By the Lake (10 page)

“I never thought it would come to so many boxes,” she said.

“They won’t go to loss,” Ruttledge said humorously.

“You can say that again,” the Shah said. He had been watching Kate’s face intently and was reassured by her manner.

They began to carry the boxes into the house. The Shah stayed by the trailer, opening and shutting the door as if to guard against anybody seeing the shameful cargo. Ruttledge carried the boxes through the porch and into the spare room. Kate found the boxes heavy and put them down in the porch. When
all the boxes had been carried in, she saw the Shah staring at her little stack of boxes.

“Am I doing something wrong?”

“Can’t you put them where nobody will see them? Can’t you put them where your man is putting them, where they’ll be out of sight?”

Ruttledge said quietly under his breath, “If they are too heavy leave them alone. I’ll carry them into the room. We couldn’t have done worse if a cargo of fallen women had been delivered to the railway sheds.” He was having difficulty presenting a straight face to the world and was glad to hide behind the carrying.

The Shah closed the trailer door and dropped the pins into place with a firmness in which anger and relief were mixed. Patrick Ryan had not looked their way. With a pencil and metal tape he was studiously measuring and marking the various lengths of wood.

“I see you have that drunken sally back working. If he gets wind of this cargo he’ll never leave from around the place,” the Shah said as he entered the house, somewhat mollified to see that the boxes had been removed and put away.

“He doesn’t like wine,” Ruttledge said.

“I suppose he’s no sooner here than he’ll be gone again. I’ve been telling you for a long time that you should run him to hell from around the place and get a proper tradesman.”

“He’s all right. He’ll do for now.”

At first, the Shah had been taken by Patrick Ryan’s easy charm, his effrontery, his mimicry, a delinquency he was partial to, but eventually he went too far and the Shah withdrew and watched him as coldly as if he were evaluating a hand of cards. On his way out to the lake one evening he gave Patrick a lift from town. Patrick was the worse for drink and in foul humour. In this mood he was given to lecturing people.

“You have gathered a sight of money. What do you think
you’ll do with it? You can’t take it with you. The shroud has no pockets. Have you made decisions?”

Patrick Ryan could not have staggered into a more dangerous territory. The Shah continued to drive in silence; he had not been spoken to like that in years. His money was a source of pride and satisfaction and a deep security. He did not speak at all until the car reached the two bars in Shruhaun beside the little river and the roofless abbey. He stopped the car at the stone bridge while Patrick continued his lecture.

“I’m not stopping here. I’ve had enough of the bars for one day, bad luck to them. I’m going on to the lake.”

“Out!” the Shah said while looking straight ahead.

If Patrick Ryan had been more sober and more watchful he would not have been so taken by surprise.

“There’s no need to take things so seriously. What were we doing but a bit of aul ravelling? They’re no cause to get so het up.”

“That’s enough. Out.”

When Patrick Ryan saw that his attempt to smooth things over would not work, his mood swung round again. “I can tell you something for nothing. You may have money but you’re as thick and ignorant as several double ditches.”

“Out, I said. I’m not one bit interested in what you think.”

“He should be run to hell,” the Shah repeated now as he entered the house. Once he was seated he asked for tea but would have nothing to eat. He was going down to the hotel as soon as he got rid of the trailer.

“You are a great girl, Kate. We have no doubt about you—unlike your man here,” he said as he took the tea, returning to the subject of the wine.

“What doubts?”

“Who’s giving the party?” he demanded half-humorously, anxiously, disapprovingly.

“What party? ”

“Someone has to be giving the party with a cargo like that in the house. I never saw the man giving the party yet that lasted long.”

“Visitors come. There are times for celebration. It will last for years,” Ruttledge said.

“It’d be some party all on your own. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended with Kate here throwing you out.”

“She may well do that anyhow.”

“And she mightn’t be too far out,” he started to shake gently, his good humour restored.

They walked him to the car and trailer. Kate gave the sheepdog a biscuit, which he carried with importance to the front seat.

“I’m sorry it was dumped on you. It should have been delivered here,” Ruttledge apologized.

“Anyway it’s safe now. It’s hid,” the Shah said.

As he turned the heavy trailer in the space between the house and the bare iron posts, he raised a slow hand in a version of an episcopal blessing to a grinning Patrick Ryan, who was all mock attention beneath the posts. Patrick answered with a blasphemous sign of the cross—on forehead, on both shoulders, on breast, in mock gratitude, and then raised his own hand in a smart military salute as the car and trailer swung around. The performance was superb, but its intended victim did not even glance in the mirror as the car and trailer crunched past the porch and out the gate to go slowly round the shore. Patrick had been acting for himself. There was no response or applause to drown out the empty echo, and he turned away in disgust.

“A worse thing could not have been left at the sheds,” Ruttledge said to Kate as he prepared to rejoin Patrick Ryan. “I’m sure he’ll be counting now to see if we’ve sold any cattle.”

“What was the Shah doing with the trailer?” Patrick Ryan asked when Ruttledge returned. “He’s unlikely to be heading into the cattle business at this stage.”

“Some things for the house were delivered to the railway by mistake.”

Jamesie would have been on fire to know what had been delivered, but Patrick Ryan was incurious about the things around him and asked no further.

“He may be your uncle and he may have made his weight in money but let me tell you something for nothing, lad: he’s still as thick and as ignorant as several double ditches.”

“I’m fond of him,” Ruttledge affirmed simply. “He was kind when I was young. That goodness is still there even if it sometimes doesn’t show too well.”

Patrick looked hard at him for a moment, but Ruttledge stood unflinchingly, and after a long pause he turned away to mark the angle of a beam.

They were able to raise the heavy beams and, using ladders, bolt them to the top of the iron posts. As they worked in the heat and silence, Bill Evans was the only visitor they had on his way to the lake for the buckets of water. He stayed chatting with them until Patrick Ryan threw him cigarettes, and then he went into the house for tea and food and more cigarettes.

“He may well be happier than any of us, lad. He doesn’t know any differ,” Patrick Ryan said.

“Who can tell?” Ruttledge asked lightly.

“Who can tell, when all is said and done, and who can tell the man who wore the ragged jacket,”
he sang softly. “It’s a conundrum, lad. That’s what it is.”

“Would you swap with him?”

“No, lad. I would not swap with a lord. We all want our own two shoes of life. If truth was told, none of us would swap with anybody. We want to go out the way we came in. It’s just as well we have no choice. If there was choice you’d have certain giddy outfits having operations to get themselves changed into other people like those sexchange outfits you see in the newspapers.”

They never knew whether he would come from one day to
the next until his dark figure appeared in the spaces between the trees in around the shore or at the alder at the gate or standing in the doorway of the room. They worked often till dark. Once the heavy crossbeams were bolted into place, they started to cut the frame to hold the roof. When they had finished work for the day and eaten, he always sat on in the house, reluctant to go home.

“I’ll be glad to run you to Carrick to see Edmund,” Ruttledge offered several times as a way out of the long, closed evening.

“I know that well,” he answered. “I know that well but Edmund’s days are done. Our lad was easygoing like my father. My mother spent years in America and was hard. She lost an eye when she got hit in the byre with a horn while tying a cow and nearly all the money she brought back with her was lost trying to save the sight of the other eye. She was very hard. In my turn I was probably too hard on Edmund. In the end what does it matter? I could see Edmund was finished the minute he woke. He’s hanging by a thread in Carrick. We’ll not see him again.”

“Would you like to take a run into town?” Ruttledge offered on other evenings.

“No, lad, no. We’d take to the drink if we went to town.”

“We could have one or two and leave it at that. We don’t have to go wild.”

“You should know by now that your Irishman can do nothing by halves. He has to go the whole hog.”

“There’s a few things that have to be got for the house.”

“You go to town, lad, if you have to run for messages,” he said. Kate looked up from her ironing with alarm. “Why don’t you put that away so that we can have a proper chat, girl?”

“We can talk away while I’m ironing. It’s more pleasant.”

“It’s hard to whistle and chew meal. Do you think will you ever make that drawing you do pay?”

“I don’t think so, Patrick.”

“Why do you keep at it, then, girl?”

“It brings what I see closer.”

“Does it mean that nobody would want those drawings if you tried to sell?”

“That’s possible. An aunt of mine painted and drew all her life. She was good but never sold a drawing or a picture.”

“She must have plenty of washers, then.”

“Her husband was a lawyer.”

“He kept the show on the road. I suppose they had no children either.”

“They had two girls.”

He would become more and more frustrated but could not attack openly and they could not get on. What he wanted was complete attention and his moods were unpredictable, always changing. “Don’t tell me about the people of this part of the country. I’ve ploughed their fields, built their houses, laid them out, slept in their beds, sat at their tables. They’re as ignorant as dogshite. All they want is to get as much for themselves and to give as little back as they can ever manage. And the older they get—when you’d think they’d have some sense—the greedier the cunts become.”

“That’s too hard. There are many decent people round here.”

“There’s a few,” he admitted reluctantly. “They are far from the normal.”

“What about Mary and Jamesie?”

“Mary’s the best in the world,” his face brightened. “There’s none better than Mary. Jamesie would give you the shirt off his back. Once I was coming to borrow their mule. He had the mule tackled and was putting out topdressing. As soon as he saw me come he had the mule untackled in seconds. He declared before God that he was doing nothing with the mule. The mule was there for me to take.”

“What about yourself? You aren’t too bad either,” Kate said firmly.

“You should know me well enough by now,” he laughed and grew light. “I don’t count. I’m just a sort of comedian to the crowd. Do you think when you made those drawings of me, Kate, do you think you got any nearer to the beast?”

“You have an interesting face but you know that yourself. I don’t think I ever got it right.”

“Maybe it’s just as well that it wasn’t laid out for all to see,” he said defensively, but his pleasure was obvious.

“You gave us a great deal of help when we came first,” Ruttledge said when they were alone laying out the timbers for the roof.

“It was nothing, lad,” Patrick Ryan said. “What else would I have done?”

“The first time I gave you money you threw it to the wind. We had to search for the notes in the bushes.”

“I disremember, lad. I’ve done many things in my time that are best forgot but I’ve never taken money from neighbours.”

“You were here the first day the priest came to the house,” Ruttledge said.

“I disremember that as well.”

“You went into hiding. When the car pulled up at the gate you told me to go and invite him into the house and be in no hurry out.”

“It’s beginning to come back. Go on, lad.”

“I brought him in and made him tea. Kate was in the town.
He wasn’t looking for you at all. We talked about the weather and cattle and the land. After a long time he asked, ‘I suppose you are wondering what brought me here?’ ‘It did cross my mind but that doesn’t matter. It’s nice that you are here,’ I said. ‘Whatever about that,’ Father Conroy said, ‘I’m not here on my own account. I believe in living and letting live. The man up in Longford is very interested in you and why you left the Church and has me persecuted about you every time he comes. He’s coming on Thursday to give Confirmation and one of the first things he’ll ask me is, Have you been up to see that man yet? And this coming Thursday I’ll tell him in no uncertain terms I
have
, and that’s the whole of my business here.’ ”