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

by Tyler, Anne

  “Grace is going to Dublin for the day,” she said, thinking this might be a fairly neutral road to go down.

  “Don’t I know!” Kate exclaimed “My poor Michael is distraught over it all. I told him that it was very vain of Grace to go miles and miles to buy another new dress when she has trunks of them, but that was the wrong thing to say. No criticism of the lady.”

  “Princess Grace,” Rachel said.

  “She is a bit of a madam, isn’t she? But I’m prejudiced. Anyone who could lead Michael Ryan any kind of dance should be in the darkest hob of hell in my view.”

  “Perhaps she’ll not get anywhere with the young hotel manager.” Rachel smiled at the wonderful partisan nature of Kate’s reactions.

  “I’d prefer if she tired of Michael, really, and did it soon, so that both the twins could get over these glittering young O’Neills sooner rather than later.”

  “Yes, we’d all be better if we had gotten over the O’Neills early in life,” Rachel said bitterly.

  Rachel looked very sad, and for the first time since Kate had known her she thought that her friend looked old. The life had gone out from her face. And when that vivacity wasn’t there for all to see, there were lines instead, lines that looked quite deep.

  She took Rachel’s hand in hers and stroked it silently for a moment. She hardly trusted herself to speak in case she said the wrong thing or that she started to cry.

  “Stop it, quite enough self-pity,” Rachel said. “It’s your day of woe today, not mine. Do you feel all right?”

  “Yes, Dr. White gave me something to calm me down. I feel fine.”

  “Have you been to the lavatory?”

  “Yes, and I’ve hardly had food or drink pass my lips so I should be all right.”

  They talked to each other through the mirror, each seeing the reflection of the other. It wasn’t quite the same as talking face to face. You could be more indiscreet.

  “Kate?”

  “Yes?”

  “He wants you to get a lot, you know that. He was delighted you refused the offer. He says …”

  “No … please, no.”

  “You’re my friend, you’ll always be my friend, even when I’m an old lady in a home in Flatbush.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “When he’s married to somebody with ten saints’ names who had the good fortune to come from this one-horse town …”

  “Rachel …”

  “What loyalty do I owe him? He says you shouldn’t take any less …”

  The chair spun around. Kate’s eyes were blazing.

  “No, do you hear me, no. You must stop. If there’s going to be any dignity, anything saved from this circus and farce that I’m heading off to, then the only way is to do it honestly …”

  “I wasn’t going to …”

  “Yes you were, you were going to tell me what his side are prepared to go to. I can’t know that, don’t you see that? I must never know what they’re willing to give.”

  “It’s just because you’re my friend. I wanted the best for you,” Rachel cried, still bewildered by the intensity of it all.

  Kate’s voice lowered. “I know you mean well, but can’t you see, if I have any hope at all of living what passes as a normal life with this man as my neighbor across the river, with my son head over heels with his daughter … with us depending on him for our custom from his hotel … then how would I feel if I had seen his hand?”

  “He’s on your side, that’s all I was saying.”

  “I know, I know. Now please, can I beg you to say no more than that. Now, Rachel Fine, can you kiss me goodbye and good luck?”

  Rachel bent to kiss her in the chair. She put her arms around Kate and laid her cheek against Kate’s thin cheek.

  “May you always have the best of all possible things and even things that are impossible,” she said in a shaky voice.

  “Haven’t I you as a great good friend? That’s worth a lot to me,” Kate said as she maneuvered her chair to the door.

  John and Dr. White were waiting for her in the pub, Fergus and Kevin Kennedy would be already at the courthouse.

  Rachel stood in the green room after Kate had gone. She didn’t know if this was praying or not, but she went to the mournful picture of the Madonna, one she had chosen herself because there were a lot of green and blue hues in it and it went with the room.

  She stood in front of it and looked into the big sad eyes of the picture.

  “Please don’t let them cheat her, don’t let them talk her into a cheap deal. Go on, please. It’s not much to ask. There are thousands of good things and bad things happening all over the place today. Let this be a good one for Kate Ryan. Please.”

  The morning was hot and heavy. Dara’s mind would not stay on parsing.

  “Come on, Dara, wake up. Subordinate adverbial clause modifying what?”

  “What, Sister?”

  “What is it modifying?”

  “I’m not sure, Sister Laura.”

  “You might be a lot surer if you looked at the book instead of outside the window, it isn’t written in letters of fire on the Dublin Road. The clause, for your information, reads … Come on Dara, this is very simple if you just concentrate.”

  “I know, Sister.” The girl’s face looked wretched.

  Sister Laura knew all about the case that was coming to court today.

  “There’s no better way of taming the language than this. You’ll know forever how sentences are constructed.” The nun’s round face was eager to help the white-faced child.

  “Who else knows …?” Sister Laura decided to take the attention away from Dara Ryan.

  “Sister! Sister!” A few of them waved their hands.

  Sister Laura looked around the classroom to choose, and her eye fell on the empty seat where Grace O’Neill normally sat. The child had gone to Dublin for the day. Her father had asked permission.

  “Grace will say she has to see the doctor. That’s not true, she’s going to buy a dress. But it’s not as frivolous as it seems, Sister Laura. I want her to be out of Mountfern on the day of the compensation case, so I asked the young manager to invent an excuse to take her. It would be more diplomatic. More sensitive.”

  He had been right, of course. He was a very good man. Not just because he had given them the money for the school hall or all that extra material for curtains that the Jewish lady had delivered. But he really was kind and out for people’s good. Sister Laura couldn’t bear it when she heard people speaking badly of him. It was only envy, envy of a man who had done so well and come home to spend his money where his father had been nobody. She knew that if the compensation had been up to him, he’d have given the Ryans all they ever needed. But of course it would have been very hard to live with for them, knowing that it was his charity.

  Sister Laura’s eyes turned to the holy picture which hung in the classroom, Our Lady of the Wayside. She looked into the sad eyes of Our Lady and made a quick prayer that she would ask her Son to give proper compensation to the Ryans. Then she said that she would parse the sentence herself and would like the entire class to give their undivided attention.

  Brother Keane had warned them not to trifle with him today; he had a toothache. Nothing that was bad enough to mean he had to leave his charges and go into the town to the dentist, but certainly something that was bad enough to remind him of its existence every waking moment. He felt it was only fair to the boys to apprise them of this fact.

  Michael wondered again and again where Grace and Jim Costello would be now. There had been no difficulty in her getting off school and she had said they were going to set out early.

  Michael had cycled across the Grange early to wish her a good trip; she had come down the stairs all dressed up in a yellow flowery dress he had never seen before. She looked as fresh as a daisy.

  “You look terrific,” he had said. “You don’t need a new frock at all. Wouldn’t that be lovely for the hotel opening?”

  It ha
d been the wrong thing to say. Still, she had been pleased he had cycled all that way to see her. She kissed him without his suggesting it. Just put both her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and at that moment Jim Costello’s car had pulled up.

  “I know we swore we wouldn’t talk about the case,” she whispered to Michael.

  “I know.” He swallowed.

  “But whatever happens we’ll still be as we are. And I hope your Mom gets a lot, I really do.”

  Something in the way she said it made him feel put out. But perhaps it was the fact of that awful Jim Costello with his sickening smile sitting waiting for her. That must have been what it was.

  The classroom was airless. A dying wasp beat uselessly against the window. Even if it got out, it wouldn’t last another hour. Michael wondered if he should finish it off now with his ruler.

  Brother Keane was looking at him. Did he imagine it or was there some sympathy in the teacher’s swollen face?

  Today they were doing an exercise which the class hated more than anything. Brother Keane would ask them to speak on any topic for one minute. There were to be no ems or ahs. There was to be no fooling around or imitating the speaker. The brothers hoped it would make the boys more articulate and able to express themselves. The boys hated it, and though never short of a word in the playground, they were struck dumb when asked to speak in front of the class.

  “Michael Ryan. Give us the benefit of your knowledge and experience of the pike, a fish which abounds in our River Fern.”

  There was a snort around the room. Either this was a trick question of Brother Keane’s or else he was going soft. The pike was dead easy to talk about; they’d all been fishing for pike since they were old enough to be allowed near the water.

  “What would you want to know about it, Brother?” Michael’s face was anxious. “There’s so many ways to start.”

  “Well, kindly choose one, and don’t hold up the class anymore.” Brother Keane’s hand was on his face.

  “Well, like any fish the pike needs oxygen, not for its lungs because they don’t have human lungs or animal lungs even; they don’t have any lungs to speak of. Not lungs as we’d know them.”

  “Could you tell us what they do have instead of what they don’t, please. Start again.”

  “Pike have to take in water through their mouths, and in that water there’s a bit of oxygen like there is in the air. And they let it out the gills. But that’s what all fish do. So what’s different about the pike? The pike has a bad reputation like a wolf has in the animal kingdom. They say he preys on the other fish and lies in wait for them in the reeds on the river bank. But in a way that’s all to the good because a pike is carrying out a function; he’s making the river bed a cleaner better place. It’s his nature to go for what he can. It’s only ignorance, really, to condemn the pike; we’d all be pike if we could, and the world might be a better place if there were more pike in it ready to go out and scavenge for themselves.”

  The boy’s face was red and angry. Nobody had said a word against the pike. Not ever, to Brother Keane’s knowledge.

  Out in the yard earlier, Brother Keane had heard voices raised about the court case which was being decided at this very moment.

  The boy was said to be very friendly with the daughter of the house, and it was probably a question of divided loyalties.

  Brother Keane liked Michael Ryan. Compared to his younger brother, Eddie, he was like the Archangel Gabriel.

  “That’s very informative and well explained,” he said, to the mystification of the class. “Now Tommy Leonard, may we have your discourse please on the benefits of the Rural Electrification Scheme.”

  “Ah, God, Brother, that’s much harder than pike,” said Tommy Leonard, who had been discovering that life was very far from fair.

  Mrs. Daly asked Rita Walsh when there would be any news from the court house.

  But Marian Johnson answered first, she said that it could be anytime from eleven in the morning on. It might be settled outside without their having to go in. She knew this from the highest authority. A Mr. Kennedy, who was representing the Ryans, had stayed in the Grange last night. A very pleasant man, from Dublin. He was going to spend a second night there no matter what the outcome. He said it was too far to drive back to Dublin, and the Grange was exactly the kind of place he had always wanted to stay in but never come across.

  Marian patted her hair reflectively and Rita Walsh sensed another reason to bring Miss Johnson and her thin flyaway hair back on a regular basis to the Rosemarie hair salon.

  Canon Moran and Father Hogan had been asked by several parishioners to pray for a special intention. And indeed to offer Mass for that intention. Nowhere had the intention been defined.

  The priests agreed that it must have to do with the court case, and that one side definitely wanted the Ryans to get a great deal of money and the others wanted them to get very little in case it would somehow offend O’Neill.

  “It’s a poser, isn’t it?” Young Father Hogan had said.

  “Not at all, we will just pray that justice will be done in the courts today. That covers it all,” said Canon Moran, who had lived a very long time and understood almost everything.

  “I’d better leave you and stop hiding here in this nice quiet place.” Sheila Whelan had drained the teapot.

  “It is a nice quiet place. You were very good to settle me here.” Mary Donnelly spoke gruffly in her gratitude.

  “Wasn’t it lucky they got you, just when they needed someone? They’d never have survived without you.”

  Mary hardly remembered that summer and its shock and sadness now. She rarely thought of the man who had let her down so badly. Even when she was condemning men in general, the face of this one did not come easily to mind.

  Sergeant Sheehan passed by as the women came out into the sunshine.

  “Starting early, Sheila,” he said jokily.

  “Lord, I’ve been discovered,” she laughed.

  She looked thoughtful when he had gone.

  “What is it?” Mary noticed her face.

  “I don’t know, I was tempted to talk to him there about something, but I can see I’m getting as bad as the rest of them.”

  “What was it?”

  “Probably nothing, but I saw a lot of activity over on the towpath. You know, beyond the bridge on the other side of the river. Lights in the middle of the night over there, and banging about.”

  “What on earth were you doing on the towpath in the middle of the night?”

  Sheila had been walking because she couldn’t sleep.

  She had heard that Joe had died. The nurse had let her know quietly, as she had asked.

  She would go to no funeral in Dublin, nor would she tell anyone but Kate Ryan of his death.

  Still, it had been impossible to close her own eyes, knowing that Joe Whelan was lying in the mortuary of that Dublin hospital where they had all been so kind to him, and where presumably his woman would recover enough to go and pay her respects, and three of his four children would be with her. The fourth mightn’t dare come back from England in case he faced charges.

  It had been too hard to try to sleep, so she had walked instead.

  “Oh, you know me, Mary, I’m as odd as two left shoes.”

  “Maybe you imagined it,” Mary said.

  “Maybe I did,” said Sheila.

  Fergus felt his hands shaking when he started to shave, so he had put down the razor immediately. He didn’t need to come to the court spattered with blood. He wondered what would make them steadier. He thought absently of a small brandy and port; his father used to take that concoction sometimes when he had what was called a chill.

  But Fergus rejected it. Warming and steadying it might be, but very soon he might need one every day before shaving, even before getting out of bed.

  By the time he was ready to leave the house, his hands had calmed down. He’d done a magnificent job on his face, he thought, not a nick anywh
ere, and he tied a firm knot on his dark gray tie.

  He knew that Kevin Kennedy would barely comb his hair, and yet here was he—the poor country solicitor, an unimportant figure—titivating himself like a peacock. Like a medieval champion going to battle wearing his lady’s favors.

  God, let him be right, urging them to go on. Kevin Kennedy had said to him a dozen times that it was impossible to know with country juries, but then Kevin was a city man who always feared the country and was never at ease when milk didn’t come from bottles and when land didn’t mean small manicured gardens.

  Fergus gave a wan wave across the street to Sheila Whelan before he climbed into his car and drove to the town. He knew she was the one person in Mountfern who would have the tact not to wish him luck as if it was all a bet on the two-thirty.

  Please God let them get twelve thousand pounds. A sum that would see them right for the next fifteen years, until the 1980s. Let them get that. Let Kate know no more anxiety and fear.

  Kate sat in the car looking out calmly left and right as they drove the straight road into the town. The September countryside was beautiful this year, it had been a good summer but not too dry. They passed through villages as small as Mountfern, but places with somehow more importance because they were on the main road. Of course, that would all change soon. Already there were new signposts; they wouldn’t be a little Midlands outpost for much longer.

  “I should come out driving with you more,” she said to John, who frowned furiously at the road. “You went to all that trouble to learn to drive for me, and I hardly ever get into the car with you. From now on we’re going to have grand drives together, the two of us.”

  Martin White said gruffly that he hoped they’d be able to afford a better car than this one when the day’s work was finished.

  “I never thought of getting a new car, did you, John?” Kate was startled at the very idea.

  “Lord, not at all, isn’t this one fine for us and whatever we want to do in it?”

  “Well, what will you do with the money?” Martin White had known them long enough and well enough to ask that question.