Tessa Hadley Reads John McGahern

I'm Deborah Treesman, 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 McGaren, which appeared in the New Yorker in March of 1980. 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. The story was chosen by Tessa Hadley, who's the author of 13 books of fiction,

including the story collections "Bad Dreams" and "After the Funeral," and the novella "The Party," which came out in 2024.

Hi Tessa. Hi Deborah. Welcome back to the podcast.

Ah, what a treat. 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 McGaren for you? Or are they part of a kind of triumvirate of writers for you? They are in my inner circle of beloved writers, all three of them.

They are among my favorite short story writers. Yeah. What tell me about your connection with John McGaren's work?

When did you first read him?

“I'm not sure. Sometimes in the '80s I think. I can't remember who posted in my hands first.”

Maybe I was reading column to be in and somehow through here my got to McGaren. Maybe I just picked a different shop, but I love these opaque, enigmatic, easy-looking, difficult stories since I first touched them. And actually, I've taught him a lot when I, 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 marvel that his strange unique, idiosyncratic technique. Yeah, how would you describe that technique? What is it that he does? 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 have been slapped and suggest you find it a different word, but that's part of the rhythm of his language and of his thought. Just sort of work back into the same words and keep on mining them for more and more complex

“meaning, that's one of his things, yes. And so, the story Goldwater, why did you pick this one?”

Ah, it's sort of perfect. It's got the thing a really good 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 the 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. Yeah, yeah, it's on some deep level, not a cheerful story. No, despite the loveliness in it, because that's very important too, there is light in the story too. Yeah. Well, we'll talk some more after the reading. Now here's Tessa Hadley, reading Gold Watch by John McGarren.

Gold Watch. It was in Grafton Street, we met aimlessly strolling on one of the lazy lovelies, Saturday mornings in spring. The week of work over, the weekends still as fresh as the bunch of a nemenies that seemed that only purchase in her cane shopping basket. What a lovely surprise, I said, and was about to take a 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 specialized in tax law. I felt I needed to change.

old hair of her student days was drawn tightly into a neat bun at the back.

“You looked 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 counted perhaps out of confusion. Hey, doesn't seem as if I'll ever break that bad habit. We had coffee in buoys, the scent of the roasting beans blowing through the vents out into grafting, 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-sealing rooms. The eager rush of excitement I felt as I left

the office at the end of the day, the lingering and the streets to buy some offering of flowers or fruit or wine or a bowl and once 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 chill was said and with the touch sealed my lips. Early summer we drove down one weekend to the small town in Kilkeny 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 school teacher mother into open quarrel late that evening after dinner. Her father sat with me in the front room cautiously kind, sipping whiskey 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 tar and 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 outstair 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 kill Kenny 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 U. 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

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

two bigger 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 don't want to come back she said 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 deepened 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 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 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 no well 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 thought 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 hay time that year as I had all the years before I met her but since he 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

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 makes 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 that would finish soon without me but this way I don't have to think about it maybe it would be kind of then to do just that and take the blame it probably would be kinder but kindness died between our

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 reddubbled 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 biobalist 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 we're talking we were almost late for our usual walk in the green we like to walk there every good evening before turning home for the night the bells were fairly clamoring from all corners

rooting vagrants and lovers from the shrubbery as we passed through a half-close gate two women at the pond's edge were hurriedly feeding the ducks bred from a plastic bag

“across the bridge where the Japanese cherry lean 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 all was 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 yeah 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 shell bone it's our local and it'll be quiet I thought of the aggressive boot thrown after the bridle car the marbles suddenly rattling in the hubcups of the honeymoon car their metals smeared with oils so that the throne confetti would stick the legs of the comic pajamas 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 plunger 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 sake I'd say I'd as I paid the bill

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 moored 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 swords 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 beach 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”

dreadful 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 not 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 warm clothes after washing have within an hour we were working the machines the machines had taken much of the uncertainty and slavery from hey making but there was still the anxiety of rain each cloud that drifted into the blue above us we watched as apprehensively across the skies 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 after we did it was an effort to drag feet to our rooms whether 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 tea kettle on the ring and started to take folded sheets

from the linen closet without warning the gold watch spilled out onto the floor she 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 soon take good care of that my father said it just pulled out with the sheets rose said i was running into it everywhere around the house and i put it in with the

sheets so that it would 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 broke why can't it be fixed i ignored the anger poor tailor in the town doesn't take in watches any more rose said and the last time it stopped we sent it to sliego sliego even sent it to Dublin but it was sent back apart the holds the balance wheel is broke what they told us is they've stopped making parts for those

watches they have to be specially hand made 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

and pale weathens edge of glory abog 20 minutes late no more than usual one of these years

“Jimmy Lynch will startle himself on the whole countryside by ringing the angeles at exactly 12”

only in Ireland is their 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 you 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 until the bus 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 to keep sake 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 fertive look much the same look that it 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 wants belong to your father i asked but the only answer he made was to turn an yarn before starting the slow exaggerated shuffle toward his room to my delight when the train pulled into amian street station i saw her outside the ticket barrier in the same tweed suit she'd worn the Saturday morning we met in grathdon street i could tell that she'd been to the hairdresser but there

were specs 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 seem glad you seem 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 keys with two verges as witnesses and we drank far too much wine at the lunch afterwards 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 rap

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

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 where it she said laughing i did not wear it i left it on the mantle the gold and white face and delicate blue hands look 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 dust

proof waterproof what do you think of it i asked it 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 described as

“serviceable there was expensive enough it looks expensive you'll take it when you go down for the hey”

it'll probably be my last summer with them at the hay i said apologetically once you change your mind and come down with me she shook her head he'd probably say i look 50 now she was a strong will does the school teacher mother she disliked and i did not press she was with child and looked calm and lovely what do 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 dinner we had talked about buying a house with a garden out near the strand in sandy mount any melancholy i was feeling lasted only until i came inside of the house all the meadows have been cut and saved the bales stacked in groups of five or six

and roof with green grass the big meadow beyond the beaches was completely clean the bales having been taken in no i had come intending to make it my last summer at the hay i now thought 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 go less be 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 his more normal to come for arrest 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 they'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'd always disliked receiving presence

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 he 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 desperate shock proof 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

and he was wearing it at breakfast the next morning he seemed to want it to be seen as he

“but it toast and reached across for milk and sugar what did you want to get up so early for he said”

to me he should have laying 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 hit it be an ideal day for hey i said looking at the window on the fields the morning was as blue and cool as the plums still touch with dew down by the hayshed there was white spider webbing over the grass i took a book and headed toward the shelter of the beaches edging the big meadow

for when the sun eventually beat through the day would be uncomfortably hot it was a poor attempt at reading half way 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 ricker kicking the hay into rose all the jangle and bustle and business of the meadows suddenly i heard the clear blows of a hammer on stone my father was sledgeying stones

that had fallen from the archway where once the workman's barrel 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 beaches as the sledge rose the watch glittered on my father's wrist i followed it down saw the shutter that round 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 and he stopped before he wiped the sweater way he put the watch to his ear and listened intently what i 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 blue stone into the barrel to steep he thrusts the watch deep into the water before my eyes i'm 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 married now tell me more news he said with an attempt at call 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 blue stone 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 that empty fields and beach trees and walls and clear yellow outline

the night seemed so full of serenity that it brought the very ache of longing for all of life to

i went idly towards the orchard and as i passed the tar barrel i saw a thin fishing line hanging

“from a part of the low u 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 blue stone 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 when o longer smooth it could hardly run

much past morning the night was so still that the shadows of the beaches 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 afterwards 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 that was tessa hadley reading gold watch by john magan the story appeared in the new yorker in march of 1980 and was included in magan's collection getting through hi i'm david ramnik editor of the new yorker at this year's academy awards tymity shallama and tiana tailored aren't the only major nominees the new yorker will be there too with two nominated short films which you can

watch at new yorker dot com slash video two people exchanging saliva was executive produced by julian war in isabelu pair and it's set in a dystopian Paris we're kissing is illegal our animated short film retirement plan follows a man as he dreams about all the things he's going to do when he's done working you can enjoy both of those films and our full library of a claim short films at new yorker dot com slash video so tessa we know just to address the elephant in the room

we know that there are parallels between this story and some of magan's other stories and his own life that he had a of 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 i think the story if it”

were the very first magan you ever read would 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 techniques intrinsic to the the habit the pattern of his thought

point of oddity i mean not many writers repeat themselves so often and so successfully it builds a

“great archetypal story somehow yes or 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 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 yeah yeah she understands what's being said but what message is being sent with that well let's start at the beginning of this story with the lightness you were talking about before the reading with this relationship that seems to sort of happen so effortlessly they they meet on the street and almost immediately there you know kissing they're blissfully happy they're moving in together

even at the first paragraph you could almost read as a poem you know it was in graphed on street we

met aimlessly strolling you know it's yeah it's so lyrical yes what do you think there's such a sort of shift from that opening because that's his sensibility is 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 to lucky people get to I would want to read it anyway I mean I'm interested just to talk about the oddity of the writing who is that man

who's armload of parcels part of 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 that first completely arbitrary and

unimportant doesn't it and yes somehow I mean it's partly doing some good work at making that busy city scene that that is so contrasted to the quiet countryside that is the other

“pole of the story but it 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 pretend at the beginning of a story yeah yeah around a man well I mean it must be foreshadowing yeah yeah in the lightest way yeah I mean I'm I'm making more of it than than is right if you see it to me because it strikes

me but actually reading it you would pass over it and yet it would leave its little residue in your

reading yeah I mean I think that that sort of falling in love the first you know few I don't know

seven or eight paragraphs of the story with this blissful relationship that happened 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 yeah of this of this happy love yeah and maybe being human we want the witch we want the ogre to be in the story because otherwise we won't believe the story we won't believe that anything is this easy but it's the men who import

“in in magahan it's the men who carry the darkness into all the stories I think you know you know”

the women are they hold out a hope of light and beauty in a very it's not an examined at all there is the issue of course of her the she's unnamed the woman we don't have and well we don't have names for any of them except for rose do we except for rose which is interesting yeah yeah I think she's rose in lots of other magahan 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 lovely sort of almost there almost like something out of a Roman fresco don't they I see them in a wall painting of of civilization of city life anyway that she has a bad relationship with her mother is what I was going to say not not not not not just dark

know if they've gone home to that housing kill Kenny 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 um he just put that in there yeah and it's interesting that that while the the narrator is is kind of in this land of bliss she is more of a pragmatist and you know she's 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 yeah 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 she's

not living in Lala land no in this relationship she's quite clear eyed yeah and that's one of the

things she's bringing to him is that sort of lucidity about life it it it it intrigues me what she 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 yeah it 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 and I don't know whether I'm taking that too far yeah it could be that or yeah it could be her trying to bring him down to earth a bit yeah especially after she's just seen her

“her irritable mother and you know yeah I think she wants him to be realistic she wants him not”

to propose in the first you know couple of weeks and yes and to take things seriously

and levelly you know 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 they're 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 sun

for every reason that story is working out and therefore she needs to beware and she she is beware and 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 yeah she's wary yeah and maybe you know once once they do meet the father once he says his cruel thing and she's very taken aback um even then she she does calm down and she agrees to stay the night and and so on she's she's reasonable um I feel so what she what she's constantly doing with the narrator the the sun is

getting him to question his own motivations you know she'll say why why are you going for the hey is it just that um how do you feel about you know she she wants him really to face up to what he's doing or his complicity in this relationship I think absolutely I think that he she does she questions him and when he says it's hey making keeps me fit it makes me feel good it 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 right that he wants to see it through and that's that's interesting too what does he want to see through yeah well those at 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 wrong don't they 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 wrong allow his father to be wronged

by him by his betrayal I I don't quite know why going back once a year somehow that that

want to allow his father the luxury of being wronged if that the woman virtually says do in that kindness you know let him think you've betrayed him right 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 marted right that that first moment

when when they arrive at the house and the father sees them getting out of the car and kind of guttles guttles off into the shadows and sits in the chair and won't shake hands what you know what what is he trying to say at that moment is it is it just the sort of shock of having seen that his son has brought a woman with him and that perhaps his son is doing better than he thought he was I mean that must be in play all the way through mustn't it it's yes and that the woman is

“beautiful that's why he says the the hateful thing about her getting on for forty here it there's”

there's a contest between father and son about you know you've 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 noticed 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 surely a kind of that's a contest between them you know my I'm I'm more glamorous I've I've moved up a class I'm 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 what the son is pretending to off-handedly say but it isn't quite that yeah but interestingly after the father makes the root comment about her age untrue clearly untrue comment he feels he's lost ground yeah by having given that yeah that's I mean that I think what my guy and get so brilliantly is the actual

physical burden of this this outdoing one another in nastiness but but not being caught out in nastiness and for him and I mean literally when the bit you describe 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 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 Paul 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 why 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 yeah it is very physical and he doesn't shake hands yes right when he's in kitchen and his kitchen 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 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 then I 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 yeah yeah I mean he realizes I suppose the father realizes he just pushed it too far because it was so absurd yeah that he couldn't possibly have thought it whereas if he said maybe 35 he could possibly have thought that you know yeah all that acts in this contest are covered hostile acts and messages and he's cut yes he's he's been a bit too blatant a bit too overt and somehow that

actually allows for all the nastiness it allows the sun to be on top to be more wrong to have the have the higher ground to stand out because he's still staying and he's still going to do the hay and so on yeah 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 sun takes the gold watch yeah then the sun doesn't tell his father about his marriage

watch which is an act of aggression it's in the father ties to destroy it yes so each act is sort of

“taking something away from the other person yeah and it may be taking away what allows the other”

person to feel wrong or it may be taking away the opportunity to feel on top as you said yeah and somewhere they are tussling about masculine power the watch is an emblem of that

and tang 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 milla's angeles on 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 angeles 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 very good I did because you're falling out in that way yes that”

seems not you know yes with the wristwatch you would have it lying flat exact have it sort of

it would slith this pocket watch slithers out doesn't it from between the jeans yeah

yeah somewhere but the transaction over the power because it's so ugly and so damaged deep at the root is is mysterious and opaque and covered yeah yeah and time is obviously at the center of a story and that's the one way in which the sun without question has one because he has time ahead of him and the father doesn't the father knows it yeah what do I need time for here yes because 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 sun I'm not sure the sun 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 yeah right and we know that as a boy the the father was crawled to him and the the father you know couldn't tolerate kindness that he saw it as weakness yes although there were moments of kindness it's a little bit opaque when they talk about it but it sounds as if sometimes the sun 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 yeah yeah I suppose the big question with the story is is this a case study of a pathology that is you know one terrible man or is it an analysis of

something more archetypal we we see that the woman's father is a kind man and it's the mother in this the matriarchal inheritance in the woman's family that is somewhat problematic and the father it seems sweet man we actually know him well it's a struggle that you know fathers and sons have probably been getting into but maybe not to this extreme for for sense yes I mean it does seem patriarchal for all everybody shares in it and and people can recognize this but it

does it's definitely a story as so many of my parents 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 well I was going to say in the in the rural environment it is the men who have the power it's the men who have the physical ability to to generate a livelihood yeah and the women like rosers sort of simplering around attending to them yeah well working

in the I mean working working in the house working in the garden works but you're absolutely right yes but she's male strength and the strength of the labour when we see that father with his

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 yeah and an and an entry way wonderful yeah an entry way it was where the bell hung that used to summon the men to work in the days before the machines when there would be more men on the land yeah 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 that as you say makes an opening an entry and he's breaking it so everything about that he's ugly and yet you're also thinking look at the man's strength look at the sweat look at the pain look at the labour look at that work so that's very true yeah and the son and you know with with ros it's not it's not that she doesn't work it said in every conversation she's sending him nervous glances trying to read what he's expecting of her yeah and for what he's expecting

yeah you know terrible he clearly has the upper hand at home that's I mean when the watch falls

onto the floor from between the sheets it's a terrible moment isn't it for her yes for her 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 apologise and explain and his outrageous misrepresentations just saying the unsayable saying would you ever sleep well at night if you haven'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 completely wrong but is it is a violence violence in words yeah a terrible thing yeah and poros it's frightening really frightening and that where this young couple meeting with all that hopefulness and light and that hope that wine and pasture and high ceilings and 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 yeah why do you think that the sun wants the gold watch why does he take it yes well that's the question isn't it it's because he wants he wants to be the next father and is fascinating in the story we're only told once that she is with child which is 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 right I mean you would think he wouldn't he wouldn't want the token of his father in his home you would

“think that but you have to remember that moment in the fields with the angeles 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 by himself and ugly watching and 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 to discaping from the country has been put into reverse and he now feels this exciting aesthetic joy at the lovely sight of the fields and the

they smell sweet and they fit him and 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 thwartiness but the longing can't be undone in the narrator

“it's just in that his root and that's why he needs the watch 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 poison yes so in genius 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 no where as perhaps it could he could say it fell in the poison yes and he wants to say so much for it being waterproof I mean it's absurd but he he wants to prove

that the gift his son has given him is of sham and do you know what of course it is a sham the sun hates that watch it's ugly yeah it's a slap in the face to his father that other deviousness

“the deviousness finally the deviousness of fathers and sons and and sometimes mothers and daughters”

and yeah yeah so hard not necessary I just 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 leaches out into more than itself 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 it's poison is very specific it kills something yeah something that was alive yeah I'm interested as 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 and you're spraying the potatoes with the

“stuff you know and I don't know good for the soil and right yeah so I don't know whether mega”

hand means us to make anything of that or whether he is you know this blue stone whatever it is I don't know what it actually what chemical it is that he's spraying onto the potatoes whether he wants us to feel that there's some poisoning of the very food and the very soil but he's the ground of the lives I don't know 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 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 and 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 was as in what is as obviously as used 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 sons new supremacy overcoming the old man who must fail and now the sun has power and has the beautiful wife and has the child on its way and it says 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

Angela's and bowed their heads promised to him not deliverance that's the wrong word but just this that that a moment would come which said how things were and its beauty seemed to have that potential in it to deliver meaning meaning for my say 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

verdict it's justice it's 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 was 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 it's a magnificent moment it is it is and you

feel it though yes don't fully understand it exactly and he's also just said that he I

knew too well such calm neither was nor could be but was a dream of death yeah so yeah he knows out there in the night in that silence death is everywhere yes and and that but you've just referenced the night seems 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 and life to mirror the beauty that stuff around us the 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 the sky and the night is is to be dead it's to not be alive because life is by definition messy gritty granular resistant friction for that's what it is it's movement it's not it's movement yes yeah and then we get to the end he puts the watch back in the poison and time hardly surprising

was still running yeah but it doesn't have to run to any conclusion yeah so it's sort of an

“acceptance I suppose as father may not die anytime soon that they're not at the end of their”

relationship that they will probably go on having many acts of aggression like this even if he doesn't come back for the hay anymore yeah 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 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 for film and resolution but you're still alive and there is that there's it 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 it is it 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 I suppose we have to be left hoping that he will not become the father he had yes and I've no doubt that he's hoping that because that might be a fear yeah yeah she won't be rose whatever happens right and that's that's the other unspoken thing in the story

he was 10 but yes we don't know if this character's mother died or how or no no what resentment

there might be there no and what terrible traumatic loss there might be there yes it's funny it's when the sun moved one hay half it's he didn't come and he was working in England and it's that year that the father marriage rose filling filling in that gap that hole that need because the strange thing is these two men I don't 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 yes the men call to each other absolutely well I think this is a story that leaves”

one thinking about it's after life thinking about what could change because there is a future ahead yeah time has not run to its conclusion yeah yeah absolutely and and very much in

McGowan's other work that it always keeps open this possibility of living differently

well thank you Tessa oh thank you Deborah John McGowan 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 Air Linguist Literary Award he published stories in the New Yorker from 1963 to 1984 Tessa Hadley a recipient of the Windham 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”

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