The Transatlantic Book Club

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  When the book-club meeting was over, Cassie and some of the others went off for pizza. As Pat let herself into the empty flat she felt bone tired. In a way she wished she’d stood her ground and hadn’t allowed Cassie to fix that holiday or to talk her into the Transatlantic Book Club. It was hard enough dealing with Ger’s death without having to cope with buried memories of Seán Shanahan, and strange to sit in Lissbeg beside Mary with Josie talking to them from Resolve. When Mrs Shanahan suggested they read Seán’s books, Pat had seen Josie’s troubled reaction. Hanna had seemed to think she was bothered about how to organise things. But Pat knew better. Josie had been a witness to all that had happened that summer in Resolve.

  When she took off her coat, Pat laid The Case of the Late Pig on her well-scrubbed kitchen table. Then she remembered Thomas Hardy’s poems about his wife. Years ago, in a second-hand bookshop, she’d bought a collection called Poems of 1912–1913. According to the introduction, Hardy’s wife’s death had hit him so badly that the past had become more real to him than the present. When she’d first read that, Pat had thought it pretentious, the sort of thing you might hear from Darina Kelly, but now, having lost Ger, she saw it made sense. Death did strange things to people left behind, so no wonder so many poets and authors wrote about it. Look at The Case of the Late Pig. The plot hinged on a man who appeared to have died and been buried and turned up as a murder victim five months later. Of course, it was just light reading, with an aristocratic English detective, whom Pat found a bit annoying. But Seán had said that sleuths and all the whodunit stuff weren’t the point of crime stories – what they were really about was love and hatred, guilt, fear, greed, death, and lost opportunities. Pat could almost see him now, sitting with a book in his hand, explaining to her. He’d been six or seven years older than she, and intense in a way that sometimes seemed boring, so Pat hadn’t taken much notice. Her strongest memory of him was that he’d been kind.

  Thomas Hardy had written stories, too, but according to the introduction of Pat’s book, his poems were his best work. Pat didn’t know. She just liked them. Now she went to the dresser and found the book on a shelf. Carrying it to an easy chair, she switched on the lamp. The pages parted at a poem called ‘When I Set Out for Lyonnesse’. Pat spoke the first two verses aloud to the empty flat.

  ‘When I set out for Lyonnesse,

  A hundred miles away,

  The rime was on the spray,

  And starlight lit my lonesomeness

  When I set out for Lyonnesse

  A hundred miles away.

  What would bechance at Lyonnesse

  While I should sojourn there

  No prophet durst declare,

  Nor did the wisest wizard guess

  What would bechance at Lyonnesse

  While I should sojourn there.’

  Closing the book with a sigh, she stirred the fire in the range and opened The Case of the Late Pig.

  Later, she tidied the kitchen, locked up, turned off the lamp, and, leaving the light on the stairs switched on for Cassie, went up to her room carrying the book of poems. By the time she’d undressed and was under the duvet she felt too tired for reading, so she left the book on her bedside table and settled herself to sleep. But as soon as her eyes closed she saw the harsh light of summer in upstate New York and Josie’s tanned legs running ahead of her, the cork heels of her sandals hardly seeming to touch the sidewalk.

  It was seven a.m. and they were rushing to catch the bus to the factory. Pat had hardly slept at all in the unfamiliar second-floor back bedroom at the rooming house. Josie had rapped on her door at half six and chivvied her down to breakfast, saying she mustn’t be late on her first day at work. Everything had been disorientating: the toast, which was made from bread that seemed to have no substance to it, the fact that jam was called ‘jelly’, and Josie asking her to get ‘a stick of butter’ from the fridge.

  The bus, when it came, was nothing like a bus you’d see in Finfarran, and Pat had felt like a fool for not knowing how she should pay the fare. Behind them, a whole queue of workers had pushed forward complaining as she’d struggled to find the right coins and put them into the slot. At home the driver would have offered to help her and half the queue would have chipped in with advice.

  Once she’d got behind a sewing machine in the factory, though, she was fine. Mary was hopeless at dressmaking, being too impatient, but Pat had been running up clothes on an old treadle machine for years. Getting used to the electric one in the factory was no problem. The forewoman told Josie to show her the ropes for the first day, but by lunchtime she’d worked things out for herself. All the same, she was tired at the end of the shift. It was six in the evening when all the girls streamed out of the factory and Josie suggested that she and Pat should eat at the Shamrock Club.

  ‘Do they do meals there?’

  ‘They do bacon and cabbage.’

  ‘Oh, God, Josie, lead me to it! I’d kill for a plate of that.’

  At home she hadn’t been all that partial to cabbage, or to the mashed turnips with white pepper that often got dished up with a cut of bacon. But as they walked the short distance from the factory to the Shamrock Club, she’d found herself longing for a familiar meal that might make the place feel less foreign.

  Lying in bed, with moonlight falling slantways through the window, Pat remembered that dusty walk, the sharp shadows cast by the houses, the absence of trees, and the six steps that led to the club’s entrance. The whitewashed frontage with its painted sign was set back from the street’s other buildings, which, in those days, had petered out a block beyond it into chain-link fences enclosing vacant lots. Even in the few months she’d spent there, the town had continued to spread, and most of the development was down to Denis Brennan.

  When Josie had brought her in, Denis was sitting on a stool in the Lucky Charm bar. He was six foot two with shoulders like a prize bull’s and eyes like gimlets. The strength of his handshake, which was like a vise, made Pat blink. There was a brief interrogation, to establish precisely who she was and where her people came from, before the old man jerked his head at Josie. ‘Go on, then, get some food down her. She looks like she’s feeling the lack of it.’ Then, as Pat turned to go, he leaned towards her and said she was welcome to come and go as she pleased. The smell of whiskey and pipe tobacco had taken her straight back to little pubs on the back roads of Finfarran, where old men who’d never had the chance to make Denis Brennan’s fortune held court with the same unquestioned authority, born of a lifetime’s knowledge of how to survive.

  The bacon and cabbage was served at long tables in what was then the club’s kitchen, a steamy room at the back of the building where two middle-aged women cooked for the members on a gas hob and the Brennan memorial range. The range was functional in those days and its original plaque, which was painted wood, was hanging from a nail above it. The meal, which cost half the price of dinner at a diner, included a slice of apple tart and a mug of strong tea. Having finished the tart, Pat knocked back her tea in a few gulps. At the other side of the table was a couple of lads in paint-stained overalls, and one of them caught her eye and gave her a wink. ‘They’ll pour you another mug if you ask them nicely.’

  Pat laughed. ‘No, I’m grand, thanks. It just went down well after the dinner.’

  ‘Are you up at the factory?’

  ‘I am. I’m Josie’s cousin. She got me the job.’

  ‘And tell me this, are you going to be round long?’

  Josie made a face at him. ‘She’s here for the summer and she’s engaged, so you can keep your eyes off her. You’d want to stay well away from this one, Pat. He’s like all the lads on the sites, mad for the girls.’

  The boy made a face back. ‘No great catch, that’s what you mean. And she’s dead wrong, Pat. Look at old Denis Brennan. That’s the kind of money you can make in construction round here.’

  Deciding that she didn’t need Josie to speak for her, Pat said she was well-suited already.
/>   ‘Oh, right, so, we’ll have to take ourselves elsewhere.’

  As the lads got up from the table and swaggered away, laughing, Josie threw Pat a good-humoured look. ‘There’s no harm in them, really, they’re decent enough. But the great thing out here, Pat, is to find a man who does the hiring and firing. You don’t want to marry a wage-slave. You want someone like Seán Shanahan.’ With a flick of her eyes, she indicated a tall guy who’d just come into the kitchen. He was red-haired and freckled and dressed in neat blue trousers and a cream zip-up jacket. ‘That’s what everyone’s after, Pat. A man with a growing business.’

  Pat shifted her position to get a better view. The man paid for a mug of tea and, taking a book from his pocket, went to sit at a table against the wall. Josie leaned sideways and kicked Pat’s ankle. ‘You’re interested now, aren’t you? And you well-suited back in Finfarran!’

  ‘I am not!’

  ‘Not suited?’

  ‘Not interested.’

  They both burst into giggles and the guy at the far side of the room looked up. Pat nearly died but Josie waved at him. His blue eyes crinkled in acknowledgement, and before he looked back down at his book, Pat saw, for the first time, his gentle, lopsided smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  In the small hours of the morning, another Atlantic storm hit Finfarran. Gathering strength as it travelled across the ocean, the wind roared in and battered the northern cliffs. Raging on across the peninsula, it spent some of its force against the solid mass of oaks and pines in Fury O’Shea’s forest, then swept across the motorway, threatening a high-sided lorry, and tore slates from the rooftops in Lissbeg. As the gusts struck, the trees in the nuns’ garden were stripped of their topmost budding leaves despite the protection of the old convent walls.

  Swirled by the furious wind, fine sleet froze as it fell and was hurled against streaming windows. In the flat above the butcher’s shop, Pat woke with a start. As often happens when sleep has had to be courted, she had no idea of the time. She sat up, groped under her pillow, and couldn’t find her wristwatch. Through the uncurtained window she could see the half-orb of the moon, bright as a new penny behind pewter clouds. Briefly, the sleet turned to hailstones and rattled the windowpanes violently, like something trying to get in. Pat wondered if Cassie had got home safely. Forgetting her watch, she threw back the duvet and, having fumbled for her slippers and pulled on a dressing-gown, made her way to the foot of the attic stairs. Here in the stairwell the sound of the storm was dulled. On the little landing above her, Cassie’s door was closed. Pat went up and opened it gently, looked in, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Cassie was lying in bed, her face buried in her pillow and one arm thrown above her head. As the wind shook the house again, the clouds shifted and moonlight flooded the room. Turning in her sleep, she had pushed down the duvet, and the patchwork quilt that Pat had sewn lay like a multi-coloured pool on the floor. It was made of squares of velvet and the moonlight touched the nap with gleaming highlights. Pat instinctively moved to pull the duvet around Cassie’s shoulders. Then she drew back, unwilling to risk waking her. The back of the cropped head was a dark smudge against the pillow and the arm emerging from the sleeve of the T-shirt curved protectively around it. On the nape of Cassie’s neck, where a curl of hair flicked up like a little duck tail, was a small tattoo, a triple spiral motif in black ink. When Mary had first noticed this she’d sniffed in disapproval, but Pat thought it was nice. You’d see women these days with tattoos all over their arms and legs, and even their chests, in different colours, and all you’d find yourself thinking about was the way they were going to look in thirty years’ time. As Mary had said, they’d be going round like frights. But this little design half hidden by the single dark curl was different. Though Mary had said that Pat only thought so because she was moonstruck by the child.

  Bending down, Pat lifted the quilt and gently drew it up. Cassie turned her head, but her breathing was deep and regular and she snuggled down, instinctively relaxing to the warmth. Looking down at her, Pat told herself Mary was absolutely right. From the day Cassie had met her and Ger at the airport in Toronto she’d fallen head over heels in love with her granddaughter. The flight had been long and she and Ger were tired when Cassie had appeared in Arrivals waving a bunch of roses. She’d driven them home and settled them into what Sonny’s wife called ‘the guest suite’. Later, when Ger was resting, she’d produced milk and brownies and sat Pat on a sofa in the family room where they’d watched Judge Judy together in companionable silence, and Pat had felt welcomed. Then, in the weeks that followed, when it turned out that she and Ger weren’t really welcome at all, Cassie had done her utmost to entertain them. It hadn’t made Pat feel less unwanted, but the joy of bonding with Cassie had almost outweighed the sadness. Faced with the fact that Sonny and Jim had made lives from which she was excluded, her granddaughter’s love had come as a gift that was all the more precious for being unexpected.

  Closing Cassie’s bedroom door, Pat returned to her own room and got back into bed. The warmth had gone from the duvet and the sheet felt chilly, so she reached for Ger’s blue pullover and slipped it on. Outside, the storm had relented and the pale light of dawn was beginning to stain the sky. Soon she’d need to get up because there was plenty to do today. Fury had said he’d be round to finish laying the bit of carpet in Ger’s office, and she hoped that Frankie would come and help move the furniture back. She’d decided to make the office into a guest room and thought that, from now on, they could call the attic bedroom Cassie’s. Not that she wanted to put any pressure on Cassie to stay in Finfarran. She’d be back on the cruise ships before long, and her real home was Canada, but it might be nice for her to know that she’d always have a room in the flat, and even a place to leave a few things when she went off again on her travels. Happily, Pat turned on her side, and hugged herself.

  Outside, as the grey sky turned pink, the house martins in the old convent eaves began to stir and sing.

  * * *

  Fury O’Shea was sitting at the table and The Divil was lapping tea from a saucer by the range when Cassie came down for breakfast. Pat reached for the teapot but Cassie shook her head and went to make coffee. Pat gave Fury a wink. ‘I do always forget that she won’t take tea in the mornings.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Fury added milk to his cup. ‘And yer man The Divil will hardly stir a foot without it. Mind you, he doesn’t like it strong. And he’d stick to water for the rest of the day, bar the drop of Guinness if he happened to get it. The end of a pint, say, if I’m having one myself. He’s got no head for the hard stuff, though. Wouldn’t touch it.’

  Pat looked fondly at the little tan and white dog who had rolled onto his side with a deep sigh of contentment. ‘He’d be great company. He’s a great guard dog, too, I suppose.’

  ‘And a judge of character. There’s many a one he’d see off that’d turn up with a suit on him, and many another he’d welcome in that hadn’t an arse to his trousers.’ Knocking back his tea, Fury declared that he ought to get on with the work.

  Pat smiled at him. ‘You’re very good and so is Tintawn Terry. I know well that you shouldn’t be here painting walls and laying down carpet. You’re a builder, not a handyman, and I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘Don’t I know the kind of money the smart lads would ask if they saw you stuck? You wouldn’t want to go running up bills at this stage. Not till you’ve got probate through and everything right and tight.’

  It was an aspect of things that Pat had considered. And ever since the day that Frankie had taken Ger’s papers she’d wondered if she ought to have checked whether or not they should have been moved from the flat. But life had to go on and it was Frankie who had to manage things, so she supposed that, among the files, there were things he needed to hand.

  Cassie joined them at the table with her coffee, saying she wasn’t going out in the van today. ‘It’s in for repairs, so I’ll be helping in the library. There’
s a coffee and cake fundraiser thing happening this afternoon.’

  Pat looked stricken. ‘Do you know what it is, I forgot all about it! I’ll make a pavlova and bring it over, Cassie. I do every year. What time do you start?’

  ‘Hanna said I should come in round lunchtime to help set things up.’

  By lunchtime the carpet in Ger’s room was down and looked great. Des had turned the sign on the shop door from OPEN to CLOSED, and come up to the flat, to give a hand with the lifting. Pat had sent a text to Frankie and had no reply, but shortly they heard him coming up from the shop. Cassie, wearing her coat and about to go over to the library, was hunkered down on the floor scratching The Divil.

  When Frankie came in he stopped dead on the threshold, his face darkening as they all looked round. Pat smiled and held out her hands to him. ‘There you are, son. Aren’t you good to come over? Des will give you a hand to move the furniture.’

  Frankie’s eyes swivelled between Cassie on the floor and Fury, who was lounging by the window. In a voice dripping with sarcasm, he remarked that Pat had a grand, hefty team already installed. Pat laughed uncertainly. ‘Well, I wouldn’t ask poor Cassie to go lifting furniture! And Fury’s done far too much already.’

  ‘Well, if he’s done all that he has to do, how come he’s still hanging round?’