29

Hanna parked the van in its designated space behind the County Library and went inside the building to return the keys. Tim Slattery was beside the desk as she arrived, with a spotted handkerchief in his breast pocket and what appeared to be a deep-sea diver’s rubber watch on his wrist. He shot his cuffs and waved as Hanna approached, revealing a pair of onyx cufflinks.

“Just the woman I was looking out for! Hang on a minute.”

Leaving the desk and going into his office, he came out a moment later with a cardboard tube in his hand.

“I knew you’d be in today so I kept this back to save the postage. Every little helps.” He held the tube out to Hanna. “Can you see that it goes up on your board ASAP?”

There was a public notice board outside the library in Lissbeg and Hanna was used to receiving material from various official sources to put on it. She peeled the tape off the end of the tube, half slid out the roll of paper inside, and recognized the poster that Gráinne from the tourist desk in Ballyfin had put on the board outside the Interpretative Centre.

“What is it?”

“End of a long road. Not, of course, that we’re there yet, but there’s a plan in place and we’ve come to the consultation process. And not that it has anything to do with me, personally. It’s the council’s plan. Interesting stuff.”

Hanna doubted it. Each year produced discussions about how the county council’s annual budget would be allocated, and, as far as she could tell, though she’d never paid much attention, the outcome amounted to ever-decreasing sums of money being moved from square to square on the same old chessboard. Road lobbyists occasionally crushed conservationists, and local politicians claimed famous victories in matters of public lavatories or enhanced traffic systems, but in the end, few people noticed the difference. Now she put the poster in its tube into her bag and turned to go, telling Tim that she’d see him next week.

Tim nodded.

“Enjoy your evening.”

“You too.”

Tim shot his cuffs again. Seeing them at close quarters, Hanna observed that the cufflinks were carved with little skulls and crossbones. Worn with the diver’s watch, they projected the subtle suggestion of piracy on the high seas, which presumably was Tim’s private source of amusement for the week.

It was raining as Hanna crossed the parking lot. She negotiated the puddles with her head down and her hands in her pockets groping for her keys. Not finding them by the time she reached her car, she stood digging in her bag with her shoulders hunched against the rain.

“Hello again.”

Startled, Hanna looked up to see Brian Morton standing by the car parked next to hers. He was holding a large umbrella.

“Sorry. Did I give you a fright?”

“No, it’s just that I didn’t notice you. My keys have vanished and I think I’m starting to drown.”

Brian walked around the car and held the umbrella over her. Hanna stepped back.

“Gosh, no, there’s no need for that. I’m grand, really.” Her fingers discovered her keys at the bottom of her bag and she fished them out triumphantly.

“See. Thank you, though.”

“No problem.” As she unlocked her car door he spoke again. “Look, I wonder . . . would you be up for that drink now?”

Before Hanna could reply, he smiled down at her. “You don’t actually have to have one. I’m just offering you the opportunity to snub me.”

“What?”

“Well, it pleases my sense of symmetry. I was immensely rude to you the other week.”

Despite herself, Hanna laughed. “I’d say we both had our moments.”

“And anyway, you don’t want to drive in a downpour.”

Actually, she didn’t. And by the look of the clouds, in half an hour the weather would most likely clear.

“Well, okay, yes, thank you. But I owe you one.”

“Let’s fight about that on the way.” Brian tilted the umbrella to look up at the sky and suggested that they wouldn’t want to walk. “Do you know The Royal Victoria? We could go in one car.”

They chose Hanna’s car because that meant that Brian could walk back to the parking lot with the umbrella if it happened still to be raining when they were done. Later Hanna realized that it also avoided their walking through the streets of Carrick arm in arm under the umbrella like Lucy and Mr. Tumnus. Not to mention ensuring that none of the library gossips would see her car still in the parking lot long after she’d left to go home.

Things weren’t looking good by the time they reached the hotel. After a stilted conversation in the car and one of the most ham-fisted attempts at parallel parking she’d ever made, Hanna was mortified. This was a relaxed drink after work with an acquaintance. Why was she behaving like one of Jazz’s schoolmates on a first date? Actually, she told herself severely, Jazz’s generation would be a lot less silly. On the other hand, Brian Morton wasn’t doing much to help.

Then, having seated them in a corner, PJ the bartender returned with nuts and olives and a manner so discreet that Hanna wanted to laugh.

“A gin and tonic, Miss Casey? Sir?”

As PJ shimmered off to get the order, Brian caught Hanna’s eye. “You’re not the flibbertigibbet wife of an officer who’s up-country on a tiger shoot? Because if you are, I think you can rely absolutely on PJ’s discretion.”

Hanna snorted and an olive went down the wrong way. Fending off Brian’s attempts to thump her on the back, she spluttered her way back to coherence and grinned at him.

“The last time I was here I was reading a Saki short story.”

“I can see why you would. Was it the stale pale elephants of Cutch Behar one?”

Charmed to discover that he shared her taste for Edwardian literature, Hanna smiled.

“How did you guess?”

“It just seemed suitable for this wonderful white elephant.”

“Do you like it? The hotel, I mean.”

“I love it. I don’t just come here because no one else from the office does.”

“No one from the library does either. God knows why not. I think it’s heavenly. Just as well, though. If they came I probably wouldn’t.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Hanna wished them unspoken. Brian might share her taste for Saki but that didn’t mean that she wanted to make him a confidant. To her relief, he didn’t pursue what she’d said. Instead, as they waited for their drinks to arrive, he seemed concentrated on the spoof poem in Saki’s short story. Hanna watched him in amusement, prompting him as he tried to remember the words. It was the sort of conversation she hadn’t had for years.

“Okay, it’s supposed to commemorate the Delhi Durbar, which is why the elephants come from Cutch Behar . . .”

“. . . because it rhymes . . .”

“Exactly. So it goes—‘Back to their homes in Himalayan heights, The stale pale elephants of Cutch Behar, Roll like great galleons on a tideless sea . . .’”

“. . . and then Bertie says that Cutch Behar isn’t anywhere near the Himalayas . . .”

“. . . and there’s the bit about there being so few poems about Russia in English because you can’t get things to rhyme with names like Minsk and Tobolsk.”

“And then it goes on to ‘. . . where the coiled cobra in the gloaming gloats . . .’”

“‘. . . and prowling panthers stalk the wary goats . . .’”

Brian frowned, trying to remember more. “I think there are other bits in between.”

“No there aren’t.”

“Yes there are.”

Hanna looked at him severely. “When did you last read this story?”

He grinned at her. “Probably when I was at school.”

“Well then! I read it last week.”

“Oh, all right. Maybe I just liked the wary goats so much that I imagined there was more.”

Hanna’s eyes widened. “Oh Lord, you’ve just reminded me. I haven’t moved my goats.”