By the Lake

by John McGahern

  “His lordship asked me to have a word with you on a small business matter,” Ruttledge said when pauses began to occur in the polite conversation.

  Immediately, Frank Dolan assumed an apprehensive formality.

  “It’s nothing unpleasant,” Ruttledge hastened to say. “Is it all right to talk here?”

  “We’d be safer further back.” He was reassured but still apprehensive. He and the Shah shared a dislike of anything new or strange entering their world.

  They moved through a clutter of old engines, cars, tractors, machines, tools, benches, Frank Dolan patting the dog’s head as if for comfort. From the back it was possible to see how enormous the shed was, all the way out to the huge rounded arch.

  “He wants to retire and is thinking of selling. Would you be interested?”

  Frank Dolan’s face registered shock, washed clean of its everyday watchful expression, and was replaced by an intensity of feeling that was close to innocence. Ruttledge still hadn’t any idea what his response might be.

  He looked long and seriously into Ruttledge’s face as he answered, “I would be very interested,” with a mixture of iron dignity and humility.

  Ruttledge hadn’t been expecting anything as straightforward and uncomplicated. “He’s not too hard in what he’s asking,” he said and told him the price the Shah had agreed.

  Frank Dolan looked steadily into Ruttledge’s face but did not make any comment on the price. “The big question: Can it be afforded? Can I get money?” he said as if thinking aloud to himself out of unnerving silence. “To be interested is the easy part.”

  “Only you could know that, Frank.”

  “How?” he asked bluntly and without guile.

  “Do you have any savings or property?”

  He had no property but had considerable savings, much more than Ruttledge would have guessed. “How though will the rest be got?” His tone changed, asking humbly, almost hopelessly.

  “The way everybody else gets that sort of money. Apply for a loan. You must know all this yourself. I shouldn’t be telling you.”

  “I don’t,” he said simply. “Would you help me?”

  “Of course I would—as far as I’m able—but wouldn’t you be better with people closer to yourself?”

  “Who?”

  “Your family … relations … friends.”

  “They can be the very worst,” he laughed. “You’d be better on your own than with some of that crowd.”

  “I’ll help you if you want. I told his lordship that he should speak to you about this himself but he wouldn’t hear. Anyhow it’s done now.”

  “That’s him all over,” he said with open confidence. “In some ways he’s the most terrible coward you could meet in a day’s walk. He’s a great show till something awkward turns up. Then he runs to other people. He’ll face nothing.”

  Ruttledge smiled at the accuracy of the description that went beneath the surface and said, “God knows you have been observing him long enough to know. With all that I’m very fond of him.”

  “We all are—except betimes—but you wouldn’t want to let on,” Frank Dolan said with emotion.

  “I’ll tell him, then, that you are interested and we’ll go ahead from there,” Ruttledge said.

  “If you wait another half-hour you’ll meet him coming from the hotel. Soon you’ll see the dog going to meet him. You and me won’t exist then.”

  “I’ll tell him another time. There’s no use rushing anything with him. I hope it will all turn out lucky.”

  “Please God,” Frank Dolan said as he walked him to the car, and for the first time it struck Ruttledge that there was something of an unorthodox monastic community about the ramshackle scrapyard and pumps and sheds and the small cottages. There wasn’t a woman anywhere in sight or in any of the small houses.

  There were many days of wind and rain. Uneasy gusts ruffled the surface of the lake, sending it running this way and that. Occasionally, a rainbow arched all the way across the lake. More often the rainbows were as broken as the weather, appearing here and there in streaks or brilliant patches of colour in the unsettled sky. When rain wasn’t dripping from leaves or eaves, the air was so heavy it was like breathing rain. The hives were quiet. Only the midges swarmed.

  The hard burnt colour of the freshly cut meadows softened and there was a blue tinge in the first growth of aftergrass that shone under the running winds. The bullfinch disappeared with the wild strawberries from the bank. The little vetches turned black. The berries on the rowans along the shore glowed with such redness it was clear why the rowan berry was used in ancient song to praise the lips of girls and women. The darting swifts and swallows hunted low above the fields and the half-light brought out the noisy blundering bats.

  There was little outside work. The sheep and cattle were heavy and content on grass. Radish, lettuce, scallions, peas, broad beans were picked each day with the new potatoes. In the mornings Ruttledge worked at the few advertising commissions he had until they were all finished. Then he read or fished from the boat. Kate read or drew and sometimes walked or cycled round the shore to Mary and Jamesie.

  Even more predictable than the rain, Bill Evans came every day. All his talk now was of the bus that would take him to the town. For some reason it had been postponed or delayed for a few weeks but each day he spoke of the imminent arrival of the bus. They were beginning to think of it as illusory as one of the small rainbows above the lake, when a squat, yellow minibus came slowly in around the shore early on Thursday morning and waited. In the evening the bus climbed past the alder tree and gate, and went all the way up the hill.

  He had always been secretive about what happened in his house or on the farm unless there was some glory or success that he could bask in; it was no different with the welfare home.

  What he was forthcoming about was the bus and the people on the bus and the bus driver, Michael Pat. Already, he had become Michael Pat’s right-hand man: the two of them ran the bus together and he spoke of the other passengers with lordly condescension.

  “I give Michael Pat great help getting them off the bus. Some of them aren’t half there. They’d make you laugh. Michael Pat said he wouldn’t have got on near as well without me and that I’m a gift. He’s calling for me first thing next Thursday. I sit beside him in the front seat and keep a watch.”

  If a strange bird couldn’t cross the fields without Jamesie knowing, a big yellow minibus coming in round the shore wasn’t going to escape his notice, but he didn’t want to seem too obviously curious. He took a couple of days before cycling in round the shore. The Ruttledges knew at once what brought him and told him what they knew. They were inclined to make light of Bill Evans’s boasting.

  He held up his hand in disagreement, knowing several people on the bus. “Take care. He may not be that far out. With people living longer there’s a whole new class who are neither in the world or the graveyard. Once they were miles above poor Bill in life. Some of them would have tossed him cigarettes after Mass on a Sunday. Now they are in wheelchairs and hardly able to cope. The bus takes them into town. It’s a great idea. They get washed and fed and attended to and it gives the relatives looking after them at home a break for the day. People fall very low through no fault of their own. Compared to some of the souls in that bus, Bill Evans is a millionaire.”

  The bus was a special bus, with safety belts and handrails and a ramp for wheelchairs. The following Thursday Bill Evans sat in the front seat beside Michael Pat and waved and laughed towards the Ruttledges as the bus went slowly down to the lake. Under the “No Smoking” sign he sat puffing away like an ocean-going liner. The faces that appeared at the other windows were strained with age and illness and looked out impassively. Many did not look out at all.

  The Shah tried but could not conceal his impatience when he arrived at the house on Sunday. “Have you managed to get in to see that man yet on that business?”

  “Did you not hear? Did he not tell you?”
r />   “You must be joking. He’d tell you nothing. You might as well be dealing with a wall.”

  “I was in. You had gone to the hotel. The place was practically closed.”

  “Why didn’t you come down to the hotel? Herself is always asking. You could have had something to eat after your trouble.”

  “It wasn’t any trouble.”

  “Did you get a word out of him at all? It must have been like pulling teeth.”

  “He was agreeable and sensible. He had plenty to say.”

  “Well?” he demanded impatiently.

  “He wants to buy the place if he’s able.”

  “Aha,” he said with satisfaction. “He’s not as green as he’s cabbage-looking. Has he the washers?”

  “He has savings, more than I thought he could have. I can’t see him ever getting fat on what you’d pay.”

  “That’ll do you now,” he shook with pleasure at this picture of his shrewdness. “He gets paid well enough. He’d live on air. How is he going to come up with the rest? Did he get round to that?”

  “He’ll have to try and get a loan.”

  “Who’ll give him a loan?”

  “He’ll have to go to a bank.”

  “What’ll the bank say when they see him? They could run him to hell.”

  “I’d say he has every chance of getting the loan but are you sure you want to go ahead and sell?”

  “Why would I want to change?” he demanded.

  “The place has been your life. Once you sell, it won’t be yours any more. You’ll no longer have any say. He’ll be able to sell it on to someone else or tell you he no longer wants you round and there’s not a thing you’ll be able to do. I’m not saying he’s likely to do any of these things. In fact, I think it’s most unlikely, but once you sell you’re gone. Now is the time to be sure.”

  “I’d love it if he told me he didn’t want me near the place. I’d be out the door before he had time to turn.”

  “As long as you know,” Ruttledge said.

  “I know full well. Too many hang on till they’re staggering round the place. There’s a time for everything. That boy is going to get some land. It’ll take some of the sleep out of his eyes.”

  “I’ll go ahead, then, with the sale if that’s what you want.”

  “Go full ahead. And take care! You may find that the banks may be in no rush to hand out loans when they see the boy they have on their hands,” he started to shake silently.

  “As long as you are sure?”

  “I’m certain. It’s time.”

  The ground had become soft and unpleasant for walking and they did not go further than the hanging hill above the inner lake from where they were able to count the sheep. Several swans were sailing on the lake amid dark clutches of wildfowl. The occasional lone heron flew between the island and the bog. Nothing was sharp. The lanes of watery light that pierced the low cloud from time to time seemed to illuminate nothing but mist and cloud and water. The sedge of Gloria Bog and the little birches had no colour. The mountains were hidden. From this hanging hill the Shah had always looked across the lake and bog towards those mountains. Increasingly, the way he stood, his right hand resting firmly on his hip, his feet wide apart, reminded Ruttledge of the way his grandmother had stood at her half-door in old age. She had been a good-looking, vigorous woman even then, with a great sense of fun. The way she stood was like a symbol of her independence and spirit when her other advantages had disappeared.

  “The rain comes down. Grass grows. Children get old,” the Shah said suddenly. “That’s it. We all know. We know full well and can’t even whisper it out loud. We know in spite of them.”

  At that same time Kate was offered tempting work in London.

  Every summer Robert Booth came from London. When the Ruttledges first moved to the lake, other visitors had come from London, but over the years they dwindled until Robert Booth was their only serious connection with that busy world to which they had both once belonged, a world that was growing increasingly distant.

  Robert Booth came from humble origins in the North of Ireland, a small draper’s brilliant son. Scholarships took him all the way to Oxford, where his studies were interrupted by the war. After the war he returned to take a double-first in history and classics and then entered the law to discover that it wasn’t acceptable to practise at the Bar with a thick regional accent; so he took himself to acting school where he acquired the accent that would serve him for the rest of his life, its only flaw being that it outdistanced what it sought to emulate.

  He was reasonably successful as a barrister but felt too exposed, too much on his own: he was an outsider who always wanted to be on the inside. When offered a partnership in a young advertising firm by people he had known at Oxford, he abandoned the law with relief. Within the firm he rose steadily. He had interviewed Ruttledge when he applied for a copywriter’s position in the firm a few years after arriving in London. He already knew Kate and Kate’s father. At their marriage he had been one of the two witnesses. He had been against their decision to leave London, and without the freelance work he put their way after they left, the first years by the lake would have been more difficult. From time to time he had been able to arrange for Kate to return to her old position in the firm for short periods.

  In those years he came on the bus, which dropped him at the end of the road. Ruttledge met the bus and they walked slowly round the shore, Ruttledge carrying his suitcase, Robert Booth using a rubber-topped walking stick to help him through the potholes and loose stones.

  In later years Ruttledge met him each year at the hotel by the river in Enniskillen and drove him to the house. He waited by the hotel bar where he had a view of the entrance. A wide lawn sloped down to the Erne, where pleasure-boats were tied up at a wooden dock. Further down, the new theatre stood beside the high stone pillars on which the railway once had crossed the river.

  A large black car drew up at the entrance of the hotel. A tall, elegant, middle-aged woman in tweeds got out from behind the wheel and walked to the passenger side to open the door for Robert and hand him a travelling case from the back seat. He used his walking stick to lift himself slowly from the seat. The couple stood for a minute smiling and exchanging words. The woman’s dress and manner spoke of golf and bridge and dinner tables, children at good schools or university, books perhaps, but strict conformity within a class of money and comfort. They embraced. She had been leaving him at this hotel for years but Ruttledge had never met the wife of Robert Booth’s brother. All his various social lives were kept within separate compartments and were never allowed to cross. Robert stood politely in the entrance as the car drove away. As soon as it banged on the cattle grid over the entrance, he raised his walking stick and turned and entered the hotel.

  “A very great pleasure,” he said.

  They had a drink at a table in the near-empty bar and Robert talked of his stay at his brother’s weekend cottage in Donegal, the people they both knew in London. As they walked to the car, Robert said politely how much he was looking forward to seeing Kate again. Ruttledge knew Robert and yet he hardly knew him. He knew only what Robert Booth chose to reveal, which was very little, or let slip involuntarily. He was a secretive, complicated man and much was hidden, Ruttledge suspected, from himself as well as from most other people.

  The friendship had been always intertwined with business. It was unlikely that one would have survived without the other. Robert Booth looked better now than when Ruttledge first knew him. Time had softened his ugliness and slowed his ungainliness.

  The road was wet with summer showers as they drove towards the border, the fields and houses neater and better tended than in the South. Many had flower gardens. At the checkpoint they sat in a queue of cars behind a ramp until a green light allowed them into the armoured and sandbagged compound. All around was a wilderness, small fields of rushes and sally and scrub with the occasional isolated house. Above them stood the bare slopes of the mountain.
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br />   Ruttledge had asked Robert Booth once how he had found the class system when he first arrived at Oxford, he who now seemed so at ease within its mazes.

  “It was quite easy,” Robert Booth answered agreeably. “When we were growing up we felt superior to the Catholics. The first step is always the hardest. After that it is easy.” Ruttledge doubted if that could be admitted so openly and confidently now.

  A young soldier carrying a machine gun read the car number into a wire grille in a camouflaged steel hut and waited until someone working the computer within the hut gave the all-clear. Another soldier stood close by on guard. They both wore boots and combat dress and had a look of drilled efficiency. Ruttledge handed the soldier his driving licence. He was friendly and personable as he took and checked the licence. Ruttledge gave his name, his trade, his date of birth, his address.

  “What is the purpose of the visit?”

  “To pick up a friend who is coming on a short holiday.”

  “Where has he come from?”

  “From London.”

  “Good day,” Robert Booth said in his officer’s accent.

  “Have a good holiday, sir,” the soldier saluted smartly after handing back the driving licence. He did not ask to look in the boot.

  “A very pleasant young man,” Robert Booth said as they drove across the ramps leading out of the compound, where other cars entering the North were waiting to be checked.

  “They all are. They are well trained.”

  “I’m told it’s quite difficult to get into today’s army. They no longer require cannon fodder,” Robert Booth said.

  “Two soldiers were killed here. A bomb was put in a car and pushed downhill. The soldiers saw too late there was no one behind the wheel.”