John McGahern - By the Lake

“They are very young, the workers,” Ruttledge said to one of the watchers at the glass wall.

“Like footballers. Few last more than a couple of years — the damp, all the lifting; it’s a young man’s game.”

“What do they do then?”

“What does anybody do who needs work?” the man smiled grimly. “Go on the buildings or to a different factory. Head for America or England or do without.”

At a busy inner office a woman tapped the details on the slip into a machine that produced an itemized account complete with deductions. She then wrote a cheque, had it countersigned by the only man in the office, and gave the cheque and account to Ruttledge in a brown envelope. The whole atmosphere was efficient and friendly and casual, the stream of men coming and going with their slips.

“Nearly all the women in that office are married,” said Jamesie, who had been busy looking at their hands while Ruttledge’s slip was being processed. “It’s a sight how the world is going. You drive in with a trailer of lambs and an hour later leave with them all in a cheque in your hip pocket,” he remarked as they drove away with the empty trailer.

Soon his eyes were feasting on the fields of short, rich grass in their walls of lichened limestone, the slender ash trees, a huge chestnut, some elevated strips of bare rock, like promontories in a sea of grass.

“A few fields of this land would be worth a whole farm around the lake.”

At an empty bar-and-grocery outside Roscommon town they had ham sandwiches with a creamy pint of stout. A woman sliced the ham and made up the sandwiches from a loaf so fresh the bread was warm. Jamesie was enjoying the strange bar and looking forward to the rest of the journey. Ruttledge was relieved the morning was over.

“Have you noticed how the journey home always seems to go faster?” he asked, when the pleasure boats came into view as they crossed the Shannon by the narrow bridge at Rooskey.

“Of course,” Jamesie answered readily. “You never know rightly what you are facing into when you’re setting out. You always know the way home.”

There was a space for the car and empty trailer outside Luke’s, and Jamesie practically danced into the bar in front of Ruttledge. Luke was sitting behind the counter, his chin resting on his joined hands. Except for a family of tinkers drinking quietly in a corner, the bar was empty. Jamesie went straight up to the counter.

“Are you vexed yet, Luke?” he demanded.

Luke leaned slightly forward to say in a mock, confidential voice, “I’m not vexed yet, Jamesie.”

“Why aren’t you vexed, Luke?”

“It’s not time yet.”

“When will it be time?”

Luke stared studiously at the electric clock among the wreaths of plastic flowers. “At two minutes to four I’ll be very vexed but I’ll expect you to be gone out of the town before then.”

“Good man, Luke! You never failed us yet,” Jamesie cried approval, and by now the tinker family had dropped their own quiet conversation. All their attention was fixed on the two men at the counter.

“A pair of Crested Tens and two pints of stout, Luke,” Ruttledge called.

“The man who made the money is buying,” Jamesie rubbed his hands vigorously together. Through the bar window they could see all the way across the street to where a man was laying out trays of potted plants on a long trestle table. Jamesie wandered over to talk to the tinkers.

“Mister and Missus McDonough. You are most welcome to the town,” he said expansively, holding out his hand. They were delighted. Neither seemed to mind that they lived closer to the town than he did and were in the bar and the town long before he arrived.

“Good health, Luke.”

“Good luck and a long life,” Luke said. “I see your friend has left you.”

“He’ll be back,” Ruttledge said.

Ruttledge picked a time when he was fairly sure of finding Frank Dolan alone to see if he was interested in taking over the Shah’s business. At six the scrapyard would be closed. The Shah would be enthroned at his table in the Central. The men who waited about the sheds and scrapyard all day would have retired to their cottages. The little shops were already closed or closing as he drove through the town.

He found Frank Dolan in the main shed. He was in one of the deep pits examining an old JCB, the sheepdog lying close to his head on the edge of the pit. Recognizing him at once, the dog ran forward.

“He knows, he knows,” Frank Dolan said of the sheepdog as he climbed the steps out of the deep pit. He was as besotted with the dog as his master was.

“If anybody else had walked up like that he’d have devoured them. In another hour there won’t be sight or light of him round the place. He’ll have disappeared to meet Himself coming from the Central. Isn’t that right?” he caught and roughed the dog playfully, who growled in turn and caught and held Frank Dolan by the wrist. When the dog released his hand, he wiped it with a cloth and offered Ruttledge a little finger in a gentle, comic apology for the oil-and-grease-stained hands.

The two men were friendly. They had known each other a long time without ever having been close. Frank’s grey eyes were humorous and sharply intelligent and over the years he had acquired a striking resemblance to his master, so much so that he was sometimes taken for his son by inexperienced commercial travellers. This was seen by both as highly compromising.

There was little similarity of feature but they had grown alike in the way they moved and stood and talked and listened. Through night classes and reading and the practical work of the shed, Frank had become knowledgeable and skilled. The Shah knew little about the newer machines; what he could do well was rough welding, meet customers he liked and buy and sell shrewdly. Each stayed well clear of the other’s territory.

“His lordship asked me to have a word with you on a small business matter,” Ruttledge said when pauses began to occur in the polite conversation.

Immediately, Frank Dolan assumed an apprehensive formality.

“It’s nothing unpleasant,” Ruttledge hastened to say. “Is it all right to talk here?”

“We’d be safer further back.” He was reassured but still apprehensive. He and the Shah shared a dislike of anything new or strange entering their world.

They moved through a clutter of old engines, cars, tractors, machines, tools, benches, Frank Dolan patting the dog’s head as if for comfort. From the back it was possible to see how enormous the shed was, all the way out to the huge rounded arch.

“He wants to retire and is thinking of selling. Would you be interested?”

Frank Dolan’s face registered shock, washed clean of its everyday watchful expression, and was replaced by an intensity of feeling that was close to innocence. Ruttledge still hadn’t any idea what his response might be.

He looked long and seriously into Ruttledge’s face as he answered, “I would be very interested,” with a mixture of iron dignity and humility.

Ruttledge hadn’t been expecting anything as straightforward and uncomplicated. “He’s not too hard in what he’s asking,” he said and told him the price the Shah had agreed.

Frank Dolan looked steadily into Ruttledge’s face but did not make any comment on the price. “The big question: Can it be afforded? Can I get money?” he said as if thinking aloud to himself out of unnerving silence. “To be interested is the easy part.”

“Only you could know that, Frank.”

“How?” he asked bluntly and without guile.

“Do you have any savings or property?”

He had no property but had considerable savings, much more than Ruttledge would have guessed. “How though will the rest be got?” His tone changed, asking humbly, almost hopelessly.