By the Lake Read Free

at her every beck and call. We heard afterwards that Anna went to England after Peadar Curren and got burned. I suppose Johnny put her back on her feet after the gunk she got with Peadar and then she got rid of him. Johnny didn’t come home that first summer but came without fail every summer since.”
    “Was Anna mentioned when he came?”
    “Never once. We don’t even know how it ended. Then we heard she married a policeman in London who turned for her.”
    “Converted to Catholicism,” Ruttledge explained. “Turned his coat. I’d have turned my coat for you, Kate, but I had no coat to turn by that time, and you never asked.”
    “Spoken like a true heathen. They’ll all turn, Kate. If they have to pick between their religion and the boggy hollow, they’ll all turn,” he laughed exultantly.
    “We’ve all been in Johnny’s place, except maybe not to the same extent,” Ruttledge said.
    “Speak for yourself, Mister Ruttledge. I haven’t been there,” Jamesie said.
    “Then you haven’t been far.”
    “I’ve never, never moved from here and I know the whole world,” he protested.
    “You’re right, Jamesie. Pay no heed to him,” Kate said.
    “What do you think, Kate?”
    “I think women are more practical. They learn to cut their losses. They are more concentrated on themselves.”
    “Enter lightly, Kate, and leave on tiptoe. Put the hand across but never press. Ask why not but never why. Always lie so that you speak the truth and God save all poor sinners,” he said, and greeted his own sally with a sharp guffaw.
    A loud sudden rapping with a stick on the porch door did not allow for any response. “God bless all here!” was shouted out as a slow laborious shuffle approached through the front room.
    “Bill Evans.”
    “It could be no one else,” Jamesie rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
    Bill Evans did not pause in the doorway but advanced boldly into the room to sit in the white rocking chair. The huge wellingtons, the blue serge trousers and torn jacket, a shirt of mattress ticking, the faded straw hat were all several sizes too large. The heavy blackthorn he carried he leaned against an arm of the chair. His eyes darted eagerly from face to face to face.“Jamesie,” he grinned with condescension. “You are welcome to this side of the lake.”
    “I’m delighted, honoured to be here,” Jamesie laughed.
    Tea was made. Milk and several spoons of sugar were added to the tea and stirred. The tea and biscuits were placed on a low stool beside the rocking chair. He ate and drank greedily.
    “How are you all up there?”
    “Topping. We are all topping.”
    “You are managing all right without Jackie?”
    “Getting along topping. Managing fine.”
    He had been schooled never to part with any information about what happened. There was much to conceal about Bill Evans’s whole life. Because he knew no other life, his instinct to protect his keepers and his place was primal.
    “Do you think will Herself get married again?” Jamesie asked jocularly, provocatively.
    “Everybody says that you are far too nosy.”
    “News is better than no news,” Jamesie answered, taken aback.
    There are no truths more hurtful than those we see as partly true. That such a humble hand delivered it made it more unsettling. Though he pretended not to care, Jamesie knew that his curiosity was secretly feared and openly mocked. He became unusually silent.
    Bill Evans finished the tea and biscuits. “Have you any fags?” he demanded when he put the plate and cup away and rose out of the rocking chair.
    Ruttledge gave him five loose cigarettes that had been placed in a corner of the dresser. “A light?” Bill asked. Some matches from a box were emptied into his palm. Cigarettes and matches were all put together into the breast pocket of the large serge jacket. “Not faulting the company but I’ll be beating away now,” he said.
    “Good luck, Bill,” Jamesie called out amiably, but Bill Evans made