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

by Tyler, Anne

  He looked shy in his country tweeds and his crisp shirt, and his curly hair combed just outside the door. In his arms he held a big gift-wrapped parcel and a glass bowl with fruit in it. Nothing very dramatic, just healthy-looking apples and thick-skinned oranges and two yellow pears.

  Fergus wished he had brought something like that instead of the box of sweets which lay on the cabinet beside the bed.

  “They tell me that I’d find you better today than any day.” Patrick was lit up with pleasure. You could see it.

  Kate stretched out her arms in greeting from the bed.

  “Thank you for all you’ve done. I can never thank you enough. The room, the car for everyone to come in and out. You’ve been too good.”

  “I couldn’t do enough, Kate, to tell you how sorry I am that it had to happen. And if it did have to happen why did it have to be on my land, with bulldozers working for me?”

  There was no mistaking his sincerity.

  “Don’t I know that. I’ve every proof of it,” Kate said.

  Patrick seemed to notice for the first time that John and Fergus were in the room. He went to John first and shook him by the hand.

  “My, doesn’t she look well, after all she’s been through.”

  It was just the right touch, Fergus thought miserably. He in no way minimized her agonies, yet he concentrated on the hopeful side. Then it was Fergus’s turn.

  “Slattery, you must be as pleased as all of us. It’s a good time to meet.”

  “Yup.” Fergus got this urge to behave like a taciturn cowboy every time he met Patrick O’Neill nowadays. The fact that he was somehow ungracious made him even more annoyed with himself.

  “And I’m very glad you both happen to be here at the same time,” Kate said, looking at them eagerly from her bed, her cheeks pink, her hair tied with a yellow ribbon matching the ribbon in her lacy bedjacket, both given to her by Rachel Fine.

  “Why is that?” Fergus was suspicious: Kate was too bright, John was looking at the floor.

  Patrick knew nothing about it, whatever it was. He smiled to know what Kate was going to say.

  “Because I am determined to get out of here and live a proper life again, and I’m tired of people coming to my bed and talking about formalities. All I want to know now, and it will help me to get better, is that there will never be any animosity between us no matter what formalities there are.”

  “How could there be animosity?” Patrick cried.

  “Kate, why don’t you leave this until later? Until you’re better,” Fergus said levelly.

  “One of the things stopping me getting better is this,” she said. “Honestly it is, I swear it, at night I wake up and think my life is over, it’s so unfair; and other nights I wake up and think of the things people tell me down in physiotherapy—that I should claim this and I should claim that, and it would make life more bearable, and it’s all from faceless insurance companies anyway so nobody gets hurt. Then I think of Patrick living beside us and what it’s going to be like, and of Grace and Kerry and the twins and how I’d hate a fight more than anything … So that’s why I’m asking you, my friends, will it be done without animosity?”

  Fergus opened his mouth and closed it again like a fish.

  John said nothing, but laid his hand supportively on Kate’s arm.

  Patrick O’Neill smiled more broadly than ever as if he could have heard no better news than this current subject Kate wanted to discuss. “But of course we’ll talk about it, from now until you feel too tired. Kate, John, I assure you I was only waiting until you felt able to talk about it. And obviously since you have Mr. Slattery here too I feel he would be glad it was brought up as soon as …”

  “I assure you, Mr. O’Neill,” Fergus began a trifle pompously.

  “No, I know it just happened to come up, but let me say something, straight out. For weeks now I’ve been wanting to say to someone of you three and never finding the right moment. I know the law, I am so well insured it would make your head swim. The courts will decide a compensation and they will pay it.

  “Kate, you can never get your spine back, but you can get some comforts, goddamn it. I’ll see to it that you do.”

  “But we don’t want to go to court against you, Patrick,” John said, avoiding Fergus’s eye.

  “Nobody wants to go to court and maybe we mightn’t even have to go inside the door,” said Patrick. “It could all be settled at the last moment. That’s what always happens. But that’s the machinery, that’s the formula … the same way as there’s a process for getting a license for a pub or permission to hold a raffle … That’s right, isn’t it, Attorney?”

  Fergus nodded, not trusting himself to speak. The man was making himself clear in a way that Fergus hadn’t been able to do. John and Kate hadn’t trusted him. He felt his mouth full of acid. “That’s right,” he said.

  “So, let’s get the insurance guys, hey? God, if you know how much they get me for every year. It will be a pleasure to get them to give you as much as we can squeeze from them. All I say, though, is that it’s a tremendous shame that it has to be over something like this.”

  He was so full of generosity, no mention of the no-claim bonus he would lose, no mention of the pressure that giant insurance companies who handled his business both here and in America would put on him. Fergus felt moved by the man’s warmth. But in his heart he felt sure that Patrick was right. Some settlement would be reached on the steps of a courthouse, and at this moment Patrick knew exactly how much it was.

  Fergus felt an urge so strong that it was almost overpowering to take him on and fight him in every court of the land, refusing offers, settlements and recommendations until he got for Kate Ryan something that would even in a paltry way compensate for the life that Patrick O’Neill and his mechanical bulldozers had taken away from her.

  Later he remembered, with his mouth in a thin line, that the cute fox O’Neill had said nothing about the private room in the hospital being a gift from Patrick to Kate or the use of a car for the Ryan family being a gift from Patrick to Kate. Oh, no. These would be included in the settlement when the time came.

  He remembered how pleased Kate had been with the game of Scrabble. He wished he had thought of it, with a pain that almost tore him in two.

  He felt that there was great truth in Mrs. Whelan’s words that everyone had gone a little mad since O’Neill came to Mountfern. He hoped he hadn’t gone madder than most. Fergus knew that he must do something practical rather than sit and rage against what had been done and couldn’t be undone.

  He decided to teach John Ryan to drive and get them a second-hand car somewhere so that O’Neill couldn’t claim months more of transport when the day of reckoning arrived.

  It was so strange going back to school without their mother to harass them and organize the huge hunt for satchels, text books and clean shirts, and shoes being taken to the mender’s. This is what the end of the summer holidays meant before.

  Mary Donnelly had it all in order. The Ryans’ house had never worked in such a streamlined way before. There was no fuss about going back to school. All the clothes were ready mended and ironed anyway. The children had almost forgotten a time when they didn’t strip and air their beds every day, and when there wasn’t a weekly examination of shoes and clothes, so that the one could be brought to old Mr. Foley’s odd wordless brother who stitched away silently at the soles of Mountfern in the back of Foley’s bar. Clothes were all darned or mended at that weekly session too.

  Kate Ryan in her hospital bed looked in amazement at neat patches and false hems to be told that Dara and Eddie were a dab hand at any kind of dressmaking now. Michael and Declan had resisted it and were responsible for shoe polishing instead.

  A cupboard had been cleared in the dining room and all schoolbooks and bags were stored there. The four children had a shelf each. The summer exercises had continued, and even Eddie was able to approach an exercise book now without scribbling all over it. Mary had always
shown such surprise and horror at any doodling it was easier to leave the book clean.

  And when school did begin Mary seemed to regard it with a reverence that the children found disconcerting. She almost spoke of school in hushed tones. She managed to inquire about their progress and particularly about what homework they had to do with an air of such interest that they did not realize how much they were giving themselves away and putting their lives into her hands.

  “Now, Dara, let me help you clear away, you’ve got all those geography questions to do tonight, you said. And Michael has that big long poem to learn. Eddie, you aren’t too badly off—only ten sums, was it?”

  They would look at each other glumly. Why had they been so specific? Now there was no escape.

  The breakfast room became a study both before and after tea. There was always a dictionary, an atlas, rulers, pencils and spare paper. The wireless was turned down respectfully. Callers were discouraged and if their father ever came looking for them for anything, the children heard Mary speaking to him in low urgent tones explaining that they were doing their homework. It was said in the voice that someone might have used about the College of Cardinals being in conclave to elect a pope. And after a few false starts it worked. The homework did get finished, and almost in silence. It was easier to learn the poem, Michael would decide, rather than have Mary offer to hear it to him at breakfast and expose his ignorance. Dara would find that Mary, when approached about homework that had been completed, was always cooperative and helped to get her better marks, but Mary would not even discuss work that had been left undone.

  Eddie felt life was too short to have to put up with Mary mentioning that she must ask Brother Keane why the children in Eddie’s class got no homework. It really was simpler to admit to the homework and do it. Then at least he would be free.

  Declan at seven didn’t have very much homework, but he liked the scene around the table. Mary had drawn him a map of Ireland and he spent each evening coloring in the different counties and labeling them. He had asked Mary was this the kind of thing a person could do in a circus as a trick. Mary had said that to be truthful it hadn’t been done much, but there was no reason why there couldn’t be a first time. And she could say hand on heart that to know the thirty-two counties of Ireland, how to spell them and where they all were would be something that would advance you in any career. So Declan sat happily mastering difficult spellings like Monaghan and Laoghais.

  Sometimes John looked in at the industry and gave a deep sigh of relief.

  By the time he got Kate home, some kind of order would reign in the house, and all the time Kate’s new domain was being built. With huge financial help from Patrick O’Neill, and great advice and care from Patrick’s lady friend Rachel Fine. Even Leopold was better behaved these days, John noticed, and slept outside Mary’s door on a sack which he dragged out to the yard each evening. It was as if he lay there protecting her from the world.

  “What does Kerry do all the time? He’s never around and his school doesn’t open for another week.” Dara and Grace were sitting in Dara’s room. Sometimes Grace came to do her homework too; Mary Donnelly looked in and out casually to make sure that the time was not being wasted around the table, but the little O’Neill girl seemed industrious enough.

  “Kerry never says. I think he studies quite a bit. This is his last year, he wants to get a good Leaving Certificate.”

  “And will he?” Dara loved to hear news of the handsome Kerry. “Will he get a lot of Honors do you think?”

  “He thinks he’ll get four. Or so he says, I don’t know.” Grace seemed doubtful.

  “Why don’t you know?”

  Grace wondered whether to speak and then decided she would.

  “Well, I just said I think he studies a lot, I’m not sure. You see, he goes to these extra lessons”

  “The Latin, with Mr. Williams?”

  “No, as well as those. He goes into the town twice a week, there’s a schoolmaster there and Kerry’s meant to be going for math.”

  “Maths,” corrected Dara automatically.

  “Yes, well, whichever, he’s not going to it. He takes the money from Father and he gets a lift with Paudie Doyle or Brian or someone, but the teacher called last week to say he was sorry that Kerry hadn’t showed up for the lessons.” Grace shook her head.

  “Where was he?”

  “That’s it, I have no idea; and as it happened, I answered the telephone. Not Miss Hayes, and not Father. So I just said that I’d pass on the message and the man said he just wanted to clear things up because Father had sent him some kind of letter thanking him for his time.”

  “Oh dear,” Dara said.

  “So it looks as if Kerry wasn’t going at all. But saying that he was.”

  The girls sat in silence to contemplate the enormity of this.

  “What could he have been doing instead?” Dara hoped he didn’t have a girlfriend or anything awful like that.

  “I asked him, but he just laughed, said it was great I had headed the guy off at the pass, that was the way he said it. And you know Kerry, Dara, he didn’t say any more and he will not say any more.”

  “Does your father know?”

  “No, he doesn’t know.”

  “And Miss Hayes, she wouldn’t …”

  “No, I have a feeling that even if she did know she wouldn’t …”

  “Well then, it’s all right.” Dara was always optimistic.

  “I suppose so.” Grace was less sure.

  Tommy Leonard told Michael that the Lourdes fund for Mrs. Ryan was getting huge now. There was going to be enough for someone else to go with her. People were wondering who it would be. Would it be Mr. Ryan? Or would one of the children get to go? Imagine Lourdes, in France. Imagine being there.

  “Do you really think Our Lady came there? She did, didn’t she?” Michael was very anxious to have it confirmed. If Our Lady hadn’t, if it had all been some kind of misunderstanding, then there would be no chance for Mam.

  “I suppose she must have,” Tommy said. “I mean, it would be the kind of place you’d go, France.”

  Michael agreed.

  Tommy said that Maggie Daly was often afraid that Our Lady might come to Mountfern, like she came to Fatima. Maggie didn’t look up into trees in case she saw her.

  “Why doesn’t she want to see her?” Michael was interested. “I mean, if she came here you’d want to see her.”

  “Maggie thinks that you’d be martyred if you saw her, it’s what always happens,” Tommy said.

  “Poor Maggie, she’s always worrying,” said Michael sympathetically.

  “Not like Kitty. Kitty was off on the back of a motorbike with Kerry O’Neill.” Tommy loved a bit of excitement.

  “Kerry’s not old enough to have a motorbike, is he?”

  “Oh, Kerry’s old enough for anything, he took it out of Jack Coyne’s yard and brought it back secretly, and he and Kitty went off miles on it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Maggie told me. Did she not tell you?”

  “No. I wonder why,” Michael said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all about Kerry and the motorbike and everything?” Dara was furious with Maggie.

  “I—I don’t know. It was a secret,” Maggie stammered.

  “If it was a secret, Maggie Daly, why did you tell Tommy Leonard?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, you don’t know, you don’t know,” Dara blazed. “You’re so boring, Maggie. You don’t know anything, you have nothing to say.”

  “I know,” Maggie said wretchedly.

  There were Halloween games in Ryan’s kitchen. Snap apple with everyone’s hands tied behind their backs and the apple hanging from a string in the middle of the room. And bobbing for apples in the sink of water, and trying to pick up the sixpence in your teeth from the floor.

  Carrie loved the fun of it, and John Ryan came in from the pub occasionally.

  Rachel Fine looked on,
she had been seeing to Kate’s new room and was in and out of the house a lot. The Whites were there, bitterly disputing whose turn it was to play, and Tommy Leonard was there.

  “Where’s Maggie?” Tommy asked at one point.

  “I didn’t ask her,” said Dara. “I forgot. Like she forgets sometimes.”

  Dara’s face was set and cross. She was very annoyed that Maggie had not told her about her sister’s carrying on. And she was even more annoyed to hear about Kerry O’Neill off gallivanting on a borrowed motorbike.

  “I’ll run down for her,” Michael said. “She’d be upset. I’ll just go to Daly’s now.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Grace offered.

  Dara felt that she had been too mean. She would go herself for Maggie. But it was too late. Michael and Grace had run off.

  They came back later without her.

  “Her mother said she had a cold, she was in bed.”

  “Oh well then, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” Dara said airily. But in her heart she felt ashamed of herself. And she felt that Maggie didn’t really have a cold.

  Grace was very nice to Maggie. She insisted too that Maggie come with them on the day that Patrick O’Neill drove some of the children in on what he called an official visit to Mrs. Ryan in the hospital.

  The twins were delighted to show their mother off to Liam, Jacinta, Tommy and Maggie, and Kate was touched to see the small crowd around the bed.

  “There’s a small fortune in the Lourdes fund, Mrs. Ryan, you’ll be able to take the whole family with you,” Tommy said enthusiastically.

  “My goodness, isn’t that generous? But if anyone’s going it should be other invalids, don’t you think?” Kate said.

  “Mrs. Williams has a broken arm,” Jacinta suggested.

  “You don’t go to Lourdes with a broken arm, eejit, you have to have much worse.” Liam looked half fearfully at Kate.

  “Oh, I think you can go with anything, really,” Kate said, trying to make light of it.

  “Now.” Jacinta was triumphant. “And Mrs. Williams is always very nice, giving us things out of her garden. She should be one of the first to go.”