The Library at the Edge of the World

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  As they’d left the meeting, they’d encountered Tim on the threshold. He was wearing a three-piece suit with a gold watch chain slung across his waistcoat and long, turned-back shirt cuffs reminiscent of Oscar Wilde. Ignoring the others, he had paused, looked Hanna full in the face, and then, coming within an inch of jostling her, stalked by without a word. Distracted by Conor’s distress, Hanna had hardly noticed. But the old nun had watched him as he’d strode off down the corridor.

  “And I’ll tell you who he reminds me of, and that’s Father Mc-Glynn from Knockmore.” Sister Michael shook her head in quiet disapproval. “Small minds and big egos, the pair of them!”

  Now she looked shrewdly at Hanna.

  “And you’d want to get a grip on yourself, Miss Casey. Battles aren’t won by going at things like a class of a bull at a gate.”

  Hanna nodded meekly. For a moment they stood there side by side, fixing their hair. Then Sister Michael’s wrinkled face set into folds of decision.

  “I’ll tell you what, though, Hanna. Life on this peninsula’s getting more and more unbalanced. It’s not healthy. It’s not fair on anyone. And it’s time you and I put a stop to it.”

  “You and I?”

  “Didn’t you hear yourself that what we need to do is to organize a submission? And you can see we’ve a hard row to hoe.”

  The trouble was, she said, that people were fed up with filling out forms and reading letters and giving feedback. And hadn’t they enough going on in their own lives without having to go to meetings? But while they were all focused on their personal problems they were losing their sense of community.

  “Look at you now, with your mind on your house and your job. It’s more than Lissbeg Library that’s threatened. Didn’t you say it yourself in there when you got up and spoke?”

  “Yes, but you’re right. No one’s going to rush out and join a revolution. They’ve got enough on their plates just trying to make ends meet.”

  “That’s why we have to start slow and let things take their course.” Sister Michael zipped up her anorak. “Seventy years I’ve spent inside in that convent and I’ve learned nothing more in there than I learned on my father’s farm. Everything in life has its own time to happen. A time to plant, a time to grow, and a time to harvest. And if you take things steady you’ll bring your harvest home.”

  41

  The next morning Hanna drove straight to Maggie’s place. It was all very well for Sister Michael to sound so confident but, in the face of an uncertain financial future, hanging on to her expensive roof slates now seemed stupid. But how would Fury respond to her change of mind? In the end she decided to make a brisk announcement and ignore his reaction. A small voice at the back of her mind told her she’d have a lot less to worry about if she hadn’t been so high-handed in the first place.

  She arrived to find Conor’s friend Dan Cafferky up on the slateless roof. The Divil was asleep on the doorstep and Fury came out to meet her, bursting with energy. Everything was going grand, he said, and now that he had young Dan on the job he’d be flying.

  When Hanna made her announcement he simply laughed.

  “We did the swap yesterday. The new tiles are round the back.”

  “But I said . . .”

  “I know what you said. But did you not notice when you said it that I said nothing? And wasn’t it just as well?”

  Biting her tongue, Hanna abandoned the subject of the tiles and said that, after careful consideration, she might rework her budget. Fury just shrugged. In that case she might have to change her approach a bit, but what matter? They’d go with the flow and see what happened. Sure budgets always got shifted, so trying to set them in stone was a waste of time.

  Later, driving the mobile library van between puddles on the road to Knockmore, Hanna turned her mind to Sister Michael again. The drive from Carrick to the convent last night had turned into a sort of strategy meeting. What was needed, Sister Michael declared, was a focal point for operations. And, given its position, its public function, and the threat of its closure, the obvious choice for that was Lissbeg Library. Furthermore, she said, Hanna’s reputation for churlish behavior could be used to their advantage.

  The word ‘churlish’ took Hanna aback but she’d come to see the force of the argument. Sitting beside her in the passenger seat, Sister Michael had patted her knee. “You’re the last person people would suspect of trying to pull the community together, so it’ll all appear to happen of its own accord.”

  “What will?”

  “Establishing proper lines of communication.”

  That would be the first stage. Drawing people together, putting them in touch with each other and showing them their strength. Then, with all their ducks in a row, she and Hanna would go public—call a meeting in the library, propose an alternative to the council’s mega plan, and harness the whole community to develop a detailed submission.

  “But how long will it take? And how do we achieve the first stage, let alone the second?”

  “It’ll take as long as it takes, girl, so all we can do is get on and prepare the ground.”

  It had been a long day and Hanna was getting tired of agricultural metaphors. Flashing a sideways glance at her, Sister Michael folded her hands in her lap and explained.

  “We find a reason to bring people to Lissbeg Library.”

  “You mean like a book club?”

  “No, I don’t mean like a book club. We haven’t a hope in hell if we’re going to think small. I mean a Big Thing that’ll catch their imagination.”

  Hanna blinked. Having consistently repressed Conor’s hopes of a book club, she was now being presented with a course of action that sounded a great deal worse. Pulling up her car at the nuns’ entrance to the convent, she looked suspiciously at Sister Michael.

  “So what kind of ‘Big Thing’ might that be?”

  Sister Michael said she hadn’t got a clue.

  “Something will turn up, though. You’ll recognize it when it does.”

  “What do you mean I’ll recognize it?”

  “Well, you’re the one who drives up and down the peninsula. I’m the one that’s stuck behind convent walls.”

  42

  The days when Miss Casey was out in the van were the days when Lissbeg Library tended to have more visitors. Conor always told himself this was a coincidence, but at the back of his mind he knew it was cause and effect. It seemed to him that half the fun of a library was stumbling on treasures by chance, but Miss Casey didn’t see things that way at all. What he thought of as browsers she called time-wasters. And libraries, she said, weren’t supposed to be fun.

  But now, out of the blue, it seemed like things were going to change. Last night, driving home from the meeting in Carrick, Conor had been raging. Partly with Miss Casey, who could have told him stuff and hadn’t, but mainly with the pen pushers, who’d made him feel a fool. Later, when he’d calmed down a bit, he’d seen why Miss Casey had said nothing. Anyway, she’d been really upset and apologized, so fair play to her for that. Then this morning when she came into work she’d taken him into her confidence. And that, when you came to think of it, was pretty amazing. Apparently herself and Sister Michael were hatching plans to confound the pen pushers, and while it was all kind of hush-hush at the moment, she’d promised to keep him in the loop if he kept his mouth shut. As soon as she’d told him the news, she’d set off to pick up the van, but only a minute later, she’d stuck her head back through the door. He shouldn’t make a big thing of it, she said, but it was okay to make the place a bit more welcoming. Conor reckoned that she’d looked a bit awkward when she said that, so he hadn’t asked any questions. But now he was dying to know what would happen next.

  Almost as soon as Miss Casey had gone, a group of young mums with babies in strollers arrived and settled into a corner. One girl returned a thriller and took out the sequel, but the rest just sat round a table, chatting and checking their phones. Conor had never seen the harm in that, so long a
s no one was disturbed. Today there wasn’t another soul in the place but Oliver the dog man. So Conor let the girls get on with it. This time, though, he could turn a blind eye to their chatting without being disloyal to Miss Casey. And that felt great.

  Around lunchtime Pat Fitz came in to return another Maeve Binchy, which Conor checked surreptitiously for rashers. A few minutes later a worried-looking woman came in and asked for a book about changing lightbulbs. Conor took her to the DIY section and found her one called Helpful Hints for Homeowners. Then, as he turned to go back to the desk, his eyes widened in alarm. At the far end of the room Oliver had reached the glass-doored bookcase that held the old books that had been there for ages, since the time when the library had been the school hall. It should have been obvious to anyone that they were unlikely to include a recent publication with a black dog on the cover. But Oliver had methodically opened the case and was checking the books one by one.

  Conor made it down the room in two strides. “Listen, Oliver, this bookcase isn’t really part of the library. I mean, it is, but you’re not supposed to open it.”

  Oliver looked at him through his thick glasses and announced that he followed a system.

  “I know, Miss Casey told me. But she wouldn’t want you opening this case.”

  Oliver frowned. “Do you know what it is, boy, you can’t go putting up a sign that says ‘Public Library’ if you don’t mean it.”

  There was no point in Conor saying that it wasn’t he who had put the sign up. Instead he got between Oliver and the bookcase.

  “You’re right, of course, Oliver, but you wouldn’t want me to lose my job. I have to tell you what Miss Casey would say, and I have to close this bookcase now, and I’m really sorry, but that’s how it is.”

  Hearing himself speak, he realized that he sounded exactly like his mum trying to placate his dad. In his dad’s case, pleading often made matters worse, so he switched tactics and modelled his approach on Miss Casey’s. Rules were rules, he said, and Oliver wasn’t the only one who ran things following a system. Then, taking the book, he closed the bookcase and strode back to the desk. Oliver left the library looking aggrieved. Sitting at the desk, Conor looked down at the book in his hand. Half an hour later, deaf to the increasingly loud chatter from the corner table, he was still turning its pages.

  43

  At the exit for Knockmore Hanna lessened her speed and turned down the narrow road that snaked between fields and woodland. Each week, driving the same roads up and down the peninsula, she was fascinated by the changing colors of the landscape. Now, as summer advanced, the first of the leaves were feathered with gold. It was a sunny day broken by intervals of rain; and in a windy space between showers, the birds were calling and singing.

  Steering the van between puddles, Hanna told herself thoughtfully that Sister Michael was right. The threatened closure of Lissbeg Library was a powerful symbol of a far deeper malaise. This wasn’t just about her own job or Conor’s, though Conor had now undoubtedly joined her on Tim Slattery’s blacklist. It was about a whole community that time had disempowered. Despite what she’d said about people not attending public meetings, Hanna had been surprised by the number of empty seats last night in Carrick. Yet, as soon as Sister Michael had made her see it, the reason was blindingly clear. The peninsula had lost its lines of communication. In the past people had met in local shops and post offices, round the horse trough in Lissbeg’s Broad Street, at village bus stops and forge doors and in the creameries. It was there that they’d swapped stories, shared skills and resources, and kept an eye on each other’s welfare. The crowded supermarkets and streamlined council facilities in Carrick were no substitute for such gathering places, or for the regular rhythms of Sundays and feast days when people congregated in the pub after Mass to discuss the week’s events. Anyway, both the pubs and the chapels were half empty now as churchgoing dwindled and many of the peninsula’s pub owners closed up shop, defeated by cut-rate alcohol in the supermarkets and people’s concerns about drunk driving.

  Hanna smiled as she swung the wheel, thinking of her mother and Maggie. There’d been plenty of malice in those gathering places, too, and a hell of a lot of nosiness. But that wasn’t the stuff that counted. What mattered was the web of mutual support that had made people feel self-reliant. And, according to Sister Michael, the loss of that web had produced a current lack of balance. It wasn’t fair, she’d said. And, what was worse, it wasn’t healthy.

  Hanna couldn’t fault the argument. What bothered her was the thought that a campaign centered on Lissbeg Library would invade her personal privacy. But, as Sister Michael had also pointed out, this wasn’t about her feelings. Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, Hanna saw she was making good time. There was a passing place just ahead so she pulled in and went to lean on a gate. The field beyond it was planted with potatoes and the dead-straight ridges made her smile. She could remember her father’s friends gathered in the little post office in Crossarra pronouncing about the state of their neighbor’s ridges. So-and-so took it handy and did it right, like his father before him. Some other fellow must have used a corkscrew for a line and dug with a crooked spade. The potatoes Hanna was looking at now were set in perfect parallel lines and the creamy blossom on their green stalks swayed in a warm wind. In the next field a group of cattle had gathered in the shade of an oak tree. As she considered the structure of its interwoven branches, Hanna’s mind drifted back to her last conversation with Fury. He’d drawn her aside so that Dan, on the roof, couldn’t hear him.

  “By the way, Miss Casey, who do you think you’re fooling? It isn’t careful consideration that’s changed your mind about them slates. It’s Tim The Time Lord Slattery and the crowd in Carrick.”

  Seeing her mortified expression, he’d become unexpectedly kind. It wasn’t that the world and his wife were talking about her, he said. It was just that a builder like himself was always in and out of the planning office, so of course he’d hear how the wind was blowing. Besides, he’d known the seed, breed, and generation of the Slatterys all his life.

  “Sure, Tim’s as weak as the rest of them. Show him the chance of a swanky new office, and he’d trample over his granny to get it and dance on her grave when he did.”

  At the time Hanna had been as cross as she was embarrassed. Now, staring at the branching oak tree, she realized that if she hadn’t been so aggressively opposed to local gossip she might have picked up that information herself and been a lot more wary of Tim Slattery.

  Nell Reily was among the group at the day-care center this week, laughing and chatting with her elderly mother in the line for coffee and tea. As soon as she saw Hanna she came to speak to her. Her mum was much better, she said, though in the end the cold had proved to be the flu.

  “This is her first day back at the center so I said I’d stay to lunch in case she wanted to come home early. The doctor says she ought to take things slow.”

  Smiling at Hanna, Nell held out a tissue-paper-wrapped package. Inside was a linen handkerchief edged with delicate scalloped lace.

  “It was the first thing Mam turned her hand to after the flu, Miss Casey. We were very grateful for those books when she was laid up.”

  The handkerchief had Hanna’s initials embroidered in one corner.

  “The chances are that you’ll never use it, but you might put it under a vase or something. Anyway, it’s just a token to say thanks.”

  Some of the other seniors crowded around to admire the gift and exclaim about Hanna’s willingness to oblige. Hanna listened ruefully. When these men and women were young, had they ever imagined how dependent old age would make them, or how grateful they might feel one day for ordinary acts of kindness? Knowing her own reputation for standoffishness, she blushed, wondering if Nell had had to summon her courage to stop her on the road that day and ask for a book for her mother.

  Now Nell sat down beside her and asked after Mary Casey. “It’s a shame we don’t see her here in the center sometimes.�
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  Maurice, the retired baker, joined them with a plate of doughnuts. He nodded and lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t say a word against Father McGlynn, mind, but it’s a fierce shame that everyone our age down this end of the peninsula has to come here to Knockmore or go nowhere. Wouldn’t it be great to have a Center in Lissbeg?”

  There was a chorus of agreement, prefaced by mutual assurances that no one would say a word against Father McGlynn. If it wasn’t for him, they agreed, anyone who wanted so much as their toenails cut would be traipsing all the way to Carrick. Still, it’d be grand if everyone on the peninsula could go somewhere closer to home. Or even somewhere it’d be easier to get a lift to since the buses these days were so bad. A place in Lissbeg, and maybe another in Ballyfin, with different things happening on different days. That way more people could get out and see each other. All the same, they were lucky to have what they did have, and they certainly weren’t complaining.

  Beneath the seniors’ appreciation of the parish priest’s efforts on their behalf, Hanna could detect a hidden concern that the facilities he provided might be withdrawn if they failed to show gratitude. It seemed unfair that their lives should feel so precarious, just as it was dreadful to feel that despite her own aloofness they were so willing to be grateful to her. And it was unnerving that she herself now knew that things could get much worse. According to Brian Morton, the Council’s mega plan involved relocating community-care provision for the entire peninsula to the huge new complex in Carrick.

  Up to now it hadn’t occurred to Hanna that when you got older having a shared space where you could keep up a lifetime of friendships was important. All right, it wasn’t really that far to Carrick, but surely the council could see that, with bad roads and patchy public transport, it could seem a million miles away to someone with poor mobility?

  But as she bit into a doughnut, she told herself that poor mobility didn’t necessarily mean a lack of energy. That was something worth remembering. As was the fact that, unlike kids like Conor or the girls from HabberDashery, seniors had plenty of spare time.