Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy Page B

like a boy? She used to tie her skirts up around her waist and climb with Barry.’
    ‘What did you do, Daddy?’
    ‘Sure I was only like poor Eddie, looking at them,’ John sighed. ‘They usually wanted me to go away, if I remember rightly.’
    Michael took this as a criticism of the twins’ own attitude to their younger brother.
    ‘I’m sure you were fine when you were young, Dad. But God, you couldn’t have Eddie hanging round with you, I mean really and truly.’
    ‘Oh I know that, I’m not disputing it, Eddie would have your heart scalded. But I was only talking about the old days across there . . . and the kind of things we used to do . . .’
    He talked on gently, his voice low enough that itwouldn’t wake Kate and have her storming out on to the landing. Yet raised enough for Michael to think it was a normal conversation and that these were normal times.
    John dug deep into his memory of games played, and accidents averted, of guards on bicycles, of two young bullocks that ran wild, away from someone’s secure field up the hill. He talked until he saw the lids begin to droop on his son’s thin white face, and knew that sleep was going to come at last, that Michael wouldn’t wake Dara and sit all night watching in helpless despair as this stranger walked through what they still wanted to think their home.
    That night old Mr Slattery couldn’t sleep and he came down to get himself some warm milk. He dozed off at the kitchen table as the milk boiled and didn’t smell the burning until Fergus appeared, wild-eyed with shock.
    ‘Don’t put me away, don’t put me in the county home,’ wept the old man. ‘I’ll take milk to bed in a flask. I’ll never try to boil it again. Please.’
    Fergus had been filling the blackened saucepan with water and opening the windows.
    ‘Are you going mad altogether, Father? Would I put you in the county home? Would I?’
    ‘If I were mad altogether you’d have to,’ Mr Slattery said reasonably.
    ‘Yes, but you’re not, and even if you were I don’t think I would.’
    ‘Why not? It would be the right thing to do, we’ve often advised clients ourselves.’
    ‘You’re not a client. You’re my father.’
    ‘You’ve got to get on with your own life.’
    ‘But I
do
get on with my own life, for God’s sake. I wasout getting on with it this evening and I’d only just got to bed. That’s why it was my nose that caught the milk, not Miss Purcell’s.’
    ‘I’m a burden, I don’t do much work in the office.’
    ‘You’re not a burden, we don’t
have
much work in the office.’
    ‘I’ve let the place run down, why else didn’t we get the business for Fernscourt?’
    ‘Oh is
that
what’s worrying you? I’ll tell you why. Your man O’Neill is in business in a big way over there, really big, owns at least half a dozen restaurants or bars or whatever they are. He has other business too, he pays accountants and lawyers big fees. Now he’s opening here, the big lawyers look up a map . . . Ireland they say, Ireland, where’s that? Then they find it. What’s the capital they say, what’s the capital? Then someone tells them and they get Dublin solicitors. That’s all.’
    ‘You make it sound so simple. I suppose it will be good when he arrives, this American. He’s given work in the place already.’
    ‘Here’s some fresh milk.’ Fergus had boiled another saucepan. ‘We’ll tell Miss Purcell that I was drunk and burned the arse out of the saucepan. The American? It has to be good for the place. I suppose the poor devil will be full of nonsense and trying to hunt and shoot and fish. We’ll have great sport with him. Imagine worrying about the American! It’ll be the best sport we ever had. I can’t wait for him to arrive.’
    That night Sergeant Sheehan found somebody lying in a very awkward position, legs splayed, head lolling, and stretched right across the footbridge at the end of thetown. Sergeant Sheehan was a thickset man who used to be a