John McGahern - By the Lake

“Good health.”

“And more again tomorrow, with the help of God, as Jamesie says.”

“Good luck and cheers.”

“ ‘Lord, son, don’t cheer in here or we’ll get put out,’ as Pee Maguire said to his English son-in-law after buying him his first pint down in the pub,” Patrick Ryan joked.

As none of the men had reached for the sandwiches, Kate handed the platter around while the glasses were being refilled.

“These sandwiches are beautiful, Kate,” Johnny said.

“It’s great to see you home, Johnny,” Kate repeated.

“Johnny here was the best shot this part of the country ever saw,” Patrick Ryan said. “When all the guns were going left and right all he had to do was raise his gun for the bird to fall like a stone.”

“Nowadays I wouldn’t hit the back of a house,” Johnny said. “A few summers ago I took up Jamesie’s gun against a few grey crows. I couldn’t hit a thing.”

“It would still come back with practice.”

“I doubt that. It’s gone,” he said simply. “Patrick here was the best this part of the country has ever seen in the plays. He was the star.”

“I would have been nothing without the others,” Patrick could not hide his pleasure. “All of us were good. The two of us played off one another. There was many who said you couldn’t pick between us.”

“In Athlone when we won the Confined Cup it was Patrick who was singled out. I was sometimes mentioned in dispatches but I never won anything.”

“It’s matterless who won or didn’t win. We all won in Athlone and weren’t sober for a whole week.”

Warmed by the rum and whiskey and the memory of the lost halls, both men felt an intensity of feeling and affection that the passing day could not long sustain.

“How is England?” Patrick Ryan demanded roughly.

“England never changes much. They have a set way of doing everything there. It’s all more or less alphabetical in England.”

“Not like this fucken place. You never know what your Irishman is going to do next. What’s more, the chances are he doesn’t know either.”

“Everybody has their own way. There are times when maybe the English can be too methodical,” Johnny said.

“No danger of that here. There’s no manners.”

“Some people here have beautiful manners,” Kate protested.

“Maybe a few,” Patrick Ryan admitted grudgingly. “But there’s no rules. They’re all making it up as they sail along.”

“Are you still in the same house in England?” Ruttledge asked.

“The same house. On Edward Road. A room on the top floor. Sometimes it’s a bit of a puff to climb the stairs but it’s better than having someone over your head. I had a room in Fairlop once and there was a Pole in the room overhead. Lord bless us you’d swear he was on death row, up and down, up and down, even in the middle of the night, it’d nearly start you walking yourself. The room on Edward is a good-size room with a big window. You can watch the lights come on in the Prince.”

Suddenly, as if he was seeing Johnny’s high room for the first time and able to look all the way down Edward Road from the big window to the Prince of Wales, Patrick Ryan was drawn to the room in the same way he was drawn to strangers and started asking about the room and the house and the people in the other rooms.

“I’m sure I told it all before. I’m going on five years in the room on Edward Road,” Johnny said.

“Go ahead. There’s nothing new in the world. And we forget. We’ll hear it again,” Patrick Ryan demanded.

There was a table in the room, a high-backed chair, a single bed, an armchair for reading and listening to the radio, a gas fire in the small grate. On the mantel above the grate he always kept a pile of coins for the meter on the landing. A gas cooker and a sink were in the corner of the room inside the door. He didn’t have a television. He saw all the TV he wanted in the canteen at work and at weekends in the betting shop or in the Prince of Wales.

“Mister Singh owns the house. He’s an Indian and drives a Merc and owns several houses. All the rich Indians drive Mercs. On Thursday nights he collects the rents personally. If there’s anything wrong — a broken gas ring, an electric socket — you tell Mister Singh on Thursday night and it’s fixed pronto. The Indians are a very alphabetical people. Mister Singh doesn’t drink, very few Indians drink, it is forbidden in their religion. A Jock and a Taffie have rooms in the house but all the rest are Irish and all but two of the Irish are Murphy Fusiliers. Mister Singh rents only to single men: no marrieds, no women, no coloureds.”

“Mister Singh must be coloured himself,” Kate said.

“That makes no differ, Kate. It’s business. Mister Singh said to me once, ‘Even in Ireland you don’t mix robins with blackbirds.’ There was a pufter there for a while, English, but he ran into trouble with the Fusiliers. The Fusiliers only sleep in the house. A minibus collects them early. They work a lot around the airport and in tunnels. Most of them go straight from work to the pub without a change of clothes. They work at weekends as well. I don’t think any of them ever darkens a church. They make big money. A few of the married men are careful enough because they send money home but most let it go in smoke. Some of them get badly hurt from time to time. I heard a few were killed. They stand by one another then and take collections. A lot complains about the Fusiliers but I can find no fault. They used to give me their money to hand to Mister Singh on Thursday night and now I collect for the whole house. It suits all round. The Fusiliers are all big strong men.”

“I can’t see them and the pufter making much hay together,” Patrick Ryan grinned.

“I don’t know what happened,” Johnny said firmly. “There was a good-looking black-haired lad from the Galway Gaeltacht in the Fusiliers that the pufter tried to get friendly with. Anyhow he was taken away in an ambulance. The police were around. Mister Singh didn’t like that. Anyhow nothing came of it. The Galway lad left soon afterwards as well. The canteen in Ford’s is an easy number, clearing the tables, keeping the floors and the toilets clean, taking the bets down to the betting shop for the men on the line.”

“How is the hearing?”

“I often hear more than I want,” he said.

“Still, anything must be better than the fucken assembly line.”

“The noise was terrible but you get used. Time passes quickly on the line. You have no time to think. You’re too busy. Time is often slow enough around the canteen. But I know I’m lucky to be there at all.”

“I suppose the evenings are hard enough to put round as well,” Patrick Ryan said.

“They’re all right. As long as you have a plan,” Johnny said. “I sometimes take a light kip. Once I get up I wash and shave and change into new clothes. That’s the one thing I hold against the Fusiliers. They never change their clothes from morning till they fall into bed. If the darts team is playing away I go down to the Prince early. There’s always plenty of transport. If we’re playing at home I go down around eight-thirty and when there’s no game I dawnder down at nine. They all know me in the Prince. Saturdays and Sundays I lie in late. I always have a few bets on Saturday after going through the Post . Sundays I never miss evening Mass at St. Ann’s. Father Wrynn is the priest there. He’s from Drumshambo. I wait behind after Mass and if he’s not busy we have a long chat about home. We always have the joke how there’s no getting away from the Drumshambo wind no matter how far you travel.”

“I knew Father Wrynn’s poor father and mother well,” Patrick Ryan said with feeling. “At that time you had to be rich to have a priest in the family. The Wrynns weren’t rich but they worked every hour God sent. They thought they were entering heaven the day Father Wrynn was ordained.”