The Mistletoe Matchmaker

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  But not this time. Not about Ger. Not now that Tom was dead. Mary had never forgiven Fate, or God, or whoever made the decisions, for leaving Ger to Pat and taking Tom. So now she’d feel nothing but triumph. She’d try to hide it, of course, but Pat would know.

  But that was how Mary was and Pat didn’t blame her. There was no point in asking someone for more than they could give. All that ever happened was that both of you got hurt. Besides, she knew that once Ger was gone Mary would be her rock again. And that would be the time she’d have need of her most.

  And he would go, too. Because any young one who wanted him would want him for his money, so the plan would be to marry him and dance him into his grave. You might think that sounded daft, but it wasn’t. Pat had sat over in Canada watching hours and hours of Judge Judy. Weren’t one half of the cases on that programme about old fellows making fools of themselves? And the other half about wives who hadn’t seen what was going on?

  42

  Most of the peninsula’s pensioners seemed to have decided to adopt new hairstyles for Christmas. Cassie, who had dyed her own hair green and tipped her fringe with silver to be festive, had great difficulty dissuading Ann Flood from trying the same effect. The rest of her clients were sniffy about Ann having her hair cut at the Old Convent Centre anyway. According to the hardliners, she didn’t qualify because she was still in full-time work. Still, it was the opinion of the town that the only way she’d be got out of her shop was in her coffin, and if age was the determining criterion, she certainly counted as a pensioner. So some people were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Everyone agreed, though, that she’d do better to keep a low profile and not be taking up Cassie’s time with ridiculous requests.

  Cassie had added a morning session to her usual afternoon one. Even so, she was beginning to feel she was working on a conveyor-belt, with far too much to do and not enough time to chat. The main subject of the week was coming through loud and clear, though. Everyone was fed up because they still hadn’t found a big prize for the raffle. And Phil didn’t seem to notice, or even care.

  Sitting in Cassie’s chair, swathed in a towel, Nell Reily looked at her anxiously in the mirror. ‘Most years we’d have half the tickets sold before the event, Cassie. But how can you do that when you can’t say what the prize is? I’ve had people coming up in the streets, asking me about it, and I’m there making faces, not knowing what to say. It’s a shame for us.’

  Cassie nodded sympathetically. She’d heard the same complaint half a dozen times and, along with it, a dawning realisation among the pensioners that nowhere in Phil’s publicity was there any mention of the homeless shelter in Carrick.

  Maurice, the retired baker, had lowered his voice and told her that Phil thought homelessness wasn’t sexy. ‘She’s afraid the notion of rough sleepers would put the tourist authorities off. You know, the crowd judging the Winter Fest.’

  As it happened, Cassie knew that he was right. According to Bríd, the matter had come up after the last committee meeting, at what Phil called her post-mortem session with Ferdia, where Bríd was in attendance to take notes. Phil’s decision was to play down the homeless shelter. Why, she’d asked, would Lissbeg want to link itself with one of their strongest competitor’s worst negative aspects? It was Carrick’s problem and Carrick could keep it. Then she’d told Bríd that, since action wasn’t required, it wasn’t a point to be noted.

  But it wasn’t Cassie’s place to tell that to Maurice, or anyone else. Bríd wouldn’t want her to repeat something she’d happened to overhear in number eight, and in Cassie’s first job her boss had said that a stylist’s chair was the equivalent of a Catholic priest’s confessional – you listened, gave no opinions, and never passed anything on. It had struck her at the time as a good rule, even though it came from a guy who was known as the world’s worst gossip.

  Maurice got up from her chair shaking his neatly cut head sadly. ‘God knows, maybe Phil’s right, if that’s what she thinks. But you can’t go turning your back on people in trouble. If the problem’s there, it’s up to us all to try and do something about it.’

  When her morning clients were dealt with, Cassie decided to have a sandwich in the café before going over to pick Pat up for the afternoon’s creative-writing group. On her way out, she met Dan emerging from Phil’s office. He had a scarlet smudge on his forehead, where he’d pushed back his hair with a painty hand. Having fallen completely into the vernacular by now, Cassie asked him what the story was.

  Dan gave her the thumbs-up. ‘The stalls are done and dusted, anyway. Phil’s just paid me for them.’

  ‘Good job. So the drinks are on you, then?’

  ‘In more senses than one.’

  He was looking so pleased with what was obviously a joke that she asked him what he meant.

  ‘Well, you know the Ballyfin crowd went over the top and gave out free cocktails?’

  ‘Complimentary, is what they called them. Though somebody said they’d spelled it “complementary” on the programmes.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, by the sound of it, their event last weekend was a humdinger. So Phil’s been going round like the Antichrist, trying to find some way to top them. And you know what happened this morning?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dekko’s only after donating us a case of brandy. So Phil’s planning spiced punch, served in medieval-looking beakers.’

  Cassie blinked. ‘What’s a medieval-looking beaker?’

  ‘I dunno. Lumpy pottery yokes, I suppose. Or maybe just ordinary cardboard cups with something stuck around them. Anyway, Lissbeg’s going to be giving out Winter Warmers.’

  ‘What happens if the crowd’s so big that the punch runs out?’

  ‘Phil says it won’t matter. She lurked round the back in Carrick and Ballyfin – the judges turn up about half an hour in, and they only stay twenty minutes. So we’ll ration the punch till they’re gone, and then the devil can take the hindmost.’

  ‘But aren’t the hindmost going to feel a bit cheated?’

  ‘Maybe. But here’s the genius bit. Phil’s going to put a “free for all” sign over the drinks stand. And if we end up with a different kind of free for all, no one can say that we lied.’

  The last bit sounded unlikely to Cassie. Probably Phil had been joking. Or maybe Dan was. Anyway, the mounting competitiveness had long since started to bore her.

  She smiled at Dan and said it was really generous of Dekko to make a donation. Dan nodded enthusiastically and said it just showed, didn’t it, that ordinary, hard-working businessmen were far less greedy than the high-ups? More honest, too, when it came down to it. It was brilliant knowing you were backed by someone like that.

  Cassie left him with another smile, and went into the nuns’ garden. The temperature had risen after a frosty snap in the weather, and it was a grey day, cold but very dry. Phil’s fairy lights had already been twisted round the bare branches of the trees that bordered the herb beds, and strung between the firs by the old convent wall. The herb beds themselves were mostly covered with a dressing of leaf mould, in preparation for next year’s planting, but the low hedges of rosemary and bay still had their matte grey and polished dark green leaves, and winter savory and chervil flourished in sheltered corners.

  Each plant was marked by the labels on little stakes that Cassie had noticed the first day she’d come to the garden with Pat. Now, as she walked along the gravel path, she saw Saira Khan kneeling on a plastic cushion, straightening a label and removing a piece of rubbish that was entangled in some thyme.

  Cassie stopped and hunkered down beside her, holding open the mouth of the sack into which Saira was gathering litter. Saira dropped a handful of chewing-gum wrappers and cigarette butts into the sack and smiled her thanks.

  ‘There’s not a lot to do outdoors in a herb garden in winter. But they say we’re due for another change in the weather, so it’s best to get out and tidy up while you can.’

  Cassie glanced round. ‘It’s
looking good.’

  In summer the flowering herbs probably softened the lines of the garden, but now you could see how the beds and paths were laid out. Everything radiated from St Francis in the centre of the fountain. The statue faced the stained-glass windows in the high wall against which the rows of headstones in the nuns’ graveyard were enclosed by cast-iron railings. In the wintry garden, where Phil’s fairy lights had still to be lit, the stained glass above the graves offered tall streaks of dull colour, the lead tracery echoing the interlaced pattern of vines and twigs from which the crimson Virginia creeper leaves had fallen and drifted in heaps.

  At first it seemed to Cassie that the coloured glass and fallen leaves were the only vibrant splashes in the grey-green setting. Then her eye was caught by a glint of metal where a brass plaque on the back of a bench caught the afternoon sunlight. ‘Is that the bench they put up for the nun that used to work in the garden? The one who’s buried over there?’

  Saira nodded. ‘Sister Michael. I never knew her. But I use her herb book. The one Hanna has in the library.’

  ‘Did Sister Michael write it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She just worked in the garden and the kitchen. They gave it to her, I think, so she’d know how to use the herbs.’ Saira shook the rubbish down to the bottom of the sack. ‘Are you coming to the writing group this afternoon?’

  Since it was the last session before Christmas, Hanna had asked them each to bring a book they were fond of, and to read their favourite paragraph to the group. Cassie had pushed a copy of Dervla Murphy’s The Waiting Land into her knapsack that morning: she’d found it last week on a shelf in number eight, with Aideen’s Aunt Bridge’s name written inside. As it was a travel book, she’d started it, and now she was hooked. She’d only got halfway through yet, but it was full of amazing descriptions so it shouldn’t be hard to pick a paragraph. Taking it out, she showed it to Saira, and told her that Pat had chosen something too.

  ‘Maybe she’s happier reading someone else’s words than writing her own.’

  Cassie nodded, wondering if they were going to find themselves listening to Keats.

  Saira said she’d decided on a passage from Sister Michael’s herb book. ‘The names of the flowers and plants are like a poem.’

  That sounded strange but, later, as they all sat in a circle in the reading room, Cassie realised she’d been right.

  ‘Blackberry, calendula, chamomile, cleavers, comfrey, dandelion, elder . . .’ Saira glanced round the circle and then looked back at the book ‘. . . fennel, goldenseal, gumweed, hawthorn, mugwort, marshmallow, nettle, peppermint, Skullcap, valerian. Willow bark. Yarrow. Yellow dock.’ She looked pleased as everyone clapped, and the book was examined and exclaimed over. Her low voice with its singsong inflections had made poetry out of what was hardly more than an instruction manual.

  Then, when Ferdia had read from a second-century Greek satire, which he claimed was the earliest sci-fi book, Mr Maguire came out with an unexpectedly intense paragraph from a book called Madame Bovary, in which the newly-wed heroine finds her husband’s dead wife’s dried bridal bouquet in their bedroom.

  Darina was absent, having gone to Carrick to buy Christmas presents. So, since Cassie had read already, Hanna turned to Pat.

  When Cassie had picked her up, after lunch, Pat had seemed a bit down. But now she looked like a kid expecting a treat. She produced a book bristling with bookmarks, and looked earnestly at Hanna. ‘I didn’t choose a paragraph. I picked out short little bits that I like all the way through the book.’

  You could see Mr Maguire about to point out that that wasn’t the exercise, but Hanna jumped in and said it was a fine plan.

  It sounded like a kids’ book. Pat began on the first page with a description of a house so low, and with thatch so covered in grass, that no one would have seen it if it wasn’t whitewashed. Then there were bits about ballad singers at a fair, gold coins hidden in a teapot, and a gypsy camp. Between each few sentences she turned the pages to her next bookmark, and another little series of images emerged, as if painted on postage stamps. As she came towards the end, she explained that, at one point in the story, there was a magic cauldron that produced any food at all that a person could wish for.

  ‘And what does Eileen, the little girl, choose? Only white pudding and tomatoes.’ Pat smiled across at Cassie. ‘I thought that bit was great.’ She flipped to the next marker and read a description of the house on Christmas Eve, with a candle burning in the uncurtained window, the pictures framed in holly, and the smell of spices and herbs. ‘And the child gets a book for a present, and it makes a big impression on her. It draws her away on adventures but, then, in the end, it draws her back. And that’s the point. The children know that their mam and dad would be desperate if they never came home.’

  Pat sat back, a little breathless, and Saira said that the book sounded beautiful. ‘What’s it called?’

  Pat turned to Cassie. ‘Well, Cassie knows the answer to that, don’t you?’

  Cassie shook her head. ‘Not me. I’ve never read it. You tell us.’

  There was a weird pause in which Pat pressed the book to her chest. For a moment her face twisted. Then it went blank. Cassie wasn’t sure if anyone else was aware of what had just happened. All she could see was the book’s title, visible now between Pat’s clutching fingers. It was The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey.

  With a sickening jolt, she remembered the conversation they’d had in Toronto. This was the book Pat had lovingly sent for her thirteenth birthday. The book she’d lied about and said she loved though, in fact, she’d never opened it. And now Pat was looking at her as though she’d struck her in the face.

  43

  It snowed overnight. When Cassie got up to take her first mug of tea back to bed, white flakes were still whirling past the kitchen window. Later, having had breakfast, she was tempted to crawl back under the duvet. But she’d promised to gather holly and ivy for the Winter Fest and, though she’d grown increasingly disenchanted by the idea of the event, she couldn’t very well back out.

  The weather had cleared by the time she left the house. Although it had been nothing like a proper Canadian snowfall, the snow on the ground was a good four inches thick, with an icy crust that crunched beneath her feet.

  As soon as she reached the back roads, she hardly recognised the landscape. The snow-capped peaks of Knockinver were silver against the sky. The ditches that lined the roads were white and sparkling, and the footprints of birds and small animals made tracks in the empty fields. In a few places, cattle were huddled round a field gate but, for the most part, the only farm animals Cassie could see were sheep, gathered under hedges, their fleece grey-white against the snow.

  During the night, she’d woken repeatedly, racked with remorse for what she’d done to Pat. Finding it impossible to go back to sleep, she’d turned on her bedside lamp and read another chapter of The Waiting Land. At least when you were reading you weren’t thinking, and each time, after a while, she’d manage to drop off for an hour or two, before waking up again feeling wretched. Then, thumping her pillow for what had felt like the millionth time, she’d remembered her own sense of rejection and humiliation when Mom had failed to appreciate the pendant she’d brought from Barbados. How had poor Pat coped year after year when each of her carefully chosen gifts had appeared to go unheeded?

  Immediately after the session in the library, Pat had slipped out ahead of her and, giving her a few minutes, so they wouldn’t look foolish, Cassie had run across the road in pursuit. What she’d wanted to do was to run away but, since moral cowardice had caused this mess, she knew she mustn’t indulge in it again.

  Pat was standing with her back to the kitchen door, putting the kettle on. The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey was lying on the table. Cassie could see that it was a library copy in a plastic cover with a catalogue number pasted across its spine. Because, of course, Pat’s own copy was thousands of miles away, probably thrust to the back of a cupboard or, worse sti
ll, thrown in the trash and buried in landfill.

  And the awful thing was that Pat had been so forgiving. Stammering and feeling terrible, Cassie had tried to explain, but Pat had told her gently that it was fine. ‘You’re not to worry, love, because I know what happened. You were only trying to make me feel good – and you did. Anyway, it was my fault in the first place. You were probably far too old for the book when I sent it to you.’

  ‘But I lied to you, Pat, and I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Well, no, but you’re not to make a thing of it. I get things wrong.’

  ‘I did love the Christmas card. I kept it for years.’

  Pat smiled wanly and Cassie nearly burst into tears. ‘Truly. I did. It’s why I’m here now. Honestly, Pat. If you hadn’t sent it, I’d never have found my way here. And now that I’m here, I feel like I’ve come home. And that’s because of you.’

  Pat had made tea, which Cassie was glad of because she still felt shaky and close to tears. They’d sat on either side of the kitchen table, holding onto the hot mugs as if they were lifelines, and talking themselves back to some kind of normality.

  After a while Cassie said she’d love to read The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey and Pat smiled and told her she’d have to borrow it from the library. ‘Or you could read it over Christmas. It doesn’t need to go back for another ten days.’

  Still clutching the mug, Cassie had stretched out a hand. ‘I’ve been wanting to ask, would it be okay if I came and spent Christmas Day here?’

  Pat went pink with pleasure. ‘Really? Don’t you know you’d be more than welcome? I’d thought maybe you’d be off somewhere with Shay.’

  With an obscure sense that exposing her own bad judgement would amount to doing penance for her lie, Cassie explained that she’d thought so, too, but that Shay had turned out to be a cheat.