The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (168 page)

Sheila laughed. “Oh, I get roped in like everyone, but I was in there for a different purpose entirely, and you were the very man I was hoping to meet as a result of it. In fact, I was going to come over to the barracks.”

“Anything wrong?”

“I’m not sure. I think something may be very wrong. Will you come in and I’ll tell you about it?”

   “What’ll you be doing in Dublin?”

“Shut up, Eddie,” said Dara. “You know it’s meant to be a secret, we don’t want half the place to know we’re going. Mam’s saying it’s a special favor and not saying that we’re going on the train. Sister Laura and Brother Keane only think we’re going into the town with Daddy.”

“But what’ll you be
doing
, will you be going to George’s Street?”

“God, he’s heard of George’s Street, is there any end to his sophistication?” mocked Dara.

“I just want to know.”

“You’re not coming with us, you’re not.” Michael was vehement. “You’d ruin every single minute of the day, not just for us but for everyone on the train, and everyone in Dublin as well.”

“I couldn’t ruin the day for them
all
,” Eddie protested.

“You could, they’d be the worse off for your being there. Go
away
, Eddie.” Dara was impatient.

“I just thought maybe you’d take Mam,” he said.

“What?” They looked at him in amazement. Eddie had never suggested anything remotely unselfish in his life.

“Yeah, she might like an outing, and get something to wear herself.”

“She doesn’t need anything to wear. Mrs. Fine gets her things,” Dara said.

“She might like to get her own.”

“She’d hate all the fuss and the noise and how could she manage in the chair?”

“You could push it down the quays. Down to O’Connell Bridge,” Eddie said.

“Is this some trick?” Dara asked.

“What’s behind it?” Michael wanted to know.

“I was just being nice,” Eddie said.

They didn’t believe him, but they did tell their father.

   John Ryan thought it was well worth putting to Kate. He came into her room to suggest it.

“How about if the children were to take you with them tomorrow?”

She was flustered and pleased. But no, she couldn’t think of it; it would be too much of a drag. It would slow the twins down too much, it would spoil their day.

“Nonsense, I’ve talked to them, they think it’s a terrific idea; they’d love you to go. And if they want to wander off and leave you for a bit, they can, and come back to you, can’t they? It’d be just like here or going into town, or the time we went to the abbey on the lake, people came and went from you and you had a grand time.”

“I did.” She smiled happily. “Thank you for thinking of it, John.” Her voice was small and full of emotion.

“Oh, I didn’t think of it,” he said airily. “Credit where it’s due. It was Eddie, apparently, gangster Eddie who thought you’d like the trip.”

He grinned at her, expecting her to think it as unlikely and funny as he had. He was surprised to see some of the pleasure go out of her face. Kate had thought that this was all John’s idea to give her a treat. But it hadn’t been his idea at all.

   Fergus had known that he had to face the Ryans fairly soon. He would never tell them about his conversation with Rachel, and he knew that no matter how bitter and resentful on their behalf she might feel, she too would keep her counsel to herself.

But he had to go soon, otherwise, it would grow to become a huge secret and it would get out of all proportion.

He had hated having to go there knowing what he did, but after the first time it was easy. Nobody else knew that O’Neill’s side had gotten away so lightly. Fergus believed that O’Neill must accept a great deal of the blame in this regard. It was not, he thought, just his natural and long-standing dislike of the man; it was just the way things had to be.

To try to take some of the fire from Rachel’s anger he had pretended to think O’Neill might have been an innocent party. He knew that this is what she had wanted to believe. But in his heart there was nothing that would take away his belief that O’Neill was a villain and would remain one until the end, whatever the end might be.

Fergus was astounded that he had defined his feelings for Kate Ryan so openly to O’Neill’s woman. He had hardly defined them to himself before this. But the very act of articulating that he half loved Kate, and that it was not the kind of emotion that would destroy him or make him destroy anyone else, was a liberating thing.

When he sat in Ryan’s and joked about the potato cakes for the café, and planned outrageous stage Irish jokes to be played on the visitors to the hotel when they arrived, Fergus felt a kind of freedom. It was as if some burden had been lifted. As if he knew that he could leave this place if he wanted to, he wasn’t tied by any cords. He knew he would stay here forever. But now it would be because he wanted to, not because of anything unsettling that would never be said.

   Grace was in Fernscourt examining her room without much pleasure. Not long ago it had been great fun here. Mrs. Fine was pointing out where the light was best to put her bureau, Father had taken her in his arms and hugged her on almost every occasion, saying how wonderful it was that the dream was coming true, and Jim Costello had been around smiling and admiring.

It was all very different now. Father was distant and distracted, there was no sign of Mrs. Fine, and Jim had been so prissy. Yes, that was the only word for it.

“Grace, I’m going to have to ask you not to throw yourself at me, the situation is quite impractical.”

Impractical. How
dare
he come on like this, using words like impractical, and suggesting that she had thrown herself at him. She had merely told him she was a big girl now and ready for anything.

Jim Costello had told her that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his whole life.
That
bit, at least, was something. But he had said that it would be playing with dynamite to get involved with her at this stage, under the eyes of her father and brother.

And then he had gone and more or less said this aloud in front of them. Grace hadn’t known where to put herself.

She wished she hadn’t been so harsh to Michael about the trip to Dublin. It had turned out that Father had wanted her out of Mountfern on the day of the court case, and Father might have been able to arrange for Michael and Dara to have gone too.

Grace sat on her bed and felt that it had all been handled very badly. She was even having second thoughts about the very expensive dress she had bought.

Mrs. Fine would have chosen something better for her.

   Dara and Michael sat on the window seat. It was nearly like old times.

“What are you reading?” Michael asked.

“It’s a letter from Madame Vartin. It’s quite hard to read, she’s awfully squiggly writing.”

Michael grinned. “And an awful squiggly habit of writing in French.”

“Oh, I can read the French easily enough,” Dara said loftily, if not very truthfully.

“What’s she writing about then? Here, let’s see.” Michael reached for the letter.

“No, there might be things in it you shouldn’t read.”

“From Madame Vartin? You said she was a religious maniac.”

“Yes, but she might be writing about sex.”

“Oh, I know all about sex,” Michael said.

“Do you?” Dara was eager and begging. “Do you really know all about it? Is it great?”

“Well not
all
, not … well not everything. But it’s pretty great as far as it goes.”

“I often wondered did you …”

“Sort of, not completely …”

“How nearly …?”

“Give us the letter.”

The confidences were over, Dara realized. She read a paragraph from the letter.

“This is the bit I don’t understand, it’s got something to do with Monsieur leaving his job—or being sacked I think. I hope. Anyway she says he is too young to make a retreat. What in the name of God would he make a retreat for anyway? He’s full of mortal sin all the time and glories in it.”

“Where does it say about him going on a retreat?” Michael read the paragraph and began to laugh. “Fine use of money it was sending
you
off to France, even I know that, and we’re all desperate up in the brothers’. It’s retiring, you eejit, “
Faire sa retraite
means
retire
.”

“He’ll be jumping on Mademoiselle Stephanie all day,” Dara said gloomily, and then brightened up. “Oh, no, he won’t, she’s getting married, isn’t that great?”

“They all sound cracked to me,” Michael said.

“There’s Grace going down the towpath,” Dara said suddenly.

Michael jumped up on the seat to look. True, Grace was walking purposefully along toward the bridge. She wore her blue jeans and those funny little red lace-up shoes she had, and a blue and red stripy shirt, and there were red ribbons in her hair.

She looked as pretty as a picture.

Michael was pale and unhappy. Dara decided she would break their code of not offering advice.

“Do you know what I would do if I were you?”

“No,” said Michael gruffly.

“I’d ask Grace straight out. I’d say, ‘Is anything wrong, things seem to have changed?’ At least that way you’d know.”

“She’ll just smile and say nothing’s changed,” Michael grumbled.

“She might actually tell you if there is something wrong.”

“I don’t want to hear it if there is,” Michael said. He feared that Grace was greatly smitten by the handsome young hotel manager, and because Jim Costello had the sense to play hard to get Grace fancied him all the more.

“Do girls like being asked direct questions like that?” he asked doubtfully.

“I do,” Dara said. “If anyone asked me a direct question like that, I’d respect them, and that’s the truth.”

   “Dara, I was just passing,” Tommy Leonard said.

“Oh Tommy, how could you be just passing? The brothers’ is at the other side of the town to the convent.”

“I know, I heard they built them that way on purpose, so that we couldn’t all get at each other.”

Dara giggled. “Not at all, it never crossed their minds.”

“Listen, I hear you’re one of the few people in the world who likes direct questions rather than beating around the bush …”

In her head Dara heard a warning bell. She didn’t want to lose Tommy Leonard as a friend.

“I used to be like that, it’s true, but I’ve gone off it again,” she said hastily. “I hate direct questions now, and I snap the head off anyone who would ask me one.”

“Phew, I’m glad we sorted that one out,” said Tommy Leonard in a mixture of disappointment and relief.

Grace told Michael that she couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. Of
course
she loved being with him. But there was so much school work to do, and she had a little table fixed up for herself in one of the residents’ lounges where she could work in the evenings. And she couldn’t be going out all the time. And sometimes when she did get through with homework there were things about the hotel she had to learn. After all, she would be living there and working there always.

“But not immediately,” Michael cried. “We’re going to go to the university, aren’t we? And get degrees and travel, before we come back to work in Mountfern.”

“Oh, yes, of
course
we are,” Grace said.

But she didn’t sound convinced.

“Then why are you learning about the reception desk now from Jim Costello?” Poor Michael let it all slip out.

Grace gave him a long look.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to be discourteous to anyone on my father’s staff,” she said, and Michael heard a ring of the boss’s daughter in her voice that he had never heard before.

   Since the day Kerry had told her about Mrs. Fine and the awful scenes, Dara felt as if a huge boulder had been lifted out of her rib cage. She had known always, of course, that Kerry couldn’t possibly … not of his own free choice … but people had been so definite.

And of course, that was the interpretation that would be put to it. As Kerry had said, he had been uncharacteristically nice, and look at the thanks he had gotten for it. If he had fled, which is what you’d expect him to do from a drunk boring woman who was telling him her life story and looking for consolation of every sort … then things would have been better by far.

She didn’t get to see him often. He had told her that because of this very bad row with his father he was doing a very ordinary menial kind of a job, he was keeping quiet about it, and in a few weeks it would all be over and they could see each other as much as they liked. He had made her promise to cut school one day and he would drive her to Galway. They would walk along the beach in Salthill in the autumn sunshine, they would buy bag after bag of lovely crisp chips, they would eat those ice-cream cones with big bars of milk chocolate stuck in the middle of them. And best, they could wander around hand in hand and kiss each other in the main streets of Galway if they wanted to.

“I know a place we could go, Kerry,” she said suddenly. “It’s a tunnel. It used to be a secret place for Michael and me when we were younger but nobody uses it now.” She looked at him eagerly.