The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (166 page)

Rachel lying back on the bed, confused with unaccustomed drink, laughing maybe, in a silly way. Her thick hair spread out on the pillow, and Kerry, his own son, leaning over her. It was
not
believable. He hit his desk with his fist. He would not believe it.

He had always been able to cope before, or if there was something that he couldn’t deal with he had put it out of his mind. He had decided not to think about Kathleen’s illness when he was not with her, and so never in his long drives to work or in his business day had he let it come into his mind. After he had beaten and fired his first dishonest manager, he had allowed no thoughts of the man, no regrets to come back to him at any stage. Kerry’s expulsion from school, his stealing the silver, these he had managed to banish. But the image of his son and Rachel was too horrifying to get rid of.

Everything was turning out like a nightmare, just a few short weeks before the day he had dreamed about since he was a boy. The day he would open his own huge palace on the spot where the landlords had once driven his grandfather to an emigrant ship.

   Fergus Slattery sat alone in his office too. Deirdre Dunne with her usual discreet face, pursed lips and habit of looking left and right before she delivered any utterance had said that it was an excellent result and he must be very satisfied.

Now, as he sat by himself and tried to give time to the other files that were on his desk, Fergus let his mind go back over it all.

He still wished that O’Neill had never come to Mountfern. There was nothing the man could do which made Fergus glad that he had invested the savings of a life’s work and investment into changing the face of the village his grandfather left.

Why couldn’t he have just come back for holidays, like these people he was hoping to find to fill his hotel? He could have worn a shirt with shamrocks on it, bought a fake shillelagh, had his picture taken beside the tinkers with their donkeys, or at a cottage where he might conceivably have roots.

But O’Neill had to do it his way, no matter who got hurt. And to Fergus’s mind a lot of people had. Not just Kate Ryan.

People had changed and become greedy. Everyone seemed to be doing things for the wrong reason. Look at his own poor Miss Purcell, for instance, talking about having to do up the Sacred Heart Altar in the church and get rid of all the damp to smarten the place up for the visitors. If it was important to spend all that money getting rid of damp around the small side altar, and Fergus didn’t think it was one of life’s essentials, then it should be done for God surely, or for the people who were going to pray in the church, Mountfern people, so they wouldn’t have to see weeping walls and fungus around the statue of the Sacred Heart and drips coming down to endanger the altar lamp. The visitors in Fernscourt might not even be Catholics, and if they were they would probably go off to mass at the old abbey fourteen miles away and take in a bit of history as well. And the vicar was busy getting his graveyard weeded and cleared up before the visitors came. This
had
to be the wrong approach too, Fergus thought. If old Protestant graves and tombstones were to be honored, then why wait till some Americans, possibly of Episcopalian stock, came to see them?

But Fergus wasn’t going to get anyone to agree with him. Kate had often warned him against becoming an old eccentric before his time. He was thirty-one. Could his time have come now, by any chance?

   Loretto Quinn heard the news from Rita Walsh. She was dying to run up and say a few words of congratulation to Kate but she couldn’t leave the shop. At that moment Jack Coyne came in.

“Would you mind the place for me, just ten minutes? I’ll be back by then.”

“God, what am I, a messenger boy?”

The man who owned Coyne’s Motor Works and thought of himself as a substantial businessman did not like being thought suitable to fill in behind the counter in what he would always think of as a huckster’s shop.

Loretto was struggling out of her shop coat, one of the smart coats that Rachel had gotten her months back. Rachel had said it was always a good idea to have something to wear to show you were working and to take it off when work was over. Loretto had agreed eagerly, and also it happened that everyone said how smart she looked in the shop coats, anyway, so it had been a great suggestion.

Jack Coyne grumbled but agreed to hold the fort for ten minutes.

“One minute later now and I’ll leave and pull the door after me.”

Loretto was gone, flying up to Ryan’s to add her good wishes.

“Who’s minding the shop?” Mary Donnelly wanted to know. Mary was beaming like a sunrise and couldn’t do enough for people.

“Jack Coyne said he’d keep an eye on it,” Loretto said.

“He has his eye on you,” Mary said in a doomed voice.

“Never in a million years. He hasn’t said a word.” Loretto tossed her head. She
had
wondered why Jack Coyne came so often to call. And perhaps in his narrow mean face there were the traces of interest.

“Oh, certainly he has,” Mary said. “Wouldn’t it be a nice tidy little business to add to his own?”

“Yes. Well.” Loretto seemed a bit put out. And yet again Kate and John Ryan exchanged glances across their pub.

Happy to be on the same wave length and happy that the ordeal was over and their future was secure.

   Jim Costello was glad the court case was out of the way because now his boss could give undivided attention to the hotel opening. It had all been full of problems, and there was a pressing need for Patrick to call everything to order. Jim suggested a meeting with an agenda.

Patrick was scornful. This was ninnies’ work—agendas, and “it was agreed” and “it was decided”—that was the stuff for nobodies. He hadn’t made his fortune by sitting on his butt attending meetings.

“There are areas which have to be sorted out in the presence of other people,” Jim said—rather prissily Patrick thought.

“Like what and like which people?”

“Like line authority and what position you want your son to hold in the hotel, and that must be discussed in his presence. That’s one thing.

“Like what penalty clauses you have arranged with Brian Doyle about what he calls the last little finishing touches and I regard as work still left undone. Like whether Mrs. Fine is or is not in charge of the decor and the arrangements for the presentation on the opening day.”

Patrick felt stopped in his tracks. These were three punches he hadn’t expected to be hit with. He took the easiest one first.

“There’s never any problem with Rachel,” he said. “Give her complete charge. She’s had years of knowing how to get along with people, she doesn’t get their noses out of joint like I do. What’s the fuss anyway? Who’s objecting?”

“No, that’s not the point. Mrs. Fine says that you don’t want her to make the arrangements for the opening. She says that she won’t be here for it, and you want the public-relations people from Dublin to make the arrangements. They’ve been on the phone twice wanting to know. Mrs. Fine just smiles at me and says she won’t be here,
you
just say ‘Rachel will sort it out.’ I’m sorry, Mr. O’Neill, I know it sounds like whining and running to you with every little problem. But can you see how hard it is to decide what is and what is not my responsibility? They’re all quite major things and rather sensitive areas.”

Patrick looked at him. Costello was unflinching; he didn’t sound like a moaner. The man had right on his side.

“I see your point. First tell Doyle that I’ll kick his ass from here to Galway tomorrow morning and then from Galway right across to Dublin unless he has all those shithouses, or whatever they are, moved tonight. Do you hear me? Tonight.”

“The things he calls offices or store rooms.”

“I don’t care if he calls them the
Cathedral
, they’re shithouses and they are not to be here tomorrow morning. But he is, and eight
A.M.
”

“Yes. Will I arrange …?”

“Just tell him I’ll see him here at eight
A.M.
And Costello?”

“Mr. O’Neill?”

“If you see my son tell him to fuck off. If he wants to show up properly attired on the day of the opening then I shall of course be pleased to see him. Not otherwise.”

Jim Costello’s eyes flashed. “No, I’m afraid I can’t give any message like that for you. That is family business. I will
not
be put in the position of delivering one kind of ultimatum and then delivering back the news of another kind of shrug. I’m sorry, but no.”

Patrick looked at him with admiration. “I was right to pick you. Alright, I’ll deal with Kerry, but your side of it is clear. He has no position in this hotel.”

“And the other …?”

“I’m going to find Rachel myself. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

Jim shook his head and seemed about to say it wasn’t any of his business. But Patrick forestalled him with a laugh.

“Hey, relax. If you’re not going to do my dirty work for me with my son, then I don’t suppose I have any hope of getting you to patch up a lovers’ quarrel for me, do I?”

He punched his manager genially on the arm and went out the door of his hotel to stand on his steps and glare at the offending prefab huts that Brian Doyle would be asked to remove the next instant. He noted that Jim Costello had had the good sense not to acknowledge even by a glance that Patrick had just let slip to him that the dispute with Rachel Fine was a lovers’ tiff. Jim Costello had been a very good choice indeed.

   Where was Rachel?

Kate had expected her at any moment, but she knew now that she need not doubt her friend. Rachel would be here at some time, it didn’t matter when. She would be so glad to share the good news, and to know that a whole day and even more did not have to be spent arguing in open court.

She would be delighted too that Patrick was so pleased and thought it was a fair sum.

Kate looked at the door more than once. She was anxious to go back into her cool green room and talk to Rachel alone.

   Rachel walked alone along the riverbank. She walked from the dock upriver, on a path that was overgrown still but not as covered with briars and brambles as the stretch from Fernscourt downriver to the bridge.

It was quiet here and she would meet nobody. She walked, a small woman in her flat-heeled stylish brogues. Rachel had hardly walked without high heels since she was seventeen years of age, but in Mountfern she had learned to change so many of her ways that changing her footwear seemed minor. She had her hands in the pockets of her suede jacket, her Hermés scarf tied jauntily around her neck.

To anyone watching, she looked an elegant woman enjoying a stroll by the river. Over the years she had learned to keep her feelings well away from the public view. Her face was in a pleasant half smile. But her thoughts were very different from the gentle expression on her face.

Patrick O’Neill had said that Kate would get at least £12,000 and the insurance company was quite prepared to pay £14,000 without any great quibble. How had it come out at so little in comparison to that? And why had Patrick said or done nothing to show that he thought it had not been adequate?

From what she had heard, and Rachel had heard plenty of accounts, there had been roistering and celebrating, and banging each other on the back, and everyone was now everyone else’s best friend.

She felt sick to the bottom of her stomach that he could be so hypocritical. And even more sick that she had not had the guts and courage to shout down her friend and tell her what the bottom line had been.

If, a few short hours ago, Rachel Fine had been brave enough to resist this girl-guide mentality of having to fight fair that Kate had been babbling about, the Ryan family could have had £14,000 in their bank account. Enough to make them secure forever. No matter what happened to their business as a result of the building of Fernscourt.

Rachel turned and looked back at the hotel. She knew very surely that she would not now wait for the opening, she would go back to New York as soon as she could manage it without upsetting innocent people.

She would go back home.

   There were a lot of people in the bar when she came in. She went straight to Kate and kissed her on each cheek.

Kate’s eyes were full of tears. “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s like a dream,” she said.

Rachel swallowed.

“Have you been talking to Patrick?” Kate asked.

“No. No, not since.”

“He’s delighted, he thinks it’s fair.”

“I’m sure he is.” Rachel was pulling away.

“Oh, do you have to go, really? I wanted to talk to you more than anyone.”

Rachel had rarely been so moved. She couldn’t say anything.

“And Rachel, I wanted to thank you for trying to do what you did. But it wouldn’t have been fair, you do see that, don’t you? It couldn’t have worked. As it is, it all worked out just as we wanted. That’s what he said they were going to give, and that’s what we took.” Kate’s eyes shone. Her face was tired but her eyes were dancing with light.

“He said that?” There was no incredulity in Rachel’s voice, just a flat tone.

“Well, yes, we asked him, you see, afterward. In the pub.”

“Yes of course. Kate, I’ll be back, later or tomorrow, and we’ll talk for all the hours that are in the day, but this is something I can’t put off.”

“All right, I won’t hold you, and thank you again for all the support. I’m going to sleep well tonight, for the first time for a long while.”

Rachel laid her hand against Kate’s face in a way she had never done before. It was as if she were trying to say something through the palm of her hand that she couldn’t say in any other way.

Then she hurried out of Ryan’s and walked down River Road. She didn’t cross the footbridge to Fernscourt, nor did she stop at Loretto Quinn’s. Rachel Fine walked the whole way to the bridge and turned left. Then she walked up the steps and knocked at the door of the ivy-covered house where Fergus Slattery lived and had his office.

   It was short and it was clear.

Rachel found herself giving no complicated explanations, she did not stop to go into her motives, nor did she twist her hands and her handkerchief as she had when she was trying to explain to Patrick that she had gotten drunk with his son but had not made love with him.