Free By the Lake by John McGahern

little roads until they reached the main road close to Carrick. In places, the encroaching hawthorns brushed the sides of the car. Some of the cottages were newly painted and pretty, with gardens and flowers. Others were neglected, uncared for.
    “You can always tell the old bachelor’s burrow. None of them ever heard tell of a can of paint or a packet of flower seed. The country is full of them and they all had mothers.”
    He spoke of the people he had worked for. Many were dead. He spoke of them humorously, with a little contempt, as most of them had been poor. “I never took a penny, lad. They hadn’t it to give.”
    When he turned to speak of the rich houses he had worked for, his voice changed: it was full of identification and half-possession, like the unformed longing of a boy.
    “Most of the people in this part of the country will never rise off their arses in the ditches. You have to have something behind you to be able to rise.”
    Rise to what? came to Ruttledge’s lips, but he didn’t speak it. “I suppose they’ll move around in the light for a while like the rest of us and disappear,” he said.
    “They wouldn’t like to hear that either, lad,” Patrick Ryan replied trenchantly. “All the fuckers half-believe they are going to be the Big Exception and live for ever.”
    The spires of the churches on the hill rose above the low roofs of Carrick, and on a higher isolated hill across the town stood a concrete water tower, like a huge mushroom on a slender stem. The long stone building had been the old workhouse and was now part of the hospital. Age had softened the grey Victorian harshness of the stone.
    The open wards they walked through were orderly andclean. The men in the military rows of beds were old. As they passed down the brown linoleum-covered corridor, many were in their own world, a few engaged in vigorous conversation with themselves. Others were as still as if they were in shock. Sunday visitors gathered around certain beds in troubled or self-conscious uselessness, but they formed a semblance of company and solidarity against those who lay alone and unvisited.
    “It’d make you think, lad,” Patrick said sourly. “There’s not a lot to it when it all comes down.”
    They found Edmund in a tiny room on his own, a drip above the bed attached to his arm, in deep, drugged sleep.
    “Our lad is bad,” Patrick Ryan said.
    “We’d be better to let him sleep.”
    Patrick Ryan put the bottle of Lucozade they had brought firmly down on the bedside table, and without any warning he took Edmund by the shoulders and began to shake him violently.
    “Let him rest. You can see he’s very sick,” Ruttledge said, but his words only increased Patrick Ryan’s determination.
    “We’ll bring him to his senses in a minute, lad.”
    “Watch the drip!” Ruttledge called in alarm as the tubes and bottle trembled.
    When Edmund woke he was frightened. At first, he did not know where he was. “Patrick,” he said out of his disturbed sleep when he recognized his brother’s face, and offered his trembling hand.
    “Are you all right?” Patrick Ryan demanded.
    He made no answer. Either he didn’t understand or his attention was distracted by Ruttledge’s presence at the foot of the bed. With great effort he reached back to an old tradition of courtesy. “Joe,” he called to Ruttledge, and with difficulty again reached out a trembling hand. “You were very good to come. How are yous all around the lake?”
    “We are well, Edmund. How is yourself?”
    He wasn’t given the opportunity to answer. Patrick filled aglass from the Lucozade bottle. “Drink this,” he ordered. “It’ll do you good.” He held it to his lips but Edmund was too weak to drink. Much of the yellow liquid ran down his white stubble.
    “Leave it be,” Ruttledge said in anger and took the glass from his hand. “We are doing more harm than good.”
    For a moment Patrick Ryan looked as if he was about to turn on