They were all in the house, a blue light flickering in the window. Inside the netting wire the brown hens were already closed in for the night.
They were watching Blind Date. The two dogs were seated in armchairs and looked possessively at Ruttledge as if he might cause their removal. Mary rose at once to kiss him but Jamesie stayed glued to the screen, watching an attractive young girl in a provocative dress standing beside the hostess of the show in front of a large audience. Behind a screen sat three youths. The screen hid them from the girl but not the audience. Whichever youth the girl picked would spend a week with her in a luxury hotel, with a chauffeured car and candlelit dinners. To help the girl make her blind choice, each boy in turn had to answer questions put to them by the hostess about their hobbies, occupations, the cooking and music they liked, their sexual preferences. Even the most pedestrian question contained a sexual innuendo. Each answer was greeted with catcalls and laughter. The salacious enjoyment of the audience was obvious in both the responses to each question and the girl’s reactions, particularly when the answer revealed a disparity between the boy’s perception of himself and how he was perceived by the girl or the audience.
Mary was annoyed by what she took as Jamesie’s discourtesy but Ruttledge assured her that he was glad to watch.
“This fella is like a child,” she said. “He goes wild for eejity stuff like this. You wouldn’t know whether the crowd or him was the worse disgrace. Cattle round a bulling cow in the middle of a field would be more decent.”
At last, the girl made her blind choice. The boy she picked came out nervously from behind the screen to huge applause while the cameras searched out every reaction the boy and girl betrayed at this their first meeting. The hostess turned to question them but by now Jamesie had lost interest. He reached out and turned the set off.
“I’m happy to watch it to the end,” Ruttledge said.
“No, no,” he raised his hand. “They are just a crowd of eejits. Mary, pour us a drink.”
“It’s all just a cover-up for sex,” Mary said contemptuously as she reached for glasses and the bottle of Powers. “They all want it and they’re all afraid. That’s why they are killing themselves laughing. Soon they’ll be watching it on television instead of doing anything themselves.”
“Oh they’ll do it too,” Jamesie protested. “They’ll want to practise what they see.”
“You’d think he’d have more sense — and the age he is!” Mary said.
“Good soldiers never die,” he said as he raised his glass. “Good health. Good luck. More again tomorrow. The crowd lying below in Shruhaun aren’t drinking any drinks today.”
“I wrote this to Johnny,” Ruttledge said as he placed the letter on the table. A silence fell as complete as the blankness of the television screen. Mary took the letter and read it in the silence of the ticking clocks while one of the dogs turned round in the chair and sighed as he dropped into a more comfortable rest. After Mary had read the letter, she handed it at once to Jamesie, her eyes fixed on his face.
“You. You read the letter.”
“No. No. The eyes are too poor. Read it out loud.”
“The eyes can see plenty when they are not wanted to see. You, Joe. You read it for him.”
“Change anything you want. Change the whole thing or don’t send it at all,” Ruttledge said as he read.
“It’s perfect,” Mary said. “We’ll change nothing. I’ll copy every word out as it stands.”
“What if he doesn’t take to it?” Jamesie asked anxiously.
“It’s matterless whether he takes to it or not,” Mary said fiercely. “He can’t come home. We’d all have to leave.”
“You don’t want him coming home thinking everything will work out. It wouldn’t even be fair,” Ruttledge said.
“A pity these things ever have to come up between people,” Jamesie’s eyes went from face to face.
“This fella would never face anything unless there was someone to stand behind him with a stick,” Mary said with an edge. “I haven’t slept since the letter came and he’s been wandering round in a haze.”
“Like a kittymore’s hen,” he tried to joke but she would not be deflected.
“This fella gets all excited every summer when Johnny is coming. The place is done up. The best sirloin is ordered. Then what does he do when Johnny does come home? He disappears. Who has to put up with him? Listening to the old stories that everybody around has long forgot. You’d think the place hadn’t changed since he left. It’s easy for you to talk,” Mary accused.
“He was too old when he went to England,” Jamesie said defensively.
“It’s a hard story,” Ruttledge said.
“He might as well have tied a stone round his neck and rowed out into the middle of the lake,” Jamesie said, and a silence fell in which the ticking and the striking of the clocks were very loud.
“It’s terrible what people will go to hell for …” Mary spoke out of the long silence.
“Change anything you want in that letter,” Ruttledge said as he rose.
“Not a word will be changed. It’ll be copied out word for word and sent in the morning.”
Jamesie looked from face to face, unsure and troubled. For a long while, like a painfully held breath, he seemed on the verge of saying something but then quickly reached for his cap and walked Ruttledge out to the lake. The two dogs abandoned their chairs to follow them. The moon was bright and clear above the lake, the line of the path sharp in yellow light. There was a cold wind.
“What if he doesn’t heed the letter? He can be as stubborn and thick as my father, God rest him,” Jamesie said.
“You won’t hear another word once he reads the letter.”
“Please God,” Jamesie prayed fervently. “The worst of those old bachelors is that they have nobody to please but themselves and then when they get old nobody wants them and they have to try to get their head in somewhere.”
“We may not be all that much better off when our time comes.”
“Still we have our own house. We haven’t to be trying to get in anywhere,” Jamesie said.
They had reached the top of the hill above the lake. “I think the winter is here,” Ruttledge said, drawing his overcoat tight against the bitter wind.
“It’s been here for weeks. You can quit talking.”
At the top of the hill they parted, though Jamesie was prepared to accompany him down to the lake. A river of beaten copper ran sparkling from shore to shore in the centre of the lake. On either side of this bright river peppered with pale stars the dark water seethed. Far away the lights of the town glowed in the sky. His own footsteps were loud. When he came to the corner of the lake, the heron rose out of the reeds to flap him lazily round the shore, ghostly in the moonlight. On such a night a man could easily want to run from his own shadow.
There came unceasing rain and wind. Some days the rain was flecked with snow but the lake was always changing, making even the downpours varied. The cattle and sheep were housed. None were calving or lambing or sick. They did not take much tending. Hedges were thinned for firewood during breaks in the rain. There was plenty of time for reading. A few writing commissions came. Trips were made to town, to Luke Henry’s bar, to the Thursday market across the border in Enniskillen, to the coal pits in Arigna for trailerloads of low-grade, inexpensive coal. Bill Evans was bundled up like a mummy between the wellingtons and the shiny black sou’wester hat when he came for tea and cigarettes on the way to the lake. If he was hungry he called out for food. On Thursdays he became lord of the bus. Nobody had seen Patrick Ryan for a time though the part of the country and the people he was working for were known.