Firefly Summer (78 page)

Declan asked could
he
go to France next summer, he wouldn’t mind looking after children, it would be nice to have something younger than himself that he could boss around and give orders to.

Carrie asked if they ate everything raw – Jimbo told her he had heard that.

Mary Donnelly said she was pleased to hear that Frenchmen were not always making free with their attentions, as had often been reported.

Grace and Michael giggled at this and Kate and Dara exchanged glances. Mary had not been told about the discovery of Monsieur Vartin and Mademoiselle Stephanie.

It was marvellous to be back at home with everyone speaking English and everyone speaking at once.

But it was awful not to be able to ask about Kerry. Nobody had mentioned his name.

After supper Dara linked Grace out into the garden. They were meant to be doing a tour of the café.

‘And what news of your big brother?’ Dara tried to be light and joky.

‘Oh, didn’t he write to you? I
told
him you were coming home today. He was on the phone looking for Father.’

‘How was he?’

‘He was mainly sounding off about Miss Hayes. I had to keep the telephone very close to my ear in case she’d hear, he’d called the night before for Father, and a . . . oh, I don’t know, she hadn’t given the right message. But I did tell him you’d be back today.’

‘Thanks, Grace,’ Dara was bleak.

‘Was it great, France?’ Grace was eager. ‘Did you go out at all to any parties or dances?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘What was the best bit?’

‘We had a picnic . . . they call it peek neek, honestly. They had huge loaves of French bread and cheese and peaches and wine . . . And we went to this place on a river, not the Loire itself but a smaller river like the Fern, and we went swimming, all of us. Even Madame. And we stayed there till quite late and it got dark, and they all seemed very happy . . .’

Grace looked at her, trying to see why this had been the high spot.

Dara went on. ‘They seemed so safe, sort of. As if they’d always be together, and I understood all the conversation, which I usually didn’t. I think it might have been the wine . . . And suddenly there were all these little pinpoints of light everywhere. Fireflies they were.’

‘Oh yes, fireflies are lovely,’ Grace said.

‘I told them we didn’t have any here, and Monsieur said I must look again when I got home. That was the best time, I think.’

Grace seemed pleased that Dara had a happy if unfathomable memory. She hugged her friend. ‘It’s great to have you home again,’ she said.

And Dara felt a great ache.

It would have been great to come home if there had been a note from Kerry saying when he’d be back in Mountfern. If Maggie had been running up River Road after supper, hands clasped and eager to hear every detail. If Tommy had come in making jokes about the French.

And if Mam’s face hadn’t this tired look, and if she’d been able to eat her supper instead of moving the cold chicken and ham from one side of the plate to the other.

Loretto Quinn had to tell someone so she picked Sheila Whelan.

‘It could be totally innocent,’ Sheila said.

‘It has to be,’ Loretto said. ‘Mother of God, you don’t think that they’d have been sleeping together as man and wife, would you?’

Sheila sighed a ‘no’.

‘But what was he doing back in town, let alone above in her room?’ Loretto’s open face was puzzled. ‘Rachel told me herself that he wouldn’t be coming back until the opening. And young Dara Ryan said that Mr O’Neill said he was still above in Donegal.’

‘It’s a mystery all right,’ Sheila said. She had a feeling that something was very wrong here. If Kerry really had been sneaking into Mountfern and to Rachel for any
purpose under the sun, not to mention the interpretation which would be put on it, then why had he advertised it so publicly?

People didn’t die without orange juice and eggs. He could have waited until Jack Coyne had left the shop, he would have heard his voice before he came in. Kate Ryan had always been worried about Kerry, she had said there was something very strange about him, he didn’t react like ordinary people.

Maybe Kate had been right.

Tommy Leonard was disappointed that he had missed Dara coming back. He had gone out with Jacinta to find good angles where Mountfern could be photographed.

Mr O’Neill was having a photographer next week who would take glossy pictures of the place and they would be turned into postcards. Some would be sold in the hotel, some in Leonard’s. Privately Tommy thought that if the visitors could buy them at the information desk in the hotel they would be most unlikely to want to trek the whole way to Leonard’s to buy the same thing. But his father had been very respectful and over-thanked Mr O’Neill.

Jack Coyne came in to buy a paper. He ignored Tommy and went instead to the older man. Jack lowered his voice so Tommy made an effort to hear. It seemed to be about Kerry O’Neill having breakfast with Loretto Quinn. Or was it Mrs Fine? In either case hadn’t they little to talk about!

Tommy’s thoughts went back to Dara. He wished he hadn’t gone out with Jacinta, he felt sure no good would come of it. Liam White said that Dara had changed totally, got a smaller waist, a bigger chest and a sort of bold flashy
look about her as if she had seen it all and done it all. Tommy knew that this couldn’t be true, but he did wish that he had been able to see her himself and make these observations about her chest and her waist instead of hearing it all from Liam.

He stood there, legs aching, wishing that his father had not been so infected by Mr O’Neill’s diligence that he now kept the shop open until nine o’clock in the evening.

Fergus went for a stroll which took him, as his strolls nearly always did, to the door of Ryan’s.

‘Can I have a look at the Parisienne?’ he asked John.

‘She’s within, chattering to her mother, saying “oui” instead of yes half the time. The boys are giving her a desperate teasing over it. Take your pint and go in to see them.’

‘Ah no, I’ll let them talk. I’ll see her plenty in the next few days.’ Fergus knew how much Kate had been looking forward to the daughter’s return.

‘Wasn’t it a great chance for her, Fergus?’ John was very pleased with the way it had all turned out. ‘We didn’t know what we were sending the child to, really, it was just that . . .’ He let the sentence trail away.

‘Well, didn’t it all work out very well when you consider . . .’ Fergus Slattery didn’t finish his sentence either.

He thought that this particular conversation was better left untold in this house. He hoped that the handsome young Dara Ryan had her head well turned by Frenchmen and that she would forget O’Neill’s dangerous-looking son.

It was so good to have Dara home. Kate wondered how she had survived without her daughter. With Dara there
was no need to pretend, with Dara there was a feeling of hope all around her. Kate knew that Dara could hear the true plans and the true worries about the Shamrock Café.

‘It’s not what we had planned, like, for our lives,’ Dara had complained.

‘A lot of things weren’t what we had planned,’ Kate said, touching the sides of the wheelchair.

Dara had noticed how much Kate hated the chair. Since the very first day she had been in it, it represented the prison bars to her. She could not make herself see it as a liberation, a way of getting about. Instead she regarded the chair as a hated object and put all her anger towards it, as if it were the cause of all her incapacity. She wanted it out of her sight when she was in bed, no matter that she might need it in the night. She disguised it by draping rugs and scarves over it.

Dara seemed to understand. Once she had written a notice on it: ‘I’m only a chair, for God’s sake, Mrs Ryan.’

Kate had pealed with laughter when she woke and saw it.

They could talk easily now, the trip to France had been an inspired idea.

Dara gave her mind eagerly to the problems of survival when the new regime arrived.

‘There’s only one thing I don’t like, Mam.’

‘Tell it then.’

‘I don’t like you going up to the hotel to give cookery lessons.’

‘Aha,’ Kate said.

‘What do you mean, aha?’

‘I have a little plan about that, I can’t tell you yet, but let’s say it’s not going to be a problem.’

‘Tell me, I tell
you
everything.’

‘I’ll only go for a very, very short time.’

‘What’s the point in it, then?’

‘This is the point, once I’ve got myself established, then Dr White will tell me, and indeed tell Patrick, that the strain is too much, and I can’t do it any more, so . . . so I’ll have to continue the lessons here. Do you understand?’

‘Mam!’

Impulsively Kate opened her arms and Dara rushed to her.

‘It’s so good to have you home, child. I missed you so much. What do people do if they don’t have a daughter? Tell me that.’

‘Oh, Mam, it’s great to be back. They were nice in their way and they went to endless trouble over things but they’d have you starved half the time and they were riddled with sin.’

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.