The Library at the Edge of the World

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  “‘As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee.’” She looked up at Fury. “It’s Psalm 42.”

  “To hell with that, it’s my forest! And, not only that, it’s made from my forest!”

  Hanna shook her head. Medieval paper was made from linen rags, not wood pulp, she said. “And, anyway, this isn’t paper, it’s parchment.”

  “Oh, have it your own way, woman, it’s made from Gunther’s goats!” Fury jabbed his finger at the page. “But I’m telling you that rock’s called Lackatobbar. I spent half my time as a lad climbing round on it.”

  He turned the page and bellowed in delight. “And that’s Finfarran Head.”

  The illustration, framed by jets of water with fluted tops like trumpets, showed a monk standing on a headland with a huge wave curling above him, full of grotesque sea monsters.

  Hanna remembered the verse. “‘Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.’”

  “Look . . .” Fury had turned to another Psalm. “Look at that! It’s Knockinver.”

  Hanna drew in her breath. There was the mountain range that she crossed each week on her drive to Ballyfin. The familiar peaks and passes appeared within the capital letter that began the text, while spears of silver and gold darted down the margin, shot from a rising sun and a crescent moon.

  “‘. . . the sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night,’” Charles spoke quietly from behind Hanna’s shoulder. “How come I never noticed that the images come from round here?”

  “Because you’re blind as well as thick, that’s why!” Fury shook his head in despair. “Holy God Almighty, I hope the poor abbot got a decent price for it. He was scraping the bottom of the barrel when he sold it to your bunch of savages.”

  Hanna was astonished by the American’s response. He simply laid the Psalter in its box and turned to examine the lectern.

  “I guess from now on I’ll have to keep my crosswords in a file.”

  With the beautifully restored lectern in his hand, he grinned at Hanna.

  “You can’t deny that the old so-and-so knows how to work with wood.”

  It was only then that Hanna realized that Fury had restored the lectern. It was so beautiful that she found herself gaping.

  Charles put the lectern on the desk. “So what’s the damage?”

  Fury looked at him, poker-faced. “Didn’t I say when I took it on that you couldn’t afford me?”

  “So break it to me gently. Do I have to mortgage the castle?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you.” Folding up the old newspaper in which he had wrapped the lectern, Fury shoved the pages into his pocket. “I’ll take the old sink in the washhouse out of the way for you, and you can pay me for the work on the lectern with that bit of a slate shelf.”

  Hanna only just managed to contain herself until she and Fury were back in his van. As they hurtled west along the peninsula with The Divil barking in the back, she announced that the deal was outrageous. She couldn’t possibly accept the sink and the slate on that basis. Fury’s work on the lectern was worth a fortune and he ought to be properly paid for it.

  Fury swung round and glared at her. “Don’t I know well what my work’s worth? I told the man when I took the job that he couldn’t afford my price. And I haven’t told you yet what I’m charging you for the sink.”

  Then, seeing Hanna’s flabbergasted face, he laughed at her. The sink and the slate would be down on the bill fair and square as kitchen fittings. Ordinary stuff that he might have picked up in the big HomeStore in Carrick. That was how he’d charge her for them and she could take it as she pleased.

  “If you want to tell yourself I’ve fiddled you, you’re welcome to call the guards on me. And if I’m giving you something worth ten times my price, isn’t that a matter for myself?”

  As for the matter of the lectern, he said tartly, he’d thank her to mind her own business. Charles Aukin and he understood each other, and there was nothing more to be said.

  49

  Sitting at her kitchen table Mary Casey poured a little martini for Pat Fitz and a can of Guinness for Ger. She and Pat had met on the bus on the way to do their weekly shopping in Carrick and sent Ger a text telling him to collect Pat at the bungalow around six. He’d be coming home that way from a meeting anyhow, so it’d be no trouble to him. They’d bought a plain Madeira because of Ger’s teeth; though the chances were that he wouldn’t eat it. Ger turned his nose up at half of what Pat slogged around the supermarket buying for him, and, if you asked Mary’s opinion, half his crankiness was down to Pat’s failure to manage him.

  Cutting a large slice of cake she slapped it in front of him, telling him to eat it up. When he picked it up and took a big bite out of it, Mary shot a triumphant look at Pat. If you didn’t put manners on him from the outset, it said, you’d get no good out of a man. But then, moments later, knocking back a swallow of Guinness, tight-fisted Ger Fitz announced he and Pat were off on a trip to Canada. He’d been working like a dog too long, he said. But now all his work was about to pay off handsomely so he was going to squire his wife across the Atlantic to visit the kids and the grandkids.

  Mary was outraged. For weeks she’d been tossing her head at Pat’s dream of going to Canada, and, in the end, Pat had quietly stopped showing her the gifts she was accumulating for the kids in Toronto. And as more weeks passed and Ger said nothing more about the promised trip, Mary’s scorn had become more vocal. Hadn’t Pat only been deluding herself, she’d demanded, and wouldn’t you think a woman of her age would have had more sense? Yet here was Pat, drinking Mary’s martini, utterly and entirely vindicated.

  Ger finished his cake with the air of a mega tycoon. He hadn’t got the tickets bought yet, he said, because the holiday depended on a business deal he was doing in Ballyfin. Mary pounced like a tiger. So the whole thing might be canceled if his Ballyfin business collapsed? But Ger shook his head. Not at all, he said, they’d be off now in a while, no doubt about it. The deal in Ballyfin was a sure thing.

  When Hanna came in from work, Pat and Ger had gone, dinner was in the oven, and Mary Casey was sitting in the kitchen indulging in a massive sulk. Hanna looked at her and sighed. Immediately, Mary rounded on her, eager for a row. Wasn’t it a fine thing, she said, to be greeted like that? Not so much as a smile or a bit of a chat, only a sour face and an old groan like you’d get from a pregnant cow. Knowing she had no choice, Hanna repressed a second sigh and sat down and asked what the matter was. Over the next ten minutes the facts were established, in a tedious sequence of alternate coaxing and flouncing. Eventually, and as usual, Hanna’s patience snapped.

  “Honestly, Mam, would you not feel pleased for Pat? Sure, she hasn’t seen her kids for ages.”

  Mary bridled. Pat was her dearest friend. Of course she was pleased for her. She was delighted.

  “Well, if you’re pleased for her, what’s the problem? And while she’s in Canada you could get out and about a bit more yourself. The fact of the matter is, Mam, that you’re far too dependent on Pat’s company.”

  With massive dignity, Mary rose from the armchair. “I have no need to get out and about. Or to listen to lectures from you. God be with your poor father who would have protected me from this class of insult and outrage.” She surged toward the door, turning majestically on the threshold to deliver her coup de grâce. “And I’m dependent on no one, I’ll have you know. I’m perfectly happy by myself!”

  As the kitchen door slammed violently, Hanna went to pour herself a drink. The trouble was that, having been accustomed to being treated like a princess by her husband, Mary had a horror of being one of a group. Her sense of her own dignity was far too developed for the seniors’ cheerful gatherings in Knockmore; and even the thought of being labeled a senior repelled her. Hanna sighed again. Many of the regulars at the Knockmore Day Care Centre had sent cuttings to Sister Michael, and, as the work in the nuns’ garde
n had continued, they’d recently come up with the idea of having an outing to Lissbeg. Maurice, the retired baker, who remembered Tom Casey from his school days, had suggested his wife should call Mary up and see if she’d come and join them. Someone could be found to give her a lift from Crossarra to Lissbeg, which was only down the road. And she might enjoy the day out. But Hanna had come home that day to find Mary in a paroxysm of annoyance.

  “Two separate calls I’ve had, saying there’s great craic in the nuns’ garden and why wouldn’t I come along.”

  “Well, why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because I’m not in my dotage yet, girl, to be going on a pensioners’ jaunt! And, anyway, I’d be bored stiff by the lot of them.”

  Yet the group from Knockmore had a whale of a time in Lissbeg. They’d organized lifts from their neighbors and arrived with more cuttings for the garden, rugs over their arms, garden tools, and a picnic. It was a lovely sunny day, and while some of them joined the volunteers who were digging and planting, others had sat chatting and drinking coffee from HabberDashery. Hanna had been at her desk in the library when Jean, Maurice the baker’s wife, had looked in to ask if Mary was coming.

  “She’d be very welcome, you know, Miss Casey. That’s why I gave her a ring.”

  Hanna had produced the polite fiction that Mary was busy. But it was evident that Jean was feeling far too cheerful to be more than fleetingly concerned. Glancing over her shoulder to check that they were alone, she sidled over to the desk confidentially and beamed at Hanna. Bríd, she said, had asked Maurice if he’d provide HabberDashery with cakes. Special occasion ones, for birthdays and maybe weddings. Someone had wanted to order one and it wasn’t Bríd’s thing.

  “He’d only be giving it a try to begin with. To see if they’d suit. But, God, Miss Casey isn’t it a great idea? Wouldn’t it take poor Maurice out of himself?”

  And Maurice wasn’t the only one who’d been networking. Gunther and Susan had offered to supply goat cheeses to HabberDashery at half the price of the imported ones they’d been selling. Bríd reckoned they were just as good and, in fact, better because they were locally made. The cheeses came wrapped in waxed paper with a picture of The Old Forge on the front and Susan was going to supply leaflets about The Old Forge Guesthouse for Bríd to put on display. As she watched Jean scuttle back to the garden, Hanna shook her head in amazement. Every day more people were beginning to set up new contacts. Everything was going perfectly according to Sister Michael’s plan.

  The seniors’ picnic, supplemented by more tea and coffee from HabberDashery, had continued well into the afternoon, by which time they were talking about doing it again. Maybe they could organize a computer course in the library and make it a regular thing? Now, as she drank wine crossly in Mary Casey’s kitchen, it occurred to Hanna that a relaxed computer course for beginners was exactly what her mother needed. Yet it was precisely the sort of activity that Mary was determined to despise. Groaning inwardly, Hanna kicked the table. It hadn’t escaped her that, despite the difference in their motivations, Mary’s attitude toward engagement with the community was remarkably similar to her own.

  Having flounced out of the kitchen, Mary didn’t come back. When Hanna knocked on her door later, she had gone to bed. Hanna opened the door a crack but the room was in darkness. Mary’s voice sounded suspiciously as if she might have been crying, so after a minute Hanna decided it was best to let things lie. It had been a long day and neither she nor Mary was up to another row.

  50

  A group of Sister Michael’s volunteers had taken to working in the library. Hanna was getting used to them. Today, toward closing time, Susan’s husband, Gunther, brought their small daughter, Holly, in from the garden to choose a book to take home. The digging was going great guns, he told Hanna, and Aideen and Bríd had come all the way around the block from HabberDashery with mugs of coffee for the workers. Sister Michael had told Gunther there were a few fold-up tables and chairs in the old convent kitchen and he’d taken them out and set them up in the garden so that people would have somewhere to sit down.

  “It’s a real meitheal, Miss Casey. Isn’t that what you call it?”

  Susan had obviously taught Gunther the Irish word for a group of neighbors coming together to help with a job of work. Hanna could remember Tom Casey talking about twenty or thirty men gathering on the peninsula’s farms in the old days and the whole group working its way around the neighborhood until every household’s harvest was saved. Now Holly informed her solemnly that she wanted to borrow a book on gardens. A big, huge one so she could help her daddy plant the herbs. As Gunther took Holly to find a book, and Susan and the others at the table began to pack away their notes, Hanna switched off the computers and tidied her desk. Brian Morton had been so horrified by the faux pas he’d made about Mary Casey’s bungalow that, to prove she wasn’t offended, she’d offered to show him the way to the beach where he’d find seals.

  As she locked the door her brain was still fizzing with the thought of The Carrick Psalter. The other day, as they chatted over their lunchtime sandwiches, she’d realized that she’d love to describe it to Brian. But this was yet another thing she couldn’t talk about. When she and Fury had left the castle, Charles Aukin had shaken her hand.

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention what I showed you up in the book room.”

  “Of course.”

  “Not that I’m suggesting you would.”

  “Of course not. I mean, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Feel free to mention your reaction to the rest of my books, though. Best insurance against burglary I could get.”

  As Hanna blushed, he had winked and waved them off.

  Afterward she had told Fury that the man must be raving mad.

  “The Psalter’s worth a fortune. I could have been anyone. Why should he think he could trust me?”

  “Name of God, woman, why wouldn’t he? Didn’t he know you were a friend of mine?”

  The turnoff to the beach was about half a mile beyond the bungalow and the road was so narrow that it appeared to be a lane. Driving ahead of Brian, Hanna led him to the place where the metaled surface petered out and their tires churned in sand. Then she climbed out of her car and leaned in his window.

  “It’s a bit farther on and then you have to get down the cliff.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, I’m sure you didn’t want to come traipsing down here after work.”

  “No, it’s fine. I like it here. I used to come and watch the seals when I was a child.”

  They walked through marram grass and thistles till they came to the edge of the cliff. Hanna turned left and led Brian to a place where a series of folds in the rocks made a kind of ladder. It was a bit of a scramble but, provided you kept up your pace, it was safe enough. They reached the bottom without mishap and Brian swung his camera off his shoulder. There, basking in the evening light, was a family of gray seals.

  From the shelter of a rock at the foot of the cliff Brian managed to shoot for several minutes before a bull seal became aware of him and led a plunging exodus into the ocean. Giving up on concealment, Brian moved farther down the beach, taking shot after shot of the sleek heads bobbing in the water and the last lumbering seals spilling off the rocks. Hanna ran down to join him.

  “What did you get?”

  “Good stuff, I think. I’ll need to look at them on my laptop to be sure.”

  They watched the seals disappear into the distance.

  “Bit unfair to disturb them.”

  “Oh, they’ll come back. And at least you were only taking photographs. When I was a kid we used to scatter them by dancing on the rocks. It was probably daft because a bull seal can be dangerous if he turns on you. But, sure, we were kids, we had no sense of danger.”

  Brian laughed. “I grew up in the Wicklow Mountains climbing round looking for eagles. God knows how half of us ever survive our childhoods.”

  They walked over to the rocks vacated by the seals
and sat down in the sun. He’d never found an eagle, he told her, probably because there wasn’t one to find.

  “I think I was inspired by Jack in the Enid Blyton adventure stories. Always scaling castles and crags in shorts and rubber-soled shoes.”

  “And polo-necked jerseys.”

  “You had the properly illustrated, early editions, I see.”

  Hanna shook her head. “I didn’t read them but Jazz did. Macmillan hardbacks. I loved the black-and-white line drawings, so I got her the whole set.”

  Brian lay back on his elbows. Black-and-white photos had the same effect, he said. Half his life was spent draining color out of his photos and thinking they looked better that way. Even sunsets. And there was something powerful about early photography that modern stuff didn’t catch. Without thinking, Hanna asked him if he’d seen the de Lancy collection of old photos in Carrick Library.

  “Is there one? I didn’t know.”

  As soon as she mentioned the library in Carrick, Hanna wished that she hadn’t. It was a dangerous subject; and the more time she spent with Brian Morton, the harder it was to remember that she needed to be on her guard. Sister Michael was still insisting that the optimum moment for overt action had yet to arise. It wasn’t at all clear to Hanna what the optimum moment might be, or how they’d recognize it when it did arise. But stage one of their plan was going so well that she knew she mustn’t jeopardize it now. A few days ago when she’d pointed out that there was a time frame for the council’s submission process, Sister Michael had just nodded. She was well aware of that, she said. It was like keeping an eye on a harvest. You couldn’t leave it too long or else you’d lose it. But, all the same, you mustn’t go at it too soon. In the meantime, it remained vital that no one should know of their plan. Silence and secrecy were the watchwords, she said, her faded eyes gleaming with humor. And such was the force of her quiet assurance that Hanna had acquiesced.