John McGahern - By the Lake

The pain inflicted by the bees was cast aside as Patrick Ryan hurried down the ladder to go towards his old friend. “Johnny. You never lost it, me oul’ comrade.” They clasped hands high like athletes in victory and then held them still as if about to begin a trial of strength.

“They’re all fucked,” Johnny sang.

“Except our Ellen,” Patrick Ryan took up as they danced round and round with clasped hands held high.

“And she’s, and she’s, and she’s,” they sang out as they swung. “And she’s in Castle — Castlepollard,” they sang as they came to a breathless stop and cheered.

“You’re welcome home. Welcome home from England.”

“Great to be home. Great to see yous all so well.”

“You’re welcome home, Johnny,” Ruttledge took his hand.

“Great, great to see you. Herself is well?”

“She’ll be delighted to see you.”

“I heard only yesterday,” Patrick Ryan said.

“It was all alphabetical,” Johnny said. “Jamesie met the train per usual in Johnny Rowley’s car. We stopped at several bars. When we got home Mary hopped the sirloin on the pan and it was like butter. Jamesie fell asleep at the Stanley and burned his forehead while we were eating. The scutching Mary gave him would do your heart good. In short, it was all quite alphabetical and couldn’t be done any better. I borrowed Mary’s bicycle here to cycle over to see yous all. It’s great to see everybody looking so well.”

“You are still at Ford’s in Dagenham?”

“Still at Ford’s. In the canteen, hoovering up, keeping the toilets clean. You’d hardly call it work.”

“It must be better than being on the line,” Patrick Ryan said.

“The line was terrible. It did the old ears no good,” he indicated a pale plastic hearing aid attached to his left ear. “That’s how I got moved to the canteen.”

“You made the mistake of your life when you left here. You were in paradise and didn’t know it. You went and threw it all away.”

“Maybe I did make a mistake,” Johnny assented blankly as if blankness alone could turn aside the judgement. “Anyhow it’s done now.”

“Patrick shows none of us any mercy,” Ruttledge said by way of comfort.

“I tell the truth and ask no favours.”

“The truth isn’t always useful.”

“Tell me what is.”

“Kindness … understanding … sympathy maybe. I’ll tell Kate Johnny is here. She’ll want to get a few things ready.”

“Tell her to go to no trouble. I only cycled over to see that you are all well.”

“Go in,” Patrick Ryan said roughly to Ruttledge. “And tell her we’ll not be in for a while.”

“They’re still here?” Johnny said when Ruttledge had gone.

“As large as life.”

“I never thought they’d last out. Every year I came home expecting to find them gone.”

“They’re expanding,” Patrick Ryan gestured ironically towards the four iron posts holding the squares and rectangles of wood. “I think we better make up our minds that they’ll be here now like the rest of us till the hearse comes. They even bought more land, as if they hadn’t enough.”

“I heard. Are they making any better shape of it?”

“They’d pass. You know yourself that you have to be born into land. That brother of yours kept them afloat in the beginning. Everything round the place are treated like royals. There’s a black cat in there with white paws that’d nearly get up on its hind legs and order his breakfast. You’d not get thanked now if you got caught hitting it a dart of a kick on the quiet. The cattle come up to the back of the house and boo in like a trade union if the grass isn’t up to standard. They reseeded meadows and had to buy sheep to crop the grass. They even got to like the sheep. There’s no more stupid animal on God’s earth. There’s an old Shorthorn they milk for the house that would nearly sit in an armchair and put specs on to read the Observer . The bees nearly ate the arse off me an hour ago. She draws all that she sees. She even did a drawing of me.”

“What was it like?”

“You wouldn’t hang it up on a wall now,” he said with a laugh. “You wouldn’t know whether I was man or beast.”

“She probably wears the britches. In England it’s the women that mostly wears the britches. The men are too washed out to care.”

“Let me tell you. They’ll all wear the britches wherever they’re let. I’ve seen it all in house after house. That pair in there are different. They never seem to go against one another. There are times when they’d make you wonder whether they are man and woman at all.”

“Strange to think of all the people that went out to England and America and the ends of the earth from this place and yon pair coming back against the tide.”

“People had to go. They had no choice. You went and had no need to go.”

“I know. I know. I know.”

“You’d be on the pig’s back now, lad, if you’d stayed.”

“We’d all be rich if we knew the result of tomorrow’s races.”

“All around could see at the time and yet you couldn’t see.”

“All around didn’t count. We better, I suppose, in the name of God, go into the house.”

“Wait a minute,” Patrick Ryan said and proceeded to gather his tools — a spirit level, metal measuring tape, set square, a saw, a hammer, various chisels — into a brown hold-all.

“Another thing that brought them here was the quiet. Will you listen to the fucken quiet for a minute and see in the name of God if it wouldn’t drive you mad?”

As if out of a deep memory of timing and ensemble playing, both men flung themselves into a comic, exaggerated attitude of listening, a hand cupped behind an ear, and stood as frozen as statues in a public place.

In the held minute, the birds seemed to sing more furiously in their branches. Bees laboured noisily between the stalks of red and white clover. Cattle lowed down by the lakeshore. Further away, cars and lorries passed on the main road and from further away still came the harsh, heavy clanging of a mechanical shovel as it cleared a hedgerow or dug the foundations of a house. As suddenly as they launched themselves into this burlesque of listening and stillness, they danced noisily free, cheered, clapped their hands and, taking one another’s raised arm, danced awkwardly round and round an iron post.

They were both out of breath and Johnny looked distressed, sweating profusely but wonderfully revived in spirit. “We better go in before we do any more damage,” he fought for breath as he laughed.

“If we stay out here any longer they might think we were talking about them,” Patrick Ryan said.

They went noisily into the house.

“You’re welcome home, Johnny.”

“Great to be home, Kate. Great to see yous all well.”

A damp tea towel covered squares of sandwiches. She took the towel from the yellow platter and placed it on a chair between the two men. Ruttledge poured rum from a dust-covered bottle into a glass and added blackcurrant concentrate.

“Rum and black,” Johnny said as he took the glass. “You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble. A whiskey would have done just as well.”

“The bottle nearly waits for you from one year to the next. Very few around take rum except maybe one or two at Christmas.”

“As soon as I walk into the Prince of Wales they hop up the rum and black on the counter before the regulars have even time to lift their glasses,” Johnny said.

“I don’t know where you got the taste,” Patrick Ryan said. “You even drank rum before you left.”

Ruttledge poured Patrick Ryan a large glass of whiskey and added water from the brown jug. Kate shook her head to his silent enquiry. He poured himself a whiskey and drank with the men.