“So you have no explanation to offer, Sergeant,” he had to say, he’d already lost much of his calm.
All Reegan did was drawl, “No,” and lounge more fully on the table.
“Stand to attention, Sergeant!” Quirke shouted, white at the insult, and losing all control.
“Stand yourself,” Reegan said in utter contempt.
“I’ll have you dismissed! Do you realize that?” Quirke pounded.
“I’ve resigned, so do you want me to stand to attention, sir,” he raised his voice to parody Quirke.
“I’ll see you are disciplined. I’ll see you get your deserts, you pup,” Quirke hardly knew what he said. Reegan moved closer, the mocking mood gone at that last mouthing insult, and the three policemen grew afraid, they knew how dangerous Reegan was.
“No, you can’t,” and the ring of hatred that came hissing on the voice now even chilled Quirke. “No, you can’t. I wore the Sam Browne too, the one time it was dangerous to wear it in this balls of a country. And I wore it to command — men, soldiers, and not to motor round to see if a few harmless poor bastards of policemen would lick me fat arse, while I shit about law and order. And the sight of a belt on somebody else never struck me blind!
“Now get out before I smash you,” Reegan ground.
He was dangerous, there could be no doubt, and he’d shocked and overawed the younger officer. Quirke had never been confronted with a situation anything like this: he’d lost sight of whether he should go and report or stand on his authority, and he saw that the line of three across the table would be no use to anyone. He rose with as much dignity as he could keep.
“You’re obviously in no condition to listen to reason but you’ve not heard the last of this, resignation or no resignation,” he stumbled.
“I’m tellin’ you to get out,” Reegan said and crowded him to the door and kicked it shut on his heels.
He was pale as death when he came in to them in the kitchen. They were startled when he spoke but it was only to ask the boy if he had posted the letter. Then he dressed himself properly and went out and round by the window on the high policeman’s bicycle and he was away all day, nearly night when he returned to his meal that was spoiled with waiting.
The dayroom door opened as he ate and Mullins ventured up the hallway to tap on the door and wait for Reegan’s “Come in.”
“I just wandered up,” he stated. “A man’d get the willies down in that joint on his own.”
He was given a chair at the fire but wasn’t easy till he got “Jasus!” out at last. “I never saw the bate of this mornin’ in all me life. ’Twas as good as a month’s salary. Some of the stations were on the phone already for particulars. Jasus, you have him rightly humped, Sergeant; they’ll have to give him an office job in the Depot; this day’ll follow him round for the rest of his life.”
Reegan was quiet, a sort of bitterness and contempt on the face that leaned towards the fire in the failing light, and then he stared into Mullins’s face and said, “It’s always easy to make a Cuchulainn outa the other fella, isn’t it, John?”
“What? What do you mean, Sergeant?” Mullins ejaculated, either unable or unwilling to understand, a shade of terror on his face.
“No, nothing, don’t mind, John,” Reegan laughed sharply. “I was only sort of talkin’ to meself, you know, jokin’.”
The night had come, the scarlets of the religious pictures faded, their glass glittered in the flashes of firelight and there seemed a red scattering of dust from the Sacred Heart lamp before the crib on the mantelpiece. “And is it time to light the lamp yet, Daddy?” the boy’s voice ventured.
“Yes,” Reegan answered without thought.
He was silent with Mullins, and the silence seemed to absorb itself in the nightly lighting of the paraffin lamp. All the years were over now, and the kitchen was quick and full with movement. The head was unscrewed off the lamp, the charred wicks trimmed, the tin of paraffin and the wide funnel got from the scullery, the smoked globe shone with twisted brown paper, the boy running from the fire to touch the turned-up wicks into flame, and the two girls racing to the windows to drag down the blinds on another night.
“My blind was down the first,” they shouted.
“No! My blind was down the first!”
“Wasn’t my blind down the first, Guard Mullins?” as the boy adjusted the wicks down to a steady yellow flame and fixed the lamp in its place — one side of the delf on the small white table-cloth.
About the Author
John McGahern was born in Dublin in 1934 and brought up in the Republic of Ireland. He trained to be a primary-school teacher before becoming a full-time writer, and later taught and travelled extensively. He lived in County Leitrim. The author of six highly acclaimed novels and four collections of short stories, he was the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, the American-Irish Award, the Prix Etrangère Ecureuil and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Amongst Women, which won both the GPA and the Irish Times Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a four-part BBC television series. His work appeared in numerous anthologies and has been translated into many languages. In 2005, his autobiography, Memoir, won the South Bank Literature Award. John McGahern died in 2006.