The scent of the lavender actually did go well with the smell of books and leather.
“You want something under it, though, if you’re going to water it.”
As he went to get a saucer from the kitchen Conor told himself that Miss Casey seemed a lot more cheerful than was usual after a meeting. Generally she arrived back muttering about time-serving eejits who wouldn’t know Ulysses from a tabloid, but now she was all smiles. Maybe it was because her daughter was home on a break. Conor didn’t really know Jazz, though she’d been in the year behind him when they were at school. People said she used to be kind of prickly, like Miss Casey, but if you saw her round Lissbeg these days she seemed in great form. You could see why, too. As soon as she’d left school she’d gone off with a couple of friends to train as cabin crew and whenever she came back to Finfarran she always had a great tan. According to Conor’s brother, Joe, she’d been in town last night, hanging out with a couple of mates. So maybe that was why Miss Casey was smiling now as she looked round for the mail.
“Anything that needs answering?”
Conor put the saucer under the pot of lavender on the desk. “Nope. There was an email from some fellow looking for a title. He’s looking for a book that has a black dog on the cover, but the bookshops in Carrick can’t find it for him.”
“Any other clues?”
“Just that it has a black dog on the cover and the name written up over it.”
“Well that eliminates The Complete Works of Shakespeare.”
Conor leaned over to the computer and opened the email for her. “I emailed back saying he can come and have a look to see if we’ve got it.”
“Ah, Conor! Well, you can deal with him when he does.”
But she was grinning when, another time, she might have been snappy. And when he told her about Mr. Slattery’s visit, she seemed really glad about the bull calf.
Earlier that morning, before going to the Health and Safety session, Hanna had visited Carrick Credit Union, written her signature on the last page of the loan application, and drawn a firm line beneath it with a blue biro. It felt wonderful. When Dennis Flood clasped her hand and wished her good luck, she left his office repressing an urge to break into Jazz’s happy dance. Then, seeing the pot of lavender in a display outside a florist’s, she had bounced in and bought it simply because it looked cheerful. The line under her signature had felt like a line drawn under all the guilt and apprehension of the last five years. The ex–Mrs. Malcolm Turner was history. So Hanna Casey, beholden to no one, could get on with life.
Now, with the lavender on her desk, she spoke casually to Conor. “You don’t happen to know any local builders?”
He was standing on a chair trying to remove the old fire exit sign from above the door and squinted over his shoulder at her.
“What kind of job would it be?”
“Oh, just bits and pieces. Restoration . . . maybe a bit of roofing.”
Conor abandoned the sign and considered the question. Seeing that what she’d intended as a casual inquiry was about to become a discussion, Hanna hastily told him to get on with his work. “If someone comes in you’ll be knocked off that chair.”
“Right so. It’d make a great headline for the Inquirer, though. ‘Man Felled While Putting up Safety Notice.’”
Here was another issue that Hanna hadn’t thought of. Given that it was practically impossible to do anything in Crossarra or Lissbeg without everyone in the area discussing it, the news that she was planning to restore Maggie’s house was sure to give the gossips a field day. Frowning at her computer screen, she wondered if she should avoid local contractors altogether. Possibly it would cost more but, then again, it might be worth it. Her contemplation of ways and means was interrupted by a dramatic groan from Conor.
“Oh, leave it to the pen pushers to make life difficult!”
He had climbed down from the chair and was looking up at his handiwork. There was a sticky mark on the wall over the door where the old sign had been, and, holding the new one up for size, he had realized that a tatty frame of redundant adhesive was going to be visible around it.
Hanna considered the mark. “Would hot water do it?”
“No chance. We want a drop of white spirit. I’ll stick the old one back up for the time being and deal with the new one tomorrow.”
Hanna nodded, glad that he seemed to have forgotten what she’d asked him. By the time he’d put the old sign back in its place she’d immersed herself in paperwork. So the question of local builders didn’t come up again.
11
As soon as her day’s work was over Hanna returned to Maggie’s place. It wasn’t exactly an occasion for champagne, but some sort of recognition of her new commitment seemed appropriate. She had left the bungalow that morning with a list of things to do and get for Mary. Going to the dry cleaner’s and buying black pudding in Fitzgerald’s took no more than ten minutes so she dropped in to Lissbeg’s latest deli, to pick up a coffee to go. Champagne mightn’t be in order, but a celebratory cappuccino on the cliff behind the house seemed a good idea.
The girl at the counter smiled when she saw her. “Hi there, Miss Casey!”
She was one of last year’s high school seniors. Hanna remembered her haunting the library after school hours, studying madly up until her final exams. Now, with her hair tied back under a flowered scarf, she was working in the delicatessen. It was good to see her looking cheerful. The shop was bright with paint and flowers and the selection of foods on display looked delicious. There were little rounds of goat’s cheese, which Hanna knew was Jazz’s favorite, so she asked for one to take away with her coffee. The girl tucked the cheese into a brown paper bag, expertly feathered a design in the foam on top of the cappuccino, and offered her a chocolate truffle.
“They’re a new line that Bríd makes herself—and, this week, they’re free with a coffee.”
Hanna shook her head. “Save them for the next person, Aideen. I’d say they’re not cheap to produce.”
“God no, they cost a fortune!” Aideen blushed. “I shouldn’t say that but it’s true. The thing is that we really want quality products. And you have to speculate to accumulate.”
Hanna smiled and took her coffee. “You do, of course, and I’m sure they’re lovely.”
With visions of color charts in her own head, she felt a surge of empathy for the courage and imagination that Bríd and Aideen had invested in their enterprise.
Maggie’s house was approached round a sharp bend so Hanna didn’t see the van by the gate until she was nearly on top of it. It was a battered-looking red Toyota with a roof rack and a tow bar. Hanna swerved to avoid it and pulled in farther down the road. Stamping her feet into her Wellingtons, she walked back to the gate with her coffee, glaring at the van. The colors of the local football club dangled from the rearview mirror. As she approached, an elderly Jack Russell terrier hurled himself from the passenger seat to the dashboard. Glancing up and down the road, Hanna saw no one; probably some farmer had left the van there while he went to check on his cattle. If it happened again she would have to have a word.
She walked round the van and opened the gate, making for the field behind the house. Then, pushing past the overgrown willow trees at the gable end, she froze. Only a few feet away, standing with his back to her, was a tall, stooped figure in a long waxed jacket with torn pockets. He wore nondescript corduroy trousers tucked into heavy work boots and a woolen hat pulled down over straggling gray hair. Before Hanna could pull herself together, he spoke, still standing with his back to her.
“Of course, you’ll want to make a fool of yourself over the slates.”
“What?”
The man nodded at the roof, which was covered in small slates, charmingly uneven and mossy. Hanna had planned to deal with those that were missing or damaged by finding replacements in salvage yards. Now, before she could open her mouth, the man spoke again.
“You won’t find them, you know.” He glanced over his
shoulder, revealing a lugubrious, unshaven face with a long nose. “And if you did, they’d see you coming a mile off and God alone knows what they’d charge you.” Without waiting for a response, he turned back to the house, nodding thoughtfully. “I’ll sell that lot off and make you a bob or two. We’ll hang on to the timber, though. Sure, if that’s gone here and there I can cut into it.”
“I’m sorry,” Hanna heard herself sounding outraged, “do you know that you’re trespassing? This is private property.”
“Trespassing? In Maggie Casey’s field?”
The man swung round, and, for a moment, Hanna felt afraid. But he stalked past her without a glance. He was well into his sixties and obviously a local man so she called after him.
“I didn’t mean to be rude but, I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are. Or what you’re talking about.”
“That’s fine, girl, I’ve no problem with that.”
He strode on toward the gate, with his long jacket held tightly around him, stepping through the briars like a stork. Hanna caught up with him by the van. Inside the cab, the terrier broke into a frenzy of barking, his nails clattering on the dashboard.
Hanna raised her voice. “I don’t know if you know who I am, I’m Hanna Casey.”
The man swung himself up into the cab and the dog subsided.
There was a clash of gears and the van pulled away from the gate. As it disappeared around a bend Hanna stared after it in bemusement. Then, shrugging, she returned to her own car. Clearly the man was a lunatic but, somehow, his unsettling presence had spoiled the notion of her quiet, celebratory cappuccino.
12
Jazz sat on the patio behind her nan’s bungalow planning to go indoors and iron her uniform. It was the last night of her long stopover and she had to be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow but, lying back in a padded garden chair, she told herself that she’d have just five more minutes watching the night-scented stocks glowing in the dusk. Her granddad had told her ages ago that stocks released more fragrance if you planted them where you wouldn’t disturb them by digging. And if you didn’t give them too much water or bother them with fertilizer, they’d seed themselves year after year and scent the whole garden in the evening.
Now, sniffing the spicy air, Jazz told herself that packing her suitcase was so routine that it really only took a few minutes. She adored her job, which kept her constantly on the move. But she loved these long weekends as well, the time spent in the comfort of her nan’s ugly, practical bungalow where the patio was edged with big stones from the beach. It was nothing like the discreet formal garden behind the London house she’d grown up in, or the huge rambling orchard that enclosed the Norfolk cottage. And it couldn’t be more different from the communal courtyard in France, where all the plants in the pots kept dying because no one was ever home to care for them.
The friends with whom she rented her French flat all worked for the same airline, and, while their potted plants were a disgrace, their block was a lovely, buzzy place to live, right in the center of town and only half an hour from the airport. That said, the rooms were even smaller than the courtyard, so Jazz reckoned it was just as well that she still had a few proper-sized cupboards at her nan’s to keep her stuff in.
Her old room in the London house was practically empty now, except for a few things in the drawers and cupboards. And Dad had sold the Norfolk cottage ages ago. Mum had broken the news of the sale as if she’d expected Jazz to go bonkers. Actually, it hadn’t bothered her as long as she could still spend time with Dad. She had gotten used to the weird move to Ireland by then, even though she’d hated it at first. And she’d never much liked being in Norfolk: a tennis court and a huge garden were pretty useless when you didn’t spend enough time there to make friends to come and hang out with you.
Now, as the light faded and the scent of the stocks grew richer, the door opened behind her.
“Mind if I join you?”
“It’s a free country.”
Jazz bit her lip. That had sounded begrudging, which wasn’t what she’d intended. It was just that her mum had a habit of tiptoeing round her, as if she were walking on eggshells. It was very irritating. With everyone else, she was brisk, competent Hanna Casey who was more than happy to call a spade a shovel. With Jazz she was so thin-skinned and tentative that you had to spend half your time trying not to hurt her. She had never been like that in England. Stretching out her foot, Jazz hooked the vacant garden chair beside her closer to her own. An apology seemed way over the top, but some kind of inviting gesture seemed to be in order, so she hoped that would do.
As Hanna settled into the chair she wondered if it was pushy to invade Jazz’s space on her last night at home. But evenings on the patio amid the scent of the stocks had always been a shared pleasure. When Jazz was small they’d spent all their summers together in Ireland. At the time, Hanna had believed Malcolm’s assertions that he’d be over to join them like a shot if it weren’t for the pressure of work. Later, when the truth about his affair had emerged, she’d cringed at the thought that while she and Jazz were building sand castles in Finfarran he and Tessa had been playing house in London. And her neighbors there had never told her. But how could they? They wouldn’t have wanted to hurt her, any more than she could bear to hurt Jazz.
It was concern for Jazz that made Hanna keep her mouth shut when Jazz first referred to Tessa as ‘Dad’s new girlfriend.” As soon as she’d finished school and without consulting Hanna, Malcolm had taken Jazz to an expensive restaurant in London and presented her with his relationship with Tessa as a kind of whirlwind romance. Jazz had arrived home to Crossarra full of excitement.
“Honestly, Mum, can you believe it, when they’d worked together for ages? And guess what? Dad’s invited me on a cruise with them this summer.”
Hanna’s heart had lurched so violently she thought she was going to be sick. As she’d groped for words, Mary Casey had emerged from the background to slam a mug of tea down in front of her. Now, sitting in the scented garden, Hanna remembered the blood pounding in her ears, the warmth of the mug in her cold hands, and her mother’s voice filling the space left by her own inadequacy.
“So what did you say, Jazz?”
Jazz, it turned out, had passed on the invitation. She’d just been offered to join the cabin-crew training course with her school friends Afric and Shane.
“And what did your dad say when you said no?”
Jazz laughed. “Well, he didn’t really want me cramping their style, did he? I think he was relieved. Anyway, that’s the story and who’d have thought it? Tessa Carmichael and Dad!”
That had been more than a year ago and the fiction of the whirlwind romance had become yet another lie in which Hanna felt forced to collude. Anything else would reveal the fact that Malcolm’s affair with Tessa had begun before Jazz was born. The trouble was that while grief and hurt pride had left Hanna tongue-tied, Malcolm had got in ahead of her. Long before she had been able to work out what to say to Jazz about their breakup, he had produced the fiction that it was painless. It was another lie that, while purporting to protect Jazz, made Hanna’s position impossible. Perhaps that was the point of it. Perhaps it was specifically devised to punish her for taking Jazz with her when she left him. Or perhaps he really believed that lies were okay and that the harm lay in exposing them. One way or the other, he had contrived to preserve his own relationship with Jazz while simultaneously paralyzing Hanna’s. And, dammit, she thought, here she was again, wasting time thinking about Malcolm instead of enjoying time with her daughter.
Beside her, Jazz stretched out and sniffed the scented air. “This always reminds me of Granddad.”
“Me too.”
When Hanna was a child Tom had planted scented flowers on either side of the bench outside the shop door and set tall calla lilies beneath the window. And as soon as he retired and the bungalow was built, he was in his element, picking out seeds and shrubs and laying patio slabs. Hanna remembered Jazz on summer hol
idays, aged eight or nine, all bare legs, bleached hair, and freckles, helping him to drag big, wave-smoothed stones across the sand on a beach towel and swing them into the trunk of the car. Together they had considered sizes and colors and rolled the stones into place around the patio. Jazz had been far more interested in the stones than in the gardening, but it was nice to know that she had good memories of the time she’d spent in Ireland as a child.
Malcolm’s mother, Louisa, was the gardener in the Turner family. The grounds of the house in Kent were ten times the size of the Caseys’ garden but, on the few occasions when Malcolm’s parents had met Hanna’s, Tom and Louisa had chatted about their shared love of flowers. And the house in London was always full of flowers from Kent. Malcolm had been visiting his parents when Hanna, pregnant with Jazz, had heard that her baby was a girl. He came home that night with a bouquet of white jasmine from Louisa, who had wrapped the star-shaped flowers and glossy green leaves in damp paper to keep them cool in the car. Hanna had breathed in the scent of the jasmine and marvelled at the thought of her baby. After her miscarriage eleven years earlier the doctors had told her she was unlikely to conceive again. At first that had seemed tragic but, in time, Malcolm’s career and their apparently seamless partnership had taken over her life.
And in all those eleven busy, childless years before Jazz, if anyone had asked her if she was happy she would have said yes. Around the corner was an exquisite Victorian public library where she began by hunting for architecture and design books and went on to discover a whole world of literature. Books on London’s late Georgian housing led her to Mrs Jordan’s Profession, Claire Tomalin’s biography of the Regency actress, and to novels of the period. Illustrated works on fabrics and materials drew her imagination across the English Channel to the glory of French palaces, the prosperous comfort of Dutch interiors, and the Greek and Roman inspirations of eighteenth-century English architects in their curly tricorn hats. In time she had moved on to translations of Proust and Stendhal, Homer and Petrarch and back to the twentieth century via a brush with Goethe and Schiller. Though German Romantics, she decided, were far too airy-fairy for a postmaster’s daughter from Crossarra. Back in those days there was no logical direction to her reading. She came to P. D. James’s detective stories via Simenon’s Maigret and found the Irish novelist John McGahern, whom she’d never heard of at home, in an essay by an American psychologist. As time passed, she set herself a more disciplined course of reading, informed by her training as a librarian: in Art Criticism she began with Ruskin’s Stones of Venice; in English Poetry she began with Beowulf and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and continued with Kenneth Muir’s classic critical anthology Elizabethan Lyrics; and she revisited her own roots with O’Rahilly’s Early Irish History and Mythology. By the time the renovation of the houses in London and Norfolk was completed she was a confirmed bookworm, and, though she had money enough to buy any book that she wanted, the library around the corner had become her enduring delight.
The Library at the Edge of the World Page 6