John McGahern - By the Lake

“The next time I might hit nothing,” he replied modestly.

“Thanks, Luke.”

“Thanks yerselves,” Luke said as he gathered in their glasses, and they were followed out by a chorus of “Good luck!” and “Safe Journey!” and “Don’t take to the hedges!”

Johnny was completely revived and needed no guiding to the car and trailer. Except for the bars the town was closed and had the same sense of closure and emptiness as beaches and public gardens at the end of the day.

“Your uncle is still going good?” Johnny enquired politely as they drove out of town.

“Still the same. Dines in the Central. He has sold the business to Frank Dolan but it just goes on the same as ever. You’d think it had never changed hands.”

“He must be a very rich man now. Everybody said he was crazy at the time when he went and bought the old railway.”

“He has more now than he needs. There’s only so much you can do with the day.”

“It may be the whole show,” Johnny agreed.

They had left the main road and entered the green lanes, whitethorns brushing the windscreen and filtering down the light. Because of the narrowness, they drove slowly and blew the horn loudly at every turn.

“Patrick Ryan will be sure to be around when he hears you are home. Maybe we could all go into Luke’s together some evening and make a night of it,” Ruttledge said.

“That’d be great. Luke’s is a very friendly place. He was always decent,” Johnny said.

After the green enclosures of the lanes, the lake met them with space and light. A red sun was low in the sky.

“All I have to do is hop the bike on the trailer and run you up to the house,” Ruttledge said when they reached the gate.

“No. They’d think I was going soft,” Johnny said firmly. “I’ll just get the bicycle from behind the pier and dawdle up at my ease. I have the whole evening.”

They both got out of the car. The engine was left running.

“Are you certain now?” Ruttledge enquired a last time as Johnny took the bicycle.

“No,” he said adamantly. “We had a most wonderful evening. It helped put round the whole day. It’s all A-one. Everything now is completely alphabetical.”

While Ruttledge was unloading the trailer he looked from time to time across the lake. Johnny was climbing the hill slowly, pausing many times, a small dark figure on the pale pass shadowed by the whitethorns. When at last he reached the brow of the hill, he stood for a long time leaning on the bicycle. All he had to do from there was freewheel down to the house. Behind him on Moroney’s Hill there shivered a pure sky that was turning pale as ash as the sun went down.

Within the house, Ruttledge told of Johnny’s fear of being abandoned in the town and then his triumph in Luke’s as each arrow flew true.

“The visit was disturbing,” Kate said.

“Because of his confusion?”

“That and because he doesn’t look well.”

“What I’d like this evening is some wine,” Ruttledge said.

The table was laid, a single candle lit, the curtains not drawn. As they ate and drank and talked, the huge shapes of the trees around the house gradually entered the room in the flickering half-light, and the room went out, as if in a dream, to include the trees and the fields and the glowing deep light of the sky. In this soft light the room seemed to grow enormous and everything to fill with repose.

A wild battering on the doors and windows, as if a storm had sprung up on the lake, woke them out of deep sleep. The house was shaking. They looked at one another in alarm and then heard a voice shouting out through all the pounding and battering. Pulling on clothes, Ruttledge ran towards the noise. Outside the glass porch Jamesie stood clear as day in the full moon above the lake. His huge hand was open and beating flatly on the glass while his other hand was shaking the locked door. The glass shook in the heavy frames as if about to shatter.

“Johnny’s dead. Johnny’s dead. Johnny’s dead,” he was calling out. “Johnny’s dead,” he continued calling out when Ruttledge opened the door.

“He can’t be. I left him at the lake gate …”

“Dead. Had the priest and the doctor. Dead.”

“I can hardly believe. I’m sorry.”

“Dead before nine. Me and Mary were down in the bog. She left his tea ready but saw him come in on the street with the bicycle and went up from the bog to make his tea. She said he was in topping form and spoke of yourself and Kate and the great time he had in the town. When she left him he was watching Mickey Mouse on the TV. He always liked those cartoons. Twice we saw him come out on the street when we were in the bog. He stood as if he was looking across at the alders on Moroney’s Hill. Mary was the first to leave the bog and heard a sort of a moan when she got near the house and found him slumped sideways. When he didn’t answer she shouted down to the bog. When I got to the house he was still able to talk but it was all ravelled. The priest said he wasn’t fully gone at the time he was anointed. The doctor said the heart just gave out and it could have happened at any time.”

Jamesie spoke very quickly and his disarray and shock were obvious but there was a finished feel to the account, as if it had been given a number of times already.

“I’m very sorry.” Ruttledge offered his hand and winced at the fierceness of the clasp. “I wanted to leave him all the way up to the house but he wouldn’t hear. He insisted on walking.”

“I know. He told it all to Mary when she was getting his tea. He had a great appetite after the town and lately he’s only been picking at his plate.”

“I’m sorry, Jamesie,” Kate joined them in the porch. “Will you come in and take something?”

“No. No. We have several houses to call to yet,” and it was only then Ruttledge noticed the small car waiting discreetly beyond the alder at the gate.

“Is there anything we can do to help?”

“Not a thing. Nothing. We can’t find Patrick Ryan anywhere. Nobody seems to know where he’s been working or gone. Some even said he could be gone to Dublin to do work for the Reynolds that have houses there.”

“We’ll be over as soon as we get dressed. Is there anything we can bring?”

“No. No. Everything’s got. Take your time.”

The moon was so bright, the night so clear, that the headlights of the small car showed weakly in the spaces between the trees as it crawled out around the shore.

They decided to walk. Wildfowl took fright as soon as they turned round the shore and clattered out towards where flocks of birds were clustered like dark fruit in the middle of the lake. The trees stood like huge sentinels along the shore, casting long shadows back on the moonlit grass. Here and there a barely perceptible night breeze stirred the still water, and stretches appeared like furrows of beaten silver under the moon. The heron had been disturbed by the car and did not rise until they were far out along the shore and was ghostly as it lifted lazily towards the moon before turning back the way they had come.

“The last thing he said to me was here,” Ruttledge spoke when they reached the open gate: “ ‘Everything is now completely alphabetical.’ ”

“It surely was. Somewhere between Y and Z .”

The small street was filled with cars. Beyond the netting wire the iron posts of the empty hayshed stood out in the moonlight, as did the whitewashed outhouses. The henhouse was closed. Rectangles of light lay on the street from the small window and the open door. The living room was full of people. All the clocks had been stopped. The long inner room was open and several cardboard boxes rested on the oval table. The chairs had been taken from the room and filled the small living room. The door to the lower room was closed.