Creatures of the Earth by John McGahern

Author:John McGahern [John McGahern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571250233
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 1992-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

‘Did Jerry notice or suspect anything?’ I asked over the coal fire in Gaffneys when we met, both of us shy in our first meeting as separate persons after the intimacy of flesh.

‘No. All he talked about was the Cuban business. Apparently, they were just as scared. They stayed up drinking all night in the hotel. He just had a terrible hangover.’

That evening we went to my room, and she was, in a calm and quiet way, completely free with her body, offering it as a gift, completely open. With the firelight leaping on the walls of the locked room, I said, ‘There is no Cuba now. It is the first time, you and I,’ but in my desire was too quick; ‘I should have been able to wait,’ but she took my face between her hands and drew it down. ‘Don’t worry. There will come a time soon enough when you won’t have that trouble.’

‘How did you first meet Jerry?’ I asked to cover the silence.

‘My father was mixed up in politics in a small way and he was friendly with Jerry; and then my father died while I was at the convent in Eccles Street. Jerry seemed to do most of the arranging at the funeral, and it seemed natural for him to take me out on those halfdays and Sundays that we were given free.’

‘Did you know of his reputation?’

‘Everybody did. It made him dangerous and attractive. And one Saturday halfday we went to this flat in an attic off Baggot Street. He must have borrowed it for the occasion for I’ve never been in it since. I was foolish. I knew so little. I just thought you lay in bed with a man and that was all that happened. I remember it was raining. The flat was right in the roof and there was the loud drumming of rain all the time. That’s how it began. And it’s gone on from there ever since.’

She drew me towards her, in the full openness of desire, but she quickly rose. ‘I have to hurry. I have to meet Jerry at nine’; and the pattern of her thieving had been set.

Often when I saw her dress to leave, combing her hair in the big cane armchair, drawing lipstick across her rich curving lips in the looking glass, I felt that she had come with stolen silver to the room. We had dined with the silver, and now that the meal was ended she was wiping and shining the silver anew, replacing it in the black jewel case to be taken out and used again in Jerry’s bed or at his table, doubly soiled; and when I complained she said angrily, ‘What about it? He doesn’t know.’

‘At least you and Jerry aren’t fouling up anybody.’

‘What about his wife? You seem very moral all of a sudden.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,’ I apologized, but already the bloom had gone from the first careless fruits, and we felt the responsibility enter softly, but definitely, as any burden.

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