The Transatlantic Book Club

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  ‘Did you? Why?’

  Mary, who, to Pat’s knowledge, had never been a reader, gave a shrug. ‘Tom’s aunt Maggie was always wanting them. He’d have to go into the library on the way home from work. I used to have a read of them before he’d bring them round to her.’

  Pat managed to keep a straight face. Of course Mary had claimed the books before they’d gone round to Maggie’s. She’d have felt that, by reading them first, she’d kept Tom’s aunt in her proper place. You couldn’t know Mary as well as Pat did without knowing the way her mind worked. But that didn’t matter. Before they’d ever met Ger and Tom, she and Mary had faced the world together, from their crocodile walks at the national school to the last day at the convent, when they’d burned their berets and cocked a snook at the nuns. They’d linked little fingers at the age of six and sworn eternal friendship, and look at them now, said Pat to herself, still drinking tea and squabbling over toast. They’d been a pair long before they’d been two of a foursome and now they were back where they’d started, without Ger and Tom.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Driving between the cliffs and the forest, Cassie was aware of new growth on the conifers to her right. Each dark branch had an inch-long, neon-bright tip, as striking as the peacock streaks in her fringe. The darkness and light on that side of the road contrasted with the unbroken blue above the ocean on her left. It was what Pat called ‘a pet day’, when the sun had new warmth and spring appeared to have taken hold overnight.

  She had made good time since her previous stop so she slowed the van and dawdled, admiring the towering trees. The last time she’d been on this road was the week before Christmas, when she’d driven over in a borrowed car, seeking holly. Wearing a hooded duck-down coat she’d brought from Canada, she’d bumped slowly down a forest track and, seeing flashes of scarlet among the conifers, found three holly trees in a clearing, their leaves gleaming like candle-lit lacquer. Hanging from the branches of a nearby oak were long tendrils of ivy, some almost as fine as yarn and others clustered with black berries among green and gold foliage. She’d found no mistletoe, though. That had been brought to Lissbeg later by Fury O’Shea and The Divil.

  Now, as she approached a roadside pub, she saw Fury’s van parked up ahead. He lived only a mile away, so that wasn’t surprising. Yet Cassie smiled. Somehow it felt just as it should that, as soon as you thought of him, Fury O’Shea would appear. Pulling in behind his van, she decided to stop for a pub lunch. The fresh air and sunshine had made her feel peckish earlier, so the sandwich she’d intended to eat at noon had been wolfed more than an hour ago, along with a chocolate bar.

  The little building, probably once a thatched cottage, had a faux-rustic porch and a slate roof. Otherwise, it must hardly have changed for centuries. There was no pub sign but the name of the licensee was painted on the lintel above the door. The whitewashed stone was pierced by small sash windows and the walls were several feet thick. As Cassie approached, Fury appeared in the doorway, with The Divil, his elderly fox terrier, peering around his leg. Cassie waved and called hello but Fury didn’t deign to raise his voice. He stood at ease in the entrance, a lanky man in his late sixties, wearing a shabby, oversized waxed jacket, with the ends of his corduroy trousers stuffed into heavy wellington boots. When she reached the porch, he nodded. ‘You’re back again, then.’

  ‘It’s good to see you. How’s The Divil?’

  ‘Fit as a fiddle.’

  Fury turned and went inside and Cassie followed, briefly blinded by the change from bright sunlight to Stygian gloom. Other pubs of the same design up and down the peninsula had taken out their internal walls to accommodate tourist parties but here there were still two small low-ceilinged rooms, with a muddy-brown varnished bar to the front and a snug to one side. A jam jar full of wildflowers stood on one table, dandelions, marsh marigold and a sprig of shepherd’s purse. The windows were framed by yellowing lace curtains and a TV hung on the wall above the bar.

  Leaving her to give her order, Fury slid onto a bench behind a table. Cassie had been here once before when the owner had seemed surly but now, vouched for by Fury, she was welcomed like an old friend. This was Fury’s local and the chances were that he ate here most days, having whatever the publican’s wife had cooked for her own family meal. There was a large plate of bacon and cabbage in front of him, and several potatoes boiled in their jackets beside it in a dish. Under the table, The Divil had his nose in a saucer of cabbage mashed in gravy. Cassie asked the man if he could do her a ham roll. ‘And a coffee? I’m driving.’

  He nodded and disappeared through to a kitchen, and Cassie joined Fury on the bench. ‘Has The Divil gone off Tayto?’ The little dog was famous for his love of custard creams but whenever she’d seen him in a pub he’d been eating salt and vinegar crisps.

  Fury kicked at the saucer under the table, splashing gravy onto The Divil’s nose. ‘He’s on a diet. The vet said his teeth were banjaxed if he kept up the custard creams. I warned The Divil that, if he didn’t take notice, the rats would be laughing at him. He saw the sense of that.’

  ‘But the Tayto?’

  ‘Ay, well, she was a bit down on his salt intake too. So I told him sodium taken with tea converts directly to sugar. He likes a saucer of tea, so that pulled him up. Mind you, I had to say I’d read it in a scientific survey.’

  ‘And had you?’

  ‘Not at all, girl. Sure I’m illiterate.’

  This was a lie he had instigated, to avoid filling in forms and providing written estimates. A master woodsman and the best builder on the peninsula, he cultivated a reputation for eccentricity, turning up when and where he chose and never answering his phone. All the same, according to Pat, he wasn’t called Fury for nothing. When he took on a job he wouldn’t stop until it was done to perfection.

  Cassie looked at The Divil, who was grimly chewing cabbage. ‘And he believed you?’

  ‘Ah, for God’s sake, he’s a dog, girl. He can’t understand English. But he knows an ultimatum when he hears one, and you’d have to give him a logical reason, to save the poor fella’s face. I mean, cutting back on the custard creams is one thing, but being in a pub with no Tayto is hard. But it was that or give up on the tea and he made his choice.’ Fury lowered his nose into his pint. ‘Mind you, I bet if you looked you’d find that somewhere on the internet. “Sodium taken with tea converts to sugar.” But “depending on conditions” or “in sufficient quantities”. Have you ever noticed they always add something to cover their arses in court?’

  Cassie’s roll arrived with a large unexpected tomato sliced into quarters, topped with a blob of mayonnaise and a jaunty sprig of parsley. The coffee was hot and strong and the ham, cut from the bone, had been glazed with honey, producing the perfect combination of savoury and sweet. Surreptitiously, she detached a piece of meat and edged it from her plate onto the floor. Under the table, with an air of elaborate nonchalance, The Divil neatly covered the scrap with his paw. Fury’s face gave no indication that he’d noticed, though Cassie knew that he never missed a trick. Later on, behind closed doors, The Divil might be reprimanded, but in public, and especially in front of a woman, Fury wouldn’t let him down. Besides, he had a fond appreciation of the little dog’s resourcefulness, like a craftsman watching his apprentice display a complex skill.

  As Cassie devoured her ham roll Fury raised his eyebrow. ‘They say you’ve brought America back with you.’

  ‘You mean the Transatlantic Book Club?’

  ‘It’s the talk of the seven parishes. I suppose people like it. Though when I took the boat I wouldn’t have fancied waving at my old neighbours on a screen.’

  ‘Did you go to the States?’

  ‘No, I was in London, on the sites.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘And, before you start doing the sums on your fingers, I’d be about six years younger than your gran.’

  ‘Did you know her and Ger back then?’

  ‘Not at all, girl. I left school at fourteen and went working
for my dad.’

  ‘So did Ger.’

  ‘Ay, but he was older than me and, anyway, he was a townie. My dad was a forester, not a shopkeeper. But he died and I went to London around the time Ger and your gran set up house.’

  ‘So you never knew my dad? Or my uncle Jim?’

  Fury put out a foot and scratched The Divil’s back. ‘They were grown and gone before I came back. What is it you’re fishing for?’

  Cassie licked mustard off her knife. ‘I guess I’m just wondering. My dad never said why he went away.’

  ‘You could ask him.’

  ‘But you don’t, do you? Ask your dad stuff like that?’

  Fury shrugged. ‘I’m no expert. Mine was the silent type.’

  ‘That’s a Finfarran characteristic, isn’t it? I like things above board and clear.’

  The barman arrived at Fury’s side with another pint. Fury pushed away the remains of his food and considered Cassie. ‘Did you never think that some things might be none of your damn business?’

  ‘Well, but this is family stuff.’

  ‘I was thinking especially of family stuff. People leave for all sorts of reasons. I heard your dad and your uncle Jim were fierce well qualified, so they went off to get jobs they couldn’t get here. I was the opposite. Well, maybe the other end of the scale. My dad died before he had half his trade taught me and, back then, there was nothing here for an unskilled lad. You could say the building sites were my university – you’d be talking nonsense, of course, but, sure, people do.’

  Cassie was still pursuing her own train of thought. ‘Back at Christmas, I thought I’d persuade my dad to come visit, and we’d do family things and hang out. I didn’t know then that Ger was so ill.’

  ‘That’s an old story. People never making it back till they turn up to a wake.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This was a hard old place when I was young. No money, not much work, and too many priests and nuns.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what my dad thought?’

  ‘I’ve no notion.’

  Fury, who’d been sipping his pint, took another pull at it. Cassie remarked that Hanna thought she asked too many questions.

  ‘Does she now?’

  ‘She doesn’t actually say so, but it’s what she thinks.’

  ‘Maybe she’s right. I hear you’ve been showing an interest in Ger’s will.’

  Cassie sat bolt upright. ‘No, I haven’t!’

  ‘That’s good, so.’

  ‘Seriously, Fury, honestly, I haven’t.’ Cassie stopped suddenly, remembering her conversation with Hanna in the library. Had she been overheard?

  Fury looked at her sideways. ‘“Where there’s a will, there’s a relative,” they say.’

  ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘Don’t get huffy with me, girl. You’re a grown woman, not a child, so you should have a bit of sense.’

  With an effort, Cassie controlled herself. After all, it was she who’d raised the subject, and maybe Fury had something useful to say. But when he spoke again his mind appeared to have drifted to something else. ‘Come here to me now, with all your schooling did you never learn what “glamour” means?’

  ‘You mean like models and movie stars?’

  ‘That’s what they use the word for, these days. People living the high life. What it really means is deception. A charm to make something look like something else.’

  Cassie shot him a glance, wondering if he was coming over all puritanical. But that wasn’t Fury at all and, besides, his expression was mischievous. ‘You can look it up in a dictionary if you doubt me.’

  ‘I don’t. I just . . . How do you mean, a “charm”?’

  ‘In the old days they would have called it a spell. Enchantment.’

  Thinking he might be winding her up, Cassie bit into her sandwich and there was silence until Fury remarked that things weren’t always what they seemed.

  ‘Well, I know that.’ Cassie frowned. ‘Did you look it up in a dictionary?’

  ‘I did not. I heard tell of it. There were O’Sheas living here in this forest long before a one of us round these parts thought of dipping a quill in ink.’

  ‘Your family?’

  ‘So my father said. He didn’t say much but, when he spoke, I wouldn’t doubt him. Nor my mother either, and she was a great storyteller. You have to mind a forest.’

  ‘How do you mean, mind it?’

  ‘I mean keep an eye on it. And maybe pay attention to it too. Wood can tell you things.’

  Cassie wondered if two pints at lunch might be one too many. Fury was staring at the blank TV screen. ‘I went away when my father died because I knew what would happen. My older brother had fallen in for all my father had. And by the time the same brother died of drink, the house was well-nigh fallen down and he’d sold off the forest.’

  ‘That was tough.’

  ‘It was worse than that. It was wrong. I’m not saying he hadn’t a right to what my father left him. What I’m saying is that my father was a fool. He knew damn well my brother was a waster, and he didn’t see where his real duty lay. People can take care of themselves. The land can’t.’

  ‘Who owns the forest now?’

  ‘I do.’

  Cassie was confused. ‘But I thought you said – Oh, did you buy it back?’

  ‘I did not. The title deeds belong to some fellow over in Australia who’s never set a foot in the place. The forest belongs to me because I take care of it.’

  ‘You mean you’re his manager?’

  Fury swallowed the last drops of his pint. ‘I mean what I said. I don’t own it. It belongs to me. Because I belong to it.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ This was all getting a bit much for Cassie. She checked her watch and slid out from behind the table. ‘You know what, I need to move on. There’ll be people waiting for books.’

  Fury stood up. ‘We’ll be away too. I’ve a tree to look at.’

  He ambled over to pay for his lunch, then he and The Divil followed Cassie out into glorious sunshine. Beyond the conifers that fringed the forest, Cassie could hear birds singing in oak trees and alders. She remembered the shadows cast by their stark winter branches as she’d driven down the frosty track, seeking holly. She’d encountered Fury that day, too, and he’d helped her to load armfuls of green and gold leaves and scarlet berries into the boot of her car. He hadn’t replied when she’d asked him where in the forest she’d find mistletoe. But the following day he’d turned up in Lissbeg with a sackful on his shoulder, and a sprig of it had hung above the range on Ger’s last Christmas Day.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There was a poem by Thomas Hardy that Pat liked. She couldn’t remember if she’d first read it in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury but it seemed likely because that was a book the nuns at school were cracked about. It might have been somewhere else, though. Because when she’d looked Hardy up in the library in Carrick, she’d found he’d written a lot of stuff the nuns wouldn’t have liked. Apparently, he’d lost his religion, picked up with a young one, and stopped talking to his wife, who’d ended her days in an attic. The poem was written after the wife died, when he’d been thinking of the past and remembering how they’d met. By then the young one had become the second Mrs Hardy, and Pat imagined she must have been pretty vexed when she read what he wrote. But maybe she’d known the bargain she’d made when she’d married him.

  This morning Pat was determined to be properly dressed by breakfast time. She’d set her alarm and had taken a shower before seven. Then, having waved Cassie off to the salon, she washed up the breakfast things and got the flat straight by nine. It was another sunny day, so she planned to have a walk and do some shopping.

  Climbing the stairs to her bedroom, she stepped into the second-floor room that had once been Sonny and Jim’s. She’d moved the beds out years ago when Ger had decided to use it as an office. There was a big desk against the wall, with a roll-top and a brass lock, like something out of Dickens, an
d a row of metal filing cabinets he’d picked up at an auction. Looking around, Pat wondered what would happen next. She’d always been on at Ger to let her decorate, but he’d hated disruption so the room still had the paper she’d hung when the lads were small. You could see the marks where it had been scraped when the beds were pushed in and out.

  The desk was locked, and so were the filing cabinets, and the keys were still on the ring Ger had kept in his trousers pocket. When they’d carried him down to the ambulance in his dressing-gown and pyjamas, Pat had followed them out through the shop and sat in beside him, forgetting she’d need her own keys to get back into the flat. But Cassie had kept her head. She’d taken Ger’s car and followed the ambulance, having thrown her bag and Pat’s into the back along with a couple of coats. By the time they got Ger to Carrick, he was dead. Though the paramedic hadn’t told her so, Pat had known that well enough. She’d stumbled down the ambulance steps into sleet. They’d lifted out the stretcher, and Cassie had been there, wrapping her up in her coat. Pat had been wearing slippers. Later, in the hospital, when they’d told her Ger was gone, she’d noticed how wet her feet were. Cassie had rubbed them with a towel, but she’d had to put the slippers back on to walk to the car and go home. They were good for nothing by that stage, so she’d thrust them into the kitchen bin before going to bed. That night, because Ger had been so careful to keep his keys close by him, she’d taken his keyring out of his trousers pocket, and put it under her jumpers in a drawer.

  This was the first time she’d been in the office since then. The sun showed up a lot of dust, and the faded paper looked awful, so she wondered if she’d look out for some paint. She’d meant to go by the hardware store anyway, to ask about getting a new lock. The shop was safe as a bank, because it had to be for insurance, and there was a Yale lock on the door at the top of the staircase that led to the flat. They’d always kept that one on the snib during opening hours, because anyone wanting to come upstairs had to pass through the shop first. But without Ger down below and coming up in the evenings, she felt she wanted the flat to be more secure. She’d stopped using the snib now, so visitors had to knock. And last night, when she’d woken up and found it hard to sleep again, she’d decided to get a Chubb lock for the door.