John McGahern - By the Lake

“He would be appalled. He never travelled outside America and thought it vulgar for people to go abroad since everything that anybody could want was in the greatest country on earth. He never forgave my mother for marrying an Englishman.”

“The greatest country in Ireland was always the world to come.”

“And all we have is the day.”

“We better make the most of it,” Ruttledge kissed her lightly as they rose.

He tended his own cattle and sheep. The work was pleasure. All the animals were healthy and the tasks took up little more than an hour. Then he walked round the lake to Jamesie’s, taking a bottle of whiskey. The heron rose lazily out of the reeds. Wildfowl scattered from the reeds to gather out in the middle of the lake. The two swans were fishing close to their old high nest in the thick reeds. The first bell for Mass came over the water but no cars could be heard starting up between the bells. Everyone had attended Midnight Mass and was still sleeping. At the house he was met by the furious barking of the closeted dogs, the expectant clucking of the hens, the lowing of the old cow. The brown hens were loosed and fed, then the excited dogs. The cowhouse had been recently whitewashed inside and out and the stone walls were a soft, glowing white. The two doors were painted bright red. Inside, the four cows were tied with chains to posts, their calves loose in a big wooden pen made from straight branches of ash taken from the hedge. Most of the bark had peeled or was worn away and the timber was so smooth it shone in places and was cool and polished to the hand. To the excited bawling of the calves, he fed each cow a measure of crushed oats from a sack on a raised stand, watered them and fed them the hay he had baled in summer. The bales had the sweet smell of hay saved without rain. With a graip and brush he quickly cleaned the house before letting out the calves to their suck. Despite Jamesie’s manly protestation that he had no interest in the cows other than the money they brought in, they were all placid and used to being handled. When the work was done and he had returned the calves to their pen, the brown hens and the dogs to their houses, he stood for a while on the street while a clock struck the hour from within the house: the whole place and everything about it was plain and beautiful. He then took the bottle of Powers, which he had left beside the pot of geraniums on the windowsill, and walked quickly towards the lake to see if Patrick Ryan was at home this Christmas morning.

The road he climbed from the lake was no longer passable other than on foot. Parts of it had been torn away by floods and never resurfaced. A rusted iron gate stood between two thick round stone piers but the entrance was choked with fuchsia and sally. There was a fresh gash in the ground where the gate had been pushed open and there were recent footprints. The whole street was grass-grown. Beside the door was a small pile of tins and bottles and plastic bags and milk cartons. Both the house and sheds were iron-roofed and solid but they hadn’t been touched by paint or whitewashed in years. Beyond the house, the old hayshed had been torn down in a storm. A mangled sheet of iron hung from an iron post like a dispirited brown flag. It was to this house Patrick Ryan had moved when he allowed the house he had grown up in to fall.

There was no answer to Ruttledge’s knock and call. The door was unlocked. Inside, the room mustn’t have changed in fifty or so years. It hadn’t changed since Ruttledge first saw it ten or fifteen years before, the brown dresser, the settlebed, the iron crook above the open hearth, the horse harness hanging between the religious pictures on the wall — the smiling Virgin, the blood-drip from the Crown of Thorns — all faded now with damp spots underneath the glass, the cheapness moving, since it too had been touched and held in depths of time. In the small window the stone walls were at least four feet thick. The naked electric bulb that hung from the ceiling answered to the switch. By the fireplace was a bale of peat briquettes and in the centre of the floor was a pile of dry branches. A brand-new red Bushman was thrown among the branches and here and there on the floor were little piles of sawdust. A bowl of sugar, unwashed cups, milk, part of a loaf, a sardine tin, a plate with eggshells, a half-full bottle of Powers, a bar of soap, butter, an empty packet of Silk Cut, red apples, a pot of marmalade, salt, matches, a brown jug, an open newspaper, a transistor radio, an alarm clock littered the table. In stark contrast, one small corner of the room was spare and neat. An iron rested on an ironing board. Two perfectly ironed white shirts were hung beside a pressed dark suit. A pair of fine black leather shoes that had been polished till they shone sat on a chair.

Ruttledge called again and was answered by an indefinite sound from the upper room. When he pushed open the door he saw a big iron bed with broken brass bells piled high with clothes and overcoats in a corner of the room. The only sign of a human presence in this mound of clothes was a nose, straight and sharp as a blade.

“What do you want?” The nose was joined to the rest of Patrick Ryan’s handsome head.

“Nothing.”

“What brought you, then?”

“To see how you were. Christmas.”

“Christmas brings out the eejit in everybody,” he said and suddenly swung out of the bed. Except for a shirt of rough material that fell to his hips he was naked. The strong body could have been the body of a younger man. This good-looking, vigorous man had lived all his life around the lake where nothing could be concealed, and he had never shown any sexual interest in another. “I don’t have to even countenance that job,” he joked once to Ruttledge. “John Quinn has agreed to do my share.”

“We’ll have to get up that shed one of these days, lad,” he said as he lifted a pair of trousers from the floor and pulled them on.

The alarm clock started up in the lower room as he was pulling on his socks. “Will you turn that clock off, lad?”

The old blue alarm clock was dancing on the table and he lifted it before turning off the alarm. He moved the bottle of Powers he had brought in beside the half-full bottle of whiskey on the crowded table and waited. When Patrick Ryan came down to the room he was wearing loose shoes and an old brown sweater, and was running his fingers through his thick grey hair. “You’ll have a drink, lad.”

“No thanks, Patrick, it’s too early.”

“It’s Christmas,” he said, and noticed the bottle of Powers. “What the fuck is this?”

“A bottle I brought for Christmas.”

“You’ll have to have a drink, then, lad.”

“It’s too early.”

“What do you want poisoning me for with what you won’t drink yourself?”

“I drink plenty … too much sometimes.”

“We all drink too much, lad. Would you see if you could get a bit of a fire started to see if we can make anything of this Christmas Day?”

With the Bushman Ruttledge sawed the dried branches. Using a fire-lighter he soon had a bright fire going under the black kettle on the crook. While they waited for the kettle to boil, Patrick Ryan ate the red apples and a few slices of buttered bread with a mug of milk into which he tipped a splash of whiskey. “Are you happy, lad?” he demanded.

Ruttledge had added turf briquettes to the fire and was looking silently into the flames.

“I’m not unhappy,” he answered, surprised.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not over the moon. I have health, for the time being, enough money, no immediate worries. That, I believe, is about as good as it gets. Are you happy?”

“I am in fuck. There are times I don’t know who I am from one minute to the next. That’s why I always liked the acting. You are someone else and always know what you are doing and why.”