by Tyler, Anne
“Well, if you see her tell her I’ve been trying to find her.”
“Certainly,” Tommy said. “I’ll tell her your sight was taken from your eyes and you’re going around with a white stick bumping into things, desperate to find her.”
Sergeant Sheehan saw the fire first.
In years to come he would always remember that. The disappointments of the morning, the shame and the laughter were as nothing when compared to being the hero who discovered the fire and arranged the fire-fighting force.
He wasted no time, when he saw the smoke. He yanked Jim Costello from the marquee and together they ran toward it.
Then to the kitchen with shouts about telephoning for further help. By this stage the carefully placed fire extinguishers would be useless. A hose was in place within minutes, and the sergeant got Jimbo Doyle, who had the loudest voice in the county, to give the alarm through the main house in case there was anyone in any of the bathrooms or in any other part of the building.
The Thatch Bar was emptied of its staff, who were marshaled into a line of water carriers.
Chauffeurs of cars, three bus drivers, and five taxi men from the big town were roped in.
A serious fire-fighting effort had begun before they saw any need to alert the people in the marquee. There was no danger to life, and even if the fire could not be contained, there was very easy emergency escape for everyone across the footbridge and over the River Fern.
Sergeant Sheehan had been the first to see the fire. The first in Fernscourt, that is.
Papers Flynn had seen the smoke much earlier.
A lifetime of never getting involved leaves its mark. Papers never brought up any subject first; he was a person who responded rather than initiated. You only got into trouble by paying attention to anyone else’s business.
He sat in the sun outside Ryan’s and saw the smoke coming out of a side window. Papers looked at it silently for a long time.
Mary Donnelly had gone into the house with Mrs. Ryan’s daughter. That boy who was always in trouble had come back, too, and the nice dog. Papers had always admired Leopold and thought him a fine animal.
He wondered should he say anything about the smoke, but the habits of a lifetime held him back.
Eddie came out and joined him on the seat.
“I could go back if I wanted to,” Eddie said.
“Oh, you could, right enough.”
“I wasn’t sent away or anything.”
“No, no, you wouldn’t be.”
“Well, I usually would be, but not this time.”
Papers nodded in agreement.
“I’ll have to make that clear to Mam. I came back of my own free will. I wouldn’t want Mam sitting in the chair there thinking maybe I’d been ordered to leave.”
The mention of Mrs. Ryan in her wheelchair galvanized Papers. Suppose there was a fire and Mrs. Ryan wasn’t able to get out?
“Would you think that’s smoke over there?” he said to Eddie.
Eddie squinted at it. “It is, it is all right.”
He ran back into the pub. Mary and Dara were just coming out.
“I’m going back, Eddie, it’s up to you, but maybe you’d prefer to stay here,” Dara said. She looked very serious but not as if she were fighting or giving out to him.
“There’s smoke,” Eddie shouted.
Dara took no notice of him.
“Mary has pointed out rightly that Mam and Dad paid a fortune for this dress, and I must go back and get value out of it for them. Even if I don’t feel like it.”
It was as if she were talking to herself.
“I think the hotel’s on fire,” Eddie said.
This time he managed to get their attention.
And by now the figures of Sergeant Sheehan and Jim Costello could be seen, running as fast as they could. Eddie was right; the hotel was very definitely on fire.
Patrick’s speech was almost over. He had thanked everybody who should have been thanked, but it wasn’t tedious. The officials who had helped him all felt included in his generous tribute to the authorities, and the people of Mountfern felt individually acknowledged as he looked around the crowd and his eyes seemed to rest on them. Each and every person knew how much they meant to him, he said. He explained that a homecoming would be nothing if it weren’t for the people. Buildings were symbols but the people were the heart of it all.
He said his family meant a great deal to him, but in a sense he had found a greater and wider family of friends.
He was about to end by wishing that this new family of friends should join him in the Thatch Bar when the cry went up. It was a terrible sound, the cry that told them that Fernscourt was on fire and it was going to burn to the ground unless something was done quickly.
They started to move the people from the marquee.
“Over the bridge” was the cry but nobody wanted to go. They stood in groups watching with horrified fascination as the flames leaped from the windows of the residents’ lounge and appeared, too, in the narrow windows of the piano bar. The line of people passing the buckets was slow. The hose seemed a trickle.
Men ran up, throwing off their coats, to join the firefighting. Orders were given and countermanded. The guards arranged for buckets to come from the river; everyone told everyone else that the fire brigade was coming.
“Ring them again, someone, and tell them to send everything they’ve got,” Martin White said.
Then he moved over to Kate Ryan’s side. “Back home with you now. That’s an order.”
“The children,” she said.
“They’ll follow. Come on, Kate. I’m taking you home.” John had moved the chair on and wheeled it rapidly toward the bridge.
Mrs. Daly blocked their way. “We should get people to pray,” she said. “That’s what we have to do now. It’s about time we realized it.”
“You’ve realized it for years, Mrs. Daly,” John said. “Now, could I get past you there? I’m a bit anxious to move Kate across so that I can go back and fight the fire.”
She stood aside, hands still clasped.
“God, she’s worse than I thought,” John muttered as he wheeled Kate swiftly across the bridge.
“She might be right,” Kate said grimly as they came to the pub.
Dara thought they looked very formal somehow, like a picture. A man standing, a woman sitting, both staring at something. Something impossible to believe.
Kate put her hand up on her shoulder to cover John’s hand which was resting there.
“How in the name of God did it start?” Kate asked.
“It’ll be all right,” he soothed. “Look, it’s less than before, it’s much less. They’ve got it under control.”
Dara came to stand beside them.
“Where’s Eddie?” Kate asked.
“He’s here, and there’s Declan coming across the bridge now.”
Eddie came up to his mother. “I was over here when it happened, talking to Dara and Mary and Papers. I had nothing to do with it, Mam,” he began.
Kate drew him close to her. “Of course you didn’t Eddie, darling Eddie,” she said into his hair.
Eddie pulled away and looked at her. Nobody had ever called him darling Eddie in his life.
“In fact I was the first to spot it,” he said.
“Of course you were.” She held his hand very tight and her eyes were full of tears.
Michael caught up with Declan on the bridge.
“Come on, Mam will want to make sure we’re all safe,” he said.
“Now we’re all here, I’m going back across,” John said.
“You’re going in that door behind the counter,” said Mary.
“I can’t sell a drink while the place is burning down across the way, I have to help.”
“Aren’t there plenty of big strong men huffing and puffing and playing fire engines over there? People want to buy drinks to calm their nerves. You’re a publican, it’s your duty to sell them.”
Th
e Ryan family smiled, all together. The same smile. John went back into his pub.
Patrick O’Neill had been quick to organize as well.
No standing dumbstruck at the awful and unexpected happening. Like Jim Costello, he was quick to see the frail and the feeble and get them organized.
“Colonel Harris, I wonder if I can ask you to help the canon out that way. That’s very good of you. Liam, it would be a great help if you could get a chair for Mrs. Daly; she wants to do a bit of praying but I think she should do it sitting down. Jimbo, get the drivers to get back into their cars and move them way down the drive.”
And all the time, with his dream burning before his very eyes, he kept assuring people it was under control, and that the brigades were coming, and there would be order restored in no time.
Carrie stood with a tear-stained face in a straw hat which had gotten very crushed by people trampling on it, but she had put it back on for some kind of comfort.
“Don’t worry now, Carrie,” he said. “We’ll all be in the Thatch Bar this evening laughing over this.”
It was then he saw that part of the roof on the Thatch Bar had caught.
Kerry worked with the rest on the fire line. Beside him Tommy Leonard and Jack Coyne passed buckets.
The hose was taken to deal with the straw roof on the bar. So they were relying on the human chain to keep the first fire under control.
“Well at least it’s only a hotel,” Jack Coyne said, panting. “Think what it would be like if it was an army barracks or something, with all those guns and explosives in it. Everyone here would be blown sky high.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Kerry, dropping his bucket.
“Kerry?” The people near him looked at him in alarm.
“Oh my God!” Kerry shouted. “Get back. Costello, get them back, get everyone away from it, get them away from it. Get back.”
They thought he was hysterical. They pushed him out of the way in their efforts to fight the fire.
They would pause to wipe their foreheads and look to the main road, hoping for the comforting sound of many fire engines.
But it was a long way from the town.
Jim Costello didn’t like Kerry’s manner.
“Will somebody get O’Neill’s son away from here?” he called in his cool voice, the voice that was used to being obeyed.
But Kerry had run onto the steps.
“There’s guns,” he shouted, “guns and gelignite! The whole place is going to blow up.”
“Don’t mind him.”
“It’s under control, we’re winning, we’ve beaten it.”
All around him were the soothing sounds of people who thought it was a brainstorm.
“I beg you, Costello.” Kerry was grabbing wildly at Jim’s coat. “They’re in the conservatory.”
Jim remembered the boxes. The boxes and crates.
“They’re whiskey, you madman,” he said.
“The top ones are. The others are ammunition.”
At the pub they couldn’t understand it. Why everyone had started to run down to the river.
At first people protested, what was it about, they were winning, the fire was beaten. When they heard what it was about they ran too, helping others, and looking over their shoulders in the panic of disbelief.
Grace had been looking for Michael when the cry went up that everyone was to abandon the firefighting. There was something in the hotel that was about to explode.
She looked around wildly for Michael but there was no sign of him.
“Get Grace back over the river,” Patrick shouted to Jim Costello as he rounded others toward the footbridge.
“Come on, Grace.” Jim ran with her for a few yards, then he left her at the laurels. “Go on!” he shouted as she paused.
“I don’t want to be on my own …”
“You’re not on your own, stupid. Look, there are all your friends up by the pub.”
“Did Michael go without me?” Grace’s lip trembled.
“Go on, please, Grace. That’s my job, to get you over the river. Please, just go.”
“And you?”
“I’ll see you later on. I’ll come and look for you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” he shouted over his shoulder and ran back to the crowd trying to hold Kerry O’Neill back from the flames.
The boy’s face was wild.
“I put it there, I have to take it out”
Jim Costello felt Patrick O’Neill standing beside him.
“What’s in it, Kerry?” Patrick asked.
“I don’t know. Guns, ammunition of some kind.”
“Of what kind?”
“I don’t know, I tell you.”
“Was it set to explode?” Jim looked at Patrick with new respect.
“No, Father, it wasn’t meant to be here, it was McCann’s friends.”
“What were they trying to do with it?”
“I was storing it for them in the tunnel until they collected it.”
Seamus Sheehan was beside them, and Dr. White.
The sergeant spoke. “Is it gelignite?”
“I don’t know, I tell you. How do I know what gelignite looks like?”
“Were there detonators with it?” The sergeant was quiet.
No tempers, no lack of control, and here they were, five men standing beside a possible inferno.
“What do they look like?” Kerry was piteous now.
“Were there separate containers, boxes?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so.”
“And you’ve put them all together. In there?” The sergeant indicated the burning building.
“Yes, I didn’t look, I didn’t have the time.”
“We’d better not risk it,” said Sergeant Sheehan, and they turned to leave.
“I’ll go down the driveway to tell the fire brigade.” Jim Costello was a quick thinker.
“Get any drivers, anyone in the buses far away down the drive,” Patrick called.
He looked at neither his son nor the doctor, neither his hotel manager nor the local sergeant as he began to walk away toward the footbridge.
“Father … Father, they’re in the conservatory, the fire hasn’t gotten there yet, we could get them out,” Kerry cried.
Seamus Sheehan shook his head. “It’s too hot, they could go any minute, flames or no flames.”
Kerry broke away and ran toward the house.
The sergeant made a move to run after him. Jim Costello was already half way down the drive toward the main garages of the hotel.
“Don’t die saving him, Sheehan,” called Martin White. “Let him go, he put the stuff there, let him go up with it.”
They heard the sound of the fire engines about five seconds before the explosion.
It wasn’t as huge as they had thought it would be. But it was huge enough to blow the back out of Fernscourt, and the fire now raged so that they knew it would never stop even if the fire engines dared come near it.
Nobody knew if there would be another explosion. To go anywhere nearer than they were would be suicide. And as it was they weren’t sure what had happened to Kerry.
It seemed like slow motion as they watched it from the bridge. Hands to their mouths, stifling cries, and the sound of Mrs. Daly’s prayers as a low drone in the background.
Then they saw the figure of Patrick O’Neill walk slowly up the steps of Fernscourt.
It could only have been seconds, but time stood still before he came out dragging Kerry with him.
Kerry was walking, his face was in his hands.
The crowd saw Martin White take off his jacket and put it around Kerry’s shoulders. They couldn’t see what had happened when the doctor took Kerry’s hands away from his face but they did see Patrick and Sergeant Sheehan turn away in pain from Kerry O’Neill’s burns.
They had to let some of it burn itself out. It looked stark and terrifying, the Thatch Bar naked apart from a scattering of scratchy burned straw.
Patrick had been handed a brandy of a size that nobody had ever drunk and survived. He stood in the very spot where the entrance to his hotel might have been.
If things had been different.
If Kate Ryan had not had her accident that day.
If things had all been quite different.
The son who had been sharp enough to see where the entrance to their hotel should be had not been sharp enough for anything else. He was heading into the hospital in the big town in the back of an ambulance.
All around him Patrick heard the consolations and the encouragements. It would rise again.
The insurance would pay for everything, wasn’t it a miracle that nobody had gotten killed or seriously injured?
They clutched at his arm, he even felt himself being hugged by people too full of emotion to trust themselves to speak.
All around him, he saw people finding each other, exclaiming they thought the other was lost.
He saw Jimbo wiping big tears out of Carrie’s eyes with a green table napkin that said “Ryan’s Shamrock Café.”
He saw the lawyer Slattery who had always hated him and the O’Neills taking off his coat to put it around the shivering Grace. The coat looked enormous on her and it hid her silly pink and white dress.
Slattery had gotten her a cup of coffee and was speaking to her soothingly.
Sheila Whelan was of course beside Patrick. Knowing that he wanted to say something rather than platitudes.
“My God, Sheila, look at the misery I brought to people,” he said. “Look at the sheer waste and misery.”
“You didn’t bring it, Patrick. It came all on its own.”
“Jesus, who brought it if I didn’t bring it?”
“You could say I did. I told Seamus Sheehan about the tunnel.”
“What in the name of God took him in with that gang?” Patrick asked.
“Seamus heard it was because he owed them money.” Sheila spoke gently.
“Yes. I wouldn’t give it to him.” Patrick’s heart lurched and he looked at his ruined hotel. “I expect he had to get it somewhere. My God, if I had known the price we’d have to pay.”
“You’d have had to call a halt somewhere,” she consoled him. “You couldn’t have gone on paying for everything all his life, that would have been worse than your father paying for nothing all of his.”
