Free The Collected Stories by John McGahern

heavy ledgers and patrol books, on an unsheathed baton. A child muttering in its sleep from the upstairs room came through the door I’d left open. ‘Shut it. We’re not in a field,’ he said.
    ‘Early, in the summer, we talked about you managing without me.And you did a good job in the garden and bringing the timber down. Well, it looks as if we prepared none too soon.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘You know what clothes and feeds you all – my pay. The police own the roof above your head. With my death that comes to a full stop. We all know how far your relatives can be depended on – as far as the door.’
    He’d his greatcoat on over his uniform, the collar turned up but unbuttoned, his shoulders hunched in a luxury of care as if any sudden movement might quench the weak flame of life the body held.
    ‘Fortunately I have made provisions for the day,’ he said, turning to the bomb box on the chair, and with the same slow carefulness unlocked it. Inside, against the mud and grass camouflage over the steel, was a green wad of money in a rubber band, two brown envelopes and a large package.
    ‘You see this money,’ he said. ‘It’s one hundred pounds. That’s for the immediate expenses when they take the body home. It won’t cross the bridge, it’ll go to Aughoo, to lie with your mother, no matter what your relatives try.
    ‘Then open this envelope, it has your name,’ he lifted the thin brown envelope, ‘all instructions for the immediate death, what to do, are down there one by one.
    ‘This other envelope has the will and deeds,’ he continued. ‘Lynch the solicitor in Boyle has the other copy, and the day after the funeral take this copy into him.
    ‘I have discussed it all with Lynch, he’ll help you with the purchase of a small farm, for after the death you’ll have to get out of the barracks if you don’t all want to be carted off to the orphanage, and if you dither the saved money’ll go like snow off a rope. Paddy Mullaney wants to sell and Lynch and I agreed it’s ideal if it comes at the right price. After the farm the first thing to get is a cow. You’ll have to work from light to dark on that farm to keep these children but it’ll be worth it and you have my confidence,’ he said with great authority.
    He locked the box, and handed me one of the keys.
    ‘You have a key and I have a key. When news of the death comes you’ll go first thing and open the box with your key. Is that clear?’ he demanded.
    What was to happen was taking clearer outline as I listened, eyes fixed on the bright metal of the key in the sweat of my palm.
    ‘The bigger package is not for the time being of any importance. It’s for when you grow older. Old watches, your mother’s rings, photos, locks of hair, medals, albums, certificates. It’s for when you all grow older.’ Then he remembered again that he was ill, and sank back at once into the dark blue greatcoat.
    What he’d been saying was that he was going to die. He’d be put in a coffin. The coffin would be put in the ground and covered with clay. He’d give no answer to any call.
    Mullaney’s farm where we’d go to live, small slated house of the herd, fields sloping uphill to the mound, wet ground about the mound where once they’d startled a hare out of its form in the brown rushes; it had paused in the loop of its flight as the shot blasted its tense listening into a crumpled stillness.
    Stone walls of those fields. Drudge of life from morning to night to feed the mouths, to keep the roof above their heads. The ugly and skin shapes of starlings, beaks voracious at the rim of the nest, days grown heavier with the burden of the carrying.
    ‘But you’re not going to die.’
    ‘All the symptoms point to the one fact that it’s certain.’
    ‘But the symptoms may be wrong.’
    ‘No. It’s as certain as anything can be in this life.’
    ‘Don’t, don’t …’
    ‘Do you love me, then?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘If you love me then you must do your best