The Library at the Edge of the World

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

“I don’t think we need to bring Tessa into this conversation. This is about your future, which, for some reason, you’re determined to chuck down the drain. Because that’s what you’re doing, Jazz. And if you’re too immature to grasp that, then nothing I can offer will help.”

  For a moment they glared at each other. Then Dad glanced away and when he looked back his whole demeanor had changed. Jazz could feel the force of his personality focused on her as his voice became persuasive. They were both behaving very badly, he said, and the fault was probably his. Maybe it was the wine and champagne speaking. Or the fat chips! Anyway, it was all just silliness. The internship thing was only an idea. If it didn’t interest her, so be it. He smiled at her, raising a rueful eyebrow, and without really intending to, she found herself smiling back. Dad crooked his finger and the waiter appeared with fresh coffee and a bottle of brandy.

  Jazz grinned. “I thought you said that our trouble was too much drink?”

  “I’m not always right about everything, you know. It might have been too little.” Raising his glass, he looked across it and winked. “Friends?”

  As she raised her own glass in return he kissed her hand.

  Back home, he kissed her cheek and told her she was asleep on her feet. Unsure whether she was tipsy or sleepy, Jazz climbed the stairs with her shoes in her hand and her shawl trailing behind her. The combination of her long day and the row with Dad had exhausted her. And, given that Dad had been trying to be helpful, the row had been all her fault. Her last thought as her head hit the pillow was that she’d gone and messed up a pleasant evening by making a foolish fuss.

  Sometime around daybreak, she woke with a raging thirst and went into the bathroom. Then, as she stood on the cold tiles with a glass of water, a scene from her childhood drifted into her mind. It was after some case that Dad had won that had gained him a big promotion. She could remember him now, sweeping into the house in triumph and waltzing Mum around the kitchen. And she could remember what he’d said. The one sure way to be a winner was to make your opponent feel a fool.

  46

  Hanna’s next encounter with Brian Morton was outside Lissbeg Library. Shaking hands, he explained that he’d come to Lissbeg for a meeting and was off to find a sandwich. Hanna, who had her own lunch in her bag, was on her way to pick up a coffee, so they crossed Broad Street together and made their purchases in HabberDashery. Then they chatted for a moment on the pavement before Brian suggested finding a place to eat.

  “It’s not easy when the deli has no seating area.” Hanna glanced around with a grimace. “I usually just go back to the library.”

  Brian shook his head decisively. Everyone needed a break from their workplace at lunchtime, he said, and on sunny days all sandwiches ought to be eaten outdoors. Then, taking a zigzag course through the traffic, he piloted Hanna across the road to the bench beside the horse trough.

  “Not exactly bosky but at least we can sit in the sunshine.”

  Hanna wasn’t sure that she wanted to eat lunch with him in the middle of Broad Street where everyone could see them. But that seemed idiotic, so she balanced her coffee on the edge of the horse trough and took her sandwich out of her bag. There was hardly time to unwrap it before a text arrived on her phone.

  YOU CAN TELL THAT LISSBEG LOT IM SICK TO DEATH OF OLD WEEDS

  Hanna groaned. “Oh, dammit, I’m sorry, if I don’t reply to this they’ll keep coming.”

  She shot off a brisk Will call later, and, by way of apology, explained to Brian that the message was from her mother.

  “People keep turning up with herbs and she thinks they’re weeds and gets fed up and shoots off texts.”

  “Any particular reason why they keep turning up with herbs?”

  Contriving to look harassed, Hanna produced the story they had concocted about God’s Garden.

  “And the next thing I knew, Sister Michael was giving a talk about it in the library and half the peninsula was flagging me down in the van and handing me cuttings of herbs.”

  “But why?”

  “Because the audience at the talk decided it would be a good idea to restore the nuns’ garden to its former glory, and most of what used to be planted there has disappeared over the years.”

  “Sounds great.” Brian took a sip of coffee and eyed Hanna over the cup. “But you don’t think so?”

  She did, of course, but Sister Michael’s strategy required her to deny it.

  “But why not? I mean, it’s a project that arose from a lecture about a book.”

  “Yes, but Lissbeg Library doesn’t do lectures. Or projects.”

  Brian grinned. Strangers turning up at all hours bearing pots of herbs might well be annoying, he said. And an elderly mother complaining by text must be worse. His response was so friendly that Hanna felt guilty about deceiving him, and, unaccountably, she remembered Conor’s woebegone voice telling her that he hated lying to Aideen. But, as she’d told Conor sharply only that morning, once you made an exception to a rule you were on a slippery slope. So, lowering her head, she concentrated on her sandwich, and, after a moment, Brian changed the subject. Did she happen to know, he wondered, where he could find a particular beach? He’d heard it was somewhere off the main road in the direction of Crossarra, very small and out of the way and a great place for basking seals.

  It was a beach that Hanna knew well, and, glad to have something else to talk about, she tried to describe how to get there. You drove out the main road from Carrick to Ballyfin and took a narrow turn off to the south. But it was easy to miss.

  “Anywhere near that lurid bungalow with the faux stained-glass door panel and the gravel driveway? No one could miss that.”

  Hanna nodded. “Not me anyway. I live there.”

  Brian turned purple. Then, as he began to stammer, she burst out laughing.

  “Don’t worry. Really. Lurid is the perfect word for it. And it’s not my place. It’s my mother’s.”

  Its appearance, she explained, was one reason she was longing to get out of it. That and the fact that—what with the weeds and the texts and the full Irish breakfasts—she and her mother were driving each other mad.

  Perhaps because Brian still seemed discomfited, or perhaps because she still felt guilty, she found herself going on to explain why she’d come back to Finfarran.

  “Basically, when my marriage broke up I wanted to get away. Well, to get home, I suppose. Now I’m just longing for a home of my own.”

  And one reason for that, she reminded herself, was to regain a bit of privacy. So why did she keep confiding in this stranger?

  After lunch a group of young mums arrived in the library and settled themselves at a table. Among them was Susan from The Old Forge Guesthouse who had joined the volunteer group that was now working in the nuns’ garden. Gunther, her husband, was outside helping to clear the beds under Sister Michael’s instruction, while their small daughter, Holly, along with several other toddlers, played in the sunshine. In the library, Susan and the other mums were making notes as they sat around the table. The pages from God’s Garden that showed the original layout of the beds had been photocopied so the volunteers could use them. Cross-referring between the photocopies and a book from the library’s open shelving, Susan was making a list of herbs to be planted, while Darina Kelly, in a grubby purple caftan, was making a hames of identifying cuttings. On her way back from lunch Hanna had seen Darina’s toddler, as disheveled as ever, running round the garden in mad circles. Now she watched Darina tip a pile of donated cuttings out of a plastic bag, scattering soil on the library table. Hanna’s mouth opened but before she could speak Susan had whisked an old newspaper under the mess and organized the leaves and flowers neatly on its surface. One of the other women moved to sit beside Darina and unobtrusively took over the identification process, checking the cuttings against the illustrations in a modern encyclopedia of herbs.

  Hanna relaxed. There was a quiet buzz of talk from the group at the table but, as the only other person in th
e library was Oliver the dog man, who had now reached a row of books on electrical engineering, she decided she had no real reason to hush them. Logging on to her computer, she wondered why she’d agreed so readily to eat lunch with Brian Morton.

  47

  That evening after closing the library Hanna drove over to Maggie’s house and found Dan and Fury working on the wiring. The new roof was sound and straight as a die; the internal walls were newly plastered; and, without bothering to wait for her approval, Fury had installed modern wooden sash windows and an old refurbished half-door. The dank, cave-like feeling was gone and the house smelled of fresh paint and sawdust. And half the shell of the new extension was already built. As Hanna paused on the threshold The Divil bounded out of the bedroom covered in wood shavings. Glancing up from the socket he was fixing, Fury cocked his head at her.

  “You hate the windows.”

  “No, I don’t. And I love the door.”

  Fury scrambled up from the floor, crossed the room, and lifted a tarp.

  “So what’s the verdict on these?”

  It was a run of four beautifully made kitchen cabinets and an expensive-looking oven and stove-top, waiting to be installed. He’d got them from a friend, he said, who’d got them from a holiday home built by some banker from Dublin. Stayed in about twice in the ten years that he’d owned it and then sold to some eejit of a woman who didn’t do secondhand kitchens. Hanna hesitated for a moment unsure that she did secondhand herself. Fury immediately rounded on her, throwing up his hands.

  “Ah, Holy God, would you look at the puss on her? What’s wrong with them? They cost a fortune, they’ve hardly been used and I got the lot for a couple of hundred euro. Stick a slate counter down there on top of them and they’ll look like a million dollars!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what? Don’t I know well the time you’ve spent over in London wandering round architectural salvage yards looking for knackered fireplaces? What’s this only salvage? Or upcycling? Or plain bloody common sense, when they’re there to be had for the taking.”

  A closer inspection suggested that the stove-top and the stylish oven had never been used at all, and, looking at the elegant, dove-gray cabinets, Hanna capitulated.

  “But you’re sure you paid for them?”

  “Very few of my friends are fools, girl. I wouldn’t have got them otherwise.”

  “But a couple of hundred euro . . .”

  “Are you going to stand there and look a gift horse in the mouth?”

  Seconds later he grabbed her elbow and hustled her out the door. There was no sink with the cabinets, he said, because some gobdaw had put a hammer through it when the kitchen was being taken out. So that would have to be got elsewhere, the sink and the counter both.

  The next thing Hanna knew they were hurtling along the back roads in Fury’s van while The Divil, exiled from the passenger seat, expressed shrill outrage in the back. As Fury had climbed into the driver’s seat he’d thrust a large package wrapped in newspaper at Hanna. With no idea where they were going, she held the package on her knee and, bracing herself against the dashboard with her other hand, concentrated on nothing but keeping her seat. By the time Fury swung the van to a halt under the portico at Castle Lancy, every bone in her body felt shaken out of its socket.

  She looked round in surprise. “What on earth are we doing here?”

  Sensing the nearness of the kitchen cat, The Divil hurled himself at the back door of the van. Fury swung his long legs out of the driver’s seat and walked round to let him out. As the dog shot round the side of the building Hanna climbed stiffly out of the passenger seat, still holding the newspaper package. Without a word, Fury took her elbow again and hustled her round to the rear of the castle where a black cat sat on a washhouse roof, spitting mortal insults at The Divil. At a snarl from Fury the cat disappeared and The Divil slunk back to the van. Then, turning triumphantly to Hanna, Fury pushed open the washhouse door. An old copper laundry vat gleamed in a shaft of sunlight, a rotting clothes wringer was tilted against the wall, and, set in a wide slate shelf two inches thick, was a deep ceramic butler’s sink.

  48

  Ten minutes later, after a vehement argument in the washhouse, Fury hustled Hanna into the castle hall and roared. Moments later there was an answering shout and Charles Aukin appeared on the landing.

  “Come on up, I’m in the book room!”

  Gesticulating encouragingly, he disappeared; and, with Fury’s bony fingers clasping her elbow, Hanna found herself climbing the stairs. Charles, in his customary well-cut suit and scuffed leather slippers, had gone ahead to open a door. The room into which he ushered them appeared to Hanna to be straight out of Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford.

  Sometime in the 1800s the de Lancys must have decided that a gentleman’s seat required a room where the master could commune with the classics. It was fitted out in mahogany, with glazed shelving surmounted by busts of Plato and Aristotle, and had a huge desk complete with brass inkwells and a shaded lamp. There were high-backed chairs suggestive of scholarship, and a fireplace with marble caryatids derived from the Acropolis. But the de Lancy family had bought their books by the yard.

  Hanna could imagine the prospectus arriving on the castle breakfast table with everything offered all complete and a subtle emphasis on the family crest that would appear on the binding. The option chosen by the de Lancys had been expensive but not exorbitant. Which made perfect sense. Gazing up at shelf upon shelf of beige calf, tooled lettering, and ribbed, wine-colored spines, Hanna guessed that most of the books in the book room had never been opened. On lower shelves and piled casually on tables were bound volumes of Punch, The Illustrated London News, and Horse & Hound. These were well thumbed and had obviously come later. But the sermons, Shakespeare, histories, works of philosophy, and obscure religious tracts were just interior decoration.

  For a moment Hanna wondered if she was about to be asked for her professional opinion of their worth. Then she realized that was nonsense; Fury had simply introduced her as a woman for whom he was working and Charles Aukin had no reason to know she was a librarian. Now, as Fury clicked his fingers at her, exactly as if she were The Divil, she realized she was still holding his newspaper package. She handed it to him obediently and he cocked an eye at Charles.

  “You know you’ve a class of an old sink out there below in the washhouse.”

  Charles observed mildly he didn’t even know he had a washhouse.

  “Ah, would you give it a rest, Charles Aukin, you know fine well what you’ve got. There isn’t a stick or a stone in this place that you haven’t run your hand over.”

  Having dismissed Charles with a sniff, Fury strode to the desk and unwrapped the package. Hanna gave a gasp of delight at what it contained. It was a carved lectern with a slatted back and two brass leaves screwed to a narrow shelf, designed to support a manuscript or a book. The shelf was decorated with a carved ribbon of leaves and berries, echoing the delicate molding of the brass. Fury set it upright on the desk and glared at Charles Aukin.

  “I suppose you’ll make a pig’s ear of this again as soon as my back’s turned?”

  Charles stood back to allow Hanna to run her finger over the carving. Fury had drifted into the background and was glaring at one of the caryatids that supported the mantelpiece, his hands deep in the torn pockets of his battered waxed jacket. She couldn’t imagine why he’d been carrying this miracle of craftsmanship around in an old bit of newspaper.

  Charles raised an eyebrow at her. “Care to see what this was originally made for?”

  He crossed the room and opened a shallow drawer in one of the bookcases, returning a moment later with an oblong cardboard box. Then, to Hanna’s astonishment, he lifted the lid and revealed a medieval Psalter.

  As she stared at it, Charles opened the book and set it on the lectern. It was a collection of Latin psalms with illuminated capitals and marginal illustrations. The color on the pages was as rich as when it was firs
t laid on in some medieval scriptorium. Hanna had seen photographs of similar manuscripts held in great libraries across Europe. She hardly dared to touch it. Fury, on the other hand, stalked across the room and picked it up.

  “Name of God, man, why did you never show me this?”

  Charles grinned at him. “You never asked me to.”

  “How long have you had it?”

  “It belongs to the castle.”

  Hanna looked at the book in Fury’s hands. It must date from around the eighth century, long before the castle was built.

  Charles nodded. “I know. It was acquired at the dissolution of the monasteries.”

  “But its existence must have already been recorded by then.”

  “Sure. It was famous. It’s The Carrick Psalter.”

  Hanna sat down abruptly. She had read about The Carrick Psalter, the treasure of an early Irish monastery in Finfarran. It had been assumed that when the monastery was sacked by Viking invaders the book of psalms had perished in the conflict.

  “Yeah. But I guess not. Apparently it survived and disappeared into another religious community. And those guys, unlike the first guys, kept it under wraps. Then when Henry VIII had his little spat with the Pope about Anne Boleyn, an abbot saw the writing on the wall and cashed in his assets. Apparently the de Lancys paid good money for the Psalter and the abbot lived on the profit for the rest of his life.”

  “And you’ve got all this on record?”

  “Sure. I’ve even got the receipt. It’s de Lancy property, sure enough. Bought and paid for.”

  Fury was bending over an illustration of a deer running through a forest. Hanna looked at the slender red body framed by oak trees. Its feet and antlers were picked out in gold, and green leaves had been swept from the trees by the speed of its passage. Farther down the page, in another illustration, it was standing by a towering rock from which water spurted like a fountain. Acorns hung from its antlers, which were interlaced with the oaks. The Latin text on the page was illegible to Hanna but, looking at the illustrations, she knew what it said.