“Most of the people in this part of the country will never rise off their arses in the ditches. You have to have something behind you to be able to rise.”
Rise to what? came to Ruttledge’s lips, but he didn’t speak it. “I suppose they’ll move around in the light for a while like the rest of us and disappear,” he said.
“They wouldn’t like to hear that either, lad,” Patrick Ryan replied trenchantly. “All the fuckers half-believe they are going to be the Big Exception and live for ever.”
The spires of the churches on the hill rose above the low roofs of Carrick, and on a higher isolated hill across the town stood a concrete water tower, like a huge mushroom on a slender stem. The long stone building had been the old workhouse and was now part of the hospital. Age had softened the grey Victorian harshness of the stone.
The open wards they walked through were orderly and clean. The men in the military rows of beds were old. As they passed down the brown linoleum-covered corridor, many were in their own world, a few engaged in vigorous conversation with themselves. Others were as still as if they were in shock. Sunday visitors gathered around certain beds in troubled or self-conscious uselessness, but they formed a semblance of company and solidarity against those who lay alone and unvisited.
“It’d make you think, lad,” Patrick said sourly. “There’s not a lot to it when it all comes down.”
They found Edmund in a tiny room on his own, a drip above the bed attached to his arm, in deep, drugged sleep.
“Our lad is bad,” Patrick Ryan said.
“We’d be better to let him sleep.”
Patrick Ryan put the bottle of Lucozade they had brought firmly down on the bedside table, and without any warning he took Edmund by the shoulders and began to shake him violently.
“Let him rest. You can see he’s very sick,” Ruttledge said, but his words only increased Patrick Ryan’s determination.
“We’ll bring him to his senses in a minute, lad.”
“Watch the drip!” Ruttledge called in alarm as the tubes and bottle trembled.
When Edmund woke he was frightened. At first, he did not know where he was. “Patrick,” he said out of his disturbed sleep when he recognized his brother’s face, and offered his trembling hand.
“Are you all right?” Patrick Ryan demanded.
He made no answer. Either he didn’t understand or his attention was distracted by Ruttledge’s presence at the foot of the bed. With great effort he reached back to an old tradition of courtesy. “Joe,” he called to Ruttledge, and with difficulty again reached out a trembling hand. “You were very good to come. How are yous all around the lake?”
“We are well, Edmund. How is yourself?”
He wasn’t given the opportunity to answer. Patrick filled a glass from the Lucozade bottle. “Drink this,” he ordered. “It’ll do you good.” He held it to his lips but Edmund was too weak to drink. Much of the yellow liquid ran down his white stubble.
“Leave it be,” Ruttledge said in anger and took the glass from his hand. “We are doing more harm than good.”
For a moment Patrick Ryan looked as if he was about to turn on Ruttledge. Instead he turned back to Edmund. “Go back to sleep now, lad,” he commanded. “You’ll be all right.”
Edmund looked towards Ruttledge in mute enquiry. The face was as regular and handsome as Patrick’s but far more withdrawn and gentle and it was now refined by illness. Ruttledge hardly knew him. They had met over the years by chance on the roads. Each had made the usual polite enquiries of the other but past that point conversation never began, falling back on that old reliable, the unreliable weather. As with many diminished people, Edmund’s response was to rephrase each thing the other person said in the form of a question, often with an expression of great interest, even charm. In its humble way it gave the other every encouragement to continue. Many did not know or care that they were responding to nothing but an echo. Others mutely acknowledged that this was his simple way. Only a few were openly contemptuous.
“Have you nothing to answer but repeat the words after me?” his exasperated brother had demanded more than once.
“Nothing to answer? Nothing at all to answer.”
No matter how much Patrick railed, Edmund remained safe within these echoes and repetitions. Now he was on the cliff-face of a silence that required nothing.
“You must be tired,” Ruttledge said gently.
“Not too tired. You were very good to come. You were both very good to come.”
“We’ll go now. You can go back to sleep,” Patrick said.
“Goodbye, Pa,” Edmund used a family name for Patrick that Ruttledge hadn’t heard him called in years. “Remember me to all of them around the lake.”
“They are all asking for you,” Ruttledge said. “They are waiting for you to come home.”
“You can go back to sleep now,” his brother repeated, but Edmund was already sleeping. A nurse came into the small room and when Patrick engaged her in conversation about the patient Ruttledge went out to the corridor to wait.
“We were wrong to wake him,” Ruttledge said as they walked through the wards and down the long pale green corridor.
“Our lad isn’t long for this world, I fear,” Patrick Ryan answered vaguely.
At the car, Ruttledge asked, “Where would you like me to leave you?”
“I never left this town yet without leaving them money. I’m not going to start doing anything different now.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“We’ll call to see how Paddy Lowe is getting along, in the name of God.”
A young girl was serving behind the counter in Lowe’s Bar. Except for a party of two girls and five men of different ages who were on their way home from a football match, the bar was empty.
“Where’s Paddy?” Patrick asked the girl as she was drawing the glasses of beer.
“He’s out on the land,” the girl answered.
“Me and Paddy are great friends,” Patrick Ryan said, but the girl was not drawn further into the conversation. As soon as they raised the glasses of beer, all Patrick’s attention veered to the crowd returning from the football match. “I’ll dawnder over to see where this crowd is from,” he laughed apologetically, and approached their table with a theatrical slowness that engaged the attention of the table even before he spoke. “Did yous win? ” he asked with charm. They had lost. The match had been played in Boyle and hadn’t been even close. Their team was Shannon Gaels. “Ye must have a crowd of duffers like our crowd,” he said amiably.
“They are not great but it’s a day out,” a man said. “Only for football we might never get out of the house.”
“You can say that again.”
“Over and over,” another man said.
There was more talk and some laughter. When Patrick Ryan rejoined Ruttledge at the counter, he was a man restored and refreshed.
“They are all from Drumlion,” he confided. “Their frigger of a team lost. We might as well drink up and go now, in the name of God. Don’t forget to tell Paddy Lowe I was in and was asking for him.”
“Who will I say …?” the girl enquired politely.
“Tell him the man who wore the ragged jacket called. Once he hears that he’ll know. ‘For none can tell the man who wore the ragged jacket.’ ”
“The man who wore the ragged jacket,” she repeated, puzzled and amused at his confidence and theatricality.
“ ‘And when all is said and done, who can tell the man who wore the ragged jacket?’ ” he repeated. The men who had been to the football match shouted out to them. Ruttledge waved. Patrick Ryan stood at the door and shouted, “Up us all! Up Ceannabo!”