‘No, I’ve a lot to do here.’
‘You’ve nothing to do here, stop fooling yourself.’
A flash of anger. ‘Shall I list the things I have to do here . . .?’
‘No, don’t be tedious, Rachel, we both know why you’re here, we both think it’s a great idea, so what? Just quit pretending it’s a real career and you can’t be taken from it to come to New York for a week.’
Never had she been so angry. Never.
They both knew why she was here, it was so obvious, was it?
She knew she must keep calm. Nothing must be thrown away for the very unimportant luxury of losing her temper.
‘What had you in mind for us in New York?’ she asked levelly.
‘I don’t know.’ He put on a teasing smile. ‘Maybe we could get ourselves to a justice of the peace and get hitched, that way I wouldn’t have to be thrown out of here like a college boy at ten o’clock at night.’
‘Would you like to get married?’ Her voice was calm.
‘No, what man likes to get married? Hell, of course I don’t want to get married, Rachel, I’m too old, you’re too old, we’re fine as we are. Hey?’
No response.
‘Hey? Rachel, you’re not sulking now, are you? We’re fine as we are. Why complicate it? Why think I love you more if you tie me down by some bit of paper?’
She looked at him levelly.
‘Well, say something, woman, for God’s sake, have I done the one unforgivable sin saying this? You did ask me would I like the idea of being married. I’m telling you. Straight up.’
‘Sure,’ she said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Not much, I guess.’
‘So what did I say that was so terrible?’
‘I suppose what was terrible was that you thought a piece of paper would only tie you down, you never thought that it might also tie down whoever you married. It’s a bargain, you know, marriage, not just one person being lassooed by another. It’s a sharing thing.’
‘You didn’t do very well during your attempt at it,’ he lashed out.
‘You weren’t exactly faithful during your attempt at it,’ she said straight back.
He was silent.
Rachel sat still in her chair. Her cream linen suit and her little sprig of purple heather worn at the lapel matched the room perfectly.
She didn’t look at Patrick, she looked across at the sun setting over Fernscourt. Her face was not sad, she was calm and entirely in command. She was thinking that this was the end of the road. She had travelled so far, so many years and so many thousands of miles and it would end now, in recriminations like so many relationships.
‘It’s got nothing to do with you. With you as a person,’ Patrick began.
Rachel said nothing, she didn’t even listen, it was as if she had always known it was coming, this conversation, the goodbye.
‘In fact I want your company and to be with you more than anybody. You know this.’
She looked across and saw men still working in the fading light. They were getting overtime now to finish the job in time.
‘Shit, Rachel, what do you have to go and suggest we got married for? Why couldn’t you let things go on the way they were?’
Almost reluctantly Rachel lifted her eyes from the men who were finishing the stone wall around the forecourt, and brought her glance to Patrick.
‘I did not bring up marriage, Patrick, you did. You said we would find a justice of the peace in New York and get hitched. Please be fair.’
He was wrongfooted over this. ‘Yeah sure, but you said . . .’
‘Forget what I said. Don’t let it end in a war of words – you said, I said. What does it matter? And as you said it has nothing to do with me as a person.’
She stood up, straightening her skirt. ‘I’ll show you out now.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Goodnight, Patrick. I’ll be going to Connemara in the next day or two, probably tomorrow. We’ll consider we said goodbye now. Right?’
He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Listen . . .’
‘Yes?’ Her eyes were large and dark, they looked into his very directly, they didn’t dart about anxiously trying to read his face.
‘Listen, Rachel, I’m not worth it.’
She smiled patiently as she might have smiled at a child.
He was struggling for words.
‘Even if I were, if I could . . . even if I did feel . . . there would be so many complications, there’d be all hell to pay. You have no idea how much trouble and everything . . .’
He looked at her, pleading, begging her to understand that their marriage would be opposed by Church and society even if he could bring himself to propose.
Rachel Fine had some dignity left. She chose not to understand what he was saying.
‘Patrick, you’ve a lot of work tomorrow and so have I.’ She kissed his cheek.
‘But . . .’
She had closed the door behind him.
She leaned against the door as she had seen so many heroines do in movies. But no heroine had ever behaved as stupidly, she thought, no woman who ever leaned against a door like that had been such a downright idiot as Rachel Fine letting her man go like that.
Possibly to the arms of Marian Johnson. And even, when the hotel was built and he was lonely, possibly he might marry Marian Johnson. Church and society wouldn’t oppose that, they’d be delighted with it, and the divorced Jewess could be moved from the scene. She didn’t cry, she felt too empty to cry. She didn’t go to the window to see him driving off.
She just stood motionless for a long time.
John Ryan sighed. Sometimes he wished he could discuss things with someone. Mary Donnelly was out, she hated Patrick O’Neill with a passion. He couldn’t speak to Fergus because young Slattery seemed to hold the O’Neills personally responsible for Kate’s accident and could only think of the day when the huge compensation would be paid over.
Dr White was not a good ally. Dr White seemed to think that John was a bit of an old misery. On more than one occasion the doctor had told him straight out that Kate’s condition could be made much more bearable if her immediate family surrounded her with hope and optimism.
No point in talking to his son, the boy was like a moonstruck calf pining over the little American girl.
He felt unwilling to bring his worries to Dara. She was still a child and it made him seem weak to tell his own daughter that he couldn’t communicate with her mother.
As he went ahead with the preparations for Ryan’s Café, John’s heart was heavy.
One afternoon when Mary was minding the bar, when Kate was busy hemming green table napkins for the café, when the children were at school and the menagerie reasonably peaceful – Leopold snoring in the garden, the cat purring like an engine on the window sill – John sat down to write a poem.
This time he didn’t write about the land or the people who had once walked this land. This time he wrote about the cage he found himself in; the cage which he couldn’t escape from because he himself had built the bars. They were bars of concern and love and good manners. They were rules he had made so that he would not hurt anyone else. He wrote how by forcing yourself to take one course of action and adopt one set of attitudes you can also be untrue to yourself and deny your real worth.
It was the cry of a strong man who found himself trapped and couldn’t see an escape. He looked into Kate’s room – she had fallen asleep over her sewing. Gently he took the needle and green linen from her hands and arranged the cushion behind her back in the chair. He left the poem beside her and went for a long walk. He walked up to Coyne’s wood and beat at the undergrowth with a stick for a while. Then he found himself climbing that big mossy hill towards the Grange.
He went in and asked for a pint of beer.
Marian’s place was slipping, he noticed, the bar was not clean and it was late afternoon, there were still ashtrays full and glasses uncollected. The stocks h
adn’t been checked, you could see some bottles had nearly run out and others had marks of liquid down their sides.
It had been years since he had come here and it used to be much smarter in the old days.
The youth serving had neither manner nor charm. He gave the wrong change and didn’t apologise when it was pointed out.
Who would stay in the Grange when there was a luxury place like Fernscourt opening three miles away? John gave a little shiver. He had heard too of the way that Patrick had interviewed the staff, how he had told them that American guests liked to be made much of, to have their names remembered. They liked people to say ‘You’re welcome’ when they said ‘Thank you’. Patrick had searched Ireland for the right manager and, not being satisfied with any of the applicants, had gone to another hotel and offered Jim Costello twice his salary to leave at once and come to manage Fernscourt. Costello, an attractive go-getting young man, had given the matter five minutes’ thought, which had raised his salary even higher, and then left the hotel after serving three weeks’ notice and finding a successor for himself. Costello was the right man for Patrick O’Neill. A man who would not burn his bridges, he had left his old employers on good terms and he could always go back if Patrick and he had a falling out; on the other hand he had impressed his new boss with his quick thinking and decision. He was a man of great charm, he had drunk many a pint in Ryan’s and delighted everyone with his easy ways.
Patrick O’Neill and Jim Costello wouldn’t have employed a surly youth like this boy behind Marian Johnson’s bar. John pondered on just how much the old order was changing.
He left, thanking the boy and getting no response, and walked down the hill. There was a scurry at one stage when he passed the big clump of trees, as if he had disturbed a courting couple. He smiled to himself, thinking how stony and uncomfortable the ground must be.
For half a moment he wondered whether it was Michael and Grace he saw disappearing into the bushes. But he dismissed the notion. For heaven’s sake, it was the middle of the afternoon.
What would they be doing up here? And anyway they were far too young for that sort of thing.
Mary Donnelly was glaring at an inoffensive couple of farmers who took no notice of her whatsoever.
‘This is a great pub, Mary,’ John said as he came in.
The farmers looked up, amused.
‘If you can’t say it who can?’ one of them laughed.
‘Have you been drinking?’ Mary asked suspiciously.
‘You’re right, Mary. God, it would need to be a sharp man to fox you. I was up having a pint in the Grange, as it happens.’
‘And it wasn’t to your liking?’
‘It was not. There was no warm service with a smile like you get when you come in this door. Oh boy no. There was only glares and surly shrugs. What human would want a pint in a place like that? People want to be made welcome in a place, that’s what running a pub or a hotel is about, it’s not just about pouring alcohol down their throats.’
The farmers looked at each other and grinned conspiratorially.
Mary flushed a dark red. ‘If you’re saying that I . . .’
‘I’m saying that it’s lovely to be back in a friendly atmosphere,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s all, and if we’re going to keep any custom from going over to O’Neill’s Thatch Bar we’ll have to let them know that they’re welcome here, and really welcome too.’
He banged out of the bar and into the house.
Mary was open-mouthed. That was the first time John had ever admitted publicly that there was a threat from O’Neill, and imagine admitting it in front of two customers. He must be really upset.
Kate was sitting by the open French window, wearing her gardening gloves and tidying up one of those high urns that Rachel Fine had cleverly positioned, one on each side of the door. These were Kate’s alone, she grew herbs and heathers in them, they were easy to reach and made her feel she was really gardening.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ John said.
He pulled off her gloves and held her hands.
‘So have I. When I read your poem and realised what it’s like for you, not wanting to upset me, and not knowing how to talk to me, I felt I could have put the power into my body and run after you. I woke up and read it and I could feel such energy surging through me, I was sure I’d have the strength to stand.’
Her eyes were wild with trying to explain, she was like a child straining to have more movement than she had.
‘Gently, Kate. Gently,’ he soothed her.
She would not be calmed. She thought as she had so often thought about that summer’s day when he had wanted to make love and she said no, it was ridiculous in the middle of the afternoon, and that she had felt restless. Restless indeed! If she had stayed with him as he had wanted she would never have wandered into Fernscourt and into this life in a chair.
‘You do have great strength,’ he told her. ‘Aren’t you the strongest woman in this county? I mean it.’
‘But tell me that you know I’d be nothing without you. The children will grow up and go away, and the pub may win or lose but the only thing I want is for us to be together. In so far as we can ever be together because of this bloody chair.’ She hit the arms of the wheelchair in frustration.
‘But you’re only saying what I know. I know you love me.’ He was smiling a huge smile of pleasure.
‘I can give you nothing. Nothing a wife can give.’
‘Stop, stop.’
‘I’ve been so selfish, I never sort of helped you or anything.’
She was talking about some of her earlier attempts to give John pleasure. They had both been embarrassed and Kate had cried at not being able to do it properly. John had been embarrassed at something so obviously selfish that could not be shared. They had attempted it less and less.
‘I’m all right, look at what you have to bear, for God’s sake. It doesn’t seem all that important to me that we can’t make love as we used to.’
‘But I was thinking we could.’ Kate’s eyes were definitely excited, her colour was high.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Draw the curtains,’ she said.
He closed the glass doors and pulled the soft green and white curtains.
‘Come here,’ she whispered.
‘Wait till I lock the door. It would be the one time we’d have Leopold, Mary, Carrie, the children and half the bar arriving in on top of us.’
She laughed like a teenager.
‘Get me out of this bloody chair, John Ryan, and love me.’
He lifted her on to the bed. Her dress opened easily; she had all her clothes made front-fastening so that she could dress herself with the minimum of fuss.
‘But we can’t . . .’ he stammered.
‘Why not? It’s my body. It won’t hurt, I won’t feel much but I feel above the belt, if you know what I mean. That’s nice.’
‘But can I . . . inside you . . . wouldn’t that be bad for you?’
‘Why would it? It’s just paralysed, it isn’t out of bounds.’ She was high with excitement and was stroking him encouragingly.
‘Kate, I don’t want to do anything that might damage you . . .’
‘It won’t. I checked.’
‘You checked? When did you check?’
‘This afternoon. I rang Dr White.’
‘My God! What did he say?’
‘He said fire ahead, and that he was delighted, he thought we’d never get round to it.’
Fergus Slattery called and was told that Mr and Mrs Ryan were in Mrs Ryan’s room and weren’t to be disturbed.
‘Nothing wrong?’ Fergus enquired.
‘John is like a lighting devil today, perhaps they’re having a row,’ Mary Donnelly said. ‘There isn’t a man in this house that will speak straight to you, I’m afraid.’
She was still smarting from Michael’s cross-questioning. He had been highly alarmed to find that his mother and father were closeted together, and felt sur
e that the only reason could be that Dad had actually seen him with Grace. The thought was too mortifying even to entertain for a moment.
What could Dad be telling Mam, and how soon would he be called in and what would he say? And why couldn’t that awful Mary stop snarling at him and tell him what kind of a peculiar humour had his father been in when he came home?
Michael, white with anxiety, had gone to throw stones from the footbridge, and pray. If God arranged it so that Dad hadn’t seen, then he would . . . what would he do? He couldn’t offer to give up being with Grace because that was what he wanted most in the world. Suppose he offered God a rosary. Not enough. God was known to be particularly against Immodest Touches, and whatever he and Grace were up to it would certainly come into that category. Perhaps if he gave God a promise that he would go to confession soon, and fixed a firm date. Perhaps that might do.
‘Was it important, your message?’ Mary remembered belatedly John’s startling instructions that she was to be high on charm.
‘You could always write it down, Mr Slattery, and I’d see that they got it.’
‘No, I’ll phone them later,’ he said.
‘They’ve taken the phone off the hook,’ Mary explained.
‘God, it must be a terrible row altogether,’ Fergus said.
Rachel looked into the window of Meagher’s. As always she was looking out for the kind of thing that Kate might be able to display in a glass cabinet when they got the café going.
Meagher’s window was not the most inspiring of places, and the woman who ran it seemed to know little or nothing about the odd selection of stock she carried. People had told Rachel that it was the late Mr Frank Meagher who was the one who knew something about the business. The window held the usual collection of musical boxes, travel clocks and some really appalling candlesticks, and there in a box with tissue paper were the two silver salvers that Rachel had bought for Fernscourt. Salvers that had been on Patrick’s sideboard on the only occasion when Rachel had visited the lodge. She had been there once when she knew both children would be far away.
Rachel stared unbelievingly at the two pieces of silver. They were worth everything else in the window three times over. Patrick surely could not have sold them. Surely, surely not. Rachel went in and bought a brooch shaped like an L which she would give to Loretto. She spoke to Mrs Meagher, a sad-faced, worried-looking woman about the silver salvers, and with shaking hand managed to pay for the brooch. She needed to be in the open air quickly.