The Copper Beech (42 page)

From their dining room they could look over at Ryan’s Shancarrig Hotel and see the early tour buses leaving on their excursions. Nessa worked flexible hours across the road in her family business. Neither of her sisters had shown any interest in hotel work.

‘They will when they see there’s money in it,’ her mother had said darkly.

‘Imagine the school for sale. We’d never have thought that possible.’ Niall was thirty now. Nobody ever referred to him as young Mr Hayes any more, in fact his father
took the back seat in almost every aspect of the business nowadays.

‘What’s not possible?’ Danny Hayes was four, and very inquisitive. He loved long words and would pronounce them carefully.

‘That you’re not going to go to the same school we went to.’ Nessa wiped his chin expertly of the runny bits of egg. ‘You’ll go on a big yellow bus to school. You won’t walk over the bridge like we did.’

‘Can I go today?’ Danny asked.

‘After Christmas,’ Nessa promised.

‘Won’t he be a bit young?’ Niall looked worried.

‘If
your
mother had had her way you wouldn’t have been allowed up the road to Shancarrig school until you were twenty.’ There was a laugh in Nessa’s voice, but also a tinge of bitterness.

It had not been quite as simple moving into The Terrace as she had thought it would be. Although her father-in-law had handed over the reins quite willingly to his son, Ethel Hayes had been less anxious to let go the gloomy rein over the family.

There were dire warnings of pneumonia, rheumatic fever, spoiled children, temper tantrums, all directed at Nessa. Danny and Brenda would suffer for it all later, was Mrs Hayes’s prediction – the children were allowed too much freedom, too little discipline, and a severe absence of cod liver oil.

‘Would we buy it?’ Nessa asked suddenly.

‘What on earth for?’ Niall was genuinely surprised.

‘To live in. It would be a great place for the children to play … the tree and everything. It would be lovely.’

‘I don’t know.’ Niall bit his lip. It was his usual reaction to a new idea, to something totally unexpected.

Nessa knew him well enough.

‘Well, let’s not think about it now. It’s a month to the auction,’ she said.

Deftly she forced Danny to finish his egg and toast by cutting it into tiny cubes and eating one alternately with him. She settled Brenda into her carrycot. Niall was still sitting at his place pondering the bombshell.

‘It’s only an idea,’ Nessa said airily. ‘But if you’re talking to Declan Blake at all, ask him how much he thinks they’ll get for it.’

Niall looked out of the window, and saw Nessa moving into her parents’ hotel. The carrycot was taken from her at the door by the porter. Danny had run to the hotel back yard where Nessa and her mother had built a sandpit, and swings and a see-saw to entertain the children who came to stay.

It had been yet one more excellent marketing notion for Ryan’s Shancarrig Hotel.

Jim and Nora Kelly read it in Galway. They were staying with Maria and Hugh. They had wanted to be away when it was announced and by wonderful chance it coincided with the very time they were badly needed. Maria’s first baby was due. She wanted her parents to be with her.

‘It’s the end of an era,’ Maria said. ‘There must be people all over Ireland saying that.’

‘Not only Ireland – didn’t our people go all over the world?’ Jim Kelly said.

He was fifty years of age, and had been re-employed in the school in the town. It wasn’t the same of course, nothing would ever be the same. But he knew a great number of the children, and he came trailing clouds of respect. A man who had run his own show, even in a small village, was a man to be reckoned with.

Nora had taken early retirement. And taken many a train to visit Maria over on the Atlantic coast. They walked along the beach together, the pregnant girl and the woman who was as good as her mother, with so much to say. Jim was pleased that his wife had taken the closing of the school so well. It might have been too much of a change for her to have gone to teach in the town.

Maria patted her stomach. ‘It’ll be so strange that she won’t know the place as a school,’ she said wonderingly.

‘Or he. Remember, you could have a boy.’ Jim Kelly knew that none of them minded whether it was a boy or girl.

They were so happy that Maria had found the steady Hugh after a series of wilder boyfriends had broken their hearts. Hugh seemed to know how much Maria needed her background in Shancarrig; he was always finding excuses to bring her there.

‘Still, when the baby’s born I’ll wheel her … or him, up to the school and say that this is where Grandpa or Grandma used to live, where every child lived for a while.’ Maria looked sad. ‘Oh, come on. I’m being stupidly sentimental,’ she said with a little shake. ‘And anyway, aren’t you better off by far living in that fine house near everything, instead of having to toil up and down the hill?’

The Kellys had settled in one of the cottages that had been vastly changed and upgraded. The row of houses by the Grane that had once held the most unruly Brennans and Dunnes were now what young Declan Blake called Highly Des Res material.

‘I wish there were going to be children there,’ Nora Kelly said. ‘I suppose it’s unlikely that anyone who has children could afford to buy it, but somehow the place cries out for them. Or am I the one being sentimental now?’

‘There’d be nobody local who could think of it.’ Jim was ticking off people in his mind.

‘Maybe when Hugh makes a fortune we’ll buy it ourselves … and let little Nora play under the copper beech like I did.’

There was a lump in their throats. It hadn’t been said that Maria was going to call her child after Nora Kelly.

‘I thought maybe Helen after your mother.’ Nora felt she should say it anyway.

‘The second one will be Helen!’ said Maria.

And the matter was left there.

Chris Barton read the notice out to her mother-in-law. She always called Eddie’s mother Una. It was yet another bond between them, the fact that she thought of the older woman as her sister.

‘Well, Una. Is this our big chance?’ Chris asked. ‘Is this the famous opportunity that is meant to present itself to people? A ready-made craft centre … get Foxy to build a few more outhouses that we could rent out as studios … is this it or is it madness?’

‘You’re the one with the courage. I’d still be turning up hems for people and letting out their winter skirts if you hadn’t come along.’ Mrs Barton declared that she said an extra decade of the rosary every single night of her life to thank the Lord and His Mother for sending Chris to Shancarrig.

‘I don’t know, I really don’t know. I’ll ask Eddie. He has a great instinct for these things. We might be running before we can walk, or we might regret it all our lives. I trust his nose for this sort of thing.’

It was true. Mrs Barton realised that her daughter-in-law really did defer to Eddie’s instincts and tastes. It wasn’t a case of pretending to take his advice like Mrs Ryan in
the hotel did, and indeed her daughter young Nessa who was busy pushing Niall Hayes into some kind of confidence. Chris genuinely thought Eddie the brains of the outfit. It made Una Barton’s heart soar.

She thought less and less about the husband who had left her all those years ago – a quarter of a century – but sometimes she wished that Ted Barton could know how well his son had done and how splendidly they had managed without him.

Eddie came in holding the twins by the hand. He laughed as he saw his wife and mother automatically reach to protect everything on the table that was in danger of being pulled to the floor.

‘Can we leave them with you, Una? I want to talk to Eddie in Barna Woods.’

‘The last time you did that you proposed to me. I hope this doesn’t mean you’re going to leave.’ He laughed confidently. He didn’t think it was likely.

The children were strapped into their high chairs, and fussed over by their grandmother. Chris and Eddie walked as they so often walked together, shoulders touching, talking so that they finished each other’s sentences, at ease with each other and the world. There was nobody in Shancarrig who noticed that Chris had a Scottish accent now, any more than they saw that she had a lame leg and a built-up shoe. She had been there since she was eighteen or nineteen. Part of the scenery.

They sat in the wood and she asked him about the centre. Was it exactly the right time? Or was this folly? Her eyes looked at him for an answer and she saw his face light up. He would never have thought of it, he said … to him it would always have been the school, the place that he had gone, rain or shine, where he had played and studied. Of course it was the answer.

‘Would we live there, or just work there?’ Chris wondered.

‘It would be great for the children.’

‘We could sell the pink house.’ Chris had always called it that, since the moment she had arrived.

‘But my mother?’

‘She said she’d leave it to us.’

‘Where would she go? She’s so used to being beside us …’ Mrs Barton lived in her own little wing of the pink house, beside them but not on top of them.

‘She’d come with us, you big nellie. We’d be building a whole lot of places and she could choose the kind of place she’d like. It’s no bigger a hill for her to climb than the one that she’s been on all her life.’

Eddie’s eyes were dancing. ‘We could invite people in … like the pottery couple, or the weavers …’

‘We could have a small shop there, selling everyone’s work. Not only ours, but everyone’s.’

‘Nessa would get them up here from the hotel for a start, and Leo’s got all sorts of contacts all over the place.’

‘Will we do it?’

They embraced, as they had embraced in these woods years ago at the thought of being married and living happily ever after.

Richard saw the advertisement.

He wondered would whoever bought it cut down the tree in the yard. What would they make of the things that were written on it? He was prepared to bet that his wasn’t the only carving that told a story.

He thought about the school all day in the office.

It was a tiring journey home, a lot of traffic. He was hot and tired. He hoped that Vera hadn’t arranged anything for tonight. What he really would like to do was … he
paused. He didn’t know what he would really like to do. It had been so long since he had allowed himself a thought like that.

He knew what he would really
not
like to do, and that would be to go to the club. Vera might have set up a little evening, a few drinks at the bar, dinner. He would know when he got in. If she had been to the hairdresser this is what she had planned.

He nosed the car into the garage beside Vera’s.

Jimmy the gardener was edging the lawn. ‘Good evening, Mr Hayes,’ he said, touching his forehead.

‘That looks great, Jimmy. Great work.’ Richard knew his voice was automatic; he didn’t see what the man had done or what needed to be done. He thought that a full-time gardener was a bit excessive in a Dublin garden.

Still, it was Vera’s decision. It was after all she who had bought the house, and filled it with valuable things. It was Vera who made the day-to-day decisions about how they spent the money which was mainly her money.

She was sitting in the conservatory. He noticed sadly that she had been to the hairdresser.

‘You look lovely,’ he said.

‘Thank you, darling. I thought we might meet some of the others at the club … you know, rather than just sitting looking at each other all night?’ She smiled.

She was very attractive in her lemon-coloured dress, her blonde upswept hair and her even suntan.

She did not look in her late thirties any more than he did. But unlike him she never seemed to find their life empty. She filled it with acquaintances, parties given, parties attended, a group of what she called like-minded people at the golf club.

Vera had taken their childlessness with what Richard
considered a disturbing lack of concern. If the question was ever raised between themselves or when other people were present she always said the same thing. She said that if it happened it did, and if it didn’t it didn’t. No point in having all those exhaustive tests to discover whose
fault
it was, as if someone was to blame.

Since Richard knew from the past, only too well from his drama with Olive, that there could be nothing lacking on his side, he wished that Vera would go for an examination. But she refused.

She had the newspaper open in front of her.

‘Look! There’s a simply lovely place for sale, in that Shancarrig where you spent all those years.’

‘I know. I saw it.’

‘Should we buy it, do you think? It has tons of potential. It would make a nice weekend place, we could have people to stay. You know, it might be fun.’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean,
no
?’

‘I mean NO, Vera,’ he said.

Her face flushed. ‘Well, I don’t know what you’re turning on
me
for, I only thought
you’d
like it. I do everything that I think you’d like. It’s becoming impossible to please you.’

He moved over to reach for her but she stood up and pulled away.

‘Seriously, Richard. Nobody could please you. There isn’t a woman on earth that could hold you. Maybe you should never have married, just been a desirable bachelor all your life.’ She was very hurt, he could see.

‘Please. Please forgive me, I’ve had a horrible day. I’m tired, that’s all. Please, I’m a pig.’

She was softening. ‘Have a bath and a drink and we’ll go out. You’ll feel much better then.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry for snapping.’ His voice was dead, he could hear it in his own ears.

‘And you really don’t think we should pick up this little house as a weekend place?’

‘No, Vera. No, I wasn’t happy there. It wouldn’t make me happy to go back.’

‘Right. It will never be mentioned again,’ she said.

And he knew that she would look for somewhere else, a place where they could invite people for the weekend – fill their life with even more half strangers. Maybe she might even pick on whatever town Gloria had settled in. He knew the Darcys had left Shancarrig not long after he had.