The Collected Stories (8 page)

They laughed when I tried to explain, and then I shouted, ‘I’m no
longer joking. He said he’d give us no help. He said we’d have to learn to live without him. That’s what he said we’d have to do.’

It took long tedious hours to weed the garden, our hands staining black with the weeds. The excitement of bringing the timber down by boat from Oakport compensated for the tedium of the gardens and when the stack grew by the water’s edge he approved: ‘The hard way is the only way.’

On hot days he sat outside on one of the yellow dayroom chairs with the dictionary, the young swallows playing between their clay nests overhead under the drainpipe. The laughter from the garden disturbed him. The children were pelting each other with clay. He put down the book to come out where I was backing up the matted furrows, pumping half-canfuls of spray out on the potato stalks.

‘It’s not enough for you to work. You have to keep an eye on the others as well,’ he said.

‘What’ll I do if they won’t heed?’ I was wet and tired backing up the rows of dripping stalks.

‘Get a stick to them, that’s what you’ll do,’ he said and left, anxious to return to the book. ‘I have to get some peace.’

The circuit court saw him in Carrick, and he took home a thermometer in a shining steel case, senna leaves, sulphur, cascara, various white and grey powders, rose-water, and slender glass flagons, in which he began to keep samples of his urine, each morning holding the liquid in the delicate glass to the window light to search for trace of sediment. His walk grew slow and careful.

From the autumn circuit he brought a cow’s head, blood staining the newspaper, and a bomb box, the colour of grass and mud, war surplus. He showed us how to open the head down its centre, scrape out the brains, cut the glazed eye out of the sockets and the insides of the black lips with their rubber-like feelers.

Before going to bed we put it to stew over a slow fire. The next morning he remained in bed. He knocked with his shoe on the boards and told us to inform Bannon that he was going sick. After signing the ledgers at nine Bannon climbed the stairs to see how he was, and on coming down rang Neary, the police doctor.

Neary called on his way to his noon dispensary. Bannon climbed with him to the bedroom door. Only the low murmur of question and answer, the creak of moving shoes on the boards, came at first, but then the voices rose. They lulled again, while the doctor
apparently made some additional examination, only to rise again worse than ever. The voices brought Bannon to the open door at the foot of the stairs to listen there with hands behind his back. Each time the voices died he returned to his patient surveyal of the road from the dayroom window, only to be brought back to the foot of the stairs by a fresh bout of shouting. He was visibly uneasy, straightening down the front of his tunic, stuffing the white hankie farther up his sleeve, when the bedroom door opened and closed sharply, and the doctor’s quick steps were on the stairs. Bannon waited out of sight inside the open doorway until the doctor was at the foot of the stairs, then appeared obsequiously to unbolt the heavy front door of the porch, and followed Neary out on the gravel. The examination had lasted well past the noon of the doctor’s dispensary.

‘I hope there’s nothing serious?’ Bannon ventured on the gravel.

‘As serious as it can be – apparently mortal,’ the doctor answered with angry sarcasm as he put his satchel on the passenger seat of his car. ‘And he knows all about it. Why he needs to see me is the one puzzlement.’

‘How long will I mark him in the sick-book for?’ Bannon shied away.

‘Till kingdom come,’ the doctor answered; but, before he closed the car door, changed: ‘Till Wednesday. I’ll come on Wednesday.’

We brought him broth of the cow’s head and milk pudding, the air stale in the room with the one window shut tight on the river and half blinded; and Bannon, morning and evening, brought him local gossip or report, in which he took no interest. Every hour he spooned a concoction he’d made for himself from the juice of senna leaves and white powders.

On Wednesday Neary appeared well before his dispensary hour. This time the room upstairs was much quieter, though the door did close on, ‘What I want is to see a specialist, not a bunch of country quacks.’ The doctor was more quiet this time as he came down to the waiting Bannon at the foot of the stairs. When they passed through the heavy door on to the gravel, thick-veined sycamore leaves blowing towards the barrack wall from the trees of the avenue, Neary tentatively asked, ‘Had you noticed any change in the Sergeant before he took to bed?’

‘How do you mean, Doctor?’ Bannon was as always cautious.

‘Any changes in his behaviour?’

‘Well, there was the book.’

‘The book?’

‘The book he spent the whole summer poring over, a book he bought at the auction.’

‘What kind of book?’

‘Medical book, it was.’

‘Medical book’ – the doctor moved stones of the gravel slowly with his shoes as he repeated. ‘I might have known. Well, I won’t deny him benefit of specialists if that’s what he needs,’ and in the evening the doctor rang that a bed was available in the Depot Hospital. The Sergeant was to travel on the next day’s train. A police car or ambulance would meet him off the train at Amiens Street Station.

When Bannon climbed the stairs with the news, the Sergeant immediately rose and dressed.

‘It took him a long time to see the light,’ he said.

‘I hope they won’t keep you long there,’ Bannon answered carefully.

‘Tell the girls to get my new uniform out of the press,’ he asked the policeman. ‘And to get shirts and underwear and pyjamas out for packing.’

When he came down he told Bannon he could go home for the night. ‘You’ll have to mind this place for long enough on your own. I’ll keep an eye on the phone for this evening,’ he said with unusual magnanimity.

The packing he supervised with great energy, only remembering later that he was ill, and then his movements grew slow and careful again, finally shutting himself away with the silent phone behind the dayroom door. Before he did, he told me he wanted to see me there after the others had gone to bed.

A low ‘Come in’ answered my knock.

His feet rested on the bricks of the fireplace, a weak heat came from the dying fire of ash, and beside him, on another yellow chair, was the bomb box, the colour of mud and grass. A tin oil-lamp was turned low on the trestle table, on the black and red ink-stains, on the wooden dip pens standing in their wells, on the heavy ledgers and patrol books, on an unsheathed baton. A child muttering in its sleep from the upstairs room came through the door I’d left open. ‘Shut it. We’re not in a field,’ he said.

‘Early, in the summer, we talked about you managing without me.
And you did a good job in the garden and bringing the timber down. Well, it looks as if we prepared none too soon.’

‘How?’

‘You know what clothes and feeds you all – my pay. The police own the roof above your head. With my death that comes to a full stop. We all know how far your relatives can be depended on – as far as the door.’

He’d his greatcoat on over his uniform, the collar turned up but unbuttoned, his shoulders hunched in a luxury of care as if any sudden movement might quench the weak flame of life the body held.

‘Fortunately I have made provisions for the day,’ he said, turning to the bomb box on the chair, and with the same slow carefulness unlocked it. Inside, against the mud and grass camouflage over the steel, was a green wad of money in a rubber band, two brown envelopes and a large package.

‘You see this money,’ he said. ‘It’s one hundred pounds. That’s for the immediate expenses when they take the body home. It won’t cross the bridge, it’ll go to Aughoo, to lie with your mother, no matter what your relatives try.

‘Then open this envelope, it has your name,’ he lifted the thin brown envelope, ‘all instructions for the immediate death, what to do, are down there one by one.

‘This other envelope has the will and deeds,’ he continued. ‘Lynch the solicitor in Boyle has the other copy, and the day after the funeral take this copy into him.

‘I have discussed it all with Lynch, he’ll help you with the purchase of a small farm, for after the death you’ll have to get out of the barracks if you don’t all want to be carted off to the orphanage, and if you dither the saved money’ll go like snow off a rope. Paddy Mullaney wants to sell and Lynch and I agreed it’s ideal if it comes at the right price. After the farm the first thing to get is a cow. You’ll have to work from light to dark on that farm to keep these children but it’ll be worth it and you have my confidence,’ he said with great authority.

He locked the box, and handed me one of the keys.

‘You have a key and I have a key. When news of the death comes you’ll go first thing and open the box with your key. Is that clear?’ he demanded.

What was to happen was taking clearer outline as I listened, eyes fixed on the bright metal of the key in the sweat of my palm.

‘The bigger package is not for the time being of any importance. It’s for when you grow older. Old watches, your mother’s rings, photos, locks of hair, medals, albums, certificates. It’s for when you all grow older.’ Then he remembered again that he was ill, and sank back at once into the dark blue greatcoat.

What he’d been saying was that he was going to die. He’d be put in a coffin. The coffin would be put in the ground and covered with clay. He’d give no answer to any call.

Mullaney’s farm where we’d go to live, small slated house of the herd, fields sloping uphill to the mound, wet ground about the mound where once they’d startled a hare out of its form in the brown rushes; it had paused in the loop of its flight as the shot blasted its tense listening into a crumpled stillness.

Stone walls of those fields. Drudge of life from morning to night to feed the mouths, to keep the roof above their heads. The ugly and skin shapes of starlings, beaks voracious at the rim of the nest, days grown heavier with the burden of the carrying.

‘But you’re not going to die.’

‘All the symptoms point to the one fact that it’s certain.’

‘But the symptoms may be wrong.’

‘No. It’s as certain as anything can be in this life.’

‘Don’t, don’t …’

‘Do you love me, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you love me then you must do your best for the others. We can’t order our days. They are willed. We have to trust in the mercy of God.’

‘I’ll have nobody.’

‘You have the key. You’ll open the box with the key when the news comes? Now we have to go to bed. It matters not how long the day.’ He lifted the box by its handle, moved towards the stairs, its weight dragging his right shoulder down. ‘Blow out the lamp. I’ll wait for you.’

Painfully the slow climb of the stairs began. His breathing came in laboured catches. He leaned on the banister rail. Three times he paused, while I kept pace below, the key in my palm, weak moonlight from the window at the top of the stairs showing the hollowed wood in the centre of the steps, dark red paint on the sides of the way.

‘I want you to come to my room to show you where to find it when the news comes.’

He opened the door of his room that stank from the stale air and senna leaves and sweat. The moon from the river window gave light enough, but he gave me matches to light the glass lamp, and grew impatient as I fumbled the lighting.

‘Under the wardrobe,’ he said as he pushed the box between the legs of the plywood wardrobe, its brass handle shining and the silver medallions of the police caps on its top.

‘You’ll pull it out from under the wardrobe when the news comes. You have the key?’

‘But I don’t want you to die.’

‘Now,’ he put his hand on my head, ‘I love you too, but we can’t control our days, we can only pray. You have the key?’

The key lay in the sweat of the palm.

‘You’ll open the box with the key when the news comes.’

The train took him to the hospital the next day but before the end of the same week he was home again. He asked at once if his room was ready and immediately went there. He said he didn’t want anything to eat and didn’t want to be called the next morning. No one ventured near the door till Bannon climbed the stairs. When no answer greeted the timid twice-repeated knock he opened it a small way.

‘You’re home, Sergeant. Are you any better?’

The Sergeant was sitting up in bed with spectacles on, going through the medical dictionary. He looked at Bannon over the spectacles but didn’t answer.

‘I just came up to see if there was anything I could do for you? If you wanted me to ring Neary or anything?’

‘No. I don’t want you to do anything. I want you to get to hell down to the dayroom and leave me in peace,’ he shouted.

A scared and bewildered Bannon closed the door, came down the stairs, and there was no sound from the bedroom for several hours till suddenly a loud knocking came on the floorboards.

‘He wants something.’ ‘You go up.’ ‘No, you go up.’ ‘No.’ It spread immediate panic.

The next knock was loud with anger, imperative.

‘Nobody’ll do anything in this house.’ I spoke almost in his voice as I went up to the room.

It had been relief to see him come home, even joy in the release. None of us knew what to make of him shutting himself away in the upstairs room. The shouts at Bannon had been loud. I still had the key.

‘It took you long enough to come.’

He was lying down in the bed, and the medical book was shut on the eiderdown to one side.

‘I was in the scullery.’

‘You weren’t all in the scullery.’

‘They didn’t want to come.’

‘I want something to eat,’ he said.

‘What would you like?’

‘Anything, anything that’s in the house.’

‘Bacon and egg or milk pudding?’

‘Bacon and eggs’ll do.’

I held the key in my hand. I wanted to ask him what to do with the key, if he wanted it back; and my eyes kept straying under the plywood wardrobe where the bomb box must be; but the face in the bed didn’t invite any questions.

That day and the next he stayed in the room, but at five o’clock the third morning he woke the whole house by clattering downstairs and even more loudly opening and closing cupboard doors and presses, muttering all the time. When we came down he’d gone out. We saw him outside examining the potato and turnip pits, the rows of winter cabbage.