By the Lake (5 page)

“I was sorry to leave,” Kate said. “I couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him. Very few people have that effect.”

“I was wondering if he was real while he was talking,” Ruttledge said.

“Oh, he was real all right. He was looking me up and down as if I were an animal. What are we to do about the extraordinary request?”

“We’ll do nothing,” Ruttledge said. “We’ll find out about him.”

It was obvious the Shah knew a great deal more about John Quinn than he was willing to tell when he was asked about their visitor the following Sunday.

“Oh, John Quinn,” he wiped his knuckles on his eyes and shook at the mention of the name. “Oh John’s a boy. Women and more women,” he said but would not add to the detail. “When he was young he was the law around and loved to settle
fights in bars, taking both men outside and beating them good-looking. ‘Putting a little manners on people,’ he would say.”

“He said he had dealings with you.”

“Everybody has dealings with John Quinn. That’s all there is to John.”

“How do you deal with him?”

“You don’t. But he can always unearth these silly women,” and shaking with amusement he indicated with a wave of the hand that to be a provider of such low detail was valley upon valley beneath him.

When they next met, Jamesie and Mary’s attention was fixed on every word as the visit was described. “I thought I heard everything till now. John Quinn is a living sight. He’ll try anything. He never misses a chance but I never thought I’d see the day when he’d be trying to get people to forage for women for him in England,” Jamesie said.

“His first lookout would be to see if there was any chance to get in with you, Kate,” Mary said.

“That’s the way these fellas are,” Jamesie said. “They’ll try anything. ‘Fuck them. What can they do but refuse?’ is how they think about other people. They’ll just go on to someone else. They have no value on people, only what they can get out of them. When he came about our place first he borrowed our little mule of the time and when he brought the mule back his breast was all skinned. ‘The borrowed horse has hard hooves!’ When he came again he was refused. I think he was the first person we ever turned away but it was like water off a drake. ‘What can they do but refuse!’ My father was fond of that mule and we weren’t able to work him for months afterwards.

“John Quinn was tall and good-looking and strong, as fine-looking a man as you’d meet in a day or two days. His older brother Packy still lives in the homeplace and is as different from John as difference can be, quiet and decent. John used to plough for hire. On a headland he was able to swing the plough around
without backing from the horses. He’d drink a bottle of stout or two but never more, he was always too careful, especially if he had to pay. He never went with girls or women when he was young though he could have had his pick. He’d sweet-talk them plenty and flirt and dance but all the time John Quinn was looking out for John Quinn.

“The Sweeneys were ripe for plucking. Their place was the sweetest place around, the same limestone fields as you get at the old Abbey—you know them yourselves, where you can see the shapes of the old monks’ cells in the grass—and they had money when no one had money. The place was known as the beehive. Margaret was an only child like her mother before her. Her father Tom Sweeney had married into the place from the mountain. He was no beauty but a great worker and it was him who planted the big chestnut tree in the middle of the yard and ringed it round with the wall of whitewashed stones and the iron hoops. Her mother was a big easy-going woman and she adored Tom Sweeney, ugly as he was—there’s no telling with people—and they both adored the ground Margaret walked on. They were simple, decent people and nothing mean or small about them. They were just that bit innocent. Tom Sweeney would be the first to go to the help if any neighbour was in trouble. Anybody who called to the house would be welcomed and given food and drink—they had always great
poitín
Tom got from the mountain, far far better than any whiskey—but they never went out much to people or bothered with other houses. They were content with their own company, and those sort of people are the most lost when anything happens. They have no one to turn to.

“I suppose Margaret was spoiled. She’d have been given everything she ever wanted but that was about to all change when John Quinn came with his team of horses to do their spring ploughing. Many girls better looking than Margaret wanted
John Quinn but they didn’t have limestone fields and a house and place to walk into.

“Her father was against him from the first, though John Quinn was dripping with sweetness. He was in dread that everything he had built about the beehive was about to be trampled underfoot. Mary the mother, though, was all for John Quinn from the very first and the place was hers.”

“What could they have done anyhow? Margaret was wild about John Quinn. All they could have done was shut the door against their only child and the poor things weren’t about to do that,” Mary said.

“All around the lake were invited to the wedding. Even Mary here went and she hadn’t long left school at the time. No expense was spared. All kinds of meat and drink were brought in. It was all the talk around the lake for weeks ahead of the wedding. There was going to be music. Packie Donnelly from the crossroads was alive then and he was the best fiddle player we ever had about the lake. He got a cousin of his own to come from Drumreilly, Peter Kelly, who was a smasher on the melodeon. Poor Tom Murphy was coming as well from Aughoo. He was a martyr for the drink but could make a tin whistle talk. On the wedding morning, when it was seen that the day was going to be without rain, a long trestle table was set up under the chestnut tree in the yard.”

“Margaret went to the church with the father and mother in the pony and trap,” Mary said. “I saw them going. She was wearing a beautiful dress of blue silk that fell to her ankles the mother had made, as good as any dressmaker. She wore a blue hat with white flowers and white shoes. John Quinn was in a brand new grey suit with a white flower in the buttonhole. He was full of himself and he was shining.”

“He had Stratton the tailor scourged for fittings for that grey suit. Stratton would never make anything for him again.
Probably he was never paid for the suit after all the fittings,” Jamesie said. “As soon as John Quinn got into the trap to drive with Margaret and the mother and father back from the church to the house, he took the reins from Tom Sweeney. In that sweet false voice, he said that Tom had done more than his share up to now and it was his time to sit back and put his feet up and take his ease. What could poor Tom Sweeney say? John Quinn took up the place of two people in the trap. Then he got the whip and waved it to the people who passed along the road and then whipped the fat brown pony till it galloped. Tom Sweeney used to talk to that pony. ‘What hurry is on you? We’ll be home as it is far too soon. She’s not used to that treatment.’ He might as well have been talking to the wind for all the heed John Quinn paid.

“A few neighbouring women and children had stayed behind preparing the house and setting tables. They had scattered the whole yard with flowers and they must have been surprised to see the wedding trap come into the yard ahead of everybody, the pony lathered in sweat, Tom Sweeney ready to cry. By the time the crowd arrived he had untackled the pony and given her water and was rubbing her down, with him still in his good clothes.

“Then the crowd gathered from the church. They all were waiting for the bridegroom to carry the bride across the doorstep into the empty house and for the feast and the music to begin, but John Quinn had another surprise in store. ‘Now Margaret, before we go into the house there’s a little thing I want to show you over here on the shore.’ Everybody was around them in the yard and the words could be heard clear. ‘We’ll go in. There’s nothing to see in the lake that we haven’t seen before.’

“He opened the gate and though she was a big enough girl he picked her up and carried her like she was a feather. I remember seeing one of the white shoes fall off her foot on to the grass.
I think someone picked it up and brought it back to the house. ‘It won’t take a minute. Excuse us, good friends and neighbours, for there’s just this little thing we have to do first that won’t hold up things at all.’ You know how sweet and humble he talks.

“Everybody thought that John Quinn was only acting the fool and they kept on talking and laughing and chatting away. ‘It wouldn’t be John if he didn’t do things different. He’s a holy terror. It wouldn’t be John if things happened like for everybody else,’ and they began to wonder what strange thing he had to show Margaret over on the shore. He was not known then as he is known now.

“They reached the top of the slope where the rock field slopes down to the shore. There’s little earth and in places the rock is bare. In dry spells the grass there turns red on that part of the shore.

“They stood for a while in full view. Though the yard had turned quiet as a church what they were saying couldn’t be heard. They were too far off. John Quinn put the blanket he had brought down on the rock. Margaret looked as if she was trying to break away but he could have held her with one hand. It was over before anybody rightly knew. He lifted the blue dress up over her head and put her down on the blanket. The screech she let out would put your heart crossways. John Quinn stood between her and the house while he was fixing his trousers and belt. He must have been afraid she’d try to break back on her own but she just lay there on the ground. In the end he had to lift her and straighten her dress and carry her in his arms. The mother and father stood there like a pair of ghosts. Not a word was spoken.

“Once the rush to get away started, you never saw the like. A few went up to the old pair before leaving but most just cut for the road. What could they say? It was clear that Margaret didn’t even want to face back to the house after what had happened. By the time he carried her into the yard the whole place had emptied.
There might never have been a wedding except for the scattered flowers and the long trestle table weighted down with all sorts of food and drink under the chestnut tree. The musicians were the last to leave without playing a note. Poor Tom Sweeney walked them all the way out to the gate at the road without uttering a word. He tried to give them a fistful of money but none of them would take as much as a penny. When he kept pressing the money, all Packie Donnelly—who was as decent a man as you’d find as well as a great fiddle player—all Packie did was to put his arm round poor Tom’s shoulder and hold him tight to show that they understood everything and wanted nothing and that no fault or blame was attached in their minds to him. In those sort of cases sympathy is nearly the hardest thing of all to take and Tom Sweeney who hadn’t said a word up to then started bawling like a child. What could they do but look at one another and say how things could turn out all right yet in the end and hurry away? It’s a terrible thing to see an old man bawling. People always say that things will turn out all right in the end when there’s never a chance of them turning out right.”

“He must have been out of his mind.”

“Not one little bit out of his mind, Kate.”

“How could he have done what he did otherwise?”

“There’s a method in everything John Quinn does. It’s all thought out. In those days when a man married into a place he had little shout. He was expected to take a back seat. Some were not much more than servants. From the minute John Quinn took the reins into his hands on the way from the church till he brought Margaret as far as the rock, he was showing who was going to be boss and that everything was going to be under him from that day out.”

“You’d think he’d be ashamed, if nothing else.”

“Not one little bit. He’d glory that it was in full view. It was said he didn’t let Margaret wear knickers in the house so that he
could do her there and then whenever he wanted, against the table or the wall and all the better if it was in front of the old pair.

“They lasted no time. They faded away. Tom Sweeney never let a morsel of food pass his lips for weeks before he died. Margaret had the eight children, and then she got bad. One morning Johnny was out with the gun he saw her walking in her nightdress in her bare feet in the dew before it was fully light to see if the coolness would ease the pain. In the end the schoolchildren didn’t want to pass the gate on their way to school because they were frightened by her cries. When they laugh over his cavortings and carry-on, they should not forget the full story,” Jamesie said.

“He can’t be blamed for her death?”

“No. It could have happened anyway. The place had been a little paradise. The animals would nearly talk to you they were that well looked after. Tom Sweeney grew every sort of vegetable—beans, peas, lettuce, parsnips, you name them—he had hives; the apple trees were pruned into shapes like bowls or cups and he was a master thatcher. He grew his own straw and thatched a seventh of the roof every year. The seven years could be seen side by side in the different shades of the straw in the thatch, from golden brown to what was nearly black with rain. John Quinn planted nothing but potatoes and cabbage and maybe turnips. He put a tin roof over the thatch and sold the bees and the hives. I don’t think he ever put a spade in the vegetable garden. The fruit trees went wild. There were several cats around the place. They used to line up in a row when Tom Sweeney was milking. I’m afraid the cats got short shrift. Anything not drawing to John Quinn’s mill wasn’t going to last long about a place.

“In fairness he was good enough with the children. He turned himself into a middling cook after the mother died and
had always a big pot of something tasty bubbling by the fire. The children were all strong and good-looking, wonderful workers, and John showered them with praise so that they’d try to outdo one another. Naturally he didn’t forget himself either when he was handing the praise around and he learned to sew and to cobble.

“At the time there were terrible beatings in the schools. Some of the teachers were savages. People were afraid to speak out but John Quinn wasn’t afraid. There was a Missus Kilboy who was a terror with the cane. She’d swipe you round the legs as well as murder your hands; and if you tried to cover your legs with your arms, the arms and back would get it as well.