The main street in Stoneybridge was lined with two- and three-storey houses, each one painted a different colour. The pubs were easy to identify, but the two explorers made the little café their first stop. They talked easily, comparing notes on their first impressions of their fellow guests at Stone House.
Freda, Anders noticed, gave little away about her own reasons for coming to Stone House but she had observed everyone else quite closely. The doctor and his wife, she said, shaking her head a little, were very sad – there had been a recent death, she could tell. Quite how she could tell she didn’t say. And that nice nurse – what was her name? Winnie, was it? – was having a dreadful time with her friend Lillian, but it would all be worth it in the end.
They went for lunch into the larger of the pubs: great bowls of steaming, succulent mussels and fresh crusty bread. And then, as if in response to some silent cue, a small, red-faced man sitting in the corner produced a fiddle and started to play. The session had started . . .
At first, musicians outnumbered audience but gradually more people arrived. Most would arrive in the evening, it was explained, but some liked to play in the afternoons and everyone was welcome to join in. The music, at first gentle and haunting, grew faster and faster. At one side of the room, a couple started dancing and Anders himself borrowed a guitar and played a couple of Swedish songs. He taught everyone the words of the songs and they joined in the choruses with great gusto.
He had, he admitted rather shyly, brought a traditional Swedish instrument with him on his holiday and he could bring it in the following day. Only if they’d like him to, of course . . .
Freda looked at him oddly as he returned to their table. ‘Once or twice a week, to an audience of six people?’ she said, so quietly he could hardly hear her over the cheering. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
Anders began to feel as if he had lived nowhere else. The American man actually was Corry Salinas, obviously here in hiding and calling himself John. The two women, Winnie and Lillian, were nearly drowned on their second day there and had to be rescued from a cave: Anders had missed all the excitement as he had stayed on in the town for the evening sessions. This time he had taken his nyckelharpa with him and had found himself called upon time and time again to play and sing along. Of John Paul there was no sign, although Anders did move between both pubs.
Eventually, on one of his visits, he asked a craggy-faced man who played the tin whistle did he know a piper from the area called John Paul?
Of course he did. Everyone knew him, very decent lad. Immediately, four other musicians joined in the conversation. They all knew poor John Paul. Stuck up there in Rocky Ridge with his old divil of a father whom no one could please. A discontented man who wished he had taken the emigrant’s ship years back and blamed everyone but himself that he hadn’t.
‘And does John Paul play the uilleann pipes anywhere round here?’
‘He hasn’t been in here in months now,’ one of the men said, shaking his head sadly. ‘A group of us went up for him in a van one day but he said he couldn’t leave the old fellow.’
The following morning, Anders asked Chicky how to get to Rocky Ridge and she packed a lunch for him.
‘I’m sure John Paul would make a meal for you, but just in case he’s not there you’d want to be prepared,’ she said.
It was a longer walk than he had expected, and he was weary when he arrived at the big, untidy farmyard. There seemed to be nobody around. As Anders approached the door some hens ran out clucking, annoyed to be disturbed.
An old man sat at the table trying to read a newspaper with a magnifying glass. A big sheepdog lay at his feet. It looked more like a rug than a dog.
‘I was looking for John Paul . . .’ Anders began.
‘You and half the country are looking for him. He went out of here God knows how many hours ago and no sign of him. I’m his father Matty, by the way, and I haven’t even had my dinner and it’s gone three o’clock.’
‘Well, I’m Anders and I brought a picnic with me, so we might as well have that,’ Anders said, and opened the waxed paper in the little bag that Chicky had packed.
He got two plates and divided the cold chicken, cheese and chutney. He made a pot of tea and they sat and ate it as normally as if it was quite commonplace for John Paul’s father to be served a meal by a passing Swedish tourist.
They talked about farming and how it had changed over the years, about the recession and how all the townhouses that the uppity O’Haras had built were standing empty like a ghost estate because people had been greedy and thought that the Celtic Tiger would last for ever. He spoke about his other children, who had done well for themselves abroad. He said that Shep the dog was blind now and useless but would always have a home.
He wanted to know about farming in Sweden, and Anders answered as best he could but said that he wished he could tell him more. He was really a city boy at heart.
‘And what brings you to this place, if you are a city boy?’ Matty wanted to know.
Anders explained how he had met John Paul on the bus tour.
‘He loved that old bus, dead-end job, in and out of shebeens the whole time, happy as a bird on a bush. Even thought of setting up his own shebeen, but he thought better of it and decided to row in here to try to get the last few shillings out of this place,’ he said, shaking his head in disapproval.
Anders felt his gorge rising in anger. This was the thanks that the old man was giving for his son’s sacrifice. Could life be any more unfair?
In a reasoned way he tried to explain that perhaps John Paul had wanted to help his father.
‘You don’t want to buy the place here, by any chance?’ Matty peered at him through half-closed eyes.
‘No, indeed, are you selling?’
‘Oh, if only we could. I’d be out of it by this evening.’
‘And where would you go, Matty?’
‘I’d go into St Joseph’s. It’s a sort of a home in the town. I’d have people calling in to see me there, and company. I wouldn’t be stuck up here on Rocky Ridge with John Paul working all the hours God sends, and for what? For next to nothing.’
‘Did you tell him this?’
‘I can’t. He thinks there’s a living in the place. He did nothing for himself in life but he’s got a good heart, and he deserves a crack at making the place work. I couldn’t go and sell it over his head.’
Anders sat there silently for a while. Matty was a man who was used to silences. Shep snored on. Maybe life was full of these misunderstandings.
John Paul was out there on mountain tops dealing with things he hated, his father was yearning to live in a nice warm, safe place where people could call in to him and his dinner would be served at one o’clock every day. They each thought the other was desperate to keep the farm going.
Could it be the same situation in Sweden?
Did Anders’ father wish that he could hand the firm over to others, release his son from a life which he did not enjoy? Was this only wishful thinking? A false parallel?
Problems don’t solve themselves neatly like that, due to a set of coincidences. Problems are solved by making decisions. Erika had always said that, and he had thought she was being doctrinaire. But it was true. Deciding not to change anything was a decision in itself. He hadn’t fully understood this before.
The light went from the sky and Shep stirred in his dreams. Anders made more tea and found them some biscuits. Matty told him about Chicky marrying this man who was killed in a car crash in New York, and how he had left her money to come home and buy the Sheedy place. Matty said Chicky was a real survivor; she didn’t expect anyone to fight her battles for her. Many a man had shown an interest in her, but she was fair and square with all of them. She was her own woman, she told them.
But you never knew what the Lord had planned for you. Maybe some nice American man might come for a holiday and sweep her off her feet again. Was there anyone among the guests that looked suitable?
Anders thought not. There was a pleasant American there, all right, but he hadn’t seen any sign of a romance.
‘Oh, is that Corry Salinas? I heard he was staying there,’ Matty said.
‘You did?’
‘Yes, he was trying to keep it a secret but everyone here recognised him. Frank Hanratty was only telling some daft story that he came into the golf club to buy Frank a drink because he saw his pink van outside the door. Frank had better take a hold of himself.’
Just then they heard the van arrive and John Paul ran into the house.
‘Da, the cattle had got through a fence up in the top field. They were wandering all over the road. Dr Dai was trying to get them back into the field through the gap with one of his golf clubs. He was worse than myself. And by the time we got someone to fix the fence—’ He broke off when he saw Anders. His big face lit up with pleasure.
‘Anders Almkvist! You came to see us!’ he said, delighted. ‘Da, this is my friend . . .’
‘Don’t I know all about him. We’ve had a long chat waiting for you to get back, and I know all about why the Swedes are better off with their krone than the euro,’ Matty said.
John Paul looked on, open-mouthed.
‘And he brought me my dinner as well,’ his father pronounced. The final accolade. Anders got another mug and poured out tea for John Paul.
There was no rush. There would be plenty of time to explain everything.
John Paul drove Anders back to Stone House. ‘Imagine you coming back here and up to Rocky Ridge to see me!’ he said.
‘I was hoping to hear you playing in one of the local pubs, but they say you work too hard. You’re too tired.’
‘I was hoping that you had come to tell me that you’d left that office of yours,’ John Paul said.
‘No. Not just yet.’
‘But you might . . .?’ John Paul looked pleased for his friend. ‘So miracles do happen.’
‘Wait until I tell you about what your father really wants, and then you’ll think twice about miracles,’ said Anders.
Anders was most apologetic when he slipped in at Chicky’s big dining table. ‘I’m sorry I’m a bit late,’ he said as he sat down next to the doctor and his wife.
‘No problem. It’s duck tonight. I kept it hot for you. Everything all right with John Paul?’
‘Fine, fine. What’s St Joseph’s like as a place to stay?’
‘As good as they come. If they could only persuade Matty to go in there, he’d love it. I have an aunt in there, and she barely has time to talk to you when you visit.’
‘No, he wants to go in. It’s John Paul who has the doubts.’
‘We can sort him out on that. And you tell John Paul he should go away and travel a bit, let some of the other brothers and sisters come back and pull their weight here. Visit Matty from time to time, instead of leaving it all to John Paul.’
‘I do have an idea at the back of my mind.’
‘If it means giving John Paul a bit of a chance in life, I’m all for it.’
‘I was thinking of opening an Irish bar in Sweden. Asking him to come and set up the music side of it for me. I can deal with the business side.’
‘So that is what you were doing here. I did wonder.’ Chicky seemed pleased to have found out without interrogating.
‘No, it wasn’t what I intended. It just sort of evolved.’
‘Things do evolve around here. I’ve seen it over and over. There’s something in the sea air, I think.’
‘I haven’t spoken to my father about it yet.’
‘And if he is against the idea?’ Chicky was gentle.
‘I will explain it to him. I will be clear and courteous, as he has always been. I will not pour any scorn on his dreams; just point out that they are not mine.’ His voice sounded very much more confident.
Chicky nodded several times. It was as if she could see it happening. ‘And when you’re hiring, you might ask my niece Orla out there, for a season anyway, to do the food for you. It would be the making of your pub, and prevent her from growing old and mad with me.’
‘There are worse places to grow old and mad,’ Anders laughed. He hoped he could explain all this to his father, and that he would not be too disappointed. Klara would take over Almkvist’s. The company was in her blood just as much as it was in his. She knew and loved the business in a way he never would. Now all he had to do was persuade his father that a woman could head up a prestigious company like Almkvist’s. He sighed and settled back in his seat. And who could he get to help him persuade his father? He pulled out a pencil and pad and started to make lists of things that he had to do. Calling Erika was top of the list.