Free Creatures of the Earth by John McGahern Page A

drink?’
    â€˜Why?’ She blushed as she looked me full in the face.
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜I said I’d be back for tea.’
    â€˜We can have sandwiches.’
    â€˜But why do you want me to?’
    â€˜I’d like very much if you come. Will you come?’
    â€˜All right I’ll come but I don’t know why.’
    It was how we began, the wind blowing from the mouth of the river while the Blanchardstown Fife and Drum downed their first thirst-quencher in the Scotch House.
    They’d nothing but beef left in Mooney’s after the weekend. We had stout with our sandwiches. Soon, in the drowsiness of the stout, we did little but watch the others drinking. I pointed out a poet to her. I recognized him from his pictures in thepaper. His shirt was open-necked inside a gabardine coat and he wore a hat with a small feather in its band. She asked me if I liked poetry.
    â€˜When I was younger,’ I said. ‘Do you?’
    â€˜Not very much.’
    She asked me if I could hear what the poet was saying to the four men at his table who continually plied him with whiskey. I hadn’t heard. Now we both listened. He was saying he loved the blossoms of Kerr Pinks more than roses, a man could only love what he knew well, and it was the quality of the love that mattered and not the accident. The whole table said they’d drink to that, but he glared at them as if slighted, and as if to avoid the glare they called for a round of doubles. While the drinks were coming from the bar the poet turned aside and took a canister from his pocket. The inside of the lid was coated with a white powder which he quickly licked clean. She thought it was baking soda. Her father in the country took baking soda for his stomach. We had more stout and we noticed, while each new round was coming, the poet turned away from the table to lick clean the fresh coat of soda on the inside of the canister lid.
    That was the way our first evening went. People who came into the pub were dripping with rain and we stayed until they’d draped the towels over the pump handles and called ‘Time’ in the hope the weather would clear, but it did not.
    The beat of rain was so fierce when we came out that the street was a dance of glass shapes, and they reminded me of blackened spikes on the brass candleshrine which hold the penny candles before the altar.
    â€˜Does it remind you of the candlespikes?’ I asked.
    â€˜Yes, now that you mention it.’
    Perhaps the rain, the rain will wash away the poorness of our attempts at speech, our bodies will draw closer, closer than our speech, I hoped, as she returned on the throat my kiss in the bus; and from the bus, under the beat of rain on the umbrella, we walked beyond Fairview church.
    â€˜Will I be able to come in?’ I asked.
    â€˜It would cause trouble.’
    â€˜You have your own room?’
    â€˜The man who owns the house watches. He would make trouble.’
    Behind the church was a dead end overhung with old trees, and the street lights did not reach as far as the wall at its end, a grey orchard wall with some ivy.
    â€˜Can we stay here a short time, then?’
    I hung upon the silence, afraid she’d use the rain as excuse, and breathed when she said, ‘Not for long, it is late.’
    We moved under the umbrella out of the street light, fumbling for certain footing between the tree roots.
    â€˜Will you hold the umbrella?’
    She took the imitation leather with the white stitching in her hands.
    Our lips moved on the saliva of our mouths as I slowly undid the coat button. I tried to control the trembling so as not to tear the small white buttons of the blouse. Coat, blouse, brassière, as names of places on a road. I globed the warm soft breasts in hands. I leaned across the cold metal above the imitation leather she held in her hands to take the small nipples gently in teeth, the steady beat on the umbrella broken by