There was a long silence. Nessa was taking it in.
‘Were you ever sorry?’
‘Not a day, not once I decided. And hasn’t it turned out well? The hotel has survived, the pair out in the pictures in the hall would have let it run into the ground, and they’d have let your father go off to the British army.’
‘Why are you telling me this now?’
‘Because you thought that all I wanted was to put ourselves above other people. I may have done that by accident but it wasn’t what I set out to do.’
‘Does Dad know about Teddy Burke?’
‘There was nothing for him to know but a young girl’s silliness and dreams.’
Mattie came in, his sack of letters delivered.
‘This town is going to hell, Mrs Ryan,’ he said. ‘A wedding party bawling “Bless this House” above in Johnny Finn’s and the women of the house sipping sherry in Ryan’s.’
‘And no one to pour a pint for the postman,’ laughed Nessa’s mother.
The moment was over, it might never come again.
Nessa began to look at other people in a new light after this. Perhaps everyone had a huge love in their life, or something they thought was a huge love. Maybe Mr Kelly up at the school had fancied a night-club singer before he settled for Mrs Kelly. Maybe Nellie Dunne had once been head over heels in love with some travelling salesman who had come many years ago to Ryan’s Commercial Hotel, but who had married someone else. Maybe one of those old men in the commercial room had been Nellie’s heart’s desire.
It wasn’t so impossible.
Look at Eddie Barton, falling in love with someone in Scotland. It had never been exactly clear how he had got in touch with her in the first place, but apparently he had been writing to Christine Taylor for ages, and phoning her from the hotel.
And then she had arrived over and was living with his mother. Nessa was amazed at the change in Eddie. He was speaking to the Dunnes, cousins of Foxy, as if he was their equal. He was in the hotel with Christine discussing improvements and ways to decorate the bedrooms.
Love did extraordinary things to people.
Eileen Blake from The Terrace said that she was stopping for a coffee in Portlaoise on her way back from Dublin and who was there but Richard Hayes and a girl, and they were booking in. As man and wife.
Young Maria Kelly from Shancarrig schoolhouse was reported to have been at a dance with him in the big town, but her parents didn’t know because she had climbed in and out her window through the branches of the old copper beech tree that grew in the yard.
Nessa Ryan heard both these facts in the space of three days. She came across them accidentally, they were not brought in as deliberate bad news to her door.
She felt, not as she had feared she might – no sense of cold betrayal, no rage that a man should tell her she was special and he wanted her to be his girl, and yet behave the same way with half the country. Very clearly and deliberately she felt her infatuation with him end. Perhaps she was her mother’s daughter much more than she had ever believed. She was not ready to give him up but she would have him in her life under different terms.
Richard came into the commercial room of the hotel. There were no travellers staying and so Nessa was using the room to do her shorthand homework.
‘I have to go into town tomorrow. I could pick you up outside your college,’ he offered.
She could imagine the eyes of her classmates when Richard Hayes leant across to open the door of the car for her.
‘And where would we go then?’ she asked.
‘I’m sure we’d find somewhere,’ he said.
Nessa looked back into the bar where her mother and father were standing, well out of earshot.
‘They’re not listening.’ Richard was impatient. But that wasn’t what concerned Nessa. She looked at them and saw her mother stroke Dad’s face gently, lovingly.
She saw that it really never mattered who talked to the men from the brewery, the biscuit salesmen, who hired or fired the barmen. It wasn’t important that Sergeant Keane dealt with her mother over the licensing laws, not her father. Mother had forgotten Teddy whatever he was, he’d have been no good to her. She had found what she really wanted, someone she could share her own strength with. Nessa saw for the first time that her mother had got what she wanted. It wasn’t a case of settling for second best.
And with a shock of recognition she felt that she was going to follow exactly the same path. It wouldn’t be a question of aiming high and searching for fireworks. There might be an entirely different way to live your life. Unbidden, Niall’s worried face came to mind. She longed to calm him and tell him it would all be all right.
She looked straight at Richard, right into his eyes.
‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘No to everything. Thank you all the same.’
It wasn’t at all easy to do.
But she would not live in fear of him and how he would react. Nothing was worth that.
‘Well, well, well.’ He looked around the room scornfully. ‘So this is all you are ever going to amount to. A second-rate shabby hotel … a grown woman still a prisoner to her mother.’ He looked very angry and put out. People didn’t usually speak to Richard Hayes like this. Girls certainly didn’t.
Nessa was furious.
‘It is not a shabby hotel. It’s my home. My home. I live here and I choose to live here. You can’t even live where you want to because they run you out of town. Don’t come down here and start criticising us. It doesn’t sit well on you. And answer me one thing: how would I amount to any more if I were to go off to the glen with you and roll around for five minutes on the ground?’
‘It would be longer than five minutes,’ he said mischievously. She hadn’t lost him. He fancied her all the more because she was refusing him.
What a wonderful power.
It was the making of Nessa Ryan.
She didn’t flirt with him like every other woman within a hundred-mile radius seemed to. She did not want to be known as his girl.
It was as if she had turned around the relationship, made it businesslike, affectionate but in no way exclusive. She teased him about his latest conquests, real and supposed, she knew that her very lack of jealousy was driving him wild. She was happy in the knowledge that he desired her. When she met him it was always with other people.
She finished her course at the college and went to work full time for her mother and father.
It was she who decided to lift the hotel on to a higher level. She contacted the tourist board about grants, and organised that they got money advanced to improve their facilities. She asked visiting Americans to write letters to their local papers praising Ryan’s so as to get them further custom.
She told her mother to drop the word Commercial from the title.
‘Ryan’s makes it sound like a pub,’ her mother complained.
‘Call it Ryan’s Shancarrig Hotel,’ said Nessa.
A few eyebrows were raised. Nellie Dunne presided over several conversations about the Ryans having notions.
‘That young one is the cut of her mother,’ said Nellie. ‘I remember when Breda O’Connor came in and took the whole establishment from Conor’s mother and father. That Nessa will do the same.’
But Nessa Ryan showed no signs of friction with her mother and father. She would laugh with her mother about the Sainted Grandparents who glared from the picture on the wall. She told her father that he looked handsome in a jacket and begged him to have nice framed pictures of racehorses on the wall, so that they might attract a few of the horsey set and give some legitimacy to her father’s constant topic of conversation.
Catherine and Nuala were mystified by her. The most handsome man around seemed to be waiting on their sister Nessa and she barely gave him the time of day. They watched uncomprehending as Nessa became more and more attractive-looking, her dark shiny hair always loose and cut with a fringe. A style that owed nothing to the hairdresser but a lot to a picture in a chil
dren’s book she had seen, a picture of Diana the huntress.
Nessa got on well with her mother. The two of them often drove to Dublin to look for fittings and fabrics. At an early age she seemed to have their trust, and to be allowed a lot of freedom that was later denied to the more spirited Catherine and Nuala.
‘Why can’t we go to Galway on our own? Nessa did,’ Catherine complained.
‘Because you’re both so unreliable and untrustworthy you’d probably go under a hedge with the first pair of tinker boys you met,’ Nessa said cheerfully to them. They felt it a great betrayal, there should be some solidarity between sisters. Imagine mentioning going under hedges in front of their mother, putting ideas in her mind.
‘I have no solidarity with you,’ Nessa said. ‘You steal my make-up, you wear my nylons, you spray yourself with my perfume. You don’t wash the bath, you do nothing to help in the hotel, you can’t wait to get away from here. Why should I help you?’
Put like that it was hard to know why.
‘Flesh and blood,’ Catherine suggested.
‘Overrated,’ Nessa told her.
‘Would you try for hotel management, do you think?’ her mother suggested. ‘It would teach you so much. There’s a great course in Dublin.’
‘I’m happy here,’ Nessa said.
‘I don’t ask you about Richard …’ her mother began.
‘I know, Mother. It’s one of the things I love about you.’ Nessa headed her off before she could start.
She wondered how long would be his exile in Shancarrig, and on Niall’s behalf she worried lest he had made too permanent and important a niche for himself with his Uncle Bill.
Mr Hayes came in to drink in Ryan’s Shancarrig Bar with Major Murphy, Leo’s father, sometimes. Nessa served behind the bar from time to time. She said it helped her to know what the customers wanted. Mr Hayes dropped no hint of how long his nephew would stay, but to Nessa’s distress he showed little enthusiasm about his son’s return.
‘Hard to know what he learned up there, you couldn’t get a word out of him,’ she heard him say to Dr Jims Blake one evening. She didn’t want to join in the conversation but later she brought up the subject.
‘Niall seems to be enjoying university and studying hard,’ she said.
‘Divil a bit of a sign he gives of either.’
‘Oh now. All fathers are the same. Still, business is good. There’ll be plenty for Niall to take on when he comes back.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. What with Richard …’ He let his voice trail away.
‘But Richard won’t be here for ever?’ Her voice was clear and without guile.
Bill Hayes looked at her directly. ‘There’s something keeping him here. I had a notion it might be yourself?’ he said.
‘No, Mr Hayes, I’m not the girl for Richard.’ There was no play-acting, nothing wistful – she seemed to be stating a fact.
‘Well, something’s keeping him here, Nessa. It’s not the pay, and it’s not the social life.’
‘I expect he’ll move on one day, like he moved in.’ Her voice was bland, expressionless.
‘I expect so.’ He sounded troubled.
Niall was home the following week.
‘I hear they’re giving you a car for your twenty-first birthday,’ he said to Nessa.
‘It’s meant to be a surprise, shut up about it,’ she hissed.
‘I didn’t know it was a secret. Isn’t it great though? A car of your own.’
‘You could have one too.’
‘How, might I ask? I’m not the doted-on daughter of the house.’
‘No, but you’re the eldest son of the house, and you never show the slightest interest in your father’s business.’
‘I’m only qualifying as a bloody solicitor, that’s all.’ Niall was offended.
‘But what kind of a solicitor? You don’t even ask him what’s going on. You don’t know about the competition.’
‘Richard, I suppose.’
‘No, you fool. He’s the family, he’s on your team. The competition. You know Gerry O’Neill the auctioneer in the town? Well, he has a brother who’s taking a lot of the conveyancing, even out this way. You have to fight back.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You don’t ask.’
‘When I do ask can I help I’m told to tear up files and put labels on envelopes.’
‘That was three years ago, silly.’ She put her arm around his shoulder. ‘Bring your father in here for a pint, treat him as an equal.’
‘He wouldn’t like that.’
‘I used to be like that, I spent my whole childhood thinking my mother wouldn’t like this or that. I was wrong. They want us to have minds of our own.’
‘No. They want us to be reliable,’ Niall insisted.
‘Yes, well. You and I are reliable, so they’ve got that much. Now they want us to have views, opinions, be out for the common good.’
He looked at her with great admiration.
‘Have you …?’ he began.
She knew he wanted to say something about Richard.
‘Yes?’ Her voice stopped him asking.
‘Nothing,’ Niall said.
‘See you and your father tonight.’
When Nessa Ryan got her car for her twenty-first birthday she first took her mother and father for a drive around Shancarrig, waving to everyone they passed. She caught her mother’s eye in the driving mirror more than once and they smiled. Friends. People who understood each other. She was doing the right thing. Thanking them publicly, showing Shancarrig that Breda O’Connor had come here twenty-two years ago and made a triumph of her life.
It was six o’clock and the angelus was ringing as she headed back home. People would be coming in to Ryan’s Shancarrig now for a drink. There would be autumn tourists to check in – the coach buses arrived in the evening.
As they passed Eddie Barton’s house Eddie and his Scottish Christine were in the garden. Nessa screeched to a halt.
‘I’ll come back for you later. I’ll pick up Leo, Niall and Maura and take you all for a spin,’ she called.
‘Just Eddie,’ Christine said. ‘So it will be like old times.’
‘You too.’
‘No. Thanks, but no.’
‘She knows what she’s doing,’ Nessa’s mother said approvingly.
‘Like all women, it seems to me,’ Conor Ryan said. His sigh was happy, not resigned. Nessa knew this now. Once she thought he was yearning to be free, now she believed that her father had the life he wanted.
Maura wouldn’t come, Nessa knew that, but she would love to be asked. She would be so pleased for the car to pull up at her cottage and for a group of the nobs, as Mrs Brennan would call them, to get out and beg her to join them.
But she would stay and mind Michael – her little boy, two-and-a-half-years old, a loving child, a child who never knew his father. Gerry O’Sullivan the handsome barman had been reliable enough to marry Maura, but not reliable enough to stay when the child had been born handicapped.
Nessa ran up the steps of Number Five The Terrace. The door was never locked.
‘Hello, Mr Hayes. I’ve come to take your right-hand man out for a drive in my new car,’ she said.
‘Congratulations, Nessa. I heard of the birthday and the car. Richard should be with you in a minute,’ he said.
‘I meant Niall,’ she answered.
‘Oh yes,’ he said.
‘I don’t know why you’re not out playing golf yourself, Mr Hayes, with all the help you have in here.’ She was playful, confident, she knew he liked her. Three years ago she wouldn’t have raised her glance to him, let alone her voice.
‘Oh, my wife wouldn’t like that,’ he said.
Nessa thought of Niall’s mother, a solid glum-looking woman, dressed always in browns or olive green. No spark, no life. Mr Hayes would have been better with a woman like Nessa’s mother, or Nessa herself.
Niall had heard her voice. ‘Did the car arri
ve?’
‘It did. And I’ve come to drive you off in it’ She linked her arm in his and appeared not to notice as Richard arrived out of the other door, straightening his tie and assuming that all the fuss in the hall meant someone had called for him.
Richard Hayes was standing at the top of the steps as Nessa ushered Niall into the front seat.
‘Didn’t you want …?’ Niall began.
‘Yeah. I wanted you but I waited till after six not to annoy your father. Let’s pick up Eddie.’
If Niall had been going to say anything about Richard he didn’t now. He settled back happily in the front seat. Eddie came, on his own. Chris had things to discuss with his mother. They drove up the long drive of The Glen. Leo was at the door waiting to meet them.
‘Will I show the car to your parents?’ Nessa asked.
‘No. No, I’d rather not,’ Leo said.
Possibly Leo’s mother and father might not have been able to afford a car for her. Or maybe her mother wasn’t well. Nobody had seen Mrs Murphy in ages, and Leo’s brothers, Harry and James, never came home from wherever they were. Biddy their maid was as silent as the grave, as if she were defending the family. Perhaps they had their secrets. Nessa didn’t mind.
Not nowadays.
And she was right about Maura. Maura wouldn’t come out with them, but she had a cake and they ate it together companionably in her cottage. The glass-fronted cabinet had a few items in it – a spoon in a purple velvet box, a piece of Connemara marble, and one of Eddie’s pressed flowers that he had done under glass as a christening present for the baby Michael.
There was a picture of Gerry O’Sullivan in a small frame on the mantelpiece.
‘Isn’t it great how we all stuck together,’ said Maura. And they nodded, unable to speak. ‘All we need is Foxy to come home and we’d be complete.’
‘He’s doing very well,’ Leo said unexpectedly. ‘He’ll be able to buy the town the way things are going.’