By the Lake (7 page)

He called for her in his big car where she lived with her parents and brother on their comfortable farm. They went to dances and films and the local plays. Gradually, he became almost another member of her family, helping her brother with the machinery on the farm, driving her parents to the seaside at Strandhill and Bundoran and later to Manorhamilton Hospital.

When her father and then her mother died, he was as helpful and as present about the house as any member of the family, but soon afterwards her brother wanted to marry and bring a
young woman into the house. Pressure was put on Annie May and on her suitor of many years. As they exchanged presents that Christmas while sitting in the big car, she said, in her placid way, “Aunt Mary wants me to go out to her in New York. You know, if something doesn’t happen soon I think I’ll go out to America around Easter.”

It would not have been possible for her to be more direct, and he understood perfectly. There must have been an interminable silence, but the same negative resourcefulness that had frustrated every attempt to force him to go back to school won out over affection and scruples.

“You know, Annie May, with the way this country is going I doubt but America will be the end of us all yet.”

No door was ever closed more softly or with more finality. She did not go to New York at Easter but married old Paddy Fitzgerald, a cattle dealer, in an arranged match.

The only change afterwards in the Shah’s life was that he went to the local cinema on his own and took to visiting the houses of his sisters and brother more often, especially on Sundays.

Only his fellow card players in the poker school ever had the temerity to test the wall of stolidity he presented to the world.

“Did you see that Annie May McKiernan got married to old Paddy Fitzgerald?” was slipped in with seeming casualness as cards were dealt.

Feet sought other feet beneath the table. His reaction could not be predicted. There was none. All the cards were played and the winnings gathered in.

“I’m afraid you missed out there,” was risked as new hands were dealt. “You didn’t move quick enough when you had the chance.”

“If she had waited another few years she’d have been safe,” he said at last.

The whole table erupted in laughter, but he did not even
smile as his gaze travelled evenly from face to face and back to his hand.

“Diamonds are trumps,” he said, and the intensity of the game resumed. “Let the best man win.”

He and Ruttledge had always got on well together, and it did no harm that they shared the same first name. When Ruttledge abandoned his studies for the priesthood, his uncle had been supportive at a time when the prevailing climate had been one of accusation and reproach. “Let them go to hell,” the Shah had said, and offered money for further study—he who had never been to school long enough to learn to read or write—before Ruttledge decided to go to England, joining the masses on the trains and the boats.

Not until some time after they had come to live by the lake, Kate having returned to London to find new tenants for her flat, did he learn how deep his uncle’s dislike of marriage ran, how ideal he considered his own single state to be.

He couldn’t have been better company the previous Sunday, wishing Kate a safe journey to London with obvious affection. The very evening of the day Kate left, Ruttledge was surprised to see the Mercedes roll up to the house. The Shah remarked on the gardens and the improvements to the place, but not until he was seated comfortably was the purpose of the visit revealed.

“It must be a great relief to you, now, that Kate is in London,” he offered in a tone of heartfelt congratulation.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it relief.”

“Tell us more,” the Shah said indulgently and began to shake in silent laughter.

“She has business in London but I don’t feel any relief that she’s gone.”

“I know,” the Shah agreed, wiping away tears with his fists. “I know full well. We all have to make those sort of noises from time to time.”

“They are not exactly noises.”

“That’ll do you now. That’ll do,” he raised his hands for silence and relief.

“I thought you liked Kate. I thought the two of you got on.”

“Kate is the very best. You couldn’t get better than poor Kate.”

“I don’t know what you are on about, then.”

“Listen,” he said. “If you talk to the wall tonight—answer me this while you’re at it—is the wall going to answer you back? Am I right or wrong?”

“You’re right. Except I haven’t much interest in talking to the wall.”

“Now you see,” he said contentedly, though it wasn’t clear what had been seen, and when Kate returned he welcomed her back as if he had missed her every single day she had been away.

So regular were his habits—turning each day into the same day, making every Sunday into all the other Sundays—that when any small change occurred it was very noticeable. Only a few months before he had asked diffidently if he could have his meal early. He always ate silently, with such absorption that to be in the same room was in itself a silent, pleasurable participation in the single ceremony. Unusually, that evening he ate hurriedly, without enjoyment, and rose early from the table.

“There must be something important on this evening,” Ruttledge remarked as he and Kate saw him to the car, Kate petting the sheepdog.

“There’s a removal,” he said hurriedly.

“Who’s dead?” Ruttledge asked without guile.

“Missus Fitzgerald,” he said, immediately turning red.

What had happened had taken place so long ago and was now so remote that Ruttledge would not have made any connection with the name but for his obvious discomfort. “Wasn’t she an old flame of yours?” he asked intuitively.

“That’ll do you now,” he said, and let the sheepdog quickly into the car before getting behind the wheel. He was still red with embarrassment when he let the window down to say his usual, “God bless yous,” as the big car rolled out towards the alder tree and down towards the lake and shore.

“It’s strange,” Kate said, “to show so much emotion going to her funeral when he could have married her when they were young. He was fond of her. His deep embarrassment was there to see.”

“He wanted to be on his own. He didn’t want to be married,” Ruttledge said. “The priest, the single man, was the ideal of society, and with all the children we saw looking up at us from the floors of those bungalows, who can blame him?”

“Don’t you think we are happy?” she asked so seriously that he paused, and drew her close.

“We are different. I don’t think we should worry it too much. We wanted to be together. We weren’t afraid.”

The four iron posts standing uselessly upright in their concrete bases had for long been an affront to the Shah.

This Sunday as they walked the fields he remarked, “They are a holy sight. Do you think will that Ryan ever finish?”

“He probably will—some day.”

“If I was you I’d get in someone who’d finish the job properly. I’d run him to hell and not let him near the place again,” he urged.

“I couldn’t do that. He did a good deal of work here when we had nothing.”

They walked the fields until they found the sheep and lambs in the shade on the side of the hill. The cows were lying with their calves in a circle like wagons a few feet from the water in the small field where old potato ridges were still marked on the grass. A little way off the old Shorthorn stood on her own under broken whitethorns that came down to the shore.

“She’s about to calve. It’s not a great time—out on all this grass.”

“She’s a long time with you now. A great old lassie,” he said.

The cow stood still as the Shah put out his hand to feel her bones. “She’s well shook,” he said. “She’ll have to be looked at again before night. She could calve at any time.”

They turned away. The surface of the water out from the reeds was alive with shoals of small fish. There were many swans on the lake. A grey rowboat was fishing along the far shore. A pair of herons moved sluggishly through the air between the trees of the island and Gloria Bog. A light breeze was passing over the sea of pale sedge like a hand. The blue of the mountain was deeper and darker than the blue of the lake or the sky. Along the high banks at the edge of the water there were many little private lawns speckled with fish bones and blue crayfish shells where the otters fed and trained their young.

“I can never look at the blue of the mountain now without thinking of John Quinn,” Ruttledge said.

“Oh John,” the Shah shook gently. “You wouldn’t want to be depending too much on John unless it was for women you were looking. John is a boy.”

The meal was served when they returned to the house. He ate alone, with the sheepdog by his chair, and no one spoke. The only sounds were the knife and fork on a plate or a stirring spoon and the small birds on the green bank outside the window. Kate and Ruttledge left the room and returned without attracting his attention. When he rose from the table he said, “That was great. God bless and keep you, Kate.”

They saw him to the car. The sheepdog leaped into the front seat and placed his front paws on the dashboard. He turned under the four iron posts and let the windows down to call out, “God bless yous,” as he passed the porch. They watched the light flash on the glass and metal as the car appeared and reappeared
in the breaks in the big trees as it went slowly out around the shore.

They continued looking for a long time at the evening sparkle on the lake until a dark figure appeared in a pale space, walking slowly, disappearing behind the trees. When the figure moved across the last clear space, it could either turn uphill or enter the fields along the shore. So even was the slow pace that Patrick Ryan emerged into the shade of the alder above the gate at the expected moment.

“Talk of the devil,” Ruttledge breathed as soon as he recognized the figure in the dark suit.

He came at the same slow, studied pace up the short avenue to the porch. The dark suit was neatly pressed, the white shirt ironed, the wine-coloured tie carefully knotted and the black shoes shone beneath the thin white dust of the road. He was five feet, six inches in height, with broad shoulders, a remarkably handsome head, sixty-five years of age, erect and strong.

Ruttledge knew that his first words would have been pondered carefully, and waited in front of the porch instead of going towards him.

“I have been meaning to come round several times but there’s been people hanging out of me for months,” Patrick spoke slowly and deliberately.

“That doesn’t matter. You are welcome,” Ruttledge said, and led him into the house.

“Where is she?” he demanded when he was seated in the white rocking chair. “Is she here?”

“In the house somewhere.”

Kate came into the room. She had changed into a blouse of pale silk and brushed her hair. “You are welcome, Patrick.”

“It’s great to see you, Kate,” he rose from the chair with natural easy charm.

It was cool and dark within the house after the brightness of the porch, the green bank outside the large window glowing in the hidden light.

“You’ll have a drink—it’s a while since you were in the house,” Ruttledge said as he took out a bottle of Powers.

“I bar the drink,” Patrick Ryan raised his hand dramatically. “I completely bar the drink. There’s too much fucken drink passed around in this country.”

“You’ll have tea?” Kate said.

“No tea either. I came on a mission. I want this man to drive me to Carrick.”

“That’s easily done.”

“I suppose you have all heard that our lad is bad in Carrick?”

“Jamesie told us that Edmund is poorly,” Ruttledge said carefully.

“With Jamesie around, this place will never lack a radio-TV station,” he said sarcastically.

“We’d be lost without Jamesie,” Ruttledge said.

“I suppose he told you that I was never in to see our lad. He probably has it spread all over the country.”

“He just mentioned that Edmund was poorly and that old Mrs. Logan and the dog are lost since he went into hospital.”

“They are casting it up that I was never in to see him when I only heard today that he was in hospital. When you are working here and there all over the country you hear nothing.”

“When do you want to leave?” Ruttledge asked.

“We’ll go now, in the name of God.”

“Would you like to come?” Ruttledge asked Kate, though he knew Patrick Ryan wouldn’t want her and she was unlikely to come.

“No, thanks.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Patrick Ryan said, but Kate made no response. In the porch he stood looking across at the four iron posts standing in their concrete bases and said, “I heard they are talking about that as well.”

“If it wasn’t that it would be something else. There’s no hurry,” Ruttledge said.

“We might as well stop them talking, lad. The people around this lake were always known to be a holy living terror for news and they’ll never die while Jamesie lives,” Patrick Ryan laughed lowly, suddenly in much better humour. “There was a boy of the Reagans down on holiday from Dublin. The Reagans were all doctors, lawyers, teachers, that kind of crowd and the boy was delicate. I heard not long ago that he’s a diplomat in Chicago. He wanted to visit an uncle, the Master in Kesh, and they thought him too delicate to walk or cycle, so they harnessed up an old quiet pony they had. I’m not telling a word of a lie, lad, but the mile by the lake took longer than the other five miles to Kesh. They were all out. They wanted to know who he was, where he was from, who he was staying with—though they all knew the pony and cart well—and where was he going and what was he doing in this part of the country. It was like having to pass through customs and excise. They got in between the shaft of the cart and the pony’s shoulder so that the poor gossen couldn’t move until they had extracted every word of flesh. If he had a loudspeaker to broadcast the details, hours could have been saved, but they all had to find out for themselves. It was dark by the time he got to Kesh and they were beginning to be worried. I’m telling you, lad, those people will never die while Jamesie is cycling around.”