“That’s money, all right,” he was impressed and asked apprehensively, “Do you ever think the day might come when you’d think of selling up the place at home?” about the house and farm I had inherited from my parents.
“No. There’ll never be any chance of that.”
“I tauld them,” he said in triumph. “Though they’re that land-mad they’d not believe you. ‘He’ll hardly be keeping on that place now that he’s in Dublin and you’ll be sure to remind him not to sell without telling me first. Him and me are the best of friends and he knows I’d see him right,’” he mimicked. “I told them they’d have more chance of jumping in the river than you selling.”
“There’s no danger of me selling,” I reassured him.
“I know. Selling a place like that is like selling your life. You’d never know when you’d want to go back to it. And it’ll not move unless you move.”
“That’s true,” I raised my glass.
“And that girl you used bring down in the summer, do you still see her?”
“No. I haven’t seen her for almost a year.”
“That must be a great relief to you.”
“No.” I was forced to laugh outright. “On the contrary, I loved her.”
“I know. We all have to make those noises.”
“I wanted to marry her and she wouldn’t marry me. That was all there was to it,” I said between laughter and an old catch of pain.
“I know, but isn’t a relief to you now that she didn’t take you at your word? You’d be in a nice fix now if she had. Your aunt had you married off the minute you appeared on the doorstep with the girl, but I’ve seen too much come and go. And I know you’re no fool.”
“It wasn’t that way at all,” I said.
“I know it’s not easy to own up to it, but if you talk to the wall this weather — am I right or wrong — will the wall answer back?”
“No, I don’t suppose it will.”
“Now you see the light!”
I saw the light. The wall would not talk back, and it was perfect and it was dull, better not to have lived at all.
If my love had married me it might all by this time have dwindled to a similar dullness, but at least by now we would know the quality of that dullness, having tried to live in love. Now we would never know at all.
My uncle saw his own state as the ideal, and it should be the goal of others to strive to reach its perfect height. For me to disturb its geometry with any different perspective would be a failure of understanding and affection.
The long black hand of the pub clock jerked past six.
“Will you have one for the road?” I asked, adding, “A small one?” When I saw his hesitation, “We have nearly twenty minutes yet.”
“You must want me to go rolling home. The train’ll be travelling on its roof,” he laughed.
“Well, you shouldn’t have any if you don’t want.”
“I don’t want,” he said.
“I don’t suppose you’d ever think of retiring from the mill and taking it easy,” I said.
“I haven’t seen anybody retire yet but they were six feet under before they knew where they were or if they weren’t they’d be as well off if they were — drooping about the place with one hand as long as the other. You’re a burden to yourself and everybody else once you stop working.”
“You’ve enough money?” I said to keep the conversation going. I knew him to be a comparatively rich man, having several times over what his modest needs would require.
“Nobody has enough money,” he countered vigorously. “Money is life. And once you stop earning it soon gallops away.”
When we got up to go to the train he found his feet were hurting. “When you’re not used to the concrete it takes it out of you,” and we went very slowly across to the station. I carried the parcel of spare parts but he kept the raincoat. For a time, as we waited on the platform and talked about the difficulty of getting spare parts down the country and how nobody in the city knew more or less one thing from another, I thought that he wasn’t going to mention the real purpose of his visit at all; but then I saw his face pucker painfully, as if it could no longer avoid a darkness too deep for him, and he said abruptly, “If she wants for anything get it for her. I’ll see it right. There’s no use expecting anything from Cyril. And there’s no scarcity of money on this side.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll see to her. I’m not short of money either.”
“Sure, I know that,” he took my hand. “You’ll be down soon?”
“As soon as I can.”
I watched him go down the platform to the carriages, small and indestructible with his parcel and raincoat, “My uncle, you will live forever.” I murmured the prayer with a force all the greater because I knew it could not be answered.
The last of the sun still mingled in the evening rush hour outside the station. All day my life had been away, in easy attendance on the lives of others, and I did not relish its burden back, the evening stretching ahead like a long and empty room. It must surely be possible to be out of our life for the whole of our life if we could tell what life is other than this painful becoming of ourselves.
I saw a bus idle up to the distant traffic lights which were on red, and I had time to get to the next stop. It was too far off to make out its number. Like spinning a coin or wheel I’d let the number of the bus decide the evening. If it turned out to be the fifty-four-A I’d get on and go back to the room and do the work I’d been putting off; if it was any of the other buses I’d turn back into the city and squander the evening. With a calmness now that I was within the rules of a game I stood at the stop and waited. The lights changed. With a grinding of gears the bus drew closer. It was a fifty-four-A. I put out a hand and it stopped and I got on.
There was no sound when I opened the door of the house and let it close. Nor was there sound other than the creaking of the old stairs as I climbed to the landing. I paused before going into the room but the house seemed to be completely still. I closed the door and stood in the room. Always the room was still.
The long velvet curtain that was drawn on the half-open window stirred only faintly. A coal fire was set ready to light in the grate. The bed with damaged brass bells stood in the corner and shelves of books lined the walls. Books as well were piled untidily on the white mantel above the coal grate, on the bare dressing table. Beside the wardrobe a table lamp made out of a Chianti bottle lit the marble tabletop that had been a washstand once, lit the typewriter that rested on a page of old newspaper on the marble, lit an untouched ream of white pages beside it. I reflected as I always did with some satisfaction after an absence that the poor light of day hardly ever got into this room.
I washed and changed, combed my hair, and washed my hands again a last time before going over to the typewriter on the marble, and started to leaf through what I had written.
We used to robe in scarlet and white how many years before. Through the small window of the sacristy the sanded footpath lay empty and still between the laurels and back wall of the church, above us the plain tongued boards of the ceiling. It seemed always hushed there, motors and voices and the scrape-drag of feet muffled by the church and tall graveyard trees. Kneelers were no longer being let down on the flagstones. The wine and water and hand linen had been taken out onto the altar. The incessant coughing told that the church was full. The robed priest stood still in front of the covered chalice on the table, and we formed into line at the door as the last bell began to ring. When it ceased the priest lifted the chalice, and we bowed together to the cross, our hearts beating. And then the sacristy door opened on to the side of the altar and all the faces grew out of a dark mass of cloth out beyond the rail. We began to walk, the priest with the covered chalice following behind.