By the Lake

by John McGahern

  “The old father was no joke,” Jamesie said. “He was a retired old bank manager but a sharp whippersnapper and you’d be surprised at all he could drink.”

  “You don’t have far to look to tell what you were interested in,” Mary said.

  The low cheer that greeted the remark was a return to his old self. All his attention was fixed on the houses and fields and turns of the road they passed. He did not call out any of the names. He did not ask to stop at Luke’s or anywhere as they drove through the town. In bits and pieces their Christmas in Dublin came out. Mary had spent all the time in the house except for a shopping expedition she made to the Christmas sales with Lucy and the children. The children had been the best part. Jamesie had met Jim’s boss and people he worked with in the city.

  “They were high up like Jim … important … clever … no daws anyway. The clevers are always plain. No big shows or blows. I was able to talk to them all.”

  “Jim said he was a big hit. You could take him anywhere,” Mary said with pride. “He was always well able to swing the lies.”

  “I had nothing to do but be myself,” he said. “What else was any of us doing?”

  “I’m sure there was some shaping and pretending as well.”

  “They adored Mary,” Jamesie raised his great hand. “The children adore the ground she walks on.”

  “I got on all right. I think I passed. But it was too long,” she said as if in correction of the praise, adding, “No house is big enough for two women. This fella was wild to be away as well. You know what he said when he saw the train was coming into Longford? ‘If the frigging thing breaks down now we’ll be able to walk home from here.’ ”

  “It was all right,” Jamesie said in an artificial voice he used when he was too impressed with the subject matter of his own speech. “Jim did his level best to show us as good a time as any old pair can be showed. It doesn’t take long to see everything you want to see in a city. There are too many people. After a while they all start to go by in a blur. If we were ever to go again we’d not go for more than a day or two.”

  The light had dimmed to a half-light. The driving was difficult because of the shadows, but when they came in sight of the lake there was light enough to show the brilliance of the two swans riding out beyond the reeds but not the wildfowl. The huge bare trees stood out on the far shore as the headlights travelled weakly over the road. Not a word was spoken, even when the car turned away from the lake and began the climb to the house. As soon as they drove in on the street they saw the nape of the woman’s neck leaning across the lighted square of the window and then her face turned sharply towards the sound of the car.

  “Kate is here!”

  There were shouts and kisses and handshakes and laughter. “You’re welcome home!” “It’s great to be home. We missed you, Kate.”

  Jamesie demanded that they have a whiskey straight away but Ruttledge insisted that he see the animals first. He looked at them intensely for a few moments. They all recognized him and the old cow looed her recognition. Then he snapped the light off.

  “They were far too well done. They’d nearly order you around. A touch of hardship would do them a world of good.”

  The dogs were with Kate in the house when the car pulled up and Mary had hardly been able to move with the frenzy of their welcome. “The poor fellas. The poor fellas,” she kept saying over and over. “What did you do at all? They’ve missed us too,” she laughed.

  Now they were seated in their chairs. Kate had a good fire going. The aluminium kettle was boiling. There was a big plate of sandwiches. They had hot whiskeys with cloves and lemon and sugar. More quietly, they talked of Dublin and the children and the parents and their stay. The presents they received were taken out and displayed: a headscarf of blue silk with the print of a medieval church, and a box of hand-made scented soaps—“Maybe they don’t think I wash enough”—a thick woollen sweater and a bottle of Black Bush for Jamesie. They stood gazing at the presents as if they held all goodwill, all generosity.

  “The poor children even saved,” Mary said.

  “They’re as good … as good … as good, pure toppers,” Jamesie said, and taking off his jacket he pulled on the sweater. It took persuasion to make Mary wear the silk headscarf.

  “They’ll be great talk at Mass when you march up to the front seat with that scarf on your head,” Jamesie said.

  By now they were truly home but they were so visibly tiring that the Ruttledges rose to leave, despite their protestations that it was far, far too early in the evening to even think of leaving yet.

  A few days after Christmas, Ruttledge witnessed the signing over of the Shah’s business to Frank Dolan in the solicitor’s office.

  The offices were in a plain Victorian house in the middle of the town. Brown photos of the main street taken many years before, when horse and bicycle were the means of transport, hung on the walls of the waiting room beside the diplomas. “Changes,” the Shah remarked stonily.

  “Nothing but change,” Ruttledge echoed, but Frank Dolan did not speak at all.

  There were no other people waiting and in a few minutes a girl led them up narrow stairs and showed them into an office. The solicitor rose from behind a heavy mahogany desk to welcome the Shah warmly and then shook hands with the two other men, motioning them towards the leather armchairs. He wore a well-cut suit and his greying hair was parted in the centre. The agreement was read and assented to. Frank Dolan handed over his cheque and was given a receipt. All the papers were initialled and signed. The only unusual thing, outside the solicitor’s friendliness and charm which seemed to extend beyond the merely professional, was that the two principals never addressed a word to one another throughout. Out in the street together they still didn’t speak. Ruttledge took Frank Dolan’s hand and wished him all the luck in the world.

  “Thanks. Thanks for all the trouble. Thanks for everything,” Frank Dolan said in an emotional voice.

  “It was no trouble. It was nothing.”

  The Shah stood solidly on the pavement, without a word or movement, as inscrutable as a statue of Buddha.

  “Thanks,” Frank repeated again and walked to his old car without another word or look. He walked slowly and naturally, as if any possible acknowledgement of the Shah’s presence in the day was unimaginable, and his very separateness was as impressive as the Shah’s own. The car had already been turned around and he did not wave or look either way as he drove towards the scrapyard and the old railway sheds, all of which he now owned.

  “Whether he makes it or not I doubt if he’ll ever come to look the part,” the Shah said as he watched the old Toyota drive away.

  “The two of you are never going to kill one another with talk,” Ruttledge remarked.

  “You wouldn’t know where to begin,” the Shah said. “You could be taking your life in your hands.”

  The weeks following Christmas were mild and damp. Then the storms came, breaking branches, uprooting small trees in the hedges, lathering the road round the shore with foam. Between the storms they had precious days of frost when the light was dry and clear and sounds carried. Thin ice glittered along the shore and clinked and chimed when there was any movement on the water.

  In all these weathers Bill Evans went every day to the lake. Jamesie counted the twenty-six times he had to set down the buckets and rest on the steep climb between the lake and the top of the hill and he imitated the sideways, crab-like gait and the way he blew on his hands and folded them into the long black sleeves and wrung them against his breast.

  They had never seen Bill Evans in better spirits. He was often condescending, as he smoked and ate and took tea in his huge wellingtons and roped black crombie and the shiny sou’wester tied beneath his chin, and talked of the bus and Michael Pat the driver and all that travelled on the bus and how they would nearly cause any normal enough person to laugh. He was no longer living from moment to moment, from blow to blow, pleasure to pleasure, refusing to look forwa
rd or back: he was now living these bus rides on Thursday in the mind as well. The seeds of calamity were sown.

  On a Thursday in February, with the rain pouring down, he came to the porch holding on to the two buckets instead of leaving them in the fuchsias at the gate. He would have carried them into the house except for the narrowness of the porch door.

  “Bring them into the house if you want, Bill, but they’ll come to no harm in the rain.” Kate saw at once that there was something very wrong.

  “I was stopped,” he cried out as he entered the porch.

  “Stopped from what?”

  “Stopped from going on the bus.”

  “Why?” She had never seen him break down before or weep, the small choked cries of a child.

  “I was stopped,” he repeated, tears slipping down his face, catching in the deep lines.

  She made tea, adding biscuits and fruitcake to the plate of buttered bread and jam. He drank the tea but he wasn’t able to eat. “Somebody or something must have stopped you or did the bus not come?” she asked.

  “They stopped me,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “Why did they do that?”

  “They stopped me,” he cried out and rose. “Did he leave any fags?”

  She gave him the ration of cigarettes from a mug on a shelf above the stove and walked him to the door. She watched him lift the two buckets outside the porch and go in the heavy rain towards the open gate and down past the fuchsias towards the lake.

  “We’ll have to do something. You’ll have to go to the house and confront them,” Kate said when Ruttledge returned.

  A cold, appraising look came over his face that she normally liked but now felt uncomfortable with. “Why?” he asked.

  “You know well that I’d be no good.”

  “Neither of us would. We’d only make matters worse.”

  “We’ll have to do something. It means the world to him. It was like looking at somebody who has lost everything.”

  “The only person with power in this case is the priest.”

  “Why don’t you go to him? The two of you get on well together.”

  “I’ll go to him tonight.”

  The church was in darkness but there was a light above the door of the presbytery. It was a strange place to have built this church and presbytery, far from any human habitation. Its natural place should have been beside the bars and post office and school and the old monastery at Shruhaun. The sound of trees waving in the darkness and the steady rain increased the sense of night and isolation. Ruttledge let himself in through the small gate beside the sacristy and rang the bell. The hall lights came on immediately. The priest appeared glad to see him, inviting him in. He was wearing a heavy black pullover and an open-necked shirt. Newspapers and bills and letters and a few books were scattered about the large oval table in the sitting room. A coal fire burned brightly in the grate. The rest of the furniture was old and dark and comfortable and must have served many undemanding masters.

  “We haven’t met since Christmas Eve,” Ruttledge remarked.

  “If everybody paid me as well as that man I’d never stop calling to the houses. Will you have tea or something stronger?”

  Ruttledge asked for tea. The cups and tea bags stood on a silver tray on a dark mahogany sideboard with an electric kettle. The priest made tea, offered biscuits, but he himself drank only warm water.

  “I should state my business,” Ruttledge said. “You know Bill Evans?”

  “I know all my parishioners,” he answered.

  “For some time now the bus has been coming to the house on Thursday and taking him into the Home.”

  “I know that.”

  “It’s been his one great pleasure. The whole week is spent looking forward to Thursday. Now he has been stopped. I came to see if you could get him back on the bus.”

  “Who stopped him?”

  “They stopped him, as far as I know.”

  “Why would they? It’s not costing them anything.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know. They may miss him for drawing water, for the various jobs he does about the house. They may have even come to resent the pleasure he gets from those Thursdays.”

  The priest continued looking at Ruttledge after he had spoken and then turned away to take tongs and arrange coals on the fire. “They don’t know it yet—and naturally he doesn’t know—but his days out there by the lake are numbered,” he said. “A housing development has already begun in the town to provide small apartments for the elderly, for people still able to manage on their own but in need of help. All of it is state-funded. I’m on the board and our friend is one of the first names on the housing list. We are going to call the development Trathnona. What do you think of the name?”

  “The evening of life,” Ruttledge translated for his own ears. “Somehow it doesn’t sound so bad in English. Next stop: night. I think it’s pretty awful.”

  “I thought you might say that,” the priest laughed. “They could call it Bundoran as far as I’m concerned, as long as it serves its purpose and the deserving people get the accommodation. We have quite a few Fenians on the board and they thought the name both patriotic and appropriate.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t matter. Not many will know what Trathnona means. In time it’ll just become another name.”

  “I don’t care. Bill Evans and two other homeboys are on the list. When the development is completed he’ll get one of the houses.”

  “He’ll be in heaven,” Ruttledge said.

  The conversation moved to the cattle both men kept, the price of cattle and the animals they intended to take out and sell in the mart on Monaghan Day. John Quinn’s name came up. The priest smiled but was slow to judge. “He’s been consoling himself with a few ladies. He takes them up to the front seat at Sunday Mass and sometimes to the empty church where they light candles at Our Lady’s shrine. At a distance it is a most touching and romantic ceremony. If I’m around he always introduces them.”

  From there the talk turned surprisingly to the priest’s own faith. He spoke with warmth of his mother and his father, who had been a farmer and small cattle dealer. “They believed and brought me into life. What was good enough for them will do for me. That is all the reason I need. When my father was dying he said that if he were given an opportunity to start life all over again he’d take it without a thought. I doubt if I could go that far. Once is more than enough.”

  “It would be wrong to say I envy you,” Ruttledge said.

  “Live and let live is what I say,” the old priest said. “The man above in Longford will never see it that way. Those Northerners want to bulldoze everybody into their own view.”

  “We are not short of people like that down here, either,” Ruttledge said.

  The evening had flown.

  “I’ll drive up your way tomorrow to see what I can do but I’ll not call. It would look a bit obvious. I’ll drop in with whatever news I have later.”

  “Would you like to come and eat something with us then?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “I’ll call to let you know what happened.”

  The next day they saw his car climb past the gate to the house. He was a poor driver and drove slowly, his eyes fixed resolutely on the road. They thought he must have spent a long time at the house because they did not hear the car go back down towards the lake. The next day Bill Evans was as distraught as ever. He had seen the priest call but couldn’t imagine that the call had anything to do with him. A couple of days later the priest came to tell them the matter had been settled but he would not delay as he had a sick call to make, and on the next Thursday morning Bill Evans was back on the bus sitting beside Michael Pat in the front seat. When he called on his way to the lake the next day, he told of all the help he gave Michael Pat and spoke as if they had never missed a day.

  Monaghan Day was the biggest mart of the year and was held on the last Thursday in February. By now it had grown so large that it extended to the Friday and
Saturday, and there were years like this year when it entered March. All the big buyers and dealers came to Monaghan Day. Because of the number of dealers, the prices to be had were generally higher than at any other time of the year. In talk in the bars around Monaghan Day some argued that the name derived from the time Monaghan buyers came to the fairs at the end of winter to buy young cattle for shipping to Scotland. More asserted that the name went much further back to the time of the faction fights, when a famous family of fighters called the Monaghans were kings of the early spring fair, with their lead-filled ash plants. Great crowds gathered to watch these fights. On one Monaghan Day the fighters had to be smuggled out of the town, hidden in cartloads of oat sheaves, after a local man had been killed in a fight. A few others declared it had nothing to do with either Monaghan, other than in the heads of ravellers and romancers who had neither knowledge nor religion: it was not Monaghan Day but Manachan Day, after Saint Manachan, who founded the old abbey and whose feast day falls on the 25th February. A great many more swore that they couldn’t care less if it was the fair of Timbuktu as long as plenty of buyers came and the prices were high.

  Jamesie took an inordinate pride in his few young cattle, and bucket-fed and currycombed and groomed them for Monaghan Day. Patrick Ryan had two young cattle still running with their mothers and he came with Jamesie to the house one morning. The three men separated Patrick’s calves—they were at least yearlings—and took them over to Jamesie’s in Ruttledge’s trailer. They were wild, unused to any handling, and were housed with great difficulty.

  “Racehorses,” Jamesie laughed. Patrick Ryan was unperturbed throughout and made jokes and was in great good humour. He planned to be in town on Monaghan Day. He was living with a rich family in Carrick, putting in bathrooms in houses bought to rent, and they would drive him to the mart on the day.

  Mary was delighted to see Patrick again and he grew more handsome in the warmth of her affection. They all had a whiskey together, to the ticking and the irregular strikings of the clocks, while arranging to meet up with Patrick outside the main ring before the bidding began at noon. Then Ruttledge left. They had much to talk about together and the talk would flow more freely in his absence.