by Tyler, Anne
“He’ll be jumping on Mademoiselle Stephanie all day,” Dara said gloomily, and then brightened up. “Oh, no, he won’t, she’s getting married, isn’t that great?”
“They all sound cracked to me,” Michael said.
“There’s Grace going down the towpath,” Dara said suddenly.
Michael jumped up on the seat to look. True, Grace was walking purposefully along toward the bridge. She wore her blue jeans and those funny little red lace-up shoes she had, and a blue and red stripy shirt, and there were red ribbons in her hair.
She looked as pretty as a picture.
Michael was pale and unhappy. Dara decided she would break their code of not offering advice.
“Do you know what I would do if I were you?”
“No,” said Michael gruffly.
“I’d ask Grace straight out. I’d say, ‘Is anything wrong, things seem to have changed?’ At least that way you’d know.”
“She’ll just smile and say nothing’s changed,” Michael grumbled.
“She might actually tell you if there is something wrong.”
“I don’t want to hear it if there is,” Michael said. He feared that Grace was greatly smitten by the handsome young hotel manager, and because Jim Costello had the sense to play hard to get Grace fancied him all the more.
“Do girls like being asked direct questions like that?” he asked doubtfully.
“I do,” Dara said. “If anyone asked me a direct question like that, I’d respect them, and that’s the truth.”
“Dara, I was just passing,” Tommy Leonard said.
“Oh Tommy, how could you be just passing? The brothers’ is at the other side of the town to the convent.”
“I know, I heard they built them that way on purpose, so that we couldn’t all get at each other.”
Dara giggled. “Not at all, it never crossed their minds.”
“Listen, I hear you’re one of the few people in the world who likes direct questions rather than beating around the bush …”
In her head Dara heard a warning bell. She didn’t want to lose Tommy Leonard as a friend.
“I used to be like that, it’s true, but I’ve gone off it again,” she said hastily. “I hate direct questions now, and I snap the head off anyone who would ask me one.”
“Phew, I’m glad we sorted that one out,” said Tommy Leonard in a mixture of disappointment and relief.
Grace told Michael that she couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. Of course she loved being with him. But there was so much school work to do, and she had a little table fixed up for herself in one of the residents’ lounges where she could work in the evenings. And she couldn’t be going out all the time. And sometimes when she did get through with homework there were things about the hotel she had to learn. After all, she would be living there and working there always.
“But not immediately,” Michael cried. “We’re going to go to the university, aren’t we? And get degrees and travel, before we come back to work in Mountfern.”
“Oh, yes, of course we are,” Grace said.
But she didn’t sound convinced.
“Then why are you learning about the reception desk now from Jim Costello?” Poor Michael let it all slip out.
Grace gave him a long look.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to be discourteous to anyone on my father’s staff,” she said, and Michael heard a ring of the boss’s daughter in her voice that he had never heard before.
Since the day Kerry had told her about Mrs. Fine and the awful scenes, Dara felt as if a huge boulder had been lifted out of her rib cage. She had known always, of course, that Kerry couldn’t possibly … not of his own free choice … but people had been so definite.
And of course, that was the interpretation that would be put to it. As Kerry had said, he had been uncharacteristically nice, and look at the thanks he had gotten for it. If he had fled, which is what you’d expect him to do from a drunk boring woman who was telling him her life story and looking for consolation of every sort … then things would have been better by far.
She didn’t get to see him often. He had told her that because of this very bad row with his father he was doing a very ordinary menial kind of a job, he was keeping quiet about it, and in a few weeks it would all be over and they could see each other as much as they liked. He had made her promise to cut school one day and he would drive her to Galway. They would walk along the beach in Salthill in the autumn sunshine, they would buy bag after bag of lovely crisp chips, they would eat those ice-cream cones with big bars of milk chocolate stuck in the middle of them. And best, they could wander around hand in hand and kiss each other in the main streets of Galway if they wanted to.
“I know a place we could go, Kerry,” she said suddenly. “It’s a tunnel. It used to be a secret place for Michael and me when we were younger but nobody uses it now.” She looked at him eagerly.
To her shock his face changed completely.
“No,” he said sharply. “No tunnel, that’s out of the question.”
He stood up. It reminded her of that time he had walked away before when she had refused his embraces. The sense of loss was sharp in her memory. She looked at him longingly.
“Will you promise without any whys. Just for me?”
“Yes, I promise,” Dara said, feeling slightly ashamed of herself as she did so.
Martin White wasn’t surprised to hear that Kate Ryan wanted him to call. She said it was for a check-up before she committed herself to the big journey to Dublin.
“It’s about more than that isn’t it?” the doctor said.
“How did you know?”
“I thought it was possible one day there not long ago.”
“I couldn’t be …” Kate looked horrified.
“Why couldn’t you? You know the way it’s done, and I’m delighted you’re able to do it.” Martin beamed uncharacteristically.
“But not with me like this.”
“Of course it could, and will.”
She leaned forward and clutched his hand. “I’m very strong, you’ll admit that, and a lot of my strength came from you giving me things straight. Be straight now. Will it be dangerous?”
Martin took her thin hand in both of his. “Not only will it not be dangerous, it will be wonderful. I couldn’t be more pleased for you.”
“Do you think you’ll go to jail?” Declan asked Eddie when they were both in bed.
“No. Not this time.”
“Will you next time?”
“I might. Why?”
“Then I could have your bed.”
“You’d be just as bad as I am if you were brave enough.”
“I am brave.”
“No you’re not, you think there’s a ghost in the press.”
“I don’t really think there is, I think there might be.”
“There is, a big one, but I’m not afraid of it. Good night.”
Eddie turned over and went to sleep knowing that Declan would be awake for hours looking at the door of the big cupboard in the corner of the bedroom, fearful over what might come out of it.
The river had never looked so lovely as that night. There was a flutter of birds in the trees, and they heard the cry of a fox in the still night. For two city people to recognize a fox at a distance wasn’t bad. Rachel was wearing her flat shoes as if she had known they were going to walk, and he helped her over the fallen branch of a tree or through the complicated little gates that the local people called stiles.
They had driven there separately. Rachel insisted. They had parked both cars on the river bank. Behind them Coyne’s wood rose dark and mysterious and further over were the hills around the Grange.
The sound of their footsteps was soft and rustling in the leaves. They came to an old wall, a good vantage point to look up at Fernscourt. Until now they had talked not at all, yet there was no air of expectancy. No tension or waiting for one of them to bring up the subject.
It came up
very naturally. Patrick laid his hand over hers.
“I wish it had been different,” he said.
“Oh, so do I,” she sighed. But not with accusation; more like people sighed when it was no longer spring or when the heat went out of the day.
“It isn’t anything to do with the not being Irish bit … believe me.”
“I do believe you. You see, you’ve always had a different feeling about being an American than the other people I’ve met in my life. They all loved being American, and being whatever else they were, but to you being American meant losing being Irish, so you had to come back and recapture it.”
She walked apparently contentedly beside him, and they came to the footbridge opposite Ryan’s.
She led the way across into Fernscourt. He had been hesitant in case on this, her last night, she might not want to go into the place that had taken all his money, his time and his heart. They walked to a seat which she had arranged a long time ago when the garden plans were being discussed.
They sat and looked across the Fern at the lights in Ryan’s pub where there were still a dozen or so in the bar. And at Loretto Quinn’s where the rooms were being held in case Rachel might change her mind. In the soft dark night dogs were barking, they could hear an owl hooting far away, and the moths flew around them gently. There was the permanent sound of the river, but they had grown so used to it, they didn’t hear it anymore.
“I’ll be very lonely here.”
“No, no, you’ll have far too much to do,” she said. “Your days will be filled from morning to night. I’ll think of you sometimes at this time, and I’m sure you will be in your office there or with Jim Costello as the host. You won’t be sitting idly here watching the stars over Mountfern.”
“And what will you do in New York?” He was gentle too, and wistful.
“I don’t know yet. I’ll work hard, I can come to anyone with great references now …” She waved her hand at the hotel behind them. “I’ve kept a portfolio of all my work. I must have known I’d need it.”
“Do you think we will be friends, you and I?”
“Sometime, not for a while.”
“Nobody has shared as much of me as you have. I’m not good at giving bits of myself.” He looked at the ground.
She wanted to shout at him and say she was the most betrayed woman in the land. She had worked ceaselessly for his dream and to keep his relationship with his family good. She had bought presents for his children’s birthdays for as long as she could remember; she had advised and cajoled and succeeded in keeping some kind of family love alive between them all. What was her reward? She was assumed to have slept with the son and then to have paid him to keep quiet about it.
“And because we are being so civilized, can I say just one thing … and you won’t get up and walk away?” she said.
“Certainly.” He was ultra formal.
“And you won’t put on that formal mask with me.”
“Very well, say it, Rachel.” He smiled at her, that familiar smile with the starry lines going out from the sides of his eyes.
There was a catch in her voice which she hadn’t intended. She had forgotten how much she loved his smile.
“About that night that Kerry came to my rooms.”
“Yes.” He sighed as if he had known it would be this.
“He came for a purpose, a very specific purpose.”
“Yes, so he said,” Patrick agreed.
“Don’t be absurd, Patrick, don’t be utterly ridiculous. There is really something lacking in you if you could believe that he could have wanted to … to be with me in that way.”
Her voice sounded confident and dismissive. This was not the woman who had wrung her hands in Coyne’s wood and explained and contradicted and apologized. Rachel was firm and decisive now, she was dismissive of Kerry and all his tales.
“For what purpose?”
“He came to warn me off, to send me home. And he has achieved that purpose.”
Her eyes were angry but her voice was calm.
“What was he saying …?”
“He was mainly saying that if I had any hopes of replacing his mother, I should forget them, that I was not worthy to mention her name, that our affair was sordid and disgusting and that her memory would never be … sullied, I think, by the insult of your marrying me. It was very bitter. Very violent.”
“I think this is all very exaggerated. Kerry has no feelings for me … Whether I marry or not, it hardly concerns him.”
“You may be right in that he has no feelings for you, but he has very strong feelings about his mother.”
“He doesn’t give any sign of them to me.”
“How would he, to you? To you of all people. He doesn’t tell you that he had Kathleen’s topaz made into a tie tack, that he has her picture in a watch chain, in his billfold, and in a plastic folder just loose in his pocket.”
Patrick started to speak, but Rachel went on. “And I don’t say this just because he told you a pack of lies about me; in itself, that’s not the worst thing.”
“What is the worst thing?”
“The worst thing is that you believed him. That he was able to make you believe him. That Kerry—with his record of deceit, gambling, theft, lies, and utter selfishness—was able to make you, an intelligent loving sensitive man, believe him rather than me … the woman who has loved you, worked with you, and for you all these years. That’s the worst thing, how he was able to convince you so easily …”
“And is that the reason you’re going?”
“That and one or two other things. I think you’ve changed. I think the effort of making this place changed you a lot.”
“How has it changed me?”
“You were always so honest. Back in New York when there was a fight you fought fair. If another guy won the contract, you shook his hand, you said it was only money, only work, you wished him well. If a guy lost, you shook his hand too. You were honest.”
“I haven’t cheated anyone here.” Patrick was bewildered.
“You cheated Kate Ryan.”
“I had to, Rachel. What else could I say? ‘You were robbed, madam, but please accept my personal check for the balance’?”
“You celebrated with them that justice was done. Justice was not done.”
“Do you really believe I am at fault over this?”
“Yes,” Rachel said simply.
He picked up her hand and stroked it. “We have grown apart, you and I. There was a time when we could have talked it out all night and you would have agreed that I did the only possible thing in giving them their dignity if I couldn’t give them an adequate settlement.”
“Even if we had been able to talk it out all night, if we still had that kind of life, I don’t think I would have agreed.”
“But you would have understood why I did what I did,” he sighed.
“Yes, I’d have understood.”
Together they sat and looked across at Ryan’s, where the lights had gone out finally and stragglers walked or bicycled home along River Road.
“Won’t you stay for the opening? Please, Rachel.”
“No, no, you can call me when it’s all over and tell me how it went.”
“It will be good to talk to you on the telephone, anyway. There are so many day-to-day things I’ll want to tell you about.”
“No, Patrick. No calls. Only on the day of the opening.”
“No calls?”
“If we’re going to live our own lives, it’s childish to keep calling each other.”
“But as friends, even?” He was begging her.
“No, we’re not friends yet. We will be some time.”
There was a long silence.
“I feel very empty. I let you down, didn’t I?”
“Let’s be the only couple in the history of the world who said good-bye without any recriminations,” she said, standing up to go.
She bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
He
put his arms around her waist and held her to him.
Gently she released herself and walked away. Down the path to the footbridge and across the Fern.
Patrick sat in the grounds of his hotel and watched Rachel walk without turning back all along the river bank, past the old wall and the funny stiles.
He heard her car start and drive away toward the town.
Chapter XXIII
The weather forecast had said sunny with scattered showers.
“I hope they’ll be scattered over the rest of Ireland and not all concentrated in this direction,” Miss Purcell said sternly.
The canon had a chest cold that would not go away. Dr. White had said that a man the canon’s age was to expect chest colds and not to stay in a draft.
Miss Purcell would have liked more concern and a preciser prescription. The canon would have to be in a considerable draft during the blessing ceremony. She had been very insistent about woolen underwear, and the wearing of a scarf while not actually involved in the religious offices.
Father Hogan was reassuring. Most of the time Canon Moran would stay well away from drafts. The huge marquee built by the dock was meant to be utterly windproof. And then there would be plenty of activities inside the house proper. Miss Purcell was to have no further worries.
Father Hogan also described at great length what he heard was going to be served to eat. There was an amount of salmon being delivered to the hotel that would frighten you, and there would be plates of it all afternoon if people wanted it; they could come back for helping after helping. There would be potato salad, and all other kinds of salads, and buttered brown scones.
Father Hogan said that there had been considerable discussion about whether or not to have a hot lunch, but the salmon faction had prevailed. There would be soup first, of course, served in cups so that it would be easy for people to manage it. There were two huge tureens of soup on their own little heaters, and you could come back for second cups or even a third cup here too.
By the time Father Hogan had begun to weigh up the merits of the fresh fruit salad and lashing of cream as opposed to the hot apple tart with ice cream, Miss Purcell began to wonder if the young priest could possibly be becoming too interested in food. She had let out his soutane once already, and it needed a further easing at the seams.
