Firefly Summer (56 page)

‘It is and it isn’t, Kate. But the hotel will have its own
laundry, you won’t see the guests taking a pillow case of dirty washing down to Bridge Street . . .’

‘Or . . .’

‘Or to wherever someone would put it.’ Mrs Whelan seemed anxious for Kate to divulge no mad little hopes.

‘A laundermat or whatever they’re called would need a place where there’d be young people living on their own, there isn’t even a bank here employing a dozen youngsters. No, nobody would be seen going to a laudermat. Can you see Miss Purcell taking Fergus Slattery’s smalls to a public washing place? The humiliation of it!’

‘You don’t think it would work?’

‘No, Kate, I think it would be foolish.’

‘I see.’

‘Times will get better.’

‘Times are fine now. It’s later I worry about.’

‘You’ll manage, you always have.’

‘I don’t know, I really don’t.’

‘Fergus, it’s Kate Ryan.’

‘Well now.’ The warmth and delight in his voice were obvious.

‘I wanted to talk to you, about a worry. Would you be able to come out here at lunchtime?’

‘I’ll come right away.’ He took a file from the cabinet. Deirdre paused in her work to notice that it was Kate Ryan’s compensation file.

‘Is she going to talk about it?’ she asked.

‘I think so,’ Fergus said.

Mary Donnelly looked at him suspiciously.

‘She’s been a bit flushed and feverish. You won’t upset her?’

‘I never upset any woman, Mary,’ said Fergus. ‘That has been my weakness and sorrow in life.’

‘Don’t make a mock out of something very serious.’ Mary banged into the kitchen but she was back in twenty seconds.

‘I forgot, Mrs Ryan, you said you’d look after the bar for an hour . . .’

‘I forgot too,’ Kate said agreeably. ‘Still, I can do it. No one comes in this early, we’ll have the place to ourselves. You go on about your business, Mary.’

Fergus marvelled at the easy graceful way Kate manoeuvred the wheelchair into the bar. Up the ramp behind the counter.

He went to his accustomed place on a high stool.

‘Would you like a drink since you’re in the right place for it?’ She smiled.

‘No, even mad country solicitors don’t start this early.’ He looked at her. Mary was right, her eyes were very bright, her colour high.

‘What is it?’ He was gentle.

‘I hate saying this to you of all people, because I always shut you up about it, but I’m worried. I think that we’re going to be in big trouble when Fernscourt opens.’

‘You’re in big trouble already.’ He looked at the wheelchair.

‘No, we are not going to go over that again. I can’t fight a man on the grounds that I went in despite all those notices and got hurt. I’m talking about something else, about the trade. I think he and the hotel are going to take all our trade.’

Fergus was silent.

‘So I just wanted your advice. I was thinking of all kinds
of things we might do. I mean I could do anything.
Anything
.’

‘Oh, Kate.’

‘Don’t “Oh, Kate” me . . . I can and will do anything to keep this place in the black, I really will. It’s just that I got a bit frightened. I seem to be the last person in Mountfern to realise how changed everything is going to be.’

‘But I tell you.’

‘No, don’t go on about how terrible he is and how he should have stayed in America, that’s useless. It’s practical advice I want. Look at everyone else: Loretto is all smartened up, and have you seen Rita Walsh’s place, it’s like something in Grafton Street.’

Fergus smiled bitterly. ‘I’ve looked at everyone all right. Oh, they were all able to jump at the smell of money. Simple country town, how are you? This lot have their eye to the main chance, they’d be a fair match for the shysters on Broadway or the Bowery or the Bronx wherever it was your man made his money.’

‘Don’t make people out to be grasping, they’re not, they’re just . . .’

‘No, not all of them are, I give you that. There are a few who have their loyalty. Not a lot, but a few.’

‘But what loyalty?’ Kate was puzzled. ‘Who are they being loyal to if they don’t want to make a bit of money out of all the changes?’

‘To you for one,’ Fergus said simply.

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’ She was really annoyed now. ‘What has it to do with me? I don’t want to be the cause of any fighting. I was talking about the changes and how we should all be ready for them. Yes, us too. I’ve been
thinking about nothing else. How it’s going to change our lives. How everything’s going to be different.’

‘It will be different all right.’ Fergus was grim. ‘You were up there yourself, Jimbo told me that Rachel brought you up for a gander at the place. How many bars did you see? Not counting the ones they’ll have in the function rooms whenever there’s a do on. I counted them. I counted four, didn’t you? That’s a fair amount of drinks for a guy to get through before dinner, if he wants a hightail or a screwball.’

‘Highball, screwdriver,’ she corrected him automatically, as she would Michael.

‘I know, I wondered if
you
did.’

Her eyes flashed at him angrily. ‘All right, Mr Know-all, if you know so much can you tell me what to do?’

‘Yes, certainly I can.’ He took the file from its big brown envelope and laid it on the bar.

She flinched away from it. ‘
No
, that is
not
what I want. I don’t want his charity, I don’t want it all to be in court. That’s not what I want at all, a future based on money I got from him by a trick of law. I want to earn a living, be his equal that way.’ She was both troubled and annoyed.

So was Fergus. ‘Stop being a Christian martyr, Kate, it’s too late for all that.’

‘I will
not
have this place divided over my accident, I will not have them taking sides, I don’t want the whole of Mountfern getting upset about this and fighting over it . . .’

‘If I have to tell you this once more I will lose what marbles I have left, and I assure you they are not many. It is
not
his charity it is his insurance, and the whole of
Mountfern is not fighting about you. Can you get that into your thick skull?’

‘Fergus!’

‘I mean it. I really have lost patience with you. You pay insurance here, if a man falls off this stool and breaks his head, it’s your insurance that pays for it, Einstein, not you and John. That’s why you pay the bloody thing.’

She laughed and relented. ‘I suppose you’re right. I’ll talk to John about it tonight. We must stop behaving like ostriches.’

He looked a little mollified.

‘She reached across and took both his hands in hers. ‘You are a good true friend to us, I mean that.’

As they sat holding hands the pub door opened silently and in the way nuns have of moving without appearing to take steps Sister Laura rolled silently into the bar.

Kate cursed the greater freedoms that allowed nuns to enter public houses instead of denouncing them.

Fergus wondered was there a law of timing like a law of gravity. Something that always made people arrive in places at the wrong time.

‘I hope I haven’t come at a wrong time, Mrs Ryan.’

Sister Laura had a great devotion to St Francis of Assisi which was unfortunate because Leopold sensed an animal lover and opened his great jaws, closed his sad eyes and gave a treble wail drowning any possible explanation that Mrs Ryan and Mr Slattery might have been about to make about their untoward conduct.

‘There’s no doubt about it, Sister, but your lot are everywhere now,’ Fergus said admiringly. ‘I’ll be off.’

‘Well, if you’re sure you’ve finished.’ Sister Laura’s eyes were innocent.

‘It’s very hard to ever be finished in a pub, Sister, but of course your lifestyle hasn’t as yet led you to explore that side of the human condition.’

He waved from the door. ‘Kate, I’ll come up with some ideas and when you’ve talked to John I’ll come and discuss them.’

‘Thanks.’ Kate waved back.

‘Very nice young man,’ Sister Laura said, sitting down as if she had been used to going into pubs all her life. ‘Does the most marvellous work for the community for minimal cost. Of course it’s really time he got married and settled down. Bachelors don’t seem to fit into today’s world like they did in previous generations. Steady him down, don’t you think?’

‘Well yes . . .’ Kate was at a great disadvantage now. Anything she said would be bound to be taken the wrong way.

‘I won’t stay long, Mrs Ryan, it would turn away trade seeing a nun in here. What I wanted to say was that we’ve had a letter from a convent in France and there are a lot of families there who are very anxious to make contact with Irish Catholic families and have Irish Catholic girls come out there.’

Kate sighed. ‘You know, that was something I had really hoped for Dara, to do an exchange with a French girl, but we didn’t have the money this year when I was working it out. The cost of having a girl here would not be great, I know, but we’d have to entertain her, take her places. That would cost money.’

‘No, this is au pair. You know, doing a little light domestic duties and speaking English to the children.’

‘When would that be, Sister?’ Kate was interested.

‘It was summer they were really thinking about. Two families in particular. We have the highest references. It’s in the Loire country where the châteaux are. It would be a great opportunity.’

‘I’ll have to talk to Dara’s father, Sister Laura. There are a lot of things to take into account. The fare, and that. And if she’ll go! She’s very thick with the Americans, she may not want to go off to France in the middle of her summer.’

‘She’ll learn no French and very little else from an American girl.’ Sister Laura had fairly trenchant views about everything. ‘I’ll be off anyway and if you do decide, let me know.’

‘I will indeed, Sister. Thank you for your interest.’

‘She’s a nice bright girl that Dara,’ Sister Laura said. ‘She’s a very bright girl. She lost a lot of ground the year you had your accident, poor child, she was grieving for you a lot.’

‘I don’t know how she managed at all,’ Kate said.

‘Of course she’s probably like a lighting devil nowadays, they all
are
at home.’ Sister Laura spoke in a matter-of-fact way that made Kate giggle.

‘I don’t seem to be able to do much right, that’s true,’ she admitted.

‘I think you’d find her a lot more appreciative after a spell in France, they learn to be grateful for home comforts.’

The nun had bright laughing eyes. Kate wondered what life would have been like for Sister Laura if she hadn’t entered the convent. Would she have been an all-wise all-knowing mother of a fifteen-year-old? Very possibly.

‘John?’

‘Hold on a minute, I’ll come in to you.’ He came in and perched on the edge of the long table that went round the walls. He looked at the pages of notes and files strewn around Kate but didn’t ask her what they were.

‘Wasn’t that a great idea, that long table? In a million years I’d never have thought of anything so useful.’ He patted the furniture admiringly.

‘Is there nobody in the bar?’ Kate didn’t want business neglected.

‘Divil a one.’ He was hamming at her. It annoyed her suddenly, there would be enough call for all that stage Irishry later.

‘Well listen, if you have a minute I want to tell you . . . well to ask you really. To discuss . . .’ She shuffled all the papers with her writing on them together.

‘Yes?’ He was mild and encouraging. Could he really be so blind to his surroundings, and to the fact that his business was going to the wall?

‘We’ll have to change a lot, I was thinking.’

‘I know. I know.’

She didn’t want to hear a soothing voice, she wanted some fire, she wanted him to take the initiative.

‘I think we’ve been fools sitting here believing that it’s all going to be sunshine and laughter when the place beyond opens . . .’ She paused for a moment, half expecting him to say something in defence of Patrick, but he said nothing.

‘I think we’ll have to start up something else, it would be mad to think they’ll leave all the bars they have over in that place to drink in ours.’

‘Particularly on a bad day,’ John agreed. ‘And our own
crowd will want to be where there’s all the activity. So we’d better offer them something else apart from drink.’

Kate looked at him surprised. ‘What would you think about a café, you know, traditional sort of teas? I know it’s not what you’re used to, what you expected things would be like.’

John didn’t look at all taken aback at the idea, she realised. He must have come to the same conclusion himself.

‘Nothing’s what we were used to,’ he said, touching the wheelchair. ‘Nothing was what we expected things to be like. But we’ve survived, and we’ll go on surviving.’

Fergus Slattery told Kate that the case was in the Lists for next September. That it would not have to be heard, no further delays would be tolerated. Fergus hoped that the case would coincide with the hotel opening. He would love the thought of the great O’Neill missing his party because he was in court hearing a huge award for compensation being given against him. The thought of it made Fergus almost dizzy with delight. He felt his life had become grey and tired; only the thought of Kate’s compensation gave it any fire at all.