John McGahern: By the Lake

“He went after Anna Mulvey. He and Anna were the stars in The Playboy that got to the All-Ireland Finals in Athlone the year before but neither of them was fit to hold a candle to Patrick Ryan. He had Donoghue the solicitor in town down to a T as — I forget rightly who it was … Patrick had the whole hall in stitches every time he moved. Johnny was wild about Anna. We were sure Anna left for England to get away from Johnny. The Mulveys were well off and she didn’t have to go. Then when she wrote to Johnny that she missed him and wanted him to come to England I don’t think his feet touched the ground for days. We wanted him to take sick leave and go and test the water and not burn all his bridges but he wouldn’t hear. If he’d heeded our words he could be still here.”

“Why would Anna write for him to come to England when she wasn’t serious or interested?”

“She was using him. She could be sure of adoration from Johnny. She had only to say the word and she’d get anything she wanted.”

“That was wrong,” Kate said.

“Right or wrong, fair or foul, what does it matter? It’s a rough business. Those that care least will win. They can watch all sides. She had no more value on Johnny than a dog or a cat.

“Poor Bran and Oscar. The gun dogs were beautiful. They were as much part of Johnny as the double barrel, and they adored him. The evening before he left he took them down to the bog with the gun. They were yelping and jumping around and following trails. They thought they were going hunting. I remember it too well. The evening was frosty, the leaves just beginning to come off the trees. There wasn’t a breath of wind. You’d hear a spade striking a stone fields away, never mind a double-barrel. There was just the two shots, one after the other. We would have been glad to take care of the dogs but he never asked. I wasn’t a great shot like Johnny but I would have kept the gun and the dogs. They were beautiful dogs. That evening a man came for the gun and another for the motorbike. He had sold them both. You’d think he’d have offered me the gun after all the years in the house. I’d have given him whatever he wanted.”

“Why didn’t you ask to buy the gun?”

“No. I’d not ask. I’d die before I’d ask.”

“Why?”

“He might think I wanted the gun for nothing. I didn’t mind the gun so much though it was a smasher. It was the poor dogs that killed me — and Mary … far worse. She adored the dogs.

“Johnny took the train the next evening. That was the move that ruined his life. He’d have been better if he’d shot himself instead of the dogs.”

“Wasn’t it a courageous thing compared to what happens in most of our lives? To abandon everything and to leave in the hope of love?”

“No, Kate. You don’t know what you’re saying. He didn’t know what he was doing. He’d have gone into a blazing house if she asked. Compared to what he saw in her he put no value on his own life. He thought he couldn’t live without her.”

“Why was she using him if she didn’t want him?”

“You must know, Kate. You’re a woman.”

“There are as many different kinds of women as there are men.”

“Mary says the same,” he struck the arm of the chair for emphasis. “Johnny’d have bought her drinks, cigarettes, God knows what, we don’t know, and he gave her money. He had a lot of money when he went to England and he’d have given her the clothes off his back if she asked. He’d be at her every beck and call. We heard afterwards that Anna went to England after Peadar Curren and got burned. I suppose Johnny put her back on her feet after the gunk she got with Peadar and then she got rid of him. Johnny didn’t come home that first summer but came without fail every summer since.”

“Was Anna mentioned when he came?”

“Never once. We don’t even know how it ended. Then we heard she married a policeman in London who turned for her.”

“Converted to Catholicism,” Ruttledge explained. “Turned his coat. I’d have turned my coat for you, Kate, but I had no coat to turn by that time, and you never asked.”

“Spoken like a true heathen. They’ll all turn, Kate. If they have to pick between their religion and the boggy hollow, they’ll all turn,” he laughed exultantly.

“We’ve all been in Johnny’s place, except maybe not to the same extent,” Ruttledge said.

“Speak for yourself, Mister Ruttledge. I haven’t been there,” Jamesie said.

“Then you haven’t been far.”

“I’ve never, never moved from here and I know the whole world,” he protested.

“You’re right, Jamesie. Pay no heed to him,” Kate said.

“What do you think, Kate?”

“I think women are more practical. They learn to cut their losses. They are more concentrated on themselves.”

“Enter lightly, Kate, and leave on tiptoe. Put the hand across but never press. Ask why not but never why. Always lie so that you speak the truth and God save all poor sinners,” he said, and greeted his own sally with a sharp guffaw.

A loud sudden rapping with a stick on the porch door did not allow for any response. “God bless all here!” was shouted out as a slow laborious shuffle approached through the front room.

“Bill Evans.”

“It could be no one else,” Jamesie rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

Bill Evans did not pause in the doorway but advanced boldly into the room to sit in the white rocking chair. The huge wellingtons, the blue serge trousers and torn jacket, a shirt of mattress ticking, the faded straw hat were all several sizes too large. The heavy blackthorn he carried he leaned against an arm of the chair. His eyes darted eagerly from face to face to face. “Jamesie,” he grinned with condescension. “You are welcome to this side of the lake.”

“I’m delighted, honoured to be here,” Jamesie laughed.

Tea was made. Milk and several spoons of sugar were added to the tea and stirred. The tea and biscuits were placed on a low stool beside the rocking chair. He ate and drank greedily.

“How are you all up there?”

“Topping. We are all topping.”

“You are managing all right without Jackie?”

“Getting along topping. Managing fine.”

He had been schooled never to part with any information about what happened. There was much to conceal about Bill Evans’s whole life. Because he knew no other life, his instinct to protect his keepers and his place was primal.

“Do you think will Herself get married again?” Jamesie asked jocularly, provocatively.

“Everybody says that you are far too nosy.”

“News is better than no news,” Jamesie answered, taken aback.

There are no truths more hurtful than those we see as partly true. That such a humble hand delivered it made it more unsettling. Though he pretended not to care, Jamesie knew that his curiosity was secretly feared and openly mocked. He became unusually silent.

Bill Evans finished the tea and biscuits. “Have you any fags?” he demanded when he put the plate and cup away and rose out of the rocking chair.

Ruttledge gave him five loose cigarettes that had been placed in a corner of the dresser. “A light?” Bill asked. Some matches from a box were emptied into his palm. Cigarettes and matches were all put together into the breast pocket of the large serge jacket. “Not faulting the company but I’ll be beating away now,” he said.

“Good luck, Bill,” Jamesie called out amiably, but Bill Evans made no answer.

Ruttledge accompanied him to the gate where he had left the two buckets in the hedge of fuchsia bushes.

“See if there’s anybody watching in the lane,” he demanded.

Ruttledge walked out into the lane and looked casually up and down. Between its high banks the narrow lane was like a lighted tunnel under the tangled roof of green branches. “There’s not a soul in sight.”