The Barracks Read online

  She listened to the first woman try to make a come-back and she hadn’t a chance. She must be so stupid, Elizabeth thought, though it seemed too pathetic to pass judgement. One poor person trying to raise herself on the stilts of her husband’s promotion and the others busy as hell sawing her down. Of course she was a beautiful and unappreciated person in her own mind, she had come from fine people but if she grew tall as her own estimation she cast a shadow on the others and every one wanted her own share of the sun of recognition. They had to drag her down as she had to seem tall, all tied in the knot of each other, without being able to attain pure love or silence or selfishness or pure anything else. Elizabeth pressed her face to the pillows. She’d have to go under the sickening treatment again tomorrow, though soon she’d be home, away out of this, in only three days, in the last days of June, hay-time. She’d hear the machines and the din of the corn-crakes at night and the wild smell of hay would be all about the barracks, she promised to help herself face another night.

  The Council ambulance took her home, it had brought a patient in that morning, and by bringing her back with them they saved Reegan the trouble and expense of a journey. There was plenty of sunshine in the ward as she left and she began to miss the things she’d miss when she was home. Always easy to love something or somebody when you know you don’t have to endure them any more, when the goodbyes are being waved, and you can have your dream and choice of them instead of their solid, individual and demanding presence.

  Though there was no danger that she’d linger. Outside everything was summery and true and by four she was out of the city, riding in front between the driver and nurse. The windows were down and they could feel the breeze and the driver was in his shirt-sleeves. People were making hay in the roadside meadows and cattle were trying to beat away the flies in the shade. They laughed and talked. Before Edgeworthstown the driver had to pull down the sun-shield, the evening had sunk, and they were driving west into the level glare.

  Already she was dreaming of meeting them in the summer evening. Every known name and mark on the road set her nerves shivering. She was going home and it was such a thing to have a home to go to. What did it matter that she’d have to adjust herself bitterly to the lonely reality of it later, for if that reality wasn’t there how could she ever know the ecstasy of these hours that burned every boundary down?

  5

  It was weeks before she was able to take her full place in the house, the shock of homecoming over, the newness and strangeness of things that’d been familiar as the parts of her own body worn away, and gradually she gave up the privileges of her convalescence that she’d come to accept as her right.

  The children had got holidays and were dragging the turf out to where the lorries could reach, with borrowed donkeys. Reegan was seldom able to be with them, it was getting too dangerous to neglect his police work as much as he used, for Quirke was watching, and he was tense with worry over the weather. If it rained the small shod hooves of the donkeys, the shod wheels of the carts would tear the skin of the pass to ribbons in an hour. They’d have to drag and struggle through the whole summer if there was rain, trying to patch the pass with rushes and heather and branches of sally, even then the donkeys often sinking. to their bellies in the mud and smashing shafts and harness in their panic, men having to come from other banks to loosen the tacklings and goad and lug them up while the frightened and guilty children tried to offer their useless help.

  The weather did not break, but as it was Elizabeth saw they weren’t able for the strain of this work. She went down to them with hot food some evenings and stayed to help. They were so lonely and silent, these flat acres stretching to the rim of the sky, single men and small family groups working alone on their own banks, their voices carrying clear and far, the tiny purple bloom sprinkled on the dull heather, long acres of sedge as pale as wheat and taller, the stunted sally and birch trees rising bright as green flowers. Always wind, no matter how calm the day, and it grew chill early in the evenings.

  She stayed and helped them as much as she was able, she hadn’t the strength to be of much use yet, the jagged bits of wood in the turf tore her hands; the dust and mould, hard and sharp as bits of flint, blew blinding and choking. She saw the children endure this and drive and beat the unwilling donkeys out and in without complaint, eager for the prizes Reegan brought, their young hearts hungry for praise: but it wasn’t right, she thought; and she protested to him. “Hard work never killed anybody,” Reegan argued. “I was doin’ almost a man’s work at their age and I never saw it do anybody any harm. Laziness and idleness was all I ever saw do harm.”

  “They’re not able to stand it,” she said. “They’ll not grow natural. Let them have some jobs but they can’t stand more than they’re able for.”

  “Turf isn’t heavy work,” he protested hotly. “If they had to dig or something, it’d be a different story.”

  “It’s too heavy for their age: they’re at it from light to dark,” their difference almost rose to acrimony.

  “They don’t mind,” he said. “They get oranges and lemonade and stuff. We have this contract and we have to fill it. It’ll only be for a little while, soon we’ll be gone to hell outa here and it’ll be all over.”

  “That doesn’t matter, it’s not right, it’s not right,” she was roused enough to want to say but she didn’t say any-anything more. “These children were too young and what was all this mad striving for? What did it amount to or intend to achieve? And the difference a little leisure can make in the lives of people,” she thought despairingly to herself.

  She was excited with resentment but there was nothing she could say or do. His greed for money to go free out of the police had grown to desperation, there was no use closing her eyes, it’d have to be accepted and lived with, but how it harmed everything, and there was nothing she could do. Now that he saw she wasn’t going to say anything more he wanted to justify himself.

  “They don’t mind. I’m goin’ to give them a whole day in town when Duffy’s circus comes, they know that. And there’s no one else to do it. I can’t take any more chances with that bastardin’ Quirke all the time nosin’ about, and they can do as much at that as a man. They’ll be finished in not much over another week, if the rain keeps away, and they’ll have still the rest of their holidays before them, and I know it’ll not do them a pick of harm, Elizabeth.”

  She nodded agreement and turned and put away the delf. He went. He said he’d be out on patrol and not back till late after ten and he’d try to get to them on the bog for an hour. She saw him fix his trousers with the bicycle clips and she gave him his raincoat folded to put on the carrier and then she waited for the blue bulk and the tyres on the gravel to go by the window.

  She finished the washing and drying and sweeping, disturbed and the peace gone out of the day. She was right and he must surely believe he was right and it was all useless and futile. Though it was July still, she said to herself, and she mustn’t forget; the blackcurrants were falling with ripeness in the garden and she had yet to pick them, and if she didn’t there’d be none left by the birds soon. She could stew some this evening yet and the kitchen would be steaming and full with their scent. Their eyes would light and she’d ladle them some of the jam hot out of the saucepan before she filled the jars. That’s what she would do, she’d pick the blackcurrants, she should have picked them days ago; and now she was able to find a gallon and the torn straw sun-hat with new joy. She shut the scullery door and the windows before she went so that the hens wouldn’t be able to get in while she was away.

  Outside Mullins was scuffling the gravel, and the moment she heard the noise of the hoe she knew she’d have to stand to talk. He was in his shirt-sleeves, no collar on the shirt that was always meant to be hidden under the tunic, the braces hauling the amazing waist of the trousers so tight up on his corporation that it tempted her to laugh. His tunic hung on the back of one of the yellow dayroom chairs that he’d placed in the shade of the
wall, a newspaper on its seat, and a spade and little iron rake leaned against the wall beside it. The door and both windows of the dayroom were wide open and inside the open door of the lockup blocked the passage.

  “Aw, Elizabeth,” he greeted. “I’m doin’ a bit of auld scufflin’, you can see!”

  “It needs it too, I suppose,” she said, her eyes following the green scum of weed over the gravel.

  “Quirke was complainin’ last week,” Mullins said. “‘We must take pride in the appearance of our station; if we don’t take pride in ourselves no one else will,’ he said; and very full the same pride’ll fill our bellies I don’t think.

  “Though this station was the tidiest station in the country when I came here first, it won the prize,” he began. “There was a fella by the name of Joyce here then, a quiet sort of strange fella from Galway, and he used keep the place like the bee’s britches, just lovely. He was daft about flowers and strange as it may be dirty jokes, and a walkin’ encyclopedia on both he was; but you could get him interested in nothin’ else, he nearly drove Sergeant Jennings that was here at the time out of his mind before they shifted him to one of the penal stations up in Donegal.”

  Mullins pointed out with his hoe where the beds of roses used to grow and the gladioli and the flowers he couldn’t name, where the lawn was kept mowed between, now wild with scutch grass and buttercups and daisies; and as Elizabeth tried to move towards the gate he continued, “That’s twenty-one years ago. I came here twenty-one years ago the 16th September last, twenty-one years too long here, just a month married then!”

  “It’s strange you were never transferred in that length of time, John,” she said, wanting to get away but not wishing to appear too uninterested and silent, it was probably cowardice on her part she thought, for good God, how many versions of this same story had she heard before! She wished she could be alone and picking the blackcurrants.

  “They must have forgotten about me up in the Depot,” Mullins laughed. “I must have got lost in some drawer. Would you believe I was never reprimanded in all that length of time, not to talk of being commended and me name appearin’ in the box in the Review. Only the pay comes the first of every month, if they forgot about that it’d be the last catastrophe!”

  “I better pick some of the blackcurrants, not to let them all go with the birds,” she smiled her apology as she moved sideways to the gate, she was growing desperate to get away.

  “A fine crop there’s there too and I’ve been watchin’ the same birds have the times of Riley,” he woke to some sense of her. “You’re lookin’ powerful yourself, mendin’ every day since you came home.”

  “Thanks,” she smiled. “I feel better and it’s a lovely day.”

  “And we’re as well make the most of it, while it’s in it,” he said as she moved away and his hoe went scuffing in the gravel again.

  She was through the iron gate at the lavatory, onions spread to dry above on its flat roof, and down the concrete path to the rain-gauge. Every morning the b.o. had to lift the top off its copper casing and take and carefully pour the water that had collected in the bottle since the morning before into the delicate glass measure and note down its reading on the chart on the wall beside the phone. It had to be posted away to the Meteorological Station at the end of the month and a new chart appeared on the wall in its place. On such wastes life goes, it seemed; and at the rain-gauge she had to push her way up a furrow through the matted potato stalks to the blackcurrants, a crowd of sparrows scattering out as she came close, and she tramped down the wild meadow between the bushes before she started to pick.

  The over-ripe fruit fell loosely to her fingers, beady black clusters underneath the coarse leaf, some hard and red or green low down in the bushes, where the wild grass had reached. She was shaded by the sycamores along the avenue, the smooth cool fruit touched her finger-tips and the rough leaves brushed the back of her hand and wrist, the saws were screaming through the timber across the lake and there was the muffled hammering of the stone-crusher in the quarry. She was able to lose herself in the slow picking, Mullins’s hoe scuffling on the gravel, and then it stopped. There was a clash of tools, the tramp of his heavy boots on concrete, the ponderous door of the lockup being bolted shut. They kept the tools there and the barrel of paraffin and tin of Jeyes Fluid for the lavatory and such stuff. Apart from drunks left to cool at Christmas it had only one prisoner since she came, the manager of a local creamery, a poor wretch who had embezzled the funds over a number of years to feed a passion for whiskey. She’d given him a meal in the kitchen, with Mullins who had several times sponged drink off the man sitting ridiculously by on guard, in an intense silence of embarrassment. Some cruel streak in Reegan must have tempted him to make the man Mullins’s prisoner.

  The man never looked up as she poured the tea, his shoulders and arms contracted into as small a space as they could find, his head down close to the plate; and, she shivered to remember it in this usual day, the degradation of shame she had suffered for his shame.

  The worst was as he went: he said, “God bless you, Mrs Reegan!” and started to cry. She was transfixed with horror where she stood and all she could do was stand and watch him being led away and listen to Mullins’s hoarse whispering, “You’ll have to pull yourself together, Jim Man. I feel as bad as you at havin’ to do this but I have to do it, it’s me duty, and there’s no use in whingin’ Jim Man. Don’t you understand that, Jim Man?” She could do nothing or say nothing but only stand and listen and watch him go. They put him in the lockup that night. The barrels and other lumber had been cleared, the floor scrubbed and a mattress and bedclothes fixed on the platform of bare boards four inches above the concrete. He slept for an hour, drugged with whiskey they’d got him from McDermott’s, but when he woke he began to beat on the wall. There was no light, the wind from the lake blew in the narrow window that had only a single steel bar in its centre, and the cell must have been damp from the scrubbing. Mullins rose to tell him to go back to sleep like a good man but it was no use, he beat louder, and called and cried. Mullins had to wake Reegan. It was soon clear that they’d have to take him out or listen to him through the night. They took him out and sat handcuffed to him to wait for morning. They had to escort him to Sligo in the morning.

  Elizabeth had seen him go, the narrow green ribbon trailing from the silver that fettered his wrist to Mullins’s. She had to sign dockets later and Reegan must have got paid for the meals she’d given him. She had managed to avoid learning what happened at the trial and afterwards. She shivered now in the day. Why had she to remember? There was the steel singing of the saws across the lake and the hammering jaws of the stone-crusher in the quarry. Why had she to think, the round red sun was sinking into the west woods, the bright bottom of her gallon was covered with blackcurrants, a springing nettle stung her legs and she rubbed it with a dock leaf. Mullins sat on the yellow chair in front of the open dayroom window so that he’d hear the phone if he nodded to sleep over the newspaper. A cart with ropes on its floor crunched past, it was going for a load of hay to the river meadows that flooded in wet weather. Two men on bicycles passed in excited argument over the price of cattle, a woman with a full shopping-bag slung from the handlebars went by alone. This was the slow village evening: she was no longer in hospital, she could be sure, she was at home at last in what she loved and knew. She could hear the splash of fish, the whipcrack of a roach on water—how blood-red it’s fins were and gold the scales and totally unedible the white flesh full of bones—if she stood intent enough. Away towards the meadows and navigation signs at the mouth of the lake the cattle had waded out to where the water washed against their bellies, standing stock still in a daze except for an impatient shake of horns or a tail. A noise of a motor crept near. The square shape of a bread van crossed the bridge and jogged past towards the shops.

  “That was a bread van, wasn’t it, Elizabeth?” she heard Mullins call.

  “It was, a bread van,” she answered.r />
  “Did you get readin’ the name, I just got a glimpse of its tail?”

  “No. I never noticed.”

  “I have the notion I spotted a B: it must be either Broder-ick’s or the Ballyshannon van!”

  “It’ll be back,” she said. “They only do the circle of the village, they don’t go this way to Arigna and the pits.”

  “No, it’ll be back,” he said. “We’ll have to watch this time. That’s the worst of dozin’ off, you’re always missin’ something. We’ll have to keep our eyes skinned this time.”

  “We’ll want to keep awake so,” she said and laughed low to herself as she continued to pick. She heard Mullins’s whistle chain ring as he struggled into his tunic, and then she had warning of his feet come on the gravel and out the avenue. He stood to lean against the sycamore nearest to her and lit a cigarette.

  “Strange how smokin’ soothes the nerves,” he said. Before she’s time to answer the bread van started up and they had to be silent to listen.

  “It’s moved from McDermott’s to Murphy’s,” he said. “Believe me that auld dry stick didn’t keep them long talkin’. ‘Here’s yer order and yer money, give me me bread and go in the name of Our Lord and don’t disturb me further, me good man,’” he mimicked viciously. “They’ll not get away so handy from Murphy’s,” he continued to comment, “Big Mick’ll want to know what happened in every dance-hall in the country. Oh, the big fat lazy bastard! Nothin’ troubles him but football and women, hot curiosity and no coolin’ experience. The best of rump-steak from the town and nothin’ to do but plank his fat arse all day on the counter,” and then he paused and said out of a moment’s reflection, “Isn’t the smell of fresh loaves a powerful smell, Elizabeth?”

  “Yes,” she spoke out of the same mood. “When I used pass the big bakeries in London or see a van with its doors open outside a shop I used to get sick for home. I’d see a van outside the shop at the Chapel and a bread rake thrown on top of the loaves on the shelves, there’s no smell so fresh.”