The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (85 page)

It would be their palace, their castle, their home.

It was because they lived so close to the place, because they could see it from their windows over the pub, and they could go there every day winter and summer, that they felt it was their own.

But of course they didn’t want to own it exclusively. Fernscourt was also for everyone, particularly during the long summer holidays when no day was long enough for the games they all played there.

There was no form to the games, but the huge mossy stones, the crumbling walls, the great fronts of ivy hanging down like curtains, and the window and doorway gaps in half-standing walls meant there were plenty of places to climb, to perch, to jump, to sit and giggle.

The girls had made a makeshift home in the old clock tower which still stood in the stableyard, though the clock and dome were long gone. The boys would use the long shallow steps that were now almost indistinguishable as steps, so overgrown with weeds and moss had they become, and arrange a jumping competition that was a cross between a long jump and a chicken run. They would all gather to see who could jump down the greatest number of steps; it was the sissy who would opt out of the jump that seemed likely to break a limb.

Yet they had ways out of being a softy. It was always time to go home or to milk the cows or to go for a swim. The boys of Mountfern had no death wish as they played in their own magnificent ruined house.

Kate saw that some of the children were already heading for home where they would be ill-received because of the need to smarten up for the concert. She saw Tommy Leonard racing down to the towpath—it would be a bit quicker that way for him. Leonard’s paper shop was near the big bridge, he would do the distance faster than by crossing over to the River Road where there was a proper surface to walk on. At Tommy’s age children didn’t mind having half their clothes and even bits of their arms torn and scratched by the thorny branches, Kate thought in wonder. Little Maggie Daly, who was Dara’s great friend, was heading toward the laurels and Kate.

“Just running, Mrs. Ryan,” Maggie said, knowing well that the twins’ mother was not coming to pay a social call. “I think Dara and Michael are just finishing up now.”

“I’m sure they are.” Kate was grim. Maggie Daly had big anxious eyes; she always looked startled by the most ordinary things. She was terrified of Leopold, the pub’s big harmless dog. When poor Leopold stretched his misshapen body in the sun, little Maggie Daly would look at him fearfully as if he were about to go for her throat.

And Maggie’s older sister Kitty, who was nearly grown up enough for the crowd on the bridge, was sauntering down the laurel path too. Kitty was too mature to scuttle; she was being bored this summer, bored by Fernscourt and the games they played, bored by having to go home and dress up for the concert. Bored by being neither one thing nor the other. Neither a real person of fifteen who could have a smart red bathing costume and be able to sit on the raft having a crowd laughing and admiring; too old to find fun every day climbing up to an old room in a ruined clock tower, or squeezing through the chinks in the mossy walls. Kitty Daly sighed heavily as she passed Kate Ryan.

“I suppose you’re coming to beat their heads in,” she said as if this was the usual practice of elderly parents when they arrived in Fernscourt.

“Not at all,” Kate said brightly, “I came to wonder was there anything they’d like, afternoon tea on a tray maybe, I’d be delighted to … my beloved twins …”

Kitty moved on hastily.

Dara and Michael had taken after their mother. No sandy brows like John Ryan—those only seemed to come out in Eddie. They were thin and wiry too, but of course their father had been as a boy. But Kate realized that in their strong dark good looks they didn’t have the Ryan laugh lines either, the face that always seemed to smile even when nobody was watching. All the Ryans looked like that—even the disapproving old mother-in-law who hadn’t thought Kate a suitable wife for her favorite son, she had had a face that seemed to smile. Dara and Michael often looked solemn, their eyes big, dark, and too concentrated. Like her own. Whenever Kate saw a photograph of herself she would scream and say she looked like the hag of Bearra or an avenging angel. She always seemed to be burning with intensity rather than smiling at the camera.

Nobody else noticed it at all.

And everyone always said the twins were a handsome pair, particularly in the summertime when, tanned and eager in their shorts and colored shirts, they roamed the countryside far and wide and explored every corner of Mountfern and its environs.

Kate wondered briskly how they would accept the blame today. They should have been home a good half hour ago to get smartened up for the school concert. She was annoyed but she would try not to show it, otherwise they would be mutinous about the washing and brushing and maybe less sure in their party pieces. Dara had a poem in Irish to recite and Michael with the boys from the brothers would be singing Moore’s melodies.

Young Miss Lynch up at the school had been so enthusiastic and given so much of her free time to organizing it that everyone in Mountfern had been drawn into the whole thing unwillingly. Normally the convent and the brothers had few joint undertakings but old Canon Moran thought it seemed a much better notion to have one concert rather than two, and everyone agreed with him, so Nora Lynch had won the day; it was being held in the church hall and all participants had to be there in their finery at five o’clock. The concert began at six o’clock sharp and promised to be finished by eight.

Kate was nearly at the house now. In the old days it must have been an impressive place: three stories tall but with high, high ceilings, big rooms, and tall windows. The Fern family who had lived here, different generations of them for over a century, surely loved this home. Kate wondered if any of them had ever paused in their gracious way of life to imagine that one day it would be a ruin played in by all the children of the village who would never have gotten inside the walls except to carry scuttles of coal or great jugs of water in the old days.

The children had all scattered. Only her own two were inside. What could they be doing that made them stay when all the others had gone? A wave of annoyance came over Kate at their disregard for any kind of order in life. She pushed through the hanging wall of ivy and saw them: sitting on a great fallen pillar and looking ahead of them through the gaps in the wall.

They looked at something in the distance with a caution that was more like fear than anything else.

Below them two men with instruments mounted on tripods peered and wrote notes in their pads. Then they would replace the tripods and start again.

Kate came up behind the twins.

“What are they?” Michael asked in a whisper.

“They’re called theodolites,” Kate said. “I know that word, it’s always very useful in crosswords.”

“What do they do?” Dara wanted to know.

“It’s a sort of survey, you know, getting levels. I’m not totally sure, to be honest.”

“They shouldn’t be here, the theodalists,” Michael said, face red with upset. “Tell them it’s private land. Go on Mam, tell them to go away.”

“No, the things are called theodolites, not the people. The men are surveyors, I suppose. Anyway it isn’t private land. If it was we couldn’t be here.”

“Could you ask them … like will they be coming back again or is it only today that they’re doing their photographing or whatever? You could ask them, Mam,” Dara pleaded. “You’re good at asking people awkward things. Please.”

“I have one awkward thing to ask at the moment and it’s this: Why, when I gave you my good alarm clock and the strictest instructions to be back home at four o’clock, why is it half-past four and we’re all here? That’s the awkward question I’m asking today, and I want an answer to it.”

The twins seemed not to hear the rising impatience in her tone; they barely heeded her.

“We didn’t really play at all, we’ve been wondering what …” Dara said.

“And hoping that they’d go away …” Michael finished for her. They often finished each other’s sentences.

“And not understanding it one bit …”

“And not liking it one bit …”

Kate took them by the shoulders and marched them back for the alarm clock and their uneaten lunches, then headed for the footbridge. There seemed to be a commotion on the other side. Eddie and Declan were lying on the edge of the water trying to reach something that was floating downstream on a piece of plywood.

Carrie, the new maid, was standing twisting her hands helplessly as the boys screamed, and Kate realized that Maurice the tortoise was heading off into the unknown.

“Get the garden rake, and the big broom,” she shouted. Michael and Dara raced across to find them, delighted to be released from the pinching grip and abuse Eddie, who was eight, was scarlet with the knowledge that he would get the blame; Declan was only six and the baby—he got off with everything.

Kate maneuvered the tortoise ashore and with a face like thunder brought it back to its original home in the mudroom. Watched by the four children and the terrified Carrie, she dried the animal with a clean towel and put it in a bed of hay. With a voice that was going to take no argument, she said that she would very much like to see Carrie at the kitchen sink washing the faces and hands of Eddie and Declan. She would like to see Michael and Dara in the bathroom and emerging in five minutes with necks, ears and knees all shining. She mentioned knees, ears and necks only because
particular
attention would be paid to those parts, but the rest was to be spotless too. A great deal of heavy scrubbing took place, and after inspection Dara and Michael were allowed to head off toward the hall. An unusually silent Eddie and Declan sat waiting sentence from their mother. They didn’t know whether they were going to be barred from the concert … which mightn’t be a bad thing. Or if there might be a slapping of the legs administered. The slapping wasn’t too likely; if it was coming at all it would have been done at the time.

They were unprepared for the severity of it.

“That is no longer your tortoise, Edward and Declan. That is now my tortoise. Do you understand?”

Things were bad when Eddie was called Edward.

“But do you mean …”

“Yes, he’s mine now. And I can do what I like with him. I can bring him back to the pet shop where I so stupidly bought him, thinking you were the kind of children who could love a pet. Or I could eat him. I could ask Carrie to serve him for lunch tomorrow.”

They were aghast.

“Well, why not?” she continued airily. “You tried to drown Maurice, why don’t I try to roast him? It’s a hard old life being a tortoise.”

Eddie’s eyes filled with tears. “Ma, we weren’t trying to drown him. It was to see if he could swim, and when he didn’t seem to be managing it too well we got him a raft, then it floated off.”

“Thank you, Edward. You are telling me it was just a careless accident, is that it?”

“Well, yes?” Eddie thought salvation lay this way but he wasn’t totally sure.

“Right, well now that he’s mine other careless accidents could happen. I could let him fall into the oven or something. Still, that is none of your business now. You are forbidden to go near him in the mudroom or near the stove or wherever else he happens to be.”

Declan let out a roar. “Mammy, you wouldn’t burn Maurice. Please don’t burn my tortoise.”

“It’s mine,” Kate said.

“You’re not allowed to kill things,” Eddie raged. “I’ll tell the guards. I’ll tell Sergeant Sheehan.”

“Certainly do, and I’ll tell him about the drowning.”

There was a silence.

“Don’t be stupid,” Kate said. “I’m not going to hurt Maurice, but he
is
mine, you know, so you can’t play with him anymore. And no ice creams in Daly’s tonight after the concert.”

It was bad but it was better than what might have been. They accepted it.

“Come on, Carrie,” Kate said, suddenly pitying the seventeen-year-old spending her first Saturday night away from home. “Tidy up your hair a bit and we’re off.”

“Am I to come with you?” Carrie’s face lit up.

“Of course you are. Did you think we’d leave you here on your own?” Kate had only just thought of it, looking at the stricken face of the girl as she had listened to the possible future of the tortoise.

“You’re a real gentleman, Mam,” said Carrie, and ran to put on a clean blouse and fix two new barrettes in her hair.

Canon Moran was small and fussy, a kind man with pale blue eyes that didn’t see very far or very much. He believed that basically most people were very good. This made him a nice change from many other parish priests in the country who believed that most people were intrinsically evil. The word went around for young curates that Mountfern would be a great posting altogether. And the young priest Father Hogan knew he was indeed a lucky man. Once Canon Moran had a nice big chair for the concert and a little footstool because he sometimes got a cramp, then he would be happy. He would clap every item enthusiastically, he would praise all the brothers and the nuns by name, he would know that old Mr. Slattery the solicitor had made a contribution so that they could have proper curtains instead of the desperate old screens they used to make do with before. The canon would thank him briefly because that was all the Slatterys would need, but he would dwell longer on the generosity of Daly’s Dairy in providing the cakes for the tea at eight o’clock, and the excellence of the programs printed free thanks to Leonard’s the stationers. The canon began confessions on a Saturday at five, and he would make sure that they were all well completed in time for the concert. Father Hogan knew that Canon Moran believed a kind word of encouragement and a pious hope that things would be better soon helped a lot of his parishioners. And they felt sure, because of his pale dreamy blue eyes, that he was also somehow deaf and wouldn’t recognize the voices that whispered their sins.