By the Lake

  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.

  “Finding it much easier now, thanking you very much for your most kind enquiry,” he called out mockingly as he threw himself down in the armchair, but then could contain his news no longer. “Gone!” he laughed out. “Gone. Out the gap. Gone!”

  “Who’s gone? What’s gone?”

  “A drink in the name of God before I die. John Quinn’s wife has gone. Skipped it before the children were right back in England, gone and left him, stranded as long as he ran. Hit it for her own part of the country.”

  Over whiskey and water he went over the story at his ease, occasionally choking as he drank into his speech but more often banging his glass down to hoot with laughter. “I heard going to the boggy hollow described as many things in my time but never as ‘going in and out of a most happy future.’ Lord bless us. John Quinn is a living sight. He could think or do anything. He said it was like being young again and she tasted like a ripe plum picked from the tree. I’d give good money to know what the plum thought.”

  “You’re a disgrace, Jamesie. You were leading him on.”

  In answer, he cheered.

  “Did she give no sign or warning?” Ruttledge asked.

  “Oh yes. Oh—yes, but those like John Quinn are too
bound up with themselves to heed. When they had done the love performance one night and were most happy and peaceful, she turned to him in the bed and said, ‘I think I may have made a big mistake.’ ”

  “That’s the end. Imagine having to go to a place like Knock to find someone like John Quinn,” Kate said.

  “Lots go and won’t be stopped,” Jamesie laughed. “Nature starts jabbing them. This tangle is far from over. Mark my words. John Quinn won’t be got rid of so easily.”

  “What can he do?”

  “Plenty. He’ll set the land for as high a price as he can ever get and head for Westmeath. ‘If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed then Mohammed has to go to the mountain.’ John Quinn may act daft but there’s not much daft at the back of the acting.”

  “He’ll be turned away?”

  “He won’t be easily turned. Whether she likes it or not she married him. John Quinn is a bit of a lawyer as well as everything else. He’ll be a sweet-talking John Quinn and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth until he gets his head in again. She’ll have her work cut out if she intends to stay clear.”

  “What about her sons?”

  “They’re all married with houses of their own. They won’t want to be too involved after she’s gone and done a caper like that. They’ll have wives. If you make your bed you lie on it. Isn’t that what’s said? There’s a lot going for John Quinn and no better man to play his cards. He won’t come back with his hands empty. She’ll have her work cut out.”

  They walked him to the gate, where he retrieved the rod and copper spoon from the fuchsias, and then down to the water and part of the way round the shore. The sloes were already ripening on the blackthorn. Patches of yellow were appearing in the thick wall of green along the shore. There was rust on the briar leaves. Certain grasses and early vegetables were dying back.

  The lake was an enormous mirror turned to the depth of the sky, holding its lights and its colours. Close to the reeds there were many flies, and small shoals of perch were rippling the surface with hints of the teeming energy and life of the depths. The reeds had lost their bright greenness and were leaning towards the water. Everything that had flowered had now come to fruit.

  They would not be in London at Christmas, a time they had particularly liked in London. Kate wrote to Robert Booth. She had delayed writing. The indulgence of delay had been to keep the door open for as long as possible. She wrote how grateful she was, how grateful they both were. A door had been held open at a time when most doors were starting to close.

  “It’s extraordinary how different it is to be young,” Kate said quietly. “Dressing up for a party, the excitement of who you might meet, your whole life possibly changed by a single meeting.”

  “You were going into your life then,” Ruttledge said. “Now you are in the middle of that life.”

  Kate wrote to Robert Booth, closing the door, and it was not a pleasant sound even though she herself was doing the closing.

  “Has that man said anything further to you about buying that place?” The Shah became more pressing on Sundays and he started arriving more often now in the late evenings.

  “No, but I am fairly sure it’ll be all right. We are trying to find a way round a few things,” Ruttledge answered with deliberate vagueness.

  “He won’t get forever. Not many would be so backward given a chance the like of that.”

  Ruttledge had talked to Joe Eustace in the bank again. They went over every possible way of obtaining a loan until they were forced to return to the plan of last resort: Ruttledge would have to take out the loan and then transfer it with legal safeguards.

  “If there was another way we’d have come up with it by now,” Joe Eustace said. “That interview is still the talk of the bank: the man who swore to do less.”

  Ruttledge went to check that Frank Dolan still wanted to buy. When he looked coldly at the square, not for the first time was he amazed at how much the Shah had come to acquire. The place was worth several times more than the asking price.

  He found Frank sorting small engine parts under a powerful spotlight on the long bench at the back of the shed. He stood for a long time watching in silence until Frank noticed him and turned the metal hood of the lamp towards the wall.

  Frank Dolan looked at him slowly, enquiringly; stubbornness and independence showed on the face.

  “You are still interested?”

  “I most certainly am.” Everything else was so cautious and covered that Ruttledge was as surprised by the forthrightness as relieved.

  “I think I have found a way. I’ll be back in a few days,” Ruttledge said.

  Frank Dolan made no enquiry as to what had been found. In pauses, they talked for a while of business and the town and then Frank Dolan walked Ruttledge to his car. He did not turn off the sharp spotlight at the back of the shed. He would be working late, preferring to work when nobody was about.

  “You’re not going in to see him?” he indicated the blue light of the TV in the station house. “I’m sure he’d like to see you. He’ll be like a lion if he gets to hear you were in.”

  “It’s a bit late and he’s not likely to hear,” Ruttledge said.

  “You’d be surprised the things he’s able to pick up.”

  “What’s the humour like this weather?”

  “Rough—that’s if you paid it any heed.”

  Later, when the Ruttledges were talking over the whole business, Kate asked, “If there’s no risk why are you so reluctant to take out the loan?”

  “It’s generally a bad idea to do business with people you are close to. It’s just that I feel there should be a simpler way.”

  “There is,” she said. “Why doesn’t the Shah give him the loan? Remember all the money we had in the house when he went to Donegal? And that’s probably only a fraction of what’s there.”

  Ruttledge stood frozen in amazement that something so close and so obvious hadn’t occurred to him.

  “It’s true that we can’t see what’s under our noses.”

  “I think it’s even more simple.”

  “How?”

  “You were always careful never to ask him for anything. Even reluctant to accept things he offered.”

  “We didn’t need for much,” he said stiffly.

  “That’s true but there were times that weren’t all that easy.”

  “We managed,” he answered defensively.

  “I know,” Kate said and continued to look at him without speaking.

  “It seems we can never know ourselves,” Ruttledge admitted out of the silence. “But will he agree to give Frank the loan?”

  “I don’t see why not. He wants him to have the place. You know that. It’s even obvious to me.”

  “People act strangely when money’s involved. It goes deeper than sense or reason.”

  “All you can do is ask.”

  Armed with information from the bank about interest rates, monthly and quarterly repayments, Ruttledge went to see the Shah as he was finishing his evening meal in the Central. He was eating alone in the alcove overlooking the dining room, rosy with contentment, eating slowly and concentratedly, oblivious of the other diners. Slow to recognize Ruttledge, he laughed and gestured towards a chair, apologized and called the waiter in practically the same movement. “Give this man whatever he wants, Jimmy. He’ll need something.”

  “I don’t feel like eating. I’ll have tea. A pot of tea.”

  “You might as well have something stronger. Whiskey, wine, stout,” he pressed. His abhorrence and fear of alcohol did not extend to his power as host. He kept a huge cupboard of drinks in the station house and loved to serve large measures to visiting relatives—especially those he disliked—about which there was a definite element of spreading bait for garden snails.

  “Tea is what I want.”

  “How is Herself?” he asked after Kate.

  “She asked to be remembered to you. We’ve both been going over that business of the sale and the loan.
”

  “Well?” he demanded, all concentration in an instant.

  “Every way I look at the business it makes sense for you to give him the loan. You have plenty of money.”

  “I’m not too short,” he admitted.

  “You won’t even have to give him money. Instead of making payments to the bank, it’ll just be a matter of Frank making the payments to you.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be going to him every month with my hand out,” he said.

  “That won’t happen. There’ll be an agreement. He’ll have to pay the money into an account in the bank in your name every month or three months. Once the agreement is signed, the two of you won’t even have to say a word to one another.”

  “What if he’s not able for it?”

  “Not able for what?”

  “To make the payments.”

  “The place and business would revert to you just as it would to the bank if they gave the loan. There’s no way you can lose.”

  In the bank, Ruttledge had agreed with Joe Eustace that a fair rate of interest should be midway between the current bank rate and the lending rates. Frank Dolan would pay less than if he had borrowed from the bank and the Shah would get a higher interest than if his money were on deposit there.

  “It’ll do better than that. I’ll give it to him for even less,” he said expansively when the proposition was put.

  He spoke as if he had been set free from anxiety and constraint. All the time he had wanted Frank Dolan to have the place but it had remained hidden because of the fear that he might be seen as unmanly or unbusinesslike or even perhaps of going outside the family.

  “You can give him any rate you want. But I’d leave it. It’s fair at that. There’s no use going overboard,” Ruttledge said.

  “Leave it so, then,” he agreed readily. “But will he be up to it at all?” He began to shake slowly at the thought.

  “You realize that once you sign the place over he can have you out on your ear at any time?”