By the Lake (14 page)

“It’s ages since we’ve seen Mary and Jamesie,” Kate said one evening. “Why don’t we walk round the lake? Johnny must have gone back to England by now.”

Below the Ruttledges’ stood the entrance to the house where Mary had grown up on the edge of the lake, its stone walls and outhouses hidden in the tall trees. In the middle of the living room an ash tree had taken root where they had played cards and said the Rosary in the evenings before raking the ashes over the red coals; but it was still easy to see what a charming, beautiful place the living house had been, a stone’s throw from the water. The blue of the pieces of broken delph in the shallows of the lake out from the piers even spoke of prosperity and ease. Cherry and apple and pear trees grew wild about the house, and here and there the fresh green of the gooseberry shone out of a wilderness of crawling blackthorn. Hundreds of daffodils and white narcissi still greeted each spring by the lake with beauty, though there was no one near at hand to notice.

As a schoolgirl Mary had fallen in love with Jamesie and had eyes for no other man. He used to come round the shore on his battered bicycle. She was always waiting. Their courtship could not have been more different from the harsh lesson Johnny had received.

On their marriage she moved to Jamesie’s house across the lake. Jamesie’s father left the upper room where he had slept since his own marriage, to take up Jamesie’s single bed in
the lower room, across from where Johnny slept beneath the window.

Vases of flowers appeared on windowsills and tables. There were touches of colour in bedspreads and chair coverings she brought with her from her own house. Linen for the beds was washed and aired and ironed and changed regularly. The meals were suddenly delicious after the old rough cooking. The house had always been cleanly kept but now it sparkled.

For years she had waited for him. Now she was with him. This was her new life, but in her joy she discovered a fresh anxiety. She had to leave that other house she also loved, her father and her young brother. In spite of their insistence that they could manage, she baked bread for the two houses and brought the loaves around the lake a couple of times a week.

Every Thursday her father drove into town in the pony and trap. When he had the shopping done he went to Hoy’s Hotel, which was owned by his cousin, and drank several glasses of their best whiskey, an eighteen-year-old White Powers, while engaged in agreeable conversation with Mister Hoy about politics and the political party to which they both belonged. Then the pony took him home. Unless there was wind or heavy rain he was always seen to be asleep in a corner of the trap as they passed between the two bars in Shruhaun. There was so little traffic on the roads, his nature so unassuming and easygoing, his little weakness so well known, that this quiet passage drew no more attention than affectionate smiles of recognition. No one even shouted a mischievous greeting. Generally, he woke coming in round the shore, the pony’s pace quickening in anticipation of being released from the trap and watered and given hay and oats. If the quick change of pace hadn’t woken him, he would be quickly shaken awake by the rutted road.

On Thursdays, no matter what the weather, she could not resist going out to the brow of the hill with the two dogs about
the time the pony was due to turn in round the shore. She would breathe with relief as soon as the trap appeared and the pony started to gallop. She followed it all the way to the house till their dog began to bark: “That will surely wake him now if he’s not awake already. I wish all people knew their business as well as that brown pony.”

When Jamesie teased her about going out to the brow of the hill, she was silent: she was beginning to understand that to be without anxiety was to be without love and that it could not be shared. She was content and happy that her first and older love, who had never spoken a harsh word to her in all the days of her girlhood, was safely home and sleeping off his Thursday in the big bed with the broken brass bells.

Then the world she had left, little by little, began to disappear. On a wet soft evening in October, veils of mist and light rain obscuring the hills as well as the water, the pony trotted safely home from the Thursday outing to the town, but the life in the trap had died somewhere along the road. She had been too young to feel her mother’s death. This was her first great loss, and she was inconsolable.

“No man had a luckier life. A good wife. Children that worked and were no trouble. Not a day sick. Then, to slip away after several glasses of White Powers after a good chat about politics with Ned Hoy, do you think the rest of us are likely to get out so easy? Can you tell me an easier way?” Jamesie tried to reason her out of her grief.

In a year the house was closed. Her brother Tom had a girl from Kesh who had gone out to an aunt in Boston. They had been writing to one another. At Halloween he left for Boston and they were married there. He gave Mary the choice of anything she wanted from the house. She took only a few things for his sake.

On a mild October Saturday, when the nuts were ripe on the hazel trees, the auction was held on the shore. A great
crowd gathered. Everything was sold: the mowing machine, the plough, the heavy red dresser, all the cattle, the pony, the harness, the trap. She didn’t attend or even go to the brow of the hill to look across at the crowd gathered. She asked Jamesie to bid for all the brown hens and the red Shorthorn she used to milk for the house. When Jamesie arrived triumphantly home with the small cow and the crate of clucking hens, they seemed like poor scattered things from a broken world. By morning she was too busy to dwell on it any further. She was pregnant and had the house and three men to care for. The birth was difficult but she was strong and recovered quickly. The boy was christened James after his father and grandfather though Jamesie offered to name the child after Mary’s own father.

Because of the boy and the expectancy of other children, it was decided to add an extra room to the house. Patrick Ryan was starting to build at the time and was as much around the place during the building as the men who lived in the house. Johnny and he were acting in plays at the time and often acted out their parts as they worked.

The Ruttledges felt that the spirit of that roofless house by the water’s edge had never died but simply moved to the other house across the lake they were walking towards. From the lake gate they climbed to the brow of the hill. From there the pass ran along a low mossy bank down to the house in its ragged shelter of trees, alder mostly, lilac and a few ash, none of them large. The sheepdog and red terrier, Ruff and Bobby, met them at the second iron gate, barking fiercely; but when they spoke the dogs wagged and nosed their recognition and escorted them down to the house. The brown hens were behind the netting wire. There were many flowers, nasturtiums, sweet williams, lilies, climbing roses. The wall of the house and outhouses had been freshly whitewashed, the doors painted a deep red, window frames a brighter, harsher green than the softly glowing green of the meadows. The room Patrick Ryan built at a right angle to the
old house was slated. Sheets of asbestos had replaced the thatch on the original three rooms. On the black windowsills stood little wooden boxes of flowers, velvety pansies and geraniums. The door of the house was open but the silence was so great that the clocks could be heard ticking within. They knew that they had been recognized by the barking of the dogs and were being waited for. They knocked playfully and knocked again.

“Come in if you’re good-looking.”

“We’re not. What will we do?”

“Too bad. You’ll have to stay outside.”

“Pay no heed to yon omadhaun. He’d disgrace a holy saint,” Mary came towards them with two hands of welcome and kissed them both on the mouth.

“Kate,” Jamesie demanded with his enormous hand. “God hates a coward. The brave man dies but once.”

“I’m a weak woman, Jamesie.”

“You’re not one bit weak.” She gave him her hand. When she cried “Careful, Jamesie,” he released his gently tightening grip with a low cry of triumph. “You are one of God’s troopers, Kate. You are welcome.” He bowed to Ruttledge like a formal clown. “I never liked you anyhow.”

“I am honoured,” Ruttledge bowed in return.

After the glaring light of evening on the lake, the room with the one small window looking south was dark even with the door open. They did not see the grandchild Margaret seated on a low stool between Mary’s chair and the yellow cooker with the shining rail. She was a beautiful dark-haired child, with very pale skin and eyes the colour of sloes. Ruttledge lifted her high in affection and welcome to see how she had grown since the summer before.

“You can’t be doing that any more. She has boys,” Jamesie teased.

“I have no boys.”

“Lots of boys. All nice and cuddly. Very nice-mannered
boys,” he thrust his tongue out provocatively and pretended to hide his head under his arms while she cuffed him officiously.

“The other three went with the parents on their holiday but Margaret came to us. Isn’t that right?” Mary said, stroking her hair with affection, and the child nodded gravely as she leaned closer.

“Where did they go to?” Kate asked.

“They went,” Jamesie said authoritatively, but couldn’t remember. “They went—you know—out there—somewhere foreign,” he said with a great sweep of his arms.

Both the child and Mary began to laugh. “Out there, somewhere,” Mary repeated mockingly. “They took a house for three weeks near Florence. Do you have any idea where Italy is?”

“It’s out there—somewhere,” he said defensively and shook his fist at Margaret.

“Do you have any earthly idea where Italy is? I declare to God he doesn’t know the difference between Florence and Mullingar. You couldn’t take him anywhere.”

“They’re all out there somewhere anyhow. We are not a bit bothered about them,” he said grandly, recovering his poise. “Have you any news?”

“No news. I suppose Johnny is back in England by now.”

“Long back.”

“And poor Edmund is gone. He was buried yesterday. May the Lord have mercy,” Mary said softly.

“I never heard. I’d have gone to the funeral if I’d known,” Ruttledge said, taken aback. “I was fond of Edmund.”

“We were all fond of Edmund. You’d have heard if you were at Mass,” Jamesie said gently. “That’s what you get for not going to Mass.”

“You could have told me,” Ruttledge said.

Jamesie felt the reproach and became uncertain: he was always uncomfortable when appearing in any mean or poor light.

“He wanted to go for you,” Mary said carefully, “but Patrick didn’t want. He said you weren’t needed.”

“I should have paid no heed. Patrick would sicken your arse. He wants his own way in everything,” he rested his hand briefly on Ruttledge’s shoulder. “I should have said nothing and just gone over. He’d never have known.”

“Don’t worry. I was fond of Edmund but it makes no difference now.”

“There was no wake. He went straight from the hospital to the church. All that was bothering Patrick was all the important people that turned up, doctors and big builders and politicians, people he worked for. He was pure silly buying them drinks and shaking their hands and looking them straight in the eye and brushing the odd tear away. You’d swear it meant something. Up in their arses he’d go if he was let. He had no time for me and he’d have no time for you either if you were there.”

“You should know Patrick by now. He wasn’t going to behave any different,” Mary said as if she felt the blame to be excessive. “I suppose if the truth was told they
did
turn up because of Patrick. Who knew poor Edmund?”

“We knew him,” Jamesie responded angrily. “There are times when the truth is the wrong thing.”

“We don’t count,” she replied firmly.

“Lies can walk while the truth stays grounded,” Ruttledge said.

“Patrick had no value on Edmund. When he was alive he let the roof of the house fall to be rid of the poor fella.”

“They say the only people missed Edmund was the dog and old Mrs. Logan. The dog is pining since the day he went to the hospital, comes and goes between the gate and the house looking for him, and the poor woman is lost. She took him in when the roof fell. He did everything for her around the place. They cared a sight for one another.”

“Did she go to the funeral?”

“The poor thing wasn’t fit,” Mary smiled a sweet, inward-looking smile. “Anyhow Patrick wouldn’t want her. There’s another person who died, John Quinn’s second wife. John turned up at the funeral though he wasn’t wanted. They didn’t let him into the house but he marched up the chapel with the coffin and knelt in the front seat and shook hands with everybody and went into the solicitor afterwards to see if there was any window through which he could get his hands on money.”

“John is a sight. It’ll be no time till he’s marrying again. God never closed one door but he opened another.” Jamesie rubbed his hands together gleefully and made a similarly playful gesture towards Mary that he had enough of talking and needed a drink. She answered with a ritualistically disapproving gesture as she went slowly to the press and took out a bottle of Powers. Kate asked for tea but Mary persuaded her that they would both have a light hot whiskey. While they were being made the small airy room filled with the scent of cloves and lemon. Margaret had a large glass of lemonade.