Kate laughed until she nearly cried; her pale face looked more colourful now.
Dara felt happier but she still resolved to ask Mrs Fine if Mam had been having any bad turns. She would ask her tomorrow. She half listened to Mam as she wondered whether Kerry might be home for the weekend. Grace was useless for any information. But of course he would come home this weekend. Now that he knew both from her postcard and from Grace on the phone that Dara was back.
Kate looked at Dara’s face, lightly tanned from the hot French sunshine. She knew how Rachel would admire her, and indeed make further representations about getting Dara’s ears pierced for her and giving her little gold studs.
It was odd that Rachel wasn’t here. She hadn’t been in all day.
Rachel Fine stayed in her room all day.
She crouched like an animal in the forest that is afraid to move because it doesn’t know if it has been too badly injured. She heard the noises of Mountfern on a late summer morning. The carts that went by, the delivery vans, the sounds of hammering from across the river. She heard voices too in and out of Loretto’s shop and children calling to each other as they chased along River Road.
Kerry had gone as light-heartedly as she had ever seen him. He had kissed her affectionately on the nose, he had been teasing and flirtatious. As he would have been after a night in bed with any woman.
They hadn’t been together in that way. But she had no way of proving it.
A hundred times she told herself that no one would believe she could have opened her body to Kerry O’Neill, who was a boy, who had been a child when she first met and loved his father.
It would have been like an act of incest.
‘So I’ll head for the hills of Donegal now before anyone knows I’ve been here. And thanks, Rachel, thanks for everything,’ he had said.
What was he thanking her for?
‘But people do know, they’ll think . . . You said you spoke to Loretto, to Jack Coyne . . .’ she croaked.
‘That’s not what I mean. They don’t count. I don’t want to meet my father, I’m going to have to tell him about some money I owe, sooner or later. No point in getting him steamed up before I ask him.’
Rachel looked at Kerry and fought back waves of dizziness and nausea.
And when he was gone she felt a coldness through her bones that made a mockery of the sunny summer day outside.
She didn’t answer when Loretto called up to know if she should bring up a parcel of materials that had just been delivered. So Loretto, more confused than ever, just left the parcel on the stairs and shook her head from side to side.
Rachel didn’t go to see Dara, newly returned. She didn’t call to collect mail at the post office, nor did she touch the parcel on the stairs.
When Brian Doyle sent round to know had some fabrics arrived, because young Costello was behaving like a pregnant cat over them, Loretto said there was no point in trying to get any answer from upstairs.
Brian said that he had always known it would happen, most people in the place had now gone clinically insane and the place for them all was the asylum on the hill.
He had been told that Kerry O’Neill was in Donegal and yet he had nearly been killed by the little bastard reversing his car at top speed this morning.
He had been told that Rachel Fine was waiting night and day for some swatches of material and now they had arrived she had apparently gone to ground like a broody hen.
O’Neill was like a lighting devil, and that leggy young Ryan child from the pub had snapped the head off him when he had addressed a civil word to her.
It was time to ring the asylum and tell them to come down with the straitjackets and take the people of Mountfern away.
As soon as he got to Fernscourt, Patrick was called to the phone in Brian Doyle’s hut.
‘Dennis Hill here, Patrick. I just rang to know if everything’s all right?’
‘That’s good of you, Dennis. It’s crawling along, crawling, but we might have hot water to make them a cup of coffee at the opening. You will come, I take it?’
‘I meant about your little girl.’
‘Grace?’ Patrick was alarmed.
‘Is she recovering?’
‘Recovering?’
‘The accident. The accident on the bridge.’
‘Grace didn’t have an accident.’ Patrick’s heart was beating very fast. Could something have happened to Grace this morning that he didn’t know about? He shouted to Costello. ‘Was there any accident on the bridge this morning, did anything happen? Quickly, man.’
Costello was quick. ‘Nothing at all,’ he said crisply.
‘And Grace, is she all right?’
‘I saw her cycling by not five minutes ago with Michael Ryan.’
‘Thanks, Costello.’
Patrick’s breathing had changed its pace now.
‘Sorry, Dennis. I was away from the phone for a moment. What did you hear?’
Mr Hill’s voice was cold. ‘I heard what your son told me yesterday, he had a call saying his sister had an accident in a fall from a bridge, she had been playing jumping and diving games with other children. He said that he had to go to Mountfern at once. Naturally I gave him permission.’
‘There was no accident,’ Patrick said dully.
‘And I am delighted to hear it,’ Dennis Hill said courteously. There was a pause.
Mr Hill spoke again: ‘He’s a difficult lad, your son.’
‘Speak to me straight, did he steal anything?’
‘No, nothing like that!’ Mr Hill was surprised.
‘Well you’d better check before you fire him. You are going to fire him, aren’t you?’
Another pause.
‘Yes, yes I think it’s better to send him back to you. There’s something there that attracts him.’
‘Well I’m damned if I know what it is.’ Patrick’s voice was weary.
‘Could be a girl. He’s a handsome fellow.’
‘The only one he seems to be with is an under-age schoolgirl. But that would figure. He’s never done anything that you’d hope he would.’
‘They don’t, you know, children. I’ve got sons here in the business, and sons-in-law. They think I’m an old fool, they want me to clear out of it. That’s the thanks you get for building up a business and handing it to them on a plate.’
‘Thanks, Dennis.’
‘What for? I’m letting your boy go, that’s not much to thank me for.’
‘I mean for letting me know about your sons. It’s less lonely somehow.’
‘You’ll survive. The girl’s good, isn’t she?’
‘Ah yes, the best.’
‘I’ve got one good fellow in my brood, wants nothing to do with the hotel, works out on a headland in a small-holding. Best of the lot of them, it’s a pleasure to sit and talk to him for hours. You’ll find that with the girl.’
‘When I see Kerry will I tell him to call you?’
‘Why prolong it all? Speeches, lies, excuses. Tell him to pick up his things when he wants to.’
As Patrick replaced the receiver he hoped he wouldn’t see Kerry for a while. Like a day anyway. He might lose control completely. A boy who could use the circumstances of Maggie Daly’s death, graft them on to his own sister. And all as an excuse to go to some gambling game or other. He might very possibly kill him.
Kerry looked across the Fern. His father’s car wasn’t outside the hotel. That meant he must be at home. He would set out for the lodge. Easier to talk to him there anyway. He would go by River Road – he would meet too many people on Bridge Street. This way he only had to pass Coyne’s, Ryan’s and the Rosemarie hair salon. Jack Coyne he had already met; Kerry smiled to think how the story would be reported. Jack would find a dozen excuses to talk to people that he would not normally have any business with.
He wondered would Rachel give any version of anything. Probably not. He would hear soon.
He turned on the car radio and they were playing ‘Pretty
Flamingo’. He turned the volume up high, pulled down the flap to keep the sun out of his eyes, and took a corner very fast.
The car that he pushed off the road was his father’s. The sound of Manfred Mann was silenced by the screeching of brakes.
Kerry stopped the car and let out a sigh of relief. It had been close and it had of course been his fault. He ran his hand through his hair as he watched his father climb out of the car that was half in the ditch. His father walked towards him slowly and flung open the door.
‘Get out of that fucking car,’ he said in a voice that Kerry had never heard before. It was as if he were being held back by two strong men. Kerry could almost see them straining to pull him back.
While all the time his father wanted to tear him limb from limb.
He got out. ‘I’m sorry, I was over too far . . .’
His father said nothing.
‘And going a little fast, I guess.’
Silence.
‘Still, no real harm’s done. Can we get it out, do you think, or should we walk back for Jack Coyne’s?’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was coming to see you. I wanted to talk to you urgently and then I was going to head for Donegal. I said I’d be back at lunchtime.’
‘You don’t have to be back by lunch or at all.’
‘But I said to Mr Hill that I’d do my best to get back today, he trusts me, and I think I should . . .’
‘Hill doesn’t trust you across the room, Kerry, he’s just fired you.’
‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘He has done that. Just that.’
Kerry thought for a moment.
‘He suddenly made up his mind and rang you to tell you, rather than tell me. That’s unlikely.’
He was cool still, not blustering or defending himself with excuses or with lies.
‘Ah yes, you may think it unlikely because you forget that some people have human feelings, generous feelings. Dennis Hill didn’t like to think of a girl falling off a bridge in a terrible accident, and her brother having to hotfoot it to her bedside. He called to know how she was.’
‘I see.’ Kerry’s face was impassive.
‘No you don’t see. You’ll never see how it would turn anyone’s stomach, what you did.’
‘I had to say something. I wanted to get away.’
‘What a great thing to choose.’
‘I needed to be out of there, I needed to be here.’
‘Why?’
‘I wanted to sort something out and see you.’
‘You’re seeing me, Kerry, by Jesus you are seeing me. Say what you have to say, and say it quickly.’
‘Father, the money?’
‘The money you called about yesterday, that ridiculous sum . . . You are not getting one penny of that from me.’
‘I wanted to come and tell you personally the kind of people they are.’
‘I don’t care if they are cousins of the pope, they’re still not going to find me coughing up their winnings at poker.’
‘I’m not saying they’re respectable people we don’t want to offend. They’re the reverse, they’re very tough.’
‘Good, then you’ve met it at last. People who are not going to give in to your every wish.’
‘You wouldn’t say good, Father, if you knew . . . Tony said that they’re getting very annoyed with me.’
Patrick looked at his son.
‘You are a spoiled selfish brat. It is my fault, it is not your mother’s fault. I didn’t see what was happening to you, I saw every other goddamn thing but I didn’t see you for what you were. I was too busy, God forgive me.’
‘I’m sure he will forgive you, Father, God always forgives people who talk nicely to him and turn up at mass, no matter what they’ve been up to.’
‘Don’t give me that.’
‘And people who put stained-glass windows into churches, and new buildings into Catholic schools, God loves them mightily.’
Kerry’s eyes were flashing. He would not be stopped.
‘You can get away with it, Father, you always have, you can cut corners, you can break promises, you can give every tart in town a topaz, but as long as the Easter dues are generous God turns a blind eye.’
Patrick moved at him, his arm up as if to strike.
Kerry went on. ‘And God understands a bit of battering too, if it’s done in the right cause. Go ahead. Go on, I don’t care. I don’t bloody care.’
Patrick withdrew.
‘You’ll care when you’re out working in a real job for the first time in your life in order to pay these hooligans, you’ll care then when three-quarters of your wages will go to pay off a debt that not one of these farmers here would sleep a wink if he owed in a lifetime.’
‘You don’t think for a moment that they’ll wait to be paid at fifteen pounds a week. That’s well over a year. They want it now. On Monday at the very latest.’
‘Give it up, you’ll never get it. If you play for it you’ll just end up paying twice as much. Work for a year, two years, regard it as your apprenticeship. They’ll wait.’
‘They can’t wait, they’re not ordinary people. They’re in an organisation.’
‘Cut that shit, they’ve organised themselves to smell a sucker and to rob a bank or a post office or two. Those fellows have no cause but themselves.’
‘You don’t understand . . .’
‘I know that for a fact. Hill warned me about them a while back. There may be some fellows in a movement in Derry since the border campaign ended, but not your lot. They’re for themselves.’
‘Hill’s an old fool, he knows nothing.’
‘You’re to collect your things from him, and he knows you’re light-fingered, so there’s no point in trying to make up any shortfall by dipping into the till before you leave.’
Kerry looked at him sharply. Things had gone very far if his father had warned an outsider against him.
‘Can I stay at the lodge when I come back?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you told Grace.’
‘That she is meant to be lying like her friend Maggie under the bridge, but that in her case there’s some hope she’ll survive? No.’
‘What will you say?’
‘As little as possible. To you and about you.’
‘That will be hard if we’re living in the same house.’
‘I’m moving into the hotel shortly, so is Grace. You can have the lodge until Christmas. We’ve paid for it until then.’
‘Miss Hayes?’
‘Will be going to her sister in New Zealand in a couple of weeks.’
‘And my room in the hotel?’
‘Will not exist, Kerry.’
‘I’m not going to make a speech or plead, Father, this isn’t about the future of the hotel or anything. It’s about now. Could you give me just this stake? Then I’ll never ask you again.’
‘No.’
‘Please. I’ve never said please before, maybe I should have. But I’m begging you.’
‘No. If I do it now, then next month it will be fifteen hundred pounds. Go to them, tell them they have to wait a year or whatever it takes to make it.’
Kerry’s eyes narrowed.
‘On your own head then, Father. If you won’t give it to me I’ll have to get it elsewhere.’
‘That won’t be easy, you’re running out of credibility.’
‘I think I know where I can get it,’ Kerry said and he almost smiled.
He got back into his car and drove away towards the main road. Patrick walked to Jack Coyne’s and got three lads to come up and move his car. He didn’t tell them how it had ended up in the ditch but he did not like the way Jack Coyne was looking at him.
There was something knowing and triumphant about the way the small rat-like man kept glancing at him.
‘Have you been talking to Kerry?’ Carrie asked Dara in a conspiratorial whisper.
‘No, he’s not home yet, but h
e might be back at the weekend. I keep hoping,’ Dara said.
‘But he is here. I saw him.’
‘You never did!’
‘Yes, last night. I said that’s funny, Kerry home on a Thursday in the middle of the week. And then again this morning, he drove past here at a hundred miles an hour.’
‘Had he anyone with him?’ Dara was almost afraid to hear the answer.
‘No, not at all. Why should he have anyone with him, isn’t he your fellow?’
Carrie saw things over-simply, Dara thought.
Dara sat on the window seat looking out at the moonlight. She couldn’t believe that Kerry had been in Mountfern without even coming in to say hallo.
Grace could never have told her a lie. There could be no awful thing that they were keeping hidden from her, like that he was going out with Kitty Daly. No, Michael would never be a party to that.
Michael came to sit beside her.
‘There’s nothing you’re keeping secret from me, is there?’ she asked.
‘How did you guess?’
‘Oh God.’ Dara’s hand went to her throat.
‘You see, Grace will soon be living across there,’ he began.
‘What is it?’
‘I was wondering, I was wondering if I could . . . if we could show her the tunnel.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Well, I know it’s quite a big thing to ask.’
Dara didn’t seem to listen.
‘Was Kerry home today?’ she asked. ‘Did he stay at the lodge last night? That’s all I want to know. It’s not very much to ask.’
‘Of course he wasn’t. If he was, he’d have talked to me, he talks to me quite a lot, as it happens.’
‘He wasn’t back then?’
‘No. How many times do I have to say it?’
‘Carrie must be going mad, that’s all,’ Dara said.
‘And what do you say about . . . ?’
Michael let his voice trail away. Dara was sitting happily on the window seat, her leg tucked underneath her, all the anxiety gone from her face. She didn’t want to talk about tunnels or to talk about anything, she wanted to think about Kerry O’Neill.
Kerry said his goodbyes briefly in Hill’s Hotel. The staff were sorry to see him leave; some of the students who had been working as chambermaids for the summer were particularly sorry. He had been so sunny, so handsome, like summer lightning around the place.