John McGahern - By the Lake

Jamesie and Jim and Patrick Ryan manoeuvred the coffin out through the narrow doorway to the hearse with Jimmy Joe McKiernan directing and helping. Mary and Lucy followed arm in arm behind. Nobody cried out in grief or anger. Jamesie’s face was taut and strained but only Mary was visibly upset. Patrick Ryan climbed into the hearse and sat like a stern, implacable god beside Jimmy Joe. It would have been customary for Jamesie to ride with the corpse on the last journey: he must have given his place up to Patrick. The hearse moved slowly out from the house. The mule was no longer at the gate but grazing far back in the field. People walked behind the hearse, thinning as soon as they reached their cars. The line of cars was still coming down the hill from the house when the hearse stopped at the corner of the lake where, on Sundays long ago during the shooting season, the guns used to gather. Once it moved on, it quickly gathered speed. The Ruttledges’ car was one of the last to join the procession, and at the corner of the lake they turned in round the shore instead of continuing on to the church.

A few days after the funeral the Ruttledges drove round the lake in the late evening to see how Jamesie and Mary were and if they wanted anything. At the corner of the lake they stopped the car in amazement. A telephone pole had been set down in the middle of the wild cherries and a line of poles stretched all the way out towards the main road. Some months previously the telephone company had offered to connect each house in the country for the same fee, no matter how remote it was, and nearly everybody around the lake had agreed to the offer. After all the talk and final agreement it was still a shock to see the substantial creosoted poles in place.

The street in front of the house was empty, the brown hens pecking away behind the netting wire, the pair of dogs barking the car to the open door.

Within, the house was altered. The clocks had been removed from the walls and were spread everywhere on beds and tables and chairs. The shapes of the clocks were distinct and pale where they had hung on the walls: without them the walls looked impoverished and plain.

“The place is a mess. I don’t even know if I can invite you in,” Mary said as they embraced.

“The little clockmaker was here all day. We couldn’t get some of them to start after the funeral so we thought we’d get them all looked at. Severals of them haven’t been telling the right time in years,” Jamesie said in a rush of words.

“He’s cleaned and oiled them. He’ll adjust them tomorrow when they go back on the walls. He says some are near enough to antiques and worth money and there’s nothing much wrong with any of them.”

“Like ourselves,” Jamesie said.

“Do you think for a minute anybody would give money for you?” Mary said.

“Lots of money. Because I’m a topper,” he argued. “That’s what Tom Casey told everybody after he married Ellen, who was a bicycle and ease and comfort to the whole country. ‘Was I as good as the rest of them?’ he asked her after he had performed on their wedding night. ‘You were a topper,’ she told him. ‘You were the very best.’ ”

“He’d disgrace you but I suppose we are used to him by now,” Mary said.

“Did you see the telephone poles?” Ruttledge asked.

“Saw them, saw them early this morning,” he stretched out his great hand. “They all went up today. They have machines, diggers, everything. It’ll be all done in a matter of weeks. The men are from Cork. Everybody has a telephone in Cork. They have no work there now and were sent here. They go home at weekends on a bus and think this is a lovely part of the country.”

“So it is,” Kate said.

“Since everything is askew with the clocks, why don’t we take a run into the town,” Ruttledge suggested. “We’ll come round another evening when the clocks are back on the walls.”

They were both plainly glad to leave the house.

“You can’t twist or sit or turn with the clocks. It’s great to get out.”

As she was locking the door Mary paused. “Poor Johnny’s gone. It’s almost as if he never was.”

“Jim flew over to London in the aeroplane to get his things,” Jamesie explained. “There wasn’t much. The flat was in the basement and smaller than he said. Jim said it was a nice part of London. The flats were big but not all that posh.”

“Did he meet Mister Singh or anybody that knew Johnny?”

“No. No. He saw no one,” Mary said. “He wrote a note for Mister Singh and pinned it on the door. Johnny had a will made. We were all surprised. He left everything to the children. Most of what he got from Ford’s was still left.”

“That was very good of him,” Kate said.

“Johnny was always very precise when it came to himself,” Jamesie said.

“Poor Patrick took it very hard. He never quits about the acting and the plays and how on Sundays when everybody was blazing away all Johnny had to do was to raise his gun for the bird to fall,” Mary said.

“Patrick has his shite,” Jamesie said. “Patrick had no more value on Johnny while he lived than he had on anybody else that’s plain and ordinary.”

“Maybe Johnny has become big and strange for him now that he’s gone,” Ruttledge said.

As they passed the new line of telephone poles, Jamesie counted them silently. “Fourteen in the one day. In no time at all they’ll be up.” They drove past the closed mart, past the two detectives standing in the alleyway across from Jimmy Joe McKiernan’s, the church, Luke Henry’s bar. As they were approaching the Central, Jamesie, who was leaning forward in an intensity of watching, called out, “Hold your horses. Stop. Look,” and Ruttledge drew in along the sidewalk.

The Shah had just come out of the hotel, and his round, heavy figure was making its satisfied way towards the station house, a knotted white plastic bag in his hand. At the same time the sheepdog emerged from the sheds and made his way across the square to the place where the white railway gates used to close. The sheepdog sat and waited there with its beautiful head raised. When they met, the words could practically be heard in the rhythm of the petting and endearment before the dog was handed the white plastic bag. The sheepdog walked proudly ahead with the bag but paused every now and then to wait with wagging tail as they went together towards the station house.

As they turned the car, Ruttledge pointed out the new street of tiny houses in off the square that was Trathnona , and Jamesie rolled down the car window in order to get a clearer view.

“You’d love to go in to see what the set-up is like, how he’s getting along,” he said.

“What good would that do? It’s none of your business,” Mary said.

“He’s probably watching TV like the rest of the country. Blind Date could be on,” Ruttledge said.

“No. It only comes on on a Saturday,” he answered.

In the bar, Luke Henry shook Jamesie’s and Mary’s hands in formal sympathy. They spoke of Johnny’s last evening in the bar and how well he had thrown.

The darts with the red plastic fins were arranged in groups of three on the face of the dart board. They had two drinks in the bar and left long before the late-night drinkers were due.

Jamesie and Mary insisted on walking all the way to the house and were set down at the corner of the lake. An evening was arranged for the Ruttledges to come round when all the clocks would be back on the walls and when everything would be back to normal again.

The arranged evening came clear. The telephone poles now extended round the lake. They were surprised when the dogs didn’t meet them at the gate and even more surprised to find the clockmaker’s car on the street and the door closed.