Back on the road, he found himself thinking about liver fluke. Joe had been worried about the sheep for a while, and the other day they’d found a couple of dead ones. The results of the tests on the carcasses should be back shortly, but their dad reckoned it was liver fluke, and he was seldom wrong. Swinging the wheel, Conor told himself that stuff like that, and having to go through soil sampling and sending things off for analysis, weren’t part of Aideen’s vision of farm life at all. She’d come over for tea last week and hung out in the kitchen while he and Joe were working. After they’d eaten, he’d taken her up for the cows on the back of the Vespa, and all the way she’d been shouting over his shoulder, saying how gorgeous everything looked, and telling him how she’d helped his mam feed the hens.
Up to a while back the winter had been so mild that there was still growth in the grass, and the trees had leaves on them. Then, last weekend, the wind had stripped them naked, and the rainy nights had pounded the fallen leaves so hard that the queue in Couneen today had stood in soggy mulch waiting for their library books. But when he and Aideen had gone for the cows the air had been full of thistledown, and curled leaves, the colour of her hair, were falling like flames from the chestnut trees.
Later on, when he’d taken her home, she’d told him that, when she’d been out in the yard, the hens had gone mad for her wellington boots and stood in a circle, pecking them. She’d wanted to know why. And why did they lay fewer eggs in winter, and how did you teach dogs to herd cattle, and when would the lambs be born, and would they be cold up in the fields if it was snowing?
So he’d told her that hens needed sunlight to lay eggs, that the dogs taught each other, and that the lambs would have to be found on the hill and carried down to the farm if the weather got bad. He didn’t tell her that ewes could go blind in the snow and the wind, and be out there bleating for their frozen babies. And he said nothing at all about liver fluke.
As he turned the van off the coast road and began the climb towards his next halting place, Dan Cafferky’s four-wheel drive came towards him. It slowed down but, with his eye on the time, Conor just waved and kept going. One good thing, anyway, was that the fuss about Dan and Cassie had blown over. It turned out that Cassie had been messing and they didn’t know each other really – Dan had only given her directions when she’d stopped him on the road.
In fairness to Bríd, she’d obviously known she’d gone way over the top with her first reaction. Anyway, she’d simmered down, and Cassie seemed to have settled in fine at number eight. Which was great, because Aideen was happy. Of course, the next row with Bríd would be when Cassie left, and Aideen wanted to get a replacement lodger. The bit of extra money each week would make a difference to their savings, so anyone could see it was going to be hard to go back to doing without.
Maybe he should have thought the whole thing through better when he’d first come up with the idea. But even if he had, he didn’t suppose he’d have managed to keep his mouth shut. The look on Aideen’s face when he’d suggested it had been magic. She’d kind of glowed, as if he was the one who could solve all her problems. And, really, that was all he ever wanted. Just to make her happy. Whatever it took.
17
Pat’s range had decided it would behave itself. For three days in a row it had lit without coaxing, which was lucky because the chilly weather had definitely set in. The kitchen was grand and warm, though, with the range lit, and there were heaters up in the bedrooms if they were needed. Pat didn’t believe in waste any more than Ger did. Fine to turn up a radiator if you needed to, but no point going round heating empty rooms.
When Cassie had gone off and rented a room from Aideen Carney, Ger had snorted and said he supposed the flat was far too cold. Pat was sure he was wrong. Cassie was the kind who’d have held her ground and said if she’d wanted more heat. Not like Sonny and Jim at the same age, who’d grown up knowing it wasn’t wise to cross Ger.
It was sad the way Ger had made a white-headed boy out of Frankie, letting the other lads feel as if he didn’t rate them as high. You couldn’t exactly put your finger on it, back when they were growing up. Oftentimes Frankie got things before the others just because he was older. And he knew more about running the farm because Ger would take him there more often, and set him to work.
It was little use that Frankie got from his big shoulders nowadays. As soon as the manager was put into the farm, he’d sat himself down behind a desk and hardly lifted a shovel since. And putting the manager in was a case in point. It was Frankie’s idea and Ger had been all for it. Though if Sonny or Jim had been in charge and suggested it, Ger would probably have cursed them for a couple of lazy tykes.
So that was how it was, and there was no help for it. But Pat had always thought it was a shame that the younger lads had grown up with no love of the land. Maybe if they’d been out in the fields in all seasons they’d have felt the pull of Finfarran after they’d left it. Instead, as far as she could gather from Cassie, they never spoke of it at all.
Cassie herself seemed to be loving the place. She’d settled in with the girls from HabberDashery and, as far as Pat could see, she was off skiting day and night. And why wouldn’t she be? At her age, she was better off with her own generation than hanging round here of an evening. Half the time, Ger did nothing but fall asleep in front of the telly and you’d be torn between keeping the sound low so it didn’t wake him, and turning it up so you’d hear it over his snores.
Having said that, Cassie appeared to get on well with anyone, regardless of their age. And she wasn’t just out for a good time. After a couple of weeks of exploring she’d turned up at the flat and asked Pat about the Old Convent Centre. ‘Did you say there’s a pensioners’ club there or something?’
Pat explained that several rooms had been turned into a day-care space.
‘Does anyone do haircuts?’
‘No, love. You’d get your nails cut but not your hair done.’
Cassie had nodded thoughtfully and said no more. But a couple of days later, when Pat was in the centre, there was a poster offering free consultation and cuts by Hairdresser Cassie Fitzgerald. A few moments later Cassie herself had emerged from Phil’s office swinging a little backpack, like the kids had these days instead of a handbag. Questioned, she’d said she’d been telling Phil what she’d need to set up the haircuts. ‘Nothing fancy, just a chair and a mirror, really, and a shelf or a little table. And access to a washbasin. I’m coming in once a week.’
‘How did this all happen?’
‘Well, I can’t spend my whole time here behaving like a tourist. I’d always planned to do some volunteering before my next job. So why not here in Lissbeg?’
And, according to everyone at the day-care facility, she was brilliant. Pat had been bowled over by the compliments. Cassie took her time, they said, and was full of suggestions. She could do a straight wash and set as good as any salon in Carrick, but she also had great ideas.
Nell Reily, who’d worn her hair scraped up on the back of her head in a tortoiseshell clip, now had a short bob with a side parting, and the clip transferred to the other side, to keep the hair out of her eyes. It took years off her.
Ann Flood from the pharmacy, who’d experimented with the dyes on her own shelves for ages and ended with hair like a scouring pad, had submitted to a deep conditioning process that had left her silky and smug as a cocker spaniel. And even a couple of the men who dropped in for the district nurse’s exercise sessions were sporting well-trimmed nose hair and short back and sides.
These days, you couldn’t walk down Broad Street with Cassie without someone giving her a wave or shouting a greeting. It’d make you burst with pride.
And she even seemed to have made friends in Carrick. A while back, when she’d taken Pat to a matinée at the cinema, they’d been pulling into a car park when a young fellow in a guard’s uniform had slowed down beside them and given her a thumbs-up.
Pat was dying to ask questions but she didn’t want t
o be inquisitive. Cassie didn’t seem bothered, though. As she parked the car she said that she’d met the guard at a nightclub inside in Carrick called Fly-By-Night. She hadn’t known he was a guard then, because he hadn’t been wearing his uniform.
‘And when did you find out?’
‘Just now.’
‘You mean he never said?’
‘Well, nightclubs are a bit noisy. You don’t tend to get much conversation.’
Pat supposed that was true enough. He looked a nice respectable fellow anyway, and he’d had a big smile for them.
Now, as she settled the poker by the range, she wondered how different things might have been if Sonny had gone off to Carrick and met himself a nice girl. The lads had gone to school dances all right, and a few parties, but most of the time they’d be up in their rooms doing lessons. Or, in Frankie’s case, charging round a field playing rugby. Sonny and Jim were more like Ger, small-built and not great on a playing field, and Jim didn’t even play tennis because of his glasses.
Of course, for all Pat knew, they might have gone out with dozens of girls at college. But, if they did, they’d left them there in Cork and never brought one of them home.
Opening the local paper, she glanced at the cinema listings. There wasn’t much on that you’d want to see, what with blockbusters and kids’ cartoons and horror movies. Anyway, Cassie had suggested that, this week, they might take a day trip to Cork. And, actually, Pat had been wanting a chance to do a bit of Christmas shopping.
A week or so after coming back from Toronto, Ger had said he needed to go down to Cork on business, and she’d said she’d go with him and take a look around the shops. But that hadn’t suited Ger, who’d got all agitated. He needed to set out at the crack of dawn, he’d said, and he couldn’t be waiting round for her. And he didn’t want her sending him texts all the time, demanding to be taken home. All nonsense, of course, because she was always ready and waiting whenever they’d fixed to go somewhere, and never made a demand on him in her life.
Thinking about it later, she’d been at a loss to make head or tail of it. Still, it didn’t do to be questioning Ger, who’d only go getting irritable. And the chances were he was meeting some fellow who’d taken him off to the dogs.
18
Most of the peninsula’s piers stood unused now, with tags of rope flapping at rusty moorings and piles of abandoned fish boxes stacked against the walls. A combination of emigration and EU quotas had reduced Finfarran’s fishing communities from a dozen down to two. A few boats still worked out of Reesagh, near Lissbeg. And there was still a fleet in Ballyfin, where local fishermen had to fight off attempts by the town’s hoteliers to move the working boats because of the smell. But it was a good thirty years since a fishing fleet had used the little pier at Couneen.
Dan, whose grandfather had fished out of Couneen with six neighbours, was always raging at Bríd about the Ballyfin hotels. ‘People go there expecting to find a fishing port, not to sit on a flashy veranda taking selfies with a dead pier!’ His grandad would turn in his grave, he said, if he saw the way the village was now. And as Bríd approached Cafferky’s internet café, she thought he was probably right.
There were several abandoned houses on the road above the little pier, their thatched roofs gone and their stone walls gradually returning to the earth. Dan’s parents had built their shop on the piece of land that had once belonged to his grandfather, and the old house, behind the new building, had been roughly reroofed for use as a shed. At one time, this had been a thriving village. Now it was a coffee break on the road to someplace else.
Bríd drove her car down the sloping descent by the shop, and parked on the grassy turning point above the path to the pier. The steep path, cobbled with wave-smoothed stones, was wet with spray. The pier below, which was far smaller than those at Ballyfin and Reesagh, had been built in a sheltered inlet with high cliffs on either side. Part of an energetic scheme initiated in the nineteenth century, it was constructed of huge blocks of dressed stone, which, according to Dan, had been brought round by sea, using local manpower. ‘The de Lancy crowd that lived in the castle were all for progress in those days. They organised some kind of an agricultural co-op thing that was meant to improve farming. And they had local men building the piers under a foreman over from England. Or some guy that was cracking the whip for them anyway.’
‘But wasn’t it good for the people?’
‘Maybe so. They lent them money for nets. I know that, because my grandad said so. His own grandad got nets and enough to buy a boat. It all had to be paid back, though, and the castle wanted to buy the fish at a special price.’
Bríd had shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose it was a regular order. We do that at the deli. Say a business is willing to commit to a platter of sandwiches every Tuesday, we’ll give them a price.’
‘Yeah, well, you don’t charge them rack rent for the houses they live in. And you didn’t turn up with an army in the first place and steal their land.’
The de Lancys had arrived in Finfarran with the Norman invasion, so he was going back a bit. But that was Dan all over. He was always going round with a chip on his shoulder and blaming the world for his woes. Bríd herself just liked to get on with stuff. On that occasion, though, it hadn’t seemed wise to say so. The fact was that HabberDashery’s business was slowly but steadily improving, while Dan’s tours from Couneen pier had disappeared down the drain.
Still, things were looking up. According to Dan, he’d picked up a lot of great ideas in Australia and, with Dekko’s investment, he was all set to relaunch his business in the spring.
The tour boat had been rented to a guy in Ballyfin while Dan had been away and was out of the water now, in dry dock for the winter. So, as Bríd walked along the pier it was deserted, except for the dinghy pulled up behind the little shed that Dan had built against the wall. The shed was part store, part workshop, and Dan was sitting outside it on an upturned box, disembowelling an outboard motor. His face lit up when he saw Bríd, and he reached out an oily hand.
Eyeing it askance, Bríd hunkered down beside him with her back to the wall. It was chilly enough but, at this time of day, the sheltered inlet was a sun trap, so the smooth, dressed stone felt warm, even through her thick coat.
Dan nodded at the kettle on its camping stove in the shed. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea in a minute. What’s the story in Lissbeg?’
‘Nothing much to tell.’
‘World War Three not broken out yet at number eight?’
Bríd made a face at him. ‘Just drop it, okay?’
‘Fair enough. I see your woman’s volunteered to work in the Old Convent Centre.’
Giving him an old-fashioned look, Bríd refused to rise to the bait. The fact was that Cassie’s self-confident air continued to be irritating, though everyone else seemed to think she was marvellous. Yesterday she had arrived home with the news that she was joining a creative-writing group in the library. And Aideen had gushed. Wasn’t she clever? Wasn’t that a great thing altogether? Aideen herself had thought of joining but couldn’t get up the nerve.
Bríd had been about to say that it didn’t sound all that hazardous, when Cassie got her say in first: ‘Nothing clever about it. I just thought it might be fun. You should have a go, Aideen. You could always leave if you don’t like it.’
No thought at all of what joining up and then just dropping out might do to the group. And that, Bríd had thought, was typical of bloody Cassie. She sailed smugly through life, thinking only of herself.
But her own thought had hardly been formulated when Cassie piped up again, as if just to annoy her: ‘Actually, I’m not all that interested. But Pat is. Big-time. I could tell by the look on her face when she told me about it. You could see she was dying to sign up, but felt that maybe it wasn’t for her. So I said that I would if she would, and that did the trick.’
So, of course, Bríd was left feeling like a bitch.
Now, eager to change the subject, she asked D
an where Dekko was. He was usually hanging around somewhere, but it turned out he’d gone up to Dublin today. ‘Is that where his family are?’
‘It’s where he comes from but I dunno if he’s still got family there. He never said.’
‘When’s he coming back?’
‘God, Bríd, what is this? The Spanish Inquisition? He’ll be back whenever he’s ready, I suppose. It’s not like there’s anything to do round here in winter.’
Looking at Dan’s oily hands, it struck Bríd that there was quite a lot to do before the business could reopen. And not just physical stuff. There was advertising and organising, and things like finding an accountant, and networking with other people in tourism on the peninsula. But, apparently, Dekko was an investor and nothing else, so that would all be down to Dan, who just didn’t seem to get it.
Now he wiped his hands on a rag and hauled her to her feet. ‘C’mon, let’s have a cup of tea and I’ll take you out in the dinghy.’
‘In this weather?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with the weather. I’d say we mightn’t get another day like this for a long time, though. Come on, don’t be a wuss. You might see a dolphin.’
‘Or a flying pig!’
‘Okay, probably not a dolphin. But you’ll get a bit of wind in your hair. And if you don’t like the effect you can always go to Cassie for a makeover.’
Later, drinking tea out of chipped mugs, she listened as he talked about his marine tours. ‘I dunno how much it has to do with climate change, but the seas are definitely warming. We’re getting all classes of fellas out there you’d never see before. Not just the dolphins and the humpback whales and the minkes. I saw them when I was a kid. And the seals and the basking sharks. But back just before I went off to Australia, I saw a pod of killer whales only a mile or two offshore. You see, the water temperature’s rising and that brings a lot of feed. That’s bad for fishing because the fish have less interest in bait. They can eat all they want out there in the ocean. But it’s great for bringing in the big fellas, and they’re amazing to see.’
The Mistletoe Matchmaker Page 9
