By the Lake

by John McGahern

  Already, there was an air of holiday in the bar and both Patrick and Jamesie were drawing shouts and waves of recognition. Drinks would soon start to flow their way. Ruttledge told Jamesie he had messages to do about the town before slipping away unnoticed.

  He walked slowly through the crowded town, with cars parked everywhere and passing traffic blowing angrily as it made a slow, tortuous way through. A few people greeted him and he returned their greetings but most people were just faces. In a little alcove by the bridge across the shallow river was the bronze statue of the harper bent over his harp. All the bars were full, the small shops crowded. There were displays in windows. He had great affection for the town but knew it came from long acquaintance and association. No two houses were alike in the long, wide, winding main street. People had come in from the country and mountain and put down a new house next to the last built house without any thought other than to shelter together and survive and trade. To prosper was such a distant dream that it was both dangerous and unlucky to even contemplate. A stream of people came and went from the Central Hotel. They were better dressed and more prosperous than the people in the bars. The Shah would have long since eaten and left. Soon, Ruttledge reached the edge of the town and found himself looking across at the small kingdom. The square was full of packed vehicles, lorries and tractors and trailers as well as cars, and he had to move closer than he wanted to see across to the sheds. Monaghan Day had brought them much business as well. People were continually going and coming and standing about in small groups at the entrance to the sheds. The big iron gates to the scrapyard were open and several people were moving about searching among the scrap. The old gardener, Jimmy Murray, had been conscripted for the day and stood on guard in his porkpie hat outside the gates.

  As a child, Ruttledge used to travel on the train with his mother to this town. The low-grade Arigna coal the train burned during the war gave so little power that on the steepest hills the passengers had to dismount from the carriages and walk to the top of the slope where they climbed aboard again. In his mind he could see the white railway gates clearly, the high white signal box, the three stunted fir trees beside the rails, the big hose that extended from the water tank and hung like an elephant’s trunk over the entrance to the boiler shed. For a moment, the old living railway station stood there so vividly in his mind, like an oil painting of great depth, that the substantial square looked deranged. Nobody could ever have imagined that the little station, then the hub of the town, would become this half-wasteland with the Shah lord of it all. Unease had brought Ruttledge to this edge of town. Ever since the sale he had been afraid his uncle could be riding for a fall. He had relinquished power without relinquishing place and was as vulnerable as a child to loss of face. The business was Frank Dolan’s now.

  He walked very slowly back. The traffic was more chaotic, the horns blowing wildly, the doors of lorries open while their drivers went in search of whatever was blocking the way, which must have been even more frustrating still since it was nothing less than the whole disordered town. Several of the lorries were full of cattle coming from the mart and their lowing added to the pandemonium. Ruttledge met a few people he knew. The small shops were all busy. The pleasure was in walking among the human excitement and eagerness of the market. The cabbage man and his van were still parked outside Luke’s. He returned a friendly wave to Ruttledge’s. Only a few bundles of plants remained unsold.

  The bar was more crowded than when he left. Jamesie was sitting in a corner with other small farmers, comparing sales’ slips and descriptions of the animals they had sold. As always with Jamesie, he was using his hands to block out the descriptions. Patrick Ryan was with the Molloys, a family of contractors who owned and worked heavy machinery for whom he had often built and repaired houses and sheds. As soon as he entered the bar, Patrick detached himself from the Molloys and joined Ruttledge. Patrick’s face was flushed but he was rock-steady and coldly charming. “You have been so long away you must have bought the town,” he chided. “You’ll have a large brandy.”

  “It’d kill me,” Ruttledge said, and shook his head to the girl’s silent enquiry. “I’ll have a pint of stout. And besides it’s my round and I have to drive.”

  “What the fuck matter whose round it is?—all we are on is a day out of our lives. We’ll never be round again,” Patrick said belligerently and insisted on paying for the pint.

  “It doesn’t matter. We are as well to try to keep it middling straight,” Ruttledge said, and ordered a large brandy for Patrick and a pint of stout for Jamesie, who was still absorbed in discussion.

  “We’ll have to get that shed up of yours before the summer, lad,” Patrick Ryan said. “It’s just been going on for far too long.”

  “You know there’s no rush. There’s nothing depending on it,” Ruttledge said easily, used to the dialogue.

  Patrick went on to say how sick he was of working for the country, of travelling from house to house and listening to all their wants. A man would want six hands to keep all of them happy. The material for the roof for his own house had been bought and stored away for more than twenty years and it was time the house was re-roofed and lived in again, he said. Sick to his arse he was of travelling, he would settle down on his own fields among the neighbours and a few cattle until the hearse came.

  Luke Henry must have been preparing food and drink since the early morning. Now he sat with arms folded on a high stool inside the counter, leaning back against the shelves that rose high above him, glinting with amber and blue and pale lights from the rows of bottles. The red wig failed to hide the grey of his hair along the sides and at the back. The expression on his face was kindly and contented as he watched the young people he had hired for the day go about their work. Occasionally, with great charm, he rose from the stool to lean across the counter to an old customer who wasn’t receiving attention or to greet or say goodbye to someone entering or leaving. His movements were slow but precise; they had been refined by practice to their essentials. Then he slipped back again into repose on the stool.

  “Me old comrade.”

  Ruttledge suddenly felt a heavy blow on his shoulder, and before he turned he knew that his friend was well under the weather.

  “We are having a great day,” Jamesie said, and Ruttledge handed him the pint he had brought.

  “It’s only starting,” Patrick Ryan said, but Jamesie didn’t rise to the bait. He was too tired.

  There was no attempt to buy another round. Ruttledge said he could drink no more and drive. He would prefer to head for home and Jamesie said he would leave as well.

  “God hates a coward,” Patrick Ryan, who had no intention of leaving, reminded him playfully.

  “He lives to fight another day,” Jamesie said absently and made his way to say goodbye to the people he had been talking with. There were many promises they would meet again before too long. It had been a great Monaghan Day.

  “A pure child,” Patrick Ryan repeated as he and Ruttledge waited.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to be left to the house?”

  “Unlike yourself there’s nobody waiting up for me, lad. I have several clients lined up to see in the town yet. It’ll be night before I leave.”

  “You have somewhere to stay?” Ruttledge enquired, and Patrick Ryan flushed a deeper red.

  “Did you ever yet see the actor that wasn’t able to find a bed?” he responded sharply, and all trace of drink and tiredness fell from his handsome features. “If you did, lad, you were looking at one that wasn’t any good.”

  “I was just asking,” Ruttledge said.

  Out on the street Jamesie was uncertain on his feet but soon steadied purposefully. On none of the faces that came and went beneath the lights did he make a single comment. They passed the three detectives in the alleyway across from Jimmy Joe McKiernan’s without a word. Once outside the street lamps, it was dark but the cattle mart blazed with a white light. Huge lorries continued to pass in and out. T
he auctioneers droning out the bids over the crackling loudspeakers sounded more than ever like prayers.

  “God bless us,” Jamesie said when they saw the number of trucks and trailers still in the grounds. “There are poor souls who won’t be out of there before daylight.”

  “We had a good day and got good prices,” Ruttledge said when they reached the car. Many of the cars and tractors parked ahead of them had already left. There was space to turn without going back into the mart or the town.

  “We had a famous day and got famous prices,” Jamesie said. “Even Patrick got good prices,” he laughed.

  They drove in silence towards the lake. The pale reeds and a sweep of water showed in the headlights but the rest of the lake was dark under a dark sky. Jamesie nodded off but woke and looked around him when the car swung in the open gate and started to climb towards the house.

  “We’re home already.”

  The street was dark except for the yellow square of the small window that was as calm and beautiful as if it were the light of a vigil. Hearing the car and footsteps and voices, the cows tied up in the byre started lowing for their calves. Mary and Ruttledge kissed but as their lips touched she looked critically at Jamesie. The room was warm, the door of the firebox open on a blazing fire of turf and logs, the pair of dogs lying passively in two armchairs on either side of the empty chair in which Mary had been sitting, the book she was reading turned face downwards. The white terrier bared his teeth as Jamesie reached down to uproot him from the chair and left snarling loudly. Mary scolded Jamesie for his drinking but it was no more than ritual scolding and she had difficulty holding the stern expression. Jamesie handed her the sale slips proudly. She read them greedily, praising the prices, and was particularly pleased that Patrick Ryan got such good prices. “I thought poor Patrick would get nothing for those greyhounds.”

  “They had the age,” Jamesie said. “There was nothing wrong with them except they weren’t fed.”

  Mary poured Ruttledge a whiskey but was sparing with Jamesie’s measure. When he protested, she poured a few drops more but he was already too tired and happy to notice how little she added.

  “He always has to go and make a meal of things. He’ll be even worse when Johnny comes home,” she complained.

  “Some of these ladies are far too precise,” he protested. “They’d have you clipped and circumcised before you’d notice.”

  Mary made a hot whiskey for herself. Then she removed a damp cloth from a platter with a border of white and blue flowers on which small squares of ham and chicken sandwiches were sprinkled with sprigs of parsley. Before she sat down again she refilled the kettle with fresh water and set the aluminium teapot to warm on the chimney box.

  “The year’ll start to fly soon,” Jamesie said tiredly as they ate and drank. “In a few days the Lent will be in and before you’d find it’ll be Patrick’s Day and Easter. Everything will have started to grow. It’s all going to be very interesting.”

  The cycle of lambing had started. The lights were left on all night in the lambing shed; they rose every two or three hours. The tiredness turned into muted satisfaction when all the ewes came safe.

  Jamesie crossed the lake to look at the new lambs. He was incredulous when told that Bill Evans would soon be on his way to a house of his own in the town.

  “What good will it do him? He’ll be lost. He’s been too long the way he is.”

  “He’ll have a life of his own,” Kate said.

  “None of us has a life of our own,” he answered dismissively.

  “At least he won’t be abused,” she said.

  “Dogs and cats around the lake were treated far better. Those people could have no luck.”

  “I don’t think luck has much to do with it. They could be as lucky as anybody. The bad go with the good, in and out the same revolving doors,” Ruttledge said.

  “If there’s a God above they could have no luck. And look at them now!” Jamesie said. “They had no luck.”

  Ruttledge went into town one evening to see what was really happening at the railway sheds. As cover he took in a broken drive shaft of a mower to be welded. On his way through the town he discovered it was Ash Wednesday. To his surprise not many were wearing ash. He remembered when everybody in this town would have worn the mark of earth on their foreheads, and if they had failed to attend church would have thumbed their own foreheads in secret with the wetted ash of burned newspapers. The Shah’s forehead was marked with ash when he found him under the arch of the main shed. The sheep dog was by his side. They seemed delighted to see him.

  “I think we can put a spot on it all right,” he said after examining the drive shaft.

  “I see you didn’t neglect your duty,” Ruttledge observed the mark of ash on his forehead.

  “That’ll do you now,” he laughed. “That woman down in the hotel wanted to go to Mass and I got the job done as well. She said a while ago that she’d like to see you if you were in.”

  “About what?”

  “She didn’t say. She wouldn’t be likely to tell me.”

  “How is Frank doing?”

  “He hasn’t hit any rocks but I suppose it’s a bit early in the day yet,” he declared.

  “How do you feel since the changeover?”

  “Great. Should have got out sooner. It was a big responsibility to be carrying around,” he said importantly.

  The conversation was interrupted by customers a number of times and by the ringing of the telephone in the tiny office. The Shah seemed to greet and serve each customer with much greater friendliness than when the business was his. “You’ll have to see the boss about that,” he would say whenever there was a question about price, and direct them to Frank Dolan, who was working somewhere deep within the sheds.

  He took up the drive shaft and turned it round a number of times as he examined the break and got out the small welder and the shield. The blue light of the welder was blinding and Ruttledge went in search of Frank Dolan, picking his way among the half-dismantled skeleton of trunks and engines and all kinds of machinery.

  Far back in the shed he found him sorting small parts and placing them on shelves within an arched alcove that must have served some similar purpose in the time of the trains. He explained meticulously that he was reorganizing the storage of the spare parts so that they could be more easily found and also gradually reducing and dismantling much of what was piled in the scrapyard.

  “I take it you’ll not be employing young people,” Ruttledge said. The only answer Frank Dolan gave to the gentle thrust was a broad quick smile.

  “How do you find Himself since the changeover?” Ruttledge asked.

  “I don’t know how I’d have managed without him. He couldn’t have done more.” His voice was emotional, the gratitude showing clearly.

  “Then everything is going well?”

  “So far anyhow,” Frank Dolan said, and the talk moved to other inconsequential things.

  When he returned to the forecourt the Shah had changed out of his work clothes and was waiting to go to the hotel. With his shoe he pointed out the welded drive shaft lying on the ground. “I’d say it’s not too bad,” he said with pride as Ruttledge examined the neat and skilful welding.

  “It looks like new.”

  “You never can tell for sure with the old drive shafts till they are working,” he said. He cleared his throat: “I was on the phone to that woman down in the hotel while you were talking to that man. They’re expecting both of us.”

  As they were leaving, Frank Dolan appeared silently in the forecourt and the sheepdog went to sit by his side. On the way to the hotel the drive shaft was dropped into the boot of the car. In off the square a new development of tiny houses was being completed. The houses all had front gardens and walls and gates. A raw concrete mixer stood in the middle of the road into the small cul-de-sac.

  “It’s for old people,” the Shah said dismissively. “They’re calling it some Irish name.”

&nb
sp; “That must be Trathnona. Do you know what it means?”

  “Something silly I’d suppose.”

  “Trathnona means evening.”

  “That’s rubbing it in all right.”

  “Bill Evans is getting one of the houses,” Ruttledge said.

  “They’ll be made up when they get him in the town. It’s about time ye were brought up to date out there at the lake and those buckets pensioned off.”

  The receptionist behind the horseshoe reception desk in the Central greeted them warmly. “Susan,” the Shah spoke her name softly as they passed into the empty dining room. Three places were laid on the raised table in the alcove. As soon as they were seated the chef came from the kitchen in his tall chef’s hat to shake Ruttledge’s hand and tell them what was on the evening menu. They both had mushroom soup and the Shah had an enormous plate of vegetables with the wild salmon, but Ruttledge only wanted a green salad with the salmon. The Shah had ice cream and sherry trifle; Ruttledge had no dessert, and refused the wine or stout or whiskey that was pressed. Mrs. Maguire joined the table. She, too, chose wild salmon with a green salad.

  “I don’t know how the two of yous eat that stuff,” the Shah remarked about their salads but otherwise was silent in the enjoyment of the food. Ruttledge recalled that the last time they had met was at the reception for John Quinn’s wedding.

  “A good boy,” the Shah shook. “A warrior.”

  “The marriage, I believe, hasn’t gone too well,” Mrs. Maguire said.

  “She got some sense in the finish. She left that lakeside residence after a week,” the Shah said.

  “Then he went for a while to her place in Westmeath but now he’s home again,” Ruttledge added.

  “They ran him,” the Shah said succinctly.

  “I have no quarrel with John,” Mrs. Maguire said. “The family all stay here when they come home from England in the summer. They are charming and have got on wonderfully well in the world.” It was clear Mrs. Maguire was closing the subject down and when the Shah remarked, “Often people like John Quinn have the best children,” it was pursued no further.