By the Lake (15 page)

“Good luck and more again tomorrow and may we never die.”

“And Johnny has gone back to England after another summer,” Ruttledge said.

“The train from Dromod. Two drinks in the bar across from the station waiting for the train that you’d be as well without. There’s nothing to celebrate seeing someone going. Margaret’s father met the train, left him at the airport.”

“I hate to say but I wasn’t sorry,” Mary said. “I had Johnny for most of the whole day every day.”

“He was very good company when he was over on his visit.”

“All these fellas know how to play when they are out,” Jamesie raised his hand. “There’s a big differ between visiting and belonging.”

“Even when he wasn’t talking it was hard seeing him, remembering all that happened,” Mary said. “He thought he could not live without her. At this table he used to put his head down in his arms and cry without crying. There he was a few days ago doing the crosswords or marking the racing pages if he wasn’t talking.”

“Anna Mulvey must have been beautiful to have set anybody so far astray?”

“No. There were plenty better looking but she was far ahead of what’s beautiful. Tall, with long black hair, long back, sharp face. All the Mulveys had a swing and an air.
The Playboy
it was that brought them together. Anna had never any interest in Johnny. She was even two-timing him with Peadar Curran when
The Playboy
was still on. He had me nearly driven out of my mind when she tried to break it off. Walking up and down, talking, talking, not able to eat, not able to sit for a minute,” Mary said.

“There were times we got afraid. We didn’t know what he’d do if he got to know about Peadar.”

“Then he did get to hear,” Mary said.

“Hugh Brady went and told him when he should have packed him with lies like everybody else. He frightened poor Brady into telling. Johnny went straight from Brady to Anna and she swore she had nothing to do with Curran or any other man. Johnny was like putty in her hands. He went back and devoured Brady for spreading rumours and lies. It was a God’s charity. Omadhauns like Brady are a living danger.

“Peadar Curran went to England. That was one torment less for Johnny. There was nothing much special about his going. Everybody was going to England. He may have gone as well because the business with Anna was getting too warm for comfort. Peadar was always careful.”

“Anna was seeing Johnny but only to keep him pacified.”

“Anna was the next for England. We thought it was to get
away from Johnny. The Mulveys were well off and she didn’t have to go. She went after Peadar.”

“How did Johnny take her going?”

“What could he do? By then he was grasping at every straw. She promised to write.”

“Anna got a land in England. The good Peadar had another woman. Then Anna started writing to Johnny. Johnny was delirious for those letters.”

“Instead of waiting for the post to come to the house he’d go round to meet the postman. He’d stop him on the road and make him search through the letters. Then when she wrote that she missed him and wanted him to come to England I don’t think his feet touched the ground for days.”

“Then he shot the poor gundogs, Oscar and Bran,” Mary said quietly. “I used to feed those dogs. They were beautiful.”

“Far better if he’d shot himself or rowed out into the middle of the lake with a stone around his neck,” Jamesie said.

“All this because Anna happened to be in
The Playboy
?”

“She was probably the worst of them as far as the acting went but you couldn’t take your eyes off her while she was on the stage.”

“Johnny used to get me to read out her lines for him when he was practising his part,” Mary said.

“Can you remember any of them?”

“Not a single line, except it was terrible old eejity stuff,” Mary smiled. “Especially when you’d compare it to what was happening under your eyes.”

“It’s Pegeen I’m seeing only, and what’d I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe from this place to the Eastern world?”
Ruttledge quoted.

“That’s it. Terrible eejity stuff,” Mary said.

“When it was new it had power enough to get people very exercised and excited,” Ruttledge said.

“It’s easy to get people excited,” Jamesie said dismissively.
“Was I like that when I was going round the lake on the bicycle trying to get at you, Mary?”

“You hardly cared. You were far too interested in everything else that was going on. I was the big booboo. What did I ever see in him, Margaret?” She put her hand on the girl’s hair.

“Did you see my Jamesie?” he mimicked, rubbing his hands together. “Those were the days, Mary. You loved me then.”

“Love,” Mary repeated. “Love flies out the window.”

“When someone falls like Johnny, it guarantees suffering,” Kate said.

“Isn’t that what courting is all about? It’s finding out,” Mary said. “Those too bound up with themselves will get their eyes opened.”

“Even the clever ones can get nabbed while they’re circling and beating about,” Jamesie said. “Is that how this fella was nabbed, Kate?”

“No,” she laughed. “We worked for the same firm in different departments, on different floors. We hardly spoke. I never thought about him in any way in particular other than it was unusual to have someone Irish working in the firm.”

“Robert Booth was Irish. He gave me the job,” Ruttledge said.

“You’d never think of Robert as Irish,” Kate said. “He went to acting school to get rid of his accent.”

“Don’t let him sidetrack you, Kate. We want the low-down on how he was nabbed. We want the feathers,” Jamesie said.

“Don’t tell him, Kate,” Ruttledge warned playfully.

“One day our copying machine wasn’t working and I went down to his floor to do some copying. We knew one another’s names and we probably would have exchanged a few words from time to time. Out of the blue he said, ‘You have very nice legs, Kate.’ ”

Jamesie cheered as if a goal had been scored, while Margaret
wagged her finger at him with the solemnity of the pendulums of one of the clocks.

“Sexy. He was the sleepy fox lying in the grass, all that time waiting to pounce,” Jamesie said.

“He’d disgrace you,” Mary said.

“Don’t tell him, Kate,” Ruttledge said. “It’ll be all over the country.”

“Pay no heed to him either. It’s a charity to show them up,” Mary said.

“You can’t get on without us either,” Jamesie asserted.

“Then we met in the lift on the way out of work—I think I might have engineered that—and he invited me for a drink. It was November, it was raining. We went to the Old Wine Shades, a wine bar near the river, not far from the office. We had a bottle of red wine—I hardly ever took a drink then—with a plate of white cheddar and crackers.”

“I don’t know how you can drink that red wine. It tastes like pure poison. Yer man here was trying to get behind the fence.”

“I think I was doing the same, Jamesie.”

He gave a small cheer of approval.

“And then that was Him who was married to Her. Margaret will be heading out into all this soon. All those boys, nice and cuddly.” The granddaughter gave him a light blow and he pretended to hide behind the shield of his huge arms.

“Margaret must think us all a terrible crowd of donkeys,” Mary said and drew her into the crook of her arm. “What would her father and mother say?”

All through the evening the pendulum clocks struck. There were seven or eight in the house, most of them on the walls of the upper room. The clocks struck the hours and half-hours irregularly, one or other of them chiming every few minutes.

“Are any of those clocks telling the right time?” Ruttledge asked, looking up, when he felt it was time to leave.

“What hurry’s on you?” Jamesie countered quickly. “Isn’t the evening long? It’s ages since ye were over.”

Unnoticed, Mary had made sandwiches with ham and lettuce and tomato, cut into small squares. As they were handed round, Ruttledge joined Jamesie in another whiskey. Kate and Mary had tea with Margaret.

“I keep those clocks wound,” Mary said. “I don’t know how to set them. We should get the little watchmaker to the house one of these days to clean and oil the parts and to set all the clocks. Jamesie’s father was a sight for clocks. He’d go to hell if there was one at an auction. He was able to set them perfect. I just keep them wound. You get used to the sound.”

“Who cares about time? We know the time well enough,” Jamesie said. “Do you have any more news now before you go?”

“None. Unless the Shah going on holidays qualifies for news.”

“The Shah gone on his holidays. Lord bless us,” Jamesie said in open amazement.

“Did he ever go on holidays in his life before?” Mary asked, the more sharply amused.

“Once, to Lough Derg years ago. This time he’s gone in the same direction but to an hotel beside the ocean.”

“He must be surely ravelling in spite of his money. He won’t know what to do with himself.”

“He went with Monica, that cousin of mine who lost her husband. The four children are going as well. He’s taking them.”

“I’d praise him for that,” Jamesie said.

Ruttledge lifted the little girl high and gave her coins and asked her and Mary to come round the lake on a visit. The child, holding Mary’s hand, Jamesie and the two dogs walked them all the way out to the brow of the hill.

“I’ll be over with the mower as soon as there’s any stretch of settled weather,” Ruttledge said.

“Whenever it suits,” Jamesie answered with the most studied
casualness, though for him it was the most important news in the whole of the evening.

Three days before the planned end of the holiday the Mercedes was back in round the shore followed by Monica’s large red Ford. The eldest boy travelled with the Shah, the girl and two younger boys with their mother. The old man and the boy were chatting as the Mercedes rolled past the porch and getting on wonderfully well together.

“This man is going to be an aeroplane pilot,” he said expansively, and put his hand proudly on the boy’s shoulder outside the porch. The boy was already taller than the stout old man. All the children were casually, expensively dressed; they were bright-looking, confident.

Their mother was wearing a simple green dress, the first time since the funeral they had seen her out of black. She was tall, with a natural elegance, and her face was humorous and kind.

“You came home a little early?”

“We did,” the Shah answered defensively, while Monica raised her eyes to the ceiling in eloquent silence. “We had long enough.”

They all had tea with fresh apple tart. By the time tea was over the younger children discovered the black cat. The eldest boy stood beside his mother’s chair as if he was now the support and hope of an ancient house.

“What was the hotel like?” Ruttledge asked his uncle when they were alone together outside the house.

“Good enough. It was right beside the front. You had only
to cross the road to get to the ocean. Every day I had a dip. I tried to get Monica to go in but she wouldn’t hear.”

“Was the food good?”

“Good enough.”

“They didn’t mind your leaving early?”

“They were decent. They gave money back. Not that it would have mattered. The Northerners are all good business people.”

“How did you find Monica?” Ruttledge asked, wanting to know how she was recovering from the death.

“I noticed she’s that little bit fond of the bar. She was in it every evening. That or she’s on the lookout for men,” he started to shake.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“There’s nothing worse than widows. Even priests will tell you that.”

“Do you want me to put the box quietly in the boot of the car?” Ruttledge wanted to change the conversation.

“No. Leave it. I’ll be out on Sunday,” he said, and Ruttledge saw how strained he was.

“I suppose it’ll be a while before you go away again,” he said sympathetically.

“Wild horses wouldn’t drag me. You’d wonder what all those silly fools are doing rushing off to places.”

“Maybe it renews and restores a sense of their own place?”

“Then they’re welcome to it,” he said dismissively.

“Still, it was a very decent thing for you to do,” Ruttledge said with feeling, knowing how much it had cost him.

Within the house Monica spoke of the days in the hotel. “You know, he did his very best. It must have been hard. He spoiled the children. He couldn’t do enough for us.” At first her shoulders shook with laughter but then the laughter appeared only in the smile. “At eleven each day he went for a swim. He changed in his room into a faded pair of old trunks that must
have been in fashion at the time of the Boer War. If he’d pulled on a dressing gown or even a raincoat it wouldn’t have been too bad but he marched through the hotel in nothing but the trunks and an old pair of sandals, carrying a towel—through the hotel lobby and out into the middle of the road, with cars honking and people splitting themselves—and then into the ocean like a whale.

“You know, you don’t notice how big he is in his clothes but in the trunks he was like a walking barrel. I kept well out of sight after the first day. A crowd gathered. Eamon here came to me and said, ‘You know, Mother, if Uncle was a funny man we could make money out of him.’ ”