By the Lake

by John McGahern

  “How did you find things up at the centre of the world?” Mrs. Maguire asked Ruttledge in a voice that betrayed the purpose of the meeting. Its source was the same anxiety that had brought about his own visit.

  “That’ll do you now. There are worse places,” the Shah said defensively.

  Ruttledge looked from face to face before he spoke. This man and woman were very close. Every Sunday and holy day they drove to Mass together, every day he had his meals in the hotel. There were many married couples who were not so close. “How do you settle with the hotel?” Ruttledge had asked his uncle once. He had never seen money changing hands. “That woman needs a lock of pounds like everybody else from time to time and she tells me.”

  From similar backgrounds they had risen in the town without ever quite belonging; both of them remained outsiders; neither had the interest or desire to join the bridge or golf club or any of the other circles in which people of their standing moved; both were too intelligent and independent to want to belong where they were ill-at-ease or at a disadvantage: their culture was that of the church and the family.

  “What particular things had you in mind?” Ruttledge enquired carefully.

  “How do you find Frank, the business, the whole place?” she asked plainly.

  “Amazingly enough—exactly the same. Nothing has changed or seems likely to change. This man appears to be working harder than ever. Frank appears grateful and happy.”

  “You’d want to give him a bit of a push when he’s starting out. You wouldn’t want to lie on him at this stage,” the Shah said.

  “Of course he’ll never be the man the first man was,” Mrs. Maguire said, and it brought the release of laughter.

  “That’ll do both of yous, now,” he shook happily, wiping his eyes with his fists.

  “I was very worried when he first brought up the idea,” Ruttledge said. “Even Kate didn’t like to see him retiring or the place changing hands.”

  “He told me,” she said. “I was worried. We were all very worried.”

  “There wasn’t a bit of need,” the Shah said confidently.

  “You can never be sure with people. Once they get the reins into their hands you don’t know what way they’ll drive.”

  “When money and power are involved people can change very quickly. I’ve seen it happen too often,” she said.

  “I imagine you’d think twice of handing everything over to your children,” Ruttledge said, and saw at once that he had blundered.

  “More than twice,” she said, looking straight ahead.

  “Anyhow this man was determined from the very beginning and it seems it couldn’t have turned out better,” Ruttledge said. “My only fear is that he’s doing too much.”

  “He’s trying to hold on to his job,” she said, looking at his ash-marked forehead with pure affection.

  “That’ll do you now. That’ll do yous all.” He shook with pure pleasure and rubbed his eyes with his fists.

  The fields long sodden with rain hardened in the drying winds. Small flowers started to appear on banks and ditches and in the shelter of the hedges. Around Mary’s old house by the lake, with the ash tree growing in the middle of the living room, hundreds of daffodils and scattered narcissi met the spring again with beauty. Birds bearing twigs in their beaks looped through the air. The brooding swan resumed her seat on the high throne in the middle of the reeds. The otter paths between the lakes grew more beaten. In shallows along the shore the water rippled with the life of spawning pike and bream: in the turmoil their dark fins showed above the water and the white of their bellies flashed when they rolled. The lambs were now out with their mothers on the grass, hopping as if they had mechanical springs in their tiny hooves, sometimes leapfrogging one another. Jamesie helped Ruttledge harness the old horse plough to the tractor and guided the handles as they turned sods and tore up ground at both houses for spring planting. Jamesie had been in the bars of Shruhaun on Patrick’s Day and complained that people with big bunches of shamrocks in their coats who had been off drink for Lent were footless. The fruit trees were fertilized and pruned. Flowers were planted out. The bees were making cleansing flights from the hives and gathering pollen. Out on a bare rock, in the middle of the drinking pool by the house, the black cat sat as studious as a scholar amid all the spawn and stirring of the pool as she waited to scoop up with one white paw any amorous frog that rose too close to the rock.

  Easter morning came clear. There was no wind on the lake. There was also a great stillness. When the bells rang out for Mass, the strokes trembling on the water, they had the entire Easter world to themselves.

  “On such an Easter morning, as we were setting out for Mass, we were always shown the sun: Look how the molten globe and all the glittering rays are dancing. The whole of heaven is dancing in its joy that Christ has risen.”

  They heard Jamesie’s racket out at the gate and his hand rattling the glass of the porch before he entered the house. “Christ has risen and God is good and Pat is earning,” he shouted out as he walked into the big room where they were sitting. “Take a break. Have a Kit-Kat.”

  “Jamesie,” they said. “You are welcome, very welcome.”

  In his Sunday suit he was shining and handsome. On the lapel of the dark suit was pinned an Easter lily.

  “Kate,” he held out his hand. She pretended to be afraid to trust her hand to such strength. “God hates a coward, Kate,” he demanded, and she took his hand.

  Not until she cried, “Easy there, Jamesie,” did he release his gently tightening grip with a low cry of triumph. “You are one of God’s troopers, Kate. Mister Ruttledge,” he bowed solemnly.

  “Mister Murphy.”

  “No misters here,” he cried. “No misters in this part of the world. Nothing but broken-down gentlemen.”

  “There are no misters in this house either. He that is down can fear no fall.”

  “Why don’t you go to Mass, then, if you’re that low? ”

  “I thought you didn’t support the men of violence?” Ruttledge fastened on the Easter lily pinned to Jamesie’s lapel, abandoning the game they had word perfect by now.

  “I support them all,” he thrust out his hand. “They were collecting outside the church gate today. They’ll be gathering soon to march from the Monument to Shruhaun. I shake hands with them all. You never know who is going to come out on top.”

  “Would you like a whiskey?” Kate smiled, returning to the game.

  “Now you’re getting down to business, Kate, but you should know by now that ‘wilya’ is a very bad word.”

  “Why?”

  “Look at yer man,” he pointed to where Ruttledge was taking glasses and a bottle of Powers from the cupboard and running water into a brown jug.

  “I’m slow,” she said laughingly, not quite able or willing to hold the straight face the play demanded.

  “You’re not one bit slow, Kate. You just weren’t brought up here. You nearly have to be born into a place to know what’s going on and what to do.”

  “He wasn’t brought up here.”

  “Not too far off, near enough to know. He wasn’t at school but he met the scholars,” he raised his glass and cheered to greet the perfect ending to the play.

  There was a long silence in which they drank.

  “Did you hear the cuckoo yet?” he asked.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “You’re very slack,” he said with pleasure. “I heard her three days ago, at ten past six in the alders on Moroney’s Hill, and twice yesterday.”

  “How come you are the first to hear the cuckoo every year?”

  “I’m a sleepy fox. That’s the why.”

  In the lull the sound of distant drumming entered the stillness of the house. After a few seconds the drumming broke off as abruptly as it began.

  “They’re gathering on Glasdrum. In a while they’ll march from the Monument to the graves in Shruhaun. I remember the ambush as if it was yesterday,” he said reflectively. �
�I was planting potatoes with my father on the hill. The sods had been turned and harted. I was dropping the splits in the holes my father made. They were dusted with lime. There was nearly always a cold blast on that hill.

  “We saw them coming up through the bog in single file with the guns, and sloping on up towards Glasdrum under cover of the hedge this side of the river. They were all very young. Some of them were not much more than boys, God bless us all. They were planning to take cover in the ditches and to ambush the tender coming from Shruhaun as soon as it got to the top of Glasdrum.

  “They walked straight into a trap. The Tans had got word, and a machine gun was set up. I never heard the sound before or since: a tinny sort of rat-tat-tat.

  “Mulvey’s red bullock got hit in the eye with one of the first rounds and staggered in circles round the field for hours, bellowing. The poor fellas didn’t stand an earthly. Those that were able did their best to escape. All of them were wounded. They tried to hide as soon as they got as far as the bog.

  “They were followed down with bloodhounds. There was an officer with a revolver and twelve or fourteen men with rifles. As soon as the bloodhounds sniffed out a man, the officer blew a whistle. There was never more than the one shot. None of them put up a fight. They had ditched their guns on the way down. Some of the guns were found later.

  “We were in full view and had only to look down. My father warned me not to be looking and to go on dropping the splits as if nothing was happening, but you couldn’t but look. They could have seen us plain as well but they never looked our way. We could have been a cow or a horse for all the notice they took.

  “We ran out of splits. We stopped all the holes and scuffled the ridges and then my father said he’d chance it to the house for a fresh bag.

  “Oh my father was strong in those days. He thought nothing of rising at daylight and he’d have an acre of meadow cut with the scythe before the sun was over Moroney’s Hill. I saw him walk the eighteen miles to buy a young horse at the fair in Swanlinbar and he’d have walked the same eighteen miles home if he hadn’t bought the horse. He never spoke much. He was ignorant and thick and believed in nothing but work and having his own way in everything, but we never went hungry. My poor mother was like a wren or a robin flitting to his every beck and call. The likes of him wouldn’t be tolerated nowadays. They’d be hammered!” He drove his fist into his palm in emphasis and resentment. “They’d have every right to be hammered.”

  “Wasn’t your mother afraid to be in the house?”

  “She was cutting the splits and Johnny was helping. They heard the shooting and weren’t sure what it was but knew better than to open the door. They could tell my father’s step on the street when he came for the splits. What could they have done anyhow if it wasn’t his step?”

  “You went on planting?”

  “What else could we do? If we ran or hid they might think we were spies. All the time we could hear the bawling and roaring of Mulvey’s red bullock as he went round in circles. After a long while they headed back for Glasdrum without ever coming near us, two men dragging a corpse between them by an arm. The men that lay wounded on Glasdrum they didn’t shoot. All were brought to Carrick in the lorry. I often think of that line of young men filing up through the bog towards Glasdrum in the morning and the terrible changes a few short hours can bring.

  “Not until we quit setting for the day and it was close to dark did we venture down into the bog. You’d swear to God nothing had happened. There wasn’t even a spent shell. Then from a clump of sallies hanging out over the river we heard, ‘Hel-lo … Hel-lo … Hel-lo’ in a half-whisper as if the caller was half-afraid to be heard.” Jamesie laughed as he tried to capture the tension in the call between the need to be heard and the fear of being heard.

  “We went to run away. In the near darkness we thought it could be a ghost of one of the dead men. He had heard our voices and knew we were children. ‘Hel-lo … hel-lo … hel-lo … hel-lo,’ he was calling out as hard as he was able. It was Big Bernie Reynolds in the middle of the clump of sallies out in the river. His head was just above the water. He had got into the river further up and worked his way down till he reached his depth. That’s how the bloodhounds lost his trail. They also said that the coldness of the water saved him by stopping his bleeding. Somehow he wedged himself in the middle of the sallies so that he wouldn’t drown if he passed out. He was very weak. My father got him out of the river by running a rope beneath his arms. We had to run and tackle the pony. For all my father’s strength, it put him to the pin of his collar to get Big Bernie lifted on to the cart.

  “We had Big Bernie for several weeks up in the loft behind the pony’s harness. The priest came and the doctor. We used a ladder. I often held the lantern while Doctor Dolan changed the bandages.

  “Hel-lo … hel-lo … hel-lo,” Jamesie called out suddenly, no longer rendering the plea or call faithfully but turning it into the high cry of a bird calling out of the depths of the bog.

  “The houses on the mountain were raided but luckily not one of the houses round Glasdrum was touched. If they had come and looked in the loft we were gonners. Big Bernie never spoke much. I used bring him his food and drink and take and empty his pot. He hardly ever said a word. My father gave out the rosary at night but he never answered down any of the prayers. Maybe he was afraid there could be somebody out on the street listening. As soon as he was fit to be moved they came for him at night with a sidecar.

  “Then they came for poor Sinclair, the Protestant, nine fields away. The Sinclairs were quiet and hardworking and they kept to themselves like all the Protestants. They knew as much about the ambush as we knew.

  “Sinclair’s wife met them when they came to the back door. She thought they were calling about a mare they had advertised in the Observer that week and pointed them to the byre where Taylor was milking. They shot him like a dog beneath the cows and said he had confessed before he was shot. Oh, we are a beautiful people, Kate. They shot him because somebody had to be made to pay and poor Sinclair was a Protestant and the nearest to hand. All the houses around were raided the next day. They searched the loft and threw down the pony’s harness but found nothing.

  “Never, never, never did Big Bernie Reynolds come back once to the house to as much as say thanks, and we could have lost our lives while he was there. We never, never had as much as a word from the night they took him away on the sidecar till this very day and we are not likely to hear now unless he rises out of the ground.

  “After the war he grew rich in the town. He was on every committee in the county. As he got old he used often sit outside his shop on a warm day. Do you think he’d ever recognize us as we passed?”

  “Couldn’t you have stopped and reminded him? People often forget and are glad to be reminded.”

  “I’d be very apt,” he said scornfully. “He knew where we lived. Would you forget if you were pulled out of the river and hid and fed in a loft for weeks? We didn’t mind. You wouldn’t leave a cat or a dog in the river, never mind a wounded man. In the spring and sometimes when it’s not spring I often see myself and my father planting potatoes on the hill and that line of young men coming up through the bog and think of the changes a short hour can bring. And that’s life!” he called out.

  “And it is everything,” Kate said slowly.

  “I don’t see queues gathering down in Shruhaun trying to get out. They have started to march.” He was listening again intently. The drumming was constant.

  “Wouldn’t it be more fitting if they had a talking dummy calling out Hel-lo every minute or so instead of the stone soldier?”

  “They’d not stand for that,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t it be better than the little stone soldier looking down the hill with his gun?”

  “They have left the Monument,” he said. “There’s no way even you, Kate, could get Hel-lo out of a stone.”

  “All you would have to do is put a long-running tape in the head that would call
out Hel-lo every so often.”

  “They’d not stand for it. They’d think you were making fun of them.”

  “But isn’t it closer to what happened?”

  “It wouldn’t make any differ. These are serious people. They would shoot you. God, but you’d love to be behind the ditch when the tourists get out of their cars with the cameras and to see their faces when the statue says Hel-lo. It’d be nearly worth doing it just to see their faces.” He laughed and drank slowly what remained in his glass. “I’ll never forget the first Hel-lo. There was a terrible gap between the ‘Hel-’ and the ‘Low.’ The poor fucker was afraid he’d be heard and afraid of his arse he’d not be heard. Now it’s a monument and an Easter march. The dead can be turned into anything,” he said almost in wonderment.

  “Why don’t we go?” Ruttledge said.

  When they came to the lake, Jamesie said, “Lord bless us, not a soul in sight on this shore. There were Sundays when this shore was black with people. There were some awful poor innocent people going then. They’d believe anything and were easily pleased. Now nothing but the divers and the swans.”

  There were primroses and violets on the banks of the lane and the dark leaf of the wild strawberry, dandelion in flower and little vetches. It was too early to scent the wild mint but they could see its rough leaves crawling along the edges of the gravel. The drumming was closer. They could hear the fifes and tin whistles. Jamesie lifted his bicycle from the hedge and cycled alongside. They hurried. When they reached the main road there was nobody else waiting. A Garda squad car had come round the turn. A colour party followed. They wore black shoes and pants, white shirts, black ties and gloves, black berets and dark glasses. Out in front a lone marcher bore the tricolour. In threes the others marched. They carried placards with slogans and photos of Pearse, McDermott and Sands on green, white and gold backgrounds. The effect was somehow sinister and cheap. A small crowd followed the band. A few were local activists but most were from the North. In the middle of the crowd, Jimmy Joe McKiernan walked quietly, the head of the Provisionals, North and South, with power over all who marched. A second Garda squad car followed at a discreet distance.