By the Lake

  “You know more about the houses and people than I do.”

  “I was old when I left. Half strangers sometimes know more about a place than the people who live there.”

  “Do you regret having left?”

  “Many times over. The whole country was leaving then and I passed no heed. I didn’t even have to leave like most of the rest. You don’t get reruns in life like you do in a play. There’s no turning back now anyhow,” he smiled.

  There were so many cars outside the healer’s house that they had to stop to allow a truck to pass.

  “Seventh son of a seventh son. At least he’s doing great business. Do you think the cure works?” Johnny asked.

  “Many are cancer patients who have tried doctors and hospitals and have nowhere else to turn. He blesses them and tells them what they want to hear. Maybe that in itself does good. The mind is a strange place. Who knows?”

  Ruttledge told him that Bill Evans was no longer drawing water from the lake and had gone to live in a small house in the town.

  “Our dogs were treated better,” Johnny approved tiredly, but wasn’t interested further. He didn’t look up as they passed the cattle mart or at the two detectives in the alleyway across from Jimmy Joe McKiernan’s bar. At the creamery he sat smoking in the car while Ruttledge loaded the trailer with bags of meal and fertilizer.

  “Would you like to go to Luke Henry’s? We could have a drink and it’d be a comfortable place to wait while I get the rest of the things before the shops close.”

  “No better place. No decenter man than Luke. It was the one call we didn’t make on the way from the train. I’d like to see Luke again.”

  They found a place to park across the street from the bar. The bar itself was empty, Luke sitting on a high stool behind the counter, his back turned to the door, looking at the television high in the corner. It took him a long time to recognize Johnny, with the help of clues Ruttledge provided. Then he reached his hand across the counter.

  “Welcome home, Johnny. Welcome as the flowers in June.”

  “Great to be home, Luke. Great to see everybody so well.”

  They ordered rum with blackcurrant and a glass of stout but Luke pushed the banknote away that Johnny proffered. “It’s on the house. Welcome home, Johnny. Welcome home from England.”

  “I have a few things to get around the town. I won’t be long,” Ruttledge explained, intending to leave Johnny chatting comfortably with Luke. To his surprise, Johnny followed him out into the evening street.

  “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in at the bar?”

  “I’d sooner tag along. We’ll come back together.”

  The shops would soon be closing. The street was quick with last-minute bustle. In the first shop Johnny stood glued to Ruttledge like a shadow. No one recognized him. Silently, Johnny waited at the checkout until the basket was checked through. On the longer walk to the next shop he started falling behind.

  “A bit out of puff,” he apologized, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. The colour of his face had drained to leave an ugly tinge of blue in the paleness.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Just that small bit out of puff.”

  Some of the shops were letting down shutters.

  “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable sitting across in Luke’s than rushing around the town?”

  “There’s no chance you’d leave me, Joe? You wouldn’t forget to collect me?” he asked in a childlike voice.

  “Lord bless us, Johnny. I have never left anybody in the town yet,” Ruttledge was so amazed that he reached out and put his arm round his shoulders. “I’ll come back when the shopping is done and we’ll have a quiet drink together at Luke’s before heading home. We can have several. It’s not every week of the year we get you home.”

  They put the purchases in the car and crossed to Luke’s. Though the phrasing of the fear was mild, there was no mistaking the anxiety in the eyes, the terror of being abandoned in what had suddenly become a strange place. Because of the suddenness of their exit, Luke looked up enquiringly as they entered, but he was too good a barman to show surprise. He just moved their two glasses solicitously closer on the counter. There was now a number of drinkers in the bar and three shop assistants were playing a game of darts in the far corner, keeping the scores in chalk on the small blackboard. Sitting at the counter, Johnny seemed to revive and recover his ease after a few sips of rum. Ruttledge ordered another round. He decided to put off the remaining purchases to another time.

  “You wouldn’t mind, lads, if I had a throw?” Johnny asked the dart players when they came to the counter for drinks during a break in the game.

  “Not at all. Fire away. We’ve just been fooling around,” they said, and gave him a set of darts with red plastic fins.

  “I’ll probably hit nothing. One of the summers I was home I took up the gun again. I could hit nothing.”

  He flexed his wrists as he felt the weight and balance of the darts and took a few very casual practice throws before taking his place on the mat. Because he was a stranger, the whole bar went silent with attention as he threw. Magically, easily, each dart flew true. There was polite applause. Pleased and a little flustered, Johnny gathered the darts and offered them back to the boys but they insisted he throw again. For several minutes he threw and each throw went home. Only a single throw was missed and that by no more than the thickness of a wire. When he finally handed back the darts and took his place beside Ruttledge at the counter there was warm applause around the bar.

  “It was the best I ever saw,” Luke seized his hand.

  “It’s as good as on TV,” the players affirmed.

  Johnny insisted on buying another round and they drank in the glow of his success.

  “I don’t understand it. I don’t think I ever threw as well playing for the Prince of Wales. I was sure I’d hit nothing. I haven’t lifted a dart in months.”

  “It couldn’t have come back if it wasn’t already there,” Luke reassured him.

  “The gun was there once but when I lifted it again it was gone. It’s a mystery. I doubt if I could throw that well again to save my life.”

  It was time to leave. By now the whole bar had come to trace who Johnny was and where he came from and something of his history.

  “I’ll not say goodbye since I’ll expect to be in again before I head back across the pond,” Johnny said to Luke.

  “You’ll have to come and play a proper game though you’ll shame us all,” one of the dart players said. “If you were staying and we had you on the team we’d be able to beat the rest of the town good-looking.”

  “The next time I might hit nothing,” he replied modestly.

  “Thanks, Luke.”

  “Thanks yerselves,” Luke said as he gathered in their glasses, and they were followed out by a chorus of “Good luck!” and “Safe Journey!” and “Don’t take to the hedges!”

  Johnny was completely revived and needed no guiding to the car and trailer. Except for the bars the town was closed and had the same sense of closure and emptiness as beaches and public gardens at the end of the day.

  “Your uncle is still going good?” Johnny enquired politely as they drove out of town.

  “Still the same. Dines in the Central. He has sold the business to Frank Dolan but it just goes on the same as ever. You’d think it had never changed hands.”

  “He must be a very rich man now. Everybody said he was crazy at the time when he went and bought the old railway.”

  “He has more now than he needs. There’s only so much you can do with the day.”

  “It may be the whole show,” Johnny agreed.

  They had left the main road and entered the green lanes, whitethorns brushing the windscreen and filtering down the light. Because of the narrowness, they drove slowly and blew the horn loudly at every turn.

  “Patrick Ryan will be sure to be around when he hears you are home. Maybe we could all go into Luke’s togethe
r some evening and make a night of it,” Ruttledge said.

  “That’d be great. Luke’s is a very friendly place. He was always decent,” Johnny said.

  After the green enclosures of the lanes, the lake met them with space and light. A red sun was low in the sky.

  “All I have to do is hop the bike on the trailer and run you up to the house,” Ruttledge said when they reached the gate.

  “No. They’d think I was going soft,” Johnny said firmly. “I’ll just get the bicycle from behind the pier and dawdle up at my ease. I have the whole evening.”

  They both got out of the car. The engine was left running.

  “Are you certain now?” Ruttledge enquired a last time as Johnny took the bicycle.

  “No,” he said adamantly. “We had a most wonderful evening. It helped put round the whole day. It’s all A-one. Everything now is completely alphabetical.”

  While Ruttledge was unloading the trailer he looked from time to time across the lake. Johnny was climbing the hill slowly, pausing many times, a small dark figure on the pale pass shadowed by the whitethorns. When at last he reached the brow of the hill, he stood for a long time leaning on the bicycle. All he had to do from there was freewheel down to the house. Behind him on Moroney’s Hill there shivered a pure sky that was turning pale as ash as the sun went down.

  Within the house, Ruttledge told of Johnny’s fear of being abandoned in the town and then his triumph in Luke’s as each arrow flew true.

  “The visit was disturbing,” Kate said.

  “Because of his confusion?”

  “That and because he doesn’t look well.”

  “What I’d like this evening is some wine,” Ruttledge said.

  The table was laid, a single candle lit, the curtains not drawn. As they ate and drank and talked, the huge shapes of the trees around the house gradually entered the room in the flickering half-light, and the room went out, as if in a dream, to include the trees and the fields and the glowing deep light of the sky. In this soft light the room seemed to grow enormous and everything to fill with repose.

  A wild battering on the doors and windows, as if a storm had sprung up on the lake, woke them out of deep sleep. The house was shaking. They looked at one another in alarm and then heard a voice shouting out through all the pounding and battering. Pulling on clothes, Ruttledge ran towards the noise. Outside the glass porch Jamesie stood clear as day in the full moon above the lake. His huge hand was open and beating flatly on the glass while his other hand was shaking the locked door. The glass shook in the heavy frames as if about to shatter.

  “Johnny’s dead. Johnny’s dead. Johnny’s dead,” he was calling out. “Johnny’s dead,” he continued calling out when Ruttledge opened the door.

  “He can’t be. I left him at the lake gate …”

  “Dead. Had the priest and the doctor. Dead.”

  “I can hardly believe. I’m sorry.”

  “Dead before nine. Me and Mary were down in the bog. She left his tea ready but saw him come in on the street with the bicycle and went up from the bog to make his tea. She said he was in topping form and spoke of yourself and Kate and the great time he had in the town. When she left him he was watching Mickey Mouse on the TV. He always liked those cartoons. Twice we saw him come out on the street when we were in the bog. He stood as if he was looking across at the alders on Moroney’s Hill. Mary was the first to leave the bog and heard a sort of a moan when she got near the house and found him slumped sideways. When he didn’t answer she shouted down to the bog. When I got to the house he was still able to talk but it was all ravelled. The priest said he wasn’t fully gone at the time he was anointed. The doctor said the heart just gave out and it could have happened at any time.”

  Jamesie spoke very quickly and his disarray and shock were obvious but there was a finished feel to the account, as if it had been given a number of times already.

  “I’m very sorry.” Ruttledge offered his hand and winced at the fierceness of the clasp. “I wanted to leave him all the way up to the house but he wouldn’t hear. He insisted on walking.”

  “I know. He told it all to Mary when she was getting his tea. He had a great appetite after the town and lately he’s only been picking at his plate.”

  “I’m sorry, Jamesie,” Kate joined them in the porch. “Will you come in and take something?”

  “No. No. We have several houses to call to yet,” and it was only then Ruttledge noticed the small car waiting discreetly beyond the alder at the gate.

  “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  “Not a thing. Nothing. We can’t find Patrick Ryan anywhere. Nobody seems to know where he’s been working or gone. Some even said he could be gone to Dublin to do work for the Reynolds that have houses there.”

  “We’ll be over as soon as we get dressed. Is there anything we can bring?”

  “No. No. Everything’s got. Take your time.”

  The moon was so bright, the night so clear, that the headlights of the small car showed weakly in the spaces between the trees as it crawled out around the shore.

  They decided to walk. Wildfowl took fright as soon as they turned round the shore and clattered out towards where flocks of birds were clustered like dark fruit in the middle of the lake. The trees stood like huge sentinels along the shore, casting long shadows back on the moonlit grass. Here and there a barely perceptible night breeze stirred the still water, and stretches appeared like furrows of beaten silver under the moon. The heron had been disturbed by the car and did not rise until they were far out along the shore and was ghostly as it lifted lazily towards the moon before turning back the way they had come.

  “The last thing he said to me was here,” Ruttledge spoke when they reached the open gate: “ ‘Everything is now completely alphabetical.’ ”

  “It surely was. Somewhere between Y and Z.”

  The small street was filled with cars. Beyond the netting wire the iron posts of the empty hayshed stood out in the moonlight, as did the whitewashed outhouses. The henhouse was closed. Rectangles of light lay on the street from the small window and the open door. The living room was full of people. All the clocks had been stopped. The long inner room was open and several cardboard boxes rested on the oval table. The chairs had been taken from the room and filled the small living room. The door to the lower room was closed.

  “Poor Johnny,” Mary clasped their hands. Her face was filled with a strange serenity, as if she had been transported by the shock and excitement of the death to a more spiritual place.

  As they shook hands and took their place among the mourners, the muted voices all around them were agreeing: “I know it’s sad but when you think about it maybe it was all for the better. He wasn’t old. No family. What had he to head back to? Nobody related next or near. Sad as it is, when you think about it, it could not have happened any better if it had been planned. Of course it would have been better if it had never happened—but sooner or later none of us can escape that—God help us all,” and there was a palpable sense of satisfaction that they stood safely and solidly outside all that their words agreed.

  The small car that had waited outside the gate beyond the alder tree returned with Jamesie. He was very agitated. The muted voices stopped as he went up to Ruttledge.

  “We sent out word far and wide and can find no trace of Patrick. Nobody appears to know where he’s gone.”

  “Why is it so necessary to find Patrick?”

  “He always lays the body out!”

  Jamesie looked anxiously around. The house was full and though it was now well after midnight people were still coming to the house. The cardboard boxes on the oval table were full of food and drink. By custom, nothing could be offered until the corpse was laid out and viewed.

  “I’ll lay Johnny out,” Ruttledge offered.

  “Will you be able?” Jamesie searched his face. The house went silent.

  “I worked in hospitals when I was a student.” Ruttledge tried to hide
his own anxiety.

  “Do you think …?” Jamesie was uncertain.

  “I’m sure, especially if I can get any help.”

  “I’ll help,” a man volunteered, Tom Kelly, a neighbour Ruttledge knew slightly. He worked as a hairdresser in Dublin, was home visiting his mother, and had accompanied her to the house.

  “You’ll need a glass first,” Jamesie said, and poured each man a glass of whiskey and waited until they drank it down as if it was essential for facing into such a task. He handed Ruttledge a flat cardboard box. “Jimmy Joe McKiernan said everything is there.”

  Mary poured a basin of steaming water. She had towels, scissors, a sponge, a razor, a pair of white starched sheets, a pillowslip. She and Jamesie led the two men down into the closed lower room. Johnny lay on the bed in his shirt and trousers. His feet were bare.

  “Poor Johnny,” Mary said dreamily before moving to leave the room.

  Jamesie stood by her shoulder but did not speak. He was strained and taut.

  “If there’s anything you want, just knock hard on the door and Jamesie will come down,” Mary said.

  “Is there cotton wool?” Ruttledge asked.

  The flat box contained a large bag of cotton wool, a white habit, rosary beads, a bar of soap, a disposable razor. Jamesie closed the door firmly as he and Mary left the room.

  “We’ll have to get off the clothes.”

  For a moment, as he held the still warm flesh in his hand, he thought of themselves in the busy evening street of a few hours ago, all the darts flying true from this now lifeless hand. It did not take an ambush to bring about such quick and irrecoverable change.

  By lifting the hips, the trousers were pulled free. There was a wallet, coins, a penknife, a comb, a bunch of keys, betting slips, rosary beads in a small worn purse. With more difficulty they drew the strong thick arms out of the shirtsleeves and pulled the shirt loose. The long cotton undershirt was more difficult still. The body was heavy and surprisingly loose.

  “Cut it off.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to do like the shirt?”