The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (152 page)

“It’s no act, Kate. You are badly injured in the name of Jesus, will you stop being the bravest girl in the school about this and start thinking of your future and your family’s future?”

“You’re cross with me.”

“I’m furious with you. You think it’s not quite nice somehow to let anyone know how much your life was changed that day, how much your chances lessened. One day, one day when it’s too late you’ll wish you’d listened, you will be very sorry then. In three or four years’ time when the pub might need a new roof, or when Dara might wonder why there was no money to send her to university or the kids might want to go on a school trip to Rome or John, God forbid, might get a virus pneumonia and be off work for four months and you’d have to pay someone to come in and run the pub … Won’t it be a great consolation to yourself to say that way back in 1966 when you had your chance, your one chance to explain your case, you were too refined, too well-brought-up or some kind of bullshit to get the compensation you and your family deserved? Fine warm comfort these high and mighty principles will be to you and your family then.”

His eyes blazed with rage on her behalf.

Kate changed immediately. She sat upright in her chair and reached for a notebook.

“You are perfectly right as always,” she said without a trace of irony. “Tell me what kind of things will we cover with Mr. Kennedy when he comes.”

   Kevin Kennedy wore an expensive suit but it was crumpled, and his shoes needed a good shine. Kate looked at him and decided that he was a bachelor whose housekeeper was lazy and indifferent. He had a big mane of greying hair, a rather theatrical bow tie and nicotine-stained fingers which groped restlessly for more cigarettes still Kate judged him to be about fifty, and realized after a very short time that he was much sharper than he gave the impression of being. He seemed to shamble through explanations and accounts but yet he remembered everything that had been said and came back to points which she had been sure he had forgotten.

He was very good at drawing her out. Kate found herself responding easily to his questions about the limitations to her life caused by the accident. She agreed that their earnings were considerably diminished since she could no longer work for Fergus in the mornings and since they had to pay out a salary to Mary Donnelly. Kate told how her concentration had lessened, she found it very hard to read a book to its end, whereas once she always had her nose in some book from the library.

Fergus was startled to hear this, she had never said it to him. But that was often Kevin’s gift, he managed to make people tell things. Very often when he was on the other side of a case cross-examining, his gentle persuasive voice made people tell things they wished to keep secret. But here in Kate’s green room Kevin Kennedy was slowly drawing the picture he would need.

Fergus sighed with admiration as Kevin talked to the Ryan couple about how their life had changed, the pain, the huge incapacity, the lack of being able to act as a real mother to the children the way other mothers could, like going up to the school or joining in any outings and activities.

“And of course your normal married life, the life between the two of you that you would have expected to have?” Kevin Kennedy was gentle.

Fergus felt a hot flush coming up his neck.

Long ago, long before Kate’s accident, he had put the thought of her sex life with John Ryan far from his mind. He knew it must exist but he never wanted to think about it, and yet it used to come back to him, the notion of the two of them entwined. He assumed that since the accident it had been out of the question. To his embarrassment John was beginning to stammer.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that it was exactly over … you know, sort of …”

Fergus felt the bile rise in his throat. Surely John could never be so gross and unfeeling as to expect Kate … No, it wasn’t possible. He felt unsteady for a moment.

“I’ll slip out and get something from the bar …” he said.

“Thanks, Fergus.” Kate was cool. “I asked Mary to get a tray ready, perhaps you could bring it to us …”

He went out, loosening his collar.

“Kate said she thought sandwiches and a bottle of the good Jameson,” Mary suggested. “I have it here ready and all, I didn’t want to go and disturb you.”

“That’s good of you.”

“Are you all right, Fergus?” She looked genuinely concerned.

“Yes, I’m just tired. Give me a large one while I’m waiting.”

“What are you waiting for?” Mary obediently poured him a double and waved away the pound note he offered.

“I don’t know really, just giving them a chance to talk, I suppose,” he said, wondering how long would Kevin Kennedy spend on lack of conjugal rights, and compensation for same. Wildly he wondered whether John was saying that really it wasn’t fair to blame Patrick O’Neill in this area because he and Kate were able to have a very satisfactory coupling despite everything.

Fergus felt his hands shaking and he gripped the glass tightly with both of them.

“It must be very hard, this kind of thing, when you’re a friend of the family as well.” Mary was sympathetic.

“Have a drink, Mary.”

“No thanks, Fergus, I don’t think …”

“Have a bloody drink.”

“Very well, keep your hair on. I’ll have a vodka and tonic, thank you very much.”

“Not at all. Good luck.”

Mary raised her glass solemnly. “Good luck, really and truly good luck. They’re relying on you.”

“No they’re not, they think they’re grand, they think it’s lovely to be financially ruined and crippled.”

“Shush now.”

“I won’t shush. And anyway nobody would rely on me, it’s Kevin they should rely on.”

“Oh him?” Mary sniffed. “From Dublin, and a man.”

“Yes, I suppose those are points against him. I wonder has it crossed your mind that I too am a man, Mary. Perhaps you should take that into consideration when you and I are having these little social drinks.”

“I know you’re a man, Fergus,” Mary said.

“I’m glad someone does, I’ve almost forgotten myself.”

“But you’re not a real man, not like ordinary men.” Mary was full of beaming approval. “Here, will you take this tray in that you came out for or they’ll think you fell into bad company.”

“You’re not the worst, Mary,” Fergus said, picking up the tray and carrying it back into the room.

They seemed to have exhausted sexual dysfunction or the possibility of suing for removal of conjugal rights. They were on to the topic of what they could expect to be awarded.

The tray was left beside Kate on the big round table which Rachel had found and covered with a floor-length green cloth. Nowhere else in Ryan’s pub had the elegance of this room.

They looked like four ordinary people having a drink, Fergus thought as Kate poured generous measures and added a splash of water from their only cut-glass crystal jug. No sign of their business together.

   Sheila Whelan came back quietly by bus.

It should only be two hours and three quarters, but the bus visited every townland on the way. It took mountainy routes and it went almost full circles into the countryside to pick up and drop farmers from crossroads that were off the beaten track. There was plenty of time to sit and think.

Think about Joe with his gaunt face and his sad tales clutching her from the hospital bed.

It hadn’t turned out as he had hoped, he told her. He wanted to come home to Mountfern. To die.

“There’s no question of dying, Joe,” she had soothed him, her words automatic, her expression effortlessly kind. Even to the man who had left her all those years ago, hurling abuse to justify himself as he went.

His life had not indeed turned out as he hoped. There were children, four—two sons and two daughters—children that Sheila was not able to bear, and he had scorned the idea of adopting and raising another man’s sons.

The woman he had left everything for was a restless woman. The children had been reared wild, left to run wild. None of them would settle in anything, school or work. The eldest boy had gone to England a few hours ahead of the Guards, it turned out.

Joe had got to thinking about Mountfern in recent weeks. He thought of all the people he knew there, Jack Leonard and Tom Daly. He hadn’t heard that Tom Daly’s little girl had met with such a terrible accident. Sheila told him about Maggie, but his mind wandered away in the middle of the story. She stopped after a while when she saw he wasn’t concentrating. It was too sad a tale anyway.

He remembered Jack Coyne and that nice dour Dr. White. Was old man Slattery around? No, well the son was a grand young fellow. And of course the canon. It would be good to wander down River Road to Ryan’s like in the old days. He had heard of the new hotel across the river, there was a lot of talk about it in the papers. He hadn’t known of Kate Ryan’s accident but he was sure that they’d got great compensation.

And since there were no real ties with Dublin, no—for all that he had a home—it was a house really—and she would understand that he wanted to go home at the end. She’d probably be pleased for him When all was said and done. So could he come back to Mountfern? Could he come home?

Sheila had talked to the nurse who recognized instantly that Sheila Whelan was someone to whom the truth was told. She heard that Joe had weeks and possibly only days to live She had confirmed what she suspected—that he would never leave his hospital bed.

She told him he could come home.

She begged him not to worry what people would say and what people would think. Nowadays, she said, people were much too busy with their own business to worry about the middle-aged postmistress and her husband. She said that Dr. White would be able to continue any treatment.

Joe’s eyes had filled with tears at her goodness. He had never meant to hurt her in the past, he had never wanted to be cruel.

She said she understood. She sat and held his hand until he fell asleep. Three days she was there helping him make his plans, telling him where they would put his bed.

He said it would be good in a way for her to have a man around the house again, and that was the only time she had cried. The tears had come down her face and she wept at the useless lives most people led and how little anyone understood about anyone else.

She asked the nurse to make sure that nobody was kept away because of her visits but the nurse shook her head and said that poor Mr. Whelan’s wife wasn’t in the best of health and wasn’t able to come and see him. Sheila read this to mean that the woman who had borne Joe Whelan’s four children suffered from her nerves or drink or both. She discovered that there were neighbors who would supervise the funeral, kind people in the small Dublin street who had known nothing of any previous existence in Mountfern.

When he fell into his coma and she was assured that he would not know anyone around him again, she left as quietly as she had come and took the bus back to Mountfern. She did not feel saintly or unselfish; she felt a weary tiredness. And for the first time in her life she felt something like anger. Anger about people who stood by and let things happen. At herself for wasting all those years thinking that Joe knew what he was doing and that there was some sort of plan. She might have been better not to have been so dignified and discreet. She could have gone after him and fought for him. And got him back.

Or she could have gotten a court order and got maintenance from him if she hadn’t valued her good name so highly and been too proud to ask for it. That way she would have strong shoes to wear instead of making do with patched soles and avoiding puddles. She would have had the money to go to Rome when the diocese was making the pilgrimage. She could have given Mary Donnelly something better than she had, some holiday or some outfit to get her over the worst days of the pain, the days when you need some distractions.

Instead she was coming back on the bus to Mountfern where nobody except Kate Ryan would know whether Joe Whelan was alive or dead. She would ask Canon Moran to say a mass for his soul, but she would just say that it was for a friend. It wasn’t that the canon would ever tell anyone but she had been so silent and secretive about this, she would keep it that way to the end.

But for the rest of her life she was not going to sit and take a back seat. She was going to take part in things, not just observe them.

Chapter XX

Patrick finished the steak and kidney pie. “That was quite excellent, Miss Hayes.”

“It’s a pleasure to serve you, Mr. O’Neill.”

He sat by himself at the table. Grace was having supper at the Ryans’. It was a night of a cookery lesson, she had explained. He knew it was just another chance to see young Michael but he pretended to take the cookery classes very seriously. Kerry was miles away in Donegal. When Olive Hayes had gone back to her kitchen he sat quite alone. As he sat many an evening.

It would be different when the hotel opened, he told himself. There would not be this stark realization that he found himself reading through his meals, and sitting idly after them, fiddling with the television, if he didn’t get out more work. He had discouraged Marian from suggesting outings, and now she had ceased trying to interest him in little trumped-up schemes. He wished he could ask Rachel here.

He stood and stretched … the evening seemed to stretch as well.

He had put off so long and so firmly any thought about what would happen to Rachel when the hotel opened that he found himself doing it again automatically. But tonight somehow he felt able to think about it.

She
could
take instruction. And if she did, then there would be no problem about her previous marriage, since it wasn’t a Catholic marriage. Hell, it wasn’t even a Christian marriage.

And she
could
fit in here, there were ways where she seemed to have adapted better than he had.

Rachel got on so well with Kate Ryan, with Sheila Whelan, with Loretto Quinn. Brian Doyle said that she was the only person connected with the entire enterprise who might be considered sane. Mary Donnelly, that madwoman running a one-woman band for the annihilation of men, said that Rachel was one in a million.

Why did he hesitate to ask her even to something simple like supper in his own house?

He knew why, it was out of guilt.

He still felt that this woman was part of his past. He had gone willingly and excitedly to her arms while the children had stayed in a big white house in New Jersey with their always-ailing mother.

And Rachel wasn’t Irish, or part of the great scheme. That’s why he kept her at such a long arm’s length.

   Dara’s postcard arrived at Hill’s Hotel for Kerry. It sounded very casual with an attempt to be sardonic:

   I heard there was a bank strike at home, I didn’t know there was a postal strike as well!! But then how does everyone else manage to write to me, I wonder? It’s a puzzlement, as they say in
The King and I
.

France is magnifique.

I’ll be back in Mountfern on the last Thursday in August.

Love Dara.

   Kerry read it and smiled. He would have taken a hotel postcard and written straight back, but he had a lot on his mind. He had lost a great deal on three consecutive nights.

It was time to call Father.

But if he won tonight, it would all be sorted out. No need to tell Father about anything.

   Tony McCann was apologetic. If it were up to him there wouldn’t be a problem in the world, Kerry knew that, didn’t he? If it were only McCann himself or Charlie it would have been a no-problem area. But
these
fellows … McCann’s voice trailed away a little. For the first time Kerry began to feel a little afraid.

   “Do you not have any idea where he is, Miss Hayes?”

“No, Kerry, he doesn’t tell me where he goes. He just said that he would be back late.”

“Whatever time he comes in, do you hear me, whatever time, can you get him to call me?”

“I’ll leave a note, certainly. I don’t want to intrude but is there anything wrong?”

“No no—heavens no.” His voice was falsely bright.

“It’s just that you sound so urgent somehow. I wouldn’t want Mr. O’Neill to be alarmed.”

“No no, it’s nothing.” He sounded impatient.

“I’ll leave him a note then in case I’m gone to bed. I’ll say you’d like him to ring back but it’s not urgent.”

Kerry spoke very slowly and deliberately. “Tell him it
is
urgent but there hasn’t been an accident or anything. It’s very urgent.”

“Very well, Kerry, whatever you say.”

   Patrick came in at eleven-thirty.

He had spent a very pleasant evening with Rachel. He called at Loretto’s and asked whether she would like a drive. He wanted to look at the ruined abbey in case it would be a place they could take the guests on the barge that he was going to operate from the new landing stage.

“You’re going to have night boat trips?” Rachel was surprised.

“No, but maybe it’s not a bad idea. They could go through the trees and along the river, the only light … the fireflies in the darkness.”

“They don’t have them here,” Rachel said.

“Fireflies? Of course they do.”

“No. Didn’t you notice?”

“Anyway, will you come with me in the car and let’s see if this abbey is worth our time?”

“It’s been around since the fourteenth century, I think it might be worth a glance all right. Let me get sensible shoes.”

They had walked easily and companionably like the old days. Three times he was about to tell her that he wanted them to be more open and seen to be close friends. Three times he stopped himself.

After all he wasn’t yet ready to offer her anything much, and he would clear it with his children before changing things even slightly. He left things as they were.

   Next morning up at the hotel Jim Costello came to Patrick, there was an urgent call from his son in Donegal.

“Would you like a bit of peace and quiet to take it?”

“No thanks, Jim, it won’t be long.”

Jim had sensed the tetchiness in Kerry O’Neill’s voice. He moved away.

“Did she not leave you my message?”

“That’s some greeting, Kerry. Yes, Miss Hayes did leave a message but it was late when I got in.”

“What time?”

“Eleven-thirty.” Patrick took a deep breath. “I went for a walk with Rachel Fine up around the old ruined abbey … she thinks that we could …”

“I’ll hear Mrs. Fine’s thoughts another time, Father. I’m in a bit of trouble. Financially.”

Patrick’s voice was ice cold. “Yes, Kerry?”

“And I would be grateful if you would bail me out.”

A silence.

“Are you still there, Father?”

“Yes. I’m still here.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Will you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You
said
you would.”

“No, I said I would discuss it, we are discussing it. How much?”

“A thousand pounds.”

Patrick was shocked. Literally shocked. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“Well find it then.”

“We made a deal.”

“We made no deal, I said I’d discuss it. I will not hand out a year’s wages to an insolent young punk who calls and demands it as if it were his right.”

“Father, this is serious.”

“You bet your fucking life it’s serious,” Patrick said.

“I thought you were going to—”

“I thought my father was going to do a lot of things for me too, like getting me enough to eat and shoes to wear. But it didn’t happen. Learn the hard way, Kerry.”

“Aren’t you going to discuss it?”

“Yes I will discuss it. When you come back.” Patrick’s anger was ebbing a little.

“I could come back today.”

“No you could not. You can stay there and do the work you are meant to be doing. I will discuss it in a few weeks’ time, when you’re back here for the opening. Meanwhile get out of it the best you can, and if you steal from Hill like you stole from me, I’ll see you go to jail.”

There was a silence.

“Life isn’t easy, Kerry, it’s a matter of finding ways around things; and if one thing doesn’t work, try something else. You’ll discover that.”

“Yes, I probably will,” Kerry said slowly.

   Rachel Fine sat in her sitting room and watched the evening fall on Fernscourt.

She felt very tired. The game was too arduous. She blew cold, he ran after her—she showed some response, he ran away. It was so immature, so unsatisfying. Somehow tonight, for the very first time, Rachel was prepared to stop the struggle, the never-ending spiral of hope, the belief that things were going well.

He was a man who hadn’t enough room in his heart for a full-time loving relationship. He never had time for it with his wife Kathleen either. Whether she had been frail or not he would still have wandered, and it was not without importance to note that he had wandered to a business colleague rather than find a sheerly social relationship.

She sighed, thinking of the years behind and the years ahead. The music on her record player was low so as not to disturb Loretto below. Chopin, soothing and familiar. Perhaps even at this late stage of her life she might even take up the piano again. When she was back in New York.

Would she be back in New York?

Yes, sooner or later. Why not make it sooner, go at her own time? See the opening just because she had worked so hard for it. Give him one ultimatum so that he would never say he didn’t know, and then go. But she had to be prepared to go, not to give herself nine lives like a cat, otherwise what was the point of giving ultimatums?

There was a soft knock on her door. Loretto would never have let him upstairs, and yet who else could it be?

She walked wearily over to the door and opened it.

There stood Kerry O’Neill, the boy she had always hoped would be her stepson one day.

He leaned against the jamb of the door. “Hi Rachel.”

“Hello Kerry.”

She made no move to ask him in.

“How are you?”

“Fine, and you?” They still stood there.

“Reasonably fine, I’d be better with a drink, to be very frank.”

“Well you know me, Kerry, a non-drinking lady. But I’m sure if you were to go to Ryan’s …”

“I don’t want to go to Ryan’s,” he said sharply.

She shrugged.

“Surely my father keeps something to drink here.”

“Your father lives in the lodge, Kerry. I live here.”

“So you never see him?”

“At work.”

“I want to talk to you, not him.”

“I told you I don’t have anything to drink.”

“I know. It doesn’t matter, I have.” He waved a bottle of whiskey. “Now can I come in?”

   Mary thought she had seen the blond figure of young Kerry O’Neill slip quietly across the footbridge earlier, but since he hadn’t come into the pub and there was nowhere else he could be heading, she must have been mistaken.

   Rachel stood back and let Kerry come into her sitting room. He stood looking at it with his cool objective eye.

“Lovely,” he said at last.

“Thank you.”

“I mean it, you have wonderful ways, Rachel. Anyone else would have ruined this place and filled it with clutter.”

He sat in the chair by the window where Patrick always sat and looked across in the darkening evening at Fernscourt.

“I can provide a glass and water,” Rachel said.

“Great, this is far too elegant a place for a man to sit drinking from a bottle.”

He was so engaging, just like his father. His compliments were not so frequent and lavish that they sounded automatic. Instead, they made people feel very touched and grateful to be praised.

She brought a tray to the little low table—Irish crystal glasses and a jug. A pretty china bowl with ice in it, a tray of cheese biscuits and for herself an orange drink. She sat down opposite him. She had not invited him, but since he was here she would be gracious. Being a hostess was second nature to Rachel Fine, she had waited on Kerry’s father for many years in the same elegant way.

“Your health,” she said politely, raising her glass of orange.

“And yours.” His eyes were bright, he raised the very large goblet of neat Irish whiskey and looked at the patterns of the glass admiringly.

Rachel was very good at not being the first to speak. She had learned that first from her mother, who said that the men in the family were the ones to be considered, and then from many many nights waiting to assess Patrick’s mood before she spoke. She knew how to leave a perfectly agreeable silence that would encourage the other person to begin.