Becoming Finola by Suzanne Strempek Shea

Author:Suzanne Strempek Shea
Language: eng
Format: epub

That’s how Una, over the sale of a jar of lemon curd, which I was buying during a break simply to taste something with that name, broached the subject of Max’s brother.

Three seconds before, she’d been describing Derek’s summer job helping Una’s Ger, he of the abrupt name and of the big powerful MAN brand truck, its windshield hung with stalactites of braided county-color yarn that swung happily as it rolled along on deliveries of construction supplies to the many, many, many rural building sites. Ralpho had opted to spend the summer splitting his time between training for a career as a sports star, helping his mam, and cycling to the pier to sell minerals and crisps and various other packets of universally recognized junk food to the ravenous and therefore gastronomically indiscriminating tourists.

“He instinctively knows the exact time of day at which to drop the hurley stick or slam the till and pedal fast to meet the boat just back from the islands,” Una was boasting, and then she switched to “He’s mad for ye,” and her smile didn’t fit with the idea of her adolescent’s yearning for a thirty-year-old.

“Who’s mad?”

“Max’s brother.”

I knew Max only as Liam’s friend, fellow Chancer, regional farrier, and fashioner of wrought iron fixtures. A fair amount of Max’s farrier business was traditional and hoof-related, but in the country’s newly affluent age, he was turning his efforts to domestic hardware (hinges, latches, gates, grates, racks, hangers) and accessories (fireplace implements, hot plates, plate racks, candleholders), marketed to those responsible for the brash infections of holiday homes spreading across the countryside. Sold to domestic Yuppies, and foreign rich people—mainly the Germans, Dutch, English, and certainly a good few Yanks—many of the unimaginative mass-produced structures were occupied only for a few weeks a year their owners could get away on vacation. Holiday home complexes with names like Mervue and Riverside were the fate of so many of the fields whose gates wore plastic-covered white paper notices that began, “Notice to Planning Authority.” There were plenty of these around Booley, typed out in legalspeak by some solicitor applying on behalf of a client seeking planning permission “for a serviced dwelling house at this location.”

All this translated to the soon-to-be-concrete-and-glass fact that yet another probably hugely ugly building was being proposed. And that somebody else would, for only two summer weeks of each year, be in need of a six-hole wine rack hammered into shape by Max Kelly.

“The brother’s the one does the designin’,” Una said as she rung up six bottles of water. “Max stands at the forge, poundin’, whatever’s done at the forge. The brother tells Max how a piece of iron should be shaped.”

“And just how did the brother come to be mad for me?”

“Seen you about, I reckon.Told me, ‘I’m mad about the girl who rearranged Liam’s.’”

“Well, that explains it. It’s as simple as that I brought his merchandise out from beneath the tablecloths. It’s seeing the light of day, so shoppers can see it for once.

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