The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (157 page)

She scrambled into the car at once.

“I’m only getting in to keep you quiet,” she said.

“Aren’t I clever?” Kerry smiled at her and the car sped off up River Road and toward the stile in Coyne’s wood.

In the wood he stood and looked at her.

“I can’t take you in, I don’t know what it is. In two months you’ve changed. I missed you,” he said, head on one side, smiling to charm her.

“No of course you didn’t, you never thought of me at all. You never wrote, not once. You didn’t even come to see me when I got back even though I sent you a card to tell you.”

“I wanted to but I couldn’t, I just wasn’t able to,” he said.

Dara looked hard at him. He was so handsome. But of course he was making excuses.

“They tied your hands?” she asked.

“No, of course I should have written but I’m hopeless. No, I meant to be there to welcome you, but I had problems. A lot of things to sort out.” His face was troubled.

“What were they?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you. I was trying to get free from Donegal so that I could be here all the time. Here with you. It took a bit of organizing.”

“And have you organized it?” She sounded doubtful. She expected him to say it hadn’t worked out.

“Yes,” he said surprisingly.

“By good timing, by the most spectacular good timing in the world, I’m free, just as you come back.”

“You’re leaving Hill’s Hotel?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He did a mock salute.

“How did you do it?”

“Not easy, a lot of aggravation I assure you. I’m still tidying up loose ends. I’ve got all my things in the car, see?”

“You mean you’ve just left
now?
”

“Just now. You’re the first person I came to see.” He reached out for her.

He looked as if he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Dara moved to what she thought were safer waters.

“I’m very pleased you’re going to be around. Even if you
are
faithless and forgetful, I like you.”

“Why am I faithless and forgetful? I raced here to find you. Let me hold you.”

“Not for a moment.”

“Why? What is it?”

“I’m much older now and I understand more. I don’t want to hold you and have you … um … touch me … and then for me to say no and you to get all upset.”

“Well it’s very simple, you don’t say no, and nobody gets upset.”

Dara looked at him with her big dark eyes. “That’s not what I want, and even though I like being with you, and like it a lot, when all is said and done it
is
my body, isn’t it? And I can do what I like with it. Or not do what I like with it.”

He stood smiling at her, and admiring. “Well, well, well,” he said.

“I thought I’d rather say it now. Sort of before anything got started so that you wouldn’t storm off.”

“Very wise.” He nodded his head sagely, making fun of her.

“So, it’s a bargain, then. You don’t get all upset if I say I don’t want to go any further.”

“Sure, and you don’t get all upset, as you say, if I don’t turn up all the time like a little lap dog. I’m going to be living here now and it will have its ups and downs. Give me some time and space to sort it out. Don’t go asking a lot of questions all the time.”

“It’s a deal,” she said. “And I promise not to keep asking questions, if you’ll tell me one thing. Is it true that you still don’t love anyone but if you did love anyone it would probably be me?”

“Where did you hear that?” He smiled.

“You told me once. When we sat in your car. After I had come to look for you in that roadhouse.”

“It was true then and it’s true now,” he said. “If the situation changes in either direction, you will be the first to know.”

   The weekend would be their last one before term began.

Grace said she hoped that she would be living in the hotel by the time school started.

“Kerry never said.” Dara was puzzled.

“Kerry’s not coming to the hotel yet. I mean I’m sure he will later.” Grace seemed flustered.

“Why on earth isn’t he going to the hotel? What happened?” Dara was astounded.

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

“I’m your best friend, for heaven’s sake. I tell you everything, Grace, why don’t you tell me?”

“I haven’t even told Michael. I think there was some kind of row, I think Father didn’t want him to leave the hotel in Donegal, but he insisted; he said he had to come back to Mountfern.”

He had to come back to Mountfern. Dara hugged this to herself with delight. He had indeed gotten into trouble over it but he had braved it all because he wanted to be back in Mountfern. With Dara.

Chapter XXI

By Sunday Kate was concerned about Rachel.

She hadn’t called on Thursday to welcome Dara home. She hadn’t been in on Friday, nor Saturday.

Sunday morning Loretto called to the pub to buy two bottles of stout.

“Going to have a bit of a spree?” Kate asked as she wrapped them in brown paper.

“No, I’m having Jack Coyne to his Sunday dinner, he was very helpful to me over a lot of heavy lifting and putting up shelves. I thought I’d cook him a meal for once.”

“Terrific. Where did Rachel go, by the way?”

“Rachel?” Loretto looked shifty.

“Yes, she must have told me but I’ve forgotten. She hasn’t been in here for days, was it to Connemara this time or Dublin?”

“I don’t … um … know.” Loretto wanted to leave. She had no intention of telling Kate what had been going on.

   Later that evening Kate looked across the footbridge and saw a figure walking on the other side, along the towpath that led down from the bridge.

It was Rachel Fine, wearing a headscarf and sunglasses.

It wasn’t cold enough for a headscarf.

It wasn’t bright enough for sunglasses.

It was almost as if she didn’t want to be seen.

   On Monday morning Dara knew she would see Kerry. He had told her that the weekend would involve a massive reconciliation job with his father, so he wouldn’t be around.

Dara did herself up to the nines. She was dying to see him again. She knew too that he didn’t want her telling too many people that they met. That suited her very well, she was anxious to keep her own parents as much in the dark as possible.

   “You’re looking very flash, Dara.”

“Sophisticated is the word,” Dara said. She was alarmed if Jack Coyne thought she was flash. She must have gone too far with the lipstick.

“Like a dog’s dinner, anyway.” He was admiring.

“Considering what Leo’s dinners look like, that’s not much of a compliment.”

“Leopold’s not a dog, he’s a freak,” Jack Coyne said. “You should have let me drown him instead of having him there turning away custom.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. People love him.”

“Well, that’s debatable. Any sign of Kerry O’Neill, by the way?”

“No, why do you ask
me?
” Dara was suspicious.

“I thought you might have heard from him. Specially seeing you’re all dolled up.”

“Lord no.” She was overly casual “Kerry O’Neill isn’t my type, nor me his, I’m certain.”

“Well, they say his tastes run to the maturer lady all right, but you’d never know.”

“Maturer?”

“Much maturer. Old even, some would say. Still if you
do
see him tell him I have that poker game in mind. He mentioned one the last time he was here a few days ago.”

“Then he
was
here the other night.”

“He was certainly here at breakfast time in the morning getting aspirins and orange juice for his lady love upstairs.”

“His what?”

“No, I’m saying nothing, but I’m surprised Loretto hasn’t passed it on to your mother. Still, what with herself being your mother’s friend and everything I suppose it’s a bit complicated. Forget I said anything, will you.”

He was gone, leaving Dara fuming on River Road. She bent down and pulled up a handful of dried grass from the riverbank to wipe off her lipstick.

Jack Coyne was always a pain and she knew that Mam and Dad didn’t like Eddie and Declan hanging around his yard. But surely not even Jack Coyne could make up something like that about Kerry and Mrs. Fine unless he had some reason.

Mrs. Fine. She was older than Mam, surely. It was disgusting.

   “Oh, Patrick, this
is
a surprise!” Marian Johnson patted her hair with pleasure.

“Hardly a surprise,” Patrick growled. “It is my office.”

“No, I heard you were going to Dublin.”

“No.” Patrick was unforthcoming. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing really, I just came down to have a look around the place, to see the coach house and stables.”

“They’re outside, Marian,” Patrick said dryly. “They often are in houses like this.”

He realized he had been overly sharp.

“Come on, I’ll take you on a tour,” he said good-naturedly. “Not that there’s anything to see of course, we’re only playing at ponies and horses here, the guests will all be taken up to the Grange.”

“I know.” She patted his arm gratefully. “I don’t know what we’d do without you. You’ve changed the whole face of Mountfern.”

“That’s not what I set out to do,” he sighed.

“All for the better, of course. You’ve improved the place out of all recognition. I mean, look at poor little Loretto’s place across the river there …” Marian waved a dismissive arm at the bright shop frontage of Quinn’s grocery and greengrocery. “That used to be a real huckster’s shop, and now it’s grand enough for Kerry O’Neill to be seen coming and going at all hours of the day and night.” She smiled what she hoped was a mischievous smile.

Patrick looked at her almost pityingly. “I know, Marian. I know. Don’t wear yourself out trying to think up ways of telling me what half the town has told me already.”

“I don’t know
what
you mean.” She flushed angrily.

As Dara passed Loretto Quinn’s she saw Mrs. Fine standing at the upper window. She was looking out over the river. She hadn’t seen Dara.

For a moment Dara hesitated. Jack Coyne had been very definite. Then she shook herself. It was ludicrous. Mrs. Fine looked a hundred.

On a sudden impulse Dara decided to go up and tell her that Mam was upset. It might do some good and it couldn’t do any harm.

Loretto was out the back somewhere, so Dara ran straight upstairs.

“Mrs. Fine?” She tapped lightly on the door and went in.

Rachel Fine turned around from the window. However badly she looked from down below she looked worse now. Dara could hardly hide her shock.

“Sorry, Dara I wasn’t expecting you. You look very nice.”

“Thanks Mrs. Fine … um … Are you all right and everything?”

“I’ve had a bit of a cold, I think. Flu perhaps.”

“Oh, I see. Mam was wondering where you were.”

There was a silence.

“Well, I’ll be off then, I suppose,” Dara said awkwardly.

“You enjoyed France? It … it must have made you grow up a lot.”

“Yes, I got lonely a bit of course, I didn’t really expect that. I missed everyone here. All the time.”

Another silence.

“Mam’s very fond of you, Mrs. Fine, she wouldn’t be afraid you’d give her an old cold.”

To Dara’s fright, big tears came into Rachel Fine’s eyes.

   Rachel went to her bedroom and sat in front of the dressing table mirror. She looked old and tense, she looked lined and pathetic. Methodically she removed her make-up, cleansed her skin, applied a gel that was meant to restore the cells and carefully put on her make-up again.

As she did the feathery strokes around her eyes, Rachel Fine began to wonder was she going mad. First avoiding her friend for days and then making herself up like a call girl to go and see a kind woman in a wheelchair who wouldn’t notice if she arrived dressed in a pillow case.

Kate was a little prickly at first.

“I must say it’s nice to see you. Dara will be glad to know you called.”

“I’ve seen Dara. She told me you were wondering why I hadn’t been in.”

“I didn’t send her with that message.” Kate’s eyes flashed.

“I know,” Rachel said wearily.

The first silence they had ever known fell between them. Eventually Rachel spoke.

“It’s no use, Kate, I’m empty, drained, there’s no me to talk to. I’ll go away, you’ve nothing to say to me, nobody has.”

Kate’s eyes blazed with anger. “I have nothing to say to you! Don’t give me that. Take offense if you bloody want to, sulk, imagine yourself wronged, insulted in some way, but don’t give me that about my having nothing to say, I have a million things to say, to ask, to tell, to share. I’m not the one who slides past the door, I’m not the one doing the avoiding. I can’t avoid anybody for God’s sake. I don’t have that little luxury anymore.”

“I didn’t think you’d be upset.”

“No of course not, what right has a vegetable to be upset? Poor old Kate, she’s lucky she had anyone come and visit her at all.”

“Kate, you know …”

“I know nothing. I’m scared sick about this café I’ve talked them all into doing. I don’t want to make John into some kind of clown doing party pieces for Americans, the next thing we’ll have his cap on the floor and ask them to throw dimes into it. I don’t want the boys to be serving cakes and potato bread in case their friends call them sissies. I don’t want Michael to be besotted by Grace with her honeyed words and smiles. I don’t want that bloody Kerry O’Neill raising his little finger and taking the clothes off my daughter, my beautiful Dara, and then throwing her aside … So now tell me about the wonderful trouble-free family life I have.”

“What’s the worst bit?” Rachel asked suddenly.

“I think it’s Kerry. He’s playing her like a fish on a line. He’ll have her as soon as he wants to, he’s the kind that gets everything he wants, and doesn’t care about who he hurts on the way.”

“You’re right.”

“I’m so frightened, and I wanted to talk to you, and now you’ve turned against me too. I’m sorry to be such a fool.” Kate groped around ineffectually for her handkerchief and cried salt tears down her newly powdered face.

Rachel’s eyes were full of tears. “I couldn’t come near you because I didn’t want you to know how stupid I’ve been. I’ve done something so stupid you wouldn’t believe it, I was too ashamed …”

“You don’t have to tell …”

“It’s Kerry … I’ve done something so stupid … so terribly stupid …”

Hand in hand the two women sat in the darkening evening, and Kate patted the beautifully ringed hands of Rachel Fine, who told how she had put herself in Kerry’s power.

   Tony McCann did not have a bank account. But he had been in and out of this particular branch so often to get change, to cash checks made out to him by other people, that he always regarded it as his bank. He had missed it during the strike.

He handed over the check for a thousand pounds.

“In the money, I see?” the cashier had said to him pleasantly.