“Bill Evans was standing in the lane in those huge wellingtons when we got back to the cars.”
“I don’t remember the two buckets but they must have been somewhere,” Ruttledge said. “A rope was tied around the heavy overcoat. On his head was a shiny black sou’wester hat. ‘Do they smoke?’ he asked.
“It was then that the Shah reached down into one of his pockets and threw a fistful of coins into the air. Some of the coins clattered on the bonnet of the small Ford and rolled among the stones and leaves of the lane. Bill Evans scrambled after the coins like some kind of animal.”
“I was taken aback by the way he threw the coins,” Kate said.
“He meant no harm. When we were small whenever he came to our house he did the very same, sometimes with sweets instead of coins. It was a way of expressing power. The whole country was very poor. The Shah then bought the place for us.”
“I was afraid he’d lose it with all his haggling,” Kate said.
The asbestos roof was replaced with black slates, new rooms added, a bathroom, a well for water bored. Once the price and contract had been agreed, the Ruttledges returned to London, leaving the Shah to oversee the work. This he undertook with proprietary zeal, rolling round the lake several times a week in the Mercedes. Jimmy Joe McKiernan had said that relations between the old woman and his immediate neighbours were poor. This and everything else he had stated so casually on that first wet stormy day around the lake turned out to be true. They got on as badly with one another as they did with the old woman. “They were like that as far back as I remember,” Jamesie had said. “Give no help or hand to anybody. Grab everything in sight. On our side of the lake people couldn’t do enough for one another and got on far better. Here they were always watching out for themselves. When people are that way there’s never any ease.”
They coveted the childless old woman’s fields, and she in her turn was determined that they would never own those fields.
The addition of rooms to the house, the new roof, the drilling of a well for water — with the lake a stone’s throw away — the coming and going of the large Mercedes, were all carefully observed, and resentment fuelled an innate intolerance of anything strange or foreign.
When the Ruttledges came from London in the spring they were shunned by near neighbours, but they were too involved with the place to notice. Would the move succeed or fail? If it failed they would return to London.
Jamesie came to the house in the very first days, pretending to be casually passing. They began to talk, and he welcomed them to the place and was invited in. A few evenings later, he arrived unexpectedly with Mary, bringing fresh eggs, small bags of potatoes and carrots and parsnips. “For the house. For the house,” he insisted, in the face of their protestations that what he had brought was too generous. “Just for the house. To wish the house luck.”
Then John Quinn came. In clouds of smoke, he turned his old white Beetle under the alder tree at the gate so that it faced down towards the lake. When he got out of the car he propped a heavy stone against one of the back wheels before strolling confidently up the little avenue.
John Quinn was a tall, powerfully built, handsome man, wearing a well-cut suit, his thick grey hair brushed back. As soon as he spoke there was an immediate discrepancy between the handsome physique and the cajoling voice.
“I came to wish new neighbours good luck and success and happiness. It does the heart good to see a young pair happy and in love starting up their lives in a new place. It lifts the heart. It does the heart good.”
He was invited in and offered tea or whiskey. With a lordly wave of the hand he refused both.
“I’m not here to waste your good time or waste my time. I’m here for a purpose. I’m here on a little business. I know your poor uncle well, better known as the Shah, as fine a man as ever entered the town and got on like no other. The little business that brought me is that I have been noticing Mrs. Ruttledge walking the roads and seeing that you got a tall fine-looking woman for yourself when you were abroad I thought you might be able to do as good or nearly as good for a neighbour. I’ll keep my account short. The first poor woman died under me after bringing eight children into the world. After they were all reared I married again. The Lord God has said in the Holy Book ‘Tis not good for man to live alone,’ and I have always taken that Commandment to heart. I don’t mind admitting that the second round of the course was not a success.”
“What went wrong?” was asked politely in the face of all that was proffered as fluently as a door-to-door salesman pretending straight-faced openness.
“What God intended men and women to do she had no taste for. What was meant to be happy and natural was for her a penance. John tried everything he knew to turn her round and make her happy. On a beautiful day like this day, the sun shining in heaven, I took her out for a row on the lake to make her feel better in herself. The lake lovely and calm, hardly a breeze, just the odd fish jumping, the birds singing for all they were worth, the mountains lovely and blue in the distance, the swans sailing around and every sound a happy sound, and do you know what she said to me? ‘You wouldn’t be thinking of throwing me in now, John, would you?’ Wasn’t that a strange sort of love talk? John here rowing like a boy and the lake all peaceful and the mountains so blue and so distant. Soon afterwards she beat back to her own place. As we were married in church and she still lives, I have to forage for myself if I do not want to live alone. That’s the little business that has brought me. Since you have done so well for yourself abroad you might do as well or nearly as well for a close neighbour. Your lovely woman is bound to have women friends of her own. And if she could place one of them in my house she’d have a friend of her own close by. We’d be great neighbours and the two houses would get on wonderfully well together and all visiting and helping one another and happy together.”
Kate excused herself and left the room and John Quinn rose to leave.
“That’s the little business that brought me now. I’m hoping you’ll be able to give a neighbour a helping hand. I put all my cards out on the table. There’s nothing underhand about my way of doing business.”
Ruttledge walked him to the battered white Beetle parked outside the gate. He removed the stone from a rear wheel before getting into the car.
“If things manage to work out now, please God, we could have wonderful times together and everybody will be happy.”
When he let in the clutch, the car rolled downhill, gathering speed. The engine coughed and spluttered into life close to the lake in clouds of smoke and continued to batter slowly out along the shore like a disabled boat attempting to make it back to harbour.
“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.”