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

by Tyler, Anne

  But she dismissed the thought as unworthy. And almost blasphemous. What was better than to see a healthy young priest enjoy his food? She thought back on the days that Fergus Slattery wouldn’t notice what she served, so long as there was a bottle of tomato ketchup on the table.

  Papers Flynn stirred in the outhouse where he had slept well all night. There was something happening today. What was it? He remembered that it was the hotel opening.

  A barge had been brought from a Dublin canal, and painted in bright colors. There were going to be tours up and down the river to the old abbey near the lake. It would be great sport to watch it. Papers would find himself a good vantage point on the bank to see the comings and goings.

  He was pleased to think of a day filled with such activity. He had all the details from Carrie. Papers had called there about his usual business and Mrs. Ryan had invited him into the kitchen for a plate of dinner.

  Mrs. Ryan was a lady he liked a lot. She never asked him to clean himself up. She wouldn’t give him any old guff about finding himself a roof over his head. Mrs. Ryan knew that Papers didn’t want to be tied down. She gave him useful things like a pair of big burlap bags with strong handles on them: she thought they might come in handy for transporting his belongings, and they were the very thing.

  Mrs. Ryan had taken Papers aside and said that he may have heard that recently they had been given a very substantial sum of money as compensation for her accident. Papers had heard it, certainly. Up in Matt Foley’s at the top of the town they had said that the Ryans were going to spend it all on a carpeted lounge bar with music playing in the background. In Conway’s pub they had said that the lot had gone into a building society and there wasn’t going to be a penny of it spent ever. It was to be their nest egg, their insurance policy for years to come. He had traveled on further to Paddy Dunne’s pub, where the story was that the money had been set aside to send Mrs. Ryan to a hospital outside Boston where they were able to do miracles with what other places had said were incurables. It cost five thousand pounds before they would look at you, and there would be the fare and everything, but she’d be walking again by the springtime. Paddy Dunne had read an article about the place in a Sunday paper.

  Papers would never dream of asking Mrs. Ryan which, if any, of these stories were true. He was surprised when she suddenly volunteered the information.

  “We’ve been very lucky, Papers, and I was wondering if you’d join us in celebrating our good fortune.”

  “Well, now, ma’am.” Papers was cautious.

  “I mean, I wouldn’t normally dream of offering anyone money, but seeing as how we got so much ourselves. It’s mainly in a savings account and it’s going to be used for the children’s education, in case any of them are bright enough to be able to use it. But we kept a few pounds aside for ourselves, and for people we know.”

  She handed him three pound notes folded over.

  “It’s not a great deal but I don’t know whether you’d like a cap, I was going to get you a cap, but John said that a man should choose his own cap for himself.”

  “He’s right there,” Papers agreed sagely.

  “Or it might not be a cap at all that you’d like, so will you get yourself something, and regard it as sharing part of our good fortune?”

  Papers had been very pleased indeed to have had his wishes considered and discussed so carefully without anyone making mention of the county home, which usually came up when people had his welfare at heart.

  In an uncharacteristic burst of speech he had told Mrs. Ryan that he might buy himself a little spirit stove that he had seen in a shop. He had been debating if it was worth the investment, but it would give him more freedom, he’d be able to go farther afield if he had his own way of being able to make a cup of tea.

  He had thanked Mrs. Ryan very formally and assured her that he would report progress on the spirit stove. If he bought it, he promised that he would be very careful with it. And ended his speech by saying that she was a great woman to be celebrating good fortune when there were many in the land who would say that it was no good fortune to have the two legs struck from under you, but was glad that Mrs. Ryan was able to rise above that.

  He had been surprised to see tears in her eyes. And she had said that oddly she didn’t worry about her legs being useless, she had gotten over that part of it, she just felt that she herself had lost her personality and was useless as a person. Papers hadn’t understood that and he told her it was a bit deep for him. She cheered up then and agreed and told him to have a good plate of stew before he left, and to come and watch any of the activities on the day of the opening from Ryan’s bar.

  “You know you’re invited like everyone else in the place to the Thatch Bar in the evening, he wants the whole of Mountfern to come.”

  “Well …” Papers was doubtful.

  “He’s not issuing personal invitations, just wants everyone to turn up for a drink and to wish the place luck. Of course, there are some who would prefer to inspect it at their own time rather than being herded together. Some people of the more independent kind, private people will take up his invitation at a later date.”

  Papers had been relieved to hear that, he thought at first that he might be expected to go, but Mrs. Ryan had set his mind at rest on that point. Papers could join the private sort of people, the people of independent mind who didn’t want to go as part of the herd.

  Rita Walsh woke with a start. Why had she set her alarm clock for seven o’clock? Then she remembered.

  It was the day of the opening. She had two young girls from the convent coming at eight o’clock to start shampooing. The schools had the day off and Rita had picked two of the more reliable Sixth Years to help her. She had trained them in the art of washing hair without drowning the client.

  All the towels and capes were clean and ready in little heaps in the salon.

  She would get milk and biscuits from Loretto; she had tea and coffee there already, and in honor of the occasion she had bought a dozen nice blue-and-white teacups.

  There would be a steady procession all morning. And since everyone would want to be finished and out by twelve-thirty, she had decided to open very early and accommodate everyone.

  It was only regulars today. Mrs. Daly, Miss Johnson, Miss Bryne the physiotherapist, Dr. White’s wife. Loretto Quinn was coming in to have her hair combed out, she had the set yesterday. She also had the ring. She told Rita Walsh that in your life you found one Barney. It would be too good to be true to imagine you’d find another. But Jack Coyne was a man often very much misunderstood, and he had told Loretto that it was lonely to be in business in a big way and have no company in the evening when he came in after a long day’s work. Loretto had understood this too.

  Rita had been very pleased for Loretto and agreed that it was often easy to get the wrong end of the stick with Jack until you knew him. She had done Loretto’s hair free as a celebration and said she must come in for a lot of back-combing and lacquer since this was a special day, the day that people would hear about their engagement. Loretto must look her best.

  Jack Coyne was going to the opening under sufferance. One of the terms of their very unromantic and highly practical contract had been that Jack would end his vendetta with Mr. O’Neill and that Loretto would smarten herself up and learn to drive. The new Mrs. Jack Coyne must be not only a successful shopkeeper in her right but a well-turned-out woman driver.

  John Ryan woke at seven. He had slept badly. Twice during the night he had gotten up to get a drink of water, his throat felt dry and he couldn’t seem to get comfortable in the bed.

  If Kate had been lying beside him in the old days, she would have woken too, and gone to make them a cup of tea. They might have sat during the dark night and talked about the hotel that was finally going to open, and all the fears that they shared, as well as the totally different fears that one had and the other had not. It would have looked less shadowy, that big house across the river, and less full of t
error.

  But Kate had not been in the room for over three years. Sometimes John slept on the divan in her green room below. He was always aware of how much she hated it when she needed to use the lavatory, whether she dragged herself into the chair and wheeled herself to the bathroom, or used the bedpan. Either way it distressed her so much that he often felt he was more of a hindrance to her than a companion. It was more sensible for him to sleep upstairs, though it was lonely.

  And sometimes he felt it was selfish, particularly after they had made love. But then, making love itself was a selfish activity these days. There was no trace of the pleasure and excitement for Kate that had delighted him before.

  John looked across at Fernscourt as the morning light fell on the great marquee. Normally he never let his mind go down this particular train of thought, but today he didn’t pull himself up. He stood holding the bedroom curtain in his hand and looked at the dock, the brightly painted barge, and the first signs of activity in the big cultivated grounds, and wondered what things would have been like if Patrick O’Neill’s grandfather had been thrown out of a cottage in Cork or Galway or Clare, instead of in this small bend on the road in the midlands.

  How different everything would have been then.

  Grace O’Neill woke with a jump because there was a noise in her bedroom. But it was only her new dress and its heavy coat hanger falling from the door of her closet where she had hung it last night. She wanted to see it first thing so that she could make an instant judgment. Now it was in a crumbled ball on the floor.

  She leaped out of bed to rescue it and held it up against the light. It was beautiful. She had been silly to think it was baby-dollish; it would look classy and striking.

  Grace hoped that Michael would be cheerful today. She hated to see that hangdog look about him, as if someone had taken away his favorite toy.

  She went to the window and leaned out. The huge marquee blocked the view across the river. She could not see Ryan’s pub properly.

  She felt sorry for Michael having to share a room with that terrible Eddie. Declan was harmless enough, but Eddie was too much.

  Michael had explained that there was a partition. He had begged for one, and Jimbo had been instructed to build a plywood wall dividing the room.

  She compared it to Jim Costello’s room. Well, it was more a suite really. He had a study, a bathroom and kitchenette, with a big bedroom that faced the river. She had seen it when he was taking her on a grand tour.

  Jim had explained that the big sofa turned into a bed at night. By day the room looked expensive and impersonal. As if it were a genuine hotel bedroom, and Jim was just passing through. There were no photographs or personal things around his room.

  Grace liked to think of the frank admiring looks he gave her, and the promise that when the day was over and there was time to think, he would be able to sit down and talk to her properly.

  Loretto Quinn woke and examined her hair to see how much of the set remained. Rita was going to brush it up for her and lacquer it like a board later in the morning.

  There were several things she wanted to do before she opened the shop. She wanted to finish her letter to Mrs. Fine, telling her that there had been a dozen requests to rent the rooms, and that Loretto was going to give them to a young chef who said that he never lived on the premises, it always led to a hassle, and he had wanted something nearby. He had been very impressed with the little kitchen and said that the cooker was a very good make and one of the most expensive on the market.

  Loretto wanted to thank Rachel for that as well; she had never appreciated it at the time. She wanted Rachel’s advice on what she should wear for her wedding next spring. Would a lemon-colored suit be nice, or would it take the color from her?

  Loretto also wanted to leave a note in to Fergus Slattery. Jack Coyne had said to her that the country had never been the same since the Married Women’s Property Act. It was a joke, but she was going to ask Fergus just to make it clear to her in words she would understand that if she and Jack had a bust-up in the years to come, that Jack couldn’t take her little shop from her. And Loretto had to iron her dress, and once she had sorted through the potatoes and shaken the earth off them, she would paint her nails pink, as people would be admiring the ring.

  And she had to decide about the picture of Barney that hung over the mantelpiece in her kitchen.

  She took it down and looked at his face. It wasn’t a very big picture, nor a very good one. His hair was sticking out in a spiky way that wasn’t really like the way Barney was. The years in between made it hard to remember exactly the way he was.

  As she looked at the picture, Loretto noticed that the big old frame was coming apart; it was old and cracked. It would be dangerous to leave it hanging in that position in case it fell on anyone. Loretto’s decision was made for her. She couldn’t put the picture up again the way it was.

  She took out the photograph of Barney Quinn and put it in a smaller frame, a stand-up type which you could put on a shelf. In front of the potted plant. But in time it could be moved over beside the plant or toward the back of the shelf.

  Eddie Ryan woke and looked out the window.

  He had promised his mother that he would do nothing today that would bring any disgrace on the family.

  “It’s an important day, and I’m in a bit of a fuss and bother about it already, so it would be the living end, Eddie, if you were to be a worry to me, if I had to be looking around asking people where is that boy and what’s he up to now.”

  “Maybe I’d better stay in bed all day,” Eddie had said quite seriously. It seemed to be the only way he could guarantee being no trouble at all.

  “No, I’d be afraid you’d fall out of the window or hang yourself or something. I wouldn’t be able to take my eyes off the house while we’re over there,” Kate had grumbled.

  Mam had bought him a great jacket that day in Dublin; it was full of pockets and zippers and wasn’t at all the kind of thing he thought Mam would buy. He’d been sure it would be something like a blazer or a suit jacket when he was unwrapping it.

  “How did you know this is what I’d want?” His eyes were shining.

  “I guessed,” Mam had said.

  She told him it was in the nature of a bribe, a promise of peace on the day of the opening.

  Declan stirred and rubbed his eyes. “Is it morning?” he asked. Declan sometimes behaved as if he were retarded.

  “No,” said Eddie. “It’s the middle of the night, and all those ghosts you’re so afraid of have been at it again. They’ve bitten the head off Jaffa. Oh, God, it’s lying on the ground all covered with dried blood.”

  Declan let out a screech that could be heard on the Dublin road, and leaped out to see if this was true.

  Carrie, who had been getting sick in the bathroom for the fourth morning running and was beginning to work out that there might be a very unsettling reason for this, got such a fright at Declan’s screams that she knocked over the entire contents of a tray that was perched dangerously on a white chest of drawers. The tray held—or had held—talcum powder, Dettol, dried-up calamine lotion, milk of magnesia, a glass eyedropper, and a bottle shaped like a crinoline lady full of blue bath salts.

  The recriminations were lengthy. The court of inquiry into why all those particular things were on a tray was endless. Kate said that it was a great thing for a woman in a wheelchair to be told that the bathroom she could never go up the stairs to see had now turned into some kind of boxroom or rubbish dump, filled with old chests of drawers and trays and the Lord knew what else.

  Dara was accused of having weighted it down too much with the crinoline lady. Dara, woken from sleep with what she considered monstrously unfair charges, said that the crinoline lady was, if anyone would care to remember, a gift from Marian Johnson to say thank you when Dara had gone to help in the Grange at a function. Dara had thought she was being paid, which was the only reason she had gone, and had been outraged by the blue crinoline. />
  Mam had said then to put it up in the bathroom somewhere out of people’s sight, and now she, Dara, was being blamed for it.

  Eddie said he would stick a compass in Declan’s heart if he told anyone why he had cried out, and that this was no joking matter.

  Poor Declan tried to say that he had been having a nightmare; he had dreamed that a ghost had bitten off the head of the cat, and that the side yard was awash with blood.

  John said that it was too much for a human to bear. One of his sons was a hardened criminal, the other a certifiable lunatic.

  Jack Coyne woke with a feeling of wellbeing that surprised him. What was he feeling so good about?

  He remembered that despite all the trials and tribulations, a few of them aided and abetted by Jack himself, Fernscourt was going to open today.

  Well, he was going to the festivities of course, no point in making any lone point over something that was happening, anyway, and passing up a free dinner.

  Anyway, there would be lots of fellows there from the Tourist Board and from Aer Lingus and the American airlines. And there would be journalists and local councillors, two bishops no less, a rake of priests, four TDs at the last count, not to mention the high and the mighty for miles around. If he couldn’t get a bit of business out of today he’d be in a poor way.

  Then he remembered Loretto and how she had agreed to everything. It had been well worth getting her those flowers back a bit, and saying that he would be happy to go dancing of a weekend. Women really and truly liked those kinds of things. It was the way they were. And Loretto had been very practical, too, and agreeable to some of his suggestions. She had been adamant about maintaining her own little shop rather than considering its possible sale as a site for some other business once the hotel got going. She had been equally firm about not learning anything whatsoever about maintenance work. She didn’t want to spend her life in greasy overalls lying under some lorry. She had agreed to learn how to drive, however, which would be very useful for car delivery or collection or going for spare parts.