‘Oh, shit, I’m sorry.’ Brad stubbed out his newly lit cigarette.
‘No, it’s not you. It’s just something in the fire.’ Cassie stood up and moved upwind and Brad called across the fire to her. ‘You okay?’
‘Sure. My own fault for wanting a huge blaze.’
‘Oh, come on, don’t say that! A huge blaze is the only way to go.’
Laughing, she walked back to him, around the circle of stones. The smoke was thinning and the heart of the fire was glowing. Far below, there was a flash of light from a mirror as a jeep pulled into the car park. Brad pointed down the hill. ‘We’ve got company.’
Cassie felt an unexpected mixture of shyness and guilt. Lighting the bonfire had probably been irresponsible and, for no reason she was prepared to think about, to be found here with Brad seemed kind of weird. Several people jumped out of the jeep and were pulling on jackets. She looked at Brad, who read her thought on her face. ‘I left my car at the other side of the hill. What’s up? Do you want to beat a retreat?’
He appeared so amused that Cassie’s shyness intensified. ‘No. Well, yes. I don’t fancy chatting to a lot of tourists. Do you?’
‘Not when I’m not being paid to. How about we walk to my car and I’ll drive you back round to pick up yours? Most likely they’ll have moved on by then.’
She wasn’t certain she wanted that either, but the sound of voices coming up the track unnerved her. ‘Okay, if you’re sure you don’t mind.’
He stood up and kicked the fire, scattering the wood and stamping out the embers. Cassie helped, rolling stones over sparks. Then, as the voices got closer, he gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘If we’re quick, they’ll never even know we’ve been here.’
It was hard to tell whether or not he was joking, and Cassie suspected that, if he was, the joke might be on her. She knew her confusion couldn’t have gone unnoticed. But perhaps he was just being funny to set her at ease. Anyway, this was no time to stand around wondering. As the first of the group of tourists emerged from the track onto the stone plateau, she ducked low and followed Brad around the dark tower.
Chapter Eighteen
Hanna stood in a group of shoppers, all queuing for Sunday roasts or the makings of weekend breakfasts. When her purchases were handed across the counter, she told Des that she’d slip up to the flat. He said she’d need to rap on the door. ‘Herself don’t leave it on the snib now, but I know she’ll be glad to see you if you go up.’
When Hanna knocked Pat welcomed her in with open arms. ‘There you are! I haven’t seen you properly since I came back.’
Taking a seat by the range, Hanna looked round at the well-swept floor, the scrubbed table, the framed print of a Paul Henry seascape, the teapot on the range, and the glass-fronted press. Nothing had changed since the last time she’d been here, except for the presence of an ornate vase on the mantelpiece, which didn’t seem to fit Pat’s style. It was made of gilded pink and purple lustre, ornamented with flowers, and held a bunch of narcissi, their clusters of creamy, ruffled petals and deep saffron centres adding to the overblown effect.
Pat saw Hanna glance at it. ‘Ger’s mam used to have that on the mantelpiece back on the farm. It came here in a box of stuff when the poor woman died and, God forgive me, I never liked it, so I stuck it inside in the press.’
‘I don’t think I’ve seen it before.’
‘No, you wouldn’t have, love. It was at the back of a shelf. Ger took it out when Cassie brought mistletoe up to the flat at Christmas and, since then, I haven’t had the heart to put it away.’
‘Well, it looks great.’
‘I don’t know . . . I think those flowers make it a bit blowsy.’ Pat cocked her head and considered the vase. ‘But they were Ger’s mam’s favourites, you know. “Bridal Crown”. She carried them on her wedding day, poor woman, and God knows she wouldn’t have had much else.’ Pat linked her hands on her knee and turned her wedding ring on her finger.
Feeling she’d led them into melancholy territory, Hanna remarked that she’d just bought black and white pudding. ‘You must be glad to have Des below in the shop.’
‘Ah, listen, Des is a great lad altogether. Though why I still call him a lad I don’t know. He must be pushing thirty. I’m a lucky woman to have him there to rely on.’
Her woebegone expression belied the statement so Hanna changed the subject to the book club. ‘I think it’s a brilliant idea. And several more people have applied to join.’
‘I suppose there’s a lot of us knew Resolve in the past.’
‘Did you ever think of staying there yourself?’
‘Ah, no, love. Sure I was engaged when I went.’
‘And you were just there for the summer?’
‘That’s it. I worked in the factory with Josie. Your mam and dad were engaged, too, and I’d a list as long as me arm of things to buy for Mary’s trousseau. Then she decided she wanted a summer wedding, so I packed them all up and posted them home.’
‘What was that about?’ Hanna stopped suddenly, thinking it might have been about herself.
Pat laughed. ‘Ah, no, love, she wasn’t pregnant. She just took a notion. Ger and I got married in the autumn, when I came back.’
‘Wasn’t there a big thing about you being a foursome?’
‘There was, and talk of a double wedding. But you know what Mary’s like.’
Hanna, who had observed her mother with the cold eye of childhood, believed she knew exactly what Pat meant. At a double wedding, Mary would have had to share a spotlight, something she never would or could abide. For years Hanna had wondered why Pat put up with her. Now, unwilling to ask the question bluntly, she said she’d always been glad that Pat was her godmother. ‘There were times I wouldn’t have survived my mam without you!’
‘Well, nobody had to twist my arm. I was glad to. And, later on, I’d say you almost saved my life. I was very depressed after Jim was born, because they’d done a hysterectomy. I’d signed the paper beforehand, of course, but they hadn’t asked me to read it, and I’d never thought they’d do that while I was asleep.’
‘God, Pat, that’s awful.’
‘Ay, well, that’s how they treated women in the hospitals then. I don’t know that they’re much better now. Anyway, ’twas the right thing to do, I suppose, if I needed it. But the point is that your mam knew how much I’d wanted a daughter. And I was very down when I found I had no hope of one anymore.’
Hanna didn’t ask if Pat had had any counselling. At that time in Finfarran there would have been no such thing.
‘It was Mary put the heart back into me. She turned up with a big box of chocolates and bullied me into eating them, and there was a nurse at the top of the ward with a face like a bag of spanners, glaring down at us. It was like being back at school, and the two of us got the giggles. And then Mary produced a picture you’d drawn for me.’
‘Did I? I don’t remember.’
‘Ah, you’d only have been about six. Mary gave it over to me and said you were a lucky girl to have me as a godmother. I suppose it cheered me up.’
‘She was right.’
‘Well, she was no great hand at the mothering job herself. That’s what she said.’
‘Did she really?’
‘She’s not as insensitive as she seems, Hanna. Not all the time, anyway.’ Pat paused. ‘And then, when she was gone, I found she’d left a package. It was a knitting pattern for a little girl’s jacket, and some needles and pink wool.’
‘Was that the one with the cable stitches you knitted me for my birthday?’
‘That was it. Of course, Mary was useless at knitting so, in one way, she was only getting the job done for her. But she knew how to set me back on my feet.’ Pat looked at the vase of flowers. ‘Mind you, Ger’s mam was very good to me too. She had no daughter either, and I was always fond of her. I thought it might be the same way when Frankie married Fran. But that was a nonstarter. Fran’s a decent enough woman but, do you know what it is
, she has no conversation. Either that or she’s deep. I’ve never known which. And I hardly know Sonny and Jim’s wives at all. No, you’re more of a daughter to me than any kith or kin, Hanna – and Mary was wrong. It’s I that was lucky, not you.’
Hanna was touched. ‘You really were a rock during my childhood. I always knew I could run round to you when Mam got on my nerves.’
‘Ay, if you weren’t round drudging for Maggie Casey.’
‘It wasn’t as bad as that. Maggie was old and grumpy, but being out of the house gave me freedom, and it made for peace all round when Mam could keep Dad firmly at home.’ Struck by what she’d just said, Hanna frowned. ‘I know that sounds bad but, actually, he adored her.’
‘Oh, there’s no disputing that.’
‘I hated to see him torn between Mam and the rest of the world. But then I’d see them sitting together in the garden, or jaunting off to Carrick for dinner, like a couple of teenagers out on their first date.’
‘I’d say that’s half Mary’s problem. She never grew up. She doted on her own dad and he was a kind of a cold man, as far as I remember him. I’ve always thought she felt she was owed some imaginary debt of love.’
‘God, isn’t it scary how our neuroses get passed on to our kids? I grew up fantasising about the perfect family and, by hook or by crook, I was going to create it for Jazz. And look at her now, the child of divorced parents. Maybe if I hadn’t been trying so hard I would have noticed I’d gone and married a rat.’
‘Ah, Jazz is grand. She has a life of her own now, and a good job. Don’t go putting yourself down. You’re a wonderful mother.’
‘Well, at least she spent her formative years feeling loved. Not that I didn’t – I knew Dad adored me as much as he doted on Mam. It was just hard to see him punished whenever he dared to show it.’
Pat’s face creased with worry. ‘I didn’t think you noticed that when you were young.’
‘Kids often see more than they’re given credit for.’
‘I suppose that’s true.’
‘And people do the best they can, don’t they? That’s the lesson you learn as you get older and, if you’ve any sense, you stop looking back and move on.’
‘You do, I suppose, if you’re able. But it takes self-awareness, and Mary was never a great woman for that.’
‘Maybe she’s the one who should have gone to the States and broadened her horizons.’
Pat laughed. ‘And take her eye off Tom for a whole summer?’
‘Well, you trusted Ger.’
‘Ger was a horse of a different colour.’ Pat got up and said she’d boil a kettle. In Finfarran circles, the offer of a cup of tea at such a juncture meant one of two opposing things: either your company was appreciated or you’d stayed too long. Seeing Hanna hesitate, Pat gave her a playful slap. ‘I’d love you to stay if you’ve time.’
‘But don’t you have things to do?’
‘I have, and plenty of them, but I’d rather take my ease and talk to you.’
Hanna settled back in her chair and raised a subject that had struck her earlier. ‘You have a new lock on the door.’
‘And you’re not to worry about it.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are. But you needn’t. I know you’re all determined to take care of me, and it’s very kind. It helps. But I have to find my own way through this, Hanna. The new lock just gives me a sense of security. Well, that’s not the whole truth, it’s more than that. There was never a time in my life when I could look round and call a space my own. But I can now and I have to learn to live in it alone. It’s not what I would have chosen, love, but it’s how things happened. Ger used to say that in life you can only play the hand you’re dealt.’
Chapter Nineteen
Fitzgerald’s closed at twelve thirty on Saturdays. When Pat came downstairs Des was scrubbing the chopping blocks and the sign was turned on the door. ‘Would you have a minute, Mrs Fitz?’
He came round the counter, looking awkward, and passed a very clean hand over his bristly head. He was a square-set man, light on his feet and quietly spoken, and the striped apron he wore over his white coat was tied low under an incipient paunch. ‘I was wondering if we’d have the usual window display, or if you wanted to skip it this year with Ger’s death so recent. I thought I might ask Frankie, but then it seemed best to come to you.’ He gazed at her doubtfully, obviously concerned that he might have said something wrong.
At first Pat couldn’t think what he meant. Then she remembered. ‘For St Patrick’s Day? Oh, yes, of course. No, we should have it, Des. We always do.’
The window display had been Ger’s idea, a way of combating the Carrick supermarkets’ St Patrick’s Day offers. It majored on nostalgia in the face of commercial hype. Instead of neon harps and foil shamrocks, Fitzgerald’s window sported a plaster wolfhound posed against a round tower, and customers buying their St Patrick’s Day lunch were given a free bunch of shamrock. Pat didn’t know where the slightly chipped plaster figures had come from, but they’d certainly been in the shop since Ger’s father’s day. The shamrock came from the farm. There were two or three places there where it grew profusely, and the idea of a giveaway that cost him nothing had greatly appealed to Ger. Each year he’d driven out with a knife and a plastic sack that had once contained sheep nuts, and returned with plenty for the customers and enough over to make a wreath around the wolfhound’s feet. So long as they didn’t lose by it, Lissbeg always liked to do down Carrick, and the free shamrock, as well as the saving in petrol, convinced many of the wisdom of buying local.
Pat hastened to reassure Des. ‘I should have remembered myself, and you did right to come to me. I’ll see about it.’
‘Right so, Mrs Fitz. I’ll put the dog on display at the start of the week. Wednesday’s the seventeenth, so if you could get me the shamrock soon I’ll be set for the rush.’
As he spoke, the door to the yard slammed and Cassie came in from the passage. Pat beamed at her. ‘Now! There you are, love! Are you busy this afternoon?’
‘Not a bit. Why?’
‘Well, I wondered if you’d drive me out to the farm.’ Pat turned to Des. ‘Ger would always check in advance to make sure of the shamrock. I know where to look and Cassie could take me today so we’d see what’s what.’
Cassie pushed her hand through her fringe. ‘No problem. Is this for St Patrick’s Day?’
Pat explained and Cassie’s eyes sparkled. ‘I didn’t know we grew shamrock on the farm.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be in the fields, love. You find it growing thick round a gate or up along a verge.’
‘You mean wild?’
Des chipped in. ‘Like your gran says, you just have to know where to look for it. Some years it fails in one place and springs up in another.’
‘Wow! So it’s like a treasure hunt.’
Pat laughed. ‘Sometimes it’s more like an endless trek down muddy boreens. We’ve never had a year without it, though. Not while I’ve been in this house.’
‘Okay. Let me find a pair of wellies and you can tell me where to go.’
* * *
It was what people called ‘a soft day’, half sunny, half misty. The bushes by the roadsides still wore a winter air, but the celandines gleaming against the stone walls had become flashes of gold in a carpet of yellow primroses. On lesser roads bounded by the banks of earth that Cassie had learned to call ditches, the primroses, fringed with pale green leaves, flourished behind a barbed network of dark, dormant briars. In damp corners between the stones, lamb’s tongue fern grew in emerald clumps. Cassie lowered her window to look out at them. Then, as she turned down a boreen indicated by Pat, she gasped. A profusion of starry flowers powdered the blackthorn hedges, their white petals shining like snow against the stark wood.
Pat smiled at Cassie’s reaction. ‘I’ve never known a spring when I haven’t gasped at the blackthorn flowers. I love the little catkins hanging from the hazel as well.’
‘It’s amazing how quickly everything’s coming to life.’
Pat began to chant in a childlike sing-song:
From Brigid’s Day on,
The birds build nests,
The sheep drop lambs,
And the day gets long.
‘I learned that from the nuns. Brigid’s Day is February the first, and they say it’s the first day of spring.’
‘It was snowing this year on February first!’
‘More often than not, that’s the way of it, love. But that’s what they say. When I was young we used make more of Brigid’s Day than St Patrick’s. Well, girls did, anyway. Maybe not lads so much.’
‘What did you do?’
‘You’d go round with a doll that was dressed up in lace and flowers.’
‘What was the significance?’
‘Ah, the custom was dying by that time, love, and I’m not sure what we were doing. There were all sorts of things they did in the past at the turn of the seasons. Dew gathered in Maytime was used for love potions, and there were herbs you could pick and put on your eyes to banish enchantment.’
‘No! Did you do that?’
‘Not at all, no one believed in that kind of stuff in my day. I think going round with the dolly was just about welcoming the spring.’
‘That’s cool.’
‘You’d walk the bounds of your land at certain times, too, and you’d light fires.’
‘What for?’
‘Protection, I think. From bad luck, you know, or a curse. An uncle of mine found an egg once, buried at a field boundary. He said someone had put it there to curse the land.’
‘Wow! He believed that?’
‘Land can bring out strange hatred in families.’
‘He thought a family member did it?’
‘I’m not sure, love. I was only a child, and they wouldn’t talk where I could hear them. I’d say there was bad blood between him and his brother, though.’
Cassie drove in silence between the flowering thorns. Then she remembered her conversation with Fury. ‘Did you know Fury O’Shea before he went off to England? He left after his dad died. His elder brother got everything so Fury just took off.’
The Transatlantic Book Club Page 12