This Train is For by Bernie McGill

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my fondness for Irish writing from both sides of the border, the kind of quiet, understated fiction that William Trevor, Claire Keegan, Lucy Caldwell and Maeve Brennan have produced. Now I can add Derry’s Bernie McGill to my list of favourites, courtesy of this excellent collection of short stories, which scooped the Edge Hill Short Story Prize earlier this year.

Here we have stories infused with loss, where the past disrupts the present, foregrounding the fallout from longstanding trauma, disagreements and secrets we try to conceal. Interestingly, virtually all the standout stories here involve travel, reconnecting the protagonists with their families and troubling events from the past. Nevertheless, it’s the emotional journeys McGill’s characters undertake that give these pieces their humanity and depth. 

In the titular story, one of my favourites from the collection, an elderly man travels by train to see his estranged sister, who is nearing the end of her life. As the landscape slips by outside – a sequence of urban and rural scenes, each with a vivid sense of place – we learn the source of their longstanding estrangement, a bitter disagreement rooted in prejudice and political divides. 

This is what we do here: move forward while facing back, keeping a sharp eye on what has been, in case it gets a run on us, overtakes on our blind side. (p. 1)

A sibling reunion of sorts also features in ‘There is More Than One Word’ as a middle-aged woman, Jaynie, returns to Belfast to deal with the discovery of the remains of a man – possibly her brother, Paul, who went missing aged seventeen.

She has told the principal at her current school that her brother has died, that she needed leave to come home for the funeral. She hasn’t told him that between these two events is a gap of forty-seven years; that she isn’t certain there will be a burial; that she hopes there will, but that she couldn’t say for sure. It was too complicated to get into. (p. 24)

In this powerful story, Jaynie is haunted by the fear of the unknown, which manifests itself in a recurring, looping vision – the sense of a body being bundled into a car, a kidnapping or ambush, perhaps? Shadowy images that refuse to sharpen into focus before the sequence begins again.

Language plays a crucial part in both of these pieces. What did Paul do back then? What did he say (or not say) to antagonise his aggressors? What unspoken rules or codes were broken? With piercing insight, McGill suggests there can be no easy release from past traumas; instead, they continue to reverberate, taunting and unnerving us till the end of our days.

The fallout from traumatic incidents can be felt in several of the best stories here – not least in ‘A Fuss’, my favourite in the collection. As Rosa waits at Dublin’s Connolly Station, her thoughts turn to the days ahead and the time-honoured rituals the family will conduct to mark her father’s death.

They’ll sit side-by-side on borrowed chairs and sip tea out of china cups that haven’t seen daylight for years, not since her mother’s mother was waked. They’ll nibble at sandwiches that have arrived ready-made, packed into loaf bags, ferried in by neighbours; they’ll nod and shake hands and thank people for coming and agree that it’s a shock; they’ll search long-unseen faces for some clue to recognition and sit silent and bleary-eyed by the coffin during the lulls. (p. 98)

No one in Rosa’s family shows much emotion; they’re not the kind to make a fuss. But as this achingly sad story unfolds, we discover the devastating consequences of these character traits, how denial and suppression – largely to avoid a potential scandal – have scarred Rosa’s life indelibly. At first, Rosa is unsettled by a chance encounter with an eccentric lady at the station, an incident that ultimately highlights the joys of a more demonstrative family. Later in the journey, this chatty woman is openly embraced by her nephew on leaving the train; and as Rosa watches from her carriage, this simple reunion, full of warmth and affection, throws her painful, suppressed emotions into sharp relief.   

She [Rosa] doesn’t know if she’s crying for the little woman with the carpet bag heavy with condiments, or for her father who went out in the morning, not knowing he wouldn’t come back that day, or for her mother who will never get over this, no matter how attentive her relatives are, or for herself, for the lack of love in her life, because she hasn’t allowed it in. (p. 103)

It’s a brilliant story in the style of William Trevor, especially in its depiction of a life blighted for the sake of respectability.

Death also haunts ‘A Loss’, in which the tragic horrors of an elderly woman’s early life are revealed when her nephew clears out her home. A note, an old mattress and an anxious dog all come together to trigger long-buried childhood memories in this haunting, unsettling story of secrets and concealment.

I think of my aunt often, and wonder about her, and about the words that she wrote on that scrap of paper, words that must have been long in her head. And I marvel, not for the first time, at the secrets people keep, for themselves, and for others, at the sadnesses that betray them, and at the small quiet lives that they continue to live out until the end of their days. (p. 43)

Like many masters of the short-story form, McGill can see into her characters’ hearts and minds with insight and precision, laying bare their deepest preoccupations for the reader to see. Her stories are quiet, subtle and poetic, often conveying the hidden sadness of life. She bears witness to the small rituals and moments of solitude when everyday life must continue, despite the grief, suffering and loneliness we all experience from time to time.

Some of these stories seem deceptively simple on the surface, but as they unfurl, other, more poignant layers are revealed. ‘The House of the Quartered Door’ and ‘Glass Girl’ are excellent examples of this, both hinging on feelings of guilt and notes of ambiguity.

Despite the melancholy tone, there are moments of brightness here, too. ‘The Snagging List’ is rife with humour, unfolding through a series of text messages between two thirty-something women, close friends since childhood. As the messages fly back and forth, a note of poignancy is ultimately revealed, putting a different slant on each character’s situation. It’s a clever story showing a different string to McGill’s bow, a welcome addition to this accomplished collection.

Others are flecked with a different brand of humour – the wry or dry kind that works so well. In ‘The Cure for Too Much Feeling’, a menopausal woman develops a susceptibility to other people’s sorrows, which she tries to manage by avoiding likely triggers. News reports are a major hazard, not to mention bus journeys, open fires and pubs!

She tuned in to Classical FM, though she had to be careful around a violin solo. (p. 121)

The collection ends with an intriguing story, ‘In the Interests of Wonder’, in which a schoolteacher provides tuition for an illusionist’s daughter when a travelling fair comes to town. It’s another story where fear of outsiders or ‘others’ breeds suspicion, mistrust and misguided accusations, scuppering potential relationships for those concerned. An excellent finish to a lyrical collection I’m pleased to recommend.

This Train is For is published by No Alibis Press; personal copy.