The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (141 page)

But Sheila had never told anyone anything about anyone else’s business. And even though it was a fifteen-year-old girl, she felt this sense that she must not interfere.

She wondered, if she had a daughter of her own, what would she like a good friend to do? It was impossible to know.

   Fergus Slattery had a distressing case to cope with. The parents of a fifteen-year-old boy came to him saying that their son had been named as the father of a girl’s baby. It was a matter of a paternity order.

They were stern unblinking people who did not believe such a thing to be possible.

“It couldn’t be done, a child of fifteen to father another child,” the farmer said in bewilderment.

“It could be done all right,” Fergus said. Even though he was twice the boy’s age and had fathered nobody he knew it could indeed be done.

“The girl’s a dirty tramp who lay with half the country,” said the farmer’s wife.

Fergus had already spoken to the terrified schoolboy.

“We’ll get nowhere talking like that. Your son is too young to marry, it’s a simple case of finance. We have to work out what can be fairly paid.”

“You’re not saying that our child is responsible for this girl’s bastard?”

“I’m saying that we’ll save ourselves a heap of trouble if we try to bring it down to pounds, shillings and pence, and keep all the recriminations for your own kitchen around the fire, or even better not have them at all.”

“God knows what you can be thinking about Mr. Slattery, you mustn’t be of this world at all.”

“I’m probably not of this world,” Fergus agreed. His face was grim, what he had been thinking of was Michael Ryan. Suppose by some horrendous ill chance Michael were to father a child of Grace O’Neill’s. What in God’s earth would happen then?

He wondered should he warn Kate Ryan or was it the action of a mad maiden aunt?

   Dr. White called to see Kate as a matter of course and courtesy rather than because he could do anything for her.

He never referred again to her inquiry about whether sexual intercourse would be wise or indeed possible. He was a dour man without great charm but Kate liked him. She trusted him because he never gave her false hopes, and he had always been able to interpret the more flowery pronouncements of consultant doctors at the hospitals, and the specialists she had seen.

“Nothing wrong with you these days except a broken back,” Martin White said in a manner that some would have found offensively direct.

“No, not a thing. That and being the mother of teenagers. It’s a hard old station, isn’t it?”

“Ah, don’t talk to me. We have Jacinta around the house day and night now, a fit of the sulks. Some awful slight or row or something, she has us demented.”

“Oh dear. Who with?” Kate hadn’t heard any of this.

“Your lot I think, and that little one of the Dalys’ and Tommy Leonard. Never mind, it’ll pass, that’s what we keep telling ourselves. The only thing is will
we
survive it?”

“Oh, I hope Dara and Michael weren’t out of turn with her …”

“You wouldn’t know what it was all about. Jealousy I think, mainly. Jacinta complains that Dara and Michael have fallen in love with the O’Neill children and are wandering around starry-eyed hand in hand, and the old gang as they knew it isn’t the same. Fat lot of time we had for that sort of thing or indeed talking about it, at their age.”

“I thought they all played together still.” Kate’s voice was tinny.

“God, Kate, they may well do. Jacinta would remind you of one of those circular saws when she gets started, I don’t listen half the time.”

Kate allowed him to change the subject.

   At supper the children’s father spoke sternly.

“There’s going to be an end to all this rambling off on your own from now on, you’re all to be where we can keep an eye on you.”

“That would mean being in the bar,” Eddie was quick to protest.

“Shut up, Eddie, not you for once.”

“Why not?” Eddie was outraged.

“I meant not only you, I meant all of you. Dara, Michael, are you listening to me?”

They exchanged glances.

“Where
do
you go anyway?” their father persisted.

“Here and there,” Michael said.

“Mainly the lodge,” Dara lied.

“That’s odd, your mother had a message from Miss Hayes above in the lodge asking if you could favor her with your presence for a fitting for this dress she’s making you. She hasn’t seen hair nor hide of you up there all weekend, apparently.”

“She must have been in a different part,” Dara mumbled.

“Yes, it’s a huge place all right, four rooms I believe, you’d easily lose a battalion up there.”

John’s face was not amused. He hadn’t liked what Kate had reported to him. The thought of anyone making free with Dara made him feel bile rise in his throat. The fact that Dara was so obviously lying made it quite sure that Dr. White’s information had been correct.

“Where do you want us to be?”

“Where I can call you, by the footbridge, or down by the real bridge at the end of the town.”

“We’re not old enough for the bridge,” Eddie said.

“Get on with your tea, Eddie,” John Ryan said wearily.

“Why’s nobody interested where
I’m
going to be?” Eddie wanted to know.

   “Do you think he suspected?” Michael asked Grace that evening. They stood on the footbridge while Michael explained the new edict.

“No of course not.”

“I want to be with you, on your own. We’re not doing anything
really
wrong.”

“We can still be together,” Grace was soothing.

“It’s not together with awful people about.”

“They’re not awful people, they’re our friends.”

“People like John Joe Conway.” Michael was mutinous.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Michael, you’re always imagining that he has some interest in me.”

“Everyone’s interested in you, Grace, we know that, it’s just that John Joe is so coarse, I couldn’t bear him looking at you, touching you …”

“He doesn’t touch me.”

“Looking at you even.”

“That’s crazy to talk like that.”

“I am crazy about you.” He put out his hand toward her.

“Watch it,” Grace said, “we’re in full view of the pub.”

“This is going to be great for the rest of the summer,” said Michael.

   Olive Hayes asked Mrs. Fine to be present for the fittings.

The dresses were all at the same stage—the aquamarine for Dara, a soft rosy pink for Grace and the unusual burnished copper for Maggie.

“Don’t you have another friend, isn’t it Dr. White’s daughter who goes about with you? I could get her some material too,” Rachel offered.

“Jacinta. Oh, she’d love that,” Maggie said.

“She doesn’t deserve it,” Dara said sternly, remembering Jacinta’s view of Mrs. Fine as a mistress.

“Come on, Dara. Don’t be mean. We’re all having a dress, why not Jacinta?” Grace was always generous.

Rachel looked at the beautiful blonde daughter of frail Kathleen O’Neill and Patrick. She had always felt the child was withdrawn and hostile toward her until recently. Now Grace was looking at her delightedly as if she were her closest friend.

“Could
you
suggest it to her, Mrs. Fine? We had a sort of falling out with Jacinta. Could you tell her about the dresses? It would mend things again.”

“Oh
please
, Mrs. Fine,” Maggie asked.

“What do
you
think, Dara? I’d need to have everyone’s point of view.”

“I think Jacinta’s being silly. But Grace is right, and if
you
said it she couldn’t snarl and take offense.”

“All right.” Rachel was pleasant about it. “I’ll stop by the house, I have an excuse anyway.” It was true. Rachel wanted to ask Dr. White if it would be too tiring for Kate to go on a shopping trip to Dublin with her. She felt her friend needed a break away from the pub and the worry about the new café.

“This needs to be lifted a little here, do you think, Mrs. Fine?”

Miss Hayes didn’t want to take any initiatives. She held the fabric in place where she was going to put the little dart that would shape it.

The others looked at Maggie Daly’s small thin shoulders and her little pointed breasts seen to their best advantage.

“You look great, Maggie,” Dara said spontaneously. “You look totally different to usual.”

Maggie saw only the compliment, she didn’t want to believe it. “You’re only saying that,” she said.

“Why would I say it? Doesn’t she?”

Grace was looking at her wordlessly. “Honestly Maggie, it’s extraordinary, you look like a painting.”

Maggie clasped her hands together and pulled them apart in delighted embarrassment. It was as if she were clapping.

“I’ll never be able to thank you enough, Mrs. Fine, imagine there being this bit of curtain just the right color.”

“I know, isn’t it extraordinary!” Rachel marveled, thinking of the hours she had spent in the material departments of Brown Thomas and Switzer’s looking for the exact shade.

“You’re terrific, Mrs. Fine,” Grace said, delighted that Maggie was getting the Cinderella treatment.

Rachel looked at the beautiful daughter of the man she loved and knew she must not say anything that would threaten this new friendship.

“It makes a very nice change for me to see three good-looking girls getting dressed up than to see yards and yards of wall coverings, and to work out why half the bedroom carpets are one shade and half are different when they were all meant to have come from the same batch. This is the fun part here, I assure you.”

She mustn’t give them any hint about how it was the only part. This and her conversations with Kate Ryan.

Why else was she in this town? She felt that she and Patrick were miles apart. Further than they had ever been, even when they were on different sides of the ocean.

   Jacinta White didn’t want a dress.

“I don’t have to follow everyone else, be a copycat,” she said.

“I think you’re right. Anyway you look good in those pants.”

Jacinta looked down at her jeans and boots in surprise. “What?” she said suspiciously.

“I was never able to wear anything like that—slacks, trousers, pants, whatever you call it. My bottom was too big. I always wanted to, though.”

Jacinta would not be won so easily.

“Oh, I haven’t much time for clothes,” she said loftily.

“Sensible of you. Anyway, it’s always there if you want it.”

“Thank you, but I haven’t time for fittings and choosing and all that sort of stuff.”

Rachel saw the aching loneliness of a fifteen-year-old who had fallen out of the pack. She knew that any more persuasion would result in further refusals.

“Maggie and Grace were saying that they wanted you to have a dress too. But don’t be dragged in if you don’t want to.” Rachel prepared to leave.

“I bet Dara didn’t want me to have a dress. Dara’s a pain in the neck, she thinks Tommy Leonard is her little slave. It would sicken you.”

“I think Dara did want you to share in all these remnants, actually, and I definitely heard that she fancied Kerry O’Neill rather than Tommy Leonard.”

“Well, she’s out of her mind fancying Kerry O’Neill, he’s far too old for her, and he has girlfriends all over the place. You don’t have any material that would make jeans, do you?”

It was very ungracious.

“No, but what I do have that might be nice is a bit of leather fringe. We could put some on your shirt and some on your boots.”

“On the boots?”

“Yes, isn’t there a man up in Foley’s who does shoe repairs? If we asked him nicely he could stitch some of this fringe onto the top of the boots.”

“And you would give it to me, would you?”

“With pleasure,” Rachel smiled.

Fringes on her shirts and her boots, that would make Tommy Leonard sit up and wipe the smile out of Dara’s eye, Jacinta thought.

“I’ll come along with you now and get it,” she said in case Mrs. Fine might change her mind.

   Patrick was in Meagher’s with Brian Doyle organizing the changes.

The place was going to be a small office and travel agency.

He would employ just one person, who would arrange tours for the guests and do any other business that Mountfern might need.

He saw Rachel coming down Bridge Street with that sulky child Jacinta, the daughter of the gloomy doctor fellow.

Patrick was about to go over to them but he stopped himself.

In front of this child they would have to behave as near-strangers. They would have to play a role.

Was it worth it? There were so many of these non-conversations all day. What was the point of another? He stopped just on the door way of the shop and turned back in again. Rachel saw him, and her heart felt cold. He had actually gotten to the stage of avoiding her now.

   “Kerry?”

“Yes Mr. Hill?”

“A word if I may?”

“Of course.”

“My own sons don’t listen to my advice, you probably don’t listen to your father. That’s the way things are, always have been possibly.”

Kerry held his head politely on one side, waiting for the old man to come to the point. He was working in the bar this week, and liking it. The summer business was beginning to build up and Kerry was an easy conversationalist, people got on well with him.

Dennis Hill looked at him without speaking for a few seconds.

“That crowd who were in last night, McCann, Burns, those …”

“Yes Mr. Hill?”

“They’re not the class for this hotel. Too rough. They don’t fit.”

“Are they barred?”

“Of course they’re not barred. They were never here before, they came to see you. They’re from Derry.”

Kerry’s eyes narrowed slightly. The old man noticed more than he thought.

“Yes, I did meet them outside the hotel, I thought it was good to ask them to come in and swell the crowd. But if you think they’re not the right kind of guests, I won’t encourage them to come back here. Is that what you’d like me to do?” The insolence was well hidden, you’d have to dig deep to find it. But it was there.

“No, I don’t mind if they come in or not, we’re well able to move people on if they’re difficult, don’t worry about that. It’s you I’m thinking about.”