‘I think it’s a hen,’ she laughed, and ran towards him to give him a hug. ‘It’s hens that fuss. It’s the bears that hug. You’re very good to me, Kerry.’
The door opened and Patrick came in.
‘Is that your new uniform? You look fantastic; a real scholar,’ he said admiringly.
Grace still had her arms around her brother’s waist.
‘Kerry’s been setting me right, and giving me all kinds of good advice about going to school.’
Patrick looked pleased. He often wondered what the children talked about when they were on their own. They seemed quite content.
‘I just thought someone should mark her card,’ Kerry said with a note of insolence that Grace noticed too. She looked up at him anxiously, and let her arms drop.
‘Good.’ Patrick was easy and relaxed. ‘I’m glad you’re doing it. I’m afraid that I have too much faith in you pair; I think you were born knowing everything, being able to do everything. I don’t mark your cards enough, I suppose.’
‘That’s a good complaint to have, Father.’ Grace was hasty in her attempts to avert this scene, whatever it was.
She spoke quickly. ‘I hear so many people complaining about their parents who tell them this and order them to do that. You just stay as you are. Tommy Leonard says his father is at him night and day.’
‘Not enough to get him to keep a clean tongue in his head,’ Kerry said.
Suddenly Grace felt weary. ‘Look, fight if you want to, I’m not going to keep chatting. I think I’ll go to bed.’
The light had gone from her face. Both her father and brother looked stricken.
‘I wasn’t fighting, Gracie, really,’ Kerry said.
‘Listen to me, honey, I couldn’t fight with anyone, not tonight, now that I see you all dressed up to go to your Irish convent school. My heart is so full, Grace. I wish, I wish so much . . .’
They knew what he wished. They knew that Father wished their mother were alive. But he didn’t say it. He just said that he wished things were different.
Grace had met most of the girls who would be in her class and who lived in Mountfern. But there were quite a few from out the country. When they saw the newcomer they were dazzled. At first they giggled a bit at the beautiful girl with the golden curls tumbling down from a top knot tied with a shiny navy ribbon. And they nudged each other at her American accent.
Sister Laura made a small speech of welcome at assembly and said that she knew the girls of Mountfern convent would be, as they always were, welcoming to a stranger in their midst and help her to feel at home. Dara whispered to Grace that this was all nonsense. There never had been a stranger in their midst before. Grace was the first one. Maggie saw Grace and Dara laughing together at assembly, and tried to stop this feeling that she was being left out of things.
Sister Laura was speaking about the school year that lay ahead. She had every hope that 1962–1963 would be a year that they would all remember for the amount of hard work they put into their studies. Even those who had no formal examinations this year would, it was hoped, show a diligence that would be long remembered in the establishing of the convent in Mountfern as a legend in the houses of the order. Sister Laura said that sister houses had been achieving a reputation for scholarship which had so far evaded Mountfern. Let 1962–1963 be the year that all changed, the year they emptied their minds of silliness and let the sun of learning shine in.
They stood there in the navy uniforms. Kitty Daly splendid with the new hairstyle which had caused Kerry O’Neill to say, ‘You look nice. Did you change something about yourself?’ and sang the hymn to Our Lady to mark the beginning of the new term. Kitty had put all silliness out of her mind and was concentrating heavily on the information that Kerry did not go to his boarding school for another week. Grace would be out of the way at school. If Kitty were to feign a terrible sickness and go home, they would never suspect her of malingering, not on the very first day of term. Then she could walk up as far as the Grange, and if that old bag Miss Hayes didn’t get suspicious, she should surely find a chance to run into Kerry. Sister Laura was right, start the year as you mean to go on.
Dara sang lustily as well. It had been a great summer holiday after all, in spite of all the changes at Fernscourt. She and Michael had said last night, as they sat on the window seat, that they wished they had somewhere to go, some special place still like that room they had in Ferns-court that was theirs. But wasn’t it funny that none of them ever wanted to go back and play in the ruins now? They had only been once with Grace and it was like going back somewhere that belonged to another part of their life. Mr O’Neill had urged them to continue playing there, but things had changed, there were bicycles for one thing, and the fishing for another. And it was great to have someone as lively as Grace around. Maggie was a great friend, but she was very mousy, and always afraid of what would happen, and of someone objecting or getting annoyed. Grace hadn’t a fear in the world. She was magnificent.
Sister Laura sang to Our Lady, Queen of the Angels and Star of the Sea, and wondered why she felt Grace O’Neill was unsuitably dressed for school. The child wore her navy school uniform; she had no hint of make-up. She did not have pierced ears and great loops of earrings. She had no bosom apparent beneath her navy jumper. She was singing the hymn as assiduously as the others. What was it about her that made her seem not a twelve-year-old, but something much more precocious? Sister Laura liked to consider herself a fair woman. She hoped that she was not taking an unreasonable dislike to the child just because she had a beautiful face, tanned skin and golden hair.
Jacinta White nudged Maggie Daly to ask her why she wasn’t singing.
‘Sorry,’ whispered Maggie, and joined in the hymn.
Jacinta was relieved. She thought Maggie’s face looked very worried, as if she had something that was upsetting her. But of course Maggie often looked like that.
Fergus Slattery called to the Grange to see old Mr Johnson about a sale. It appeared that Patrick O’Neill had made an offer, a most generous offer for a small paddock owned by the Johnsons, and the right of way to bring horses to and fro from this field from the main road across the Johnsons’ land.
‘I can’t see a thing wrong with it myself, but the American said to be sure, and do it through a solicitor; so here we are, Fergus. I’m sorry for bringing you all the way up here, I thought maybe your father might come, and we’d have a bit of a chat.’
‘He has a cold on his chest, and Miss Purcell won’t let him out of the house. He says he’s going to look for a writ of habeas corpus if she keeps him there much longer.’ Fergus spoke absent-mindedly. He was looking at the papers. ‘What does this fellow want the land for up here?’
‘I can’t tell you, that’s for certain. Marian says he’s doing it out of the generosity of his heart, because he knows we’re a bit strapped for cash. We wanted to get a bit of a paint job done but it costs the earth these days.’
‘Is that field useful to you?’
‘Not at all, it’s only a nuisance to us. The hedges and walls are all broken anyway, but it says somewhere there, doesn’t it, that he’s going to build them up?’
Fergus had been reading this. ‘Yes, he can build walls and low constructions for the maintenance of cattle, livestock or horses. I suppose that’s what he wants, to set up a rival stables, take the one bit of business you have left.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Mr Johnson was mild. ‘He’s signed an agreement with us about using our horses, paying a retainer even, in case he doesn’t have sufficient guests for them. He’s going to be the making of us, Fergus. Paying a great big rent for that falling-down gate lodge too, and a year in advance because we had to do a bit of smartening it up.’
‘Smartening it up? From what I hear, you practically built a new house,’ Fergus snapped.
‘What have you against him, boy?’
‘It’s a good question, Mr Johnson, and a timely one. I’ll look at this document now, and stop a
ll this sounding off.’
Fergus read the totally straightforward deed of sale drafted by a perfectly honest solicitor. Reluctantly he agreed that if Mr Johnson wanted to sell, then there was nothing here that was out of the way, and that the price offered was well higher than the normal rate per acre hereabouts.
As a last, and almost petty gesture, Fergus asked whether Mr Johnson could see any reason, apart from the goodness of Patrick O’Neill’s heart and his wish to give them decorating money, why a businessman should suddenly make an offer for that particular field.
Mr Johnson’s mild old eyes looked surprised.
‘Well of course there’s a reason, Fergus. He needs a place where he can keep horses himself. And suppose he and Marian fall out, suppose Marian sets her cap at him too obviously and he isn’t willing, well he’d need to have a fall-back position if he’s offering his guests riding lessons, pony trekking, hunting and all. It’s to cover himself.’
Fergus was astonished at such clarity of vision.
‘And does Marian see it like this?’ he gasped.
‘Now, now, now, Fergus, do women ever see things the way they are? Have you known a woman who could see further than romance and yards of veil and wedding days? Let them go on like that, it doesn’t do anyone any harm.’
Fergus felt a chill. It was like playing God with people’s future, he thought, as he arranged the signature of the deed of sale.
Olive Hayes wrote a long letter to her sister in New Zealand every month. She kept a carbon copy of it, and knew her sister probably did the same. They could refer back easily to small incidents that each had described over the years and they never forgot anything, no matter how trivial. Miss Hayes knew of the health of the elderly Reverend Mother who was always expected to die and then rallied, just when a successor had been more or less agreed for the community. Over on the other side of the earth in a convent on a cliff in South Island, Sister Bernadette knew about the O’Neill family, and how little Grace continued sunnily her life in Mountfern. Grace had even asked Miss Hayes if she would like to come to the sale of work up at the convent which was usually for the children’s parents.
‘You helped me make all the jam and cakes. You’re more entitled than anyone,’ Grace had said.
Miss Hayes had been very pleased, but she wondered was she stepping out of place.
‘Perhaps Miss Johnson?’ she had said tentatively.
‘Ugh, ugh, no thank you very much,’ Grace had giggled. ‘We don’t want to be giving her ideas, Miss Hayes.’
Olive had found that very endearing. She told her sister that Patrick O’Neill had gone to the States again. He travelled the whole way there as easily as some people took a train from the big town to Dublin. Miss Hayes felt that he had waited until Kerry was safely installed at his boarding school before he went. It was no trouble to look after Grace, but Kerry might have been a handful.
Miss Hayes looked back at the carbons of her previous letters and noticed with satisfaction that she had made this very same pronouncement in July when the O’Neills had arrived. Now, five letters later, she was interested to know that she had been right.
Kate Ryan decorated the Slatterys’ office with holly at Christmas time. She thought how strangely unfestive it all was compared to everywhere else in Mountfern. The church had its huge crib and in the window of the presbytery there was a Christmas candle and another smaller crib, lovingly tended by Miss Barry who hadn’t touched a drop since the summer.
Leonard’s stationery and paper shop was all done up with the paper chains and streamers it sold. Mrs Meagher was still in mourning for her husband, but she had sprigs of tinsel and glitter around the Christmas-wrapped brooches and earrings in the window of the shop. The cinema had two large Christmas trees with lights that flashed on and off. Declan Morrissey said it gave him a headache to look at them, and every single year he managed to fuse the lights in the cinema when he was putting up these ridiculous Christmas decorations. Daly’s Dairy had very smart plaited rings of ivy and holly twisted around each other and tied with a red ribbon. They had been made by Kitty apparently, who was a changed girl according to all accounts, and had seen how to do this home-made decoration in one of those American magazines she was always reading.
In the post office there were some coloured paper chains, a big silver banner saying Peace on Earth, and a collection box discreetly placed in case anyone might interpret the season of good will as a time to give a few pennies towards gifts for a children’s orphanage. Dunne’s pub had a big plastic Santa Claus in the window. There was hardly any point in their putting up any further decoration since they were yet again on the verge of packing up and going to Liverpool. Jimbo Doyle had put a Christmas tree for his mother in the window of their small house, and had agreed after much nagging to get proper fairy lights that worked. His mother had said that she was sick of hearing all the work Jimbo was doing in other people’s houses while their own looked like a very good imitation of a rubbish tip.
In the Garda barracks Seamus Sheehan looked in some doubt at the decorations Mary had bought on her last visit to Dublin. He wondered whether they were appropriate to the walls of a Garda Siochana station. Arty-looking cutout robins and reindeer with little holes where you inserted mistletoe or holly. But Mrs Sheehan had been adamant. She had read about them in a magazine which said that all the best people in Dublin had these in their homes now, and she wanted to drag a bit of style into Mountfern no matter how much they all resisted it.
Judy Byrne had planted two neat window boxes of her small house with holly bushes and miniature Christmas trees. They looked very festive and elegant at the same time, people told her. Patrick O’Neill had made a point of coming in to congratulate her on them. He had stayed for a drink at Judy’s insistence because of the season. She ran next door to Foley’s with a tray and came back with a large whiskey for Patrick and a small sherry for herself.
She told Patrick that she didn’t keep drink in the house. She thought it was a pity for single ladies to start opening the bottle at a regular hour each evening. Single women had to be so careful. Not that she was saying a word against Marian Johnson of course, and in a hotel poor Marian had to be sociable. Still it was a danger, and it could run away with you all too easily.
Across the road Mr and Mrs Williams had their house neatly draped in holly and ivy. The Protestant church had been decorated by their few parishioners. Dr White and his wife had threatened to have no decorations this year if this ridiculous row about mistletoe wasn’t solved. Jacinta wanted a big bunch of it on the door just as you came in; Liam wanted none of it in or near the house. Never had a battle been fought so long and bitterly. Tommy Leonard said it was better than being at the pictures listening to the two of them. Dr White decided eventually that a small discreet sprig of mistletoe be placed over the kitchen door, that it should not be publicly referred to, and that if this row began again, both Jacinta and Liam would remember Christmas 1962 as the year they not only had no decorations but no presents and no turkey either.
Miss Purcell wasn’t best pleased when she saw Kate Ryan on a chair with a sprig of holly and a packet of thumb tacks.
‘It was never the way here; Mr Slattery never requested it,’ said Miss Purcell, lips in a hard line and the two red spots coming up magnificently on her cheeks.
‘I know, Miss Purcell.’ Kate was falsely apologetic. ‘It’s quite ridiculous really, but the children went up to Coyne’s wood and they picked lovely bits full of berries, so I thought the least I could do . . . you know Mr Slattery wouldn’t want to offend . . . and in the spirit of Christmas . . .’
She finished no sentence and did not explain that she had asked Michael and Dara to collect a big box and deliver it to the office for her. A Christmas card from Fergus’s sister Rosemary in England and then old Mr Slattery, Fergus and Miss Purcell in paper hats sitting round a small turkey dinner. It didn’t seem nearly celebratory enough for someone as warm and funny as Fergus.
He was
pleased and surprised. He had been at the district court in the town, his father had gone to talk to an old crony on the grounds of a will that might be changed, but really in the knowledge that a bottle would be opened. Fergus looked at the holly with pleasure.
‘We never had that; it’s lovely,’ he said simply.
‘Not even when your mother was alive?’
‘Not really. She was never strong, you know. She didn’t have all that energy like you have.’
To herself Kate thought that it didn’t really take much energy to stick a few bits of holly on a wall behind pictures, or round a doorway for a man and a boy. But she said nothing. She didn’t mention that Grace O’Neill had said the very same thing; her mother had been unwell always. They didn’t have Christmas decorations, it would have been tiring for her.
‘I got you a present, Kate,’ Fergus said. ‘You’re a hard person to buy for; you have everything.’
‘I felt the same about you.’ She produced a big wrapped parcel.
‘Isn’t that great, to be the two people who have everything,’ Fergus said, and waited for her to open hers first. It was a day excursion ticket to Dublin, two gift vouchers – one for Switzer’s and one for Brown Thomas – and a note saying, ‘On presentation of this paper to her employer, Mrs Kate Ryan will be granted one day’s leave from her lawful employment during the working week.’
Kate stared at it in delight.
‘I thought you could go to the January sales, and those vouchers are to make sure you go to Grafton Street and see nice things. You’re not to be buying up household goods in Clery’s, mind.’ He spoke gruffly to hide his pleasure in her delight.
‘I’ll enjoy every minute of the day.’ She hugged him. ‘Fergus, you are a darling. Thank you very much.’
‘Well now, let’s see what you gave me.’ He opened the box. It was a beautiful edition of Moore’s Melodies with huge over-flowery illustrations by Daniel Maclise.
‘I remembered you said you like Thomas Moore – that day at the concert, when Michael’s class was murdering some of the melodies. I thought you’d like this.’ She beamed at him and saw to her consternation that his eyes were far too bright. She spoke quickly until he had recovered a calm voice himself. ‘I got it inside the town. You know, Gorman’s bookshop, I asked them to look out for an old edition and they came up with this. John and I have been looking at it ourselves. I hope you like it.’