The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (153 page)

Kerry smiled as if he could see into her mind. It was a knowing smile full of confidence.

“And how long are you going to be with us?” he asked genially.

Rachel was shocked by the insolence of his tone. So shocked that it made her speak sharply.

“I was just going to ask
you
the same question. Are you with us for long or do you have to get back to Donegal?”

Kerry smiled even more broadly; he sensed a fight and he welcomed it.

“Oh,
I’m
here for the duration, Rachel, this is my home.”

She controlled herself with difficulty. “Well of course, and has your father decided what part you will play in the hotel?” Polite interest, but letting him know that everyone realized it was Patrick who called the shots.

“I’m sure you’re much more aware of what my father has decided or has not decided than anyone.”

She smiled coldly but made no reply. From years of training herself not to over-react, not to fly off the handle, Rachel had perfected a calm and measured response even to situations that were outside the bounds of any manners or fairness.

“My involvement is always in ideas for design, and sometimes it’s an uphill job.” She forced a little laugh that she did not feel. “I can tell you the designer is the one who always ends up taking the blame—it’s too stark, it’s too cold, it’s not Irish enough—my, but you need extraordinary patience in this job. Lucky I have it!” Again her tinkle was very false and again she felt that Kerry recognized this.

“Perhaps you’ve been too patient.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know, hanging around too long, hoping that when this is over—when that is over—the world will settle down as
you
would like it, as
you
design it.”

She wondered how much more of this she could take, this pretense of deliberately misunderstanding his discourtesy.

“At least the day of the opening is in sight,” she said “We’ll see then if it works.”

“And what will you do then? Go back to Brooklyn?”

“I live in Manhattan.”

“Sure, but you
do
live in New York, will you go directly back there? After the hotel opens?”

His question echoed so much her own bitter thoughts and decisions of earlier that evening that it brought a heavy, weary feeling to Rachel. It was as if she suddenly decided to give up the bright sunny response.

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “I’m not sure.”

“Rachel!” He was teasing. “Not sure? Of course you are, you’ve every step planned out, haven’t you?”

“No. Not every step.”

“Most of them then. You’ve been part of my father’s life for a very long time. A lot of people didn’t rate your chances very highly.”

“I don’t know how you could know any of this. You were a child.”

“Sure I was a child, I didn’t know really, not for certain, not until my mother’s last illness. That’s when I knew.”

Rachel looked at him impassively.

Kerry poured another large goblet of whiskey, his hand trembling slightly.

“Those nights when she was alone in the house, and he was with you—in Manhattan, as you remind me. Out until the early hours of the morning. Sometimes I stood on the landing and watched him come in, go into the bathroom and rinse his mouth, freshen himself up before he came up to her bedroom. She was always awake, always waiting for him to come back from you. From your apartment in Manhattan.”

Rachel looked at his white and angry face.

“He sat in a chair drinking whiskey, that’s why he used a mouth rinse, it was not to hide traces of me. He sat talking about her illness, about you all. That’s what I gave him in those months, just a chair, a whiskey, and an ear for his troubles.”

“He had plenty of ears at home if he had come there.”

“Sure he had, but you were so young, your mother was so frail, he couldn’t …”

Kerry’s eyes blazed at her suddenly.

“Don’t you dare to talk of my mother, don’t bring her in casually like that … don’t speak of her.”

“Kerry, this is absurd.
You
mentioned your mother, you mentioned something that has upset you in the past, I was merely telling you what it was really like …”

“I don’t want your version of what things were really like. If it were a true version it would be fairly sordid.”

“You are unfair to your father and to everyone if you persist in believing all this …”

“Oh, it was all hand-holding and platonic. Don’t be pathetic, Rachel.”

“I am
not
pathetic, I am telling you what is true. During the time of Kathleen’s last—”

“I told you not to mention her name.”

Her eyes filled with sudden unexpected tears. She turned her head away in a vain attempt to hide them.

Kerry put his glass down on the table. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t trust herself to speak.

“I mean it. I am sorry I guess I’m upset. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

She stood up wordlessly as if to say that his visit was over. But Kerry decided that it was not over yet.

“Please, I said I spoke out of turn. Please?”

He had such a persuasive way, she noticed almost dispassionately. Kerry believed that if you were charming enough in sufficient doses it would open every door. And he had usually been right.

“I didn’t intend to come here and harangue you, I intended—”

“What did you intend?”

“I guess I wanted to know what was happening. Is that so bad? Things are fairly unsettled. Father has me up at the other end of the country, he’s so unapproachable, he tells me none of his plans, I hear from this side one set of things, from another side a different … It sure is a rumor factory here, isn’t it?” He grinned companionably, the shouting put well behind.

“And what do they say on all these different sides?”

“Oh, some say that my father is the object of a hate campaign, vandalism, slogans, mysterious happenings; others say that since the prophet Elijah there hasn’t been such a welcome appearance. Then they say that the hotel will be open on time and that it hasn’t a chance of opening; that Father’s going to marry Marian Johnson and she’s going to change her hairstyle and get some new clothes, or that he’s going to marry you and you’re going to keep all your nice clothes the way they are but change your religion … And I hear that he has hundreds of bookings from the States and that he has no bookings … So do you see why I came to have a talk in case you could set me straight on some of these issues, anyway?”

She looked at him, and realized that he was making it all up, there was no way that people in Mountfern would confide such things to the son of Patrick O’Neill. But he was right in his summing up of the different viewpoints.

Kerry patted the chair beside him. “Come on, Rachel, sit down and talk to me. I won’t get nasty again. Promise.”

She sat down, knowing it was a very dangerous thing to do.

“There, that’s better. And now have a drink. Come
on
Rachel, if you’re going to be an honorary Irish person you’ll have to learn to drink.”

It was easy and comforting to sit there with him instead of sitting on her own.

He had admitted his temper and his feelings. It was only natural that a boy should love his mother and want to keep his memories of her almost frozen in the viewpoint of the troubled teenager that he was at the time.

Rachel sipped the drink that he mixed for her, a whiskey and dry ginger. It tasted sweet and warming, not like the wine she sometimes sipped at functions, which was bitter and alien. Here in the sunset looking across the river with the handsome boy admitting his petulant temper and smiling at her like a conspirator it was easy to sit and talk and drink the sweet, fizzy, harmless liquor.

Kerry talked of the hotel in Donegal, how lonely he was up there and how the place seemed so remote. He often went to Derry across the border, it was exciting somehow to be in a place that was ruled by another country, to see other flags flying. Most of the people in Derry were basically Irish, he explained to Rachel, and they felt much more at home in the republic. He had met a few guys who were easy to get along with there. Rough guys, not the kind who would be welcomed with open arms in the front doors of Fernscourt, he said scathingly. Still, they were alive all through, which was more than you could say for many of the people you met in this country, north or south. Rachel took this to mean that they were able to play cards with him or point him to some kind of game down town.

And Rachel found herself telling Kerry more than she intended to about some of the problems in getting deliveries in time and how she always tried to shield Patrick from the more troublesome side of things, partly because he had so much to think about he really could not be expected to give time to wondering why some weavers in Connemara had not been able to come up with the consignment they had promised months back. And partly because any complaining or even mild criticism always seemed like a condemnation of his decision to come back to this land and build his dream castle.

Together they sighed amicably about the difficulties of dealing with the great Patrick O’Neill. There was none of the usual fencing between them and no hint of the flash of anger and the instructions not to speak his dead mother’s name.

Rachel told of how Maurice, the Ryans’ missing tortoise, had been discovered in the hen house where apparently he had been living for months in total contentment. And Kerry told how he had discovered that Jimbo Doyle really was making it big on the ballad-singing circuit; he was even booked for an appearance in Donegal, which had to be the Vegas of Ireland.

The sun sank behind the big house and the trees. The river took on its black rippling look where it seemed like a dark ribbon instead of a living, flowing thing.

Somewhere, possibly from down near the bridge, they heard the sound of a fiddle playing, an air that sounded sad and plaintive, but all Irish airs seemed sad to Rachel and Kerry. The boy reached across and patted her hand. There were tears in Rachel’s eyes again but this time she wasn’t hiding them, they fell down her face.

“I could have fit in here, I could have stayed and been part of it,” she wept.

“But now you think you’ll go back?” His voice was soft, like honey.

“I decided today I’ll have to go back. He thinks he doesn’t need me, he thinks he can manage on his own …” She let a sob come through her voice.

“I know, I know.”

“You can’t know.”

“Well I do, he doesn’t need me either. He never did.”

Rachel looked at him, tear-stained. He was so different tonight, vulnerable, understanding.

“I think he finds it hard to express himself to you …” she began, trying as usual to build bridges.

“I’m only his son, his flesh and blood. It shouldn’t be so very hard to express himself.”

“He does care for you … I know.”

“And I know how fond of you he is too. I didn’t always want to see it, I can tell you, but …”

He looked so straightforward. Rachel felt fuzzy and a little confused, but she could see that Kerry was being genuine toward her and she wanted to reassure him that he was important to his father.

And now Kerry was admitting that she, Rachel, was a part of Patrick too. She was certainly a little heady.

She placed her hand on Kerry’s knee. He lifted it to admire her rings.

“These are very beautiful,” he said softly. “Did you choose these yourself or were they a gift?”

She saw no guile in the words. It was a question. She held her hand away and admired the topaz and the emerald.

“Your father bought me the topaz a long long time ago. The emerald I bought myself. I have a little garnet too, but I don’t wear them all at once.”

“No, no.” He was holding her hand and admiring the way the light caught the stones.

“It means fidelity, a topaz,” she said dreamily “I remember that very well.”

“Is it your birthstone?” Kerry asked interestedly.

He was so relaxed and easy to talk to tonight, Rachel wondered why she had ever thought him prickly and difficult.

“No, I’m Gemini—that’s the emerald.” She turned her hand in his to examine the green stone.

“I got the emerald because of that and also because it means ‘success in love.’ I guess I wasn’t so lucky there”

Kerry said nothing, he fingered the tie tack he always wore these days. Even when he wasn’t wearing a formal shirt and tie he seemed to have this pin on his lapel somehow.

“My, that’s a topaz also,” Rachel realized for the first time.

“Yes. Topaz, that’s right.” His voice seemed strained.

“And was
that
a gift or did you buy it, like I bought my emerald?” She was being giggly now.

“It was both, in a way. I paid for it to be made into a tie tack, but it was a gift, from my mother. Father gave her a topaz for fidelity also, you see. He never asked where it was when she died, I don’t know if he realizes this is where it ended up.”

Rachel felt a sudden lurch in her stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said, staggering to her feet.

   Loretto Quinn was serving Jack Coyne next morning when Kerry appeared in the shop. He was in his stocking feet, walking lightly, and his clothes were crushed and rumpled.

“Hi Loretto. Well hi Jack, how are things?”

“Things are reasonable.” Jack wasn’t able to reply as quickly as usual, he was so startled to see O’Neill’s son come in casually through the back of the shop, meaning that he must have been upstairs.

Upstairs with O’Neill’s woman.

“So they are with me, pretty reasonable. Loretto, can I have some oranges please, perhaps half a dozen … Sorry Jack, am I cutting in ahead of you?”

“No, please.” Jack could hardly wait to see what else the young Kerry O’Neill was ordering.

Kerry said he’d take eggs, bread, four slices of that really great bacon—how could anyone in America
think
they had tasted bacon until they came to Ireland? And he’d better take a packet of those aspirin tablets too.

He smiled at them both, punched Jack playfully, and said that the little red sports car was a dream on wheels and he thought he’d either have to buy it so that it would be his own or possibly play Jack a game of poker for it.