“It’s only for another few months.”
The bones stood out clear in the face in the mirror, a sunken glow in the eyes.
“They broke stronger men than you, the same books,” atavistic fear was in the eyes that looked on the quiet books on the table in the lamplight. “Far stronger men than you the books broke. And if you haven’t your health what good will it all do you?”
“I feel alright.”
“You’ll feel alright when you’re in a brown box too, not a care in the world on you, let others do the worrying and the burying.”
The best was to stand there and say nothing, the less his idea was opposed the more quickly it’d wear itself out.
“You’ll probably wind up with nothing in the heel of the hunt anyhow. You’ll look a right eejit then, won’t you? And don’t say I didn’t warn you. But I suppose there’s people dying that never died before,” and he went muttering out of the house.
S
CHOOL WENT IN GRINDING CONCENTRATION ON JUNE, WHAT
questions were most likely to be asked and how to answer, practice at the papers of previous years, ideal answers from Caffrey’s Correspondence College in Dublin.
The only interruptions were the priests from the various orders in search of vocations. Once or twice in these appeals they phrased your own torment too close for comfort.
“My dear boys, you are on the threshold of life, a life that’ll end in death. Then the Judgment. All the joys and pleasures of life you yearn for now will have been just a passing bauble then. If you clutch at these now will they avail you anything in the only important moment in life, moment of death? On the other hand, if you give your life to God, and surely the priesthood is the gift outright, you can say you kept nothing
back. As your whole life was in God, so will your life be in death, and in the hereafter.”
That was it simply, and you had set your face the other way from it, towards the bauble. You were heading out into an uncertain life, sacrificing the certainty of a life based on death; for what you didn’t know, windblown excitements and imaginings that in the humdrum of their actuality might soon get stripped of their sensual marvel.
How easy it would be to go downstairs to the community room where the priest interviewed anyone interested afterwards and say: “I want to become a priest, father.” Everything would be taken care of. You’d go on to the Seminary at the end of the year. You’d be cut loose from your father. You’d not have to worry about a job or what people thought. In your death you’d be a priest, a priest of God, the death already accepted in life, the life already given into His keeping before it was required, years before, in your youth.
You’d be almost afraid to look at the leaflet handouts the priest took from the black leather case afterwards, photos of the Seminary life, on the football pitch and in the oratory, happily eating in the refectory, bent in the peace of books at study, walking with companions through grounds filled with evergreens.
There was a fierce drag to go down to the community room and give your life into that death, but no, you’d set your face another direction, and you knew if you did go down that the drag would be back to where you were now. No way was easy.
The other appeals—comradeship, the sharing of mysterious power, working in exotic countries where oranges and lemons grew along the roadside, walking with the great of the land—never moved you much. In the reality your life moved in the shade of a woman or death. Only the lifeless or blind fell for the lesser than these. This was just the destruction of
entering the dream around delight of the woman or the disciplined waiting in the priesthood of Christ.
Mahoney’s violence was turning more on himself. He came reeking with Guinness from the April market. When they’d given him his meal, answered his inquiries about the pigs and milking, and he could find nothing to fault, he let himself slump before the heat of the fire. It seemed he’d doze quietly there. Then suddenly he jumped up, the face red and bloated, dramatic arm outstretched, to do a half-circle swing on the floor and shout, “I went to school too.”
“This is my life, and this kitchen in the townland of Cloone is my stage, and I am playing my life out here on,” and he stood, the eyes wild, as if grappling for his lines.
“And nobody sees me except a crowd of childer,” the voice trailed bitterly, and then burst out again.
“But it’s important, it’s important to me, it’s the only life I’ve got, it’s more important than anything else in the world to me. I went to school too,” and he started to sob drunkenly till he grew aware of the still eyes of the children watching him, when he began to shout again.
“What are ye gaping at? Have you nothing to do but stand with your mouths open? Such a useless pack,” and they instinctively scattered, years of habit, before he could single any one of them out.
As June drew closer the school prayers, morning and evening, were offered for the exams—that the school might do well. The class was exhorted to offer their private prayers for the same intention.
Please God may I not fail
.
Please God may I get over sixty per cent
.
Please God may I get a high place
.
Please God may all those likely to beat me get killed in road accidents, and may they die roaring.
It made no sense, even if you did say your prayers any
more. If God was there nothing mattered but the Presence.
The poor, the tramps of the road, were supposed to have better chance in the final round-up than the secure. What was you alone went to Him, not roses and vegetable garden and semi-detached house and young wife and children and the Ford or Volkswagen for Sunday outings from the Dublin suburbs you took to him if you got the Junior Executive Exam for the Civil Service, but whatever was you alone.
What was there to do but keep silent, but when Mahoney offered the hurried rosary they said each night for your success you couldn’t stand it, at least Mahoney should be above that slobber, you thought.
“What did you say that for?” you almost shouted the moment they’d finished, unable to choke back the anger.
“What?”
“Praying for my success.”
“Don’t you want the Grace of God or are you a pagan or something?”
“No. It’s not that. What does it matter to God whether I get the exam or not, or to my life under him? If it’s his Will, and I’m lucky enough and good enough, I’ll get the exam. And if I don’t it doesn’t matter. It’ll not matter the day I’m dying.”
“What sort of rubbish and blasphemy am I listening to?”
“None. You want to use prayer like money, wheedle the exam out of God. Can’t you leave it alone. God is more important than a getter of exams for people. What does it matter whether I get the exam or not?”
“There was enough fire and light used on it then, if it wasn’t important. You should take your scarecrow face and bag of bones before a mirror if you want to get a fright sometime, apparently it matters that much. And now you’re gone too crazy madhouse to ask God. Is it out of your mind you’re gone?”
“No. I’m sane as you are, or more. Ask for Grace if you want, but don’t ask him to pass the exam ——”
“Heathen rubbish!”
“No. No exam deserves the Grace of God, nobody does. Let them ask Grace, a bolloksed poor devil, but no, no, no.”
Mahoney waited till the rush of passion subsided, and then addressed more the general house than made direct answer.
“Do you hear what I had to wait till near the end of my days to hear in my own house? Heathen rubbish. And in future keep your dirty language for your street-corner friends in town, do you hear me?”
“I do, but I don’t want any praying for exams.”
“We wouldn’t as much as dirty prayers with your name again but such filth and rubbish. Hell is where you’re heading for and fast. I never knew too much books to do good yet. Puffed pride. You think you can do or say anything you’ve a mind for. I’ve seen a few examples of it in me time, but never such prize heretic baloney as this night. I’ll hear no more in this house. Do you hear me now?”
“Alright. You’ll hear no more.”
“Such rubbish,” he went on complaining. “And in front of the children too. Puffed up and crazy, it’d choke you to live the same as other people, wouldn’t it? You don’t even need God now? You wouldn’t ever have to do such a mean thing as clean your arse, would you, these days? Maybe it’s up in the sky you spend your time these days, having conversations with God, and not down here with the likes of us. And I reared you and let you to school for that. As if there could be luck in a house with the likes of you in it.”
He went muttering and complaining that way to bed. And then, when he was gone, the wave of remorse that came. You’d troubled him, and for what? Did it matter what was prayed for? If it gave him satisfaction to pray for success why not let him, it would make no difference except he’d not be
upset as now. Stupid vanity had caused it all. The house had gone to bed. You were alone in the kitchen. You wanted to say to him you were sorry but you weren’t able.
His boots, wet from the grass, stood drying by the raked fire. They started to take on horrible fascination.
They were your father’s boots, close to the raked fire. They’d been put there to dry for morning. Their toes touched where the ashes spilled out from the fire on the concrete, boots wet from the grass. Your father’s feet had been laced in their black leather, leather over walking flesh. They’d walk in his hopes, be carried over the ground, till they grew worn, past mending, and were discarded for the new pair from Curley’s, on and on, over the habitual fields, lightly to the football matches in Reegan’s field on Sundays, till the feet themselves wore, boots taken off his dying feet. Corns of the flesh against the leather. All the absurd anxiety and delight and heedlessness the boots carried. They stood so utterly quiet by the fire, the feet that they’d cover resting between sheets to wear them through another day. The boots were so calm there. They would not move. You touched them in fascination, they did not stir, only the rough touch of wet boot leather against the finger-tips. One lace was broken, replaced by white twine.
How could you possibly hurt or disturb anyone? Hadn’t the feet that wore the boots, all that life moving in boot leather, enough to contend with, from morning to night to death, without you heaping on more burden, from sheer egotism. Did it matter to the boots, moving or still, whether your success was prayed for or not? Why couldn’t you allow people to do the small things that pleased them? In this same mood you did what you had never done and went and knocked on his door.
“Who’s that? What do you want?”
“I’m sorry over the prayers.”
“It’s a bit late in the day to be sorry now, easy to be sorry when the harm’s done, such heathen rubbish, easy to know why you’re sorry. It’s more than sorry you ought to be——”
Anger rose as the voice continued to complain out of the darkness of the bedroom. The same boots could kick and trample. You couldn’t stand it, you’d only meant well, that was all.
“Forget it for God’s sake. I just said I was sorry,” you said and closed the door sharply to go troubled and angry through the kitchen to your own bedroom.
C
LOSER AND CLOSER THE EXAM CAME ON A COUNT OF DAYS
, early June days of pure summer that year, memory of boats on the river down the town at the bridge and girls in white at tennis over by the Courthouse on Wednesday half-days through dead evenings. All but the exam classes had been let away on summer holidays. The pressure of the ordinary schooldays was completely relaxed, effort to ease the strain of waiting for the exam. Timetable and rule went overboard, chairs were brought out on the lawn. In the shade of the huge cypress tree a half-circle was made about Benedict, the lawn bright outside the shade, white flags of the clock golf, white lawn blocks like toy dogs on either side of the concrete path that cut the lawn in two, the pink snow of petals on the grass under the one lilac tree.
“There’s no need to sweat any more. The work is over. More harm than good is always done this time of year by
work. Just relax. An exam is the same as a football match. You never train heavily on its eve. What we’ll do now is go over any points that still puzzle you. Well, I’m waiting for questions,” Benedict smiled, the jet-black hair sleeked, he’d to shave twice a day because of the darkness of his beard. The wide leather belt was buckled tight about the narrow waist, part of the cape drawn across his throat and thrown over his shoulder. It was said that he could read in six languages and that he had foreign blood because of his blackness.
Questions moved about the Council of Trent, a point of grammar in one of the Horace Odes, Plantation of Ulster, degenerating into sheer time-wasting and ease in the end.
“Do you think if Horace came he’d understand the Latin the way we read it?”
“No. He’d probably be horrified. But you needn’t fear, McDermott, the only ghosts you should have back these days are the nights you spent in the Gaiety all winter.”
“Why is the dead language of Latin used in the Mass?”
“Because it’s the official language of the Church, binding together the differences of so many languages, the universal unchanging language.”
It was a game, not touching the exam.
A drill battered at concrete the other end of the town. Cars passed the gate on the Dublin Road, the stone Celtic cross above it, ad maiorem dei gloriam. The shadow of the great cypress, stretching farther than the hedge of flowering currant and the high wall, stayed still on the lawn. The questions lazed on.
“Were the Romans much like us?”
“Why were so many of the poets heretics and mad?”
“How many classes have you prepared for the Leaving since you became a Brother?”
“Do you think has Roscommon much of a chance in the All Ireland this year?”
“Do you think our class is among the better or worse?”
You sat on that lawn through those questions, part of your life passed that way, in the ease of the day and this shuttlecock of undemanding question and answer. Though the ease was broken by constant flashes: the exam was near, the day of reckoning. A horrible tightening of fear gathered in the guts. Benedict said you’d walk away with the Scholarship, but there was always luck he said too.
Would you fail? Fail Benedict’s opinion, not have any luck, get the wrong questions, not having what it took in the last round-up. You could hear your father’s voice when that result came.
“See where the study got you after it all, the amount of fire and light down the drain, and for nothing. Yourself and the rest of the house damned near driven cracked. Didn’t I tell you? I told you only those with the pull would get anything, didn’t I tell you that?”
You tried to shut your eyes. Your eyes strayed about. Grass, concrete, shade, strands of wire running between concrete posts and beyond the sanded yard you used cross with the bicycle, all the times rough-and-tumble soccer was kicked there with a sponge ball. Fallen lilacs were on the lawn. A hit tune started to beat through the sickness: “We’ll gather lilacs in the springtime.”
They’d all gather lilacs in a horrible summertime, parched into dust. Dry lilac petals choking your father’s mouth, your own mouth, rotting life of the lawn about the lilac tree, under the bridges of Paris with me, darling you’ll hold me tight.
The sun, the heat was the worst. The futility of the chairs on the lawn. Your father might be right enough yet, you were half crazy. If you’d kept on to be a priest you’d be calm as the others; just an easy progression into a seminary of continuing days is all you’d have to fear.
“Security. Security. Security. Everyone’s looking for security,” the Reverend Bull Reegan shouted annually from the pulpit at every annual retreat.
Lives were lived through in this rathole of security, warding off blows, dealing blows, one desperate cling to stay alive in the rat hole; terror of change; neither much risk or generosity or praise, even madness as banal and harmless as anything else there. You must get the same bus at the same time on the same road each morning, hang your hat on the same hook, have three pennies for the same newspaper which the newsboy would hand you without you asking. That was the height of the exam. That of the recognition in the city when you’d walk out of the office with the umbrella.
Dream of a girl’s mouth on the lawn in the cypress shade and Benedict’s dry ironic voice yards away with the drill digging the concrete, no taking to the air a quiet breath without moan, but the last shiver of the nerves in soft threshing thighs and lips on a dancing floor.
No. Some ordinary futility instead, fail the exam, a second-class ticket on the nightboat for Holyhead, and did it matter, but it was too close to the exam to turn back, just go blindly into it for the next fortnight for God’s sake.
“Pray for success. Ask God’s blessing. Have the peace of the state of Grace in your soul. Put yourself as an instrument in God’s hand. You’ll not fare any worse by it,” Benedict was saying, obviously ready to end the class, and it was no use to you.
“I have studied the course, worked as hard as I could drive myself. After that it’s a game with luck. I’ll just go in and do it as best I can. If anyone’s better it has nothing to do with me. There’s not places for everyone, only two, no matter how good the rest are. It’s only a shocking game. And who are the judges and what are their standards anyhow?” you tried to phrase as you left the lawn with your books and chair.
“You can go to England if all fails. You’ll work in Dagen-ham and they’ll call you Pat.”
“Will you make up a game for the alley,” O’Reilly called, it was the best. A doubles, energy let loose in this striving, the concrete wall before you, imprisoned by the high netting wire. The small elephant was a brown blur of spin and speed. There was the joy of skill and pure movement, the flash of instinctive thinking, and it was of no consequence much who won or lost. Outside the netting wire was the mould of the monastery garden, full of cabbages and young potato stalks.