The Dark by John McGahern

white hair with roses while we may, and anointed with Syrian spikenard let us drink? Bacchus drives eating cares away .
    He was able to translate it. He lifted his eyes and smiled, whether from the satisfaction, it seemed to make meaning enough, or because it evoked a beautiful life and way—old men fragrant with roses drinking life heedlessly away under the plane tree.
    He’d not be asked about beauty in the leaving next June. He’d be asked to translate it, to scan it, to comment on grammatical usages. Horace wasn’t easy, he was for the Honours . So he laboured on mechanically through the notes and text.
    Later he closed the book, his eyes tired from the print jogging before them. Outside the dusty windows of the bus a bright day in August was ending, the few women in the seats beginning to wear cardigans loose about the shoulders of their summer dresses.
    Since midday he’d travelled in this reek of diesel and warm rubber and leather, an hour’s wait in Cavan that he’d used to hang about the streets, football fever in the town, references in the passing salutations.
    “If Peter Donoughue has his shooting boots on Cavan will win, though it’ll be tight,” a conductor with a green tin box in his hands said outside the waiting-room door, and it had for some reason stayed.
    “Is it long more?” he turned and asked as he let the Latin textbook slip into his pocket.
    “No. Not long. Eight or ten minutes.”
    “Thanks.”
    He stared ahead. Father Gerald would be waiting. In eight or ten minutes they’d meet, and the strange thing was that the whole decision and meeting had seemed closer and more definite six months before, the day the priest took Joan away. The nearer the waiting got to its end the more certain it seemed that it could never end, it must surely last for ever, though it was actually ending even now. A country townhuddled beneath church spires was in sight; and the conductor nodded. He’d arrived. As the bus slowed he took his coat and case from the overhead rack and the black figure of the priest with Joan at his side grew recognizable out of the few people waiting on the pavement.
    After the first greetings, the inquiries and answers about the journey, it was Father Gerald who told him that they’d been invited to tea in Ryans, where Joan worked. They went towards it down the street, Ο Riain in florid Celtic lettering on the draper’s lintel. The shop was closed. They knocked on the hall door, up steps one side of the shop.
    Mrs. Ryan welcomed them, a large woman with a mass of hair that must have been black once, her big body showing well out of the grey tweed dress. Three daughters and a son waited in the dining-room with their father. He seemed dominated in some way. She introduced them, one by one, shaking hands with father and son and bowing to the daughters with such strain that he was only half aware of what he was doing. They sat to the laden table. After the tea was poured the priest offered Grace.
    The meal passed in continual pleasantry and gossip, even Ryan towards the end asserted himself enough to tell a safe joke. Afterwards they sat together till close to midnight, a kind of intensity or excitement gathering, whether from the closeness of bodies or personalities, for the local talk hardly deserved such eagerness or passion. The priest’s face was flushed when he rose, he lingering for twenty minutes pro¬ longing it between the chair and the door, reluctant to let the evening go, though it was past its time.
    That was the one chance he got alone with Joan. She’d grown since she left them, but her face was more pale and drawn.
    “Are you alright?”
    She said nothing, he knew something was the matter.
    “Are you not happy, Joan, or what?”
    “No, it’s worse than home,” she said and that was all there was time for before they were joined by Mrs. Ryan.
    “It’s worse than home,” troubled him in the priest’s car but he had no time to hunt to see.
    “We’re late,