By the Lake (19 page)

“What is it but another small while? I wonder what the poor old father would make out of the shed now if he ran and put his nose to the window?” she laughed.

“He’d go out of his mind,” Jamesie said. “He’d think the world had gone mad.”

“We may all be the father at the window yet,” Ruttledge said.

“And that’s life!” Jamesie shouted down from the stifling heat of the hayshed.

“I suppose when we are lying below in Shruhaun, Margaret will be talking about us the way we are talking about the father,” Mary said.

“She’ll be talking nice and sweet to her young man. She’ll be saying they were decent enough people, God rest them, but they never went to school and they had no money and never learned manners but they weren’t too bad. They were decent old skins when it was all added up,” Jamesie said.

“I will not,” Margaret stamped her foot.

“That’s right, Margaret,” Mary said. “He’s had his own way for far too long. Joe here went to school and is an educated man, not like that comedian up on the hay who has enough to say for ten scholars.”

Jamesie cheered the speech defensively and Ruttledge said, “Don’t you see where it got me, Mary?”

“An important job with the government,” Jamesie shouted down, and they stood and laughed before swinging back to work.

They were gathering in the last few stacks when a big green car drove in on the street. The car wasn’t a substantial statement, like the Shah’s heavy Mercedes, but it was a statement of sorts—brand-new, expensive, an open sun roof and silver wheels that looked like the spokes of the sun. Music was playing from speakers in the car.

“Margaret’s holiday is over,” Mary turned to the child, who drew closer to Mary and looked apprehensive. The parents were the first to emerge from the car, Jim in casual golfing clothes and Lucy in a summer dress. The children looked subdued. They were at an awkward age and stood on the street without moving towards Margaret or she to them. For a still moment the scene appeared frozen in uncertainty, until Jamesie shouted out and with nimble quickness came down the rows of bales.

“You’re welcome. Welcome.” He shook everybody by the hand, but did not kiss or embrace. In an instinctive move to harness his excitement, he swooped to lift the three grandchildren one by one and then pretended he was no longer able. “You are all growing up past me and this poor old fella is going down,” he pulled his doleful clown’s face so that they all laughed. By then he had regained his old watchful, humorous presence. In contrast, Mary’s face was mute with devotion as she waited to receive her son’s kiss as if it were a sacrament.

“Is he still treating you badly, Mother?” her son joked.

“Sleepy fox,” Jamesie cried but Mary remained silent.

“How are you, Gran? Great to see you,” Lucy said effusively as the two women kissed.

“You are as welcome as ever anybody could be,” Mary said, but all the uncertain pauses of her heart were audible in the simple string of words.

“You’re welcome,” Ruttledge shook their hands in turn.

“Helping Mom and Pop with the hay? The extended family. How is Kate?” Lucy asked with a breeziness that had the effect of a voice singing out of tune though well intentioned.

“She is well. She’ll be sorry to have missed you. How was Florence?” Ruttledge asked.

“Fantastic. Just fantastic,” Lucy said. “The experience of a lifetime.”

“We were glad enough to get home,” her husband added quietly.

“How did Margaret behave herself?” the mother asked, smiling forcefully down at the child.

“Margaret was wonderful. She lifted us all in the meadows,” Ruttledge said, feeling out of place. “She gave us heart.”

“It must be some weight off this man’s mind to get the hay in the shed. He used always go a bit bananas about this time of year,” their son laughed.

“Pay no heed. I never heard. They’d all have you circling if you paid them heed,” Jamesie answered jauntily while engaged with the three children who had been joined by Margaret and the pair of dogs. “They’d have you so that you wouldn’t know whether you were coming or going.”

“He has an answer for everything. He’s a character,” Lucy said in glorious condescension.

“A quare hawk,” her husband echoed, but defensively, uncertainly, and laughed.

“A poor old fella. A decent poor skin. May the Lord have mercy on his soul,” the subject himself answered, still engaged with his grandchildren.

The flurry and excitement of the arrival died away. The brown hens returned to their pecking in the dirt, raising a yellow eye sideways from time to time to inspect with comic gravity the strangely crowded street. From within the house one of the clocks began to strike an earlier hour. A blackbird landed with a frenzied clatter in the hedge beside the hayshed. Completely alone though a part of the crowd, Mary stood mutely gazing on her son and his wife as if in wonderment how so much time had disappeared and emerged again in such strange and substantial forms that were and were not her own. Across her face there seemed to pass many feelings and reflections: it was as if she ached to touch and gather in and make whole those scattered years of change. But how can time be gathered in and kissed? There is only flesh.

To Ruttledge, Jim was a quiet, courteous man without the
vividness or presence or the warmth of his parents. He had the habit of attention and his face was kind. It was as if he had been prematurely exhausted by the long journey he had made and discovered little sustenance on the new shores of Kildare Street and Mount Merrion. Already he had gone far but was unlikely to advance much further without luck. The people who could promote him to the highest rung would have to be interacted with, and could not be studied like a problem or a book.

His wife would want his advancement and certainly she herself would be a hindrance to what she sought. When she first met the Ruttledges she expected them to be bowled over by her personality since they were already friendly with her parents-in-law. They found her exhausting. She drew all her life from what was outside herself, especially from the impression she imagined she was making on other people, and her dark good looks and sexual attractiveness helped this primal conceit. She accepted mere politeness as unqualified endorsements but was quick to dismiss anybody who allowed signs to show that they found her less than entrancing. Her sense of importance and confidence could only be kept alive by the large, closely bound family to which she belonged and to which her husband had been inexorably annexed.

“I’ll get in these last bales and leave you to your evening,” Ruttledge said.

Once all the meadows were empty and clean he refused to turn off the engine. He waved to everybody and blew a kiss to Margaret, who turned away as pleased as she was embarrassed.

“I hope you have a great evening,” he shouted down.

“God bless you for all the help,” Mary said.

“You know I never liked you anyhow,” Jamesie shouted.

“Isn’t he terrible? But you have to admit he’s a character,” Lucy smiled, waving like a queen.

Jim smiled quietly as he waved.

The next morning was heavy and still. The radio said that thundery showers in the south would cross the whole country by evening. Very early in the morning they started to draw in the bales, the wheels of the tractor making bright streams through the cobwebbed grass. Kate insisted on helping. She wore old gloves against the hard binder twine but hadn’t the strength to lift the heavier bales.

“Are you sure you want to be doing this?”

“As long as I’m useful.”

“You are great use. Those bales are heavy though. There’s no use getting hurt.”

They worked steadily. Not until the bales rose high would the lifting become hard and slow. While it was still morning they saw Jamesie and Mary come through the open gate under the alder tree. They were wheeling bicycles and wearing caps with the peaks turned back. Their two dogs were already following trails through the meadow. Their hearts lifted. A weight of heavy repetitious work stretching into the evening rain was suddenly halved and made light.

“A poor old pair slaving away against starvation in the winter,” Jamesie called out.

“Why aren’t you attending to your guests?”

“They’re gone. They went last night. In that car Dublin is only two hours away.”

“We thought they’d stay a few days.”

“No. They went,” Jamesie said carefully. “Jim had to be back at work. The house is too small.”

“Poor Margaret was lost,” Mary said. “She didn’t want to go at all. All she wanted was to be in the meadows with us again today.”

“When you see a child like her you wish for happiness.”

“Then wishing you’ll be. She’ll have to batter it out on her own like the rest of us,” Mary said.

“There’s nothing worse than seeing a lone man in a
meadow,” Jamesie said, and burst out laughing when he spotted the gloves Kate was wearing. “God bless you, Kate. You came prepared for winter,” and displayed his own enormous welted hands with pride: “Pure shoe leather!”

The drawing in started to go very quickly. The two women went into the house and brought out a jug of sweetened tea.

“The Shah was right. John Quinn is getting married,” Jamesie said, resting on the bales.

“He was like a hen on a hot griddle until he found out,” Mary said. “It was a sweet charity someone got to hear something for once before he did. As soon as you were gone he got Jim to drive him down to Shruhaun. Lucy was fit to be tied. She thought they’d never come back.”

“We had only two drinks,” Jamesie said. “The place was packed. There was a great welcome for Jim. John Quinn was there like a cat with cream, people congratulating him and slapping him on the back, buying him drinks. It’d nearly make you die. He got her out of the Knock Bureau all right. Her family is dead set against the match. That’s why the wedding is here. She has three sons, a big farm and money. We’re all going to be invited. He’s not going to send out anything as ignorant as invitations. John himself is coming round on all the good neighbours and inviting us all personally. You can expect a visit. We had a most wonderful time.”

“Had Jim drinks?” Ruttledge enquired.

“Just the two but Lucy was wild. She bundled everybody into the car the minute they got back,” Mary laughed. “I’d say your ears were well warmed on the way back to Dublin if you could hear.”

“I’ll recover,” he said. “Some of these ones are just too precise. They think the whole world revolves round their whatnot.”

As the stacks disappeared from the meadows and the shed filled, the sun coming and going behind the dark, racing clouds,
they were able to stack the last loads at their ease, chatting and idling. The birds had gone quiet. The hum of the insects was still. Swallows were sweeping low above the empty meadows. The wing beats of swans crossing between the lakes came on the still air and they counted seven in formation before they disappeared below the screen of trees. For such elegant creatures of the air and the water, their landing was loud and clumsy.

They were lingering and tidying up, with hours of space and weather to spare, when Bill Evans came through the gate and lumbered over to the packed shed. He was wearing the huge wellingtons but no overcoat, wide braces crossing the shirt of mattress ticking. The braces were connected to the voluminous tweed trousers with nails instead of buttons.

“Ye got on great,” he praised.

“Anybody with meadows yet to mow is late,” Jamesie said provocatively.

“There’ll be plenty of weather yet,” he defended his own house stubbornly.

“That’s right. Give him no heed, Bill,” Mary took his part. “When will the bus start taking you to town?”

“Every Thursday from now on,” he said importantly.

“They’ll wash your whatnot when they get you to town,” Jamesie said. “You’ll never be the same again.”

“You’re a pure disgust, Jamesie. They will run you out of the parish yet. It’s a wonder Mary has put up with you for so long,” he responded ringingly.

“What else can I do, Bill? I’m stuck with him now,” Mary said.

“That’s all that is saving him,” he grinned.

The two women left to go into the house and he followed them as trustingly as a child.

“Lord bless us,” Jamesie said. “They treat him worse than a dog and yet he’d die on the cross for them if you said as much as
a word. He’ll have great times in the town. He’ll devour everything in sight. He’ll eat and drink rings round him. He’ll fatten,” Jamesie said in glee. “Sometimes I think he’s as happy as anybody.”

The words hung in the air a moment without meeting agreement or disagreement: it was as if they both knew secretly that there was no certainty as to what constituted the happiness or unhappiness of another.

“Would you change places with him?”

“No.”

“Would he change places with you?”

“Like a shot.”

“I doubt it. Nobody will change lives with another. Anyhow it’s not possible.”

“I’d change. I’d love to have been de Valera,” Jamesie said.

“Then you’d be dead,” Ruttledge said, and from the expression on Jamesie’s face he saw that he felt that his words were no joke at all.

By early evening they were looking down at the complete emptiness of the meadows under the stillness of the big trees. All over the country for a week or more these reaped meadows would give back their squares and rectangles of burned yellow light amid the green of hedges and pastures. A number of times Ruttledge suggested that they finish and go into the house but Jamesie continued to dawdle and fuss over the last few rows as if he was waiting for the rain. When it came, in the complete silence of the trees and the birds, the first spare drops were loud on the iron.

“Isn’t Patrick Ryan the most hopeless man?” Jamesie said as he looked across the lake at the bare hill where Patrick’s few cattle were grazing. “Not a blade of grass cut yet and all that good weather gone. A most hopeless man and he couldn’t care less if there wasn’t a dry day between now and Christmas.”

The surfaces of the lake between the trees were now pocked with rain. Water was splashing heavily down from the big sycamore leaves on to the roof of the shed.