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

by Tyler, Anne

  For four years she had lived quietly in this family, kept their confidences and made no judgments about them. Now she would no longer be part of their lives.

  Kerry barely acknowledged her departure.

  She had known this would be the case. She was no longer of any use to him. There had been a time when he had been charming, but charm was a currency, no need to spend any of it on Miss Hayes.

  She felt a great sense of peace and achievement, and no last-minute regrets about leaving. It was what she had always planned.

  Mr. O’Neill’s generosity made it possible to come back if things did not work out. She was letting her little house in the town to a young couple with a baby. They paid a small rent and would continue to put that into Sheila Whelan’s post office for her.

  When Olive Hayes called quietly and decorously to say goodbye to the people in the pub, she had a quick moment with Kate. Unlike most of the place who would have wished her luck in the compensation case, Miss Hayes had a different wish.

  “I spent a lot of time, Mrs. Ryan, wondering what to say about this and perhaps I am just an interfering old busybody, but perhaps, being confined to the house, you mightn’t realize that Kerry O’Neill is a very dangerous young man.”

  “Oh Miss Hayes, don’t I know it,” Kate sighed. “I know only too well how unstable he is. I did my best by sending her to France, but I can’t banish the child from her own town forever.”

  “With respect, it’s not that he’s unstable, he is very aware of what he is doing and what he wants. He is totally self-centered. Perhaps with the help of God your daughter will see through him.”

  “Get out there fast to those nuns and start them praying.” Kate smiled wanly.

  Olive Hayes took her seriously. “When I heard that he would be living in the lodge on his own, I did ask Bernadette to get some prayers said for a special intention.”

  Kate held her hand for a long moment before Olive Hayes left Mountfern.

  It was, as Michael expected, not nearly as easy to see Grace once she was in the hotel. The excitement of the new life, the attention and the fuss kept her busy all the hours that she had free from school.

  They had arranged to wave to each other at certain times at night and make mirror flashes across the river.

  Michael had worked out “I love you” in Morse code, but Grace said it was endless, and you’d be exhausted working out all the short-long short-longs of it just for one sentence.

  Tommy Leonard seemed to understand. “Wasn’t it easier before girls?” he said to Michael.

  “Like when there was just Adam in the garden of Eden?” Michael laughed.

  “No, you know what I mean.”

  “But you don’t have any problems with Jacinta; she’s there all the time, living on the other side of the street and everything.” Michael was envious.

  “It isn’t Jacinta I want, you thick oaf.”

  Grace told Michael that her father was giving her a new dress for the opening. She was to go to Dublin to buy it. She was going to ask for the day off from school. Could Michael come with her and help her choose?

  School had reopened and the notion of giving Michael a day off to go shopping with a girl in Dublin was about as acceptable to the authorities as suggesting a trip on a flying saucer.

  “Come on, Mike, think of something.”

  “But it’s not just Brother Keane, he’d have to explain to Mom and to Dad and if I went without saying anything to them, Eddie would hear and tell, or Tommy Leonard would. Lord, Grace, we can’t just waltz off to Dublin as if we were adults.”

  “We are adults—in lots of ways.” Grace pouted at him.

  “Yes, well.” Michael reddened, thinking of their last visit to the tunnel. He felt it was official to go there now, now that Dara had given permission. So he was more adventurous in his approach to Grace as a celebration of this.

  “Don’t be such a mother’s boy,” she taunted.

  That hurt. Especially since it was really his mother he feared most. He had the feeling that she worried about his friendship with Grace. And that she would be astounded to think he would even suggest the shopping trip.

  That morning Kate had spoken for the first time to Dara and Michael about the upcoming court case.

  She had said that she wanted them to give her all the support they could. What she needed was to know that they wouldn’t go around blabbing or being silly about it. That they would be the model of good behavior for just these few days, since the eyes of Mountfern would be on the whole family for a short time. Some people wished them to get a fortune; some wished them not to get anything significant in case it would prejudice the hotel in any way. But the truth of the matter was that there would be a respectable sum of money which would be placed in a bank for the children’s education.

  It was all upsetting having to go to court, but what would make it worthwhile was the knowledge that the Ryan children were working hard and would deserve any benefit that might come to them.

  She had been quite solemn, and for the first time for a very long while she had sounded sad.

  She had said that in many ways her own life was over, and that this was not something to feel bitter about; people’s lives ended in different ways. But it would all have a meaning if her children were to be strong and to have a bit of class when faced with the wagging tongues and overexcitement of a small parish.

  Michael and Dara had promised that they would not let her down.

  Going to Dublin midweek on a train, telling Brother Keane a pack of lies—that would be letting her down.

  Michael said he couldn’t go and help Grace choose a dress.

  Grace said that was all right, then, she might ask Jim Costello was he going to drive to Dublin anytime soon, she could get a ride in his car. Michael wasn’t to give it another thought.

  The District Court sat every week in the town, and cases that were of a higher jurisdiction or that were appealed were heard when the Circuit Court came four times a year for a period of three weeks each time.

  At one stage there was a judge who had been interested in fishing who had driven out to the Fern each evening after the summer sessions and sat on his little stool looking for all the world like an old tramp. He and Fergus Slattery’s father had struck up a friendship without either ever knowing the other was involved in the law, so great was their interest in the fish that swam the Fern and the methods of taking them out of the river.

  Nowadays, with better roads and better train services, the barristers and judges didn’t spend long in the town. They rarely came as far as Mountfern.

  Kate and John Ryan were surprised to see Kevin Kennedy come into the pub the night before the case.

  “Fergus didn’t say you were coming,” Kate said, flustered.

  She moved the wheelchair in her quick agile way back over the ramp, and they beckoned him into her big green room. How right it had been to make this room into a proper sitting place for her. Seeing that she was going to sit for the rest of her days it made it much more bearable to sit in pleasant surroundings and not to apologize for wherever you were.

  John got Mary to take over his place pulling pints. Most of the clientele would know who Kevin Kennedy was anyway and what it was about.

  “Good luck and get them a fortune,” said one man as Kevin squeezed his way past the counter.

  “Luck is exactly what it’s about,” he said, turning around, “it has not a thing to do with what people deserve, or they would get a king’s ransom.”

  His serious voice startled the drinkers. They had expected some sort of joky answer.

  “Fergus doesn’t even know I’m here …” he began when they were in the room.

  “Well, don’t you think maybe …” John began.

  “No, no, I’m on my way to him, it’s just that we’ve had an offer. A firm offer. Six thousand pounds. A yes or a no. That’s what they say.”

  “Yes,” said Kate.

  “We must ask Fergus,” said John.


  “What do you think?” Kate asked John.

  “I don’t know what to think. We could go into court and fight all day and come out with less but the fact they offer it at all twenty-four hours before the case means they think it might go further against them.”

  Kevin Kennedy looked from one to another.

  There weren’t many consultations on his cases, usually it was a matter of working straight from the brief, from the case to advice. But when he had met the people involved in their houses, he had often felt his city prejudices against country people were confirmed. They were so often inarticulate, and often grasping. This time it was different. There was a gentle pace of life that he liked in Mountfern; there was a graciousness about this couple and their handsome dark-eyed children whom he had seen briefly.

  There was a sense of repressed energy about the crippled Kate Ryan that gave her more life than most women who were able to walk and run. She was quick, opinionated and impatient, and she had had a long hard lesson in having to learn that she must lean on others. He liked the husband too. All very genial and easygoing on the outside, but he had a logical reasoning mind. Fergus Slattery had said the man was a poet too, in a small way.

  He felt involved with these people in a way he hadn’t felt involved for a long time. He had been through every case reported: the factory worker who only this year had been awarded £3,000. The sum had been based on his earnings, and how much more he could have expected. He had been twenty-eight, he had lost an eye. Everyone had accepted that £3,000 was fair; he had been earning £14 a week.

  There was an agricultural laborer in his mid forties. His injuries were terrible even to read about. He got £7,000. His case had included the plea that he would never be able to marry and have a family. The award was considered high. There was that woman who had spent four months in the special hospital in England. Her barristers had proved such mental anguish, the compensation was £7,000.

  They were looking at him, as if he should know. And he didn’t know. He couldn’t tell them either what was fair or what would happen.

  “It’s very tempting to say that we’ll take it,” Kate said. “It’s so tempting that I have to think it’s the wrong decision.”

  John had his hand on hers as he spoke. “It would be such an easy way to finish it off. To say we’ll take it and put it in the bank for the children to go to university maybe, or for rainy days which may well come this way.” He nodded his head across in the direction of Fernscourt, and Kevin Kennedy remembered the danger to their small business from the new hotel.

  “So you’d like to refuse it …?”

  “I think we shouldn’t accept it too readily,” John said. “I know that sounds like sitting on the fence … I’m not a gambling man, and I’m not in the world of doing deals or bargaining, but I have this feeling you shouldn’t accept the first offer. Am I right?”

  Kevin was about to say there was no need to accept anything now as there would undoubtedly be time to do so tomorrow, but Kate spoke first.

  “I’m sure you know how much more than just a mere solicitor Fergus has been to us. It’s as if his own spine were broken.” She spoke clearly and without any sense of drama. She just wanted to be sure he understood how important the tall gangling country lawyer was in their lives.

  “Yes, of course, of course,” he murmured.

  “So I suppose you will bring him in on this, won’t you, and ask him what he thinks we should do. I don’t think John and I should really make any decision without Fergus being here.”

  “Of course. I just wanted to get a gut reaction. Sometimes a surplus of lawyers can confuse people rather than help.”

  “Did you get a gut reaction?” Kate asked.

  “Yes. You’d take anything, Mrs. Ryan, anything not to have to face a court. It’s your back, it’s your legs, we should listen to you. Your husband is aware of all this, but he’s thinking about what you’ll both feel years from now, and trying to take that into account. I’m with Mr. Ryan, but then, it didn’t happen to me.”

  Fergus said, as they knew he would say, that it was not enough.

  Kevin Kennedy said that it was about what they could hope for from the jury.

  Dr. White said that was a lot of money, he had many patients with broken bodies after car accidents and they hadn’t got a third of that.

  Fergus said that they were dealing with multimillionaires here, big foreign international companies with coffers of money which they guarded like misers and wouldn’t give out to the people that were struck down and obviously deserving it.

  John said that he knew he was a cautious man but wouldn’t six thousand pounds go a very long way, and buy them everything they ever needed? And since no money would buy Kate the chance of walking again, then maybe they should take this now and be done with it. But, then …

  Kate sat very still as they talked.

  They leaned over to make a point; they interrupted each other. Four men all wanting the best for her, and coming at it in their different ways. She felt curiously detached from it. As if up in the air looking down at them, the doctor, the solicitor, the barrister and the publican.

  They talked themselves out at around the same time, and they all looked at her.

  “It’s up to you in the end, Kate. Whatever you say, that’s what we’ll do.”

  She looked slowly around the little group.

  “Fight,” she said. “I think we owe it to the children to do this for them. Let’s fight to the finish.”

  Kevin Kennedy said that he was going to spend the night in Mountfern. He had heard there was a delightful old-world place called the Grange. Everyone exchanged glances. What was wrong with it? He wanted to know. Nothing, it was just that Patrick O’Neill stayed there.

  “He’s moved,” Kate said. “He went into the hotel.”

  This surprised the others, but then Kate always knew everything ahead of most people.

  “That’s fine then.” Kevin Kennedy was businesslike. “I’ll give them a call. If our friend Mr. O’Neill has moved out, that’s all right, then.”

  It was a sunny morning.

  “I don’t know whether that makes it better or worse,” Kate said.

  John had slept on the divan bed in her room. Not that either of them slept very much. He had gotten up to make tea twice. He pulled back the curtains over the glass doors to reveal Leopold sitting mournfully outside.

  “If that animal lets as much as the smallest yowl out of him, I’ll kill him with my own bare hands,” Kate said.

  Leopold seemed to sense the danger. He raised his front paw hopefully, as if someone might shake hands with him through the closed door.

  She looked sleepy and anxious.

  John stood beside her bed. “Could you get another hour if I closed off the light again, and left you in peace?”

  “No, no. I’m too jumpy.”

  “So am I. I can neither stand, sit, nor lie.”

  “What are you going to do?” She saw him pulling on a jumper over the shirt he had worn the previous day. He obviously wasn’t going to get washed and ready for the court at this early hour.

  “I don’t know. I feel trapped in here, somehow.”

  Something in her face made him realize how trapped Kate must feel all the time.

  “Not that I’m going to go out or anything,” he said hastily.

  “Take me out too.”

  “It’s only halfpast six in the morning.”

  “Come on, we’ll go for a walk.”

  He dressed her, and she slid into her chair. Quietly they let themselves out the front door of the pub—they didn’t go through the backyard for fear of waking Mary Donnelly.

  The river was glorious in the September early morning. Leopold trotted with them, delighted with the chance of an early-morning outing but staying at a respectful distance.

  Up past the Rosemarie hair salon, its pink curtains drawn firmly.

  “Do you think she’s still at it?” John asked.


  Kate laughed. “Not at all, she’s far too busy getting ready for American hairstyles, she even has books on how to do it so that they’d like it.”

  “Oh, she always knew how to do it so that they’d like it,” John said. “They tell me of course, I wouldn’t know from any personal experience.”

  And as they came back again to the footbridge and the day was about to begin for everyone else, they stopped and looked over at Fernscourt.

  They could see Patrick O’Neill in his shirt sleeves at one of the windows on the first floor.

  “It’s a hard day for him too,” Kate said.

  They looked across the river to the dock, up the path with its rockeries and shrubs leading to the great sweep where the drive came in. They looked at the steps up to the big house, the bedroom wings fanning back on either side, the workmen beginning to arrive in twos and threes.

  And they saw Patrick standing still at his window.

  He must have seen them too.

  But because it was the day that it was, nobody waved at anyone else.

  Rachel was coming to get Kate dressed.

  They had been such friends for so long that nobody saw anything remotely odd about this merging of both sides of the case.

  They had several differences of opinion about what she should wear with the simple gray-and-white dress which had been ironed by Carrie, and then done again by Dara, and finally given a going over by Mary.

  Rachel said no lady could be seen without gloves. Kate said only the gentry wore gloves around here.

  Rachel said a little eye shadow made Kate look much more attractive. Kate said that a country jury would think eye shadow meant she was the whore of Babylon.

  “Stop making people into yokels, Kate, this is the sixties; they all move with the times here like everywhere else.”

  Kate said she wasn’t going to risk it. She had promised Fergus she would look demure.

  They were ready far too early.

  Rachel tried to distract her with tales that didn’t have any bearing on what was about to happen.

  That was harder to do than she had imagined. Almost all her conversation was related to Patrick or to his hotel.