The Barracks (18 page)

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

“It was, a bread van,” she answered.

“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.”

Mullins spoke and after what seemed an age of conversation in the quiet day the van moved again.

“What did I tell you, Elizabeth; they were kept all that length in the shop,” Mullins pricked immediately to attention, returning to his former tone. “That lazy auld bollocks has enough information to keep his swamp of a mind employed
for another while. Some of the bread-van men and the travellers'd want to be sexual encyclopedias to satisfy some of the people in this village.”

“It's never a full-time occupation,” Elizabeth said, not able to resist, afraid when she'd said the words that'd tempt him into a monotone of sex for the evening.

“No, that's the good truth anyhow,” he laughed, “but when it's confined to talkin' and imaginin' it can be full-time till the final whistle blows.”

The van had stopped, it would be for the last time.

“They'll not stay long with that hape of a Glinn bitch with her
Jasus Christ tonight and would you be tellin' me that
now
in her man's voice and her legs spread far enough apart to drive a fair-sized tractor through.”

“You're very hard on the people, John,” Elizabeth accused, though amused to soreness by this time.

“It's easy for you to talk, Elizabeth; you never mix with them; you always keep yourself apart. But if you were fightin' and agreein' with them for more than twenty years, till you can't have any more respect for yourself than you have for them, you might have evidence enough to change your mind,” he defended, taking the accusation seriously.

She nodded: the conversation was beginning to disturb and pain her; she wished he'd soon decide to go away.

The bread-van's motor started to life for the last time in the evening and Mullins stiffened as it came in sight to read, “Broderick's—I knew I saw a capital b, Β for Bread and Β for Broderick's, Broderick's from Athlone: Mullingar, Athlone and Kinnegad as the Geography used to say.”

They watched it cross the bridge, dust rising and some
loose stones cracking out from the tyres, and Mullins said, “Those loose stones would tear any tyre to pieces. I got two punctures on me back wheel this week. Do you know where I'd like to be now?” he asked when the silence fell.

“Where?” she answered desperately.

“In one of those pubs along the Liffey—the White Horse or the Scotch House—and a nice pint of stout in me fist. Isn't it strange that Dublin's the only place in the country that you can get a nice pint of stout, they say it's the Liffey gives it its flavour!”

“'Tis strange,” she nodded but wished the phone'd call him or he'd take it into his head to go. He was silent now against the sycamore trunk, his heavy red face sunk in reflection as she continued with the picking, the can more than half-full; and she was disturbed by how even his presence grated on her in the silence.

“Do you ever think, Elizabeth, that gettin' married and havin' a steady job takes a lot of the ginger outa life,” he soon broke that silence. “There's not the same adventure at all any more! It's all more or less settled and the only information missin' for the auld nameplate is the age!”

She lifted her face: who'd ever think Mullins of the barrack arguments had such dangerous notions running through his head, she thought quickly. She wished she could be honest and giving, that she could strip her own heart bare in answer, for his words were but the cry of a fumbling loneliness, but the only answer she could make was to join his seeking with her own; and she knew she neither could nor would, she'd be deliberately dishonest, smiling and presenting him with the mirage of flattery that'd more than satisfy him. To answer truly could only lead to compassion or the discovery of each other's helplessness and squalor, and the one possible way to go that way was through the door of love, it would probably end the same, but at least it'd be with the heart and not in the cold blood of boredom.

“I don't know,” she said. “You'd want to be the two things together to compare them, both married and single at once, and none of us can manage that.”

“That's perfectly right, Elizabeth,” he agreed. “You're the only person anyone can have a real talk with about here. You're the only one who understands anything.”

“Don't be foolish!” she laughed.

“That's the God's truth,” he said and moved away from the trunk. “And I suppose I'd be better to be gettin' back to base and let you go on with the pickin'.”

“It's almost finished, John,” she said and watched the back of his blue uniform go, heard his feet stir the gravel when he passed through the gate. She had thought she'd never get rid of him and now that he was gone she felt guilty. She felt such sympathy for people and yet she denied them—but this thinking only made bad worse. She wished she was blind as they.

“Why had he to come to disturb her anyhow?”

She was just out of hospital, it was the summertime, the pain of the clash with Reegan had almost faded when he arrived. Could he not leave her easy to enjoy the garden and the day? The pure shining blackness of the clusters of currants stared at her out of the leaves, the cold grasses touched her legs; the light was making a marvel out of the great rough rhubarb leaves over by the netting-wire, speckled with birds' droppings; the long ridges of potato stalks were all about her, tiny blossoms riding above the leaves and butterflies tossing. Could he not leave her alone to these? She heard him pottering about in the dayroom, then come out again to sit on the yellow chair in the shade, and later she heard him hum over and over to himself:

She smiled, she hadn't heard it before, she wondered was the Limerick his own. The singing grew louder and more provocative. She heard the words clearly. Her can was full. She pushed her way through the green stalks to the rain-
gauge. He was humming and beating time on the gravel with a stick but as soon as he saw her come he stopped.

“I see you're singin',” she said.

“Takin' to cultivatin' me artistic talents in me auld age,” he mocked, his phrases echoing the gossip columns in the newspapers, and then he said fiercely, “Hangin' b.o. about this joint'd drive a man to anything!”

“It'll soon be time for the tea.”

“That itself,” he muttered but half-grinning.

“Will you leave the door open when the mail car comes?” she inquired.

“I'll give you a knock if Brennan doesn't come to relieve me by then,” he said.

“That'll be perfect,” she answered.

“The lads are on the bog today?” he made conversation.

“They are,” she said, and started to move on the gravel. “I intend makin' some jam before they get home.”

“That's what'll be into their barrows,” he laughed as she was going, the hens gathering excitedly about, believing she carried feeding in the can.

She didn't think once she was inside and she was happy, absorbed in preparing and washing the fruit, measuring sugar on the balance scales and going to the yellowed cookery book to make sure of the recipe. Soon the kitchen was full of the scent of the steaming jam, she stirred and tasted it to see if it was coming right, and then she had to scald the old jam jars and find rubber bands and cellophane. She'd often pause and smile to herself as she imagined how they'd shout when they'd smell the jam, untackling the donkeys without.

A light evening breeze had risen, blowing the curtains in the window open on the river. The sawmill had stopped, and the stone-crusher. Brennan must have relieved Mullins in the dayroom for he hadn't opened the door and she'd heard the noise of what must have been the mail car go.

She went to the windows where the curtains blew, the light had slanted, making such violence on the water that she'd to shade her eyes to see the reeds along the shore, the
red navigation barrels caught in a swaying blaze at the mouth of the lake and the soft rectangles of shadow behind.

In a sort of an awe she put her fingers to the vase of roses on the sill, she'd been given them by Mrs Casey yesterday, and lifted them to her face. How deep and strong the scent at first, and then the longer she held her face close how the scent faded till no fragrance came. She'd want to go away and have other loves and when she'd accidentally return that fragrance would be given back to her fresh as after rain.

That would be the wise way. Things had to be taken in small doses to be enjoyed, she knew; but how that mean of measurement degraded and cheapened all passion for life and for truth, and though it had to go through human hell, a total love was the only way she had of approaching towards the frightful fulfilment of being resonant with her situation, and this was her whole terror and longing. She could love too much, break the vase, cast herself on the ground, and be what she was, powerless and helpless, a broken thing; but her life with these others, their need and her own need, all their fear, drew her back into the activity of the day where they huddled in their frail and human love, together. And she had to watch the blackcurrants till they were stewed and pour the jam steaming into the glass jars that seemed made of light in the evening, and she knew she was waiting for them to come home and when they'd come there would be other things.

July went, the weather breaking at its end, a fine drizzle that spun slowly and endlessly down and wet you to the skin without you noticing. They didn't go to the bog these days, the pass would be soft with rain and Reegan wasn't worried; he had most of the turf sold and what remained on the banks wasn't enough to matter. The borrowed donkeys nodded in the shelter of the sycamore and the hens slept on their feet beneath the heeled-up carts. The children helped Elizabeth inside or played draughts or push-halfpenny
on the window-sills, where they could watch out at the rain, their knees on the warm rug of the sofa along the
wall. Or they got tired of the house, put on old police raincoats, dug a canister of worms in the garden, and went down the meadows to fish for perch, the eelhook and cork and brown perch line rolled about the rods of hazel they carried on their shoulders.

Reegan sat mostly with the other policemen in the atmosphere of Casey's, chain-smoking in the dayroom, doing whatever clerical work had to be done, and trying to shut his ears to the crazy arguments that went on non-stop. Sometimes, if he thought the children had gone and Elizabeth was alone, he'd come and they'd have tea together and he'd tell her about the money he'd made out of the turf and his plans for next year. He mentioned nothing about clashes with Quirke or when he hoped to get out of the police; and she suspected that he thought these things might worry her and she was grateful and didn't try to pry beyond his care. She was happy, not since their first days did he show himself so aware of her, and there was something of the hour for the hour's vitality about him that had always excited her. Whenever they kept their talk to the impersonal truck of their lives, not scraping down to the cores of personality, everything went smooth and easy, and that was almost always now.

He was specially happy if she found him something to mend on these wet days in the kitchen, a saucepan that wanted soldering or a chair with a broken leg. What he hated most was stillness. He'd complain at first: “These children'll have to learn that they can't be rockin' back on these chairs; that's how the back goes and the legs,” but it was complaining for the pleasure of complaining and to throw an extra light of importance on the job he had in hand. She'd watch him as he worked and share it when he'd want something held steady. When she was at peace she loved the kitchen full of the noisy life of his hammering, seeing the metal gleam of the nails between his teeth, and wanting to touch the smoothness of the new wood when it was planed. Sometimes she'd think how lucky she was to have found Reegan, to be married to him and not to Halliday,
where she and he would drive each other crazy with the weight and desperation of their consciousness.