61

When she entered the house it welcomed her with stillness. She closed the door and leaned against it, seeing Brian’s figure block the light from the window as he passed it and walked away. The morning sunlight had begun to warm the room but Hanna still felt cold. Kneeling on the hearth, she put a match to the kindling and watched small flames begin to flicker up through the sods of turf. She wondered if she was too tired to boil a kettle, but the idea of the warmth of the bowl between her hands and the rich taste and scent of the coffee spurred her on. When the coffee was brewed she carried it to the fire and sat down on the rush-bottomed chair.

At first all she felt was relief that Jazz was alive. Then the fact that she might well have been killed hit her again like a blow to the gut. Shivering so violently that she almost spilled the coffee, she set the bowl on the floor, took the shawl from the back of the chair, and wrapped it round her. After a few minutes the shivering stopped and in the quiet that followed she almost laughed, thinking of how much like Maggie she must look, crouched over the fire with a shawl round her shoulders. It had never occurred to her to wonder what Maggie used to think about, sitting all alone in the house. Now, sitting here herself, she thought about Brian. What would it be like if he, too, were here by the hearth? If they’d come into the house together, she’d lit the fire while he made the coffee, and she’d allowed herself to be comforted and cared for? It would have been different. But it wouldn’t have been what she needed. Or wanted. At least, not yet. First she needed to understand what she had and how far she’d come to get it.

This wasn’t the house of her childhood dreams. The naïve young man with his curly-brimmed hat, his flowered waistcoat, and his pink-cheeked wife with her baby and her quilted petticoat, had no place here. This wasn’t a stylish project fit for a design magazine or a perfect retreat from a stressful world. Instead it was a place of compromises. The elegant kitchen that she loved was a secondhand windfall. The dresser by the hearth still belonged more to Maggie, or even to Fury, than to herself. In fact, none of the furniture or possessions that surrounded her were symbols of hard-won independence. They were the story of her reintegration into a community that, for years, she had failed to value and that now might be her salvation.

As firelight and sunlight filled the room Hanna began to feel warmer. Dropping the shawl from her shoulders to her elbows, she took up her coffee again. She still felt strangely distanced from the news that Brian had brought her. The fight for Lissbeg Library had been lost. Soon—not at once but inevitably—she would find herself out of a job. It was certain that there’d be nothing for her in Finfarran’s library service. Tim would see to that. Perhaps, with so many new contacts in the community, she was better placed now than she might have been when it came to finding something else. But with work already so hard to find on the peninsula, would anyone offer a job to a woman her age? This was the hard fact from which Brian’s company tonight would have shielded her. But the truth was that she was happier to face it at once and alone.

There was a knock at the door and Hanna went to open it realizing that, paradoxically, she was hoping Brian had come back. But it was Fury on the threshold, with his waxed jacket hitched round his skinny hips and The Divil sniffing at his heels. Hanna stood back to let them in. She had yet to find a table for the house, so her three straight-backed chairs were standing against the wall. Fury moved one of them to the fire and placed another between his chair and Hanna’s. Then, reaching into the poacher’s pocket in his jacket, he produced a disreputable-looking package and laid it on the chair that stood between them. The Divil curled up on the hearth as near to the fire as he could get.

“I hear the child in the hospital is grand.”

Hanna smiled. It was inevitable that Fury would be up to date with the news.

“She’ll be fine. You heard we lost the vote, too, I suppose.”

“I did, of course, and I saw it coming. Sure, Joe Furlong and Ger Fitz and the rest of the money men had it all stitched up beforehand.”

His smugness irritated Hanna. If he was so sure that they’d been wasting their time, she said, why hadn’t he said so earlier?

“Because it wasn’t a waste. It was a triumph.”

Look at the way people had come together, he said. People like Conor’s dad, Paddy McCarthy, who’d hardly come out of the house a few weeks ago and had ended up on a committee; and the next thing you knew he was coming to grips with a computer and laying stuff out on spreadsheets. And what about the seniors? You wouldn’t see them kowtowing to Father McGlynn again, not now that they’d tasted freedom. What about all the young people and their networking? And Sister Michael out in the garden surrounded by friends when she used to be stuck in a sickroom? And what about Hanna herself?

“What about me?”

“Isn’t it obvious? There you were driving round the peninsula for years with a face on you like a hen’s arse. And look at you now! A grand lift in your step and a big smile for everyone.”

“Well, the chances are that I won’t be smiling for long.”

“Why so?”

“Because I’ll be down on my uppers. We’ve lost the fight and they’re going to close the library.”

“Ah, woman dear, do you think I’m a fool entirely? They’ll do nothing of the sort.”

Fury nodded at the package he’d put on the chair.

“Look what I’ve brought you.”

Hanna opened the wrapping. Inside was the lectern made of ash wood with its brass leaves and its newly carved ribbon of berries. Baffled, she looked up at Fury who was sitting back looking smug.

“Isn’t it a great thing altogether, Miss Casey, that it’s a book that will save your library and put the money men in their place?”

Taking the lectern into his own hands, Fury smiled at her. He hadn’t waited till the end of the meeting last night, he said. He’d seen which way the wind was blowing so he’d driven round to Castle Lancy.

“Something told me the time had come to call in a couple of favors. Charles Aukin’s a decent enough old skin in his own way. And, God knows, those de Lancys owe this place a lot.”

It had taken a couple of drinks, he said, but in the end they’d come to an agreement. As a memorial to his deceased wife, the last of the de Lancys, Charles was presenting The Carrick Psalter to the people of Finfarran.

Hanna looked at Fury blankly. Delighted by the effect of his announcement, Fury scratched The Divil with his boot.

“No, wait now, there’s more to come and it’s even better.”

The Psalter itself, he said, was only half of the gift. Charles was establishing a trust fund for its preservation and display. And the terms of the trust would stipulate where exactly it was to be housed.

“In Lissbeg Library, as part of a newly developed, council-funded social amenities center. Situated in the old convent.”

“You mean that the terms of the bequest require that the council adopt our proposal?”

“Oh, I think you’ll find that pretty soon it’ll be the council’s proposal, not yours. Just as the HoHo app will become The Edge of the World website, so you’d better warn young Ferdia to drive a hard bargain for his work.”

“No but, hang on, just a minute, what about last night’s vote?”

“Sure, no better man than a county councillor for a bit of backped’ling. This is an offer they’re not going to refuse. Do you think the government would let them? They’re getting a world-class museum piece and the price of a place to house it. They’ll bite Charles Aukin’s arm off and give him the thanks of the nation.”

The Divil’s legs scrabbled in the ashes; he was chasing rats in his dreams.

Hanna gazed at Fury, unable to take things in. He leaned forward and placed the lectern in her hands.

“Mind you, I know the kind of nonsense the insurance lads will insist on. So I added my own stipulation before Charles and I shook hands. Whatever class of a bulletproof glass case that book ends up in, you’ll display it on my lectern or we’ll have it back.” Cocking his head, Fury winked at her. “Tell Conor that if he wears his motorbike gloves he can turn a page over each day.”

Hanna sat with the lectern in her lap, gazing into the fire. After a few minutes Fury stood up and poked The Divil with his toe. The little dog rolled over and shook himself vigorously, scattering ashes on the hearthstone. Fury looked at Hanna in disapproval.

“That fire wants a decent brush and a proper shovel.”

For a moment Hanna expected him to produce them from a pocket. Instead he threw his head back and laughed at her.

“Ah no, Miss Casey, this one’s your problem. I’ll be here tomorrow to get on with the extension. But as of today I’ve given your house back to you.”

Shading her eyes from a flood of sunlight, Hanna stepped over the threshold. This was her field above the Atlantic, bounded by stone walls and ready to be tilled. Above her, the turquoise sky reflected the color of the ocean. She had a stone slab for a doorstep and the land at her feet sloped down to a high cliff’s edge. Beyond that was a broad ledge clustered with sea pinks and a sheer drop to the dancing waves below. At her back, the quiet house stood like a sanctuary. Before her lay a future filled with hope.

When Fury had left she’d poured herself another bowl of coffee, relishing the feeling of warmth through the worn glaze. Now bees hummed in the tasseled grass as she carried it down the field. As she reached the wall at the edge of the cliff, a seagull swooped by overhead. Holding the bowl carefully, Hanna climbed the stile and sat on the bench beyond the wall. There was a flash of color as a dragonfly landed on a flower. Millions of small, noisy lives were being lived out all around her and the stones against which she had set her back were warm.

Breathing in deeply, Hanna thought of the Psalter. A deer ran through a forest, its feet and flanks touched with gold. Farther down the page it was standing by a fountain, and acorns hung from its antlers. Waterspouts had fluted tops like trumpets; and there within the painted words on the parchment were the mountains she crossed in the van each week on her drive to Ballyfin. Tomorrow when she went back to work, the library would be crowded. Darina Kelly would turn up with her grubby toddler, Conor on his Vespa, and Pat Fitz with her computer class of seniors. Across the road in his butcher shop, Ger Fitz would gnash his teeth when he heard about the Psalter. She supposed that Charles Aukin’s gift to Finfarran had probably lost Ger a fortune. But Pat, who would never know, would never miss it. And since the tickets Pat had bought to fly them to Canada were a bargain, Ger would have to take the rough along with the smooth.

Smiling, Hanna tipped her head back and listened to the sound of the ocean. Jazz was alive, the library was saved, and one day soon, by the horse trough on Broad Street, she knew that she’d encounter Brian Morton. In the distance the horizon was a silver streak shining between turquoise and indigo. And the taste of windblown salt on her lips was mixed with the honey scent of flowers.