called them on the lie. Father Dominic Burn-in-Hell Byrne was forever ruining their fun. The seventy-five-year-old priest made note of everything, kept close watch over his flock. He considered Bernie one of the devoted. And she was. Up to a point.
“Did you notice the chip man is using the newsletter to wrap the kippers again?” asked her friend Aileen.
“He is not,” she said, aghast. She was the sole editor and writer of the four-page paper, the Gaelic Voice, having taken over the duties from her husband, John, after his death last year. The crime blotter, which she’d added recently at Aileen’s urging, was especially popular:
Man calls Garda, complaining his neighbor won’t stop playing Frank Sinatra at 2:00 a.m. Garda tells him to be patient. The woman is suffering from a broken heart.
Woman calls Garda, says there’s a rat sitting on her couch, watching the football match; would he please get rid of it? Garda asks if the rat is a fan of Manchester United.
“Is,” Aileen said with a pin in her mouth. “What’s the circulation now?”
“One hundred, including the surrounding villages,” Bernie said. “If I had my way, all the towns up and down the coast would have their own Gaelic papers. A Gaelic newspaper empire.”
“Careful. You’re starting to sound rather Machiavellian.” Aileen laughed. “You going to have an English edition too?”
“That’s cheating.”
“More like subtitles, you know, in films? It’s a known fact the language is dying out. There’s no getting around it, sad though it may be.”
“I’ve never been much for known facts, and it’s my mission to keep the language alive. John would have wanted it that way. I do too.” They could go on like this for hours, debating the merits of the village, the people, themselves.
But another day was ending, not much different from the last. The vendors were packing up for the day or nodding off in their chairs. The only people wandering the streets at that hour were a group of restless teens and a couple of aging pub regulars—Denny Fitzpatrick, their friend Oona’s da, and Niall Maloney, dressed in trousers, jumpers, and caps. They weren’t the sort who’d be interested in the lace.
“If we had a beer garden or an espresso stand, people would come,” Aileen said. “My son’s got an espresso bar in Galway. Keeps the bookstore open. He couldn’t run it otherwise. The shoppers go for coffee first, he says, Yeats second.”
“What’s the world coming to, that Yeats should come second to anything?” Bernie loved poetry. She and her husband had read it to each other every night before bed. She hadn’t imagined she’d forget the sound of his voice; she would have given anything to hear it again. “We can’t sell espresso,” she added. “It would spoil the lace. People are forever spilling things.”
“I suppose you’re right, though I could use a shot of something right now. I didn’t sleep well last night. The Change, you know.” Aileen had been having hot flashes. She was a striking woman, and if she didn’t keep bringing the matter up, people would have thought she was younger. Not that there was much chance of fooling anyone in Glenmara, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, or thought they did.
Aileen had never felt comfortable with her looks, not realizing that her flaws—the slightly too large nose, the gap in her teeth, and her whippet-thin figure—were part of what made her interesting. She wouldn’t listen, no matter how many times Bernie reminded her of that. “You’re my friend, Bee, it’s your job to tell me what I want to hear,” Aileen would say.
“Try valerian tea,” Bernie suggested. “I heard that helps.”
“Probably causes cancer.”
“These days nearly everything causes cancer, or so they think, for at least five minutes. Try to enjoy life and not worry so much. You only live once.” That had been her mantra since John died, especially in the beginning, whenever the inertia descended and she sat at the table in the morning and found that hours had passed as she stared out the window, the cup of tea by her elbow gone cold, her Labrador, Fergus, whimpering at her feet, his brow wrinkled with worry.
“I’m not programmed that way—especially when I can’t get any damned rest. I’d kill for a good night’s sleep. I used to be such a good sleeper—”
“Yes, I remember,” Bernie replied. Aileen had slept like the dead when they were girls. “You snored something awful.”
“It was the adenoids. Been better since I got them out, though now I think