The Transatlantic Book Club

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  ‘I wouldn’t doubt them.’

  He handed her phone back to her and, with nothing left to be said, Cassie stood up. Frankie did, too, and his heavy arm swung around her shoulders. As he walked her to the door she could feel his fingers through her sweatshirt, and it struck her that he was twice the size of Ger. Fran had remained seated in the conservatory, her beaded glass of vodka in her hand.

  Cassie drove home in darkness, pulling up now and then to check the ghostly white finger posts that glimmered in the maze of country roads. When she reached the motorway she increased her speed till she came to the turn that took her back to Lissbeg. It was raining, so the streets were almost empty, but light shone from uncurtained windows, and in Broad Street music was playing in the pubs. Driving round to the rear of the shop, she left the car in the shed Ger had used as a garage, and crossed the cobbled yard to let herself in the back door, which opened onto a narrow passage. The blinds were down in the shop and, having turned the light off in the passage, she groped her way past the counter to the door at the foot of the stairs. Treading quietly, Cassie went up, thinking that, to be fair to Mary Casey, the steps were steep and the sharp turn was awkward. There was a brave sliver of moon shining through the landing window, though; and, when she switched off the light at the top of the stairs and went into the warm kitchen, the old-fashioned lamp and the easy chairs, the seascape on the wall and the worn, scrubbed table seemed to be welcoming her home.

  Chapter Nine

  The sun shone brilliantly for Cassie’s first mobile-library run. The following day, on her first shift at the salon, she described it to Margot. ‘A girl from the County Library in Carrick came along to show me the ropes. That’s where the van’s based.’

  ‘Where do you take it?’

  ‘North side of the peninsula on Wednesdays. I love all the winding roads to the north, and the high cliffs beyond the forest. Don’t get me wrong, the other side’s cool as well. I just like the contrast.’ She explained that on Fridays, when she took the southern route, her last stop of the day would be Ballyfin. ‘That one’s all winding roads as well, but on both days, once I’ve finished work, I shoot down the motorway, leave the van in Carrick, and pick up my car.’

  They were standing in the staff room, having met each other coming up in the lift. Cassie peered in the mirror at her fringe. ‘Well, it’s not actually my car. It was Ger’s. Pat gave up driving ages ago. I’d hoped she’d want to take it up again, now she’s on her own, but I don’t know.’

  ‘She’s a bit old for that, surely? If she hasn’t driven for years.’

  ‘She’s a very competent little lady under that sweet exterior. And getting out of the house would do her good. I’m trying to convince her to join the library’s book club. She needs to get back in the swing of things.’

  ‘Maybe what she needs is a bit of time.’

  ‘Or a bit of encouragement. Like, she slotted right back into life over in Resolve. It was ages since she’d been there, but she remembered everything. The layout of all the streets and the numbers of buses. The whole thing.’

  ‘It must have changed since her time, though?’

  ‘Sure. Erin says it’s probably doubled in size. Even the Shamrock Club’s moved on a bit. Though apparently not that much!’

  They went through to the salon, where Margot checked the appointments. ‘The thing about a hotel salon is that guests expect us to be like room service. So we get more walk-ins than bookings. But there are some things you can anticipate. Obviously, if there’s a wedding on, we know there’ll be lots of updos. And hen parties often go for the whole hog – colour, perms, you name it. Then they’re back next morning, hyperventilating, expecting you to put everything in reverse. If that happens, leave them to me. I’ll put manners on them.’ Margot scrolled down the screen. ‘Otherwise, it’s mostly wash-and-blow-dries and the occasional trim. Oh, and guys wanting cuts, but they never book.’

  ‘And it’s all guests?’

  ‘Yeah. Even though there’s times when we’re practically sitting watching tumbleweed. I think it’s crazy, especially in winter, because people from town would come in. But the manager’s adamant. We’ve got to be “exclusive”.’

  Having dismissed the manager with air quotes, Margot suggested coffee. ‘I have a lady at ten, so you’ll be doing walk-ins. Sharon, the receptionist, should be here in a minute. She covers the beauty parlour as well as the salon, and her kid sister Kate is our junior. Keep the kid working – she tends to slope off.’ Turning away from the computer screen, Margot grinned at Cassie. ‘Let’s have our coffee on the terrace. We might as well catch what sun we can, given the month that’s in it, and I’ll nip back in when I hear the lift.’

  The terrace wrapped round two sides of the hotel’s top floor and the view was spectacular. Leaning on the rail with her coffee, Cassie craned her neck to look at the mountains towering high above the little port. Beyond them were the roads she’d driven yesterday in the van, then the sparsely inhabited farmland between the ocean and Finfarran’s ancient stretch of deciduous woodland, which was fringed with conifers tall as church spires. The mobile library had specific stopping places, not all of which had made immediate sense to Cassie. But she’d soon realised that a church had an adjacent hall, which hosted a day-care centre, and a guest house, which had once been a forge, owned a forecourt that accommodated the van.

  Some of the villages she’d passed through had had few houses and no shop or pub. One, close to the end of her route, had a name that had caught her eye. She asked Margot about it. ‘Do you know a place on the far side of the mountain called Mullafrack?’

  ‘Well, yeah, but there’s nothing there.’

  ‘I know, but there must have been once.’

  Margot shrugged. ‘It’s awful land that side of the mountain. There might have been people farming it way back. Not now.’

  Mullafrack was where Jack Shanahan’s people came from. He’d told her the name but she’d forgotten it till she saw the sign by the road.

  Margot looked at her sharply. ‘How come you’re looking all wistful? Why did you want to know?’

  ‘No reason.’

  Burying her nose in her coffee cup, Cassie remembered the night of the farewell party. She and Jack had been sitting on the kitchen counter, taking selfies and drinking pints of Guinness. The evening was in full swing. The tables in the dining room had been pushed against the walls, Rambling Paddy had segued from ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’ to ‘Finfarran’s Forest’, and most people were dancing and singing along. Through the door, Cassie could see Pat sitting chatting to Josie. As she’d watched, she’d felt a thump on her back as the club’s cat leaped from a shelf and snaked down from her shoulder onto her lap. The shock made her lurch and almost spill her Guinness.

  Jack had laughed and taken the glass from her hand. ‘Whoa! That’s a proper pint, don’t waste it!’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I’m told no one outside Finfarran can pull a proper pint.’

  ‘Hm, pretty specific. Finfarran, not just Ireland?’

  ‘That’s what I’m told.’

  He lifted the white cat from her lap. ‘This guy is not allowed in the kitchen.’

  Cassie scratched the cat’s head. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Pangur. He’s supposed to be sixteen or something. King of the club. Descended from a cat who came here from Finfarran.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘In the pocket of my great-great-grandfather’s old frieze coat.’

  ‘You’re making it up!’

  ‘That’s the story. I’ve never believed it myself.’

  The cat made another graceful leap, this time to the floor and, handing Cassie his glass, Jack bent to pick him up. ‘Pangur always slept under the range when it was here in the kitchen. But since they remodelled he’s banned, aren’t you, big guy?’

  When he’d turned round with the cat in his arms Cassie’s heart had unaccountably lurched. At the time she’d told herself – with some truth – that
she was tipsy. Now she frowned. ‘Wistful’ was a dumb word but, all the same, Margot was perfectly right. Ever since she’d left Resolve she’d found herself thinking of Jack. Constantly. Telling herself he wasn’t her type made no difference. And what made matters worse was the fact that he hadn’t seemed all that taken with her. He was friendly but not particularly attentive, and Cassie was used to making more of an impact on guys.

  Carrying the cat, he’d gone into the yard and she’d followed, sobering up when the night air hit her face. She’d expected to find no more than a space for trash cans but, beyond the paving outside the kitchen, steps led up to a lawn surrounded by flower beds. There was a stunted apple tree in the far corner and Jack set Pangur on a bench beneath it. The cat shook himself violently and Jack grinned at Cassie. ‘He’s so mad now the kitchen is out of bounds.’

  Cassie had put the drinks on the bench and tried to encourage the cat to allow her to pet him but, avoiding her hand, he’d leaped onto the grass and stalked off. Giving up, she’d sat by Jack and together they’d looked up at the night sky. And nothing at all had happened. He’d made some remarks about constellations and planets. She’d asked where his family had lived in Finfarran, which was when he’d told her they’d farmed in Mullafrack. ‘I haven’t a clue where that is, except it’s somewhere near Ballyfin.’

  It appeared that Ballyfin was the Shamrock Club’s universal landmark. There must have been six editions of A Long Way to LA in the club’s library, and several souvenir publications chronicling the shooting of the film. Signed posters of the book cover hung in the bar, and memorabilia from the shoot were displayed in a glass-topped case. Finishing his beer, Jack had held his glass between his knees. Then he’d stretched his arms above his head, reminding Cassie of the cat’s indolent grace. She’d asked him why his people had left Finfarran.

  ‘That I do know. Poverty. Hunger. They couldn’t pay the rent, so the landlord threw them out.’

  ‘But how could they afford to come over here?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t a complete villain. There was some organised scheme to clear the land back in the late nineteenth century, and tenant farmers were given the price of their passage to the States. Could be they were actually given tickets, I don’t know. Anyway, they had no choice, so they went. How about your folks?’

  ‘Nothing so dramatic. My dad and his brother were raised in Lissbeg and went off to be computer nerds as soon as they left college. Like your dad is, I guess.’

  ‘How come they went to Canada, not here?’

  ‘My granddad knew some guy in Toronto, I think. I never asked.’

  ‘Well, I gather my lot weren’t exactly on coffin ships. But they had it hard.’

  The cat had prowled back to them and Jack captured it. ‘I’ll take him indoors and shut him in the library. He still sleeps under the range.’

  ‘I thought cats were put out at night, not shut in.’

  ‘There’s two schools of thought on that one. If you’ve got a good mouser, you might want to keep him indoors.’

  ‘And he’s a mouser?’

  ‘I doubt if he’d bother – he’s far too well fed.’

  It was a pointless, inconsequential conversation, which had obscurely annoyed Cassie, though afterwards she’d taken herself to task. What more had she expected – some sort of starlit tryst? She wasn’t looking for romance and, if she were, Jack Shanahan was the last guy she’d choose. There was a sedentary, comfortable quality about him that marked him out as a bore. Apparently, he’d never even left the town he’d grown up in. How could somebody his age have so little get-up-and-go? Now, she gave herself another mental reprimand. If he was such a bore, she’d better stop thinking about him.

  There was a ping from the salon’s reception area, and Margot hustled Cassie back inside. But the figures who emerged from the lift were Sharon, the receptionist, and her kid sister. Margot made the introductions and Cassie went through to the salon to check her chair and set out her gear. Pretty soon she was dealing with a woman who’d decided on a whim that she wanted a fringe.

  ‘Nothing as edgy as yours, just something that makes me look like this.’

  With a sinking heart Cassie took the proffered magazine and looked at a shot of Cher in a jet-black Cleopatra headdress. The woman, who had wispy fair hair and a square jaw, looked expectant. Cassie summoned professional tact, knowing as she did so that it would be wasted. ‘Is it for a special occasion? Because the thing is, the hair in the shot is a wig. So maybe you could consider that as an option?’

  The woman shook her wispy head. ‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. I’d like to go for a cut.’

  ‘A cut and colour?’

  ‘Well, colour might be a step too far.’

  ‘Okay, but that does mean you won’t look like the photo.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, dear, don’t be so modest.’ Thrusting the magazine into her bag, the woman sat down and beamed at Cassie in the mirror. ‘This is my treat to me, and I know you’ll work wonders! I can’t wait to see my gorgeous new look!’

  From the other side of the salon, Margot caught Cassie’s eye and made a poker face. Concealing a grin, Cassie summoned Kate to wash the woman’s hair. Something told her that her first day in the salon was going to be way more stressful than driving the library van.

  Chapter Ten

  Cassie and Erin had progressed from Snapchat to Skype.

  ‘What’s the library like?’

  ‘It’s good. Taking the van around is pretty cool. So’s Hanna.’

  Sitting cross-legged on her bed in PJs, Cassie explained that today she’d driven the southern route unaccompanied and, except for occasional glitches, it had been wonderful. At one point, when she’d stopped at a little two-room school, she hadn’t been able to find a book that had been on order. After a frantic search, during which she’d knocked over the returns box, a small boy had pointed out the book, dead centre on a shelf at eye level. Cassie couldn’t imagine how she’d missed it. ‘I guess the teacher unnerved me. She had aggressive eyebrows.’

  Erin giggled. ‘But you don’t just stop at schools?’

  ‘Nope. Mainly it’s parking lots. Way out in the country. It’s so gorgeous. There was misty, drizzly rain today as I drove down to a village on the ocean, and then the sun came out and, right below me, this huge rainbow arched across the bay. Like I was in a movie. Some of the roads are awful, though. They’re so narrow and you’re steering between potholes. But it’s so quiet. You can travel for miles and not see a single soul.’

  ‘Spooky.’

  ‘No, it’s beautiful. Hanna says the hedgerows are full of wildflowers in summer. Right now they’re kind of stark, a bit Wuthering Heights, but if you look closely there’s a haze of pale green on all the bushes. Little leaf buds just beginning to appear. And the fields are full of lambs with squeaky high-pitched voices. It’s really cute.’

  ‘You can see and hear all that when you’re driving?’

  ‘No, but I do stop to eat.’

  The sun had been out today when she’d taken her lunch break sitting on the step of the van by a ruined church. It was a tiny, roofless building, which, according to a nearby notice board, was nearly a thousand years old. Ferns were sprouting in the stonework round the entrance and the remains of a bird’s nest were perched above the door. Sticks and tufts of dry moss had fallen from the forsaken nest to the threshold. Behind the building was a little graveyard where grey headstones stood at drunken angles among rough grass.

  Erin’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, my God! That really is spooky.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. It was cool. Like I was the only person left in the world.’ Cassie rolled onto her stomach and adjusted her laptop against the piled-up pillows. ‘Actually, no, it was better than that. Like being a Pack Horse Library woman back in the nineteen thirties.’

  ‘Being what?’

  ‘It was a thing. Part of the New Deal.’

  ‘President Roosevelt?’

  ‘Yeah. Probably. I’ve only seen ph
otographs. You’ll get it online if you google it. I think they went into the Kentucky Mountains. On horseback. Women with big saddlebags full of books. I guess it happened in other places, too, not just Kentucky. They forded creeks and rode through storms with their feet frozen in the stirrups. And they wore long slickers and really cool nineteen-thirties hats.’

  ‘Awesome.’

  ‘It felt just like that. Me against the wilderness.’

  Twenty minutes later she’d been parked beside a post office with a sign that read ‘Wi-Fi Available’ but, as she’d eaten her lunchtime sandwich, she had felt as if the church was some abandoned frontier dwelling and the graveyard full of the bones of pioneers.

  Erin giggled again. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Okay, that’s a bit extreme. But, you know, people here are so grateful for the mobile-library service. I suppose it provides a social event as well as books and stuff.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, a gathering place. Especially for seniors. I see them hanging out after they’ve done the library thing. They combine it with a trip to pick up their pension or go for a coffee. Sometimes they just sit on a wall and chat. Moms with toddlers too. I guess it gets them out of the house.’

  ‘Beats going to the gym.’

  ‘Especially if you’re ancient. I don’t know, though – Hanna says the library did Read and Stretch sessions last year.’

  ‘How the hell did that work?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. Touch your toes at the end of every chapter? She said the seniors piled in.’

  ‘If it was my gran, it’d have to be something way less energetic.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s the point, isn’t it? According to Hanna, librarians keep an ear to the ground and respond to what’s required. Someone comes in and suggests something and, if it makes sense and there’s enough interest, she goes with the flow.’

  Erin asked if Pat had liked the photos of the party.

  ‘She loved them. I’m going to have one of her and Josie printed and put in a frame.’