The Transatlantic Book Club

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  That was Cassie. Her enthusiasm was so infectious that you always found yourself nodding. So, feeling uncertain but far too tired to argue, Pat had agreed. Now, in the silence of the library, the cat stirred as the clock struck the hour. Turning her gaze from a case of classic crime stories, Pat saw it was time to go to her party. Tomorrow, she thought, she’d be flying home to Finfarran and, despite everyone’s kindness, crossing the Atlantic Ocean hadn’t made things better at all. In fact, just as she’d feared it might, being in Resolve had stirred up memories she’d far rather forget.

  Chapter Two

  March had come in like a lion, battering Ireland’s west coast with a fierce Atlantic gale. The Finfarran Peninsula had taken the brunt of it, and as Hanna Casey drove to her job in Lissbeg Library, the winding country lanes were strewn with debris blown from the hedgerows. In fields on either side of the roads, uprooted trees lay at crazy angles and, here and there, corrugated panels had been wrenched from the sides of barns. Yet, lying awake in her bed before dawn, Hanna had become aware of a change. The icy northerly wind had veered away from the peninsula, and now a southerly breeze had brought a morning as mild as milk.

  This was typical March weather in Finfarran, what local people were accustomed to call ‘four seasons in a day’. By this evening another storm could bring sleet, or even snow. But, for now, Hanna revelled in the rain-washed morning, the spangled celandines gleaming in the ditches, and the iridescent, mother-of-pearl sky.

  She drove into Lissbeg, joining the flow of traffic streaming down Broad Street. Passing Fitzgerald’s butcher’s shop, she saw the upstairs blinds had been raised. Pat and Cassie Fitz must have arrived home from the States. Hanna was glad to see that the town had suffered little storm damage. It would have been awful if Pat had come home to find slates off her roof. Turning into the car park, Hanna pulled into the space marked ‘Librarian’ and went through an arched gateway into a paved courtyard. The town’s former convent and school buildings were now the Old Convent Centre, home to a mix of amenities, including the public library and a walled park, which had been the nuns’ private garden. An iron-bound door, once the school entrance, now led to council offices; a smaller door to the left accessed the library, housed in what had been the assembly hall.

  At first Hanna had found it bizarre to work where she’d giggled and yawned as a schoolgirl. Her mother had been to the convent, too, as had every generation of girls in Lissbeg till the nuns had closed the school in the 1990s. Now the dark assembly hall had been extended to include exhibition space and a reading room, large windows and glass partitions flooding it with light. Glass-fronted cases incorporated in the heavy oak panelling still contained books left by the nuns, but the public library’s collection was kept on metal shelving ranged in parallel rows down the room. Hanna’s desk was at the front, its back to the glass wall that divided the library from the exhibition space. Next to the staff loo at the end of the hall there was a slip of a kitchen, where she and her assistant brewed tea and coffee and hung their coats.

  With an eye to the weather, Hanna had worn a warm jacket this morning, and put a folding umbrella into her bag. Having hung both in the kitchen, she plugged in the public-access computers, then went to her desk to log on to her own and check the morning’s emails. She’d hardly sat down when the door opened and Cassie Fitzgerald came in, looking remarkably wide awake for someone who’d flown from New York.

  ‘Welcome back! When did you arrive?’

  ‘You know what? I have no idea! It felt like we landed in the middle of the night, and then we had the drive from Shannon.’

  ‘You must be exhausted.’

  ‘Well, I crashed for a couple of hours and now I feel fine. Pat’s still asleep, though.’

  ‘How was the holiday?’

  ‘Good. Great, in fact. I guess if I didn’t feel needed here I might even have stayed on.’ A look of surprise crossed Hanna’s face and Cassie went on hastily, ‘But you’ve still got a job for me, right? Because I’ll definitely be around while Conor’s away.’

  Conor, Hanna’s library assistant, was going on a course, and it hadn’t been easy to find someone to take on short-term, part-time cover. There was one day based in Lissbeg on offer, plus two more driving the mobile library, and everyone available had turned out not to have a suitable driving licence, or wanted to change the hours, which couldn’t be done. Then Cassie had suggested herself and Hanna had agreed at once. The timing was ideal and she had had a second reason to be pleased. She’d always been fond of Pat, who was her godmother, so it was great to hear that Cassie planned to spend more time in Finfarran. Ger had been a cross-grained, miserly little man, and the marriage had never looked easy. But Pat was shaken by her loss and Cassie’s company would help.

  Hanna smiled at the eager figure by her desk. ‘That’s absolutely fine. I cleared the paperwork last week, so we’re good to go.’

  ‘Brilliant. And my whole week’s sorted. The salon at the Spa Hotel has a vacancy for a stylist, so I grabbed that to fill the other two days.’

  ‘The Spa in Ballyfin?’

  ‘Yep. Pat’s planning to sell Ger’s car, but she’s said I can use it while I’m here.’

  ‘Poor Pat – she’ll have plenty of decisions like that to make.’

  ‘I know. Ger left her everything. I bet Uncle Frankie’s nose is well out of joint.’

  Aware that a woman reading nearby was in earshot, Hanna stuck to business and asked if Cassie could start work at once. ‘Mobile days are Wednesdays and Fridays, when you’ll pick up the van from the County Library in Carrick, so if you come in tomorrow you can get accustomed to how I run things here.’

  ‘No problem.’ Cassie took out her phone. ‘I got some great pix over in Resolve. Look, that was the farewell party. Only forty-eight hours ago – no wonder Pat’s still asleep.’

  As Hanna swiped through them, the photos became more erratic. Decorous shots of smiling women with platters of food, and a musician in a bright green waistcoat degenerated into increasingly crooked selfies of Cassie and Pat in party hats. ‘It looks like you had quite a night.’ The next shot was another selfie, this time of Cassie and a red-headed boy holding up pints of Guinness. ‘Who’s the young man?’

  Cassie shrugged. ‘Just the guy who set things up for the music. His name’s Shanahan. His grandma runs the club’s quilting guild. The family came from near Ballyfin, generations back.’

  Faced with such a statement, the instinctive reaction of most of Hanna’s neighbours would be to establish certain facts. Which branch of the Shanahan family was in question, what village the specific household had come from, and the exact date on which they’d left Finfarran. But Cassie had stopped abruptly, as if regretting having volunteered the information, and, having spent most of her adult life in London, Hanna had lost that particular native instinct and gained a cosmopolitan sense of tact. Instead she exclaimed at a photo of a large cake covered with glitter, held aloft by a lady wearing two bouncy shamrocks, like rabbit’s ears.

  Cassie giggled. ‘It was humungous! And Pat had to cut it with a ceremonial knife. I mean, the whole thing was crazy, but people were so kind.’

  ‘So the holiday was a success?’

  ‘I hope so. I don’t know, really.’ Cassie’s nose wrinkled. ‘I haven’t dealt with grief before. It has stages, doesn’t it? Denial and anger and stuff. And, eventually, acceptance? I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take.’

  Hanna suggested it might not be that simple.

  Intent on what she clearly viewed as a project, Cassie frowned. ‘I can’t understand how Pat came to marry Ger. She’s such a sweetie and he was just an old crab. Don’t you think?’

  Aware that the woman reading nearby was now unashamedly eavesdropping, Hanna hesitated. While enquiries about antecedents were the accepted norm in Finfarran, direct questions like this one were not. Nevertheless, gossip, whether harmless or malicious, was an inevitable part of daily life. As a divorcée who’d returned to the town she
’d grown up in, Hanna’s own marriage had been the subject of covert speculation, and she knew how distressing it could be. She was about to issue a quiet reproof to Cassie when she was struck by a memory of standing on a dais, exactly where the library’s Popular Fiction shelving stood now. She was a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl enduring reproof from Sister Consuelo, an ancient nun whose remit had included ‘Pastoral Care’. The experience was humiliating, and as soon as Hanna had been released she’d forgotten whatever the lecture had contained. What had stayed with her, however, was a fierce sense of resentment. Eager to avoid a similar reaction from Cassie, she settled for a smile and the recommendation that she get a good night’s sleep before coming to work.

  For the next while, Hanna was immersed in emails, but later she wondered if her brisk change of subject had been either kind to Cassie or fair to Pat. Many private dramas were played out in this public space, where much could be learned from people’s choices of books and films, where they sat and who they met here and, like most local librarians, Hanna’s instinct was to keep her eyes open and her mouth shut. But that was the wisdom of experience, and Cassie was impetuous and young. With a pang of fellow-feeling for long-dead Sister Consuelo, Hanna returned to her work. But the hamster wheel at the back of her mind kept turning. With luck, Cassie would have more sense than to go about asking indiscriminate questions. On the other hand, having not been warned, it was possible that she wouldn’t. And what would happen then?

  Chapter Three

  As Pat came downstairs she noticed the guest-room door was open and, judging by the look of the kitchen, Cassie had eaten and gone out. It was practically lunchtime but Pat discovered she was craving a real breakfast. Not a fry or anything heavy but maybe some toast and an egg. She could scramble the egg, throw in a bit of parsley, and call it brunch.

  Frankie had agreed to drop a few bits and pieces into the shop downstairs for her return, and Pat had fixed with Des, who worked behind the counter, to add rashers and leave the lot in her fridge before shutting up. She’d asked Frankie for milk, eggs, and a loaf, but on opening the fridge she discovered it was crammed. For a moment she was surprised. Then her powers of deduction overcame her jetlag and she turned on her phone.

  There was a text from Mary Casey, sent the previous evening. I GOT YOU SOME FOOD IN YOU COULDN’T TRUST FRANK%1E CHANCES ARE HE@LL FORGET

  A second message had followed immediately: YOU@@ BE DEAD TO THE WORLD AFTER THE PLANE ILL BE OVER WHEN YOURE UP

  Mary, Pat’s oldest friend, never stooped to punctuation in texts and only used capital letters. She also held decided opinions on what other people ought to want and need. Opening the fridge again, Pat was dismayed by a large ring of black pudding, a dozen eggs, a basket of tomatoes, and far more milk and fruit juice than she and Cassie could consume in a week. In the breadbin she found a cake of Mary’s homemade brown soda bread and a box containing three Danish pastries. No bread appeared to have come from Frankie.

  She had the box of pastries in her hand when the door opened and Mary entered the flat, complaining bitterly, as she always did, about the stairs. ‘I declare to God, it’s like climbing a ladder to get up here from the shop! And that stairwell’s black as the hob of hell! I could’ve missed my step.’

  ‘There’s a light switch at the bottom and the top, as well you know. And a window on the landing.’

  ‘Ay, well, it’s halfway up there’s a nasty turn in the stair.’

  Dumping her bag on the kitchen table, Mary nodded at the pastries. ‘I got three of them because I knew you’d fuss about keeping one for Cassie. Put two out on a plate now and let’s have a cup of tea.’

  Pat gave up on her vision of a modest egg on toast. There was no use arguing with Mary Casey, especially if you were tired. She was a woman who surged through life like a battleship, seldom regarding the trails of flotsam bobbing in her wake. But, also like a battleship, she exuded strength and inspired confidence, something Pat had learned at an early age. She and Mary had been to convent school in Lissbeg together, hung out round the horse trough in Broad Street with lads from the Christian Brothers, and married husbands who’d also been best friends.

  Tom had died ten years or so before Ger, resulting in a slight coolness between Mary and Pat. The idea that her friend would retain a husband when her own had been snatched away had offended Mary. It was she who had been the golden girl of the foursome, a leader where Pat had been a mere follower. Yet Tom had been taken and Ger, who, in her view, was a poor stick, had been left. God’s failure to recognise the accepted hierarchy had seemed to Mary to be a deadly insult, and in the first years of her bereavement a sense of outrage had made her less close to Pat.

  But with Ger’s death the relationship had readjusted. Mary had surged back into Pat’s life, brushing aside Cassie’s presence as irrelevant. A granddaughter might be all very well, and blood might be thicker than water, but only Mary could truly understand Pat. And Pat, who had long since analysed their friendship, had come to the wry conclusion that Mary was right. No one left alive in Lissbeg knew more about the dynamics of that complicated foursome, and no one knew more than Pat herself how powerful an ally her oldest friend could be when times got tough.

  ‘I saw Cassie leaving the library just now. Did we ever think we’d see the day, Pat, when your grandchild would be working for my daughter?’

  ‘I’m glad Hanna has a job for her.’

  ‘I’d say Hanna was lucky to get her. I hear young Conor’s left her in the lurch.’

  Pat gave her a direct look and Mary immediately tossed her head defensively. ‘I’m not putting words into Hanna’s mouth. I’m only repeating what I heard on the street.’

  ‘Conor’s gone on a course.’

  ‘Well, that’s young people these days, isn’t it? Never content with what they’ve got but off looking for more. Mind you, they have great energy. Look at those.’ She waved her hand at the pastries. ‘Not that I’m that impressed by all this artisan nonsense but those girls at the deli make everything from scratch.’ Beating Pat to the pile of plates on the dresser, she whisked the pastries onto the table. There was a moment of unspoken jockeying about who would fill the kettle but, conceding that this was Pat’s home ground, Mary settled for a tart comment about keeping teaspoons in drawers. ‘You want to put them in a mug by the teapot and have them there to hand.’

  Pat thought the better of mentioning dust. Any suggestion of an aspersion cast on Mary’s standards of hygiene could be lethal. Her bright pink bungalow on the main road to Carrick had been specifically designed to avoid the inconveniences of Pat’s flat, where visitors were entertained in the kitchen and you had to switch on a standard lamp if you wanted to read or sew. Mary hadn’t bothered with drains or that sort of thing. Those had been Tom’s province. She’d made sure she had double glazing and efficient central heating, a hi-spec kitchen separate from her lounge, and a bright light in the middle of every ceiling. She wasn’t getting any younger, she’d pointed out belligerently, and she was damned if she’d squint at a newspaper, or scrub an old range with a Brillo pad. She’d had enough of that in her youth when she and Tom started out.

  Getting no response to her comment on teaspoons, Mary slammed the dresser drawer and took a seat at the table. Pat brought the tea and looked round for her phone. ‘I suppose you want to see photos?’

  ‘Don’t you know I do! But, come here to me, how are you feeling?’

  ‘Jetlagged. Fine, though. It was a great holiday.’

  ‘And was the house nice?’

  ‘It was lovely. Mind you, we hardly saw Josie’s daughter, she works so hard. Erin’s a pet and she gets on great with Cassie, and Josie has a lovely little granny flat in the house. All on one level and, God knows, the poor woman needs it. I wouldn’t say she’d climbed a staircase for years.’

  ‘Isn’t that what I’m saying about Ger leaving you that stair to contend with?’

  ‘Ah, Mary Casey, you’re like a dog with a bone! There’s nothing wron
g with my legs, or my lungs either. Poor Josie’s got emphysema and she’s using a walker.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Well, she’s ten years older than we are, if not more. Didn’t she leave Lissbeg in 1950? And Ger and I got engaged in 1962.’

  Tom had proposed to Mary the same week, and Pat had gone off to Resolve that summer with a list of commissions for Mary’s trousseau almost as long as her own. Sweetheart necklines and Silhouette bras had featured, and, in Mary’s case, a spandex girdle to produce the right effect under her tussore-silk going-away outfit. It was Josie, Pat’s cousin, who’d fixed up the job in the factory and found Pat a place in the rooming house nearby. Meeting her again, Pat had been shocked by her condition. Since then she’d told herself that she ought to count her blessings. Her own health was grand and she’d no need to think about leaving her home. After a bottle of wine and a night of reminiscence, Josie had admitted she’d wept for the loss of her freedom, and feared becoming a burden to her daughter as she grew older.

  Mary bit into a Danish pastry. ‘And tell me this, was the Shamrock Club the way you remembered it?’

  ‘Ah, listen, girl, some things never change. But you should see how big it’s got! There’s a new wing with a kitchen and a dining hall, and they have what they call a library now, where they run book clubs.’

  Books weren’t really Mary’s thing. ‘So they’ve built a restaurant?’

  ‘Not at all, the dining hall’s just for members. But they had the kitchen redone lately and, Holy God, Mary, it must have cost a mint.’

  ‘Ah, they get great tax breaks in America. They probably wrote the whole thing off as charity.’

  ‘Well, you could be right because there was a plaque up saying the Canny twins had donated it.’

  Mary’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are they Moss Canny’s sons?’

  The merest flicker of a repressive glance showed Pat wasn’t going to be drawn into gossip, even if the story was more than fifty years old. Moss Canny had left Finfarran in the mid-1960s under a dark and unspecified cloud. Something about a property deal that went wrong. The word was that his family had clubbed together to get rid of him, possibly before the guards came knocking on the door. In America he’d become a solid citizen, and though he’d come back once or twice over the years, looking prosperous, he’d never stayed long. No one of Pat and Mary’s generation in Finfarran was likely to forget his story, though, and, since factual details were lacking, it had been embroidered over the years.