By the Lake (34 page)

Jamesie’s face expressed his relief instantly but he was too tense to speak or rub his hands in satisfaction. Already Patrick Ryan had wandered away to another part of the ring and was talking with other people. Ruttledge and Jamesie decided to separate. Ruttledge was to go to the other ring and sell the heifers. They couldn’t risk staying together because they couldn’t be sure which would come on the market first. On his way between the rings he passed Father Conroy, who nodded recognition but did not pause or speak. Close to him was his old acolyte, the church sacristan, Jimmy Lynch. The priest had made no attempt at disguise and was wearing his white collar with old clerical clothes. He was absorbed and separate. There were many there who knew him but once they saw his face they turned aside. Care was needed passing between the rings, and a number of times Ruttledge had to climb on gates and the rungs of pens to avoid the rush of milling, frightened cattle being moved between the rings and the pens.

As soon as he reached the heifer ring, he saw from the chalked numbers that he hadn’t come too early, and he recognized his own cattle in one of the holding pens. They did not look distressed. By now, they were probably numbed. As their numbers drew close, the selling seemed to race. Ruttledge watched the big hands of the scale until it came to rest when the
first animal entered the cage, and waited to see that it tallied with the number chalked on the board before entering the box. Through the little window he was able to look out at the buyers crowding round the ring and packing the stand. Like prayers, the bids were called out, and when they slowed to a stop the auctioneer leaned down. “What do you think yourself?” he found himself asking, despite the fact that he knew the auctioneer would not want to take responsibility. The auctioneer went round the ring again. The bids rose a little higher. The next time he looked his way he nodded vigorously to sell.

“On the mart—slowly.” The bidding rose quickly and when the auctioneer brought down the hammer, he turned towards the box and nodded his satisfaction with the price. What followed was over in an instant. He was being handed the sales’ slips and another man was taking his place in the box. At other marts he had seen old farmers leaving the box looking as dazed and befuddled as he felt. A man clapped him on the shoulder and brought a smiling, friendly face up close. “Those were great prices. They were nice cattle!”

“Are you buying or selling yourself?”

“Selling but it’ll be hours yet till I’m on.”

“Good luck. The mart is good.”

“Thanks … as long as it keeps up,” the man said fervently.

On his way back, a look at the sales’ slips confirmed that Jamesie had got the higher prices. In the crowd round the ring he found Jamesie and Patrick back together again. He handed them the slips. Jamesie’s huge hands were shaking.

“The prices are good but Jamesie got the best prices.”

“Jamesie is always winning,” Patrick Ryan winked. “He must have the best, best cattle in, in, in the whole of Ireland.”

“Not the worst anyhow,” Jamesie sang out, ignoring the play. “The prices are so close that there’s hardly a whit of difference.”

The bidding had slowed around the bullock ring as previous
withdrawals were rerun again, to the auctioneer’s obvious impatience.

“Tanglers trying their cattle,” Jamesie said.

Then the bidding quickened. They saw their cattle being driven into the holding pens next to the weighing cage. The number chalked up on the board was only two numbers away from their numbers. Because of the good prices the heifers went for, Jamesie insisted superstitiously that Ruttledge sell the bullocks as well. Patrick Ryan didn’t want to go near the box. “Sell them no matter what you get. Sell them if you get anything. Sell them to hell. They are not coming home.”

Ruttledge was calmer now. He saw his own animal enter the ring, its weight chalked up on the board, and watched the coded signals of the dealers as they bid, the bids translated into the rhythmic exhortation of the auctioneer. When the bidding slowed and the auctioneer leaned towards him, he nodded to him to complete the sale. There were a few shouted insults about racehorses and “age is venerable” when Patrick Ryan’s steers entered the ring. At first the bidding was much lower than for the other cattle but once they were put on the mart there was sharp competition and they went for a higher price than anybody had expected. The two men were delighted and they were being congratulated all round when Ruttledge rejoined them.

“Do you want to stay around for a while or will we head off?” Ruttledge asked.

“We’ll go,” Jamesie said with feeling. “I hate the mart. We’ll go.”

“We’ll go in the name of God. We’ll go like good Christians,” Patrick Ryan laughed.

Slowly they untangled themselves from the crush of men around the ring and reached the wide passageway between the pens. At a distant pen they saw the priest and his sacristan looking at cattle.

“You’d think he’d go and get someone else to sell the cattle for him. It doesn’t look the thing to see him in his black gear in the middle of the mart,” Patrick Ryan said.

“I’d have no fault with poor Father Conroy. He’s as good, as plain a priest as ever came about,” Jamesie said.

“If his black gear hasn’t a place in the cattle mart, it hasn’t a place anywhere else either. It either belongs to life or it doesn’t,” Ruttledge said.

“Everything has its place, lad. Even you should know that,” Patrick Ryan said.

“Shots, shots!” Jamesie warned gently.

“They had this whole place abulling with religion once. People were afraid to wipe their arses with grass in case it was a sin.”

“They’d be better off with hay,” Jamesie said while nudging Ruttledge to stay silent. Because of the crowds filling the sidewalks they had to thread their way through the town. Patrick Ryan started to chew the side of his mouth, a sure sign he was in foul humour, but it changed quickly as soon as people greeted him. Their progress through the town was slow. Jamesie and Ruttledge paused several times and waited while Patrick delighted in the chance meetings. They did not mind. They had the whole day.

“Don’t go against Patrick in anything to do with religion or politics or we’ll be sick all day listening to lectures,” Jamesie warned during one of the waits, and Ruttledge nodded agreement.

There were three detectives instead of the usual two in the alleyway across from Jimmy Joe McKiernan’s bar. The door of the bar was wedged open to let in air. Men stood shoulder to packed shoulder outside the counter of the narrow bar as far back as the eye could follow, spilling out into the wide yard at the back. The hubbub of the voices was intense.

“They’re getting surer of themselves. They think their day will be soon here,” Patrick Ryan said.

“They honoured themselves at Enniskillen. How many innocent people did they kill and maim?” Ruttledge said.

Jamesie stretched out his boot to press hard on Ruttledge’s, reminding him to be silent.

For the first time that year the cabbage man was outside Luke Henry’s bar. The doors of the van were open, on view the neat rows of plants—Early York, Flat Dutch and Curly—tied in bundles with yellow binder twine.

“Me old comrade,” Jamesie took hold of his arm. “The winter is over.”

The man was wearing overalls and his pleasant round face under a cloth cap was smiling. “The plants are ready for spring, whatever about the weather,” he said self-effacingly. “You wouldn’t think of coming back to chance it with the potatoes again?”

“No, not on a bet,” Jamesie put his hand out with finality. “Too old. Finished. No use.”

“You wouldn’t try me out?” Patrick Ryan asked roguishly.

“There’s only the one Jamesie,” the cabbage man said. “They pegged away the mould when they made Jamesie.”

Jamesie cheered and everybody laughed. All three men bought a bundle of Early York. As Jamesie continued chatting, Patrick and Ruttledge entered the bar.

“He could be there an hour yet. He’s a pure child,” Patrick said.

The bar was crowded. Many greeted them. Because of the high prices, there was great praise for this Monaghan Day, and there was unusual good humour. Patrick insisted on ordering the first round and buying three whiskeys to have with the three pints.

“Too much. Too much. Too much,” he heard Jamesie’s voice
like a measuring echo, and raised his glass in no more than a ritual protest. “Good man, Patrick. You have a heavy hand but may you live for ever and never die in want,” Jamesie raised the glass of whiskey disapprovingly when he joined them but drank it with a flourish, buoyed by his chat with the cabbage man.

“You’re flying, Jamesie,” Patrick countered defensively.

“Never even tried it, Patrick,” he said after finishing the whiskey, before taking a long satisfying drink from the pint.

“The same again, Mary, when you have the time,” Jamesie called softly to one of the girls serving behind the counter. He may have disapproved of Patrick’s heavy hand but was determined not to be outdone.

Already, there was an air of holiday in the bar and both Patrick and Jamesie were drawing shouts and waves of recognition. Drinks would soon start to flow their way. Ruttledge told Jamesie he had messages to do about the town before slipping away unnoticed.

He walked slowly through the crowded town, with cars parked everywhere and passing traffic blowing angrily as it made a slow, tortuous way through. A few people greeted him and he returned their greetings but most people were just faces. In a little alcove by the bridge across the shallow river was the bronze statue of the harper bent over his harp. All the bars were full, the small shops crowded. There were displays in windows. He had great affection for the town but knew it came from long acquaintance and association. No two houses were alike in the long, wide, winding main street. People had come in from the country and mountain and put down a new house next to the last built house without any thought other than to shelter together and survive and trade. To prosper was such a distant dream that it was both dangerous and unlucky to even contemplate. A stream of people came and went from the Central Hotel. They were better dressed and more prosperous than the people in the bars. The Shah would have long since eaten and left. Soon, Ruttledge
reached the edge of the town and found himself looking across at the small kingdom. The square was full of packed vehicles, lorries and tractors and trailers as well as cars, and he had to move closer than he wanted to see across to the sheds. Monaghan Day had brought them much business as well. People were continually going and coming and standing about in small groups at the entrance to the sheds. The big iron gates to the scrapyard were open and several people were moving about searching among the scrap. The old gardener, Jimmy Murray, had been conscripted for the day and stood on guard in his porkpie hat outside the gates.

As a child, Ruttledge used to travel on the train with his mother to this town. The low-grade Arigna coal the train burned during the war gave so little power that on the steepest hills the passengers had to dismount from the carriages and walk to the top of the slope where they climbed aboard again. In his mind he could see the white railway gates clearly, the high white signal box, the three stunted fir trees beside the rails, the big hose that extended from the water tank and hung like an elephant’s trunk over the entrance to the boiler shed. For a moment, the old living railway station stood there so vividly in his mind, like an oil painting of great depth, that the substantial square looked deranged. Nobody could ever have imagined that the little station, then the hub of the town, would become this half-wasteland with the Shah lord of it all. Unease had brought Ruttledge to this edge of town. Ever since the sale he had been afraid his uncle could be riding for a fall. He had relinquished power without relinquishing place and was as vulnerable as a child to loss of face. The business was Frank Dolan’s now.

He walked very slowly back. The traffic was more chaotic, the horns blowing wildly, the doors of lorries open while their drivers went in search of whatever was blocking the way, which must have been even more frustrating still since it was nothing less than the whole disordered town. Several of the lorries were
full of cattle coming from the mart and their lowing added to the pandemonium. Ruttledge met a few people he knew. The small shops were all busy. The pleasure was in walking among the human excitement and eagerness of the market. The cabbage man and his van were still parked outside Luke’s. He returned a friendly wave to Ruttledge’s. Only a few bundles of plants remained unsold.

The bar was more crowded than when he left. Jamesie was sitting in a corner with other small farmers, comparing sales’ slips and descriptions of the animals they had sold. As always with Jamesie, he was using his hands to block out the descriptions. Patrick Ryan was with the Molloys, a family of contractors who owned and worked heavy machinery for whom he had often built and repaired houses and sheds. As soon as he entered the bar, Patrick detached himself from the Molloys and joined Ruttledge. Patrick’s face was flushed but he was rock-steady and coldly charming. “You have been so long away you must have bought the town,” he chided. “You’ll have a large brandy.”

“It’d kill me,” Ruttledge said, and shook his head to the girl’s silent enquiry. “I’ll have a pint of stout. And besides it’s my round and I have to drive.”

“What the fuck matter whose round it is?—all we are on is a day out of our lives. We’ll never be round again,” Patrick said belligerently and insisted on paying for the pint.

“It doesn’t matter. We are as well to try to keep it middling straight,” Ruttledge said, and ordered a large brandy for Patrick and a pint of stout for Jamesie, who was still absorbed in discussion.

“We’ll have to get that shed up of yours before the summer, lad,” Patrick Ryan said. “It’s just been going on for far too long.”

“You know there’s no rush. There’s nothing depending on it,” Ruttledge said easily, used to the dialogue.

Patrick went on to say how sick he was of working for the country, of travelling from house to house and listening to all
their wants. A man would want six hands to keep all of them happy. The material for the roof for his own house had been bought and stored away for more than twenty years and it was time the house was re-roofed and lived in again, he said. Sick to his arse he was of travelling, he would settle down on his own fields among the neighbours and a few cattle until the hearse came.