by Tyler, Anne
And being so athletic was an advantage. It was no use when you were at the pictures or being watched parading up and down Bridge Street, but it was marvelous when you were the only girl who could dive from the wall of the bridge and when Tommy Leonard admired you.
“Do you mind if I buy a car from Jack Coyne? I know you and he don’t get on,” Kerry said.
“How have you enough money to buy a car?”
“We said there would be no discussion about money, ever again.”
“No, we said there would be no discussion about stealing unless it happened again.”
“Well it hasn’t.”
There was a silence.
“I won it up north.”
Patrick nodded. “Very well. Now about Coyne, he’s a mean, dishonest little shit, but Rachel warned me against alienating locals, however unlikable. Go ahead. Watch out that it’s a real car, mind. Make sure he doesn’t sell you a lemon.”
“No, he’ll be so anxious to get into your good books he’ll give me a fantastic bargain.” Kerry grinned.
Patrick smiled too. This was good thinking. That is exactly what Jack Coyne would do. How sensible his son was to capitalize on it.
“You might find that the pattern has changed a bit this summer,” he said.
“Changed in what way?”
“Not so much wandering off on your own, it looks like, everyone swimming by the bridge.”
“Well, I’ll have a car, that should change the pattern a bit more.”
“You might find a bit of resistance along the way. Dara Ryan’s mother for one.” Patrick spoke lightly.
Kerry was sunny. “That’s no problem, there are plenty of other girls to take for drives. And anyway I like swimming too.”
He smiled at his father as if there weren’t a problem in the world.
Loretto Quinn told Rachel that Jack Coyne was like the cat that got the cream. The young O’Neill boy had said he would like to buy a second-hand car from him. Jack Coyne had sped off to the town in high excitement. He said he was going to find a little honey of a little car for the boy. Loretto hadn’t known him as pleased for years.
“He calls in here a lot. Is he an admirer do you think?” Rachel asked.
Loretto pealed with laughter. “Jack Coyne an admirer? Lord, all that man ever admired was a roll of fivers. But it’s very flattering of you to think I might have a caller, Mrs. Fine.”
“You’re a fine woman, Loretto. Why wouldn’t you have callers and admirers?”
“Ah, Mrs. Fine, you’ve improved me but not that much. Not in a place like this. Anyway I wouldn’t want them, I’m happy as I am. Much happier since you came.”
Rachel was pleased. Even if she had to resign herself that her coming to Mountfern had not achieved its aim, at least she could console herself that she had done a lot to help the women and girls of the place. Rachel was reading about the women’s liberation that seemed to be sweeping the States at the moment. Not much of it had found its way to Mountfern. But she was definitely helping to improve the quality of life for a few of the female citizens of the place anyway.
Maggie Daly hung up her new dress all by itself on the back of her door. She didn’t want to put it in the wardrobe in case it got crushed. And anyway she couldn’t see it in the wardrobe.
She wondered what Kitty would say about it. Kitty was coming home for a weekend.
Kerry’s car was red and had an open roof. It wasn’t quite a sports car but it was almost.
He took Grace for a lap of honor up and down Bridge Street, turning neatly in front of the Classic Cinema, which nearly gave Declan Morrissey a heart attack as he thought the boy was through the cinema doors. Grace’s hair, blown by the wind, stood like a halo around her head. Michael fixed a smile on his face and wished with such intensity that it hurt him physically that he was old enough to drive, that he had the money to buy a white sports car and that he and Grace could drive around Mountfern like that.
Dara fixed a smile on her face as she sat beside Maggie on the wall of the bridge.
She wished with an intensity that hurt her that she could be sitting where Grace was and that Kerry and she would do one more tour of the town and then drive off for miles in the beautiful car. She wished that her hair curled under and that she had her ears pierced. Then she would be truly happy.
Father Hogan and Canon Moran were taking a walk when they saw the red car. They were about to cluck at each other and say that Mr. O’Neill really spoiled his children and gave a bad example when the car stopped.
“Do you want to test it out? I only have it an hour.” Kerry sounded excited.
“Test it out?”
“I’ll take you for a test ride.”
The priests looked at each other in amazement. Nobody had ever offered them anything so racy.
“Us?” Canon Moran croaked in disbelief.
“Yes Canon, one at a time, it only seats two.”
“It’s very nice of you, Kerry … but my old bones.”
There was naked longing on Father Hogan’s face.
“What about you, Father, you’ll risk it won’t you?”
“Aren’t you very good to be bothering with the clergy …” Grace had gotten out and was holding the door open, Father Hogan had gathered up the skirts of his soutane and settled himself in.
“But of course I bother with the clergy, Father Hogan, aren’t they the most important people in town?” Kerry smiled and slipped through the gears to roar off with Father Hogan in the passenger seat.
It was a warm evening, warm enough to come back to the bridge and swim again after tea.
At seven o’clock they gathered there again.
Jacinta did some spectacular dives. This was the first time Kerry had seen them, he was full of praise. Jacinta was gruff and red with delight. She looked at Tommy Leonard to see whether he had noticed. But Tommy’s eyes were wide. Maggie was approaching in her new dress. She looked quite different to the Maggie they all knew.
“I didn’t know we were going to wear them now, I thought we’d wait till there was something special,” Dara grumbled.
“What will there be special?” Maggie asked.
“You look like a picture,” Michael said.
“That’s exactly what I told her,” Grace said eagerly.
“Hey, you’re even more dazzling than your big sister,” Kerry said.
Dara felt plain and foolish.
Mam had been watching her like a hawk—where are you going, what are you doing, will you be with Michael? It was maddening Just as she was coming out Mam had told her not to be dressing up like as if she was going to a ball, so she wore her striped tee shirt and the plain blue skirt.
She felt like a deck chair in the outfit, canvas and stripes. Who would look at her? And here was Maggie with her hair all brushed and shimmering and reminding Kerry of Kitty up in Dublin.
The light went out of the evening for Dara. Hands in the pockets of her dull plain skirt, she turned away. The others were so busy admiring Maggie they hardly noticed.
Dara began to walk toward River Road. There was nothing here for her, every moment she stayed just pointed out how dull she was. She couldn’t do dives like Jacinta, she wasn’t lovely like Grace was or Maggie was turning out to be. She was boring old wooden Dara.
She had turned into River Road and was nearly at Jack Coyne’s when she realized Maggie was running after her.
“Why won’t you stay?”
“What do you care?”
“We were having fun, weren’t we?” Maggie asked anxiously.
“Oh Maggie, can’t you ever make up your mind about anything?” Dara snapped.
Maggie looked at her, dismayed.
“You’re so weak. You don’t even know whether we were having fun or not. You ask me were we? I don’t know about you. I wasn’t, so I came home. But at least I know. You never know.”
“What don’t I know?”
“See!” Dara was triumphant. “You don’t know if you�
�d like an ice cream, you don’t know if you’d like a trip in Kerry’s car, you don’t know if you want to swim or to wear a bathing cap. You don’t know anything.”
“What did I do, Dara?” wailed poor Maggie after Dara’s back.
Dara didn’t even turn around, she just shouted over her shoulder. “You did nothing. You never do anything. That’s just the point.”
Maggie stood stricken on the river bank, Dara stormed home and threw herself on her bed to cry.
Mary came up and knocked on the door. “Your mother would like you to go to her room and talk to her.”
“Tell her I’m in bed.”
“Dara. Please. Your mother sent me up specially.”
“I’m in bed, I’m not going down.”
“She can’t come up.”
There was a silence.
“So please, Dara, will you come down?”
The door opened and Dara’s tear-stained face appeared. “That’s the most cruel blackmail I ever heard. Reminding me that Mam can’t ever get up the stairs. How mean and unfair.” She stormed past Mary and nearly took the hinges off the door of her mother’s green room.
Mary sighed. It went against her principles to say that boys were easier around the house than girls at this age. But maybe it was because women were so much more sensitive.
“Yes?” Dara stood inside the door she had just banged.
“I was wondering if you could help me.”
“Do what?”
“To think of a name for our café. We will have to get it painted for one thing and then if we call it something we can start painting that on trays and perhaps even embroidering it on aprons.”
Dara looked at Kate as if her mother had gone mad.
“I don’t care what you call it,” she said.
“You’ll be looking at it for a long time.”
“Not necessarily,” Dara said.
“Well, even if you’re going to leave home, you might want to have a say in what the café is called.”
“No, Mam, honestly I don’t. I’m not being rude, I don’t mind what name you choose.” She made as if to go.
“Ryan’s Ridiculous Café, maybe?” Kate tried. “Ryan’s Rubbishy Café, Ryan’s Wreck of a Café. Ryan’s Roadhouse.” She pretended to be considering each of them. Dara couldn’t raise a smile even.
“Could you sit down do you think?”
“No Mam, if you don’t mind … I’d prefer to go to bed.”
“It’s not eight o’clock, you’re the one who told me not two hours ago that it was inhuman to ask people to be home by ten o’clock. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything I can do? Anything at all.”
“No. No there isn’t, really. Thanks all the same.”
“Dara?”
“Yes.”
“I asked you to come down because I love you, no other reason, I love you with all my heart and I don’t want you to be unhappy. I know it’s not much use just to have me loving you, but it might be a help sometime, so just remember it will you?” Kate smiled at her and continued, “No, of course you don’t need to sit here anymore. I got lonely too sitting by myself and I thought it might work if you came and sat with me, we might get less lonely. But it didn’t work. Off you go to bed. Good night now, love.”
“You’ll think of a name.”
“Yes I will, or you will or someone will.”
“Why does it have to have a name at all?”
“I’m not sure,” Kate said. “Rachel thinks it would stick in people’s minds more. You know the way they like things to be defined—Emerald Isle, Land of Shamrocks. I suppose we’re the same with other places, we think of Spain and we think of castanets.”
“You could call it Shamrock Café,” Dara said.
“Ryan’s Shamrock Café,” Kate said slowly. “That might do.”
“Good night Mam.”
“Good night my love.”
Dara longed to rush back and throw herself into her mother’s arms, but it would have meant too many tears and trying to explain what she was crying about. So she resisted it and went back upstairs to the window seat, where she sat and watched the sun set over the River Fern, and saw Michael walk disconsolately home at five minutes to ten.
Grace flashed by in Kerry’s little red car.
“Were you swimming and all till now?” Dara asked Michael.
“Jacinta said you went off in a sulk. Did you?” he asked.
“Of course not,” Dara lied. “What did everyone do?”
“If you’d stayed you’d have found out,” he said and went into the boys’ room and closed the door.
Dara felt more alone than she had ever felt.
She thought about Mam saying that she loved her. It was a nice thing to say but Mam was right, it wasn’t much use at the moment.
The next evening they had all made separate resolutions.
Dara was not going to sulk. She wore a red shirt over her black bathing suit, and the silk rose that Kerry had given her on her fifteenth birthday all those months ago behind her ear. She smiled at everyone.
Maggie had decided not to wear her good new dress. It had been overdoing it, they had all gotten annoyed with her somehow. She wore an old Viyella dress that used to belong to Kitty once, it was faded and shrunk now. It made Maggie look about ten.
Jacinta’s father had told her that he was prescribing himself headache remedies because of the continuous whine tone in her voice, so she had resolved to speak more cheerfully.
Michael had decided that it was not the end of the world if John Joe Conway said “Fine girl you are” every time he looked at Grace. And that it only made him look the stupid one if he reacted all the time.
Tommy Leonard had decided that Dara did like him, she wasn’t sighing at him, she was sighing at everything around her.
Liam White thought that he might ask Maggie Daly to the pictures. She was so small he could even get her in for half price as an under twelve.
Grace made a vow to be much nicer to Michael. It was awful for him, his parents had turned into policemen and insisted that they all move in packs. Someone must have seen them. She shuddered to think what her own father would say if anything was reported to him. But then he was so busy and out so much he wouldn’t notice.
They sat swinging their legs on the bridge, the four girls, Dara, Maggie, Grace and Jacinta. The boys perched on their bikes and chatted to them.
Half a dozen others came and went, John Joe Conway with his loutish laugh saying there was nothing to look at since the girls were all covered up.
There was no sign of Kerry.
Then they saw him walking down Bridge Street, the evening sun hitting his golden hair. He looked like a young god as he walked, in his open-necked blue shirt the exact color of his eyes, and his white trousers gleaming. He looked like a cowboy in a Western, the good guy who had come in to save the town. Tonight he did not have the red car—he had left his bike slung casually against the railing of Slattery’s house.
He was coming to join the gang on the bridge. The evening could begin.
They had never seen Kerry swim in this part of the river. Up beyond the footbridge yes, long ago. But here was more public somehow. Up in the old place with the raft it had never mattered whether you could swim or not, it was wallowing and flapping about in the water from the bank to the raft and back.
But here it was altogether more showy.
They watched as Kerry kicked off his canvas shoes and slipped off his trousers. He was wearing his swimming trunks underneath. He stood in the golden rays of the evening sun, blinking. Then he threw off his blue shirt, and laughed at them.
“It only gets worse thinking about it,” he said as if he were totally unaware that all their eyes were on him. Lean and tanned, golden and confident, he stood on the parapet of the bridge and did one long clean dive into the River Fern.
Tommy Leonard thought gloomily that that was that. There went his only chance of
being good at something. Kerry O’Neill turned out to be much better at diving than Tommy. Wouldn’t you know?
Dara looked at Kerry in wonder. He was perched on the raft, the drops of water clinging to his tanned shoulders and arms making him look shimmering. He was so very very handsome and he was smiling straight up at her.
“Come on, Dara, let’s see you do it.”
Without thinking, Dara peeled off her red shirt, took the silk rose carefully from her hair and scrambled up on the wall of the bridge.
“Careful, Dara,” Michael said.
“Move more to the middle,” Tommy Leonard warned.
Dara dived in. She seemed surprised at herself when she surfaced, shaking the water from her face.
“Great stuff,” Kerry said, moving over on the raft to make room for her.
“Very good, keep your legs straight though,” Jacinta called.
“Is it very high?” Grace shouted.
“Not bad, don’t stop and consider it.” Dara laughed.
In her smart stripy bathing suit Grace turned to Michael for advice. “What do you think?”
“Why don’t we go down the side? We can dive from the raft,” he said.
But Grace wanted to do the high dive.
Once up there it looked very far.
“Stop thinking about it!” Dara called.
This was good advice. In a splash Grace was beside them in the water. She looked back up at the bridge.
“I never thought I could dive that far,” she said in wonder.
And so it was that they all managed it. It was the only summer when they were all able to jump or dive from the bridge itself. They all remembered summers years ago when some people went from the high bridge, but there was never a summer surely where everyone was able to do it.
Little Maggie Daly realized that. It looked like a million miles.
“Try a jump first,” Liam White encouraged. “Once you’ve done the jump it’s easy to do the dive.”
“Is it deep enough?” Maggie asked fearfully.
“It’s over twenty feet,” Liam laughed. “That’s enough water for you, Maggie.”