Read Online By the Lake by John McGahern - Free Book Online

were his habits—turning each day into the same day, making every Sunday into all the other Sundays—that when any small change occurred it was very noticeable. Only a few months before he had asked diffidently if he could have his meal early. He always ate silently, with such absorption that to be in the same room was in itself a silent, pleasurable participation in the single ceremony. Unusually, that evening he ate hurriedly, without enjoyment, and rose early from the table.
    “There must be something important on this evening,” Ruttledge remarked as he and Kate saw him to the car, Kate petting the sheepdog.
    “There’s a removal,” he said hurriedly.
    “Who’s dead?” Ruttledge asked without guile.
    “Missus Fitzgerald,” he said, immediately turning red.
    What had happened had taken place so long ago and was now so remote that Ruttledge would not have made any connection with the name but for his obvious discomfort. “Wasn’t she an old flame of yours?” he asked intuitively.
    “That’ll do you now,” he said, and let the sheepdog quickly into the car before getting behind the wheel. He was still red with embarrassment when he let the window down to say his usual, “God bless yous,” as the big car rolled out towards the alder tree and down towards the lake and shore.
    “It’s strange,” Kate said, “to show so much emotion going to her funeral when he could have married her when they were young. He was fond of her. His deep embarrassment was there to see.”
    “He wanted to be on his own. He didn’t want to be married,” Ruttledge said. “The priest, the single man, was the ideal of society, and with all the children we saw looking up at us from the floors of those bungalows, who can blame him?”
    “Don’t you think we are happy?” she asked so seriously that he paused, and drew her close.
    “We are different. I don’t think we should worry it too much. We wanted to be together. We weren’t afraid.”
    The four iron posts standing uselessly upright in their concrete bases had for long been an affront to the Shah.
    This Sunday as they walked the fields he remarked, “They are a holy sight. Do you think will that Ryan ever finish?”
    “He probably will—some day.”
    “If I was you I’d get in someone who’d finish the job properly. I’d run him to hell and not let him near the place again,” he urged.
    “I couldn’t do that. He did a good deal of work here when we had nothing.”
    They walked the fields until they found the sheep and lambs in the shade on the side of the hill. The cows were lying with their calves in a circle like wagons a few feet from the water in the small field where old potato ridges were still marked on the grass. A little way off the old Shorthorn stood on her own under broken whitethorns that came down to the shore.
    “She’s about to calve. It’s not a great time—out on all this grass.”
    “She’s a long time with you now. A great old lassie,” he said.
    The cow stood still as the Shah put out his hand to feel her bones. “She’s well shook,” he said. “She’ll have to be looked at again before night. She could calve at any time.”
    They turned away. The surface of the water out from the reeds was alive with shoals of small fish. There were many swans on the lake. A grey rowboat was fishing along the far shore. A pair of herons moved sluggishly through the air between the trees of the island and Gloria Bog. A light breeze was passing over the sea of pale sedge like a hand. The blue of the mountain was deeper and darker than the blue of the lake or the sky. Along the high banks at the edge of the water there were many little private lawns speckled with fish bones and blue crayfish shells where the otters fed and trained their young.
    “I can never look at the blue of the mountain now without thinking of John Quinn,” Ruttledge said.
    “Oh John,” the Shah shook gently. “You wouldn’t want to be depending too much on John unless