Firefly Summer (43 page)

‘It doesn’t seem real any more.’

‘Nothing does.’

The twins sat there for a long moment. Neither wanted to say anything falsely cheering.

As usual they spoke at the same time when they did speak.

‘Do you think Lourdes would work . . .?’ Dara began.

‘I wonder if there really are miracles . . .’ Michael began.

They burst out laughing.

‘Maybe our minds got divided,’ Dara said. ‘We didn’t get a full one each but between us we have a fantastic Super mind.’

‘Which is why we can only work out things when there are the two of us,’ Michael agreed.

‘So what do we think about Lourdes?’ Dara said.

‘There must have been some miracles there, some of them have to be real.’ Michael’s face was full of hope.

‘Yes, Sister Laura said that if it was all a fraud the enemies of the Church would have found it out.’ Dara was eager also.

‘So maybe if we could get her there. It could work, couldn’t it?’

‘And it would be better than just sitting round waiting.’

Dara and Michael were much revived. It was like old times, having some kind of project. Something important to do.

The twins didn’t know that the village of Mountfern was already planning to send Kate to Lourdes. Money had been collected, people had been in touch with the travel agencies in Dublin and had received details from the Joe
Walsh Travel Agency and the Michael Walsh Travel Agency.

The collection had begun. Sheila Whelan was approached to put the money in the post office. She thought it should be a proper fund administered through a solicitor’s office.

At first Fergus didn’t want anything to do with it. It was grotesque to build up people’s hopes, Kate’s hopes too. Why let simple people believe that there was a way that a place would mend a broken spine? Perhaps John Ryan would feel patronised, he might not like the idea that the people of Mountfern should pay for his wife to go to Lourdes instead of waiting for him to send her himself.

‘If you don’t start it for us then as sure as anything Patrick O’Neill will organise it,’ Sheila said.

‘I’ll open a bank deposit account tomorrow,’ said Fergus.

‘Father, did you know that there’s a collection being organised to take Dara and Michael’s mother to Lourdes?’ Grace asked.

‘Yes, people are very generous, they’re digging very deep in their pockets.’

‘Who’s organising it?’ Kerry asked.

‘I don’t know, I don’t think anyone is. You can give your money at the church to either of the priests, or at the post office or to Mr Slattery, you know – the lawyer.’

‘Slattery. That figures,’ Kerry said.

‘Why?’ Grace asked.

Kerry smiled knowingly. His hair was longer than he usually wore it, it clustered around his neck. His father thought it made him look like a girl. Kerry said that there wasn’t a barber within miles and that he might be
misjudged if he went to the Rosemarie hair salon. He was tanned and relaxed-looking, like a boy who had been on a holiday in a resort, Patrick thought with some annoyance. He had seen the young Ryan boy and Tommy Leonard today; both of them looked peaked and as if they had not seen a ray of sun all year.

‘Well, your sister asked you a question. Why does it figure that Slattery is taking up the money? Sure he is. He’s a lawyer, as Grace said.’

‘And he’s the leader of the other side.’

‘Yes, but when the time comes for litigation the Ryans will have other lawyers.’

‘I mean the other side here in Mountfern. He’s the head of the pack that wants to run us out of town. So naturally he collects money to send the injured Mrs Ryan to Lourdes.’

‘He doesn’t want to run us out of town. Does he?’ Grace looked alarmed.

‘Of course not, your brother is playing games.’

‘Not so, Father. He hardly welcomed us here with open arms, did he? And now we are blacker still, one of the great and good has been injured on our property. Of course he wants us out, like a lot of them do.’

‘Where do you get these kinds of ideas?’ Patrick’s tone sounded a lot milder than he felt.

‘Because I’m not stupid.’ It was very arrogant the way Kerry said it. The direct implication was that Patrick was stupid. Very.

‘Neither am I, Kerry. I’m not at all stupid no matter what you might believe.’

Kerry shrugged as if it were a matter of indifference to him what his father thought or was.

‘I do know all about the collection, Grace.’ His remarks were now addressed to his daughter. Patrick didn’t trust himself to speak to Kerry.

‘I think it’s a great idea. I don’t believe it will cure her but they do say, and I’ve heard all kinds of people say this, even people who would scorn the whole idea of miracles . . . They say that nobody ever comes back from Lourdes the worse for having been there, they all come back better in some way. Happier, more resigned, feeling that compared to what they saw there then they aren’t too badly off.’

Kerry smiled. ‘That’s well put,’ he said admiringly. ‘Send people off there so they see what terrible things other people have, they come home quietened . . I never heard that line.’

Patrick ignored him. ‘I could have given Kate Ryan a cheque to take her to Lourdes, Gracie, but I didn’t, I felt it had to come from her own people here. Not from us.’

‘Like Mary Donnelly?’

‘Exactly. So of course I’ve contributed to the fund, but nothing excessive.’

‘You know, I misjudged you, Father.’ Kerry seemed genuinely admiring now. But with Kerry it was often hard to know.

There was no time to discuss it. A shadow passed the window.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Patrick said, ‘it’s Marian.’

Marian was full of chat. She had come to invite them all to be her guests at an upcoming angling festival.

Patrick would simply love it, she said, it was tailor-made for him, he would get the entire atmosphere of one of these occasions at first hand, he would know how to
describe it to those Americans who were keen fishermen. There would be an excellent buffet lunch in a marquee to which they would be invited.

It would be frightfully boring for the young people of course, lots of standing round talking and drinking. But possibly they would love it too. Or it might even be that they would prefer to be with their own friends that day. They must do whichever they pleased, come with her to the lake or stay here in Mountfern and have a great time. Their decision entirely.

Covering the snuffles and giggles of his children, Patrick said graciously and firmly that he would let her know tomorrow. He hadn’t yet been able to work out their plans next week.

Patrick thought that it was no mean achievement that he had managed to conduct the entire conversation extremely courteously but without allowing Marian to sit down. In what was after all her own house.

Brian Doyle telephoned Patrick to say that it was probably unimportant but there was some paint daubed on the wooden hoarding around some of the digging on the site. They’d have it removed but he thought Patrick should know.

‘What does it say?’

‘It says “Yank Go Home”, but I wouldn’t take a blind bit of notice of that,’ said Brian Doyle.

Marian Johnson was extremely put out when her offer to show Patrick the lake and introduce him to the people who ran angling in the country was so suddenly and almost curtly refused.

Patrick had been apologetic but had given no real explanation. Marian had the bad luck to run into Jack Coyne who had said that it was devoutly to be hoped that Patrick O’Neill hadn’t any plans to build a monstrosity like the Slieve Sunset, because that was the place he was seen hurrying in and out of at all hours of the day and night, and that he was there at this moment with that foreign-looking woman, the one with the beautiful hair.

Marian Johnson patted her own sparse hair, newly arranged in the Rosemarie hair salon for an outing which was not now going to take place.

It was impossible to make sense of Patrick O’Neill. He had spent his entire life getting ready to come home, to mix with the best in the land. She had been ready to introduce him to people from Prosperous and Belturbet, from Boyle and Ballinasloe. She knew the families who owned the fishing rights from Lough Ree to Lough Allen, from the Erne to the Lee. She had already made sure he had met the Master socially so that he would not be considered an outsider when it came to foxhunting. And what was the thanks she got, his sneaking away to see that woman in the Slieve Sunset. But there couldn’t be anything in it. Not after all his hopes of coming home and being Irish, properly Irish. He could never get involved with a foreign woman, not at this stage.

Kate didn’t remember meeting Rachel Fine before. She was dark and exotic-looking, with a beautiful suit that must have cost a fortune. She wore a scarf in such an elegant way too. Usually you only saw people in photographs wearing scarves like that; when they moved it would go into a rag.

She came towards the bed. ‘Your husband says you have a very sketchy memory of the day.’

‘Very.’ Kate felt at a loss with this elegant woman.

‘Perhaps that’s good, it means you won’t remember too much about the shock and the pain.’

‘No, I can’t remember that at all. I can only remember waking up here and someone telling me it was three days before.’ Kate’s face closed up in pain at the memory.

‘I believe there are some wonderful surgeons here, Patrick tells me that his hotshot from New York was highly impressed.’

Patrick. She called him Patrick. Nobody else who worked with him did. It was coming back to her. John had told her that Rachel Fine was some kind of decorator or designer, she had been staying out in the Slieve Sunset, and then she went on a tour to see about ordering Irish fabrics and things. John had been very vague.

‘You’re very good to come and see me. Especially as I’ve been a bit like a madam and saying I didn’t want people to come.’

‘No way should you have people gaping at you if you don’t feel like it.’

Rachel was gentle and easy, she was no effort to talk to. She explained that she had brought glossy magazines, the kind of thing you wouldn’t dream of buying for yourself or reading when you were well. Kate, who had read nothing in the weeks she lay here, was pleased. Those magazines she could just about manage, she felt.

‘Why
did
you come?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Because . . . when I had just arrived in Mountfern you made me welcome. I was sitting in that pub waiting for
Patrick to come in, I was anxious and tense and you were kind to me. I liked you.’

It was a flowery speech. Kate paused for a moment. Then it came back to her the way it had before. She was Patrick O’Neill’s woman!

Perhaps the woman saw the recognition in her eyes. Anyway she went on to speak of it.

‘I thought you were someone I could talk to. I can’t tell you how distressed I was. How unreal it seemed when you were so lively and laughing . . .’ Her eyes filled with tears.

Something in Kate responded to her warmly. Here was someone who was not afraid to say it was a bloody tragedy. For the first time since it happened, she looked into the face of another human being who was prepared to admit that Kate was very, very unlucky, someone to be pitied rather than jollied along. It was a huge relief.

‘Thank you,’ Kate began, and found to her horror that she was beginning to sob. ‘Thank you. I
was
lively and laughing, wasn’t I? I wasn’t always like this. I
was
able to run and move and grab things up rather than lie here while people rub oil and powder on me like a giant baby. I used to decide what to do and where to go myself. I did, I did.’

‘Yes, that’s the way you were.’ She was matter of fact.

Kate waited for the cheery sentence saying that she’d be like that again some day. But it didn’t come.

‘It’s so unfair,’ Rachel said instead. ‘I’d be able to cope with life if it wasn’t so terribly unjust. All you were doing is looking. Standing looking and thinking about what the place was going to be like, and you end up with your back broken, lying here.’

Such warmth and sympathy meant that Kate didn’t have to put on any act in return, she didn’t have to bite her lip and be stoic like she did for John, nor pretend a jolly getting-better-every-day role as she did with the children.

She cried and cried and Rachel held her face to her and didn’t mind about the tears all over her good suit, and didn’t call the nurse. After a while the crying stopped as unexpectedly as it had begun. Kate looked tired.

‘Can I come and see you again?’ Rachel asked.

‘Please. Please.’

Patrick wasn’t pleased.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to see her?’

‘I don’t have to tell you everything.’

‘It was sneaky and underhand.’

‘I honestly think you can’t be well to say something like that. What on earth could be underhand about going to see someone in hospital?’

‘You didn’t ask me should you go.’

‘I am not your servant, nor your ten-year-old child. You have told me often enough that you want us to lead separate lives here. I am trying to do that, and now that doesn’t seem to please you either.’ Rachel’s eyes flashed in an unaccustomed display of anger.

‘No, but you wouldn’t have mentioned it, I would never have known if Grace hadn’t told me.’

‘Grace. Yes.’

‘Oh, don’t take that tone, Grace was full of how much Mrs Ryan loved you and how nice you were, she got it all from the twins. She told me in innocence, not full of tittletattle as you are trying to imply.’

‘This conversation is getting nowhere. Shall we talk
about something else? Work perhaps. I have some samples to discuss with you for wall hangings.’

‘To hell with wall hangings . . . What did she say?’

‘Kate Ryan? Not much really. She cried a lot. But that was between us.’ Rachel stood up and walked restlessly around the plastic and formica lobby of the Slieve Sunset. Since the incident of their discovery in Rachel’s bedroom on the day of the accident Patrick had been most anxious that all meetings should take place in the public eye and that they be known as colleagues.

‘It’s just that it wouldn’t be a good idea to say anything,’ Patrick began. He looked troubled and not like his usual decisive self.