Still, having mentioned Sam, she realised that she didn’t actually want to discuss him at all. Coming back to the fire, she picked up her glass. ‘D’you remember that summer in London when you read me The Wind in the Willows? I must have been six.’
‘I remember you loved Badger.’
‘In fairness, you did do a brilliant Badger voice.’
‘I think I ran out of voices pretty soon. Toad ended up just sounding like your dad.’
‘Did he? I never noticed. Mole was my favourite character. Well, not Mole himself. I just loved his house, and the way he called it Mole End. And that bit about the “small inquiring something” animals carry inside them, saying unmistakably, “This leads home!”’
Jazz stared into the flames. ‘But then I loved that “Wayfarers All” chapter too. When Ratty gets overcome by the urge to travel after he meets the seafaring rat by the road.’
‘You didn’t love it when I first read it. You got scared when Mole looked at Rat and saw that his eyes had changed.’
‘Did I?’
‘Well, it’s powerful stuff. They were “glazed and set and turned a streaked and shifting grey”, don’t you remember? “Not his friend’s eyes, but the eyes of some other animal”.’
‘Yes. I’d forgotten that.’
Mum smiled. ‘I remember the description of the forecourt of Mole End. The skittle alley with the tables marked with rings that hinted at beer mugs. And the busts of Garibaldi, Queen Victoria, and the infant Samuel.’
‘“And other heroes of modern Italy”.’ Jazz laughed. ‘Mole had a garden seat in the forecourt, remember? And a pond with a glass ball in the middle that “reflected everything all wrong with a very pleasing effect”. I loved the language.’
The breeze from the open door was beginning to cause the sods to spurt flames. Mum picked up another scrap of turf to feed the little fire.
Jazz looked around the room. ‘You’ve kind of re-created that here.’
‘Plaster statuary, sardines on toast, and a bourgeois Victorian lifestyle?’
‘I didn’t mean that and you know it. I meant the bit about “familiar, friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him”.’
‘Which makes me Mole?’
‘I guess so.’
‘He moved on, though, didn’t he? Ratty recovers from the spell laid on him by the seafarer. When he comes to his senses, he sees he has all that he needs right there. But Mole’s story is more subtle. At the end of the chapter he realises that he doesn’t want to creep into his safe burrow and stay there. The call of the upper world is too strong and – what’s the phrase? – “he knew he must return to the larger stage”.’
Something in her voice made Jazz look at her sharply. Mum looked away and asked her what she’d thought of the film.
‘Tonight’s? I dunno. A bit blokey. All that stuff about fighting the forces of nature. I mean, it looked amazing, didn’t it? And Leo was really powerful. But it’s a film about a guy who’s going through hell on earth to avenge his lost son, and it doesn’t even touch on how he felt about being a dad.’ Suddenly Jazz giggled. ‘Oh, lor’, I announced back there that Brooklyn ought to have made more of the stuff about the dead father. Do you think I’m obsessed?’
‘No, but I think you might be in need of some proper space and a garden.’ Mum added another scrap of turf to the glowing fire. ‘Did you know that Maggie wanted this place to be a haven? A fortress for the women who’d come after her. She left it to me because she thought I might need it when I grew up.’
‘Did she say so?’
‘Maggie wasn’t a talker. She wrote it in her diary. “Maybe one day she’ll need a place where she can feel safe and be happy.”’
‘Cool. She must have been nice.’
‘I’m not sure “nice” is the word I’d use. Your nan always called her “a bad besom”. No, there was absolutely nothing cosy or nice about Maggie. She’d had plenty of hard knocks in her life, and learned the value of standing on one’s own two feet.’
‘And in the end it was she who got you out of Nan’s back bedroom.’
‘Yes, but that’s not the point. I didn’t need a place to escape to. What I needed was to discover how to be happy where I was.’
‘I bet if you’d stayed at Nan’s we’d have ended up with a murder enquiry.’
Mum laughed. ‘Fair point. But you do see what I’m saying? It was a bloody hard lesson to learn, so I might as well pass it on to you.’
‘You’re saying I don’t know how to be alone.’
Mum was looking tentative, concerned she’d said too much. Jazz leaned forward, feeling herself on the brink of something important. ‘Mum, forget being tactful, this isn’t the time.’
‘Okay, yes, that is what I’m saying. Look, your dad let you down badly, first by cheating on me and then by lying about it to you. And I didn’t help by trying to protect you from the truth. You lost your home and your friends and ended up living in a new country. Then, when you thought you’d got some stability back, you lost your first real boyfriend. After that there were all those guys abroad that I don’t want to think about. Then there was Sam, and now he’s gone as well. It isn’t surprising that you keep trying to fill what feels like a gaping hole. You have this dream in which the perfect life requires the perfect man. And you keep thinking he’s out there beyond some unreal horizon.’
Mum stopped abruptly and clasped her hands on her knee. ‘Maybe you borrowed that dream from me and, if you did, I’m sorry. It’s a dumb dream, Jazz, because there’s no such thing as perfection. And you don’t need someone to love you. What you need is . . .’
‘. . . to Learn to Love Myself.’
‘I know it sounds like a Hallmark card but, yes, exactly that. It’s sure as hell what I needed when I moved out of your nan’s. I’d spent so long focused on you and your dad that I hadn’t a clue who I was myself, or even what I wanted.’
For a long moment Jazz said nothing, digesting what, for the first time, she realised was the truth. Then she took a gulp of wine and said something she’d wanted to say for years. ‘You do know I’m grateful, Mum, don’t you? For everything. All the stories in the conservatory, and the walks to the library in London. The way you tried to protect me from Dad’s asinine behaviour. And how you never blamed me for being a hellish teen.’
‘You weren’t hellish.’
‘I took up a hell of a lot of your time. I still do. I don’t know what I’d do without you, truly. Even if mostly I’m too bloody-minded to admit it.’
Mum knocked back her own wine, looking kind of wobbly. Afraid that they’d both end up in tears, Jazz gave her a grin.
‘So you’re focused on yourself now, and you know what you want, do you?’
There was a pause in which Mum looked into the fire, turning the stem of her wineglass. Then she nodded. ‘Heaven knows how your nan will react but, yes, I know what I want. Your dad said it, Jazz. It’s time for me to move on.’
Chapter Forty-Four
The Hag’s Glen at sunrise was full of drifting mist, and the back road that approached it was wet. A herd of sheep blocked the way as Hanna approached the turning, so she kept her distance and slowed the car to a crawl. The farmer up ahead of her was riding a quad bike, with a dog running in front controlling the herd.
Hanna watched the dog’s eager body weave to and fro. His dark flanks and waving tail hardly showed against the sheep’s skinny black legs but when he turned his head his russet face showed like a whiskered fox’s.
The car crested a rise in the road and Hanna looked down at a river of woolly backs. Crammed between the ditches, the herd skittered, like water running over stones, their hooves clicking on the wet tarmacadam. The rhythmic sound became the rhythm of an old folk song that, for the last few days, had been playing in her head.
I wish I was on yonder hill
’Tis there I’d sit and cry my fill,
And every tear would turn a mill . . .
As the
leaders increased their pace, and the dog urged the others on from the rear, the sound of the hooves deepened and became like urgent drumming.
I’ll dye my petticoats, I’ll dye them red
And round the world I’ll beg my bread . . .
When the herd passed the turning, the farmer raised his hand in salute without looking back. Hanna accelerated and swung the wheel, taking Brian’s newly built road up to the river valley. The mist ahead began to lift with the heat of the rising sun.
After Jazz had left the previous night, Hanna had walked down Maggie’s field to the cliff edge. Gulls had been soaring above the ocean and the night was so still she could hear the sound of shingle dragged by the waves. Standing there on the cool grass, she’d remembered the click of her own heels in the West End of London. Those stylish shoes worn on shopping trips with friends, and outings with Malcolm, hadn’t been among the things she’d thrown into her suitcase when she’d left him. Tasting the salt on the wind, she’d wondered what had become of the designer outfits that had once crammed her wardrobe. Not that any of them would still be in fashion now.
In a ghastly row years ago, just after she’d left him, Malcolm had told her that bolting with Jazz had been selfish, and that a conscientious mother would never have acted as she did. The other day, over brunch, he’d apologised. Of course, Jazz’s reaction when she’d seen the flowers had been right: she’d recognised her dad in manipulation mode. Hanna herself had been aware of that too. But it was also true that Malcolm was genuinely lonely and – as Louisa had said – failing to cope on his own. Now Hanna told herself that for Jazz to come out and say thank you, and Malcolm to say he was sorry, had been amazing. It almost felt as if her fractured family might yet be restored.
The mist was still drifting over the river and the pale sky became streaked with gold. At the head of the valley there was a flash of light from where the waterfall fell between high rocks.
Hanna knew that from up there, and from the green roof of the house, you could look across distant treetops to the patch of blue ocean where waves dragged the rolling shingle forward and back again. Beyond the waves was a shimmering horizon, and beyond that, if the stories were true, was the Land of Heart’s Desire, where the streets were paved with gold.
This was the first time she had seen the house with no sign of building work or human habitation. When she stopped her car she wondered if Brian was gone.
Then he opened the door. Behind him the room was empty, except for a camera on a tripod standing against a cobalt blue wall.
Hanna blinked and Brian pulled a wry face. ‘Fury doesn’t believe in tins of paint going to waste.’
‘So I see. Are you going to keep it blue?’
‘If I don’t he’ll probably break in and do it again.’
Standing with his back to the startling wall, he looked older. He put his hand on the doorframe and glanced up at the sky. ‘Isn’t it kind of early?’
‘I’m sorry. I needed to talk.’
I’ll sell my rod, I’ll sell my reel
I’ll sell my only spinning wheel
To buy my love a coat of steel . . .
Brian stood back and held the door open, but Hanna shook her head. ‘No, I just want to tell you something.’
But, now that they were face to face, she couldn’t, so she told him Jazz was thinking of going away with Mike.
‘What, for good?’
‘No, of course not. For a holiday. To run a marathon.’
‘Okay.’
‘Not for a couple of years yet, though. Because she’ll have to get in shape first. And, the thing is, Brian, I’m going to give Jazz Maggie’s house.’
‘In a couple of years?’
‘No. Immediately. Well, as soon as I get things sorted. It’s what she needs and it’s time for me to move on.’ Hanna clasped her hands, eager to finish what she’d started. ‘I’ve always thought Jazz was the one who suffered when we came here from London. But I lost so much too. Not just Malcolm, or security, or the home we’d built together, but the person I was when I lived over there. That’s who I’d been for most of my adult life.’
Brian nodded, as if he was thinking about it deeply. Hanna reached into her pocket and took out the ring. ‘You said The Divil found this in the river.’
‘I said it was yours. You should take it with you.’
Hanna looked at the amber-coloured water chattering over the stones. The mist was almost gone now. Raising her hand, she drew back her arm and threw the ring away. It rose in a high arc, spinning over the rough grassland, the sun striking light from the polished gold. In the quiet glen, they both heard the sound as it hit the water. Then Hanna stepped back and gritted her teeth.
‘I won’t marry you. I can’t do that again. I know you didn’t lie to me. And I know Malcolm did. But life is complicated. Making choices takes courage, Brian. I think that the older you are the harder it gets.’
They looked at each other in silence. Hanna took a deep breath. ‘Malcolm’s reconsidered the sale of the London house. He’s recognised that it doesn’t belong to him. Not really. It was ours as a family.’
‘And you’ve made your choice.’
‘Yes. I’ll never have all of you, Brian. I know that now. And the truth is that you’ll never have all of me. Too much has happened in both of our lives for that. So I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want to marry you.’
Brian’s face was bleak. He nodded again and stepped backwards. Then Hanna held out her hand and grasped his, and crossed the threshold.
‘I don’t want to be married. I want to be happy. I want to be your love and live with you here in the Hag’s Glen.’
Acknowledgments
Huge thanks to my editor Rebecca Raskin and everyone at Harper Perennial, and to Ciara Doorley and all at Hachette Books Ireland. My gratitude also goes to the readers worldwide who’ve got in touch by email, letter, and on social media to tell me what they enjoy about the Finfarran novels. Every message, whoever and wherever it comes from, is appreciated and adds to the great pleasure of creating the lives of Hanna Casey and her neighbours.
I’d also like to send heartfelt thanks to my husband, Wilf Judd; to Markus Hoffmann at Regal Hoffmann & Associates in New York; and, as ever, to my agent Gaia Banks at Sheil Land Associates.
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About the Author
Meet Felicity Hayes-McCoy
I’VE BEEN A professional writer all my working life and a reader for longer than I can remember. Along the way, my projects have included nonfiction titles; children’s books; original TV dramas and contributions to series (including Ballykissangel, the BBC’s smash hit series set in Ireland); radio soap opera, features, documentaries, and plays; screenplays; a couple of opera libretti; and interactive multimedia. But—given that my childhood was spent largely behind sofas, reading stories—I suspect it was inevitable that, sooner or later, I’d come to write a series of books about books, with a protagonist who’s a librarian.
I was born in Dublin, Ireland, studied English and Irish language and literature at university, and immigrated to London in my early twenties. I built a successful career there, as an actress and then as a writer: in fact, it was books that led me to the stage in the first place, the wonderful Blue Door Theatre series by the English children’s author Pamela Brown. Back in the 1960s Dublin was famous for its musty, quirky secondhand bookshops beside the River Liffey. My father, who was a historian, was unable to pass the stalls that stood outside them without stopping and never came home without a book or two, for himself or one of the family. I still have the Nelson edition of The Swish of the Curtain that he bought me in 1963, with the price
and the date penciled inside in his careful, elegant handwriting. It cost him ninepence, which I’m not sure he’d have spent so cheerfully if he’d known that his gift was going to make me an actress, not an academic. Still, I like to think he’d have been pleased to know that, thirty years later, as a writer in London, I successfully pitched and dramatized the Blue Door Theatre series for BBC Radio.
To a certain extent, my Finfarran Peninsula series has a little of my own story in it. Though Hanna Casey’s is a rural background, like me she grew up in Ireland and moved to London, where she married. In 1986, I met and married the English opera director Wilf Judd, then artistic director of the Garden Venture at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Unlike Hanna and her rat-fink husband, Malcolm, though, Wilf and I met as colleagues, and we continue to work together, sharing our love of literature, theatre, ecology, and design, and dividing our life and work between a flat in inner-city London and a stone house at the western end of Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula.
In my memoir The House on an Irish Hillside I write about our Irish home on this real peninsula which, while geographically similar, is culturally quite different from my fictional Finfarran. One of the defining differences is that our West Kerry home is in what is called a Gaeltacht—an area where Irish, not English, is the language of everyday life. Gaeltacht, pronounced “Gwale-tockt,” comes from the word Gaeilge, which is often translated into English as “Gaelic.” And “Gaelic,” incidentally, is not a word ever used in Ireland for the Irish language!
I first visited the western end of the Dingle Peninsula at age seventeen, not just to further my Irish language studies but because of a growing fascination with folklore. I was seeking something I’d glimpsed in my childhood in Dublin, a city kid curled on my country granny’s bed listening to stories. I’d begun to understand it as a student, plowing through books and exams. And, on that first visit, I began to recognize something that, all my life, I’d taken for granted. The effect of thinking in two languages.
The Month of Borrowed Dreams Page 28