Firefly Summer

  He decided to teach John Ryan to drive and get them a second-hand car somewhere so that O’Neill couldn’t claim months more of transport when the day of reckoning arrived.

  It was so strange going back to school without their mother to harass them and organise the huge hunt for satchels, text books and clean shirts, and shoes being taken to the mender’s. This is what the end of the summer holidays meant before.

  Mary Donnelly had it all in order. The Ryans’ house had never worked in such a streamlined way before. There was no fuss about going back to school. All the clothes were ready mended and ironed anyway. The children had almost forgotten a time when they didn’t strip and air their beds every day, and when there wasn’t a weekly examination of shoes and clothes, so that the one could be brought to old Mr Foley’s odd wordless brother who stitched away silently at the soles of Mountfern in the back of Foley’s bar. Clothes were all darned or mended at that weekly session too.

  Kate Ryan in her hospital bed looked in amazement at neat patches and false hems to be told that Dara and Eddie were a dab hand at any kind of dressmaking now. Michael and Declan had resisted it and were responsible for shoe polishing instead.

  A cupboard had been cleared in the dining room and all schoolbooks and bags were stored there. The four children had a shelf each. The summer exercises had continued, and even Eddie was able to approach an exercise book now without scribbling all over it. Mary had always shown such surprise and horror at any doodling it was easier to leave the book clean.

  And when school did begin Mary seemed to regard it with a reverence that the children found disconcerting. She almost spoke of school in hushed tones. She managed to enquire about their progress and particularly about what homework they had to do with an air of such interest that they did not realise how much they were giving themselves away and putting their lives into her hands.

  ‘Now, Dara, let me help you clear away, you’ve got all those geography questions to do tonight, you said. And Michael has that big long poem to learn. Eddie, you aren’t too badly off – only ten sums, was it?’

  They would look at each other glumly. Why had they been so specific? Now there was no escape.

  The breakfast room became a study both before and after tea. There was always a dictionary, an atlas, rulers, pencils and spare paper. The wireless was turned down respectfully. Callers were discouraged and if their father ever came looking for them for anything, the children heard Mary speaking to him in low urgent tones explaining that they were doing their homework. It was said in the voice that someone might have used about the College of Cardinals being in conclave to elect a pope. And after a few false starts it worked. The homework did get finished, and almost in silence. It was easier to learn the poem, Michael would decide, rather than have Mary offer to hear it to him at breakfast and expose his ignorance. Dara would find that Mary, when approached about homework that had been completed, was always cooperative and helped to get her better marks, but Mary would not even discuss work that had been left undone.

  Eddie felt life was too short to have to put up with Mary mentioning that she must ask Brother Keane why the children in Eddie’s class got no homework. It really was simpler to admit to the homework and do it. Then at least he would be free.

  Declan at seven didn’t have very much homework, but he liked the scene around the table. Mary had drawn him a map of Ireland and he spent each evening colouring in the different counties and labelling them. He had asked Mary was this the kind of thing a person could do in a circus as a trick. Mary had said that to be truthful it hadn’t been done much, but there was no reason why there couldn’t be a first time. And she could say hand on heart that to know the thirty-two counties of Ireland, how to spell them and where they all were would be something that would advance you in any career. So Declan sat happily mastering difficult spellings like Monaghan and Laoghais.

  Sometimes John looked in at the industry and gave a deep sigh of relief.

  By the time he got Kate home, some kind of order would reign in the house, and all the time Kate’s new domain was being built. With huge financial help from Patrick O’Neill, and great advice and care from Patrick’s lady friend Rachel Fine. Even Leopold was better behaved these days, John noticed, and slept outside Mary’s door on a sack which he dragged out to the yard each evening. It was as if he lay there protecting her from the world.

  ‘What does Kerry do all the time? He’s never around and his school doesn’t open for another week.’ Dara and Grace were sitting in Dara’s room. Sometimes Grace came to do her homework too; Mary Donnelly looked in and out casually to make sure that the time was not being wasted around the table, but the little O’Neill girl seemed industrious enough.

  ‘Kerry never says. I think he studies quite a lot. This is his last year, he wants to get a good Leaving Cert.’

  ‘And will he?’ Dara loved to hear news of the handsome Kerry. ‘Will he get a lot of Honours do you think?’

  ‘He thinks he’ll get four. Or so he says, I don’t know.’ Grace seemed doubtful.

  ‘Why don’t you know?’

  Grace wondered whether to speak and then decided she would.

  ‘Well, I just said I think he studies a lot, I’m not sure. You see, he goes to these extra lessons.’

  ‘The Latin, with Mr Williams?’

  ‘No, as well as those. He goes into the town twice a week, there’s a schoolmaster there and Kerry’s meant to be going for math.’

  ‘Maths,’ corrected Dara automatically.

  ‘Yes, well, whichever, he’s not going to it. He takes the money from Father and he gets a lift with Paudie Doyle or Brian or someone, but the teacher called last week to say he was sorry that Kerry hadn’t taken up the lessons.’ Grace shook her head.

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘That’s it, I have no idea; and as it happened, I answered the telephone. Not Miss Hayes, and not Father. So I just said that I’d pass on the message and the man said he just wanted to clear things up because Father had sent him some kind of letter thanking him for his time.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Dara said.

  ‘So it looks as if Kerry wasn’t going at all. But saying that he was.’

  The girls sat in silence to contemplate the enormity of this.

  ‘What could he have been doing instead?’ Dara hoped he didn’t have a girlfriend or anything awful like that.

  ‘I asked him, but he just laughed, he said it was great I had headed the guy off at the pass, that was the way he said it. And you know Kerry, Dara, he didn’t say any more and he will not say any more.’

  ‘Does your father know?’

  ‘No, he does not know.’

  ‘And Miss Hayes, she wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘No, I have a feeling that even if she did know she wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘Well then, it’s all right.’ Dara was always optimistic. ‘I suppose so.’ Grace was less sure.

  Tommy Leonard told Michael that the Lourdes fund for Mrs Ryan was getting huge now. There was going to be enough for someone else to go with her. People were wondering who it would be. Would it be Mr Ryan? Or would one of the children get to go? Imagine Lourdes, in France. Imagine being there.

  ‘Do you really think Our Lady came there? She did, didn’t she?’ Michael was very anxious to have it confirmed. If Our Lady hadn’t, if it had all been some kind of misunderstanding, then there would be no chance for Mam.

  ‘I suppose she must have,’ Tommy said. ‘I mean, it would be the kind of place you’d go, France.’

  Michael agreed.

  Tommy said that Maggie Daly was often afraid that Our Lady might come to Mountfern, like she came to Fatima. Maggie didn’t look up into trees in case she saw her.

  ‘Why doesn’t she want to see her?’ Michael was interested. ‘I mean, if she came here you’d want to see her.’

  ‘Maggie thinks that you’d be martyred if you saw her, it’s what always happens,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Poor Maggie, she’s al
ways worrying,’ said Michael sympathetically.

  ‘Not like Kitty. Kitty was off on the back of a motor-bike with Kerry O’Neill.’ Tommy loved a bit of excitement.

  ‘Kerry’s not old enough to have a motorbike, is he?’

  ‘Oh, Kerry’s old enough for anything, he took it out of Jack Coyne’s yard and brought it back secretly, and he and Kitty went off miles on it.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Maggie told me. Did she not tell you?’

  ‘No. I wonder why,’ Michael said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me all about Kerry and the motorbike and everything?’ Dara was furious with Maggie.

  ‘I don’t know. It was a secret,’ Maggie stammered.

  ‘If it was a secret, Maggie Daly, why did you tell Tommy Leonard?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t know, you don’t know,’ Dara blazed. ‘You’re so boring, Maggie. You don’t know anything, you have nothing to say.’

  ‘I know,’ Maggie said wretchedly.

  There were Halloween games in Ryan’s kitchen. Snap apple with everyone’s hands tied behind their backs and the apple hanging from a string in the middle of the room. And bobbing for apples in the sink of water, and trying to pick up the sixpence in your teeth from the floor.

  Carrie loved the fun of it, and John Ryan came in from the pub occasionally.

  Rachel Fine looked on; she had been seeing to Kate’s new room and was in and out of the house a lot. The Whites were there, bitterly disputing whose turn it was to play, and Tommy Leonard was there.

  ‘Where’s Maggie?’ Tommy asked at one point.

  ‘I didn’t ask her,’ said Dara. ‘I forgot. Like she forgets sometimes.’

  Dara’s face was set and cross. She was very annoyed that Maggie had not told her about her sister’s carry-on. And she was even more annoyed to hear about Kerry O’Neill off galivanting on a borrowed motorbike.

  ‘I’ll run down for her,’ Michael said. ‘She’d be upset. I’ll just go to Daly’s now.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Grace offered.

  Dara felt that she had been too mean. She would go herself for Maggie. But it was too late. Michael and Grace had run off.

  They came back later without her.

  ‘Her mother said she had a cold, she was in bed.’

  ‘Oh well then, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway,’ Dara said airily. But in her heart she felt ashamed of herself. And she felt that Maggie didn’t really have a cold.

  Grace was very nice to Maggie. She insisted too that Maggie come with them on the day that Patrick O’Neill drove some of the children in on what he called an official visit to Mrs Ryan in hospital.

  The twins were delighted to show their mother off to Liam, Jacinta, Tommy and Maggie, and Kate was touched to see the small crowd around the bed.

  ‘There’s a small fortune in the Lourdes fund, Mrs Ryan, you’ll be able to take the whole family with you,’ Tommy said enthusiastically.

  ‘My goodness, isn’t that generous? But if anyone’s going it should be other invalids, don’t you think?’ Kate said.

  ‘Mrs Williams has a broken arm,’ Jacinta suggested. ‘You don’t go to Lourdes with a broken arm, eejit, you have to have much worse.’ Liam looked half fearfully at Kate.

  ‘Oh, I think you can go with anything, really,’ Kate said, trying to make light of it.

  ‘Now.’ Jacinta was triumphant. ‘And Mrs Williams is always very nice, giving us things out of her garden. She should be one of the first to go.’

  ‘She is a Protestant of course,’ Tommy said doubtfully.

  ‘Not to mention a vicar’s wife,’ Kate said, trying to keep her face straight.

  ‘It might convert her to the real faith, though, if she was taken there,’ Maggie suggested.

  ‘Particularly if her arm was cured,’ Patrick O’Neill laughed.

  He shooed the children out of the hospital room and told them there would be lemonade and biscuits.

  ‘You’re marvellous to bring them all in to see me,’ Kate said. She felt easy and relaxed talking to the big American.

  ‘I love playing the big guy,’ he mocked himself.

  ‘No you don’t, not at all. You’re very fatherly to them all. My twins tell me how kind you’ve been up at the lodge, teaching them chess and Scrabble and spending the time playing with them, a busy man like you.’

  She smiled at him warmly.

  ‘They’re very easy to like, your children,’ he sighed.

  ‘Well, aren’t yours also?’ She was genuinely surprised.

  ‘Grace is.’

  ‘Fathers and sons always have friction. It’s a known thing.’

  ‘John doesn’t.’

  ‘You should hear him with Eddie.’

  ‘Kate, I know you’ll forgive my saying this, but most of the Western world has some kind of friction with Eddie at some time or another. No, my case is a bit different.’

  He looked very strained somehow.

  ‘Would it help to tell me about it?’

  ‘Some day, maybe. Yes, it might help a lot. But not just now. I have a gang of people who were promised refreshments, I can’t welsh on that. And you’ll be back home to us soon, isn’t that great?’ He seemed genuinely delighted.

  ‘In a couple of weeks,’ Kate said. ‘Then it will be as before.’

  His eyes rested on her for a moment. ‘It will not be as before, Kate. But please God it will be a good life.’ He had so much concern in his voice that it quivered a little.

  Kate swallowed and gave him a smile.

  They didn’t say any more because there wasn’t any need.

  Dara got a postcard from Kerry O’Neill from the town near his school.

  ‘We are here for half a day, they took us to see a castle on a river. The river is brown and muddy, I think it’s nothing compared to the Fern. Glad to hear your mother is coming home soon. Hope to see you all in Mountfern during the Christmas holidays. Kind wishes to all, Kerry.’

  Dara hugged it to her and knew every word, not only every word but how every letter of each word was formed.

  ‘Just tell me straight out, Maggie, no dithering, did Kitty get a card from Kerry O’Neill too? Just a yes or a no would do.’

  ‘No. There was no card from Kerry for Kitty. I can tell you that.’

  Maggie spoke firmly. Because what she said was true. There had been no postcard for her sister. But Kitty had been looking very cheerful, and there were letters from time to time, which were not discussed. And they did have a postmark of the county where Kerry’s school was. But it would be foolish to enter into that kind of speculation. Maggie never wanted to draw things on them. And she had been asked specifically about postcards, nothing else.

  Maggie was glad when Dara took her arm. It would have been stupid to upset Dara over something that might not even be true. Kitty could have been getting letters from anyone.

  ‘I hope Mrs Ryan will like the way I run things,’ Mary Donnelly said doubtfully.

  ‘Why wouldn’t she?’ John was unused to Mary in an insecure role.

  ‘She’s the mistress of this house, it will be hard for her coming back after five months and seeing another woman in her place.’

  ‘But hasn’t she told you over and over how delighted she is with you, and all you’ve done for us?’ John was bewildered. Mary had been a visitor several times to Kate in the hospital. They had got on very well.

  ‘But her coming home, and to that grand room, it will be hard for her not being in total charge again. If you’d like me to go I’d quite understand.’

  ‘Mary, we’d die if you went.’ John was alarmed. ‘You couldn’t go, not now that she’s coming back at last. Please don’t think of leaving. Is it that you think she’d be giving you orders? Because Kate’s not like that. She’ll be only too glad for things to go on the way they are. You’ll be happy here. Please don’t go.’

  ‘I’m very happy here, Mr Ryan. It’s very nice, it’s the first p
lace I ever thought of as home, and it’s a place where people don’t make your life a torture for you.’

  ‘But who would make your life a torture for you? Ever?’

  ‘My mother did, my colleagues at the school. The other women round where I lived.’

  John was at a loss for words.

  ‘Well,’ he said eventually, aware that it wasn’t enough.

  ‘So what I say is that Mrs Kate Ryan, if she had to be married and evidently she had, could have done far worse for herself with the husband and three sons that she found.’

  John knew he would never hear such praise again.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said very seriously. ‘I hope we will always be able to have your trust, my sons and I.’

  Fergus had found Mary a surprising ally when he was trying to teach John to drive. She had urged the two of them to go out as often as possible, saying that she could well keep an eye on the bar. It never occurred to her that Fergus might have any work to do himself, so she was always putting forward unlikely hours like 11 a.m. as good for a quick lesson.

  As it happened the little girl Deirdre he had got for the office was every bit as reliable as Kate said she would be. She was always able to tell a caller that Mr Slattery had gone out on urgent business with a client, and she would take all the details. Somehow, like her father, she gave off a look of utter secrecy. You felt that she would survive well under torture, rather than reveal the most trivial of business.

  And she wasn’t telling lies, she explained to Fergus. After all, Mr Ryan was a client, and teaching him to drive was important business.

  It took twenty lessons, and then John felt confident enough to drive all on his own into the hospital. This too was a secret and a surprise for Kate. Several times he nearly blurted it out, and Rachel Fine nearly let it slip as well.

  Then together Fergus and John went to Jack Coyne and put it to him squarely: he was to supply the soundest second-hand car in the world. Not just the country, but the world.