Ballyfin was Hanna’s last stop of the day. She parked the mobile library van as usual in the little square, directly across from a small, handsome building where a large sign saying INTERPRETATIVE CENTRE almost but not quite obscured the word LIBRARY, which was carved on the pediment over the door. The building had been built two hundred years ago with money donated by the Anglo-Irish de Lancy family, who for centuries had been landlords to the whole peninsula. But now their benevolence was just a memory. The last member of the family still lived alone in the ancestral castle near Carrick but, twenty years ago when the dwindling de Lancy library bequest had run out, the County Council had taken over the building. And subsequently the powers that be had decided it was wasted on books. So the books, maps, photos, and records that made up the de Lancy collection had been removed to the County Library in Carrick and what had once been a public library became an interactive heritage experience. So now if people in Ballyfin wanted to borrow Little Dorrit or a DIY manual they were left with the options of driving to Lissbeg or Carrick, or waiting for Hanna’s arrival in the van.
At a desk just inside the door of the Interpretative Centre a digital display alternated the words Tourist Information with images of dancing fish. With each passing year the number of tourists who came to Ballyfin to fish became fewer, but fishiness was the core of its brand image, not because of the town’s maritime history but because of the book that had turned it into a tourism phenomenon.
A Long Way to LA was the life story of an immensely sexy film star whose Hollywood career had spanned thirty years of blockbuster successes. In a desperate attempt to make it stand out from the other celebrity memoirs, its publishers had latched onto the fact that the star had once spent a nervous breakdown angling in Ballyfin. The designer of the book’s iconic cover, unaware that the town’s name actually derived from that of a medieval saint, had produced an image of a huge dorsal fin rising from the waves and the editor had decided that the narrative would be presented as the star’s stream of consciousness during his long weeks in Ballyfin grappling with really big fish. This not only gave structure to the book but also added stature to the star, who emerged as a kind of Captain Ahab, struggling with madness and monsters. A Long Way to LA became a global bestseller, helped by the fact that it was published just as the star divorced his fifth wife and married his sixth, a twenty-one-year-old singer with a huge online fan base. And Ballyfin became the place to go.
These days you were more likely to eat seafood in Ballyfin than to catch it, and A Long Way to LA was long out of print. But images of the star and the book cover still appeared everywhere in the town and the association with Hollywood, combined with the stunning scenery, continued to draw the crowds.
From Hanna’s point of view, Ballyfin was sad. She could remember a time when the shops in the square sold provisions, school uniforms, and electrical supplies, and were interspersed with a doctor’s office, an attorney’s, and a hairdresser’s. Just as she could remember when the peninsula had seven village post offices. Now the last village post office west of Carrick, run by the parents of Conor’s friend Dan Cafferky, was struggling to stay open. And Ballyfin, which had lost its library, had gained nothing but gift shops and hotels.
Having promised to check out the availability of collections of one-act plays for consideration by the local drama group, Hanna glanced at her watch and saw it was time to get back on the road. As she drove round the square, Gráinne, one of the girls who manned the tourist information desk, emerged carrying a poster. She waved at Hanna who stopped for a word.
“Had a good day?”
“Oh you know yourself, busy, busy.” Gráinne came over and leaned against the van. “It’s the time of year, sure we’re used to it.”
There was a public notice board beside the Interpretative Centre, a vestige of the time when the building had served the local people rather than the tourists.
Gráinne squinted up at the sky. “It’s going to be another lovely evening. I’ll get this on the board and shut up for the day and take myself off for a swim.”
Hanna glanced down at the poster. “What is it?”
“Oh, some consultation meeting of the council’s about their plans for next year’s budget. It came this morning from Carrick. And you know yourself no one will read it.”
Hanna laughed. “It’s a daft time of year to be expecting people in this town to read posters. Or turn up at meetings.”
“Well, you never know, maybe that’s the point! Maybe the last thing they actually want is people offering feedback.”
Hanna smiled, swung the wheel, and took to the road. She didn’t want to be rude to Gráinne, who was nice enough, but since the phone call she’d made in reply to Tim Slattery’s text at lunchtime had resulted in a promise to attend a boring council event that evening, the last thing she wanted at this stage of the day was a chat about small-town politics.
Hanna liked Tim. When she applied for her job in Lissbeg, he’d been immensely cordial, asked no personal questions about her years in London, and announced that Finfarran’s library service was lucky to have her. It was he who had organized the designated parking space in Lissbeg that, although she never admitted it, even to herself, had given her a sense of dignity; and his urbane manner amused her. Now and then she had wondered if he, too, felt confined in Finfarran. His parents had owned a thriving business in Carrick and his sister had a big job in Dublin. Yet, despite his impressive title of County Librarian, he worked in what was no more than a cubbyhole in a shabby, graceless building. Given his flamboyant sense of style, this was hardly the perfect fit but, sensitive to his respect for her own privacy, Hanna never probed his feelings.
Today, on the phone, he had been more urbane than ever. He was sorry to be a bore but could she bear to come to a hootenanny? Well, not quite that, more of a dull drinks party. The council’s tourism officer had invited a government minister down from Dublin, and, having whisked him around the peninsula, she was planning to ply him with drinks.
“Damn all to do with us, of course, but she’s desperate to impress him so she’s whipping up a sort of rent-a-crowd.”
Hanna had groaned inwardly. God alone knew what favor Teresa O’Donnell the Tourist Officer had called in to make Tim summon his troops, but that was how things worked. And she herself felt indebted to Tim. In the five years since she’d left Malcolm, far from falling in and out of bed with rugged Irish fishermen, she had hardly had a social life at all. So the occasional dinner with Tim and his girlfriend had been a welcome respite from long nights watching television with Mary Casey while Jazz sat locked in her bedroom. And the occasional conversation with Tim, whose interest in books was more than just professional, had added interest to her workdays. Caught off guard by his phone call, she’d found that she couldn’t refuse him.
“It’s a mobile day, so I’m driving the van back to Carrick anyway. A drink will be lovely.”
“Trust me, it won’t. The red will be plonk and the white will be saccharine. I know it’s a lot to ask of you but I’m truly grateful. See you round seven.”
The timing meant that she had an hour to kill so, driving the van back toward Carrick through slanting evening sunlight, Hanna couldn’t resist taking a detour to look at the house. Conor would have locked up the library and left things as they should be in Lissbeg. He was utterly reliable, even if his eagerness to be helpful could make him overstep the mark. She should have known that he would try to come up with an answer to her question about local builders. And the truth was that the problem with Fury O’Shea was her own fault.
Leaving the van at the gate she wondered if the sensible thing might be to find herself a builder who wasn’t local; one way or the other, whoever she ended up with, she’d need to have a proper sense of the work herself before she came to brief him. The first thing to do would be to clear the site; it looked as if half the parish had been using it as a dumping ground since Maggie died. Making her way down the side of the house, she told herself that one thing she’d learned from her renovations in England was the importance of establishing complete control of a building project from the outset. Then, turning the corner at the gable end, she found herself facing a goat.