Firefly Summer (14 page)

They looked at him in amazement.

John and Kate Ryan also exchanged glances of relief. Whatever else was going to happen, at least this big man understood somehow that the place was important to the twins. What a relief that they would not be getting into trouble over trespass or being a nuisance. The man in full view of the whole bar had literally invited the children to continue playing in the house.

‘That’s very kind of Mr O’Neill; thank him, children,’ Kate said.

‘Thank you,’ said Dara.

‘Very much,’ finished Michael.

It was time for them to go back to school. They were hooshed out back through the house again. The children had never been known to go out on to River Road through the pub entrance. Kate went silent behind the bar and helped to serve. Nobody would move until the introductions had been properly made. Jimbo Doyle, the man who did a bit of everything in Mountfern, was particularly pleased. If he could be present as a friend of the establishment it might mean work on the new place across the river. He was a big fair man with hair like straw and a healthy red face. He often wore a check shirt and looked about to break into a square dance at any moment.

Charlie, who worked in Daly’s, would be sure to be a frequent visitor there anyway, with milk and cream. Unless, of course, the man was going to have his own cow, his own dairy. Maybe Charlie could ask him now.

Patrick O’Neill was open with all of them. He wasn’t at all sure if they would have their own cows. Some day
possibly. But not for a good bit. He’d be needing all the milk, butter and cream that Daly’s Dairy would provide. Charlie felt very important to be the bearer of this news and specially so when Mr O’Neill remembered his name.

‘See you again then, Charlie,’ and a cheerful wave as he was leaving to ride down River Road and back to Bridge Street to Mrs Daly with the good tidings.

Jimbo Doyle’s red face was positively scarlet after the encounter. Mr O’Neill said that the work on the site was all in the hands of an overseer, a Brian Doyle who came from the big town sixteen miles away. Possibly Jimbo and Brian were related? It could be, couldn’t it? Jimbo shook his head ruefully. Ah no, there were lots of Doyles and if this man was a building contractor and in a big way over in the town then it wasn’t likely that he would be any family to Jimbo. But still, maybe it was an omen. If the man’s name was Doyle, he might find it hard to refuse another Doyle.

‘He won’t refuse you, Jim,’ Patrick O’Neill said. ‘I’ll tell him I met you and that your work has been highly spoken of.’

Kate polished glasses with a snow-white cloth and watched the big, handsome American speaking easily with them all. One by one they left, secure in the knowledge that they would be remembered, and somehow warmed by his interest. Kate felt admiring and then a little fearful. It wasn’t that she feared he would forget these men in their working clothes, with their humble hopes. No, she was afraid more that he
would
remember them. And this all meant that he was very determined to come back to some kind of roots. Roots which he was finding it increasingly hard to establish, as
he’d just told them in the bar. Nobody, not even the older men, could remember any O’Neills around the place, not living on the demesne in Fernscourt anyway. There were O’Neills up the other side of the town, the far end of Bridge Street. But Patrick’s kith nobody could recall. ‘It was all a long time ago,’ they said, as if to forgive themselves and each other.

Yet the man who had come back to build here remembered it all. As if he had been present.

Kate made the glasses shine as she puzzled over it. A man like that must have another wife in mind, someone in America, an Irish-American widow perhaps. Would she be coming over too? He must be worth a fortune. Look at what he must have paid out already for site investigation, and that was before he started work on the house. He must be very determined to make this a success. And if he did, what would happen to them?

They were alone in the bar now, the three of them. Patrick had let them buy him a drink to welcome him to these parts; now they let him buy one for them. Kate’s small port felt as if it were choking her, but she drank it and smiled at the handsome man with the open face, the open shirt and the well-cut tweed jacket.

‘To the dream.’ He raised his glass. ‘John, Kate . . . I want you to be part of the dream as well. I want us all to share in it.’

‘Well sure, we’ll be glad to share anything there is to share,’ John said, a bit at a loss.

‘I’ll drink to the dream,’ Kate said. ‘And to your happiness and success across the river. You won’t find it too tame for you after New York?’

‘All my life I wanted to come back here,’ he said simply.
‘In the middle of big deals and buying more neighbourhood bars I always said to myself . . . Patrick, this is one step nearer coming home.’

‘Imagine that, and you weren’t born and brought up here at all.’ John shook his head in wonderment.

Kate hoped her voice didn’t sound tinny. ‘And what exactly do you plan, or have you worked it out yet?’

She tried to listen to the words as they came out, and wondered, did they betray her anxiety. If they had, the big man didn’t seem to notice. He leaned over the bar eagerly, and like a boy told his plans. The house was going to rise again, like it had been before. There were old pictures and drawings, and he had people working on those country homes built all over the land in the 1780s; it would all be in keeping and in the right period. It was going to be a hotel for the kind of Irish-American who wanted to feel welcome, and as if he had come home. Limo services would be arranged to take them to their own part of the country so that they could find their own roots. There would be fishing and horse riding, and in the correct seasons there would be shooting and hunting. Very few of the Irish who had emigrated to America had any of the gentlemanly sports like these in their background. They had gone to the States because other gentlemen, gentlemen of a different race and religion, had ousted them from their homes. It would be a real homecoming in every sense of the word for any American of Irish stock.

And there would be names on the rooms instead of numbers. Like the O’Brien room, or the Lynch room, or the Kennedy room, or whatever. Kate listened to the list and gave her little oohs and aahs to coincide with the genuine ones of her husband. Her lower lip was almost
flattened with the effort of staying calm until he came to the bit about the bar.

Oh, there would be a cocktail lounge certainly, for pre-dinner drinks where orders could be taken before guests went into the dining room. And then there would be the Thatch Bar. A thatched cottage on the grounds in what Patrick thought must be the exact spot his own ancestors lived before they were thrown out on the road. There was a lot of talk about ancestors being forced to workhouses before Kate could get him silkily back to the Thatch Bar. A real traditional Irish bar, with fiddlers playing and every night some little entertainment, like Irish dancing or a singer, or some old storyteller telling a tale.

And there would be ordinary prices in it too, not fancy ones. Patrick O’Neill wanted his own to come to his bar, not just the gentry. The pint would cost the same in the Thatch Bar as it would anywhere else. It would attract the local people in and the visitors would really and genuinely get to know them.

Kate looked at the boyish face in astonishment. What kind of a mind did you need to get on in America if this was the proof of it sitting opposite her? What did he
mean
, he didn’t want just the gentry? What gentry would go to a flash place like this anyway? Could he see the Walters, or the Harrises, or the Johnsons from the Grange even, spending an evening in the Thatch Bar? The man must be mad. But what was he thinking about, telling them these plans? He must know that he would ruin their trade if this all came to pass. He must know they would try to oppose his licence on the ground that the area was well covered with licensed premises already. What was he talking about, telling them that he wanted to share a dream with them?

Kate looked at John for some support, and found that she couldn’t read his face. It was just as it had been when he was talking to Marian Johnson earlier on, smiling and thoughtful. Was he really taken in by all this patter, or had his heart missed a beat when he heard of the Thatch Bar and all the dangers it looked like bringing on top of them? She could find no words to speak, everything she wanted to say would sound harsh and hysterical. She wanted to take this O’Neill man by the lapels and look straight into his smiling blue eyes. Burrow into them until she could see the truth. She would like to beg him not to ruin their business. She wanted to tell him that, as he had so much money, and so many chances, could he not just have Fernscourt as a home, to entertain his American friends. Surely he didn’t
need
a bar business there. Then that mood vanished, and she wanted to tell him there would be no further pretence at amicable conversation. She and her husband would oppose his getting a licence, and they would raise everyone in the neighbourhood to support them in their case.

But Kate Ryan knew with heavy heart that she could do nothing of the sort. Had she not seen the gratified delight already on everyone’s face? There would be a very slender army to raise against Patrick O’Neill.

John was asking all kinds of questions, idiotic questions, Kate thought, as if he were delighted to see such opposition arriving on his doorstep.

Would the guests go round in buses? What part of America would they come from mainly?

Kate could have killed him for his eager interest in the unimportant side of things. What did it matter if these visitors travelled by bus or by wheelbarrow? Who could
care less if they came from one part of America or another? They didn’t know
any
parts of America, for God’s sake. And yet little by little John was learning more about the whole undertaking across the river than anyone else would have learned from this clever American. There could be a purpose to his questions. She looked hard at John, fighting the lump in her throat which made her want to burst into tears. He looked so good and patient; he had worked for so many years at a job that he would never have chosen. It would be cruel to see it swept away by this successful man who could have had power and riches anywhere else on the earth.

Kate knew she should join in the conversation. She had been conspicuously silent. In fact she saw John glance at her, his face still cheerful and his smile all-embracing.

‘Well I can’t tell you, Patrick, what an excitement all this will be.’ He looked at his wife as if he were leaving the way open for her to add her words of delight and welcome. Kate was still too full to trust herself to conversation.

‘The excitement is mainly mine,’ Patrick said. ‘If you knew how many times I dreamed of this, and often I had to say it aloud to myself, you know like a chant or a prayer. It will happen; it will happen.’ He looked at them both with an engaging smile.

‘Now I almost have to tell myself it
has
happened, it
has
happened.’ He looked so boyish and delighted it was hard not to like him.

Kate decided to speak. ‘And how would we come into all this? How can we . . . um . . . help you in it all?’ she asked. Her voice was definitely faltering and she wasn’t far from tears.

‘But that’s what good neighbours will always do,’ he
cried triumphantly. ‘I’ll get my guests to come to you, send them over to you before lunch or in the early afternoon . . . when maybe you could do with an injection.’ He looked around the empty bar and left a short significant pause. ‘I guess this would be a good time to send a group over for an Irish coffee or something. And you can tell your regulars when there’s entertainment on in the Thatch that they might like to come and see. Or better, any of them who are talented, if they want to come and perform. Play for people. It’s their place now.’ He smiled from one to another.

‘I guess you know that it’s a principle of business that one successful establishment leads to another. Business grows out of custom to an area. Mark my words, there’s going to be new places starting up out on River Road before we know it. By the end of the sixties they’ll be asking where Bridge Street is . . . they’ll all think that River Road is the centre of the universe, and the Ryans and O’Neills will have been here from the outset.’

John was smiling back at him. Was John Ryan under the net? Had the web of companionship and complicity caught him up? Kate realised that there were going to be very few people who would not be caught in that net. Even her own Dara and Michael, who had vowed never to speak to the new owner of Fernscourt, were flashing him grateful smiles and friendly glances when he said that they could continue playing there.

So far only Fergus Slattery had managed to remain aloof, and he hadn’t met the American yet; perhaps he would be bowled over like the others had all been. Kate smiled on, though she felt there was a distant ache in her face. If John could smile so could she. Anyway there was
nothing to be gained by showing her hand now. She must remember that if she came straight out with all her worries and hostilities, it would do nothing but harm. Living all these years with the solid John Ryan had taught her that much anyway.

So she accepted with a dimpling smile when the laughing American begged to be allowed to buy them one more drink so that they could toast the success of River Road and especially those who were in at the very start.

Fergus Slattery heard that the American was doing the rounds. He didn’t want to be in. His father had gone fishing; he put a closed sign on the door and headed out.

‘Where will I say you’ve gone?’ Miss Purcell asked, not because she thought anyone would call, but because she wanted to know what was taking him away from his business in the middle of the afternoon.

‘Go out on the doorstep every hour and say to the crowds that Sergeant Sheehan and I have raised a posse of men and we’ve gone out to see if we can bring in any poachers. Dead or alive. That should satisfy them,’ he said.