Jamesie would have been on fire to know what had been delivered, but Patrick Ryan was incurious about the things around him and asked no further.
“He may be your uncle and he may have made his weight in money but let me tell you something for nothing, lad: he’s still as thick and as ignorant as several double ditches.”
“I’m fond of him,” Ruttledge affirmed simply. “He was kind when I was young. That goodness is still there even if it sometimes doesn’t show too well.”
Patrick looked hard at him for a moment, but Ruttledge stood unflinchingly, and after a long pause he turned away to mark the angle of a beam.
They were able to raise the heavy beams and, using ladders, bolt them to the top of the iron posts. As they worked in the heat and silence, Bill Evans was the only visitor they had on his way to the lake for the buckets of water. He stayed chatting with them until Patrick Ryan threw him cigarettes, and then he went into the house for tea and food and more cigarettes.
“He may well be happier than any of us, lad. He doesn’t know any differ,” Patrick Ryan said.
“Who can tell?” Ruttledge asked lightly.
“Who can tell, when all is said and done, and who can tell the man who wore the ragged jacket,” he sang softly. “It’s a conundrum, lad. That’s what it is.”
“Would you swap with him?”
“No, lad. I would not swap with a lord. We all want our own two shoes of life. If truth was told, none of us would swap with anybody. We want to go out the way we came in. It’s just as well we have no choice. If there was choice you’d have certain giddy outfits having operations to get themselves changed into other people like those sexchange outfits you see in the newspapers.”
They never knew whether he would come from one day to the next until his dark figure appeared in the spaces between the trees in around the shore or at the alder at the gate or standing in the doorway of the room. They worked often till dark. Once the heavy crossbeams were bolted into place, they started to cut the frame to hold the roof. When they had finished work for the day and eaten, he always sat on in the house, reluctant to go home.
“I’ll be glad to run you to Carrick to see Edmund,” Ruttledge offered several times as a way out of the long, closed evening.
“I know that well,” he answered. “I know that well but Edmund’s days are done. Our lad was easygoing like my father. My mother spent years in America and was hard. She lost an eye when she got hit in the byre with a horn while tying a cow and nearly all the money she brought back with her was lost trying to save the sight of the other eye. She was very hard. In my turn I was probably too hard on Edmund. In the end what does it matter? I could see Edmund was finished the minute he woke. He’s hanging by a thread in Carrick. We’ll not see him again.”
“Would you like to take a run into town?” Ruttledge offered on other evenings.
“No, lad, no. We’d take to the drink if we went to town.”
“We could have one or two and leave it at that. We don’t have to go wild.”
“You should know by now that your Irishman can do nothing by halves. He has to go the whole hog.”
“There’s a few things that have to be got for the house.”
“You go to town, lad, if you have to run for messages,” he said. Kate looked up from her ironing with alarm. “Why don’t you put that away so that we can have a proper chat, girl?”
“We can talk away while I’m ironing. It’s more pleasant.”
“It’s hard to whistle and chew meal. Do you think will you ever make that drawing you do pay?”
“I don’t think so, Patrick.”
“Why do you keep at it, then, girl?”
“It brings what I see closer.”
“Does it mean that nobody would want those drawings if you tried to sell?”
“That’s possible. An aunt of mine painted and drew all her life. She was good but never sold a drawing or a picture.”
“She must have plenty of washers, then.”
“Her husband was a lawyer.”
“He kept the show on the road. I suppose they had no children either.”
“They had two girls.”
He would become more and more frustrated but could not attack openly and they could not get on. What he wanted was complete attention and his moods were unpredictable, always changing. “Don’t tell me about the people of this part of the country. I’ve ploughed their fields, built their houses, laid them out, slept in their beds, sat at their tables. They’re as ignorant as dogshite. All they want is to get as much for themselves and to give as little back as they can ever manage. And the older they get — when you’d think they’d have some sense — the greedier the cunts become.”
“That’s too hard. There are many decent people round here.”
“There’s a few,” he admitted reluctantly. “They are far from the normal.”
“What about Mary and Jamesie?”
“Mary’s the best in the world,” his face brightened. “There’s none better than Mary. Jamesie would give you the shirt off his back. Once I was coming to borrow their mule. He had the mule tackled and was putting out topdressing. As soon as he saw me come he had the mule untackled in seconds. He declared before God that he was doing nothing with the mule. The mule was there for me to take.”
“What about yourself? You aren’t too bad either,” Kate said firmly.
“You should know me well enough by now,” he laughed and grew light. “I don’t count. I’m just a sort of comedian to the crowd. Do you think when you made those drawings of me, Kate, do you think you got any nearer to the beast?”
“You have an interesting face but you know that yourself. I don’t think I ever got it right.”
“Maybe it’s just as well that it wasn’t laid out for all to see,” he said defensively, but his pleasure was obvious.
“You gave us a great deal of help when we came first,” Ruttledge said when they were alone laying out the timbers for the roof.
“It was nothing, lad,” Patrick Ryan said. “What else would I have done?”
“The first time I gave you money you threw it to the wind. We had to search for the notes in the bushes.”
“I disremember, lad. I’ve done many things in my time that are best forgot but I’ve never taken money from neighbours.”
“You were here the first day the priest came to the house,” Ruttledge said.
“I disremember that as well.”
“You went into hiding. When the car pulled up at the gate you told me to go and invite him into the house and be in no hurry out.”
“It’s beginning to come back. Go on, lad.”
“I brought him in and made him tea. Kate was in the town. He wasn’t looking for you at all. We talked about the weather and cattle and the land. After a long time he asked, ‘I suppose you are wondering what brought me here?’ ‘It did cross my mind but that doesn’t matter. It’s nice that you are here,’ I said. ‘Whatever about that,’ Father Conroy said, ‘I’m not here on my own account. I believe in living and letting live. The man up in Longford is very interested in you and why you left the Church and has me persecuted about you every time he comes. He’s coming on Thursday to give Confirmation and one of the first things he’ll ask me is, Have you been up to see that man yet? And this coming Thursday I’ll tell him in no uncertain terms I have, and that’s the whole of my business here.’ ”
“He’s straight and direct,” Patrick Ryan said. “Himself and the Bishop don’t pull. They’re like chalk and cheese.”
“He drank the tea black without sugar. He wouldn’t even take a biscuit,” Ruttledge said.
“I’m surprised he took the tea. He must have been upset. He generally takes nothing in houses. He lives on fruit and bread and milk and water. For a man with such an interest in cattle he never touches meat. I suppose that’s why there’s not a pick on him for such a big man.”