He reached across the table and took her hand. Hanna heard herself begin to gabble. She didn’t have time to work out what he was talking about and she was desperate to keep things on course.
“Well, I’m glad you’re glad. I knew that if we could just see each other and talk you’d be reasonable. I mean, we could be reasonable. Both of us. I’ve got a job, of course I’ve got a job, but I’m living with my mother . . . well, you know my mother. You must see that I can’t spend the rest of my life with her . . . I have to have someplace to myself now that Jazz is grown up and gone. I’m not trying to fleece you, Malcolm, I’m just asking you to be fair.”
Seeing his eyes narrow, she kept going. “Look, I know I said I didn’t want a penny from you and I know it must have sounded aggressive. And I’m sorry. But the whole divorce might have been different if we’d had a chance to talk. I can’t deal with you by letter, Malcolm. You retreat behind legal-speak and I just get angry.”
Taking a deep breath, she tried to focus. “That’s why I’m here. I’m fifty-one, Malcolm. Half my life was invested in our marriage and your career. I project-managed the London house. I found the place in Norfolk. I ran your social life like clockwork, I stocked the freezers, I planned the dinner parties, I cultivated the right people, I wore the right clothes.”
His mouth tightened. Hanna found herself hanging on to his hand. “I helped you build your career and now you’re the one reaping the benefits. You’ll always look after Jazz, I know that. But I’m her mother and I was your wife and it wasn’t me who broke up our marriage. You owe me, Malcolm, and you’ve got to be reasonable.”
Glad that she’d managed to stay relatively cool, she looked at him hopefully. Malcolm recoiled like a snake. Standing up, he crossed the room and swung back to her, as if interrogating a witness.
“Let me get this straight. You invited me here to talk about money?”
“Well, yes. I did. I just thought that we could sit down like reasonable people . . .”
He was looking at her as if she were mad. “In the afternoon? In a hotel bedroom?”
“Yes, well, like I said, it’s private.”
Suddenly the implications of what he had just said dawned on Hanna. “You thought . . .”
“What did you expect me to think?”
“You thought this was some kind of . . . assignation?”
Her jaw dropped but he didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s three in the afternoon, Hanna. It’s Mayfair.” He took a step towards her. “And I imagine it’s been a while for you.”
“What?”
The look on her face made Malcolm step back again. “Okay, maybe it hasn’t. Maybe you’ve been falling into bed with rugged Irish fishermen. I don’t know.” He glowered at her, sounding peevish. “You invited me up saying you wanted it to be just us. Maybe I got the wrong message.”
Hanna’s disbelief changed to anger. “Oh no, you got the exactly right message. I told that po-faced secretary of yours that I wanted to see you here and I did. And I wanted it to be just us because I’m sick to death of the way you use your huge staff and your huge self-importance to keep me at arm’s length.”
He opened his mouth but she stood up, shoving the table away and jabbing her finger at him.
“No, shut up, Malcolm, this is happening on my time. And on my credit card. I paid to fly over here, I paid for this room, and in my terms it cost a fortune. You probably swan off to afternoon assignations in foreign hotel rooms all the time—’ She stopped abruptly, her eyes widening. Malcolm had only looked guilty for a second but it was long enough. “Oh my God, you probably do.” Hanna gaped at him, her anger turning to outrage. “You really are a piece of work, Malcolm, you know that? What about poor Tessa? Did she know what you do with your afternoons? Or did you spare her, too, just like you spared me? Do you still tell yourself it’s fine so long as it’s discreet?”
That was what he’d said five years ago, the day after she arrived home unexpectedly and found him in bed with their friend Tessa Carmichael, a colleague in his law firm. It was a ghastly phone conversation, held the morning after she had packed her bags and taken Jazz to Ireland. All too aware that Mary Casey was listening to every word, Hanna had hissed furiously into the telephone in the hallway in Crossarra while Malcolm shouted at her from London. Somewhere in the midst of his aggression and her recriminations, the truth about the timing of his affair had emerged. For Hanna, the shock of finding them together in the bedroom of the London house she had designed and looked after so lovingly had been nothing to the discovery that he had started sleeping with Tessa long before Jazz was born.
Now his guilty expression turned to bullishness. “I never said—”
“Oh yes you did, you prided yourself on your discretion. Thoughtful, considerate Malcolm, so eager to keep everybody happy!”
“Damn right, I was. I did my best!”
“You did your best?”
“I told you before, Hanna. I didn’t want to fall in love. It happened. And when it did happen I behaved responsibly. I put my family first.”
“You were married to me! You were sleeping with another woman! How do those two facts add up to putting your family first?”
“You were my wife. I stayed with you. I was showing you respect. If you can’t see that, I can’t help it.”
Hanna took a deep breath. None of this was going to plan. It was supposed to have been so calm and rational and instead they were having a shouting match. She tried to refocus her thoughts. But it was too late. Furious that he had been wrong-footed about the reason for their meeting and defensive after his inadvertent flicker of guilt, Malcolm was on a roll.
“You were the one who tore the family apart, Hanna. And that, in case you’ve forgotten, involved dragging our sixteen-year-old daughter away from everything and everyone she knew and sacrificing her happiness on the altar of your wounded pride.”
This was so close to what Hanna had repeatedly told herself on sleepless nights in Mary Casey’s back bedroom that her eyes filled with tears. Immediately Malcolm pressed his advantage.
“A little discretion. A sense of responsibility. A willingness to look beyond your personal agenda. That’s not a lot to ask, Hanna. Not of someone who claims to be a loving mother.”
It wasn’t fair. But maybe it was true. Hanna blinked, determined not to cry. She couldn’t trust her voice but her mind was screaming at him. How could he stand there looking supercilious? It was he who had wanted them to marry when she’d found out that she was pregnant that first time, so soon after they’d met. Then, when she lost that baby and wondered if the marriage had been a mistake, it was he who had persuaded her that things could still work out for them. She remembered sitting up in bed in the flat near Sloane Square, dumb with misery, having had the miscarriage. Malcolm had sat beside her, hugging her and insisting that they could get through this. He couldn’t bear to lose his marriage, he said, as well as losing their baby. They’d find a house, he said, somewhere beautiful that would be theirs, not just a place that he rented from his cousin. It would be Hanna’s project. She would create a wonderful home, and, in time, there’d be other babies. But even if there weren’t it didn’t matter, he’d told her. He loved her for herself.
And Hanna had believed him. She could have left him then, gone back to her college course, and picked up her career plan. Instead, though she’d walked like a zombie through those first weeks after her miscarriage, she had thrown herself into his project believing it to be an expression of their love. But there was no point in revisiting all that now. Taking another deep breath she tried to keep her voice steady. “I’m sorry, you’re right, maybe it was stupid of me to ask you to come here. I just wanted privacy, Malcolm, because I thought that if we could sit down on our own we could solve the problem.”
“I see no problem.”
“Well, that’s the problem.” She could see his hackles rising again, so she kept talking. “Look, it’s about practicality, not perception
. I’m not asking for a fortune. I just think I deserve some settlement after all those years. And I’m not saying they weren’t happy years. They were. Well, at least, I thought they were. Anyway, that’s not the point and I’m sorry for dragging up the past. The point is that you’re not being fair.”
But having brought her to a state of apology, Malcolm clearly felt that his work was done. He picked up his briefcase.
“Let’s not discuss fairness, Hanna. Or what I owe the woman who destroyed my child’s life.”
“How can you say that? Jazz is happy! But she’s grown up now and off chasing her dreams and I’m stuck living alone with my mother.”
“Jazz is serving plastic meals on budget flights to Malaga. Not what I’d call a dream, Hanna. More like what you’ve reduced her to.”
Malcolm walked to the door and then turned back abruptly. “You’re absolutely right. I will always look after my daughter. But you made your choice, Hanna. You’ll get nothing more from me.”
7
Getting off the plane the next morning, Hanna was struck, as always, by the scent of Irish air. From the top of the steps at the rear door of the aircraft she could see green fields and, beyond them, the high mountain range that guarded the approach to Finfarran. She cleared customs, found her car, and within half an hour the outskirts of the city were behind her. After another fifteen minutes on the highway she turned off and took the older, slower road she remembered from her childhood.
The previous night she had lain awake till dawn in her hotel room, crying all the tears she’d had to suppress when sleeping in her mother’s back bedroom. And now driving between fields and farmyards that got progressively smaller the farther she traveled west, she realized she was exhausted. Seeing a little shop by the side of the road, she pulled over for something to eat. Having idled round the shelves, she bought an apple and a flapjack and took them to a bench by the door. A few moments later the woman who had served her came out with a mug of tea. She had just poured one for herself, she said, would Hanna like one, too? Then, shaking her head at an offer of payment, she disappeared into the shop again, leaving Hanna with a mug of Builders’ Tea, well milked and liberally sugared.
On a clothesline in a little garden across the road, clothes snapped and flapped in the wind. Years ago Hanna had hung sheets and flannel nighties on a line in the field behind Maggie’s house. On hot summer days like this one they dried quickly in the wind from the Atlantic, and when she carried them into the house they’d be warm to the touch. Mary Casey adored the convenience of her electric washer-dryer and there was no doubt that it was efficient. But as Hanna sipped her tea she reflected on the childhood pleasure of rough cotton sheets with the tang of salt in their creases.
And then an idea flowered in her mind. Maybe she should view her meeting with Malcolm as closure, not defeat. If she couldn’t have her little house in Lissbeg, what about the field above the ocean? The site was narrow and the cramped little house was hardly more than a shell. But it was hers. And maybe, just maybe, it was the way forward. Snatching her wallet out of her bag, she riffled through her collection of accumulated business cards. And there was the one that she was looking for. With her eyes blazing, she took out her phone and tapped in the number on the card.
Half an hour later she was sitting in a café in Carrick smiling apologetically at Dennis Flood.
“Listen, Dennis, I feel bad ringing you up on a Sunday.”
“Ah, sure, what matter? I was in town anyway.”
Dennis was the manager of Carrick Credit Union and she had attended school with him forty years ago in Crossarra. He still had the huge grin that she remembered from the school yard, though his trousers were now belted under a vast beer belly and his hair had receded to a couple of tufts over his ears. Hanna looked at him anxiously.
“And you’re sure the figures stack up?”
Dennis glanced at the paper napkin on which he’d been making notes. For a thing that was only a notion, he said, it looked perfectly sound to him. The main cost of a house was the site and Hanna had that already. If all she wanted was to renovate an old place, she wouldn’t need to borrow much.
“And I’d be able to get a loan from the Credit Union?”
“Ah for God’s sake, Hanna, you’re the perfect applicant. Aren’t you a council employee with a grand safe job back there in Lissbeg Library? Come in on Monday and we’ll get the forms filled. I’ll be only too delighted.”
Half an hour later, with the smell of the sea in the air, Hanna drove on down the peninsula toward Crossarra. What she needed now, she told herself, was time to get her head together. Turning off the main road, she made her way toward Maggie’s house through winding lanes and farmland.
There was a pair of Wellingtons in the trunk of the car. Pulling them on, Hanna opened the gate, pushed her way around the gable end of the house, and stood once more in the high field above the pounding ocean. When she reached the tumbledown wall at the edge of the cliff the light on the waves was dazzling. Scrambling over the fallen stones, she sat down and closed her eyes.
As soon as she could no longer see, she became aware of her other senses. Millions of small, noisy lives were being lived out all around her. Up near the house, a blackbird’s song changed to a warning call. Opening her eyes she saw a hawk circling the field. The taste of salt on the wind mixed with the honey scent of shaken flowers. Lying back again with the warmth of the sun on her eyelids, she smiled at the small ironies of life.
It was Mary Casey who’d badgered her into her job at Lissbeg Library. What else, she’d asked, was she good for? And wasn’t it the height of luck, now that she’d slunk home with nothing after a failed marriage, that there was a job on offer in Lissbeg? She should thank God, brush up her skills, and grab her chance with both hands. To Hanna it had been insult added to injury. How could her dreams of a career as an art librarian in London end in a job in the local library of the town where she’d gone to school? But, with no other option, she’d taken a course, presented herself for interview, and, with her shoulders hunched and her teeth gritted, accepted her fate. Yet it was the job forced on her by Mary that would secure her dream of freedom now.
Exhausted by the tensions of the last forty-eight hours, she drifted towards sleep.
Moments later her phone shrilled loudly in her bag. It was a text from Mary written, as usual, without punctuation and entirely in capitals.
ARE YOU COMING HOME AT ALL OR WHERE ARE YOU JAZZ HAS A LONG STOPOVER AND IS HERE FOR THE NIGHT
Groaning, Hanna hit REPLY, and keyed in: Half an hour. Before she had time to press SEND, another text arrived in her in-box.
GO TO JOHNNYS
Taking a deep breath, Hanna reminded herself of the light at the end of the tunnel. Then, stumping up the field, she got in her car and drove over to their neighbor’s for some onions for her mother’s liver casserole.
8
Jazz sat on her nan’s kitchen table eating a piece of buttered brack. The Formica-topped table stood in the center of the room. Each of its chairs had a tie-on cushion in a crochet cover and a plastic seat. When the bungalow was built Mary had told Tom that she was all for a fitted kitchen. But as soon as they’d moved in, she’d demanded a proper dresser. What was the point of all her lovely ware, she’d said, and no way for the neighbors to admire it? The dresser stood between the fridge freezer and a picture of St. Padre Pio. Its varnished pine shelves, edged with a gingham paper trim, supported a collection of jugs, while its cupboard held dinner and tea sets and its drawers were crammed with cutlery. At the other side of the room, where Mary zoomed between the steel sink and the built-in cooker, the fitted units had become storage places for magazines, old plant pots, Christmas decorations, and a sewing basket. Jazz thought it was kind of cozy, though she knew her mum hated it.
When Hanna came into the kitchen, she put the paper bag of onions on the table and held out her arms to Jazz, who hugged her briefly. There had been a time when her arrival home had produced squea
ls of excitement and bear hugs. There was even a happy dance that Jazz had invented as a child and still sometimes indulged in as a teenager. Sighing inwardly, Hanna told herself that that was before the buildup of resentment, which, now that Jazz was older, had turned to polite reserve. Mary turned from the stove, where she was frying liver, and shook the contents of the bag onto the table. A bunch of sage tumbled out with the onions, and her lip curled in disdain.
“Well, isn’t that Johnny Hennessy all over, trying to get rid of old weeds!”
Jazz picked up a gray-green leaf and sniffed it. “Liver and sage are lovely together. Why don’t you use it, Nan?”
Mary tossed her head. “’Tis far from that we were reared round these parts, I can tell you. Eating bits of old grass and leaves!”
“Actually, Maggie used sage in lots of dishes, Mam. She made tea from it, too.” Hanna had sat down, shredding a leaf between her fingers. “She used all sorts of herbs, I think, I just can’t remember them.”
Mary swept the onions onto a chopping board and attacked them with a knife. “Sure, everyone knew poor Maggie was gone in the head. Living back there on the side of the cliff and slamming the door in your face if you dropped in to visit.”
Hanna’s lips twitched. She had forgotten the row that had taken place years ago when Maggie was growing old and Mary Casey had decided that the best place for her to end her days was the old folks’ home in Carrick.
Scenting a story, Jazz poured Hanna a glass of red wine and pulled up a chair to the table. “Who was Maggie?”
Mary sniffed loudly. “She was your granddad’s Auntie Margaret, pet, and a bad-minded old besom, too, God forgive me for saying so.”
Behind her grandmother’s back, Jazz raised her eyebrows at Hanna. “A bad-minded besom? Go on, Nan, tell us more.”
Hanna spoke before Mary could answer. “Oh, really, Mam! She might have been eccentric but she wasn’t bad-minded.”
The Library at the Edge of the World Page 4