The Ruttledges congratulated him and wished him happiness and thanked him, saying they would be delighted to attend his wedding.
“We are not now in our first bloom and have no reason to wait and whether young or old the summer is the best time for marrying. I’ll be going now and leaving you to your good work and not wasting any more of your time.”
He would take neither tea nor whiskey in celebration of the happy occasion and made a point of repeating that they were busy and he was busy and no one should stand too much on ceremony or politeness. Too much politeness was sometimes a big hold-up to people’s business in this world.
They both walked him to the green Vauxhall under the alder tree.
“We hope you’ll both be very happy.”
“Happiness makes happiness. When people are happy they help one another and get on well together.”
He didn’t start the engine but released the hand brake to let it freewheel down to the lake. Approaching the lake, he put it into gear. It shuddered a moment before starting.
“He was saving on juice,” Ruttledge said.
“Ah,” Kate shook her shoulders with distaste.
“This time he could meet his match,” Ruttledge said. “You’d never know. There must be villains in the female line as well.”
“Of course, but I bet they take good care to steer clear of one another,” she said.
The time came when the lambs had to be sold. Every year without fail Jamesie accompanied Ruttledge on the drive to the factory. Early on the arranged morning he entered the house rubbing his hands together. He knew it wasn’t a day they welcomed.
“We are going to gather the money. We are going to be rich. We’ll lie in clover and speak the truth without fear or favour.”
“You look like a prince,” Kate said.
“Prince of the bogs and the rushes,” he answered defensively, but he was shining. His loose grey tweeds were worn but spotless and in the open-necked shirt he looked even more elegant than in his Sunday clothes. The leather of his boots was pale in places where the black dye had been washed away by wet grass.
“Would you like anything before starting?”
“No. Not today. We’re as well to be making tracks. There could be a long queue.”
The trailer was already hitched to the car and backed up to the door of the shed. The sheep and lambs had been enclosed in the small field next to the shed and were easily penned. The fat male lambs were picked out and carried to the trailer. Borderline lambs were weighed on a metal scale in the corner.
“Salvation,” Jamesie said when an underweight lamb was marked and let free.
“A very temporary salvation.”
“Tell me what other kind there is?”
“A long life on grass.”
“You think that’s permanent? They are going where they should be going. To a good Sunday table,” he said.
“Five months old. It’s a short journey.”
Jamesie rapped the roof of the trailer in quiet satisfaction as they got into the car. “They’ll never see the lake again.”
To Jamesie everything they passed was of intense interest: the fields well kept, the neglected fields, the grazing cattle, ramshackle houses, houses that shone, houses in ruin. A long, slow-running commentary rose out of the avid looking. He praised where he could, but most people were allowed their space without praise or blame in a gesture of hands that assigned his life and theirs to their own parts in this inexhaustible journey.
As they passed the roofless Abbey at Shruhaun, he made the sign of the cross, quickly and hurriedly, like sprinkling water.
The bars in Shruhaun were closed but vans were delivering bread and newspapers to the side doors. He craned back to try to discover who was taking in the bread, frustrated by the vans. Once they reached the outskirts of the town he ordered Ruttledge to slow.
“I saw the day when every man around thought that woman was the light of heaven,” he said of a big woman crossing the street. “A pure wilderness of a woman now.”
“You’ll find the light of heaven hasn’t travelled far. It’s come to rest on some other young women.”
“Two detectives — in the alley — watching,” he sang out as the car and trailer went slowly past Jimmy Joe McKiernan’s bar.
“They’re always there.”
“Night and day.”
“And it’s a waste of time. Nobody they want is going to roll up to the front door.”
“I know. I know. I know full well. Everything goes on round the back,” he protested. “The world knows he led the big breakout from Long Kesh — didn’t he get his arm broke? — and a whole lot else but they can’t arrest him. They have to be seen to be watching, that’s all. Everything that is done they do in the North. They don’t care a straw as long as it doesn’t travel down here. All for show.”
“I think it’s wrong,” Ruttledge said. “There shouldn’t be two laws.”
“I have nothing against Jimmy Joe McKiernan. As plain and decent a man as there is in the town. He’s not for himself like all the others.”
“You don’t mind that he’d shoot you?”
“He’d do that only if he had to. He’d only do it if you stood in the way of the Cause. Jimmy Joe wouldn’t harm a fly unless it stood in his way.”
“I don’t see much difference between getting shot in a bad cause or a good.”
“You’re getting too precise, Mister Ruttledge. He’s not going to shoot you or me. We don’t count,” Jamesie was uncomfortable with the argument. “There’s not a soul stirring round Luke’s,” he said as they passed Luke Henry’s bar. Jamesie always wanted to flee unpleasantness and disagreement.
“We’ll have a drink in Luke’s on the way home,” Ruttledge said, recognizing his anxiety.
“Please God,” he said fervently, relieved. “The Empire of the Shah,” he said caressing the words as they came to the end of the town and saw the sheds and diesel signs and the cottages and the huge yard packed with the scrapped lorries and cars and tractors and machinery behind the high wire fence. “Does he know the end of his money?”
“He enjoys having money,” Ruttledge said, and then saw the small round figure in the arched entrance of the main shed, with his fist firmly fixed on his hip, the sheepdog sitting by his side. “He hasn’t a great deal of use for money. It’s just the having of it that gives him pleasure.”
“Lord bless us, he is up already with half the town still asleep. What is he going to do with it all?” Jamesie said in wonderment as soon as he spotted the round figure by the sheepdog.
“It’ll go to somebody or other. It has nowhere else to go,” Ruttledge said laughingly. “It was gathered from people and just goes back to other people.”
“I know you’re not a bit interested in his money and Kate doesn’t care,” Jamesie said cautiously. “I’d praise you both for that. There’s no worse sight than watching people wait to fill dead men’s shoes when they should be going about their own business.”
“I know, Jamesie. I know.”
Once they passed beyond the town he no longer knew any of the people who lived on the farms or in the roadside bungalows. His fascination did not lessen but he was silent now, looking to left and right, as if he was afraid he might miss something important along the way.