short story

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So Late In the Day by Claire Keegan

So Late in the Day (2023) was recently shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year; it didn’t win that award however Claire Keegan won Author of the Year 2023.

The Literary Withhold

I read So Late in the Day as if it were a kind of literary mystery.

It is so short, (it’s a small square book of 4 chapters, 47 pages, around 11,000 words), that with Keegan’s combination of economy and precision with words, I found I was reading vigilantly between the lines as I went, not being able to stop myself from trying to guess the significance of every utterance and carefully constructed phrase. I mean, right from that opening line…

On Friday, July 29th, Dublin got the weather that was forecast.

…it read to me like something imbued with meaning. Did something or someone get what they deserved, I wondered?

Recalling other stories of Keegan’s, like Foster and Small Things Like These, I would suggest this is a motif of her storytelling, the slow reveal, the building up of a sense of something untold, omitted. The reader can’t help but wonder, question, try and guess as each page reveals a little more, what might be coming, the denouement.

Keegan herself suggested in a recent interview that the book requires a second reading:

So Late in the Day deploys her typically hushed technique to devastating effect; plain sentences unfurl their full implication only on rereading, the narration a veiled disclosure of the protagonist’s poisonous habits of thought.  – extract from Guardian article

Review

A young man, Cathal, is at his workplace on a Friday afternoon and seems very conscious of the time, in the first couple of pages it is mentioned twice, it passes slowly, perhaps excruciatingly. People act on guard around him, they know something we don’t.

It was almost ready (his coffee) when Cynthia, the brightly dressed woman from accounts, came in, laughing on her mobile. She paused when she saw him, and soon hung up.

Photo by R.Esquivel Pexels.com

His boss indicates he needn’t stay the rest of the day, and Cathal is aware of him closing his door softly, all of which makes the reader wonder why, what has happened to this young man that people seem to be treading carefully around him? As he leaves the office at the end of the day and waits for the lift, on hearing someone approach, he pushes open the door to the stairwell.

On the bus ride home, another clue:

He would ordinarily have taken out his mobile then, to check his messages, but found he wasn’t ready – then wondered if anyone ever was ready for what was difficult or painful.

The final clue before the end of the chapter is when a young woman gets on the bus and sits in a vacant seat opposite him. He breathes in her scent…

until it occurred to him that there must be thousands if not hundreds of thousands of women who smelled the same.

A Relationship Unravelled

He returns home, steps over wilted flowers on his doorstep and spends the evening alone, consuming a weight watchers microwave dinner and opens a bottle of champagne.

The four short chapters alternate between the past and the present. When the narrative steps back in time, we learn about his relationship with a half French, half English girl Sabine that he’d met in Toulouse. The dialogue between them reveals a disconnect that goes unnoticed by him and is ignored by her.

It is the discordant undertones within their conversation and his contemptuous observations that reveal the long, dark shadow of influence and inference.

After the reveal, when we learn what has happened to him, who he is, he recalls things about his own mother, his father, things from the past that shaped them, though he does not acknowledge that.

If a part of Cathal now wondered how he might have turned out if his father had been another type of man and had not laughed, Cathal did not let his mind dwell on it. He told himself it meant little, it was just a bad joke.

A Take on Language and Lore

It is a thought-provoking, provocative read, that subtly explores a seismic patriarchal crack in Irish society, one that infiltrates language, habits, behaviours and attitudes.

It is ironic, that the title in English is ‘So Late in the Day‘ compared to the French translated title which was translated or treated as ‘Misogynie‘. One title refers to the actions of the female character while the other refers to the behaviours of the male character. The story is told through the observations of Cathal, so the English language title belongs to his perception of reality, while the French title takes on a more overarching thematic approach.

In the article below, in The Guardian, it was revealed that the American author George Saunders was a fan of the story and recently chose it when invited to pick a favourite New Yorker story to discuss on the magazine’s podcast, but stopped short of reading it, due to one of the words used.

Keegan (who read the story herself, with riveting poise) tells me she respects his reluctance “even though he considered it to be the perfect word – as I do. It’s what Irish men often call women here. Writing the language people use is part of what a writer does to portray the lives we lead, the world we live in.”

Further Reading

The Guardian Interview: Claire Keegan: ‘I can’t explain my work. I just write stories’ by Anthony Cummins

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Daphne’s Dilemma – Part II

Click here To Read Daphne’s Dilemma – Part I first

Annie was my first horse. No thoroughbred, she was what some might call an ‘old nag’, not tall enough to be called a horse, just an unexceptional, somewhat lazy pony.

Chocolate brown and rotund, she liked to spend her days grazing in the paddock getting fatter and fatter. She was slow and patient and a good pony for my sister and I to ride on, though she did have a couple of stubborn habits. Sometimes she would turn her head when we put our foot in the stirrup and try to nip us on the backside.

She also had a habit of pulling her head down quickly to eat grass if we paused for a few seconds. Knowing this, we kept a firm grip on the reins to prevent her from eating, to which she would retaliate by throwing her head forward with a sudden jerk, flinging the reins out of our hands. Sliding down her neck to rest behind her ears, the reins then became impossible to reach without dismounting. We had to climb off, lead her alongside a log to give us extra height so our feet could reach the stirrup, or find a sheep track on a steep part of the hillside so we could jump back on, hoping she didn’t move while we attempted such daredevil tactics.

Annie had been pregnant and due to give birth. We had stopped riding her and Dad had put her in a different paddock from where she was usually kept. Every day she would come up to the fence so she could see the other horses in the adjoining paddocks, until that day she stopped coming.

“That’s strange” Dad had said, “I haven’t seen Annie. Perhaps she has had her foal and moved away from the fence-line to be nearer water.” Steep limestone cliffs lay beyond the trees where the soil was damp from underground water springs. It is a dangerous area, my father later agreed, but animals have good instincts he’d said.

Limestone CliffsImages of water, slippery rock and a pregnant horse left me with a sick feeling in my stomach and that racing heart. A heavy black cloud descended as we waited for Dad to return from his search, one we were forbidden to participate in. He returned alone. He had found Annie lying bloated and very dead at the foot of one of the cliffs. She had been about to give birth, he said.

I wished I had gone searching for her the day before, I wished we could have anticipated the risk, I wished so hard that we could rewind those days and she would be back up at the fence-line neighing to the other horses. I did not mind that she was bad-tempered, ate too much and tried to bite us, I just wanted her back and to remove forever that terrible helpless feeling in the pit of my stomach.

*

I walk up to the cottage when I see the distant figures of cow, man and dog disappear out of sight behind the trees between the airstrip and the shepherd’s cottage. When I arrive, there is Daphne, fat as ever but no calf. Dad leads her to the steel gate that opens into the main paddock in front of the house. Opening the gate right back on its hinges, he sandwiches her into the space between the gate and the fence. There is no chance of her bolting.

Now that she is standing still, I can see a tiny pair of hooves emerging from the much swollen, pink, fleshy area beneath her tail. I am told she is having difficulty and seems to have given up pushing. Dad rolls up his sleeves just like he would on a lambing beat, to lend a helping hand. Literally. He puts his hand inside that swollen, pink, fleshy area and tries to get a grip further up the protruding legs to assist the calf to come out. The legs emerge a little further but nothing more.

“It’s a big calf alright” he says as he tries again, “but she doesn’t wanna budge.” I walk to the corner where the gate meets the fence to check out Daphne’s face. She has an angry look, I struggle to find any glimmer of recognition in those big frowning, brown eyes.

She is flicking her tail down the other end, back and forth like a fly swat. It is easy to see she is not impressed with her captivity or the interference with her private cow parts. She will get used to it though, this is to become a familiar setting, to be locked in a tight holding area while my father sits on his small wooden stool in front of her hind leg to commence with the ritual morning teat pulling,  ‘milking the house-cow’ as we say.

After a few more attempts at hand assisted birth, Dad comes up with the idea to tie a rope around the calf’s ankles and pull it out. He knows he must be careful not to pull too quickly, as this could endanger Daphne’s reproductive equipment. He must be careful in case those contracting muscles suddenly give way, that could land him and the calf on the ground with a heavy thump, another scenario he wishes to avoid. He pulls as carefully and as strongly as he dares, but still nothing more than the front legs emerge. Daphne is beginning to protest. She starts to bellow loudly and tries to sit down. She has had enough.

“Get up you old bitch” Dad bellows back, thumping his hand on her rump. I cast him my own angry look but keep silent. I know she has to stay standing and the calf has to get out, we could lose them both if she gives up.

“Come on Daphne, you can do it” I say under my breath, just like I did two years ago while leading her around the obstacle course at the agricultural calf club day at school.

Finally Dad announces that he is going to get the tractor. The tractor! What is he going to do with the tractor?

He comes back with his old Massey Ferguson tractor and parks it in front of Daphne’s rear end. He ties the rope to the tractor, puts it in its lowest gear and very slowly inches it forward until the head of the calf emerges, followed by a loud bellow from Daphne.

Leaving the tractor running in neutral, he pulls on the hand brake, jumps out of the seat and returns to the calf just in time to catch it as it makes its first tumble into the outside world.

The calf is covered in a light, greasy film and as Dad moves the tractor away, I close the gate to let Daphne move from her confined position. She immediately turns around, puts her head down, sniffs her new-born calf and begins licking it.

The calf puts its front legs forward and tries to lift itself off the ground. The first attempt is unsuccessful; he is a little unsteady on his feet. But with the second attempt he manages to stand and begins to butt at his mother, searching for that universal elixir of life, ‘mother’s milk’.

The End

Daphne's Calf

Daphne’s Calf

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Daphne’s Dilemma – Part I

Daphne is pregnant.

She is no longer my teat sucking, sun frolicking pet calf, she has matured into a fully grown cow. She doesn’t even look like my Daphne anymore – but I know it is her because I recognize the familiar black and white patchwork pelt she wears and she still walks up to me in the paddock, something no other cow will do.

I no longer feed her milk from a bottle, nor offer my hand to her once willing, hungry mouth; the welcome teat substitute she liked to suckle in a noisy rhythmic motion, her rough sand-paper like tongue producing sticky foam milk bubbles from the sides of her mouth. She is almost ready for milking now. We will be digesting the warm, nutritious contents of her udder with our Weet-Bix very soon.

CowWhen I say she doesn’t look like my Daphne anymore, it is her face that I am referring to. When she was a calf she had an eager, yearning sort of facial expression, a hungry face, hungry for her next feed and starving for my affection. Now she has a mature cow’s face – I’ve noticed that with all the calves, when they grow up they stop smiling. Something happens as their facial features mature that makes their grown up expression more like a frown than a smile, they no longer exhibit the contentedness of frolicking calves, high on powdered milk and the scent of fresh spring pastures.

So Daphne has a mature grown up look now, but despite this I know she remembers me, even though those baby calf memories of less than two years ago for me, are the equivalent of nine cow years ago for her.

Sweet scented Daphne is both my mother’s favorite fragrant, flowering shrub and the name of her mother, our Nana. I have always loved this name and thought that everyone would understand and appreciate the gesture, to name my pet calf after my very dear grandmother and something sweet-smelling and adored by my mother. Unfortunately my parents didn’t agree, though they allowed me to keep the name, they just made sure that Nana was never to learn of the esteemed honor I had gifted her.

Daphne is really fat now, she has a baby calf inside her and this morning at breakfast Dad announced she is ready to drop. At lunch there is a call from a neighbor to say he has seen a cow in distress down by the airstrip gate. Although I don’t hear the words myself, I can tell from what Dad is saying that it is my Daphne. I know because I feel this terrible pain in my chest and stomach, my heart is beating way too fast, there is a dry lump in my throat and I can’t even finish my favourite cold roast lamb and home-made chutney sandwich. I haven’t experienced a feeling like this since Annie died.

“Better go take a look” Dad says, placing the receiver of the party line telephone back on its cradle and ringing off one short to let callers know the line is free. There are few secrets in this neighborhood when four families share one telephone line and bored operators sit with nothing better to do than listen in. I imagine by tonight everyone will have heard about Daphne.

“I’m coming too” I say, pushing back my chair and getting up from the table.

“No, you stay put for now, finish your lunch and help your mother clean up first. I’ll bring ‘er up to the yards next to the shepherd’s cottage. You can meet us up there. It’s best not to have too many people around, you know they’re warrant to get a bit spooked and we don’t want ‘er taking fright and bolting off down by that big hole.”

“Alright” I mutter, slumping back in my chair, arms crossed, appetite ruined. I know what he says makes sense, though I don’t believe she will be scared off because of me. More likely those yapping dogs that never listen when you shout ‘Shut Up!’ or ‘Get in behind!’ I’d like to say, but don’t.

Animals’ giving birth is a common and natural event in the spring, although here it is more common to see thousands of sheep giving birth, not so many cows and a very large pet giving birth is a new experience for us. Pet lambs always go back into the main flock before they became adult sheep, so we never know whether they give birth or not, but despite the familiarity with animals giving birth, I am worried about Daphne.

I too have matured in these past two years, I am about to go off to boarding school in the city away from my family; I know I am old enough not to become attached to farm animals, but somewhere in a dark chamber of my mind, a closed-door of slumbering memories has drifted open and I cannot stop the rush of disturbing flashbacks which enter my mind and begin to replay that terrible thing that happened to Annie.

Daphne’s Dilemma – Part II