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

by Tyler, Anne

  He looked at her helplessly without saying anything.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Ryan.” Her face was scarlet. “It’s just that he said it would be easy, but I didn’t know what else to do but ask. There’d be no point in my listening at doors.”

  “No point, Carrie.” He was weary. “Tell Jimbo that you think suing Patrick O’Neill is the last thing on my mind. There’s no plans to stop him in his building, their jobs will be all right. That’s what it’s about.”

  “I suppose it is,” Carrie said miserably.

  “Was that Miss Johnson from the Grange leaving in such a hurry?” Mrs. Daly from the Dairy wanted to know.

  “It was indeed.” Rita Walsh tossed her head. She had just had words with Marian Johnson. Unpleasant words. Rita had said like any human would have said that it was a tragedy about Kate Ryan, wasn’t it appalling to think she had been so badly injured only yards from her own home, in a place that used to be green fields and wild brambles.

  Marian Johnson had taken this as some kind of criticism of Patrick O’Neill; she had answered hotly that the Ryan woman should have been able to read the dozen notices around the building site.

  It had all been very unfortunate; the hair-do had not been a success. Every attempt to organize a parting in Marian’s many-crowned head had been interrupted by further defense of the American. Rita had been foolish enough to pass some remark about Patrick being well able to look after himself and if he wasn’t, hadn’t he that foreign-looking woman, the one he had installed over in the Slieve Sunset, to look after him? This had caused an unexpected reaction, and Marian had left before her hair was finished.

  “It’s pathetic at her age,” Mrs. Daly said disapprovingly. “She’s well into her forties, what does she think is going to happen? A big white wedding up in the church with Canon Moran blessing the happy couple? She should have sense.”

  Mrs. Leonard from the stationer’s was coming out from under one of the big heavy chrome hairdryers. She didn’t want to miss anything that was going on.

  “I was in Conway’s this morning—you know, the shop part, not the pub of course.” She gave a tinkle of a laugh. “They were saying in there that they hoped there’d be no bad feeling over this. An act of God is all it was.”

  “Well yes,” Rita said unthinkingly. “But an act of God that happened because of that man’s machinery and bulldozers. If he hadn’t come back and filled the place up with things you’d never expect in the heart of the country …”

  She felt Mrs. Daly’s shoulders tense slightly under the pink cotton cape. She knew that for a second time that morning she was going to find herself in disagreement with a client.

  “That’s all very well, Rita,” Mrs. Daly said, “but it doesn’t do to forget what benefits that man is bringing to this place. It would be a pity if people were to go around saying things carelessly that might drive him out of it. He’s in a terrible way, I hear, near to tears over the whole thing, and he’s like a child about Mountfern and wanting to be part of it. The smallest thing could blow him away from here like a puff of wind. We’ll have to watch what we say.”

  Rita looked in the mirror and her eyes met Mrs. Daly’s eyes, small and round like Mrs. Daly’s face, satisfied with life the way it now was since the American had come to breathe hope into the town and to give Daly’s Dairy the chance of supplying a large hotel.

  “I know what you mean,” Rita Walsh said. “It doesn’t do to give the wrong impression.”

  “Exactly.” Mrs. Daly wriggled her plump little shoulders and waited for Rita’s expert fingers to arrange the finger wave to the best advantage on her forehead.

  Dr. White came into the post office with relief. Here at least nobody would expect him to know the ins and outs of Kate Ryan’s injuries, the likely chance of her ever being able to walk again.

  The door to the back room was open and the doctor saw the big stocky figure of the American at the telephone.

  “Well, Sheila,” Dr. White said mildly, “I didn’t know this was going on. Is it a serious romance or are you just setting up an opposition to the Rosemarie hair salon?”

  “Ah, leave poor Rita alone.” Sheila Whelan didn’t bother denying the reputation of Mrs. Walsh’s establishment. Neither did she offer any explanation for the presence of Patrick O’Neill in her sitting room, but she had quietly closed the through door with her foot.

  “Can I get you stamps, or are you eligible for the old-age pension suddenly?” she asked.

  “God, I feel I could do with the pension. Be like old man Slattery used to be, take my little stool and bag and spend my days eyeball to eyeball with lovely eight-pound—ten-pound, even—pike. Dangle a few little herrings in front of them, that’s what a man should do with his days on this earth.”

  “Never saw the sense of it myself,” Sheila Whelan said. “Taking one kind of fish to attract another kind of fish, and not even eating the ones you take out of the river. Still.”

  “That’s it. Still, let people do what they want to. I came in for one thing and one thing only, to avoid running into the canon. I saw him coming up the road, and I fled in here. I can’t take another dose of the Lord’s will, and the goodness of Our Blessed Lady.”

  Sheila Whelan smiled. “Come on out of that, you’re a very saintly man.”

  “Yes I am, but it’s not the kind of saintly that sees the hand of God and his mother in paralyzing Kate Ryan all in the cause of building a flashy hotel.”

  “She’d have been paralyzed whether the hotel was going to be flashy or whether they were building a library for cloistered nuns over there.”

  “You always stand up for him.” Dr. White jerked his head toward the door.

  “No, that’s not so. I don’t always stand up for him or always stand up for anyone, but Lord God it’s not his fault, is it?”

  “I suppose like the rest of the town you’re terrified he’ll go, and take his money with him.”

  Sheila was mild. “What do I see of his money? I’m hardly making a fortune from his being here. A lot more work, and certainly revenue for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. I’m hardly benefiting myself.”

  “Of course not.” Dr. White was ashamed.

  “I know what you mean though, Martin. And it’s very hard to look at it. The way people look out for themselves. But it’s not a thriving place, this. I suppose you’d have to expect it.”

  “You’re too tolerant.”

  “I’m not I can’t sleep at night thinking of Kate Ryan’s injuries, but that doesn’t mean I blame that poor man in there. He can’t even make a call without a circle of people around him waiting to hear what he’s at.”

  “And hasn’t he a phone above in the lodge?”

  “A lot of these are calls to the States, it’s easier on him to be here. I’ve shown him how to get through.”

  “Oh well, that’s all right. Business as usual then, or maybe he’s onto some smart lawyers over there, fellows that will come over here and say he isn’t even in the remotest way responsible for what happened.”

  “That is very unjust and very unlike you, Martin White.”

  The doctor looked at her, startled. Perhaps he had gone too far. He waited to see if she would explain why it was so unfair. But Sheila Whelan said nothing. It wasn’t up to her to explain that Patrick O’Neill was on the phone to America trying to get a particular specialist to come over from America and examine Kate Ryan.

  He had been on the telephone all day trying to get the right people. His phone bill would be staggering.

  Patrick said he didn’t care how offended anyone was, he was flying the specialist from New York and he would be here on Monday. No, he didn’t care whose toes were being stepped on, in a case of life or death, in a case of paralysis he would presume that medical men and women would be large enough and sufficiently generous-spirited to realize that the patient came first. No aspersions were being cast, no offense should be taken.

  He knew that the New York man would probabl
y confirm everything that was being done here, so where was the harm, where was the insult?

  The hospital, which had been horrified to hear of outsiders, succumbed as Patrick had known they would.

  He couldn’t bear to think they might bungle it, move her when she shouldn’t be moved, or leave her in a country hospital when she should be at the remedial center in Dublin. Only when he heard an independent and expert view from a man he had chosen and paid would Patrick believe that everything possible was being done.

  The whole thing had an air of unreality to it. He thanked God that he hadn’t broached the matter of the entrance to them; if he had spoken of it then he would always have felt sure that Kate’s accident was in some way connected.

  One night John found the twins asleep on the window seat.

  Before he woke them he made three mugs of hot chocolate, and they drank them together as the summer moon shone down on the river and the building site.

  “You’re very good the way you manage, but you’ll have to get some proper sleep, not with crooked necks and cramps here on the window.” His voice was gentle.

  “Everything’s different,” Michael said.

  “I know, son.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Do you think …” Dara began.

  “I don’t know. I hope so, but I really don’t know.”

  A little later he took their empty mugs and left them on the chest of drawers under the Sacred Heart lamp and saw the twins off to bed.

  Dara had wanted to have Grace O’Neill to stay. She said it would be lovely to have someone to talk to at night.

  John Ryan had hated saying no, but he felt it would be wrong in some way. He felt that until things were sorted out, O’Neill’s child shouldn’t really sleep under their roof.

  Chapter XII

  Kate stirred in the hospital.

  “Mrs. Ryan, you’re fine. Fine. Don’t move too much.”

  “Nurse, is my husband here?”

  “He’s been here all morning, he stepped out for a smoke. Will I get him?”

  “No, send him home.”

  “He doesn’t want to go home, he wants to be here with you.”

  “He has no business wanting that, he’s got a business to run. How will he keep it if he’s here?”

  Kate was fretful and worried. Sometimes it was clear to her that she had cracked her spine and broken several vertebrae, sometimes nothing was clear. There were bits when she wanted to cry and cry it all out of her and then she knew she would feel fine, she could get off this ridiculous table she was on and tear out these tubes and go home. There were other bits when she thought she would never move again. It wasn’t clear to her what happened.

  Sometimes she would ask. But she would drift off before the explanation.

  John had peeped through the circle of glass in the door and seen that Kate was awake. He had stubbed out his cigarette and come in eagerly.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “It’s midday, love, I just heard the angelus.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “What?”

  “The pub opens in half an hour, John, who’s going to open it?”

  “Not today, love, they all know I’m here with you.”

  “They won’t know that till they get to the door and find the place closed. John, have sense. Please. Please don’t leave me to make all the decisions, even though I’m lying here with a broken back. For God’s sake do something on your own initiative. Just once.”

  The nurse had called for assistance and the houseman came in. Kate was thrashing around and the injection was swift in coming.

  John stood rooted to the spot.

  Kate’s face was calm again as if in a normal peaceful sleep.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said to the young nurse pitifully.

  “I think you should go home, Mr. Ryan, she’s had a very strong sedative now, she won’t be able to talk for a while.”

  “But what would I do at home?”

  “I don’t know, maybe you could open the pub as she said.”

  John Ryan turned and went out with a heavy tread.

  Sitting outside in a hired car was Paudie Doyle, the younger brother of Brian. He was eighteen and had a drivers license. Patrick O’Neill had hired him with the car and said that he was to drive the Ryan family backward and forward from the hospital to Mountfern—a hundred times a day if needs be. And to be there always at their beck and call.

  He was a kind young fellow and he couldn’t bear to see the look of pain on John’s face.

  “In about twenty-five minutes the pubs will be open, or maybe you might know someone who’d open early for you. Would that be nice? A drop of brandy maybe?”

  “Thanks, Paudie. Drive me home to my own place like a good lad. I’ve got to open up, got a business to run, you know.”

  “Of course you do, I thought you’d have someone else doing that. They would you know, people are very willing to do anything to help. You know they are.”

  “I know,” said John dully. “I just don’t seem to be able to think of anything they could do.”

  Kate had been right of course, there were plenty of people anxious to know how she was and to give the Ryans their custom.

  Grace wanted to know was it all right if she stayed to lunch.

  “Certainly.” John was pleased that the twins would have company. He sent her on into the kitchen behind and concentrated on serving. Patrick sat on a stool and asked about everything, and when Fergus came in, he sat on the stool beside the American.

  “And what did the injection do, did she go out at once or did it take time?” Patrick asked.

  “Why don’t you ask him to put a bulletin up on the door as they do in Buckingham Palace?” Fergus asked suddenly.

  Patrick looked at him, startled.

  “There are fourteen people in this public house needing pints, half ones, glasses of whiskey, bottles of minerals opened for them. Would you not have the common sense to let the man get on with it instead of interrogating him about every twist and turn of his unfortunate wife.”

  “Fergus.” John was shocked.

  “I mean it, John, you get on with serving while you still have a pub to serve in.” Fergus had a voice very near tears.

  “He’s right, of course.” Patrick stood up. “I’ll call back to ask about Kate when you’re not busy, John.” In four steps he was out the door.

  John Ryan was very upset.

  “Ah, Fergus, what did you have to go and do that for? Now I’ll have to go after him. He’s been so good to us, Fergus, you have no idea. He has cars for us everywhere, we’d never be able to get in and out to the hospital, and he’s paying for a specialist to come from America, someone who actually treated the Kennedys coming the whole way to look at Kate What did you have to go and insult him for? He was only being interested and asking.”

  “I’m interested but I want you to keep your business,” Fergus hissed, indicating a small group at the other end of the counter needing refills. “And I could drive you in to see Kate, I could give you my car, for God’s sake. He’s not the only one who wants to help.”

  “But that’s it. He does want to help. Don’t be on at him like you were up in the hospital. It only makes things harder.” John was still looking at the door wondering if he should run after Patrick.

  “No, you’re right.” And Fergus swung off the stool to stride out also—leaving John Ryan without two customers he realized as he walked sadly along River Road and saw the figure of Patrick O’Neill walking sadly among the machinery and small walls of his building site on the other side of the river.

  Kerry O’Neill had bought a get-well card in Leonard’s. He had chosen it carefully. Not a funny one, and not a mournful one either, full of flowers and verses about Good Friendship and Health.

  Tommy Leonard thought that Kerry was very considerate to put so much thought into it. A lot of people just bought the first thing or the che
apest thing they saw.

  Kerry’s father didn’t share this view. He thought Kerry was cold and distant about the accident, he felt there was something a little calculating about finding a meaningless printed card and signing it “… from all your friends in Mountfern, and Kerry O’Neill.” But then very little that Kerry did or said pleased Patrick these days. The boy seemed to be entirely wrapped up in himself. There was no room for anyone else in his life.

  The chicken was boiled a long time now. Carrie looked at it anxiously—it was beginning to break up in the pot. Usually the mistress came out and made a white sauce at this stage; she used to come like a whirlwind into the kitchen. Up to the stove and pound pound pound in a small saucepan, flinging in the milk, the butter and the flour at random, it seemed. The instructions were given to Carrie like a series of short and rapid machine guns being fired. Kate Ryan used to speak firmly but kindly:

  “Potatoes drained and into the dish, now. Thanks, Carrie, and plates warming, there’s a good girl. Thanks, Carrie. Pass me the carving knife and fork. Right, call Michael, it’s his turn to serve today.” It used to go like clockwork. But today nothing was right. Carrie didn’t have enough hands. The children were all sitting inside like lords and ladies waiting to be served, the master was in the pub where it seemed half the parish had come up to drink like pigs at a trough.

  Carrie was flustered and confused. When she put the chicken down it started to go cold out of the pot so she put it back in again while she got out the potatoes, then the chicken seemed to have broken into fragments with all the shifting it about.

  Since the mistress wasn’t here to criticize her, she thought she’d risk taking the potatoes to the table in the big black pot. She ran with it because it was so heavy. She hadn’t known that the young O’Neill child was sitting at the table inside. She began to run out again but the pot slipped. She banged it on the table and there was a noise, a sizzling noise. The pot had burned a huge weal into the table.

  Carrie looked at it, her face as aghast as the five children’s faces that looked first at the burning table and then at her.