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

by Tyler, Anne

  She asked the nurse to make sure that nobody was kept away because of her visits but the nurse shook her head and said that poor Mr. Whelan’s wife wasn’t in the best of health and wasn’t able to come and see him. Sheila read this to mean that the woman who had borne Joe Whelan’s four children suffered from her nerves or drink or both. She discovered that there were neighbors who would supervise the funeral, kind people in the small Dublin street who had known nothing of any previous existence in Mountfern.

  When he fell into his coma and she was assured that he would not know anyone around him again, she left as quietly as she had come and took the bus back to Mountfern. She did not feel saintly or unselfish; she felt a weary tiredness. And for the first time in her life she felt something like anger. Anger about people who stood by and let things happen. At herself for wasting all those years thinking that Joe knew what he was doing and that there was some sort of plan. She might have been better not to have been so dignified and discreet. She could have gone after him and fought for him. And got him back.

  Or she could have gotten a court order and got maintenance from him if she hadn’t valued her good name so highly and been too proud to ask for it. That way she would have strong shoes to wear instead of making do with patched soles and avoiding puddles. She would have had the money to go to Rome when the diocese was making the pilgrimage. She could have given Mary Donnelly something better than she had, some holiday or some outfit to get her over the worst days of the pain, the days when you need some distractions.

  Instead she was coming back on the bus to Mountfern where nobody except Kate Ryan would know whether Joe Whelan was alive or dead. She would ask Canon Moran to say a mass for his soul, but she would just say that it was for a friend. It wasn’t that the canon would ever tell anyone but she had been so silent and secretive about this, she would keep it that way to the end.

  But for the rest of her life she was not going to sit and take a back seat. She was going to take part in things, not just observe them.

  Chapter XX

  Patrick finished the steak and kidney pie. “That was quite excellent, Miss Hayes.”

  “It’s a pleasure to serve you, Mr. O’Neill.”

  He sat by himself at the table. Grace was having supper at the Ryans’. It was a night of a cookery lesson, she had explained. He knew it was just another chance to see young Michael but he pretended to take the cookery classes very seriously. Kerry was miles away in Donegal. When Olive Hayes had gone back to her kitchen he sat quite alone. As he sat many an evening.

  It would be different when the hotel opened, he told himself. There would not be this stark realization that he found himself reading through his meals, and sitting idly after them, fiddling with the television, if he didn’t get out more work. He had discouraged Marian from suggesting outings, and now she had ceased trying to interest him in little trumped-up schemes. He wished he could ask Rachel here.

  He stood and stretched … the evening seemed to stretch as well.

  He had put off so long and so firmly any thought about what would happen to Rachel when the hotel opened that he found himself doing it again automatically. But tonight somehow he felt able to think about it.

  She could take instruction. And if she did, then there would be no problem about her previous marriage, since it wasn’t a Catholic marriage. Hell, it wasn’t even a Christian marriage.

  And she could fit in here, there were ways where she seemed to have adapted better than he had.

  Rachel got on so well with Kate Ryan, with Sheila Whelan, with Loretto Quinn. Brian Doyle said that she was the only person connected with the entire enterprise who might be considered sane. Mary Donnelly, that madwoman running a one-woman band for the annihilation of men, said that Rachel was one in a million.

  Why did he hesitate to ask her even to something simple like supper in his own house?

  He knew why, it was out of guilt.

  He still felt that this woman was part of his past. He had gone willingly and excitedly to her arms while the children had stayed in a big white house in New Jersey with their always-ailing mother.

  And Rachel wasn’t Irish, or part of the great scheme. That’s why he kept her at such a long arm’s length.

  Dara’s postcard arrived at Hill’s Hotel for Kerry. It sounded very casual with an attempt to be sardonic:

  I heard there was a bank strike at home, I didn’t know there was a postal strike as well!! But then how does everyone else manage to write to me, I wonder? It’s a puzzlement, as they say in The King and I.

  France is magnifique.

  I’ll be back in Mountfern on the last Thursday in August.

  Love Dara.

  Kerry read it and smiled. He would have taken a hotel postcard and written straight back, but he had a lot on his mind. He had lost a great deal on three consecutive nights.

  It was time to call Father.

  But if he won tonight, it would all be sorted out. No need to tell Father about anything.

  Tony McCann was apologetic. If it were up to him there wouldn’t be a problem in the world, Kerry knew that, didn’t he? If it were only McCann himself or Charlie it would have been a no-problem area. But these fellows … McCann’s voice trailed away a little. For the first time Kerry began to feel a little afraid.

  “Do you not have any idea where he is, Miss Hayes?”

  “No, Kerry, he doesn’t tell me where he goes. He just said that he would be back late.”

  “Whatever time he comes in, do you hear me, whatever time, can you get him to call me?”

  “I’ll leave a note, certainly. I don’t want to intrude but is there anything wrong?”

  “No no—heavens no.” His voice was falsely bright.

  “It’s just that you sound so urgent somehow. I wouldn’t want Mr. O’Neill to be alarmed.”

  “No no, it’s nothing.” He sounded impatient.

  “I’ll leave him a note then in case I’m gone to bed. I’ll say you’d like him to ring back but it’s not urgent.”

  Kerry spoke very slowly and deliberately. “Tell him it is urgent but there hasn’t been an accident or anything. It’s very urgent.”

  “Very well, Kerry, whatever you say.”

  Patrick came in at eleven-thirty.

  He had spent a very pleasant evening with Rachel. He called at Loretto’s and asked whether she would like a drive. He wanted to look at the ruined abbey in case it would be a place they could take the guests on the barge that he was going to operate from the new landing stage.

  “You’re going to have night boat trips?” Rachel was surprised.

  “No, but maybe it’s not a bad idea. They could go through the trees and along the river, the only light … the fireflies in the darkness.”

  “They don’t have them here,” Rachel said.

  “Fireflies? Of course they do.”

  “No. Didn’t you notice?”

  “Anyway, will you come with me in the car and let’s see if this abbey is worth our time?”

  “It’s been around since the fourteenth century, I think it might be worth a glance all right. Let me get sensible shoes.”

  They had walked easily and companionably like the old days. Three times he was about to tell her that he wanted them to be more open and seen to be close friends. Three times he stopped himself.

  After all he wasn’t yet ready to offer her anything much, and he would clear it with his children before changing things even slightly. He left things as they were.

  Next morning up at the hotel Jim Costello came to Patrick, there was an urgent call from his son in Donegal.

  “Would you like a bit of peace and quiet to take it?”

  “No thanks, Jim, it won’t be long.”

  Jim had sensed the tetchiness in Kerry O’Neill’s voice. He moved away.

  “Did she not leave you my message?”

  “That’s some greeting, Kerry. Yes, Miss Hayes did leave a message but it was late when I got in.”

  �
�What time?”

  “Eleven-thirty.” Patrick took a deep breath. “I went for a walk with Rachel Fine up around the old ruined abbey … she thinks that we could …”

  “I’ll hear Mrs. Fine’s thoughts another time, Father. I’m in a bit of trouble. Financially.”

  Patrick’s voice was ice cold. “Yes, Kerry?”

  “And I would be grateful if you would bail me out.”

  A silence.

  “Are you still there, Father?”

  “Yes. I’m still here.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Will you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You said you would.”

  “No, I said I would discuss it, we are discussing it. How much?”

  “A thousand pounds.”

  Patrick was shocked. Literally shocked. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am.”

  “Well find it then.”

  “We made a deal.”

  “We made no deal, I said I’d discuss it. I will not hand out a year’s wages to an insolent young punk who calls and demands it as if it were his right.”

  “Father, this is serious.”

  “You bet your fucking life it’s serious,” Patrick said.

  “I thought you were going to—”

  “I thought my father was going to do a lot of things for me too, like getting me enough to eat and shoes to wear. But it didn’t happen. Learn the hard way, Kerry.”

  “Aren’t you going to discuss it?”

  “Yes I will discuss it. When you come back.” Patrick’s anger was ebbing a little.

  “I could come back today.”

  “No you could not. You can stay there and do the work you are meant to be doing. I will discuss it in a few weeks’ time, when you’re back here for the opening. Meanwhile get out of it the best you can, and if you steal from Hill like you stole from me, I’ll see you go to jail.”

  There was a silence.

  “Life isn’t easy, Kerry, it’s a matter of finding ways around things; and if one thing doesn’t work, try something else. You’ll discover that.”

  “Yes, I probably will,” Kerry said slowly.

  Rachel Fine sat in her sitting room and watched the evening fall on Fernscourt.

  She felt very tired. The game was too arduous. She blew cold, he ran after her—she showed some response, he ran away. It was so immature, so unsatisfying. Somehow tonight, for the very first time, Rachel was prepared to stop the struggle, the never-ending spiral of hope, the belief that things were going well.

  He was a man who hadn’t enough room in his heart for a full-time loving relationship. He never had time for it with his wife Kathleen either. Whether she had been frail or not he would still have wandered, and it was not without importance to note that he had wandered to a business colleague rather than find a sheerly social relationship.

  She sighed, thinking of the years behind and the years ahead. The music on her record player was low so as not to disturb Loretto below. Chopin, soothing and familiar. Perhaps even at this late stage of her life she might even take up the piano again. When she was back in New York.

  Would she be back in New York?

  Yes, sooner or later. Why not make it sooner, go at her own time? See the opening just because she had worked so hard for it. Give him one ultimatum so that he would never say he didn’t know, and then go. But she had to be prepared to go, not to give herself nine lives like a cat, otherwise what was the point of giving ultimatums?

  There was a soft knock on her door. Loretto would never have let him upstairs, and yet who else could it be?

  She walked wearily over to the door and opened it.

  There stood Kerry O’Neill, the boy she had always hoped would be her stepson one day.

  He leaned against the jamb of the door. “Hi Rachel.”

  “Hello Kerry.”

  She made no move to ask him in.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine, and you?” They still stood there.

  “Reasonably fine, I’d be better with a drink, to be very frank.”

  “Well you know me, Kerry, a non-drinking lady. But I’m sure if you were to go to Ryan’s …”

  “I don’t want to go to Ryan’s,” he said sharply.

  She shrugged.

  “Surely my father keeps something to drink here.”

  “Your father lives in the lodge, Kerry. I live here.”

  “So you never see him?”

  “At work.”

  “I want to talk to you, not him.”

  “I told you I don’t have anything to drink.”

  “I know. It doesn’t matter, I have.” He waved a bottle of whiskey. “Now can I come in?”

  Mary thought she had seen the blond figure of young Kerry O’Neill slip quietly across the footbridge earlier, but since he hadn’t come into the pub and there was nowhere else he could be heading, she must have been mistaken.

  Rachel stood back and let Kerry come into her sitting room. He stood looking at it with his cool objective eye.

  “Lovely,” he said at last.

  “Thank you.”

  “I mean it, you have wonderful ways, Rachel. Anyone else would have ruined this place and filled it with clutter.”

  He sat in the chair by the window where Patrick always sat and looked across in the darkening evening at Fernscourt.

  “I can provide a glass and water,” Rachel said.

  “Great, this is far too elegant a place for a man to sit drinking from a bottle.”

  He was so engaging, just like his father. His compliments were not so frequent and lavish that they sounded automatic. Instead, they made people feel very touched and grateful to be praised.

  She brought a tray to the little low table—Irish crystal glasses and a jug. A pretty china bowl with ice in it, a tray of cheese biscuits and for herself an orange drink. She sat down opposite him. She had not invited him, but since he was here she would be gracious. Being a hostess was second nature to Rachel Fine, she had waited on Kerry’s father for many years in the same elegant way.

  “Your health,” she said politely, raising her glass of orange.

  “And yours.” His eyes were bright, he raised the very large goblet of neat Irish whiskey and looked at the patterns of the glass admiringly.

  Rachel was very good at not being the first to speak. She had learned that first from her mother, who said that the men in the family were the ones to be considered, and then from many many nights waiting to assess Patrick’s mood before she spoke. She knew how to leave a perfectly agreeable silence that would encourage the other person to begin.

  Kerry smiled as if he could see into her mind. It was a knowing smile full of confidence.

  “And how long are you going to be with us?” he asked genially.

  Rachel was shocked by the insolence of his tone. So shocked that it made her speak sharply.

  “I was just going to ask you the same question. Are you with us for long or do you have to get back to Donegal?”

  Kerry smiled even more broadly; he sensed a fight and he welcomed it.

  “Oh, I’m here for the duration, Rachel, this is my home.”

  She controlled herself with difficulty. “Well of course, and has your father decided what part you will play in the hotel?” Polite interest, but letting him know that everyone realized it was Patrick who called the shots.

  “I’m sure you’re much more aware of what my father has decided or has not decided than anyone.”

  She smiled coldly but made no reply. From years of training herself not to over-react, not to fly off the handle, Rachel had perfected a calm and measured response even to situations that were outside the bounds of any manners or fairness.

  “My involvement is always in ideas for design, and sometimes it’s an uphill job.” She forced a little laugh that she did not feel. “I can tell you the designer is the one who always ends up taking the blame—it’s to
o stark, it’s too cold, it’s not Irish enough—my, but you need extraordinary patience in this job. Lucky I have it!” Again her tinkle was very false and again she felt that Kerry recognized this.

  “Perhaps you’ve been too patient.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know, hanging around too long, hoping that when this is over—when that is over—the world will settle down as you would like it, as you design it.”

  She wondered how much more of this she could take, this pretense of deliberately misunderstanding his discourtesy.

  “At least the day of the opening is in sight,” she said “We’ll see then if it works.”

  “And what will you do then? Go back to Brooklyn?”

  “I live in Manhattan.”

  “Sure, but you do live in New York, will you go directly back there? After the hotel opens?”

  His question echoed so much her own bitter thoughts and decisions of earlier that evening that it brought a heavy, weary feeling to Rachel. It was as if she suddenly decided to give up the bright sunny response.

  “I don’t know,” she said simply. “I’m not sure.”

  “Rachel!” He was teasing. “Not sure? Of course you are, you’ve every step planned out, haven’t you?”

  “No. Not every step.”

  “Most of them then. You’ve been part of my father’s life for a very long time. A lot of people didn’t rate your chances very highly.”

  “I don’t know how you could know any of this. You were a child.”

  “Sure I was a child, I didn’t know really, not for certain, not until my mother’s last illness. That’s when I knew.”

  Rachel looked at him impassively.

  Kerry poured another large goblet of whiskey, his hand trembling slightly.

  “Those nights when she was alone in the house, and he was with you—in Manhattan, as you remind me. Out until the early hours of the morning. Sometimes I stood on the landing and watched him come in, go into the bathroom and rinse his mouth, freshen himself up before he came up to her bedroom. She was always awake, always waiting for him to come back from you. From your apartment in Manhattan.”