Ballinn, County Kerry
September 2019
It was the contents of her mum’s bookshelf that finally drove Ellie out of hiding; Moira Fitzgerald’s taste in literature was chalk and cheese to her daughter’s. Heaving bosoms versus timeless classics. And two weeks of plot lines where the guy gets the girl and everything turns out hunky-dory was just too much.
In a desperate bid to fill her days, Ellie had devoured a dozen old editions of The Kerryman scattered here and there about the house, read the crumpled ageing news of local sporting victories and items lost and found. When she’d asked Moira to pick up the Guardian from the village shop, her mum had loyally obliged, bringing the paper back each day between two fingers as though it might be contagious. Ellie knew she would have made some excuse to Deidre O’Brien, the proprietor – and purveyor of gossip – about why she was ordering it (sure, Ellie’s career is flying in Dublin – a freelance article in the Guardian!).
A little white lie.
Now, browsing the shelves in Ballinn’s only charity shop, Ellie admitted to herself it had been a mistake to come out of exile, to wind her way down from the safety of her mum’s farm to the village, where prying eyes and flapping ears were sure to be lying in wait. Her large sunglasses, meant as a disguise, had attracted more attention than they’d diverted, and her mum’s green Nissan Micra, which made a wince-inducing crunch in second gear, drew a friendly wave from every local on Main Street, their hands poised in mid-air as they realised it wasn’t Moira Fitzgerald behind the wheel but someone altogether different.
But still, she’d snuck into Threadbare undetected, and with any luck she could leave a few coins on the counter, tuck some books under her arm and slip out unseen.
‘Eleanor?’
Oh dear.
‘Is that you?’
Ellie looked and saw . . . nothing. No one. The shop was as dead as she felt inside. She added going stir crazy to the long list of things that were wrong with her.
The disembodied voice called again. ‘Ellie?’
She squinted into the gloom. ‘Hello?’
A head appeared. It floated above a shelf of women’s clothing then emerged atop a large body covered shoulders to toes in an amorphous collection of fabrics, a hundred jagged colours stitched together as though they’d been thrown in a blender and pulsed.
‘Bernie?’ Ellie’s shoulders dropped with relief. Bernie was her mum’s best friend and relatively discreet confidante; a rare commodity in Ballinn. ‘Bernie, I . . . if I’d known you were working here, I’d not have crept in . . .’
‘In disguise?’
Ellie removed her huge sunglasses. It had been a ridiculous notion: hiding in plain sight in a rural Irish village.
Bernie stepped forward, a grin on her wide face, and pulled Ellie into a technicolour bear hug. ‘You poor, poor cratúir. Your mammy said you’d be at the homeplace for a bit.’
‘It’s great to see you,’ Ellie said truthfully. ‘It’s good to be back.’ Another little white lie.
She did love Ballinn – it was charming in its way, sandwiched neatly between the heather-flecked foothills of the MacGillycuddy Reeks and the wild Atlantic. It had a church, two pubs, a café whose ownership changed with the seasons, a well-worn charity shop selling well-worn things and a garda station open every second Tuesday. And, of course, a corner shop where gossip was dished out gratis to the few dozen locals – and few hundred holiday-home owners – with every carton of milk. In winter, the village smelled of peat, its earthy smoke mingling with the fog that rolled off Kenmare Bay. In summer, it could be glorious or sodden; some days it cowered under incessant rain thrown from the Gulf Stream, other times it was bathed in sunshine, the square packed with gaggles of delighted tourists buying Irish-wool sweaters and overpriced ice cream. It was beautiful. Quaint. Grand. But it was still coming back. Still the homeplace. Not home, as such. But a safe house. Comfort, familiar surrounds and her mum’s butter-laden cooking.
‘There’s a bit of Dublin in you now,’ said Bernie, holding her at arm’s length. ‘They’ve been starving you up there?’
‘I haven’t been looking after myself.’
‘No. Course you haven’t.’
Ellie wasn’t sure how much Berne knew, but no doubt Moira had given her an overview, titbits of Ellie’s broken life. Or, at least, the titbits her mum knew about. She sighed and stepped back, looked past Bernie to the sheets of rain washing the window pane. But by avoiding Bernie’s gaze, she caught her own, there in the glass, staring back. Her usually neat fringe messy. Her hair an Ozzy Osbourne wig. She wore a black leather jacket and pale jeans: her uniform. And a smear of red lipstick: her armour.
‘. . . and my Sean always said you were top of the class.’
She turned back to Bernie. ‘Sorry?’
‘He considered you his best pupil.’
‘Out of twelve students?’
‘Wilful but bright.’ Bernie nodded. ‘Or . . . not so much bright as curious.’
‘Didn’t curiosity kill the cat?’
Bernie touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘You’re not dead yet, pet. Far from it.’
But Ellie felt dead. Inside. Outside. She ached with the desire to turn back the clock. Her old job. Her old love. Her old life.
The older woman reached forward and squeezed her hand in a way that said feck ’em, and it took her by surprise. Ellie dropped her eyes, felt a familiar prickle behind them. Pushed it away as she took back her hand. She despised this new weakness inside her, and yet it was there.
Bernie frowned, then turned on her heel. ‘As vice chief volunteer at Threadbare, Ellie, I’m offering you VIP shopping.’ She went to the door, flicked the lock, then waved an arm around the room as though somewhere among the jumble lay the answer to all Ellie’s problems.
Despite herself, Ellie smiled. ‘Vice chief? I thought you’d be the boss.’
‘The chief’d never give up the top spot. Anyway, I can’t think of anything worse.’ Bernie leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Last week we started block colouring. In a charity shop!’
It was true, a feeble effort had been made. Reds on one rack graduating to pink then off-white. Blues gathered in the back corner. And yellows piled high by the doorway as though attempting an escape.
Bernie took a scarlet shirt and moved it across to the greys with a nod of satisfaction. ‘Now, El, I know you don’t need any fancy clothes. Tell me . . . what are you looking for?’
My old life, Ellie wanted to say, but instead she ran her hand along the line of tattered spines. ‘Reading material. Anything to pass the time.’
Bernie took her intimation – that she had nothing else to do – in her stride and removed a paperback from the shelf, held it up.
‘Well, not anything . . .’ said Ellie.
Bernie sifted, pushing books along the shelf. ‘No. No. No. Penny dreadful. Too violent. Horrible cover. Ah . . .’ she held up Frank McCourt’s Irish classic, ‘there’s always a few copies of Angela’s Ashes about.’
Ellie had enough misery in her life and Frank McCourt was the last thing she needed. She shook her head and ran her hand along the books. It was an odd assortment of fiction and non-fiction flung together – a seventies cookbook sandwiched between Hen Keeping for Beginners and a chunky Ken Follett.
Bernie held up a sausagey finger – ‘Hold on a minute’ – and disappeared through a door at the back of the shop. The sound of dragging boxes spilled from the room and Ellie turned her gaze to her own ring finger, ran her hand over its smooth surface, felt for something that was no longer there.
‘Any of these take your fancy?’ Bernie returned carrying a large cardboard box. ‘No one buys them, so we keep them out back.’ She held it out: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a Conan Doyle, several Austens.
‘You keep these out back?’
‘Sure.’ Bernie scratched at an invisible stain on her dress.
‘Really?’
‘I know what you’re implying, but it’s strictly against Threadbare policy to save items for friends and family. The chief would eat the face off of me. She’s always hated me, you know . . .’
‘Bernie!’
‘Look, someone dropped them off from Blackwater Hall . . . the old place on the plateau,’ she added, as though it was something Ellie should know. ‘I haven’t had time to sort them. So when I heard you were coming, I just . . . put them aside.’
A lump formed in Ellie’s throat. ‘Thank you.’ There was nothing like returning to Kerry to soften the hard edges of the city.
Bernie grinned and put the box in Ellie’s arms, pushing away the money that came in the other direction. Then she took a paperback from the shelf, held it up. On its cover, a woman stared with longing into the dark eyes of a man who had evidently misplaced his shirt. She laid it on top of Jane Austen and winked.
‘There,’ she said, ‘that one’s for your mammy.’
Outside, the rain fell in fat drops and Ellie ran the last few steps to the car. She fiddled with her keys and dropped them once, twice, before wrenching open the passenger-side door and flinging the box into the car’s dry interior. By the time she slid herself into the driver’s seat, her fringe dripped with rain.
The gloom of the afternoon looked like dusk, but sunset was hours away. That was Ballinn in September; it could be summer or winter or anything in between. Next to her sat the box of books, its top flap half open as if inviting a quick peep. Reaching past the damp cardboard, she retrieved Moira’s bodice-ripper. Look away, she wanted to say to the woman on the cover, save yourself. She put it aside, leaned over the remaining titles. At the very bottom was a mottled slipcase with a book lodged inside, spine first. She picked it up and slid it out.
The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie.
Its cloth-bound spine creaked in protest as she eased it open. As she did with all old books, she brought it to her nose, sniffed. Any scent of its owner was long gone, its pages infused with damp and time.
The book was still attached to her nose when her phone rang, bringing her back to the car, back to the village. Back to now. It had been so long since she’d answered a call that she tensed in fear. But when she looked at the screen, her shoulders dropped. Mum landline.
‘I’m on my way,’ she said. ‘Fifteen minutes max.’
‘There’s no need of rushing, Ellie,’ came Moira’s reply, ‘but dinner’ll be ready at five.’
Ellie smiled to herself. Dinner was always at five. ‘I’m just leaving the village.’ She wedged the phone under her ear and placed the open book in her lap. The text was neat and slightly raised; gentle Braille beneath her fingers. ‘I bumped into Bernie. She knew I was back . . .’
‘I can’t be keeping a thing like that from Bernie! You know what she’s like. Knows what you’re going to say before you even think it.’
‘A mind reader, is she?’
Moira blustered, and Ellie experienced equal measures of guilt and pleasure. ‘Had some books for me, as it turns out.’
‘Oh?’ Moira’s voice rose a notch.
Ellie paused. ‘You knew about the books?’
The line became muffled. ‘Oh . . . I have to go . . . The spuds, they’re . . . boiling over. The divils.’
‘Right.’
‘See you soon, love.’ Love? Oh yes, thought Ellie, wincing as a tractor raced past on the empty street, Moira knew about the books. Another of her ploys to get Ellie out and about. Back into the fray. Because Moira was of the generation who worked through grief and sadness and the horrors of life with action, and Ellie was from the generation who tackled it with Netflix. But as the farm didn’t have broadband – or mobile reception, for that matter – Ellie’s only escape had been books. And now she had the box. She patted it fondly as she snapped The ABC Murders shut, returning it to the top of the pile.
‘See you soon,’ she said.
She hung up and appraised the phone. It had come to life that very afternoon as she’d wound her way down the hill into Ballinn, pinging and chiming so that she’d arrived at Threadbare with a full email inbox and countless messages waiting to be read. Another time, she thought. She put the phone deep in her pocket, then turned the Micra’s key, and the car spluttered reluctantly to life, the windscreen wipers clearing a path before her.
Reminding herself to skip second gear, she pulled out on to Ballinn’s main street and away.