“To go near the hives.”
She waited but Patrick Ryan went back to pouring the creosote out on the timber, spreading it roughly around with the brush. When a spray of the dark liquid fell dangerously close to where she stood, she moved quickly on without glance or word. The two men worked in silence, pouring the creosote, spreading it with the brush, moving the ladders.
“This creosoting from the ladders is one slow feck of a job,” Patrick complained as he moved the heavy ladder along the beam one more time. “I’m away with myself out to the orchard here to cut a button.”
“I’d be careful of the hives,” Ruttledge warned.
“The bees won’t bother me. My hide is too hard.”
“I’d still be careful.”
“No, lad, no. The bees won’t bother me.”
He disappeared into the orchard, his cap worn jauntily back to front. His shoulders and back beneath the dirty white shirt were large and powerful but so perfectly proportioned that their strength was concealed.
Ruttledge continued creosoting. There was a mindless pleasure in brushing the dark liquid into the wood in the heat and the light breeze from the lake. In the far distance, the bucket of a mechanical digger clanged and pushed and clanged again.
Patrick Ryan’s re-emergence into this slow mindlessness was like the eruptions of air that occur in the wheaten light of mown meadows in a heatwave. Dried grass and leaves, and even bits of sticks, are sent whirling high in a noisy spinning cylinder of dust and violent air, which then as quickly dies, to reappear like a mirage in another part of the meadow. With one hand he held up his trousers as he tried to run. His free hand swung his cap in a wild and furious arc as he attempted to beat away his tormentors. Whirling round to face the attacking bees, he beat out to left and right, but it was to no avaiclass="underline" he swung the cap round his head in a smaller despairing arc as he turned again and ran. The barely manageable trousers were bunched awkwardly around his ankles and with every fighting step he threatened to fall over. At the foot of the ladders he turned and stood. With his cap he beat away the single bees that zoomed in like dive-bombers. There was nothing Ruttledge could do. He had to beat away stray bees that came at him high on the ladder. A bee became entangled in his hair. Only very gradually did the attacks cease. At the foot of the ladders Patrick Ryan was slumped low but his breathing was growing easier. “Double fuck those for fucken cunts of bees,” he cried out.
A buzzing came from his hair. With his cap he pummelled and crushed his head until the buzzing stopped. Ruttledge helped him search his shirt and trousers. There were even bees in his shoes. When Ruttledge shook free a number of bees trapped beneath the collar of his shirt, he called out angrily, “Why didn’t you kill the fuckers?”
“There was no need.”
“They should be all killed. They shouldn’t be let around any house. I was sitting there with my trousers down thinking about the world to come when they came down on me like a fucken cloud.”
“Are you in much pain?”
“I tell you, lad, I wouldn’t swap the pain for a place in heaven,” he grinned savagely. “It’ll pass. Everything does if you can wait long enough.”
“There’s Blue in the house.”
“It’ll do no good. We’ll give them no heed. They’ll go in their own time.”
“We’ll dodge into the house for a break. They’ll be more settled when we come back. I could do with a drink of water,” Ruttledge said.
It was cool within the house. The dark light was restful. No matter how Kate pressed Patrick Ryan, he would not allow her to examine or treat the stings.
“Not a blessed thing will do any good. Pay them no heed. Treat yer man if he wants,” he brushed all offers aside.
“My few stings are nothing,” Ruttledge said.
“Give me a good glass of whiskey instead,” Patrick Ryan said. A large glass was poured. He wanted neither water nor lemonade. “Yer Irishman’s morphine. May we all meet up in heaven. Am I having no company?” He raised his glass in salutation.
“It’s too hot and I’m not in pain.” Ruttledge poured himself a small measure as a gesture and added much water. Kate had tea.
The pain forced Patrick Ryan to move and shift as he drank but his humour was improving by the minute. “They came down on me like a cloud,” he said. “The noise was worse than the darkness. No matter where you ran or turned they were around your head and you couldn’t beat them away.”
“I’m sorry. I should have warned you,” Kate said. “I never saw them so angry. I couldn’t handle them, even with all the gear.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Kate. Yer man here warned me but I paid no heed.”
He constantly moved and shifted on the chair as he spoke. He talked as if talk itself could ease the pain. He drank quickly and appeared not to notice when Kate refilled his glass.
He talked of a mowing accident that happened when he was a child. A man had been mowing a meadow with a young horse when the blade cut through a nest of wild red bees. The young horse was nervous. They say the bees can smell fear. They lighted on the poor horse. The man was luckily flung clear when the horse bolted. In no time the horse made bits of the shafts and traces before dropping down stone dead. Patrick Ryan had never laid eyes on the man or set foot in the meadow but he could see the man sitting on the single-bar mowing machine and the young horse and the big trees of an enclosed meadow as real, as real as if he had been there.
“The past and present are all the same in the mind,” Kate said. “They are just pictures.”
“Are you sure you haven’t been drinking, Kate?” Ruttledge asked.
“It must be the aspirins and the Blue,” she said and winked.
Patrick Ryan was so concentrated that the little exchange passed unnoticed.
“There were red bees and black bees. We used to raid the nests in the meadows and suck the honey. The red bees were the wickedest. The rotary mowers and the bag stuff took all the nests out of the meadows,” Patrick Ryan said as he rose gingerly. “If we have any more of that painkiller we’ll be falling from ladders. We’ll go back to work in the name of God and his Blessed Mother.”
Outside, the bees were still flying around but they were no longer attacking. Patrick Ryan kept changing his weight from foot to foot on the rungs of the ladder but he never complained, all the time keeping up a flow of jokes and stories as if speech alleviated pain. In the silences, he whistled and recited nonsensical refrains and blasphemies. Solicitous enquiry was brushed aside.
“They are nothing. In another hour they won’t even be heard tell of. They’ll be clean forgot.”
A sudden sharp cough and a loud deliberate scraping of shoes on the gravel drew their eyes to a man wheeling a girl’s bicycle towards the house, a cane basket on the handlebars. A pattern of knitted wool like a tea cosy covered the saddle. His head was bent low as if he was more animal or circus clown than man, his shoes lifting slowly to make exaggerated, comical steps over the gravel. His suit was a worsted blue. A red tie hung low. The bottoms of his trousers were stuffed into dark socks. His grey hair was darkened with oil and combed flat out across a receding hairline. As he wheeled the bicycle closer, his walk became slower and even more exaggerated, like an animal pawing uncertain ground.
“Johnny’s home! Johnny’s home from England!” Patrick Ryan cried.
Under the iron posts Johnny drew himself to his full height, pushed the bicycle away, where it wheeled perilously around before falling short of one of the posts, clicked his heels together, and saluted. “Reporting for duty,” he called out.
The pain inflicted by the bees was cast aside as Patrick Ryan hurried down the ladder to go towards his old friend. “Johnny. You never lost it, me oul’ comrade.” They clasped hands high like athletes in victory and then held them still as if about to begin a trial of strength.