He told McCann that he could get the money and have it on Saturday afternoon.
McCann had said he would come with him to get it.
That was not what Kerry wanted.
‘Look, you’ve been in Mountfern, you know the setup, it’s a one-horse place. We’re the kings of the castle there, if I say I’ll get it I will, and then I’ll get it to you.’
‘No point in your driving all over the country,’ McCann said laconically. ‘I’ll come with you. Then I’ll get the bus back.’
It was a dispiriting drive. The back of the car was filled with Kerry’s stuff, they couldn’t give a lift to any of the girls they saw on the road even if they had wanted to. Which Kerry didn’t.
They listened to music the whole way down. Tony McCann liked ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking’. He said it was a great song, and sang it tunelessly with Nancy Sinatra.
Kerry said he liked ‘Pretty Flamingo’, he didn’t know why but it reminded him of Dara Ryan, who was only a kid but very attractive.
‘Is she pink and does she stand on one leg?’ McCann had wanted to know with a laugh.
Several times Kerry O’Neill wondered why he found McCann such good company.
In Mountfern he told McCann there were three pubs he could drink in, and that he would be an hour at the most. Then he’d come with the money.
McCann had said that a cheque would be fine. His friends knew that Kerry wouldn’t be foolish enough to give them a cheque that didn’t work. That would be more stupid than not giving them anything at all.
Kerry had nodded fervently.
He settled McCann in Foley’s, realising that between taciturn old Mr Foley and the silent McCann little chat would be exchanged.
Then he drove down Bridge Street, looking neither right nor left of him. He realised that when he was back here full time it would be like living in one of those fish tanks that old Hill had in his hotel where people would look at the lobsters from every side. He averted his eyes from Fergus Slattery and turned right into River Road.
Loretto’s eyes were like dinner plates as he walked past her and up the stairs to Rachel Fine.
Her face was as white as a sheet. She was sitting at a table with papers on it. A coffee cup sat beside her, full but cold.
She looked up in alarm as he came in softly.
‘We have to talk, Rachel, you and I,’ he said.
And he pulled up a chair beside her.
Friday afternoon. Could she really have been home only twenty-four hours? Dara felt she had been back for weeks.
She had gone to look for Jacinta and been told she was at her riding lesson with Marian Johnson.
Some time or other Dara would have to go into Daly’s. It had better be now.
Mrs Daly smiled at her warmly and wanted to know all about France.
‘Did you get to Lourdes at all while you were there?’
‘No, Mrs Daly, but the lady I was staying with did. I asked her to say a prayer for Maggie. I wrote the name down for her on the back of a holy picture.’
Mrs Daly was pleased. She patted Dara’s hand.
‘You’re a good child in spite of everything,’ she said.
Dara repeated this to Tommy Leonard in a cross voice. ‘In spite of what? What did she mean?’ she asked.
Tommy couldn’t take his eyes off Dara. She looked utterly lovely, he thought.
‘In spite of being good-looking, she means. Mrs Daly hates good-looking people, she likes them with faces like ironing boards.’
Dara giggled. ‘I don’t suppose you can come off with me for a bit?’
‘I can’t. I used up all my time off going to hunt out sites and vantage points with Jacinta yesterday. You look just great, you know.’
‘Thanks, Tommy. Well, if you’ve spent your free time with Jacinta I can but go in search of fun and games elsewhere. Sit out on the street and wait till King Kerry turns up for the weekend.’
‘Oh, King Kerry as you call him is here already.’ Tommy was pained to have to acknowledge it but at least it was good that Dara didn’t seem to be tied up with him the moment she came back.
‘He can’t be!’
‘Well then, he has a double. I saw him with a fellow from a horror movie going into Foley’s, maybe they’ve taken to drinking in there.’
‘Kerry doesn’t drink,’ Dara said.
‘He could have started,’ Tommy suggested.
‘Today was it?’
‘Oh, don’t go up looking for them in Foley’s, Dara, for heaven’s sake.’
‘I’ve no intention of going looking for them anywhere,’ Dara flounced. ‘Kerry will come and look for me when he’s ready.’
Dara waited on the footbridge. She knew he would have to come and find her.
She saw the shadows getting a little longer. She leaned over and looked at her reflection in the water. She looked all right, she thought. Not a beauty, but all right.
Where was he?
She didn’t hear the car stopping and his light step behind her. She felt his arms around her waist and as she looked into the river she saw him reflected there. He kissed her.
‘In front of the pub, with them all looking out the window?’ she protested.
‘Right, let’s go somewhere with no windows. Get in.’ He opened the door of the little red car.
Dara walked towards it slowly. Was she being very cheap, very easy to get by going with him straight away? He hadn’t written. Not once. Not even a card.
He hadn’t got in touch when he got back. But for seeing her now, he might never have stopped.
He looked up at her from the car. ‘You’re so beautiful, Dara. I hope those Frenchmen didn’t get what you wouldn’t give me.’
He was talking out loud. Anyone could have heard him if they had been near the pub window.
She scrambled into the car at once.
‘I’m only getting in to keep you quiet,’ she said.
‘Aren’t I clever?’ Kerry smiled at her and the car sped off up River Road and towards the stile in Coyne’s wood.
In the wood he stood and looked at her.
‘I can’t take you in, I don’t know what it is. In two months you’ve changed. I missed you,’ he said, head on one side, smiling to charm her.
‘No of course you didn’t, you never thought of me at all. You never wrote, not once. You didn’t even come to see me when I got back even though I sent you a card to tell you.’
‘I wanted to but I couldn’t, I just wasn’t able to,’ he said.
Dara looked hard at him. He was so handsome. But of course he was making excuses.
‘They tied your hands?’ she asked.
‘No, of course I should have written but I’m hopeless. No, I meant to be there to welcome you, but I had problems. A lot of things to sort out.’ His face was troubled.
‘What were they?’
‘Okay, I’ll tell you. I was trying to get free from Donegal so that I could be here all the time. Here with you. It took a bit of organising.’
‘And have you organised it?’ She sounded doubtful. She expected him to say it hadn’t worked out.
‘Yes,’ he said surprisingly.
‘By good timing, by the most spectacular good timing in the world, I’m free, just as you come back.’
‘You’re leaving Hill’s Hotel?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He did a mock salute.
‘How did you do it?’
‘Not easy, a lot of aggravation I assure you. I’m still tidying up loose ends. I’ve got all my things in the car, see?’
‘You mean you’ve just left now?’
‘Just now. You’re the first person I came to see.’ He reached out for her.
He looked as if he didn’t want to talk about it any more. Dara moved to what she thought were safer waters.
‘I’m very pleased you’re going to be around. Even if you are faithless and forgetful, I like you.’
‘Why am I faithless and forgetful? I raced here to find you. Let
me hold you.’
‘Not for a moment.’
‘Why? What is it?’
‘I’m much older now and I understand more. I don’t want to hold you and have you . . . um . . . touch me . . . and then for me to say no and you to get all upset.’
‘Well it’s very simple, you don’t say no, and nobody gets upset.’
Dara looked at him with her big dark eyes. ‘That’s not what I want, and even though I like being with you, and like it a lot, when all is said and done it is my body, isn’t it? And I can do what I like with it. Or not do what I like with it.’
He stood smiling at her, and admiring. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said.
‘I thought I’d rather say it now. Sort of before anything got started so that you wouldn’t storm off.’
‘Very wise.’ He nodded his head sagely, making fun of her.
‘So, it’s a bargain, then. You don’t get all upset if I say I don’t want to go any further.’
‘Sure, and you don’t get all upset, as you say, if I don’t turn up all the time like a little lap dog. I’m going to be living here now and it will have its ups and downs. Give me some time and space to sort it out. Not asking a lot of questions all the time.’
‘It’s a deal,’ she said. ‘And I promise not to keep asking questions, if you’ll tell me one thing. Is it true that you still don’t love anyone but if you did love anyone it would probably be me?’
‘Where did you hear that?’ He smiled.
‘You told me once. When we sat in your car. After I had come to look for you in that roadhouse.’
‘It was true then and it’s true now,’ he said. ‘If the situation changes in either direction, you will be the first to know.’
The weekend would be their last one before term began.
Grace said she hoped that she would be living in the hotel by the time school started.
‘Kerry never said.’ Dara was puzzled.
‘Kerry’s not coming to the hotel yet. I mean I’m sure he will later.’ Grace seemed flustered.
‘Why on earth isn’t he going to the hotel? What happened?’ Dara was astounded.
‘Nothing, nothing at all.’
‘I’m your best friend, for heaven’s sake. I tell you everything, Grace, why don’t you tell me?’
‘I haven’t even told Michael. I think there was some kind of row, I think Father didn’t want him to leave the hotel in Donegal, but he insisted, he said he had to come back to Mountfern.’
He had to come back to Mountfern. Dara hugged this to herself with delight. He had indeed got into trouble over it but he had braved it all because he wanted to be back in Mountfern. With Dara.
21
By Sunday Kate was concerned about Rachel.
She hadn’t called on Thursday to welcome Dara home. She hadn’t been in on Friday, nor Saturday.
Sunday morning Loretto called to the pub to buy two bottles of stout.
‘Going to have a bit of a batter?’ Kate asked as she wrapped them in brown paper.
‘No, I’m having Jack Coyne to his Sunday dinner, he was very helpful to me over a lot of heavy lifting and putting up shelves. I thought I’d cook him a meal for once.’
‘Terrific. Where did Rachel go, by the way?’
‘Rachel?’ Loretto looked shifty.
‘Yes, she must have told me but I’ve forgotten. She hasn’t been in here for days, was it to Connemara this time or Dublin?’
‘I don’t . . . um . . . know.’ Loretto wanted to leave. She had no intention of telling Kate what had been going on.
Later that evening Kate looked across the footbridge and saw a figure walking on the other side, along the towpath that led down from the bridge.
It was Rachel Fine, wearing a headscarf and sunglasses.
It wasn’t cold enough for a headscarf.
It wasn’t bright enough for sunglasses.
It was almost as if she didn’t want to be seen.
On Monday morning Dara knew she would see Kerry. He had told her that the weekend would involve a massive reconciliation job with his father, so he wouldn’t be around.
Dara did herself up to the nines. She was dying to see him again. She knew too that he didn’t want her telling too many people that they met. That suited her very well, she was anxious to keep her own parents as much in the dark as possible.
‘You’re looking very flash, Dara.’
‘Sophisticated is the word,’ Dara said. She was alarmed if Jack Coyne thought she was flash. She must have gone too far with the lipstick.
‘Like a dog’s dinner, anyway.’ He was admiring.
‘Considering what Leo’s dinners look like, that’s not much of a compliment.’
‘Leopold’s not a dog, he’s a freak,’ Jack Coyne said. ‘You should have let me drown him instead of having him there turning away custom.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. People love him.’
‘Well, that’s debatable. Any sign of Kerry O’Neill, by the way?’
‘No, why do you ask me?’ Dara was suspicious.
‘I thought you might have heard from him. Specially seeing you’re all dolled up.’
‘Lord no.’ She was over-casual. ‘Kerry O’Neill isn’t my type, nor me his, I’m certain.’
‘Well, they say his tastes run to the maturer lady all right, but you’d never know.’
‘Maturer?’
‘Much maturer. Old even, some would say. Still if you do see him tell him I have that poker game in mind. He mentioned one the last time he was here a few days ago.’
‘Then he was here the other night.’
‘He was certainly here at breakfast time in the morning getting aspirins and orange juice for his lady love upstairs.’
‘His what?’
‘No, I’m saying nothing, but I’m surprised Loretto hasn’t passed it on to your mother. Still, what with herself being your mother’s friend and everything I suppose it’s a bit complicated. Forget I said anything, will you.’
He was gone, leaving Dara fuming on River Road. She bent down and pulled up a handful of dried grass from the river bank to wipe off her lipstick.
Jack Coyne was always a pain and she knew that Mam and Dad didn’t like Eddie and Declan hanging around his yard. But surely not even Jack Coyne could make up something like that about Kerry and Mrs Fine unless he had some reason.
Mrs Fine. She was older than Mam, surely. It was disgusting.
‘Oh, Patrick, this is a surprise!’ Marian Johnson patted her hair with pleasure.
‘Hardly a surprise,’ Patrick growled. ‘It is my office.’
‘No, I heard you were going to Dublin.’
‘No.’ Patrick was unforthcoming. ‘What can I do for you . . . ?’
‘Nothing really, I just came down to have a look around the place, to see the coach house and stables.’
‘They’re outside, Marian,’ Patrick said dryly. ‘They often are in houses like this.’
He realised he had been over-sharp.
‘Come on, I’ll take you out to have a tour,’ he said good-naturedly. ‘Not that there’s anything to see of course, we’re only playing at ponies and horses here, the guests will all be taken up to the Grange.’
‘I know.’ She patted his arm gratefully. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you. You’ve changed the whole face of Mountfern.’
That’s not what I set out to do,’ he sighed.
‘All for the better, of course. You’ve improved the place out of all recognition. I mean, look at poor little Loretto’s place across the river there . . .’ Marian waved a dismissive arm at the bright shop frontage of Quinn’s grocery and greengrocery. ‘That used to be a real huckster’s shop, and now it’s grand enough for Kerry O’Neill to be seen coming and going at all hours of the day and night.’ She smiled what she hoped was a mischievous smile.
Patrick looked at her almost pityingly. ‘I know, Marian. I know. Don’t wear yourself out trying to think up ways of telling me what half
the town has told me already.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She flushed angrily.
As Dara passed Loretto Quinn’s she saw Mrs Fine standing at the upper window. She was looking out over the river. She hadn’t seen Dara.
For a moment Dara hesitated. Jack Coyne had been very definite. Then she shook herself. It was ludicrous. Mrs Fine looked a hundred.
On a sudden impulse Dara decided to go up and tell her that Mam was upset. It might do some good and it couldn’t do any harm.
Loretto was out the back somewhere, so Dara ran straight upstairs.
‘Mrs Fine?’ She tapped lightly on the door and went in.
Rachel Fine turned round from the window. However badly she looked from down below she looked worse now. Dara could hardly hide her shock.
‘Sorry, Dara. I wasn’t expecting you. You look very nice.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Fine . . . um . . . Are you all right and everything?’
‘I’ve had a bit of a cold, I think. Flu perhaps.’
‘Oh, I see. Mam was wondering where you were.’
There was a silence.
‘Well, I’ll be off then, I suppose,’ Dara said awkwardly.
‘You enjoyed France? It . . . it must have made you grow up a lot.’
‘Yes, I got lonely a bit of course, I didn’t really expect that. I missed everyone here. All the time.’
Another silence.
‘Mam’s very fond of you, Mrs Fine, she wouldn’t be afraid you’d give her an old cold.’
To Dara’s fright, big tears came into Rachel Fine’s eyes.
Rachel went to her bedroom and sat in front of the dressing-table mirror. She looked old and tense, she looked lined and pathetic. Methodically she removed her make-up, cleansed her skin, applied a gel that was meant to restore the cells and carefully put on her make-up again.
As she did the feathery strokes around her eyes, Rachel Fine began to wonder was she going mad. First avoiding her friend for days and then making herself up like a call girl to go and see a kind woman in a wheelchair who wouldn’t notice if she arrived dressed in a pillow case.
Kate was a little prickly at first.
‘I must say it’s nice to see you. Dara will be glad to know you called.’