The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (135 page)

“I don’t know, Carrie, I really don’t.”

   “Will Kerry be home for a weekend soon?” Dara asked Grace.

She got the usual reply. “Oh, you know Kerry.”

It was a very unsatisfactory reply indeed. Because she didn’t really know Kerry. She would love to get to know him much, much better. She wished he would say in these cards if he was ever coming back home.

   Brother Keane said that the boys were to write a letter to Mr. O’Neill that would try to put into words how grateful they were for the new playing field. It would have taken years and years to have gotten what they now had through the generosity of this good man. Their own sons would have barely been playing on a good field like this if it hadn’t been for Mr. O’Neill.

Tommy Leonard was the best at English; he was chosen to write the letter. Every boy in the school was to sign it. It would then be framed in carpentry class and presented to Mr. O’Neill at a public ceremony.

Tommy’s first three efforts were refused. Brother Keane said to him in a voice like thunder that it was hard to believe Tommy could be so insensitive as to begin by saying “Despite the fact that you did not think this school good enough for your own son …” Really and truly, Brother Keane thought, all this jazz and the like had young boys half cracked these days.

   Brian Doyle liked Rachel Fine. She had a very good way with people, he noticed, she spoke in a very low voice so that they strained to hear rather than shouting over them. Sometimes he felt she wanted to criticize something here and there but never did. Once or twice he actually asked her did she like something or if she could suggest an alternative. Very reluctantly she would give her views. Like the dock. Brian was going to paint it brightly. Rachel wondered would it be better in natural woods. It looked much better without the garish paint, but Rachel never claimed any of the credit, she joined in the general admiration and praise of Brian Doyle.

He wondered why O’Neill hadn’t married her yet.

   “Kerry’s coming back this weekend,” Michael said.

“Never!” Dara felt something like a lump of coal in her throat.

“Yes, he called last night, he’s got a couple of days off. Grace’s father was very surprised.”

“When does he arrive?”

“I think he’s going by Dublin so it won’t be till Saturday.”

“He never said.”

“Does he write much to you?”

“The odd card.” Dara was deliberately casual.

“It may have been a last-minute thing.” Michael was reassuring. “He probably didn’t tell any of the other girls either.”

“What other girls?”

“Oh, can’t you be sure that Kerry would have girls everywhere?”

Michael looked at Dara’s face and was sorry that he had said that.

   Maggie Daly’s mother had sent her in to inspect Loretto Quinn’s and see was it true that the place had smartened up beyond all recognition since the Jewish lady had gone to live upstairs. The Dalys had heard disturbing rumors that it would nearly be a rival for their own place. Loretto of all people! God help her, she used to look like a poor tinker.

Loretto was kind to Maggie and spent ages helping her choose between one kind of sweet and another while poor Maggie did her best to spy on the lay of the land.

“Wouldn’t you have these sweets for nothing in your own place?” Loretto asked innocently.

“Yes, but I’m not meant to be eating too many of them.” Maggie knew she was hopeless at this kind of subterfuge.

Mrs. Fine came down the stairs just then; she had armfuls of materials with her.

“Heavens, haven’t you the most beautiful auburn hair!” she said, standing in admiration.

“Who me?” Maggie looked around in case someone else had come into the shop.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it Loretto?”

Privately Loretto thought all the Dalys had terrible heads of frizz, but maybe Mrs. Fine was just being kind.

“Lovely altogether,” she agreed.

“It’s Maggie, isn’t that right?”

Maggie was delighted. “That’s it, Mrs. Fine.”

“Listen Maggie, I have something here that will look lovely with that hair.” She put down her materials and found a length of ribbon. It was in a copper satin.

“Shall I fix it in your hair for you, would you like that?”

Maggie was thrilled. This woman looked like something out of a magazine herself. She was very old of course, but her style was the talk of the place and here she was playing with ribbons in Maggie’s hair.

“I’d love it,” she said.

Rachel took a strand of the hair and half plaited it in with the ribbon. She swept back some of the rest of the hair. Then she took a compact out of her handbag and showed Maggie the mirror.

“Look, aren’t you lovely!” she said.

It was true. Maggie
did
look much nicer. Her face split into a huge smile.

“You must keep it, you’re like a little Pre-Raphaelite,” Mrs. Fine said.

Neither Loretto nor Maggie knew what it meant but it sounded good. Loretto’s eyes held genuine admiration and Maggie could see it. She went home to abuse from her mother because she couldn’t remember how or in what ways Loretto’s shop had improved.

Liam White told her she wasn’t looking as scraggy as usual, and Michael Ryan stopped on his bicycle for a chat.

“You look a bit different today,” he said in approval.

   Mary Donnelly said that if they were going to make any kind of a fist of this café they were going to run in the hopes of getting a bit of custom, they should have a plan.

“We’ll have to get into the minds of Americans, that’s a hard thing to do,” Kate said.

“Aren’t you best friends with an American woman, for heaven’s sake?” Mary said as if she expected Rachel to help them every bit of the way.

And in many ways Rachel did. She told them of places that sold cheap but very authentically Irish pottery and even ordered it for them so that she could get a proper discount for them. She told them that American visitors would love to feel they were somewhere that was
really
Irish.

“Do you mean leprechauns and begorras?”

“No,” said Rachel, but she didn’t say it with a great deal of conviction.

“Do you mean a hint of leprechauns and begorras?” Kate suggested again.

“That’s exactly what I mean, a hint of it.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Kate said. “It’s worse than I thought.”

   Eddie had another breakage. This time it was the side mirror of Judy Byrne’s car. It had been parked outside Ryan’s while Judy was inside doing the exercises with Kate. Eddie had been seeing how far it would turn around. Not as pliable as he had thought.

It was there in his hand when Judy came out.

“I’ll fix it.”

“You won’t,” said Judy. “You’ll pay for it.”

Mary suggested a source of money to him. “Your mam will pay you piece work for hemming the green napkins for the café.”

“Me hem table napkins? You must be mad,” Eddie stormed.

“Look at it this way: there aren’t many jobs open to you, and you’ve done the Protestant graveyard already, so what else is there? You’ve a fine hand with a needle, I’m always telling you that.”

“Just as long as you don’t tell anyone else …” Eddie warned.

“Do a dozen a night, up in your room if you don’t want anyone to see you, or you can come out to my house if you like, and sit there with Leopold and the wireless.”

It wasn’t the life Eddie Ryan had planned for himself. Sitting in a converted outhouse hemming green linen serviettes with a mad dog and Radio Eireann for company. Mary’s wireless didn’t seem to get Radio Luxembourg.

Still, it paid for Miss Byrne’s old mirror, and Mam was very nice to him and sometimes said that he was an old dote despite everything.

   Dara and Michael waited for Grace to collect them on Saturday to go to the pictures. They met Tommy and the Whites just outside—it was going to be very crowded. Declan Morrissey rubbed his hands happily. If he had his way he’d show musicals all the year round. This was the third or fourth time he had
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
and it was always the same, you got the old and the young alike to come to it.

Michael was pleased to see the queue, it meant that they might all get separated. Then he and Grace could go to the back somewhere. There couldn’t be any touching Grace if the others were all there.

Maggie was late. “Sorry,” she apologized, even though it didn’t matter, they were still in the line waiting to get in.

“Sorry, Kitty called from Dublin, she wanted me to think up some story about why she’s not coming home for the weekend.”

“She picked a poor one to invent a story for her,” Tommy Leonard said affectionately.

“I know, I get so flustered,” Maggie said.

“Why can’t she tell them herself?” Dara said.

“She didn’t want to talk to Mam, because Mam would worm it out of her, so she called when Mam was at benediction.”

“Worm what?” Dara said.

“She’s meeting Kerry in Dublin, that’s why she’s not coming home,” said Maggie excitedly, and looked around at the faces of her friends.

   Kerry arrived on Sunday evening. He called into Ryan’s at a slack time. Kate was behind the counter in her wheelchair.

“What can I serve you?” Her smile was pleasant.

“I don’t drink alcohol at all, Mrs. Ryan.”

“Very sensible of you, but then that’s a little hypocritical of me. If everyone was to feel like you do where would our business be, I wonder?”

“Your business is going okay, isn’t it?” He looked pointedly around the almost empty pub.

“Usually a little more lively than this.” Kate felt annoyed somehow that this young fellow hadn’t come in when they were doing a really good business. She wondered why she was trying to impress him.

“I just came to find out if I could take your lovely daughter for a walk by the river on this beautiful evening,” he asked.

“My lovely daughter has homework to do.” Kate smiled.

“I’m sure she’ll be able to do it later.” Kerry smiled.

“At just fifteen she’s a little young to let walks with young men get between her and her studies.” Kate was still smiling a smile she didn’t feel.

“Oh now, Mrs. Ryan, she’s not
just
fifteen. I had the pleasure of being at her fifteenth birthday, a long long time ago. Way back last September, if I remember rightly.”

“You remember rightly, Kerry.”

“So you are saying she can’t come out with me. Is this what I hear?”

“No it is not what you hear, you must go and ask her herself.”

“Oh well, that’s all right then. May I go into the house?”

“No, I’ll call her.”

Dara had seen him coming from the window seat. She had combed her hair and rubbed a little lipstick on and off again.

“Hi,” she said.

“Lovely to see you again,” he said warmly. “I was trying to persuade your mother here to let us go for a walk.”

Dora looked at him levelly. “I’d love to, Kerry, but I have all this homework to do,” she said.

He was surprised. “Can’t you leave it till later?” He was sure he would convince her.

“No, at this stage there’s so much to be done. I wish I’d worked harder earlier in the year but you know how it is, I’m afraid I’ve left it all to the end.”

“You’re not graduating this year.” There was an edge to his voice.

“You’ve obviously never met Sister Laura, she thinks this is the most important year in our lives. We have exams nearly every week.”

Kerry was furious. “Another time then,” he said, and walked out.

Kate looked at her stricken daughter.

Round One to Dara, she thought with a mixture of pride and anxiety.

   Miss Hayes had never known a prayer to St. Anthony to fail, but this time it had. Nowhere could she find the two silver salvers that had stood on the sideboard.

Marian had admired them often and said that they were magnificent silver. She had been startled to discover that Mrs. Fine had bought them for Patrick at an auction, at his request.

Mrs. Fine often bought old Irish silverware, and had said that the O’Neills should have the pleasure of looking at it before it went to the hotel eventually.

Every two weeks Olive Hayes cleaned the little collection. Mrs. Fine had visited once and praised her highly for the wonderful way it had been cared for. Now Miss Hayes was worried—what could have happened to them? It was unlikely that they had been robbed. There had been no break-in, and anyway there was always someone in the house.

Marian Johnson did drop in from time to time but she would never … of course not. And those little Ryan twins and Maggie Daly from the dairy. No, it was out of the question.

She would have to think again—was it possible that she had placed them somewhere else? Or perhaps Mr. O’Neill had already taken them to the hotel, or to have them valued.

Olive Hayes was very troubled.

   Americans would want entertainment. Kate knew that.

But what kind? It couldn’t be amateurish in their café when it was professional and well organized across the river.

What would they expect in an Irish café? If it was to be truly authentic then of course there wouldn’t be singing and dancing, nobody would be doing anything except getting stuck into their tea and scones. But this plan was for something that wasn’t quite authentic but looked as if it might be.

What a pity that none of them played the harp, and that they didn’t have a big tuneful harp handy in one of their outhouses.

   Carrie asked Jimbo would they get married sometime.

“Sure, we’ll get married sometime,” Jimbo said.

Carrie felt vaguely dissatisfied with this reply.

   Jack Coyne asked Loretto did the great O’Neill spend the night above in the rooms with your woman.

Loretto said certainly he did not.

Jack said Loretto was right to keep her mouth shut. He would do the same in her place. Loretto was annoyed about that, since she was not being diplomatic. It was the truth. Patrick O’Neill came to call sometimes but he never stayed the night.

   Dennis Hill telephoned to know whether Kerry’s father had recovered from his illness.

Olive Hayes told him that there had been no illness.