T
HE DAYS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THE EXAM TOOK ON THE
quality of a dream: time passing, the will paralysed, watching the certain flow towards the brink in helpless fear and fascination, it could not be true and yet it was drawing relentlessly close. Possibility of working was gone, the listless turning of pages I knew already by heart alone in the room. Evenings across Oakport towards the river with books; but, instead of studying, all it was possible to do was gaze at the great rusting gates of Oakport that used open to coaches once, the weathered white of the rotting wood of Nutley’s boathouse, the reeds along the shore trembling with fish and the endless water. On the way home through the wood my feet tramping on the bluebells. The exam was only days away, but it was as unreal as my own death; was all life like this; and it was impossible to be easy. Crossing the stone walls of the Plains with the
sheepdog in the hope of the distraction of a grazing rabbit was one escape.
The day before the exam was an intensification of the same, a Sunday, hot and without a breeze. With Joan I went on the river, in the old tarred boat, the tar melting and smelling in the heat, and I’d to pour water over the squealing rowing-pins. She let out the spoons and I rowed at slow trawling speed, but there was too much brightness, the light glaring off the water, not even in the shade of Oakport Wood along the edges of the drowning leaves did a single fish strike. Joan sat with the lines in her hands at the end of the boat. I rowed with the same mechanical slowness, lifting the oars high now and then to listen to the ripple of the boat through the glass-calm water.
“Are you worried about tomorrow?” she asked.
“I don’t know. The whole business seems cuckoo or something. It’s not real. Why did you ask?”
“No why. You didn’t speak a word since we left. I was just wondering.”
“I suppose I must be worried.”
In a dream the boat went by the known landmarks. The Gut at the mouth between a red navigation pan and a black, the Golden Bush good for perch, Toughran’s Island, Knockvicar Island and the creamery through the trees, the three arches of Knockvicar Bridge with the scum from the creamery sewer along the sally bushes, names bedded for ever in my life, as eternal.
Knockvicar Locks was as far as the boat could get up the river, because of the great wooden gates. To an ash sapling rooted in the stones we tied the boat and started to worm fish for perch, an even mane of water falling across the wall and churning white out on the stones from the sluice, the smell of rotting river-weed thick in the air.
The place was almost crowded: a few boats, people sitting
on the lock gates or out on the wall fishing with their trousers rolled to their knees, the mane of water dragging at their ankles before it poured down the green wall; girls on the grass along the bank. There was sense of laziness and ease and Sunday over it all, but the fishing was without pleasure, list¬ lessly pulling in the small perch, their bright red fins and the gills working on the floor of the boat till they died in the heat, baiting the hook again, and sitting to watch the cork. The exam was tomorrow, the first day would be finishing this time tomorrow, it wasn’t possible to believe, and there was only a dull ache. This whole corner of river was a painting of a Sunday, even children. These hadn’t to wrestle with any exams. They were as fixed here on hot Sundays as the river. There was no darkness or fear or struggle. Their cigarette-packets drifted past. Only a fool wanted to be different.
“I’m sorry, Joan. I can’t stand it. We’ll go home.”
Rowing home was distraction, the sense of movement. I had at least the notion of going some place. Though before the boat was half-way I was worrying if the oars would blister my hands for the morning, it’d be almost safer to ask Joan to row.
“Tomorrow the exam starts,” Mahoney echoed it at tea.
“Yes, tomorrow,” I nodded. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” started to beat to the mind out of
Macbeth
.
“What subject is on?”
“It’s Irish first.”
“Don’t worry, not to worry is the important thing. It’s not an execution you’re going for, remember. Cool, calm and collected, the three seas of wisdom and success.”
The house grew impossible to endure, outside the glare was gone, a liquid yellow from the west pouring on the gates under the yew. I went by the orchard, the apples green and hard, the big rhubarb leaves crowding out of the wooden frame, the red stalk streaked with green when I lifted the
leaves. The fierce urge to touch grew, the pale moss on the apple branches with my finger-tips, brittle and hard; the cool of a rhubarb leaf against my face. The wooden stile at the bottom was white with weather, the bucket handle nailed into the yew to steady you over was cold. Nettles and huge dock grew choking against the thorn hedge except where the fowl scraped.
This place was at least green and real, I tried to say; but it wasn’t possible for long. The exam was tomorrow. I couldn’t face the exam. I’d have to go sick. I’d steal away to England.
No, simply endure, it’s enough, was argued back. I’m afraid in case I’ll fail, and wreck my pride, and what does that matter. It’s useless to run. It’s the same stake as Macbeth’s except for the banality of the whole situation. And it’s fight a way out or go down. Everyone can’t be king but it’s the same. They have to fight their way out or go down. My hands clenched as they touched the bucket handle to cross the stile. I kicked at the harmless grasses.
It was impossible not to laugh too, it was too comic, the whole affair exaggerated, I was going to no crucifixion on a mountain between thieves but to a desk in a public building to engage in a writing competition. The whole business had grown out of proportion, though in a way why shouldn’t it, I was at the heart of the absurdity and what proportion was there to my life, what did I know about it. I knew nothing.
It was as good to climb to the hay-shed across the meadow in the shelter and lie on the old hay. No one would come there. Lying on the bank of hay you could look over the miles of stone walls across the Plains towards Elphin. The smoke of Carrick clouded the sky far off on the left, changed in the light, and soft yellow.
The hay could stir promptings, the wenches that beat it out on their backs in hay-sheds under the waggoners of Jeffrey Farnol. The sharp ends pricked through clothes. I might as
well, might as well finish the way I’d begun, what did it matter, why not, no one would come here. A girl in the hay, breasts and lips and thighs, a heart-shaped locket swinging in the valley of her breasts, I’d catch it with the teeth, the gold hard but warm from her flesh. The hay comes sharp against my skin once I get my trousers free. The miraged girl is in the hay, shaking hay in my eyes and hair, and she struggles and laughs as I catch her, and she yields, “My love,” and folds my lips in a kiss. I lay her bare under my hands, I slide into her, the pain of the pricking hay delicious pleasure.
“My love. My love. My love,” I mutter, the lips roving on the hay, the seed pumping free, and it was over. The blue sky over the Plains came to my raised eyes, the stone walls, the grazing sheep, small white birds in the distance between stones, the trunks of three green oaks at the top of the meadow, and the light between. Nothing was changed. Half stripped I lay on the hay, a dry depression settling, and I had to get up, the fixing of shirt and trousers on the height of hay absurd embarrassment. The seed was lost in the hay. It’d dry. A grim smile as I wondered a minute what it’d taste like to the cattle. Strange how human seed would only grow in humans, no good pumping it into either a mare or a mouse, they had their own seed.
I’d to hang round till I was calmer, brush my clothes clean. The exam was tomorrow. It was far away as tomorrow now, I didn’t care. It was strange how there never was any urge towards abuse when I was at peace.
T
HE CLASS MET AT THE MONASTERY GATE, THOSE WHO HAD
bicycles parked them in the big room inside. Benedict came with us up Gallows Hill to the Convent. No one spoke much.
“Remember to read down through the paper. Don’t plunge at the first question you know. Pick out the questions you intend to answer. Allot a time to each. Spend ten minutes picking the questions, it’ll be well spent. And don’t spend too much time at any one question,” Benedict gave last advice outside the Convent, white railings round the lawns and flowerbeds by the wall, and we were checking for the tenth time if we had pen and ink and ruler, the card with the number. If we could get a glance at what was on the paper we’d give money or if there was any chance of escape.
The desks were arranged inside in the assembly hall, under the stage the Superintendent stood, a green curtain with two gold bands across. I found the desk with my number and sat.
The official black box was unlocked. The rules were read. Someone in the front desks witnessed the breaking of the seal on the envelope that held the papers. The papers were given out face downwards, red for honours, a blue paper for pass. I watched the clock. At ten I’d lift the red paper and read.
The hands that took it at ten were clumsy. The eyes read down the page, only half taking in what was there, but enough to tell that all the nights and concentration hadn’t been for nothing. The desire to rush at the questions had to be beaten back. I picked the questions, marked what I’d picked, a quick glance at the other faces, and I became a writing machine, putting down what I’d learned the way they told me to, glancing up at the clock, once asking for more foolscap.
Unbelievably quick the three hours were at an end. I handed up the envelope and left. Benedict was outside on the gravel, a huddle about him going feverishly over the paper, the mistakes and the triumphs, how much better every one would do if it was possible to have one more go at it, what they’d avoid.
We went back to the monastery during the lunch hour, the interest changing to the next paper at two, what’d be on, and it was over at five. I was cycling home same as usual except more spent after the excitement. It hadn’t been very terrible. Tomorrow would be another day, History, some things I wanted to go over to make fresh. That night was less restless, before the end of the fortnight it had grown much the same as ordinary schooldays, only for the challenge of each new paper.
Tea was given to the class in the community parlour the last day. Benedict made a short speech. Five years at the school were over for us, he said. There’d been differences, no one wanted to shut his eyes to the fact, but differences were a fact of life, and they had, if you could put it that way, agreed to differ, and carried on. The important thing was that they had carried on. Now it was over. They were going out from
the shade of the school into life … it went, and one by one when he had finished we came and thanked him and Brother Patrick.
There was certain pain leaving for the last time, getting the bicycle out of the big room, wheeling over that sanded yard of so much soccer, the lawn and concrete path and lilac tree for the last time, the teachers walking on that concrete in the breaks all the years, up and down, a mystery what they talked about.
Through the green gate with the cross above it facing the Leitrim Road for the last time. Down the town: the shops, Flynn’s and Low’s, the town clock, past the barracks, and over the stone bridge across the Shannon, Willie Winter’s garage and the galvanized paling about the football pitch of the Streets’ League.
They were gone, the places in their days, probably able to see them again but never this way, coming from the day of the school. Part of my life had passed in them, it was over, to name them again was to name the dead life as much as them, frozen in the mystery of love.
Yet the surface of it was that I had cycled past them hundreds of evenings without paying the slightest attention. I knew them only now when they were lost, I’d loved them without knowing, and only learned of the love in the losing, and I cycled past the trees and houses of the road, the quarry, afraid to think: and Mahoney read the last paper greedy as he’d read all the others when I got home.
“So it’s over,” he said. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t have made much of a fist of any of it.”
“You would if you’d been taught, if you’d studied for it. It wasn’t so hard.”
“Nothing’s hard if you have the know-how, it’s only hard if you don’t. And you think you managed it alright?”
“I think I did.”
“Time’ll soon tell that. And whether the others did better.”
“That’s the question,” I was able to laugh. I didn’t care, the dice was thrown, I’d have to wait to read its fall, that was all.
“That’s the question,” Mahoney repeated. “The one certain thing is that there’s not places for everyone.”
“Dog eat dog,” Mahoney muttered in an abstraction over the red paper, the conversation fading.
“Dog eat dog, who’ll eat and who’ll be eaten, and what’ll the eaters and the eaten do,” there was at least grim laughter.
“Go on aten, and being et,” Mahoney said.
“I suppose.”
“May you be lucky anyhow. That’s all there’s for me to say. And may you be lucky with your luck,” he said, an old prayer. He took his hat off the sill. I watched him go.
“There’s still work to be done, exams or no exams.”
I gathered and put away the books that night. The nights of slavery, cramming the mind for the exam, most of it useless rubbish, and already being forgotten. The most that was left was some of the Latin lyrics, their strange grace;
Macbeth
; some poems; and the delight of solving the maths problems, putting order on their enclosed world, proving that numbers real and imaginary had relationships with each other. That was all. The quicker the rest went out of the head the better. One by one I put the books away, a kind of reverence, my life same as by the shops of the town had passed over these pages, it was over, but there were too many kinds of deaths, and no one’s life was very important except to himself or someone else in love with it.
Outside the windows of the room the fields I’d been brought up on stretched to their stone walls, yellow moss and streaks of marvellous white lichen on the grey limestone, some trees green in summer and grazing cattle breaking the green monotony.