Page 18 of The Secret Bookshop in Ireland

Oisín shrugged. ‘I don’t know, really. I asked her once but she said it was old history and we shouldn’t carry grudges. Said she didn’t believe that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children, or something like that. She sold a few of my little watercolours in her bookshop before it closed down. That was seven or so years ago, of course. Nobody has lived there since then, and the shop must be in huge disarray.’

‘Not any more,’ Ciara said, unable to take her eyes off Oisín. ‘Someone was in there recently and cleaned up the books and put them all in alphabetical order, but in the wrong genres.’

‘What?’ Liz asked, her fork frozen in mid-air. ‘Someone was in the old shop?’

‘Yes.’ Ciara took another sip of wine. ‘Between my last visit and today.’

Liz and Oisín exchanged a look. ‘How mysterious,’ Oisín remarked.

‘Maybe it was someone from Martha’s group of friends?’ Liz suggested. ‘She and these other old women used to meet regularly in a house up the street from the shop. It belonged to a woman called Bridget O’Byrne. There were six of them and they were like a gang of old cronies.’

‘The Cherrywood Sisterhood,’ Oisín cut in. ‘Not really sisters, but that’s what they called themselves.’

‘That’s right,’ Liz agreed. ‘They used to do the flowers for the church when there was still a parish priest. But the church isn’t used any more. Now everyone goes to mass in Enniskerry, of course. But that’s just what I’ve heard about the group,’ Liz ended. ‘I was a baby when they were around.’

‘That was thirty-odd years ago,’ Oisín explained. ‘When I was just a little boy and Liz a toddler in her pram. I remember those women, all of a certain age even then. In their sixties or so, I’d say. They were quite powerful in the village and all owned some of the properties there. They seemed very old to me at the age ofsix. I was scared of them. They were so strict and didn’t like kids playing on the street and making noise.’

‘He was a bit wild then,’ Liz teased. ‘A real little brat, they said.’

Oisín laughed. ‘I suppose I was.’ He looked again at Ciara. ‘But coming back to Martha and her friends…’ He stopped for a moment. ‘I didn’t see them around much after Martha went into the nursing home. But I do have a faint memory of meeting Bridget before Martha left. She said something then about a mission. Something they had to do before they all died.’

TEN

‘A mission?’ Maureen asked. ‘What kind of mission?’

Oisín shrugged. ‘No idea. Most of them are gone now, I’m afraid, so I hope they managed to fulfil their promise.’ He lifted the carafe. ‘Have some more wine.’

‘Thanks,’ Maureen said. ‘It’s very good, but I’m feeling it going to my head, so I’ll just have water from now on.’

They continued to enjoy the food, which was delicious; the meat was tender and the vegetables had a wonderful fresh taste of being just harvested.

‘These carrots are amazing,’ Ciara said. ‘And the spinach and beetroot salad the best I’ve ever tasted.’

‘We grow everything ourselves,’ Liz said. ‘At least I do while Oisín paints.’

‘What do you paint?’ Ciara asked. ‘I mean, what kind of painter are you? Landscape artist or portrait or abstract?’

‘A bit of everything,’ Oisín said, smiling at Ciara. ‘You can take a look after dinner if you like. My studio is in the little shed behind the trees down by the river,’ he explained, pointing down the grassy field, where they spotted a log cabin behind the tall sycamores.

‘How fascinating,’ Maureen said. ‘I’ve never been in an artist’s studio before.’

Once they had enjoyed Liz’s rhubarb crumble laced with custard, they wandered down to Oisín’s studio that had large windows with views of the mountains. ‘The famous north light that all painters love,’ he explained as he held the door open to a large room that smelled of paint and turpentine. They all stepped inside and looked around at the vast canvases stacked against the walls. Oisín turned one of them around to reveal a big painting of the river and the mountains and a hawk spreading its wings against the deep blue sky. ‘The birds of prey around here are so majestic,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of them in this area. Hawks, buzzards, falcons, we have them all. I love watching them sitting on the wind and then diving straight down, several hundred feet to pounce on an unsuspecting mouse or rat, or even a squirrel or a rabbit.’

‘Not so much fun for the rabbits,’ Ciara remarked.

‘It’s the law of nature,’ Oisín said. ‘The birds don’t watch Disney movies, you know.’

Ciara shot him a pale smile. ‘Yeah, right. I know what you’re saying. Wild animals are not our little pets to cuddle and coo over.’

‘Even if they’re very cute sometimes,’ Oisín said. He turned another canvas, which was an abstract painting with swirls and shapes in blues and greens and greys feeding into black cloud shapes. It was a painting that drew Ciara in and she looked at it for a long time without speaking.

‘Thoughts,’ she mumbled. ‘All jumbled together like when you can’t go to sleep and the night is closing in and…’ She stopped, feeling suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. ‘It makes me feel strange.’

‘That’s exactly what I was trying to create,’ Oisín said with a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Thoughts and dreams that cramtogether in your head at that hour of the wolf when we wake up and don’t know what time it is or even where you are.’

‘It’s very powerful,’ Maureen said. ‘But I’m not sure I’d like to hang it on my wall all the same.’

‘Actually,’ Oisín said, looking a little self-conscious, ‘it’s going to a museum in Cork. They were impressed with my work and said it would be included in their Irish contemporary art collection.’