By the Lake Read Free Page B

He walked up and down between the rows of tables or stood under the big crucifix between the high windows. He read out notices and issued warnings and with bowed head intoned the prayers of grace before and after meals. As he walked slowly up and down between the tables he read his Breviary, pausing now and then to cast an unblinking eye on any table where there was a hint of boisterousness or irregularity. Such was his reputation that cutlery was often knocked to the floor or scattered in the nervous rush towards correction. Then, with a chilling smile, he would pass on, returning to his Breviary, resuming the metronomical walk, until pausing to rest his gaze on an upturned salt cruet. Around him the boys in their short white coats hurried between the kitchens and the tables.
    One morning a boy turned quickly away from a table and found the Dean unexpectedly in his path and went straight into him with a tray. Plates and bowls went flying. The soutane was splashed. Only the students who were seated close to the accident saw what happened next, and even they weren’t certain. In the face of his fury it was thought that the boy broke the rule of silence to try to excuse the accident. The beating was sudden and savage. Nobody ate a morsel at any of the tables while it was taking place. Not a word was uttered. In the sobbing aftermath the silence was deep and accusing until the scrape of knife and fork on plate and the low hum of conversation resumed. Many who had sat mutely at the tables during the beating were to feel all their lives that they had taken part in the beating through their self-protective silence. This ageing man, who could easilyhave been one of those boys waiting at tables or cleaning the kitchens if he hadn’t been dispatched to that first farm, sat at ease and in full comfort in the white rocking chair, smoking, after having eaten the enormous bowl of potatoes.
    “You were sent out to that first farm when you were fourteen?”
    “Begod, I was.”
    “You worked for them for a good few years before you ran away to here?”
    “Begod, I did.”
    “They didn’t treat you very well?”
    For what seemed an age he made no attempt to answer, looking obstinately out from the white chair that no longer moved. “Why are you asking me this, Joe?”
    “Everybody comes from somewhere or other. None of us comes out of the blue air.”
    “You’ll be as bad as Jamesie soon,” he answered irritably.
    “Weren’t you in a place run by Brothers and priests before they sent you to the first farm?” Ruttledge ignored the rebuke. A troubled look passed across Bill Evans’s face as swiftly as a shadow of a bird passing across window light and was replaced by a black truculence. “Before the priests and Brothers weren’t you with nuns in a convent with other small boys? Weren’t you treated better when you were small and with the nuns?”
    This time there was no long pause. A look of rage and pain crossed his face. “Stop torturing me,” he cried out.
    Taken aback by the violence and ashamed now of his own idle probing, Ruttledge answered quickly, “I’d never want to do that. I’m sorry there’s so little food in the house.”
    “The spuds were topping, Joe. They have me packed,” he said rising stiffly from the chair, leaning on the rough handle of the blackthorn. “They left me in charge and could be home any minute now. I’d want to be above when they get back.”
    Now, several years later, Ruttledge watched him toil slowly down to the lake with the two buckets. Every day since he and Kate had come to the house, Bill Evans had drawn water from the lake with the buckets. In the house, Kate and Jamesie were talking about him still.
    “I told you, Kate, you are too soft,” Jamesie argued. “The decenter you treat the likes of him the more they’ll walk all over you.”
    “What else has he ever known?”
    “You’ll be the one to suffer but you could be right in the long run,” Jamesie yielded in his