Firefly Summer (3 page)

The twins seemed not to hear the rising impatience in her tone, they barely heeded her.

‘We didn’t really play at all, we’ve been wondering what . . .’ Dara said.

‘And hoping that they’d go away . . .’ Michael finished for her. They often finished each other’s sentences.

‘And not understanding it one bit . . .’

‘And not liking it one bit . . .’

Kate took them by the shoulders and marched them back for the alarm clock and their uneaten lunches, then headed for the footbridge. There seemed to be a commotion on the other side. Eddie and Declan were lying on the edge of the water trying to reach something that was floating downstream on a piece of plywood.

Carrie, the new maid, was standing twisting her hands helplessly as the boys screamed, and Kate realised that Maurice the tortoise was heading off into the unknown.

‘Get the garden rake, and the big sweeping brush,’ she shouted. Michael and Dara raced across to find them, delighted to be released from the pinching grip and abuse. Eddie, who was eight, was scarlet with the knowledge that he would get the blame; Declan was only six and the baby – he got off with everything.

Kate manoeuvred the tortoise ashore and with a face like thunder brought it back to its original home in the turf room. Watched by the four children and the terrified Carrie, she dried the animal with a clean towel and put it in a bed of hay. With a voice that was going to take no argument she said that she would very much like to see Carrie at the kitchen sink washing the faces and hands of Eddie and Declan. She would like to see Michael and Dara in the bathroom and emerging in five minutes with necks, ears and knees all shining. She mentioned knees, ears and necks only because
particular
attention would be paid to those parts but the rest was to be spotless too. A great deal of heavy scrubbing took place, and after inspection Dara and Michael were allowed to head off towards the hall. An unusually silent Eddie and Declan sat waiting sentence from their mother. They didn’t know whether they were going to be barred from the concert . . . which mightn’t be a bad thing. Or if there might be a slapping of the legs administered. The slapping wasn’t too likely; if it was coming at all it would have been done at the time.

They were unprepared for the severity of it.

‘That is no longer your tortoise, Edward and Declan. That is now my tortoise. Do you understand?’

Things were bad when Eddie was called Edward.

‘But do you mean . . .?’

‘Yes, he’s mine now. And I can do what I like with him. I can bring him back to the pet shop where I so stupidly bought him, thinking you were the kind of children who could love a pet. Or I could eat him. I could ask Carrie to serve him for lunch tomorrow.’

They were aghast.

‘Well, why not?’ she continued airily. ‘You tried to drown Maurice, why don’t I try to roast him? It’s a hard old life being a tortoise.’

Eddie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Ma, we weren’t trying to drown him. It was to see if he could swim, and when he didn’t seem to be managing it too well we got him a raft, then it floated off.’

‘Thank you, Edward. You are telling me it was just a careless accident, is that it?’

‘Well, yes?’ Eddie thought salvation lay this way but he wasn’t totally sure.

‘Right, well now that he’s mine other careless accidents could happen. I could let him fall into the oven or something. Still, that is none of your business now. You are forbidden to go near him in the turf room or the Rayburn or wherever else he happens to be.’

Declan let out a roar. ‘Mammy, you wouldn’t burn Maurice. Please don’t burn my tortoise.’

‘It’s mine,’ Kate said.

‘You’re not allowed to kill things,’ Eddie raged. ‘I’ll tell the guards. I’ll tell Sergeant Sheehan.’

‘Certainly do, and I’ll tell him about the drowning.’

There was silence.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Kate said. ‘I’m not going to hurt
Maurice, but he
is
mine, you know, so you can’t play with him any more. And no ice creams in Daly’s tonight after the concert.’

It was bad but it was better than what might have been. They accepted it.

‘Come on, Carrie,’ Kate said, suddenly pitying the seventeen-year-old spending her first Saturday night away from home. ‘Tidy up your hair a bit and we’re off.’

‘Am I to come with you?’ Carrie’s face lit up.

‘Of course you are, did you think we’d leave you here on your own?’ Kate had only just thought of it, looking at the stricken face of the girl as she had listened to the possible future of the tortoise.

‘You’re a real gentleman, ma’am,’ said Carrie and ran to put on a clean blouse and fix two new slides in her hair.

Canon Moran was small and fussy, a kind man with pale blue eyes that didn’t see very far or very much. He believed that basically most people were very good. This made him a nice change from many other parish priests in the country who believed that most people were intrinsically evil. The word went round for young curates that Mountfern would be a great posting altogether. And the young priest Father Hogan knew he was indeed a lucky man. Once Canon Moran had a nice big chair for the concert and a little footstool because he sometimes got a cramp, then he would be happy. He would clap every item enthusiastically, he would praise all the brothers and the nuns by name, he would know that old Mr Slattery the solicitor had made a contribution so that they could have proper curtains instead of the desperate old screens they used to make do with before. The canon would thank him
briefly because that was all the Slatterys would need, but he would dwell longer on the generosity of Daly’s Dairy in providing the cakes for the tea at eight o’clock, and the excellence of the programmes printed free thanks to Leonard’s the stationers. The canon began confessions on a Saturday at five, and he would make sure that they were all well completed in time for the concert. Father Hogan knew that Canon Moran believed a kind word of encouragement and a pious hope that things would be better soon helped a lot of his parishioners. And they felt sure, because of his pale dreamy blue eyes, that he was also somehow deaf and wouldn’t recognise the voices that whispered their sins.

Father Hogan thought Mountfern was a warm, kind place to live, and though it didn’t perhaps offer as much of a challenge as he had dreamed about in the seminary, he followed his canon’s belief that there were souls to be saved everywhere, and that running a concert for the people of this place might have equal value in the great scheme of things to working in the missions or running a boys’ club for delinquents in a tough city parish.

Miss Lynch was more or less walking out with young Mr Slattery so he had to come to the concert as moral support. He sat beside Kate Ryan and the two chastened small boys, and the girl with reddened eyes called Carrie.

‘And how does the master of your house escape this great cultural event?’ Fergus Slattery asked with envy.

‘Someone has to run the bar. I know it looks as if half the county is here, but you’d be surprised how many men find the excuse for a drink when their children are up here on the stage,’ Kate said.

‘Well for him, then.’ Fergus was genuinely admiring. ‘I
can’t say that I have to work on a Saturday evening, they don’t think solicitors work at all, but my office is too near. I’d actually have to be in the window in my shirt sleeves before they’d believe me.’

Fergus grinned boyishly. He was very like a tall gangly boy, Kate thought, though he must be in his mid or late twenties now. She had always thought of him as a kind of irrepressible student home for the holidays. Even though he ran his father’s office almost entirely on his own now, it was hard for her to think of him as a grown-up. Maybe it was because he looked untidy; his hair was sort of jutting out at an angle no matter whether he had been to the barber or not. His shirts were perfectly and lovingly ironed by the Slatterys’ faithful housekeeper, Miss Purcell, yet the collars sometimes stood at an angle away from his neck. Kate wouldn’t be at all surprised if he bought the wrong size or had the button in the wrong place. He had dark eyes and if he had held himself differently and worn long smooth dark coats he might have been thought very handsome and elegant indeed.

But part of his charm was that he would never be elegant; he was totally unaware of his tall, dark and almost handsome looks, and that he had caused many a flutter and several specific hopes around Mountfern.

‘You mean you wouldn’t want to come – what with that Nora Lynch killing herself to impress you?’ Kate was disbelieving.

‘Impress
me
!’

‘Of course. Why else would that young girl kill herself and show herself to be part of a small backwater like this unless it was to prove to you that she could fit in and be part of it?’

‘But why would she prove that to me?’

‘Aren’t you and she going out?’ Kate wondered about men a lot. They couldn’t all be as dim as they often seemed.

‘Yes, sure, we go out to the pictures and we go to a dance, but there’s nothing in it.’ Fergus looked baffled and honest.

‘What do you mean there’s nothing in it, aren’t you a right beast to be leading her on and then tell me there’s nothing in it? You know, the older I get the more I believe the nuns were right, men are basically wild animals at heart.’

‘But there
is
nothing in it,’ Fergus pleaded. ‘I mean we don’t love each other or anything, or have the same plans or the same hopes. Nothing’s been said or agreed. Truly.’

‘I believe you.’ Kate was cynical. ‘O Lord, protect me or mine from ever falling for a lawyer. You’ll have yourself covered from every angle.’

‘But she doesn’t think . . .’ Fergus began, but at that moment Nora Lynch, resplendent in a new hair-do from the Rosemarie salon, in a new yellow dress short enough to be fashionable but not so short as to cause adverse comment from the canon, the nuns and the brothers, appeared on stage. She said she hoped everyone would enjoy this show, the first combined effort; she thanked the canon, the brothers, the convent and the sponsors, the children and the parents, and knew that everyone would have a wonderful evening. She said that as an outsider she felt very privileged to be allowed to get involved in something as much a part of the community as this was. But then in many ways she felt that she had always been part of this place and always would.

‘How old are you, Fergus Slattery?’ Kate whispered suddenly.

‘I’m twenty-seven,’ he replied, confused.

‘Twenty-seven years in the world and you try to tell me that young woman has no hopes of you. May God forgive you, I mean it, Fergus, may he forgive you and send you some kind of sense.’

‘Thanks, Kate,’ said Fergus, not knowing whether he was being attacked or pitied, and not liking it whichever it was.

Dara Ryan felt as if she had swallowed an ice cream whole; her stomach was cold and heavy and she wondered if she might be sick.

‘I’ll never be able to say it,’ she told Maggie Daly.

Maggie believed Dara could do anything. ‘You’re great, Dara, you never minded saying it at school in front of everyone there.’

‘That’s different.’ Dara hopped around on one leg and looked through the door that they were meant to keep firmly closed, to see how big the audience was.

‘Lord, it’s full of people,’ she said theatrically.

‘They’ll love it.’ Maggie was loyal.

Dara would have fought with her shadow at this stage. ‘No, they’ll hate it, it’s in Irish, they won’t understand a word of it.’

‘But it will
sound
terrific.’

‘Why don’t I just go and make sounds then, nice sounds, or better still take up a gong and just bang it for three minutes and bow to the applause?’

Maggie giggled. Things were all right once Dara started making up outlandish things.

Maggie was not doing any solo piece. She was in the
girls’ choir which would sing Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria’, and later on come back and sing ‘I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree’. But Dara would stand in front of the whole of Mountfern and recite ‘Cill Cais’ which Miss Lynch had told them was a lament for an old house, a ruin like Fernscourt, except that it had been a different kind of household who had lived there, an Old Catholic family who used to have mass said in the stately home and everyone would come from far and near to attend it.

‘Dara, you’re on.’

Crossing her fingers and giving Dara a squeeze for luck, Maggie Daly stood and watched her friend walk up on the stage.

Miss Lynch, knowing very well that hardly anyone would get even the vaguest glimmer of what the poem was about without some kind of translation, said that of course everyone knew the story of ‘Cill Cais’, and told it without appearing to. The audience, flattered to be thought of as people who would know this, nodded to each other sagely and waited for the young Ryan girl to tell it to them again in Irish. Dara’s voice sounded confident and she fixed her eyes on the back of the hall as Miss Lynch had told her to do. There was a storm of clapping and people told each other that she made a very good fist of it, then she was off and it was time for the choir from the brothers’.

Brother Keane had chosen three of Moore’s finest Irish melodies. He announced that the boys would sing them in the same magnificent spirit that Thomas Moore had brought to bear when he was writing them. Brother Keane had calculated without the enormously humorous content that the songs seemed to hold for his choir of
twelve-year-olds, depleted as it was by six whose voices chose the time of the concert to break.

‘Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water.

Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose.’

Brother Keane loved this above all other of Moore’s melodies. He could see none of the allusions to breaking wind, pulling the chains and passing water that the entire group in front of him seemed to see written in letters of fire on their song sheets. He glared at them ferociously as with the most enormous difficulty the forty boys tried to stifle their mirth, and led them into the next song called, unhappily, ‘The Meeting of the Waters’. The entire choir seemed to choke with the daring double entendre of the name and Brother Keane resolved to deal with them very sternly in a less public place.