By the Lake

by John McGahern

  “It’s too tight.” Ruttledge handed Tom Kelly the pair of scissors and when he looked doubtful added, “He won’t need it any more.”

  “There’s no earthly edge on these scissors. You can never get scissors with an edge in the country. They use them for everything,” Tom Kelly complained.

  When at last he got the incision made, the cotton tore easily. They did likewise with the underpants. The only thing that remained on the body was a large silver digital watch, the red numerals pulsing out the seconds like a mechanical heart eerily alive in the stillness.

  “He won’t need that any more either,” the hairdresser removed the watch, but it continued to pulse in the glass ashtray until it distracted Ruttledge, and he turned it face down. He then noticed and removed his hearing-aid.

  They closed the ears and the nostrils with the cotton wool, and when they turned him over to close the rectum, dentures fell from his mouth. The rectum absorbed almost all the cotton wool. The act was as intimate and warm as the act of sex. The innate sacredness of each single life stood out more starkly in death than in the whole of its natural life. To see him naked was also to know what his character and clothes had disguised—the wonderful physical specimen he had been. That perfect coordination of hand and eye that had caused so many wildfowl to fall like stones from the air had been no accident. That hand, too, had now fallen.

  “We’d be better to lift him down to the floor.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “We’ll have more room and we have to make the bed.”

  In the sheet they lifted him from the bed. Tom Kelly shaved him with quick firm professional strokes and nicked the line of the sideburns level with the closed eyes while Ruttledge washed and dried the body.

  “Does he need a quick trim?”

  “Whatever you think.”

  Taking a comb and complaining all the time about the scissors, Tom Kelly trimmed and combed the hair. When they were almost finished, the door burst open. By throwing himself against the door Ruttledge managed to shut it again before it swung wide. Profuse apologies came from the other side of the door. They noticed a large old-fashioned key in the lock and turned the key.

  “It would have been terrible if he was seen like this on the floor.”

  “We should have noticed the key in the first place.”

  “It’s locked now anyhow.”

  They changed the sheet and the pillowslip. Very carefully they lifted the great weight back on to the bed. They arranged his feet and took the habit. It was a glowing white, a cloth breastplate with long sleeves, four white ribbons. The cuffs and breastplate were embroidered with gold thread. They eased the hands and arms into the sleeves, lifted the back to secure the breastplate by tying the ribbons.

  “They skimp on everything these days,” Tom Kelly complained. “There was a time when every dead person was given a full habit.”

  “It makes it easier for us. Nobody will know the difference. What’ll we do about the beads?”

  “We’ll give him his own beads.”

  Tom Kelly took the beads from the small purse and twined them through his fingers before arranging his hands on the breastplate. They then drew up the sheet and placed the hands on the fold. One eye had opened and was closed gently again.

  “We are almost through.”

  “All we have to do is get the mouth right.”

  Tom Kelly fixed the dentures in place. With cotton wool he moulded the mouth and face into shape slowly and with meticulous care.

  “It looks perfect,” Ruttledge said, but as he spoke a final press caused the dentures to fall loose. This occurred a number of times: all would look in place and then come undone through striving for too much perfection.

  “I can hear people getting restless.”

  “Mark you well my words,” Tom Kelly answered. “Everything we have done will be remarked upon. Everything we have done will be well gone over.”

  The whole slow process began again. There was no doubting the growing impatience and restlessness beyond the door for the wake to begin.

  “If you don’t get it done this time I’m taking over,” Ruttledge said.

  Possibly because of this extra pressure the face became undone more quickly.

  “Don’t you worry,” Tom Kelly said angrily as he gave up his place. “We will all have our critics. We will have our critics.”

  By using more cotton wool and striving for less, Ruttledge got the dentures in place and the mouth to hold shape.

  “I had it far better than that several times.”

  “I know.”

  “The cheeks bulge.”

  “They’ll have to do. Can’t you hear?”

  “You may not know it but mark my words our work will be well gone over. We will have our critics. We could be the talk of the country yet,” Tom Kelly said.

  “I’ll take the blame. You’ll be in Dublin.”

  “Whether we like it or not we could be scourged,” Tom Kelly said so anxiously that Ruttledge pressed his shoulder in reassurance.

  “You did great. We did our best. We couldn’t keep at it for ever.”

  “Maybe it isn’t too bad, then. We could still pass muster,” he replied doubtfully.

  The clothes and waste were stuffed in a plastic bag and hid in the wardrobe with the flat cardboard box. The door was unlocked, the basin of water removed. Jamesie and Mary came down to the room. They stood in silence for a long time looking at the face.

  “He’s beautiful,” Mary said and reached across to touch the pale forehead.

  “He’s perfect. Patrick couldn’t have done it a whit better,” Jamesie said emotionally.

  “I had no idea he was such a fine figure of a man,” Ruttledge said.

  “Stronger than me, stronger than my father, far stronger than me the best day ever I was,” Jamesie said.

  A row of chairs was arranged around the walls of the room. A bedside table was draped with a white cloth and two candles were placed in brass candlesticks and lit. A huge vase of flowers was set in the windowsill.

  One by one each person came and took their leave and stood or knelt. Old men and women sat on the chairs along the wall. The Rosary was said, a woman leading the prayers, the swelling responses given back as one voice.

  Huge platters of sandwiches were handed around, whiskey, beer, stout, sherry, port, lemonade. Tea was poured from the large aluminium kettle. The murmurs of speech grew louder and more confident. At first all the talk was of the dead man but then it wandered to their own interests and cares. Some who smoked dropped their cigarette ends down the necks of empty beer or stout bottles, where they hissed like trapped wasps. People wandered out into the night and the moonlight. Jokes began and laughter.

  “If we couldn’t have a laugh or two we might as well go and lie down ourselves.”

  Morning was beginning to thin the moonlight on the street when Patrick Ryan appeared in the doorway without warning, and stood there, a silent dark-suited apparition. The white shirt shone, the black tie neatly knotted; he was clean-shaven, the thick silver hair brushed.

  “I’m sorry. Sorry.”

  “We know, Patrick. We know. We were looking for you everywhere.”

  “I heard. Word was brought. I had to dress.”

  With the same slow steps he went down to the room, made the sign of the cross, stood for a long time gazing at the dead man before touching the hands and the forehead in a slow, stern leave-taking.

  The loud talk and the laughter his entrance had quelled rose again. Patrick made an impatient movement when he returned from the room but the talk and noise could not be stilled a second time. When offered sandwiches, he made a dismissive gesture, as if what had happened was too momentous to be bartered for the small coinages of food and drink, but he accepted the large whiskey Jamesie poured as if he was absent and the hand that gripped the glass was not his own.

  “Who laid him out?” he demanded.

  “I did,” Ruttledge said.

  “I
might have known.”

  “I told you,” Tom Kelly whispered. “Our critics have landed.”

  “I couldn’t care less.”

  With a peremptory wave of the hand, Patrick Ryan indicated that he wished to see Ruttledge alone outside the house. They stood by the lighted window and could see through the bowl of flowers to the lighted candles and the white stillness of the bed.

  “Why didn’t you wait for me, lad? Were you that greedy to get stuck in?”

  “Nobody could find you,” Ruttledge said patiently. “They looked everywhere. They couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “They might have known that important word would have always got to me,” he said.

  “They didn’t know. Someone said you could even be in Dublin. They thought the funeral would be over before you got word.”

  “I suppose it was that molly of a hairdresser who helped you botch the job.”

  “Tom Kelly gave great help. Any faults were mine,” Ruttledge said.

  “It was some face to give a poor man leaving the world,” he complained bitterly. “Some face to give him for his appearance in the next.”

  “People seem pleased enough.”

  “People know nothing, lad. All they want is to be riding and filling their gullets. But there are people who know. The trades know. I know. Anyhow it’s matterless now, lad. It’s done,” he said as if growing impatient of his own thought. “I’ll be over to your place next week. We’ll finish that shed. It’s been standing there making a show of both of us for far too long.”

  People were no longer coming to the house and many were beginning to leave. Only those intending to keep watch into the day remained. Kate indicated that she was ready to leave. They took their leave of the dead man. With the watchers on the chairs around the walls and the whiteness of the linen and the flowers and the candles, the small room looked beautiful in the stillness of the ceremony. Ruttledge looked at the face carefully and did not think, in spite of all that Patrick said, that it could have been improved greatly. Jamesie and Mary insisted on walking them all the way to the lake. After the warmth of the house, their own tiredness met them in the coldness of the morning breeze from the lake. The moon had paled and the grey light was now on everything.

  “Are you sure you should be coming all this distance?”

  “It’s an excuse to get out and draw breath. We’ll be in there enough. Anyhow, everything went great.”

  “Patrick Ryan wasn’t too pleased with our work,” Ruttledge said.

  “You can quit about Patrick. Everybody knows Patrick,” Jamesie said. “If the Lord God came down out of heaven he still wouldn’t manage to please Patrick. Everybody, everybody said that Johnny looked just beautiful.”

  “No matter what they say, Jamesie here is the best of the whole lot of them, Patrick included,” Mary said, her eyes shining.

  “Jamesie is special,” Kate smiled agreement.

  “Maybe I wasn’t the worst of them anyhow,” he said carefully. “We should start digging the grave about noon.”

  “What tools do you want me to bring?”

  “There’ll be lots of tools but bring, bring the sharp steel spade and that good pick and the crowbar.”

  “Do you think will Jimmy Joe McKiernan come with the hearse or will he send one of his men?”

  “I’d say one of his men but you’d never know with Jimmy Joe. There’s probably too much politics and trouble going on for Jimmy Joe to come, though it was Jimmy Joe himself who handed me the box and the habit.”

  “Kate here was a great help,” Mary praised as they embraced above the lake.

  “I did very little. It was a privilege to be with you.”

  “The children aren’t coming. They hardly knew Johnny but Jim and Lucy are coming from Dublin in the morning,” Jamesie informed them as they parted.

  “We’ll see you soon.”

  “Please God.”

  As they descended the hill, they walked into the white morning mist that obscured and made ghostly the shapes of the trees along the shore. Hidden in the mist, wildfowl were shrieking and chattering wildly out in the centre of the lake. At the corner the old grey-suited heron rose and flapped lazily ahead before disappearing into the white mist. They were too full of tiredness and reflection to talk.

  “What was it like preparing the body?” Kate asked finally as they were climbing towards their own house.

  “I’m not sure except I am very glad to have done it. It made death and the fear of death more natural, more ordinary. What did you do?”

  “Made tea, poured drinks, helped Mary make sandwiches. Did you ever see anything like that entrance?”

  Ruttledge shook in silent laughter that was a thinner, paler version of his uncle’s. “Sergeant Death appeared and found he had arrived too late.”

  As they climbed the hill to their own house he decided not to tell her yet that Patrick Ryan was coming the following week to complete the building of the shed.

  Big Mick Madden joined Jamesie and Patrick Ryan and Ruttledge in the digging of the grave. They had to search for the family plot amid the headstones and long grass out from the monastery walls, and found it marked with a rusted iron cross in a rusted circle a blacksmith had made. Some of the marks the hammer made on the iron still showed on the rust. Once the long grass was cleared, Patrick Ryan measured the grave with a tape and marked the corners with small pegs. All four men who had watched the march from the Monument to the graves of Shruhaun on Easter Sunday began to dig. Outside the graveyard wall the priest’s cattle grazed on the grass-grown ruins of the ancient settlement. They were sleek and fat from the rich grass, many calves resting with their mothers on the uneven ground. The grave sank quickly at first, but as it deepened the pace slowed: it was no longer possible to swing the pick, and each slow inch had to be scraped out with the crowbar and steel spade. They worked turn and turn about and began to talk more. Around them the bees moved about on the red and white clover and small yellow flowers. The occasional motor or lorry passed in a cloud of white dust. Away across the lakes and the bogs, the mountains stood in a distant haze of blue. As they worked, the shadow of the monastery walls drew closer to the open grave.

  “This place was swarming with monks once. They had big disputes over books. They used to raise welts on one another,” Patrick Ryan asserted.

  “The likes of us would be just slaves,” Big Mick Madden said. “They ruled the countryside from here. If we stepped out of line they’d gather a crowd for a quick trial on the shore and we’d be rowed out into the middle of the lake with a stone around our necks.”

  “It’s all at peace now,” Ruttledge said, looking about at the traces of the streets and huts and the buildings that could be traced through the lines and indentations on the short grass where the cattle lay.

  “You wouldn’t know, lad,” Patrick Ryan argued. “It’s just more covered up. The crowd in charge are cleverer these days. They have to be. People have more information now about what goes on.”

  They reached pieces of rotted board, bones, a skull.

  Jamesie gathered the bones into a plastic bag. “My mother was buried on the village side of the grave. If my turn is next it looks as if I’ll be going down to my old father.”

  “God rest the dead.”

  “Rest in peace.”

  “Amen.”

  “My old boy is fixed over there.” Big Mick Madden pointed out another iron cross within an iron circle close by, slightly more elaborate than Jamesie’s family cross; the outer arms of the cross were shaped and beaten into a suggestion of rose petals. “It took him two whole days to die.”

  All the antagonism he held towards Jamesie had disappeared.

  “I remember it well,” Patrick Ryan said. “Big John, your father, was a huge man, at least twenty stone, and wouldn’t harm a child. A big crowd gathered round the house. I was there both evenings. Between every breath he drew he’d say, ‘It’s a huar,’ as if he was labouring hard. After each loud rattling br
eath you’d hear, ‘It’s a hu-ar,’ and everytime ‘It’s a huar’ came out, the crowd used to burst out laughing. Poor people were easily entertained then.”

  “I remember,” Big Mick said. “I remember it well. I got home from England the night that he died.”

  Suddenly the steel spade hit the rock. They could dig no further. As they were scraping the rock clean, the graveyard gate opened and John Quinn came towards them with a spade on his shoulder.

  “We might have known,” Patrick Ryan laughed as John Quinn approached. “You’d want to be out early to best John Quinn. Arriving too late to get in the way of work but in plenty of time for the free drinks in the village.”

  “I heard but I heard too late. I was very sorry to hear about poor Johnny, the best shot this part of the country ever saw or ever will see,” John Quinn said as he shook Jamesie’s hand. “I was very sorry.”

  “I know that, John. I know that well.”

  “Look what we have gone and done!” Patrick Ryan shouted out, and John Quinn’s arrival was lost in the dramatic cry.

  “I marked the grave out wrong. I kind of knew as soon as we saw the bones. We have put the head where the feet should go. We have widened the wrong fucken end.”

  They then widened the other end of the grave. Even John Quinn helped and they teased him about his women as they worked. He was flattered by the teasing and responded with an earthy zest in which the singsonging cajolery was mixed with cunning and boastfulness.

  When they were gathering the tools to go to the village for the customary gravediggers’ drinks, Ruttledge asked Patrick Ryan, “Does it make a great difference that his head lies in the west?”

  “It makes every difference, lad, or it makes no difference.”

  “In what way?”

  “You should know, lad,” he said, enjoying such full possession of the graveyard that even John Quinn’s presence went unheeded. “You went to school long enough by all accounts to know.”

  “The world is full of things I don’t know,” Ruttledge said.

  “He sleeps with his head in the west … so that when he wakes he may face the rising sun.” Looking from face to face and drawing himself to his full height, Patrick Ryan stretched his arm dramatically towards the east. “We look to the resurrection of the dead.”