Firefly Summer (33 page)

‘No, Dara.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’d look like a gypsy, like a tramp.
No
.’

Dara looked crestfallen. She could read the tones, and this was a very definite no.

‘Listen, I know it’s not the same thing, but I’ll get you a nice ribbon for your pony tail, you know the way Grace wears those ribbons.’

‘Oh, Mam, Grace could wear anything in her hair and it would look great. I’d look like a jack-in-the-box with ribbon.’

‘You’ve no idea how lovely you are,’ said her mother. ‘And we will discuss your ears when you’re sixteen. Not a day before then, not an hour.’

‘That’s over three years. I can’t believe it’s going to be as long as that,’ wailed Dara. ‘I’ll be so old then, nobody will want to look at my ears, or any part of me.’

‘Yes, well that’s possible, but just to get value out of these days when everyone
is
looking at you, I’ll get a ribbon. Would you like a stripy ribbon or spots?’

Dara spent a long time curling her pony tail with pipe cleaners. It looked great next morning, tied up with an old blue ribbon she had found in Carrie’s room.

Dara was first at the raft, but Kerry O’Neill didn’t turn
up. Dara thought the day was very long. No Maggie, no Tommy, no Whites, and mainly no Kerry. Three times Dara asked Grace where he might be. Three times Grace shrugged; you knew what Kerry was like. He turned up or he didn’t.

Grace and Michael lay on the raft for ages, just talking. Dara felt very discontented, and dangled her feet in the water from the bank as she looked back up at Coyne’s wood in case she would see Kerry O’Neill approaching on his bicycle.

The twins sat on the window seat and looked at the moon shining on the river.

‘Can we take Grace to the tunnel, do you think?’ Michael asked.

‘We
said
it was going to be ours,’ Dara complained.

‘Yes, well it is, of course.’

‘So why take Grace?’

‘She’s your best friend.’

‘I know. That’s not the point; we’d have to take Maggie and Tommy. It would stop being special.’

‘We wouldn’t, we could have it as a secret, the three of us.’

‘You can’t keep secrets in threes.’

‘How do we know? I bet you and Grace have secrets. Things you don’t tell me.’

‘So, if we do, what is the point?’

‘The point is that if you do, then it means she
is
able to keep a secret. It would be great to bring Grace to the tunnel.’

‘No,’ said Dara.

‘Okay.’

‘What do you mean, okay?’

‘Just that. If you say no, then we don’t. If you’d wanted someone to come and I’d said no it would be the same.’

‘No sulks, Michael?’

‘No sulks, Dara.’

Fergus Slattery left his invitation to Dublin too late. The O’Neills had got in before him. Just two hours before him. He called formally to the pub and told John that he was going to hire a station wagon to take the Ryan family to Dublin to see President Kennedy. He had friends with a solicitor’s office on the very route of the cavalcade and they could sit at the window there above the crowd and see the whole thing.

John’s good-natured face had a look of sorrow to refuse such generosity. But hadn’t Patrick O’Neill been in that very morning with a similar suggestion? Imagine the Ryans being asked twice in the one day to go to see the President of America! Patrick was taking his own big car, Marian Johnson was taking her station wagon, and between them they were inviting the Ryans – John had decided to close the pub – and Sheila Whelan, whose nephew was going to be at the post office to deal with emergencies.

‘Well, well, that’s a pity,’ Fergus said between clenched teeth. ‘And what a chance to pass up. A seat on the very route itself.’

But it appeared that Patrick had some American friends with three hotel rooms overlooking the route so they would miss nothing.

Fergus had a whiskey, which burned his throat. Would he even bother to go now? The whole outing had gone as sour on him as the drink. He could hardly swallow. And to think that O’Neill had the decency to ask Sheila
Whelan. That was something Fergus should have thought of himself, but hadn’t. Why did the bloody man make all the right moves,
and
make them first?

Fergus walked back down River Road and back home. ‘Miss Purcell,’ he shouted.

‘Miss Purcell, would you like to go to Dublin next week and see John Fitzgerald Kennedy with me?’

‘Are you drunk, Mr Fergus?’

‘No, Miss Purcell, I am sober. I am, however, inviting you to watch the President of the United States visit Ireland.’

‘There’s no need to shout, Mr Fergus. I’ll think about it.’ Miss Purcell was flustered – the red spots were beginning to burn brightly, like bicycle tail-lamps.

‘Good, while you think about it I am going across the road to invite Father Hogan if he’d like to come too. I think the canon’s a bit too frail for the journey, and anyway some cleric had better mind the shop in case there’s a call for spiritual assistance.’

‘You’re inviting Father Hogan?’ Miss Purcell was now in seventh heaven. To travel to and from Dublin with the curate!

‘Yes, I hope he’ll have the graciousness to say thank you, Fergus, I’d love to come, rather than deciding he’s going to
think
about it.’

‘I’d love to come, Mr Fergus, thank you very much,’ said Miss Purcell. ‘You see, I didn’t really believe it was true. I didn’t want to say yes too quickly.’

Fergus found a strange stinging behind his eyes, and wondered was he going soft in the head, or had the whiskey in Ryan’s been drugged.

Dara dreamed that Kerry could drive and that he had invited her to go to Dublin in his car, and it had broken down, and they had to stay in a wood. They build two beds out of bracken and moss and slept beside each other holding hands.

None of them would ever forget the day that John Fitzgerald Kennedy came to Ireland. He was so boyish and young, they all said. Imagine him having that huge responsibility, and being in charge of half the earth, in a manner of speaking.

Fergus met Jimbo Doyle, who said that a van had been arranged on loan from Jack Coyne for a few pals, and he was taking Carrie out of Ryan’s with him. He told Fergus that he had asked her only just in time, because there was a question of Mr O’Neill himself including her in his party as part of the household.

‘Would you believe that?’ Jimbo said wonderingly. ‘And Carrie just a maid in the house.’

‘She’s not just a maid, she’s your girlfriend. Hasn’t she as much right to go and see Kennedy as anyone?’ Fergus snapped.

‘I know she’s my girlfriend, Mr Slattery, but she is the maid in their house too. I mean, that’s her job.’ Jimbo spoke in some bewilderment.

‘I’m sorry. I’m an ignorant bosthoon.’

‘You are not,’ Jimbo said. ‘You’re one of the most educated men for miles round these parts.’

The solicitor who had invited Fergus to bring some friends with him may have been startled at the young priest and the elderly housekeeper. But then he was a city man to
begin with, he probably expected country people to be eccentric. The crowds were shouting and cheering long before the cavalcade even came in view. Two newspaper photographers perched from nearby windows and they could even see a television camera team on the corner. Father Hogan and Miss Purcell waved the Irish and American flags they had been given, and as he saw their great excitement and pleasure, a lump came in Fergus’s throat, and he made himself a promise that he would try to be less selfish. All right, so he didn’t walk over people like that O’Neill did, but on the other hand he didn’t have the same genuine feeling for what would make people happy. Once or twice he had wondered how the Ryans were faring in the unfamiliar posh hotel. But soon the momentum had gathered and taken over, and like everyone else he was leaning out of the window waving, certain that there was a special wave and smile up at them.

Marian talked a lot about the trip to Dublin. She told everyone in the Rosemarie hair salon that Patrick O’Neill was a simply superb host.

‘Has he done much entertaining in that cottage of yours?’ Judy Byrne asked as she waited, thumbing through Rita Walsh’s rather old magazines.

‘No, they keep very much to themselves in the lodge, just family, you know.’ Marian sounded much more knowing than she was. She could not believe it possible that a family could live in her grounds and she would know so little of their everyday life. They were perfectly pleasant, if mildly startled when she came to call; they refused all offers of hospitality that she and her father showered on them. Marian had heard that a woman was
coming across from New York, a Mrs Fine. There had already been two phone calls to the Grange for her. It was a mystery. Patrick had made no booking; usually he was assiduous about booking well in advance and paying a full rate.

Who was Mrs Fine?

She longed to ask did anyone in the salon know, but she hated to reveal her hand.

She would call at Ryan’s perhaps, and enquire there.

Marian didn’t even need to do that. She met Grace and Dara as soon as she left Rita Walsh’s door.

‘Your hair looks lovely.’ Grace was always so enthusiastic, so willing to praise.

‘Thank you, dear. Grace, who is Mrs Fine?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean is she somebody who is a family friend?’

‘No, she’s not a family friend.’

‘Is she coming over here to Ireland?’

‘Not that I know of, Miss Johnson.’

‘It’s just that there have been two calls for her, and I hadn’t heard anything. Your father is usually so good about booking people in; I was wondering whether it had slipped his mind . . .’

‘No, it wouldn’t have slipped his mind. She can’t be intended to stay in the Grange. They must have got it wrong back in the States.’

‘So who
is
she then, dear?’

‘A sort of designer, I think; someone rather old who works with Father.’

‘And she and Mr Fine aren’t friends of yours back home?’

‘No, I think it’s all a work thing.’

‘I see.’ Marian was satisfied.

Grace linked Dara on towards their raft on the bend of the river.

‘I’ll tell you something, because I tell you all my secrets.’

‘You don’t have to.’ Dara still felt guilty about the tunnel.

‘Well, I will. The woman that Marian’s rabbiting on about, she’s the woman I was telling you about. The one that was meant to be interested in Father. You know the things people said.’

‘Oh heavens.’ Dara was worried for her friend.

‘No, it couldn’t be anything. I know that now. Father isn’t interested in women and all that sort of thing. It’s too late, and he’s only interested in being part of things here.’

‘Well, that’s all right then.’ Dara was relieved that there were no more storm clouds on the horizon.

‘Kerry, Mrs Fine’s coming.’

‘She’s not. He wouldn’t dare.’

‘I thought I’d tell you now, so that you wouldn’t make a scene.’

‘He can’t mean to bring her
here
.’ Kerry looked round the lodge in dismay.

‘No, not here, I mean to Mountfern.’

‘Is she staying in the Grange?’

‘No, or Marian knows nothing about it, if she is.’

‘It’s revolting.’ Kerry was walking around, agitated.

‘Please don’t make a scene. We’ve been over this a hundred times. We’ve said it
can’t
be true. Not all this time, not at their age.’

‘Look at what we hear about the people going to the Rosemarie hair salon, they must be about a hundred.’

‘But not Father!’

‘Why ever not? He’s just the same.’

‘I’ll ask him if you like. Let me ask him.’ Grace was anxious to avoid what would happen if Kerry asked.

‘No, don’t ask him. Don’t sink to asking him. If she comes to this place then he’ll have to explain her, let him explain her himself without us asking.’ Kerry’s lip was curled in disapproval.

Papers Flynn called to Dr White’s surgery, as if he were the most regular visitor there, coming for prescriptions and patent medicines. Mrs White was surprised to see him at the surgery door; his usual approach was to the kitchen door in search of cardboard, when he would not be averse to a cup of tea.

Then she saw he had a gigantic bump on his forehead and a cut all round it.

‘Oh, Papers, have you been in the wars?’ she asked, concerned for the gentle old man whose wits were long gone.

‘I don’t know what happened, Mam, but I was sitting there minding my own business in the dump near the brothers’ school and I saw Miss Barry from the presbytery, who often gives me a cup of tea. Anyway she threw this bag of bottles in, and she didn’t look at all to see if there was anyone there, and it’s opened my head. I can’t imagine what came into her.’

Mrs White sighed. It was about time for one of Miss Barry’s batters. But really and truly she was getting quite dangerous, if she had nearly laid out Papers. Still she could hardly be faulted for thinking that a rubbish dump might be free of people sitting on the debris having their tea. Mountfern was a very mad place, Mrs White often told
her husband, on the frequent occasions when she was trying to encourage him to find a practice somewhere with a bit more life in it.