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.