It wasn’t often that Conor got time off on the weekends and when he did he mostly hung out at home, tinkering with the Vespa out in the old cowshed or chilling in front of the TV. But this afternoon he’d had a text from his friend Dan Cafferky who was meeting a couple of girls in Lissbeg for coffee. Going into town meant taking a shower and making himself halfway decent but it beat watching some old Harrison Ford movie with his mam, who had got to the sofa first and claimed the remote.
Bríd Carney had been in school with Dan and Conor and her cousin Aideen had been a couple of classes behind them. Conor hadn’t seen Bríd for ages. She was just back in Lissbeg after doing some class of a cookery science degree and the two girls ran the new delicatessen across the way from the library. They called it HabberDashery, because there used to be an old shop there selling sewing stuff, and, according to Bríd, it was doing all right, though not brilliantly. In fact, when Dan and Conor arrived it was empty, but at least that meant they could sit and have a bit of a chat. When Aideen got iffy about taking payment for the coffees Dan told her she was daft. His own business running marine eco-trips on the north side of the peninsula wasn’t doing too well either, he said, but he could still afford a latte. Just about.
They sat round one of the tables, with Bríd poised to nip back round the counter and Dan talked about whale watching. You got masses of tourists these days who were mad for ecology. But the problem in his area was the lack of decent roads that would bring them to you. Bríd said the real problem was that damn road running straight through from Carrick to Ballyfin; the crazy speed limit meant that tourists never slowed down and found the great places on either side of it. Since neither the farm nor the library depended on the tourists, Conor sat back and listened while the others talked. He’d had a notion that Dan had fancied Bríd back at school but maybe they’d moved on since then. There was nothing lovey-dovey about their talk anyway; it was all about profit margins and ways to get by. Aideen was full of determination to make a go of the girls’ business in Lissbeg.
“It’s not that I don’t want to travel, mind. I just want to have the choice. And in the end it’s here I’d like to live.”
Dan tipped a packet of sugar into his latte. “You see, that’s what I think. I was a year in Australia but I want to settle in my own place. But look at my poor mum and dad there, trying to make a go of their shop. They’ve got the post office as well and the Internet café out the back. I mean, that’s three businesses in one and they’re only just treading water. And here’s me, trying to sell whale-watching to tourists that can hardly find their way to me. And half the time I’ve got to go laboring to make ends meet, so I’m not available when they do come.”
“Maybe you need some kind of website or online presence.”
“Maybe you could ask the council or the tourist board to give you a hand.”
“Sure, the only ones they’ll give a hand to are the crowd back in Ballyfin.”
It was an old complaint but Bríd shook her head and called it a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Listen, we’re all paying taxes. And I’ll tell you something else. If you don’t ask you don’t get.”
Dan interrupted her. “Yeah, but I’ll tell you what gets up my nose. Nobody’s interested in our opinion. The people who actually live here. Nobody comes to us and says ‘this is what we’re planning to do, come and tell us what you think of it.’”
Bríd and Conor were nodding when Aideen interrupted. Actually, she said, that wasn’t true. There were posters up in Carrick about some council consultation meeting that would affect next year’s budget for the whole peninsula. Or maybe it was a plan they were rolling out over the next five years. Anyway, they were going to have a public meeting in a few weeks and present their ideas. Dan gave a big laugh out of him as if Aideen was just stupid. The whole thing would be a setup because that was always the way of it. Brown envelopes in back rooms. That’s what his dad said anyway. Aideen turned red and retreated behind the counter. Watching her fiddle awkwardly with some dishes in the sink, Conor felt sorry for her. After all, it was Dan who’d mentioned consultation in the first place. It crossed Conor’s mind to give him a hack on the shin but it was too late, and, anyway, Aideen probably wouldn’t thank him for it. She was kind of shy and the chances were that she wouldn’t want him making a fuss.
Later, as he zoomed home on his Vespa, Conor told himself that Dan Cafferky was right about one thing anyway. Every tourist penny in Finfarran seemed to get spent in Ballyfin. Once a little fishing port, it was now a booming tourist resort, with jet-setters and movie stars hanging out in its narrow streets and a string of fashionable restaurants by the beach, where champagne was always on ice. Because of Ballyfin’s remote location at the western end of the peninsula beyond the Knockinver Mountains, it had been sold internationally to tourists as the best-kept secret in Ireland. Everyone on the rest of the peninsula called it the worst-kept secret in the world. But Aideen was right. Well-signed and expensively maintained, the wide road from Carrick led directly to Ballyfin and the country roads that led off it were seldom traveled by tourists. Which wasn’t all that surprising because most of them were hard enough going in a tractor. In fact, the really well-kept secret on the Finfarran Peninsula was its farmland and forest and the cliffs to the south and north, areas that were full of outlying farms and scattered villages. Those were the communities Miss Casey served in the library van. And, as far as Conor could see, the pen pushers hardly knew they were there at all.