At two o’clock, Cassie came by, and they went over the road for Hanna’s creative-writing group. Pat got her own bit out of the way quickly – a few lines describing Fuzzy that she’d made up out of her head. The rest of the crowd clapped like mad because it was the first thing she’d read to them, and Hanna said she must have worked real hard on it, which made Pat feel ashamed.
Then Saira Khan did a bit about a squirrel she’d seen in the nuns’ garden; and Mr Maguire turned out to keep hens, and read out a list of differences between Dorkings and Araucanas.
Ferdia and the others had pieces, too, but Pat didn’t really hear them. She was remembering the day she’d let go of her mam’s hand and got lost at the fair.
It had been raining and Broad Street was crowded. The cobbles were covered in muck and her shoes were in a state. She couldn’t have been more than seven or so because the cows’ haunches were way above her. The swinging tails were slapping her cheeks when a dog came up and circled behind her, cutting her off from the cows. He had a pointy black face, with white spots on it, like eyebrows, and white fur on his muzzle, with black bristly whiskers on either side. You could see the insides of his ears, that were grey, like pussy willow. He didn’t bark or jump up. Instead, he circled round her again, pushing her back from the cows. His legs were dirty with muck, and he had tags of matted, rusty hair, like a coat thrown round his shoulders. He didn’t really come near her, he just pushed her with his eyes.
In a minute or two he’d got her away from the cattle, but he didn’t just leave her crying there in the street. There were animals calling, and shouts and whistles and curses going on all around them, and she saw the dog’s ears move forwards and back. Then his nose turned, and she looked round and heard her mam calling. And he waited till Pat ran across to her before he went back to his cows.
35
The seagull turned his head and looked straight into Cassie’s lens, his grey and white feathers and pale gold beak echoing the colours of the creamy-yellow lichen on the grey clifftop rock. Cassie was about to press the shutter when a violent gust of wind hit her on the shoulder, bowling her sideways and sweeping the bird off its perch.
‘Damn!’ She checked her camera, which had been jerked from her hand and was dangling from its strap on her wrist. It was fine, but she decided to take no more risks and, tucking it safely into its case, she made her way back to the car. She’d drive on to the internet café in Couneen and upload the shots she’d taken in the last few days. The family at home hadn’t shown much interest in the stuff she put on Instagram, but the friends she’d made on the cruise ships seemed to think that Ireland was cool.
When she walked into the shop in Couneen, it looked like the café was closed. There was no one behind the counter either. But as she hesitated in the doorway, Dan clattered down the stairs. ‘Hi, can I help— Oh, hi, Cassie.’
‘I wanted to go online with a coffee but . . .’
Dan waved her in. ‘No problem. I can stick a kettle on.’
‘But if you’re not open . . .’
‘That’s always a moot point at this time of year. Honestly, it’s no hassle. I’ll make you a cup and you can work away.’
By the time she’d uploaded the photos, he’d brought her a coffee with a cookie on the side.
‘You weren’t out with a camera in this weather?’
‘Well, yeah.’
He looked at her screen and chuckled. ‘You might do better to switch to interiors.’
‘I think I’ll give up. I usually do. What are you up to today?’
‘The parents are off on a skite, so I’m minding the place. Serving the odd customer. Dragging bags of nuts up to the sheep.’
‘So your folks have a farm?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. Just a few sheep, and my mum keeps hens. This was always a place for fishing, not farming.’
‘And your family’s always lived here?’
‘Yup. Time immemorial. The place that’s a shed now behind the shop was my grandparents’ house. It’s hard to tell with old houses round here, but it could’ve been built a few hundred years before that.’
‘Awesome!’
‘Tell you what,’ Dan turned away from the table and went to put on a jacket, ‘do you want to come up and I’ll show you a proper interior? The fireplace in my grandad’s house is practically a museum piece.’
He locked the shop and they climbed a steep path to the old house, which had whitewashed walls and a corrugated-iron roof. The windows were roughly boarded up, with wide gaps between the boards; and the door, which was white uPVC, had obviously started life in a suburban terrace. One panel was badly dented but it still had a little inset fanlight and an imitation Georgian knocker.
‘The original half door gave up a few years ago. The place doesn’t really need one, but this keeps the hens out. I found it in a skip.’
Dan led Cassie into the single room, which was piled with tools and sacks of animal feed. Sunlight falling through the boarded windows made broad stripes on the floor, but the ends of the room were in shadow. He pursed his lips. ‘Not sure you’ll get much of a shot with this lighting.’
But, forgetting photography, Cassie was already at the hearth. The fireplace was in the gable wall of the house, a high chimneypiece with spaces left between the stones to make little niches for storage. There was a tarnished tin tea caddy in one, and a decaying box of matches in another. An iron crane festooned with pothooks still stood by the hearth, and rusting beneath it was a wheel that had once worked a bellows. The proportions of the tapering chimneypiece were beautiful, and over the stone lintel above the opening, a wooden shelf held a candlestick, and a faded picture in a frame. ‘This is so amazing. They cooked on an open fire?’
‘I’d say if my nan had lived there’d have been a range installed, and electricity and running water. But she died young and Grandad was happy to leave things be. He ate below in the shop with us, and most evenings he’d be down the pub with his mates. Anyway, half the time he’d be out fishing at sea.’
‘Did you know him well?’
‘I sure did. I was always out in a boat with him. He was a great teacher.’
Cassie sighed, lifting down the tea caddy and brushing dirt from the lid. ‘You see, that makes me really envious. I bet he told you all sorts of stories about how life was when he was young. Stuff that makes you feel rooted here yourself.’
‘I suppose that’s it. I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else, anyway.’
‘But you went to Australia.’
‘That was just for the craic. Or maybe I had a notion of making my fortune.’ Dan shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t have worked out anyway because this is where I belong.’
Cassie crouched down by the fireplace to peer up the chimney. The stone walls were furred with burned-on soot and she could see straight up to the sky overhead.
Dan hunkered beside her. ‘At night you could look up from beside the fire and see stars.’
Cassie pulled a face. ‘My dad grew up in the flat where Pat and Ger are living now. I guess he and my uncle Jim went to Canada to make their fortune. But they never came back, and they never talk about the past.’
‘They never even came on a visit?’
‘Nope. I’m the only one of my family who seems to have had the urge.’
‘But, shur, you’re a great traveller, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, I like to travel. But this trip is different. I’m not like you. I don’t know where I belong. But I guess I’ve always wondered if it might be here.’
‘Is it?’
Cassie laughed. ‘I dunno. I just wish I could be here with my dad and have him teach me stuff. Like your grandad and you.’
‘Was your dad raised a farmer?’
‘See, I don’t even know that!’ Cassie stood up crossly, wiping the dust from her hands.
‘Can’t you ask your gran?’
‘I don’t think so. She’s a pet but she’s . . . kind of emotionally frail. It’s like there are
no-go areas? And, as far as I can see, my grandad never talks at all.’
Catching sight of Dan’s face, she wondered if this was way too much information. After all, she hardly knew him. The thought prompted the realisation that she’d never talked like this to Shay. That was strange. Everything she’d just articulated seemed to have crystallised since she’d come here to Ireland, and Shay was a big part of her new sense of feeling at home. Yet somehow Dan seemed more likely to understand.
He was looking slightly awkward but she could feel he was sympathetic. Then he stood up, moved away from her and began to heave a sack of feed towards the door. ‘Ger would rap out the orders all right, but he’s no conversationalist. His customers hardly get a word out of him when he’s serving inside in the shop.’
Cassie went to place the tin candlestick on the windowsill. Taking out her camera, she tried to frame a shot that took in the lines of light falling through the boards.
Dan leaned on the doorframe and looked across at her. ‘How about your mum’s family? Are you close to them?’
Cassie shook her head. Her mom was an only child, whose parents were both dead and, though Gran’ma had lived to be quite old, she’d had Alzheimer’s for ages. There had been a few visits to the care home for seniors where she’d lived but mostly they’d been half embarrassing, half distressful, and after a while Cassie and her sisters weren’t taken along.
She looked through the lens at the candlestick on the windowsill, focusing on the stump of a candle that was almost burned down to the quick. But the shot she took didn’t look like much of anything, so she deleted it.
Then, glancing up, she realised that Dan was waiting to go. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. You need to get up to your sheep.’
‘They won’t starve.’ He came over to join her at the window and, turning the candlestick, began chipping pieces of wax off it, using his fingernail.
Cassie had a feeling that, given half a chance, he’d start sharing confidences himself. And she wasn’t sure that she was up for it. Dan was nice, and undoubtedly attractive, but he wasn’t her problem. And, if he needed someone to talk to, surely he had Bríd?
Looking up, she saw a strange expression in his eyes. For a moment she thought he was about to make a move on her. But instead he turned away, running his hand through his hair. It was an oddly despairing gesture, and before she could decide what to make of it, he’d gone back to the threshold and heaved the sack onto his shoulder.
His car was round the side of the building with a trailer hitched to the back and, as she walked down to her own car, he waved as he drove off.
On her way back to Lissbeg Cassie wondered if the Fitzgeralds too had a tumbledown house that had once been the family homestead. Uncle Frankie’s fancy home had been built near the old farmhouse. The home that Ger had grown up in wouldn’t have been like Dan’s grandad’s place, which, as Dan had said, was pretty much a museum piece. But she wondered what it was like.
Dad and the uncles must have visited there when they were kids. Maybe they’d hung out in the kitchen with their grandma. Maybe they’d carried animal feed up to the fields, like Dan. She wondered if the house had had a range, like Pat’s, in the kitchen, and whether it was still standing, with windows boarded up, like the Cafferky place, and empty rooms full of dust and memories, and slanting sunlight.
And, if such a house existed, who would it belong to? Was it standing there waiting for Dad and Uncle Jim to come home? According to Jazz Turner, Hanna had inherited the house where she lived from some ancient auntie. It was left to her when she was only a kid and she’d grown up and emigrated to England. And, when she came back to Ireland, it had almost gone to ruin. But Hanna had done it up and settled in.
Cassie had a vision of herself in another fifty years. A voyager with her travelling done, coming home to a craggy niche in some green mountainy field. Would she be a warm presence in the community, like Min the Match or Pat? Or crabby and totally taciturn, like Ger? You could never tell what would happen next in life, though – look at poor Gran’ma with her Alzheimer’s. So maybe it was best to live for today and let the future look after itself.
36
Bríd was beginning to feel claustrophobic. Oddly enough, it wasn’t Cassie’s presence in the house that had bothered her lately. It was Dan. He was turning up at number eight far more than he used to and, since he’d begun the work at the Old Convent Centre, he’d taken to nipping across the road for a lunchtime sandwich from the deli. There was nothing wrong with that, of course, but the last few times he’d come in he’d seemed to be looking for a conversation and, with the length of the queue at lunchtime, that was just daft.
She still fancied him. Big-time. Though lately she’d wondered if it was a bit crass to keep leaping into bed with him and afterwards to hold him at arm’s length. The bottom line, though, was that they weren’t a couple. And he knew that because they’d said so often enough. When you bought in to commitment, like Aideen and Conor, most of your own life seemed to disappear. Dan would be worse than Conor too. There was a vulnerable streak underneath all that aggression, and the unfortunate woman who got him would spend half her life propping him up.
So Bríd wasn’t going to be rushed. She had a business to build in the medium and long term, and in the short term she and Aideen were up to their eyes preparing for the Winter Fest. As well as keeping up their ordinary routine, they’d been planning seasonal products – Christmas cookies, mini plum puddings, and chocolate Yule logs. If the press was going to be there in force, then things didn’t just have to taste good, they needed to look spectacular. She’d been in touch with their local suppliers, lots of whom had taken stalls as well. You didn’t want to double up on what you’d be selling, but you could flag the fact that HabberDashery used local cheeses and other produce.
It all took time to organise, though, so, to tell the truth, it was great to have Cassie at home to cook dinner.
Now as she opened the door of number eight Bríd could see down the hall and into the kitchen, where Aideen was laying the table and Cassie, wearing an apron, was working at the stove. Cassie leaned back and waved. ‘Meatballs and pasta again. But this time I got inspired and added aubergine.’
Chucking her coat on the rack behind the door, Bríd asked if there was time to grab a shower.
‘No problem. This’ll be fine for ten minutes. Will we pour you a drink?’
Fifteen minutes later, wearing her PJs and dressing gown, she gratefully took the first sip of wine and joined them at the kitchen table, happy to relax.
Aideen took a tinfoil parcel from the oven and unwrapped a fragrant loaf of garlic bread. ‘Carb overload – but Cassie reckons we deserve it.’
‘Well, you do. You’ve been working like demons.’
Bríd felt a flicker of irritation. Not everyone could go round taking months off work, like Cassie. And people who worked hard didn’t necessarily need cosseting. Pulling a piece of bread off the loaf, she told herself not to get ratty. It was just that Cassie’s thing about hanging loose always got up her nose.
Anyway, the pasta was gorgeous. The balance of oregano and thyme was perfect, and there was a hint of paprika that made a huge difference. Bríd was about to ask for the proportions when Aideen spoke first.
‘You know that saying about being careful what you wish for? Well, I never really thought about it till tonight.’
‘So how come you did now?’
‘Well, Cassie and I were talking. You know, about making money, and work, and Conor and me saving up.’
‘And?’
‘And, well, I dunno, I suppose I’ve had this fantasy about working like mad and saving for a huge big wedding. And then Conor focusing on farming and me being a farmer’s wife.’
Cassie was sitting back, smiling. She had a sort of relaxed assurance about her that probably came from a long day doing nothing at all.
Aideen took a forkful of pasta and planted her elbows on the table. ‘But, you know, Cassie was saying that
maybe I’m putting too much pressure on Conor to be a farmer. Not overt, you know. Kind of implicit.’
It was exactly what Bríd herself had thought, so the wave of annoyance that possessed her made no sense. But how dare Cassie barge in and offer advice to Aideen? Cassie, who’d turned up out of nowhere and would, no doubt, disappear again at the drop of a hat. How well she hadn’t thought about who’d have to cope if it turned out that she was wrong!
But it wouldn’t do to make a fuss at the dinner table. Especially since, in an argument, she’d end up on Cassie’s side. Which was pretty bloody ironic. Determined to suppress her reaction, Bríd took another gulp of wine while Aideen rattled on.
‘I need to get on to Conor and tell him I’m fine with him being a librarian. I mean, the thing that matters is that we’re happy. And you can’t have a marriage where one partner is stressing the other one out.’
Cassie nodded. ‘I know it’s got nothing to do with me but, if I were you, I’d give myself time to think. Get my head round the options. Be really sure what I wanted myself before sitting down to talk.’
Aideen looked at her earnestly. ‘You’re absolutely right. I need to take my time and choose my moment. God, Cassie, I’m really, really grateful. Wine, pasta, and life lessons all on the same night!’
Bríd could feel her back teeth clench in exasperation while, at the same time, a bit of her mind was amused. But, though irony was all very well, it was important not to let the others in on the joke. Being able to laugh at herself was one thing. Handing Cassie a laugh at her expense was something else again.
And for the rest of the meal she managed. The conversation moved on to other things, though every so often Aideen would reiterate her gratitude. At one point, she announced that Cassie ought to be a relationship counsellor. ‘You really do see through the crap to what matters!’
The Mistletoe Matchmaker Page 19
