“Begod now, even with good neighbours all around you and everybody getting on well together and helping one another in the end, it’d nearly make you start to think,” John Quinn said.
That evening the Ruttledges drove round the shore so that their car could accompany the hearse. Already there were several cars along the far shore, and they parked the car behind a line of cars and walked to the house. Once they reached the hill they were amazed by the number of cars parked in the fields all the way along the pass.
“I’ve never seen such a gathering,” Kate said.
“Jamesie and Mary are very well liked everywhere. It’s not because of Johnny. He’s been too long away.”
At the gate to the house they met sudden consternation. The glass and polished chrome of the hearse waited outside the gate. Cars were backing out to allow the hearse to enter the small street and turn. Because of the panic there was much erratic reversing and revving of engines and clouds of smoke and loud, confusing directions. Jimmy Joe McKiernan climbed from the hearse and stood in the lane observing the panic in detached, silent amusement. Though he wore a black suit and white shirt and black tie he still managed to appear casually dressed, quiet and anonymous; he had caused the panic by arriving an hour too early for the removal. Seeing the Ruttledges, Jamesie came toward them in high excitement.
“Jimmy Joe himself has come. He thought the removal was at six instead of seven.”
“He’ll just have to wait,” Ruttledge said.
When the cars had been cleared, the hearse moved very slowly down to the house past the privet hedge and the big rhubarb leaves and the beds of scallions and parsley in the small side garden. The mule came to the iron gate to inspect the hearse as it passed. The brown hens, used to all the traffic by now, went on pecking in the dirt as the long shining hearse turned, pausing to cast a yellow eye studiously on the scene before returning their attention again to the dirt.
“We were looking for you as soon as we saw Jimmy Joe come early,” Jamesie said excitedly. “We want you to keep him above in the room till it’s time to leave.”
“I’m no friend of Jimmy Joe or his movement. You must know that,” Ruttledge protested.
“Doesn’t matter. You’ll be able to talk to him. We can’t have him down with everybody.”
“What about yourself or Jim?”
“No, no,” he said quickly. “We’re wanted below.”
“Patrick Ryan is your man,” Ruttledge said in desperate inspiration. “There’s nothing Patrick Ryan would like better than entertaining Jimmy Joe McKiernan.”
“No, no. Patrick would want too much ground. He’s too bloody bold,” Jamesie said adamantly. “Jimmy Joe would be sick listening. It’s not much to ask. You’ll be well able. Tell him, Kate.”
“I’m out of it, Jamesie.”
“It’s not much. You’ll be well able. There’ll be whiskey and glasses and everything you’ll want.”
Ruttledge saw that he would have to refuse stubbornly or agree, and he wasn’t going to refuse Jamesie on this day.
They were put in the upper room. A tray with a full bottle of Powers and a big jug of water and lemonade and glasses were placed on the table at the foot of the bed. The pendulums of the four big clocks on the walls were still. The two men had not been alone together and had not spoken other than the daily courtesies whenever they met in passing since Jimmy Joe had sold them the farm above the lake all those years before. They had met in passing many times, especially in bars, where Jimmy Joe sold An Phoblacht. There were a few who bought it out of active sympathy, and more still, like Jamesie, out of a desire to please and keep all sides happy. There were also a few like Ruttledge who refused to buy the newspaper because they disapproved of violence and the aims of that violence. Jimmy Joe had always stood courteously indifferent in the face of acceptance or rejection. If the newspaper was taken he would hand the paper over and accept the coins with a smile or an inclination of the head; and if refused he would acknowledge the refusal with the same slight bow and turn silently away.
“I made the mistake of thinking the removal was due at the church at six,” he was the first to break the silence after the door had been firmly shut on them both and they had shaken hands.
“They think you too important to sit below and for some reason or another I have been appointed to look after you,” Ruttledge explained apologetically.
“I’m used to people looking after me,” he responded with grim humour. “A lot has happened since I sold you that place across the lake.”
“More to you than to me,” Ruttledge said as he offered whiskey.
There were the explosions in towns he had been linked to, kidnappings, the making and carrying of bombs, murders, maimings, interrogations, executions, the years in Long Kesh; it was a source of some surprise — but finally none — that such a man should be declining the whiskey so courteously. Easier still to imagine him on hunger strike and proceeding to the final self-effacement with a quiet, unbreakable resolve. Others he would use pitilessly as tools.
“I gave it up. I used to enjoy it once but was meeting too many people and was too much in the way of it. I don’t even miss it now,” he explained.
“Would you like water or lemonade or a cup of tea?”
“I’m quite happy without anything.”
After a long silence, Ruttledge asked, “It must have been hard in Long Kesh?” more out of courtesy in the face of the silence than any desire to know.
“It was no holiday camp,” he answered.
He had led a breakout in which his arm was broken but insisted on continuing when others wanted him to turn back. The escape and his part in that escape had been made into a ballad that was often sung at gatherings.
“They thought you’d be too busy to come yourself. They were expecting someone else to come with the hearse.”
“I often have to get a man but I find it a relief to get out among people when I can,” he said with a watchful authority in a conversation that had become more halting and difficult. In the many silences, the talk and laughter, and words of welcome and condolence, entered the room with the clink of glasses from other parts of the small house. The street was now filled with people and loud with a murmur of voices and the occasional laugh and then the constant sound of shoes changing position on the gravel or walking to or from the house.
“They are enjoying themselves,” Ruttledge reflected during one of the long silences, but Jimmy Joe McKiernan made no response.
“What do you do over there on that place of yours?” Jimmy Joe asked.
“The usuaclass="underline" a few cattle, sheep …”
“You can hardly make it into a living?”
“We would probably just get by if we had to — we don’t need much — but I get outside work as well,” Ruttledge said.
“What work?”
“Writing work.”
“Is that hard?”
“Hard enough. Being out and about in the fields is much more pleasant.”
“Would the birds and the quiet over there be useful to that kind of work?”
“No.” It was Ruttledge’s turn to smile grimly. “The quiet and the birds are no use.”
“What are you doing over there, then?”
“You mean I should live closer to my markets? It is where we live, a place like any other. You asked me about the birds as well that first day you showed us the place.”
“I don’t remember,” he said agreeably. “I’m told your uncle still visits you regularly.”
“He’s been coming every Sunday since we moved here.”
“I like the Shah. He doesn’t support us very much but he doesn’t stand in our way either. He takes life easy.”
Gradually, the talk moved into the easier waters of personalities and finally how the dead man had come home every summer since he had first left the place for England. So easy were these neutral waters that Ruttledge was fully expecting them to see the hour out when Jimmy Joe McKiernan took him by surprise by asking, “You don’t seem to have any interest in our cause?”