The Barracks (5 page)

She thought she'd never be able to climb the stairs to her room, the things of the house gathering in against her; she thanked God that the dayroom door wasn't open on her way.

She heard Reegan shout in the kitchen.

“Now do you see what you have done? Now do you see what you have done? Jesus Christ, can you not keep your mouth shut for wan minute of the day?”

Then the boy's terrified protest, “I didn't mean anything! I didn't mean any harm, Daddy.”

Reegan's shouts again, “Will you never understand? Will you never grow up? Will you never understand that women look on things different to men?”

She heard his feet follow her on the hollow stairs. She was sitting on the bed's edge when he came into the room. She could not lift her head. He'd look as unreal as all people pleading.

“The lad meant nothing. He was only thinkin' that we'd be able to give you a holiday at last. Shure you know yourself that we'd never be able to get on without you?”

He put his hands on her shoulders, she'd no wish to create a scene, she dried her face with her sleeve.

“I couldn't help it,” she said, looking at him with a nervous smile. “But it doesn't matter. It was only that it came so sudden.”

“Would you like to go to the wedding? The lad was only wantin' to please you.…”

“Maybe, I should go,” she had tried to look bright. She had not wanted to go. It had been simply easier to go than to stay then.

She felt the pain at last was easing. The rosary was droning to its end in the kitchen. The decades were over. Reegan was sing-songing,

His face a mask without expression, staring as if tranced at its image in the big sideboard mirror, his fingers even now instinctively moving on the beads, the voice completely toneless
 
that repeated Her praises, their continual “Pray for us”, like punctuating murmurs of sleep.

“The Dedication of the Christian Family,” began the last prayers, the trimmings.

Prayer for the Canonization of Blessed Oliver Plunkett—whose scorched head, they remembered reading on the leaflet, was on show in a church in Drogheda.

Prayers for all they were bound to pray for in duty, promise or charity.

Prayer for a happy death.

And the last prayer, the last terrible acknowledgement, the long iambic stresses relentlessly sledged:

O Jesus, I must die, I know not where nor when nor how,
but if I die in mortal sin I go to hell for all eternity
.

The newspapers were lifted, the beads and chairs returned to their places. They heard Casey come back from his supper. “Rush! Rush!” Reegan said to the boy and girl. “Off to bed! Ye'll be asleep all day in school tomorrow if you don't rush.”

Some red bricks had been set to warm at the fire. Willie slipped them into a pair of heavy woollen socks with the tongs. He lit the candles in their tin holders and they were ready to be kissed good night.

Sheila ran to Elizabeth. Reegan was sitting in front of the fire and the boy went close up to him, between his open knees. Hands came on his shoulders.

“Good night, Willie. God guard you.”

“Good night, Daddy.”

He lifted the hot bricks and said at the door, “Good night, Elizabeth.”

“Good night, Willie.”

At last they were in the hall, their fluttering candles lighting up the darkness. Casey was coming down the stairs, a pile of the dark grey police blankets in his arms, the top and bottom edges braided with official green thread. He had to feel out his steps very carefully because of his load. They waited on him at the foot of the stairs with the candles.

“Ye're off to bed,” he said. “Hot bricks and all to keep ye warm.”

“Good night, Guard Casey,” they answered simply.

He turned to them laughing, the whiteness of his bald head thrust over the pile of blankets into their candlelight.

he recited.

They smiled with polite servility, but it was the end of the night, and his pleasantness went through them like a shiver of cold. They watched him cruelly as he shaped sideways to manœuvre his load of blankets through the dayroom door. They took his place on the stairs, the paint completely worn away in the centre of the steps, and even the wood shredding and a little hollowed by years of feet. They climbed without speaking a word. When they got near the top they could see their images with candles and bricks mounting into the night on the black shine of the window. It was directly at the head of the stairs, facing out on the huge sycamore between the house and the river. There was no sign of moon or star, only two children with candles reflected out of its black depth, raindrops slipping down the glass without, where the masses of wind struggled and reeled in the night.

Willie went with Sheila into her room. On nights like these they were never at ease with each other.

“Will you be afraid now, Sheila?” he asked.

“I'll leave the candle lit,” she said.

“And do you want the door open?”

He knew by the way she said “Aye” that she was almost dumb with fear.

“Well, you want nothing else so?”

An importance had crept into his voice, the situation making him feel and act like a grown person.

“No,” Sheila said. “Nothing.”

“Well, good night so, Sheila.”

“Good night, Willie.”

Downstairs Elizabeth strained Reegan's barley water into a mug with a little blue circle above its handle. He drank it sitting before the dying fire, blowing at it sometimes, for it was hot. He loved drawing out these last minutes. The thought of Quirke didn't trouble him any more than the
thought of his own life and death. All things became remote and far away, speculations that might involve him one day, but they had no power over him now, and these minutes were his rest of peace.

“Is the cat out?” he asked.

“She didn't come in at all tonight,” Elizabeth answered.

“Are the hens shut in?”

“They are.”

“Do you want me to go out for anything?”

“No. There's nothing wanting.”

He rose, put the mug down on the table, and went and bolted the scullery door. She was setting the table for the morning when he came in.

“Don't stay long now,” he said on his way to bed, because she'd found it hard to sleep since she grew uneasy about her breasts, and often sat reading for hours in the stillness after he'd go, books Willie brought her from the lending library in the school, a few books she'd brought with her from London and kept always locked in her trunk upstairs, books that'd grown in her life as if they'd been grafted there, that she'd sometimes only to handle again to experience blindingly.

“No. I won't be a minute after you. When I rake the fire.”

At the hall door he noticed the intense strained look on her face.

“You look tired out. You're killin' yourself workin' too hard.”

And then he asked as if he had been given vision, “Are you sure you're feelin' well, girl?”

“Don't be foolish,” she tried to laugh. “How could I work too hard with the few things that'd have to be done in this house! When I rake the fire I'll be in bed.”

“Don't be long so, that readin' at night'd drive a person crackers,” he said and left for his bed.

She put a few wet sods of turf on the fire, then covered it with ashes. She heard Casey noisily shifting his bed down in the dayroom, soon Reegan's boots clattered overhead on the ceiling and she blew out the lamp and followed him to their room.

T
he alarm woke her out of a state that wasn't deep enough to call it sleep. The night was still outside, and the room in total darkness with the blind of the one window down, the air raw with frost. The evenings of the wet February had gone; Lent was in, the days closing up an early Easter.

By sheer force of instinct and habit she reached across the shape of bedclothes that was Reegan and stopped the clock's dance on the table. Then she fell back, though she knew it could only make it harder than ever to rise in the end, as tired as if she'd never slept. Reegan hadn't woken; his elbow brushed her as he changed sides, the surface of his sleep no more than trembled by the alarm.

“If you go to bed tired and wake up tired,” began to twitch like a nerve in her mind, and stayed there in its mystifying
repetition till she fixed it among the ad. columns of many magazines and newspapers, “If you go to bed tired and wake up tired drink Bourna-Vita.” She grimaced in recognition and settled herself deeper in the warmth. There had been another night of frost, she could tell by the air on her face. She didn't know how she'd managed to get up since the frosts came, but even before then it was becoming a more desperate struggle with every fresh morning.

A few more minutes, she told herself, she'd stay: Reegan hadn't woken: there was no noise of the children stirring in the next rooms; but, oh, the longer she enjoyed the stolen sweetness of these minutes the more it had to become a tearing of her flesh out of the bedclothes in the end. And she used to love rising into these March mornings, to let up the blinds gently in the silence and find the night not fully gone
and the world white with frost. She'd unbolt the door to break the ice on the barrel with the edge of the basin and gasp with waking as her hands brought the frozen water to her face.

The mornings of these last weeks had been one long flinching from the cold and the day, what used to be the adventure once all changed to the drudgery she could barely get herself to face. She'd ask for nothing better than to lie on in bed and not to have to face anything, but these small reprieves she gave herself were always adding up till she rose in the last minute and the mornings were all a rush.

Suddenly she remembered: this was not any morning, it was the morning of the Circuit Court. She'd set the alarm for early, for twenty past seven. The room was still pitch dark, nothing was stirring.

How had she lain there for even these few minutes without it entering her mind? She had even checked his clothes the last thing in the kitchen the night before, and it had been on her mind between the fitful snatches of sleep she'd got during the night. Here she'd been playing a game of rising and it was a court day. Her dread of the cold and her weariness were gone in a flash: she was out of bed and dressed and moving through the dark to the door without being conscious that she'd managed to rise. She didn't let up the blind or shut the bedroom door fully so as not to make noise. She could hear Reegan's breathing as she left. She would not wake him until she was ready.

The house was quiet as death and dark as she came down, her slippers loud on the hollow stairs, her hand sliding down the wooden railing to guide her way; when it came against the large round knob at the bottom her foot searched out for the solid concrete. Here she could touch the dayroom door. She could hear nothing behind the shut door, but the smell of Mullins's smoked Woodbines came. She trailed her fingers along the wall as she came up the hallway to avoid knocking against the collapsible form that was laid against it. When she let up the blinds a little light came in. The bare whiteness of the field sloping down to the river and the hill
beyond shone against the dark. She lit the small glass oil lamp and turned to rake the coals out of the ashes.

She worked quickly and well and without thinking much. She didn't wash herself or brush her hair or go outside till she had to get water out of the barrel for Reegan's shaving. The cold made her wince as she broke the ice, and she saw their black cat dart in through the door she'd left open; she came in afraid to find her thieving, but she was only waiting to wrap her frozen fur about Elizabeth's legs and purred and cried loudly till she was given a saucer of milk in the scullery.

The children were rising, their feet were padding on the boards overhead. The kettle was boiling, the shaving water, the slices of bacon laid on the pan ready for frying, the table set. The morning's work was almost done; her sense of purpose, of things needing her to do them, failing fast. There wasn't enough in front of her now to keep her going headlong: she didn't want to wash or brush her hair and she could not bear the look of her face in the mirror; and when the children came with a rush of life into the kitchen it made her only more oppressively aware of her sickness. “There was frost, Elizabeth?” their cries came. “We'll be able to slide on Malone's pond if it keeps up.”

She could only answer them with tired assent. There seemed no end to their excitement and curiosity. She wondered if they'd wake Reegan.

“Daddy's off to court today?”

“Yes.”

“Is it time for him to get up, Elizabeth?”

“Can I go up to call him?”

“Me, Elizabeth, I'll go up!”

“Let Sheila go up so,” she said to Una.

“Then I can quench the lamp, Elizabeth? It's no good any more, it's too bright.”

“I'll shine his boots, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, it seemed without end. Sheila was racing up the stairs. The blinded darkness met her with a shock. She stood at the door and called,
“Daddy, it's time to get up,” but she got no answer and she had to tiptoe to the window and let up the blind so that the light poured in.

“Daddy, it's time to get up,” she timidly rocked his shoulder.

She had to rock harder and raise her voice.

“It's the day for the court, Daddy.”

He grunted, and then suddenly opened his eyes. She felt the wild fright of his eyes opened on her and not recognizing her and then the slow remembering and the dawning there of the world he lived in. At last he knew who she was.

“It's time to get up, Daddy.”

“It's you, Sheila,” he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. “What day is today, Sheila?”

“Thursday, Daddy. It's the day of the court.”

He took a moment to absorb what she said and then his eyes searched swiftly for the clock on the table: it was five past eight. “Christ, I forgot,” he swore as he jumped out of bed. “Another blasted day in town.”

He was downstairs almost with her in his collarless shirt and trousers and stockinged feet. He stopped to listen at the dayroom door: but there was no noise of Mullins moving.

“You must have been up early,” he praised Elizabeth when he felt the kitchen warm with the blazing fire.

“I thought not to wake you,” she replied.

“Is there water boiled?”

“It's ready—when you want it.…”

He took down the plain wooden box that held his shaving-kit from the top of the medicine press and opened it on the sewing-machine to get his cut-throat razor and he stroked it over and back on a strip of fine leather tacked to the side of the press. After he'd tested its sharpness he laid it carefully on a newspaper in the window and searched the box for the brush and stick of soap.

Elizabeth poured the hot water into the basin in the scullery, watched the steam rapidly rise up to cloud the mirror in the window, and took a clean towel from the clothes-horse to hand to one of the waiting girls.

“When he's finished,” she said, for the ritual of these court mornings never varied.

The child waited till the scraping of the razor stopped and he was sousing himself with water. She was beside him when he turned, his eyes blind with soap, the large hands groping.

They were quiet in the kitchen as he sat to his breakfast, but the alarm had gone down in the dayroom. Mullins was up, pounding upstairs with mattress and load of bedclothes, dragging the iron bed in against the wall of the lock-up. His poker and tongs banged on the concrete as he set the fire going. They heard him unlock the outside door and the boots go on the frozen ground down to the ashpit at the bottom of the garden, with his bucket and piss-pot.

He came up to the kitchen in his greatcoat and cap a little later. His red face was burning blue, the pores plainly visible in the swollen flesh. He hadn't washed.

“That's a powerful smell, the fryin', Elizabeth, on a frosty morning. It has me driven wild already with the hunger. Freeze the arse of a brass monkey, this mornin' would. A holy terror to get out of bed,” he spoke.

“That's six days of frost,” she said, the social makeweight of these comings and goings was always left to Elizabeth.

“Six days surely, though anything's better than the wet. But wouldn't we be worse off if we had nothing at all to be complainin' about,” he remarked and chuckled over his own wit at the door.

“That's true, I suppose,” she smiled.

“We're all off today,” he said. “Casey'll be holdin' the fort on his own.”

He turned to Reegan and stated that he was going to get his breakfast and shine himself up for the court, he'd be back soon after nine to leave the books in order and go with them to the town.

“The door's left open, so you'll hear the phone if be any miracle it rings. The day in town'll be a bit of a change,” he said.

Reegan continued with his meal in silence after Mullins
went. Sometimes he watched out past the sycamore and netting-wire to the white field that went down to the river, the calm strip of black water moving through the whiteness, and the thorn hedge half-way up the white hill beyond. Sometimes he watched his own face eating in the sideboard mirror, completely silent. He disliked Elizabeth asking, “Are there many cases today?” “Not many,” he said.

He'd give her no information. His mind had been a painless blank, watching his own face and the images of white field and river and white hill, and not relating them to anything and not thinking. Now she had forced her way into this total blankness and disturbed him with thought of her and the day.

“Not many,” was meant to cut her out again but he could not.

“I only wanted to know whether you'd be home early for your dinner or not,” he had to listen to her injured tones. He had to wake to some sense that she'd been hurt.

“Only one big case—last month's crash at the quarry,” he imparted. “It'll depend on when it's called. We might be out in an hour and we might be there till night. If we're not home before two you'll know we'll be fairly late.”

She nodded. There were tears in her eyes that she held back. She felt her strength draining and sat on the side of one of the wooden chairs, her arm on its back. It was early morning, excited with the preparations for the court, and she was as worn as if she'd been on her feet for days. She felt herself go weak. She had to grip the back of the chair fiercely, use all her determination not to go down. She could not let herself collapse. The fit passed; but she'd not be able to go on long like this, not more than days now; in the desperation she took her courage in both hands.

“Would you call at the doctor's and ask him what would be a good time to see him tomorrow?” she asked quietly. “I think I'd better go for a check-up.”

The asking brought a dramatic silence that she shrank from, even the children turned quiet to fix her with their attention. She was drooped and deathly pale.

“You don't look well,” he said with unthinking cruelty. “You've not been yourself since Christmas.”

“I don't think it's anything,” she protested. “It's only to make sure.”

She was haggard.

“I'll tell him to come out,” he said.

“No, no. It'd cost too much.”

“Cost,” he derided angrily. “We're not paupers.”

“No. There'd be no sense in him coming. I'm well able to cycle. And I'd like the day in town.”

She tried to brush it off as nothing. With all her will she rose from the chair. She lifted off the boiling kettle, put on a saucepan.

“It's nothing at all,” she smiled casually with every muscle in her face. “It's only to be sure.”

She stood still, making a pretence of tending the fire. She could hear her heart beating. She regretted having ever spoken.

She saw Reegan rise to change into his best boots, the ones Una had polished. He sheathed the razor and put his shaving things back in the box to take out the button brush and the brass stick and tin of Silvo. There began the scrupulous brushing of his tunic and greatcoat and cap, the buttons drawn together in a row on the brass stick and coated with Silvo, the letting it dry and then the shining, even the medallions
on the collar and cap, the whistle chain that went across the tunic to the breast pocket, were polished till they shone like brightnesses. And last of all the black baton sheath was shone; the baton—a short vicious stick of polished hickory filled with lead, the grooved surface tapering
to where a leather thong hung from the handle for securing it about the wrist in action—was placed in the sheath and hung from the belt of the tunic. He squared himself before the sideboard mirror, shaved and handsome, stuffing the fresh hankie she handed him up his sleeve.

He turned his back for their inspection. There wasn't a speck on the uniform.

“He'll not be able to find much fault today,” he said.

No one could, he was shining.

“Will I leave your bike round at the dayroom door?” Willie wanted to know.

“Do, and see if the tyres are pumped,” he was told.

Down in the dayroom the window was lifted up and the key taken from the sill, it was Brennan, for the next minute Casey appeared through the archway. The time was exactly nine. Reegan had to go down to them to sign and call the roll. He'd not return to the kitchen unless he'd forgotten something, but leave with the others from the dayroom.