The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (114 page)

“Will you be back for lunch? Did you tell Miss Hayes?” Grace asked him.

“Oh, I’ve explained to her, I’ll be gone all day. I’m going to look at that ruined abbey down the river. She’s making me some sandwiches.”

Grace knew that Kitty Daly was taking a picnic off on her bike too that day. She knew also that Kerry was keeping well out of Father’s way. He was very annoyed to hear that Mrs. Fine might be coming to Mountfern.

   Rachel Fine looked at the Slieve Sunset hotel in disbelief. It was quite bad enough of Patrick to say they couldn’t stay in the same hotel for discretion … but to put her up in this dump was inexcusable. The Grange was a country house, covered in virginia creeper, the Grange had horses in stables. It had a decanter of sherry to which the guests helped themselves before dinner. It had a lady with a plummy voice called Marian Johnson who was the daughter of the house and who ran the place very well. So what was Rachel doing in this fleapit? It was such a low-grade motel, it was definitely an insult.

She pulled off her long cream gloves and sat on the bed to inspect the room. There was no chair to sit on. Hideous drapes in huge sunbursts clashing with a carpet of equally hideous, but non-toning, shades. The light switch was not even beside the bed. There was no bathroom, you could share a tub or shower room with Lord knew how many people. A handbasin with a dripping faucet, a small uneven-looking wardrobe as an excuse for a closet. Four rattling wire coat hangers inside.

Rachel’s head was aching. She had flown from New York to Shannon. She had rented a car on Patrick’s suggestion. He had been hard to pin down on the telephone, but it was something to do with wanting her to see a bit of the country. Big clown. She could still see the countryside if he had come to meet her.

And what was all this need for discretion, here of all places? Here nobody knew them. It could be like that one week they had spent in Mexico where they could check into any hotel as man and wife, where they could hold hands at dinner. Who in Ireland would know or care that they stayed in the same hotel? Why, there was even his daughter as chaperon.

Tired and angry, Rachel began to unpack. She smoothed out her best silk suit; she had expected to hang it over a tub of steaming, scented water when she arrived, but
that
was not on. She looked at her face in the mirror. She looked every day of forty-eight and a few more days as well. She could
kill
him. But she wouldn’t. She hadn’t waited this long, and put up with so much already, to blow the whole thing in a dump in a one-horse town in a second-rate country.

   Patrick was locked in a never-ending argument with architects and structural engineers all morning. He had said goodbye to Kerry the previous night, glad that the boy would be gone before Rachel arrived. He hadn’t even said anything about her coming. With Grace there was no problem; the child had no idea of any relationship, and anyway she was so taken up with the Ryan twins she had no time for anyone else.

It was a warm day and the architects were being excessively stubborn; the whole planning could be negated even at this stage, they insisted, if he wouldn’t tell them where he had finally decided to place the entrance.

“I’ll tell you any goddamn place to get the show on the road, but we can change it again later, that’s the deal,” Patrick said.

That was not the deal, apparently. It was very wearing. Brian Doyle had been no help either.

“There’s only two places you can put the entrance, in the name of God, Mr. O’Neill,” he shouted, exasperated. “Where it is, where it was always meant to be. Or where the Yank architects say, which is along that sort of overgrown towpath, which will cost you another thousand pounds just to cut back the brambles. All you’ve got to say is one or the other.”

None of them had seen what his son had seen, that the best and indeed the only place to have an imposing entrance, was from the small piece of ground where Ryan’s Licensed Premises stood at this very moment.

Patrick decided to end the meeting. Kerry had left. Rachel was arriving. Marian was billing and cooing about dinner for the two of them that evening, when he most certainly would not be free. But most important of all, he realized, he had to talk to the Ryans. He had always despised other businessmen who pussyfooted about. He was going to ask those people straight away if there was any chance that they would consider selling. It was tempting to let other people do the dirty work, ask the questions that were almost impossible to ask. But Patrick O’Neill knew that in almost every aspect of life, if you want to do something it’s best to do it yourself. If he did it quickly he might even have the conversation finished one way or another before lunch. Then he’d hightail it up to the Slieve Sunset and pray that Rachel wasn’t spitting blood once she had seen the style he had relegated her to for her visit.

   Miss Purcell had been in a very good humor since the trip to Dublin. She had been treated as the highest in the land with a window seat at which the young president looked up and waved directly. There had been tea and sandwiches, and Father Hogan had been a delightful companion for the day. Mr. Fergus was so odd of course, and put people off by his funny manner, but there was no doubt he had a heart of gold. She had ironed his shirts lovingly for him; she hoped he would look very well in this nice hotel he was going to, and people would admire him. She hoped he would meet a nice class of person, and have a good social life. He refused to play bridge, and he was on his own far too much. Miss Purcell didn’t really want to see a wife for Mr. Fergus—that would mean too many changes—but she would like him to have more people of his own class and education to talk to in the evenings. He had taken to long walks, and heavy pints in Ryan’s Licensed Premises with farm laborers.

She was glad of the thought of two weeks on her own. She could spring clean the house properly. It would be very quiet, of course, without Mr. Fergus and Kate Ryan and the clients trooping in and out. But the Lord knew the man was entitled to his two weeks off, and she went out on the doorstep to examine the skies, hoping for good weather for the young master on his holidays.

At that very moment a small car drew up and a very well-dressed woman jumped out.

“Pardon me, but seeing that you live here, can I ask you where I should go to find Mr. Patrick O’Neill who is doing major building works in these parts?”

Miss Purcell was delighted, an American lady just arrived in town. What a chance to meet her at once, just because she had gone to look at the weather.

“Of course I can tell you,” she said. “You turn right at the big bridge you see here before you, then go along River Road. Park your car outside the public house called Ryan’s and cross a footbridge. It’s a bit of a walk but that’s the site.”

“That’s where the old Fernscourt was …” the American lady said.

“The very place,” Miss Purcell said. “Mr. O’Neill’s building a fine new hotel there, they tell me.”

“So I walk over the footbridge and it’s a fair way?” The woman looked down at her very elegant high-heeled shoes. “Well, I guess I’m going to have to get used to different ways.”

Miss Purcell was bursting with assistance.

“Seeing you have the car with you, you could always go back the way you came up to the main road, along a bit and then you’d see a rough sort of entrance, and a narrow path where there are lorries and tractors and the like. They have all kinds of signs telling people to beware of this and beware of that, so you should blow your horn at them all the time to let them know you’re coming.”

The woman thanked her. “No, I’ll risk the little walk. And if I can’t make it the whole way, I’ll just holler.”

Miss Purcell looked after her with interest. Now, who could she be? She looked a bit … overdressed, a bit foreign to be any kind of lady friend. Maybe someone he had met on an aeroplane or somesuch. Time would tell. They’d soon know.

   Fergus Slattery had been out in the country making a will for a dying farmer. It was the last thing he had to do before he went back to pack. The old man clutched at him and thanked him for his patience.

“But then you wouldn’t be your father’s son if you were any other way,” he wheezed.

“Was my father patient?” Fergus had worked beside the older man for years and realized that he was certainly well read and certainly slow.

“He had all the time in the world for you. It’s the hallmark of the busy man; they never look rushed.”

That was true of Patrick O’Neill, Fergus thought ruefully; he seemed to have time for chats and pints and strolls along the river bank. He had time to come and talk to the angling club and show them new flies he had brought from somewhere on his travels, chatting in a leisurely way, while all the time there were huge deals being done in New York to move money here and there, to finance even huger investments for his Fernscourt project. Already the walls were in evidence—only feet above the ground, but within a few months of leveling of the ruin the new order was beginning to appear.

Fergus shook himself back into the present.

“Well, I do have all the time in the world, so now if there’s any little thing here that isn’t clear to you, I can read it over again with you, Danny.”

“No, it seems fair enough, fair enough.”

“And sure, you’ve all the time in the world yourself, if you want to change anything,” Fergus lied into the man’s eyes. “When I come back from my holidays you can ask me to come up here again, if you’ve anything you want to add or take away.”

“When you come back from your holidays, boy, I’ll be in the churchyard, and we both know that I’ll tell your father that you’re doing a good job.”

“If you see him, will you ask him to send me a message about what in God’s name he did with the papers in the Scanlan case? They’re irretrievably lost and I have someone on to me about them every month.”

The old man laughed, the thought of death pushed further away.

Fergus felt better himself. He thought he might call into Ryan’s for a lunchtime pint. Since he had closed his own office he was childishly light-hearted; he felt his holiday had begun. He said goodbye to the old man he would never see again, and drove off toward Ryan’s.

   That funny thin woman with the dutch-doll coloring hadn’t lied, Rachel thought, when she saw what a fair step it was to walk toward the busy site. She looked again at her shoes and said this was madness. Even squinting into the sunlight she couldn’t see Patrick among the bulldozers and the men going in and out of a prefab hut which must be the site office.

She stood for a while looking at the scene which was the heart’s desire of the man she loved. It was as incomprehensible to her, now that she was four hundred yards from it, as when she had been three thousand miles away from it. Perhaps she had been foolish to come here on her own. Maybe she should have waited. But that hotel was beginning to make her flesh crawl. She had lain without closing her eyes on that uncomfortable bed in the garish room. Sleep would not come. But it had benefited her nothing to come this far. Unless, of course, he was in the habit of calling at this public house for his lunch. She went up to the front door and into Ryan’s.

She had assumed it would be a simple place; it certainly didn’t look much from the outside but at least they had the good sense not to change the front and destroy the whole feel of the place like so many others, notably the dreaded Slieve Sunset, had done. She had thought it might be dark, and there might be men who would resent a woman calling in for a morning drink.

What she had not expected was a totally empty saloon with a husband and wife embracing each other behind the bar. The woman was dark-haired and good-looking, with tears running down her face. The man was sandy and plump, and looked as if someone had just told him that he had won the Irish Sweepstake.

But it was far better than that. John Ryan was holding the
Irish Press
newspaper of that day, in which his first poem had been published.

It was a poem called “Sleep in Peace,” and it was telling the Fern family to sleep peacefully in their graves because the old order had changed. They must rest on and never come back because everything was so changed that they wouldn’t be able to walk as Lords of the Soil, as they once had. It was both gentle and savage. John had written it to put in the book that he was doing for Patrick, then his confidence had failed and he thought that perhaps Patrick wouldn’t like it. Kate had urged him to show it to someone who might know. She had typed it out and posted it to the
Irish Press
, which sometimes published poetry.

There it was, in black and white in the paper. He had only turned to the page five minutes before, and had come in shouting and roaring like a bull from the garden. Leopold, genuinely frightened for once, was whimpering under a table.

Rachel Fine had never seen such intense excitement and pleasure. She felt utterly out of place, as if she had intruded into a marriage bed.

“I guess I’m a little early for bar hours,” she said.

They disentangled themselves and Kate wiped her eyes.

“You must excuse us, Ma’am,” said John. “But you arrived at a big moment for us. Can we ask you to share it … whatever you like to drink. Anything at all. This is a big celebration.”

Kate was composed. “My husband has just had his first literary work published. Here it is in the newspaper. We’re so pleased. It’s been
so
long.”

“And Kate never lost faith in me; she never thought for a minute that I wouldn’t succeed.” The man’s face gave off rays like the sun.

Rachel looked politely at the paper. “Oh, it’s about the Ferns,” she cried.

“They used to own that house … well the house that
was
over there.” John was so excited he could hardly talk.

“John, give the lady the promised drink and give me one too,” Kate said.

Rachel looked from one to other. “I’m useless; I’m an orange-juice lady. I have no business being in a bar at all. I’m sorry not to be more festive on your great occasion.”

“I’m often an orange-juice lady myself,” Kate confided. “But I daren’t say it in a public house. It’s bad for business. You are most welcome to a nice glass of Club Orange if you’re sure that’s what you’d like.”