The old boat held together by tar and pitch and sand was moored under a sally on the river, dead leaves of the sally on the ribs and floorboards with the fish scales.
They took their places in the boat before he untied it, and with one knee on the edge drove it out into the stream, and clambered on to the rowing-seat while it was moving. They began to let out the spoons as he pulled.
“Watch now. Hold the lines tight. I hear a twenty-pounder coming round by Moran’s Bay on a motor-bike,” he joked and they laughed but their fingers trembled on the white lines, feeling the vibration of the spoons and then someone shouted.
“I have a one, Daddy. He’s pulling. Quick.”
“Watch that you don’t give him slack line. Hold him,” he shouted back. He started to row fiercely, shouting, “Try and keep the boat shifting,” as he let go the oars to take the line. They took his place at the oars but they were too excited to pull much.
“Try and keep the boat on the move,” he had to say.
They watched him drag the fighting fish close, hand over hand.
“He’s a good one. He’s trying for the bottom.”
And then the fish was sliding towards the boat on the surface, the mouth open, showing the vicious teeth and the whiteness and the spoon hooked in the roof of the mouth. He would make his last fight at the side of the boat, it was dangerous if the hooks weren’t in firmly, he could shake them free, the sinking of the heart as they rattled loose. But Mahoney had leaned out and got him by the gills with his fingers. He was lifting him into the boat.
“He’s four pounds. That’s a start, I’m telling you.”
They watched the pike on the floorboards and they gloated, the gleaming yellow stripes across the back and the white swollen belly, the jaws with the vicious rows of teeth snapping air as blood trickled from the gills.
When the boat was moving again, all the spoons rescued from the bottom and spinning, the bell for second Mass came clear over the water.
“It’s only eleven yet and we have a right pike,” he said as he rowed. Soon the noise of cars and speech crossing the bridge in the distance on the way to Mass mingled with the constant rippling of the oars. The last bell rang when there was quiet.
“They’re starting into Mass now. If you’re not early afoot and at first Mass there’s no length left in the day. It’s gone and wasted.”
“And we’ve a pike caught, Daddy.”
“We have and most of the day left and on the river.”
“I’ve a one this time,” a shout rose. Another fish was hooked. The same struggle started. And the boat was sliding in its own ripple in the narrow reaches of the river, in the calm under the leaning trees of Oakport, wood strawberries in the moss under the heaviest beeches, cattle in the fields the side facing the wood. He rowed that way under the trees to Knockvicar, where he bought lemonade in the post office, and they ate the sandwiches on the river bank. Afterwards he slept with his straw hat over his face while they left the bottles back and played.
He woke in less than the hour, but he was drowsy and different; though he said, “This is the way to live,” as he pushed the boat with an oar out from the bank, the effort to still praise the day was growing strained, and a wary silence grew over the boat turned towards home. Mahoney rowed in silence, it was easy in the calm of Oakport, but once they left the narrower reaches he had to fight the wind.
“A sleep in the middle of the day if you’re not used to it gives you a damned headache,” he was tiring, cursing every time the waves fouled his stroke, and in this rough water they let the lines cross and tangle without noticing, they were so intent and anxious. When they did it was too late and once he saw the mess his growing frustration turned their way.
“Now do you see,” he left the oars. “Too cursed lazy to watch the lines while I break my back against this wind.”
Except for one line out on a bamboo rod the spinning spoons had turned the lines into a tangle that’d take hours to loose.
“It’ll take a day to get that mess out and to think I brought you out fishing. We have to row home with one bait out. What tempted me to bring you at all. God, Ο God, such a mis-fortunate crowd of ignoramuses to be saddled with,” he shouted, while they listened in hatred, they shouldn’t have trusted, they hadn’t even wanted to come out, they could take his throat, but they were afraid to even stir on the seats.
He was grinding his teeth, a habit when he was in a rage, and then he caught two of them and shook them violently.
“Too useless to do anything while I kill myself,” he mouthed and only for the dangerous rocking of the boat his rage would have carried him on its own impetus.
“Such a cross to have to live under,” he complained back at the oars, and started to pull furiously, the boat lifting against the rock of water, the line on the bamboo rod taut with the speed and the spoon pulled to the surface far behind and glittering.
They sat in silence, the boredom of watching the oars, violence was preferable to this constant nagging. “God, Ο God, Ο God, such a curse,” at the oars.
The seagulls were screaming over their island of bare rocks ringed with reeds on McCabe’s shore as the nag-nag-nag went like a hacksaw across the steel of their hatred.
They carried the fish home in the same dogged silence, with the tangled lines, and there he changed again.
“It was a good day’s outing we had anyhow,” he enthused.
“It was good,” they were utterly watchful.
“We must go on the river oftener.”
“It’d be nice to go.”
“What about a game of cards?” he took the pack from the window.
“We have to tidy up and get the dinner ready for tomorrow.”
“But that won’t take you all night. You can manage it later.”
“We better scale and gut the pike too, they go bad quick this time. It won’t take too long. Then we can play,” they evaded.
They gathered in the scullery to do the very little they had to do: scrape the scales of the pike with the big bread-knife, cabbage put with a portion of bacon in the aluminium saucepan and the potatoes washed and left ready, the dusk broken by a candle burning on a canister lid in the window.
“Does anyone want a game of cards?” a softly mimicking voice caused a stifled burst of laughing as they finished.
They stood stiff to listen in the scullery. His chair creaked. The habitual hissing he made with his lips when he played alone came. Buttons of his sleeve scraped on the wooden edge. His hands brushed the soft green surface on the table as he gathered in the cards for the flick-flick of the patient dealing again. A grim smile of understanding showing on the faces in the scullery with the candle flame burning before the shaving-mirror in the window.
“Let him play alone.”
3
THE WORST WAS TO HAVE TO SLEEP WITH HIM THE NIGHTS HE wanted love, strain of waiting for him to come to bed, no hope of sleep in the waiting — counting and losing the count of the thirty-two boards across the ceiling, trying to pick out the darker circles of the knots beneath the varnish. Watch the moon on the broken brass bells at the foot of the bed. Turn and listen and turn. Go over the day that was gone, what was done or left undone, or dream of the dead days with her in June.
The dreams and passing of time would break with the noise of the hall door opening, feet on the cement, his habitual noises as he drank barley water over the dying fire, and at last the stockinged feet on the stairs.
He was coming and there was nothing to do but wait and grow hard as stone and lie.
“Are you sleeping?”
The one thing was to keep the eyes shut no matter what and to lie stiff as a board.
“You’re asleep so?”
It was such breathing relief to hear the soft plump of his clothes being let fall on the floor. And then the winding of the clock.