‘No, this is au pair. You know, doing a little light domestic duties and speaking English to the children.’
‘When would that be, Sister?’ Kate was interested.
‘It was summer they were really thinking about. Two families in particular. We have the highest references. It’s in the Loire country where the châteaux are. It would be a great opportunity.’
‘I’ll have to talk to Dara’s father, Sister Laura. There are a lot of things to take into account. The fare, and that. And if she’ll go! She’s very thick with the Americans, she may not want to go off to France in the middle of her summer.’
‘She’ll learn no French and very little else from an American girl.’ Sister Laura had fairly trenchant views about everything. ‘I’ll be off anyway and if you do decide, let me know.’
‘I will indeed, Sister. Thank you for your interest.’
‘She’s a nice bright girl that Dara,’ Sister Laura said. ‘She’s a very bright girl. She lost a lot of ground the year you had your accident, poor child, she was grieving for you a lot.’
‘I don’t know how she managed at all,’ Kate said.
‘Of course she’s probably like a lighting devil nowadays, they all are at home.’ Sister Laura spoke in a matter-of-fact way that made Kate giggle.
‘I don’t seem to be able to do much right, that’s true,’ she admitted.
‘I think you’d find her a lot more appreciative after a spell in France, they learn to be grateful for home comforts.’
The nun had bright laughing eyes. Kate wondered what life would have been like for Sister Laura if she hadn’t entered the convent. Would she have been an all-wise all-knowing mother of a fifteen-year-old? Very possibly.
‘John?’
‘Hold on a minute, I’ll come in to you.’ He came in and perched on the edge of the long table that went round the walls. He looked at the pages of notes and files strewn around Kate but didn’t ask her what they were.
‘Wasn’t that a great idea, that long table? In a million years I’d never have thought of anything so useful.’ He patted the furniture admiringly.
‘Is there nobody in the bar?’ Kate didn’t want business neglected.
‘Divil a one.’ He was hamming at her. It annoyed her suddenly, there would be enough call for all that stage Irishry later.
‘Well listen, if you have a minute I want to tell you . . . well to ask you really. To discuss . . .’ She shuffled all the papers with her writing on them together.
‘Yes?’ He was mild and encouraging. Could he really be so blind to his surroundings, and to the fact that his business was going to the wall?
‘We’ll have to change a lot, I was thinking.’
‘I know. I know.’
She didn’t want to hear a soothing voice, she wanted some fire, she wanted him to take the initiative.
‘I think we’ve been fools sitting here believing that it’s all going to be sunshine and laughter when the place beyond opens . . .’ She paused for a moment, half expecting him to say something in defence of Patrick, but he said nothing.
‘I think we’ll have to start up something else, it would be mad to think they’ll leave all the bars they have over in that place to drink in ours.’
‘Particularly on a bad day,’ John agreed. ‘And our own crowd will want to be where there’s all the activity. So we’d better offer them something else apart from drink.’
Kate looked at him surprised. ‘What would you think about a café, you know, traditional sort of teas? I know it’s not what you’re used to, what you expected things would be like.’
John didn’t look at all taken aback at the idea, she realised. He must have come to the same conclusion himself.
‘Nothing’s what we were used to,’ he said, touching the wheelchair. ‘Nothing was what we expected things to be like. But we’ve survived, and we’ll go on surviving.’
17
Fergus Slattery told Kate that the case was in the Lists for next September. That it would not have to be heard, no further delays would be tolerated. Fergus hoped that the case would coincide with the hotel opening. He would love the thought of the great O’Neill missing his party because he was in court hearing a huge award for compensation being given against him. The thought of it made Fergus almost dizzy with delight. He felt his life had become grey and tired; only the thought of Kate’s compensation gave it any fire at all.
Sometimes Deirdre saw Fergus finger the slim pile of documents as he took out a letter or added one to the pile. It was moving very slowly, and even when Counsel had been briefed and it should have gone much further ahead, all kinds of things intervened. There was the delay caused by the courthouse in the big town being declared unfit for use, and so cases were adjourned. Then there was a backlog occasioned by that delay. Then the insurance company changed by merging with another insurance company and all the documents had to be reissued.
Fergus had never failed to refer briskly and efficiently to the delays and adjournments, he was always up to date on the last letter that had been sent backwards and forwards and you would believe that he had no other case on his files.
Patrick was invariably polite and equally informed; he made it his business to be equally up to date in case he might be accused of not caring what happened.
He had offered on more than one occasion to pay some money on account. It had always been coldly refused. Barely within the bounds of civility, Fergus would hint that by paying any sum now Patrick would be getting himself in well as a philanthropist with the courts later when the assessment came.
‘Any sum I paid now would be without prejudice and would be to alleviate hardship.’
‘They don’t live in hardship, they don’t need handouts and American food parcels to alleviate poverty,’ Fergus had snapped.
‘Do you dislike all Americans, or is it only me?’ Patrick had asked one day, exasperated.
‘I’m interested to note you describe yourself as American, O’Neill. Any time I’ve heard you speak you always call yourself an Irishman . . .’
It was never announced that the Ryan compensation case had been listed for hearing, but still everybody knew. Kate and John realised to their alarm that people had begun to take sides. There were those who wished the Ryans to take O’Neill and all belonging to him for as much as they could win in the Irish Sweepstakes. There were, it seemed, as many who said that the whole thing was flying in the face of all the generosity that Patrick O’Neill had shown to this parish. That they hoped the compensation would be insignificant and that somehow by this he would know that nobody in Mountfern or anywhere in the environs wished him anything but good.
‘We’ll have to pretend we don’t know what they’re saying, after all they never say it in front of us,’ John said.
‘But that’s very hard, why don’t we tell people that we have no fight with him, and try to explain all that business about insurance companies and how it’s all a formula?’
‘We can’t start explaining our business like that, you’d be the last to want us to air it all.’
‘But it’s so unfair,’ wailed Kate. ‘Why should we spend our lives pretending that things are fine?’
‘A lot of people do,’ John said mildly.
‘Not the whole time,’ she stormed.
‘A fair bit of the time.’ He spoke so quietly she stopped in her tracks. She picked up his hand and laid it to her face.
Perhaps John was pretending things were fine for a fair bit of the time. And she had never noticed.
Michael couldn’t see any difficulty ahead about the court case. Several times Jack Coyne had said that the twins shouldn’t be too friendly with Grace O’Neill since one day they were all going to have to face each other across the bar of the court. But that was nonsense. Everyone knew that it was all a matter of what insurance the companies would pay, nothing to do with Mr O’Neill himself who had been so good to them all.
When Michael talked to Grace they never felt there
was any problem between their families. That’s what made it so galling to hear the fellows at school talking about the big battle ahead. And even more infuriating to have those two eejits of younger brothers joining in all the silly antics and writing ‘Go home O’Neill’ on the walls.
In the summery feeling of his first love Michael Ryan was able to brush all these annoyances aside. It was only Grace he thought of.
The lodge was three miles away. He could cycle two and a half miles and she could cycle half a mile and they could meet in that nice clump of trees on the hill which looked down on Mountfern. But it took so long, and then there were the explanations of where he had been. And Grace had to explain.
And all he wanted was to lie with her and stroke her and read her the poems he made up about her, about her eyes and her feet and her soft skin. And recently her beautiful breasts. Oh God, how he yearned for it to be like it had been just after the party, but there was nowhere they could see each other now without causing the most immense fuss.
Perhaps Mam understood more than he thought because occasionally she would ruffle his hair and say that it wouldn’t be long now before the hotel was open and Grace would be living across the river from them all. But Mam said it with a shiver too, as if it were going to be somehow very frightening when the hotel opened. Michael was counting every day until his Grace could move from the lodge, which seemed a million miles away.
She had told him she loved him, she told him she had never dreamed it could be so lovely lying beside him as he stroked her from head to toe, and she trusted him and let him linger where he wanted to, she said she liked it too, and she knew he would never force her to do anything she didn’t want to. Which of course he wouldn’t. Never in a million years.
Kerry was learning a lot about the hotel business in Donegal; old Mr Hill who had been running a family hotel for years there was a good teacher. He was getting a sizeable fee to have O’Neill’s son in his place for a type of apprenticeship, and he was determined to earn it.
The boy would learn the business from every angle. He would work in the kitchens and at the reception desk, he would groom the ponies for the day’s trekking, he would stand by the trolley as the beef was being carved. Dennis Hill said that he could give a better training than the Shannon Hotel School if he was asked to.
‘Why don’t you?’ Kerry asked him one day. ‘You could easily set up a sort of training course here.’
‘And build up a whole breed of rivals to myself?’ Mr Hill shook his head.
‘Well what about us, aren’t we rivals?’
‘Not at all, boy, aren’t you down in the midlands there where no one in their right mind would want to spend a holiday, a big turf bog of a place miles from the sea. You’re no rivals to anyone there.’
His eyes were laughing. Dennis Hill was no fool, he knew that O’Neill’s Fernscourt would be no threat to him as it was so far away; he also knew that if he did a good job on this handsome troublesome playboy then O’Neill would send business his way for a long time.
Hills of Donegal was a famous hotel already, its name easily remembered, its clientele faithful, its food vastly superior to almost anything Ireland offered. Dennis Hill had a large family; he kept his hotel open at a loss all winter so that they could practise for the very busy summer season.
He had never taken a foolish step.
Sometimes he looked at Kerry O’Neill’s striking face and cold eyes and wondered what would become of the boy. At the first sign of any trouble here Kerry would be packed off from the Hills of Donegal household back to his father, who seemed a grand fellow all set to make an outstanding success of his venture if reports could be believed.
Dara got postcards from Kerry, but they were inside envelopes so that anyone and everyone couldn’t read what he wrote. There were things you wouldn’t want anyone to read, like how he wanted to kiss her lovely lips again, and he wanted to smell her beautiful hair and hold her in his arms. And there were things you would want everyone to read, like how much he missed Mountfern and was looking forward to being back.
She wished he realised that he didn’t have to write on a postcard, he could have got a writing pad and written pages and pages to her. Dara wrote pages and pages back.
Tommy Leonard said when she bought the writing pad that she must be going to get like St Paul and write epistles that nobody read.
‘What do you mean, that nobody reads, aren’t we demented with St Paul?’ Dara said.
‘Yes we are, but the Corinthians and the Ephesians and whoever didn’t take a blind bit of notice of him.’
‘They did too. He converted the lot of them.’
‘No he did not. Most of them went on their own way.’
Tommy’s father came over and asked through gritted teeth would it be possible for his son and young Miss Ryan to continue this interesting screaming match about the New Testament outside working hours.
Kitty Daly came home from Dublin for a weekend. She looked very much more grown up, they all thought. Her skirt was very short and she had a lot of make-up. Instead of taming her wild frizzy hair she let it all hang in a long curtain down her back. They nudged each other at mass when she went up to holy communion.
‘I’d say she’s up to no good in Dublin,’ whispered Dara, who always feared that Kitty had her eye on Kerry O’Neill.
‘She can’t be up to that much if she’s going to communion,’ said Michael, which settled it.
Mrs Meagher told Kate Ryan in great confidence that her bold strap of a daughter Teresa was pregnant at last. It had only been a matter of time. Mrs Meagher wept. It was bound to happen. What in the name of the Lord was she to do? Kate soothed her, sent for more tea and spoke in low tones. Teresa could stay in Dublin, that was one thing, or she could have the child and they could bring it up in Mountfern together, that would be another. It would be a nine-day wonder and then Mountfern would let them settle down, mother and daughter living together, and then a new life to look after. It might be the making of them. Mrs Meagher didn’t think so.
There was no question, apparently, of the father being forced to marry Teresa; the girl was vague to the point of confusion about who the father might be. Mrs Meagher wept again.
Kate said that they were living in 1966, not the dark ages, surely she wouldn’t want to force some child to marry another child over this?
Mrs Meagher said if there was any chance of it that is exactly what she would like.
‘Wait for a little while,’ Kate begged. ‘Don’t go round telling everyone, just wait, something will turn up to make it seem clear to you.’
She was so calm, so confident sitting there in her chair, unruffled, and unshocked. Mrs Meagher really did feel better and was glad she had come to see her.
She would have been interested to know that five minutes after she left Kate Ryan had reached out of the wheelchair, and caught Carrie’s arm in a hard grip.
‘Listen to me, Carrie, listen to me good. Get some kind of organisation into your life with Jimbo, do you hear? Fix a day whenever you like, and don’t get yourself thrown aside.’
‘What do you mean?’ Carrie was frightened.
‘I don’t care if you have a baby, I’d like a baby for God’s sake, I’d love to be playing with it, looking after it. I’m never going to have any more of my own, but it’s going to be no good to you. It may well be 1966 but as far as Mountfern is concerned it’s centuries ago and you’d be an outcast.’
‘But there’d be no question of that . . .’ Carrie began to stammer.
‘Of course there would, Carrie. I’m not a fool. And you do like him, don’t you? So put it to him straight. Say you’d like to get married. Give yourself some kind of a chance.’
‘But he wouldn’t think I’m good enough. You know he’s doing great as a singer, he’d want someone with a bit more class.’
‘Then for Christ’s sake develop a bit more class.’
‘Why are you shouting at me, Mrs Ryan?’
‘I
don’t know, Carrie, I really don’t.’
‘Will Kerry be home for a weekend soon?’ Dara asked Grace.
She got the usual reply. ‘Oh, you know Kerry.’
It was a very unsatisfactory reply indeed. Because she didn’t really know Kerry. She would love to get to know him much much better. She wished he would say in these cards if he was ever coming back home.
Brother Keane said that the boys were to write a letter to Mr O’Neill that would try to put into words how grateful they were for the new pitch. It would have taken years and years to have got what they now had through the generosity of this good man. Their own sons would have barely been playing on a good field like this if it hadn’t been for Mr O’Neill.
Tommy Leonard was the best at English; he was chosen to write the letter. Every boy in the school was to sign it. It would then be framed in carpentry class and presented to Mr O’Neill at a public ceremony.
Tommy’s first three efforts were refused. Brother Keane said to him in a voice like thunder that it was hard to believe Tommy could be so insensitive as to begin by saying, ‘Despite the fact that you did not think this school good enough for your own son . . .’ Really and truly, Brother Keane thought, all this jazz and the like had young boys half cracked these days.
Brian Doyle liked Rachel Fine. She had a very good way with people, he noticed, she spoke in a very low voice so that they strained to hear rather than shouting over them. Sometimes he felt she wanted to criticise something here and there but never did. Once or twice he actually asked her did she like something or if she could suggest an alternative. Very reluctantly she would give her views. Like the landing stage. Brian was going to paint it brightly. Rachel wondered would it be better in natural woods. It looked much better without the garish paint, but Rachel never claimed any of the credit, she joined in the general admiration and praise of Brian Doyle.
He wondered why O’Neill hadn’t married her yet.
‘Kerry’s coming back this weekend,’ Michael said.
‘Never!’ Dara felt something like a lump of coal in her throat.