The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (117 page)

   Tommy Leonard came up River Road and called to collect the Ryans for mass.

“I thought I’d walk with you,” he said to Dara. “It’s the only thing I can think of that might help.”

Dara was grateful.

“And Dara, I did something else. I went up to Miss Byrne and asked her did backs ever mend, and she was full of information. She said that after a bit when they know how bad the injuries are they will decide on what program to follow. It’s programs, you see, one kind for one kind of a back one kind for another. She said they do marvelous things now.”

Tommy’s face shone with the good news. Dara managed a watery smile.

Michael looked very white, Tommy thought, as if he had been sick.

“I’d say you could have a dispensation not to go to mass,” Tommy said after some reflection.

“Did you get that straight from the pope?” Michael asked with a sort of a grin.

Tommy was pleased. At least he had made both of them smile a bit. They walked down River Road, the four Ryan children and Tommy.

“Will I have to walk ahead of you or behind you?” Eddie asked.

“Of course not,” Dara said.

“You’re all right with us,” said Michael.

Eddie’s face registered great alarm. Things must be worse than he thought if he was allowed to walk with the twins and Tommy Leonard. Mam must be in a very bad way altogether.

   Kitty Daly wheeled her bicycle out quietly.

If anyone asked her why she needed a bike to go the few yards to mass she would say that she was going out to her best friend’s house afterward. This was a girl who lived on a farm three miles out beyond the bridge.

But nobody asked her, so Kitty looked up and down Bridge Street and set off at a great pace toward Coyne’s wood. While the mass bell was ringing over Mountfern she pedaled on and got to the old stile at the same time as Kerry O’Neill.

Hand in hand they walked through the paths that had hardly changed since their grandparents and great-grandparents had been young and had visited Coyne’s wood all those years ago.

   Patrick O’Neill could have done without this parade. But he knew that not to have come to mass would have caused more comment still. His face was grim as he walked into the church. A year ago he would have known nobody here, now there wasn’t a face that he didn’t recognize nor a person who didn’t know him.

He knelt beside Grace and wondered to himself how the church had survived so long with ineffectual old men like Canon Moran in charge of parishes. Possibly because there were no thrusting young men anxious to topple them as there were in ordinary business.

Or if the thrusting young men
did
feel like that then they were not in the right calling. Thrusting young men reminded him of his son, and the great wave of annoyance came over him again. As it had when he had spoken to Kerry and told him about the accident.

“We’re insured aren’t we?” Kerry had said.

Patrick had remained silent.

“Well we are, Father, hey?” Kerry’s voice had sounded impatient.

“Yes we’re insured,” Patrick had said.

“And Father, the whole place is hung with notices. Christ, they can’t even expect
our
insurance to pay.”

Patrick hadn’t trusted himself to speak. He realized that if Kerry O’Neill reacted this way he had inherited it from his father.

Patrick saw Fergus Slattery loosening his collar and tie and looking around him a bit wildly. He wondered was the lawyer coming adrift in some way. There had been that very unpleasant and unexpected scene in the hospital where Fergus had shouted at him, not caring who heard.

“Don’t think you can buy your way out of this, O’Neill, as you bought everything else.”

The man had been almost deranged.

Patrick had put out a hand to calm him and Fergus had flung it away.

“Your tactics won’t work with me, O’Neill, you can’t glad-hand me like you do everyone in the county. Kate Ryan was injured—possibly fatally injured—on your premises by a machine in your ownership by a man in your employ. Making a few grand gestures about American surgeons, friends of yours no doubt who’ll say that her spine was broken always … that’s not going to change the mind of the courts of law.”

“Ah Fergus, will you stop and think? Who’s talking about courts of law? We’re talking about making Kate better.”

“
I’m
talking about courts of law, district courts, circuit courts, the High Court, the Supreme Court. Don’t worry, O’Neill, this time you’re not getting away with it. This time you won’t smile your way out of ruining people’s lives.”

They had calmed him, other people had. Patrick had walked away knowing that his presence was inflaming Fergus Slattery more every second.

Patrick wondered if Slattery was sweet on Mrs. Ryan. There was something very passionate and personal in the way he talked. But he realized that in fact it didn’t matter whether Fergus Slattery was in love with Kate Ryan or not, what mattered was that he held Patrick totally responsible for the accident. And so might a lot of other people.

   Marian Johnson was at eleven o’clock mass. She had tried on her three hats and examined herself with distaste in all of them. They were aging, every single one of them. She looked like a middle-aged frump.

But then she didn’t want to wear a headscarf. People like Marian Johnson always wore hats, it said something about who you were to wear a hat at mass.

She had driven quickly to the church and looked in the mirror of her car without pleasure. She saw Patrick and Grace, and thank heavens there was no sign of that foreign-looking American woman who had arrived a few days ago. She had heard some very unsettling stories about Patrick being discovered in the same room as this Mrs. Fine when they were searching for him after the accident.

But that couldn’t be so. Anyway she would be here at mass with him if she were a close friend of any kind.

She had hardly spoken to Patrick since Kate Ryan’s accident. He was so preoccupied and either on the phone to America or over in the hospital as if it were his fault.

Heavens, everyone was saying that he hadn’t a thing to blame himself for. It wasn’t his fault if that woman didn’t know what dangers and hazards there were there. Living right across the river from them. It was terrible for her of course, and all those children.

Marian’s eye fell on them in a row: the solemn dark-eyed twins who were such friends of Grace O’Neill, and two scruffy little boys with spiky hair.

She heard Canon Moran’s reed-thin voice pipe on about happy death or speedy recovery. The man must be getting senile. How could you recover from a broken spine speedily, for heaven’s sake? Then she saw Dara taking the smaller scruffy boy by the hand and leading him out of the church.

With his other hand rolled into a fist and stuck into his eye, the child was roaring.

“He said happy death, Mammy’s not going to have a happy death; they said she was all right. They
said
she was all right.”

   Kate struggled during the night. She was very agitated and wouldn’t be comforted.

“Shush shush now. I’m here, there’s nothing to worry about,” the night nurse soothed.

“There’s everything to worry about.” Kate was suddenly clear and rational. “I can’t stay here, I have to go home. They’ll never manage.”

“Of course they’ll manage, they’re managing fine, isn’t that what your husband has been saying to you every day for a week?”

“A
week?
I don’t believe it.”

“Don’t think about it now, try to rest.”

“It can’t be a week,” Kate Ryan said, and her over-bright eyes closed heavily as she went back to something that was neither sleep nor complete unconsciousness. She had been there for a time that she couldn’t work out. Every time things cleared people told her some different time scale.

Her breathing was heavy and jerky.

The night nurse took her pulse and marveled at the resilience of the human body. To be able to survive those injuries. To be able to lie still while people worked out just how bad those injuries were.

   They were managing in a sort of a way. Often it was the well-meant curiosity and concern that was the hardest to take. People came with stories of bone setters who had made the crippled walk, with details of saints who had interceded with God in startling ways and with herbal cures which had been known in these parts for years and never once known to fail.

People came with kind worried faces saying that Kate should be kept still for six months or that she should be on her feet now before the paralysis had time to set in, or that she should have hot seaweed baths.

The support of a small community had its good side and its wearying side. Nobody could be offended, nobody could be ignored. And it didn’t have the advantage of taking their minds off things. Everyone was talking about the same thing. How to get Kate Ryan cured and back in their midst.

   Jack Coyne was the last person John wanted to see come into the pub.

“It’s all right, don’t stand up. I’m not here socializing.”

“Sorry, Jack, what can I get you? It
is
a public house; I have to try and keep things normal for everyone’s sake.”

“No you don’t, things are
not
normal. You’ve contacted a solicitor, I suppose.”

“Ah Jack, stop will you …”

“Someone has to keep you straight, John. You’ll need a big firm of solicitors, Fergus will be the first to tell you that. Don’t just go to someone in the town, go right to Dublin. You’ll have to in the end.”

“It’s doctors she needs and a run of luck, not lawyers for Christ’s sake.”

“She’s the businesswoman in this family, she’d be the first to agree with me.”

“Please, Jack. I know you mean well. You’re not helping.”

“I can give you the name of a big firm. I let one of the partners have a car last year, he came down here fishing. Jesus Mary and Joseph, John, O’Neill has to be stopped. He has to be stopped, I tell you, and you’ll need the big guns on him. He can’t come in here to this parish throwing his weight around, favoring one, ignoring another and in the end getting Kate into this terrible mess.”

“It’s not the time … I beg you.”

“If you don’t act now it’ll be too late, he’ll outfox you. There’s a lot of people in this place standing up for you, John, don’t let them down.”

   “Mr. Ryan?”

“What is it, Carrie?”

“Mr. Ryan, Jimbo asked me to find out kind of if you were going to be taking Mr. O’Neill to the law for all that’s happened to Mrs. Ryan.”

“And what on earth business is it of Jimbo’s, can I ask?”

“I know, Mr. Ryan. I didn’t want to ask you at all, but he said a lot of the fellows who work for Mr. O’Neill were wondering and that I was in a grand position to know, working here and all.”

She looked wretched, her long lank hair falling into her eyes. John knew that if Kate were standing here she would hand Carrie a hair clip so that she wouldn’t blind herself.

He looked at her helplessly without saying anything.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Ryan.” Her face was scarlet. “It’s just that he said it would be easy, but I didn’t know what else to do but ask. There’d be no point in my listening at doors.”

“No point, Carrie.” He was weary. “Tell Jimbo that you think suing Patrick O’Neill is the last thing on my mind. There’s no plans to stop him in his building, their jobs will be all right. That’s what it’s about.”

“I suppose it is,” Carrie said miserably.

   “Was that Miss Johnson from the Grange leaving in such a hurry?” Mrs. Daly from the Dairy wanted to know.

“It was indeed.” Rita Walsh tossed her head. She had just had words with Marian Johnson. Unpleasant words. Rita had said like any human would have said that it was a tragedy about Kate Ryan, wasn’t it appalling to think she had been so badly injured only yards from her own home, in a place that used to be green fields and wild brambles.

Marian Johnson had taken this as some kind of criticism of Patrick O’Neill; she had answered hotly that the Ryan woman should have been able to read the dozen notices around the building site.

It had all been very unfortunate; the hair-do had not been a success. Every attempt to organize a parting in Marian’s many-crowned head had been interrupted by further defense of the American. Rita had been foolish enough to pass some remark about Patrick being well able to look after himself and if he wasn’t, hadn’t he that foreign-looking woman, the one he had installed over in the Slieve Sunset, to look after him? This had caused an unexpected reaction, and Marian had left before her hair was finished.

“It’s pathetic at her age,” Mrs. Daly said disapprovingly. “She’s well into her forties, what does she think is going to happen? A big white wedding up in the church with Canon Moran blessing the happy couple? She should have sense.”

Mrs. Leonard from the stationer’s was coming out from under one of the big heavy chrome hairdryers. She didn’t want to miss anything that was going on.

“I was in Conway’s this morning—you know, the shop part, not the pub of course.” She gave a tinkle of a laugh. “They were saying in there that they hoped there’d be no bad feeling over this. An act of God is all it was.”

“Well yes,” Rita said unthinkingly. “But an act of God that happened because of that man’s machinery and bulldozers. If he hadn’t come back and filled the place up with things you’d never expect in the heart of the country …”

She felt Mrs. Daly’s shoulders tense slightly under the pink cotton cape. She knew that for a second time that morning she was going to find herself in disagreement with a client.

“That’s all very well, Rita,” Mrs. Daly said, “but it doesn’t do to forget what benefits that man is bringing to this place. It would be a pity if people were to go around saying things carelessly that might drive him out of it. He’s in a terrible way, I hear, near to tears over the whole thing, and he’s like a child about Mountfern and wanting to be part of it. The smallest thing could blow him away from here like a puff of wind. We’ll have to watch what we say.”

Rita looked in the mirror and her eyes met Mrs. Daly’s eyes, small and round like Mrs. Daly’s face, satisfied with life the way it now was since the American had come to breathe hope into the town and to give Daly’s Dairy the chance of supplying a large hotel.