Firefly Summer (7 page)

In Paddy Dunne’s pub all talk of emigration to Liverpool to the brother’s pub had stopped. This was now the hub of the universe. Paddy Dunne had it from one of the travelling salesmen who came in trying to get him to take biscuits. Biscuits in a pub! Anyway this man knew all about Fernscourt: it was an agricultural research place. Foreigners were going to come and test soil and plants and the place was going to be a boom town as a result of it. The smart man would expand now or expand a little and then sell when prices were going up. It provided hours of speculation.

Sheila Whelan sat in the comfortable sitting room
behind the post office and listened to a concert on Radio Eireann. She loved all that Strauss music and it didn’t sweep her into a world of people waltzing in Vienna; instead it reminded her for some reason of the first time she had come to Mountfern with Joe Whelan. He had taken her to Coyne’s wood which was full of bluebells. Literally carpeted with them. They had picked armfuls of them and Joe had told her that he loved music and that he would take her to concerts. He told her lots of things. Sheila lay back in her chair, tired. She knew a bit more about Fernscourt than the others because the telegrams all came through her post office. But she didn’t know it all. She sighed and wondered what the changes would mean.

Across the road in the Whites’, the doctor was telling his wife all the theories he had heard. It was mainly nuns, he reported, but there was a considerable weight of opinion behind a college, and a strong vocal minority thought it was going to be a development of twelve luxury bungalows each with a quarter acre of garden and a river view.

‘What would be the best?’ Mrs White wondered.

‘It depends where you stand.’ Dr White was philosophical. ‘If Jacinta were going to join the Poor Clares or whatever, it would be nice to have her down the road; on the other hand if she were to land a millionaire let’s hope she might buy one of the new bungalows.’

‘It’s going to make everyone look out for themselves,’ said Mrs White suddenly, as if the thought had just hit her.

Close to Dr White’s house, in Conway’s, Miss Barry was having a small port for her stomach. She sat fearfully on a high stool. The Conways wished she would buy a bottle of port and take it home with her, she made
everyone uneasy by looking around nervously and protesting that she had a cramp which meant that her body was crying out to be warmed.

Miss Barry had heard that there was definitely oil in the ground, that a research organisation was going to come and test it, but they were going to install an order of silent enclosed nuns there as a disguise to keep people away – three theories rolled comfortably into one. She found a ready and unexpected audience in Conway’s. They looked at her as if there might be some truth in it; they had all heard elements of this story and this explanation would at last tie it all together.

In the Classic Cinema twenty-three people sat and watched the romantic tale of
The Glass Mountain
unfold itself on the screen, while Declan Morrissey who ran the place sat in the projection room and read an article he had cut out of a Sunday newspaper. Are the days of the cinema numbered? He wondered should he get out now or wait and see if these daft rumours about half the civil service being transplanted from Dublin to the midlands were true. Wouldn’t it be a very stupid thing to sell the Classic just as the horde of possible cinema viewers were about to arrive?

In Meagher’s, the watch-menders and small jewellers, Teresa’s parents fought on bitterly. Mrs Meagher said it didn’t matter if the Prince of Wales had left and that Mrs Simpson was coming to live in Mountfern and give parties, life still wouldn’t be any way good for her. It had been a vale of tears since she had married Mr Meagher.

Mr Meagher tired suddenly of the arguments; he had a pain in his chest and down his arm. He said he would call a halt to the barney and go to bed. He might feel better in the morning. He said that his wife was probably right. Life
was a vale of tears and perhaps he had contributed to it. In the morning he would try to consider what could be done about it.

Next morning Teresa Meagher was sent running for Dr White but it was too late. Mr Meagher had not recovered from his heart attack. Dr White knew that he was dead but still arranged for him to be taken to the hospital in the town. It would be less distressing for the family. That’s what a lot of his work was about. Minimising the distress. There was little he could have done to prevent Frank Meagher’s heart attack. The man ate like a fat man in a circus, smoked four packets of cigarettes a day and existed on a level of tension that should have finished him off years ago. Dr White left Mrs Meagher weeping to the canon, whose faded blue eyes clouded further with the memory of the happy family life the two Meaghers had led, and before long Mrs Meagher began to believe it herself.

The news of Frank Meagher’s death did not take long to travel around Mountfern. In Leonard’s stationers, Tommy’s mother and father discreetly moved the Deepest Sympathy cards to the front of the stand. They hunted in the drawers for the black-edged Mass cards and flowery Spiritual Bouquet cards as well. People would want to pay their respects.

In Conway’s they realised that a coffin would be needed. Discreetly they set about getting one ready. Frank Meagher was a big man. It would be a big coffin. His wife would be as guilty as hell about the life she had led him, it could be an expensive one. But they probably didn’t have much insurance, maybe standard was the right thing to suggest.

At seven o’clock mass that morning he was prayed for. The religious bent their heads. Miss Purcell, Miss Hayes and Jimbo Doyle’s mother exchanged glances. They could have said a lot about the Meaghers, but they would say no more now, not after a bereavement like this.

Miss Purcell looked after the Slattery household with an unsmiling face and unstinting effort. Old Mr Slattery’s clothes were clean, ironed and mended, his shoes were polished and his newspaper laid in front of his well-served breakfast at eight-thirty every morning. Miss Purcell would already have been to seven o’clock mass, she was a daily communicant; she would have collected fresh milk at Daly’s and the newspaper at Leonard’s. His son Fergus was equally well looked after. His shirts were ironed for him, and left hanging on the big heavy wardrobe in his room. Miss Slattery always took the one he was going to wear next day to give it a little warm in the hot press. She had a horror of the damp.

Fergus had a series of sleeveless vee-necked knitted pullovers, almost all of them in a grey to blue shade. In the long evenings when others went out looking for diversion Miss Purcell knitted fresh supplies and darned the existing force. Though old-fashioned and obviously home-made, they gave him an even more boyish charm than he had already. Many a girl’s heart turned over to see him sitting at his desk in his shirt sleeves with the light on of an evening, reading through papers with hair tousled and glasses often pushed back into his thick dark hair.

If someone had offered Fergus a thousand pounds to strike attitudes or adopt a pose he wouldn’t have been able to do it. Like his father he was a pleasure to work for, Miss
Purcell told her few cronies, a courteous and considerate man, always opening doors, carrying buckets of coal for her, and saying how much he liked whatever she put on the table. It would be hard to find his equal in three counties or more. Miss Purcell never understood any of his jokes but Fergus seemed to be very witty and make clients laugh. Often when they were leaving she heard them say that he was too human to be a lawyer. She had been worried about this and made two novenas that he should become less human in case he endangered the practice. Sometimes Fergus cleaned his own shoes – he didn’t think it was right to let a woman polish the black laced shoes that had been on his feet all day – but Miss Purcell didn’t like any changes in routine. She sniffed disapprovingly at his efforts and said she would prefer if he wouldn’t disgrace her in the town by going about with such ill-kept feet.

It was said that Canon Moran had often looked with envy at the Slatterys and wished they would give him their housekeeper. The purse-faced Miss Purcell who kept such a good house would be indeed a delight compared to poor Miss Barry, but she had been there so long and had no other home to go to, so in Christian kindness Canon Moran couldn’t, and made no efforts to replace her.

Miss Purcell was tall, thin and had a small face with two deceptively cheery-looking spots of red on her cheeks. These were not jolly ruddy cheeks, they were in fact two spots of colour whose redness increased according to how disapproving she was. At breakfast that morning they were very red indeed: a sure sign that something was about to blow up. Father and son avoided recognising this for as long as they could.

‘Do you want a bit of the
Independent
?’ Fergus’s father offered him the middle pages.

‘I wish we’d get the
Times
, it’s a better paper altogether,’ Fergus said. They were both avoiding the eye of Miss Purcell who stood ready to sound off.

‘Well it is and it isn’t, but nobody dies in the
Irish Times
. You don’t get the list of deaths in it like the
Independent
. A country solicitor needs to know who has died.’

‘Couldn’t we go into Leonard’s and sort of race down the deaths without buying the paper at all?’ Fergus suggested.

‘Fine thing that would be to do in a small town, depriving the Leonards of their income. Couldn’t the whole town do that? Couldn’t they come in here and look at our law books? Where’s the sense in that?’ Mr Slattery rattled his half of the paper in annoyance.

Miss Purcell cleared her throat.

‘Mrs Ryan is here. A bit early I said to her but she seemed to think that you expected her before nine.’

‘Is that Marian Ryan come to make her will again?’ Old Mr Slattery looked over his glasses.

‘No, it’s Kate, Kate Ryan from the pub up the River Road,’ said Fegus. ‘Isn’t it, Miss Purcell?’

‘Oh yes, Mr Fergus, that’s the Mrs Ryan it is, all right. And if I might say . . .’

‘Yes, Miss Purcell?’ Fergus decided to take it manfully, whatever it was.

‘Mrs Ryan arrived five minutes ago with the information that she is going to be working here.’

‘That’s right,’ Fergus said cheerfully. ‘She’s going to start this morning. Well she’s nice and punctual, that makes a change from the rest of Mountfern.’

‘I can’t recall any occasion anything was late in this house . . .’ Miss Purcell began to bristle . . .

‘Oh not you, Miss Purcell, for heaven’s sake, everyone else.’

‘And what work will Kate Ryan from the pub be doing here, and why wasn’t I consulted?’ The spots on the cheek were dangerously red now. Even old Mr Slattery had put down his paper and was looking anxiously like an old bird from one to the other.

‘Well, lots of things, I hope.’ Fergus was still bewildered by this storm, and the sudden dropping of the Mrs Ryan, and changing it to Kate from the pub.

‘In nineteen years working for this house I have never had such treatment.’ Miss Purcell looked ten feet tall; she had drawn herself up into a long thin stick quivering with rage. ‘If my work was not to your satisfaction, the very least I would have expected was to be told. Instead of allowing me to be humiliated by seeing that Kate Ryan from the pub, come along with her apron and things in a basket prepared to do my work for me.’

The eyes were very bright. Old Mr Slattery’s glasses had fallen off his nose with shock.

Fergus was on his feet. ‘Miss Purcell, Miss Purcell! What an idea, what a thought that we would dream of improving on your housework! Don’t you keep the best house in the town? Aren’t we the envy of the whole of Mountfern, including I might say the canon himself? You can’t have thought for a moment that we’d as much as contemplate getting anyone else, let alone doing it without telling you . . .’

‘But Kate from the pub out there with her basket?’

‘I don’t know what she has in the basket but Mrs Ryan
is going to work in the office. She was trained in a solicitor’s office in Dublin, you know. She’ll be doing the files and typing letters.’

‘Oh.’ Miss Purcell had to spend a moment doing some social adjustment.

‘So you see you were quite wrong to think we have anything except the highest regard for you, isn’t that right, Dad?’

‘Heavens yes. Oh, Miss Purcell, the house would fall down without you,’ said Mr Slattery anxiously.

‘But that would mean Kate . . . that Mrs Ryan and her family would know all your business, confidential business of the town.’ Miss Purcell wasn’t going to give up.

‘We wouldn’t take her on if we didn’t know she could be trusted. It’s not easy to find the kind of discretion and loyalty that you have, Miss Purcell. You are, as my father has said, the mainstay of this house, but we think we have found someone who will be able to keep our business private, as you do. It’s very good of you to be worried about it.’

There was no more to be said. Miss Purcell had to go back to the hall where she had left Kate standing, and usher her into the office, asking the while whether she took sugar in her tea and if she would like a plain biscuit, a sweet biscuit or a slice of home-made currant bread. Kate wisely chose the home-made bread and disclosed four punnets of raspberries which she had brought as a gift because she had heard it said that Miss Purcell made the best jam in the county. The pink spots began to lose their ferocity and the ‘Mrs Ryan’ was pronounced without the sarcastic overtones. Kate was in, she was starting a new
career. There was hardly any trade in the pub in the mornings, and John was in agreement with her that the few pounds the Slatterys paid would be helpful. Young Declan was off at school, so they were all out of house, and Carrie knew how to put a lunch on the table at the stroke of one. It would be nice to be behind a typewriter again for a change rather than behind a bar. Mr Slattery was such a gentleman, a real old-fashioned man who was spending more and more time fishing; and Fergus was the best company in the world, self-mocking and droll, full of compassion for some of the people who came to see him, slow to send a bill where it would be a hardship to pay it, but also quick with his tongue to abuse anyone who wanted to work a fiddle or hide an income.