The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (115 page)

John was staring at the paper as if it might vanish before his eyes.

“I’m Rachel Fine,” Rachel said, stretching out her hand. “I work for Patrick O’Neill, I’m his designer and adviser.”

Kate thrilled with sudden recognition. My God, he’s got a fancy woman, she said to herself as she shook hands with the well-groomed woman and poured her a Club Orange to celebrate the success of the poem.

   Rachel suggested that John go and buy up several copies of the paper, which he thought was a great idea. If Leonard’s didn’t have any more copies left, they could telephone somebody in the big town to keep some copies, or even the paper itself. They could get them copied too on a photocopier. He would inquire about that too when he was in Bridge Street.

“Don’t be gone all day,” Kate said. “There’s bound to be a bit of a crowd in at lunchtime.”

“I’ll be back. Won’t I want to show them?” Like an excited child he headed off down River Road. Kate knew he would stop first to tell Loretto Quinn, and could see her clapping her hands with pleasure for him.

“You must think we’re quite mad,” Kate said to Rachel. “Any other day of the year, you’d come in here and find us the most quiet respectable pub in the country. In fact I’d be up in the solicitor’s office where I work in the mornings. But today is such a red-letter day, you have no idea, you really don’t.”

“I do, I can see only too clearly how pleased you are for him,” Rachel said.

It wasn’t the words, which were ordinary enough, but it was the way she said them that made Kate more expansive than usual. Normally she never told anyone what she felt about John.

“You see I wouldn’t mind if he never wrote a poem that was published. I wouldn’t want any fame or money or anything for me or for us out of his writing. But it’s him. Often he says he’s only a fool to be scribbling and writing, and maybe he’s half-cracked to have such notions. Now he’ll never think that again. His dream is official, as it were.” She gave a little laugh at this definition of John’s dream.

“That’s a wonderful way of putting it,” Rachel said. “His dream is official. Like Patrick’s dream. I suppose now that he sees brick going on brick, he knows it’s official.” The two women looked across the river at the huge building site up the slope.

In a gentle voice Kate said, “Patrick will be over shortly, he nearly always comes in at lunchtime.”

In a couple of sentences they had exchanged a great deal of information. And without saying very much at all they knew they were going to be great friends.

   It was indeed busy at lunchtime as Kate had predicted, and with all kinds of unexpected people. Miss Barry had decided to begin what looked like a spectacular breakout by sitting on a bar stool and ordering a brandy and port. She had rarely been seen in a public house before; all her drinking had been done from surreptitious paper bags bought in off-sales in the big town.

Kate managed to get her out by saying that they had neither brandy nor port for sale in the pub, but if Miss Barry liked, she could give her a half bottle of each in a private transaction since she was sure that Miss Barry wanted them for medicinal purposes at home. This brought Miss Barry to her limited senses and she slipped away with two small brown-paper parcels toward a three-day binge and a spectacular hangover.

Fergus Slattery came in to say goodbye and said the place was like Portsmouth on pay night, with all the activity. When Kate told him about the poem, his pleasure was so genuine it touched her heart. He went straight to John and congratulated him loudly. He promised to tell everyone at the hotel he was going to that he knew the poet himself, and John Ryan’s ears pinked up with the pleasure of it all.

Jimbo Doyle, who wouldn’t have read a poem in a million years normally, said that all the children above with the brothers and the nuns should be made to learn it off by heart, and that it should be recited at the next concert.

In the middle of it all Patrick O’Neill came in. He didn’t see Rachel, now on her third orange juice and happily settled in. He looked preoccupied and somehow annoyed to see so many people.

“Any chance of a word with yourself and John today?” he asked.

“Fire ahead,” Kate said. “I may have to interrupt you, John’s buying drinks for everybody, he had a poem published.”

“That’s good,” Patrick said mechanically. “It’s just that …”

“Oh Patrick,” Kate’s face was stricken. “Don’t say, ‘That’s good,’ it’s much more than good. For God’s sake the man has had his first poem published and you just say ‘That’s good.’ It’s magnificent, that’s what it is.” Her eyes had begun to blaze at the inadequacy of his remark.

Patrick realized he had been crass. “I’m sorry, I had something on my mind … I beg your pardon … where is he … must tell him how pleased I am.”

“That’s more like it.”

“I am sorry, I know it sounds mean-spirited of me, I genuinely am pleased, it’s just that there’s something I’m anxious about …”

“Oh, she’s here …” Kate cried triumphantly. “I’m sorry, I should have said it before … she’s over there in the back rooms. Rachel, Rachel, Patrick’s here.”

Patrick’s face was in a tight line where his mouth had been. How had it happened that Kate Ryan seemed to have guessed immediately that Rachel was more than a member of his staff, and why did she feel able to call this fact out familiarly across the pub?

He had been mad to let Rachel come here in the first place. He saw her then, surrounded by local people and laughing. But she looked wrong, she could never be part of this place. He must make that clear soon. Sweet Lord, how had it all turned into this, making things clear to people, speaking his mind?

Rachel looked up and waved at him nice and casually, as she would have done back home.

“Well Mr. O’Neill, I made it to Ireland. Isn’t it a great place?” she said, and his heart softened toward her again.

Things were getting very complicated indeed.

   By three o’clock the bar was empty. John and Kate were exhausted. The glasses were washed; two clean cloths, washed through after the polishing, lay across the beer and stout pumps. The place was ready for any afternoon visitor who might stray in, and for the teatime trade.

“God, if we were to have a crowd like that again we’d have to hire a young lad,” John said.

“There speaks the man with the second income,” Kate teased.

“Wasn’t it great when Patrick read it out?” John said.

Kate had thought Patrick’s mind was miles away but she didn’t say that.

“I’m very, very proud of you,” she said.

“Would we risk it and go up to bed for a while?” he said.

“Are you mad?”

“Ah go on, we could ask Carrie to step in here.”

“And what would she think?”

“Does it matter what she thinks?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, John, the children could come home.”

The twins had gone for a picnic with Grace, Eddie was out with his gang of toughs, Declan could be anywhere.

“Let them, the door would be locked.”

“We’ll lock it tonight instead,” she said.

“And what am I going to do here, mad with desire for you?”

“Why don’t you look through your other poems, the ones we liked, and you could maybe give me some of them. I’ll type them and you can always say I have had work published already, I enclose an example …”

“But there’s only one example …”

“You don’t have to tell them that,” Kate said.

“God, you’re a fox, Kate. Between yourself and Patrick O’Neill you could rule the world. There’s a pair of you in it.”

“I hope not,” Kate said, shivering slightly.

“And what are you going to do if you’re not going to fulfil your marital duties?” John asked sulkily.

“I’m going to have a little walk. I’m restless and over-excited … but
no
I do
not
see a way to cure all that. I’m not going to let us become the talk of the neighborhood by abandoning our pub and going off to bed in the middle of the afternoon.” She skipped out of his way and took her cardigan off the back of a chair.

“Go on, John, get your poems down, truly now … I love the one about the nun looking into the river, the nun with the very sad face.”

She walked out and stretched in the sunshine. She had said the truth, she
was
restless and over-excited. She was happy for John in a way she had never expected to be, but everywhere around her, like a big black cloud, she felt a sense of danger. Even when Patrick had said he wanted to talk to them she had thought it was going to be something bad, and was glad that the crowds and the circumstances had meant he couldn’t bring up whatever it was. It was like a reprieve.

She felt there was something odd about Kerry. It wasn’t that he never smiled—his face was one big smile, for God’s sake, with those perfect white teeth. And he couldn’t be more polite. It wasn’t anything to do with Grace. The twins seemed to love her, and she was a warm little thing, all smiles too.

She really couldn’t say that the work on Fernscourt had harmed their business. When else had they been full on a Tuesday at lunchtime? And perhaps these people would keep coming back even when the building works were over. So why then was she restless? Was it the holidays and knowing that young Fergus was off to find himself a woman? Surely not. She
wanted
Fergus to find himself a woman.

She crossed the footbridge and looked up at the site. Patrick would not be there now, he had told Rachel that he would drive out to the Slieve Sunset with her and see if they could make any improvements. Kate wondered why on earth she hadn’t been allowed to go to the Grange and then remembered that Grace was at the lodge and might suspect something. Could that be it?

It would be very hard to be in love with Patrick O’Neill, hard to come first in his life. There would always be business, or the children, or travel or long-distance telephone calls. Kate sighed thinking of it all, and wished Rachel Fine luck in her uphill struggle. She remembered how warm and nice Patrick had been that day last week when they had gone to see President Kennedy arrive in Dublin. He had been so anxious to please them all with drinks and sandwiches in the big Dublin hotel. He had hardly ever stopped smiling and laughing. It would be easy to fall in love with him. She walked up the slope that the twins used to think of as their own private path at one time, now more open and exposed with a lot of the brambles and briars cut away. She hadn’t been in to look at the site since the foundations were dug and already the walls were showing, so that you could see the shape it would be.

Kate felt she must know what it was going to be like, no point in being like an ostrich anymore. She was going to go right up there and look, and ask Brian Doyle which room was which, and talk about it to Patrick O’Neill, and ask Rachel Fine what kind of colors it was going to be. She quickened her step and threw back her head with confidence.
There’s a time for everything, she thought. I wasn’t ready to know about it before, but I’m ready now
.

She saw Brian Doyle waving at her frantically as she approached the site. He had both hands in the air and was shouting something. But she hadn’t heard what it was by the time she felt the terrifying sharp pain. It was so sudden and worse than anything she had ever known, like the terror in a dream or a nightmare. And it only lasted seconds, because that was all it took for Kate Ryan to be hit sideways by the huge bulldozer, flung up in the air and crashed to the ground. It only took a few seconds to break her spine.

   John knew only when the third person rushing away from the site to get help refused to look him in the eye and tell him what had happened. Roaring like a bull, he ran across the footbridge and had to be held back from the scene by three men. White-faced Brian Doyle begged him not to go near her.

“Jesus, the only thing we
do
know, John, is not to move her. For God’s sake believe that. Stand back from her, don’t touch her. You could make it worse.”

John sat down like a child and put his big face into his hands. Strong men who had known him and had drunk pints in his pub for twenty years couldn’t find the words or the gestures to touch him. They stood awkwardly around, eyes averted from the crumpled body on the ground.

   Patrick O’Neill knew when there was a great hammering on the door of Rachel Fine’s room in the Slieve Sunset hotel.

“No, of course Mr. O’Neill is not here,” Rachel called through the door. “What on earth makes you think he is?”

“Sorry ma’am,” the young girl called. “We’ve had a message from Brian Doyle, he said he’s trying everywhere in the country to find Mr. O’Neill, there’s been a terrible accident … a terrible accident and Mr. O’Neill’s got to come at once.”

Patrick was out of bed and had pulled his trousers on.

“What kind of an accident?” He shouted through the door.

“On the site of the new hotel in Mountfern.”

“What happened?” Patrick had opened the door now; Rachel was cowering behind it. Patrick had pulled his shirt on at the same electrifying speed.

“Someone’s been killed, I think. Some woman.”

“A woman, killed on the site?” Patrick’s shoes were on and he had picked up his car keys.

“Did he say what woman? What was a woman doing there? Did he say how it happened?”

“No, he said if we found you to get you over there as quick as possible.”

Patrick was down the corridor by this stage and the girl was round-eyed at the thought of the American millionaire who was building the big hotel five miles away being in bed in the middle of the afternoon with a strange American woman and not being a bit ashamed of it. Weren’t things going to liven up a bit here when the Yanks started coming over in force?

   Mrs. Whelan in the post office knew fairly early on because Dr. White stopped his car outside her door and ran in to collect her.

“Put some kind of sign on the door, do anything but come with me, Sheila. They’re going to need someone sensible at the pub to look after them.”

She didn’t question whether she was the right person or not, she just closed the door behind her and stepped quietly into his car.

“Have you told the canon?”