By the Lake

by John McGahern

  “I’ll get in these last bales and leave you to your evening,” Ruttledge said.

  Once all the meadows were empty and clean he refused to turn off the engine. He waved to everybody and blew a kiss to Margaret, who turned away as pleased as she was embarrassed.

  “I hope you have a great evening,” he shouted down.

  “God bless you for all the help,” Mary said.

  “You know I never liked you anyhow,” Jamesie shouted.

  “Isn’t he terrible? But you have to admit he’s a character,” Lucy smiled, waving like a queen.

  Jim smiled quietly as he waved.

  The next morning was heavy and still. The radio said that thundery showers in the south would cross the whole country by evening. Very early in the morning they started to draw in the bales, the wheels of the tractor making bright streams through the cobwebbed grass. Kate insisted on helping. She wore old gloves against the hard binder twine but hadn’t the strength to lift the heavier bales.

  “Are you sure you want to be doing this?”

  “As long as I’m useful.”

  “You are great use. Those bales are heavy though. There’s no use getting hurt.”

  They worked steadily. Not until the bales rose high would the lifting become hard and slow. While it was still morning they saw Jamesie and Mary come through the open gate under the alder tree. They were wheeling bicycles and wearing caps with the peaks turned back. Their two dogs were already following trails through the meadow. Their hearts lifted. A weight of heavy repetitious work stretching into the evening rain was suddenly halved and made light.

  “A poor old pair slaving away against starvation in the winter,” Jamesie called out.

  “Why aren’t you attending to your guests?”

  “They’re gone. They went last night. In that car Dublin is only two hours away.”

  “We thought they’d stay a few days.”

  “No. They went,” Jamesie said carefully. “Jim had to be back at work. The house is too small.”

  “Poor Margaret was lost,” Mary said. “She didn’t want to go at all. All she wanted was to be in the meadows with us again today.”

  “When you see a child like her you wish for happiness.”

  “Then wishing you’ll be. She’ll have to batter it out on her own like the rest of us,” Mary said.

  “There’s nothing worse than seeing a lone man in a meadow,” Jamesie said, and burst out laughing when he spotted the gloves Kate was wearing. “God bless you, Kate. You came prepared for winter,” and displayed his own enormous welted hands with pride: “Pure shoe leather!”

  The drawing in started to go very quickly. The two women went into the house and brought out a jug of sweetened tea.

  “The Shah was right. John Quinn is getting married,” Jamesie said, resting on the bales.

  “He was like a hen on a hot griddle until he found out,” Mary said. “It was a sweet charity someone got to hear something for once before he did. As soon as you were gone he got Jim to drive him down to Shruhaun. Lucy was fit to be tied. She thought they’d never come back.”

  “We had only two drinks,” Jamesie said. “The place was packed. There was a great welcome for Jim. John Quinn was there like a cat with cream, people congratulating him and slapping him on the back, buying him drinks. It’d nearly make you die. He got her out of the Knock Bureau all right. Her family is dead set against the match. That’s why the wedding is here. She has three sons, a big farm and money. We’re all going to be invited. He’s not going to send out anything as ignorant as invitations. John himself is coming round on all the good neighbours and inviting us all personally. You can expect a visit. We had a most wonderful time.”

  “Had Jim drinks?” Ruttledge enquired.

  “Just the two but Lucy was wild. She bundled everybody into the car the minute they got back,” Mary laughed. “I’d say your ears were well warmed on the way back to Dublin if you could hear.”

  “I’ll recover,” he said. “Some of these ones are just too precise. They think the whole world revolves round their whatnot.”

  As the stacks disappeared from the meadows and the shed filled, the sun coming and going behind the dark, racing clouds, they were able to stack the last loads at their ease, chatting and idling. The birds had gone quiet. The hum of the insects was still. Swallows were sweeping low above the empty meadows. The wing beats of swans crossing between the lakes came on the still air and they counted seven in formation before they disappeared below the screen of trees. For such elegant creatures of the air and the water, their landing was loud and clumsy.

  They were lingering and tidying up, with hours of space and weather to spare, when Bill Evans came through the gate and lumbered over to the packed shed. He was wearing the huge wellingtons but no overcoat, wide braces crossing the shirt of mattress ticking. The braces were connected to the voluminous tweed trousers with nails instead of buttons.

  “Ye got on great,” he praised.

  “Anybody with meadows yet to mow is late,” Jamesie said provocatively.

  “There’ll be plenty of weather yet,” he defended his own house stubbornly.

  “That’s right. Give him no heed, Bill,” Mary took his part. “When will the bus start taking you to town?”

  “Every Thursday from now on,” he said importantly.

  “They’ll wash your whatnot when they get you to town,” Jamesie said. “You’ll never be the same again.”

  “You’re a pure disgust, Jamesie. They will run you out of the parish yet. It’s a wonder Mary has put up with you for so long,” he responded ringingly.

  “What else can I do, Bill? I’m stuck with him now,” Mary said.

  “That’s all that is saving him,” he grinned.

  The two women left to go into the house and he followed them as trustingly as a child.

  “Lord bless us,” Jamesie said. “They treat him worse than a dog and yet he’d die on the cross for them if you said as much as a word. He’ll have great times in the town. He’ll devour everything in sight. He’ll eat and drink rings round him. He’ll fatten,” Jamesie said in glee. “Sometimes I think he’s as happy as anybody.”

  The words hung in the air a moment without meeting agreement or disagreement: it was as if they both knew secretly that there was no certainty as to what constituted the happiness or unhappiness of another.

  “Would you change places with him?”

  “No.”

  “Would he change places with you?”

  “Like a shot.”

  “I doubt it. Nobody will change lives with another. Anyhow it’s not possible.”

  “I’d change. I’d love to have been de Valera,” Jamesie said.

  “Then you’d be dead,” Ruttledge said, and from the expression on Jamesie’s face he saw that he felt that his words were no joke at all.

  By early evening they were looking down at the complete emptiness of the meadows under the stillness of the big trees. All over the country for a week or more these reaped meadows would give back their squares and rectangles of burned yellow light amid the green of hedges and pastures. A number of times Ruttledge suggested that they finish and go into the house but Jamesie continued to dawdle and fuss over the last few rows as if he was waiting for the rain. When it came, in the complete silence of the trees and the birds, the first spare drops were loud on the iron.

  “Isn’t Patrick Ryan the most hopeless man?” Jamesie said as he looked across the lake at the bare hill where Patrick’s few cattle were grazing. “Not a blade of grass cut yet and all that good weather gone. A most hopeless man and he couldn’t care less if there wasn’t a dry day between now and Christmas.”

  The surfaces of the lake between the trees were now pocked with rain. Water was splashing heavily down from the big sycamore leaves on to the roof of the shed.

  “I’m going to enjoy this rain. I’m going to sit with a glass in my hand at the window and watch it pour down,” Jamesie said as they prepared to ru
n towards the house.

  The ground softened quickly and the drains were loud with rushing water. When the rain stopped, it was followed by broken weather, wind and light showers racing over the face of the lake.

  On a showery Sunday the Shah came grim-faced to the house and said that he had made up his mind.

  “Have you spoken to anybody since?”

  “Just that woman in the hotel.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Much what you said yourself. She’s made a will. The children will take over the place but not till she decides and how long they’ll last is another matter,” he said. “One thing sure is they’ll never fill her shoes.”

  “What did she think of giving Frank Dolan his chance?”

  “She thought it was fair enough. If he can come up with the washers. What do you think?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “He’s worked for you all his life. He’s as much entitled to the place as anybody. That said, people don’t always get what they’re entitled to.”

  “You can say that again,” he said with relish.

  “You can always take it to an auctioneer.”

  “No,” he said in alarm. “That crowd of crooks. They’re not all like Jimmy Joe McKiernan. You’d be annoyed as well with people beating round the place and the taxman snooping.”

  “There are times when they are necessary,” Ruttledge said.

  “Will the other fella be able for it though? Will he have the washers? Will he be able to pay?” he asked, and it was clear to Ruttledge that his mind was made up.

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to find out first if he wants the place.”

  The Shah found this unbelievable: he couldn’t imagine anyone not desiring the place.

  “There are people who don’t want responsibility,” Ruttledge explained.

  “What’d happen if some other man walked in?” he asked.

  “He could be out on his ear,” Ruttledge said.

  “Now you’re talking. Now you see,” he declared confidently.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  “You’ll have to have a word with him. The two of you will have to talk.”

  The Shah stopped, dumbfounded. Close by, the berries of a rowan were starting to redden. On the branches of a whitethorn a small bird, a robin, was singing. A single crow lighted silently in the bare field.

  “We don’t talk,” he said.

  “He must be with you twenty years by now.”

  “A good deal more than that but we still don’t talk,” he said stubbornly.

  It was Ruttledge’s turn to be dumbfounded. He had assumed that people who were so close for so long talked with one another. Now he had to acknowledge that in all the times he had seen them together never once had he witnessed even a brief conversation. From time to time they made statements that were intended to be overheard, sometimes with their backs turned or delivered sideways but never face to face. These communications were received in silence and then they went back to whatever they had been doing.

  Their ways and habits helped. The Shah liked to rise early. Frank Dolan seldom got out of bed before midday but would work late into the night. They were agreeable to their many customers but always separately. The customers they disliked soon learned not to come about the place. However it was communicated—and it was as sure and quick as radar—there was never the slightest disagreement about the unwanted customers. Whether they met Frank Dolan or the Shah they were unceremoniously shown the door. If the other happened to be close by, they would generally lift their heads from whatever they were doing to observe what was going on but never to comment or take any part.

  “What do you want me to do?” Ruttledge asked.

  “Would you have a word with him?”

  “Are you sure? Are you sure you wouldn’t be better going on as you are for a while longer?”

  “No. It’s time to make a move and nobody else but Frank knows anything about the place. It wouldn’t be much use to anybody else. They wouldn’t know how to get on with the people.”

  “I take it you are not selling your house or the cottages or the fields. Just the business?”

  “I’m bad but I’m not that bad. I’m not putting out every light in the house in the one go,” he shook gently for the first time that day, restored to his old self. “Frank is due for a big awakening,” he said with gusto.

  “He may not want the responsibility,” Ruttledge warned.

  “Then we can go to your auctioneer and he’ll get an even bigger awakening. Some of these fellas think life is a picnic.”

  Not many days later John Quinn came to the house in a new second-hand green Vauxhall. He parked beneath the alder tree where he had parked the old white Beetle years before. This time he placed no big stone beneath the tyre to ensure it didn’t roll towards the lake. In a new dark pinstripe suit, he could have been a distinguished politician or businessman.

  “It’s wonderful to see a young couple happy and getting on so well in the world and going from strength to strength and turning their backs on nobody and bringing everybody else along with them,” he began as he entered the house.

  “I’m afraid, John, we are not all that young any more,” Ruttledge said.

  “All in the mind. It’s all in the mind. You are as young as you feel. I myself intend to be a permanent twenty-two or twenty-three till night falls. I come with good news and I won’t be staying long,” he said when he was offered a chair. “I have work to do and you have your work to do and I don’t want wasting good time or good neighbours’ time.”

  All through the brief visit he remained standing but his eyes were restless about the room and only paused when he looked at Kate. His small eyes and a few missing teeth were the only blemishes in his handsome head. “The Lord God has said, ‘Tis not good for man to live alone,’ and John Quinn always took this to heart,” he continued smoothly, softly; “and when the mountain doesn’t go to Mohammed then Mohammed must go to the mountain. So John went to the Marriage Bureau in Knock where Our Lady appeared to the children. Everything was vetted and proved to be above board. They found me a most respectable person. She lost her good husband after bringing up her family and like myself did not think it good to live alone. There is a small trouble with her family but that will pass given time. Young people sometimes find it hard to understand that older people need the same little things and comforts and enjoyments that they need. So we are having the wedding here among good friends and neighbours instead of in her part of the country, which would be more according to the book. So it’s no wild goose errand that has brought me here but to invite you to join with us in our happiness,” and he named the date and time of the wedding and the reception at the Central Hotel.

  The Ruttledges congratulated him and wished him happiness and thanked him, saying they would be delighted to attend his wedding.

  “We are not now in our first bloom and have no reason to wait and whether young or old the summer is the best time for marrying. I’ll be going now and leaving you to your good work and not wasting any more of your time.”

  He would take neither tea nor whiskey in celebration of the happy occasion and made a point of repeating that they were busy and he was busy and no one should stand too much on ceremony or politeness. Too much politeness was sometimes a big hold-up to people’s business in this world.

  They both walked him to the green Vauxhall under the alder tree.

  “We hope you’ll both be very happy.”

  “Happiness makes happiness. When people are happy they help one another and get on well together.”

  He didn’t start the engine but released the hand brake to let it freewheel down to the lake. Approaching the lake, he put it into gear. It shuddered a moment before starting.

  “He was saving on juice,” Ruttledge said.

  “Ah,” Kate shook her shoulder
s with distaste.

  “This time he could meet his match,” Ruttledge said. “You’d never know. There must be villains in the female line as well.”

  “Of course, but I bet they take good care to steer clear of one another,” she said.

  The time came when the lambs had to be sold. Every year without fail Jamesie accompanied Ruttledge on the drive to the factory. Early on the arranged morning he entered the house rubbing his hands together. He knew it wasn’t a day they welcomed.

  “We are going to gather the money. We are going to be rich. We’ll lie in clover and speak the truth without fear or favour.”

  “You look like a prince,” Kate said.

  “Prince of the bogs and the rushes,” he answered defensively, but he was shining. His loose grey tweeds were worn but spotless and in the open-necked shirt he looked even more elegant than in his Sunday clothes. The leather of his boots was pale in places where the black dye had been washed away by wet grass.

  “Would you like anything before starting?”

  “No. Not today. We’re as well to be making tracks. There could be a long queue.”

  The trailer was already hitched to the car and backed up to the door of the shed. The sheep and lambs had been enclosed in the small field next to the shed and were easily penned. The fat male lambs were picked out and carried to the trailer. Borderline lambs were weighed on a metal scale in the corner.

  “Salvation,” Jamesie said when an underweight lamb was marked and let free.

  “A very temporary salvation.”

  “Tell me what other kind there is?”

  “A long life on grass.”

  “You think that’s permanent? They are going where they should be going. To a good Sunday table,” he said.

  “Five months old. It’s a short journey.”