The Barracks

by John McGahern

  Afterwards the doctor told Reegan that he didn’t expect her to live through the summer. He considered that if it happened soon it’d be almost merciful, she’d get hardly more than the first cancer pains; ventricular failure would cheat the slow drugged agony of that death, he believed.

  The green rushes the children had scattered for Our Lady’s Eve hadn’t been swept and now after the few weeks lay brown and rotting on the doorstep but it was May yet and the bells rang in the evenings for devotions. On the bog, where the white fluffs of cotton tossed, the barrows of turf were fit for handling. The potato leaves pushed their way out of the earth in the garden and Reegan covered them against the frost, but without much care, the turf was his whole care. Night and morning he had the radio on long before news-time to get the weather forecast, and he watched the skies always. If they kept fair he’d be able to go free without fear or worry in September.

  The most Elizabeth saw of this spring and early summer was Reegan’s tiredness at night, loose clay on the policemen’s boots when they came to visit her, a little bunch of primroses Sheila brought. The birds were loud about the house all day, it was their mating-time, and life put even song to use. More flies gathered in the room. They had hung a yellow tape from the ceiling, where they stuck and struggled in its sweetness till they died into another motionless black speck. Mrs Lennon, the village nurse, began to come for a few hours night and morning and she made little difference to anything or any one in the house.

  Elizabeth sank steadily, and she didn’t care. Sometimes she tried to imagine her own heart and breasts laid bare on the lurid anatomy charts in the Training Hospital; she’d try to imagine what had gone wrong or what could be done but soon that’d fail and she’d be listening to one of the Sister Tutors drone through an hour of words falling like light rain. And when she woke to vital life it was often to hate.

  One night a door banged to frighten her to life. She’d been more in a stupor than asleep when the noise rocked through the house, and peeling flakes of whitewash fell from the walls. She woke in a state of panic and saw the children on the landing.

  “Who banged that door?” she called as fierce as she was able.

  They shifted on their feet and then explained, “We were tuggin’ and the door gev.”

  “Can you give me no peace? Have you no consideration for anybody? Have you nothing else to do?” their explanation only roused her more.

  Both Mrs Casey and Reegan came, attracted by the loud bang, and the commotion. “There’s nothing but noise and doors slamming. I was nearly frightened out of my senses,” she complained.

  “Didn’t I tell ye not to make noise upstairs?” Mrs Casey reproached and Reegan said, “I thought the blasted house was comin’ down about our ears. What did ye think ye were doin’? What was goin’ on here?”

  “We were playin’ and the door gev.”

  “And have ye to behave like wild animals in the house?”

  “We didn’t mean.”

  “Ye were warned before, weren’t ye? This time you’ll have to be taught a lesson, long threatenin’ comes at last,” and he pushed them before him downstairs.

  Her anger drained as she heard them go. She began to curse herself for not holding it in check. She heard their cries, they were being punished, and what was the futile use? Later she was overcome with shame when their tear-stained faces appeared in the doorway.

  “Daddy sent us to say that we are sorry.”

  “It’s all right, don’t worry. I lost my temper. It was my fault as much as yours.”

  They stood there.

  “It’s all right now, isn’t it? There’s sweets in this bag on the table. Will you take one?”

  They smiled and accepted, it was over. No matter how she spoiled them she couldn’t take responsibility for causing more pain. Not so many evenings ago she’d flown at one of the girls because her piece of toast was burned black on one side and had a trace of ashes where it must have slipped from the fork. She must be careful. This fiendish resentment was ready to possess her at every petty chance. She’d make a hell for herself and every one about her if she didn’t watch. This petty world of hers wasn’t the whole world; each person was a world; and there were so many people. None of them had to move to her beck and call, they were all free. They came to her out of their generosity or loneliness; and surely she should try to meet them with some graciousness. That was the way it should be, she was certain. But it was hard to keep that before her mind with this body and room dragging her down till she could hardly tell one thing from another.

  Though everything wasn’t black, even if it seemed so now, she’d want to affirm. Very late that same night, the house was asleep, Mullins brought down his bed. She had to smile as she heard his feet go downstairs for the second and last time, with the load of green-braided blankets surely, for she remembered how he used always bring the two pillows on top of the awkward mattress first. In spite of her discomfort there was rich enjoyment in her eyes: he’d hardly ever be likely to change that habit now! The dayroom door banged shut. “No concern for anybody, just lorry round the place,” Reegan would complain if he was awake. That door would be the last loud noise of the night, she could hear Reegan’s heavy breathing from the bed over at the fire-place, there was no sound from the children’s room, and then some place at the other end of the house began the quick, pattering race of mice on the boards of the ceiling.

  The priest came constantly and soon after she’d been taken bad he gave her Extreme Unction, it seemed awful ordinary, the touching of nostrils and eyes and ears and lips, the hands and feet with the yellow oil, smell of the 65 per cent wax candles burning, the wooden crucifix, the vessels of ordinary water and holy water, the host in the little pyx on the table.

  She had prepared patients in the hospitals herself for this same Sacrament. They’d have to wash them beforehand; make the bed so that the clothes at the bottom would be free to fold back from the feet; and when it was over she used burn the cotton-wool that had soaked the holy oil. She’d never been able to envisage herself receiving it, always it was other people.

  She flinched as she was touched with the wet wool. The organs of sense, through which sin had entered the soul, were being anointed; and she wanted to declare in the face of the Latin words that sense of truth and justice and beauty and all things else had entered that way too. She felt terribly unreal, frightened of the significance, till her eyes lit on the little bottle of yellow oil the priest had. Surely it was olive oil. Out of the Cathecism Notes they used singsong by heart at school,

  O oil of olives

  mixed with balm

  and blessed by the bishop

  on Holy Thursday.

  That was all, no awe now or intimations or anything, the priest with the purple stole touching the senses in their turn with the oil and murmuring the prayers and the 65 per cent wax candles burning that had been blessed too and, Oil of olives/mixed with balm/and blessed by the bishop/on Holy Thursday, beating in her mind, echoed by a choir of young voices preparing for Confirmation in a lost schoolroom, shutting out the full realism of the Sacrament being administered to her in this room that had grown somehow horrible. They’d got such a careful upbringing in a way, so careful that it was hard now to see what it had all been for, was it just for this? And the terror that brought could be soothed by this chanting in the memory.

  O oil of olives

  mixed with balm

  and blessed by the bishop

  on Holy Thursday.

  Then it was over, and she’d managed not to realize much, the priest was going away, he’d come again tomorrow.

  He was kind, now that she was ill, but she continued to dislike him, their first meeting and clash was deep in her mind and it would never leave it. She had always found her first instinctive reaction to people right, no matter how false somebody’s conduct made that first judgement seem for a time it had never been really proved wrong, no matter how successfully she was able to override it with reas
on or even a late liking.

  She tried never to let this priest close. In the confessional she put everything into formula. She didn’t let him know any of her thoughts. It was dishonest, though lawfully proper enough. Her thoughts had been with her too long, they had changed themselves too often for her to want to change them now because of another’s interpretation of a law big enough to include every positive position of honesty; and if her own truth wasn’t within herself she didn’t see how it could possibly concern her anyhow. She wanted to be understood, that was the old craving, but was it not an indulgence? How could anyone have time to understand her, they were as full of their own lives as she was of hers; all their lives had to overflow or cripple and die and did it matter where the overflow ran? This priest would have to examine and try to understand what she’d say in the light of his own life, and it could only lead to the wilful agreement of sympathy, or open or silent conflict. He’d want to change her to his view and she’d want to hold her own. The whole of her vital world was in herself, contracting or going outwards to embrace according to the strength and direction of her desire, but it had nothing to do with what some one else thought or felt. She didn’t want to struggle and argue, she hadn’t blind strength enough for that in years, she wanted to have her own way and be let go it in peace. Now she was losing even that desire.

  So few people took on individuality in her mind, and this priest was definitely not one of them. A big tall man in his sixties, as tall as Reegan but not so straight, bloated, a tracery of thread-like purple veins under the red skin of his face. She was detached, she could watch: he was sitting on a chair at the bedside, a priest supposed to be comforting a dying woman; she didn’t care. Sometimes the pressure of his talk oppressed her to near craziness, as if she’d been dragged close as inches to the steel singing far away across the lake, and she felt like crying at him for some ease or silence. Mostly she didn’t hear what he was saying but agreed with him mechanically as she watched him, his bloated appearance fascinated her most, and she’d think how strange it was how some wore down to skin and bone and others puffed out to burst like a pod in the sun.

  The one thing she’d fear if she could care enough was his aggressiveness, when he began to suspect that her total acquiescence wasn’t agreement but the evasion it actually was.

  “You must pray to Mary, she has the ear of God, she speaks to God for us, we’re one of the few nations in the world who understand Her importance. Don’t you think we should have great devotion to Mary?” he impressed hotly one evening.

  “Yes, of course,” she answered wearily.

  “There’s no of course about it, we should, and that’s all,” he said.

  She went hot with resentment, the instinct to savage him rose and as quickly died. He was simply a person to be avoided if she had a choice in the matter but she didn’t care whether she chose or was chosen any more, it was all the same. For a moment a picture of the ridiculous village presbytery, the hideous Virgin Mary blue of doors and windows in the whitewashed walls at the end of the lovely drive of limes, showed itself to her eyes and she wanted to laugh. “Yes. That’s quite right,” she said. She was able to agree. She’d save herself that much noise.

  It was hard enough to accept the reality of her situation; but it was surely the last and hardest thing to accept its interpretations from knaves and active fools and being compelled to live in them as in strait-jackets. To be able to say yes to that intolerant lunacy so as to be able to go your own way without noise or interruption was to accept everything and was hardest of all to do.

  A worn and dry craving to see the back of this priest would take possession of her; for Reegan to come from the bog with turf-mould dried in sweat to his face and hands; for them to kneel down about her bed so that she could hear them chant.

  Mystical Rose,

  Pray for us.

  Tower of David,

  pray for us.

  Tower of Ivory,

  pray for us.

  House of Gold,

  pray for us.

  Ark of the Covenant,

  pray for us.

  Gate of Heaven,

  pray for us.

  Morning Star.

  The rosary had grown into her life: she’d come to love its words, its rhythm, its repetitions, its confident chanting, its eternal mysteries; what it meant didn’t matter, whether it meant anything at all or not it gave the last need of her heart release, the need to praise and celebrate, in which everything rejoiced.

  She grew worse, she began to sink, though they didn’t know when it would end. As she felt herself go she tried to say once to herself, “This is not my life. This is not the way I lived. What’s happening now was never part of my life. I have lived in health, not in sickness in death,” but suddenly it was too tiring or futile to continue and the resolution was soon lost, as everything was.

  Reegan spent most of these May days on the bog, scattering the barrow heaps out into the drying. The weather was dry and hard, white frost at nights, a still low mist white in the morning that couldn’t be penetrated as far as the navigation signs at the mouth of the lake from the barrack door; the sun would beat it away before ten and rise into a blazing day, getting quite cold again towards evening. It was the best possible weather for saving turf, and Reegan was on the bog with Sheila and Willie the day she died, Una let stay in the house with Mrs Casey because the illness had reached the stage when some one had to be all the time with her in the bedroom.

  She had drowsed through the morning, stirred once to get her dose of drugs, and was breathing heavily when the Angelus rang.

  “That was the bell, Willie, wasn’t it?” she said to the child.

  “’Twas, Elizabeth,” Una answered, and there was noise and smells of Mrs Casey cooking in the kitchen.

  “I wasn’t sure, all day I seem to hear strange bells ringing in my mind, church bells. It was the bell, wasn’t it?”

  “’Twas,” the child was growing uneasy.

  “Did they come from the bog yet?”

  “No, not till evenin’, Daddy has a day’s monthly leave, they brought bread and bottles of tea in the socks.”

  “But they were to be back to go to devotions, it grows cold on the bog in the evenings. But that was the first bell, wasn’t it?”

  “No,’ twas the Angelus, Elizabeth,” the child gave a short laugh, though it couldn’t be possible that Elizabeth was trying to play tricks with her.

  “It’s the bell for the Angelus,” Elizabeth repeated, obviously trying to understand.

  “It’s the bell for the Angelus, late no more than usual, twenty past twelve on the clock now,” the child said with the faint suggestion of a laugh, the unpunctual ringing of the bells was a local joke.

  “But why did you draw the blinds?”

  “What blinds?” the child was frightened.

  “The blinds of the window.”

  “No, there’s no blinds down, but it’ll not be long till it’s brighter. The sun’ll be round to this side of the house in an hour.”

  “There’s no clouds?”

  “No, no,” the child said, trying to behave as if everything was usual, but she was stiff with fright. The wide window where she stood was open on the summer, changing corrugations of the breeze on the bright lake and river, glittering points; butterflies, white and rainbow, tossed in the light over the meadows, wild flowers shining out of the green, the sickly rich heaviness of meadowsweet reaching as far as the house.

  “No, there’s no cloud,” the child said, and stood in terror. Elizabeth’s head fell slack; the breath began to snore and rattle; her fingers groped at the sheets, the perishing senses trying to find root in something physical; and the childran calling to Mrs Casey in the kitchen.

  After the first shock, the incredulity of the death, the women, as at a wedding, took over: the priest and doctor were sent for, the news broken to Reegan on the bog, the room tidied of its sick litter, a brown habit and whiskey and stout and tobacco and foodstu
ffs got from the shops at the chapel, the body washed and laid out—the eyes closed with pennies and her brown beads twined through the fingers that were joined on the breast in prayer. Her relatives and the newspapers were notified, and the black mourning diamonds sewn on Reegan’s and the children’s coats.

  Reegan was sent to the town to make the funeral arrangements, and it was the first chance he got to think what had happened since Casey came to the bog with the news. There was such a bustle of activity about the death, and he felt just a puppet in the show. When he got home from the town and undertaker the house was full of people. The wake would last till the rosary was said at midnight; and a few would remain in the room afterwards to keep the early morning vigil, the candles burning close to her dead face while it grew light. All Reegan had to do was stand at the door and shake hands with those offering him their sympathy, answering the customary, “I’m sorry for your trouble, Sergeant,” with what grew more and more idiotic to him as the night progressed, “I know that. I know that indeed. Thank you.”

  The next evening she was coffined and taken to the church where she was received by the priest and left beneath the red sanctuary lamp, surrounded by candles in tall black sticks, till she’d be taken to the graveyard in Eastersnow after High Mass the next day.

  Cars crept jerkedly in low gear behind the hearse at the funeral, a few surviving horse-traps that seemed to belong more to museums than the living day followed behind the cars, the bicycles came next, and those who walked were last of all. A funeral’s importance was judged by the number of cars behind the hearse and they were counted carefully as they crawled past the shops: Elizabeth had 33 cars at her funeral. The most important funeral ever from the church had 186 cars, it was the record, and labourers hired out for their lives from the religious institutions that reared them to farmers, homeboys, were known to have as few as 5 cars behind their deal coffins, so Elizabeth’s funeral with 33 cars was considered neither a disgrace nor a remarkable turnout.