Free Amongst Women by John McGahern Page A

know how they’ll turn out. If you do the generous thing, then you can’t be blamed.’
    ‘I can be blamed. Make no mistake about that. In this case I can always be blamed.’
    ‘I know it is hard but it’s better to try to ignore what is said against you. If you can ignore it then you’ll know that you have nothing to blame yourself for. Do nothing in a hurry.’
    ‘What do you want me to do?’
    ‘I think it’d be better if you wrote him,’ Rose suggested.
    ‘I’ll probably just earn another kick in the teeth but I’ll do it none the less.’
    Moran spent a long time composing the letter. He could not resist adding recrimination. Luke answered the letter by telegram. Seldom a telegram came and nobody liked to see one come to a house. The small green envelope with the harp generally came with news of sudden death. Moran’s high- strung nervousness, which was usually concealed by slow, deliberate movements, was all on show as he looked about him like an animal in unknown territory and tore open the envelope. When he read delighted to meet maggie stop love stop luke he had to struggle to contain himself. He was barely able to conceal his fury until after he paid the postman whom he walked all the way out to the iron gate.
    ‘Maybe he just sent the telegram and a letter will come after a few days,’ Maggie tried to soothe.
    ‘No letter will come. It leaves me like a right fool out in the bloody open.’

    ‘I don’t know how you can say that, Daddy. You did everything decent,’ Rose said.
    ‘Why in the name of the Saviour do you have to put your ignorance on full display,’ he turned on her. ‘You don’t know the first thing about the business, woman.’
    That the telegram was formally polite and completely ignored his own attack infuriated Moran. After he had read it aloud he crumpled the note up in his fist and thrust it into the fire as if the very sight of it was hateful.
    ‘Well, at least you’ll have someone to meet you at Euston,’ Rose said softly to Maggie who already knew that she would be met.
    ‘Of course he’ll meet her. He’ll meet her to try to turn her against me,’ shouted Moran.
    ‘He was polite enough,’ Rose suggested.
    ‘What do you know about it? What in hell do you know about anything?’
    He swept his hat from the dresser and crushed it on his head and went outside as if he might break down the doors in his way. Soon they heard the sharp, swift sounds of the axe as he started to split lengths of branches into firewood.
    She stood stunned. He had never spoken to her like that before. In the spreading lull she looked towards the others. They had all been there when Moran read out the telegram. Part of her expected to find them laughing at his wild reaction beyond all sense and to return her to the blessed normal but when she looked around only Maggie stood in the room. The others had slipped away like ghosts. Maggie was kneading currants through dough in a glass bowl on the sideboard, as absorbed in the kneading as if all of her life were passing through the pale dough.
    ‘Where have they all disappeared to all of a sudden, Maggie?’
    ‘They must have gone out,’ Maggie looked up from the dough with intense attention.
    ‘I thought I might find them laughing at poor Daddy,’ Rose said, allowing her own shock and fear to ease out in the nervous laughter, but Maggie’s face remained pale and serious.

    ‘I don’t know what happened to Daddy,’ Rose said.
    ‘Sometimes he gets like that.’
    ‘I never saw him so upset.’
    ‘He’s not been like that for a long time.’
    ‘Was he often like that?’
    ‘Before, but not for a long time now,’ Maggie admitted reluctantly and Rose did not want to learn any more. She had already more than she wanted to deal with. In the silence the sound of the sledge could be heard thudding on stones from one of the near fields. He had already abandoned the timber.
    Often when talking with the girls she had noticed that whenever