The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (97 page)

   Rachel Fine applied her throat cream exactly as the label had advised with short upward strokes. She then applied her eye cream in the recommended manner with a feather-light fingertip so as not to damage the delicate tissue around the eye. She sat in her cotton nightdress looking without pleasure at the reflection that stared from the mirror. She looked like any sad Jewish mamma left on her own this night. There must be a thousand of them in this area alone. But she hadn’t even the satisfaction of being a mamma. And her husband, Herbert had been in California for eight years. She and he had ended their relationship long before hers with Patrick had begun. Herbert had given her the apartment and a car. The divorce had been genuinely amicable. They sent each other postcards even; they remained casual friends, bewildered that they had ever thought they knew each other well enough to marry and to remain married for so long.

But however lonely, Rachel would not telephone Herbert for company. And she had very few friends left. When you devote your life to a man, his business, and his limited free time as Rachel had done, it didn’t leave much time for friends. She still had work to do for O’Neill Enterprises even while he was in Ireland, but she did it in a mechanical way. When there was no Patrick to discuss her ideas with the fire went out of them.

Sure she was a designer. Sure, sure, everyone realized that she was worth her salary, her ideas had been praised in the newspapers and magazines, and her style had lifted the O’Neill chain way out of the commonplace. Rachel had never wanted to see her own name over the smart corner-bistro-type restaurants, it was quite satisfying enough to know that her choosing of colors and fabrics, her layout and her selection of decor, waitresses’ uniforms and lighting techniques contributed to the O’Neill empire. When Patrick had eight pub-restaurants and the motel in New Jersey he said he had enough. He bought no more until this huge bottomless pit that was Fernscourt, bleeding away his profits in a way that nobody would believe.

Gerry Power, Patrick’s second in command, knew this. He was tight-lipped and disapproving; but not even to Rachel, whose position he knew very well, would he hint that he took anything less than delight in all of Patrick’s schemes.

Rachel looked again at the telephone. It was ten
P.M.
here. It was three o’clock tomorrow morning in that godforsaken place. Perhaps he would call tomorrow. Perhaps he might even call at his lunchtime, which would be getting up time here. Yes, surely that’s what he would do.

Rachel laid a towel over her pillowcase. The only advantage of not having your man living with you all the time was that you could do your beauty routines adequately. On the nights when Patrick stayed, there was a satin nightgown, not a cheap cotton one, there was no throat cream or eye cream. There were certainly no exercises.

But what was Patrick’s great phrase? “It’s always either a feast or a famine.” Rachel Fine sighed deeply. It had been a famine for her for a very long time, and the worst bit was that she could see long lean years of famine still ahead.

   Mrs. Whelan understood without being told and without the need for comment that Patrick would need to make calls in privacy. She settled him next day in her own sitting room, two closed doors away from anyone who might be standing in the post office with their ears flapping.

She gave him a table for his papers and said she would add up the charges each time and he could pay at the end. Another cup of strong tea, a cushion to cure his saddle sores.

“You’re a wonderful woman. Did the late Mr. Whelan appreciate you?”

“He’s not late, he just went off,” she said simply.

Patrick knew how hard it was for a woman in a small community to admit something like this, she would say it to him once because her common sense would tell her that he would hear it elsewhere, then it would never be mentioned again. He too would acknowledge it once and then forget it.

“A foolish man. Did he find the happiness he thought he was going to find? Most people who run away don’t.”

She thought about it.

“At first he did, I’d say. But times aren’t great now, I hear. When I do hear, which isn’t often.” That meant the subject was closed. “I’d better leave you and start to get through to the operator for you.”

Patrick hadn’t been thinking of phoning Kerry in his big school. But why not? They would certainly get him to the phone. As he settled himself into the chair and cushions provided by Sheila Whelan, Patrick realized that in ways she was a little like Rachel. She knew how to make a man feel welcome and comfortable and important. How strange that Rachel was sitting alone in Brooklyn just as Sheila lived alone in Mountfern. Did it prove that it was a bad thing to make a man comfortable?

Patrick had never been able to understand people who could use the telephone for long chatty conversations. For too many years now he had used it for work to be able to think of it as a way of talking unselfconsciously. Grace could talk for hours on the telephone to friends whom she had just left at school. People told Patrick that it was the same with their daughters, and indeed their wives.

He put the first call through to Gerry Power. At least Gerry felt the same way about telephones. A necessary but unappealing part of business life. He wouldn’t complain that Patrick was not being sufficiently warm or forthcoming over three thousand miles on a piece of machinery.

Gerry Power wasted no time congratulating him or expressing any surprise. If Mr. O’Neill had said he was going to go and throw away his fortune on this heap of old stones, then this is what he was going to do. He listened to instructions, and nodded and grunted. At the end of the catalogue he read them back. Patrick smiled; he could almost see Gerry Power in his shirt sleeves, writing with a stubby pencil.

“And that’s three air tickets you want. Three not four?”

“You’re very numerate Gerry, three. One each for Kerry, Grace and me.”

“Just checking.” Gerry Power was in no way put out. He hated grey areas and wanted to make sure that his boss hadn’t expected him to book a seat for Mrs. Fine, without asking him directly to do so.

Grace was always excited to hear from him. When was he arriving? Good, good. And how long was he staying home? Only a few days, but that was awful! He had been gone so long. He was
what?
Was this true? He was really and truly going to take Kerry and Grace with him to Ireland? And she could go to school there? Grace’s voice disappeared into squeaks of excitement.

Patrick spoke to his sister Philomena. She shared neither Grace’s excitement nor Patrick’s enthusiasm. She listened to the facts in a disapproving silence. Yes she would have clothes organized; and she would explain to the nuns here that Grace would not return in the fall.

“Well, what do you think of my getting back to the old country in the end?” Patrick hated having to ask her, despised himself for fishing for the praise and congratulation that he felt were his due.

He was getting none of them from Philomena anyway.

“You’ve always done whatever you wanted to do, Patrick, and to be fair, the rest of us have done well out of your endeavors. But it is quite beyond us to know why you want to go and undo the work of the very people who got us here. Our grandfather as sure as hell didn’t come over here on the deck of a ship so that his grandson and his great-grandchildren should end up going back to the godforsaken bog that he left behind him. But it was never any use talking to you and it won’t be any use now.”

They got Kerry out of class to talk to him. It was the first time he had ever called his son at school; he could not credit the time it took to find the boy. Kerry could not believe that his father had called just for a conversation. Especially as he learned, he would see his father within a few days.

“I wanted to share the good news with you.” Patrick felt a trace of tears come into his voice, and fought it desperately. Kerry hated emotion. More than once he had accused his father of being what he called Italian. In flatter tones than he intended, he told his son that the dream was now a reality. He said that the land had been bought, the plans were underway. And that he had heard of a good school where Kerry would start in the fall. There was a silence at the other end of the telephone which chilled him.

In business Patrick had never pleaded on the telephone, and he knew it was pathetic to ask if someone was still there when there was a silence. Sitting in Sheila Whelan’s floral armchair, he steeled himself and waited. But Kerry waited longer.

Eventually Patrick spoke. “So we’ll talk about all that when I see you. Right?”

“What do we talk about?”

“About how great it will all be. So many people have something that they always want to do, all their lives they talk about it and so often it never happens. Your mother and I talked about this for so long …”

This time Kerry spoke. “Mother never talked about it to me,” he said.

“But you know it was what she wanted?”

“Maybe.”

With difficulty Patrick controlled himself. His hands were shaking when he put down the telephone. He had one more call to make, and he needed something stronger than tea to steady him for this one.

Sheila Whelan wouldn’t hear of his going to buy a brandy. She would slip into Conway’s for it. No point in his getting a reputation in the first couple of days. She was back in minutes and the half bottle of brandy, glass and jug of water were beside his elbow on a round tray advertising Craven A cigarettes. Patrick O’Neill took a long swallow and made a person to person call to Mrs. Rachel Fine.

   Afterwards he walked out into Bridge Street; he looked down to the river as his grandfather must have done, and up the town. It would all have changed so much since those days. There would have been no calling the States. And no calling home once he had arrived on the other side of the world. Patrick crossed the street, nodding at Mr. Conway, the man who unbelievably ran twin trades of publican and mortician without anyone thinking it was slightly odd. He waved at the two young White children going into their house and he gave a glance to see what ancient movie the Classic was offering tonight.

His grandfather would have had no contact at all with the family. Going to America was like going to the next world. No wonder the Irish held American wakes for the man who was leaving for America and would be out of touch with his kith and kin from now on. Maybe it might have been sensible, Patrick thought gloomily. His sister, his son, his manager and Rachel Fine had hardly been overjoyed to hear from him.

   “He’s only staying a few more days,” John said. “He was in here earlier with some plans, showing me an artist’s impression. You never saw the like of it.”

“No permission or no license granted yet,” Kate remarked coolly.

“A formality,” Fergus Slattery said. Fergus had called again. It was a restful place, Ryan’s. You could read your paper, or you could join in the chat. It made a nice stretch to his legs after his supper. And anyway he felt an overwhelming loyalty to the shabby little place.

“You shouldn’t have refused good money,” John Ryan said in a low voice so that the others wouldn’t hear. “Kate told me you won’t handle his business in case it might be in conflict with us … No, no … let me finish. Fergus, you’re a decent man as your father before you is, but there’s no conflict. There’s nothing but cooperation with that man. The best man you could meet; he’ll put new life in the place.”

“I did meet him,” Fergus said.

“Well. Didn’t you like him?”

“Of course I liked him,” Fergus growled. “You couldn’t not like him. I told him that I’d feel it more sensible not to get involved in his application just in case there was the unlikely event of one of my fellow parishioners wanting to get involved on the other side.”

“And what did he say?” John and Kate were both eager. This was new; this had happened this afternoon.

“Oh he was charm itself. Said he quite understood, said it was very ethical of me, showed I was a man with a community spirit, hoped he’d be able to prove that he felt the same community spirit himself.”

“That’s just it.”

“I know, John. I’m not disputing it. I’m just saying that he’s a mixture, we’re always one thing or the other here; he’s more than one thing.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well at the same time he was telling me how much he wanted to feel part of the place and a member of the local community, he also made sure I realized that he had extinguished a license. Ahearne’s pub, way beyond. Now that’s sharp legal talk for an innocent Yank who’s building his own place. He not only knows that you have to buy up and extinguish one pub license before you get another, but he’s done it. That’s a bit quick for me.”

John Ryan smiled as he polished the bar counter. “Well by God you’re a very impatient young fellow, Fergus, for all your great education and studies at the universities.”

“Stop making fun of me. Wouldn’t I need to be impatient with all that’s going on around here?”

“No,” said John slowly. “That’s the last thing you’d need to be. There’s all the time in the world. Look at all that could happen before any of this comes into being.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father would understand better than you. He has a feeling for the river, and how things go on and on. That river was there just the way it is now when your man’s grandfather left Mountfern, and it will be here forever.”

“John, you sound like some old soothsayer, will you stop it?” Kate laughed at him good-naturedly.

“No, I mean it. Patrick O’Neill has great plans like fireworks but they may never materialize.”

“He’s hardly bought Ahearne’s license just for fun,” Fergus said.

“No, but look at what could happen. I remember that place that was going to be built about ten miles out on the Galway road.
That
never materialized, did it?”

“They ran out of money,” Fergus said.

“Exactly,” said John.

“But that fellow O’Neill has a fortune.”

“So had the other crowd. Or maybe he’d lose interest, or something else would distract him, or it wouldn’t turn out right for him.”