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

by Tyler, Anne

  Loretto Quinn was appalled.

  “A smart American woman with all those grand clothes like Mrs. Fine. No Kate, honestly, I couldn’t cope with that. I only agreed to do all this because you said there’d be a few shillings in it once the hotel was built. No, I don’t want the fright and the worry of trying to please people that are way beyond me like that.”

  “Shush, Loretto, listen. This is the best thing you could have. Rachel will be coming back and forward all the time, she will want her own place, she might even take them permanently.”

  “Won’t she be staying in the hotel yonder when it’s finished?”

  “It won’t be finished for ages and the Grange is too far away. Your place would be just ideal. I only thought of it this morning when she was on the phone. I am a sort of genius so I am.”

  “You might be and all, Kate, but you scared me to death. There’s only beds and chairs in those rooms, there’s no proper furniture, only the plainest of white curtains on them that you’d see in a lunatic asylum …”

  “Leave it just as it is, I beg you. That’s Rachel’s job; that’s what she gets paid a fortune for, knowing what to put on this and what not to put. You and I couldn’t see it in a million years. She’ll give you great advice altogether. I mean it. Look at what she did for me. She’ll have your bedrooms the talk of the town. Marian Johnson will be green with envy; she’ll be climbing the drainpipes to get a peep at them.”

  The thought of Marian Johnson being envious of poor little Loretto Quinn was such a happy one that the women laughed imagining it.

  “What’ll she put her clothes on till it’s all done up though?” Loretto was practical.

  “I know, we’ll get one of those coat rails they have in shops, a big long one. Jimbo could get you one from one of the bigger shops away in the town. I’ll ring a few places for you.”

  “It wouldn’t be too bare?”

  “Nothing can be too bare, apparently. That’s what having style is all about.”

  Rachel brought them all gifts. For Dara a red dress with white tassels, bright and showy and ready to transform her into the colorful girl that Kate always knew she could be. For Michael a huge book about fish and fishing all over the world, for Eddie a bicycle lamp that looked like something from outer space, for Declan a box of horrible joke items including a cushion that made a sound like a fart when you sat on it.

  Rachel had remembered that John had lost weight—there was clearly nothing she had forgotten from Kate’s letters—so she had brought him two smart linen jackets: one in navy, one in a daring gold-tan color. He looked bashful trying it on but delighted with the inspection in the mirror.

  Kate was right, John Ryan had slimmed down and looked somehow taller. He was so pleased with the tan jacket he planned an entire outfit based on the color and said Rachel would have to come to the big town with him one day to advise him.

  For Kate there were magnificent green, blue, and gold silk scarves, each one more elegant than the next. Rachel had magic in her fingers when it came to draping them and arranging them. Everyone gasped as Kate spun her wheelchair around for admiration in the blue and silver scarf. Leopold, who had been watching through the glass door, set up a howl of approval and chased his tail happily.

  It was lovely to be back in this place, and better to be back on her own terms. Rachel didn’t have to worry about Patrick, about what mood he would be in, or what time he got back from Dublin. She didn’t have to feel alarmed when Marian Johnson put her ludicrous oar in trying to drag up remembered incidents and share jokes. No indeed, she didn’t miss Patrick here, and as Kate had said, it did make her feel more independent. More her own woman.

  She was touched at how welcome they made her and especially by the nervousness of Loretto Quinn, who was up at Ryan’s apologizing for the bedrooms before Rachel had even seen them. She hastened to inspect them and put the nervous woman at her ease.

  “This is magnificent, Loretto,” Rachel had said. “And if you wouldn’t take it amiss I’ll have plenty of spare samples of fabrics and little extras and if you like we could do these rooms up for next to nothing while I’m here.”

  Loretto thought that she was in heaven. In days beautiful lilac-colored curtains had arrived—and by an extraordinary coincidence they were just the right size—together with the heather carpet and the cream fabric with lilac flowers for bedspread and cushions. In front of her eyes and with no fuss Loretto saw her rooms transformed. She would walk upstairs and look at her tasteful guest rooms and clasp her hands with pleasure.

  There had also been some extra material in big heavy red for a bedspread for Loretto’s own room, and red and white curtains. Rachel for all her glamor was as nice as anything; she had even found a very bright colorful extra piece of linoleum that was just the right size for Loretto’s shop, and since it looked so smart in that nice green and red, why not paint the counter red and the shelves green? Those young lads of Kate Ryan’s would only be delighted to help out. People began to praise Loretto in terms that they never had before. Wasn’t she the smart little thing now to brighten up her huckster’s shop in readiness for all the visitors? Who would ever have thought that she had so much sense?

  When Patrick called on Loretto Quinn he couldn’t believe the transformation. Her pathetic little place looked smart and cheerful. Even the woman herself looked as if she had been made over by some women’s magazine for a before and after feature.

  “Mrs. Fine about, is she?” he said casually.

  Loretto had been given her instructions very clearly.

  “She’s away on business, Mr. O’Neill.”

  “What business?”

  “Mrs. Fine didn’t tell me, sir.”

  “When’s she coming back?”

  “She didn’t say that either, Mr. O’Neill.”

  “She’s being mighty secretive about her movements, I must say.”

  “Oh no, nothing like that, she’s full of chat, Mrs. Fine, such a nice person. I was nervous of her coming here in the first place, but now I can’t think why. She couldn’t have been more help to me.”

  Patrick had suspected he saw Rachel’s hand in the transformed shop.

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s true, Mrs. Quinn, it’s just that I expected her here to give me a report on everything.”

  “Did she know you were coming here, Mr. O’Neill? She couldn’t have surely?”

  “No, well it was a last-minute thing.”

  “There you are.” Loretto was triumphant that her new friend Mrs. Fine hadn’t been at fault.

  “I’ll take a look at her rooms while I’m here,” Patrick said grumpily.

  Loretto looked embarrassed. “I don’t think … I mean …”

  “Oh, Mrs. Fine wouldn’t mind, Rachel would like me to see that she had a nice place to stay.”

  “It’s just that … you see. If I let rooms to one person I can’t be responsible to let other people in. You do see that, Mr. O’Neill. I can’t be letting people traipse through.”

  “I’m not other people, I’m not traipsing through …” Patrick was very annoyed now.

  “But you do see. Perhaps when Mrs. Fine gets back, if she would like to show you her rooms, it would be different.”

  Patrick banged out of the shop.

  The woman was right, of course, but for God’s sake the last time he had been here she was like a bag lady shoveling potatoes out of dirty old bags. Now she was all dressed up, the potatoes were in big clean containers, Loretto was taking attitudes and striking poses about showing the rooms upstairs. It was too much.

  Patrick didn’t risk going into Ryan’s Licensed Premises. He had managed to fight with everyone he met since getting back, so he decided to put off the possibility of taking John by the lapels or entering into a screaming match with Kate in her wheelchair. He parked his car out of sight of them, and walked across the footbridge. The mansion gave him scant pleasure this morning. All he could see were the faults—the ugly angle of the drive for one thing.
How much better it would have been to have come straight down in one long tree-lined sweep to the river. But how could he have suggested that when, the very day he was going to propose buying their property, Kate was crippled for life on his own building site? Then he didn’t like the huge forecourt, either. It was too bare, too like a parking lot. Which was what it was. Rachel had urged him to leave three trees there but he had thought they would hide the house too much and they would be just further objects to negotiate for buses and cars. He had been wrong and Rachel had been right.

  Where was she for God’s sake?

  Brian Doyle was glad to see him anyway. That made a nice change, Patrick thought grimly. He took off his jacket and sat down in Brian’s site office.

  “Tell me why you’re glad to see me, Brian, is it because I am such a good kind employer responsible for the livelihood of at least two hundred people give or take, responsible for your own inflated lifestyle and yet another new car which I see parked outside? Is that why my presence makes you glad? Or is it because I’m the first peasant within five hundred miles who bought the Big House and made it live the way we want it to live? Or is it because of my curly brown hair and twinkling blue eyes?”

  Brian looked at Patrick in alarm. He supposed the man must have been drinking, it could be the only explanation.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” he began.

  “This may come as a shock to you, Brian, but I would not like a cup of coffee. I have never, since all this began, liked any cup of coffee I have had here. It has become an interesting guessing game to know whether it is coffee, or tea or Postum or the water that all these things have been washed up in.”

  “Oh well then, forget it.” Brian wasn’t at all offended at the insult to the coffee made on site, he took it that Mr. O’Neill was beyond coffee, and wanted a drink fast.

  “Will we go down to Ryan’s and talk then?” he said agreeably.

  “We will not go down to Ryan’s, we will talk here. It may have escaped your notice that it is ten-fifty in the morning, not a time for adjourning to a pub even by your standards.”

  “Jesus Christ, nothing would please you today.”

  “You may be right. Why were you glad to see me?”

  “There’s been a lot of messages for one thing, people wanting to get in touch with you. The phone’s not stopped all morning.”

  “Right,” Patrick grunted. “Where’s Rachel?”

  “Who?”

  “Rachel Fine. Has it escaped your notice that she has been working with me since 1963 in the design and interior decoration of this hotel which has made you a millionaire ten times over?”

  You couldn’t insult Brian Doyle, which was one of his great strengths.

  “Oh, Mrs. Fine? I’ve no idea where she is, she’s been in and out, but you know what she’s like, a very helpful lady—never gets in the way, does her work, leaves a note about it and is gone.”

  “Yes, well what note did she leave?”

  “It was measurements, someone here gave her the wrong figures for the dining room, they’d got it all wrong, the shop was going to send twice too much material. Mrs. Fine headed them off. She’s saving you a packet that lady, I tell you. A packet.”

  “I’m glad somebody’s saving me a packet, with the way that other people throw it around.”

  “Maybe when you feel more yourself,” said Brian in the tone that you’d use to talk to a drunk about to fall off a bar stool.

  “I am myself, you idiot,” said Patrick. “I just want you to ring these guys as you call it. Ring them on that phone, as you call it, and tell them I’m not here.”

  “Everyone calls it ring, it’s not a word I made up,” cried Brian, stung at last to some kind of response. “And you told me yourself that you always grasped the nettle, Mr. O’Neill, you always took the bull by the horns, you said that was the one sure road to success. I’ve been following your example, I’ve been doing it myself, and it does seem to work. I’ve been doing much better.”

  “You’ve been doing much better because I handed you the job of a lifetime on a plate and you are taking a lifetime to complete it!” Patrick was aware that his bad temper was doing him no good but he wasn’t ready to stop yet.

  “Now Brian, listen to me. You do what I say, and do it now. I’m getting the hell out of here before I have a heart attack and the litigation about the hotel becomes legal history and with any luck you’d never get paid the last bit.”

  “And when do I say you’re going to be here?”

  “You don’t know. You haven’t a goddamn clue.”

  Patrick grabbed his jacket and got up to head for the footbridge.

  “But Mr. O’Neill, can’t I show you what we’ve done …”

  “I see what you’ve done, the front is like a tarmac in an airport.”

  “Shit, Mr. O’Neill, everything was in the plans …”

  “Don’t you say shit to me …”

  “But don’t you want a tour of the site as usual?”

  “How can I if I’m not here?”

  Patrick was half way down to the footbridge when he saw Dara Ryan running toward him excitedly.

  “Hallo, Mr. O’Neill,” she called, pleased to see him.

  “Well Dara, good to see you.” He noticed that she was becoming a striking-looking girl, tall, dark, in a white tee shirt, jeans and a red flower tucked behind her ear—or maybe it was a bit of jewelry.

  “When did you get back?” she asked.

  “A little while ago. Everyone I’ve met has fought with me so far. You’re not going to have a fight are you?”

  “Lord, no.” She seemed eager to talk. “Did you have a good time?”

  “In Dublin. No, not really, not at all in fact. Nothing but meetings and more meetings and nothing much at the end of it. Despite what you may think I actually don’t enjoy fighting.”

  “I never thought you enjoyed fighting,” Dara said. She was anxious to ask him something. He wondered what it was.

  “Well, you’re right.” He smiled warmly at her. It was true, he didn’t enjoy a fight. He had not enjoyed the scenes some weeks back after a demarcation dispute between two sets of workers. In front of fifty men he had told Brian Doyle that they had three hours in which to decide which men did what work. If it were not agreed then every single man would be paid off that afternoon. There had been something in his face that sorted out the dispute in far less than the three hours he had given them.

  It was a victory but he hadn’t enjoyed it.

  “And what are you doing here on the footbridge? Were you lying in wait for me?” he asked.

  “Not really, I was wondering when you’d be back, there’s a folk concert up in the grounds of the ruined abbey, lots of quite well-known singers, and I was wondering …”

  “I think I’m a bit old for it, Dara,” he teased.

  “No, I meant if Kerry was interested in going. I wasn’t sure when you were both coming back so I kept an eye out.”

  He looked at her and sighed. “Kerry won’t be back for the concert,” he said.

  “He’s not with you?”

  “No, he wasn’t in Dublin, he went straight to Donegal, did he not tell you?”

  “I must have gotten it wrong,” said Dara Ryan. The light had gone out of her big dark eyes.

  “Can we go out for a walk?” Rachel said. It was a very sunny afternoon but with a nice breeze.

  “Sure, hold on a moment until I get some gum and stick my spine together, then I’ll leap up and come with you,” Kate said without rancor.

  “I meant me going for a walk, you going for a push.”

  “It’s boring,” Kate said. “You have to shout over my shoulder, I have to crane my neck. I wish I had a pram, people can talk to babies, not over their heads.”

  “We can talk when we get there,” Rachel said.

  “Get where?”

  “Mystery tour.”

  “Why not? Let me drape one of your scarves elegantly around me so that I’ll
knock the eyes out of anyone we meet.”

  They went first to Loretto Quinn’s. Kate couldn’t believe the changes that had been made. Normally Loretto was so indecisive she couldn’t decide whether to wrap your potatoes in newspaper, put them into a paper bag or feed them straight into your shopping bag. Now it appeared that in under two weeks her entire shop had been refurbished. There was even a man redoing the sign over the door.

  Two men in the shop lifted Kate’s wheelchair inside so that she could see. She propelled herself around touching this and stroking that. There was so much room here now. The place looked an entirely different class of a shop. Much more upper-class or something. Yet her prices were the same. Kate was full of praise.

  “But it’s all Mrs. Fine, Kate, she’s a walking saint—a bit like yourself. I don’t know why she did all this for me, I really don’t. I’d never in a month of Sundays have been able to think of it all myself, or if I thought of it, I’d never have been able to do it.”

  Loretto looked taller, Kate thought, suddenly, which was nonsense. But maybe she was standing up more straight now, and she had tidied herself up. It wouldn’t do to be the old wishy-washy Loretto with pale hair falling into her eyes and a grubby pink overall. She wore a smart brown shopcoat, with a white blouse underneath. Her hair was clipped back with a smart red barrette, undoubtedly a gift from Rachel.

  Kate sighed. “You’re a sort of magician, you know, you’ve changed Loretto’s life,” she said to Rachel as they went back along River Road.

  “It’s easy to change other people’s lives, it’s your own that’s the problem,” Rachel laughed.

  “Hey, is the tour over? That was very short as a mystery tour—up to Loretto’s and back.”

  “No, no, it hasn’t begun. I thought we’d go across the footbridge and look at the hotel.”

  It was said lightly, but they both knew it wasn’t light. Kate hadn’t been across the Fern for more than two years. Not since the day she had walked across the footbridge herself and been carried out of the site unconscious in an ambulance.

  “Oh I don’t think so, Rachel.”

  They were at the footbridge. Rachel came around to the front of the wheelchair and squatted down in front of Kate. Her perfectly arranged hair in its short natural looking curls that took her thirty minutes to arrange every morning hadn’t been disturbed. Her make-up made her look like a young girl. Her big dark eyes were troubled and fixed on Kate.