John McGahern - By the Lake

“Please God.”

As they descended the hill, they walked into the white morning mist that obscured and made ghostly the shapes of the trees along the shore. Hidden in the mist, wildfowl were shrieking and chattering wildly out in the centre of the lake. At the corner the old grey-suited heron rose and flapped lazily ahead before disappearing into the white mist. They were too full of tiredness and reflection to talk.

“What was it like preparing the body?” Kate asked finally as they were climbing towards their own house.

“I’m not sure except I am very glad to have done it. It made death and the fear of death more natural, more ordinary. What did you do?”

“Made tea, poured drinks, helped Mary make sandwiches. Did you ever see anything like that entrance?”

Ruttledge shook in silent laughter that was a thinner, paler version of his uncle’s. “Sergeant Death appeared and found he had arrived too late.”

As they climbed the hill to their own house he decided not to tell her yet that Patrick Ryan was coming the following week to complete the building of the shed.

Big Mick Madden joined Jamesie and Patrick Ryan and Ruttledge in the digging of the grave. They had to search for the family plot amid the headstones and long grass out from the monastery walls, and found it marked with a rusted iron cross in a rusted circle a blacksmith had made. Some of the marks the hammer made on the iron still showed on the rust. Once the long grass was cleared, Patrick Ryan measured the grave with a tape and marked the corners with small pegs. All four men who had watched the march from the Monument to the graves of Shruhaun on Easter Sunday began to dig. Outside the graveyard wall the priest’s cattle grazed on the grass-grown ruins of the ancient settlement. They were sleek and fat from the rich grass, many calves resting with their mothers on the uneven ground. The grave sank quickly at first, but as it deepened the pace slowed: it was no longer possible to swing the pick, and each slow inch had to be scraped out with the crowbar and steel spade. They worked turn and turn about and began to talk more. Around them the bees moved about on the red and white clover and small yellow flowers. The occasional motor or lorry passed in a cloud of white dust. Away across the lakes and the bogs, the mountains stood in a distant haze of blue. As they worked, the shadow of the monastery walls drew closer to the open grave.

“This place was swarming with monks once. They had big disputes over books. They used to raise welts on one another,” Patrick Ryan asserted.

“The likes of us would be just slaves,” Big Mick Madden said. “They ruled the countryside from here. If we stepped out of line they’d gather a crowd for a quick trial on the shore and we’d be rowed out into the middle of the lake with a stone around our necks.”

“It’s all at peace now,” Ruttledge said, looking about at the traces of the streets and huts and the buildings that could be traced through the lines and indentations on the short grass where the cattle lay.

“You wouldn’t know, lad,” Patrick Ryan argued. “It’s just more covered up. The crowd in charge are cleverer these days. They have to be. People have more information now about what goes on.”

They reached pieces of rotted board, bones, a skull.

Jamesie gathered the bones into a plastic bag. “My mother was buried on the village side of the grave. If my turn is next it looks as if I’ll be going down to my old father.”

“God rest the dead.”

“Rest in peace.”

“Amen.”

“My old boy is fixed over there.” Big Mick Madden pointed out another iron cross within an iron circle close by, slightly more elaborate than Jamesie’s family cross; the outer arms of the cross were shaped and beaten into a suggestion of rose petals. “It took him two whole days to die.”

All the antagonism he held towards Jamesie had disappeared.

“I remember it well,” Patrick Ryan said. “Big John, your father, was a huge man, at least twenty stone, and wouldn’t harm a child. A big crowd gathered round the house. I was there both evenings. Between every breath he drew he’d say, ‘It’s a huar,’ as if he was labouring hard. After each loud rattling breath you’d hear, ‘It’s a hu-ar,’ and everytime ‘It’s a huar’ came out, the crowd used to burst out laughing. Poor people were easily entertained then.”

“I remember,” Big Mick said. “I remember it well. I got home from England the night that he died.”

Suddenly the steel spade hit the rock. They could dig no further. As they were scraping the rock clean, the graveyard gate opened and John Quinn came towards them with a spade on his shoulder.

“We might have known,” Patrick Ryan laughed as John Quinn approached. “You’d want to be out early to best John Quinn. Arriving too late to get in the way of work but in plenty of time for the free drinks in the village.”

“I heard but I heard too late. I was very sorry to hear about poor Johnny, the best shot this part of the country ever saw or ever will see,” John Quinn said as he shook Jamesie’s hand. “I was very sorry.”

“I know that, John. I know that well.”

“Look what we have gone and done!” Patrick Ryan shouted out, and John Quinn’s arrival was lost in the dramatic cry.

“I marked the grave out wrong. I kind of knew as soon as we saw the bones. We have put the head where the feet should go. We have widened the wrong fucken end.”

They then widened the other end of the grave. Even John Quinn helped and they teased him about his women as they worked. He was flattered by the teasing and responded with an earthy zest in which the singsonging cajolery was mixed with cunning and boastfulness.

When they were gathering the tools to go to the village for the customary gravediggers’ drinks, Ruttledge asked Patrick Ryan, “Does it make a great difference that his head lies in the west?”

“It makes every difference, lad, or it makes no difference.”

“In what way?”

“You should know, lad,” he said, enjoying such full possession of the graveyard that even John Quinn’s presence went unheeded. “You went to school long enough by all accounts to know.”

“The world is full of things I don’t know,” Ruttledge said.

“He sleeps with his head in the west … so that when he wakes he may face the rising sun.” Looking from face to face and drawing himself to his full height, Patrick Ryan stretched his arm dramatically towards the east. “We look to the resurrection of the dead.”

The shadow from the abbey now stretched beyond the open grave, but the rose-window in the west pulsed with light, sending out wave after wave of carved shapes of light towards that part of the sky where the sun would rise.

“You never lost it, Patrick,” Jamesie said, while Ruttledge bowed his head.

“Begod now, even with good neighbours all around you and everybody getting on well together and helping one another in the end, it’d nearly make you start to think,” John Quinn said.

That evening the Ruttledges drove round the shore so that their car could accompany the hearse. Already there were several cars along the far shore, and they parked the car behind a line of cars and walked to the house. Once they reached the hill they were amazed by the number of cars parked in the fields all the way along the pass.

“I’ve never seen such a gathering,” Kate said.

“Jamesie and Mary are very well liked everywhere. It’s not because of Johnny. He’s been too long away.”

At the gate to the house they met sudden consternation. The glass and polished chrome of the hearse waited outside the gate. Cars were backing out to allow the hearse to enter the small street and turn. Because of the panic there was much erratic reversing and revving of engines and clouds of smoke and loud, confusing directions. Jimmy Joe McKiernan climbed from the hearse and stood in the lane observing the panic in detached, silent amusement. Though he wore a black suit and white shirt and black tie he still managed to appear casually dressed, quiet and anonymous; he had caused the panic by arriving an hour too early for the removal. Seeing the Ruttledges, Jamesie came toward them in high excitement.