He watched the dog go round the hotel and out towards the back.
The action moved down towards the marquee. Luncheon was being served. The band had started to play lunchtime numbers like songs from The Student Prince and The Merry Widow.
Dara watched as Kerry’s arm guided Kitty towards the huge lunch tent. He had never even looked for her.
She stood high on the steps of Fernscourt and watched them. Why had he not looked for her? Why had he said he loved her only short days ago, why did he hold her and say she was precious and beautiful beyond all imagining, if he was going to be with Kitty Daly? Did he know all the time that Kitty was coming, that she had turned out to be so beautiful?
Dara didn’t believe that he could have held her in his arms and thought of Kitty. It was impossible. Kerry was so good, so true, and he wanted the best for her. For everyone.
Suddenly it made sense to her. He did want the best. And up to now she had been the best in Mountfern. She had been young and not bad-looking, and she had loved him. But now there was a better best. There was Kitty, and he had to have her. The way he had to have that jacket which had cost a fortune. And he had to have the car. And money for gambling.
With a shock she realised that he might have had to get Rachel Fine out of Mountfern. He hadn’t liked her and she might have married his father and become a person of importance. She shook her head. All this and seeing Maggie’s dress. It made her feel dizzy, as if she were going to fall.
She sat down on the steps and to her astonishment Leopold came and laid his head on her lap.
‘What in the name of God are you doing here, Leopold?’ she asked him and he looked up at her from an awkward angle, trying to explain that he thought there might have been a bit of fun and he had come because everyone else was there.
Eddie appeared at that moment, looking anxiously round from behind an urn.
‘Can I take it that you’ll be responsible for him now, could we say that I handed him over to you?’ Eddie said.
‘Wouldn’t you know that you’d have to let us down by bringing Leopold?’ Dara said.
‘I didn’t, he came across all by himself.’
‘Yeah, carrying his invitation in his teeth.’
‘What’ll we do, Dara?’
‘We’ll take him home. Come on,’ she said.
‘But it’s not over. There’s lots more to go.’ He was disappointed.
‘Wouldn’t it be safer to go, Eddie, before you do anything dreadful that’ll be remembered for years, like the confession box?’
Eddie was philosophical. ‘I suppose it would be best,’ he said.
They made a funny little threesome, Eddie with his spiky hair, Dara in her magnificent red silk dress, and Leopold, happy now that he had seen all there was to see.
Kerry O’Neill was coming out to look for Dara and he saw them reach the footbridge. She had probably been sent to take that awful brother and awful dog home. She would be back later. He would see her then.
Michael found Grace with Tommy and Jacinta and Liam.
‘She didn’t know,’ he said. ‘That it was a special dress for Maggie.’
They agreed. Grudgingly. Kitty couldn’t have known.
‘It looks quite different on her anyway,’ Grace said. Grace was very disappointed with her own outfit, she wished that Mrs Fine was still here, she was great at advising people. Mrs Fine had been so nice to them that time, that short time at the beginning of the summer.
Marian Johnson could look wonderful, Mrs Fine had said, if she wore tailored clothes. She needed well-cut almost mannish garments, not the soft fly-away things she usually wore.
Today Marian looked very smart in a dark blue and white suit and a blouse with a cameo brooch like Mrs Whelan wore. She was with a very shabby big untidy man that people said was a barrister. Grace heard them say that he was Marian’s escort. Imagine having escorts at that age.
She went over to her father who was standing momentarily alone.
‘Do you miss Mrs Fine, Father?’ she asked unexpectedly.
Patrick put his arm around his daughter. ‘It’s funny you should say that, I was thinking of her this very moment. She’s going to call tonight. Or I’m to call her. Anyway when it’s over, we’ll talk.’
‘So you’re still good friends with her?’ Grace looked pleased.
‘No, sadly not. But tonight is special, she and I will talk tonight and then not again for a long while.’
Jim Costello toured ceaselessly. He found smears on some glasses. They were dealt with effortlessly, not by any shouts and roars but by a quick quiet word with someone and the use of the phrase ‘this minute, please’ on almost every occasion.
He ensured that the rooms where valuable antiques were kept had people watching them, and he checked that the revellers had not got into the conservatory. He frowned slightly at the boxes which had been stored there. He looked at the top one. Whiskey.
It was probably some fail-safe idea of O’Neill’s. He was determined that nobody in the county would go dry. He must have ordered a few more crates put in this morning.
At least they were out of the way, nobody would think they were meant to come and carouse in here.
‘Where’s Dara?’ Grace asked Michael.
‘I don’t know. I’ve been looking for her.’
Michael was afraid that Dara might be crying somewhere.
‘Do you think she’s upset about Kitty being with Kerry?’ Grace asked.
‘I don’t know. Do you think he really likes Kitty, or what?’
‘I expect he just wants to have fun with everybody,’ Grace said.
‘Isn’t that what everyone wants?’
Michael saw Grace look around as Jim Costello passed by. A feeling of sadness came over him. Having fun with everybody. Yes, that probably was what everybody wanted. It was what the O’Neills wanted anyway.
Everyone was in the marquee now listening to the speeches. The band was silent and respectful as the dignitaries spoke. All of them praised the courage and foresight of Patrick O’Neill, to come back to this spot and build his monument. They said that faith like his was needed more and more. They looked forward to the day when Americans who came to stay in his hotel would themselves come to build in Ireland and put stone on stone in friendship as their ancestors had done. There was hardly anyone in the main house to see the curtains move in the breeze that came in the open window. And there was nobody there to see when the curtains flapped against the ashtray and knocked it over. The cigarette smouldered on the carpet for a long time before the breeze fanned it into a flame and the flame caught the curtains. The long blue drapes that Rachel Fine had worked on so long to get the right texture, the right shade and the right look for Fernscourt.
The kitchen staff were far away from it, Jim Costello was hearing himself praised in the marquee, the staff who would serve in the Thatch Bar were busy setting up the place for the onslaught they would have descending on them as soon as the speeches were finished. There wasn’t a man in Mountfern who wouldn’t prefer a pint to the glasses of champagne which were on offer in the big tent.
There was nobody to see the way the singeing became a flame and the way a breeze carried the flame to the pelmet. The residents’ lounge burned discreetly and thoroughly behind the closed doors.
By the time the door burned down the blaze was out of control.
‘Did you see Dara?’ Kerry asked Tommy Leonard. ‘I’ve been looking for her all day.’
‘Yeah, I can see you have.’ Tommy’s eyes were fixed pointedly on Kitty Daly’s arm, which Kerry still held. ‘Well, if you see her tell her I’ve been trying to find her.’
‘Certainly,’ Tommy said. ‘I’ll tell her your sight was taken from your eyes and you’re going round with a white stick bumping into things desperate to find her.’
Sergeant Sheehan saw the fire first.
In years to come he would always remember that. The disappointments of the morning, the shame and the laughter were as
nothing when compared to being the hero who discovered the fire and arranged the fire-fighting force.
He wasted no time, when he saw the smoke. He yanked Jim Costello from the marquee and together they ran towards it.
Then to the kitchen with shouts about telephoning for further help. By this stage the carefully placed fire extinguishers would be useless. A hose was in place within minutes and the sergeant got Jimbo Doyle, who had the loudest voice in the county, to give the alarm through the main house in case there was anyone in any of the bathrooms or in any other part of the building.
The Thatch Bar was emptied of its staff, who were marshalled into a line of water carriers.
Chauffeurs of cars, three bus drivers and five taxi men from the big town were roped in.
A serious fire-fighting effort had begun before they saw any need to alert the people in the marquee. There was no danger to life, and even if the fire could not be contained there was very easy emergency escape for everyone across the footbridge and over the River Fern.
Sergeant Sheehan had been the first to see the fire. The first in Fernscourt that is.
Papers Flynn had seen the smoke much earlier.
A lifetime of never getting involved leaves its mark. Papers never brought up any subject first, he was a person who responded rather than initiated. You only got into trouble by paying attention to anyone else’s business.
He sat in the sun outside Ryan’s and saw the smoke coming out of a side window. Papers looked at it silently for a long time.
Mary Donnelly had gone into the house with Mrs Ryan’s daughter. That boy who was always in trouble had come back too, and the nice dog. Papers had always admired Leopold and thought him a fine animal.
He wondered should he say anything about the smoke, but the habits of a lifetime held him back.
Eddie came out and joined him on the seat.
‘I could go back if I wanted to,’ Eddie said.
‘Oh you could right enough.’
‘I wasn’t sent away or anything.’
‘No, no, you wouldn’t be.’
‘Well I usually would be, but not this time.’
Papers nodded in agreement.
‘I’ll have to make that clear to Mam, I came back of my own free will. I wouldn’t want Mam sitting in the chair there thinking maybe I’d been ordered to leave.’
The mention of Mrs Ryan in her wheelchair galvanised Papers. Suppose there was a fire and Mrs Ryan wasn’t able to get out.
‘Would you think that’s smoke over there?’ he said to Eddie.
Eddie squinted at it. ‘It is, it is all right.’
He ran back into the pub. Mary and Dara were just coming out.
‘I’m going back, Eddie, it’s up to you but maybe you’d prefer to stay here,’ Dara said. She looked very serious but not as if she were fighting or giving out to him.
‘There’s smoke,’ Eddie shouted.
Dara took no notice of him.
‘Mary has pointed out rightly that Mam and Dad paid a fortune for this dress, and I must go back and get value out of it for them. Even if I don’t feel like it.’
It was as if she were talking to herself.
‘I think the hotel’s on fire,’ Eddie said.
This time he managed to get their attention.
And by now the figures of Sergeant Sheehan and Jim Costello could be seen, running as fast as they could. Eddie was right, the hotel was very definitely on fire.
Patrick’s speech was almost over. He had thanked everybody who should have been thanked but it wasn’t tedious. The officials who had helped him all felt included in his generous tribute to the authorities, and the people of Mountfern felt individually acknowledged as he looked around the crowd and his eyes seemed to rest on them. Each and every person knew how much they meant to him, he said. He explained that a homecoming would be nothing if it weren’t for the people. Buildings were symbols but the people were the heart of it.
He said his family meant a great deal to him, but in a sense he had found a greater and wider family of friends.
He was about to end by wishing that this new family of friends should join him in the Thatch Bar when the cry went up. It was a terrible sound, the cry that told them that Fernscourt was on fire and it was going to burn to the ground unless something was done quickly.
They started to move the people from the marquee.
‘Over the bridge’ was the cry but nobody wanted to go. They stood in groups watching with horrified fascination as the flames leaped from the windows of the residents’ lounge and appeared too in the narrow windows of the Piano Bar. The line of people passing the buckets was slow. The hose seemed a trickle.
Men ran up, throwing off their coats, to join the fire fighting. Orders were given and countermanded. The guards arranged for buckets to come from the river, everyone told everyone else that the fire brigade was coming.
‘Ring them again, someone, and tell them to send everything they’ve got,’ Martin White said.
Then he moved over to Kate Ryan’s side. ‘Back home with you now, that’s an order.’
‘The children,’ she said.
‘They’ll follow. Come on, Kate. I’m taking you home.’ John had moved the chair on and wheeled it rapidly towards the bridge.
Mrs Daly blocked their way. ‘We should get people to pray,’ she said. ‘That’s what we have to do now. It’s about time we realised it.’
‘You’ve realised it for years, Mrs Daly,’ John said. ‘Now could I get past you there, I’m a bit anxious to move Kate across so that I can go back and fight the fire.’
She stood aside, hands still clasped.
‘God, she’s worse than I thought,’ John muttered as he wheeled Kate swiftly across the bridge.
‘She might be right,’ Kate said grimly as they came to the pub.
Dara thought they looked very formal somehow, like a picture. A man standing, a woman sitting, both staring at something. Something impossible to believe.
Kate put her hand up on her shoulder to cover John’s hand which was resting there.
‘How in the name of God did it start?’ Kate asked.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he soothed. ‘Look, it’s less than before, it’s much less. They’ve got it under control.’
Dara came to stand beside them.
‘Where’s Eddie?’ Kate asked.
‘He’s here, and there’s Declan coming across the bridge now.’
Eddie came up to his mother. ‘I was over here when it happened, talking to Dara and Mary and Papers. I had nothing to do with it, Mam,’ he began.
Kate drew him close to her. ‘Of course you didn’t, Eddie, darling Eddie,’ she said into his hair.
Eddie pulled away and looked at her. Nobody had ever called him darling Eddie in his life.
‘In fact I was the first to spot it,’ he said.
‘Of course you were.’ She held his hand very tight and her eyes were full of tears.
Michael caught up with Declan on the bridge.
‘Come on, Mam will want to make sure we’re all safe,’ he said.
‘Now we’re all here I’m going back across,’ John said.
‘You’re going in that door behind the counter,’ said Mary.
‘I can’t sell a drink while the place is burning down across the way, I have to help.’
‘Aren’t there plenty of big strong men huffing and puffing and playing fire engines over there? People want to buy drinks to calm their nerves. You’re a publican, it’s your duty to sell them.’
The Ryan family smiled, all together. The same smile. John went back into his pub.
Patrick O’Neill had been quick to organise as well.
No standing dumbstruck at the awful and unexpected happening. Like Jim Costello he was quick to see the frail and the feeble and get them organised.
‘Colonel Harris, I wonder if I can ask you to help the canon out that way, that’s very good of you. Liam, it would be a great help if you could get a
chair for Mrs Daly, she wants to do a bit of praying but I think she should do it sitting down. Jimbo, get the drivers to get back into their cars and move them way down the drive.’
And all the time with his dream burning before his very eyes he kept assuring people it was under control, and that the brigades were coming and there would be order restored in no time.
Carrie stood with a tear-stained face in a straw hat which had got very crushed by people trampling on it, but she had put it back on for some kind of comfort.
‘Don’t worry now, Carrie,’ he said. ‘We’ll all be in the Thatch Bar this evening laughing over this.’
It was then he saw that part of the roof on the Thatch Bar had caught.
Kerry worked with the rest on the fire line. Beside him Tommy Leonard and Jack Coyne passed buckets.
The hose was taken to deal with the straw roof on the bar. So they were relying on the human chain to keep the first fire under control.
‘Well at least it’s only a hotel,’ Jack Coyne said, panting. ‘Think what it would be like if it was an army barracks or something with all those guns and explosives in it. Everyone here would be blown sky high.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Kerry, dropping his buckets.
‘Kerry?’ The people near him looked at him in alarm.
‘Oh my God!’ Kerry shouted. ‘Get back. Costello, get them back, get everyone away from it, get them away from it. Get back.’
They thought he was hysterical. They pushed him out of the way in their efforts to fight the fire.
They would pause to wipe their foreheads and look to the main road, hoping for the comforting sound of many fire engines.
But it was a long way from the town.
Jim Costello didn’t like Kerry’s manner.
‘Will somebody get O’Neill’s son away from here?’ he called in his cool voice, the voice that was used to being obeyed.
But Kerry had run on to the steps.
‘There’s guns,’ he shouted, ‘guns and gelignite. The whole place is going to blow up.’
‘Don’t mind him.’
‘It’s under control, we’re winning, we’ve beaten it.’
All around him were the soothing sounds of people who thought it was a brainstorm.