The following week Hanna’s route in the mobile library van took her along the northern edge of the peninsula. The road ran between a fringe of ancient forest and black cliffs towering above stony inlets that were very different from the sandy beaches to the south. It was another day of sunshine and showers. The sky above the ocean was full of billowing clouds, the dark trees were full of birdsong, and the rutted road that Hanna drove was dappled with sunlight filtered through rustling leaves.
Because the villages were more scattered on this side of the peninsula she had more stops on her schedule and stayed for shorter periods at each of them. One of her first was at a crossroads where an old forge and the house adjacent to it had been turned into a guesthouse. Perfectly positioned between the forest and the cliffs, it had been bought and renovated a few years ago by a young German and his Irish wife. There were four en suite guest bedrooms in the house, where Gunther and Susan also had their own living accommodations, and the old forge had become an open-plan space for the guests, where meals were served on long wooden tables and an assortment of sofas and comfortable chairs surrounded an open fire. Gunther did the cooking and Susan had taken on the housekeeping, kept sheep and goats, and made cheese in a stone shed with a slate floor they had built behind the forge.
As Hanna pulled up at the crossroads, Susan ran down to speak to her.
“Hi, Miss Casey. Did that order of mine come in? Sewall’s Life of Emily Dickinson?”
Hanna walked around the van to open the back door and get the book. This side of the peninsula had fairly efficient Internet coverage, and Susan frequently used the online system to request interlibrary loans. It wasn’t a system used by many of Hanna’s older borrowers, though some of the seniors at the day-care center had plans to sign up for computer classes in Carrick, which, they had assured each other, would revolutionize their lives. The only shame, they’d told Hanna, was that they couldn’t find classes nearer to home. Traveling to Carrick in the evenings was a bit daunting, even in summer, so, up to now, nothing had come of their plans. High-quality Internet access on the peninsula was a big issue. There was no problem in Lissbeg, but the big businesses toward the far end of the peninsula had lobbied aggressively to get the transmitter there to favor Ballyfin. As Susan said, for everyone else it was a case of the devil take the hindmost.
“We’re lucky here because Gunther’s cousin in Stuttgart has a travel agency and sends people on to us. And we get groups of hikers who always come back once they’ve found us. But half the B&Bs back here have given up trying.”
Hanna gave Susan the book she’d ordered and helped her choose a Billy Goats Gruff picture book for Holly, her five-year-old daughter. Then, having served the small line of people who had been sitting on the wall waiting for her, she drove on to her next stop at Cafferky’s shop and post office. Like her own family shop in Crossarra thirty years ago, it was run by a couple who lived upstairs and tended a garden out back. The same basic groceries that Hanna remembered from her youth were stacked on the shelves but she often wondered what Tom would have thought of the sandwiches and smoothies that Fidelma Cafferky made to order, or the little Internet café, which consisted of a computer and a couple of tables in the back room. She had mentioned it to Mary once, who had tossed her head and sniffed.
“Sure, wasn’t Tom Casey the first man for miles around to put in the electric bacon slicer? There wasn’t one of us in those days that was backwards in coming forwards when it came to innovation. We’d never have survived if we’d been stuck in the Ark!”
Looking at the Cafferky’s tidy shop and the Internet café with its clearly written list of instructions and charges on the wall, Hanna could see that her mother was right. The people of Finfarran had always been resourceful. Many of them now worked two or three jobs to make a living, sometimes alternating between summer and winter, and often keeping a small farm going as well. Mentally reproaching herself for not being more grateful for her own safe job in the library, Hanna asked Fidelma how Dan’s eco-trips were going. Fidelma shrugged and made a face.
“He’s hanging on by the skin of his teeth, if the truth be told. We keep hoping for a bit of investment in the roads to bring more visitors round this side of the peninsula. And we keep being promised it. But you wouldn’t know. And, of course, if they come up with some big motorway like the road to Ballyfin they’ll have the place destroyed altogether.”
Her husband was sick to death writing letters to the council about it.
“He’s written so often that at this stage they think he’s a right crank. And the trouble is, Miss Casey, that he’s getting terribly bitter. And he has Dan almost as cynical as himself.”
Fidelma forced a smile and turned to go into the shop.
“You’ll have a cup of tea in your hand anyway, while you’re here?”
She brought it out on a tray with a scone hot from the oven and a second cup for herself. After drinking it and serving an old man who had come to return Heart of Darkness, Hanna was about to get back in the cab when a car drew up and a young woman with tousled red hair got out, followed by a toddler in paint-spattered dungarees. The woman, who was wearing an oversized t-shirt, leggings, and quantities of amber beads, approached the van with a pile of books, raising her voice while she was still several yards away.
“Morning, Miss Casey. I think some of these are late.”
Hanna stiffened. “When you say ‘some of them,’ Mrs. Kelly, I assume you know which they are? You’ll find the proper return date clearly stamped on the panel inside the cover.”
“Oh, I’d say it’s only a few of them. Actually, they might all be fine. Though we may have left poor Peter Rabbit in the garden. It was just a case of grab them and go when I realized what day it was.” She beamed. “We’re so lucky, aren’t we, to have the mobile library. I mean, it’s such a community thing. Brings people together. And far better than chucking out a fortune on the Internet on books that you’ll only read once.”
Grabbing her toddler, Darina pulled a children’s book from the bib of his dungarees. It had been rolled up like a scroll and the pages were scribbled on. The child opened his mouth and roared. Then, staggering over to Hanna, he thumped her on the leg. His mother laughed. “Isn’t he sweet? Such a little bookworm. He doesn’t want to give it back.”
She picked him up and perched him on her hip where he pushed out his lower lip, stuck his finger up his nose, and glowered at Hanna. Darina joggled him up and down, laughing.
“Bad, Miss Casey! Naughty, naughty library!”
This was too much for Hanna. With her back as straight as a ramrod, she marched to the van, placed the books in the proper receptacle, and turned on Darina Kelly.
“As you can see, Mrs. Kelly, the book has been destroyed. It will have to be replaced and you’ll receive an invoice in the post. There will be an administration charge added and I would appreciate prompt payment. No fines are payable for late returns of children’s books, but there are four fines outstanding on the books that you borrowed from the adult collection. Three of them are in a disgraceful state. I am a librarian, Mrs. Kelly, it is not my job to remove sticky marks from the covers of the books in my charge. I suggest that, if you wish to avail of the public library’s services in the future, you control your child and return your books on time in good order!”
Later, swinging off the cliff road and entering the shade of the forest, Hanna told herself that losing one’s temper with a woman like Darina Kelly was just pathetic. But what else could you do with someone who raised her child to make a pig’s ear of The Gruffalo?