Summer's End, page 7
Lily nodded. “Yes, he seemed very nice . . .”
Ava looked at her as though waiting to hear more, and when there was only a short silence, she turned to find the top of the hot-water bottle.
When Lily came back up from her bedroom, the cup of cocoa was waiting for her on a small tray with two small coconut biscuits.
Ava’s kindness struck Lily. It was over and above her job. “That’s very good of you, Ava. I appreciate it.”
“It’s nothing at all. It’s been a long day for you. Travelling over and then out at the church and everything tonight and then the cinema.”
“I suppose it has,” Lily said.
“Thank you for inviting me to the cinema with you and Declan. I don’t get out that often, and I really enjoyed it.”
“It was nice to have your company,” Lily said.
Ava turned towards the darkened window. “You’re very lucky . . . your father and brothers are lovely, so nice and welcoming. And from what I’ve heard them say, I can just imagine what your mother and other brothers are like. That’s what I’ve missed growing up in the orphanage.” She turned back.
“They’ve all been good inviting me over to Scotland, so I’m going to chat to Mrs Stewart about getting some time off.”
Lily tried not to show her surprise. “Will you come in the summer?”
“Actually,” Ava said, “I’m hoping to come over for Easter. Declan said he can take time off then and you would be home from college too.”
“Lovely,” Lily said, wondering what her mother would make of it.
Chapter 7
Lily woke with a start. For a few moments she stared into the darkness, not knowing where she was. And then it came to her. She lay back on the pillow, her heart thudding. She had been dreaming. She sat up in the bed and switched the lamp on.
She had been dreaming that she was walking alone on a deserted beach. And then another figure had appeared in the distance. Somehow, she knew it was a man. They had walked towards each other and then the figure had suddenly disappeared. Lily could recall that she had turned around and the figure had appeared again in the distance. She started walking towards it again, and once again it disappeared. This time, when she turned around, she was face to face with Gerard René.
Although she knew it was a silly, obvious dream about not wanting to see him, muddled in with meeting Dara Ryan, it unsettled her.
She lay back on the pillow for a few minutes, and then reached for her watch to check the time. It was ten past three. Still a long way to go until morning. She put her watch back and then lifted a magazine to distract her racing mind. She flicked over pages of fashion and music and then made herself focus on an article about The Beatles.
Shortly afterwards she threw her magazine down on the floor and turned the lamp off. She lay straight in the bed for a while, then tossed and turned, and eventually put the light on again.
She decided to go to the bathroom. She padded across the floor, opened the door quietly and went down the corridor. When she returned a few minutes later, she was just closing her bedroom door when she heard the murmur of voices in the reception area. She listened and recognised one voice as Ava’s. The other was a man’s. She looked back along the corridor towards reception and Ava came into view. Then she caught a glimpse of a man with his arms wrapped around her. He whirled her around and, as they moved out of sight again, she thought she heard a Scottish accent.
God, she thought, Declan isn’t half taking this little holiday romance seriously.
They moved into her view again, with Declan’s back to her, and she noticed that he had changed his shirt. The plain blue one with the chocolate stain had now been replaced with a patterned shirt in blue and green. It crossed her mind that it was an unusually modern style for Declan, who was the most conservative of her brothers. It wasn’t the sort of shirt that he would buy for himself, nor, she imagined, the sort her mother would pick. She deduced it was probably a Christmas present he’d got from their fashion-conscious sister-in-law Eileen. The boys often took the mickey out of Seán about the loud clothes she bought him.
Not wishing to witness anything more intimate, she quickly closed her door. She read for another ten minutes and eventually fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When she woke to the sound of her father tapping on her door to say breakfast was in fifteen minutes, she moved out of bed and down to the bathroom for a quick bath. As she lay back in the hot water for a few minutes, she began to feel back to her old self. It was a surprisingly sunny day for January and she was going to make the most of it. Dara Ryan was already fading from her mind. She couldn’t even remember what he looked like apart from his long hair.
She would put on her good black fitted dress with the three-quarter sleeves and the matching coat with the fur collar that her mother had insisted on. She would go to church and join in with the prayers and singing and do everything that was expected of her.
* * *
The funeral mass and the burial at the cemetery and then the meal back in a small hotel on the outskirts of Carraigvale all passed in a seemly but busy haze. As the day wore on and the elderly people drifted off home, the crowd moved out to the public bar, where there the subdued mood gradually lifted and an almost celebratory feeling took over. Lily met and spoke to so many people that she found herself being introduced to some people several times.
She enjoyed the first few drinks she was bought but when she began to feel the effects, she asked for glasses of red lemonade. Declan came to her at one point to say he was getting a taxi back to the bed and breakfast if she wanted to come with him. He said she might be better going soon because, just in case she hadn’t noticed, their father was knocking back the pints. He also reminded her, however, that if she did go back to Carraigvale she would be on her own for the rest of the evening as he was taking Ava out for a meal. Lily thanked him but said she would stay a while longer. There was no point, she thought, in being stuck in the lounge with Mrs Stewart or maybe even one of the commercial travellers.
She went to check on her father but before she got the chance to corner him, Bridget’s husband, Martin Kennedy, was over to her asking what she wanted to drink. She waved away the offer saying she had two drinks waiting back at the table with the girls. She chatted to Martin for a while, keeping one eye on her father, who she noted was talking in the halting way he did when drunk, and gesturing with his hands.
When she got the opportunity, she pulled him to the side. “I think you’ve had enough to drink.”
He looked at her with wide, surprised eyes. “Sure, I’ve only had a couple of pints. What’s the harm in that?”
“You’ve had more than a couple,” she told him.
“I’m only keeping up with the other lads,” he said. “It’s the tradition to have a few . . .” He paused. “I’m only enjoying the chat and the bit of craic.”
“It’s a funeral, not a wedding.”
“Ah, don’t be giving out to me,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re sounding like your mother now!” He nodded to himself. “I’d have thought twice about you coming if I’d known you were going to be so critical.”
“I’m not criticising you,” Lily said. “I’m only looking after you.” Although she was really annoyed with him now, she knew this wasn’t the time or place to have an argument with him. She took a deep breath and then squeezed his hand to show she wasn’t falling out with him. “Just take it a wee bit easier, that’s all I’m saying.”
She went back to the table where her cousins were. Various people came to speak to her and when they went someone else quickly appeared. A local lad came over to introduce himself, and within minutes he was asking her to go to the cinema the following night. She could see he was nice in an old-fashioned way, but she declined as he definitely was not her type. And if he had been, the last place she would have gone with him would have been the cinema.
Shortly afterwards, a good-looking, small curly-haired fellow – definitely the worst for wear – came over to ask her to go to his brother’s wedding in Kildare on Saturday with him.
“A wedding?” she repeated incredulously.
“Ah, sure I know it’s short notice,” he explained, “but the girl I was going to bring along is just a neighbour. She knows well that I only asked her because there was nobody else.”
Lily gasped – half amused and half shocked. “I can’t believe the cheek of you. That’s a dreadful insult to any girl.”
“Ah, don’t be giving out to me,” he said, holding on to the table to steady himself. “I can tell just by looking at you that you’re a lovely girl.”
Lily was now trying to keep a straight face. “But you don’t even know me! We might not get on.”
“Aren’t you lovely-looking with the same curly hair as myself? And you have a lovely smiling face.” He staggered back. “And wouldn’t the wedding give us time to get to know one another? We’d have the whole day.”
Lily looked at him. The state he was in after a few hours’ drinking, she could just imagine what he would be like after a whole day.
Just then her cousin Marie appeared, and when Lily laughingly explained the situation to her, her face tightened and she took the fellow by the elbow off to a quiet corner.
She came back a few minutes later. “The nerve of that Frankie Doherty,” she said to Lily. “He’s been going out with Sinéad Lynch for the last few months.” She leaned forward so no one else could hear. “Now it’s well-known he’s only making an eejit out of her, and has no serious intentions at all, but it would look fierce bad if he turned up at his brother’s wedding with a total stranger on his arm.” She shook her head. “Poor Sinéad has spent a fortune on an outfit for the day.”
Lily could see the potentially explosive situation. “Well,” she said, her face now suitably serious, “I wouldn’t be interested in going anywhere with him even if he was single. She’ll be lucky if he’s sobered up by the time the wedding comes around.”
“You have it in one,” Marie said. “And imagine him carrying on like that at a funeral. Some people have no respect at all.”
A sing-song began, and another while passed as a variety of singers – both good and bad – took their turn.
When Lily heard the overloud clapping she took little notice but when she heard some loud, overenthusiastic cheering her heart quickened. She craned her neck to look over to the corner where her father and Seán were, but she could only see the tops of their heads. When the next singer came on, her fears were confirmed when the loud shouts of encouragement started up again and she heard Pat’s unmistakable Scottish accent.
It was time, she thought, for them all to head back to the bed and breakfast.
She excused herself from the group and made her way over to the men. Her father was engaged in conversation with three or four others and she knew by the dull heavy look on his face and the jerky mannerisms that he shouldn’t be drinking any more. She managed to get Seán away from the group and whispered to him that they should be thinking of going back before her father made a show of himself.
“I was just thinking that myself,” he said. “Give us another five minutes to finish our drinks. And before you say anything, I’ve already told him I’ll drive. I’ve only had three or four pints and I know the road well enough.”
By the time they got outside, Lily could see that her father was in one of the worse states she’d ever seen him in. If he wasn’t flinging his arms around her and making halting statements about random, nonsensical subjects, he was staring off into the distance and muttering to himself.
Between them, she and Seán managed to get him into the passenger seat of the car while Lily sat in the back. Once settled in, Pat began his ramblings again, gesturing at houses they drove past and calling out names they had never heard of. A few times she caught the words ‘my mother’ and ‘Helena Casey’ and she knew he was thinking again about all the people he knew who had died.
And then he suddenly went quiet.
Lily leaned forward to tap his shoulder. “Dad?” she said. “Are you all right?”
“It’s okay,” Seán said. “He’s asleep.”
“Thank God!” Lily said, and heaved a sigh of relief.
Getting him out of the car at the bed and breakfast was another hurdle, and it was only when they got to the door, each taking an arm, that Lily remembered that it was Mrs Stewart on duty.
“Have you the front-door key?” Lily said to Seán, her heart thumping.
“Aye,” he said, taking it out of the top pocket of his jacket and handing it to her. “You open the door and I’ll hold him up.”
Lily held her breath as they entered the hallway, her eyes darting from side to side. There was no sign of the landlady, so they quickly and quietly helped Pat stumble his way down the corridor and into his room. After closing the door behind them, they put him on the bed and Lily took his jacket off, unlaced his shoes and slid his socks off. He closed his eyes and was silent.
“You can do the shirt and trousers,” she told her brother.
“Ah, I’ll leave him for a while,” Seán said.
“They’re his good suit trousers and hard to press. They’ll be ruined if you let him sleep in them.”
“I’ll sort him later,” Seán said. He went to the door. “You keep an eye on him while I go to the bathroom.”
Lily glanced around the room. “I hope he doesn’t get sick. That’s all we need …” Her eyes lit on the plastic wastepaper bin. “Pass me the bin over, just in case.”
“He’ll be fine,” Seán said, heading out of the door. “I’ve never seen him be sick with drink.”
“There’s always a first time,” Lily said. “I’ve never had to carry him home before, and I’m not taking a chance while we’re in this place tonight.”
Seán closed the door behind him.
Lily viewed her father, lying dishevelled on the bed. “God almighty,” she said aloud.
Pat suddenly shifted in the bed. “I’m grand,” he said, moving into a semi-sitting position.
“You’re anything but grand,” she hissed, in a low tone that she knew sounded exactly like her mother’s.
He turned to face her, his eyes glazed. “It’s been a hard day . . . it’s been . . . well . . . it’s been one of the worst days.”
“It’s nearly over,” she said
“It might not have happened . . .” he paused, “. . . if I hadn’t left Ireland.”
Lily sucked in her breath. “She was an old woman,” she said, trying to keep her patience. “She would have died whether you were in Ireland or not.”
“She wasn’t old . . . not when I left and not when she died.”
Lily’s forehead creased. He was obviously starting his ramblings again.
“Go to sleep.”
Pat was still turned towards his daughter, but his gaze was vague and wandering. “I told her I would come back. I wrote and told her I would come back . . .”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lily said. “Forget about it.”
“But you don’t understand!” He was shaking his head. “I was sending money home and I was saving a bit every week to come home. I always meant to come home . . .”
“That was good you sent money back.” Lily had always known about the money Pat and his brothers sent back to help their parents in Ireland. “But things don’t always turn out the way you think. And you’ve done well in Scotland.”
He looked over to the window. “I never forgot her . . . I thought about her all the time.”
Lily looked down at her hands, wishing this night was over.
“I wrote and told her I would come back.” He was shaking his head again. “I can’t remember now . . . It doesn’t matter. But somebody told me that she was stepping out with somebody else. She was seen in Dublin arm in arm with another lad.”
Lily was totally confused and frustrated now. “Who,” she asked, folding her arms over her chest, “are you talking about? Are you saying my granny in Ireland was going out with another man?”
“Helena Casey,” he told her.
Lily’s throat tightened. Something told her she didn’t want to hear any more. “Forget about it, Dad. Turn over now and go to sleep.”
“She was the loveliest girl in Ballygrace . . .” His voice broke now. “I always thought I’d marry her . . . I always thought it.”
She felt a hot rush in her face. “Dad, you’re talking rubbish now. Stop it. If my mother could hear you!”
“You’re my daughter . . . a grown woman now, Lily . . . things in life aren’t always straightforward.”
“I’m not listening to any more,” she said, turning towards the door.
“When I met your mother I thought Helena was spoken for. We got together very quickly . . . and next thing I knew the oul’ shotgun was over my head. Six months down the line we got married . . .”
Lily’s hand came up to cover her mouth. Since she was a teenager, she had known her mother was cagey when talking about her wedding date. Eventually, she had worked out that her eldest brother, Michael, was born five months after her parents married. It was information she had put in a little box somewhere in her mind, to maybe discuss with her mother when she was older and married herself. To have it confirmed now by her father and framed in such a cold and loveless manner shocked her.
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this old rubbish,” she snapped. “You’ve obviously had far too much to drink.”
“But you don’t understand . . .” He rubbed his hand over his face. “When Helena heard I’d got married she wrote to me. The lad in Dublin was only her cousin.”
His voice was so low she could only just make out what he was saying.
“He was at the seminary. She was only up visiting him …”
Tears slowly formed in Lily’s eyes. Her father had just told her that he had never planned to marry her mother. That he had got stuck in Scotland with her and Michael and then with the rest of her brothers. He hadn’t wanted any of them. He had been in love all these years with another woman.
