John McGahern - By the Lake

“I haven’t an idea. A hundred pounds?”

“Twenty pounds. ‘Give me twenty pounds, Jamesie.’ They say he’s hard on money and I had to nearly beat him to get him to take forty pounds.”

“Less than John Quinn got back for his second-hand wedding ring.”

“John Quinn’s a living sight but Father Conroy is as good a priest as could be got anywhere. You can go to him any hour of the day or night and never be run and he’d leave no man poor. Those that complain have their shite and have no reason.”

“I like him too,” Ruttledge said.

“Then you should go to Mass,” Jamesie whispered mockingly.

There was a new moon above the lake, a pale crescent. The night was so still that the lake reflected the sky and looked as deep. A huddle of wildfowl was gathered at the centre. The two swans were feeding close to the shore. High overhead, the lights of a passing aeroplane pulsed like hearts in the sky.

“You can’t see sight or light of your house with the way the trees along the shore have grown,” Jamesie said and turned towards Patrick Ryan’s hill, which looked ragged even in this soft light, with such deep satisfaction that the pleasure could be heard in his voice. “Isn’t Patrick Ryan the most hopeless man? The poor cattle alone and fending for themselves on that big hill and Patrick astray all over the country. I may not have travelled far but I know the whole world,” he said with a wide sweep of his arm.

“You do know the whole world,” Ruttledge said. “And you have been my sweet guide.”

Jamesie paused, and then turned quickly away: “I wasn’t the worst anyhow,” he said.

As Kate and Mary drew close they embraced, and the Ruttledges went quickly down towards the lake. When they were close to the gate, they heard a call or a cry from the hill and turned around. Jamesie and Mary stood framed in the light.

“Kate,” Jamesie was calling.

“Jamesie,” she called back and waited.

“Hel-lo. Hel-lo. Hel-lo. Hel-lo,” he called over the lake in the high cry of a bird mocking them out over the depths of the bog. They heard coughing and scolding and laughter as Mary, and then Jamesie, disappeared from the sky.

No heron rose out of the reeds where the new telephone pole stood in the middle of the wild cherries to lead them in round the shore. The night and the lake had not the bright metallic beauty of the night Johnny had died: the shapes of the great trees were softer and brooded even deeper in their mysteries. The water was silent, except for the chattering of the wildfowl, the night air sweet with the scents of the ripening meadows, thyme and clover and meadowsweet, wild woodbine high in the whitethorns mixed with the scent of the wild mint crawling along the gravel on the edge of the water.

When they turned the corner to climb towards the house, Kate cried out in fear. Patrick Ryan stood between the narrow high banks of the lane exactly as he had appeared in the doorway on the night of the wake, the white shirt and face and silver hair glowing. Everything else was black and merged with the night.

“You gave her a terrible fright. Why didn’t you show yourself?” Ruttledge demanded.

“I was on my way,” he said coldly. “Ye weren’t talking. I was above at the house. Nothing was locked, neither car nor shed nor house. I thought ye might be out in the fields and waited.”

“We were across in Jamesie’s.”

“I know. I heard him yodelling a few minutes back above the lake. He’ll never get sense. Already you’d think Johnny had never died.”

“Do you want to come back with us?” Kate asked. The invitation surprised Ruttledge. Her voice was calm.

“No. I was up there long enough. It’s time I was heading for the Tomb,” he dismissed the offer impatiently. “I’m going to be there all summer. We’re going to finish that building. One good thing about the house and place being open to the world is that I was able to go around and check up on what we’ll need. I left the list on the table. It’s propped against a jug, but all that is matterless now. Bring the list with you anyhow in case we forget something in the morning. Meet me with the car and the trailer at the corner of the lake at nine. We’ll head for the town and get everything we need. It takes a hard jolt now and then to learn us that we’ll not be in it for ever. Tomorrow we’ll make a start, in the name of the Lord, and we’ll not quit until that whole cathedral of a shed is finished,” he said in the same ringing, confident tone that had ordered Johnny’s head to lie to the west in Shruhaun so that when he rose with all the faithful he would face the rising sun.

“There’s no great need or rush with the shed, Patrick,” Kate said uncertainly, surprised by her own forwardness. “Maybe it could be left there for another summer in deference to Johnny?”

He stood amazed but did not speak. The chatter of the wildfowl out on the lake was loud in the strain of the silence. With slow economy of movement he turned his back on Kate and spoke to Ruttledge, slowly and carefully. “You must do what you have to do, lad. Meet me at nine at the corner of the lake with the car and trailer if you want. It’s completely matterless whether you turn up or not. If you don’t turn up I have plenty of places to go to. I’ll go and entertain them all in their own houses.”

Then he was gone, walking slowly round the shore in the half-light.

The Ruttledges did not speak as they climbed the hill.

“What are you going to do?” Kate asked as they passed beneath the alder tree.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “We can talk it through. We don’t have to decide on anything till morning.”

At the porch, before entering the house, they both turned to look back across the lake, even though they knew that both Jamesie and Mary had long since disappeared from the sky.