The burden of putting round the winter disappeared for days in a great flare of excitement, rumour and conjecture. John Quinn had been away for less than a month in his wife’s place in Westmeath when he returned home. He had been driven out by the woman’s sons. He went there and then to the doctor, the priest, the solicitor, the guards. None of them was interested in his cause. The family was well off and respectable. The doctor examined his bruises and said his injuries weren’t serious and wrote him a prescription. The priest advised him to offer it all up as prayers and penance. The local solicitor told him he was far more likely to be sued and prosecuted than to succeed in an action if he insisted in pressing a case. They had been hardworking, decent people who had never been tainted by scandal. The guards took a statement but told him they had no intention of pressing charges as it was purely a civil matter.
The wife had gone to live with one of her sons. John Quinn’s few possessions had been dumped on the street.
In Longford he broke the journey to go to another doctor and to spend the night in the hotel. When he was leaving the next morning, he refused to settle his account and ordered them to send his bill to his solicitor. There was a serious law case pending and the solicitor would settle everything, he informed the hotel.
He went to the solicitor to try to sue his wife and was presented with the hotel bill. None of the several solicitors he approached would touch the case. Then he caused a stir in the mart by turning up to bid for several cattle, eventually buying a bull calf though his land was let on the eleven months.
“That little calf won’t be taking a bladeen of grass away from the decent man that’s looking after the land till next summer and he’ll be a little interest to myself over the winter now that I’m back again among good friend and neighbours.”
In this mill of rumour and conjecture John Quinn was not slow to speak for himself. He walked into Luke Henry’s bar when it was full at the end of a late-night Saturday shopping and stood at the counter, a wronged man nursing a careful bottle of stout, declaring how happy he was to be back again among good neighbours.
“I have put the whole matter in the hands of my solicitor and am expecting proper redress through the courts,” he said to anybody who would listen. “In the meantime I have taken to writing ladies again. This time we can have no blessing of church but we’ll have our own blessing and the blessing of good neighbours which may turn out even luckier.”
Some managed to remain wonderfully straight-faced. Others assured him how glad they were to see him home and that he shouldn’t blame himself in any respect whatsoever. Nobody in the wide world could have done more or tried harder to rescue what turned out to be a sinking ship. In fact, when everything was considered fully and turned over, he had been a veritable martyr to the cause. Extending out from John Quinn, the net of hypocrisy and lies had become as consistent as truth, encircling him.
Johnny wrote that he completely understood what a bad move it would be for him to think of coming home. He had been in a low mood when he wrote and was thinking of writing back to them even before he got their letter. In the short time since then everything had more or less fallen into place and was now completely alphabetical. When he told Mister Singh that Ford had made him redundant and he would have to look for a cheaper room or move to another part of London where light work was obtainable, Mister Singh wouldn’t hear. Recently Mister Singh had bought a terrace of Victorian houses overlooking the Heath that ran into Epping Forest and was turning them into apartments for professional and business people — doctors, nurses, accountants, secretaries, a different class entirely to the Fusiliers.
Johnny was to be a sort of porter or Mister Singh’s stand-in. He would keep the stairs and landings polished and clean and he would do light repairs when anything went wrong in the apartments. In return, he would have a small weekly wage and a rent-free flat in the basement. When he totted it all up one evening before going out to the Prince of Wales, he reckoned he would be better off money-wise at the end of the week than he was in the very best days on the line at Ford’s. He was staying put until he went up as per usual to the Connors in Birmingham for Christmas and was then moving to Leytonstone as soon as he got back after the Christmas. Everything seemed to have worked out perfectically alphabetical.
“It couldn’t have been planned better,” Ruttledge said as he handed back the letter. It was written with care and it brought a small world to life.
“It’s great,” Mary said, her eyes gleaming. “He fell on his feet. The poor fella deserved some bit of luck in England.”
“That letter you wrote worked,” Jamesie said.
“It worked powerfully,” Mary said. “It couldn’t have worked any better.”
“Johnny thinks the world of Mister Singh,” Jamesie said. “And Mister Singh stood by him in the end.”
For many years now, Jim had been pressing his parents to come and spend Christmas in Dublin.
“He’d look nice in Dublin,” Mary used to joke.
“There’d be much worse there already,” Jamesie would counter happily. “You don’t have to worry.”
After many hesitations and changes of mind, Jamesie and Mary decided to go to Dublin for Christmas. The Ruttledges would look after the animals and the place while they were away. The letter they received from Johnny was decisive in their going.
The gaiety of spirit grew as Christmas approached. Holly with rich red berries and trailing ivy was picked from the hedges to decorate rooms. Nets of many-coloured small electric lights were draped over Christmas trees and winked from porches. Mary made a plum pudding and baked a Christmas cake to take to Dublin.
At the Saturday market, Jamesie examined crates of live turkeys and finally bought a pair, a small turkey to give as a Christmas present to the Ruttledges and a huge bird to take to Dublin. In return, the Ruttledges gave a bottle of eighteen-year-old White Powers they got from a bar in Enniskillen, a leftover from the time when prosperous bars matured and bottled their own whiskey. The dark whiskey had a slight taste of port from the cask and looked beautiful in the clear glass of the unlabelled bottle.
In the town a great-lighted crib was erected outside the church. The shops were all bright with lights and holly and streamers and tinsel. Alone among all the bars and shops Jimmy Joe McKiernan flew a tricolour in a two-fingered salute to the two detectives across the road in the alleyway — or to the town in general, which was so complacently celebrating Christmas, with the business of the country still unfinished.
In the little square near the cattle mart and shallow river the market traders erected their stalls around the statue of the harpist. In the evenings, with the street lamps on and the shops bustling and busy, it was moving to watch the families traipsing between the windows, the children in the shadow of their parents, stopping every so often to meet and greet friends and neighbours.
All the bars had a lighted Christmas tree and holly and looped strings of tinsel. Pages were pinned up beside the dart boards, on which lines could be purchased for the Christmas raffle, with prizes of a goose and a turkey, hampers of ham and whiskey and port and gin. Regular customers were served a Christmas round of drinks on the house. In all this feast of Christmas there were some shops that were almost empty, the assistants or owners looking out on the busy street to the passers-by who were all shopping elsewhere; and there were people wandering the town who had no people to meet, who did not want to be alone and were not noticed.