The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (136 page)

“There has to have been an illness, why else did he go home?” Mr. Hill wanted to know.

Miss Hayes decided to rescue the situation. “There was a bit of trouble all right, it wasn’t exactly an illness,” she said.

Mr. Hill never pried. He had just been calling out of courtesy, he said. When would they expect Kerry back?

“I’ll ask him to call you himself,” said Miss Hayes.

She told Kerry that he should call Donegal. She told him that Mr. Hill was now under the impression that what he had thought was an illness was in fact a little trouble.

Kerry smiled a great charming smile at her. “You are a great ally, Miss Hayes,” he said.

“I wouldn’t rely on it, Kerry,” she said.

“I get the picture,” Kerry said.

   Dara and Maggie were on the footbridge, when Kerry came along.

“Maggie, could you do something for me? Please.” His eyes were a piercing blue. They looked straight at little Maggie.

“Sure,” she said good-naturedly.

“Could you go up to the hotel and see if my father is around? I want to go up and talk to Brian Doyle about something, but my father thinks I’ve gone back to Donegal so I want to make sure he isn’t there. Can you look and see if his car is there? Do you mind?”

“Not at all, but am I the right one …? I often get things wrong.”

“No, you’re perfect, you look so innocent no one would know you were my spy”

Maggie scampered up the path by the laurel bushes.

“Well,” Kerry said to Dara.

“Well what?”

“Well what was all this drama, you had homework to do? I came straight out and put myself on the line and asked your mother … and you turn me down. What was all that about?” He looked very angry. Dara’s heart began to pound. It had been a very risky thing. She had wondered afterwards had she been mad.

“No reason,” she said, shrugging.

“Don’t do that, it’s so silly, it makes you so cheap, so common. I came to see you. I thought you liked me. Why are you playing silly games?” His handsome face looked hurt.

“Well …” She didn’t know what to say.

“Because if you don’t want to see me, that’s fine, just say it straight out. But if you do, let’s go up to Coyne’s wood.”

“When?”

“What’s wrong with now?”

“You can’t mean now. You’ve just sent Maggie on a message.”

“That was so that I could talk to you. My father’s in Shannon today.”

“You told her a lie …!”

“It was so that I could ask you what was wrong.”

“And you met Kitty in Dublin too!”

“Silly little Maggie, getting everything wrong. I
saw
Kitty in Dublin and she clung and clung. Kitty the clam I call her.”

“We can’t go off and leave Maggie to come back and find us not here.”

“Yes we can if you want to.”

It was the longest moment of Dara’s life.

“No, I’ll wait for Maggie. You sent her on a fool’s errand,” she said.

If Kate Ryan had been watching she would have said, “Round Two, Dara.”

   “John, will you read me some poetry?”

“Aren’t you too tired, love?”

Kate sat in her green room, her eyes too bright, her face drawn.

“No, I have that feeling I’m not going to sleep.”

“Let me get you into bed first then I’ll go and find something you might like. I haven’t written anything for so long.”

“How could you?” She touched his hand in sympathy. “But tonight I want you to read me other people’s poetry, not just your own, and no, I won’t go to bed yet.”

“Other people’s poetry?” He was disappointed.

She was deliberately light and joky. “Yes, isn’t it very presumptuous of them, but other people did write poetry, like Yeats, or Oscar Wilde or James Clarence Mangan.”

“Will I read you the
Lays of Ancient Rome?
I love that …”

“No, something Irish.”

“Or
Hiawatha …
I’ve never read the whole of
Hiawatha
aloud.
That
will send you off to sleep all right.”

“No.” She gripped the sides of the wheelchair in impatience.

“All right, all right …” He went to the bookshelves and ran his finger along the backs of books for what seemed a long time. Eventually he took out a book and began:

“Oh my dark Rosaleen

“Do not sigh do not weep …”

   “Stand up over there so that I can see you,” Kate said. “Now start again.”

He read the poem with gestures, putting a lot of emphasis into it and giving the repetition a fine sonorous sound.

“That was very good,” Kate said approvingly.

John’s face was empty. “That wasn’t me reading poetry to you, that was an audition, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kate said in a small voice.

“Well?”

“It was very good. Could you bear it?”

“Of course, if we
have
to.”

“We have to.”

   Rachel was adamant about not letting him stay the night. If Patrick wanted to preserve the fiction that he and Rachel were just good friends, then preserve it. She did not even countenance making love in her rooms. She was a respectable woman staying in Loretto’s, she didn’t want any reputation, thank you very much. And Patrick always had to leave early.

Once or twice they had managed it in Coyne’s wood, and in the back of the car and in a far distant corner of the river bank on a rug. It had been exciting and uncomfortable at the same time.

“I may have to go back to New York for a week, come with me,” Patrick said suddenly one May evening, in Loretto’s.

“What for?”

“Well, we could make love properly for one thing without risk of half the town discovering us or getting curvature of the spine.” He was grinning at her in the way she loved and hadn’t seen a lot recently.

“No, I have a lot to do here.”

“You’ve nothing to do here, stop fooling yourself.”

A flash of anger. “Shall I list the things I have to do here …”

“No, don’t be tedious, Rachel, we both know why you’re here, we both think it’s a great idea, so what? Just quit pretending it’s a real career and you can’t be taken from it to come to New York for a week.”

Never had she been so angry. Never.

They both knew why she was here, it was so obvious was it?

She knew she must keep calm. Nothing must be thrown away for the very unimportant luxury of losing her temper.

“What had you in mind for us in New York?” she asked levelly.

“I don’t know.” He put on a teasing smile. “Maybe we could get ourselves to a justice of the peace and get hitched, that way I wouldn’t have to be thrown out of here like a college boy at ten o’clock at night.”

“Would you like to get married?” Her voice was calm.

“No, what man
likes
to get married? Hell, of course I don’t want to get married, Rachel, I’m too old, you’re too old, we’re fine as we are. Hey?”

No response.

“Hey? Rachel, you’re not sulking now, are you? We’re fine as we are. Why complicate it? Why think I love you more if you tie me down by some bit of paper?”

She looked at him levelly.

“Well, say something, woman, for God’s sake, have I done the one unforgivable sin saying this? You did ask me would I
like
the idea of being married. I’m telling you. Straight up.”

“Sure,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“Not much, I guess.”

“So what did I say that was so terrible?”

“I suppose what was terrible was that you thought a piece of paper would only tie
you
down, you never thought that it might also tie down whoever you married. It’s a bargain you know, marriage, not just one person being lassooed by another. It’s a sharing thing.”

“You didn’t do very well during your attempt at it,” he lashed out.

“You weren’t exactly faithful during
your
attempt at it,” she said straight back.

He was silent.

Rachel sat still in her chair. Her cream linen suit and her little sprig of purple heather worn at the lapel matched the room perfectly.

She didn’t look at Patrick, she looked across at the sun setting over Fernscourt. Her face was not sad, she was calm and entirely in command. She was thinking that this was the end of the road. She had traveled so far, so many years and so many thousands of miles and it would end now, in recriminations like so many relationships.

“It’s got nothing to do with you. With you as a person,” Patrick began.

Rachel said nothing, she didn’t even listen, it was as if she had always known it was coming, this conversation, the goodbye.

“In fact I want your company and to be with you more than anybody. You know that.”

She looked across and saw men still working in the fading light. They were getting overtime now to finish the job in time.

“Shit Rachel, why did you have to go and suggest we get married? Why couldn’t you let things go on the way they were?”

Almost reluctantly Rachel lifted her eyes from the men who were finishing the stone wall around the forecourt, and brought her glance to Patrick.

“I did not bring up marriage, Patrick,
you
did. You said we would find a justice of the peace in New York and get hitched. Please be fair.”

He was wrongfooted over this. “Yeah sure, but you said …”

“Forget what I said. Don’t let it end in a war of words—you said, I said. What does it matter? And as you said it has nothing to do with me as a person.”

She stood up, straightening her skirt. “I’ll show you out now.”

“Well …”

“Good night, Patrick. I’ll be going to Connemara in the next day or two, probably tomorrow. We’ll consider we said goodbye now. Right?”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “Listen …”

“Yes?” Her eyes were large and dark, they looked into his very directly, they didn’t dart about anxiously trying to read his face.

“Listen Rachel, I’m not worth it.”

She smiled patiently as she might have smiled at a child.

He was struggling for words.

“Even if I were, if I could … even if I did feel … there would be so many complications, there’d be all hell to pay. You have no idea how much trouble and everything …”

He looked at her, pleading, begging her to understand that their marriage would be opposed by Church and society even if he could bring himself to propose.

Rachel Fine had some dignity left. She chose not to understand what he was saying.

“Patrick, you’ve a lot of work to do tomorrow and so have I.” She kissed his cheek.

“But …”

She had closed the door behind him.

She leaned against the door as she had seen so many heroines do in movies. But no heroine had ever behaved as stupidly, she thought, no woman who ever leaned against a door like that had been such a downright idiot as Rachel Fine letting her man go like that.

Possibly to the arms of Marian Johnson. And even, when the hotel was built and he was lonely, possibly he might marry Marian Johnson. Church and society wouldn’t oppose that, they’d be delighted with it, and the divorced Jewess could be moved from the scene. She didn’t cry, she felt too empty to cry. She didn’t go to the window to see him driving off.

She just stood motionless for a long time.

   John Ryan sighed. Sometimes he wished he could discuss things with someone. Mary Donnelly was out, she hated Patrick O’Neill with a passion. He couldn’t speak to Fergus because young Slattery seemed to hold the O’Neills personally responsible for Kate’s accident and could only think of the day when the huge compensation would be paid over.

Dr. White was not a good ally. He seemed to think that John was a bit of an old misery. On more than one occasion the doctor had told him straight out that Kate’s condition could be made much more bearable if her immediate family surrounded her with hope and optimism.

No point in talking to his son, the boy was like a moonstruck calf pining over the little American girl.

He felt unwilling to bring his worries to Dara. She was still a child and it made him seem weak to tell his own daughter that he couldn’t communicate with her mother.

As he went ahead with the preparations for Ryan’s Café, John’s heart was heavy.

One afternoon when Mary was minding the bar, when Kate was busy hemming green table napkins for the café, when the children were at school and the menagerie reasonably peaceful—Leopold snoring in the garden, the cat purring like an engine on the windowsill—John sat down to write a poem.

This time he didn’t write about the land or the people who had once walked this land. This time he wrote about the cage he found himself in; the cage which he couldn’t escape from because he himself had built the bars. They were bars of concern and love and good manners. They were rules he had made so that he would not hurt anyone else. He wrote how by forcing yourself to take one course of action and adopt one set of attitudes you can also be untrue to yourself and deny your real worth.

It was the cry of a strong man who found himself trapped and couldn’t see an escape. He looked into Kate’s room—she had fallen asleep over her sewing. Gently he took the needle and green linen from her hands and arranged the cushion behind her back in the chair. He left the poem beside her and went for a long walk. He walked up to Coyne’s wood and beat at the undergrowth with a stick for a while. Then he found himself climbing that big mossy hill toward the Grange.

He went in and asked for a pint of beer.

Marian’s place was slipping, he noticed, the bar was not clean and it was late afternoon, there were still ashtrays full and glasses uncollected. The stocks hadn’t been checked, you could see some bottles had nearly run out and others had marks of liquid down their sides.

It had been years since he had come here and it used to be much smarter in the old days.

The youth serving had neither manner nor charm. He gave the wrong change and didn’t apologize when it was pointed out.

Who would stay in the Grange when there was a luxury place like Fernscourt opening three miles away? John gave a little shiver. He had heard too of the way that Patrick had interviewed the staff, how he had told them that American guests liked to be made much of, to have their names remembered. They liked people to say “You’re welcome” when they said “Thank you.” Patrick had searched Ireland for the right manager and, not being satisfied with any of the applicants, had gone to another hotel and offered Jim Costello twice his salary to leave at once and come to manage Fernscourt. Costello, an attractive go-getting young man, had given the matter five minutes’ thought, which had raised his salary even higher, and then left the hotel after serving three weeks’ notice and finding a successor for himself. Costello was the right man for Patrick O’Neill. A man who would not burn his bridges, he had left his old employers on good terms and he could always go back if Patrick and he had a falling out; on the other hand he had impressed his new boss with his quick thinking and decision. He was a man of great charm; he had drunk many a pint in Ryan’s and delighted everyone with his easy ways.