The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (101 page)

He felt sure that Patrick O’Neill wasn’t so stupid as to think that this was doing him a favor.

“Who can have bikes? Is it only people of eleven?” Patrick looked down at the small furious boy with hair sticking out in all directions.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” the child said. “I just wanted to know if it was worthwhile or if I’d be belted out of there.” He jerked his head at Jack Coyne’s.

“What do people say?”

“Mr. Coyne says he can’t get them out of his sight quick enough. Father Hogan said we should give them to those in need first.”

“But aren’t we all in need?” Patrick asked him.

“That’s what I said, but you couldn’t argue with a priest.”

“I know it.” Patrick was sympathetic.

The small boy wasn’t prepared to let the conversation wander into philosophical waters.

“So what are the rules, Mr. O’Neill?”

Patrick liked him, he was a little toughie.

“You know my name, why can’t I know yours?”

“Because then you’d say there were too many bicycles gone to our family because of the twins,” Eddie said.

“Oh it’s young Mr. Ryan, I see.”

“Well it’s no use now.” Eddie’s hands were deep in his pockets.

“Are you able to ride a bike?”

“Everyone is.” Eddie was scornful.

“No they’re not. Come on, pick one out. If you can ride it straight up and down here for me without wobbling, you can have it.”

Eddie was back like a flash with a bike and a following of half a dozen children.

Patrick watched him attempt a few false starts and then get going. He came back triumphantly.

“Well?” he cried.

“No,” Patrick said.

“What do you mean no. I stayed on, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but you rode on the wrong side of the road, you young fool. You’d have been killed if anyone was coming toward you.”

“You didn’t
say
you were counting things like that.”

“Sorry, friend. Try again next week, same time, same place, new test.”

Eddie grinned back at him. This was the kind of deal he understood.

   Grace O’Neill said she thought that Mountfern was the most beautiful place she had ever been. She said that they were all so lucky to have grown up here, it was like a magic place. The children preened themselves when they heard this. Grace didn’t boast about all the places she had been. She didn’t say that New York was better than Mountfern, and she had been to all kinds of things and places they had only seen in the films. She had been up the Empire State Building, and on Broadway. She had been up the Statue of Liberty and she had been across the Brooklyn Bridge. But this was only revealed when they questioned her. Normally she said little about what had been her home up to now. Her chat was all of the future. They knew that her mother had died. They asked her was it awful. Grace said that the worst part had been knowing somehow for ages that she was never going to be really well. They had stopped making plans for the things they would do when mother got cured. She didn’t know when it began but that was the worst part. The time she had died was hard to remember, there were so many people coming in and out of the house.

She had looked so sad when she talked about that, they changed the subject. Maggie Daly had asked could they see some of her American clothes and all the girls had gotten on their bicycles and cycled off to the lodge just like that. Of course Tommy Leonard and Michael Ryan and Liam White were far too grown up and male to want to do anything stupid like cycling nearly three miles to see clothes. But they felt a bit empty sitting there by the river when all the girls had gone. It wasn’t that they would have gone if they had been asked. But they would like to have been asked. They would have preferred if the girls hadn’t gone at all.

   Kerry didn’t come and join in the games. He was far too old for them. He was nearly old enough to be on the bridge with the fellows and girls who were almost grown up. But he didn’t hang around there either.

Grace said he cycled a lot on his own; he had found some ruined abbey he liked. And he used to read too, and he was catching up on some work he had to do before he went to his boarding school, and he had some Latin lessons from Mr. Williams the vicar, who had said that life was very droll when you had the Protestant parson teaching the Roman Catholics Latin, even though it was never used in Mr. Williams’s church and nothing else was used in Canon Moran’s establishment down the road.

   “O’Neill’s children seem to have taken over the place like the Lords of the Soil,” Fergus said to Kate.

“I’m quick to find fault, quicker than you are, and I can’t see anything against them,” Kate said.

“Oh, cocky little pair of swaggerers,” Fergus grunted. “Sailing around on their bicycles as if they owned the place. Which they do of course. Own the place.”

“Ah, come on, Fergus, at least half the place is on wheels now, that can’t be bad.”

“That’s what the people of Hamelin said to each other about the Pied Piper. At least they’re all dancing, that can’t be bad.”

“God, Fergus, nothing would please you about that unfortunate family. Seriously, the children smile and they’re being patronizing, they don’t smile and they’re being standoffish. What could they do to please you?”

“Go back to America,” he said.

“You’re worse than Eddie when you have that puss on you. What have you so much against them?”

Kate was bright and fresh-looking in a pink blouse and a red pinafore dress. She had bought the blouse in a sale and the pinafore dress was something she had worn years ago, before Declan was born. With a smart black belt to take the maternity look off it she felt as smart as paint. Fergus looked at her, a long admiring look.

“The main thing I have against them is that they are going to take your business away.”

“Oh Fergus.” She was touched to the heart.

“Don’t ‘Oh Fergus’ me, go on being nice to them, silly little overdressed vipers in your bosom.” He blew his nose loudly. “Just wait until those children have taken away your children’s inheritance. See how you’ll feel then.”

Kate was totally at a loss.

“It’s not the children’s fault,” she began.

He put away his handkerchief. “You’re quite right. They make me feel old and grubby and silly. Your children make me feel … I don’t know, splendid, fascinating.”

“Which is what you are,” Kate said, and then went back to work.

Chapter VI

Everyone asked Miss Hayes what they were like at home, the Americans. Was there a ton of money spent in the place? What did they talk about? Olive Hayes was never sufficiently forthcoming. They were very nice people, she reported, thoughtful and considerate. She had never worked in a house before, it was all a very new experience for her. People thought Miss Hayes was a poor informant. Soon they didn’t bother to ask her anymore. She was a woman with no stories to tell.

Olive Hayes was a woman saving her fare to New Zealand. She was going to keep her position in this small comfortable house with the American family. There would be no tales about the arrogant resentful Kerry, the impatient father who could find nothing to say to his son, but who idolized his beautiful daughter. Nor would Miss Hayes talk about Grace outside the house even though there was nothing but good to report. She was a delightful child, anxious to help, willing to learn. She made her bed and kept her room in perfect order. She always asked permission if she were to invite the other children into the house. She had a ready smile and she soldiered on bravely to keep the peace between her father and brother. Miss Hayes had never felt any yearning to marry and rear a family. But sometimes when she looked at Grace O’Neill in the kitchen, helping her to wipe dishes and tumbling out stories of how the day had been spent, she sighed and a soft look came to her long angular features. It would have been good to have had a daughter like Grace O’Neill.

   Kitty Daly had thought that the summer would never end, long endless boring summers with that crowd on the bridge being so dismissive and all Maggie’s friends being so loud and awful. But it all changed when Kerry O’Neill came to town. He came into Daly’s Dairy from time to time Kitty hated working in the shop during the summer and was normally so sulky and unhelpful that her parents thought it was counter-productive to have her behind the counter. They had a girl from out the country, and Charlie who hauled and dragged things in and out and did deliveries.

Kerry held out his hand the first time he called.

“Hi, I’m Kerry O’Neill,” he had said, as if Kitty didn’t know. As if everyone for miles around didn’t know.

She shook his hand and mumbled.

“What’s your name?” he asked, as if he had expected her to give it.

“Kitty. Kitty Daly.”

“Oh this is your place?” He looked around the clean bright shop in admiration. Its cakes and bread in one section, milk, butter and bacon at another counter and the main body of groceries all together behind the main counter.

“Yes, it is.” Kitty wished she could think of something else to say, but she couldn’t. She gave a big shrug to let this gorgeous fellow know that she thought it was all terrible. So that he wouldn’t think of her as a poor country hick. But he didn’t seem to think it was dreadful.

“It’s a very handsome store,” he said. “You must like working in it, you must feel proud of it.”

Kitty was about to change her stance completely and express great pride in the dairy.

But her mother spoke first. “Oh there’d be white blackbirds before Miss Kitty here would do a hand’s turn in the shop.”

A dark red stain came into Kitty’s face, but Kerry seemed to understand at once.

“I’m just the same,” he said, looking straight at her, though he spoke lightly. “I’m very interested in my father’s hotel but he thinks I’m only fooling around. It’s not just, is it?”

“No it isn’t.” Kitty Daly was hoarse with excitement as the bright blue eyes of Kerry O’Neill rested on her for a little longer. Then he had bought a bar of chocolate and was gone. She watched him walk easily down Bridge Street and go into Leonard’s. She resisted the urge to run after him and talk more. She would see him again. He was here forever. And he liked her. He had made it obvious. Kitty saw her mother looking at her and immediately put on a face.

“I suppose you’ll go getting notions about him now, that’s the next cross we’ll have to bear,” Mrs. Daly said in tones of great weariness.

“It’s a pity that older people have such sad, sick minds,” said Kitty, and resolved to be very nice to Mrs. Walsh from the Rosemarie hair salon in case there was a chance she might give her a cheap hair-do.

   Grace O’Neill said that she would love to catch a fish. A real fish herself, and then she would cook it and eat it. Nobody she ever knew before had done anything like this. She made life seem much more exciting than it was for the children of Mountfern. She loved everything. She thought it was wonderful that they had a river all for them, not in a park or anything, but in their own town. And she thought it was great to know everyone’s names. Grace made a point of saying, “Good morning Mrs. Williams, Hi, Mr. Slattery; Good day Father Hogan.” She said that in the United States you never met anyone you knew or who knew you. Reluctantly the others agreed that it was all right. Before Grace’s arrival they had always thought it tiresome to be under the ever-watchful eyes of the whole town no matter what you did or where you were going. It was hard to see it as a positive asset.

But fishing. That was something the girls hadn’t been involved in.

“You won’t like it, the fish look terrible when you do get them out of the water,” said Maggie Daly.

“They have all blood by the side of their mouths,” Jacinta White said.

“And their eyes look terrified,” said Maggie, maybe with fellow feeling. Her own eyes often looked big and frightened.

“And they wriggle and twitch and you’d be dying to throw them back in,” Jacinta said.

“Except that the poor mouth is torn off them.” Maggie was perplexed by the enormity of the decision. “So you wouldn’t know what would be for the best, to kill them quickly and get it over with or let them back with half their jaw gone.”

Dara hadn’t joined in, which was unusual.

Then she spoke.

“I think that’s a lot of sentimental rubbish. If Grace says she would like to fish then we should. After all we’ve lived beside the river for all our lives and we’ve never objected before …”

Grace flashed her a grateful and admiring look.

“But we never did it ourselves …” Maggie began.

“Because we’ve no guts,” Dara said firmly, and with that female fishing was on. They were going to get rods and hooks. Michael was terrific, he’d show them.

“Michael won’t want us hanging around with them,” Jacinta said.

“I’m sure he won’t mind showing us how it’s done,” Grace said, with a sunny confident smile.

   Michael didn’t mind showing Grace how it was done, and he was pleased that his twin had suddenly developed an interest in fishing. Tommy Leonard was helpful too, and Liam White. They bent over hooks and bait. Maggie Daly forced herself to look into jars of maggots, even though it made her stomach heave. Michael explained that you had to just nick the edge of the maggot with the hook so that the maggot still wriggled about in the water and the fish would believe it was a live grub and snap at it. There was other bait too: bread made into a paste, or bits of crust. Maggie wondered could they stick to this, but Michael and Tommy and Liam said you had to use maggots and worms as well.

Jacinta said she felt sick watching the hook going through the worm But Grace and Dara looked on steadfastly. Taking a deep breath, Maggie looked on too and said nothing about the nausea rising in her, together with the feeling that this was all a silly phase. They would get over it soon, and go back to being as they were. She hoped Grace would like looking at the tombstones in the Protestant graveyard, but it was probably wiser not to suggest it too soon.

Grace wanted to know could she try out some of the rods which Michael said they had back at the pub. It was nearly teatime. There was indecision. Suddenly the twins looked at each other in the way they often did, as an idea seemed to come to them at exactly the same time.

“We’ll ask can you come to tea,” Dara said.

“Just what I was thinking.”

“Oh no,” Grace protested.

“Yes, then we can look at the rods.”

Grace was firm. “Miss Hayes will have my tea ready. No, I can’t call her, that would be very high-handed. But maybe I could ask Father if I can cycle back again tonight.”

That was agreed, and they scattered to go back to their houses as the six o’clock bell pealing out the angelus was heard all over Mountfern.

Maggie walked along River Road with her hands in her pockets. Dara hadn’t asked her to come back after tea. Michael hadn’t been keen to show her any rods. Tommy Leonard and the Whites were chatting on cheerfully. They didn’t notice that Maggie hung behind and was very quiet.

   But next day Maggie was called by her mother.

“Come down quickly, Maggie, your friend is here.”

Something about the way she said friend was unusual. Usually Mrs. Daly said that Jacinta or Dara was there, in a way that you knew she was casting her eyes up to heaven. Maggie ran down the stairs of Daly’s and into the shop.

There was Grace, full of chat to everyone, asking questions about what kind of pastry this was on the cream cakes, and what kind of filling was in the eclairs.

“Would you like to taste one?” Mrs. Daly asked her.

“Heavens no, thank you Mrs. Daly, thank you so much; I was only interested, that’s all. I ask too many questions, I’m afraid.”

“Nice to see someone awake and not half dozy all the time.” Maggie’s father was full of approval.

Maggie stood there, feeling very shabby in her beige shirt and brown shorts. Grace was in a yellow and white dress with a big white collar, she had little yellow shoes. She must have a dozen pairs of shoes, Maggie thought enviously, always something to go with her outfit.

Grace took her arm. “Is it all right if we go off now?” she asked to nobody in particular but to everybody at the same time. Grace forced other people to be charming too. Mrs. Daly was nodding and smiling, Mr. Daly was wishing them good weather, Charlie looked up from the boxes he was collecting, to grin at them.

Out on Bridge Street Grace looked at Maggie anxiously. “It was all right to come, wasn’t it? I wanted you to show me the tombstones you were talking about.”

“Yes, but …?” Maggie was bewildered. Surely Grace wouldn’t want to go off with her, with just Maggie when there was so much else to do, so many other people to meet and such an amount of revolting wriggling maggots to be threaded onto those hooks.

But apparently that was what Grace did want.

“Please, Maggie,” she said “I’d love to see the names and the things people said.”

Maggie was still hesitant.

“The fishing …” she began.

“Oh we can join them later, I met Liam on my way here. I said we’d be along in about an hour or more.”

“What did he say?”

“He said ‘fine’ or something.” Grace was unconcerned.

She left her bicycle parked at the back of Daly’s, and arm in arm, they went up Bridge Street to the top of the town. Grace peeped into the Garda barracks just to see what it looked like, she said.

Sergeant Sheehan told her to come in and have a look around.

“Do you have prison cells here?” Grace asked with interest.

“Not here, child.” He looked at her affectionately.

Seamus Sheehan had only sons; this was a beautiful sunny girl. The little one of the Dalys seemed dazzled by her almost.

“What do you do with criminals?”

“They go to jail in the big town. I’ve a room back there with a big padlock on it if you’d like to be kept in detention.”

Grace giggled. “No, I was only getting to know the place.”

“Quite right too.” Sergeant Sheehan seemed much more cheerful today, Maggie thought, like her father was, and her mother, and like Miss Byrne the physiotherapist who made it her business to come over and ask Grace how they were settling into the lodge, and hoping it wasn’t too damp for them.

Grace was fascinated with the graves and the tombstones. She said she would bring a notebook the next time so that she could write them all down.

“We won’t be buried here, of course,” Grace said conversationally.

“No, we’ll be in the Catholic graveyard. Well
we
will, anyway,” Maggie explained. “If you stay then I suppose you will too.”