He agreed. Unwillingly. And went to Fergus on a bright September morning.
Miss Purcell had told him of a novena that was being done for Kate and a bouquet of masses which would be offered on the first Tuesday of the month. She wondered when would poor Mrs Ryan be able to travel to Lourdes, the fund had been generously subscribed. Eventually John got away from her and sat down in the room where his wife used to work every morning.
‘Haven’t you got anyone yet?’ he asked kindly, knowing that Fergus Slattery had put off getting any permanent help out of loyalty to Kate and to the belief that she might work again.
‘Your wife told me off about that too. I’ll have to, I will. Soon.’
‘Right.’ John didn’t nag him, he knew how irritating it was to be told to do something if you didn’t want to. Jack Coyne was always urging him to get a new roof or a light-up sign over the pub. Things that sounded sensible, things that he might do one day, but not immediately.
‘I’ll speak as simply and quickly as I can, John. I know you don’t want to be here in case it looks as if you’re going to take Patrick O’Neill to court, so I’ll try to put you in the picture as best I can.’
‘I know you will, Fergus.’ John nodded politely like an obedient child.
Fergus felt his collar a bit tight around his neck, and loosened it with his finger. He seemed almost reluctant to begin now that he had the undivided attention of the man who was usually moving away to pull pints or to greet those who came in the door.
‘Well, it’s a matter of just spelling it out,’ he said.
John looked at him and waited.
‘And if there’s anything you don’t agree with you’ll say . . . of course.’
‘Of course,’ John agreed.
‘Well, obviously it wasn’t the time before, with everything being so upset and on top of us, but now we have to think in terms of practicalities. Like what happens when Kate comes home.’
John was silent. He was looking around the room thoughtfully as if imagining Kate working here, moving quickly from typewriter to cupboard, from big scales where she would have weighed the long narrow envelopes of documents before they were taken to Sheila Whelan’s to post.
‘John,’ Fergus said.
‘Yes, I know, practicalities. Well, those are being thought of in most ways. Judy Byrne will come in three times a week at first to keep Kate doing the exercises. And Patrick’s getting his builders to even out the floor levels so that she can come into the pub on the chair without anyone having to lift it. He’s been very generous, Patrick has, generous and thoughtful.’ John’s glance went round the lawyer’s office again, slowly and deliberately.
Fergus could barely conceal his irritation.
‘I don’t doubt that. No, look at me, John, I know you’ve heard me giving out about the man, I don’t doubt that he has been generosity itself, but can I beg you to listen? Now two years ago there was this act passed, the Civil Liability Act of 1961, and up to this there were just three kinds of person who were deemed to exist on your land: an invitee, a licensee and a trespasser. There were no other people. So if anyone got injured the decision was, which kind of person were they? If they were an invitee they got one kind of compensation, a licensee got another – a licensee would be somebody, say, who had permission to be there in some category or other – and the trespasser got another.’
He saw John fidgeting.
‘Please listen, John, I’m making it very short and you’ll see why it is important in a minute. There used to be lots of innocent trespassers, people who weren’t intending trespass . . .’
‘But Kate wasn’t . . .’
‘Listen, will you, like children or like Kate, say, who was a neighbour and friend . . . So the law was changed making the landowner more liable than he used to be in the old days. So Patrick or his insurance company has a legal liability to pay compensation . . .’
‘But he has, I tell you, we don’t want to be blackmailing him . . .’
‘The law, God Almighty, the law of the land we live in says he has to pay it, he knows he has to pay it, he doesn’t live in some cloud-bloody-cuckoo-land like you do.’
‘Why are you shouting at me, Fergus?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I think it’s because I’m being so long-winded and you won’t wait till I get to the point.’
‘All right.’
‘So the system is you have to sue Patrick. Kate has to sue him. That’s the machinery, that’s the way it’s done. His insurance company won’t pay, can’t pay until there’s a case set up, until the proper requirements of the law are complied with.’
‘We don’t want to sue him.’
‘He knows that, you know that, I know that, his lawyers know that. Even his insurance company knows that. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, people are suing each other day in and day out who are the best of friends.’
‘I don’t believe you!’
‘But it’s the way, it’s the system. You know Marian Johnson up at the Grange. When she was about eighteen she drove her father home from some place out the country and they had an accident, he was badly injured, he sued her. The insurance company gave him compensation. He didn’t sue her because he was her enemy, he sued her because that’s how it’s done. That’s the way you unlock the money.’
‘It seems very hypocritical and devious to me.’
Fergus was weary. ‘It’s not really, John, it’s sensible, it’s the only way to keep control, otherwise insurance companies would have to be paying out huge awards and they couldn’t afford it and the premiums would be enormous. This way at least they know it’s a genuine case when the parties are prepared to go to court about it. It gives them a sort of authenticity, if you see what I mean.’
‘You’re very good at explaining the law, and you obviously understand it too, which is more than a lot of lawyers . . . but, Fergus, do you have any understanding at all about what it is to be a neighbour? I mean, you’re here in this house in the middle of the street, nothing changes for you no matter who comes to live here. You don’t depend on good will and rubbing along with people like we do in a pub. It doesn’t make sense to go into a court of law and say things about a neighbour, things that cannot be unsaid.’ John was calm but he seemed very resolute.
Fergus tried again.
‘There’ll be very little said, and you and Patrick won’t have to do any of the saying. The question is, would you like a different solicitor?’
‘Not you?’
‘I’m very close to you, to all of you. Perhaps it might be easier with someone from the town. It often is.’
‘If we want to have anyone, Fergus, then Kate and I would want to have you.’
‘Right.’
‘Do we need to do anything immediately?’
‘No, not for a while, leave it with me.’
‘Oh, and Fergus, could you explain to Patrick O’Neill about it all being friendly when it starts? You know, tell him about Marian Johnson in the Grange and her father and all. It would make it a bit less formal.’
‘I don’t need to tell him that, he’s a businessman, John, he knows.’
‘I’d like you to tell him all the same.’
‘If it comes up easily I will,’ Fergus said.
14
Patrick was pleased to get a message from Rachel that Kate would like to see him on Friday afternoon.
‘She must be getting better, is she?’ he asked.
‘She says she is,’ Rachel said doubtfully. ‘I think she looked a bit feverish, excited. Still, it’s better than all that terribly depressed way she was last week.’
‘What would she like? She has a radio, you say?’
‘Yes, she hardly listens to it. She might like a game – Scrabble, say. She could play it with the little guys when they go in.’
‘That’s a great idea, Rachel,’ he beamed. ‘Where in the world will I get Scrabble? I may have to go to Dublin for it, or Shannon.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’l
l get it for you.’
She had already got a set, and many other things. She wanted Kate to think that Patrick was thoughtful and concerned.
John sat on the edge of the bed and told Kate everything.
‘He seems dead set that there’s going to be a case,’ she said, biting at her lower lip.
‘I’m just reporting everything that he said, and trying to give you the sort of tone he said it in.’
‘You’re doing very well.’ She grinned ruefully. ‘I can practically hear him speaking.’
‘He’s so out for our good, he wants the best for you.’
‘The best for me is not to have to lock horns with Patrick O’Neill in public. The best would be not having to lie here worrying myself sick what he’ll think, what he’ll do when we turn on him like an ungrateful dog. That’s what it’s going to be like, John, no matter how many fine words Fergus says about the law . . .’
She was distressed, her eyes full of tears and her face red with exertion.
John took her hand. ‘You’re not going to spend any time lying here worrying, not even five minutes. I’ll tell you what we’ll do . . . and you’re the one who can do it.’
Soothing and shushing down her protests he explained to her that she could sort everything out if she happened by accident to arrange that Patrick O’Neill and Fergus Slattery should both turn up at the same time in her hospital bedroom.
Then it could all be said out in the open.
Fergus was told by the hospital that Friday would be a good day to come in and see Mrs Ryan. He drove glumly to the hospital. She had been so low the last time, it had been an effort to keep up any kind of conversation at all.
He had brought the application forms of the four young women who had applied for jobs as his secretary. He knew two of them, daughters of local farmers who had done secretarial courses. He thought they would be very unlikely candidates, he wanted Kate’s advice badly. Wouldn’t it be great if she was in good sparkling form? Dr White said that some days she was the old Kate, laughing and joking, and you would think she was just lying down for a rest. Other times she had been awake all night, convinced she had not very much longer to live, and was railing at the injustice of it.
Please may it be a good day. For all their sakes.
She was as flushed as a girl, he hoped it was a good sign. She was delighted that he had brought the confidential files, and urged strongly in favour of Deirdre Dunne, a girl who lived about three miles away.
‘Look, she’s given you all kinds of details, like how it will be no trouble to get a lift in and out. That’s sensible. And I know Deirdre, her father comes into Ryan’s. A tighter-mouthed man you never met. He wouldn’t tell you what day it was let alone anyone else’s business.’
She was indeed like the old Kate, teasing him, sending him up, full of plans. Rachel Fine had said that her room should be moved downstairs; soon builders would go in and flatten out all the steps in the downstairs so she could come into the pub and the kitchen. The parlour was going to be made into a big bed-sitting room for her, with a special bathroom beside it. There woud be a rail all round it, and garden doors – you know those French windows with glass in them down to the floor – out to the side yard, which would be made posh, and she could wheel herself out there.
Fergus took off his glasses and wiped them because they had misted up with delight that she was able to think of a life after this white hospital room, and with pity that it would be limited by wheelchairs and rails round walls.
John Ryan came in then, told him to sit where he was, no need to go, he’d been in and out a dozen times during the afternoon and would be again. Just then there was a tap, and Patrick stood there.
He looked shy in his country tweeds and his crisp shirt, and his curly hair combed just outside the door. In his arms he held a big gift-wrapped parcel and a glass bowl with fruit in it. Nothing very dramatic, just healthy-looking apples and thick-skin oranges and two yellow pears.
Fergus wished he had brought something like that instead of the box of sweets which lay on the cabinet beside the bed.
‘They tell me that I’d find you better today than any day.’ Patrick was lit up with pleasure. You could see it.
Kate stretched out her arms in greeting from the bed.
‘Thank you for all you’ve done. I can never thank you enough. The room, the car for everyone to come in and out. You’ve been too good.’
‘I couldn’t do enough, Kate, to tell you how sorry I am that it had to happen. And if it did have to happen why did it have to be on my land, with diggers working for me?’
There was no mistaking his sincerity.
‘Don’t I know that. I’ve every proof of it,’ Kate said.
Patrick seemed to notice for the first time that John and Fergus were in the room. He went to John first and shook him by the hand.
‘My, doesn’t she look well, after all she’s been through.’
It was just the right touch, Fergus thought miserably. He in no way minimised her agonies, yet he concentrated on the hopeful side. Then it was Fergus’s turn.
‘Slattery, you must be as pleased as all of us. It’s a good time to meet.’
‘Yup.’ Fergus got this urge to behave like a taciturn cowboy every time he met Patrick O’Neill nowadays. The fact that he was somehow ungracious made him even more annoyed with himself.
‘And I’m very glad you both happen to be here at the same time,’ Kate said, looking at them eagerly from her bed, her cheeks pink, her hair tied with a yellow ribbon matching the ribbon in her lacy bedjacket, both given to her by Rachel Fine.
‘Why is that?’ Fergus was suspicious: Kate was too bright, John was looking at the floor.
Patrick knew nothing about it, whatever it was. He smiled to know what Kate was going to say.
‘Because I am determined to get out of here and live a proper life again, and I’m tired of people coming to my bed and talking about formalities. All I want to know now, and it will help me to get better, is that there will never be any animosity between us no matter what formalities there are.’
‘How could there be animosity?’ Patrick cried.
‘Kate, why don’t you leave this until later? Until you’re better,’ Fergus said levelly.
‘One of the things stopping me getting better is this,’ she said. ‘Honestly it is, I swear it, at night I wake up and think my life is over, it’s so unfair; and other nights I wake up and think of the things people tell me down in physiotherapy – that I should claim this and I should claim that, and it would make life more bearable, and it’s all from faceless insurance companies anyway so nobody gets hurt. Then I think of Patrick living beside us and what it’s going to be like, and of Grace and Kerry and the twins and how I’d hate a fight more than anything . . . So that’s why I’m asking you, my friends, will it be done without animosity?’
Fergus opened his mouth and closed it again like a fish.
John said nothing, but laid his hand supportively on Kate’s arm.
Patrick O’Neill smiled more broadly than ever as if he could have heard no better news than this current subject Kate wanted to discuss. ‘But of course we’ll talk about it, from now until you feel too tired. Kate, John, I assure you I was only waiting until you felt able to talk about it. And obviously since you have Mr Slattery here too I feel he would be glad it was brought up as soon as . . .’
‘I assure you, Mr O’Neill,’ Fergus began a trifle pompously.
‘No, I know it just happened to come up, but let me say something, hand on heart, for weeks now I’ve been wanting to say to someone of you three and never finding the right moment. I know the law, I am so well insured it would make your head swim. The courts will decide a compensation and they will pay it.
‘Kate, you can never get your spine back, but you can get some comforts, goddamn it. I’ll see to it that you do.’
‘But we don’t want to go to court against you, Patrick,’ John said, avoiding Fergus’s eye.
<
br /> ‘Nobody wants to go to court and maybe we mightn’t even have to go inside the door,’ said Patrick. ‘It could all be settled at the last moment. That’s what always happens. But that’s the machinery, that’s the formula . . . the same way as there’s a process for getting a licence for a pub or permission to hold a raffle . . . That’s right, isn’t it, Attorney?’
Fergus nodded, not trusting himself to speak. The man was making himself clear in a way that Fergus hadn’t been able to do. John and Kate hadn’t trusted him. He felt his mouth full of acid. ‘That’s right,’ he said.
‘So, let’s get the insurance guys, hey? God, if you know how much they get me for every year. It will be a pleasure to get them to give you as much as we can squeeze from them. All I say, though, is that it’s a shame crying out to heaven that it has to be over something like this.’
He was so full of generosity, no mention of the no-claim bonus he would lose, no mention of the pressure that giant insurance companies who handled his business both here and in America would put on him. Fergus felt moved by the man’s warmth. But in his heart he felt sure that Patrick was right. Some settlement would be reached on the steps of a courthouse, and at this moment Patrick knew exactly how much it was.
Fergus felt an urge so strong that it was almost overpowering to take him on and fight him in every court of the land, refusing offers, settlements and recommendations until he got for Kate Ryan something that would even in a paltry way compensate for the life that Patrick O’Neill and his mechanical diggers had taken away from her.
Later he remembered, with his mouth in a thin line, that the cute fox O’Neill had said nothing about the private room in the hospital being a gift from Patrick to Kate or the use of a car for the Ryan family being a gift from Patrick to Kate. Oh, no. These would be included in the settlement when the time came.
He remembered how pleased Kate had been with the game of Scrabble. He wished he had thought of it, with a pain that almost tore him in two.
He felt that there was great truth in Mrs Whelan’s words that everyone had gone a little mad since O’Neill came to Mountfern. He hoped he hadn’t gone madder than most. Fergus knew that he must do something practical rather than sit and rage against what had been done and couldn’t be undone.