The Barracks (24 page)

He woke Brennan, asleep on the iron bed under the phone, who stirred to ask vaguely out of his waking, “Is there something wrong? Is there something wrong, Sergeant?”

“Don't get up, don't move yourself. This woman isn't well and I just want to ring the doctor,” and before Brennan could ask more questions Reegan was talking with whoever was on the Exchange. When he was put through to the doctor's house it was the wife who took the call.

The doctor didn't come till ten that day; and late in the evening the priest arrived at the house, for the first time since she had come from hospital.

T
hey rose from their knees about the sick-bed, the pairs of beads in their hands, and the children went to Elizabeth to wish her good night, the girls with their lips, a touch of fingers from the boy; and then they went to Reegan, who stayed in the room after they'd gone.

“Do you know what I think, Elizabeth? We should get a nurse, you're four weeks down now, and with a nurse we'd have you on yer feet in no time. What do you think, Elizabeth?” Reegan suggested in fumbling, uneasy tones as the vibrations of their feet descending the stairs shivered through the floor boards and furniture.

“What? How do you mean?” she asked. She jerked out of her drowsiness where the prayers and the touch of fresh lips and fingers lingered in confusion in her mind. The question took her unawares, she had been expecting some remark about the great length that was coming into these April evenings to which she'd add her quiet assent. “What? How do you mean?” she asked and there was panic in the voice.

“I thought it might be better to get a nurse. With a nurse you'd be out of bed far quicker,” he said and she was wide awake now. Did he not realize that she was dying? Did they not all realize?

“Is there need?” she answered excitedly. “I don't see any need.”

“Of course there's need! There's need for you to get better,” he protested.

“There's need for me to get better?”

“Of course there's need! What else is there need for, Elizabeth?”

“There's need for me to get better,” she puzzled, and it brought such horrible sweet hope.

“It'd cost money, too much money,” she said.

“We're not paupers,” he answered. “The quicker you get the nurse the quicker you'll be out and about again and the expense will be over quicker, not draggin' on. With the nurse and the good weather comin' you'll be on your feet in no time.”

Jesus Christ, she thought; that was rimming it—the good weather! She wanted to laugh hysterically. The good weather, that was rich. All the old tricks were being played back. It was always sunshine and summer for hope, never the lorry loads of salt and sand being shovelled on the slush of the street.

Jesus, how often she herself had comforted the doomed poor bitches in the ward, “No, you're not that bad, Mrs Ashby; and you mustn't let yourself get depressed. Things take time. With the new treatment Dr Granville is getting you and the summer around the corner you'll be home before you know.”

She'd see it clutched at, as they clutched at every other floating straw. Even when the bedclothes were lightened, and bodies lay clammy under a single sheet, the reflected glitter from the cars crawling between the stunted plane trees below in Whitechapel Road hurting the eyes at the windows and there could be no more hope in that summer, how their single passion used seek and find other omens to clutch. She'd noticed very little of the irony of understanding in any eyes.

Now it was her turn. She was being played the same tricks back, and she found she wanted to live in the face of all adversity, she found herself wanting to clutch at anything at all, even these old and shabby omens of good and ill. And neither the cancer nor her failing heart, which ever would destroy her the first, knew anything of the change in days or in flowers.

“You know I'll not get better,” she tried to reason with Reegan or herself, quietly.

“Not if you go on talkin' like that,” he remonstrated,
blustery and assertive and surely afraid, as somebody trying to stand on his dignity, trying to stand on anything that doesn't exist unless it's allowed to in the other mind.

“Things take time,” he continued. “Miracles don't happen in a day.”

She saw he was shaken, his passion of assertion theatrical. He was afraid to face up, as she was. He'd refuse to understand. It was as if he was afraid that if he shared with her the knowledge of her approaching death he'd be forced in some way to share her dying too. No one at all would help her. She'd have to go on as she had lived, alone. She'd have to pretend to believe she was going to get well, whether she did or didn't, and the worst was that it happened to be the one thing in the world she wanted to believe.

“I don't think there's need for a nurse full time. Mrs Lennon might come for a few hours, it'd take the weight of the work off Mrs Casey, I often feel guilty about how much she's doing for us.”

“She wants to do it,” Reegan said. “When I talked about employin' some one she was insulted.”

His face was quiet, she saw. What he said she knew was true, she'd never seen the younger woman so happy before, but it's more often harder to accept than to give.

“I thought we might get some one full time, to stop here in the house with you. Mrs Lennon is only the village nurse. She'd be only able to come for a few hours at a time.”

“It'd be enough,” she said.

“Are you sure? For you must have whatever's needed to get you on yer feet.”

“I'm sure, quite sure,” she said. She wanted her own thoughts, even if they'd bring no peace, at least they'd be a change.

“We'll talk to the doctor so tomorrow. We'll see what he says,” he decided.

“That'll be best. And open the window a little before you go, the fire all day in the room has it stuffy.”

The old pulleys squealed as he lowered the window and the curtains started to sway in the draught of night air.

“Is that enough?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“You'll have to get better soon, Elizabeth,” he stooped to kiss her. “You can't just go away on us like that. Good night, Elizabeth.”

“Good night,” she smiled.

“I have to do an auld late patrol. Try to be asleep when I get back,” he said as he left, his feet already on the stairs, and she'd see the uniformed shoulders pass down, between the rungs of the stair railing. The door was always open, it was her wish, more than once in the last weeks she believed that open door had saved her from madness. That she could see out on the landing and stairs left her the illusion or sense that she was still connected with the living, and it was something that she couldn't live without.

“Try and be asleep when I get back,” murmured in her mind when she was alone, a bitter joke. Perhaps the moon would rise, flood the room with far stronger light than this low night light, the little green glass oil-lamp on the table.

He no longer slept with her in the big bed with the brass bells and ornaments, but over near the fire-place, on one of the official iron beds that he'd taken out of the storeroom. She'd hear him take off his clothes if she kept silent when he came, the creak of springs, and his sigh of relief as he let the day's tiredness sink away from him down into the mattress and springs, soon she'd hear the deep even breathing of his sleep. Perhaps one living moment of tension would enter when he'd whisper, “Are you sleepin' yet. Elizabeth?”

She'd be angry with herself if she spoke: he was too tired, at his turf banks as well as doing the police work, to be kept awake in meaningless talk; but sometimes she had to speak, to try to create some sense of life and movement about her in the night. These words they'd speak or the simple giving and acceptance of a drink or tablet often kept her whole life from breaking into a scream in her mouth.

Such silence and stillness settled over the room and the house, settled over everything except her own feverish mind. With the flickering night light she could follow the boards
across the ceiling, then the knots in the boards, dark circles in the waxen varnish; but soon they were lost, the ceiling in as much confusion and emptiness over her eyes as she didn't know what. She lowered her eyes to the plywood wardrobe, the brass handle shining, and there were some rolls of wallpaper
on top that she'd bought and never finished putting up. Reegan's bed was in the corner over at the fire-place, iron and black, the piping at the top and bottom curved, same as every official bed in so many barracks all over Ireland. She often felt herself go near madness on these nights. She'd want to cry or call: and only she knew she'd be able to renew some sense of life with Reegan when he'd come late she didn't know how she'd be able to go on. Even when he slept the sound of his breathing kept her mind from worse things, and it was that much contact, her life going out to the dreams of his sleep and the day that had him so dog tired, it didn't seem so blank as the solid ceiling and wardrobe and the brass ornaments between that caught the moonlight. Then the long wait for morning, always breaking with fierce violence since she could no longer join its noise: dark in the room, Reegan's deep breathing, and the first cart would rock on the road, faint and far away but growing nearer, rocking past the end of the avenue with a noise of harness and the crunch of small stones under the iron tyres and fading as it went across the bridge and round to the woods or quarry. More carts on the road, rocking now together, men shouting to the horses or each other. A tractor, smooth and humming after the slow harsh motion of the carts; other carts and tractors and a solitary car or van with men travelling to work. The gleam of the brass on the bed grew brighter. She was almost able to see the figures on the face of the alarm clock clearly, see the shape of Reegan rolled in clothes in the bare policeman's bed. She was hot with thirst and took water from the jug and glass, her feet sticky against the sheets. Outside the morning was clean and cold, men after hot breakfasts were on their way to work. The noises of the morning rose within her to a call of wild excitement. Never had she felt it so when she was
rising to let up the blinds in the kitchen and rake out the coals to get their breakfasts, the drag and burden of their lives together was how she'd mostly felt it then, and now it was a wild call to life; life, life and life at any cost.

The light grew clear. She could read the clock, the hands at eight. Perhaps at five or ten or a quarter past the saws would scream and sing in the woods, it might even be later, nothing ran too strictly to time here. The stone-crusher was working in the quarries, the whole morning throbbing with life, calling her out, urging her to rise in passion.

With a bang of doors the children were up, coming into the room to wake Reegan and to wish her good morning. Later, as Reegan put on his clothes, she heard the tongs thud downstairs as they set the fire going.

“Did you sleep well, Elizabeth?” he asked.

“Yes,” she lied, though hard to believe from the look in her eyes.

“That's powerful, that's what'll have you on yer feet soon. The doctor will be here on his way from the dispensary and we'll ask how about the nurse.”

“That'll be perfect,” she said. “You're a little late this morning.”

“Aye—half-eight. Always a rush for this cursed nine. Jesus, people get more like clocks these days and they have to.”

“Will you go on the bog today?”

“You can be sure. I'll have to see what the men are doin', though I can't risk takin' the day.”

“Who have you?”

He named the workmen as he pulled on his tunic, letting it swing open, and then he was gone for his breakfast.

The fire would be blazing, she remembered. He'd shave before the scullery mirror, the eyes blind with soap and the hands groping for the towel; the kitchen clean and lovely, a white cloth on the table. That's where she'd love to be now, in the middle of the life of the morning, and not alone and clammy under these bedclothes.

Mullins was barrack orderly, pounding upstairs to the
storeroom with his mattress and load of blankets, she saw his shoulders and arms clasped about the grey blankets through the open door and between rungs of the wooden railing. She heard his shovel and tongs at the fire. The outside door opened, the gate at the lavatory clanged, he was going down to the ashpit with his bucket of ashes and pisspot. The iron gate shut, there was some minutes' delay while he made his morning visit to the lavatory, and then his feet on the gravel and the scraping of his boots at the door.

“Johnny Aitchinson was thrashin' ashes in Johnny Aitchinson's ash hole,” repeated itself in her mind after the door had closed, it brought no smile or grimace to her lips—just, “Johnny Aitchinson was thrashin' ashes in Johnny Aitchinson's ash hole,” over and over again.

Close to nine he brought some last thing up to the storeroom and then crossed the landing to Elizabeth's room. Whoever was b.o. came each morning to see her.

“All's finished and ready to go for the auld breakfast now. I'm just lookin' in to see how you are,” he stated.

“You're always very good, John,” she said.

“Not a bit trouble in the world, for nothin' at all,” he said, put ill at ease by the touch of praise or courtesy; it made him overflow with the feeling that he should somehow be better than he was. She saw the effect of her slight politeness, and wished she'd been silent, it wasn't true courtesy if it made Mullins so uneasy, only a silly, affected fashion of manners.

“What kind of night had you?” he asked.

“I slept all right,” she said, she must try to divert him away.

“You're lookin' better than ever and there's a powerful feel of the summer comin' and it'd damned near bring a dead man to life, never mind some one foxin', like you.”

He'd never accuse her of foxing if it wasn't blatantly untrue:
they must have very little real hope that she'd recover, she thought. She must try to divert him quickly.

“Was there rain, was there rain last night?” she asked. “I couldn't hear your boots on the ground this mornin'.”

“We can't make many moves anownt of you, can we?”
he bantered. “There was showers, still clouds in the sky, the ground's as soft as putty. Believe me, you're not missin' much not to be out in this weather.”

He was returning to her sickness, though she'd easily fence him away now.