John McGahern - By the Lake

“I’m slow,” she said laughingly, not quite able or willing to hold the straight face the play demanded.

“You’re not one bit slow, Kate. You just weren’t brought up here. You nearly have to be born into a place to know what’s going on and what to do.”

“He wasn’t brought up here.”

“Not too far off, near enough to know. He wasn’t at school but he met the scholars,” he raised his glass and cheered to greet the perfect ending to the play.

There was a long silence in which they drank.

“Did you hear the cuckoo yet?” he asked.

“No. Not yet.”

“You’re very slack,” he said with pleasure. “I heard her three days ago, at ten past six in the alders on Moroney’s Hill, and twice yesterday.”

“How come you are the first to hear the cuckoo every year?”

“I’m a sleepy fox. That’s the why.”

In the lull the sound of distant drumming entered the stillness of the house. After a few seconds the drumming broke off as abruptly as it began.

“They’re gathering on Glasdrum. In a while they’ll march from the Monument to the graves in Shruhaun. I remember the ambush as if it was yesterday,” he said reflectively. “I was planting potatoes with my father on the hill. The sods had been turned and harted. I was dropping the splits in the holes my father made. They were dusted with lime. There was nearly always a cold blast on that hill.

“We saw them coming up through the bog in single file with the guns, and sloping on up towards Glasdrum under cover of the hedge this side of the river. They were all very young. Some of them were not much more than boys, God bless us all. They were planning to take cover in the ditches and to ambush the tender coming from Shruhaun as soon as it got to the top of Glasdrum.

“They walked straight into a trap. The Tans had got word, and a machine gun was set up. I never heard the sound before or since: a tinny sort of rat-tat-tat.

“Mulvey’s red bullock got hit in the eye with one of the first rounds and staggered in circles round the field for hours, bellowing. The poor fellas didn’t stand an earthly. Those that were able did their best to escape. All of them were wounded. They tried to hide as soon as they got as far as the bog.

“They were followed down with bloodhounds. There was an officer with a revolver and twelve or fourteen men with rifles. As soon as the bloodhounds sniffed out a man, the officer blew a whistle. There was never more than the one shot. None of them put up a fight. They had ditched their guns on the way down. Some of the guns were found later.

“We were in full view and had only to look down. My father warned me not to be looking and to go on dropping the splits as if nothing was happening, but you couldn’t but look. They could have seen us plain as well but they never looked our way. We could have been a cow or a horse for all the notice they took.

“We ran out of splits. We stopped all the holes and scuffled the ridges and then my father said he’d chance it to the house for a fresh bag.

“Oh my father was strong in those days. He thought nothing of rising at daylight and he’d have an acre of meadow cut with the scythe before the sun was over Moroney’s Hill. I saw him walk the eighteen miles to buy a young horse at the fair in Swanlinbar and he’d have walked the same eighteen miles home if he hadn’t bought the horse. He never spoke much. He was ignorant and thick and believed in nothing but work and having his own way in everything, but we never went hungry. My poor mother was like a wren or a robin flitting to his every beck and call. The likes of him wouldn’t be tolerated nowadays. They’d be hammered!” He drove his fist into his palm in emphasis and resentment. “They’d have every right to be hammered.”

“Wasn’t your mother afraid to be in the house?”

“She was cutting the splits and Johnny was helping. They heard the shooting and weren’t sure what it was but knew better than to open the door. They could tell my father’s step on the street when he came for the splits. What could they have done anyhow if it wasn’t his step?”

“You went on planting?”

“What else could we do? If we ran or hid they might think we were spies. All the time we could hear the bawling and roaring of Mulvey’s red bullock as he went round in circles. After a long while they headed back for Glasdrum without ever coming near us, two men dragging a corpse between them by an arm. The men that lay wounded on Glasdrum they didn’t shoot. All were brought to Carrick in the lorry. I often think of that line of young men filing up through the bog towards Glasdrum in the morning and the terrible changes a few short hours can bring.

“Not until we quit setting for the day and it was close to dark did we venture down into the bog. You’d swear to God nothing had happened. There wasn’t even a spent shell. Then from a clump of sallies hanging out over the river we heard, ‘Hel-lo … Hel-lo … Hel-lo’ in a half-whisper as if the caller was half-afraid to be heard.” Jamesie laughed as he tried to capture the tension in the call between the need to be heard and the fear of being heard.

“We went to run away. In the near darkness we thought it could be a ghost of one of the dead men. He had heard our voices and knew we were children. ‘Hel-lo … hel-lo … hel-lo … hel-lo,’ he was calling out as hard as he was able. It was Big Bernie Reynolds in the middle of the clump of sallies out in the river. His head was just above the water. He had got into the river further up and worked his way down till he reached his depth. That’s how the bloodhounds lost his trail. They also said that the coldness of the water saved him by stopping his bleeding. Somehow he wedged himself in the middle of the sallies so that he wouldn’t drown if he passed out. He was very weak. My father got him out of the river by running a rope beneath his arms. We had to run and tackle the pony. For all my father’s strength, it put him to the pin of his collar to get Big Bernie lifted on to the cart.

“We had Big Bernie for several weeks up in the loft behind the pony’s harness. The priest came and the doctor. We used a ladder. I often held the lantern while Doctor Dolan changed the bandages.

“Hel-lo … hel-lo … hel-lo,” Jamesie called out suddenly, no longer rendering the plea or call faithfully but turning it into the high cry of a bird calling out of the depths of the bog.

“The houses on the mountain were raided but luckily not one of the houses round Glasdrum was touched. If they had come and looked in the loft we were gonners. Big Bernie never spoke much. I used bring him his food and drink and take and empty his pot. He hardly ever said a word. My father gave out the rosary at night but he never answered down any of the prayers. Maybe he was afraid there could be somebody out on the street listening. As soon as he was fit to be moved they came for him at night with a sidecar.

“Then they came for poor Sinclair, the Protestant, nine fields away. The Sinclairs were quiet and hardworking and they kept to themselves like all the Protestants. They knew as much about the ambush as we knew.

“Sinclair’s wife met them when they came to the back door. She thought they were calling about a mare they had advertised in the Observer that week and pointed them to the byre where Taylor was milking. They shot him like a dog beneath the cows and said he had confessed before he was shot. Oh, we are a beautiful people, Kate. They shot him because somebody had to be made to pay and poor Sinclair was a Protestant and the nearest to hand. All the houses around were raided the next day. They searched the loft and threw down the pony’s harness but found nothing.

“Never, never, never did Big Bernie Reynolds come back once to the house to as much as say thanks, and we could have lost our lives while he was there. We never, never had as much as a word from the night they took him away on the sidecar till this very day and we are not likely to hear now unless he rises out of the ground.