The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (93 page)

“I bought it. It’s mine,” he said quickly.

“Of
course
, they said you’d be here soon. How stupid of me not to recognize it must have been you, I thought you were another tourist. Well, well, what a beautiful place you’ve got for yourself, Mr. O’Neill, and will you be making a home of it, or what?”

“I’m going to be the opposition, Miss Johnson,” he said simply. “I’m going to build a hotel. I don’t know whether we will be exactly in competition or not; I feel sure that we will be going for different markets. But what I was hoping was that we might be able to cooperate … If you wanted to expand your riding school say, and incorporate some of the guests from Fernscourt …?” He looked at her openly and eagerly.

It was very honest of him to come right out and say it straight, she thought. Another man might have sniffed around her hotel to steal a few ideas before declaring his hand.

“Do you know anything about the hotel business?” she asked.

“I have one small motel in New Jersey. I bought it really for tax purposes, so I’m not what you’d call experienced. But I have bars and restaurants, so I guess you could say I know something about what the public wants. Only the New York public mind you, but New York is pretty cosmopolitan, and it might be a good sample of what all kinds of people want.” He wasn’t only after the American package-tour business, he explained, he wanted local people to feel involved. It was to be their place too. Too long the walls of Fernscourt had kept them out. For nearly a hundred and fifty years the real Irish people of the parish had been refused access to places that rightly belonged to them. That wouldn’t be the way anymore.

“I don’t think people were refused access,” Marian said. “It’s been a ruin for years. It belonged to the Land Commission, didn’t it? We used to go there on picnics when I was a girl.”

“No, I mean before that, when the Ferns were there, barring everyone from their door.”

Marian was cheerfully vague about that side of things. “Did they? How stupid of them. They were gone long before my time, of course, but I think my father remembers them. He used to play bridge with someone called Fern. But it mightn’t have been them, the people from the house. It could have been a cousin or something.”

Patrick was slightly irritated by this affectionate view. He thought that perhaps Marian had been overprotected and didn’t really know the story of the big house. After all, the Johnsons were Catholics, Patrick had seen the Infant of Prague in the hall and there was a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Succor in the bedroom where he had laid his case. Suddenly the tiredness of last night began to reach him. His eyes felt heavy.

“Do you think it’s a possibility … our getting together over some aspects of the tourist trade?” he asked Marian.

“I see unlimited possibilities,” said Marian, running her tongue lightly across her lower lip and thinking that life was looking up.

Chapter IV

Now that he was here they all claimed to have been the first to meet him and the one who knew him best. Those who had been telling stories only hours ago about the certainty of the nuns or the agricultural research institute were now eager to tell how they had known all along that it was going to be a hotel. The possibilities of a big tourist undertaking were legion. Patrick O’Neill was said to have told people that this was going to be his home, and his home would be open three hundred and sixty-five days a year, no closing down in the winter leaving the boys and girls to find some other jobs for the long harsh wet months from September to Easter.

Judy Byrne was peeved to note that he had been spotted riding horses with Marian Johnson in the morning light. That was fast moving of a spectacular nature. Kate Ryan had heard that he was seen in Conway’s and Dunne’s, and she was sure he must have been in Foley’s too. Rita Walsh, who ran the Rosemarie hair salon, had seen what she thought must have been him in the moonlight over at the ruin. Hard to see at that distance but he had looked a fine cut of a man.

Tommy Leonard’s mother said that Tommy was under no circumstances to be seen running wild with that gang of young criminals he called his friends. This was a chance sent from heaven for him to better himself. Maybe his whole future could be assured if he were seen by the new owner of Fernscourt to be a sensible boy. Tommy wondered how could it sort out his future if he turned his back on his friends? But Mrs. Leonard said there were a million ways if Tommy would put his mind to it. That hotel was going to need a shop on the very premises to sell things to its visitors who mightn’t want to walk the whole way to Mountfern. What more sensible than to offer the concession to the local existing stationers and booksellers? Tommy must be ready to seize the chance.

“But I’m only twelve,” Tommy wailed. “How could I seize a shop in a hotel?” He saw his whole youth and adolescence trickling away standing behind counters of one sort or another.

“By the time that hotel is up and ready to have a shop you’ll be well old enough to work in it,” his mother said firmly.

Maggie Daly’s mother couldn’t understand how it was that they hadn’t seen him. He was meant to have been in Sheila Whelan’s, and in all three pubs on Bridge Street; he had been seen standing looking at the Stations of the Cross in the church, but Canon Moran hadn’t focused on him properly and didn’t want to interrupt a man at prayer, so he was no use as an informant.

Then he had been observed driving up past Coyne’s wood. Could he have been going to the convent maybe? The whole thing might still have something to do with an order of cloistered nuns. The only people who knew for sure were Sheila Whelan, because he had been in the post office for an age, but of course it was hopeless trying to get anything out of Sheila. And Marian Johnson, she didn’t talk to everyone easily in Mountfern, so there would be no news from that quarter.

Jack Coyne was very anxious for a description of the American who had bought Fernscourt and was going to turn it into a hotel. Very anxious indeed. Yesterday he had gotten a call from the railway station in the big town: an American wanting to hire a car. Jack had driven in to him.

“Why did a well-heeled person like yourself not hire a car from Avis or Hertz?” Jack inquired.

“Always believe in supporting the local industry,” the Yank had said.

“Here for the fishing?”

“Yup,” the man said.

Jack Coyne had too much on his mind to make conversation with a taciturn foreign visitor whom he would never see again. He charged the American two and a half times the normal price and gave him a poor rate for his dollar. Jack was ashen-faced trying to get a proper account of the Patrick O’Neill who had bought Fernscourt. He had an uneasy feeling that he might have cheated the man who was going to live across the river from him. The man who could have brought him the kind of wealth he never dreamed of.

Miss Barry was quite unaware that she had met Mr. O’Neill. She had been struggling under the weight of two heavy shopping bags when a man stopped to give her a lift. She had climbed clumsily into the car, opening the window with that native cunning she had when she smelled of drink. Fresh air was an ally, closed spaces were a giveaway. She told this man about the saintly Canon Moran, the angelic young Father Hogan and even sang a few bars of a song.

“Tell me does your poor wife take a drink?” she asked him suddenly. She got the reply that the late Mrs. O’Neill had not in fact been partial to liquor.

“Best way to be,” Miss Barry said approvingly. “She’ll live to be a hundred, God spare her.”

She rattled her plastic bags which contained bottles and smiled at him beatifically.

But none of this remained in any part of her consciousness.

Patrick had indeed gone to the convent when he had been sighted driving toward Coyne’s wood. He left the car at Coyne’s garage and walked up the shabby ill-kept avenue to the school. Sister Laura greeted him, a small shrew-like woman, eyes dark and bright in her round face, like two currants in a bun. She saw within minutes why he was there. He was trying to work out whether this country school would in any way approach his hopes and plans for his only daughter’s education.

Sister Laura was a sensible woman. She knew that it would be counterproductive to encourage this American to believe that hers was the finest educational establishment in Ireland. She spoke praisingly of the Sacred Heart Convent, the Loretto nuns, the Holy Child Order, the FCJ (Faithful Companions of Jesus), all of them excellent sisters running very highly thought of boarding schools for girls. But that was just the point. They would be boarding schools. And if Mr. O’Neill wanted his child with him, then this was the only game in town.

She didn’t put it as racily as that, but Patrick realized that if she had known the phrase she would have.

She listed the disadvantages. Grace would be much more sophisticated than the simple girls who came from smallholdings over the fields to this school each day. Grace would have to learn Irish: it was compulsory in schools, and they wouldn’t have any facility for her to study something else at the time Irish-language lessons were taking place. It would be fairly rough and ready; sports would not be as she had known them in the United States, the girls played camogie, a form of hockey. Sister Laura said it was the female equivalent of hurling for boys.

But on the plus side Grace would grow up with the children among whom her father intended her to live. She would be at his side, she would make friends of all kinds, which was essential if a family were to live in a small community. She would avoid the princess-in-the-castle role. Patrick had looked with dismay at the shabby building, and particularly what Sister Laura described with pride as the new extension: classrooms thrown together, without thought or design. The finish was shoddy, obviously a local builder doing it for half nothing and knowing that the nuns weren’t going to complain. The library where the small nun lingered so lovingly was a big barren room lined with jerry-built shelves. Soon to contain a couple of hundred books, most of them the lives of the saints. But the nun was right, he could see all this. He knew that he would send his child to the convent. What Grace Mary O’Neill might lose on polish and a broader approach to education, she would surely gain in a sense of belonging. And that was what this journey was all about.

Sister Laura had pursed her lips over the thought of Mr. O’Neill’s son being educated in Mountfern. Of course the brothers were the best in the world. But …

And of course one had to take into consideration that a boy, a young man would have to be prepared to make his way in the world. Especially a young man who would inherit a huge property. So, she didn’t actually say that he should forget the brothers, nor was there a mention of any inadequacies. But there was a veiled hint that only a madman might entrust the son and heir to Brother Keane and his colleagues in the big red-brick school behind the church. Mention was made of Jesuits, of Benedictines and of Holy Ghost Fathers. All known to Mr. O’Neill, certainly, in the United States, she was sure, and all running exceptionally good boys’ boarding schools in Ireland, for the sons of gentlemen and people who were going to get on in life. After all, with a boy it was much more important. And with a boy there wouldn’t be the same sense of loss seeing the child go to boarding school.

For courtesy and diplomacy Patrick O’Neill called on Brother Keane too. He went with no sense of apology. Instead he asked the man for advice. He had to send his son as a boarder. He would be most grateful if Brother Keane could mark his card. Would he favor the Jesuits in County Kildare, the Benedictines in Limerick, the Holy Ghost or Vincentians in Dublin?

Brother Keane had never been so flattered in his life. He gave great care to his deliberations and between them the two men came up with the ideal school for Kerry O’Neill.

Patrick O’Neill felt that slowly things were placing themselves together.

He was back in Mountfern, the sale of the land was going through. He had been assured there would be no problems with the licenses. The grants toward building a hotel would be even greater than he had thought. The people were friendly from what he could judge; usual sprinkling of rogues and drunks but basically a solid place. The place his people had come from. He let his mind rest lightly on the images of his children. Grace with the beautiful curls and dimples, Grace almost twelve now, the prettiest girl in her year, the apple of his eye. And Kerry. Handsome distant Kerry. Fifteen and as tall as Patrick. No paddy features in Kerry, his face was chiseled and had classic good looks. Even as a small child.

What would his two striking children make of Mountfern? They had never really believed that he would change their lives so totally. Part of them thought it was a huge adventure, another—perhaps the greater—part would find it a wrench to leave their surroundings, their friends, the memory of the way things had always been when their mother was alive. Patrick squared his shoulders. There was to be no wallowing in the past. This had been his dream, to take his family back to the place they had come from.

This town would be their home now. It had its shortcomings. He was not so blinded with the yearning to return that he couldn’t see that. The untidiness of it irritated him. An Irish village, his Irish village shouldn’t have yards full of rusting, broken machinery, there should be bright paint on all the doors. There should be a fountain or something at the end of Bridge Street instead of just letting it peter out and wind away.

He had called into the local public houses, each one in turn. None of them would be any opposition to him, of course, but even more importantly he didn’t think his hotel would be a threat to any of them. Dunne’s looked as if it were about to do a moonlight flit, Conway’s had three serious drinkers sitting on high stools behind its grocery. You’d need radar to find out that there was a bar there at all. And in Foley’s he had the distinct impression he had wandered into a private house. Matt Foley had eyed him beadily but the chat died down while he was there. No, there was only that place with the nice old sign, Ryan’s, which was right opposite his new estate. He would need to handle them with tact. If anyone was going to lose by his plans for Fernscourt it would be this little place While still incognito he had inquired about the family. He heard that the mother went out to work, a rare thing in Irish country towns, and that the business was steady. The rest of the brothers and sisters who had owned the place had all emigrated, so John Ryan had only his own family to support out of it.

Patrick had looked at it often when he had been visiting the site. He had even looked at it by moonlight last night when he was walking around his land. It had been very still with everyone asleep, and nobody knowing that he watched it from across the river.

He walked from the brothers past the church and along in front of the bridge, and looked up Bridge Street. It could be a fine town. He would make so many changes here, give people a bit of pride in their surroundings again. He would walk to Fernscourt now. This was not New York, home of the automobile, this was his place, to walk around, to stop and talk, or just to watch the river if he wanted to. Past Jack Coyne’s, past a shabby little store with the name Quinn in faded lettering, then across a rickety footbridge. He would walk his land before going to introduce himself to the Ryans in that attractive little shebeen.