by Tyler, Anne
“Your man, the American’s going to have a real bar, not a fancy lounge with uppity prices, but a normal bar across the bridge there from them, it will take all their trade. Very hard on them. Poor man’s wife in a wheelchair already after an accident and now this on top of it all.”
Dara turned away and looked out the window.
“Tell me, did you know that unfortunate child who was killed there last week, wasn’t it the saddest thing …?”
His voice trailed away as he saw the glint of tears on the girl’s face. “Of course you must have known the girl I’m sorry,” he said, mad with himself.
Dara just kept looking out at the road taking them toward Galway.
“Will I wait and see that you meet your brother all right?”
“No thanks, I’m fine now. Really I am.”
“You must take no notice of me, Mikey the big mouth, that’s what they call me.”
“No, you were very kind to give me a lift.”
“The little girl who died is in heaven of course.”
“Of course,” Dara said in an odd flat voice.
There didn’t seem to be a back room when she went in first. Just a shabby-looking bar with a loud jukebox. There were cigarette butts on the floor and bits of litter everywhere.
It must be through the door that said toilets on a hand-scrawled sign.
She pushed through the door and saw ahead of her another one, she touched it and it opened a little. Kerry sat at a table with a drunk. Kerry was shuffling cards in a way that they seemed to make an are. His face was clenched in concentration.
She stood looking at him for what felt like a long time before he looked up and saw her.
His face didn’t change, he looked neither annoyed nor surprised.
“Hi,” he said and continued with the shuffle.
“Not that way, Kerry, get your thumb in there properly.” Francis Doyle’s voice was slurred.
Dara sat down and watched. The drunken man helped himself to more whiskey from time to time. Neither of them even acknowledged her being there.
“I felt lonely so I thought I’d come out here,” she said eventually.
“Sure.” Kerry was pleasant but abstracted.
“To find you,” she said.
“And you did,” he said.
Francis Doyle took no more notice of her than if she had been a fly that had buzzed into this close, overpowering room. She felt slightly light-headed as if she might faint.
“Are you going to talk to me?” she asked Kerry.
“Not now, no.”
“When?”
“When I’ve learned the waterfall,” he said.
Dara’s mind went blank as she sat in the airless room. She was unaware of her surroundings or how long she sat there. Then she felt Kerry touching her shoulder.
“I’ll drive you home now,” he said in a light casual way as if it were the most normal thing in the world to find her in this strange place miles and miles from home.
He held open the door of the little red car. They drove back to Mountfern, fast through the twisty roads. Dara didn’t speak. But she felt more at ease. She settled herself low in the car and once or twice she closed her eyes. On a hill a few miles from Mountfern the car stopped. Kerry looked at her.
“What are we going to do with you, Dara?” He said it with a mixture of affection and irritation.
She turned to him. “I don’t know. I felt so empty. The only thing that made any sense was to be with you.”
“But you don’t want to be with me. You made that clear in the woods.”
“I don’t want to sleep with you.”
“We were wide awake.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know you keep pushing me away. Why should I think you want to be with me?” He looked puzzled.
Dara took Kerry’s hand and held it to her lips. “I’ve never loved anyone before. You see this is the first time and it’s very confusing. It’s all mixed up with everything else that’s happened, and I feel strange and frightened.”
She looked terribly young. He took her hand and kissed it gently the way she had his. He said nothing.
“You mightn’t even love me at all,” she continued. “So I had nothing to lose by going to find you. I’m not playing any sort of game.”
“I don’t know if I love anyone,” Kerry said. “But if I do the nearest I’d come to it would be you. Come here to me.”
He took her in his arms and she stretched across the little red car to reach him.
He had ten more days’ holiday.
Dara still looked pale and anxious. But she went to sit in the woods each day Some days he came there, some he did not. She never knew whether he would be there or not.
Each time he held her close to him, he seemed to be more demanding and urgent. Dara felt her resistance changing in degree. What she had fought off a week previously seemed acceptable now.
“When is Kerry going back to Donegal?” Kate asked Rachel.
“Patrick says he still has a few days.”
“I wish he’d go now.”
“Don’t worry so much, Kate.”
“I can’t help it. She looks totally feverish and her mind is a thousand miles away when she’s here, or to be more precise three miles away up at the lodge.”
“I asked her to come for a drive with me, but she said no.” Rachel had done her best.
“I know you did, you’re very good. I suppose we can just hang on until he goes.”
“Do you have friends in Donegal?” Dara asked.
“Not really. It’s mainly work, you know … I play cards sometimes, with a couple of guys I met, Tony McCann, Charlie Burns, they live in Derry across the border.”
“Don’t they have red buses and red letter boxes there?”
“You’ve never been to the north?”
“No, how would I go to the north, Kerry?”
“They have red everything, and red, white and blue flags.”
“Well it’s part of England.”
“It’s part of the United Kingdom.”
“Same thing.”
“Don’t you care about it not being part of Ireland?”
“Not very much. It will be eventually, I suppose.”
“McCann cares, and his friends care. They feel very strongly about it.” Kerry’s voice sounded as if he were quoting rather than talking.
“That’s all big talk because you’re an American,” Dara said.
“What do you know about it?”
“Nothing,” she giggled.
“Will you miss me when I go back?” he asked.
“Very much. Do you have to go back?”
“Maybe I could stay … perhaps I could think of an excuse to stay …” he said teasingly.
“Really?”
“If I stay will you be nice to me?” He had reached his arms out for her.
“I’m always nice to you. How would you get off work?”
“I can get anything I want,” Kerry said.
“When’s Kerry going back?” Kate asked with an innocent air.
“I don’t think he is,” Dara said, eyes dancing.
“That’s right, Grace said he was hoping to get some more time,” said Michael.
“Doesn’t he have to work in Hill’s?” Kate’s voice was crisp.
“Oh, Kerry could talk his way out of anything,” Michael said.
Dara frowned: she didn’t want Kerry presented as too much of a playboy. “He’ll be able to arrange more time, there’s going to be no problem,” she said.
She looked excited and eager.
Kate’s mouth was a hard narrow line.
“Would you like me to take Dara off on a trip somewhere?” Fergus asked Kate next day.
“Dara?”
“It would keep her out of Kerry O’Neill’s clutches. At least you’d know she was safe with me. Everyone’s safe with me,” Fergus added gloomily.
Kate didn’t give the usual good-humored
riposte. She said nothing for a moment.
Then she said, “No, I think it’s time for Dara to go on a trip much further afield.”
“Where do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ll talk to John about it. We have to stop pretending it isn’t happening.”
“Of course we don’t know if anything is happening.” Fergus began to backtrack.
“We have an educated guess,” Kate said grimly.
They sat in the side yard. The whitewashed walls of the big outhouse which had been where the twins had their party now had clematis and honeysuckle growing up and winding around. The front of that building out on River Road looked well too, bright-colored windowboxes getting ready for the day it would open as Ryan’s Shamrock Café.
John and Kate often sat for a while in the side yard. After a night in a room that smelled of cigarette smoke and porter it was like a cool waterfall to sit here where the flowers took over. The night-scented stock and the jasmine were everywhere.
“What will we do with Dara?” Kate’s voice was heavy and sad.
“I’ve been thinking,” John said slowly.
“I knew you would.” She looked at him hopefully.
“Do you remember what Sister Laura wanted us to do in the first place? Why don’t we send her to France?”
Chapter XIX
Madame Vartin looked like the Mother of Sorrows. She had a long white face and a thin mouth that trembled as if on the verge of tears constantly. She had pale blue eyes swimming in sadness. Monsieur Vartin was quite different—he was small and round and laughed like a machine gun firing in continuous rattles and blasts. Neither of them spoke a word of English. Mademoiselle Stephanie, who was a cousin of Madame Vartin, spoke enough to explain Dara’s duties to her.
She was to prepare breakfast for the three small Vartin children, she was to take them for a walk and teach them five phrases in English each day. Then she was to play with them till their lunch; after that she was free to study. At dinner she was to help serve at table and to clear afterward.
She got pocket money which worked out at about £3 a week and there was nothing to spend it on as they were miles from anywhere in the middle of the country. The children were horrible and Monsieur was inclined to touch her a lot, pressing up against her when he passed by. Madame’s eyes brimmed with such sadness Dara felt almost afraid to talk to her at all. If it had not been for Stephanie, Dara felt she would have gone mad. It was hard to know what Stephanie did in the house. She was often to be seen folding linen or gathering flowers. She made curtains for one of the rooms, a job that took her almost all the summer. Sometimes she took the small car and drove off in the afternoons, sometimes she picked fruit. Dara couldn’t make it out at all.
“Avez-vous un vrai job, Mademoiselle Stephanie?” she asked one day. Stephanie laughed at her and quite unexpectedly gave Dara a kiss on each cheek.
“Je t’adore, mon petit chou,” she said, still pealing with laughter.
Dara was confused. Why did Stephanie adore her? Why didn’t she say whether she had a job or not? Why did she use the familiar tu form? Ever since she had arrived she had known that she must be formal and call everyone except the children vous. It was a mystery. For a couple of days Stephanie would keep repeating un vrai job and shake her head with laughter each time.
Dara could hardly believe how quickly she had managed to find herself transported to France. She, Dara Ryan, who had never even been to London or Belfast had been through Paris in a car and had seen the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. Then she had been driven by Mademoiselle Stephanie to this far-away falling down house in the French countryside.
Mademoiselle Stephanie, blonde and curvy, said she liked the opportunity to practice her English; one day she would visit Ireland and meet all the great and famous people in Ireland. Dara wondered fearfully if Sister Laura had exaggerated the attractions of Mountfern or the connections of the Ryan household.
But mainly she wondered why she was here. It had been so sudden, the explanations all quite unsatisfactory.
Mam had been no help. She had been all excited and said it was wonderful, that Dad had found the money, and what a great, wonderful chance for Dara. Michael had said it was a pity they didn’t take boy au pairs, Grace said it was the most exciting thing she had heard of in her life. Tommy Leonard had said he would write to her every few days in case she was lonely. Mary Donnelly told her that of all men, Frenchmen were known to be the lowest.
Kerry had said nothing.
She had rushed to tell him in Coyne’s wood and he had shrugged.
“Well if you want to go, that’s great.”
“I don’t want to go and leave you.”
“Why don’t you do what you want to do, Dara?”
It was a frightening echo of the way she had spoken to Maggie. She remembered the way she had spoken to Maggie the night before the accident.
“You don’t ever know what you want.” She had shouted that as an accusation, and Kerry was saying the same thing to her. She looked at him aghast.
He relented a little. “Have a lovely summer,” he said, and kissed her on the nose.
“Will you write to me?” she asked.
“I’ll send you a card.”
“Will you?”
“I said I would.” He sounded impatient.
“Will you stay here now that I’m going back or do you think you should go back to Donegal?”
“Who knows, little Dara? Who knows?” He had kissed her again on the nose.
She had gone to the lodge twice in the hope of seeing him. But he had been out both times.
Grace thought he might have gone to some place he liked miles out on the Galway road. Miss Hayes said that she hoped he had not. It was a place with a bad name, full of drunks and layabouts.
“No it’s not, it’s just shabby and dirty,” Dara had said and they looked at her with surprise.
She longed to ask Grace to write and tell her about Kerry. She longed to tell Grace how much she yearned to hear of him. But it would be useless, Grace had no idea how much Dara envied her the easy access, the nearness and the closeness to Kerry.
She nearly asked Michael, but she couldn’t do that either.
“I’ll miss you a lot,” Michael said the night before she left.
“No you won’t, you have Grace.”
“That’s different, I’ll still miss you, Dara,” he said, surprised. “You’re my twin, for heaven’s sake.”
“So I am,” she said emptily.
“Is anything wrong?”
“Everything’s all changed.”
“We’re just getting older.”
“Maggie didn’t,” she said.
And suddenly here she was in the French countryside taking children for walks down strange kinds of country roads that had no character in them at all. The fields didn’t have proper walls, they went on for miles and miles without any fences even. The farmhouse was terribly shabby on the outside, but very rich and full of huge furniture on the inside.
There was Maria, an Italian maid who had great tufts of long black hair at her armpits and who seemed almost as miserable as Madame. Only Madame, Maria and Dara went to mass on Sundays, which seemed to make nonsense of the nuns saying they were Catholic families looking for equally good Catholics to come and stay. Monsieur had been to the church five times he told her, for his christening, his first communion, his wedding, and the christening of two of his three children; the third managed without him. At least that’s what Dara thought he was saying; he seemed to be counting out the occasions proudly on the fingers of one hand for her. She shuddered to think what Canon Moran, or anyone at school would think if she told them, and for some reason she didn’t quite understand, she felt that she wouldn’t tell them.
Madame’s visit to Lourdes involved a lot of preparation. An open suitcase sat on the landing and there was a lot of folding and refolding of clothes, and placing and replacing of missals and small prayer books. There wa
s never a smile or an eagerness, just a more determined business than ever Dara wondered what the woman could be going so far to pray for.
“Desirez-vous un miracle, Madame Vartin?” she asked boldly on the morning of the departure.
The thin dark woman stopped and looked at her as if she had never seen Dara before.
“Un miracle!” she repeated. “Un miracle. Tiens!”
And suddenly and totally unexpectedly, she took Dara by the shoulders and kissed her on each cheek. There were tears in her eyes.
Dara felt terrible. Perhaps Madame Vartin was very sick. How stupid to ask her if she was seeking a miracle! Dara wished she could have bitten back the words, but strangely Madame’s softness remained, and when she was being waved off by the entire family at the door she had a special pat for Dara. It was impossible to understand the French.
Dara went for her usual walk in the orchard to find apples that would stave off hunger until the impossibly late meal that evening. She decided to write a long letter to her mother and went upstairs to get her writing paper.
There was summer lightning out over the strange unwalled fields of France. She ate the green apples, and she wrote about Madame going to Lourdes and her own tactless remarks. Dara had gotten into the habit of writing to her mother just like she talked. She knew that the letters were not read out at home, but that her mother gave edited extracts.
“I wonder why she’s so sad,” Dara wrote. “I mean she doesn’t have any awful things to put up with like you do, not being able to walk, and getting stuck behind the counter listening to old bores drinking and chattering on for hours. I can’t understand why Monsieur married her really, he must have known she would be a misery. She looks like a disaster area even in their wedding picture. But I think you’d need to live here for a lifetime to know what any of them are at.”
Next morning she knocked on Mademoiselle Stephanie’s door to ask for a stamp. They gave their letters to the mailman when he arrived with the incoming mail.
Mademoiselle Stephanie was still in bed, which was odd. Beside her was Monsieur Vartin, which was so unexpected that the letter fell from Dara’s hand.
“I’m terribly sorry …” she began.
