By the Lake

by John McGahern

  “One thing you can say about Jimmy Joe is that he never pushes himself out in front,” Jamesie said with approval.

  “They’ll probably be putting up another statue to him one of these years,” Ruttledge said.

  “In jail, out of jail, pulled in for questioning at all hours, watched night and day by the detectives from the Special Branch. Since he was a boy he’s been with them and nothing much was ever happening. It must have been a pure godsend when the North blew up.”

  “Have any of the marchers any idea of what really happened at Glasdrum?”

  “Not a clue. They’re not from here and weren’t born then. Jimmy Joe is the only one who knows, and he doesn’t care. All he cares about is turning it around into a bigger thing. That’s why they’d never stand for your shouting dummy. It’s in the other direction they want to go.”

  “What’s that?” Ruttledge asked.

  “Big show. Big blow. Importance.”

  When the second squad car passed, a small group came into view standing outside the cottage on the corner farther down the road. They had been watching the march and were now waving to the Ruttledges and Jamesie to join them. Patrick Ryan was there and Big Mick Madden, an old antagonist of Jamesie’s who owned the cottage. With them were three teenage boys.

  “Leave them to hell. We’ll stay as we are,” Jamesie said, but it was too late. The Ruttledges were already moving down the road. He didn’t want to be seen as the one who turned back.

  Big Mick Madden was powerfully built. When young he had gone to work in factories and on building sites in England and had come home in his forties on his father’s death. A good melodeon player, he had made money playing in bars and at weddings until drink forced him to give up both music and drinking. While aggressive and boastful, he was also engagingly boyish. The cottage was the traditional three rooms, neat and whitewashed, the door and window frames painted red. Grey sheets of asbestos had replaced the thatch. He embraced Kate and shook hands warmly with Ruttledge but turned at once on Jamesie.

  “Have you heard the cuckoo yet?” he demanded.

  “Ye can hear nothing out here along the road,” Jamesie countered defensively. “Your ears are deafened with cars and trucks.”

  “Deafened,” Big Mick repeated derisively. “Elsewhere they are putting men on the moon and flying to the stars and here we have clients with their ears to the ground trying to be first to hear the cuckoo!”

  “Not a great class of bird to be listening for either,” Patrick Ryan added. “Laying eggs in other men’s nests, pushing the rightful eggs out, tricking the poor birds into drawing and carrying, and all he contributes is a song, ‘Cuck-oo … Cuck-oo … Cuck-oo …’ ”

  “Out in the world they are putting men on the moon and here we have old blows trying to be first to hear the cuckoo,” Big Mick repeated.

  “I listen for the cuckoo every year,” Kate said.

  “Don’t be standing up for him, Kate,” Big Mick warned. “Give him an inch and the frigger will build nests in your ears.”

  “I listen to the cuckoo and call out ‘Cuckoo’ so that people can hear him before their time,” Patrick Ryan said, and gave a passable imitation of the clear call.

  “Good man, Patrick,” Big Mick Madden warmed. “Pack those old blowers and dukers with lies.”

  “No, I’d not be fooled. I’d know full well,” Jamesie said dismissively. It was his only contribution.

  Ordinarily so nimble and playful, he could not function in the face of such aggression and contented himself with pulling faces for the three youths. Soon he had them laughing at his dumb show behind Mick Madden’s back. At first, Mick thought the boys were laughing with him, and this increased the vigour of his abuse, but gradually he grew suspicious and would suddenly whirl round in vain attempts to catch Jamesie in the act.

  “We better be making tracks,” Ruttledge said after a time. Patrick Ryan had plainly enjoyed the meeting and the confrontation and made promises as they parted to be around shortly to visit them all. The boys waved shyly and Big Mick hurled a few parting insults after Jamesie with plain enjoyment.

  “I never hear. I’m like water and the duck,” Jamesie raised his hand resignedly. “That Madden is unseemly,” he said as they turned down towards the lake. “If he had manners he could still be going into bars and houses and have company and a drink or two but he had always to go and do the gulpen. Now he can go nowhere. He has to skulk in the house on his own, driving those young boys wild with talk of all the black women he rode in England. He rode nothing either here or in England. He’d be afraid of his arse.”

  “He’s still a fine-looking man,” Kate said.

  “These fellas are all afraid, Kate. They’ll talk plenty and then turn back. They’d sicken your face.”

  “At least John Quinn isn’t afraid,” Ruttledge said lightly by way of change.

  “They say John Quinn never went with women when he was in England the time the first wife was alive. He worked all the hours he could get his hands on, sending every penny home. You can never tell with people,” Jamesie pondered soberly.

  They had drawn close to the water. Jamesie stopped suddenly and raised his hand. All the way from the old abbey and graveyard in Shruhaun floated the melancholy notes of a bugler.

  “And that was Him who was married to Her,” he said when the distant bugle notes died. He did not move for a long time as he listened, and then climbed on his bicycle and turned round to bow low. “I have decided, I have decided after serious deliberation that I never liked yous anyhow.”

  The sun was now high above the lake. There wasn’t a wisp of cloud. Everywhere the water sparkled. A child could easily believe that the whole of heaven was dancing.

  The cows calved safely and were out on grass with their calves. A single late ewe that could not open was lost with her lamb. They had taken the lamb from her, broken and dead, and she died of shock before morning. She and her lamb were their only loss.

  Monica came to tell them that she was going to marry again. They were glad and wished her happiness and it was arranged that she would bring Peter Monaghan to the house for an evening.

  “I wanted you to know before his lordship hears. God knows what he’ll say when he hears,” she smiled in her self-depreciating way. “What I was most worried about was the children, but they seem to have got used to Peter though they were very cool to begin with. We met in the church choir. I’m sure when the poor Shah hears he’ll begin to lose his faith in churches.”

  It is not always true that people repeat their first sexual choice endlessly. On the surface Peter Monaghan could not have been more different to the hard-drinking, extroverted popular businessman Monica had first loved and married. He was attentive, even diffident, drank little and was in thrall to Monica. What he shared with Paddy Joe and Monica was that, like them, he was intelligent. The evening she brought him to the Ruttledges went well and another evening was arranged at Monica’s house.

  “It looks as if there’s going to be a wedding,” the Shah announced ponderously the following Sunday, his hand on the sheepdog’s head.

  “What wedding?” Kate enquired.

  “Monica,” he cleared his throat. “You might well have known. She’s going to the river again. You’d think one round of the course and four children would be enough for the silly frigger.”

  “Who’s the fortunate man?”

  “Some poor harmless gom of a teacher. He’ll get his eyes opened. She was well able for poor Paddy Joe and the size of him and his large Crested Tens. ‘There’s not many of your size walking around,’ the doctor told him,” and at the very recollection of the doctor’s warning to his old adversary, he started to rock with amusement and to shout at the dog “Who’s the boss?” which set the dog barking. “I could see well what she was up to when we were in that hotel by the ocean in Donegal. Her father’s side of the house were all silly in that direction. Daft sexy friggers.”

  “Monica is an attractive, intelligent wom
an,” Kate said carefully. “If she has found someone she’s happy with she’ll have a better life than bringing up four children on her own. I hope they’ll both be happy.”

  “They’re welcome to it,” he said vigorously, as if offering poison.

  The plum trees blossomed, then the apple came and the white brilliance of the pear tree. May came in wet and windy. The rich green of the grass in the shelter of the hedges travelled out over the whole fields. Weeds had to be pulled from the ridges, the vegetable garden turned and weeded. Foxgloves appeared on the banks of the lane and the scent of the wild mint was stronger along the shore. Each night the black cat took to leaving the house before it was closed and returned soundlessly or noisily with her prey through the open window in the early light. All the hives were working. The spaces between the branches of the trees along the shore filled with leaves and were now a great broken wall of green. In the clear spaces through which the water showed it looked like sky, until the eye travelled to the farther shore.

  When the lambing was long over, Kate came on a ewe, a late lamb of the year before, not much more than a lamb herself, with a new lamb that was completely black. She had been checking the sheep and had come up with the worst of all counts: there was one missing. She listened for cries or bleating but there were none. The leaves stirred in a hum of insects and loud birds. A frenzy of gulls came from the lake. Crows were squabbling somewhere else, blackbirds set up derisory rackets in the whitethorns. She searched along the drains and hedges in growing anxiety at each empty field. She was about to turn back to the house for help when she came on the young ewe high on a bank in a small clearing between briar and whitethorn. She was chewing away in contentment and watchfulness, the perfectly formed black lamb by her side. The ewe put her face momentarily down to check the lamb’s scent and then looked possessively back at Kate. The place the ewe had found on the bank was both a sun trap and a sheltered lawn. They were a picture of happiness.

  Not until evening did the young ewe leave the safety of the bank, but she stayed clear of the flock for another day. The little black lamb and the ewe were always together and a little apart from the flock.

  An evening after rain Ruttledge ran the whole flock into the shed for an overdue dosing. With the dosing pack and a can of green aerosol spray he went through them quickly, even impatiently, as his clothes were soaking from the wet wool. When he let them back out into the fields there were the usual cries of the separated lambs and mothers searching for one another, but one ewe continued to cry and came right up to the bars of the gate after the rest had all found one another. As soon as he recognized her as the ewe with the late lamb he caught his breath and started to curse. After searching here and there, he found the lamb lifeless in the straw of the shed. The small lamb had been knocked in the milling about as he seized the ewes and trampled underfoot.

  “I have bad news. The black lamb is dead.”

  “What happened?” She went still.

  “I dosed them for fluke. I was late and in a hurry. I didn’t think how small the lamb was. I should have thought.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Nine times out of ten he would have been all right. It was bad luck he fell. I could have picked him out and put him safe.”

  “That’s easy to know now.”

  “At least it was a male. We couldn’t have kept the lamb.”

  In the silence they could hear the loud calling of the mother at the back of the house.

  “One good thing. They are not like us. She’ll have completely forgotten him in another day. Tomorrow it will be as if he never existed.”

  In spite of the knowledge that it was indulgent and wasteful, they were not able to ward off a lowering cloud. It was as if the black lamb reached back to other feelings of loss and disappointment and gathered them into an ache that was out of all proportion to the small loss.

  Jamesie came without knocking, calling out softly, “All work, no play—finding it much easier; take a break.” He was halfway across the room to the big armchair beneath the window with his head held low when he stopped. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “We had a bit of bad luck.”

  “What sort?”

  “There was a late black lamb,” they said.

  “You can quit that,” he said. “These things happen. Anybody with livestock is going to have deadstock. There’s no use dwelling. You have to put all these things behind you. Otherwise you might as well throw it all up now and admit that you’re no good.”

  As he spoke, the black lamb became an instant of beauty, safe by the side of the young ewe on the bank in the sun, and was gone. The beauty of that instant in the sun could only be kept now in the mind.

  Jamesie himself had come to the house on a troubling errand of his own. In earlier years Jim and Lucy and the children had often visited the Ruttledges but in more recent years the visits had ceased. This had come about naturally, without incident or unpleasantness, in the ebb and flow of human relations: standing invitations had remained in place without being taken up by either side.

  Now Jim and the family were coming from Dublin at the weekend. The child Margaret had seen Ruttledge cooking steaks on the iron grill the Shah had made for the old fireplace in the front room. They wanted to know if they could come over to the house and if Ruttledge would cook meat on the fire. Jamesie was so unsettled that he rose to leave even as he made the request. Ruttledge forced him back down into the chair by the shoulders.

  “We’ll have a feast.”

  “Too much. Too much,” he protested.

  “It’d be better if they can come on Saturday. The Shah is always here on Sunday.”

  “They can come either day. It makes no differ. They are coming for the whole weekend and are staying in the Central. The house is too small.”

  They talked of the pleasant times they all had together when the children were small, and he grew easier. They walked him down to the lake. As the heron rose to lead him out along the shore, out of pride he protested again. “I didn’t want to ask but Mary said ‘Have they ever refused you anything?’ That’s all the more reason not to ask, I told her. It’s Lucy that wants to come over. Jim wouldn’t care. It’s she that wants it more than the children.”

  “What does it matter who wants. Isn’t it a great excuse? We’ll have a feast. It’ll be as good as Johnny coming from England. Unless we hear differently we’ll expect you all at two o’clock on Saturday.”

  “Too much. Too much,” he protested.

  “You were like an angel coming today,” Kate said. “I was a bit down.”

  “No good, Kate. No good and I thought you didn’t believe,” he countered sharply.

  “There are lay angels,” she said.

  “No wings. Can’t fly,” he called out as he cycled after the disappearing heron.

  Ruttledge recognized Bill Evans’s loud knocking on the porch but not his step or walk. There was no sound of the stick on the floor, no swishing from the big wellingtons. When he reached the doorway he stood transformed. He had a new haircut, was cleanly and expertly shaven. He was wearing a fine new wool suit, a white shirt, a dark tie with white spots, and new black shoes that creaked.

  “You’re shining.”

  “Not too bad anyhow,” he grinned as he shuffled towards the white rocking chair.

  The sharp features were refined by hardship, but the eyes had learned nothing, not seeing any further than what they looked at.

  “I’ve never seen you better. Where did you get all the finery?”

  “In the town,” he answered readily. “Father Conroy got them. I’m leaving yous. I’m going to the town to live.”

  “How did that come about?”

  “Father Conroy,” he said.

  Automatically, Ruttledge reached for the small ration of cigarettes, set the kettle to boil and got sweet cake from a tin.

  “Have you nothing better than tea today?”

  “You’re right, Bill. It’s a special day. Th
ere’s whiskey and brandy.”

  “Brandy,” he said.

  He had already lit one of the cigarettes and was inhaling slow deep breaths, releasing each breath haltingly. Ruttledge poured a careful measure of brandy. Bill Evans downed it in a single gulp and demanded more. Another small measure was poured and a token measure poured into a second glass. “That’s all, Bill,” Ruttledge said firmly. “We can’t have you staggering around when the priest calls.”

  “I’ll be topping,” he argued.

  “I hope you’ll be very happy in the town,” Ruttledge raised his own glass.

  “Good luck, Joe. And may you never go without.”

  “What do you think you’ll do in the town?”

  “I’ll do lots,” he said, and then a stubborn look crossed his face. He would say no more.

  “What’s happened to your old clothes?”

  “They’re above in the house.”

  “Will you be taking them with you?”

  “No,” he laughed. “You’re getting as newsy as Jamesie.”

  “Will you come back out to see us at all?” Ruttledge asked as he walked him to the gate.

  “I’ll not,” he laughed again as if the very idea was ridiculous. “Everything is in the town.”

  “Don’t forget to say goodbye to the missus for me,” Bill Evans said when they reached the alder tree.

  “She’ll be sorry to have missed you,” Ruttledge said. “I’ll not say goodbye to you myself as I’m sure to see you in the town.”

  “Don’t forget the fags when you come.”

  “I’ll not forget.”

  In his new shoes and clothes he walked slowly and never looked back. The branches along the lake had long become intertwined overhead, and as they were now in full leaf the lane had turned into a green tunnel shot through with points of light. From time to time, in his slow walk uphill through this green shade, he stood and rested as if he was still carrying the buckets.