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

by Tyler, Anne

In fact Sheila Whelan was the only member of the family to know anything. Mary Donnelly felt that Sheila, having been abandoned by her own husband, might understand. She had told her everything only six weeks ago.

  Mrs. Whelan decided to ring her and suggest it anyway. No harm could come from suggesting something and for poor Mary, bruised and betrayed, anything would be better than staying where she was and enduring the pitying glances of friends and relations.

  John Ryan was not at mass, he was at his wife’s bedside. Kate’s face was very white, her breathing was troubled and she gave little snores and half-choking sounds. Kate had never snored although she claimed that John would raise the roof unless she nudged him and pinched him to change his position in bed.

  There was a tube attached to her arm and another to her bladder. She didn’t look like Kate, she looked like a picture of Kate that had been given to medical students to experiment on.

  Once or twice she seemed to know him.

  “John,” she said once.

  “I’m here, love.”

  “I’m sorry, John.”

  Then nothing more for a long time.

  “The children?” she asked quite clearly.

  “Fine, not a worry about them, in great form.”

  “Who … who?”

  “Carrie’s coping very well, Loretto’s in and out, Sheila Whelan came in all three days. We’re fine, they’re fine.”

  “Three days?” She seemed mystified.

  “Since it happened,” John said.

  “My God, three days.”

  “Don’t think about it, you’re getting better, they say you’re on the mend.” His face was red with exertion.

  Kate had slipped away into unconsciousness again.

  Dara had washed Eddie’s neck and Declan’s ears before they went to mass. She had refused their protestations.

  “Mammy says she could plant rows of potatoes in your neck, Eddie. Stand still and let me scrub it.”

  “Put some soap and water on the facecloth,” roared Eddie.

  “There’s plenty on it. It’s just that you’re so filthy.”

  Declan stood waiting for his turn. “Maybe I’d do my own ears to save you the trouble,” he offered.

  “No,” Dara said. “I’ll do them.”

  Michael sat saying nothing. Carrie had come back from early mass and was standing unhappily wondering about the lunch.

  “Are you clean, Michael?” Dara asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Ah, come on, Michael, it’s the only thing we can do for Mammy, not to be like tinkers. That’s what she’d say.”

  “We don’t know what she’d say.” He was mutinous.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have half of Mountfern saying ‘Your mother would say this,’ and the other half saying ‘She’d say that’ … When will she be able to say something for herself, not have us all listening to other people saying it for her?”

  “When she is able to say something I’m sure she’d prefer you to stop moping and do something.”

  “All right.” Michael went at Declan’s ears with such savagery that the boy roared for mercy.

  “Isn’t it disgusting to think that our mother has to look at such awful things as necks and ears,” Michael said.

  “I bet yours were just as bad and maybe still are, for all we know.”

  “Stay still, Declan. It hurts less if you don’t move, you clown.”

  Michael thought he’d like to skip mass; he felt sure that God would understand that he could pray better for Mam if he were to walk up the bank a bit. He remembered a great day he had walked off for miles up the Fern and met old Mr. Slattery who was deep in conversation with a Dutchman. The Dutchman was telling him all the names they would call the fish if they were in Holland. A perch was a baars, and a pike was a snoek. Old Mr. Slattery had been delighted with that word and had said that if ever Michael went to foreign places like Amsterdam or The Hague he could talk about snoek with the best of them.

  Michael had often thought that he and Dara might take trips to foreign parts when they lived in Fernscourt. They would travel once or twice a year. How stupid and babyish they had been. He should have known that good things never happened really. Everyone said that Mam was going to get better, and they said she’d be running in the door again like she always did in no time. But Michael didn’t believe it. People were saying it the way they said that it was going to be a great summer or that they were going to beat Offaly in the match. Just a hope. Not something real. Michael wished he could tell God about this on the river bank, and explain without being all mopey and dismal-sounding that it couldn’t help anyone to keep Mam sick in hospital, but it would help everyone to make her better. He was sure that God would listen better on the banks of the Fern than in the church with everyone coughing and fidgeting. But there was no way you could explain that to anyone.

  Only a madman or a heretic would suggest not going to mass on a Sunday when his mother was lying with a broken back.

  Mrs. Daly caught sight of Maggie leaving the house. “Where are you going, Maggie? It’s too early for mass.”

  “I was going down to collect Dara and Michael to walk them to the church,” Maggie said.

  “Don’t be going in there on top of them all, they’ll have the house filled with people.”

  “No, their Dad’s gone into the town, they’ll have nobody,” Maggie said.

  “You can see them in the church. Don’t be dragging up there and living in their pockets at a time like this.”

  “But isn’t this the time they would like people around?” Maggie asked simply.

  “Stop contradicting me at every hand’s turn. Comb that mop of hair of yours, will you, Maggie, and wait till the bell rings before going to mass.”

  Mrs. Daly’s mouth was in a thin disapproving line.

  In the lodge Olive Hayes was sitting at the kitchen table writing a long letter to Sister Bernadette on the other side of the world. Miss Hayes had put a breakfast on the table but none of the O’Neills had been able to eat. There had been yet another row between Mr. O’Neill and his son. And Grace had wanted to go and stay in the Ryans’ pub after the terrible accident. But her father had said no. You could have cut the atmosphere at breakfast with a knife. As Olive Hayes wrote page after page she paused now and then to think how true it was that riches did not automatically bring happiness. This very morning she had seen the O’Neills sit white-faced around their table leaving the scrambled eggs, crispy bacon and home-made bread untouched. She had seen Marian Johnson go by in a ridiculous hat that must have cost a fortune and looked like a bird’s nest. Marian’s face was tense and anxious.

  And now Mr. O’Neill and his daughter had driven off to eleven o’clock mass but Kerry had not gone with them. He had gone to his room. That meant he would miss mass entirely this Sunday. Olive Hayes wrote on in wonder to her sister about how changed the world had become. Could either of them ever imagine a situation where a boy of sixteen would refuse to go to mass on a Sunday because of some row with his father? It was outside their comprehension.

  Tommy Leonard came up River Road and called to collect the Ryans for mass.

  “I thought I’d walk with you,” he said to Dara. “It’s the only thing I can think of that might help.”

  Dara was grateful.

  “And Dara, I did something else. I went up to Miss Byrne and asked her did backs ever mend, and she was full of information. She said that after a bit when they know how bad the injuries are they will decide on what program to follow. It’s programs, you see, one kind for one kind of a back one kind for another. She said they do marvelous things now.”

  Tommy’s face shone with the good news. Dara managed a watery smile.

  Michael looked very white, Tommy thought, as if he had been sick.

  “I’d say you could have a dispensation not to go to mass,” Tommy said after some reflection.

  “Did you get that straight from the pope?” Michael asked wit
h a sort of a grin.

  Tommy was pleased. At least he had made both of them smile a bit. They walked down River Road, the four Ryan children and Tommy.

  “Will I have to walk ahead of you or behind you?” Eddie asked.

  “Of course not,” Dara said.

  “You’re all right with us,” said Michael.

  Eddie’s face registered great alarm. Things must be worse than he thought if he was allowed to walk with the twins and Tommy Leonard. Mam must be in a very bad way altogether.

  Kitty Daly wheeled her bicycle out quietly.

  If anyone asked her why she needed a bike to go the few yards to mass she would say that she was going out to her best friend’s house afterward. This was a girl who lived on a farm three miles out beyond the bridge.

  But nobody asked her, so Kitty looked up and down Bridge Street and set off at a great pace toward Coyne’s wood. While the mass bell was ringing over Mountfern she pedaled on and got to the old stile at the same time as Kerry O’Neill.

  Hand in hand they walked through the paths that had hardly changed since their grandparents and great-grandparents had been young and had visited Coyne’s wood all those years ago.

  Patrick O’Neill could have done without this parade. But he knew that not to have come to mass would have caused more comment still. His face was grim as he walked into the church. A year ago he would have known nobody here, now there wasn’t a face that he didn’t recognize nor a person who didn’t know him.

  He knelt beside Grace and wondered to himself how the church had survived so long with ineffectual old men like Canon Moran in charge of parishes. Possibly because there were no thrusting young men anxious to topple them as there were in ordinary business.

  Or if the thrusting young men did feel like that then they were not in the right calling. Thrusting young men reminded him of his son, and the great wave of annoyance came over him again. As it had when he had spoken to Kerry and told him about the accident.

  “We’re insured aren’t we?” Kerry had said.

  Patrick had remained silent.

  “Well we are, Father, hey?” Kerry’s voice had sounded impatient.

  “Yes we’re insured,” Patrick had said.

  “And Father, the whole place is hung with notices. Christ, they can’t even expect our insurance to pay.”

  Patrick hadn’t trusted himself to speak. He realized that if Kerry O’Neill reacted this way he had inherited it from his father.

  Patrick saw Fergus Slattery loosening his collar and tie and looking around him a bit wildly. He wondered was the lawyer coming adrift in some way. There had been that very unpleasant and unexpected scene in the hospital where Fergus had shouted at him, not caring who heard.

  “Don’t think you can buy your way out of this, O’Neill, as you bought everything else.”

  The man had been almost deranged.

  Patrick had put out a hand to calm him and Fergus had flung it away.

  “Your tactics won’t work with me, O’Neill, you can’t glad-hand me like you do everyone in the county. Kate Ryan was injured—possibly fatally injured—on your premises by a machine in your ownership by a man in your employ. Making a few grand gestures about American surgeons, friends of yours no doubt who’ll say that her spine was broken always … that’s not going to change the mind of the courts of law.”

  “Ah Fergus, will you stop and think? Who’s talking about courts of law? We’re talking about making Kate better.”

  “I’m talking about courts of law, district courts, circuit courts, the High Court, the Supreme Court. Don’t worry, O’Neill, this time you’re not getting away with it. This time you won’t smile your way out of ruining people’s lives.”

  They had calmed him, other people had. Patrick had walked away knowing that his presence was inflaming Fergus Slattery more every second.

  Patrick wondered if Slattery was sweet on Mrs. Ryan. There was something very passionate and personal in the way he talked. But he realized that in fact it didn’t matter whether Fergus Slattery was in love with Kate Ryan or not, what mattered was that he held Patrick totally responsible for the accident. And so might a lot of other people.

  Marian Johnson was at eleven o’clock mass. She had tried on her three hats and examined herself with distaste in all of them. They were aging, every single one of them. She looked like a middle-aged frump.

  But then she didn’t want to wear a headscarf. People like Marian Johnson always wore hats, it said something about who you were to wear a hat at mass.

  She had driven quickly to the church and looked in the mirror of her car without pleasure. She saw Patrick and Grace, and thank heavens there was no sign of that foreign-looking American woman who had arrived a few days ago. She had heard some very unsettling stories about Patrick being discovered in the same room as this Mrs. Fine when they were searching for him after the accident.

  But that couldn’t be so. Anyway she would be here at mass with him if she were a close friend of any kind.

  She had hardly spoken to Patrick since Kate Ryan’s accident. He was so preoccupied and either on the phone to America or over in the hospital as if it were his fault.

  Heavens, everyone was saying that he hadn’t a thing to blame himself for. It wasn’t his fault if that woman didn’t know what dangers and hazards there were there. Living right across the river from them. It was terrible for her of course, and all those children.

  Marian’s eye fell on them in a row: the solemn dark-eyed twins who were such friends of Grace O’Neill, and two scruffy little boys with spiky hair.

  She heard Canon Moran’s reed-thin voice pipe on about happy death or speedy recovery. The man must be getting senile. How could you recover from a broken spine speedily, for heaven’s sake? Then she saw Dara taking the smaller scruffy boy by the hand and leading him out of the church.

  With his other hand rolled into a fist and stuck into his eye, the child was roaring.

  “He said happy death, Mammy’s not going to have a happy death; they said she was all right. They said she was all right.”

  Kate struggled during the night. She was very agitated and wouldn’t be comforted.

  “Shush shush now. I’m here, there’s nothing to worry about,” the night nurse soothed.

  “There’s everything to worry about.” Kate was suddenly clear and rational. “I can’t stay here, I have to go home. They’ll never manage.”

  “Of course they’ll manage, they’re managing fine, isn’t that what your husband has been saying to you every day for a week?”

  “A week? I don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t think about it now, try to rest.”

  “It can’t be a week,” Kate Ryan said, and her over-bright eyes closed heavily as she went back to something that was neither sleep nor complete unconsciousness. She had been there for a time that she couldn’t work out. Every time things cleared people told her some different time scale.

  Her breathing was heavy and jerky.

  The night nurse took her pulse and marveled at the resilience of the human body. To be able to survive those injuries. To be able to lie still while people worked out just how bad those injuries were.

  They were managing in a sort of a way. Often it was the well-meant curiosity and concern that was the hardest to take. People came with stories of bone setters who had made the crippled walk, with details of saints who had interceded with God in startling ways and with herbal cures which had been known in these parts for years and never once known to fail.

  People came with kind worried faces saying that Kate should be kept still for six months or that she should be on her feet now before the paralysis had time to set in, or that she should have hot seaweed baths.

  The support of a small community had its good side and its wearying side. Nobody could be offended, nobody could be ignored. And it didn’t have the advantage of taking their minds off things. Everyone was talking about the same thing. How to get Kate Ryan cured and back in their midst
.

  Jack Coyne was the last person John wanted to see come into the pub.

  “It’s all right, don’t stand up. I’m not here socializing.”

  “Sorry, Jack, what can I get you? It is a public house; I have to try and keep things normal for everyone’s sake.”

  “No you don’t, things are not normal. You’ve contacted a solicitor, I suppose.”

  “Ah Jack, stop will you …”

  “Someone has to keep you straight, John. You’ll need a big firm of solicitors, Fergus will be the first to tell you that. Don’t just go to someone in the town, go right to Dublin. You’ll have to in the end.”

  “It’s doctors she needs and a run of luck, not lawyers for Christ’s sake.”

  “She’s the businesswoman in this family, she’d be the first to agree with me.”

  “Please, Jack. I know you mean well. You’re not helping.”

  “I can give you the name of a big firm. I let one of the partners have a car last year, he came down here fishing. Jesus Mary and Joseph, John, O’Neill has to be stopped. He has to be stopped, I tell you, and you’ll need the big guns on him. He can’t come in here to this parish throwing his weight around, favoring one, ignoring another and in the end getting Kate into this terrible mess.”

  “It’s not the time … I beg you.”

  “If you don’t act now it’ll be too late, he’ll outfox you. There’s a lot of people in this place standing up for you, John, don’t let them down.”

  “Mr. Ryan?”

  “What is it, Carrie?”

  “Mr. Ryan, Jimbo asked me to find out kind of if you were going to be taking Mr. O’Neill to the law for all that’s happened to Mrs. Ryan.”

  “And what on earth business is it of Jimbo’s, can I ask?”

  “I know, Mr. Ryan. I didn’t want to ask you at all, but he said a lot of the fellows who work for Mr. O’Neill were wondering and that I was in a grand position to know, working here and all.”

  She looked wretched, her long lank hair falling into her eyes. John knew that if Kate were standing here she would hand Carrie a hair clip so that she wouldn’t blind herself.