By the Lake (37 page)

“The houses on the mountain were raided but luckily not one of the houses round Glasdrum was touched. If they had come and looked in the loft we were gonners. Big Bernie never spoke much. I used bring him his food and drink and take
and empty his pot. He hardly ever said a word. My father gave out the rosary at night but he never answered down any of the prayers. Maybe he was afraid there could be somebody out on the street listening. As soon as he was fit to be moved they came for him at night with a sidecar.

“Then they came for poor Sinclair, the Protestant, nine fields away. The Sinclairs were quiet and hardworking and they kept to themselves like all the Protestants. They knew as much about the ambush as we knew.

“Sinclair’s wife met them when they came to the back door. She thought they were calling about a mare they had advertised in the
Observer
that week and pointed them to the byre where Taylor was milking. They shot him like a dog beneath the cows and said he had confessed before he was shot. Oh, we are a beautiful people, Kate. They shot him because somebody had to be made to pay and poor Sinclair was a Protestant and the nearest to hand. All the houses around were raided the next day. They searched the loft and threw down the pony’s harness but found nothing.

“Never, never, never did Big Bernie Reynolds come back once to the house to as much as say thanks, and we could have lost our lives while he was there. We never, never had as much as a word from the night they took him away on the sidecar till this very day and we are not likely to hear now unless he rises out of the ground.

“After the war he grew rich in the town. He was on every committee in the county. As he got old he used often sit outside his shop on a warm day. Do you think he’d ever recognize us as we passed?”

“Couldn’t you have stopped and reminded him? People often forget and are glad to be reminded.”

“I’d be very apt,” he said scornfully. “He knew where we lived. Would you forget if you were pulled out of the river and hid and fed in a loft for weeks? We didn’t mind. You wouldn’t
leave a cat or a dog in the river, never mind a wounded man. In the spring and sometimes when it’s not spring I often see myself and my father planting potatoes on the hill and that line of young men coming up through the bog and think of the changes a short hour can bring. And that’s life!” he called out.

“And it is everything,” Kate said slowly.

“I don’t see queues gathering down in Shruhaun trying to get out. They have started to march.” He was listening again intently. The drumming was constant.

“Wouldn’t it be more fitting if they had a talking dummy calling out
Hel-lo
every minute or so instead of the stone soldier?”

“They’d not stand for that,” he said.

“Wouldn’t it be better than the little stone soldier looking down the hill with his gun?”

“They have left the Monument,” he said. “There’s no way even you, Kate, could get Hel-lo out of a stone.”

“All you would have to do is put a long-running tape in the head that would call out Hel-lo every so often.”

“They’d not stand for it. They’d think you were making fun of them.”

“But isn’t it closer to what happened?”

“It wouldn’t make any differ. These are serious people. They would shoot you. God, but you’d love to be behind the ditch when the tourists get out of their cars with the cameras and to see their faces when the statue says
Hel-lo
. It’d be nearly worth doing it just to see their faces.” He laughed and drank slowly what remained in his glass. “I’ll never forget the first Hel-lo. There was a terrible gap between the ‘Hel-’ and the ‘Low.’ The poor fucker was afraid he’d be heard and afraid of his arse he’d not be heard. Now it’s a monument and an Easter march. The dead can be turned into anything,” he said almost in wonderment.

“Why don’t we go?” Ruttledge said.

When they came to the lake, Jamesie said, “Lord bless us, not a soul in sight on this shore. There were Sundays when this shore was black with people. There were some awful poor innocent people going then. They’d believe anything and were easily pleased. Now nothing but the divers and the swans.”

There were primroses and violets on the banks of the lane and the dark leaf of the wild strawberry, dandelion in flower and little vetches. It was too early to scent the wild mint but they could see its rough leaves crawling along the edges of the gravel. The drumming was closer. They could hear the fifes and tin whistles. Jamesie lifted his bicycle from the hedge and cycled alongside. They hurried. When they reached the main road there was nobody else waiting. A Garda squad car had come round the turn. A colour party followed. They wore black shoes and pants, white shirts, black ties and gloves, black berets and dark glasses. Out in front a lone marcher bore the tricolour. In threes the others marched. They carried placards with slogans and photos of Pearse, McDermott and Sands on green, white and gold backgrounds. The effect was somehow sinister and cheap. A small crowd followed the band. A few were local activists but most were from the North. In the middle of the crowd, Jimmy Joe McKiernan walked quietly, the head of the Provisionals, North and South, with power over all who marched. A second Garda squad car followed at a discreet distance.

“One thing you can say about Jimmy Joe is that he never pushes himself out in front,” Jamesie said with approval.

“They’ll probably be putting up another statue to him one of these years,” Ruttledge said.

“In jail, out of jail, pulled in for questioning at all hours, watched night and day by the detectives from the Special Branch. Since he was a boy he’s been with them and nothing much was ever happening. It must have been a pure godsend when the North blew up.”

“Have any of the marchers any idea of what really happened at Glasdrum?”

“Not a clue. They’re not from here and weren’t born then. Jimmy Joe is the only one who knows, and he doesn’t care. All he cares about is turning it around into a bigger thing. That’s why they’d never stand for your shouting dummy. It’s in the other direction they want to go.”

“What’s that?” Ruttledge asked.

“Big show. Big blow. Importance.”

When the second squad car passed, a small group came into view standing outside the cottage on the corner farther down the road. They had been watching the march and were now waving to the Ruttledges and Jamesie to join them. Patrick Ryan was there and Big Mick Madden, an old antagonist of Jamesie’s who owned the cottage. With them were three teenage boys.

“Leave them to hell. We’ll stay as we are,” Jamesie said, but it was too late. The Ruttledges were already moving down the road. He didn’t want to be seen as the one who turned back.

Big Mick Madden was powerfully built. When young he had gone to work in factories and on building sites in England and had come home in his forties on his father’s death. A good melodeon player, he had made money playing in bars and at weddings until drink forced him to give up both music and drinking. While aggressive and boastful, he was also engagingly boyish. The cottage was the traditional three rooms, neat and whitewashed, the door and window frames painted red. Grey sheets of asbestos had replaced the thatch. He embraced Kate and shook hands warmly with Ruttledge but turned at once on Jamesie.

“Have you heard the cuckoo yet?” he demanded.

“Ye can hear nothing out here along the road,” Jamesie countered defensively. “Your ears are deafened with cars and trucks.”

“Deafened,” Big Mick repeated derisively. “Elsewhere they are putting men on the moon and flying to the stars and here we have clients with their ears to the ground trying to be first to hear the cuckoo!”

“Not a great class of bird to be listening for either,” Patrick Ryan added. “Laying eggs in other men’s nests, pushing the rightful eggs out, tricking the poor birds into drawing and carrying, and all he contributes is a song, ‘Cuck-oo … Cuck-oo … Cuck-oo …’ ”

“Out in the world they are putting men on the moon and here we have old blows trying to be first to hear the cuckoo,” Big Mick repeated.

“I listen for the cuckoo every year,” Kate said.

“Don’t be standing up for him, Kate,” Big Mick warned. “Give him an inch and the frigger will build nests in your ears.”

“I listen to the cuckoo and call out ‘Cuckoo’ so that people can hear him before their time,” Patrick Ryan said, and gave a passable imitation of the clear call.

“Good man, Patrick,” Big Mick Madden warmed. “Pack those old blowers and dukers with lies.”

“No, I’d not be fooled. I’d know full well,” Jamesie said dismissively. It was his only contribution.

Ordinarily so nimble and playful, he could not function in the face of such aggression and contented himself with pulling faces for the three youths. Soon he had them laughing at his dumb show behind Mick Madden’s back. At first, Mick thought the boys were laughing with him, and this increased the vigour of his abuse, but gradually he grew suspicious and would suddenly whirl round in vain attempts to catch Jamesie in the act.

“We better be making tracks,” Ruttledge said after a time. Patrick Ryan had plainly enjoyed the meeting and the confrontation and made promises as they parted to be around shortly to visit them all. The boys waved shyly and Big Mick hurled a few parting insults after Jamesie with plain enjoyment.

“I never hear. I’m like water and the duck,” Jamesie raised his hand resignedly. “That Madden is unseemly,” he said as they turned down towards the lake. “If he had manners he could still be going into bars and houses and have company and a drink or two but he had always to go and do the gulpen. Now he can go nowhere. He has to skulk in the house on his own, driving those young boys wild with talk of all the black women he rode in England. He rode nothing either here or in England. He’d be afraid of his arse.”

“He’s still a fine-looking man,” Kate said.

“These fellas are all afraid, Kate. They’ll talk plenty and then turn back. They’d sicken your face.”

“At least John Quinn isn’t afraid,” Ruttledge said lightly by way of change.

“They say John Quinn never went with women when he was in England the time the first wife was alive. He worked all the hours he could get his hands on, sending every penny home. You can never tell with people,” Jamesie pondered soberly.

They had drawn close to the water. Jamesie stopped suddenly and raised his hand. All the way from the old abbey and graveyard in Shruhaun floated the melancholy notes of a bugler.

“And that was Him who was married to Her,” he said when the distant bugle notes died. He did not move for a long time as he listened, and then climbed on his bicycle and turned round to bow low. “I have decided, I have decided after serious deliberation that I never liked yous anyhow.”

The sun was now high above the lake. There wasn’t a wisp of cloud. Everywhere the water sparkled. A child could easily believe that the whole of heaven was dancing.

The cows calved safely and were out on grass with their calves. A single late ewe that could not open was lost with her lamb. They had taken the lamb from her, broken and dead, and she died of shock before morning. She and her lamb were their only loss.

Monica came to tell them that she was going to marry again. They were glad and wished her happiness and it was arranged that she would bring Peter Monaghan to the house for an evening.

“I wanted you to know before his lordship hears. God knows what he’ll say when he hears,” she smiled in her self-depreciating way. “What I was most worried about was the children, but they seem to have got used to Peter though they were very cool to begin with. We met in the church choir. I’m sure when the poor Shah hears he’ll begin to lose his faith in churches.”

It is not always true that people repeat their first sexual choice endlessly. On the surface Peter Monaghan could not have been more different to the hard-drinking, extroverted popular businessman Monica had first loved and married. He was attentive, even diffident, drank little and was in thrall to Monica. What he shared with Paddy Joe and Monica was that, like them, he was intelligent. The evening she brought him to the Ruttledges went well and another evening was arranged at Monica’s house.

“It looks as if there’s going to be a wedding,” the Shah announced ponderously the following Sunday, his hand on the sheepdog’s head.

“What wedding?” Kate enquired.

“Monica,” he cleared his throat. “You might well have known. She’s going to the river again. You’d think one round of the course and four children would be enough for the silly frigger.”

“Who’s the fortunate man?”

“Some poor harmless gom of a teacher. He’ll get his eyes opened. She was well able for poor Paddy Joe and the size of him and his large Crested Tens. ‘There’s not many of your size walking around,’ the doctor told him,” and at the very recollection of the doctor’s warning to his old adversary, he started to rock with amusement and to shout at the dog “Who’s the boss?” which set the dog barking. “I could see well what she was up to when we were in that hotel by the ocean in Donegal. Her father’s side of the house were all silly in that direction. Daft sexy friggers.”