Cast A Cold Eye Read online

  Things were falling nicely into place. He would have liked, given all the time in the world, to spend more time seeing Dublin—his grandmother had grown up here, walked these very streets, shopped in many of the same stores—but he was even more eager to get done what had to be done here and get out into the country where his house was waiting.

  He checked the list in his mind. He’d already called the auto rental agency and they’d promised to deliver the car—a Ford Escort automatic, and didn’t they sound impressed that he was renting it for three entire months!—by ten o’clock in the morning. “You’ll have it by the time you’re done with your breakfast,” the pleasant lady on the phone had told him, and he’d smiled at the typically Irish conception of time. There’s real time and there’s Irish time, they’d told him back in the States. He hoped to see the car by eleven.

  He’d intended to buy a good sweater and that was done now. He’d been warned at home about the cool Irish weather, especially in September, and he could vouch for it now himself. As bright as the sun was at the moment, he was already thinking about putting the sweater on beneath his brown corduroy jacket. If he went out this evening, he’d surely need it against the night’s damp chill.

  That left two items of business to attend to, the computer and a supply of books.

  He’d bought a green Geographia map of Dublin at the airport and studied it later on the bus. If he remembered right, the Radio Shack store was on Bachelor’s Walk, facing the River Liffey just off O’Connell Street near the bridge. He turned to his left and began strolling toward the river, crossed O’Connell Street, then went around the corner and found the little Radio Shack store right there where it was supposed to be. He caught himself grinning at the familiar red sign, seeming so out of place in this foreign city, yet a comfortable touch of home.

  The shop was tiny, not at all like the Radio Shack Computer Center on Fifth Avenue where he did most of his business and where the manager took good care of him. But, once he was inside the doors, looking at the familiar displays, he felt he was back in his own territory. Only the soft Irish accents were different­.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “Yes. My name is Jack Quinlan. You should have—”

  “Oh, of course.” The neatly-groomed young man smiled happily. “We’ve been expecting you. I think you’ll find everything is in order. Would you like to step over here?”

  “Terrific,” Jack said, and took a seat beside the young man’s desk.

  Everything, it turned out, was indeed in order. Jack’s literary agent in London had taken care of the arrangements long in advance, as soon as Jack had planned this trip. The clerk even had the papers filled out for the three-month lease on the word processor, and a carton on the floor by his desk was already filled with an adequate supply of disks, paper, and ribbon cartridges for the printer. It was all infinitely easier than Jack had hoped or expected, especially in light of everything he’d heard at home about Irish efficiency.

  “Well, thanks very much,” Jack said when the papers were signed and the contents of the carton checked against the clerk’s list. “You’ve gotten me off to a good start.”

  “That’s no trouble at all, Mr. Quinlan,” the clerk said. Then he seemed to hesitate for a second. “I wonder,” he said, “would you mind terribly . . .”

  “Yes?”

  The clerk pulled open a drawer by his knee and took out paperback copies of four of Jack’s novels. Two of them were British editions, but the other two were American books; those novels had been his first and hadn’t sold in England. “Would you mind very much taking the time to sign them?” the clerk asked.

  Jack grinned happily and pulled the books over in front of him. “Not at all. I’d be delighted. But where did you get these?” he said, tapping the two American books.

  Now it was the clerk’s turn to grin. “I have a cousin in the Bronx,” he said. “She sent them to me.”

  Jack signed the four books with elaborate inscriptions and he and the clerk smiled happily at each other all the way to the door.

  “Are you writing a book while you’re over here?” the clerk asked when they reached the doorway.

  “I am,” Jack said. He almost burst out laughing, hearing the sudden Irish phrasing and rhythm in his own voice. “I’m doing some research for it in the west, in County Clare. I hope to get a first draft done while I’m here.”

  “Would you mind if I asked what it’s about?”

  “Not at all,” Jack said, happy to find a fan this far away from home. God bless the printed word, he thought. “It’s about the Famine. It’s an historical, bit of a change of pace for me.”

  The clerk’s face had clouded over a little. “About the Famine, is it?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “A sad time for Ireland,” the clerk said, the smile gone now completely from his face.

  “Yes,” Jack said again. “I’ve been doing the basic research, of course, but now I want to see some of the settings.” He was choosing his words with care now, suddenly, sharply, reminded by the tone of the young man’s voice—how old could he be? twenty-two? twenty-three?—that the pain of the Famine and events that took place almost a hundred and fifty years ago were still fresh and tender in the thoughts of the Irish. Here, in a land as ancient as Ireland, history was only yesterday and the distant past breathed fresh and sharp and painful in living memory. “I want to get it right,” he added.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” the clerk said. Then his smile—or some of it, at least, Jack thought—returned and he said, “I’ll look forward to reading it. Has it a title?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Jack said, glad to be back on more solid ground. “Still working on coming up with the right one.” The clerk was nodding. “Well, then, I’ll see you tomorrow when I have my car to pick up all that stuff.”

  “Right, then,” the clerk said.

  “Right,” Jack said, and stepped down to the sidewalk.

  Still wondering if the young man’s reaction was really a universal Irish response to mention of the Famine, Jack crossed the busy street toward the river and leaned on the stone wall, peering over it down to the brown depths of the Liffey.

  His grandmother used to talk about the River Liffey, mostly about the terrible way it smelled in the nineteenth century because the breweries used to empty their waste into it. Lucky thing I’ve come along, he thought, his smile returning. He’d never quite gotten the hang of drinking Guinness, not even in the Irish bars of New York, but he expected to do some serious damage to the local supply of Harp. God willing, there’d be a decent cozy pub in the village, preferably within walking distance of the house. God willing. I’m doing it again, he thought. I am naturally mimetic, a lucky thing for a novelist. And the top of the morning to you too, Johannes Gutenberg.

  He turned away from the river and placed his elbows behind him on the wall, leaning back comfortably, gazing happily around, drinking in the foreign details, the different shapes of cars and street signs and lamps and windows, the different complexions and angles of faces.

  I’ve come home, he thought. This will be fine. Just fine.

  He was back at the bed-and-breakfast house in Clontarf before he remembered about the books.

  The strain of travel was beginning to take its toll and he sat on the edge of his bed, thinking through the rest of the day. There was still time to make it to a bookstore. If he got that out of the way this afternoon, he wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. Then all he’d have to do would be to make the brief stop to pick up the computer and he’d be on his way. Much more civilized like that, he thought, and bent to pull his shoes on again.

  Mrs. O’Keefe, the landlady, told him there was a fine and well-stocked bookshop just down the road, go under the railroad tracks, turn right, walk for a minute or two, and it’ll be right there. The Clontarf Bookshop, it was called, and be sure to mention her name, she sent many of her guests there as she had so many professors and other professional gentlemen from all over the world. He thanked her and was on his way.

  Clontarf, he had read in the guidebooks, was a wealthy and upwardly mobile suburb, and his walk to the bookstore—the “minute or two” was closer to fifteen—bore that out: neat streets lined with well-kept homes, bright-faced young wives returning from shopping trips, well-mannered children playing on the lawns. No poverty here, he thought.

  The bookstore, when he reached it at last, suited its location: bright, large, well-stocked, just what he was looking for. He wanted to load up on books now, at the beginning of his stay. He didn’t know when he’d get back to Dublin and he had little hope of finding a bookstore anywhere near where he’d be living, no more than he had hopes of seeing neat streets and manicured lawns.

  He received a smile from the pretty girl at the counter near the door as he entered, a tiny bell tinkling overhead, and looked around for a moment to orient himself.

  “Can I help you find something?” she asked. Her voice was soft and shy, in contrast to her frank smile and dark eyes that met his own.

  “Well, I will need help, I think, but I’d like to look around for a bit myself.”

  “All right,” she said, “take your time,” and lowered her head again to the book she was reading.

  Jack’s eyes lingered on her briefly. She was rather the classic Irish beauty of the dark variety: milk-white skin and thick and silky jet-black hair, heritage of lusty Spanish seamen in centuries gone by. Very pretty. Extremely pretty.

  He spent forty-five minutes wandering through the store, enjoying the different look and feel of the Irish and British books, the different covers on familiar books, and was delighted to find three of his own novels in the fiction section, in their British editions. When he had made some selections—a few Am
erican bestsellers he hadn’t read, the latest British bestsellers, several Irish authors (he’d always meant to read James Plunkett and this was a perfect time to get to him), and several books on Irish history, he carried a dozen of them up to the counter. The girl looked at him curiously as he set the pile down and went back for more. There were about three dozen in all when he was done, probably more than he’d read in the three months, but better to have too much than too little.

  “Are you off to live in a cave?” the girl asked, smiling. The smile made her extraordinarily pretty, with those dark eyes that seemed almost to glitter, the milky complexion, and the black hair that fell softly across her shoulders. She was sitting on a high stool with apparent ease and wearing jeans that revealed long legs and slim hips. A bulky white sweater, however, suggested a full figure. Coltish, Jack thought, and for an instant, wished he had more time in Dublin. He had, from the day he planned the trip, resigned himself to looking at nothing but hefty farmgirls during his stay.

  “Something like that,” he said, and returned her smile.

  “Are you from the States?”

  “I am,” he said, thinking as he said it, I’m doing it again. By the time I leave, I’ll be able to pass for a native.

  “Your people mustn’t be very good company if you have to bring so many books,” she said.

  “Oh, no,” he laughed. “I have no people over here. Or if I do, I don’t know them. I’m on my own, actually.” Jack, you sly devil, he told himself.

  “Are you?” she said without a flicker of the friendly smile. “You must be a great reader. I am too.” She held up as evidence the paperback in her hand and, Jack noted with pleasure, slipped a bookmark into it and put it down on the counter. She was prepared to talk. Jack caught himself wishing that the book had just happened to be one of his own.

  Just then the telephone beside the cash register rang and the girl smiled apologetically at him as she reached for it. Jack wandered again through the aisles but didn’t see anything else that caught his fancy. He kept one ear on the girl’s quiet conversation. As soon as she was off the phone, however, another customer had several questions for her and she disappeared into the back of the store to look for something. Jack continued strolling through the aisles, then remembered two other things he’d meant to pick up here. One was a copy of Liam O’Flaherty’s Famine—jet-lag must be killing my memory, he thought—which he’d looked for in the States but hadn’t found. And he’d also meant to pick up copies of his own books, if they were available. A gift of an author’s book could go a long distance toward smoothing the way sometimes. He took four copies of each of his books and carried them back to the counter as the girl was saying goodbye to the other customer.

  She looked even more curiously at these books than she had at the other piles he’d made. “He must be your favorite author,” she said.

  “He is,” Jack said, smiling. “I’ve read every word he’s written.”

  “Have you?”

  “I have.”

  “You’re him.”

  “I am.”

  They laughed together.

  She started to say she knew his books, but then blushed pink and confessed she didn’t. Jack told her it was quite all right; after all, most of the human race hadn’t read his books.

  They chatted for a minute.

  “It’s not fair that you should know my name but I don’t know yours,” Jack said when the conversation lagged briefly.

  “Grainne,” she told him.

  “Say it again.”

  “Graw-nyuh,” she pronounced carefully.

  “Grainne.”

  “That’s right. It’s Grace in English, like the great warrior queen, Grace O’Malley, but I like it best in Irish.”

  She asked what he was doing in Ireland and he told her he was staying for at least three months to research and write a book.

  “Which reminds me,” he said. “I was looking for a copy of Famine by Liam O’Flaherty.”

  “Are there none on the shelf? Wait, I think there’s some in the back.”

  She hopped off the stool and Jack watched her walk to the rear of the store. She moved with an easy feminine grace, long-legged and liquid, black hair swaying softly at her back. He guessed her to be about twenty-two. Again, for an instant, Jack wished he could stay longer in Dublin . . . although, from what he’d heard of Irish girls, it wouldn’t make much difference; apparently, you had to meet them in church, preferably in the line waiting to take Holy Communion, or it didn’t count for anything. When she reappeared, she had a copy of the book in her hand.

  “Great,” he said, “I’ve been hoping to find this.”

  “Has it something to do with the book you’re writing?” she asked.

  He told her briefly that it was an historical novel, set in the west of Ireland, about a family and its struggles to survive through the Famine of 1846 and 1847, and about the horrible thing—Jack shuddered internally, just thinking about it; that was going to be a hard part to write—that happened to three members of the family in particular.

  She listened to him gravely. “It’ll be a sad story, then,” she said.

  Jack waved a hand non-committally. “We’ll see. I won’t really know until I do it. Stories have a way of writing themselves sometimes.”

  She was smiling again, interested now and not interrupting, so Jack continued chatting about writing in general. Whenever he slowed down, she asked a question, intelligent, thoughtful, informed, and the conversation fell into a comfortable two-way rhythm. Jack was glad that no other customers had entered the store. After a few minutes, Grainne told him that she had just finished her degree at Trinity and had read history there, concentrating on Irish history.

  Her words suddenly raised possibilities, unformed but almost tangible in the quiet air between them. Each seemed waiting for the other to speak.

  “Well,” Jack said, “if I need any historical guidance, I’ll know where to come.”

  Grainne glanced away for a moment, and Jack flattered himself that a slight blush colored her fair skin. Then she raised her eyes and met his gaze. “That would be nice,” she said shyly. “It would be interesting.”

  As my sainted grandmother used to say, Jack thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. “It would be interesting,” he said. “For both of us. If there’s a nice pub nearby, perhaps we could talk about it some more.”

  This time she definitely did blush. “I’d have to close up the shop first,” she said. “It’s closing time anyway.” She spoke so softly that he could barely hear her.

  “I’ll wait,” Jack said. He kept his smile within what he hoped were decent limits.

  The pub, on Clontarf Road about half a mile beyond his bed-and-breakfast house, faced the choppy waters of Dublin Bay and was called The Ship. It was filled with what Jack would have called, in American terms, upper-middle class or possibly lower-upper class businessmen, most still in their three-piece suits, stopping off for a pint or two with their cronies on the way home for the evening. Most were in their twenties and thirties, with a sprinkling of bright young women among them in pairs and groups. It was definitely not a pick-up or dating bar, as it would have been in the States: these young men had old-fashioned wives at home, rocking the young ones and fixing dinner at this very moment, waiting for their men; the bright young women would find no husbands here; they’d have to go to London or Dublin or back to the corridors of the University for that. Everyone seemed to have at least a nodding acquaintance with everyone else.

  Jack and Grainne found a place in a corner, near the bar, and after they’d finished the first pint—foaming Guinness for her, lager for him—she persuaded the barkeep’s wife to fix them a couple of sandwiches. They ate quickly and Jack went back to the crowded bar for refills on the pints.

  The conversation, smoothed by the beer, the food, the warmth of the pub, and by the tiredness now creeping all through Jack’s body, was easy and natural. They liked each other, and each of them knew it. Chemistry, Jack told himself as he listened to the musical cadences of her voice.