I’m not pedantic about how prose should be written, although in that respect I sometimes feel in a minority: some of the dictums I come across online remind me of those schoolteachers whose hearts could only allow them to find merit in one style of writing. Having said that, I do look on John McGahern as some sort of exemplar in the craft of the short story.
A contemporary review of Housman’s poetic style comes to mind: “the sort of hard writing that makes easy reading”. So it is with McGahern. Clear, fluent, uncluttered – if you hadn’t tried yourself you might think there was nothing to it. Except that when you do try you quickly understand what a Herculean task it is to distil perception and expression to that level of refinement.
‘The Conversion of William Kirkwood’ is one of a pair of stories, its predecessor being ‘Eddie Mac’. If you’d read the latter you would know that William and his father, living a gentle and cerebral life amidst Catholics in a large Protestant estate, have been abruptly deprived or their cattle by said Eddie Mac. Also left behind was Annie May Moran, pregnant by Mac, who had served the Kirkwoods since the age of fourteen.
Subject to derision for their gullibility, it would not occur to William and his father to abandon Annie May, or Lucy, the child she subsequently bears, and they are henceforth incorporated into the household and treated like family. When William’s father dies, the remaining three live harmoniously together, with Lucy becoming devoted to a man who treats her as a daughter.
Now two things occur. War begins and, though Ireland is neutral, local defence forces are convened. William signs up and, by the long-held seniority of his family name, augmented by an unforeseeable emergence of military instincts, is made a captain. His new status is resented, then begrudgingly admired.
Alongside this, while helping Lucy with her homework, he grows fascinated by the Catholic catechism that is part of her studies, so much so that he attends the local presbytery for instruction, and in due course converts. This turn of events does much to alleviate the historic distance between the Kirkwood household and the surrounding community. Though still unmarried at forty-five, his refined manners and distinguished bearing attract interest from local women.
And there I will leave it. Perhaps you can see the dilemma that awaits him, alas fated to remain unresolved within the scope of this story. Maybe it’s this that has made me read it ten or more times. Or maybe it’s McGahern’s gorgeous prose, utter command of his characters, and deep instinct for the human spirit. How I wish he’d written a sequel.
First published in The New Yorker in 1982, then in the collection High Ground, Faber and Faber, 1985
A Personal Anthology 