Firefly Summer (48 page)

‘It’d be better for him if he died, poor bastard,’ Brian Doyle said in the middle of a silence. ‘Young man like that stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He couldn’t take it, he’d go off his head.’

It was a long minute before anyone realised what he had said. They were all thinking of John F. Kennedy, not about
Mrs Ryan, a younger woman stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Then Brian Doyle noticed a couple of faces crumpling up and remembered.

‘But of course they can do great things now,’ he said desperately. Nobody helped him out.

‘Great things altogether,’ said Brian, wishing he was dead and six feet under the clay.

The spring of 1964 was a wet one in Mountfern. The river flooded its banks twice, and there were even photographers sent from Dublin to take a picture of the Fern in flood. The trees hung heavy over River Road and let loose what felt like waterfalls when anyone shook them.

The children’s raft broke loose from its moorings and bobbed down to the big bridge in the town, where it remained battering itself against the side.

The schools smelled of wet clothes and everyone had colds.

People still managed to go out for a drink, however, and often the wet weather meant that there was more custom than ever in Ryan’s bar.

In her light room with its soft green colours Kate Ryan sat and spent the first spring in a wheelchair.

She would have gone mad, she realised, if she had not got the side garden to look out on through the big glass doors. She was the first to know when snowdrops came, when crocuses started to open and when the primroses and cowslips began in a yellow corner that she had never noticed before.

Jaffa the big orange cat looked out longingly, waiting
for the days to come when the sun would shine and she could sit and sleep on the old stone walls. Sitting still in her chair, Kate Ryan scratched the cat’s ears and told Jaffa that for her the day would come. She sighed a lot and wondered had it rained like this always but because she had been so busy she had never noticed it.

Little by little the people of Mountfern came to accept that this would be Kate Ryan’s life. They ceased to shake their heads over the sudden accident, the one quick blow that would leave her for ever paralysed. Once people had seen the bright attractive room and the handsome dark woman in her chair, laughing and cheerful for their visit . . . then that was how she remained in their minds. They didn’t tell each other any more about how swift she had been, and how light running up and down the steps of Mr Slattery’s office. They talked no longer of the way she ran down River Road like a young girl.

Rachel had found a great roll of green rush matting. She said they should cut it off in lengths and spread it out to make a path over Kate’s new carpet. Otherwise people would be afraid to visit her in the room for fear of walking in the mud with them.

Rachel came every day; she had become adept at helping to lift the two white, wasted-looking legs out of the bed and on to the wheelchair. Then she would bend while Kate pulled herself out of bed by putting her arms round Rachel’s neck.

She wasn’t able to do it with Carrie; the girl was too nervous and might move away. She didn’t want to ask Mary Donnelly to help her. It would place too much of an emotional burden on Dara. And she didn’t want John to
see her like that
every
day. On the mornings when he came in and found her dressed and sitting at some part of the giant desk that went three sides of the room, he could almost believe that things were normal.

The two women had tea and a chat, as if they had been neighbours for many years, as if they had been young married women together and shared all the years of childbirth and watching toddlers. Neither of them ever felt it was odd that they had only met on one day before they were in the roles of hospital patient and visitor. It was as if they had always known the easy companionship and the undemanding shorthand of friendship.

Kate could tell of her unreasonable dislike of Mary Donnelly, Rachel of her irritation with Marian Johnson.

‘He has no interest in Marian Johnson,’ Kate assured her friend.

‘She’s much more suitable for this life . . . the life he wants.’

‘Oh but no, you mustn’t think that. Can you imagine him loving her? Even loving her a little bit?’ Kate shook her head at the idea of it.

‘He can’t love
me
much, either. One day I’ll accept that I’m not part of his plan. Then I’ll be free.’

‘But you’d be very lonely,’ Kate said.

Rachel smiled, relieved. This was the counsel she had wanted to hear.

‘Will Mrs Fine be here for long?’ Dara asked.

She had got into the habit of sitting with her mother as soon as she came back from school, and the others agreed without ever saying it that this was Dara’s time.

‘I don’t know, my love, I don’t ask her. Do you mind if
we ask her for meals now and then? It’s terrible for her up in that awful hotel all the time.’

Dara agreed immediately. ‘Oh we must ask her as much as possible, she’d start talking to herself if she had to stay in the Slieve Sunset all the time.’

Kate laughed. Dara had become so grown up, she was able to talk to her much more freely than before. The months must have made a huge difference to the girl, living here in the pub without her mother, unsure of what was going to happen and if Kate would ever come home. It was a very noticeable change. Before the accident Dara had been a tomboy, dying to get away from the house, to escape any kind of involvement or conversation, sighing at grownup conversation, and flinching away from any confidences. And now, that was all gone. She seemed older than Michael too, while once she had waited for his every move before she decided what to do herself. She was technically a woman, and Dara already felt the stirrings of . . . well if not love . . . at least hero worship. Kate had noticed how her face changed when she spoke of Kerry. That little crush must have developed since the previous summer.

Kate felt she could tell Dara things that sometimes might seem a bit petty when she told them to John. Maybe it was a conspiracy kind of thing between women . . . she hoped she didn’t overdo it. Dara seemed to approve of Rachel coming to the house. Her connection with Patrick O’Neill was never mentioned; Kate was far too loyal to bring up the matter herself, but she felt that Dara instinctively had some understanding of it.

‘Will Mary Donnelly be here for much longer?’

Kate tried to look concerned and kind. ‘I’ve no idea,
she must suit herself.’ A sharp note had come into her voice.

‘Why don’t you like her, Mam? She’s very helpful.’

‘I know, I know. What do you mean I don’t like her? Don’t be silly, Dara.’

‘But you don’t. Why? It’s not as if she’s after Dad or anything. She hates men, she even hates them when they’re only Michael’s age.’

‘She’s so childish to be going on with all that kind of rawmaishing out of her,’ Kate snapped.

‘Is that why you don’t like her, because she’s against men?’

‘No, I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t like her because she’s doing what I should be doing, she’s standing there serving people in the bar and not talking to them when I would be talking to them pleasantly, she’s going down to Loretto Quinn and beating her down over the price of this and that instead of paying her. She has the kitchen clean and tidy, better maybe than I’d keep it. She has Leopold changed beyond recognition. But she has Carrie terrified of her, and crying if she breaks a saucer. She has the sheets clean on the beds but she has a smell of boiling in the house from Monday to Saturday.’

Dara looked at her mother open-mouthed.

‘And mostly I don’t like her because she has two good legs that start at the top and go down to her feet and she can put one of them in front of the other and walk. If she’s in a hurry she can put one in front of the other quickly and she can run. She doesn’t have to drag herself by her arms and strain and stretch and pull and at the end of it be just a few inches towards the edge of the bed. I suppose
that’s
why I don’t like her.’

Dara still couldn’t speak.

‘Because I’m a mean old pig,’ Kate added as an explanation.

Dara flew into her arms, literally hurled herself at Kate.

‘You’re
not
a mean old pig, it’s the unfairest thing in the world that you should be like this. I told Sister Laura that God must have a very cruel streak in him to let you be just in the path of that machine.’

Dara sobbed into her mother’s shoulder as Kate patted the dark hair and the heaving slender body.

‘What did Sister Laura say about God’s mean streak?’ she asked gently.

Dara drew away from her for a moment and looked at her with a tear-stained face.

‘She said that Almighty God had a purpose in everything, and that we couldn’t see it now. In years to come we’ll see it. Do you think we will?’

Kate held the hands of her daughter and spoke slowly. ‘I don’t know. That’s the truth. I don’t know. If it was something that might be cured,
then
perhaps all these months and even a couple of years in a wheelchair might have a purpose.’

‘But . . .’ Dara waited anxiously.

‘But because it’s
not
going to be cured, and I will never walk again, I find it hard to believe that God has a purpose. God
can’t
believe that I’m a better citizen, a better Christian to him stuck in this chair. Maybe it’s just that he knew I might be a desperate sinner if I was out of the chair so he keeps me in it. That could be his purpose, I suppose.’ She half smiled.

‘But you wouldn’t have any sins would you, Mam, in or out of the wheelchair?’ Dara could never imagine that
grown-ups committed sin anyway, they were allowed to do everything just because they were grown up, it seemed impossible to know what was left except murder and worshipping idols which Mam wouldn’t be likely to be at.

‘I suppose the biggest sin I have is not accepting what God has sent me. That is a sin, you know, Dara. I’m going to have to confess it to Father Hogan when he comes today, and I’m going to tell him also that I don’t want to go to Lourdes. That’s going to be even harder.’

Dara’s eyes were filled with tears again. ‘You
must
go to Lourdes, Mam, you must, it’s the only hope. That’s what Michael and I say all the time. There have been miracles and you could be one of them.’

‘No, darling Dara, I’m not going, there’s no miracles for me there. If Our Lady wants to cure my spine she can do it in Mountfern, I am not going to spend all those people’s money going there, and have all their hopes disappointed. That’s it. I didn’t mean to tell you so suddenly, I was going to put it gently, maybe even differently. But you’re such a joy to me and such a comfort, I treat you like a grown-up daughter instead of a child.’

The tears had dried and Dara was as pleased as anything. ‘Well, I’m going to have to look after you properly if I’m a grown-up. If you get your way about Lourdes can we have your word that you’ll be sensible about Mary Donnelly and be civil to her in case she packs her bags and leaves?’

Kate burst into peals of laughter. Dara’s voice was such a good imitation of her own when she was being bossy. Even her face had the same look.

‘I’ll be so civil, it will frighten you,’ she laughed.

‘There’s no need to over-do it, Mam,’ Dara said disapprovingly.

John was taking a stroll with his daughter along the river bank.

‘I’m glad that Rachel is here,’ he said. ‘Your mam likes her a lot. It will take her mind off things.’

‘Do you think her mind’s on things a lot?’ Dara wanted to know.

‘It’s so hard to know. She says she’s almost forgotten her life before the wheelchair. She doesn’t even dream of herself as being able to walk any more.’ He sounded sad.

‘Don’t get all depressed, Daddy, she hates that more than anything.’

‘I wouldn’t be depressed in front of her, Dara. But, Lord, on my own or with you, can’t I let the mask drop a bit?’

They walked on companionably past the people fishing, careful not to disturb them by idle chatter. They were both remembering some of the scenes when a red-faced and furious Kate would shout and cry that she wanted no sympathy, no sad faces around her. She had even thrown a jug of milk and broken plates and saucers, flinging them at John when he was in what he considered a gentle and concerned mood. Kate had taken it as defeatist and said it made her worse.

‘I can’t even bloody walk, you can all do everything, so for Christ’s sake stop moaning and saying, “Poor Mam, Poor Kate.” What is the point of that? I’d prefer to be dead. Dead, dead and buried long ago than to be poor Kate, poor Mam.’

She had frightened them so much they had rung for
Dr White. He came to see her, and the family waiting outside got little consolation from him as he came out.

‘Nothing wrong with Mrs Ryan except that she is paralysed,’ he said bluntly. ‘And that she is surrounded by people who don’t give her any reason or point in living. They call the doctor if she shows any bit of fire and life, and their way of supporting her is to offer her pity. Good evening.’

They never forgot it. Even Declan and Eddie knew that the mood was to be optimistic. Mam wanted to believe that things were getting better all the time. That’s what gave her the energy to drag herself from bed to chair, from chair to lavatory or bath stool, and to push herself to the garden or the kitchen or the pub. If she didn’t believe that things were getting better all the time, she wouldn’t even sit up in the mornings.

Dara linked her father as they turned to come back along the road. ‘What do you think
really
, Dad, about the hotel? Is it going to take away all our business? Mary Donnelly says it could be the ruination of us.’

‘Mary, for all that we are blessed to have her, is wrong about almost everything.’

Dara looked at her father affectionately. ‘It would be a terrible thing to hate men, not to see them as friends.’

‘I think it would be a pity all right,’ John agreed. ‘I think you’d lose out on it in the long run. And on the same subject, what’s a beautiful girl like you doing on a summer evening walking the river bank with her old father? Why aren’t the Tommy Leonards and the Liam Whites and the others of Mountfern beating me out of the way? Tell me that.’