Firefly Summer

Now, for the first time, the priest was shaken into a direct response.

  ‘He’s a fifteen-year-old boy, Father, almost sixteen. Eventually, I suppose, if I ask enough questions we might get an answer. Was he drunk? Did he hit one of the masters? Did he miss mass? What in God’s name prompted all these letters and phone calls that the FBI couldn’t work out?’

  ‘I’m trying to explain.’

  ‘God damn it, you are not trying to explain. Did he screw one of the maids? Did he deny the infallibility of the pope? If I drive here and take him away with me leaving behind buildings I’m goddamn paying to erect, I would like to know why.’

  ‘He took a great deal of money.’

  Patrick felt an ice-cold pool in the base of his stomach.

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘I assure you . . .’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two hundred pounds.’

  ‘Have you any proof of this?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to let me have it.’

  ‘Do you want your son here?’

  ‘Not immediately. Let me hear it from you first, then we’ll ask Kerry his side of things. Right?’

  The old Patrick had returned on the outside. A brisk smile, the kind he used in his business deals . . . a charm not fulsome, just there. He composed his face to listen.

  It was a tale of a charity football match in aid of deprived children. Patrick held his mask face with difficulty. The priest was so unctuous. He spoke of deprived children as if they were another species of life. The rugby match had attracted a lot of attention. People came from all over to attend it. There were three Irish internationals playing on each side. It wasn’t often that you saw such talent gathered on one afternoon on the playing fields of an Irish school. The entrance fee had been two shillings.

  The boys in the school all attended, of course, people from the neighbourhood and rugby fans from all over Ireland, as well as some people from the newspapers. Father Minehan’s voice lowered again, in case someone from the newspaper might be in the room with them. It was all highly unfortunate. Over fourteen hundred people attended the match, many of them being men of property and generosity who gave much more than the two-shilling entrance fee.

  Over two hundred pounds had been collected at the small tables placed near the school gate. It was taken into the school in leather bags, each with the amount it contained neatly written on a label attached to it. The money was in Father Bursar’s office ready to be checked into a bank account next day. It disappeared. There was a search. The search revealed among other things that some of the senior boys were not in their dormitory; they came in later over the wall. They were met by a reception committee.

  Kerry O’Neill had an envelope with fifty-seven pounds of the collection still in his pocket.

  ‘Balls,’ snapped Patrick. ‘Nobody could spend all that in a night. What did he do? Buy a couple of properties down town?’

  ‘He has not said what he did with it,’ Father Minehan said simply.

  ‘But he hasn’t said he took it, surely?’

  ‘He cannot say otherwise. He is not a fool.’

  Again Patrick felt ice water moving in his stomach.

  Kerry had packed. They had told him that morning that he was to have everything ready; he would be leaving with his father. When he came to the dean’s study he had his fawn overcoat thrown casually over his shoulders.

  Patrick was annoyed by this, and by seeing the boy’s luggage outside the door. It was showing they were beaten before they began.

  ‘Can you throw any light on this, Kerry?’ He was firm, not accusatory, but wasting no time in pleas or expostulations.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to drive up here, Father.’ Kerry was perfectly calm.

  ‘Tell us what you have to tell.’ Patrick didn’t look at Father Minehan, who stood there in classic thoughtful pose with one arm across his waist, supporting the elbow of the other arm. A hand with long white fingers spread discreetly over his face.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing to tell, Father.’

  ‘You deny you took this money.’

  ‘No, I can’t deny that, I’m very sorry.’

  ‘You don’t mean you took it?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  There wasn’t a sound from the priest.

  ‘In the name of God why did you do that? I could have given you money, I give you a bloody allowance every month, for Christ’s sake.’

  Kerry stood still; regret was the only emotion Patrick could see on his face. Mild regret. No shame, no sorrow.

  ‘So what did you want it for?’

  An inclination of the head towards the priest, that was all.

  ‘Could you leave us alone, Father Minehan?’

  ‘No, Mr O’Neill, this is my study. I do not choose to leave it.’

  Patrick made a decision.

  ‘Yes, that’s your privilege. Now you asked me to take my son away. I shall do that. Thank you for the part your community has played in his education so far.’

  Father Minehan had been prepared for a day of recriminations and explanations, and bringing in bigger guns like the Father Superior. He couldn’t believe it was over already.

  ‘Well, I have to say . . .’ he began.

  ‘I hope you have to say very little. We will not discuss any fees that might be owing by me to you, since I think we will agree that donations already given would make the pursual of those fees a grotesque impertinence on your part . . .’

  ‘I assure you that . . .’

  ‘I accept all your assurances. If I am owed any balance why not add that to the already significant sum I have given to the college? And I expect full and favourable reports and references on my son’s progress and achievements in this school. I have fulfilled to the letter your request to me, once I understood it. I am taking him away with me in the next five minutes. Within the next five days I expect a detailed report which I can give to the principal of the next college he will attend. And, Father Minehan, I shall expect the most glowing of verbal references, should any school call you to enquire about Kerry.’

  ‘Well, there will have to be . . .’

  ‘You are quite right, there will have to be arrangements made to that effect immediately, otherwise I will create such a stink and a scandal that the smell will remain over these college walls for three generations to come. I will talk of the blackmail in order to get subscriptions, the extortion of further money from the children by making them pay to see rugby matches in your own premises. I will speak to the newspapers about the lax security and discipline that allows children in your care to scale walls and disappear in the evenings.’ He lowered his voice suddenly. ‘But all this would be very unpleasant, and I am sure quite unnecessary.’

  He walked with Kerry from the school to his car. He looked at the creeper on the walls and remembered the day he had driven here to start Kerry off as a pupil.

  Kerry sat in silence as they drove.

  Patrick waited five minutes for an apology, an explanation.

  He looked at his son’s arrogant profile: he remembered his dead wife’s hopes. He drew into a petrol station. Beyond the pumps where there was some waste ground.

  He got out, and with deliberate steps went around to Kerry’s side of the car and opened the door. Kerry got out, a look of polite mystification on his face. Patrick hit him.

  As Kerry reeled from the blow, Patrick hit him again on the jaw and rained blows into his body. Winded, Kerry made no real effort to defend himself, except to cry out . . .

  ‘You big ape, you bog man . . . you’re nothing but a bloody Irish bog man, that’s why you wanted to come back to the bogs, you never left them.’

  Patrick had stopped punching anyway. He indicated a gents’ toilet. ‘Be back here in five minutes. We’re going home,’ he said, and he got into his car, wearily watching Kerry stagger away, bruised and bloodstained, to try and repair the damage to his face and clothes.


  8

  They knew that something had happened in the O’Neill family. And whatever it was, Grace was not going to talk about it.

  Tommy Leonard thought that it was because Mr O’Neill was being bad-tempered. He had heard stories of him shouting at people about delays and messing and inefficiency. And to Tommy Leonard fathers were bad-tempered, because his own was a demon altogether.

  Jacinta and Liam White thought that it might have something to do with someone being sick. Their father had been called up to the lodge one evening. So maybe it was an illness. Dr White wouldn’t tell them; he never talked about his patients. But if it was something simple like measles or mumps he would have said, so it could be a fatal disease.

  Maggie Daly had heard that they were going away, people had said that Mr O’Neill was so fed up with not getting the hotel built straight away he was going to pull out and forget the whole thing. Maggie half hoped they would, but in another way she wanted them to stay. She didn’t hate Grace; she wanted to be her friend. The best that could possibly happen was that Grace would want the three of them – Dara, Maggie and her – to be friends, to be a proper gang with nobody left out.

  Kitty Daly kept asking Maggie why Grace didn’t come to play any more, and whether Kerry had come back from boarding school. She was not at all satisfied when her little sister didn’t seem to know.

  Dara knew that Kerry had come back from school because she had been there the evening that Mr O’Neill had gone to collect him. But the next day she had a telephone call from Grace asking her not to say anything to anyone about anything.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dara was totally confused. ‘If someone says hallo, am I not to say hallo back?’

  ‘This is serious,’ Grace said.

  ‘I know it is. I’m serious too. Why can’t you tell me what I’m not to say anything about? Why aren’t you here anyway?’

  ‘Is anyone listening to you?’

  ‘No, I mean Dad’s in the pub. Mam’s at work, Carrie’s in the kitchen, Michael’s in the yard, Eddie is probably eavesdropping somewhere. What is it?’

  ‘There’s been a bad row, and I can’t come out for a few days. Not till we’re back at school, we might even be going away.’

  ‘Where, where are you going?’

  ‘I don’t know, please, Dara don’t tell anyone what I told you.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me anything. I don’t understand any of this.’

  ‘About my father and Kerry not getting on. You know?’

  ‘Oh that. No, I won’t tell anyone. I wouldn’t have anyway.’

  ‘And could you try to take the drama out of it all?’

  ‘I didn’t know it was a drama . . .’

  ‘I’ve got to go now.’ Grace hung up.

  They didn’t see Grace until the first day of term, a whole week. She looked very pale.

  Jacinta was triumphant. ‘I told you it was a disease,’ she said proudly. ‘It could be TB.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her?’ Maggie said.

  ‘You don’t ask people who are riddled with TB if they’re riddled with it; you pretend everything is normal,’ Jacinta replied, the doctor’s daughter.

  Maggie noticed that Dara wasn’t racing up to Grace as usual. Dara was on her own.

  Good, Maggie thought. Now she knows how it feels to be left out of things.

  But if anyone looked left out of things it was Grace. She was like someone recovering from a bad bout of flu.

  Even Sister Laura warmed to the girl.

  ‘Did you get any time to do those Irish lessons I set you?’ she asked, in a kinder tone than she usually used when checking on homework.

  ‘Yes, Sister, I have them here.’ The girl produced pages of sentences:

  ‘I’m going to town. Was he going to the town? We were not going to the town.’ All neatly written in the slopey writing and purple ink that the nun objected to, and was annoyed with herself for the unreasonable objection.

  ‘That’s very good,’ she said, impressed. ‘You must have spent a lot of time working.’

  ‘I spent all last week. I sat in my room all day, Sister.’ She looked downcast.

  ‘Well, you’re an example to them all, I must say. How is your brother getting on at his school, tell me?’

  It was a courtesy, a little personal remark to show that Sister Laura cared about Grace and her family. The girl’s face flushed a bit.

  ‘He liked it very much, but the place was a bit damp so they decided because he has a weak chest . . . they thought . . . they said it would be better if he went to another school. Which isn’t damp. More modern. So he’s going there.’

  ‘Very wise, you can’t be too careful with chests,’ Sister Laura said.

  It was an odd thing to move the boy at the beginning of the summer term, very upsetting to the child and school to have changes in the middle of the academic year. And surely the place couldn’t be all that damp in the summer.

  Still it was no business of hers. Sister Laura put her mind to the business of keeping the children’s minds on school when everything outside was tempting them out of the classroom and on to the river bank, into the woods and over the springy green fields around Mountfern.

  Patrick and Kerry sat at the breakfast table in the lodge. Miss Hayes left the refilled coffee pot on the table and explained that she was about to cycle into Mountfern for the messages. She wished Kerry good luck at his new school and said she hoped it wouldn’t be damp like the last place. There was nothing as bad as a chill that settled on the chest. And she was gone.

  She knew of course that there had been hell to pay between father and son.

  Mr O’Neill had said to her on that evening when he came back with the boy, looking as if he’d been in a fight with a crowd of thugs, that there were a few things the family wanted to discuss in confidence and they would probably go away for some days to do so in privacy. Olive Hayes had given it a little thought and said that it would be much better if she were to go away and let them have the house on their own. She had stocked up the larder and gone to a cousin in Galway without either giving or getting any further explanations. She knew that she had done the right thing; Mr O’Neill had gripped her hand firmly when she returned and said that they had been greatly blessed to have found someone like her. He had also added that there would always be a place and role for her when the new hotel was built. If it was ever built. Life was full of obstacles, he had said with his engaging smile.

  And so now she left them alone once more so that the father and son could say goodbye in whatever way they wanted to without having to lower their voices for fear of her overhearing them.

  In fact they sat in silence for some minutes after they heard her bicycle creak out through the big iron gates of the Grange.

  ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking, Kerry.’

  Kerry looked at him politely.

  ‘We seem to have discovered that it wasn’t for drugs, or for alcohol. It was not for anyone else . . . you do not appear to have made any friends. It was hardly for a woman, and at your age you are unlikely to have done anything for which you could be blackmailed. There was no race meeting where you could have lost it, and you aren’t known in the bookies near the school, so it couldn’t have been that. If you bought anything with it then that item was not delivered. You will not tell me and I have not been able to find out.’

  Kerry said nothing.

  ‘Is that a summary of what has happened?’

  ‘Yes, you left out a bit here and there.’ Kerry rubbed his bruised jaw.

  ‘I wish that I hadn’t beaten you. I’ve said that.’

  ‘I don’t mind. It makes us quits.’

  ‘It does not make us quits. In no way does it make us anything like quits.’

  Patrick stood up and walked towards the window.

  ‘It leaves me knowing that I can’t control my temper; that’s a weak position to be in. I am also left with the knowledge that you stole an enormous sum of money for a purpose which you
cannot or will not explain, which leaves me in an even weaker position. How am I to continue in this way of life that I am trying to build for us if I cannot trust you? You may take money from Miss Hayes’s purse; you may reach over the counter in Daly’s and put your hand in the till. I may have to drive to this new school and hear a similar story.

  ‘All that’s happened to you is that you got beaten. Your life goes on exactly the same – new school, clean slate, reputation totally unsullied even to your little sister.’

  Kerry remained very still.

  ‘In five minutes Marian is coming to drive you into the town, and you are getting the train to a school I have not seen. The principal has had a lying letter from that death’s head Minehan. I’ve seen a copy of it. He will not have gone behind my back, so you start here with nothing on your record. This is your last chance, Kerry, your only chance.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘No, I mean it. We’ve done a cosmetic job on it; we’ve papered it over. The last school was damp, you had a wheeze in your chest, medical advice . . . even Grace more or less believes it now. You’ve been given a new start. I’d like to embrace you and come with you to the school, and tell this new head priest, whoever he is, that I’m proud of my son and I want him to do well, like I did last time, but I don’t have the stomach for it. So Marian is taking you to the train. And we agreed that in front of anyone round here we act as normal, as if we were the best of friends.’

  ‘Sure.’

  They heard the wheels of Marian’s car.

  ‘And maybe we can be the best of friends again some day.’

  ‘I hope so, Father.’

  He looked so handsome and straightforward standing there. Patrick really did believe that it was going to be all right. He had gripped Kerry’s hand and put his other hand on the boy’s shoulder when Marian came in.

  ‘Yoo hoo! I’m not too early, am I? I always think it’s best to leave plenty of time, that way nobody’s rushing too much.’ She glanced eagerly, like a bright fluffy bird, from one to the other. Patrick felt a sense of shame at using her like this. She was an honourable if boring and fussy woman. It was not fair to keep involving her like this when he had no intention of involving her more permanently. Marian would be useless in a crisis. She was perfect for domestic trivia. But she would have no idea what to do in any important area of life. Unlike Rachel Fine.