The Collected Stories

by John McGahern

  ‘What is it, Mary?’ He lifted his head from the desk as she tapped on the glass of the classroom door.

  ‘It’s Joe Cunningham from Derrada.’ She held up the small green envelope. ‘He’s been killed in an accident in England. They’re all at the hay.’

  ‘Joe Cunningham.’ The child’s face came to him. A dull average boy, the oldest of the Cunninghams, two of them still at school. He’d been home last summer, boasting and flashing his money in the bars. ‘What’ll you have, Master? I’m standin’ today. We mightn’t have been all geniuses but we got on toppin’,’ what looked like bits of tinfoil glittering in his jacket.

  ‘I’ll take it, Mary. It’s just as well I take it. They know me a long time now. I suppose they took the car to the fields?’

  ‘No, they went in the van.’

  ‘I’ll take the car, then.’

  All the doors of the house were open when he got to Cunningham’s but there was nobody in. He knew that they must be nearhand, probably at the hay. There is such stillness, stillness of death, he thought, about an empty house with all its doors open on a hot day. A black and white sheepdog left off snapping at flies to rush towards him as he came through the gate into the meadow. It was on the side of the hill above the lake. In the shade, a tin cup floated among some hayseed in a gallon of spring water. Across the lake, just out from a green jet of reeds, a man sat still in a rowboat fishing for perch. They were all in the hayfields, the mother and father and four or five children. The field had been raked clean and they were heading off cocks. All work stopped as the hatted man came over the meadow. The father rose from teasing out hay to a boy winding it into a rope. They showed obvious discomfort as they waited, probably thinking the teacher had come to complain about some of the children, until they saw the pale green envelope.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the hatted man said as he watched the father read. ‘If there’s anything I can do you have only to tell me.’

  ‘Joe’s been killed in England. The Lord have mercy on his soul,’ the father said in dazed quiet, handing the envelope to the mother, all his slow movements heavy with toil.

  ‘Oh my God. My Joe,’ the mother broke.

  The older children began to cry, but two little girls lifted fistfuls of hay and began to look playfully at one another and the whole stunned hayfield through wisps of hay and to laugh wildly.

  ‘I’ll have to go to London. I’ll have to take him home,’ the father said.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ the teacher said again.

  ‘Thanks, Master. Shush now,’ he said to his wife. ‘We’ll all go in now. The hay can be tidied up after. Shush now, Bridget. We have to do the best by him the few days more he’ll be with us,’ the father said as they trooped out of the hayfield.

  ‘Is there anything – a small drop of something – we can offer you, Master?’ They paused at the open door.

  ‘Nothing, thanks, Joe. What I’ll do is let you get tidied up and I’ll come round for you in about two hours. I’ll take you into the town so that you can see to things.’

  ‘Are you sure that won’t be putting you to too much trouble, Master?’

  ‘No trouble at all. Why don’t you go in now?’

  Before he switched on the engine he heard from the open door, ‘Thou, Oh Lord, wilt open my lips,’ in the father’s voice. The leaves of the row of poplars along the path from the house were beginning to rattle so loudly in the evening silence that he was glad when the starting engine shut out the sound.

  The father went to London and flew back with the coffin two days later. A long line of cars met the hearse on the Dublin road to follow it to the church. After High Mass the next day young people with white armbands walked behind the hearse until it crossed the bridge, where it gathered speed, and it did not slow until it came in sight of Ardcarne, where they buried him.

  Some weeks later the Dance Committee met round the big mahogany table in the front room of the presbytery: the priest, the hatted teacher, the Councillor Doherty, Owen Walsh the sharp-faced postman, and Jimmy McGuire who owned the post office.

  ‘We seem to be nearly all here.’ The priest looked round when it had gone well past the time of the meeting.

  ‘We are,’ the postman answered quickly. ‘Paddy McDermott said he was sorry he couldn’t come. It’s something to do with sheep.’

  ‘We might as well begin, then,’ the priest said. ‘As we all know why we’re here I’ll just go over it briefly. Young Cunningham was killed in England. The family insisted on taking the body home. Whether it was wise or foolish it is done now and the only thing we know is that the Cunninghams can’t afford to fly a coffin home from England. The talk is that old Joe himself will have to go to England this winter to pay off the expense of the funeral. We all feel, I think, that there’s no need for that.’ There was a low murmur of approval.

  ‘So we’ve more or less decided to hold a dance,’ the teacher took up quietly. ‘Unless someone here has a better idea?’

  ‘Have we thought about a collection?’ the Councillor Doherty asked because he felt he should ask something.

  ‘The dance more or less covers that as well,’ the priest said, and the Councillor nodded comprehendingly. ‘Anybody not going will be invited to send subscriptions.’

  ‘I can manage that end of it,’ the postman said. ‘I can put the word out on my rounds so that it can be done without any fuss.’

  ‘There’s no question of getting a big band or anything like that. “Faith, Hope and Charity” will bring in as much and they’ll play for a few crates of stout. We’ll let people pay whatever they can afford,’ the priest said.

  ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ were three old bachelor brothers, the Cryans, who played at local functions. They had been known as ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ for so long that nobody now knew how their name began. Faith played the fiddle. Hope beat out the rhythm on the drums. Charity was strapped into an old accordion that was said to have come from America.

  ‘Well, everything seems settled, then, so, except the date.’ The priest rose when everybody murmured agreement and unlocked the cabinet. He took out five heavy tumblers and a cut-glass decanter of whiskey. There was already a glass jug of water beside the vase of roses in the centre of the big table.

  The dance was held on a lovely clear night in September. A big harvest moon hung over the fields. It was almost as clear as day coming to the dance and the hall was full. Most of the older people came just to show their faces and by midnight the dance belonged completely to the young. The Committee left after counting the takings. The postman and the teacher agreed to stay behind to close the hall. They sat on the table near the door watching the young people dance. The teacher had taught nearly all the dancers, and as they paired off to go into the backs of cars they showed their embarrassment in different ways as they passed the table.

  ‘Now that “Faith, Hope and Charity” are getting into right old playing form,’ the postman nodded humorously towards the empty crates of stout between the three old brothers playing away on the stage, ‘they seem to be losing most of their customers.’

  ‘Earlier and earlier they seem to start at it these days,’ the teacher said.

  ‘Still, I suppose they’re happy while they’re at it.’ The postman smiled, and folded his arms on the table at the door, always feeling a bit of an intellectual in these discussions with the hatted teacher, while ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ launched into the opening bars of ‘A Whistling Gypsy’.

  ‘No, Owen. No. I wouldn’t be prepared to go as far as that with you, now,’ James Sharkey began.

  The Stoat

  I was following a two-iron I had struck just short of the green when I heard the crying high in the rough grass above the fairway. The clubs rattled as I climbed towards the sound, but it did not cease, its pitch rising. The light of water from the inlet was blinding when I climbed out of the grass, and I did not see the rabbit at once, where it sat rigidly still on a bare patch of loose sand, crying.
I was standing over the rabbit when I saw the grey body of the stoat slithering away like a snake into the long grass.

  The rabbit still did not move, but its crying ceased. I saw the wet slick of blood behind its ear, the blood pumping out on the sand. It did not stir when I stooped. Never before did I hold such pure terror in my hands, the body trembling in a rigidity of terror. I stilled it with a single stroke. I took the rabbit down with the bag of clubs and left it on the edge of the green while I played out the hole. Then as I crossed to the next tee I saw the stoat cross the fairway following me still. After watching two simple shots fade away into the rough, I gave up for the day. As I made my way back to the cottage my father rented every August, twice I saw the stoat, following the rabbit still, though it was dead.

  All night the rabbit must have raced from warren to warren, the stoat on its trail. Plumper rabbits had crossed the stoat’s path but it would not be deflected; it had marked down this one rabbit to kill. No matter how fast the rabbit raced, the stoat was still on its trail, and at last the rabbit sat down in terror and waited for the stoat to slither up and cut the vein behind the ear. I had heard it crying as the stoat was drinking its blood.

  My father was reading the death notices on the back of the Independent on the lawn of the cottage. He always read the death notices first, and then, after he had exhausted the news and studied the ads for teachers, he’d pore over the death notices again.

  ‘Another colleague who was in Drumcondra the same year as myself has gone to his reward,’ he said when he looked up. ‘A great full-back poor Bernie was, God rest him.’

  I held up the rabbit by way of answer.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘A stoat was killing it on the links.’

  ‘That’s what they do. Why did you bring it back?’

  ‘I just brought it. The crying gave me a fright.’

  ‘What will we cook for dinner? You know Miss McCabe is coming tonight?’

  ‘Not the poor rabbit anyhow. There’s lamb chops and cheese and wine and salad.’

  My father had asked me to come to Strandhill because of Miss McCabe. They’d been seeing one another for several months and had arranged to spend August at the ocean. They seemed to have reached some vague, timid understanding that if the holiday went well they’d become engaged before they returned to their schools in September. At their age, or any age, I thought their formality strange, and I an even stranger chaperon.

  ‘Why do you want me to come with you?’ I had asked.

  ‘It’d look more decent – proper – and I’d be grateful if you’d come. Next year you’ll be a qualified doctor with a life of your own.’

  I had arranged to do postgraduate work for my uncle, a surgeon in Dublin, when my father pleaded for this last summer. I would golf and study, he would read the Independent and see Miss McCabe.

  The summer before he had asked me, ‘Would you take it very much to heart if I decided to marry again?’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I was afraid you might be affronted by the idea of another woman holding the position your dear mother held.’

  ‘Mother is dead. You should do exactly as you want to.’

  ‘You have no objections, then?’

  ‘None whatever.’

  ‘I wouldn’t even think of going ahead if you’d any objections.’

  ‘Well, you can rest assured, then. I have none. Have you someone in mind?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he answered absently.

  I put it aside as some wandering whim until several weeks later when he offered me a sheet of paper on which was written in his clear, careful hand: Teacher, fifty-two. Seeks companionship. View marriage. ‘What do you think of it?’ he asked.

  ‘I think it’s fine.’ Dismay cancelled a sudden wild impulse to roar with laughter.

  ‘I’ll send it off, then, so.’

  After about a month he showed me the response. A huge pile of envelopes lay on his desk. I was amazed. I had no idea that so much unfulfilled longing wandered around in the world. Replies came from nurses, housekeepers, secretaries, childless widows, widows with small children, house owners, car owners, pensioners, teachers, civil servants, a policewoman, and a woman who had left at twenty years of age to work at Fords of Dagenham who wanted to come home. The postman inquired slyly if the school was seeking a new assistant, and the woman who ran the post office said in a faraway voice that if we were looking for a housekeeper she had a relative who might be interested.

  ‘I hope they don’t steam the damn letters. This country is on fire with curiosity,’ he said.

  Throughout the winter I saw much of him because he had to meet many of the women in Dublin though he had to go to Cork and Limerick and Tullamore as well. In hotel lounges he met them, hiding behind a copy of the Roscommon Herald.

  ‘You’ve never in your life seen such a collection of wrecks and battleaxes as I’ve had to see in the last few months,’ he said, a cold night in late March after he had met the lady from Dagenham in the Ormond. ‘You’d need to get a government grant before you could even think of taking some of them on.’

  ‘Do you mean in appearance or as people?’

  ‘All ways,’ he said despairingly. ‘I have someone who seems a decent person, at least compared to what I’ve seen,’ and for the first time he told me about Miss McCabe.

  Because of these interviews I was under no pressure to go home for Easter and I spent it with my uncle in Dublin. I wasn’t able to resist telling him, ‘My father’s going to get married.’

  ‘You must be joking. You’d think boring one poor woman in a lifetime would be enough.’

  ‘He’s gone about it in a curious way. He’s put an ad in the papers.’

  ‘An ad!’ Suddenly my uncle became convulsed with laughter and was hardly able to get words out. ‘Did he get … replies?’

  ‘Bundles. He’s been interviewing them.’

  ‘Bundles … God help us all. This is too much.’

  ‘Apparently, he’s just found someone. A schoolteacher in her forties.’

  ‘Have you seen this person?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m supposed to see her soon.’

  ‘My God, if you hang round long enough you see everything.’

  My uncle combed his fingers through his long greying hair. He was a distinguished man and his confidence and energy could be intimidating. ‘At least, if he does get married, it’ll get him off your back.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ I replied defensively. ‘I’m well used to him by now.’

  I met Miss McCabe in the lobby of the Ormond Hotel, a lobby that could have been little different to the many lobbies he had waited in behind a copy of the Roscommon Herald. They sat in front of me, very stiffly and properly, like two well-dressed, well-behaved children seeking adult approval. She was small and frail and nervous, a nervousness that extended, I suspected, well beyond the awkwardness and unease of the whole contrived meeting. There was something about her – a waif-like sense of decency – that was at once appealing and troubling. Though old, she was like a girl, in love with being in love a whole life long without ever settling on any single demanding presence until this late backward glance fell on my bereft but seeking father.

  ‘Well, what was your impression?’ he asked me when we were alone.

  ‘I think Miss McCabe is a decent, good person,’ I said uncomfortably.

  ‘You have … no objections, then?’

  ‘None.’

  We had been here a week. I had seen Miss McCabe three or four times casually. She looked open-eyed and happy. She stayed in the Seaview Hotel beside the salt baths on the ocean front and went for walks along the shore with my father. They had lunches and teas together. Tonight she was coming to the house for the first time. In all his years in the world my father had never learned to cook, and I offered to take care of the dinner.

  She wore a long blue printed dress, silver shoes, and silver pendants, like thin el
ongated pears, hung from her ears. Though she praised the food she hardly ate at all and took only a few sips from the wine glass. My father spoke of schools and curricula and how necessary it was to get to the sea each August to rid oneself of staleness before starting back into the new school year, and her eyes shone as she followed every heavy word.

  ‘You couldn’t be more right. The sea will always be wonderful,’ she said.

  It seemed to discomfort my father, as if her words belonged more to the sea and air than to his own rooted presence.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked predictably when he returned from leaving her back to the Seaview.

  ‘I think she is a very gentle person.’

  ‘Do you think she has her feet on the ground?’

  ‘I think you are very lucky to have found her,’ I said. The way he looked at me told me he was far from convinced that he had been lucky.

  The next morning he looked at me in a more dissatisfied manner still when a girl came from the Seaview to report that Miss McCabe had a mild turn during the night. A doctor had seen her. She was recovering and resting in the hotel and wanted to see my father. The look on his face told me that he was more than certain now that she was not near rooted enough.

  ‘Will you come with me?’ he asked.

  ‘It is yourself she wants to see.’

  When he got back from the hotel he was agitated. ‘She’s all right,’ he said. ‘She had a mild heart attack. She still thinks we’ll get engaged at the end of the month.’

  ‘I thought that was the idea.’

  ‘It was. If everything went well,’ he said with emphasis.

  ‘Did you try to discuss it with her?’

  ‘I tried. I wasn’t able. All she thinks of is our future. Her head is full of plans.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Clear out,’ he said. ‘There is no other way.’

  As if all the irons were suddenly being truly struck and were flowing from all directions to the heart of the green, I saw that my father had started to run like the poor rabbit. He would have been better off if he could have tried to understand something, even though it would get him off nothing. Miss McCabe was not alone in her situation.