The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (140 page)

Sister Laura wished that she’d had such opportunities when she was young. Nobody ever went anywhere then. She had always wanted to see the great cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, and go to Chartres. Girls had so many chances today. And an easy life too! No school on Saturdays now. Sister Laura’s lips were pursed about that. It was better far when they had lessons right up to lunchtime, and this new way made the weekend far too long, they got up to all kinds of mischief.

Dr. White had urged Sister Laura to take more exercise and get more fresh air. Dutifully she took a Saturday constitutional through Coyne’s wood, down to River Road, along up Bridge Street and back to the convent by the Protestant church and graveyard.

In Coyne’s wood she found Dara Ryan sitting on a stile watching eagerly to see who came through the trees. The child seemed disappointed—even dismayed—to see her teacher.

Down by the river bank she saw Grace O’Neill—holding hands, no less—with Dara’s twin brother. They were much too young to be at that class of thing. Sister Laura barked a greeting at them that made them drop hands hastily.

When she called into Daly’s for a cream cake—which Dr. White had told her should form no further part of her diet—Sister Laura was met by a saga of complaints about little Maggie who, according to her mother, had taken up with the foreign woman and was spending all her waking hours admiring herself in the mirror. Across the road from Daly’s was Dr. White’s. Sister Laura quickened her step and lowered her eyes in case she might catch the doctor’s observant eye and he would read the cream cake written in her guilty face. Instead she saw Jacinta swinging on the gate and for once anxious for a chat.

Jacinta said that it was great to see nuns being normal now, and eating cream buns. Everything had gotten much better since the Vatican Council.

Sister Laura realized she had a mustache of cream on her face and pounded up Bridge Street in a very bad temper, thinking that fifteen-year-old girls in 1966 were a severe cross to have to bear.

She was glad she had not been called to the Married State. It was quite enough to have to deal with them in the classroom.

   Kerry came through the wood and smiled easily.

“Well this
is
a lovely thing to discover in the woods on a summer day.”

“Hello Kerry.”

“Is that all you have to say to me?” He slid his arms around her but she wriggled out of them.

“What is it? Don’t you like me?”

“I like you well enough.”

“So what’s with all the hard-to-get nonsense, then?”

“I’m not being hard to get, it’s just that I haven’t seen you for a while, I thought it would be nice to talk, you know, rather than … straight away.”

“Sure, let’s talk.” He sat down on the ground and stroked her foot. “Could we talk about your ankles, for one thing? They’re very beautiful …”

“Oh, please.” Dara was at a total loss.

“Why don’t you like me to admire you?” He looked genuinely bewildered.

“Because … because it’s like as if you’re not admiring me as a person, it’s only an ankle or a mouth or whatever.” She looked troubled.

“Oh Dara, that’s not so, if you must know I like you as a person. You are totally special. I’ve told you that so many times.”

“No you haven’t, we haven’t talked much at all, you and I.”

“You’re right!” he said, grinning broadly. “We haven’t talked nearly enough. I think about you so much, that’s what makes me think we did talk much more than we have. Will you come and walk with me, we’ll walk through here and down to the river, and honestly”—he held both his hands up in the air—“no touching, promise.”

Dara felt very silly, but it did look like a sort of a victory.

“That would be nice,” she said and leaped from the stile.

Kerry got up lithely from his sitting position without putting his hands on the ground.

“That was clever,” Dara admired.

“Oh come on, anyone can do that,” Kerry challenged.

“Maybe, but you had your legs crossed.”

“Go on, try it.”

Dara sat down on the mossy ground and crossed her legs. “Let me see, what did you do?” She automatically kept trying to put her hands on the ground.

Kerry stood looking at her, laughing.

“It’s not nearly as easy as you make it look.” Dara was cross.

“Here, I’ll sit down beside you and show you.”

But when Kerry sat down beside her they were very close.

He looked at her flushed face.

He bent a little closer to her.

Dara bit her lip with indecision.

“It’s very easy,” Kerry said. He put his head slightly to one side and smiled at her.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it …” Dara said.

“Oh, I think you are,” Kerry said. His face was closer still but he made no move to hold her.

She moved toward him. Their lips brushed lightly.

Kerry pulled back slightly. “No hands,” he said triumphantly, showing both hands as he had done before.

But it didn’t matter now. Their lips were together and nobody was working out technical details like that.

   Kate was impatient that evening.

“Dara, where on earth were you? You look as if you rolled around on the ground, you’re so full of leaves and dirt.”

It was so precisely what Dara had been doing that she got a shock, but she realized her mother was on a different track.

“Really and truly you twins are like tinkers. When you see how neat and clean Grace looks, and even Maggie has smartened herself up a lot. I don’t know what we’re all working our fingers to the bone earning money to dress you pair for, we might as well buy the clothes and just rub them in the ground.”

“I’m sorry,” Dara said automatically.

“No, you’re not. Where were you anyway?”

This was the question she had been trying to avoid.

“Oh, Michael will explain, I’d better go and have a wash,” she said, and ran off.

Minutes later Michael burst into her room “That was beautiful,” he said furiously. “Why did you have to do that?”

Dara giggled. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of anything else. What did you say?”

“I said we were down playing on the towpath. Where all the brambles were. You should have warned me.”

Dara was sitting on her bed hugging her knees.

“I think that if we’re going to spend this summer with the O’Neill family in different parts of the forest we should think up a story and stick to it,” she said.

“Were you with Kerry?” he asked.

“Of course.” She looked triumphant.

“Gosh, Dara. What were you doing?”

“Never mind!”

“You’d better be careful. Kerry’s very old, and experienced.”

“I know.”

“You’re awfully silly when you put on that face. You think you sound grown-up and clever, but in fact you sound silly. Like Jacinta when she’s having one of her awful moods.”

“You should hear what
you
sound like sometimes—Grace says, Grace thinks, Grace always believes, Grace was wondering … Like a record stuck and going on over and over.”

“I don’t,” Michael said. “Do I?” he asked anxiously after a minute.

“A bit. Listen, let’s not have a fight about it. Mam’s on the warpath. The main thing is to keep the peace.”

“Sure.” Michael was distracted. “Does everyone else notice, about my mentioning Grace I mean?”

“No.”

“Grace always says that I believe people too easily, I get taken in,” Michael said.

   Miss Purcell had a problem. Old Mr. Slattery had once said there was no problem that could not be solved by walking along by the river. Canon Moran said that God often spoke to the heart in peaceful riverside surroundings more clearly than he spoke in the midst of rush and bustle.

Miss Purcell took a riverside walk to try to work out her worry. Should she leave Fergus Slattery and go to work at the presbytery? To leave your post was an act of desertion. That was true. To work for the priests of God was a high calling. That too was true.

To forget the Slattery family who had been good to her for many years would be base ingratitude. To replace Miss Barry would mean that Miss Barry would definitely have to go for treatment to the county home. Would that be a good or a bad thing?

Miss Purcell walked on long and purposefully, hoping to hear some voice that would make things seem clear.

What she did hear among the reeds and rushes was some giggling and laughing. She craned her neck to see what was going on and stepped up to her ankles in water.

She saw two fleeing figures, children she thought. One of them was almost definitely that little O’Neill girl, she couldn’t identify the boy. When she came back bad-tempered, with soaking feet and no decision made, she met Fergus in the hall.

“Really, Miss Purcell, if you go paddling the point is to take off your shoes and stockings,” he said in a mock-reproving voice.

Miss Purcell was in no mood for light hearted banter. “I don’t know what this place is coming to,” she said. “I saw that young O’Neill girl and she’s only a child, up to no good at all, keeping company up in the reeds. She can only be fourteen or fifteen. It’s disgraceful.” Two red spots burned in Miss Purcell’s face.

“Oh a chip off the old block, her father’s the greatest whoremaster for a hundred miles,” Fergus said casually.

“Mr.
Slattery
, please.” Miss Purcell had never listened to this kind of conversation before and she didn’t intend to now. Unwittingly Fergus had made the decision that no voice had made for her on the river bank. Miss Purcell would spend the autumn of her life with the Clergy. Where she wouldn’t hear words or sentiments like that.

   Kerry had a long weekend, he didn’t have to go back until Monday night he told Dara. He would be able to see her on Sunday
and
on Monday.

“Don’t come to the pub … I’ll go out and meet you,” Dara said.

“I’m trying to be respectable,” Kerry said. “Do the right thing, ask your parents’ permission and everything. Is that not the way to go?”

“Of course it’s not,” Dara said. “They’d never give their permission for what we do.”

Kerry smiled. “They wouldn’t know.”

“They’d guess. I’ll say I’m going up to the lodge.”

“Whatever you say.”

“And where will I meet you?”

“I’ll come and find you in the wood.”

He did. But only late in the evening. Dara had been waiting, she was upset and annoyed.

“We didn’t make a time,” Kerry said. “We didn’t fix a date and a place, you wouldn’t let me come and pick you up. So what’s all the drama?”

“There’s no drama,” Dara said.

“Good, I hate girls that make a fuss over nothing,” Kerry said.

Dara heard two warnings in that.

One warning. There had been and probably still were plenty of other girls. And also the warning that fussy girls mightn’t last long in the picture.

Dara gave a watery smile.

“Sure, anyway it was nice here. I love this wood, I always have.”

“It’s beautiful in the evening,” Kerry said. “I think it’s one of the loveliest places ever. Imagine Jack Coyne having a wood called after him. I wish we had an O’Neill’s wood.”

“It’s not really Jack’s wood, there have always been Coynes in this part.” Dara didn’t want to give the ferret-faced man from the motor works any part of the mossy, flower-filled place.

Kerry seemed restless. Edgy almost.

“What did you do today?”

He looked at her in surprise. Dara swallowed. It hadn’t been such a terrible question, had it?

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“I was just wondering what kind of things you did.” She bit her lip and wished she had let the silence be. It was so hard to talk to him today; yesterday he had been like an angel.

“If you must know I went to a bar way out on the Galway road.”

“A bar. But you don’t drink?”

“No, Miss Curiosity 1966, you are right. I do not drink. But I do play cards and that’s what they were doing there.”

“Cards in a pub on a Sunday?”

“In a back room. Brian Doyle’s brother works there—well, sort of deals cards there. It was great.”

“Did you play for money?”

He paused. As if he were debating something.

“No. Not this time.”

“Will you another time?”

“Yes, no point in it otherwise.”

“Why didn’t you put money on the cards today then?”

“Francis said not to, just to watch, watch him dealing. It was great.”

“Could I come with you next time?”

“No way. I’m even a bit young for this place, they’d think you were a baby in a cradle.”

“I’m pretty grown up.”

“You are very pretty, and very grown up,” Kerry said, slipping an arm around Dara. “So I won’t let them set eyes on you.”

Dara smiled happily. She wriggled out of his arm for a moment as Sheila Whelan walked past, greeting them both briefly.

“I hope she won’t tell,” Dara said.

“What can she tell?” Kerry sounded bored.

She changed the subject. “Did you have woods like this back in America?”

“Not like this. We had trees of course on our property … but it was different from this.”

“Did you walk under the trees?”

“Yes. With my mother, when she was well.”

Even Grace hardly talked about their mother. Dara held her breath a little.

“What was it like?” she asked tentatively.

“It was good. We used to walk in the evenings, and watch the fireflies. You don’t have them here?”

“Fireflies?” asked Dara.

“I’ve never seen any. I wonder why that is.”

“What are they like?”

“Like little points of light, like a million tiny stars.”

“They must be lovely,” Dara breathed.

“It was lovely then, but it all changed. Anyway, it’s silly wanting fireflies when we have so much else here.”

“What have we here?”

“We have some very beautiful girls for one thing.”

“Oh, lots of them is it?” Dara pretended a sense of outrage and started to run off down the slope.

“Yes thousands, but you’re the most beautiful. By far.” He ran after her and caught her easily.

Because Dara wasn’t running very fast.

   Dara Ryan is too young for Kerry O’Neill, Sheila Whelan thought to herself. Far too young. She shouldn’t be up in Coyne’s wood alone with him at this time of the evening.