Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy Page A

his business, thank you. I can accept or refuse any work I like. I am not going to accept anything which is going to take the bread and butter out of your mouth.’ He looked angry and upset as he stood beside her and she found herself weeping on his shoulder. ‘Do you want to go home, and tell John?’
    ‘No, not yet.’ Kate shook her head and sat down purposefully at her desk. ‘Not for a while. If our bread and butter’s going to disappear in the pub I’d better make sure I don’t lose the job in the office as well.’ She gave a smile to show that the emotional bit was over.
    ‘You’d never lose a job here,’ Fergus said gently. ‘I just wish it paid better. Maybe you should tell John now, before someone else does.’
    ‘Nobody else will. It’s silly but last night he was saying, when we were sitting out in the side garden bit . . . he was saying that nothing bad was ever going to happen to us. Maybe this isn’t very bad. I want to have a think before I tell him. That’s all.’ There were no words to say. It was about as bad as it could be. Fergus didn’t say anything. He took off his glasses and polished them. He saw Kate looking at him gratefully.
    ‘All right. All right, I know I have a weak face without them, I’m putting them back on. Let’s open more mail, shall we? Who knows what other little surprises may be lurking in these nice brown envelopes?’
    Patrick O’Neill drove to the Grange, some three miles from Mountfern. It was a big, gracious house that had always been in the Johnson family. It had known good days and bad, and just now was going through a fairly prosperous phase. Marian Johnson had discovered that there was a business in offering riding holidays. City people and English visitors like to come and stay in the vaguely country house atmosphere. The Johnsons always left a decanter of sherry out instead of charging people by the glass, it gave them a feeling that they were guests on a country weekend. Last summer Marian had quite a few Americans, who usually came in groups. This big, handsome O’Neill man was different.
    He said he would like to ride, but since he had not sat on a horse’s back for years he wondered if it was foolish to begin again at the age of forty-eight.
    Marian Johnson aged thirty-nine looked into his blue eyes with the crinkly laugh lines coming away from them at the sides. No, she thought that was the perfect age to start again. She would take him riding herself.
    Marian was fair-haired, but no one would ever have called her a blonde; her hair was wispy and flyaway, and no style ever seemed to tame it. She had a big soft bosom and often wore twinsets, mauves or pale green light jumpers with a matching cardigan. She looked her best when her hair was tidied into a net and under a bowler hat, and her soft drooping bosom gathered into the mannish coat of the hunt. The Johnsons were people who considered themselves of importance in the neighbourhood; normally Marian would never have shown the slightest interest in any American visitor. A man passing through, a man with no family, no background or stake in the area. Marian would have little time to waste. Yet there was something about Patrick O’Neill that attracted her.
    ‘Does your wife like the idea of riding?’ Marian asked.
    ‘My wife passed away this year,’ Patrick said.
    ‘Oh, I am most awfully sorry.’
    ‘She had been in poor health for a long time,’ murmured Patrick.
    Marian said no more; she arranged for the horses and assured Patrick that there would be no broken bones.
    Companionably they walked the horses over to a stile where she advised Patrick to mount his animal.
    ‘Go on,’ she laughed. ‘It’s more dignified than all this getting a leg up by putting your foot in someone’s hand. It’s like stepping on.’
    ‘It’s too easy,’ Patrick complained. ‘I don’t mind the undignified way.’
    Astride their horses, they rode down the quiet lane with the fuchsia-filled hedges.