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 tore off them.’ Maggie was perplexed by the enormity of the decision. ‘So you wouldn’t know what would be 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 along 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 on to 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 gaol 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 tomb-stones. 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 laid in the Catholic graveyard. Well we wi
ll, anyway,’ Maggie explained. ‘If you stay then I suppose you will too.’
‘Of course we’ll stay, why would we not stay?’ Grace sat on the edge of an untended grave. ‘Hey, we should do something for this poor James Edward Gray, nobody’s weeded round him for years. Of course we’re going to stay.’
Maggie was helping to remove some of the bigger dandelions from James Edward Gray’s resting place.
‘People were wondering would you not find it all too dull for you here,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Heavens no, it’s fantastic. You want us to stay, Maggie? You don’t want us to go away, do you?’ Grace’s beautiful face was troubled. She looked really anxious.
Maggie couldn’t remember why she had felt so upset yesterday evening as she had walked home along by the Fern, and how she had wished that the O’Neills had never come here.
She looked at the worried blue eyes of Grace O’Neill, and with a great big smile that went all over her face, Maggie Daly said, ‘Of course we don’t want you to go away; it’s great that you’re here.’ And she meant it.
She meant it not just at that moment but for a long time. Like when they joined the fishing party which was waiting for them at the footbridge.
‘Sorry,’ Grace said casually, ‘I dragged Maggie off to show me the graves. You’re right, they’re fabulous. We’re going to try and smarten up James Edward Gray a bit.’
‘Where’s he? In the corner near the wall, is it?’ Dara asked.
Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. Dara wasn’t a bit annoyed that Maggie had taken Grace away. People like Dara didn’t get annoyed, Maggie told herself. Only mean-spirited people like herself got jealous and possessive and annoyed. Grace was telling Michael that on consideration she wondered could he bait their lines with those lumps of bread they had been talking about yesterday; she said she thought it would be easier to learn on bait made from crusts and then she could progress to maggots later.
Dara was disappointed. She had a jar of maggots ready for threading on to hooks. But Michael said Grace was right, better get used to this kind first, because it was always easier to hand.
Grace flashed Maggie Daly a smile. Things were much easier than they seemed, the smile said.
Kitty Daly thought that Mrs Ryan wasn’t bad for a grownup; at least she wasn’t a religious maniac like her own mother was. She was a woman you could talk to a bit.
‘Do you think I could work for a bit in the bar, Mrs Ryan?’
‘No, Kitty, I’m sorry.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re too young. That’s one reason. We don’t need anyone. That’s another.’
‘I’m almost fifteen. That’s not young.’
‘I know it’s not.’ Kate sighed. All this terrible sulking and mulish behaviour probably lay ahead with her own Dara. ‘But it is too young for bar work. I suppose this is a silly question, but why couldn’t you work in your own shop?’
She took one look at Kitty’s face and decided that it was a silly question. The girl looked distressed.
‘Did you want the money for something in particular?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, maybe you could try to see if there is any other way of getting what you want. Like if it’s clothes, could you make them?’
‘It’s hair, Mrs Ryan.’
‘Hair?’ Kitty had the Daly curls, frizz really. There was nothing startlingly bad about the child’s hair. It was clean and neat, and a brownish reddish colour.
‘Yes, a good cut would make all the difference, and no matter what else Mrs Walsh is she does know how to cut hair.’
Kate let the comment pass. No point in drawing an argument on herself with this difficult girl.
‘Could you do a deal with her? Sweep up the hair from the floor, make people cups of tea, put the towels out to dry for two weeks, say, and then she might give you a haircut free?’
Kitty considered it without much pleasure.
‘It wouldn’t be much fun.’
‘No, but if she agreed it would get you the haircut.’
‘Two weeks is an awfully long time.’
‘True. I suppose you’d have to work out whether it’s worth it or not.’
Kitty thought a bit. Mrs Ryan was a lot better than most people’s mothers. She didn’t say things like, your hair was fine the way it was, or, at your age I didn’t have the chance to go to hairdressers. She put her mind to the question properly.
‘Yes, well I’ll give it a go,’ she said ungraciously.
‘Kitty.’
‘Yes, Mrs Ryan?’
‘Do you want a hint?’
‘All right.’
‘If I were you, I’d tell Mrs Walsh how much you admire her own hair, and the way she cuts other people’s, and you were wondering if you could make her a proposition. I’d be over-polite if I were you, because Mrs Walsh is a very busy person with a lot on her mind, and she’d be quick to dismiss an idea unless it was put to her nicely.’ Kate Ryan saw the defensive look on Kitty’s face, and hastened to say, ‘I mean, Kitty, I couldn’t care less if you shaved your head bald and painted the Irish flag on it. I think your hair is fine as it is, but I know what you mean about a good cut giving it a better shape. So you can take my hint if you like, or ignore it if you like. Now I must get along with my work.’
Kitty thanked her, less grumpily than she had been going to. And in fact it was a good idea. She would ask Mrs Walsh straight away. Imagine Mrs Walsh going to bed with men for money. It was unbelievable, but that is what she did. Everyone knew, but no one talked about it much. Imagine men paying to go to bed with anyone as old as Mrs Walsh.
Kerry O’Neill had no great hopes about his new school. He had gone there with his father for an unsatisfactory visit, and Father Minehan had marked out a certain amount of work that would have to be done. He had agreed that since Kerry was fifteen it would not be practical for him to learn the Irish language at this stage, but he would be expected to master enough of it to get the general sense of things Irish. He was a forbidding-looking man, white, ascetic, with a nervous smile. He had managed to suggest more than once to Kerry’s father that the school, which was a very illustrious one, had fallen on hard times due to a massive and expensive rebuilding programme. There was a building fund that would cripple the community eventually; they couldn’t raise the fees yet again this year, so they often had to rely on the generosity of those parents who were lucky enough to be financially secure to help in some of the extreme times of need.
Kerry had been quiet and respectful through most of the interview. At an early stage in the proceedings he realised that Father Minehan didn’t respond to charm. He walked admiringly around the old buildings and asked bright questions about the original building and the time that the order had first set it up.
‘It’s only been here a hundred years. It’s not one of our older foundations,’ Father Minehan had said a little testily.
‘Don’t forget, I’m from the United States. That seems very old to me,’ Kerry said with a smile.
Father Minehan softened then. Kerry had said the right thing.
Coming home in the car his father looked at Kerry.
‘You handled that one well, son. Our sort of cleric, wasn’t he?’
Kerry didn’t join in what he considered his father’s allmen-together mode. ‘I think he was all right, he has a job to do.’
Patrick was annoyed. ‘What do you mean, he has a job to do?’
‘Well, just that. He has to keep me in my place, arrogant young American know-all, trample me down a bit. He has to try to fleece you for his building fund. Irish-American: more money than sense, get him to sign a cheque.’
Patrick gave a genuine shout of laughter.
‘It didn’t take you long to sum him up. Still, it’s got a great reputation. It’s one of the finest schools in Ireland.’
Kerry turned away to look out of the window; he knew what his father would say next, and he knew the tone he would say it in. Patrick
was about to say that he got the poorest of educations in grade school and had to go back when he was twenty to learn more than reading and writing. He often said this. But he never got the response he was hoping for. Kerry O’Neill never once said that it certainly hadn’t made any difference, as Father had done so well. He never said anything at all.
Grace, on the other hand, was looking forward to starting school. It was different for her, she told Kerry, she knew all her friends already, she would be in the same class as Dara and Maggie and Jacinta. They had told her all about the worst things, and how to get round Sister Laura. Grace was going to have to learn Irish, and Sister Laura had suggested she become familiar with the alphabet and a small amount of vocabulary before term began.
The others had been very helpful, although the boys had taught her a really rude phrase which she might easily have said unless Dara had told her what it meant. She had got her navy uniform in the big town, and even the plain skirt and jumper and the pale blue shirt which looked so dull, and drained the colour out of the other girls, could not take from Grace O’Neill’s healthy good looks. She bought a navy hair ribbon and tied up her golden curls.
She paraded with her school bag for her brother.
‘How do I look?’
‘Great.’ His mind was elsewhere.
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘No, seriously, you do look great. You look older than you are.’
‘Older in this?’ Grace was disbelieving.
‘Yes, you look much more grown up than all the other puddings here. Don’t let these fellows make any more rude remarks. You hear?’
‘Oh, Kerry, it wasn’t fellows telling rude remarks. It was Tommy and Liam and . . .’
‘Just not any more.’
Grace wished now she hadn’t told him. He didn’t understand how funny it had been.
‘Sure, sure,’ she said to placate him.
‘You’ve no mother, Grace, and Father lives in his own world. Somebody has to look after you. That’s why I sound like an old bear, an old hen . . . whichever it is that does the clucking and fussing.’