Among the Lissbeg newcomers were Margot, Cassie’s boss from the salon, and the small woman whose husband had been outraged by the seed cake. He was no reader, his wife explained to Hanna, but he’d brought her into town and taken himself to the pub for a pint. ‘Mind you, I haven’t caught up with the reading bit myself. But I’ve two cousins over in Resolve – I’m Mrs Breen but they’d be Courtneys on my mother’s side, though one of them married a man called Dillon and one is a widow whose husband’s name was Duff. Anyway, I gave them a call and told them I’d drop in here this evening.’ The woman’s eyes fixed on the screen and she gave a crow of delight. ‘Ah, would you look at that! There they are and it’s twenty years since I’ve seen them!’
It seemed more than likely to Hanna that this would be another meeting hijacked by reminiscences, but the club’s growing numbers were proving its worth to both communities, and it wasn’t her job to police what it discussed. Mary was already in the front row. Moving to greet some more arrivals, Hanna raised her eyebrows at Cassie, who’d welcomed them at the desk. ‘Is Pat not with you?’
‘She said she didn’t feel like coming out.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘Fine, I think. She’s been quiet since the weekend. She sent her love.’
Hanna’s attention was diverted by a pile-up in the reading-room doorway, where Darina was attempting to wrest her iPhone out of Gobnit’s hand. The little girl, who was wearing a unicorn onesie, was butting her mother with the silver horn protruding from its hood. As people around them became annoyed, Mr Maguire, directly behind them, employed his classroom voice: ‘That’s quite enough nonsense, thank you, Gobnit. Give Mummy the phone at once and move along.’
Darina cast him an anguished glance and Gobnit threw back her unicorn’s head and emitted a piercing scream. Having provoked the tantrum, Mr Maguire, still in teacher mode, immediately blamed the parent. ‘A little discipline is all that’s wanted.’
By the time Hanna had calmed things down and Cassie had taken her seat at the back, Gobnit was under Darina’s chair, still glued to the iPhone, and the clock on the wall said seven p.m. Over in Resolve, Jack strolled to the back of the room and leaned against the range. Other than coping if someone knocked over a microphone, the technician’s job involved no more than establishing the Skype link in advance, shutting it down after the meeting, and clearing away the equipment. Ferdia was earning overtime as a council employee, but Hanna wondered if Jack had nothing better to do on what for him was an afternoon. He seemed neither bored nor interested as he lounged against the range with his long legs outstretched.
The meeting began with much discussion of the new layout in Resolve. Everyone admired the upholstery of Ashlee’s wingback armchair, and the provenance of a rosewood sofa was traced back three generations. Then a piano stool was recognised as having been carried through from the Lucky Charm bar. This provoked a brief run-through of popular songs of the seventies and a chorus of ‘I Will Survive’ sung by Ashlee, who turned out to be an alto. Hanna and Josie had learned by now not to attempt to control this initial chat, so they sat back, awaiting a suitable break in the conversation. Then, spotting her chance, Josie called for attention. ‘How about we settle down and take a look at this book?’
Hanna was about to pick up her cue when Darina clapped her hands. ‘But of course! I’ve been trying to grasp the significance of the range! It’s a metaphor, am I right? A literary reference?’ On both sides of the ocean people gaped. Standing up, Darina addressed the screen. ‘I mean, why put a range in a library? That was the question I asked myself. Because, as we all know, each little detail is part of a wider picture. And then I thought, Darina, you’re looking at a library of classic crime stories! And I had my answer! The range is a reference to The Franchise Affair!’
In the stunned silence that followed, Darina beamed at Hanna. ‘The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey, remember? It was huge. One of the top hundred crime novels of all time.’ She looked again at the group in Resolve, which was sitting in stunned silence. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? And what could be more fitting? Such a powerful story. No sleuth, no stolen necklace or missing will. Not even a corpse. Just a forensic deconstruction of the values of its time! So evocative of privation and monotony!’ Closing her eyes, she lowered her voice dramatically. ‘“We put the range on only on Mondays when the scrubbing is done.”’ The well-dressed couple in the best seats registered shocked disapproval. Hanna saw Josie glance at them in alarm.
Delighted with her theory, Darina opened her eyes. Seeing the looks on the faces on the screen, she leaned forward earnestly, her amber beads clunking against the head of a woman in front of her. ‘Honestly, it’s your courage I applaud. You could have chosen any kind of artwork. A collage of authors’ portraits, say, or a bust of Sherlock Holmes. But instead you went for this battered relic, this nuanced installation, which demands that we question the very term “Golden Age”. Is it right for us to indulge in books so essentially linked to class and social privilege? Are not the values they enshrine intrinsically corrupt?’
The well-dressed man raised his hand. Unable to think what else to do, Hanna smiled encouragingly at the camera. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know your name, Mr . . . ?’
‘Brennan.’ The man rose to his feet and glared round the room. ‘And that battered relic, as you call it, was a gift to the club from its founder, Denis Brennan, to celebrate our ancestry and remind us of our roots.’
Darina turned scarlet and sat down abruptly. Hanna stifled a grin. It seemed so unfair that the first valid discussion point about the club’s chosen genre should emerge from one of Darina’s misapprehensions. But, with a librarian’s long experience of dealing with small-town sensibilities, she guessed that the faux-pas would produce more cheerful gossip than offence. The looks on faces such as the Canny twins’ showed that a set-down to Brennan pride wasn’t wholly unwelcome. It was evident, too, that old power struggles were waning, and that Erin and Jack’s generation had little or no memory of the Shamrock Club’s once all-powerful founder. In fact, she thought, the symbols that had defined Resolve’s Irishness belonged in the world of the convent that her own library had supplanted. Already almost irrelevant in Finfarran, they had hung on in the emigrant community, mutating into anomalies, like Mrs Shanahan’s four-leaved clover and the preservation of an outworn range as if it were the Holy Grail.
Intrigued by what had emerged so unexpectedly, Hanna wondered if Darina’s question applied as much to that sentimental nationalism as to the values of the Golden Age detective stories with their rigid assumptions of right and wrong and unquestioned social hierarchies. It was precisely the sort of discussion that a book club might engage in but it seemed unwise to embark on it right now. Besides, who was she to pull down old gods by questioning old certainties? In his time Denis Brennan had held his community together, and allowed it to build its future by invoking a past that, though largely mythical, upheld the virtues of hard work and mutual self-help. There was much to be admired in that. But change had come, as it always does, thought Hanna. Having outlived its use in the kitchen, the range had been moved to the Shamrock Club’s library and, no doubt, would eventually find its way to a skip. Or perhaps not. Perhaps time would elevate it to the rank of a museum piece and its current faintly ridiculous air would be gone.
Over in Resolve, Josie had managed to ease Mr Brennan back into his chair. To everyone’s relief, Mrs Breen stood up and called out to her Courtney cousins, producing a new outburst of chat. Mentally, Hanna made a note to suggest to Josie that the club might evolve into a local history group or a conversation circle. A dynamic had asserted itself and, as she’d told Cassie, you had to keep your ear to the ground and respond to what was required.
When the meeting was over Hanna went to the front row to speak to Mary. Ferdia had disappeared to the loo and the room was nearly empty. Josie was still visible on the screen, shaking hands with the Brennans and ushering out the remaining stragglers in Resolve.
‘There’s no need for that. I’ve ordered a taxi.’
‘But I can give you a lift.’
‘You can, but you don’t need to. You’ve your own life to get on with, without chauffeuring me around.’ Mary’s mild tone contained an underlying warning. It was evident that any show of surprise might provoke aggression, so Hanna nodded. Mary looked up at her magisterially. ‘I’ll sit here and you can give me a shout when he arrives.’
‘Of course. No problem. You can keep Gobnit company.’ Concealing her astonishment, Hanna went through to unlock the door for the last of her own stragglers.
Still fiddling with the iPhone, Gobnit was slumped on a chair several rows behind Mary. An expression of massive disapproval crossed Mary’s face. ‘Where’s your mother?’
‘Gone to see if she can make a call from Hanna’s desk.’
Gobnit didn’t raise her head and Mary’s annoyance increased. ‘You mean you won’t let her have her own phone, you bold little girl?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘How dare you speak to me like that?’
Giggling, Gobnit pulled her pink hood over her face and spoke from behind the sparkly unicorn horn. ‘Because you’re a nosy old woman, that’s why. Nosy Mrs McNoseFace!’
Mary advanced on her. ‘Give me that phone.’
Gobnit slid to the floor and disappeared under the seating, scrambling up and mounting a chair when she got to the next row. ‘No, I won’t. You’re a nosy old noseface. You go round spying all the time. You’ve been spying on Cassie. I saw her and that Bradley guy having coffee in Carrick at the weekend, and you were peering out from behind a fern.’
Determined to assert her authority, Mary made a grab for the phone. Holding it high above her head, Gobnit began to clamber from chair to chair. ‘I saw you! And I heard you asking that guy who works in the Spa Hotel if Cassie had spent the night there!’
Scarlet as a turkey cock, Mary lunged towards her and, still giggling, Gobnit made a leap from the chair to a table top. ‘I did! I heard you. My mummy was buying a paper because I won’t let her go onto the internet, and he was in the shop and you went up and asked him questions. It’s no business of yours, who Cassie sleeps with! My mummy says sexual things are private.’
A sound from the doorway made Mary swing round to see Cassie staring at the screen. Evidently waiting for Ferdia’s return before ending the Skype call, Jack was standing in the empty room in Resolve, holding the cat. For what felt like hours nobody said anything. Then Jack reached out to the laptop in Resolve and the screen went dead.
Chapter Forty
Pat knew Frankie wouldn’t ignore her summons. When she’d phoned him she’d spoken more briefly than she’d ever done before, and she’d known when she ended the call that he’d been worried. She’d told him to be at the flat at seven fifteen. The book-club meeting in the library would have started by then, so there was no danger of Cassie coming in, or of Mary spotting Frankie’s car and wanting to know what was happening.
After Mary’s departure on Saturday, Pat had been exhausted to the marrow of her bones. She’d washed the teacups, gone to her bed, and wept, hating Ger for leaving her to cope with this alone. Now she sat in the kitchen, feeling numb. No wonder Frankie had tried to push her aside once the will had been read. He’d been so sure that, when Ger died, he’d be cock of the walk. And he’d had good reason. Ger had let him believe that he, not Pat, would be his executor – hadn’t said so explicitly but hadn’t said that he wouldn’t – and never let on that his will was fifty years old. And, after all the years of getting his own way, Frank had been easily fooled. The note of triumph in Ger’s letter as he described his own cunning had made Pat wince.
As the hands of the clock passed the hour, she thought again of her own lack of courage. It wasn’t just that she hadn’t faced her suspicions about Frankie, or even how she’d allowed Ger to spoil him. It was more. Her first reaction to Ger’s letter had been anger. She’d asked herself furiously why he couldn’t have taken his grubby secret with him. He’d fooled Frankie and the end result was that she’d been left in control. Why hadn’t he left it at that? Why did he need to tell her what Frankie had done? As soon as the questions were formed she saw the answers. Ger had known her just as well as she had understood him. And he’d known Frankie. He’d been afraid that, little by little, she’d let Frankie take over, and that, in the end, Sonny and Jim would lose out.
Staring bleakly at her linked hands, Pat realised he’d been right. Of course he was. He, of all people, had known the comfort of someone to rely on, and who would she have turned to for help if not their eldest son?
Perhaps Ger had known, too, how grief could numb the mind. Since she’d read his letter she’d felt she couldn’t pull two thoughts together. There was so much to process. I didn’t want you hurt, Pat, and I thought that, if you knew, you might leave me. You might take yourself off to Canada and I’d be left here with him. There was a ring of truth in that, she thought, and Ger might even have been right. She didn’t know. Inevitably, on the next page, he’d given a different excuse. I thought that a stain on the family name would affect the other lads’ chances of work. To be fair to him, back when it all started, that could well have been so. But the shame would have reflected on Frankie himself, as well as the others. Ger should have called Frankie’s bluff. But if she had been in Ger’s place, would she have taken the risk? The same circular argument had tormented her for the past three sleepless nights. The fact was that, whichever way he turned, Ger had found himself cornered and all he’d done was play the hand he’d believed that he’d been dealt.
Out on the landing a key turned in the lock and the handle was rattled. If Frankie was making a point, Pat had already made her own. She waited a minute before getting to her feet and going to unlock the Chubb. He came in with his trench coat swinging, playing the bully-boy, bringing a cold draught from the dark stairwell. Pat gestured to the easy chair by the hearth. ‘I’d like you to sit down, Frankie, and listen to what I say.’
‘Is there something wrong? Are you well? Could it not have waited?’
She didn’t answer so he shrugged and took the seat. Pat stood by the table holding on to the back of a chair. ‘I’m not going to say this more than once and I want no interruptions. And no denials either, Frank, because I know what you’ve been at.’ She drew a deep breath and looked him straight in the eye. ‘I’m ashamed of you. To blackmail your own father all these years. To behave like that to a man who’d have plucked the moon out of the sky for you.’ Frankie reared up, as if to answer, and Pat heard her own voice crack as she talked him down. ‘You had no need to do it. And you knew you hadn’t! It wasn’t about need, or even greed. It was power you wanted. You liked the hold you had over him. You’re a mean-spirited bully, Frank Fitzgerald.’
His colour changed and Pat looked away, unable to bear the sight of him. Then she pulled herself together before he could speak. ‘I know what you’re going to say, so don’t bother. No one can prove in a court of law that you did anything wrong. Well, I’m not going to try to prove it, Frank. I’ve more respect for your father’s name in this town than that.’ She waited until she could feel his relief, then took a step towards him. ‘But this is what is going to happen. The gravy train stops here. You’ve had everything you’re going to get from your father’s estate, Frankie. You can keep your house and your big car and whatever money you had on the day he died. But, from now on, every cent that’s made from the farm and the shop, and from all Ger’s investments, comes to me. I’ll do the hiring and firing and I’ll pay the bills. I’ll keep the books and you’ll keep your distance. And don’t think that you’ll be on the payroll, because you won’t.’
Frankie sat with his mouth open, looking like a pricked balloon. Pat let go of the chair and moved to the kitchen sink. In her mind’s eye she could see the final page of Ger’s letter, pen
ned in the neat writing he’d learned at the Brothers’ school. I know I ought to talk to you now that I’m dying but I can’t. I can’t think of any better way to handle it than this. At the bottom of the page, under his tidy signature, he’d scrawled a few more lines. The truth is that, even now, I can’t bear to be the one to hurt him. I’m sorry you married a failure. I would have been more like Tom for you if I could.
Pat could hear her own voice choked with tears as she’d sat on the edge of Josie’s bed, wearing her honeymoon dress. She’d kept her cool until Seán dropped her home but, as soon as she’d got in, she’d gone upstairs bawling. The rest of them were all back from the céilí at the club, and when Josie had found out what the matter was she’d been gobsmacked. ‘But, dear God Almighty, girl, a proposal from Seán Shanahan! Would you not reach out and grab it?’ But when she couldn’t explain, Josie hadn’t pressed her. Instead she’d held her hand while Pat cried her fill.
Tonight Pat’s mind had been full of a jumble of possibilities, each of which had seemed to require more courage than she had. Now, to her surprise, she thought of Cassie and, clutching the edge of the kitchen sink, sent up a desperate, incoherent prayer. She couldn’t bear the thought that valiant little Cassie, with her snub nose, peacock-bright fringe, and air of independence might end up as trapped and confused by life as herself.
Aware that Frankie was staring at her, Pat forced herself to concentrate. Ger’s mother’s vase was upended on the draining board. When she’d taken it down to wash it, there had been dust lodged in the china petals of the roses round its neck and its curly feet. One of the three feet was chipped but you could turn it to the back, where you’d hardly notice. Having scrubbed the vase with a soft brush in soapy water, she’d screwed up the corner of a tea-towel and gone round all the crevices, inside and out.
The Transatlantic Book Club Page 26