By the Lake (26 page)

“She’s going to have to start getting up very early in the morning if she’s going to best John Quinn,” Patrick Ryan said.

The tables were cleared away for dancing. There were no musicians but the hotel had a jukebox with old dance tunes. The groom and his bride led the dancing in a slow waltz. Bill Evans was almost immobile with food and drink and sat staring out at the dancing through rings of cigarette smoke as impassively as a Chinaman.

Mrs. Maguire was making the rounds of the wedding party, enquiring if everything had been to their satisfaction, and seeing the Ruttledges she sat and spoke with them. When she left, after talking with Jamesie and Mary, they decided that they were ready to leave. Patrick had already left their table. Away on the
far side of the room they saw him in conversation with the bride’s brother.

“Should we ask Patrick if he wants a lift?” Kate asked.

“He’ll not want,” Jamesie said. “He’ll go round on everybody. He’ll have a world of lifts before the night is out.”

“You know, that Missus Maguire is a great friendly manly woman. Herself and the Shah are great friends. It’d be a terror if the two went and got married,” Jamesie said jauntily as they drove out of the town.

“They’re not daft like you and John Quinn,” Mary said sharply. “Isn’t that right, Bill?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bill replied absently, freed of all concerns.

“What would they be getting married for?”

“We all know,” Jamesie rubbed his huge hands together.

“You’re a disgrace!”

“All make their way,” he sang.

“I think people are sexual until they die,” said Kate, who was driving as she had hardly anything to drink.

“God, Kate, you’re a caution,” Mary broke down in laughter.

“She’s right,” Jamesie said. “You can see children jigging as soon as they can walk. The old crowd have it in their heads and if they have it anywhere else they are clever enough to keep it under cover.”

“You see, you are only putting things in his head, Kate.”

“We had a most interesting day. Will the bride sit or will she run?” Jamesie asked.

“She’ll run if she has sense,” Kate said.

Jamesie and Mary insisted on walking all the way into the house from the lake gate. “It’ll clear the heads,” Mary said.

Bill Evans hadn’t said a word during the drive home. They drove him past their own gate to the top of the hill so that he had only a short walk down to the house.

“How do you feel?” Ruttledge asked when he got him out of the car. “Will you be all right?”

“Topping, topping,” he answered tiredly. “I feel all rolly-polly.”

John Quinn’s marriage celebrations lasted a week. The bride waited until the big cars carrying John Quinn’s children passed through Dublin and Holyhead and were well on their way to their various homes around London. All that week she lived with John Quinn in the house by the lake but spent little time there other than the nights and the mornings.

The cars would arrive early to take them away for the day. It was always late night or early morning before they were left back again. The days were spent over meals in hotels, in bars and visiting relatives. John Quinn’s wife found the atmosphere charming: such a large family, getting on so well together in the excitement their interest in one another generated; they, in turn, were delighted by the solid respectability of his new wife after the succession of ladies he had paraded over the years.

To the relatives they visited John Quinn’s children brought offerings of whiskey and chocolates and fruit. Growing up so hard and poor, they had received small kindnesses from many of these people. Now they enjoyed returning these kindnesses in the ease of their prosperity and were too tactful to ruin it with loud display. Their conduct was a direct counter to their father’s behaviour.

Many of the relatives would not have wanted John Quinn. He would have owed them money or have tried to take advantage of them in some other way. They were content to pretend to “Let it go with him. It’ll all sort itself out” for the sake of peace and the family. Alone, they kept him at an iron distance,
but when he appeared with the children they allowed that distance to lapse.

Most of these houses would know few visitors. Some would see no faces other than when they went into town to shop or look in on the cattle mart or attend Sunday Mass. Such a visit as John Quinn’s family would be a huge break and excitement in the sameness of the days. Even in the poorest houses, whiskey, set aside for such rare occasions, would be offered. Tea would be made. A hunt would be started to search out sweets or biscuits or some small delicacy for the children. In their fierce pride, John Quinn’s children, in turn, would have ensured that more was brought to the house in offerings and gifts than could be given back.

The welcome disruption of the everyday the visit brought was nothing compared to the richness it provided for weeks and months. “A terror how old villains like John Quinn could have such decent good children while decent people are as likely as not to get children bringing nothing but trouble. Study how an old blackguard like that after burying two wives and having all sorts of other women could sail out at the end of his days and get a respectable, well-preserved, presentable woman from, of all places, Knock where the Virgin appeared, when men who would make far better husbands were left with two hands hanging. Some poor women can go badly astray when it comes to this love business.”

Already, the new wife had come to realize that she had made a mistake, but was keeping her own counsel.

On the last evening the family gave a dinner in the Central, with toasts and all kinds of wishes for long lives and much happiness to the new couple, and afterwards there were drinks and a singsong in the bar till late. They all said goodbye to one another that night in the Central, with promises to see one another when they came again the following summer, if not before that, when, as they hoped, the happy couple would visit
them in London. The next day, while the convoy of cars was crossing England, the wife packed all her personal belongings while John Quinn was away out the land fencing and attending to cattle, and walked to Shruhaun.

A tall, fair-haired young man came by car to the village an hour earlier. He had a single pint of stout in the bar. Though he was polite and answered readily enough to the small talk of the bar, he didn’t volunteer either where he was from or what business had brought him to Shruhaun. As soon as John Quinn’s wife walked in the door, he rose and put his glass back on the counter and went and took the two suitcases she had been carrying. They left without a word. There were only a few in the bar at the time. Nobody thought to get the registration number of the car but they guessed by his appearance and by the way he went towards her that he was one of her sons.

Jamesie had great belief in two spoons he used for casting from the shore, an elongated piece of rough beaten copper Johnny had made before going to England and a red and silver spoon with a tiny amber eye he had found years ago hooked in a piece of driftwood. It was the long copper spoon he was using from the shore the day after John Quinn’s family had returned to England. With each cast he drew closer to the iron-roofed house under the great chestnut tree in the yard. Very few fish were ever caught in this part of the lake and the morning was too bright, but fish weren’t much on his mind. Not far away from where he sent the spinning copper out on the water was the bare rock to which John Quinn had led his first bride. Around the edges of the rock the sparse grass had turned red. There were clusters of
wildfowl out on the lake and the swans were sailing around and feeding close in to the shore. Everywhere birds were singing. When Jamesie moved between the rock and the house, the old sheepdog came to the gate of the yard, gave a few half-hearted barks and went away. He could see hens pecking about in the dust of the yard around the big chestnut tree. If he advanced any further along the shore, he would begin moving away from the house. He knew he had only to wait.

The old sheepdog came first. While continuing to cast and reel in the copper spoon, Jamesie was able to observe John Quinn’s approach. He was still dressed in his wedding suit.

“John Quinn is one happy and contented man this bright morning,” Jamesie sang out as he drew close while reeling in and lifting the copper spoon from the water.

“It’s lovely to see good neighbours innocent and at peace and looking for something good for the table,” John Quinn said.

“You must be one happy man to be safely married again to a fine woman,” Jamesie was all smiles as he turned the attention around.

“I do my best to be happy and not live alone, as the Lord intended—‘Tis not good for man to live alone,’ He himself has said—but I don’t mind admitting that we have had a little setback that I’m hoping and praying will only be very temporary.”

“A setback?” Jamesie enquired incredulously. “A setback for John Quinn?”

“Yes, Jamesie. You could call it a setback but I’m hoping it’ll be only temporary, no more than a hitch or a small hiccup. It’s down in a holy writ that what God has joined together no man can put asunder. I was away on some cattle business yesterday evening and when I came back I found she had left for her own part of the country. All she left behind was a note and it wasn’t a love note.”

“Was there no signs or warnings?”

“No signs. No signs worth remarking. We had a most wonderful
week, the children taking us everywhere and all happy and getting on wonderfully well together. Except one night when we were most content and peaceable after the usual love performance she turned to me and said, ‘John, I think I’ve made a big mistake.’ Women get strange notions like that from time to time, like children, and have to be humoured. I told her what you have to tell them on such occasions and when I heard nothing more thought it was the sweet end of that figary and we were back to happiness again.”

“Still, you must have had a great week in spite of everything, John Quinn?” Jamesie had known him over a lifetime. John Quinn had circled and wheedled and bullied many in search of advantage. Now he was being circled expertly.

“The children have done well for themselves and got on well in the world and wanted to do as good for their old father. They came in a great show of strength. Nothing was too much for them or too good. They brought us everywhere. Then we had the nights to ourselves. I don’t mind telling you, Jamesie, it was like being young again. It was youth come back again and it wasn’t wasted. We had the strength but not the know-how when we were young.”

“She was a fine woman,” Jamesie said.

“As fine as was ever handled, Jamesie, hadn’t to be taught a thing and was more solid and wholesome than a young woman. You could tell she had an easy, comfortable life and never got much hardship. She was as ripe as a good plum picked when it was about to fall off the tree. It was most beautiful. It was like going in and out of a most happy future.”

“You’re a terror, John Quinn. A pure living holy terror,” Jamesie cheered and John Quinn luxuriated in the rapt attention.

“Then this little slip-up came along and sort of went and spoiled everything but please God it’ll be soon rectified and everything will be back happy and everybody getting on wonderfully well together again.”

“I don’t doubt it. I can’t see John Quinn letting anything go without an almighty struggle. I don’t doubt it for a minute.”

“Even now I’m negotiating for a happy outcome. Once you marry you know you have rights as well as duties. It can’t be put away like a pair of old boots. It’s my belief anyhow that she won’t be got back to this part of the country. My plan is very plain and simple and I tell you man to man, Jamesie: if the mountain won’t go to Mohammed, then, it was always said, Mohammed has to go to the mountain.”

Jamesie went straight from John Quinn to the Ruttledges. There were no games of stealth, of ghosting into the house to listen. The trolling rod was left in the fuchsia bushes at the gate and he whooped and called out as he came in the short avenue and rapped with his palm on the glass of the porch. He could have been a small crowd returning victorious from a football match or a spectacular cattle sale. Kate was alone in the house and went to meet him in the porch. Ruttledge heard the commotion and came in from the fields.