Firefly Summer (74 page)

‘You sound just like Fergus,’ she said.

Patrick stood up. He shrugged helplessly.

‘I’ll leave you, Kate, before we start again.’ He smiled and his face was transformed as it always was. He looked at her sitting so still in the chair.

‘It’s no wonder half the town is in love with you,’ he said. ‘I could fall in love with you myself.’

‘Oho, it’s a well-known thing that, to say you could fall in love with the unattainable. That’s very Irish, Patrick, you’ve inherited a lot of your forefathers’ little ways of going on. That’s the kind of thing all those mountainy old bachelors would say.’

‘I’m a mountainy old bachelor too by nature, I guess.’

‘That will certainly disappoint the gossips here.’

His eyes were cold. ‘What do they say, the gossips?’

‘That you intend to ask Rachel to marry you some day.’

He was startled. For Kate who was Rachel’s close confidante to speak like this.

‘Well,’ he said.

‘However it’s not something Rachel and I talk about,’ she said.

‘You don’t, heck.’

‘You mustn’t flatter yourself too much. We
used
to talk about you certainly, but not nowadays.’

There was an unsettling truth in the way she spoke. There was a little silence.

‘I don’t handle things very well sometimes,’ he said eventually.

‘There are some things that it isn’t a matter of handling, or coping with or sorting out like business deals.’

‘I know.’

They sat companionably for a few moments.

Kate was a much more still person than she had been before. There was a time when Kate Ryan could not have allowed a silence of longer than two seconds.

Patrick was not a man much given to sitting and musing either. But here he sat and looked ahead of him into the flower-filled garden where the big orange cat sunned herself and the soft cluck of the hens in the distance was soothing. There was no sign of the terrible dog, perhaps someone had been dispatched to take it on a far-distant walk so that its baying could upset another parish.

‘I must go now,’ he said.

‘You were very good to come and see me. Thank you for what you said. No matter what happens I’ll remember that and appreciate it.’

He leaned over lightly and kissed her on the forehead. He had never done that before.

‘And you promise me you’ll remember what I said? It doesn’t make you weak, it makes you strong.’

‘I’ll remember,’ she said.

And he left.

Kate sat still for a long while. She could understand why
Rachel was so enmeshed with this man. He was alive and aware and reacting all the time.

It must have been a heady thing for Rachel to realise how essential she was to him and how much he needed her.

No wonder she felt bereft now that he most likely didn’t need her any more. Kate’s fists beat on her useless legs. The only point in living was to be needed, to be an inspiration, to be the power in something. Nobody understood that, nobody.

Fergus, with all his childish spite against the O’Neills didn’t have the glimmerings of an understanding. He didn’t know
why
she was a person who needed compensation. It didn’t have all that much to do with paralysis. It had to do with having a role.

John Ryan in a million years would not understand. He would say she was being hysterical, and that of course she was important, more than important . . . but essential to all of them.

But Kate Ryan knew she wasn’t essential any more. They didn’t need her like they had once needed her. John was stronger and more his own man, he made decisions with certainty, he coped with the pub as she had once wished and prayed that he would. He still found time to write his poems. He was not as gullible as she had once thought him to be. He was firm with the children, he drove a car, their own car, around Mountfern. He was a slimmer, fitter man than the man of three years ago, more confident in every way.

But he didn’t lean on Kate as he once had. He didn’t need her at every turn of the day.

That was why she needed some goddamn compensation.
Not that money was any good, but the reason she should get anything was because her husband didn’t depend on her any more.

And the only man who had the faintest understanding of this was the man who was
meant
to be their great enemy. Patrick O’Neill.

‘I can’t like that young Costello,’ Fergus said to Kate.

‘You can’t like anyone with hand, act or part in Fernscourt.’

‘Wrong. There’s a lot of decent people working for him. Don’t make me out to be unreasonable.’

‘Lord, you’re the most reasonable man in the world usually; this is your only blind spot. What has poor Jim Costello done now?’

‘I heard him talking to Canon Moran, meant to be a sort of private chat. But I could see what he was getting at.’

‘You listened to his confession!’

‘No, it was in the open air out in the church grounds. You know, beside the garden that O’Neill’s workmen built up for them. He was telling the poor doddery old canon how great it would be if the bishop came to the opening.’

‘Well the bishop
is
coming to the opening, surely?’

‘Yes, but Jim wanted him to speak at the blessing bit and he was explaining this awful plamawsy way to the canon that Mr O’Neill wouldn’t like to suggest it, and Mr O’Neill wanted it to be the canon who spoke, but wouldn’t it be great if the bishop were to say a few words too. You know, a lot of devious bullshit.’

‘And you’re the one always giving out about Patrick’s language!’

‘The poor old canon thinks he’s the one now who thought of asking the bishop, he’s back up at the presbytery trying to word the letter.’

Kate changed the subject. Fergus was getting moody.

‘And how is your Miss Purcell up there with the clergy?’

‘As happy as anything.’

‘Well it leaves you a bit freer, anyway. Whatever you want to do you don’t have to take her future into consideration.’

‘I don’t want to do much, Kate. I just want things to stay the same.’

To his surprise she leaned across from the wheelchair and patted his hand. ‘I know. I know just what you mean,’ she said.

‘Are you going to the hotel opening, Mary?’ Fergus was civil.

‘It’s very kind of you to be so interested but the answer is no. Some one person should be here to keep the door open in case in the Republic of Ireland there happens to be one or two souls who are
not
going to the opening and think they might be served a drink in a wayside pub.’

Mary’s face was flushed with anger and loyalty to her stance about the rightness of everything the Ryans did and the wrongness of the O’Neills.

Fergus blinked wearily. He had brought this attack upon himself and there were many ways that he supported her entirely. But she was a trying woman.

He had only broached the subject of the opening to her on instructions from Sheila Whelan.

‘Say the odd kind word to Mary when you’re passing,’ Sheila had asked.

‘Have you a suit of chain mail for me to put on when I’m talking to her?’

Fergus had been bitten too often to feel easy about saying anything to Mary Donnelly.

‘She’s a great woman when you get to know her. She has all the qualities of a good wife – loyalty, determination, everything.’ Sheila sighed.

‘Are you trying to make a match for her by any chance?’

‘Oh, I think it would be a brave soul who would attempt to make a match for Mary these days.’

‘Or for me?’ Fergus teased.

‘Oh, we’re dying to marry
you
off, Fergus,’ Sheila said.

‘Who’s we?’

‘Kate and myself, we’d love to settle you down. But I’m only giving you a big head. Listen, when you see that cousin of mine, Mary, will you tell her she’s to go to the opening of the hotel. It’s only a false kind of loyalty to the Ryans saying she is going to boycott. Use your charms.’

‘My charms haven’t much of a track record,’ Fergus had said gloomily.

And indeed he felt he was right, Mary Donnelly showed no reaction to his charming manner except to reject the notion of going near the new hotel. She sniffed and said that the Ryans were going not to show offence, and because they had a standard of manners much higher and more generous than the O’Neill family.

Fergus sighed again. Talking to Mary was like trying to climb up a waterfall.

‘Can I talk to Kate? I have to get her to see Kevin Kennedy, that’s the barrister. I want to fix up a proper consultation but Kate’s always too busy making potato
cakes, or hemming serviettes or some other nonsense. If the woman could only understand that she must give her whole heart and mind to Kevin Kennedy and the court case, then she won’t
have
to hem all those table napkins.’

‘Will you be able to get her a great compensation, do you think?’ Mary looked eager and excited. ‘I’d love more than anything for her to take a fortune off that man. I’d really love it.’

‘That’s not the way it’s going to be, he’ll pay nothing, it’s the insurance company. I don’t know, I really don’t. These cases are like throwing a dice. It could be any figure that comes up.’

‘There must be some system.’

‘There is a sort of system, but it depends what way it’s presented. It’s very practical you know, very matter of fact. What were her earnings, what could be said to have been lost in terms of money? There’s something built in for pain and suffering, and then there’s a category called mental distress. But it all depends on judges and juries in the end, and they’re often cautious men, careful with other people’s money even if it’s insurance companies. Oh God, I wish I knew.’

‘You sound very worried.’ Mary’s face looked quite pleasant when she wasn’t making some strong point, she had a softness about her that wasn’t in her normal style.

‘I’m worried, Mary, I’m worried that Kate and John are turning down their only chance of getting what they deserve and are owed. They don’t seem to grasp that this is the one and only time they’ll ever get any stake together for any kind of life.’

‘And show that bastard what the courts of Ireland think of him.’

‘Yes, but with respect, Mary, mightn’t we do better if we played down that side of it?’

‘I know what you mean, I’m as bright as the next man. I’ll sing low on the revenge bit – is that what you mean?’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘I’ll feel it in my heart, though,’ Mary said.

‘So will I,’ said Fergus.

‘Oh bring him along, certainly,’ Kate said when Fergus suggested a consultation with Kevin Kennedy.

‘He’s quite important, Kate, you won’t just play along and joke and make eejity remarks about it being half your own fault?’

‘I never make eejity remarks. Remember when I was your right-hand woman in the office, don’t say I make eejity remarks.’

‘I remember. I remember well,’ Fergus sighed.

‘So, I’ll be polite and use long words. But isn’t he on our side, is he not our lawyer, why do I have to be impressing him and putting on an act for our own counsel? Isn’t it the judge and the jury I have to do the tragic queen act for?’

Fergus was startled to hear this, she had never said it to him. But that was often Kevin’s gift, he managed to make people tell things. Very often when he was on the other side of a case cross-examining, his gentle persuasive voice made people tell things they wished to keep secret. But here in Kate’s green room Kevin Kennedy was slowly drawing the picture he would need.

Fergus sighed with admiration as Kevin talked to the Ryan couple about how their life had changed, the pain, the huge incapacity, the lack of being able to act as a real
mother to the children the way other mothers could, like going up to the school or joining in any outings and activities.

‘And of course your normal married life, the life between the two of you that you would have expected to have?’ Kevin Kennedy was gentle.

Fergus felt a hot flush coming up his neck.

Long ago, long before Kate’s accident, he had put the thought of her sex life with John Ryan far from his mind. He knew it must exist but he never wanted to think about it, and yet it used to come back to him, the notion of the two of them entwined. He assumed that since the accident it had been out of the question. To his embarrassment John was beginning to stammer.

‘Well, I wouldn’t say that it was exactly over . . . you know, sort of . . .’

Fergus felt the bile rise in his throat. Surely John could never be so gross and unfeeling as to expect Kate . . . No, it wasn’t possible. He felt unsteady for a moment.

‘I’ll slip out and get something from the bar . . .’ he said.

‘Thanks, Fergus.’ Kate was cool. ‘I asked Mary to get a tray ready, perhaps you could bring it to us . . .’

He went out, loosening his collar.

‘Kate said she thought sandwiches and a bottle of the good Jameson,’ Mary suggested. ‘I have it here ready and all, I didn’t want to go and disturb you.’

‘That’s good of you.’

‘Are you all right, Fergus?’ She looked genuinely concerned.

‘Yes, I’m just tired. Give me a large one while I’m waiting.’

‘What are you waiting for?’ Mary obediently poured
him a double measure from the optic and waved away the pound note he offered.

‘I don’t know really, just giving them a chance to talk, I suppose,’ he said, wondering how long would Kevin Kennedy spend on lack of conjugal rights, and compensation for same. Wildly he wondered whether John was saying that really it wasn’t fair to blame Patrick O’Neill in this area because he and Kate were able to have a very satisfactory coupling despite everything.

Fergus felt his hands shaking and he gripped the glass tightly with both of them.

‘It must be very hard, this kind of thing, when you’re a friend of the family as well.’ Mary was sympathetic.

‘Have a drink, Mary.’

‘No thanks, Fergus, I don’t think . . .’

‘Have a bloody drink.’

‘Very well, keep your hair on. I’ll have a vodka and tonic, thank you very much.’

‘Not at all. Good luck.’

Mary raised her glass solemnly. ‘Good luck, really and truly good luck. They’re relying on you.’

‘No they’re not, they think they’re grand, they think it’s lovely to be financially ruined and crippled.’