The work on The Edge of the World submission was going swimmingly. Each evening when Hanna closed the library she crossed the garden for a meeting with Sister Michael. Ferdia, who did daily updates on the core document the volunteers were producing, had given Hanna his spare laptop so she could keep tabs on the overall progress. The bishop, who was in favor of anything that would take the convent off his hands, had extended its insurance policy to cover public access to the garden. And, to Sister Michael and Hanna’s delight, he had given Father McGlynn definite instructions not to involve himself in the submission, lest anyone accuse the Church of feathering its own nest.
The garden working parties had spawned new groups that were taking on responsibility for different aspects of the submission. Several were composed of a mixture of young businesspeople and seniors whose varied skills and experience occasionally produced conflict. Jimmy Harty, a seventy-nine-year-old who had once been head of the council’s Roads Division, had somehow got attached to the Finfarran Flora and Fauna group and fallen out badly with Darina Kelly who was chairing it. But then Dan Cafferky’s dad pointed out to Hanna that Jimmy’s background made him the perfect man to address the peninsula’s lack of decent roads. Within hours, Jimmy was chairing his own group and digging out paperwork on an unimplemented scheme that he’d once worked on for the council. If they re-costed it, he said, they could add it as an annex to the submission, which would beef things up. A graphic designer who lived in a village north of Knockmore had been co-opted to the group for his computer skills, and, according to Ferdia’s latest update, the work was now forging ahead.
Sitting over sherry with Sister Michael, Hanna considered the time chart that was pinned to the living-room wall. So far everything was going to plan, but with the council’s decision meeting only three weeks away, no one could afford to slacken. And new ideas kept presenting themselves. Someone had pointed out that Internet access was a big issue so a hastily convened group was researching government policy on rural broadband provision and establishing how far the peninsula fell short of it. Meanwhile Hanna and Sister Michael had decided that, as well as producing an online submission complete with hyperlinks, they needed to make a bound hard copy for each county councillor who would vote at the meeting. It would involve masses of printing, collating, and checking, but in the end it should be worth it. And, to be certain of avoiding sabotage, the hard copies would be hand-delivered to the councillors’ private addresses.
Hanna left Sister Michael painfully typing up the next day’s agendas on the convent’s old Remington typewriter and walked back across the garden toward the parking lot. Susan and little Holly were sitting on the rim of the fountain watching birds eating bread from the outstretched hands of the stone statue of St. Francis. Hanna sat down beside them, listening to the little girl’s squeaks of delight and the sound of the falling water. It seemed incredible that, for better or worse, these intense weeks of effort would soon be over. Right now, at the end of an exhausting day, it seemed all too likely that their work would have been for nothing. Suddenly Susan nudged her, indicating Holly whose eyes were as round as pennies. A bird had fluttered down from the statue’s hand and was pecking at a piece of crust by the child’s shoe. The look on Holly’s face swept Hanna straight back to Jazz’s London childhood, when they’d walk home from the local library and stop in the park to feed the birds.
Held both by the past and the future, it took Hanna a moment to realize that Susan was asking her a question. Had she heard about Pat Fitzgerald’s bargain plane tickets? It was a brilliant deal, Susan said. Pat had been showing her computer class how to use a search engine when she’d clicked on an airline’s website and found this great offer on flights to where her kids lived in Canada. There were only four seats left at the price and the money was nonrefundable. But it was an amazing deal, and, fair play to Mrs. Fitz, she’d reached for the handbag and gone for it.
“You mean she bought them without consulting Ger?”
“She did! She put them on her credit card and rang him up and told him and, by all accounts, he was delighted.”
Hanna wondered if Pat would have been quite so brave if her computer class hadn’t egged her on. Still, it was a great story, even if it was likely to devastate poor, indignant Mary Casey. On the other hand, it might have the opposite effect and make Mary herself more proactive. With so much excitement going on in Lissbeg, and so much talk up and down the peninsula, Hanna had a growing suspicion that her mother was feeling left out.
Later that night, when Hanna got home to the bungalow, instead of complaining about her lateness, Mary produced hot chicken soup and a loaf of delicious homemade soda bread. Then she sat down and pumped Hanna about the events of her day. What was the story in the library? And what was all this guff she’d been hearing about Hanna carrying on like Joan of Arc? More to the point, what was all the talk about people giving Hanna bits of furniture?
Hanna sighed, anticipating an argument. But, turning on her heel, Mary went to a cupboard and returned with a shopping bag.
“Heirlooms and old things, that’s what they’re saying they’ve been giving you. Stuff out of old cabins that was shoved out into sheds! Well, it’s far from súgán chairs you were reared, Hanna-Mariah Casey. Though God knows you didn’t appreciate it.”
Dumping the bag on the table, she stood back and glared at Hanna. “And it’s not as if your mother’s family hasn’t heirlooms of its own.”
Inside the bag was a shawl. Hanna shook it out in amazement. It was made of thick beige wool with a broad black and cream band around the edge and a fringe a hand span deep. She pressed her face against the wool, which smelled of oil and lavender.
Mary tossed her head. “It was your granny’s. My mam’s. And her mother’s before her. I don’t suppose you’re going to be fool enough to go out with it round you like a hippie. But you might throw it on a bed or the back of a chair.”
Before Hanna could speak, Mary stumped away again, this time to the dresser. Opening a door, she took down a battered cardboard box.
“They were my grandma’s, too. Basins, she called them. The old people hereabouts used to use them for drinking tea.”
Hanna had seen similar bowls in France and Brittany. They were pottery, made without handles, wide enough to require two hands to grasp them and deep enough to allow you to dip a croissant in your coffee.
There was no point in waxing lyrical to Mary Casey. Instead Hanna just put the gifts into the shopping bag and said thanks. When she went round to the house the next day she found that Johnny Hennessy had left a fertilizer bag full of black turf on the doorstep. She carried the bag through to a corner of the unfinished extension and, taking an armful of sods of turf through to the hearth, laid a fire, ready to be lit when she moved in. Then she hung the shawl on the back of the súgán chair by the fireside and placed the bowls on a shelf in the dresser alongside Maggie’s buttermilk glass. The house was still unfinished and there were dozens of other things that had yet to be bought, thought about, and decided upon. But now, sitting by the hearth with her hands in her lap, she felt that she’d truly come home.