The Barracks by John McGahern Page B

across the bridge for the town.
    She had two miles of beaten dirt and stones, scattered by the traffic out of the potholes the council were always filling, till she reached the Dublin Road. Here the traffic began to pass and come against her incessantly. She hadn’t to go far till she found she’d set her strength at least its equal. Even as far back as Christmas she had found it tough going, the day she went with Reegan for the children’s Santa Claus and the fruit and spices and whiskey and things that would create their festival with the candles in all the windows of the houses Christmas Eve and the walk at night to the church ablaze with lights for midnight Mass.
    Her clothes grew clammy with sweat as she cycled, and she felt the journey come down on her more like a weight. There were great beech trees between ash and oak and chestnut along the road and she started to count, numbering when the smooth white flesh showed out of the darker trunks in the distance, cycling past, her eyes already searching ahead for the next. There were five hills to go that she’d have to dismount under and walk. She turned and pushed and turned the pedals till they dwindled to four and three and two, with so many hills behind, till she was across the last; holding the handlebars as she free-wheeled down into the town, the solid block of the mountains beyond dominatingthe slate roofs and the treetops.
    It was twenty past eleven on the post office clock in Carrick Street and she left her bike against the wall there to walk to the doctor’s house at the other end of the town.
    She read on the brass plate: DR. J. RYAN, M.B., N.U.I. and climbed the steps between black railings to press the doorbell and was let in by a very made-up girl in her early twenties.
    â€œMrs Reegan,” Elizabeth said.
    â€œWas the doctor expecting you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWould you come this way, please? He’s rather busy this morning but I do not think you’ll have long to wait. I shall tell him that you’ve come,” with the practised smile and bow and opening of the door.
    There were five women in the room, a youth, two children —all sitting round the big elliptical table with its vase of daffodils and quota of magazines.
    They watched her find the most deserted corner of the table like a half-dazed animal and she was in no condition to observe them read her belly for pregnancy, her face and greying hair for age, the cost of the dark coat and the bag she carried, the third finger of her left hand when she took off her gloves.
    Their curiosity soon exhausted itself. They did not know her. They were women from the poorer class of this ex-garrison town. The companies had gone, the windows smashed in the great stone barracks, but somehow their class remained—Browns and Gatebys and Rushfords and Boots and Woods—hanging idle about the streets; or temporary postmen or lorry helpers or hawkers of fish and newspapers—now that it was Britain’s peace-time! But they had been Monty’s Rats and in Normandy as their fathers had been at Mons and the Dardanelles. Already Friday Gateby’s account of Dunkirk had become the local classic of the whole war. “It was a very dangerous place,” he agreed, home for a few weeks’ leave after the collapse. “A very dangerous place surely!”
    With holy-water bottle and stole and speeches to the tune of Soldiers of Old Ireland are We , Wellington Parade became St Brigid’s Terrace in white paint on a green plaque, but they went on breeding more than their fair share of illegitimatesand going and coming from the Ulster Rifles and Inniskilling Fusiliers as if nothing had ever happened.
    They continued with the conversation Elizabeth had interrupted. She listened quietly there, turning the pages of The Word that happened to lie at her hand till she was calm. When she raised her eyes she saw nothing on the faces that she hadn’t seen in