Loading summary
Transcript132 lines
- [00:00]
Tessa Hadley
If your eyes are the windows to your soul and your glasses are the windows to your eyes, then it's pretty important to find your perfect frames. That's why at Warby Parker, we've made shopping for eyewear as easy and fun as can be. Peruse endless styles in our stores or use our app to virtually try on frames and get personalized recommendations to find your next favorite pair of glasses, sunglasses or contact lenses, or to locate your nearest Warby Parker store. Hi. Head over to warbyparker.com that's warbyparker.com so.
- [00:31]
Quince Brand Representative
Many of my favorite pieces come from Quinte these days. Honestly, I'm kind of obsessed. Everything they make is designed to layer well and to look good. Together they make it so easy to build a timeless wardrobe that lasts. Think 100% organic cotton sweaters. Premium denim made with stretch for all day comfort luxe cotton cashmere blends perfect for the changing seasons. Everything you need for a wardrobe that actually lasts. Quince works directly with safe, ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you're not paying for brand markup, just high quality clothing. Quince uses the highest quality materials like 100% European linen and organic cotton. Everything is built to hold up season after season. The stitching, the fit, the fabrics. These are pieces you'll reach for over and over. I wear the cashmere batwing sweater from Quince almost every day. It's so cozy, but it's got dramatic flair. Makes me feel dressed up while I'm still feeling so warm and comfortable. Refresh your wardrobe with quints. Go to quince.com nyfiction for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Q-U-I-N-C-E.com nyfiction to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com nyfiction.
- [01:51]
Deborah Treisman
This is the New Yorker Fiction podcast from the New Yorker Magazine. Debra I'm Debra 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 Gold watch by John McGairn, which appeared in the New Yorker in March of 1980.
- [02:10]
Tessa Hadley
I knew myself too well. There was more caution than any love or charity in my habitual going home. It was unattractive, and it had been learned in the bitter school of my ungiving father.
- [02:24]
Deborah Treisman
The story was chosen by Tessa Hadley, who's The author of 13 books of fiction, including the story collection's Bad Dreams and after the funeral and the novella the Party, which came out in 2024. Hi, Tessa.
- [02:38]
Tessa Hadley
Hi, Deborah.
- [02:39]
Deborah Treisman
Welcome back to the podcast.
- [02:40]
Tessa Hadley
Ah, what a treat.
- [02:42]
Deborah Treisman
So, Tessa, in previous episodes of the podcast, you read stories by Nadine Gordimer and John Updike. Do those writers have anything in common with McGahren for you? Are they part of a kind triumvirate of writers for you?
- [02:56]
Tessa Hadley
They are in my inner circle of beloved writers, all three of them. They are among my favorite short story writers. Yeah, yeah.
- [03:07]
Deborah Treisman
Tell me about your connection with John McGarren's work. When did you first read him?
- [03:11]
Tessa Hadley
I'm not sure. Sometime in the 80s, I think. I can't remember who put it in my hands first. Maybe I was reading Column column to Bean, and somehow through him, I got to McGahan. Maybe I just picked it up in a shop. I've loved these opaque, enigmatic, easy looking, difficult stories since I first touched them. And actually I've taught him a lot. Before I retired from teaching, I used to set him as a set text to my students on my short story course. And he was loved by everyone. And we marveled at his strange, unique, idiosyncratic technique. Yeah.
- [03:52]
Deborah Treisman
How would you describe that technique? What is it that he does?
- [03:55]
Tessa Hadley
A sort of surface lucidity, a surface simplicity almost with. It doesn't crop up so much in this story, but often lots of repetitions, the kind of repetitions that your New Yorker editor might often pencil out and suggest you find a different word. But that's part of the rhythm of his language and of his thought, to sort of work back into the same words and keep on mining them for more and more complex meaning. It's one of his things. Yes.
- [04:27]
Deborah Treisman
And so the story Gold watch. Why did you pick this one?
- [04:30]
Tessa Hadley
Ah, it's sort of perfect. It's got the thing a really good short story often has, which is one thing you can hold in your hand, which is literally, you can hold it in your hand. You can hold this watch in your hand. And in fact, one man has held it in his hand. His children, his son has wanted it, envied it, and he now holds it in his hand. And out of that small thing you can hold in your hand, you can unpack inside this story a universe of patriarchy, of country and city, of men unpicking and remaking power between them in the most sort of deadly, dark way.
- [05:18]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah. It's, on some deep level, not a cheerful story.
- [05:24]
Tessa Hadley
No. Despite the loveliness in it, because that's very important too. There is Light in the story, too.
- [05:31]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, well, we'll talk some more after the reading. Now here's Tessa Hadley reading Gold watch by John McGarren.
- [05:41]
Tessa Hadley
Gold watch it was in Grafton street we met aimlessly strolling on one of the lazy, lovely Saturday mornings in spring, the week of work over the weekend, still as fresh as the bunch of anemones that seemed the only purchase in her cane shopping basket. What a lovely surprise, I said, and was about to take her hand when a man with an armload of parcels parted us as she was shifting the basket to her other hand and we withdrew from the pushing crowds into the comparative quiet of Harry Street. We had not met since we had graduated in the same law class from University College five years before. I had heard she'd become engaged to the medical student she used to knock around with and had gone into private practice down the country, perhaps waiting for him to graduate. Are you up for the weekend or on holiday or what? I asked. No, I work here now. She named a big firm that specialised in tax law. I felt I needed a change. She was wearing a beautiful oatmeal coloured suit, the narrow skirt slit from the knee. The long old hair of her student days was drawn tightly into a neat bun at the back. You look different, but as beautiful as ever, I said. I thought you'd be married by now. And do you still go home every summer? She countered, perhaps out of confusion. It doesn't seem as if I'll ever break that bad habit. We had coffee in Bewlieu's, the scent of the roasting beans blowing through the vents out into Grafton, becoming forever mixed through the memory of that morning, and we went on to spend the whole idle day together until she laughingly and firmly returned my first hesitant kiss, and it was she who silenced my even more fumbled offer of marriage several weeks later. No, she said, I don't want to be married. But we can move in together and see how it goes. If it doesn't turn out well, we can split and there'll be no bitterness. And it was she who found the flat in Hume street, on the top floor of one of those old Georgian houses in off the green, within walking distance of both our places of work. There was extraordinary peace and loveliness in our first weeks together that I will always link with those high ceilinged rooms, the eager rush of excitement I felt as I left the office at the end of the day, the lingering in the streets to buy some offering of flowers or fruit or wine or a bowl and wants one copper pan, the rushing up the stairs to call her name, the emptiness of those rooms when I'd find she hadn't got home yet. Why are we so happy? I would ask. Don't worry it, she always said, and with a touch sealed my lips. Early Summer we drove down one weekend to the small town in Kilkenny where she had grown up, and in separate rooms we slept above her father's bakery. That Sunday a whole stream of relatives, aunts, cousins, two uncles with trains of children arrived at the house. Word had gone out and they had plainly come to look me over. This brought the tension between herself and her schoolteacher mother into open quarrel. Late that evening after dinner, her father sat with me in the front room, cautiously kind, sipping whisky as we measured each careful cliche, listening to the quarrels slow and rise and crack in the far off kitchen. I had found the sense of comfort and space charming at first, but by Monday morning I too was beginning to find the small town claustrophobic. Unfortunately, the best part of these visits is always the leaving, she said as we drove away. After a while on your own, you're lured into thinking that the next time will somehow be different. But it never is. Wait, wait until you see my place, I said. At least your crowd made an effort. And your father is a nice man, and yet you keep going back to the old place. That's true, I'm afraid. It's just something in my own nature that I have to face. It's just easier for me to go back than to cut that way I don't feel any guilt. I don't feel anything. I knew myself too well. There was more caution than any love or charity in my habitual going home. It was unattractive, and it had been learned in the bitter school of my ungiving father. I would fall into no guilt, and I was already fast outwearing him. For a time it seemed I could outstare the one eye of nature. I had even waited for love, if love this was, for it was happiness such as I had never known. You see, I waited long enough for you, I said as we drove away from her Kilkenny town. I hope I can keep you now. If it wasn't me, it would be some other. My mother will never understand that. You might as well say I waited long enough for you. You might as well say that, too. The visit we made to my father not long after quickly turned to disaster, far worse than I had, at the very worst, envisaged. I saw him watch us as I got out of the car to open the iron gate under the yew but instead of coming out to the road to greet us, he withdrew into the shadows of the hallway. It was my stepmother, Rose, who came out to the car when we had both got out and were opening the small garden gate. We had to follow her smiles and trills of speech all the way into the kitchen to find my father, who was seated in the cane chair, and he did not rise to take our hands. After a lunch that was silent in spite of several shuttlecocks of speech Rose tried to keep in the air. He said as he took his hat from the sill, I want to ask you about these walnuts, and I followed him out into the fields. The mock orange was in blossom, and it was where the mock orange stood out from the clump of egg bushes that he turned suddenly and said, what age is your intended? She looks well on her way to 40. She's the same age as I am, I said blankly. I could hardly think, caught between the shock and pure amazement. I don't believe it, he said. You don't have to. But we were in the same class at university. I turned away, walking with her in the same field close to the mock orange. Late that evening, I said, do you know what my father said to me? No, she said happily, but from what I've seen, I don't think anything will surprise me. We were walking just here, I began and repeated what he'd said. When I saw her go still and pale, I knew I should not have spoken. Close to 40, she repeated. I have to get out of this place. I'm sorry for telling you, but it's so blatantly untrue that I didn't think you'd take it seriously. If anything, you're too beautiful. I just want to get out of this place. Stay this one night, I begged. It's late now. We'd have to stay in a hotel. It'd be making it into too big a production. You don't ever have to come back again if you don't want to. But stay the night. It'll be easier. I'll not want to come back, she said, as she agreed to see out this one night. But why do you think he said it? I asked her later, when we were both quiet, sitting on a wall at the end of the big meadow, watching the shadows of the evening deepen between the beaches, putting off the time when we'd have to go into the house. Not unlike two grown children. Is there any doubt out of simple hatred? There's no living with that kind of hatred. We'll Leave first thing in the morning, I promised. And why did you, she asked, teasing my throat with a blade of rye, say I was, if anything, too beautiful? Because it's true, it makes you public, and it's harder to live naturally. You live in too many eyes, in envy or confusion or even simple admiration. It's all the same. It makes it harder to live, luckily. But it gives you many advantages. If you make use of those advantages, you're drawn in even deeper. And of course I'm afraid it'll attract people who'll try to steal you from me. That won't happen. She laughed. She'd recovered all her natural good spirits. And now I suppose we'd better go in and face the ogre. We have to do it sooner or later, and it's getting chilly. My father tried to be very charming at dinner that night, but there was a false heartiness to it that made it clear that it grew out of nowhere, meaning he felt he'd lost ground and was now trying to recover it far too quickly, using silence and politeness like a single weapon. We refused to be drawn in, and when pressed to stay the next morning we said unequivocally that we had to be back. Except for one summer when I went to work in England, the summer my father married Rose, I had always gone home to help at the hay, and after I entered the civil service I was able to arrange holidays so that they fell around hay time at home. They had come to depend on me, and I liked the work. My father had never forgiven me for taking my chance to go to university. He had wanted me to stay and work the land. I had always fought his need to turn my refusal into betrayal. And by going home each summer I felt I was affirming that the great betrayal was not mine but nature's own. I had arranged my holiday to fall at haytime that year, as I had all the years before I met her. But since he'd turned to me at the Mock Orange, I was no longer sure I had to go. I was no longer free, since in everything but name our life together seemed to be growing into marriage. It might even make him happy for a time to call it my betrayal. I don't know what to do, I confessed to her a week before I was due to take my holiday. They've come to depend on me for the hay. Everything else they can manage themselves. I know they'll expect me. What do you want to do? I suppose I'd prefer to go home. That's if you don't Mind, why do you prefer I like working at the hay? You come back to the city feeling fit and well. Is that the real reason? No, it's something that might even be called sinister. I've gone home for so long that I'd like to see it through. I don't want to be blamed for finishing it, though it'll finish soon, with or without me. But this way I don't have to think about it. Maybe it would be kinder then to do just that and take the blame. It probably would be kinder. But kindness died between us so long ago that it doesn't enter into it. So there was some kindness. When I was younger. I had to smile. He looked on it as weakness. I suspect he couldn't deal with it anyhow. It always redoubled his fury. He was kind too, in fits when he was feeling good about things. That was even more unacceptable. And that thing from the old Bible is true. After enough suffering, a kind of iron enters the soul. It's very far from commendable. But now I do want to see it through. Well then, go, she said. We had pasta and two bottles of red wine at the flat the evening before I was to leave for the hay and with talking we were almost late for our usual walk in the green. We liked to walk there every good evening before turning home for the night. The bells were fairly clamouring from all corners, rooting vagrants and lovers from the shrubbery. As we passed through a half closed gate, two women at the pond's edge were hurriedly feeding the ducks bread from a plastic bag. We crossed the bridge where the Japanese cherry leaned down among the empty benches. Round the paths and flower beds. Within their low railings the deck chairs had been gathered in, the sprinklers turned off. There was about the green, always at this hour, some of the melancholy of the beach at the close of holiday. The gate we had entered was already locked. The attendant was rattling an enormous bunch of keys at the one through which we had to leave. You know, she said, I'd like to be married before long. I hadn't thought it would make much difference to me, but oddly now I want to be married. I hope it's to me, I said. You haven't asked me. I could feel her laughter as she held my arm close. I'm asking now. I made a flourish of removing a non existent hat. Will you marry me? I will. When? Before the year is out. Would you like to go for a drink to celebrate then? I always like any excuse to celebrate. She was biting her lip. Where will you take me? The Shelbourne. It's our local and it'll be quiet. I thought of the aggressive boot thrown after the bridal car, the marbles suddenly rattling in the hubcaps of the honeymoon car, their metals smeared with oil so that the throne confetti would stick, the legs of the comic pyjamas hilariously sewn up. We would avoid all that we had promised one another, the simplest wedding. We live in a lucky time, she said and raised her glass, her calm, grey, intelligent eyes shining. We wouldn't have been allowed to do it this way, even a decade ago. Will you tell your father that we're to be married? I don't know. Probably not, unless it comes up. And you? I better. As it is, Mother will probably be furious that it is not going to be a big splash. I'm so grateful for this time together, that we were able to drift into marriage without that drowning plunge when you see your whole life in the flash. What will you do while I'm away? I'll pine, she said and laughed. I might even try to decorate the flat out of simple desperation. There's a play at the abbey that I want to see. There are some good restaurants in the city if I get too depressed. And in the meantime, have a wonderful time with your father and poor rose in the 19th century at the Bloody Hay. Oh, for the Lord's sake, I said as I paid the bill. Outside. She was still laughing so provocatively that I drew her toward me. The next morning on the train home, I heard the weather forecast from a transistor far down the carriage. A prolonged spell of good weather was promised. Meadows were being mowed all along the line, and I saw men testing handfuls of hay in the breeze as they waited for the sun to burn the dew off the fallen swards. It was weather people prayed for. I walked the three miles from the station. Meadows were down all along the road, some already saved in stacked bales. The scent of cut grass was everywhere as I drew close to the stone house in its trees. I could hardly wait to see if the big meadow beyond the row of beech trees was down. When I'd lived here, I'd felt this same excitement as the train rattled across the bridges into the city, or when I approached the first sight of the ocean. Now that I lived in a city on the sea, the excitement had been gradually transferred home. As I turned in at the gate, I could tell by the emptiness beyond the beaches that the big meadow had been cut at the house rose and my father were waiting in a high state. Everything's ready for you, rose said as she shook my hand, and through the window I saw my old clothes outside in the sun, draped across the back of a chair. As soon as you get a bite you can jump in your old duds, my father said. I knocked the big meadow yesterday. All's ready for go. Rose had washed my old clothes before hanging them outside to air. When I changed into them, they were still warm from the sun and they had that lovely clean feel that worn clothes after washing have. Within an hour we were working the machines. The machines had taken much of the uncertainty and slavery from haymaking, but there was still the anxiety of rain. Each cloud that drifted into the blue above us, we watched as apprehensively across the sky as if it were an enemy ship, and we seemed as tired at the end of every day as we were before. We had the machines eating late in silence, waking from a listless watching of the television only when the weather forecast showed and afterward it was an effort to drag feet to our rooms, where the beds lit with moonlight showed like heaven and sleep was as instant as it was dreamless. It was into the stupor of such an evening that the gold watch fell. We were slumped in front of the television set. Rose, who had been working outside in the front garden, came in and put the teakettle on the ring and started to take folded sheets from the closet. Without warning, the gold watch spilled out onto the floor. She'd pulled it from the closet with one of the sheets. The pale face was upward in the poor light. I bent to pick it up. The glass had not broken. It's lucky it no longer goes, rose said under her breath. Well, if it did, you'd soon take good care of that, my father said. It just pulled out with the sheets, rose said. I was running into it everywhere round the house, and I put it in with the sheets so that it'd be out of the way. I'm sure you had it well planned. Give us this day, our daily crash. Tell me this. Would you sleep at night if you didn't manage to smash or break something during the day? He'd been frightened out of a light sleep. He was intent on avenging his fright. Why did the watch stop? I asked. I turned the cold gold in my hand. Elgin was the one word on the white face. The delicate hands were of blue steel. All through my childhood it had shone. Can there be two reasons why it stopped? His anger veered toward me now. It stopped because it got Broken. Why can't it be fixed? I ignored the anger. Poor Taylor in the town doesn't take in watches anymore, rose said. And the last time it stopped we sent it to Sligo. Sligo even sent it to Dublin. But it was sent back. A part that holds the balance wheel is broke. What they told us is they've stopped making parts for those watches. They have to be specially handmade. They said the quality of the gold wasn't high enough to justify that expense, that it was only gold plated. I don't suppose it'll ever go again. I put it in with the sheets to have it out of the way. I was running into it everywhere. Well, if it wasn't fixed before, you must certainly have fixed it for good and forever. This time, my father said. He would not let go. His hand trembled on the arm of the rocking chair, the same hand that would draw out the gold watch long ago, as the first strokes of the Angelus came to us over the heather and and pale wheaten sedge of Gloria Bog. 20 minutes late, no more than usual. One of these years Jimmy lynch will startle himself and the whole countryside by ringing the Angelus at exactly 12. Only in Ireland is there right time and wrong time. In other countries there is just time. We would stand and stretch, our backs aching from scattering the turf, and wait for him to lift his straw hat. Waiting with him under the yew, suitcases round our feet, we would look for the bus that took us each year to the sea at Strand Hill, after the hay was in and the turf home, and to quiet us he'd take out the watch and let it lie in his open palm where we'd follow the small second hand low down on the face, endlessly circling and until the buzz came into sight at the top of Doherty's Hill. How clearly everything sang now, set free by the distance of the years, with what heaviness the actual scenes and days had weighed. If the watch isn't going to be fixed, then I might as well have it, I said. I was amazed at the calm sound of my own words. The watch had come to him from his father. Through all the long years of childhood. I had assumed that one day he would pass it on to me. Then I would possess its power. Once, in a generous fit he'd even promised it to me. But he did not keep that promise. Unfairly. Perhaps I expected him to give it to me when I graduated, when I passed into the civil service, when I won my first promotion. But he did not. I had forgotten about it until it had fallen out of the folded sheets. I saw a look pass between my father and my stepmother before he said, what good would it be to you? No good, I said. Just a keepsake. I'll get you a good new watch in its place. I often see watches in the duty free airports. My work often took me outside the country. I don't need a watch, he said, and he pulled himself up from his chair. Rose cast me a furtive look, much the same look that had passed a few moments before between her and my father. Maybe your father wants to keep the watch, it pleaded, but I ignored it. Didn't the watch once belong to your father? I asked, but the only answer he made was to turn and yawn before starting the slow, exaggerated shuffle toward his room. To my delight, when the train pulled into Amiens street station, I saw her outside the ticket barrier in the same tweed suit she'd worn the Saturday morning we met in Grafton Street. I could tell that she'd been to the hairdresser, but there were specks of white paint on her hands. Did you tell them that we're to be married? She asked as we left the station. No, I said. Why not? It never came up. And you? Did you write home? No. In fact I drove down last weekend and told them. How did they take it? They seemed glad. You seemed to have made a good impression. She smiled as I guessed. Mother is quite annoyed that it's not going to be a big do. You won't change our plans because of that? Of course not. She's not much given to change herself except to changing other people so that they fit in with her ideas. This fell my way at last, I said, and I showed her the silent watch. I've always wanted it. If we believed in signs, it would seem life is falling into our hands at last and not before our time. I think I can risk adding. We were married in October by a Franciscan priest in their church on the quays with two vergers as witnesses, and we drank far too much wine at the lunch afterward in a new restaurant that had opened in Lincoln Court. Staggering home in the late afternoon, I saw some people on our street smile at my attempt to lift her across the threshold. We did not even hear the bells closing the green. It was dark when we woke, and she said, I have something for you, taking a small wrapped package from the bedside table. You know we promised not to give presents, I said. I know, but this is different. Open it anyhow. You said you didn't believe in signs. It was the gold watch I held it to my ear. It was running perfectly. The small second hand was circling endlessly low. Down on the face the blue hands pointed past midnight. Did it cost much? I asked. No, very little. But that's not your business. I thought the parts had to be specially made. That wasn't true. They probably never even asked. You shouldn't have bothered. Now I'm hoping to see you wear it, she said, laughing. I did not wear it. I left it on the mantel. The gold and white face and delicate blue hands looked very beautiful to me on the white marble. It gave me a curious pleasure mixed with guilt to wind it and watch it run. And the following spring, coming from a conference in Ottawa, I bought an expensive modern wristwatch in the duty free shop of Montreal Airport. It was guaranteed for five years and was shockproof, dustproof, waterproof. What do you think of it? I asked her when I returned to Dublin. I bought it for my father. Well, it's no beauty, she said, but my mother would certainly approve of it. It's what she'd describe as serviceable. It was expensive enough. It looks expensive. You'll take it when you go down for the hay. It'll probably be my last summer with them at the hay, I said apologetically. Won't you change your mind and come down with me? She shook her head. He'd probably say I look 50 now. She was as strong willed as the school teacher mother she disliked and I did not press. She was with child and looked calm and lovely. What'll they do about the hay when they no longer have you to help them? She asked. What does anybody do? Stop. Do without me. Get it done by contract. They have plenty of money. It'll just be the end of something that has gone on for a very long time. That it certainly has. I came by train at the same time in July as I'd come every summer. The excitement I'd always felt tainted with melancholy that it would probably be the last summer I would come. I had not even a wish to see it to its natural end anymore. I had come because it seemed less violent to come than to stay away, and I had the good new modern watch to hand over in place of the old gold. The night before at dinner we had talked about buying a house with a garden out near the Strand in Sandymount. Any melancholy I was feeling lasted only until I came in sight of the house. All the meadows had been cut and saved, the bales stacked in groups of five or six and roofed with green grass. The big meadow beyond the beeches was completely clean, the bales having been taken in. Though I had come intending to make it my last summer at the hay, I now felt a keen outrage that it had been ended without me. Rose and my father were nowhere to be seen. What happened? I asked when I found them at last. The winter feeding got too much for us, my father said, as if it were a matter of little concern. We decided to let the meadows. Gillespie took them. He cut early two weeks ago. Why didn't you tell me? My father and Rose exchanged looks, and my father spoke as if he were delivering a prepared statement. We didn't like to, and we thought you'd want to come. Hay and no hay. It's more normal to come for a rest instead of to kill yourself at the old hay. And indeed there's plenty else for you to do if you've a mind to do it. I've taken up the garden again myself. I've brought these, I said, and I handed Rose a box of chocolates and a bottle of Scent and gave my father the watch. What's this for? He had always disliked receiving presents. It's the watch I told you I'd get in place of the old watch. I don't need a watch. I got it anyhow. What do you think of it? It's ugly, he said, turning it over. It was expensive enough. I named the price, and that was duty free. They must have seen you coming, then. No. It's guaranteed for five years. It's dustproof, shockproof, waterproof. The old gold watch, do you still have that? He asked after a time. Of course. Did you ever get it working? No, I lied. But it's sort of nice to have. That doesn't make much sense to me. Well, you'll find that the new watch is working well anyway. What use have I for time here anymore? He said. But I saw him start to wind and examine the new watch, and he was wearing it at breakfast the next morning. He seemed to want it to be seen as he buttered toast and reached across for milk and sugar. What did you want to get up so early for? He said to me. You should have lain in and taken a good rest when you had the chance. What will you be doing today? I asked. Not much. A bit of fooling around. I might get spray ready for the potatoes. It'd be an ideal day for hay, I said, looking out the window on the fields. The morning was as blue and cool as the plums still touched with dew. Down by the hay shed there was white spider webbing over the grass. I took a book and headed toward the shelter of the beeches edging the big meadow, for when the sun eventually beat through, the day would be uncomfortably hot. It was a poor attempt at reading. Halfway down each page I'd find I had lost every thread and was staring blankly at the words. I thought at first that the trees and green and those few wisps of cloud, hazy and calm in the emerging blue, brought the tension of past exams and summers too close to the book I held in my hand. But then I found myself stirring uncomfortably in my suit, missing my old loose clothes, the smell of diesel in the meadow, the blades of grass shivering as they fell, the long teeth of the raker kicking the hay into rows, all the jangle and bustle and busyness of the meadows. Suddenly I heard the clear blows of a hammer on stone. My father was sledging stones that had fallen from the archway where once the workman's bell had hung. Some of the stones were quite beautiful, and there seemed no point in breaking them up. I moved closer, taking care to stay hidden in the shade of the beeches. As the sledge rose, the watch glittered on my father's wrist. I followed it down, saw the shudder that ran through his arms as the metal met the stone. A watch was always removed from the wrist before such violent work. I waited in this heat he could not keep up such work for long. He brought the sledge down again and again, the watch glittering, the shock shuddering through his arm. When he stopped before he wiped the sweat away, he put the watch to his ear and listened intently. What I'd guessed was certain now, from the irritable way he threw the sledge aside, it was clear that the watch was still running. That afternoon I helped him fill the tar barrel with water for spraying the potatoes, though he made it known that he didn't want help. In an old piece of sacking he poured the small blue pebbles needed to make the spray, and he tied the sacking into a bag. By morning the pebbles would have dissolved in the water. When he put the bag of bluestone into the barrel to steep, he thrust the watch deep into the water before my eyes. Im going back to Dublin tomorrow, I said. I thought you were coming for two weeks, he said. You always stayed two weeks before. There's no need for me now. It's your holidays now. You're as well off here as by the sea. It's as much of a change and far cheaper. I meant to tell you before, and should have, but didn't. I'm married. Now tell me more news, he said with an attempt at cool surprise, but I saw by his eyes that he already knew. It's a bit late in the day for formal announcements, never mind invitations. I suppose we weren't important enough to be invited. There was no one at the wedding but ourselves. We invited no one, neither her people nor mine. Well, I suppose it was cheaper that way, he agreed sarcastically. When will you spray? I'll spray tomorrow, he said, and we left the bluestone to steep in the barrel of water. With relief I noticed he was no longer wearing the watch. But the feeling of unease was so great in the house that after dinner I went outside. It was a perfect moonlit night, the empty fields and beech trees and wolves in clear yellow outline. The night seemed so full of serenity that it brought the very ache of longing for all of life to reflect its moonlit calm. Yet I knew too well such calm neither was nor could be, but was a dream of death. I went idly toward the orchard, and as I passed the tar barrel I saw a thin fishing line hanging from a part of the low yew branch down into the water. I seemed to hear the ticking even before the wristwatch came up tied to the end of the line. What dismayed me was that I felt no surprise. I felt the bag that we'd left to steep earlier in the water. The bluestone had all melted down. It was a barrel of pure poison ready for spraying. I listened to the ticking of the watch on the end of the line in silence before letting it drop back into the barrel. The poison had already eaten into the casing of the watch. The shining rim and back were no longer smooth. It could hardly run much past morning. The night was so still that the shadows of the beeches did not waver on the moonlit grass, but seemed fixed like a leaf in rock on the white marble. The gold watch must now be lying face upward in this same light, silent or running. The ticking of the watch down in the barrel was so completely muffled by the spray that only by imagination could it be heard. A bird moved in a high branch, but afterward the silence was so deep it began to hurt, and the longing grew for the bird or anything to stir again. I stood in that moonlit silence as if waiting for some word or truth. But none came, none ever came, and I grew amused at that part of myself that still expected something, standing like a fool out there in all that moonlit silence, when only what was increased or diminished as it changed became only what is becoming again. What was even faster than the small second hand endlessly circling in the poison. Suddenly the lights in the house went out. Rose had gone to join my father in bed before going in this last night to my room. I drew the watch up again, out of the barrel by the line, and listened to it tick, now purely amused by the expectation it renewed, that if I continued to listen to the ticking, some word or truth might come. And when I finally lowered the watch back down into the poison, I lowered it so carefully that no ripple or splash disturbed the quiet. And time, hardly surprisingly, was still running, time that did not have to run to any conclusion.
- [45:33]
Deborah Treisman
That was Tessa Hadley reading Gold watch by John McGahn. The story appeared in the New Yorker in March of 1980 and was included in McGahren's collection Getting Through.
- [45:48]
Vincent Cunningham
Come see Critics at large live. On February 19th, we're gonna be at the 92nd Street Y in New York City for a conversation about Wuthering Heights. There's a new adaptation coming up starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and we will certainly be getting into that, but we'll also do what we humbly, I'll say what we do best. Returning to the text, we're gonna go deep on the Gothic and Emily Bronte. Join me, Vincent Cunningham, and my co hosts Alex Schwartz and Nomi Frye for the discussion. And crucially, if you buy a VIP ticket, you'll join us for an after party, too. Go to 92ny.org for more information. That's 92ny.org hope to see you there.
- [46:39]
Deborah Treisman
So, Tessa, we know, just to address the elephant in the room, we know that there are parallels between this story and some of McGahran's other stories and his own life, that he had a father who was abusive and tyrannical and had a very difficult relationship with him. Does that affect and should it affect the way you read the story?
- [47:01]
Tessa Hadley
I think the story, if it were the very first McGahn you ever read, would have everything it needs in it. You don't need the rest. But it's that thing I said before we started about how repetition is so intrinsic to his technique as a writer. But it's not merely technique. It's intrinsic to the habit, the pattern of his thought. I mean, he tells this story in different versions and variants over and over and over to the point of oddity. I mean, not many writers repeat themselves so often and so successfully. It builds a great archetypal story somehow. Yes, over and over again. The stepmother is there, the son the bullying, terrible father and Sometimes in other places. In some of the novels, the father has a history in the IRA in the past, but doesn't need to have that. The violence is there anyway. It's there. It's there in every daily gesture and act and speech. And in this story, of course, in that one slight thing. He says that when he says she looks like she's nearly 40. And the woman who you think is so sane and sensible, instead of laughing that off and thinking, really, she knows what it. It's hatred. That's hatred.
- [48:20]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah. She understands what's being said, what message is being sent with that. Well, let's start at the beginning of the story with the lightness you were talking about before the reading, with this relationship that seems to sort of happen so effortlessly. They meet on the street, and almost immediately they're, you know, kissing. They're blissfully happy. They're moving in together. Even that. The first paragraph you could almost read is a poem, you know, it was in Grafton street we met aimlessly strolling, you know. It's so lyrical.
- [48:53]
Tessa Hadley
Yes.
- [48:54]
Deborah Treisman
Why do you think there's such a sort of shift from that opening?
- [49:00]
Tessa Hadley
Because that's his sensibility is a hunger for this light that is possible, this living that is other. And then a being drawn back to darkness. I mean, I don't think he's capable of writing a bland and merry story in which two lucky people get to. Would we want to read it anyway? I mean, I'm interested just to talk about the oddity of the writing. Who is that man whose armload of parcels parted us as she was shifting the basket to her other hand? Why is that on the sixth line of the story? It's sort of. It seems at first completely arbitrary and unimportant, doesn't it? And yet somehow, I mean, it's partly doing some good work at making that busy city scene that is so contrasted to the quiet countryside that is the other of the story. But it seems as if a crowd of human life is there, including a busy man who is parting them. The world conspires to sort of stop them getting together. But the two of them in that moment have the gift of knowing how to withdraw from the pushing crowds into the quiet of Harry Street. But it is an extraordinary thing to put in at the beginning of a story, isn't it? A random man.
- [50:20]
Deborah Treisman
Well, I mean, it must be foreshadowing. Yeah, yeah.
- [50:24]
Tessa Hadley
In the lightest way.
- [50:25]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [50:26]
Tessa Hadley
I mean, I'm making more of it than is right, if you see what I mean. Because it strikes Me. But actually reading it, you would pass over it, and yet it would leave its little residue in your reading, I think.
- [50:41]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. I mean, I think that sort of falling in love, the first few, I don't know, seven or eight paragraphs of the story with this blissful relationship that happens so easily. It has almost a fairy tale scene to it. And perhaps you are waiting for the witch or the ogre to come in and cast a spell or break the spell of this happy love.
- [51:10]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah. And maybe being human, we want the witch, we want the ogre to be in the story, because otherwise we won't be believe the story. We won't believe that anything is this easy. But it's the men who import in McGahan. It's the men who carry the darkness into all the stories. I think, you know, the women are. They hold out a hope of light and beauty in a very. It's not unexamined at all. There is the issue, of course, of her. She's unnamed. The woman we don't have. Well, we don't have names for any of them. Except for Rose, do we?
- [51:49]
Deborah Treisman
Except for Rose, which is interesting.
- [51:51]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah, yeah. And I think she's Rose in lots of other McGahan writing as well, the stepmother. It is interesting that our lovely woman who's brought such light and flowers and wine and pasta and bowls into his life and the copper pan, all these. Well, these lovely sort of almost. They're almost like something out of a Roman fresco, aren't they? I see them in a wall painting of civilization, of city life. Anyway, that she has a bad relationship with her mother is what I was going to say. Not as dark and terrible a relationship as the man has with his father. But it is a balance. It stops us. You know, if they'd gone home to that house in Kilkenny and it had all been sweetness, maybe again, the story would have felt a little unbalanced. We'd have recognized that's a bit too good to be true. But he does put that in there.
- [52:50]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. And it's interesting that while the narrator is kind of in this land of bliss, she is more of a pragmatist. And, you know, she's the one who says, well, we're not getting married yet and we're not doing this, but I will live with you. And she finds the flat and she sort of handles practicalities. And even after the visit to her family, you know, she says, well, if it wasn't me, it would be some other. You know, she's not living in la la land in this relationship. She's quite clear eyed.
- [53:27]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah. And that's one of the things she's. Is that sort of lucidity about life. It intrigues me what exactly she means when she says, if not me, it would have been some other. Because in another way, the story, the man, the narrator seems to be asserting. Not very much. Not that we feel she has. She is necessary. Exactly. Her looking like that in that suit, with that gold hair. Gold hair like the gold watch. I don't know if. Seems somehow gold seems to shine in the story. And her pragmatism, as you say, all of those qualities seem exactly what was needed to undo the ugly spell that his life was under. And yet she says it would have been some other. Which perhaps almost is her recognizing inside the story that she's an archetype that he needs rather than. I don't know whether I'm taking that too far.
- [54:26]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, it could be that or. Yes, it could be her trying to bring him down to earth a bit.
- [54:32]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah.
- [54:33]
Deborah Treisman
Especially after she's just seen her irritable mother. And, you know, I think she wants him to be realistic. She wants him not to propose in the first couple of weeks and to take things seriously and levelly, you know.
- [54:50]
Tessa Hadley
And to think that another woman could have done what she's doing in her place. But we're allowed to not be completely convinced of that. To think that there's some particular quality in her that is working this magic. Yeah, but it's dangerous. Magic is dangerous. And if it. I mean, we haven't got onto this yet. But whoever this man is that's telling the story, it is not just a story about an innocent man who needs to get rid of his wicked father. The darkness is inside the son for every reason. That's what the story's working out. And therefore she needs to beware. And she is Bewaring. You're absolutely right. There's a sort of knowingness in her. Whereas his absolute commitment to her saving him is something. Maybe that's what it is. She knows to be a little bit afraid of that even. Even while sort of getting its gift and being able to accept its gift. She knows also to be a little bit afraid.
- [55:57]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. She's wary. And maybe, you know, once. Once they do meet the father, once he says his cruel thing and she's very taken aback. Even then she. She does calm down and she agrees to stay the night and. And so on.
- [56:11]
Tessa Hadley
She's.
- [56:11]
Deborah Treisman
She's reasonable. I feel as though what she's constantly doing with the narrator, the Son is getting him to question his own motivations. You know, she'll say, why are you going for the hay? Is it just that? How do you feel about, you know, she wants him really to face up to what he's doing or his complicity in this relationship. I think absolutely.
- [56:39]
Tessa Hadley
I think that she does. She questions him. And when he says, haymaking keeps me fit, it makes me feel good, she said. And really, is that all? And then he comes out with the more the complicated transaction it is that makes him go back every year.
- [56:55]
Deborah Treisman
Right. That he wants to see it through. And that's interesting, too. What does he want to see through?
- [57:00]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah. Well, these two men, father and son, they seem to play out. One of the really ugly things that plays out between them is that they each want to be wronged. They each want to be put in the wrong by the other. And that is at least a part of why he goes back. It's only a part. But he doesn't want to allow his father to be wronged by him, by his betrayal. I don't quite know why. Going back once a year, somehow that manages to stand in for him. Not betraying the father because he doesn't want his father, doesn't want to allow his father the luxury of being wronged. The woman virtually says, do him that kindness, you know, let him think you've betrayed him.
- [57:45]
Deborah Treisman
Right, right. Let him off the hook.
- [57:48]
Tessa Hadley
Let him off the hook. Let him think what he wants to do. But they are. They're trapped in this nasty mechanism together in which they. They play all sorts of games to be the one who is somehow martyred.
- [58:02]
Deborah Treisman
Right. That first moment when they arrive at the house and the father sees them getting out of the car and kind of scuttles off into the shadows and sits in the chair and won't shake hands, you know, what is he trying to say at that moment? Is it just the sort of shock of having seen that his son has brought a woman with him?
- [58:24]
Tessa Hadley
Yes.
- [58:24]
Deborah Treisman
And that perhaps his son is doing better than he thought he was.
- [58:28]
Tessa Hadley
I mean, that must be in play all the way through, mustn't it? Yes. And that the woman is beautiful. That's why he says the hateful thing about her getting on for 40. There's a contest between father and son about, you know, you've brought home this lovely woman. I got Rose, you've got this one. And I think it plays out in other arenas, too. I notice that the son mentions how he goes abroad a lot and how he buys things in Duty Free. He bought the watch in Duty Free. Well, that's short, surely. A kind of. That's a contest between them, you know, I'm more glamorous, I've moved up a class. I've left behind your country ways, your immobility. I buy my stuff at Duty Free. And the father weakly sort of says, well, they must have seen you coming. Yeah, exactly. But it's not enough to undo what the son is pretending to offhandedly say. But it isn't quite that.
- [59:29]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. But interestingly, after the father makes the rude comment about her age. Untrue, clearly. Untrue comment. He feels he's lost ground by having done that.
- [59:41]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah. I mean that. I think what McGahan gets so brilliantly is the actual physical burden of this outdoing one another in nastiness, but not being caught out in nastiness. And from. I mean, literally, when the bit you described, Deborah, where you said he sees them arrive, but he sort of scuttles away and then he's sitting in that chair and he doesn't get up and it's all physical. Like family resentments are. That's how they feel. They feel like something visceral, not something in the head. There's another place where after the watch first erupts into the household, when it falls out of that cupboard, when poor Rose takes out the sheets, the father goes to bed and it says he exaggerates his sort of limping. And that's more of him kind of playing this slightly grotesque part. And quite what each is up to. Son and father at any given moment. So difficult to pin down. But it's like a grotesque pantomime that they play out in relation to one another.
- [60:54]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. It is very physical. And he doesn't shake hands.
- [60:57]
Tessa Hadley
That's right.
- [60:57]
Deborah Treisman
When he's in the kitchen in his cane chair.
- [60:59]
Tessa Hadley
You said after he said the rude thing about her being looking old, he then feels he's lost some ground. And that's. I just think a brilliant observation is if you come out too much and too hard, and it's. The other two are. Then they're refusing to react and they're saying they're going the next day. And there's a sort of they've won because again, they're now wronged. It's that competitive martyrdom, which I think is an even more profound and ugly transaction in a relationship than a sort of more overt competitive. On topness, you know?
- [61:36]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah.
- [61:37]
Tessa Hadley
I mean, he realizes.
- [61:38]
Deborah Treisman
I suppose the father realizes he just pushed it too far because it was so Absurd that he couldn't possibly have thought it. Whereas if he'd said maybe 35, he could possibly have thought that, you know.
- [61:50]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah. All their acts in this contest are covert, hostile acts and messages. And he's cut. Yes. He's been a bit too blatant, a bit too overt. And somehow that actually allows for all the nastiness. It allows the son to be on top of. To be more wronged and to have.
- [62:12]
Deborah Treisman
The higher ground to stand on. Because he's still staying and he's still gonna do the hay and so on.
- [62:18]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah.
- [62:19]
Deborah Treisman
I mean, there's. I actually had to write down a list of what they do to each other. So I have six things. First, the father insults the girlfriend. Then the son takes the gold watch. Then the son doesn't tell his father about his marriage. The father has someone else do the hay without telling the son. The son gives him the new watch, which is an act of aggression, and the father tries to destroy it. So each act is sort of taking something away from the other person. And it may be taking away what allows the other person to feel wronged, or it may be taking away the opportunity to feel on top of, as you said.
- [63:03]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah. And somewhere they are tussling about masculine power. The watch is an emblem of that. And tangled. Yes. I mean, amazing that he got it from his own father. And then when the narrator was a boy, he used to pull it out of his pocket in these. I mean, at that moment. You are thinking of Mills Angelus, aren't you? That wonderful archetypal painting of the peasants in the field taking off, bowing their heads in prayer when they hear the bells of the Angelus. It's so deep, this religious time, country time, measured in a beautiful, slim gold watch. Do you make it a pocket watch, Deborah, or do you think it's a rich.
- [63:50]
Deborah Treisman
I did. I did. Because falling out in that way, that seems not, you know, whether with a wristwatch, you would have it lying flat.
- [63:58]
Tessa Hadley
Exactly.
- [63:58]
Deborah Treisman
And have it sort of.
- [63:59]
Tessa Hadley
It would slither. This pocket watch slithers out, doesn't it? From between the smooth sheets. Yeah. Yes. Somewhere. But the transaction over the power, because it's so ugly and so damaged, deep at the root, is mysterious and opaque and covert.
- [64:17]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah. And time is obviously at the center of the story. And that's the one way in which the son, without question, has won because he has time ahead of him and the father doesn't. The father knows it.
- [64:32]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah. What do I need time for here? He says. Cause the other, I suppose, when the father Says that. What do I need to know the time for here? You know, I'm not even bringing in the harvest anymore. What am I for? They are very naked to one another, or at least the father is naked to the son. I'm not sure the son is so naked. Oh, well, he's exposed to the father as he always has been since he was a tiny boy. That can't go away. That's just in there at the root of him.
- [65:04]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, right. And we know that as a boy, the father was cruel to him and that the father, you know, couldn't tolerate kindness, that he saw it as weakness.
- [65:14]
Tessa Hadley
Yes, Though there were moments of kindness. It's a little bit opaque when they talk about it, but it sounds as if sometimes the son felt kindly towards his father, and sometimes the father was kind to his son. But both of them were afraid of that. Exactly. The openness of loving that the woman makes possible. The men couldn't. They were too afraid of how weak kindness made them. So whenever a little bit of kindness slipped out when they're feeling good about themselves, they've made them. They've exposed themselves as weak, and therefore they're quick to cover that up with a piece of cruelty.
- [66:00]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, Yeah.
- [66:00]
Tessa Hadley
I suppose the big question with the story is, is this a case study of. Of a pathology that is, you know, one terrible man, or is it an analysis of something more archetypal? We see that the woman's father is a kind man and it's the mother in. It's the matriarchal inheritance in the woman's family that is somewhat problematic. And the father seems a sweet man. We superficially know him well.
- [66:31]
Deborah Treisman
It's a struggle that, you know, fathers and sons have probably been getting into, but maybe not to this extreme for centuries.
- [66:41]
Tessa Hadley
Yes, yes. I mean, it does seem patriarchal for all. Everybody shares in it, and people can recognize this, but it does. It's definitely a story, as so many of McGohan's stories are about patriarchy. And it does seem to map on very specifically and painfully onto this generational shift between a pastoral world and a city world, doesn't it?
- [67:09]
Deborah Treisman
Well, I was going to say, in the rural environment, it is the men who have the power. It's the men who have the physical ability to generate a livelihood. Yeah. And the women, like Rose, are sort of simpering around, attending to them, you know.
- [67:26]
Tessa Hadley
Well, working in the. I mean, gratitude. Working in the house, working in the garden work. But you're absolutely right. There's sheer male strength and the strength of the Labor. When we see that father with his mallet that he's breaking the stones with, we're mostly focused on something horrific in the act because we know that he's trying to break the watch. And also, incidentally, he's trying to break the stones of a beautiful arch. An arch which is like a symbol of reciprocity, isn't it? And balance and relationship.
- [68:05]
Deborah Treisman
Entryway.
- [68:06]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah. And an entryway. Wonderful. Yeah. An entryway. It was where the bell hung that used to summon the men to work in the days before the machines, when they would been more men on the land. And the father is trying to break the stones of that arch, which an arch is always something beautiful, something achieved, something human. Human ingenuity makes it work and lifts it up and then, as you say, makes an opening and an entry, and he's breaking it. So everything about that is ugly. And yet you're also thinking, look at the man's strength. Look at the sweat. Look at the pain, look at the labor. Look at that work. So that's very true. Yeah. And the son.
- [68:47]
Deborah Treisman
And, you know, with Rose, it's not that she doesn't work. It's that in every conversation, she's sending him nervous glances, trying to read what he's expecting of her and perform what he's expecting.
- [69:03]
Tessa Hadley
Terrible.
- [69:03]
Deborah Treisman
He clearly has the upper hand at home.
- [69:06]
Tessa Hadley
That's. I mean, when the watch falls onto the floor from between the sheets, it's a terrible moment, isn't it?
- [69:12]
Deborah Treisman
For her, yes, for her.
- [69:13]
Tessa Hadley
Yes. And actually for the room, for the air that goes vibrating around in the expectation of violence. I mean, it's verbal violence, but, you know, we all know that that can be as terrible as physical violence. Yeah, yeah. And her apology, her sort of weak rushing to apologize and explain, and his outrageous misrepresentations. Just saying the unsayable saying, would you ever sleep well at night if you hadn't broken something during the day? I mean, what. You know, and I mean, maybe in our world just right now, we know something about how frightening it is when people just say what's completely wrong? But is it is a violence. Violence in words.
- [70:06]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [70:07]
Tessa Hadley
A terrible thing. Yeah. And poor Rose. It's frightening. Really frightening. And that's this young couple meeting with all that hopefulness and light and that hope that wine and pastor and high ceilings and a repaired watch can make a different kind of living. This is what they have to reckon with somewhere, don't they? They have to reckon with this inheritance of a different version of how humans will relate to each other. And how men will relate to women.
- [70:42]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Why do you think that the son wants the gold watch? Why does he take it?
- [70:48]
Tessa Hadley
Yes, well, that's the question, isn't it? It's because he wants to be the next father. And it's fascinating in the story we're only told once that she is with child, which feels right, feels lovely. He doesn't tell them, does he, at home? Absolutely. Doesn't tell them, no. So he wants to become the patriarch. And it's an equivocal inheritance, I think.
- [71:14]
Deborah Treisman
Right. I mean, you would think he wouldn't want the token of his father in his home.
- [71:20]
Tessa Hadley
You would think that. But you have to remember that moment in the fields with the angelus, that actually the problem is that you cannot disown your childhood. You cannot disown the pastoral. You cannot disown the beauty of the fields and the hay harvest and that form of labor which has gone into your being in the earliest years. And it cannot be undone or wiped out. It's you. So he needs the watch because he is that man. And to simply deny it and, let's say, buy himself an ugly watch in a duty free. It's not available for him. He has to somehow reckon with that man. He is. I'm making it sound more kind of almost like a therapeutic story which is going to put everything right, but I'm. That just isn't the way the story feels. I don't think it either says everything is wrong. I think it just feels as if everything is hard. But the beauty of that pastoral is so important in the story. When he comes back on the train and the old excitement at escaping from the country has been put into reverse, and he now feels this excited aesthetic joy at the lovely sight of the. And the hay. And then he puts on those clothes that Rose has washed for him in the old form of women's labor. And they smell sweet and they fit him. And he works alongside his hated father, and they do it well together and approve each other silently, wordlessly, in their labors. That fulfillment, the longing for it. And then it's horrible thwartedness. But the longing can't be undone in the narrator. It's just in at his root. And that's why he needs the watch.
- [73:21]
Deborah Treisman
Right. So, you know, we have that moment where the father goes too far by saying she looks like she's 40. And then we have this other moment of just insane extremity. Putting the watch in a barrel of poison.
- [73:37]
Tessa Hadley
Yes.
- [73:39]
Deborah Treisman
He couldn't possibly go farther than that in his attempt to destroy It. I mean, he doesn't smash it with the mallet, but he wouldn't be able to kind of explain that.
- [73:50]
Tessa Hadley
No, no.
- [73:51]
Deborah Treisman
Whereas perhaps he could say it fell in the poison.
- [73:54]
Tessa Hadley
Yes. And he wants to say so much for it being waterproof. I mean, it's absurd. But he wants to prove that the gift his son has given him is a sham. And do you know what? Of course it is a sham. The son hates that watch. It's ugly. It's a slap in the face to his father. Oh, the deviousness. The deviousness of family. The deviousness of fathers and sons and sometimes mothers and daughters and.
- [74:24]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [74:26]
Tessa Hadley
So hard. Not necessary. It isn't. You know, it is a case study, and this relationship is pathological, and not all relationships are like that, but it's a case study that leeches out into more than itself.
- [74:42]
Deborah Treisman
And, of course, poison is what you use to kill living things. It's not what you use to kill something inanimate or even to kill the passage of time. Poison is very specific. It kills something. Something that was alive.
- [74:59]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah. I'm interested. That's an interesting thing to raise, because I want. I mean, now with our kind of increased ecological awareness, even since 1980. Well, very much since 1980, we're probably quite worried at him spraying the potatoes with this stuff. You know, that doesn't sound good for the soil and. Yeah. So I don't know whether McGahan means us to make anything of that or whether he is, you know, this bluestone, whatever it is. I don't know what it actually. What chemical it is that he's spraying onto the potatoes. He wants us to feel that there's some poisoning of the very food and the very soil that is the ground of their lives. I don't know.
- [75:39]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. So there are just a few passages at the end quite hard to. Quite hard to understand or parse when he's looking at the watch and the poison and so on, and he says, I grew amused at that part of myself that still expected something standing like a fool out there in all that moonlit silence, when only what was increased or diminished as it changed became only what is becoming again, what was even faster than the small second hand endlessly circling in the poison. What are those what wases and what ises?
- [76:18]
Tessa Hadley
Obviously, as you sort of said earlier, Deborah, this is time passing. And it's time that, in one sense, delivers over the years the decline of the deadly patriarch, and it delivers his son's new supremacy, overcoming the old man who must Fail. And now the son has power and has the beautiful wife and has the child on its way. And it's as if. Is it. Is it that out here in the beauty of that night, which is again the beauty that he's responded to since he was a child, this pastoral, exquisite, lovely world that has always promised to him, like when they stood at the Angelus and bowed their heads, promised to him. Not deliverance, that's the wrong word, but justice. That a moment would come which said how things were. And its beauty seemed to have that potential in it to deliver meaning, meaningfulness, I suppose, which would somehow put things right. And what he's saying as an adult is that that beautiful world and the ticking of time, it can't deliver. What does it say? Some word or truth? None came that moment where life squeezes out its final verdict, its justice, its final word, resolution, redress. Judgment. The judgment that says, you were right, your father was a terrible man. And you can write and write and write all the stories and books of your life that say your father was a terrible man, but it's never going to take him away, out of your childhood and out of you. And it's not going to be the last word. I suppose it's one of those extraordinary moments where out there in the moonlit silence, he can actually feel time and change moving, increasing and diminishing, things mattering and not mattering. The power of the present and then how the present falls away behind us at every moment, becomes the past, Becomes the past. Yeah, yeah. It's a magnificent moment.
- [78:53]
Deborah Treisman
It is, it is. And you feel it, though don't fully understand it.
- [78:58]
Tessa Hadley
Exactly.
- [79:00]
Deborah Treisman
And he's also just said that I knew too well such calm neither was nor could be, but was a dream of death.
- [79:07]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah, yeah.
- [79:09]
Deborah Treisman
He knows. Out there in the night, in that silence, death is everywhere.
- [79:15]
Tessa Hadley
Yes. And that bit you've just referenced, the night seemed so full of serenity. It brought the very ache of longing for all of life to reflect its moonlit calm. And that is the perennial longing for the completeness of life and the satisfaction of life, the joy in life to mirror the beauty. That stuff around us, sky, the night, the fields, the city, the moon promises us. But he's saying there actually life is. It's messy by its very nature. And the only way you can have that, lose yourselves once and for all totally into a kind of fulfillment in the beauty of the moon and the sky and the night, is to be dead. It's to not be alive. Because life is by definition messy, greasy, granular resistant, frictionful. That's what it is.
- [80:15]
Deborah Treisman
It's movement. It's not movement.
- [80:17]
Tessa Hadley
It's movement. Yes.
- [80:18]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. And then we get to the end. He puts the watch back in the poison, and time, hardly surprising, was still running. But it doesn't have to run to any conclusion. So it's sort of an acceptance, I suppose, that his father may not die anytime soon, that they're not at the end of their relationship, that they'll probably go on having many acts of aggression like this, even if he doesn't come back for the hay anymore.
- [80:51]
Tessa Hadley
Yep. And even if his father does die, that won't be a conclusion, because it's all in him. It's all inside him. But it's a relief, that last sentence, isn't it? I mean, it's both a comedy in that he's playing his father's game by not only putting it back in the poison, but also being careful not to be heard to do so. And yet there's a sort of relinquishment which to find that you've got these watches, this watch of patriarchal time ticking away, these two competitive watches in contest with each other, lies told about both of them, and instead actually put it away, stop that ticking. But time is still running. And of course, it doesn't bring redress, justice, fulfillment, resolution, but you're still alive. And there is. It feels as if in the last sentence, the possibility that's been opened up elsewhere in the story of future and happiness and a bright life, a life of. With light in. Remains open and possible, even though there's always going to be this sort of innermost closed room of patriarchal violence which can't finally be once and for all addressed and purged and judged and got rid of.
- [82:29]
Deborah Treisman
I suppose we have to be left hoping that he will not become the father he had.
- [82:35]
Tessa Hadley
Yes. And I've no doubt that he's hoping that. Because that might be a fear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She won't be Rose, whatever happens.
- [82:45]
Deborah Treisman
Right. And that's the other unspoken thing in this story. The story doesn't say what happened to his mother.
- [82:51]
Tessa Hadley
No.
- [82:52]
Deborah Treisman
And of course, McGahren's mother died when he was 10. But we don't know if this character's mother died or how or.
- [82:59]
Tessa Hadley
No. No.
- [83:00]
Deborah Treisman
What resentment there might be there.
- [83:02]
Tessa Hadley
No. And what terrible, traumatic loss there might be there. No. Yes. It's funny. It's when the son moved one hay harvest, he didn't come, and he was working in England, and it's that year that the father marries Rose filling in that gap, that hole, that need. Cause the strange thing is these two men, I don't want to say they love each other. I'm really not sure they do. That would be a travesty to call it love. But oh my goodness, they are important to each other. You know, they are fundamental to each other.
- [83:36]
Deborah Treisman
Absolutely. Well, I think this is a story that leaves one thinking about its afterlife, thinking about what could change, because there is a future ahead. Time has not run to its conclusion.
- [83:50]
Tessa Hadley
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And very much in McGahn's other work that it always keeps open this possibility of living differently.
- [84:02]
Deborah Treisman
Well, thank you, Tessa.
- [84:03]
Tessa Hadley
Oh, thank you, Deborah.
- [84:07]
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. He published stories in the New Yorker from 1963 to 1984. Tessa Hadley, a recipient of the Wyndham Campbell Literature Prize, is the author of more than a dozen books of fiction, including the novels Late in the Day and Free Love and the story collections Bad Dreams and After the Funeral. A novella, the Party, came out in 2024. She's been publishing fiction in the New Yorker since 2002. You can download more than 220 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction podcast, including episodes in which Tessa Hadley reads and discusses stories by John Updike and Nadine Gordimer, 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 own 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 John Lamay. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks for listening.
- [85:31]
Tessa Hadley
I'm Shilpa Uskokovic. And I'm Jesse Sepczyk, and we're the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident, curious bakers. Jesse and I love to bake. Some might even call us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't works that come with it. Every month we publish a recipe on bon appetit.com that introduces a baking concept. We think you should know. Then you'll bake. Send us any questions you have and we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe. So consider this your official invitation. Come join the Ba Bake Club, new episodes on the first Tuesday of every month, wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking. From prx.