The Month of Borrowed Dreams

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  ‘Were you over long?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘I was at school there. Boarding school. It was a hellish building, freezing cold in winter.’

  The Divil appeared down by the river and, seeing that they’d stopped working, bounded up. Fury scratched him between the ears and the little dog promptly curled up and closed his eyes. ‘He’s a divil for company.’

  ‘That’s pack instinct, isn’t it? Generations of ancestors sleeping in a hairy heap at the back of a cave.’

  ‘I’d say none of us was meant to live alone.’ Fury cocked an eye at him. ‘You ever been married?’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘Lucky man.’

  ‘You weren’t?’

  ‘Nah. Well, I never settled. It’s a hard life on the sites. You keep moving. And back then, I can tell you, you weren’t welcome. They needed you for the dirty jobs but they treated you like shit. It’s always the same story when you’re an emigrant. So you’re always making plans to be going home. Then you do come home and it’s nothing like the place you had in your head.’

  Brian took a pull on his cigarette. ‘Did you ever read Brooklyn?’

  ‘I’m illiterate, remember?’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Fury, could you drop that for once?’

  ‘No, I didn’t read Brooklyn. What’s it about?’

  ‘There’s a film too.’

  ‘I don’t go to cinemas. They won’t let The Divil in.’

  ‘It’s about being caught between two countries and not knowing which to choose. No, that’s wrong. It’s about forgetting your life in the other place when you’re not actually in it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that can happen.’

  Brian flicked limy soil off his forefinger with his thumbnail. Then he tipped his head back and watched the swallow circling in the air. ‘Hanna showed Brooklyn at her film club.’

  ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘God, no, I don’t join things. I went and bought the book.’

  Fury scratched the sleeping Divil, who curled himself into a tighter knot. ‘I’ll be letting the painters go at the end of the week.’

  The tin of cobalt blue hung in the air. Determined to ignore it, Brian asked about Fury’s next job.

  ‘Ah, I pick and choose these days. Something will come up.’

  ‘Hanna said you were round to do her roof tile.’ He hadn’t intended to mention Hanna again and, now he’d done so, found himself starting to gabble. ‘You did a great job for her there on Maggie’s place. I remember the panic she got herself into over the planning permission.’

  Fury pinched his fag out. ‘Why don’t you just piss or get off the pot?’ Uncoiling his long length, he got up and stood over Brian, his torn waxed jacket flapping in a gust of wind. ‘You’re dying to put that ring on her finger, so what’s holding you back?’

  ‘Oh, Jesus! Stuff. Complications. She had a whole life before she met me. So had I.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, man, so has everyone. I was sixteen when I went to London, and I left a girl behind me. A lifetime later I left someone else to come back.’

  ‘I need to talk to her.’

  Fury bent down and picked up the hammer. ‘Well, that’s up to you, of course. I’ve never gone in for too much talking myself.’

  ‘That’s the point, isn’t it? Nor have I. Mostly it just makes things more complicated.’

  ‘You’ve built her a house, though.’

  ‘All right, I admit it. Yes, I have.’

  ‘So what’s your problem?’

  Brian stood up and stubbed his cigarette out on a stone. ‘You can’t ask a woman to marry you if there’s stuff you haven’t said.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Hanna inspected her neck in a mirror. It was nearly two years since she’d seen Malcolm – at a fraught family gathering where they’d all been madly convivial – and she’d woken this morning with a sinking feeling that she wasn’t wearing well.

  This, of course, was irrational. She looked a damn sight better now than she had in the stressful years immediately after she’d left him. Furthermore, Malcolm’s opinion of her appearance was unimportant. Irrelevant. Totally beside the point. He hadn’t come over to see her, he was visiting Jazz and Louisa. He’d be focused on his mum and daughter, not his ex-wife.

  It was far too warm for a polo neck, but perhaps a jaunty scarf? Rooting through a drawer, she found a silk square and spent several minutes attempting to knot it securely. But each time she turned away and glanced back at her reflection the Audrey Hepburn effect had gone and she saw an anxious middle-aged cowboy wearing a badly tied neckerchief. Eventually she laughed at herself and tossed the scarf onto the bed. Her neck wasn’t all that bad, and how could it matter what Malcolm thought, when Brian said that her beauty was in the bone?

  Anyway, she had no reason to expect to see Malcolm today. Jazz had phoned the previous night with his schedule. He was flying into Cork this morning, and hiring a car to drive on to Finfarran. He’d booked himself into The Royal Vic in Carrick, but hadn’t divulged how long he was planning to stay.

  Pulling on her sweater and looking for her handbag, Hanna told herself grimly that, for someone who claimed to be so cool about Malcolm, Jazz needed a hell of a lot of attention when he was around. She’d announced again on the phone that he’d better not take her for granted. ‘He always thinks I’ll be free to entertain him. Well, I’m not, Mum. You know that.’

  ‘I do. So does he, love. He knows you’ve got a job.’

  ‘And I hope he’s not going to start making demands on you.’

  ‘He can try, but that doesn’t mean I’ll give in to them. I’ve got my own work, you know.’

  ‘Yes, and so has Louisa.’

  ‘Jazz, you’ve told me yourself, repeatedly, that Louisa’s got the measure of him. Chill out.’

  ‘Oh, God, Mum, what a ghastly expression!’

  Hanna had laughed, but she’d ended the call with the thought that none of this was going to be easy. Louisa’s suspicion that Malcolm was bored was probably spot-on, and no one knew better than Hanna herself what that meant. If they’d still been married she’d have strongly opposed his taking early retirement, given the effect it was likely to have on his ego. Malcolm needed a spotlight. He’d be lost without the excitement of the courtroom, where his charm and manipulative intelligence had made him such a star.

  Pushing her packed lunch into her bag, and taking a last look at herself in the mirror, Hanna remembered Louisa’s complaint after taking that trip to London. Malcolm had questioned his mother’s ability to run Edge of the World Essentials, and wouldn’t accept that her business was none of his concern. Hanna sighed. If he’d come to Finfarran intending to meddle, Louisa wouldn’t be happy. And Jazz, in her present volatile state, was likely to go ballistic. She seemed to be coping well with the difficult job of being Eileen’s bridesmaid, but Hanna knew it was adding to her stress.

  Today was one of Conor’s mobile days and, usually, there’d be nothing special happening in the library. Though the clubs and events were always well attended, significant feedback in the box on her desk had alerted Hanna to the need for balance. Several brisk notes had pointed out there was a distinction to be made between a public library and a jolly community centre, and that the writers would appreciate a chance to browse in silence, or avail themselves in peace of a trained librarian’s knowledge and advice. So, aware of often being distracted by the demands of what else was going on, she tried to keep at least one morning purely for book borrowing, which appealed to a demographic that seldom came in on other days.

  Today, however, she’d had to bend her rule. The County Arts Officer had declared it Children’s Culture Day and a story session was scheduled for twelve noon. Volunteers had been working on crêpe-paper decorations, and a local children’s author had been booked to give a reading. The author, a pleasant man whom Hanna had met socially, was important enough to warrant a page in the Finfarran Inquirer, so a reporter who dou
bled as a photographer was due to come along.

  Even though there was nothing to do but set out the kids’ chairs and hang the streamers, Hanna knew that at least one volunteer would be waiting for her to open up. Sure enough, as she entered the courtyard from Broad Street, Darina Kelly was standing on the doorstep, trying to control two unruly children. She was wearing ripped jeans and a tie-dye T-shirt, and her hennaed cornrows suggested Bo Derek on a bad day. ‘Oh, there you are. Thank goodness! These two are being such twerps! I’ve told them they have to behave as it’s a special day for kids – haven’t I, monsters? But their dad fed them a ton of sugar at breakfast and now they’re like a couple of bees in a bottle!’

  Resigning herself to a difficult morning, Hanna unlocked the outer door and turned off the alarm. As she entered the lobby, the gift shop staff came clattering in behind her, and two of the psalter exhibition guides appeared at the foot of the steps. Darina bustled past her into the library. ‘It’s so quiet and tranquil here in the mornings! Such a joy after the hell at home! You must love your job, Hanna, don’t you? I mean, what a gift to live one’s life surrounded by all these books!’ She dropped her drawstring bag on the floor, where her little girl pounced on it.

  ‘Oh, hell! Gobnit, stop, leave Mummy’s bag alone . . .’ The child pulled an iPhone from the depths of the bag and crawled under Hanna’s desk. Wedging herself defiantly into a corner, she glared out through a fringe of blonde hair plaited with beads. Her little brother’s face turned scarlet. Darina took him by the arm. ‘Setanta! Stop it, d’you hear? I mean, don’t start!’ She bent forward and the heavy pendant she was wearing struck him on the head. The boy, who was only a toddler, dissolved into tears. Dropping his arm and casting her eyes to Heaven, Darina attempted to disentangle the pendant from her scarf, which, Hanna reckoned, must be at least four feet long. Definitely not the Hepburn look, more Dr Who.

  Setanta was now screaming like a fire siren. Basely ignoring Darina’s line about the sugar, Hanna took him by the hand and suggested a biscuit. Immediately Gobnit emerged from under the desk. ‘Me too. He can’t unless I do. Gimme one.’

  Darina threw up her hands. ‘Oh, fine, gorge yourselves, see if I care! Say “thank you” to Miss Casey, though. Be nice. D’you hear me, Gobnit? Nice.’ She delved into the bag for her crêpe-paper streamers, leaving Hanna to pilot the kids to the kitchenette.

  Once there, Hanna closed the door and looked down at them sternly. ‘One each, and you’re going to sit down to eat them. Is that clear?’

  Both children smiled at her angelically, and Gobnit pointed to the row of hooks on the wall. ‘Do you want us to put on coveralls?’

  Hanna took down two children’s plastic aprons, kept for the library’s Kiddie Crafts group. ‘Yes. And I also want you to be quiet. Can you do that?’

  ‘Of course.’ Gobnit held up the iPhone. ‘We’ll turn the volume right down and play Dora the Explorer.’

  Back in the library, Hanna settled them in a secluded corner. There were sure to be ructions when Darina found them with the iPhone, but at least she’d bought herself breathing space to get set up for the day.

  By eleven thirty Darina had been joined by the three other mums who’d organised the event. In the interim Hanna had persuaded her to take the kids to play in the nuns’ garden. Before they left, she’d managed to whip away the iPhone and return it to the bag unnoticed by Darina. Gobnit’s justifiable outrage had been taken by her mother for characteristic naughtiness, and the reproach in little Setanta’s eyes had left Hanna smitten by remorse. Still, she’d got them out of the way for a couple of hours, which had allowed her to help several elderly readers to find books.

  She’d also dealt with a call from Mary Casey, who knew perfectly well that she shouldn’t have phoned. ‘Don’t go putting this down on me now. I’m only ringing because you ignore my texts.’

  ‘Mam, I ignore your texts for the same reason I don’t take personal phone calls. I’m at work.’

  ‘And when is your poor mother supposed to talk to you?’

  ‘You can call me whenever you like, you know that. Just not when I’m working.’

  ‘God above, do you know what it is, you’re worse than our Jazz!’

  ‘You haven’t been ringing Jazz at work, have you?’

  ‘How well you don’t ask if I’m all right!’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘I am, of course. Never better.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘I want to know what you’re going to say to your pup of an ex-husband!’

  ‘Mam . . .’

  ‘Don’t you Mam me, Hanna-Mariah Casey. This is crunch time. I’m telling you now, I won’t sit down in that man’s company unless I know that you’ve thrashed this money thing out.’

  ‘Well, in that case you’re going to be doing an awful lot of standing. Because there’s nothing to be discussed.’

  ‘He owes you—’

  ‘Mother! Stop. Right now. I’m going to put the phone down. Don’t ring me back on this line. And I’m warning you, don’t go winding Jazz up. I mean it. Back off.’

  The call had upset her so much that she’d nearly rung Brian. But he, too, would be working, so that wouldn’t be fair. Anyway, it really wasn’t okay to be making personal phone calls so, to calm herself down, she’d raided the library biscuit tin instead.

  Three KitKats later, she’d returned to her desk and motored through a huge list of emails. But now, as the author arrived, along with the reporter, she felt that, like Darina’s kids, she’d overdosed on sugar and, having had the initial rush, was suffering from its effect. All around her, children were squealing and quarrelling over chairs. Irritated, Hanna cursed herself for having agreed to host the story session. This was supposed to be a calm, composed day in the library, when her time was spent simply dealing with books. No crêpe paper. No reporters. No affable woman from the County Arts Office, turning up with her hair done, eager to be featured in a photo.

  But that was churlish. The author was charming, the kids were excited, and this was a special day. Pulling herself together, Hanna went and shook hands with the arrivals. Darina appeared beside her with Setanta and Gobnit in tow. It was evident that she was longing to be introduced to the author and to tell him how much Gobnit adored all his books.

  ‘She really is a remarkable little reader, aren’t you, Pumpkin? And a critic too! She wasn’t at all happy about what Brona Bear did in Brona’s Burp! We thought she was very greedy and we tore that page out!’

  Hanna’s eyes met the author’s registering apology, though she could see that he’d weathered worse mothers in his time. Gobnit crossed her eyes at him and announced that Brona Bear was Very Boring. ‘I like Dora the Explorer because I can get her in hi-res.’

  Darina retired discomfited and Hanna steered the author – who was shaking with repressed laughter – to his seat. Then she returned to her desk and watched the magic of a really talented storyteller addressing a group of kids. They sat in a circle around him, their eyes wide and, in many cases, their thumbs firmly in their mouths. Listening to the low voice, and observing the fluid movements of the author’s supple hands, Hanna could see each child falling under his spell.

  Setanta was lying on his stomach on the floor with his elbows planted on the author’s feet. Even Gobnit, who’d hung around by the shelving, was edging towards the group. Observing the pointed face under the ridiculous beaded fringe, Hanna was stabbed by a memory of Jazz as a little girl.

  As a stroppy teenager pained by the marriage breakup, Jazz had insisted that Malcolm in the midst of a case had always been distant and unavailable; and, fuelled by Mary Casey, that had become an accepted myth, which Hanna never challenged. But the whole truth had been far more nuanced than Mary or Jazz was prepared to admit.

  Now, as Gobnit slid into the author’s spellbound circle, Hanna recalled a May evening in London after a shopping trip to the West End. She’d let herself in at the front door and run down to the basement, wher
e she’d piled her bags on the scrubbed kitchen table. The conservatory door was open and the pear trees in the brick-walled garden were in leaf.

  Outside, Malcolm was sitting on the garden bench with Jazz. Their heads were bent in intense concentration, and Jazz’s eyes beneath her dark fringe were alight. She’d been the same age as Gobnit then, seven or eight. Standing in the doorway, Hanna had watched the two beloved faces, and strained to hear Malcolm’s murmuring voice. He was telling Jazz a story about a mouse who lived in a pear tree.

  Every detail of that scene was still etched in Hanna’s mind. The evening sun through the green leaves and the grey slabbed surface of the garden, where she’d planted big scarlet tubs of rosemary and mint. The Liberty print smock that Jazz had worn with a pair of Doc Martens, and the muscular curve of Malcolm’s arm around their daughter’s waist. He’d removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of the crisp, formal shirt he’d worn to work that morning. The jacket and a discreet silk tie were tossed on the garden bench and, as his quiet voice rose and fell, his handsome, hawklike face was full of delight. Leaning together in perfect trust, he and Jazz were like two absorbed children and, rather than disturb them, Hanna had crept away, leaving them to finish the story together.

  That sharp snapshot of the past was only one of many. You might say that Malcolm’s betrayal negated all such moments, but Hanna knew she could never pretend that they hadn’t happened at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  When Conor got home from the day’s mobile-library run he was worried. He’d texted Aideen several times and she still hadn’t replied. Having left the van in Carrick and started back home on his Vespa, he’d been tempted to take a right turn off the motorway and nip into Lissbeg. He couldn’t, though, because he’d promised Joe that he’d grease and oil the tractor, a job that needed doing before the following day.

  Eileen was coming to tea at the farm and Joe didn’t want her arriving while he was up to his elbows in muck. That’s what he’d said, anyway, though Conor had noticed that, ever since old Dawson had come up with the offer of a desk and a business card, Joe had taken to copping out of the dirtier jobs on the farm. He was all for swaggering round the mart, talking to fellows he’d soon be selling gear to, but you seldom saw him clearing a ditch with a shovel, or wrestling a bunch of sheep through a stinking bath of dip.