by Tyler, Anne
In the post office there were some colored paper chains, a big silver banner saying Peace on Earth, and a collection box discreetly placed in case anyone might interpret the season of good will as a time to give a few pennies toward gifts for a children’s orphanage. Dunne’s pub had a big plastic Santa Claus in the window. There was hardly any point in their putting up any further decoration since they were yet again on the verge of packing up and going to Liverpool. Jimbo Doyle had put a Christmas tree for his mother in the window of their small house, and had agreed after much nagging to get proper fairy lights that worked. His mother had said that she was sick of hearing all the work Jimbo was doing in other people’s houses while their own looked like a very good imitation of a rubbish heap.
In the Garda barracks, Seamus Sheehan looked in some doubt at the decorations Mary had bought on her last visit to Dublin. He wondered whether they were appropriate to the walls of a Garda Siochana station. Arty-looking cut-out robins and reindeer with little holes where you inserted mistletoe or holly. But Mrs. Sheehan had been adamant. She had read about them in a magazine which said that all the best people in Dublin had these in their homes now, and she wanted to drag a bit of style into Mountfern no matter how much they all resisted it.
Judy Byrne had planted two neat window boxes of her small house with holly bushes and miniature Christmas trees. They looked very festive and elegant at the same time, people told her. Patrick O’Neill had made a point of coming in to congratulate her on them. He had stayed for a drink at Judy’s insistence because of the season. She ran next door to Foley’s with a tray and came back with a large whiskey for Patrick and a small sherry for herself.
She told Patrick that she didn’t keep drink in the house. She thought it was a pity for single ladies to start opening the bottle at a regular hour each evening. Single women had to be so careful. Not that she was saying a word against Marian Johnson of course, and in a hotel poor Marian had to be sociable. Still it was a danger, and it could run away with you all too easily.
Across the road Mr. and Mrs. Williams had their house neatly draped in holly and ivy. The Protestant church had been decorated by their few parishioners. Dr. White and his wife had threatened to have no decorations this year if this ridiculous row about mistletoe wasn’t solved. Jacinta wanted a big bunch of it on the door just as you came in; Liam wanted none of it in or near the house. Never had a battle been fought so long and bitterly. Tommy Leonard said it was better than being at the pictures listening to the two of them. Dr. White decided eventually that a small discreet sprig of mistletoe be placed over the kitchen door, that it should not be publicly referred to, and that if this row began again, both Jacinta and Liam would remember Christmas 1962 as the year they not only had no decorations but no presents and no turkey either.
Miss Purcell wasn’t best pleased when she saw Kate Ryan on a chair with a sprig of holly and a pack of thumb tacks.
“It was never the way here; Mr. Slattery never requested it,” said Miss Purcell, lips in a hard line and the two red spots coming up magnificently on her cheeks.
“I know, Miss Purcell.” Kate was falsely apologetic. “It’s quite ridiculous really, but the children went up to Coyne’s wood and they picked lovely bits full of berries, so I thought the least I could do … you know Mr. Slattery wouldn’t want to offend … and in the spirit of Christmas …”
She finished no sentence and did not explain that she had asked Michael and Dara to collect a big box and deliver it to the office for her. A Christmas card from Fergus’s sister Rosemary in England and then old Mr. Slattery, Fergus and Miss Purcell in paper hats sitting around a small turkey dinner. It didn’t seem nearly celebratory enough for someone as warm and funny as Fergus.
He was pleased and surprised. He had been at the district court in the town, his father had gone to talk to an old crony on the grounds of a will that might be changed, but really in the knowledge that a bottle would be opened. Fergus looked at the holly with pleasure.
“We never had that; it’s lovely,” he said simply.
“Not even when your mother was alive?”
“Not really. She was never strong, you know. She didn’t have all that energy like you have.”
To herself Kate thought that it didn’t really take much energy to stick a few bits of holly on a wall behind pictures, or around a doorway for a man and a boy. But she said nothing. She didn’t mention that Grace O’Neill had said the very same thing; her mother had been unwell always. They didn’t have Christmas decorations, it would have been tiring for her.
“I got you a present, Kate,” Fergus said. “You’re a hard person to buy for; you have everything.”
“I felt the same about you.” She produced a big wrapped parcel.
“Isn’t that great, to be the two people who have everything,” Fergus said, and waited for her to open hers first. It was a day excursion ticket to Dublin, two gift vouchers—one for Switzer’s and one for Brown Thomas—and a note saying: “On presentation of this paper to her employer, Mrs. Kate Ryan will be granted one day’s leave from her lawful employment during the working week.”
Kate stared at it in delight.
“I thought you could go to the January sales, and those vouchers are to make sure you go to Grafton Street and see nice things. You’re not to be buying up household goods in Clery’s, mind.” He spoke gruffly to hide his pleasure in her delight.
“I’ll enjoy every minute of the day.” She hugged him. “Fergus, you are a darling. Thank you very much.”
“Well now, let’s see what you gave me.” He opened the box. It was a beautiful edition of Moore’s Melodies with huge over-flowery illustrations by Daniel Maclise.
“I remembered you said you like Thomas Moore—that day at the concert, when Michael’s class was murdering some of the melodies. I thought you’d like this.” She beamed at him and saw to her consternation that his eyes were far too bright. She spoke quickly until he had recovered a calm voice himself. “I got it inside in the town. You know, Gorman’s bookshop, I asked them to look out for an old edition and they came up with this. John and I have been looking at it ourselves. I hope you like it.”
Fergus had recovered his voice.
“I love it. Miss Purcell and my father won’t know what’s ahead of them this Christmas day. They’re going to get a blast of the lot here … I might come over to your place and sing them through for you as well.”
Kate said that was a promise and she was holding him to it. At some stage over Christmas Fergus Slattery was to walk up River Road with his Moore book in a plastic bag in case it rained on it, and he would sing the entire repertoire for whoever was in Ryan’s Licensed Premises.
“That should empty the place for you and lose you your trade before O’Neill takes it away,” Fergus said.
“Now Fergus, it’s Christmas time. Stop talking about him. And wasn’t John Ryan right, as he is in so many things? For all his great chat and plans there isn’t a sod turned on that site yet. It’s going to take longer than he thinks to get his hotel going in a place that moves as slowly as Mountfern.”
Kerry came home from school on a day when Patrick had to be in Dublin for further talks with the Tourist Board. The train would need to be met. Marian Johnson was only too happy to oblige. She had heard that Patrick was trying to arrange that Brian Doyle the builder see to it, and Brian had replied with spirit that he was a building contractor, not a chauffeur. He would be quite happy to do anyone a favor, but would not be asked to do a driving job as if it were part of his terms in getting the Fernscourt contract.
Patrick had admired this viewpoint and apologized. Many another man would have had less pride and courage than Brian Doyle, and would not have jeopardized their chance of the biggest building job in these parts in years. But Brian was not one to sit back and allow anyone to assume he was what he was not. He did himself more good by his truculent attitude with Patrick than he ever knew.
Marian was pleased too, although she thoug
ht Brian Doyle was insane. She stood on the platform raking the crowd of passengers who got off, looking for Kerry.
He seemed to have gotten taller or thinner somehow at school. Very handsome in his school blazer, and carrying his sports bag as well as his suitcase. He smiled pleasantly at Marian, and looked around for Grace.
“She’s busy decorating the lodge for Christmas,” said Marian, who had told the child there was no room in the car. “She’ll see you back at home. Your father has to be in Dublin. He said to tell you he’s very sorry.”
“I’m sure he is,” Kerry was polite and cold.
“So I thought we might have a little lunch, you and I in the hotel … to get to know each other.” She twinkled at him, but Kerry didn’t twinkle back.
“We do know each other don’t we …?” he said, bewildered. “You’re Miss Johnson … from the Grange.”
“Marian,” she said.
“Yes, well.”
It was most unsatisfactory. Marian had wanted to lean her elbows on the table of the Grand or the Central and have a lunch with this handsome blond son of Patrick’s Now it was all falling to pieces.
Kerry looked at her carefully and long It was as if he were deciding what to do. And then it was as if he had decided to turn on the electric light of his charm.
“Well Marian … if you’re sure I may call you that, I’d love to have lunch with you even though we do know each other already. That would be very nice”
They went to the Central. Marian waved at the people she knew whose heads went close together to discuss what she could possibly be doing with this teenage boy. They had tomato soup, boiled bacon and cabbage followed by apple pie and ice cream. Kerry told her little about school, less about his father and nothing about their life as it used to be in America However he did learn about what had been going on in Mountfern, and that Grace seemed to love her school, had plenty of nice little girls as friends. Grace and his father had been taking riding lessons and both were progressing very well. There had been endless delays about clearing the title for the final land purchase in Fernscourt.
Marian prattled on in what she had hoped would be their lunch of getting to know each other, and she managed to present herself to Kerry as three different ages during the space of half an hour. She was getting younger as the lunch continued. She said that she was quite demented trying to get the O’Neills to give up this ridiculous idea of having Christmas lunch on their own, as a family. They should join her and her father, and there would be four other guests, charming people whom they would like, one of them was actually the Honorable and was terribly natural and unassuming, as if she were like everyone else.
On the journey back Marian had the vague feeling that she had gotten to know Kerry O’Neill not at all, but he had gotten to know almost all there was to be known about her.
“I’ll call in later when your father gets back from Dublin,” she said as she dropped him at the lodge and he was thanking her courteously.
“Why will you do that?” He was perfectly polite.
“Well. Gosh. Well, to see if he got back all right and to tell him that I met you safely.”
Kerry looked at her, a clear unflinching look.
“Or maybe I’ll drop in tomorrow … or sometime,” Marian said foolishly.
She saw Grace racing out of the lodge to throw her arms around Kerry.
“Where were you? Miss Johnson said I couldn’t come. I’ve been looking out for you for ages. Come in and tell me all about it, I’ve been dying for you to get here …”
The door of the lodge closed behind them. Marian saw the long stern face of Olive Hayes who was washing up at the kitchen sink. Marian told herself, as she had done many times before, that she mustn’t rush it. Patrick O’Neill was a man not long a widower, a busy man with a million things on his mind. He had a tight self-sufficient little family. It would be foolish to try to break into it until they were ready.
That was the silly mistake Judy Byrne was making all the time, with her little invitations to a drink, and then fluttering in and out of Foley’s instead of realizing that any man likes a woman with a good Waterford glass decanter on the sideboard.
They had a tradition in Mountfern that there was only one mass on Christmas Day. It meant that one priest was then free to go around and take holy communion to the people who weren’t able to leave home. The mass was at nine o’clock. And the whole parish was there.
Judy Byrne wore a mantilla to communion, which looked very well on her. Miss Purcell, who really would have preferred a seven-thirty mass but would never criticize the clergy, wore a nice blue scarf that Kate Ryan had knitted for her, because she knew Miss Purcell had a blue coat.
Sheila Whelan had had a tiring night: young Teresa Meagher had had yet another row with her mother and wanted to leave home. There were no buses on Christmas Eve. Sheila had spent a great deal of time making cups of hot chocolate and taking further bars of Kit Kat out of the shelves. She cajoled and soothed. She told Teresa that if somebody left home at Christmas it had a terrible effect because it didn’t just destroy that Christmas, but every other Christmas afterwards for both sides. She knew this, she told Teresa, very very well. She didn’t go into details about how Joe Whelan had left her at Christmas, and how the big row over the road many years ago with Rosemary Slattery had been at Christmastime also. There was something about the season and all its expectations. Sheila talked long and gently about Teresa’s mother feeling sad and lonely this Christmas, the first since her husband died; she must be given some little extra understanding; no of course, not over things that were totally unfair, but just an overall understanding.
Eventually the troubled child went to sleep on the sofa. Sheila put a rug over her, and a cushion under her head. Then she crossed the road and heard the whole story again from Teresa’s mother, the insolence, the selfishness … Again she tried to talk of a daughter who had lost her father, and eventually Mrs. Meagher’s red puffy eyes began to close, so Sheila left her.
She had urged them for form’s sake to dress properly and go to mass as if nothing had happened. They were all going to Christmas lunch with the Whites. Judy Byrne was going too. Sheila would have preferred to have spent the day stock-taking, or sitting and listening to Radio Eireann. They had lovely programs on Christmas Day for people at home. It would be a real treat not to have to leave the house at all.
Patrick O’Neill walked his son and daughter up the church for their first Christmas Day in Mountfern. They had given Miss Hayes a lift from the lodge, but she didn’t sit with them. She said she had friends to meet, and Christmas greetings to exchange. Everyone looked at the trio. Patrick in his camel-haired overcoat, stocky and handsome, smiling at this one, at that. Kerry taller definitely, he must have grown another two inches during his first term at boarding school. He wore a belted tweed coat, the kind many a youth of his age might wear, but it looked impossibly stylish because of the way the collar was turned up. Grace had a new outfit brought back from New York. It was a soft pale pink, a dusty pink coat with big velvet cuffs and collar in a darker pink. She had a velvet beret, a sort of tam o’shanter perched on top of all those golden curls as well. People turned to each other to smile at the beautiful child. Grace saw Dara and Michael and gave a little wave; they both stared at her open-mouthed.
Her father must have given this to her this morning already. She hadn’t mentioned it yesterday. Maggie Daly sat in her brown coat which used to belong to Kitty. She felt like a colorless blob. Canon Moran was blessing everyone and wishing that the spirit of the Holy Child be with them now and always, and all Maggie Daly could think of was her own awful coat. No wonder Our Lord wasn’t kinder to her, if she couldn’t even drag her mind to think of him on his birthday of all days. Maggie gloomily accepted that she didn’t deserve golden hair and a pink coat, or to be Dara Ryan’s best friend.
The children all went for a walk in Coyne’s wood on Christmas afternoon. It was a lovely clear, crisp day, and they wrapped up we
ll and set out.
Kerry O’Neill came too. He told them about his school and spoke as if he were exactly the same age as everyone else, instead of being fifteen. Grace hung on to his arm a lot, and encouraged him to tell more tales, like the night the boy in the dormitory was listening to a transistor radio on an earphone and forgot where he was, and kept singing along with the Beatles. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah … and all the time Father Minehan was standing at the end of the bed watching him.
Kerry O’Neill remembered everyone’s names. He was interested in everything they did. Tommy Leonard did one of his great imitations of Miss Barry the priest’s housekeeper when she was on a tear. Michael explained to Kerry the best parts of the river, and told him a great hint about always noting a place where the cattle went to drink from. The cows stirred up mud, and also disturbed the water plants as they came to drink, so this meant fish would find it a good area for feeding, and you should position yourself about ten or twenty yards downstream and wait for them there. Kerry took all this in gravely and agreed with Jacinta White that Christmas wasn’t Christmas without mistletoe, and at the same time agreed with her brother Liam that too much palaver could go on about it, just let it be there was the best solution. He asked Maggie Daly if all their family had that nice auburn hair. Did her sisters who were away nursing in Wales have it too? And Maggie pinked up happily and said that nobody had ever called it auburn before. Kerry said he heard that Dara was a demon fisherwoman, great at threading the maggots on the hooks and had caught a huge pike that struggled and fought. He said he thought Mountfern was the greatest place in the world, and as dark fell and they all went back to their homes, there wasn’t one of the children who had come to Coyne’s wood that would have remembered the day six months ago when they thought it was the end of the world because somebody had bought Fernscourt.
PART TWO