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

by Tyler, Anne

  Grace looked wretched as she went over this. Impulsively Dara threw her arm around her friend’s shoulder.

  “Don’t worry about it, Grace, please. It’s not happened. It’s not going to happen. We can head off the awful Marians and awful Judys, and Mrs. Fine can’t be any threat, otherwise she’d be here.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s right.”

  “So why are you still sad?”

  “Because I’m thinking about the day of the funeral and how upset Kerry was when I told him about what people were saying. But you’re right. It’s not going to happen: I won’t think about it anymore.”

  They came out of the wood and cycled to the lodge. Miss Hayes said that Mr. O’Neill had been on the telephone to say he would not be back for tea. He had gone to Kerry’s school. The boys had spent some of the Easter holidays there to take part in the Easter vigil and church services. They were meant to be getting holidays in a week. But Kerry was coming back tonight.

  All through their macaroni and cheese they chattered excitedly about Kerry coming home. They cleared the table and washed the dishes with Miss Hayes. Dara marveled at the peace and quiet in this house, no Carrie clattering pans in the kitchen, no bar on the other side of the green door, no Leopold howling, no Declan complaining that he was going to be the baby in this family until he was an old-age-pensioner, no Eddie bringing some new doom and destruction down on them. No bustle. It must be lonely for Grace sometimes too, of course, so far from everyone.

  They sat in Grace’s room, and Dara tried on all her clothes. The shoes were a little too small, which was a pity since Grace had so many she could have given Dara any amount without missing them.

  “Does your father ever fight with Michael?” Grace asked.

  “No, no he doesn’t.”

  Grace sighed heavily. “No, I think it’s just my father and Kerry. It’s something in them that doesn’t mix.”

  “Of course Daddy gets very irate with Eddie, almost every day of our lives,” Dara offered, in the hope of reassuring her friend.

  “Eddie’s different, as you said yourself.”

  “Yes,” Dara agreed. “Eddie’s very different, nobody could mix with him.”

  Dara cycled home and saw a man slipping into the Rosemarie hair salon, having looked up and down River Road nervously first. Could the unlikely rumor they had heard at school possibly be true? She must tell Grace tomorrow morning. She hoped Grace wouldn’t be lonely as she waited for Kerry and her father to come home.

  Grace wished she had never told Kerry about that stupid thing that Brigid Anne had said, about the gossip that Father had some other lady in mind to marry. Obviously it hadn’t been true. It was nearly two years since Mother had died, and Father had no intention of marrying again. Father Devine had introduced him to several likely people, awful women from the parish, widows and terrible people. But Father used to laugh about them with her so Grace had no worries.

  Kerry had a picture of Mother in his billfold, and also in the plastic folder at the back of his assignment book. Grace had seen him taking it out to look at it one day when he thought nobody was watching. And the picture of Mother that stood on the piano … Kerry was always adjusting it and making sure it stood right where it was best lit.

  There was a portrait of Mother hanging in the hall. Mother had never liked it, she thought it made her look as if she had been dressed up to play the part of a fine lady. Father had laughed and told her that she was a fine lady. Kerry didn’t like that picture, he never stopped to look at it. Once Grace asked him why he didn’t like it, and he had said that Father had only dressed Mother up in jewelry and silks and paid a society painter to do the portrait, to show what a big man he was. It had nothing to do with Mother herself.

  Kerry had said that when things were his to do what he liked with, he would take the picture outside and burn it. Then Mother would know how well he had understood her. Kerry said some very odd things from time to time.

  Grace wished she knew why her father had driven all the way up to his school to collect him. Perhaps it was a sign that Father was going to be warmer to Kerry, but somehow she didn’t think so.

  Father Minehan was a fussy man. Anything that could be said directly and simply, he managed to dress up and obscure. Patrick had been fifteen minutes in the dean’s study and still didn’t know why he was being asked to take Kerry away. That very day.

  “So, when all aspects are considered, and taking everything into account, very often, the greater good is achieved by the simpler option,” Father Minehan said.

  Patrick looked at the priest with disgust. His blue eyes were hard and unsmiling.

  “Briefly, what did he do?” he asked again, but his tone was more curt.

  “There are so many explanations and ways of looking at what we do and why we do it …” Father Minehan was beginning again.

  “In two or three sentences, Father.” Patrick had never been so ill-mannered to a man of the cloth. His old training made him feel a thrill of wrongdoing because he was interrupting a priest with a bark of command.

  “If it were as easy as that …”

  “It is as easy as that. I have driven for two hours to a school where I thought you were educating my son, a school to which I have given generous contributions I may add, and I hear, or think I hear that you want him to leave. Now. Why?”

  Father Minehan was at a loss to answer a question so directly put. He remained silent.

  “Come on, Father, I can’t stay all week playing guessing games. What did he do?”

  “Let’s take it slowly, Mr. O’Neill.”

  “Let’s take it at a nice brisk pace, Father Minehan. Did he bugger one of the other boys?”

  “Mr. O’Neill, please!”

  Now, for the first time, the priest was shaken into a direct response.

  “He’s a fifteen-year-old boy, Father, almost sixteen. Eventually, I suppose, if I ask enough questions we might get an answer. Was he drunk? Did he hit one of the masters? Did he miss mass? What in God’s name prompted all these letters and phone calls that the FBI couldn’t work out?”

  “I’m trying to explain.”

  “God damn it, you are not trying to explain. Did he screw one of the maids? Did he deny the infallibility of the pope? If I drive here and take him away with me leaving behind buildings I’m goddamn paying to erect, I would like to know why.”

  “He took a great deal of money.”

  Patrick felt an ice-cold pool in the base of his stomach.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I assure you …”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred pounds.”

  “Have you any proof of this?”

  “Oh yes”

  “Perhaps you would be good enough to let me have it.”

  “Do you want your son here?”

  “Not immediately. Let me hear it from you first, then we’ll ask Kerry his side of things. Right?”

  The old Patrick had returned on the outside. A brisk smile, the kind he used in his business deals … a charm not fulsome, just there. He composed his face to listen.

  It was a tale of a charity football match in aid of deprived children. Patrick held his mask face with difficulty. The priest was so unctuous. He spoke of deprived children as if they were another species of life. The rugby match had attracted a lot of attention People came from all over to attend it. There were three Irish internationals playing on each side. It wasn’t often that you saw such talent gathered on one afternoon on the playing fields of an Irish school. The entrance fee had been two shillings.

  The boys in the school all attended, of course, people from the neighborhood and rugby fans from all over Ireland, as well as some people from the newspapers. Father Minehan’s voice lowered again, in case someone from the newspaper might be in the room with them. It was all highly unfortunate. Over fourteen hundred people attended the match, many of them being men of property and generosity who gave much more than the two-shilling
entrance fee.

  Over two hundred pounds had been collected at the small tables placed near the school gate. It was taken into the school in leather bags, each with the amount it contained neatly written on a label attached to it. The money was in Father Bursar’s office ready to be checked into a bank account next day. It disappeared. There was a search. The search revealed among other things that some of the senior boys were not in their dormitory; they came in later over the wall. They were met by a reception committee.

  Kerry O’Neill had an envelope with fifty-seven pounds of the collection still in his pocket.

  “Balls,” snapped Patrick. “Nobody could spend all that in a night. What did he do? Buy a couple of properties down town?”

  “He has not said what he did with it,” Father Minehan said simply.

  “But he hasn’t said he took it, surely?”

  “He cannot say otherwise. He is not a fool.”

  Again Patrick felt ice water moving in his stomach.

  Kerry had packed. They had told him that morning that he was to have everything ready; he would be leaving with his father. When he came to the dean’s study he had his fawn overcoat thrown casually over his shoulders.

  Patrick was annoyed by this, and by seeing the boy’s luggage outside the door. It was showing they were beaten before they began.

  “Can you throw any light on this, Kerry?” He was firm, not accusatory, but wasting no time in pleas or expostulations.

  “I’m sorry you had to drive up here, Father.” Kerry was perfectly calm.

  “Tell us what you have to tell.” Patrick didn’t look at Father Minehan, who stood there in classic thoughtful pose with one arm across his waist, supporting the elbow of the other arm. A hand with long white fingers spread discreetly over his face.

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing to tell, Father.”

  “You deny you took this money.”

  “No, I can’t deny that, I’m very sorry.”

  “You don’t mean you took it?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  There wasn’t a sound from the priest.

  “In the name of God why did you do that? I could have given you money. I give you a bloody allowance every month, for Christ’s sake.”

  Kerry stood still; regret was the only emotion Patrick could see on his face. Mild regret. No shame, no sorrow.

  “So what did you want it for?”

  An inclination of the head toward the priest, that was all.

  “Could you leave us alone, Father Minehan?”

  “No, Mr. O’Neill, this is my study. I do not choose to leave it.”

  Patrick made a decision.

  “Yes, that’s your privilege. Now you asked me to take my son away. I shall do that. Thank you for the part your community has played in his education so far.”

  Father Minehan had been prepared for a day of recriminations and explanations, and bringing in bigger guns like the Father Superior. He couldn’t believe it was over already.

  “Well, I have to say …” he began.

  “I hope you have to say very little. We will not discuss any fees that might be owing by me to you, since I think we will agree that donations already given would make the pursual of those fees a grotesque impertinence on your part …”

  “I assure you that …”

  “I accept all your assurances. If I am owed any balance why not add that to the already significant sum I have given to the college? And I expect full and favorable reports and references on my son’s progress and achievements in this school. I have fulfilled to the letter your request to me, once I understood it. I am taking him away with me in the next five minutes. Within the next five days I expect a detailed report which I can give to the principal of the next college he will attend. And, Father Minehan, I shall expect the most glowing of verbal references, should any school call you to inquire about Kerry.”

  “Well, there will have to be—”

  “You are quite right, there will have to be arrangements made to that effect immediately, otherwise, I will create such a stink and a scandal that the smell will remain over these college walls for three generations to come I will talk of the blackmail in order to get subscriptions, the extortion of further money from the children by making them pay to see rugby matches in your own premises. I will speak to the newspapers about the lax security and discipline that allows children in your care to scale walls and disappear in the evenings.” He lowered his voice suddenly. “But all this would be very unpleasant and I am sure quite unnecessary.”

  He walked with Kerry from the school to his car. He looked at the creeper on the walls and remembered the day he had driven here to start Kerry off as a pupil.

  Kerry sat in silence as they drove.

  Patrick waited five minutes for an apology, an explanation.

  He looked at his son’s arrogant profile; he remembered his dead wife’s hopes. He drew into a petrol station. Beyond the pumps where there was some waste ground.

  He got out and with deliberate steps went around to Kerry’s side of the car and opened the door. Kerry got out, a look of polite mystification on his face. Patrick hit him.

  As Kerry reeled from the blow, Patrick hit him again on the jaw and rained blows into his body. Winded, Kerry made no real effort to defend himself, except to cry out …

  “You big ape, you bog man … you’re nothing but a bloody Irish bog man; that’s why you wanted to come back to the bogs, you never left them.”

  Patrick had stopped punching anyway. He indicated a gents’ toilet. “Be back here in five minutes. We’re going home,” he said, and he got into his car, wearily watching Kerry stagger away, bruised and bloodstained, to try and repair the damage to his face and clothes.

  Chapter VIII

  They knew that something had happened in the O’Neill family. And whatever it was, Grace was not going to talk about it.

  Tommy Leonard thought that it was because Mr. O’Neill was being bad-tempered. He had heard stories of him shouting at people about delays and messing and inefficiency. And to Tommy Leonard all fathers were bad-tempered, because his own was a demon altogether.

  Jacinta and Liam White thought that it might have something to do with someone being sick. Their father had been called up to the lodge one evening. So maybe it was an illness. Dr. White wouldn’t tell them; he never talked about his patients. But if it was something simple like measles or mumps he would have said, so it could be a fatal disease.

  Maggie Daly had heard that they were going away, people had said that Mr. O’Neill was so fed up with not getting the hotel built straight away he was going to pull out and forget the whole thing. Maggie half hoped they would, but in another way she wanted them to stay. She didn’t hate Grace; she wanted to be her friend. The best that could possibly happen was that Grace would want the three of them—Dara, Maggie and her—to be friends, to be a proper gang with nobody left out.

  Kitty Daly kept asking Maggie why Grace didn’t come to play anymore, and whether Kerry had come back from boarding school. She was not at all satisfied when her little sister didn’t seem to know.

  Dara knew that Kerry had come back from school because she had been there the evening that Mr. O’Neill had gone to collect him. But the next day she had a telephone call from Grace asking her not to say anything to anyone about anything.

  “What do you mean?” Dara was totally confused. “If someone says hello, am I not to say hello back?”

  “This is serious,” Grace said.

  “I know it is. I’m serious too. Why can’t you tell me what I’m not to say anything about? Why aren’t you here anyway?”

  “Is anyone listening to you?”

  “No, I mean Dad’s in the pub. Mam’s at work, Carrie’s in the kitchen, Michael’s in the yard, Eddie is probably eavesdropping somewhere. What is it?”

  “There’s been a bad row, and I can’t come out for a few days. Not till we’re back at school, we might even be going away.”

  “Where,
where are you going?”

  “I don’t know, please Dara, don’t tell anyone what I told you.”

  “You didn’t tell me anything. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “About my father and Kerry not getting on. You know?”

  “Oh that. No, I won’t tell anyone I wouldn’t have anyway.”

  “And could you try to take the drama out of it all?”

  “I didn’t know it was a drama …”

  “I’ve got to go now.” Grace hung up.

  They didn’t see Grace until the first day of term, a whole week. She looked very pale.

  Jacinta was triumphant. “I told you it was a disease,” she said proudly. “It could be TB.”

  “Why don’t you ask her?” Maggie said.

  “You don’t ask people who are riddled with TB if they’re riddled with it; you pretend everything is normal,” Jacinta, the doctor’s daughter, replied.

  Maggie noticed that Dara wasn’t racing up to Grace as usual. Dara was on her own.

  Good, Maggie thought. Now she knows how it feels to be left out of things.

  But if anyone looked left out of things it was Grace. She was like someone recovering from a bad bout of flu.

  Even Sister Laura warmed to the girl.

  “Did you get any time to do those Irish lessons I set you?” she asked, in a kinder tone than she usually used when checking on homework.

  “Yes, Sister, I have them here.” The girl produced pages of sentences:

  “I am going to town. Was he going to the town? We were not going to the town.” All neatly written in the slopy writing and purple ink that the nun objected to, and was annoyed with herself for the unreasonable objection.

  “That’s very good,” she said, impressed. “You must have spent a lot of time working.”

  “I spent all last week. I sat in my room all day, Sister.” She looked downcast.

  “Well, you’re an example to them all, I must say. How is your brother getting on at his school, tell me?”