The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (156 page)

“I had to say something. I wanted to get away.”

“What a great thing to choose.”

“I needed to be out of there, I needed to be here.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to sort something out and see you”

“You’re looking at me, Kerry. Say what you have to say, and say it quickly.”

“Father, the money?”

“The money you called about yesterday, that ridiculous sum … You are not getting one penny of that from me.”

“I wanted to come and tell you personally the kind of people they are.”

“I don’t care if they are cousins of the pope, they’re still not going to find me coughing up their winnings at poker.”

“I’m not saying they’re respectable people we don’t want to offend. They’re the opposite, they’re very tough.”

“Good, then you’ve met it at last. People who are not going to give in to your every wish.”

“You wouldn’t say good, Father, if you knew … Tony said that they’re getting very annoyed with me.”

Patrick looked at his son.

“You are a spoiled selfish brat. It is my fault, it is not your mother’s fault. I didn’t see what was happening to you, I saw every other goddamn thing but I didn’t see you for what you were. I was too busy. God forgive me.”

“I’m sure he will forgive you, Father, God always forgives people who talk nicely to him and turn up at mass, no matter what they’ve been up to.”

“Don’t give me that.”

“And people who put stained-glass windows into churches, and new buildings into Catholic schools, God loves them mightily.”

Kerry’s eyes were flashing. He would not be stopped.

“You can get away with it, Father, you always have, you can cut corners, you can break promises, you can give every slut in town a topaz, but as long as the Easter donations are generous God turns a blind eye.”

Patrick moved at him, his arm up as if to strike.

Kerry went on. “And God understands a bit of battering too, if it’s done in the right cause. Go ahead. Go on, I don’t care. I don’t give a damn.”

Patrick withdrew.

“You’ll care when you’re working in a real job for the first time in your life to pay these punks, you’ll care then when three-quarters of your wages will go to pay off a debt that not one of these farmers here could sleep a wink if he owed in a lifetime.”

“You don’t think for a
moment
that they’ll wait to be paid at fifteen pounds a week. That would take more than a year. They want it now. On Monday at the very latest.”

“Give up, you’ll never get it. If you play for it you’ll just end up paying twice as much. Work for a year, two years, regard it as your apprenticeship. They’ll wait.”

“They can’t wait, they’re not ordinary people. They’re in an … organization.”

“Cut that shit, they’ve organized themselves to smell a sucker and to rob a bank or a post office or two. Those fellows have no cause but themselves.”

“You don’t understand …”

“I know that for a fact, Hill warned me about them a while back. There may be some fellows in a movement in Derry since the border campaign ended, but not your gang. They’re in it for themselves.”

“Hill’s an old fool, he knows nothing.”

“I said you would stop by Hill’s for your things, and he knows you’re not to be trusted so there’s no point in trying to make up any shortfall by dipping into the till before you leave.”

Kerry looked at him sharply. Things had gone very far if his father had warned an outsider against him.

“Can I stay at the lodge when I come back?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you told Grace.”

“That she is meant to be lying like her friend Maggie under the bridge, but that in her case there’s some hope she’ll survive? No.”

“What
will
you say?”

“As little as possible. To you and about you.”

“That will be hard if we’re living in the same house.”

“I’m moving into the hotel shortly, so is Grace. You can have the lodge until Christmas. We’ve paid for it until then.”

“Miss Hayes?”

“She’ll be going to her sister in New Zealand in a couple of weeks.”

“And my room in the hotel?”

“Will not exist, Kerry.”

“I’m not going to make a speech or plead, Father, this isn’t about the future of the hotel or anything. It’s about now. Could you give me just this amount? Then I’ll never ask you again.”

“No.”

“Please. I’ve never said please before, maybe I should have. But I’m begging you.”

“No. If I do it now, then next month it will be fifteen hundred pounds. Go to them, tell them they have to wait a year or whatever it takes for you to make it.”

Kerry’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s on your head then, Father. If you won’t give it to me I’ll have to get it elsewhere.”

“That won’t be easy, you’re running out of credibility.”

“I think I know where I can get it,” Kerry said and he almost smiled.

He got back into his car and drove away toward the main road. Patrick walked to Jack Coyne’s and got three lads to come up and move his car. He didn’t tell them how it had ended up in the ditch but he did not like the way Jack Coyne was looking at him.

There was something knowing and triumphant about the way the small ratlike man kept glancing at him.

   “Have you been talking to Kerry?” Carrie asked Dara in a conspiratorial whisper.

“No, he’s not home yet, but he might be back at the weekend. I keep hoping,” Dara said.

“But he
is
here. I saw him.”

“You never did!”

“Yes, last night. I said that’s funny, Kerry home on a Thursday in the middle of the week. And then again this morning, he drove past here at a hundred miles an hour.”

“Had he anyone with him?” Dara was almost afraid to hear the answer.

“No, not at all. Why should he have anyone with him, isn’t he your fellow?”

Carrie saw things over-simply, Dara thought.

   Dara sat on the window seat looking out at the moonlight. She couldn’t believe that Kerry had been in Mountfern without even coming in to say hello.

Grace could never have told her a lie. There could be no awful thing that they were keeping hidden from her, like that he was going out with Kitty Daly. No, Michael would never be a party to that.

Michael came to sit beside her.

“There’s nothing you’re keeping secret from me, is there?” she asked.

“How did you guess?”

“Oh God.” Dara’s hand went to her throat.

“You see, Grace will soon be living across there,” he began.

“What is it?”

“I was wondering, I was wondering if I could … if we could show her the tunnel.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, I know it’s quite a big thing to ask.”

Dara didn’t seem to listen.

“Was Kerry home today?” she asked. “Did he stay at the lodge last night? That’s all I want to know. It’s not very much to ask.”

“Of course he wasn’t. If he was, he’d have talked to me. He talks to me quite a lot, as it happens.”

“He wasn’t back then?”

“No. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Carrie must be going mad, that’s all,” Dara said.

“And what do you say about …?”

Michael let his voice trail away. Dara was sitting happily on the window seat, her leg tucked underneath her, all the anxiety gone from her face. She didn’t want to talk about tunnels or to talk about anything, she wanted to think about Kerry O’Neill.

   Kerry said his goodbye’s briefly in Hill’s hotel. The staff were sorry to see him leave; some of the students who had been working as chambermaids for the summer were particularly sorry. He had been so sunny, so handsome, like summer lightning around the place.

He told McCann that he could get the money and have it on Saturday afternoon.

McCann had said he would come with him to get it.

That was not what Kerry wanted.

“Look you’ve been in Mountfern, you know the set-up, it’s a one-horse place. We’re the kings of the castle there, if I say I’ll get it I will, and then I’ll get it to you.”

“No point in your driving all over the country,” McCann said laconically. “I’ll come with you. Then I’ll get the bus back.”

It was a dispiriting drive. The back of the car was filled with Kerry’s stuff, they couldn’t give a lift to any of the girls they saw on the road even if they had wanted to. Which Kerry didn’t.

They listened to music the whole way down. Tony McCann liked “These Boots Are Made for Walking”. He said it was a great song, and sang it tunelessly with Nancy Sinatra.

Kerry said he liked “Pretty Flamingo”, he didn’t know why but it reminded him of Dara Ryan, who was only a kid but very attractive.

“Is she pink and does she stand on one leg?” McCann had wanted to know with a laugh.

Several times Kerry O’Neill wondered why he found McCann such good company.

   In Mountfern he told McCann there were three pubs he could drink in, and that he would be an hour at the most. Then he’d come with the money.

McCann had said that a check would be fine. His friends knew that Kerry wouldn’t be foolish enough to give them a check that didn’t work. That would be more stupid than not giving them anything at all.

Kerry had nodded fervently.

He settled McCann in Foley’s, realizing that between taciturn old Mr. Foley and the silent McCann little chat would be exchanged.

Then he drove down Bridge Street, looking neither right nor left of him. He realized that when he was back here full time it would be like living in one of those fish tanks that old Hill had in his hotel where people could look at the lobsters from every side. He averted his eyes from Fergus Slattery and turned right into River Road.

Loretto’s eyes were like dinner plates as he walked past her and up the stairs to Rachel Fine.

Her face was as white as a sheet. She was sitting at a table with papers on it. A coffee cup sat beside her, full but cold.

She looked up in alarm as he came in softly.

“We have to talk, Rachel, you and I,” he said.

And he pulled up a chair beside her.

   Friday afternoon. Could she really have been home only twenty-four hours? Dara felt she had been back for weeks.

She had gone to look for Jacinta and been told she was at her riding lesson with Marian Johnson.

Some time or other Dara would have to go into Daly’s. It had better be now.

Mrs. Daly smiled at her warmly and wanted to know all about France.

“Did you get to Lourdes at all while you were there?”

“No, Mrs. Daly, but the lady I was staying with did. I asked her to say a prayer for Maggie. I wrote the name down for her on the back of a holy picture.”

Mrs. Daly was pleased. She patted Dara’s hand.

“You’re a good child in spite of everything,” she said.

Dara repeated this to Tommy Leonard in a cross voice. “In spite of what? What did she mean?” she asked.

Tommy couldn’t take his eyes off Dara. She looked utterly lovely, he thought.

“In spite of being good-looking, she means. Mrs. Daly hates good-looking people, she likes them with faces like ironing boards.”

Dara giggled. “I don’t suppose you can come off with me for a bit?”

“I can’t. I used up all my time off going to hunt out sites and vantage points with Jacinta yesterday. You look just great, you know.”

“Thanks, Tommy. Well, if you’ve spent your free time with Jacinta I can but go in search of fun and games elsewhere. Sit out on the street and wait till King Kerry turns up for the weekend.”

“Oh, King Kerry as you call him is here already.” Tommy was pained to have to acknowledge it but at least it was good that Dara didn’t seem to be tied up with him the moment she came back.

“He can’t be!”

“Well then, he has a double. I saw him with a fellow from a horror movie going into Foley’s, maybe they’ve taken to drinking in there.”

“Kerry doesn’t drink,” Dara said.

“He could have started,” Tommy suggested.

“Today was it?”

“Oh, don’t go up looking for them in Foley’s, Dara, for heaven’s sake.”

“I’ve no intention of going looking for them anywhere,” Dara flounced. “Kerry will come and look for me when he’s ready.”

   Dara waited on the footbridge. She knew he would have to come and find her.

She saw the shadows getting a little longer. She leaned over and looked at her reflection in the water. She looked all right, she thought. Not a beauty, but all right.

Where
was
he?

She didn’t hear the car stopping and his light step behind her. She felt his arms around her waist and as she looked into the river she saw him reflected there. He kissed her.

“In front of the pub, with them all looking out the window?” she protested.

“Right, let’s go somewhere with no windows. Get in.” He opened the door of the little red car.

Dara walked toward it slowly. Was she being very cheap, very easy-to-get by going with him right away? He hadn’t written. Not once. Not even a card.

He hadn’t gotten in touch when he got back. But for seeing her now, he might never have stopped.

He looked up at her from the car. “You’re so beautiful, Dara. I hope those Frenchmen didn’t get what you wouldn’t give me.”

He was talking out loud. Anyone could have heard him if they had been near the pub window.