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

by Tyler, Anne

  “Daddy, are we poor?”

  “No we’re not poor. You know that.”

  “But we’re not rich are we?”

  “You don’t have to be one or the other, you can be in between, like most of us are around here.”

  “Will we ever be rich?”

  “We’ll be all right. What’s this worry about money?”

  “We’re going to need it to buy our house.” Her face was very determined.

  “But we have our house, silly old thing, this is our house,” he indicated the pub and the whitewashed walls of the house with a wave of his hand.

  “Not here, our house across in Fernscourt. You know where they have the bulldozers. They’re clearing it for someone to live there, some American, he’ll live there unless we can buy it.”

  “Now, now, Dara,” John began soothingly.

  But she was on her feet full of anger and wouldn’t be soothed.

  “It’s our house, Michael’s and mine, and everyone’s.”

  John sighed.

  “Will you come for a bit of a walk with me?”

  “I don’t feel like a walk.”

  “I don’t feel like a walk with such a disagreeable weasel as you, but it might help.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “We could go to Fernscourt.”

  “All right then.”

  Kate Ryan was in the bar talking to Jimbo Doyle and Jack Coyne, who were not her idea of the best of company, when she saw through the window the two figures crossing the footbridge. Her husband who was meant to be working on his poetry and her daughter who had been like a bag of hedgehogs all week. Her knuckles ached to rap on the window, but she wouldn’t give that sharp-faced Jack Coyne the satisfaction of seeing her act the bossy wife.

  Kate had always spoken impetuously, and not long ago in confession had told Canon Moran that she was quick-tempered. Canon Moran had suggested that she think of Our Lord’s Blessed Mother whenever she was tempted to say something sharp. She should think what Our Lady might have said. She needn’t actually say what Our Lady would have said, but thinking it might delay the caustic response or the hurtful crack.

  Looking at the man and girl hand in hand walking across the footbridge Kate Ryan thought that the Mother of God might have blessed them and wished them well and happiness and thanked God for her good fortune. Right, Kate Ryan would think similar noble thoughts. She turned around and faced Jack Coyne and Jimbo Doyle with what she thought was a saintly smile.

  “Jesus, Kate, have you a toothache?” asked Jimbo Doyle in alarm.

  “And Michael and I planned to live here when we grew up. Everyone knew that we’d get a proper roof made over this bit, and probably build windows and a door.” Dara was pointing out the extent of the house.

  “But it was only a dream.” John was gentle.

  “No it wasn’t.”

  “Yes, of course it was … and is. Like going to see the man in the moon. Do you remember when you were very young we used to take you out to have a look at the man in the moon before you went to bed? Now you don’t think it’s a man up there, you’re quite happy to look at the moon for itself, as something beautiful lighting up the sky over Mountfern.”

  “Yes but …”

  “And when you were very young altogether you and Michael used to be staring up the chimney in the kitchen, didn’t you, at Christmas time, the way Declan did last Christmas? You thought that if the chimney was too old and too awkward you wouldn’t get any presents. But they came all the same, didn’t they, and you don’t mind now where they come from?”

  “That’s not the same …”

  “I know it’s not the same … but I was just saying that the way we look at things changes as life goes on, it couldn’t always stay the same, otherwise we’d all be still living in caves with clubs or if we didn’t grow up in some kind of way wouldn’t we all be in nappies waddling around the place in playpens …”

  “You don’t understand …” she wailed.

  “I don’t understand completely, but I understand a bit. Don’t I?” She looked up at him, her face softening.

  “I know, Dara, it’ll always be here in some way for you, not the same way, remember the man in the moon. The moon didn’t go, and it still looks beautiful, doesn’t it, when you can see all the cattle over on the hills, and the spire of the church and the woods and … and Fernscourt …”

  “Will it be the same when this awful man comes, him with all his American money?”

  “He’s not going to be awful. He has children, we hear, you’ll love them as sure as anything.”

  “I won’t, I won’t.”

  “Well you’ll meet them anyway, and you might like them. Would that be reasonable?”

  “And we’d never be able to afford to buy it ourselves.”

  “No, that isn’t a thing you should think about, that’s not a possible thing, that’s like imagining a square circle, or imagining that Jaffa grew a long neck like a giraffe in the picture books. Cats don’t grow long necks, this isn’t a real home for you and Michael, it was a home for last summer and before that.”

  “And now?” Her lip had stopped trembling.

  “It’s still special but it isn’t anything you start getting all het up about and start saving your pocket money to buy. That’s like the days when you used to want to know if the man in the moon had to wash his neck.”

  “Will you explain that to Michael, Daddy? I’m not great at explaining.”

  “I’m not great at it either.”

  “Well, you’re better than me,” Dara said in the matter-of-fact voice which meant that he had sorted this one out anyway.

  John Ryan hadn’t written a poem or built a hen run, but he had convinced his angry little daughter that the world wasn’t going to come to an end. Now all he had to do was to get into the house without his wife knowing he had played hooky from his poetry writing.

  It was a busy night in the bar, they had hardly time for a word of any kind let alone the attack that John feared was brewing. Kate moved so quickly around the place, she had glasses swept up, and washed or refilled quicker than he would have decided whether to move the glass in the first place. Yet she didn’t give the customers the impression that they were being rushed, only that there was an urgency in getting their pint in front of them.

  Kate had decided to say nothing until everyone was gone, then she was going to force her voice to stay low, not to get high and excited, and she would not allow herself to speak too quickly until it became a gabble. She was going to point out—in tones that no one could find offense in—that she got up every morning and saw the children off to school, then she went and did what amounted to a day’s work in an office, and not that she was complaining but she spent the afternoon listening to almighty bores rambling out of them instead of getting on with her own work of which she had plenty, but she had stood in the bar to let her husband work … She would keep her voice very calm as she told him how she would like to take a cleaver to him and split him in two.

  Her humor was not helped by the behavior of Eddie and Declan who had come into the pub, despite all the strictures against this, to know could they take possession of the tortoise again. They had burst into the pub, mouths stained with the jam which Carrie had been making a very poor fist of setting. They looked like the children of tinkers both of them in the most torn clothes that they could have found. In front of the drinking population of Mountfern—who probably had looked at her askance because she was an outsider from the first day and had now committed the crime of going outside the family home to work—she had been guilty of the worst sin of all … neglecting her children. And had John supported her, had he removed them with an authoritative wave and a thunderous warning? He had like hell!

  John Ryan had put an arm around the shoulder of each small furious son and he chose with a slow deliberation for each of them a chocolate biscuit from the shelf behind the bar and he had walked them out as if they had been honored guests instead
of his own children who had broken his own most strict rule of coming into the family pub.

  But Kate would not let her tone betray her rage, otherwise he would just walk away from it saying that the last thing on earth he wanted was a fight. It was infuriating. The only way she could convince him of how badly he was behaving was to speak in a reasonable tone as if she were the most contented woman on earth.

  For a wild moment she wondered how the Mother of God would have coped, and then realized that Mary wouldn’t have had nearly as many problems in Nazareth. There was never any mention of her running Joseph’s carpentry business almost single-handedly and doing another job for a local lawyer as well. Kate’s resentment knew no bounds.

  The last straggler finally went home. The glasses were washed, the windows opened to air the place, two clean dishcloths lay out to dry on the counter. Kate felt sweaty and weary, not in the mood to list her wrongs.

  Her husband smiled at her across the counter. “May I pour you a port wine?” he asked.

  “Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph isn’t that all I’d need tomorrow, a roaring port hangover.”

  “Just one glass each, we’ll bring it out to the side garden and I’ll tell you my plans for it.”

  She bit her lip. He was like a big child.

  “Well?” He had the glass and the port bottle ready.

  She was too tired.

  “Hold on till I rinse this blouse out,” she said, and took off the blue and white cotton blouse that was sticking to her back. Standing in her slip top and dark blue skirt, she looked flushed and very beautiful, John thought. He touched her neck where the long dark curly hair was loosely tied with a narrow blue ribbon.

  “That’s lovely for them to see that kind of carry on if they pass the window,” she said shaking his hand away.

  “Well you’re the one who’s half-dressed, I’m quite respectable,” he laughed.

  The blouse was left to hang on the back of a chair, it would be dry in the morning. Kate gave herself a quick sluice with the water in the sink that was meant to wash only glasses.

  “If we’re going to go to the side garden, let’s go then,” she said more ungraciously than she felt; she was glad at any rate that he was calling it a garden rather than a yard. That was an advance.

  The moonlight made it look a great deal better than it seemed by day. Jaffa sat still as a statue on the wall. Leopold was dreaming of beatings and his hard life. He gave a gentle whimper now and then in his sleep. From the hen house there was a soft cluck.

  John folded a sack and left it on an upturned barrel. “I was to ask you about the tortoise.”

  “No, no.” Her eyes flashed with rage. “It’s not fair, John, really it isn’t. You’re always the lovey dovey one, ask poor old Daddy, he’s so soft, he’d melt as soon as he looks at you. Mammy’s the nagging old shrew … It’s not fair to let them grow up thinking that.”

  “They do not think that.”

  “They do, and they will more if you say they can have the tortoise back. Do you think I want the smelly old thing in the mudroom looking at me like something out of one of those horror pictures they have in the picture house? I’ve wished a hundred times it would die one day and we could have a funeral and it would all be over, and all the fighting.”

  “They live for years, you know, you’re on a loser there,” he grinned.

  She wouldn’t give in “No, they can’t have it back, they broke all the rules coming into the pub like pictures of children you’d see when they’re collecting for charity. They’re worse than Leopold, they pretend they never got a meal or a bath in their lives.”

  Kate Ryan was very aggrieved.

  “Did I ever try to countermand any of your decisions?” John asked.

  “No, but you try to get around me. We’ve got to be consistent, John, otherwise how do they know where they are?”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “But?”

  “But nothing. I couldn’t agree more.”

  “So what about the bloody tortoise? What were you going to suggest?”

  “Come here, I want to show you something …” He took her by the hand and pointed out where they should build a long hen run, with netting over it. The hens would have freedom, but within frontiers. The rest was going to be a garden. He showed where they could have a rockery. And how they would build a raised flower bed maybe and she could grow the flowers she had always said she would like.

  “You should have been writing your poetry.”

  “It’s not like making things in a factory, Kate, you can’t sit down in front of a conveyor belt and turn out bits of writing and in the end a poem emerges.” He spoke quietly and with dignity.

  “I know, I know.” She was contrite.

  “So when it didn’t seem to come, I thought I’d do something for you and plan you a garden.”

  “That’s lovely.”

  “I’ll have a word with Jimbo Doyle and he could do a couple of days and build up a few beds. Now wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “It would.” She was touched, she couldn’t deliver her attack now. It would be ingratitude, flying in the face of God, to attack a husband who was so kind.

  “I was over in Fernscourt today, there’s heaps of stones lying around the place. We could get some nice big rocks, Jimbo could wheel them across the footbridge.”

  “I don’t suppose they belong to anyone.” Kate didn’t want her voice to sound grudging … “That would be grand,” she added.

  “And this thing about the tortoise, I wouldn’t countermand your orders. God, what would be the point? What I was wondering was now that the hens have a place of their own someone will have to feed them properly you know, mix up the scraps with the bran …”

  “Yes.”

  “So suppose we made those two scallywaggers do that? They’d be well able for it, and they’d give the hens a feed twice a day … and to encourage them maybe they could have some kind of access to that tortoise, maybe take him out of your way in the mudroom, not have him looking up at you like a prehistoric monster. What do you think?”

  Kate tried to hide her smile. Unsuccessfully.

  “What do I think?” she said, laughing in spite of herself. “I think I might be persuaded … but …”

  “But it would have to come from you. If you think it would be a good idea, then you should suggest it.” He was adamant about this.

  “I suppose you sorted Dara out too,” Kate said gently and with admiration. “They should have you up on the platform in Geneva sorting things out for everyone.”

  “Ah, the poor child was very upset, it’s giving up a bit of fairyland. None of us like doing that.”

  “People like you didn’t have to, it’s still all there in your heads,” Kate said, but she said it with a hint of envy in her voice, and she kissed his lips softly so that he tasted the port wine.

  Chapter III

  That night Michael sat on the landing window seat and looked across at Fernscourt in the moonlight.

  The curtains of ivy waved over the hummocks of moss. It was easier than ever to see the ruins since some of the big straggly trees and bushes had been cut down.

  Eddie and Declan were long asleep in their bunk beds. Michael had been reading with a torch, but his mind had strayed from the knight who had rescued the Lady Araminta with the golden tresses. He wanted to look at real life, which was Fernscourt. For a long time he looked at the shadows over the moon and the patterns they made on the soft green banks up from the river toward the house.

  Then he saw a figure moving in the moonlight. Nobody ever walked there at night. Michael knelt up and opened the window to have a better view. It was a man, an old man even older than Daddy. He was wandering around with his hands in his pockets looking up at the walls. Sometimes he touched the moss, sometimes he pushed aside the ivy. Michael was kneeling on the window seat now, peering and straining to see as the figure disappeared and emerged again behind the ruined walls. He felt a hand on his shoulder,
and there was his father in his pajamas.

  “Dad, I think he’s come. I think he’s here.”

  “Who?”

  “The American. I think that’s him in our house.” The boy’s face was white even on the shadowy landing with moonlight coming in irregular darts through the window.

  John Ryan looked out and saw a figure walking around touching walls and almost patting the bits of building that still stood. John felt he was spying somehow. The man was as if naked over there, in that he didn’t know he was being observed.

  Michael was wriggling off the seat. “I’ll have to wake Dara,” he said, his face working anxiously.

  “Wait, Michael.”

  “But it’s our house, he’s here, he came after all. People said he might not be going to live here. But look at him, he is going to live in it, isn’t he? Isn’t he?”

  John sat down on the window seat, and lifted his feet a little off the cold linoleum floor covering. “Michael, don’t wake the child up.”

  “She’s not a child, she’s twenty minutes older than I am.”

  “That’s true. She’s not a child any more than you are.”

  Michael’s face was troubled. “She’ll need to know, Dad.”

  “Nobody needs to know.”

  “It’s partly her house.”

  “It’s his house Michael.” John indicated the man across the river.

  “I know, I know.” The boy’s thin shoulders were raised, tense. He was troubled and unsure what to do.

  “Give me something to put my feet on so they’re not like two big blocks of ice when I get back into the bed with your mother.”

  Michael rooted around under the comics and books that were on the window seat and found a raggedy cushion.

  “Will this do?”

  “That’s fine, thank you son.”

  Some of the quivering tension had left the boy. He sat down, still looking out of the window, but prepared to talk rather than wake his sister and the whole house in his grief.