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- [00:01]
Anne Enright
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians.
- [00:09]
Deborah Treisman
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- [00:14]
Anne Enright
Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [00:19]
Deborah Treisman
Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker Magazine. I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month we're going to hear Sierra leone by John McGarren, which appeared in the New Yorker in August of 1977. The story was chosen by Anne Enright, who's the author of three story collections and eight novels, including the Gathering, which won the Man Booker Prize, and the Wren. The Wren. Hi, Anne.
- [01:01]
Anne Enright
Hi, how are you, Deborah?
- [01:03]
Deborah Treisman
Good. Welcome. Let's start with why you wanted to read a story by John McGahran today.
- [01:09]
Anne Enright
Yeah. John McGahren is a great Irish writer, and if you don't know who he is, he is the Irish writer's Irish writer. He is the one that we all read, argue with in our heads, admire, approach, you know, get annoyed with the whole. The whole nine yards. He. This story is from 1977, so it's Mid McGowan, his early and his later work is set in the Irish countryside where he found great solace and difficulty. But this is set in the middle where he's just kind of working things out. He just get an enormous feeling of the sincerity of his intention and the way he's working on life.
- [01:53]
Deborah Treisman
So it is, as you said, this is mid career. The story came out when McGarren was 42, so not early in his career, not late. Do you see it as standing out from the later work or the earlier work being different in tone or style?
- [02:11]
Anne Enright
So the middle work are set between Dublin and the countryside. The early work is set in the countryside, and so is the late work. And it has those amazing deep rhythms of the countryside, the seasons, the harvests, all of those things that he found great solace in. So this is the disturbed, unsettled middle ground before he knew exactly what he was doing. And I think that's always the more interesting part. Sierra Leone is the story that really stayed with me from when I read it, when I was in my early 20s, but because it was very close to the real Dublin that I knew and close also to the countryside that I knew from my father's childhood and life and my summers There in the countryside. And it seemed a little bit kind of perilously close to social satire. There's a politician and a mistress. Now, Ireland was very exercised at the time by politicians and their mistresses. There was one in particular. And you just think, well, how is he going to make something more? You know, there's something always very chiseled about his work. How is he going to bring it into a more permanent form? It's very interesting to see how he takes that kind of social material. He starts with the Cuban crisis and puts it down on the page. In his later work he went into a kind of always everywhere kind of continuous tense of country rhythms. And you'll see him do it here as well. He goes into a continuous tense all the time. Irish writers are martyrs to continuous tenses. But I like how he undoes the form of the short story here. He's not producing something shiny or epiphanic. He's not wrapping it up. He's not putting a bow on it. He's letting it kind of be less constructed in a way that I find really true.
- [04:13]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, you mentioned to me that this story for you shows what's great about McGahran just before he tilts into what you don't like so much about his influence. So I'm wondering if maybe you can talk about what that influence has been.
- [04:30]
Anne Enright
McGahren is a hero of Irish letters because he was banned after his second book, the Dark, in 1965. He was banned, his book was banned and he was fired from his job as a school teacher in Clontarf. And even I remember my mother saying he shouldn't be teaching children with the material that he had been writing. What he had revealed in the Dark were various abusive situations, one involving a priest and one involving sadly and very upsettingly his own father. So these matters were not discussed. I mean, he was so controversial. It was such he blazed through the taboos of the time in that second novel, after which he had a really difficult decade. I mean, you think he had a very difficult childhood. His mother died when he was 9 or 10. And then his father was a bully and a brute. And so he had a difficult childhood. And then he was kind of exiled or felt or self exiled from Irish life and moved around the place from job to job, very great financial difficulty or whatever, very unsettled, unsorted, quite bitter because he always reached in a high minded way for the truth of things. So that kind of argument between McGahran and the truth is extremely urgent. Because he broke truths that had not been said before. And it leads him in interesting directions. In this story. He's very engaged with real life and with what was going on in the town at the time. He was going to tell the truth again. He always gets the truth into it one way or the other.
- [06:22]
Deborah Treisman
Sign of a good writer.
- [06:23]
Anne Enright
No, it is the sign of a valuable writer. Yeah.
- [06:28]
Deborah Treisman
Well, I think we should now listen to the story. So here is Anne Enright reading Sierra Leone by John McGarren.
- [06:36]
Anne Enright
Sierra Leone we were the same age, in our late twenties, and had known each other casually for years. But we didn't meet in any serious way till the night of the Cuban crisis. I had met her many times, Jerry Macready, a politician who had a wife and family in the suburbs and a reputation as a womanizer around the city. But by my time all his other women had disappeared. The black haired Geraldine was with him everywhere and he seemed to have fallen in love at last. When old, even to the point of endangering his career. It was common gossip in the firm of accountants where I worked, which handled his account, as well as those of other politicians. In the small Dublin world, at the fringe of government, a very blurred line runs between business and the social, and I was continually meeting them. I had thought her young and lovely and wasted. There was a fever everywhere I turned in the city of Dublin that night. It was so quiet as to be almost unreal. The streets and faces hushed and I had been wandering from window to window where the lighted television sets were on display in the area round Grafton Street. On every television set the Russian ships were still on course for Cuba. There was a growing air that we were walking in the last quiet evening of the world. It looks none too good, a voice said, and I heard Geraldine's laugh at my side as I stood staring at the ships moving silently across the screen. None too good. I turned. Are you scared? Of course I'm scared. Do you know it's the first time we've ever met on our own? I said. Where's Jerry? He's in Cork, at a meeting. One that a loose woman like myself can't appear at. She laughed her provocative laugh. Why don't you come for a drink then? I'd love to. With the way things are, I was even thinking of going in for one on my own. The bar we picked had a stillness such as I had never known. People looked up from their drinks as each fresh news flash came on the set high in the corner, and it was with visible relief that they bent down again to the darkness of their pints. It's a real tester for that old chestnut about the Jesuit. When he was asked what he'd do if he was playing cards at five minutes to midnight and was suddenly told that the world was to end at midnight, I said as I took our drinks to a table. The table was in one of the far corners of the bar, in full sight of the screen. And what would he do? He'd continue playing cards, of course. It's to show that all things are equal. It's only love that matters. That's a fine old farce. She lifted her glass. It's strange how I've always wanted to ask you out and that it should happen this way. I always thought you were very beautiful. Why didn't you tell me you were with Jerry? You should still have told me. I don't think Jerry ever minded the niceties very much when he was after a woman. She laughed and then added softly, actually, I thought you disliked me anyhow. We're here this night, I know, but it's somehow hard to believe was the stillness that was unreal, the comfortable sitting in chairs with drinks in our hands, the ships leaving a white wake behind them on the screen. We were in the condemned cell, waiting for reprieve or execution. Except that this time the whole world was the cell. There was nothing we could do. Her hair shone dark blue in the light. Her skin had the bloom of ripe fruit. The white teeth glittered when she smiled. We had struggled toward the best years. Now they waited for us and all was to be laid waste. As we were about to enter on them, I moved my face close to hers. Our lips met. I put my hand on hers. Is Jerry coming back tonight? No. Can I stay with you tonight? If you want that. Her lips touched my face again. It's all I could wish for, except maybe a better time. Why don't we go then? She said softly. We walked by the green closed and hushed within its railings, not talking much when she said, I wonder what they're doing in the Pentagon. As we walk these steps by the green, it seemed more part of the silence than speech. There was a bicycle against the wall of the hallway when she turned the key and it somehow made the stairs and linoleum covered hallway more bare. It's the man's upstairs, she said, nodding towards the bicycle. He works on the buses. The flat was small and untidy. I'd always imagined Jerry kept you in more style, I said. He doesn't keep me, she said. Sharply. I pay for this place. He always wanted me to move, but I would never give up my own place. But she could not be harsh for long and began to laugh. Anyhow, he always leaves before morning. He has his breakfast in the other house. She switched off the light on the disordered bed and chairs. The night had been so tense and sudden that we had no desire except to lie in one another's arms. And as we kissed the last time before turning to seek our sleep, she whispered, if you want me during the night, don't be afraid to wake me up. The Russian ships had stopped, the radio told us the next morning as she made coffee on the small gas stove beside the sink in the corner of the room. The danger seemed about to pass again. The world breathed, and it appeared foolish to have believed it had ever been threatened. Jerry was coming back from Cork that evening, and we agreed as we kissed to let this day go by without meeting, but to meet at 5 the next day in Gaffney's of Fairview. We picked Gaffney's because it was out of the way. Even there we would run risk enough. The bicycle had gone from the hallway by the time I left. The morning met me as other damp, cold Dublin mornings, the world almost restored already to its comfortable, slow movement. The rich uses we dreamed when it was threatened were now forgotten when it lay all about us in such tedious abundance. Did Jerry notice or suspect anything, I asked, when we met at Gaffney's the next evening at 5? No, she said. All he talked about was the Cuban business. Apparently they were just as scared. They stayed up drinking all night in the hotel. He had a terrible hangover that evening. We went to my room, and she was in a calm and quiet way, completely free with her body, offering it as a gift. With the firelight leaping on the walls of the locked room, I said, there's no Cuba now. It is the first time you and I. But in my desire I was too quick. Afterward, she took my face between her hands and drew it down. Don't worry. There will come a time soon enough when you won't have that trouble. How did you first meet Jerry? I asked after a while to cover the silence. My father was mixed up in politics in a small way, and he was friendly with Jerry. And then my father died while I was at the convent in Eccles Street. Jerry seemed to do most of the arranging at the funeral, and then it seemed natural for him to take me out on those half days and Sundays that we were given free. Did you know of his reputation. Everybody did. It made him dangerous and attractive. And then one Saturday half day, we went to this flat in an attic off Baggot Street. He must have borrowed it for the occasion, for I've never been in it since. I was foolish. I knew so little. I just thought you lay in bed with a man. And that was all that happened. I remember it was raining. The flat was right under the roof and there was the loud drumming of the rain all the time. That's how it began. And it's gone on from there ever since. She drew me toward her, but she quickly rose and said, I have to hurry. I have to meet Jerry at 9. And the pattern of our time together had been set. It doesn't seem right that you are leaving me to go to him, I would say. What are we going to do about it? She would ask. At least you and he aren't fouling up anybody. I feel sometimes as if I was stabbing him in the back, I said one night as she was dressing to leave, combing her hair in the big cane armchair, drawing the lipstick across her lips in the looking glass. You seem very moral all of a sudden. What about his wife? I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I apologized, but we felt the responsibility enter softly but definitely as any burden. Why can't you stay another hour? I know what had happened in one of those hours, she said, but the tone was affectionate and dreamy. I'd get pregnant as hell in one of those hours. What should we do? Maybe we should tell Jerry, she said, and it was my turn to be alarmed. What would we tell him? The days of Jerry's profligacy were over. Not only had he grown jealous, he'd grown violent. Not long before hearing that she'd been seen in a bar with a man and not being able to find her, he had taken a razor and slashed the dresses in her wardrobe to ribbons. We could tell him everything, she said without conviction, that we want to be together. He'd go berserk. You know that he's often said that the one thing he feels guilty about is having taken my young life. That we should have met when both of us were young. That doesn't mean he'll think me the ideal man for the job, I said. They say the world would be a better place if we looked at ourselves objectively and subjectively at others. But that's never the way the ball bounces. Well, what are we to do? I think you should leave Jerry. Tell him you just want to start up a Life of your own. But he'll know that there's someone. That's his problem. You don't have to tell him. We can stay apart for a while and then take up like two free people. I don't know, she said as she put on her coat. And then after all that, if I found that you didn't want me, I'd be in a nice fix. There'd be no fear of that. Where are you going tonight? There's a dinner that a younger branch of the party is giving. It's all right for me to go. They think it rather dashing of Jerry to appear with a young woman. I'm not so sure. Young people don't like to see themselves caricatured either. Anyhow, I'm going, she said. Will it be five in Gaffney's tomorrow? At five then I heard, as the door opened and softly closed. Does Jerry suspect anything at all? I asked her again on another evening over Gaffney's small coal fire. Spring had come by this time, but not good weather. No, not at all. Odd that he often was suspicious when nothing was going on. And now that there is, he suspects nothing. Only the other day he was asking about you. He was wondering what had become of you. It seemed so long since we'd seen you last. This pattern had gone on for months. And our easy thieving that was hardly loving anxiety curbed by caution, appetite so luxuriously satisfied it could hardly give way to the dreaming that draws us close to danger was wearing itself naturally away when now a different relationship was made alarmingly possible. She told me that Jerry had been suddenly offered a lucrative contract to found a new radio television network in Sierra Leone. And he was thinking of accepting Ireland as a small nation with a history of oppression was suddenly becoming useful in the Third World. He goes to London the weekend after next for the interview, and he'll almost certainly take it, she said. That means the end of his political career here. There's not much further he can get here. It gives him prestige, a different platform, and a lot of cash. How do you fit into this? I don't know. Does he want to take you with him? He'll go out on his own first. But he says that as soon as he's settled there and sees what the setup is, he wants me to follow him. What'll you do? I don't know, she said in a voice that implied that I was now part of these circumstances. Slane was a lovely old village in the English style, close to Dublin. One Sunday that spring we'd had lunch at the one hotel more like a village inn than a hotel with plain wooden tables and chairs, the walls and fireplaces simple black and white iron scrapers on the steps outside the entrance. Now she suggested that we go there the weekend Gerry was on Interview in London. The country weekend. The walks along the wooded banks of the river, coming back to the hotel with sharp appetites to have one drink in the bar and then to linger over lunch in the knowledge that we had the whole long curtained afternoon spread before us was dream enough. But was it to be all that simple? Did we know one another at all and were we prepared to spend our lives together? We'd often talked of my stepmother and father of their rich farm in the country. Do you think they would like me? She used to ask. I know they'd love you, I'd say uneasily and tell her of the trees and acres I would probably one day inherit. If everything was simple, she'd say, Meaning, I presume, if Macready and my parents conveniently forgot to exist we'd go there and start our lives together away from this bloody city. Even as we made plans for our weekend it was growing clear that she wasn't sure of me and that I wasn't sure. Thursday, when the telegram came from my father in the country saying it was urgent I come home, I was for once almost glad of the drama and mysteriousness. It was with a good deal of relief then that I handed her the telegram. That evening, as we met to decide the final arrangements, we were meeting in Gaffney's as usual. She read the telegram without speaking, not looking up when the barman brought us drinks. Always before she had some word or a smile for him. It seems we're just out of luck this time, I said. So it's goodbye to our poor weekend. She handed me back the telegram. It's only one weekend, I protested. We'll have as many as we want once Jerry goes. You remember when I wanted to tell Jerry that we were in love and you wouldn't have it? You said we didn't know each other well enough. And then when we can have two whole days together, you get this telegram. How are we ever going to get to know one another except by being together? Maybe we can still go. No, not if you are doubtful. I think you should go home. Will you come back with me this evening? No, I have to have dinner with Jerry. When? At 8. We'll have time. We can take a taxi. No, love. She was quite definite. Will you meet Me? When I come back, then? I asked uncertainly. Jerry comes back from London on Sunday. On Monday, then. All right, on the Monday. There was no need to say where or when. She even said, see you Monday, to the barman's silent inquiry as we left and he waved. Have a nice weekend. As he gathered in our glasses, I was returning home. A last look at the telegram before throwing it away. An overnight bag, the ticket, the train. The old wheel turned and turned anew, wearing my life away. But if it wasn't this wheel, it would be another at the farm. Rose, my stepmother, seemed glad to see me, smiling hard, speaking rapidly. We even thought you might come on the late train last night. We said he might very well be on that train when we heard it pass. We kept the kettle on till after the news, and then we said, you'll hardly come now. But even then we didn't go to bed till we were certain you'd not come. Is there something wrong? No, there's nothing wrong. What does he want me for? I suppose he wants to see you. I didn't know there was anything special. But he's been worrying or brooding lately. I'm sure he'll tell you himself. And now you'd be wanting something to eat. He's not been himself lately, she added conspiratorially. If you can go with him, do your best to humour him. We shook hands when he came, but we did not speak, and Rose and I carried the burden of the conversation during the meal. Suddenly, as we rose at the end of the meal, he said, I want you to walk over with me and look at the walnuts. Why the walnuts? He's thinking of selling the walnut trees, Rose said. They've offered a great price. It's for the veneer. But I said, you wouldn't want us to sell a lot. You'd know about that, he said, for in a half snarl. But she covertly winked at me, and we left it that way. Was the telegram about the selling of the walnut trees, then? I asked as we walked together towards the plantation. Sell anything you want as far as I'm concerned. No, I've no intention of selling the walnuts. I threatened to sell them from time to time, just to stir things up. She's fond of those damned walnuts. I just mentioned it as an excuse to get out. We can talk in peace here, he said, and I waited. You know about this act they're bringing in? He began. No. They're giving it its first reading, but it's not the law yet. What is this act. It's an act that makes sure that the widow gets so much of a man's property as makes no difference after he's dead whether he likes it or not. What's this got to do with us? You can't be that thick. I'll not live forever after this act. Who'll get this place now? Do you get my drift? Rose will. And who'll Rose give it to? Those damned relatives will be swarming all over this place before I'm even cold. How do you know that? I was asking questions now simply to gain time to think. How do I know? He said with manic grievance. Already the place is disappearing fast beneath our feet. Only a few weeks back the tractor was missing. Her damned nephew had it without as much as a by my leave. They forgot to inform me, and she never goes near them, that there's not something missing from the house. That's hardly fair. It's usual to share things around in the country. She always brought back more than she took. I remembered the baskets of raspberries and plums she used to bring back from their mountain farm. That's right. Don't take my word. He shouted. Soon you'll know. But what's this got to do with the telegram? I asked, and he quieted. I was in to see Callan, the solicitor. That's why I sent the telegram. If I transfer the police to you before that act becomes law, then the act can't touch us. He said as well that there was a crying need of a good accountant in the town. You could even buy out old McGinnis who's half doting anyhow, and you could get this place running right once more. It's some of the best land in the whole countryside and I'm not able for it anymore. D'you get me now? I did too well. He would disinherit Rose by signing the place over to me. I would inherit both Rose and the place if he died. You won't have it signed over to you then? No, I won't. Have you said any of this to Rose? Of course I haven't. To take me for a fool or something. Are you saying to me for the last time that you won't take it? And when I wouldn't answer he said with great bitterness, I should have known. You don't even have respect for your own blood. And muttering walked away toward the cattle gathered between the stone wall and the first of the walnut trees. Once or twice he moved as if he might turn back, but he did not. We did not speak any common language, and to learn another's language is more difficult than to learn any foreign language, especially since perfect knowledge is sure to end in murder. We avoided each other that evening, and the next day I tried to slip quietly away. Is it going you are? Rose said sharply when she saw me about to leave. That's right, Rose. You shouldn't pass any heed on your father. You should let it go with him. He won't change his ways now. You're worse than he is not to let it go with him. For a moment I wanted to ask her, do you know that he wanted to leave you at my sweet mercy after his death? But I knew she would answer, what does that matter? You know he gets these ideas. You should let it go with him. When I said goodbye, Rose, she did not answer, and I did not look back. As the train trundled across the bridges into Dublin and by the grey back of Croke park, all I could do was stare. The weekend was over. If it had happened differently, it would still be over differently. She and I would have had our walks and drinks, made love in the curtained rooms, experimented in the ways of love, pretending we were taming instinct, imagining we were getting more out of it than had been intended, and afterward, where were we to go from there? And it would be over and not over. I had gone home instead, a repetition of other home goings, and it too was over now. She would have met Macready at the airport already. They would have had dinner, and if their evenings remained the same as when I used to meet them together, they would now be having drinks in some bar. As the train came slowly into Amiens Street, I suddenly wanted to find them, to see us all together. They were not in any of the Grafton street bars, and I was on the point of giving up with gratitude that I hadn't been able to find them when I saw them in a hotel lounge by the river. They were sitting at the counter, picking at a bowl of salted peanuts between their drinks. He seemed glad to see me getting off his stool. I was just saying here how long it is since we last saw saw you, he said in his remorseless slow voice, as if my coming might lighten an already heavy hanging evening. He was so friendly that I could easily have asked him how his interview had gone amid the profusion of my lies, forgetting that I wasn't supposed to know. I've just come from London. We've had dinner at the airport. He began to tell me all that I already knew. And will you take this job? I asked after he told me at length about the weekend, without any attempt to select among its details other than to put the whole lot in. It's all arranged. It'll be in the papers tomorrow. I leave in three weeks time, he said. Congratulations, I proffered uneasily. But do you have any regrets about leaving? No, none whatever. I've done my marching stint and my speeching stint. Let the young do that. Now it's my time to sit back. There comes a time of life when your grapefruit in the morning is important. And will her Ladyship go with you? I'll see how the land lies first and then she'll follow. And by the way, he began to shake with laughter and gripped my arm so that it hurt. Don't you think to get up to anything with her while I'm gone? Now that you've put it into my head, I might try my hand. I looked for danger, but he was only enjoying his own joke, shaking with laughter as he rose from the bar stool. I better go spend a penny on the strength of that. That was rotten, she said without looking up. I suppose it was. I couldn't help it. You knew he'd be round. It was rotten. Will you see me tomorrow? What do you think? Anyhow, I'll be there. How did your weekend in the country go? She asked sarcastically. It went as usual. Nothing but the usual. I echoed her own sarcasm. Macready was still laughing when he came back. I've just been thinking that you two should be the young couple and me the uncle. And if you do decide to get up to something, you must ask Uncle's dispensation first. And he clapped me on the back. Well, I better start by asking now, I said quickly, in case my dismay would show, and he let out a bellow of helpless laughter. He must have been drinking, for he put arms round both of us. I just love you two young people. Tears of laughter slipped from his eyes. Hi, Boreman. Give us another round before I die. I sat inside the partition in Gaffney's the next evening, as on all other evenings, the barman as usual, polishing glasses. Nobody but the two of us in the bar. Your friend seems a bit later than usual this evening, he said. I don't think she'll come this evening, I said. Auntie looked at me inquiringly. She went down the country for the weekend. She was doubtful if she'd get back. I hope there's nothing wrong. No, her mother is old, you know. The way I was making for the safety of the roomy cliches. That's the sadness. You don't know whether to look after them or your own life. Before any pain of her absence could begin to hang about the opening and closing doors, as the early evening drinkers bustled in, I got up and left. Yet her absence was certainly less painful than the responsibility of a life together. But what then of love? Love flies out the window, I had heard them say. She'll not come now, I said. No, it doesn't seem, he said as he took my glass with a glance in which suspicion equalled exasperated. We did not meet till several weeks later. We met in Grafton street, close to where we had met the first night. A little nervously, she agreed to come for a drink with me. She looked quite beautiful, a collar of dark fur pinned to her raincoat. Jerry's in Sierra Leone now, she said, and I brought the drinks. I know. I read it in the papers. He rang me last night, she said. He was in the house of a friend, a judge. I could hear music in the background. I think they were a bit tight. The judge insisted he speak to me, too. He had an Oxford accent, very posh, but apparently he's as black as the ace of spades. She laughed. I could see that she treasured the wasteful coal. She began to tell me about Sierra Leone, its swamps and markets. There were avocado and cacao and banana trees. The rivers were crocodile infested. Jerry lived in a white columned house on a hillside above the sea. And he had been given a chauffeur driven Mercedes. She laughed when she told me that a native bride had to spend the first nine months of her marriage indoors so that she grew light skinned. Will you be joining Jerry soon? I asked. Soon. He knows enough people high up now to arrange it. They're getting the papers in order. I don't suppose you'll come home with me tonight then? No. There wasn't a hint of hesitation in the answer. Difficulty and distance were obviously great restorers of the moral order. You must let me take you to dinner then, before you leave, as old friends, no strings attached. That'll be nice, she said. Out in Grafton street we parted as easily as two leaves sent spinning apart by any sudden gust. All things begin in dreams and it must be wonderful to have your mind full of a whole country like Sierra Leone before you go there and risk discovering that it might be your life. On the eve of her departure for Sierra Leone, another telegram came from the country. There was nothing Mysterious about it this time. Rose had died. The overnight bag, the ticket, the train. The iron gate under the yew was open and the blinds of the stone house at the end of the gravel were drawn. Her flower garden inside the wooden gate and the low whitethorn hedge just before the house had been freshly weeded and the coarse grass had been cut with shears. Who attend the flowers now? I shook hands with everybody in the still house, including my father, who did not rise from the chair he'd converted from a car seat years before. I heard them go over and over what happened, as if by going over and over it they would return it to the everyday. Rose got up, put on the fire, left the breakfast ready, and went to let out the chickens. She had her hand on the latch coming in when he heard this thump. And there she was, lying, the door half open. I went into the room to look on her face. The face was over too. If she'd been happy or unhappy, it did not show now. Would she have been happier with another? Who knows the person another will find happiness or unhappiness with? Why don't you let it go with him? I heard her voice say. You know what he's like. She had lived rooted in this one place and life with this one man, like the black Sally in the one hedge, as pliant as it is knobbed and gnarled, keeping close to the ground as it invades the darker corners of the meadows. The coffin was taken in. The house was closed. I saw some of the mourners trample on the flowers as they waited in the front garden for her to be taken out. She was light on our shoulders. Her people did not return to the house after the funeral. They had relinquished any hopes they had to the land. We seem to have it all to ourselves, I said to my father in the empty house. He gave me a venomous look but did not reply for long. Yes, he said. Yes, we seem to have it all to ourselves. But where do we go from here? Not anyhow to Sierra Leone. For a moment I saw the tall colonial building on a hill above the sea, its white pillars the cool of the veranda. In the evening, maybe they were facing one another across the dinner table at this very moment, a servant removing the dishes. Where now is Rose? I suppose we might as well try and stay put for a time, I said. And when my father looked at me sharply, I added, for the sake of my own peace. That is, until things settle a bit and we can find our feet again and think.
- [39:21]
Deborah Treisman
That was Anne Enright reading Sierra leone by John McCarron. The story appeared in the New Yorker in August of 1977 and was included in McGahren's 1978 collection Getting Through. Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker. Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from authors like Colson Whitehead.
- [39:49]
Anne Enright
Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look.
- [39:52]
Deborah Treisman
Of horror on his face.
- [39:53]
Anne Enright
They saw it.
- [39:55]
Deborah Treisman
Griff wasn't going down. He was going to go for it.
- [39:59]
Anne Enright
No matter what happened after.
- [40:02]
Deborah Treisman
Or Joy Williams, her father was silent.
- [40:06]
Anne Enright
Slowly he passed his hand over his hair.
- [40:09]
Deborah Treisman
This usually meant that he was traveling to a place immune to her presence.
- [40:14]
Anne Enright
A place that indeed contradicted her presence. She might as well go to lunch.
- [40:21]
Deborah Treisman
Listen to news stories, or dive into our archive of great fiction. You can find the work of your favorite fiction writers and discover new ones. Listen and follow the Writer's Voice wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:38]
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- [41:53]
Deborah Treisman
So Anne, the story is set in Dublin. It begins in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's a night of fear and fever and the entire world may be coming to this disastrous end. What purpose do you think that setting for the opening serves in the story?
- [42:14]
Anne Enright
So the story reaches away from Ireland really radically Twice. Once in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in the second instance in this idea of Sierra Leone, which feels a little dated now. I mean, McGahren wasn't that much traveled. He'd been to Paris, he'd been to London. And so it's a kind of slightly exoticized version of what Sierra Leone might provide or what it was, or in a colonial sense. The easiest thing to say is that McGowan found it difficult to get away from autobiographical material. So it may be based on a real incident, or he may have wanted to capture, you know, what he had experienced on that night in October 1962. But it frames their small and in some ways, slightly tawdry difficulty. I mean, our situation in this larger sense of imminence. Yeah, he's very interested in repetition, McGahren. Patterson. Repetition, the wheel turning. And the end of repetition is death. So that is what Rose's death does at the end of the story. So he begins the story with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the idea that everybody is going to die. So it's a kind of massive sense of communal mortality rather than the individual mortality of Rose.
- [43:36]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Do you think that on another night when death wasn't imminent, Geraldine would have been so quick to respond and agreed to take him home for the night?
- [43:46]
Anne Enright
I do not know. I do not know whether. I suppose you could say, blame the Cuban Missile Crisis. That's. That's. You know, I'm sure there are people who said, blame the Cuban. Yes, of course. It plays a kind of causatory or provoking role in the short story. I don't know about what her character would have done without it.
- [44:10]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [44:11]
Anne Enright
That's all.
- [44:11]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Well, seems to me that it plays a role for the narrator because he's throwing caution to the wind, in a sense, because he's anxious about stealing Jerry's mistress.
- [44:21]
Anne Enright
Well, there are a number of triangulations through the story. The women are all transactional pieces, you know, that Rose becomes heritable towards the end. So there are these triangles between Macready and the narrator and between the narrator and his father. And Rose and Geraldine are not. They can't be swapped over, but they play some kind of role between two men in each instance. But, yeah, no, the Cuban Missile Crisis just opens a space, and it also, oddly, makes their first encounter quite sweet by extracting the sex out of it, that they just fall asleep together. They're so frightened. So it makes it less kind of carnal, a relationship. It kind of lifts it a bit as a relationship.
- [45:05]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Interestingly. Then, the first time they actually do have sex, he doesn't prove to be especially good at it. He's too quick.
- [45:13]
Anne Enright
No.
- [45:14]
Deborah Treisman
And she has to reassure him.
- [45:16]
Anne Enright
No. At the same time as this short story, McGachan was writing the Pornographer, and there is a relationship quite similarly timed but differently configured in the Pornographer and the sex scenes. He's brilliant. He knows everything. He's absolutely fantastic. So, yeah, the quietness and the humility of this sex scene is also him too. You know, that he would break a taboo, but do it in a way that was somehow realistic rather than hyped up in some way.
- [45:48]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. It's interesting that, you know, the narrator says he's been interested in her for a long time. He's always found her beautiful. Once he gets her, he is in no rush to get her away from Jerry. He's quite happy to keep on sharing.
- [46:03]
Anne Enright
Absolutely. And his dialogue slips again and again to, what does Jerry think? Does he think. Is he jealous? What does Jerry think? What does. So there's very little about her. Quite a lot about Jerry. And that clearly was the psychology that McGahren intuited in that relationship. He knew what was going on there. You know, I mean, Dublin in those times, those men, they were always. What's the phrase? Banging chests. You know, there are a number of, you know, possible candidates for the original of this politician at the time, Charlie Hawey was very famously had a mistress, and that went on for 27 years. And the whole country knew. But the mention of Africa also relates to another politician who went to Africa. And you just go, okay. It's quite possible that McGahren would have put this other guy in just to annoy him. No biographical content, just for spite, because they were always putting each other in their place, or, as I say, largely was quite a competitive space for those kind of bruised, damaged men of which there was an abundance back in the day.
- [47:19]
Deborah Treisman
I mean, throughout the story, the narrator keeps kind of evading, evading any kind of statement or commitment, any sort of claim to Geraldine, even though he continues to see her. They have their lovely routine. And Gaffneys, he refers to their relationship as easy thieving that was hardly loving. What is in it for him? I mean, he's obviously not pursuing her. He doesn't quite fall in love with her. He keeps bringing up the idea that they hardly know each other, even though it seems they've spent a lot of nights and evenings together by that point. Is it just that he's shut down internally? He can't do anything.
- [48:02]
Anne Enright
Yeah. I think the key word at the end of the discussion of the character is exasperation, which is the barman looks at him with exasperation when she doesn't turn up. And that barman, who is slightly kind of wonderful in his lovely cadences about looking after the old and all of that, he finds, forms the character who judges him. He's seen all their interplay in Gaffney's. She's always had a nice word or a look or whatever for the barman. The barman is quite a key figure in some Dublin fictions. And so he's exasperated with the narrator. I mean, for the writer, for McGahern, he is playing with the idea that the narrator is not heroic in any way and that his failures sort of accumulate. He doesn't act. I mean, I suppose you'd call him a commitment phobe about that was, you know, a phrase. He's also extremely wary and high minded about instinct. He says, you know, they would have spent this weekend. He sees it as a kind of fruitless attempt to tame instinct. It's like he didn't miss the lovely weekend one way or the other. And it's part of that narrator and the narrator of the novel he was writing at the time, come to the conclusion that it's all one. It's all the same. That after one event is the same as after another event. So that time wins, or time is the mechanism, or. You know, I find a really exasperating. I find exasperating. I'm with the powerman. You know, he read a lot of Camus at the time, you know, so things not mattering. Nothing matters except death. And then death doesn't matter because the face is over. He's just really. He's really astringent about. Don't get too excited now. We're all gonna die.
- [50:05]
Deborah Treisman
Don't get too attached. Yeah, yeah.
- [50:08]
Anne Enright
Well, his attachments are also quite aversive. So I don't know if it's really evident in the story that he find dependency quite difficult. It would suit him that Macready's on the scene because it means that he doesn't have to attach.
- [50:25]
Deborah Treisman
I suppose he doesn't have to be responsible for her. It's interesting. I suppose you can read his reaction to his father in a couple of ways. You know, his anger at this idea of disinheriting Rose to pass the farm to him. In one way, he's defending Rose, you know, and not wanting her to be treated in that way. While he's somewhat treating Geraldine in that way. So there's a conflict there. But on the other hand, we learn that he sees inheriting the farm as inheriting Rose, as you've said, and having this responsibility to this woman that he doesn't want.
- [51:04]
Anne Enright
Well, even worse, that she would be at his mercy. So there's a shadow there of him turning into his cruel and sadistic father, that a woman would be at his mercy. And he wants to say to her, do you know that he was going to put you at my sweet mercy? These are very raw realities of inheritance. And when there isn't a lot of freedom of movement in the countryside. And Rose would have had very few options. And there was a phrase, a kind of heartbreaking phrase, that an old person would have a seat at the fire, that you'd always have a seat at the fire, meaning you wouldn't be thrown out in old age to go to the dreaded county home or any of the awful institutions that were around that looked after the discarded. It was all quite possible. Anything was possible, Rose. And you get that coolness from the narrator and perhaps a kind of note of fear that he doesn't want to turn into his father. But they do collude that conspiratorial. There's a whole idea that he has to be managed, that they are in this together, himself and Rose in the difficult problem of his father.
- [52:13]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, we don't learn that much about the father in this story. I mean, if you know biographical details about McGarren, then you assume that it's based on his own father. But we're not given a lot of explanation as to why their relationship is so strained. Why the father is so angry.
- [52:32]
Anne Enright
No, none at all. I mean, they shake hands but don't speak, and the stepmother is there. This trope is repeated in Gold Watch, another New Yorker story, and also most iconically in his novel Amongst Women, where the difficulty of the is managed by the stepmother and the daughters in particular. And again and again. I mean, one reason when I was young and this story stuck with me, other stories, not so much. I couldn't understand McGahren, in part because I didn't know why he wanted to be plain in his style. But I also didn't have a terrible father. I think if you had a certain kind of father, you would know immediately, as soon as this guy walks on the page and his many iterations, you would know what the problem was. But I didn't know what the problem was, because the father walks into a story in my head. And he's a nice guy, so that's. So I had to do some flips there. But once you get him, then the forcefulness and the darkness and the tediousness or the pettiness of him, the smallness of it is really compelling, I think.
- [53:48]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. You know, he's married to Rose for years and years. And then his annoyance at the idea that her relatives might borrow the tractor or whatever else, you know, it's like their marriage is a battlefield for power.
- [54:03]
Anne Enright
I suppose it's all about inheritance, it's all about the land. So it's not Rose. He's fine with Rose, it's roses and relatives. It's the in laws problem, not unknown problem. You're fine, but all your family drives me nuts. No, that's the in laws problem.
- [54:22]
Deborah Treisman
But ironically, he has very little love for his son. It's not clear so much why he wants this sort of estranged son to inherit it.
- [54:33]
Anne Enright
Yeah, well, it's all blood and soil, isn't it, really? Better than the unrelated stranger is the stranger that he engendered himself at the end of the story, when the two of them are together, you get the feeling that they've been together all along. That they understand each other in some very profound way and they're not getting on is totally interesting to them. It's not that they're disconnected or properly estranged. They're very similar or potentially similar and they understand each other extraordinarily well.
- [55:10]
Deborah Treisman
Right, well, they treat women similarly. Yes, women are burdens.
- [55:17]
Anne Enright
Well, I think Rose is kind of a facilitator. I don't think the father thinks of Rose as a burden, but he doesn't like the extended family. They're a threat. Certainly it's not really stated what the threat might be from Geraldine, the black haired Geraldine. Perhaps it didn't need to be stated because it was so evident that a man wouldn't want to be pinned down. Or in other stories he would talk about men being trapped by a woman. So it may have been just so culturally or socially evident that getting married is not ideal, you know, that he wouldn't have wanted that. That commitment is not necessarily what he was looking for or not looking for at all.
- [56:02]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, it's very unclear if he was looking for anything. I mean, it seems to me that he's out on the night of the Cuban Missile crisis and this woman is there, so why not? He's always found her attractive and he.
- [56:13]
Anne Enright
Thinks she's wasted, so he wants to take her from the old guy. He wants to win that one, but he's afraid to bring it out into the open.
- [56:23]
Deborah Treisman
What do you think is happening in that scene where he goes and finds them both on the Sunday night in the bar?
- [56:28]
Anne Enright
You know, I mean, the earlier conversation, he says, you know, if he found out, he would go berserk. And there's this kind of slightly odd thing that he's turned violent. And you wouldn't want to let a violent man know that you'd fallen for his girlfriend. That would be a disaster. So he's a coward as well. And I think McGahren is deliberately making him a coward. I don't know if we're fully to believe that the politician. Is that so? Yeah. So what is that? He arrives and he just gets a bad notion. He wants to see them all together.
- [57:04]
Deborah Treisman
He's coming back from the encounter with his father that has upset him and nothing matters.
- [57:11]
Anne Enright
And now he wants to see them all together.
- [57:13]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. It's like he wants to explode everything.
- [57:15]
Anne Enright
Well, he wants the full drama.
- [57:17]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Maybe he just wants to make sure that Geraldine will go to Sierra Leone. Right.
- [57:23]
Anne Enright
So I suppose he wants the dynamic to play out or to become explicit. You know, see it in the world. See how it feels when it's not quite in his unconscious, that it's actually in the room. That's a kind of manifestation of what's going on. So it's a kind of let's bring it on, that kind of feeling. But I think what he wants to bring on is not a rapprochement. You know, he doesn't want to get back with Geraldine or figure things out with Geraldine. He wants to bring out the fact that he has also slept with this powerful man's girlfriend, despite the fact that the man doesn't know. So he wants that excitement. It's slightly covert.
- [58:02]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [58:02]
Anne Enright
Not very heroic. Yeah.
- [58:04]
Deborah Treisman
What it does is make Geraldine not want to continue with him at all. She's put in a very awkward position. So what do you think that Jerry Macready, the politician, understands in that scene? Because there's a lot of laughter and joking. Is it just that or is there an undercurrent that he has cottoned on to what's been happening?
- [58:30]
Anne Enright
There is that really creepy thing that he says, if you have to get up to something, you must ask Uncle's dispensation first and just go, okay. So he's asserting that he's the guy in charge. He knows that there's some kind of dynamic. The word uncle has rarely been used so unpleasantly. I don't know, it's like.
- [58:56]
Deborah Treisman
I mean, he is like an uncle. He was her father's friend.
- [58:58]
Anne Enright
Yeah. No, there was a wonderful writer, Lulo Phelan, who wrote by Charlie Ahi, who was Prime Minister of Ireland coming. Who is her father's friend driving her home when she was still a schoolgirl and her mother rapping on the window to get her out of the car. It was so well known how bad minded some of these politicians were. It's also really interesting. He also had a kind of semi public mistress for 27 years who was married to someone who subsequently became a High Court judge. So at a time when politicians were being upbraided for being less than good or moral, or when they were enacting legislation about the family and about contraception and about divorce, all of which were illegal at the time, you have this kingpin at the top of it all doing exactly what he wanted and being celebrated for that.
- [59:48]
Deborah Treisman
Some things never change. I mean, what's interesting to me is that ultimately in the story, Jerry Macready is the one who seems to really love Geraldine. There's no mention of his wife potentially going to.
- [60:03]
Anne Enright
She really disappears. Yeah.
- [60:04]
Deborah Treisman
She doesn't go to Sierra Leone. She's not an option. This is him planning to live out his days with Geraldine in this other country. Unlike our narrator, indeed, who says probably one of the harshest lines I've ever read. Her absence was certainly less painful than the responsibility of a life together, you know?
- [60:27]
Anne Enright
Yes. I mean, one of the reasons McGahren is so revered is that he is utterly uncompromising. And the lack of sentimentality can be so bracing and sometimes thrilling, you know. And it is part of that absence of sentimentality that makes the story happen in the way it does, that it's not overly constructed at the time, not overly shaped, because to shape it and put a ribbon on it and to get an image that makes sense of it all, that is a kind of gift to the reader, is not something he's going to allow himself. There is no storytelling moment of ease, or might say consolation, but even of finishing, it just ends with the two of them together, all the unfinished business still unfinished between them. And that is also a sign of his kind of aesthetic discipline there.
- [61:28]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, let's talk about the ending, because I find that last paragraph sort of mystifying. You know, he says to his father, he says, I suppose we might as well try and stay put for a time. I said. And when my father looked at me sharply, I added, for the sake of my own peace. That is, until things settle a bit and we can find our feet again and think, what is he saying? Is he staying on the farm with the father? He's choosing to be there.
- [61:52]
Anne Enright
Yes. That's one thing that's really possible, isn't it? This slow, churning resignation happens early in the story where he says, the wheel turns and it turns. And if it wasn't this wheel, then it would be another one. Oh, you know, okay. It's like one suffering is the same as another suffering. One dynamic is the same as another dynamic. All you have to do is keep on going, keep on making your way through, trying to find some peace of mind. And that is very McGahren all the way through. So it's not resignation, but it's just a kind of less frantic than the romance has been or less disturbed than the romance has been and the feeling of settling down. He was a teacher, you know, so I'm sure he told people to settle down.
- [62:59]
Deborah Treisman
I feel that he would want nothing less than. Than to move back in with his father. But at that point, the women are gone, Geraldine's in Africa, and Rose is dead.
- [63:12]
Anne Enright
So in the work around this story, there is an immense appreciation of the countryside and of nature's simplicities, of social rituals, including funerals, and of the kind of social round and the cycle of country living. What McGahran himself wrote about in his memoir and elsewhere, where when he returned to the countryside was that he was returning to a sense of his lost mother, so that the countryside was very much a maternal space from walking along lanes where he had walked with her in the past. He never, I don't think, properly resolved and really unresolvable childhood, that he lost his mother and then was thrown into the care of a very unpleasant. And all through his work, attractive man, that somehow he's bound to him. There's some magnetized sense elsewhere. The father figure is charming. He has a kind of gift of intimacy, which really can be quite creepy. He's very self regarding. He's very handsome. It's like he never gets around this father figure one way or the other. But the challenge and the temptation is to reproduce the father, to be the father one way or the other. So I think that edge is in here that he would get Rose. It would become a kind of version of his father. So you just see it on the periphery of the story.
- [64:52]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah. But in a sense, he's giving into that.
- [64:56]
Anne Enright
Yes, indeed. I really like the ending. Do you not like the ending?
- [65:01]
Deborah Treisman
I really like it, yeah. Partly because I don't understand it. I don't understand quite. You know, even the father says, so where do we go from here? The son's answer is just, well, not to Sierra Leone. Yeah.
- [65:15]
Anne Enright
Here is where it is.
- [65:16]
Deborah Treisman
Nothing is decided. They have to think.
- [65:18]
Anne Enright
Yeah. But you get the sense that they'll go another round, you know, that the wheel will keep turning one way or the other.
- [65:26]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. It's hard. You know, in reading the story, I was thinking, I think you mentioned earlier about this kind of parallel between the father and the politician. Well, one's the uncle and one's the father, I suppose, you know, this kind of dichotomy in these older men that he's tangled with.
- [65:45]
Anne Enright
They both have their grotesque attributes as well.
- [65:48]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [65:48]
Anne Enright
I mean, in the comic and kind of snarling mode, they're both over the top. They're both too large. They're uncontained somehow, for the scenes they're in. I mean, their emotions are too big. They're both foolish. They're a bit slightly cartoonish.
- [66:06]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. And then the narrator, in the midst.
- [66:08]
Anne Enright
Of it, is unexpressive, totally contained, unable.
- [66:12]
Deborah Treisman
To really even experience emotion, it seems.
- [66:17]
Anne Enright
So you see, in all the dialogue with the father, which I think is his more successful dialogue, is where he's just flattening the father's effect by just saying, so what are you saying? So what are you saying? And being very contained, very controlled and very reserved. But you could imagine that to be otherwise, in the face of such a man, would make you unbearably vulnerable in some way.
- [66:48]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. It's interesting because on first quick read of the story, I thought it was a love story. And by the third read.
- [67:01]
Anne Enright
I thought.
- [67:02]
Deborah Treisman
It was a story with no love in it.
- [67:04]
Anne Enright
Yeah. Yeah. Melancholy.
- [67:08]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [67:08]
Anne Enright
What he called the bittersweet pause, that's what he wanted it to be about, maybe. Impossibility. That's a great romantic trope. Impossibility. But it's not even impossible. Love. It's just impossibility.
- [67:25]
Deborah Treisman
Impossibility of accepting love or committing to love.
- [67:28]
Anne Enright
Yeah.
- [67:30]
Deborah Treisman
Ultimately, what do you think is the relationship or the connection between father and son? Because they're obviously. You know, he's going to settle down and think with his father, there obviously is something there. Do you think there's love?
- [67:43]
Anne Enright
I don't know about love. I think there's a considerable amount of hatred there. I mean, they're attached. Whether he wants to be attached to his father or not, he doesn't seem to have a choice. They're trapped. They're stuck together. The father has no one either. There they are.
- [67:59]
Deborah Treisman
I mean, there's that amazing line about them having no common language, but if they had perfect knowledge of each other's language, it would lead to murder.
- [68:07]
Anne Enright
Yes. Well, there's my garn. Going large. It's like if we understood each other, we would have killed each other long ago. So very Greek, you might say. Very, very dramatic indeed. Yeah. He had no doubt in other stories that the father figure was interested in killing him. His narrators had occasionally had insights that they were in danger of their lives.
- [68:37]
Deborah Treisman
So not a love story, just a tragedy.
- [68:39]
Anne Enright
Yeah, just an ordinary. An ordinary tragedy.
- [68:45]
Deborah Treisman
Well, thank you so much, Anne.
- [68:46]
Anne Enright
Thank you.
- [68:53]
Deborah Treisman
John McGarren, who died in 2006 at the age of 71, was the author of 10 books of fiction, including the story collections Getting through and High Ground and the novels the Barracks the Dark, which was banned in Ireland, and Amongst Women, which won the Irish Times Aer Lingus Literary Award. Anne Enright, a winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, among others, has published, published 11 books of fiction, including the story collection Yesterday's Weather and the novels Actress and the Wren. The Wren. She's been publishing fiction in the New Yorker since 2000. You can download more than 200 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, including episodes in which Ann Enright reads and discusses stories by John cheever and Frank O'Connor, or subscribe to the podcast for free in Apple Podcasts. On the Writer's Voice podcast, you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the Writer's Voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. This episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast was produced by Chloe Prasinos. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks for listening. You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, we're the Godfather of Artificial Intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen.
- [70:42]
Anne Enright
To podcasts from prx.