By the Lake

by John McGahern

  Ruttledge knew that his first words would have been pondered carefully, and waited in front of the porch instead of going towards him.

  “I have been meaning to come round several times but there’s been people hanging out of me for months,” Patrick spoke slowly and deliberately.

  “That doesn’t matter. You are welcome,” Ruttledge said, and led him into the house.

  “Where is she?” he demanded when he was seated in the white rocking chair. “Is she here?”

  “In the house somewhere.”

  Kate came into the room. She had changed into a blouse of pale silk and brushed her hair. “You are welcome, Patrick.”

  “It’s great to see you, Kate,” he rose from the chair with natural easy charm.

  It was cool and dark within the house after the brightness of the porch, the green bank outside the large window glowing in the hidden light.

  “You’ll have a drink—it’s a while since you were in the house,” Ruttledge said as he took out a bottle of Powers.

  “I bar the drink,” Patrick Ryan raised his hand dramatically. “I completely bar the drink. There’s too much fucken drink passed around in this country.”

  “You’ll have tea?” Kate said.

  “No tea either. I came on a mission. I want this man to drive me to Carrick.”

  “That’s easily done.”

  “I suppose you have all heard that our lad is bad in Carrick?”

  “Jamesie told us that Edmund is poorly,” Ruttledge said carefully.

  “With Jamesie around, this place will never lack a radio-TV station,” he said sarcastically.

  “We’d be lost without Jamesie,” Ruttledge said.

  “I suppose he told you that I was never in to see our lad. He probably has it spread all over the country.”

  “He just mentioned that Edmund was poorly and that old Mrs. Logan and the dog are lost since he went into hospital.”

  “They are casting it up that I was never in to see him when I only heard today that he was in hospital. When you are working here and there all over the country you hear nothing.”

  “When do you want to leave?” Ruttledge asked.

  “We’ll go now, in the name of God.”

  “Would you like to come?” Ruttledge asked Kate, though he knew Patrick Ryan wouldn’t want her and she was unlikely to come.

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Patrick Ryan said, but Kate made no response. In the porch he stood looking across at the four iron posts standing in their concrete bases and said, “I heard they are talking about that as well.”

  “If it wasn’t that it would be something else. There’s no hurry,” Ruttledge said.

  “We might as well stop them talking, lad. The people around this lake were always known to be a holy living terror for news and they’ll never die while Jamesie lives,” Patrick Ryan laughed lowly, suddenly in much better humour. “There was a boy of the Reagans down on holiday from Dublin. The Reagans were all doctors, lawyers, teachers, that kind of crowd and the boy was delicate. I heard not long ago that he’s a diplomat in Chicago. He wanted to visit an uncle, the Master in Kesh, and they thought him too delicate to walk or cycle, so they harnessed up an old quiet pony they had. I’m not telling a word of a lie, lad, but the mile by the lake took longer than the other five miles to Kesh. They were all out. They wanted to know who he was, where he was from, who he was staying with—though they all knew the pony and cart well—and where was he going and what was he doing in this part of the country. It was like having to pass through customs and excise. They got in between the shaft of the cart and the pony’s shoulder so that the poor gossen couldn’t move until they had extracted every word of flesh. If he had a loudspeaker to broadcast the details, hours could have been saved, but they all had to find out for themselves. It was dark by the time he got to Kesh and they were beginning to be worried. I’m telling you, lad, those people will never die while Jamesie is cycling around.”

  “Jamesie is marvellous,” Ruttledge said.

  “He’s a pure child, lad. He’ll never grow up,” he said dismissively. “There’s been a big clear-out since young Reagan came round the lake in the pony and cart. The country was walking with people then. After us there’ll be nothing but the water hen and the swan.”

  They passed the wide opening down to the lake where earlier Cecil Pierce had sat fishing from the transport box with the tractor running. “Cecil has gone home to do the milking. He was fishing here all day,” Ruttledge said.

  “No better sort than poor Cecil,” Patrick Ryan said. “I never heard a mean word about anybody from Cecil’s mouth. You’d think that crowd up in the North would learn something, lad, and get on like Cecil and us.”

  “It’s different up there.”

  “How could it be different?”

  “They are more equal there and hate one another. There were never many Protestants here. When there are only a few, they have to keep their heads low whether it suits or not, like the Irish in England when a bomb goes off. Cecil would want to keep his head low whether they were many or few. He is that kind of person.”

  “They are a bad old bitter crowd up there. They’ll eat one another yet,” Patrick Ryan said belligerently.

  “Johnny is coming home from England this week,” Ruttledge said to change the subject.

  “God bless us, has that come round again?” Ryan said, and then brightened to mimic Jamesie with affectionate malice. “ ‘Meet the train with Johnny Rowley’s car … There’ll be drinks, you know, rounds … rounds of drinks, stops at bars, shake hands and welcome … Welcome home from England … no sooner in the door than Mary has the sirloin on the pan.’ ” He laughed in the enjoyment of his power and mastery. He had a deadly gift.

  “That’s almost too good, Patrick—it’s wicked.”

  “ ‘He’s a sight, a holy sight,’ ” he mimicked Jamesie again, warmed by the praise, and then changed briskly into his own voice. “After all that performance he’ll spend the next two weeks avoiding Johnny at every stop and turn as if he had grown horns. They never got on. For two brothers they couldn’t be more unlike.”

  They drove through a maze of little roads until they reached the main road close to Carrick. In places, the encroaching hawthorns brushed the sides of the car. Some of the cottages were newly painted and pretty, with gardens and flowers. Others were neglected, uncared for.

  “You can always tell the old bachelor’s burrow. None of them ever heard tell of a can of paint or a packet of flower seed. The country is full of them and they all had mothers.”

  He spoke of the people he had worked for. Many were dead. He spoke of them humorously, with a little contempt, as most of them had been poor. “I never took a penny, lad. They hadn’t it to give.”

  When he turned to speak of the rich houses he had worked for, his voice changed: it was full of identification and half-possession, like the unformed longing of a boy.

  “Most of the people in this part of the country will never rise off their arses in the ditches. You have to have something behind you to be able to rise.”

  Rise to what? came to Ruttledge’s lips, but he didn’t speak it. “I suppose they’ll move around in the light for a while like the rest of us and disappear,” he said.

  “They wouldn’t like to hear that either, lad,” Patrick Ryan replied trenchantly. “All the fuckers half-believe they are going to be the Big Exception and live for ever.”

  The spires of the churches on the hill rose above the low roofs of Carrick, and on a higher isolated hill across the town stood a concrete water tower, like a huge mushroom on a slender stem. The long stone building had been the old workhouse and was now part of the hospital. Age had softened the grey Victorian harshness of the stone.

  The open wards they walked through were orderly and clean. The men in the military rows of beds were old. As they passed down the brown linoleum-covered corridor, many were in their own world, a few engaged in vigorous c
onversation with themselves. Others were as still as if they were in shock. Sunday visitors gathered around certain beds in troubled or self-conscious uselessness, but they formed a semblance of company and solidarity against those who lay alone and unvisited.

  “It’d make you think, lad,” Patrick said sourly. “There’s not a lot to it when it all comes down.”

  They found Edmund in a tiny room on his own, a drip above the bed attached to his arm, in deep, drugged sleep.

  “Our lad is bad,” Patrick Ryan said.

  “We’d be better to let him sleep.”

  Patrick Ryan put the bottle of Lucozade they had brought firmly down on the bedside table, and without any warning he took Edmund by the shoulders and began to shake him violently.

  “Let him rest. You can see he’s very sick,” Ruttledge said, but his words only increased Patrick Ryan’s determination.

  “We’ll bring him to his senses in a minute, lad.”

  “Watch the drip!” Ruttledge called in alarm as the tubes and bottle trembled.

  When Edmund woke he was frightened. At first, he did not know where he was. “Patrick,” he said out of his disturbed sleep when he recognized his brother’s face, and offered his trembling hand.

  “Are you all right?” Patrick Ryan demanded.

  He made no answer. Either he didn’t understand or his attention was distracted by Ruttledge’s presence at the foot of the bed. With great effort he reached back to an old tradition of courtesy. “Joe,” he called to Ruttledge, and with difficulty again reached out a trembling hand. “You were very good to come. How are yous all around the lake?”

  “We are well, Edmund. How is yourself?”

  He wasn’t given the opportunity to answer. Patrick filled a glass from the Lucozade bottle. “Drink this,” he ordered. “It’ll do you good.” He held it to his lips but Edmund was too weak to drink. Much of the yellow liquid ran down his white stubble.

  “Leave it be,” Ruttledge said in anger and took the glass from his hand. “We are doing more harm than good.”

  For a moment Patrick Ryan looked as if he was about to turn on Ruttledge. Instead he turned back to Edmund. “Go back to sleep now, lad,” he commanded. “You’ll be all right.”

  Edmund looked towards Ruttledge in mute enquiry. The face was as regular and handsome as Patrick’s but far more withdrawn and gentle and it was now refined by illness. Ruttledge hardly knew him. They had met over the years by chance on the roads. Each had made the usual polite enquiries of the other but past that point conversation never began, falling back on that old reliable, the unreliable weather. As with many diminished people, Edmund’s response was to rephrase each thing the other person said in the form of a question, often with an expression of great interest, even charm. In its humble way it gave the other every encouragement to continue. Many did not know or care that they were responding to nothing but an echo. Others mutely acknowledged that this was his simple way. Only a few were openly contemptuous.

  “Have you nothing to answer but repeat the words after me?” his exasperated brother had demanded more than once.

  “Nothing to answer? Nothing at all to answer.”

  No matter how much Patrick railed, Edmund remained safe within these echoes and repetitions. Now he was on the cliff-face of a silence that required nothing.

  “You must be tired,” Ruttledge said gently.

  “Not too tired. You were very good to come. You were both very good to come.”

  “We’ll go now. You can go back to sleep,” Patrick said.

  “Goodbye, Pa,” Edmund used a family name for Patrick that Ruttledge hadn’t heard him called in years. “Remember me to all of them around the lake.”

  “They are all asking for you,” Ruttledge said. “They are waiting for you to come home.”

  “You can go back to sleep now,” his brother repeated, but Edmund was already sleeping. A nurse came into the small room and when Patrick engaged her in conversation about the patient Ruttledge went out to the corridor to wait.

  “We were wrong to wake him,” Ruttledge said as they walked through the wards and down the long pale green corridor.

  “Our lad isn’t long for this world, I fear,” Patrick Ryan answered vaguely.

  At the car, Ruttledge asked, “Where would you like me to leave you?”

  “I never left this town yet without leaving them money. I’m not going to start doing anything different now.”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “We’ll call to see how Paddy Lowe is getting along, in the name of God.”

  A young girl was serving behind the counter in Lowe’s Bar. Except for a party of two girls and five men of different ages who were on their way home from a football match, the bar was empty.

  “Where’s Paddy?” Patrick asked the girl as she was drawing the glasses of beer.

  “He’s out on the land,” the girl answered.

  “Me and Paddy are great friends,” Patrick Ryan said, but the girl was not drawn further into the conversation. As soon as they raised the glasses of beer, all Patrick’s attention veered to the crowd returning from the football match. “I’ll dawnder over to see where this crowd is from,” he laughed apologetically, and approached their table with a theatrical slowness that engaged the attention of the table even before he spoke. “Did yous win? ” he asked with charm. They had lost. The match had been played in Boyle and hadn’t been even close. Their team was Shannon Gaels. “Ye must have a crowd of duffers like our crowd,” he said amiably.

  “They are not great but it’s a day out,” a man said. “Only for football we might never get out of the house.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Over and over,” another man said.

  There was more talk and some laughter. When Patrick Ryan rejoined Ruttledge at the counter, he was a man restored and refreshed.

  “They are all from Drumlion,” he confided. “Their frigger of a team lost. We might as well drink up and go now, in the name of God. Don’t forget to tell Paddy Lowe I was in and was asking for him.”

  “Who will I say …?” the girl enquired politely.

  “Tell him the man who wore the ragged jacket called. Once he hears that he’ll know. ‘For none can tell the man who wore the ragged jacket.’ ”

  “The man who wore the ragged jacket,” she repeated, puzzled and amused at his confidence and theatricality.

  “ ‘And when all is said and done, who can tell the man who wore the ragged jacket?’ ” he repeated. The men who had been to the football match shouted out to them. Ruttledge waved. Patrick Ryan stood at the door and shouted, “Up us all! Up Ceannabo!”

  “ ‘May we never die and down with the begrudgers,’ ” they chorused back and pounded their glasses on the table. One man cheered.

  “God, you could have a great evening with that crowd,” Patrick Ryan said as they got into the car. “I can tell you something for nothing, lad. Only for football and the Mass on Sunday and the Observer on Wednesday, people would never get out of their frigging houses. They’d be marooned.”

  They drove out of town and were soon back in the maze of small roads. Except for the narrow strip of sky above the bending whitethorns they could have been travelling through a green wilderness.

  “I’ll be round tomorrow. We’ll finish that shed,” Patrick Ryan said as they drove slowly, Ruttledge blowing the horn loudly at every blind turn of the road.

  “There’s no hurry.”

  “You were anxious enough to get building done once,” Patrick Ryan said.

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “You’ve got on a sight since you first came round the place, lad.”

  “We managed. Most people get by in one way or another.”

  “Some get on a sight better than others. What do you put that down to—luck? Or having something behind you?”

  “They all help,” Ruttledge said.

  “Do you miss not having children?” Patrick Ryan asked aggr
essively as if sensing the evasion.

  “No. You can’t miss what you never had. It’s not as if there aren’t enough people in the world.”

  “Was she too old when you started?”

  “No, Patrick. She wasn’t too old,” Ruttledge said quietly but with an edge of steel. “Where do you want to be left? Or do you want to come back to the house?”

  “Drop me in the village,” Patrick Ryan said.

  There was nothing stirring in the small village. A few cars stood outside the two bars. A boy was leaning over the little bridge, looking down into the shallow river, and he lifted his head as the car drew up beside the green telephone box. The priest’s cows were grazing with their calves in the rich fields around the roofless abbey.

  “You’ll see me in the morning,” Patrick Ryan said as he closed the car door, and went jauntily towards the Abbey Bar.

  At the house Ruttledge called to Kate that he was back, changed quickly into old clothes, remembering that he had completely forgotten to look at the Shorthorn.

  The cattle had left the ridged fields by the shore, their shapes still visible on the short grass. Two fields away he found them grazing greedily. At a glance he saw the old red Shorthorn was missing. Anxiously, he went in among the cattle. She wasn’t there; neither was she in any of the adjacent fields. She was their last surviving animal of the stock they had first bought. It would be hard to lose her now through carelessness.

  He searched the obvious places quickly. He said to himself as he grew anxious that it was useless to panic or rush. Nothing could be done now but to search the land methodically, field by field. Having searched every field, he found her finally in a corner of the young spruce plantation that had been set as a shelterbelt above the lake. At her back was a ditch covered with ferns and briars and tall foxgloves. She was lying on her side when he parted the branches. She tried to struggle to her feet but recognizing him fell back with a low, plaintive moan for help. “My poor old girl,” he spoke his relief at finding her. She repeated the same low call. She wanted help.