The solitary pleasure of driving through stunning scenery was well worth the extra hour that the mobile library added to Hanna’s workdays. Twice a week she’d drive to Carrick and, leaving her car at the County Library, set off down the peninsula, driving the library van. Her route today would take her off the main road, to the southern side of the peninsula and on to Ballyfin.
The weather was dull at first, but by the time she left Carrick and was driving west the clouds had begun to lift. Her first stop was a seaside village reached by a one-track road that meandered off the main route and climbed the low brow of a hill. As she reached the top, the air beyond the windshield shimmered, a rainbow arched from the horizon, and Hanna could see children playing near the school yard by the pier. Beyond the yard was a narrow cove where gannets nested on the cliffs and swooped down shrieking, to follow the fishing boats. It was a two-room school where, except for the presence of a couple of computers and an electric piano, the children were taught in almost the same surroundings as their parents and grandparents before them. The straight rows of desks were gone and the wall that used to be covered by a blackboard was hung with the pupils’ artwork, but the rows of pegs in the lobby, loaded these days with Puffa jackets and hoodies, had once held belted raincoats and corduroy jackets and, before that, shawls and frieze coats. Hanna had attended a two-room school herself before graduating to the high corridors and classrooms ruled by the nuns. But now, like the old, echoing convent in Lissbeg, most of Finfarran’s primary schools had been shut down years ago. The kids now running to join the line for the library van were among the last on the peninsula who could still walk to school by the roads or the beaches, or come and go on their bikes.
“Did you bring me my Harry Potter, Miss Casey?”
Hanna opened the back of the van and the little boy peered at the rows of books inside. She handed him Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and he grabbed it with all the excitement she’d seen on the face of his older brother two years ago. The other children jostled each other as they waited. Hanna dealt with them briskly, handing out copies of Vincent McDonnell’s Story of the GAA and Ice Man, the adventures of the Irish Antarctic hero, Tom Crean. A freckled eight-year-old with her eye on a copy of Charlotte’s Web tried to scramble past her into the van and was pulled back sharply by an elder sister. Everyone knew that you didn’t mess with Miss Casey.
Later, as Hanna drove back over the brow of the cliff, she told herself that the freedom of growing up without constant adult supervision was one of the things that, in hindsight, she valued most about her childhood. Maybe that was why Jazz had enjoyed the holidays spent in Ireland; the pace of life was slower here, and instead of being whisked off to ballet class, summer camps, or creative workshops, kids tended to make their own entertainment and to help in the family business or on the farm.
Emerging from the one-track road that had taken her to the village, Hanna joined the stream of tourist traffic heading west. Unimpeded by bends or potholes, she increased her speed. Five miles farther on, she slowed down and turned left again, onto another winding road, which snaked between fields and woodland. When she’d first found it years ago, bumping along on her bicycle, the ferns and briars along the ditches had obscured her view of the fields. But driving in the van was different. From her high vantage point she could see for miles across a patchwork of pasture and tillage, where cows grazed between stone walls, and cream flowers on green potato stalks moved like foam on the wind.
She was headed for Knockmore village where a day-care center for the elderly was held in the church hall. There was convenient parking beside the church and people often used the arrival of the library van as a reason to drop into the village shop, or have lunch in the pub, as well as to get their books. Today, as she passed a farm gate, a woman ran out of the farmhouse door with a book in her hand and flagged her down. Sighing, Hanna stopped the van. Theoretically, this wasn’t supposed to happen but in practice it frequently did. She lowered the window and leaned out as the woman reached the van door and held on to the handle, panting.
“Sorry, Miss Casey, Mum has a bit of a cold on her, so we won’t get to the center today.”
“That’s fine, Nell, don’t worry about it.”
Hanna reached out of the cab window and took the book.
“How’s the cold? Has she just started it?”
“Ah, it’s been hanging round for a while. She got great reading out of that book we got last week, though. You wouldn’t have another one there in the back?”
It took ten minutes to find a book for Mrs. Reily, who loved murder mysteries, and a family saga for Nell. Mostly, Nell explained, she and her mother made lace as they sat watching television. Hanna had seen the beautiful work they produced together and sent off as presents to family in America or donated to parish sales and fetes.
“But I can’t settle to the lace-making when Mum’s not at her best,” Nell told her. “And I don’t like to have the telly on in case I wouldn’t hear her call. These will do us grand now till she’s downstairs again.”
She balanced The Mysterious Affair at Styles and A House Divided on the top of the gate and waved as the van pulled off.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, Hanna saw her walking back to the house with a spring in her step. It had only been a few minutes spent with an acquaintance but the human contact and the prospect of a couple of books to read and chat about had obviously made her day. No matter how isolated the scattered farms and villages on the peninsula might seem, there was a web of personal and communal relationships that linked people together, offering mutual support. And, Hanna told herself, it wasn’t just for the elderly. Jazz’s school friends, and Conor’s, who wanted to build lives in the area they had grown up in, needed a community that would support them. Even though its rituals and relationships could combine to drive you mad.
That morning Conor had driven up on his Vespa just as she was unlocking the library door and it was clear that there was something on his mind. But her own mind was on getting to Carrick in good time to collect the van so, hoping Conor’s problem was trivial, she’d tried to ignore it. Then, on her way to the door, she’d glanced up at the old MIND YOUR STEP sign and told him to get it replaced by the end of the day. But that, apparently, was the very subject that was bothering him. So, since there was no way of avoiding it, she spent the next ten minutes unraveling a complicated story about how her gangling trespasser at Maggie’s house had effectively been sent there by Conor.
“I wasn’t gossiping, Miss Casey, honest, I was only trying to help. And I never told him to go round to you. I don’t even know how he knew where to go. It’s just that he’s a builder and you asked me if I knew any builders. And then when I went to him for a drop of white spirit I just happened to mention your name.”
Giving up on hitting the road in time to avoid the worst of the traffic, Hanna had perched on the edge of her desk while Conor, very red in the face, explained that the old sign couldn’t come down till the new one could go up; and the new one couldn’t go up till Fury O’Shea arrived with the white spirit; and Fury might not turn up at all since the word was that Hanna herself had mortally insulted him. Not that she would have wanted to, Conor said hastily, but someone had seen them having what looked like a bit of a row beside Fury’s van and that must have started a rumor. At Hanna’s suggestion that Conor could pop out and pick up a bottle of white spirit himself for a couple of euro, he had looked at her in horror. What if Fury turned up with the spirit after all? He’d be twice as upset if he thought that Conor had doubted him. And what about the crowds that might come looking for books if Conor ran out to the hardware shop? He’d have to leave the library with the CLOSED sign up, and what if they got complaints? Watching his eyes widen at the prospect of insult compounded by disaster, Hanna had quenched him briskly.
“Well, there’s no point in making a crisis out of a simple misunderstanding. Leave the sign as it is till you see if Mr. O’Shea does come in and if he doesn’t we’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
But now, increasing her speed along the rutted road, hoping to make up for the time she had spent with Nell Reily, Hanna was worried. Having grown up in Crossarra, she knew exactly what would happen if Conor was right and this O’Shea man felt mortally insulted. Not only would O’Shea refuse to work for her but no one else in the locality would take on a job he’d refused. Or at least no one that you’d want to have working for you. Hanna groaned. With luck, Conor was exaggerating. But by the sound of things it was far more likely that she herself had made a costly mistake. Then, pulling herself together, she told herself not to be stupid. It was the old Hanna who went about anticipating trouble. The new Hanna was different. And how hard could it really be to handle this Fury O’Shea?