That evening after closing the library Hanna drove over to Maggie’s house and found Dan and Fury working on the wiring. The new roof was sound and straight as a die; the internal walls were newly plastered; and, without bothering to wait for her approval, Fury had installed modern wooden sash windows and an old refurbished half-door. The dank, cave-like feeling was gone and the house smelled of fresh paint and sawdust. And half the shell of the new extension was already built. As Hanna paused on the threshold The Divil bounded out of the bedroom covered in wood shavings. Glancing up from the socket he was fixing, Fury cocked his head at her.
“You hate the windows.”
“No, I don’t. And I love the door.”
Fury scrambled up from the floor, crossed the room, and lifted a tarp.
“So what’s the verdict on these?”
It was a run of four beautifully made kitchen cabinets and an expensive-looking oven and stove-top, waiting to be installed. He’d got them from a friend, he said, who’d got them from a holiday home built by some banker from Dublin. Stayed in about twice in the ten years that he’d owned it and then sold to some eejit of a woman who didn’t do secondhand kitchens. Hanna hesitated for a moment unsure that she did secondhand herself. Fury immediately rounded on her, throwing up his hands.
“Ah, Holy God, would you look at the puss on her? What’s wrong with them? They cost a fortune, they’ve hardly been used and I got the lot for a couple of hundred euro. Stick a slate counter down there on top of them and they’ll look like a million dollars!”
“Yes, but—”
“But what? Don’t I know well the time you’ve spent over in London wandering round architectural salvage yards looking for knackered fireplaces? What’s this only salvage? Or upcycling? Or plain bloody common sense, when they’re there to be had for the taking.”
A closer inspection suggested that the stove-top and the stylish oven had never been used at all, and, looking at the elegant, dove-gray cabinets, Hanna capitulated.
“But you’re sure you paid for them?”
“Very few of my friends are fools, girl. I wouldn’t have got them otherwise.”
“But a couple of hundred euro . . .”
“Are you going to stand there and look a gift horse in the mouth?”
Seconds later he grabbed her elbow and hustled her out the door. There was no sink with the cabinets, he said, because some gobdaw had put a hammer through it when the kitchen was being taken out. So that would have to be got elsewhere, the sink and the counter both.
The next thing Hanna knew they were hurtling along the back roads in Fury’s van while The Divil, exiled from the passenger seat, expressed shrill outrage in the back. As Fury had climbed into the driver’s seat he’d thrust a large package wrapped in newspaper at Hanna. With no idea where they were going, she held the package on her knee and, bracing herself against the dashboard with her other hand, concentrated on nothing but keeping her seat. By the time Fury swung the van to a halt under the portico at Castle Lancy, every bone in her body felt shaken out of its socket.
She looked round in surprise. “What on earth are we doing here?”
Sensing the nearness of the kitchen cat, The Divil hurled himself at the back door of the van. Fury swung his long legs out of the driver’s seat and walked round to let him out. As the dog shot round the side of the building Hanna climbed stiffly out of the passenger seat, still holding the newspaper package. Without a word, Fury took her elbow again and hustled her round to the rear of the castle where a black cat sat on a washhouse roof, spitting mortal insults at The Divil. At a snarl from Fury the cat disappeared and The Divil slunk back to the van. Then, turning triumphantly to Hanna, Fury pushed open the washhouse door. An old copper laundry vat gleamed in a shaft of sunlight, a rotting clothes wringer was tilted against the wall, and, set in a wide slate shelf two inches thick, was a deep ceramic butler’s sink.