“I listen for the cuckoo every year,” Kate said.
“Don’t be standing up for him, Kate,” Big Mick warned. “Give him an inch and the frigger will build nests in your ears.”
“I listen to the cuckoo and call out ‘Cuckoo’ so that people can hear him before their time,” Patrick Ryan said, and gave a passable imitation of the clear call.
“Good man, Patrick,” Big Mick Madden warmed. “Pack those old blowers and dukers with lies.”
“No, I’d not be fooled. I’d know full well,” Jamesie said dismissively. It was his only contribution.
Ordinarily so nimble and playful, he could not function in the face of such aggression and contented himself with pulling faces for the three youths. Soon he had them laughing at his dumb show behind Mick Madden’s back. At first, Mick thought the boys were laughing with him, and this increased the vigour of his abuse, but gradually he grew suspicious and would suddenly whirl round in vain attempts to catch Jamesie in the act.
“We better be making tracks,” Ruttledge said after a time. Patrick Ryan had plainly enjoyed the meeting and the confrontation and made promises as they parted to be around shortly to visit them all. The boys waved shyly and Big Mick hurled a few parting insults after Jamesie with plain enjoyment.
“I never hear. I’m like water and the duck,” Jamesie raised his hand resignedly. “That Madden is unseemly,” he said as they turned down towards the lake. “If he had manners he could still be going into bars and houses and have company and a drink or two but he had always to go and do the gulpen. Now he can go nowhere. He has to skulk in the house on his own, driving those young boys wild with talk of all the black women he rode in England. He rode nothing either here or in England. He’d be afraid of his arse.”
“He’s still a fine-looking man,” Kate said.
“These fellas are all afraid, Kate. They’ll talk plenty and then turn back. They’d sicken your face.”
“At least John Quinn isn’t afraid,” Ruttledge said lightly by way of change.
“They say John Quinn never went with women when he was in England the time the first wife was alive. He worked all the hours he could get his hands on, sending every penny home. You can never tell with people,” Jamesie pondered soberly.
They had drawn close to the water. Jamesie stopped suddenly and raised his hand. All the way from the old abbey and graveyard in Shruhaun floated the melancholy notes of a bugler.
“And that was Him who was married to Her,” he said when the distant bugle notes died. He did not move for a long time as he listened, and then climbed on his bicycle and turned round to bow low. “I have decided, I have decided after serious deliberation that I never liked yous anyhow.”
The sun was now high above the lake. There wasn’t a wisp of cloud. Everywhere the water sparkled. A child could easily believe that the whole of heaven was dancing.
The cows calved safely and were out on grass with their calves. A single late ewe that could not open was lost with her lamb. They had taken the lamb from her, broken and dead, and she died of shock before morning. She and her lamb were their only loss.
Monica came to tell them that she was going to marry again. They were glad and wished her happiness and it was arranged that she would bring Peter Monaghan to the house for an evening.
“I wanted you to know before his lordship hears. God knows what he’ll say when he hears,” she smiled in her self-depreciating way. “What I was most worried about was the children, but they seem to have got used to Peter though they were very cool to begin with. We met in the church choir. I’m sure when the poor Shah hears he’ll begin to lose his faith in churches.”
It is not always true that people repeat their first sexual choice endlessly. On the surface Peter Monaghan could not have been more different to the hard-drinking, extroverted popular businessman Monica had first loved and married. He was attentive, even diffident, drank little and was in thrall to Monica. What he shared with Paddy Joe and Monica was that, like them, he was intelligent. The evening she brought him to the Ruttledges went well and another evening was arranged at Monica’s house.
“It looks as if there’s going to be a wedding,” the Shah announced ponderously the following Sunday, his hand on the sheepdog’s head.
“What wedding?” Kate enquired.
“Monica,” he cleared his throat. “You might well have known. She’s going to the river again. You’d think one round of the course and four children would be enough for the silly frigger.”
“Who’s the fortunate man?”
“Some poor harmless gom of a teacher. He’ll get his eyes opened. She was well able for poor Paddy Joe and the size of him and his large Crested Tens. ‘There’s not many of your size walking around,’ the doctor told him,” and at the very recollection of the doctor’s warning to his old adversary, he started to rock with amusement and to shout at the dog “Who’s the boss?” which set the dog barking. “I could see well what she was up to when we were in that hotel by the ocean in Donegal. Her father’s side of the house were all silly in that direction. Daft sexy friggers.”
“Monica is an attractive, intelligent woman,” Kate said carefully. “If she has found someone she’s happy with she’ll have a better life than bringing up four children on her own. I hope they’ll both be happy.”
“They’re welcome to it,” he said vigorously, as if offering poison.
The plum trees blossomed, then the apple came and the white brilliance of the pear tree. May came in wet and windy. The rich green of the grass in the shelter of the hedges travelled out over the whole fields. Weeds had to be pulled from the ridges, the vegetable garden turned and weeded. Foxgloves appeared on the banks of the lane and the scent of the wild mint was stronger along the shore. Each night the black cat took to leaving the house before it was closed and returned soundlessly or noisily with her prey through the open window in the early light. All the hives were working. The spaces between the branches of the trees along the shore filled with leaves and were now a great broken wall of green. In the clear spaces through which the water showed it looked like sky, until the eye travelled to the farther shore.
When the lambing was long over, Kate came on a ewe, a late lamb of the year before, not much more than a lamb herself, with a new lamb that was completely black. She had been checking the sheep and had come up with the worst of all counts: there was one missing. She listened for cries or bleating but there were none. The leaves stirred in a hum of insects and loud birds. A frenzy of gulls came from the lake. Crows were squabbling somewhere else, blackbirds set up derisory rackets in the whitethorns. She searched along the drains and hedges in growing anxiety at each empty field. She was about to turn back to the house for help when she came on the young ewe high on a bank in a small clearing between briar and whitethorn. She was chewing away in contentment and watchfulness, the perfectly formed black lamb by her side. The ewe put her face momentarily down to check the lamb’s scent and then looked possessively back at Kate. The place the ewe had found on the bank was both a sun trap and a sheltered lawn. They were a picture of happiness.
Not until evening did the young ewe leave the safety of the bank, but she stayed clear of the flock for another day. The little black lamb and the ewe were always together and a little apart from the flock.
An evening after rain Ruttledge ran the whole flock into the shed for an overdue dosing. With the dosing pack and a can of green aerosol spray he went through them quickly, even impatiently, as his clothes were soaking from the wet wool. When he let them back out into the fields there were the usual cries of the separated lambs and mothers searching for one another, but one ewe continued to cry and came right up to the bars of the gate after the rest had all found one another. As soon as he recognized her as the ewe with the late lamb he caught his breath and started to curse. After searching here and there, he found the lamb lifeless in the straw of the shed. The small lamb had been knocked in the milling about as he seized the ewes and trampled underfoot.