Amongst Women by John McGahern Page B

the circle, Moran again had to recite the Last Decade. ‘Will we shut the doors, Daddy?’ Mona asked nervously after they rose from their knees.
    ‘What does it matter whether they are open or shut?’ he said and the doors remained open.
    As soon as they finished with their books the two girls made him tea. Rose always made tea at this hour. Immediately after they tidied and washed up, they went to kiss Moran good night and slipped away to their rooms. He sat for more than an hour alone before dragging himself to the room, shutting the doors loudly behind him as he went. He did not speak in the room, allowing his clothes to fall on to the floor in the darkness, waiting for some stir or sign from Rose, but the only sound in the room was the brushing of his own clothes falling in the darkness.
    ‘Are you awake at all there, Rose?’ he whispered before reaching out to pull aside the bedclothes.
    She did not answer at first but moved or turned.
    ‘I’m awake,’ she said at last in a voice strained with hurt. ‘I’ll have to go away from here.’
    ‘I never heard such nonsense,’ he blustered. ‘Are you taking everything up as serious as some of the other people in the house? Does every move have to be Judgement Day?’
    ‘I was told I was no use in the house. I couldn’t go on living in a place where I was no use,’ she spoke with the quietness and desperate authority of someone who had discovered they could give up no more ground and live.
    ‘God, O God. Has everything to be taken like this? I never meant anything like that. The whole world knows that the house was never run right until you came. A blind man could see that the children think the earth of you. They’d cry their eyes out if they heard even a whisper of this silly talk.’
    ‘It didn’t sound silly to me. It sounded as if it was meant. I’ll have to go back to Glasgow and take up my life there again.’
    ‘God, can’t a man say anything in his own house without it being taken up wrong?’ and the quarrel circled about the two positions until he reached and took her in his arms. She neither yielded to him nor attempted to pull away.
    ‘I love you dearly and I love the house but I couldn’t live here if I am not wanted.’
    ‘I thought we’d finished with that for ever.’ He was restless by her side, clenching and unclenching his hands. He had been checked. Instead of recognition, all that the quarrel had incurred was a deepening blindness. He now knew less about her than the day they had first met in the post office, standing beside one another on the scrubbed hollow boards, waiting for the evening mail van to come.
    Mona and Sheila rose earlier than usual the next morning. They had heard noises of someone rising very early and felt apprehensive. They weren’t sure if they would find Rose there at all or what way they would find her if they did. They were taken aback to find her smiling and totally at ease. The room was already warm and the furniture shone as if all the pieces had been gone over with a damp cloth.
    ‘You are all up a bit before your time. You could have stolen another few minutes,’ she said as if the evening had never happened. She poured their tea and sat with a cup of her own by the fire, chatting away as easily as she did every morning. ‘No danger of your brother ever getting up too early,’ she said and went to call Michael. When he came into the room, sleepy and rubbing his eyes, he too stared as if not able to believe how like all other mornings the morning was. Nothing seemed to have changed.
    Moran stayed in bed until late that day, disappearing silently into the fields after eating. When the children came back from school they found that still nothing had changed. Moran was in a rage about tools and a barrow that had been left out in the rain and complained about how much money was being wasted heedlessly about the house all the time.
    ‘Why does he always have to go on like that?’ Sheila was emboldened