All Summer
Claire Kilroy
Faber & Faber, 2003
Dingo Fandango
"So," Mr. McGuire settled back. "What are you reading these days?"
That had stemmed back the silence, last trip.
"All Summer, by Claire Kilroy."
"Oh! Still?"
He cleared his throat four times over a mile of motorway.
Dervla paraded her fugitive answer. "It's savory."
TWO WEEKS EARLIER. START OF SUMMER TERM.
"Hi, Da. This is my friend I told ye about, Dervla Fandango. Um. I sorta promised her ye'd give her a lift home. Dunshaughlin's on your way, ye know?"
Young Dervla waved hi with a hand of silver rings.
Mr. McGuire cleared his throat. A habit when he was nervous. "Ah! Of course, it's nothing," he announced. "Delighted!"
The freeloader loaded her bag in his Opel. He whispered to his daughter's newly pierced ear. "You're sure you won't be coming home for the long weekend? Your mother's a bit worried about you, away on your own at this college course for the first time-"
"Da!" she laughed her protest.
"She's worried you're off with strange people. Far from home." Mr. McGuire made a clean chest of it.
"I'll be fine! It's only one week I've been here. And come the autumn I'll be at Uni full time. Tell Ma it's good practice."
Her kiss of dismissal on his cheek, Mr. McGuire gunned the engine- a habit, his Citroen used to stall- and aimed the car out of Dublin.
#
At the Kilmainham roundabout, he'd won his fight through traffic and his own thoughts. Silence in the confined cabin weighed thirty pounds per square inch. "So!"
His daughter's new friend produced an attentive smile but gave the impression that the lack of a cigarette was fatal. He didn't want smoke in his car. The Opel might not have been new anymore, but no one had smoked in it.
"You're on the same course? Arts, is it?"
"Dutch Masters. I got my scholarship placement in Literature, but my love is canvas."
"Oh right!" Arts. Why couldn't they have picked something practical? Something there was actual employment in? A trade had been good enough for his son.
Conversation vanished as swiftly as a pay packet. He cleared his throat. "Have ye a great many friends on this summer program? Are there interesting painters and the like?"
"You're daughter's sound but most of the other students are shocking wasters."
"Oh right!"
"There's this one spa," young Dervla announced with a girlish snort. "He came all the way from Australia for the summer and do you know why? Because a bushranger's ghost appeared to him in a dream, 'Get yer adjectival backside to Waterford.' But there was no summer course in Waterford so the pothead figured Dublin would do."
"Oh right!" He dug for change to pay the toll. That done, McGuire cleared his throat. This Dervla stopped rolling the imaginary cigarette. She toyed with the temptation of her backpack purse.
"So! What books are you reading?" Students. They always have a book in their hand.
"All Summer, by Claire Kilroy. I sat out on the green, yesterday, and absorbed twenty pages."
"What's that one about, then?"
"A woman in hiding. An island, in winter. Secrets, Scars. Gossip's constrains in small communities. The Sacred Heart light left by the cottage's absent owner blazes demonic."
"That doesn't sound half bad! I like a good read myself. A good mystery."
"Oh, you'd love this one then. This woman who's hiding? She's an art thief."
"Like the General?"
"Who?"
"Your man with the pigeons and the funny underpants."
When explanation was done Mr. McGuire felt musty.
"Actually," his daughter's friend directed. "Dropping me just here at the pub would be great. I'm meeting someone."
A meeting or an avoiding?
TWO WEEKS LATER.
"Savory!" he chuckled. "I've heard books described as unsavory."
She clacked that metal tongue yoke against her teeth. "I'll give you a loan of the novel when I'm done. "
"Oh right," he cleared again. "So what's the art thief after, now?"
"Her own past. There was this trauma, you know? Anna Hunt lost her memory."
The name of the amnesiac struck Mr. McGuire as a wee bit twee, and made the mistake of saying so. Dervla Fandango unclasped the backpack with all its mad buttons. He caught a glimpse of a woman racing a horse across a scarlet cover. "Anna awakes, curled in the ferns with a ransom briefcase. There's also her face in a strange passport." She cleared her throat. "I couldn't stop repeating the name to myself, as if hearing it enough times would make it fall into place. Isolde Chevron. I thought of antique lace and black silk. Wrought iron and roses. Long-stemmed roses with their thorns still intact."
Miss Savory was waiting for his reaction. An Oh Right wouldn't do.
THE CAR AGAIN. LATE JULY.
"Mr. McGuire, you are legend!"
"Ah, it's on my way."
"If only my Dutch Masters lecturer was as kind. That spa! Some projects take time, you know?"
The sky was as gloomy as a December day, but Mr. McGuire never had to fall back on the conversational mainstay of the weather. His daughter's friend was rattling on in the free, open way that his daughter had not in too long.
"Anyway I sorta promised three other people that I'd loan them All Summer as well, when I've finished it. Sorry about the delay."
"That's the book you were reading the last time? It only looked like a thin enough yoke."
Dervla unwrapped her schnauzer-dog scarf and put it into her bag. The red cover made another appearance. "Two hundred and thirty-five pages. But there's poetry in each one. Only with reflection can you achieve the full effect." She read. "I began by placing an A4 photocopy of Isolde's photograph in the dead center of the wall. I just wanted to look at her, think about her, rehabilitate her back into my memory. Yes indeed, noble motives. But then I kept going back to the photocopier in the hotel office to do more and yet more, and then larger and yet larger photocopies of her face. I stuck them all together on the wall (unflatteringly out of kilter) so that the pupil of the eye alone took an A4 page for itself. And that page was entirely black. And that was the page that I stared at the most. And that was the page that stared at me the most."
Mr. McGuire wondered if his daughter was smoking hash at this college. Yes, of course she was. It was foolish to think otherwise. She and her friends were trying out drugs and thinking druggie thoughts. He hoped that was all they were up to. The color of the day was cold enough to make him shiver.
"There's this feller on the course," Dervla dropped the book and told him. "This brilliant musician. He came all the way from Australia just on the word of an outlaw in a dream, can you believe that?"
"Oh! I've heard the like."
"He's only gorgeous. He's writing a song about that image, that photocopy of what's supposed to be you on the wall. It's beautiful."
"Ah! It seems that All Summer is the book that everyone's talking about!" A Dan Brown for arts students.
"Not everybody," Dervla put importance into the distinction. "But it's there if you seek it. There's a special private circle that those who choose can share."
AUGUST. TERM'S END.
"You're sure ye won't come home for the week? Your Ma is forgetting what you look like."
"Ah sure, she saw me when you all came to Dublin for lunch that day. Besides. I need to cart my stuff from the summer residence to the dorm. It'll take ages." His daughter smiled. "Some friends offered to help. We'll take it slow over a few days, then I'll catch Bus Eireann."
"Oh right." He cleared his throat. "Well! Are ye stuck for money? I've got a few bob in my pocket."
"You're very sweet."
He wasn't sure about this new hairstyle. But she'd aced all her exams. Must be minding herself right there, at least. She deserved the few days of Dublin's nightclubs to celebrate.
His passenger rattled on about hot chicken sandwiches and the lorry drivers who ate three of them. The petrol station hat she had to wear was only atrocious. Mr. McGuire made all the right noises, but he was mainly comforted by the smoke and the sound of her voice. Just like Anna had been by Kel's.
"Sorry I never got around to loaning you that novel," Dervla interrupted herself.
"Ah, that's fine." He smiled. "I bought a copy."
"No way! What part are you up to?"
"A slim thing like that? I had it read in two nights."
"What did you think?"
He thought this Anna Hunt was an awful eejit. The girl just didn't take care of herself. What in God's name was she doing, obsessing herself into love with horrible abusive men like that? "Oh, brilliant, brilliant."
"Don't give away the ending!"
"I'll just say there's a decent enough twist, there."
"Does the missing great-aunt who owns the hideout cottage ever come back?" That cottage. In the very first paragraph Anna says she arrived on the island with its keys on her person. Then in the flashback when she rents the place she is told that the keys are under the matt. Mystery novels had given him a detective's eye for details. He cleared his throat. Maybe the keys were there for arts students who read for poetry?
"Get this," Dervla went on. "I had this Nordic lecturer who used to be an assistant at the National Gallery. All the details about restoring the painting? That's legit."
"Interesting stuff!" Mr. McGuire allowed. He would have liked more about that. He was interested in how paintings were stolen and recovered. A good heist novel, ah that's the thing. He would have liked more about that. "Did your Aussie ever finish his song?"
Dervla grinned as madly as her hat tassels. "We've formed our own band, me and him! We've got a gig even."
"Ye don't say!"
"It'll be brilliant, I swear. It's a benefit for Madagascar this Thursday. Everyone's going!"
"Great stuff altogether!"
"You're alright," his daughter's young friend appraised. She lit a fresh fag with a box of kitchen matches. "At first I thought you were dry like my old man, but you'd enjoy the music. Come along!"
THURSDAY. LA TAVERNA DI BACCO.
Mr. and Mrs. McGuire entered the club. Young Dervla was chatting to eight hip nicotine addicts near the door and made them nine and ten. "Thanks for showing up!"
"You said everyone would be here, Dervla. You weren't half joking!"
"I'm bricking it, about putting our songs up there on stage. But that bushranger appeared in another dream. Some people will be confused. Some so pissed off they'll walk out. Most will enjoy the sincerity, the spirit of fun and innovation. Shit! I'd better go!"
There was a tap on his shoulder as soon as he turned to the barman. "Mammy! Da! You came? That's, like, fantastic!"
Pure delight. Dingo Fandango began strumming and Mr. McGuire savored. He was a fan already.
Critical Mick Says: All Summer is an impressive read. It won't delight straightforward mystery fans, but poetry, style and truth bridge any shortcomings.
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