“Father Conroy isn’t like that,” Ruttledge intervened.
“Father Conroy is plain. The priests had this country abulling with religion once. It’s a good job it’s easing off,” Patrick Ryan said.
“At Christmas I go up on the train to Josie Connor in Birmingham. I always bring the turkey and a few bottles of Powers. We go over everything that ever happened round the lake. Anne and Josie are pure fourteen-carat. They always write to me well before Christmas. It’d be a lonesome oul Christmas Day looking down a deserted Edward Road with the Prince closed all day and a few people going by carrying presents.”
“All the Connors were decent, as decent as ever wore shoe leather. Even when they lived on the edge of the bog they’d give you what they didn’t have for themselves,” Patrick Ryan said emotionally from the whiskey. “And Anne’s crowd, the Dohertys, were near enough the same cut of cloth. They’d give you as well what they didn’t have for themselves.”
A fat bullfinch came into view and began to peck at the small wild strawberries on the bank. The black cat was sleeping in the window but tensed when its attention was drawn to the small bird’s darting movements as it hopped about like a mechanical toy among the ferns and grasses.
“That’s a great cat,” Patrick Ryan said sarcastically. “She’d like if she was handed the bird and given a knife and fork.”
“Half the pleasure of the wild strawberries is watching the finch,” Kate said. “I’m glad the cat is in the house.”
“I’d side with Kate,” Johnny said. “I must have shot every game bird that ever moved. Now I’d sooner see them flying around.”
“I wouldn’t,” Patrick Ryan said. “I’d shoot the lot.”
“How is Bill Evans this weather?” Johnny asked.
“As large as life. He still goes to the lake for the buckets of water.”
“That’s one man who has earned his place in heaven,” Johnny said.
“Jesus Christ had nothing on Bill Evans except Bill was never put up on a cross. He has had a better time since his Master Packie died. You wouldn’t call it heaven now but it’s a big improvement on what went before,” Patrick Ryan said.
Johnny and Patrick exchanged cigarettes, sharing the single match Johnny had struck. Patrick Ryan’s face lit in a strange childlike peace as he reached into the flame, as if they were in possession again of that old warm world that was once theirs together. It could not last. As soon as he took the last quick draw on the cigarette, he thrust the butt towards Ruttledge without preamble or warning.
“Throw that out on the street for me, lad.”
Ruttledge did not speak or move. The air filled with the tension of uncertainty. The low murmur of summer outside the house that had gone unheeded entered the room, the blundering of a big black fly against the window on the bank from which the finch had disappeared was suddenly loud.
Ruttledge rose slowly and bowed. “At your service, sir,” and took the smouldering butt and opened the door of the unlit brown Raeburn and threw it in. He was too familiar with these demands to be hurried. He had seen him make supplicants who needed his skills carry his coat and tools as abjectly as slaves.
“You wouldn’t have made a bad actor, lad,” he laughed uncomfortably as Ruttledge closed the door of the stove; but the room stayed silent.
“I should have put out an ashtray,” Kate said.
Johnny had already slipped his quenched cigarette into his pocket. “Thanks for everything,” he rose and placed his glass on the table. “It’s great to see yous all so well after another year.”
“Thanks for coming over,” they answered. “It was great to see you again.”
“I’m going. I’ll not be back for a while,” Patrick Ryan said, his anger still raw from the unsatisfactory confrontation. “You’ll have plenty of time to finish the creosoting. That way you’ll not have to worry about the rain on the timber.”
“That’ll be all right.”
“What’ll be all right?”
“Everything. The creosoting — everything,” Ruttledge answered.
“It won’t be all right but it’ll have to do,” Patrick Ryan said.
“Would you ever think of coming back for good when you retire from Ford’s?” Kate asked as they saw them to the gate.
“I don’t know, Kate. You get used to England. When you cut your stick and make your bed you have to lie on it,” he said.
“It wouldn’t work out,” Patrick Ryan said. “He’d know nobody here now.”
“Be sure and remember us to Mary and Jamesie.”
“Will do,” he responded jauntily, his English accent showing.
“I suppose you have many calls to make.”
“Not too many, Kate. Just a few and there are fewer every year. That’s why it’s great to see everybody so well.”
Patrick Ryan picked up his bundle of tools. Johnny wheeled the girl’s bicycle. The two men seemed to fall into spirited conversation as they went downhill to the corner of the lake. Twice they paused. There was the clear ring of laughter in the voices.
Once all the timbers were creosoted the frame stood like a dark, ungainly skeleton high on the four posts. As Ruttledge was tidying up, Kate passed outside the ladders to check that the hive roofs hadn’t been dislodged in the disturbance of the previous day. The bees were working quietly.
On Sunday the black Mercedes rolled round the shore, bringing an enormous box of chocolates wrapped with blue ribbon for Kate and a small metal box with handles. The metal was the colour of grass and mud and looked like military surplus.
“I see the cathedral is coming along,” the Shah said as he eased himself out of the front seat.
“Probably it’ll stay that way for a while now. He’s gone again. God knows when he’ll be back.”
“I told you long ago he should be run.”
“I’d say yes to that,” Kate said.
“Now you’re talking.”
He handed Kate the chocolates and she thanked him, protesting that it was too much.
“That’ll do you now,” he said. “It’s not one bit too much.”
“What’s in the strange box?” Ruttledge asked.
“I’m going on a bit of a holiday and leaving this here,” he announced as he placed the metal box on the table. He had never gone on holiday, unless three days many years before on Lough Derg counted as a holiday. From time to time he would recall how much he had suffered: the cold, the wet, the lack of sleep, the never-ending circle of prayer in bare feet, the hunger, the sharp stones. “If hell is anything like it I’m sticking to the straight and narrow.” The one hot Sunday or two he drove to the ocean at Bundoran every year to wallow in the waves and lie in the sun until he was burned pink hardly counted as holiday.
“I’m going to Donegal, to Burtonport,” he said. “I’m bringing Monica and the children. The poor thing needs taking out of herself.”
Monica was his favourite niece, a tall, dark-haired, intelligent woman with four children. Her husband had been a successful businessman, extrovert and popular, an overweight, gentle giant of a man. They had made a striking couple. “He was warned and gave no heed and paid the price. He just keeled over,” the Shah said with some satisfaction, as he too had been warned about his weight. The difference was that he had started to eat grapefruit in the morning, the one meal he never cared for, as someone told him they reduced weight. He bought them by the boxful. They did not affect his weight but they allowed him to enjoy the enormous meals he ate in the Central with a clear conscience. “I told him about the grapefruit but all he did was laugh. He learned.”
The couple had been close. In spite of the sudden loss, Monica had taken over the parts of the business she could handle while bringing up the children and sold off other parts she felt she couldn’t manage on her own.