Chapter 2

“Say it again,” he said, soft and refusing to grin. “Okay,” she said, rolling her eyes and letting the wave go through. “Thank you.” “Tell me one thing you need that isn’t a miracle.” “I need Harbour House’s ancient fuse box not to explode on Saturday,” she said. “I’ll fix it for the price of you watching me and saying ‘good job’ at the right time,” he said. “You’re a cheap date,” she said, and felt her mouth move into something like peace. That night, he came with his van and his tool roll and a look that meant he would leave his boots by the back door without being asked. He explained every step as he went—isolating supply, testing, replacing cracked Bakelite with clean modern, installing a transfer switch for the generator, labelling like a librarian. “If I get hit by a bus,” he said lightly, “this will make sense to the next poor devil.” “Stop saying bus,” she muttered, bent to hold a torch in the place he wanted. “I’m trying to hire you for many years.” “Hire me as a man who likes to turn up with a spanner,” he said, head down, the smile audible. “I’m free between the hours of stupid o’clock and whatever time the lads learn to pass to the man on the shoulder.” “It’s a very narrow window,” she said. “Then you’d better be quick,” he said, and the electricity between them crackled literal and not. He didn’t lean. She didn’t either. They let work be the kiss that night. In the pub, Máiréad told a story about the year Seamus tried to repair the bar’s pump with a spoon and nearly flooded the snug. “We asked for help,” she finished, eyes on her grandson. “We did not wait for embarrassment to become expensive.” “Noted,” he said. “Consider me a man who will ask before the floor floats away.” “Ask before your heart does,” she said mildly, buttering a scone with a violence that should have alarmed nations. “The girl’s not a mind reader and you’re not a poet.” “Gran,” he said, scandalised and five years old. The table hooted. The week turned. Posters went up. The school choir practised on the steps and small children stuck their tongues out with the effort of pitch. Orla and Aoibh ran a steward drill in the car park with enough hi-vis to be seen from the moon. Siún’s piece landed in the Connacht Tribune and made them look like the sort of parish whose plans were a template not a problem; she was clever enough to edit herself out. Then, weather. The west does not so much forecast as shrug. Friday morning, the radio said “gale-force gusts,” and the quay looked at the sky and said, Not today, thanks. Permits, the living things that they are, paled. Ais walked into the community office to find Cian at the counter with wet hair, a piece of paper in his hand, and his jaw set in a way that lined him up for a fight. Declan Harte, looking like a man who’d arrived on a gust of his own importance, stood with one elbow on the desk. “As I’ve already explained,” Declan said, the vowels polished thin as a blade, “we cannot be seen to bend for one parish.” “It’s not bending,” Cian said, steady. “It’s sense. You move us off the quay because the quay will go to sea, and you honour our alternative venues because we’ve done the paperwork and the fire exits and the insurance. Or you force us to cancel and explain to a hundred children why the school choir rehearsed for nothing.” “It’s adverse weather,” Declan said. “Acts of God are not the county board’s purview.” “Acts of God are weather,” Cian said. “Acts of county are how you adapt.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t call the man a donkey. He pressed, and Ais felt absurdly proud and wanted to call his gran and say he was a good one. “I will consider your request,” Declan said, which meant no. “Consider faster,” Ais said, stepping in, polite as a blade. “We have vendors to ring. People to shift. Chairs to move. If you tell me by four, I can save fifty people a wasted drive.” “You should have built contingency into your plan.” “We did,” she said. “You’re looking at it. The hall. The pub. The school. We built community into our plan. Now we’re asking the county to meet the standard.” Declan blinked as if the light had flickered. He looked at Cian—perhaps to find an ally; perhaps to find a crack—and found a man who said, “What she said,” with his eyes. “We don’t have discretion,” Declan said, which was a lie a child could have found with a stick. “The clerk in Permits says you do,” Siún said from the doorway, phone in hand, having attended this entire conversation like a woman taking shorthand. “And we will happily print their name on the programme as the human being who used sense on a Friday.” She smiled disarmingly and pressed send on something that made Declan’s phone buzz. “You’ll find a map attached.” Declan looked down at the screen, looked up at the three of them, and made a small, sour calculation. “Fine,” he said. “But no street parking on the bend.” “We love safety,” Ais said, all teeth. “Garda Rooney already has cones.” When he left, the clerk put both hands on the counter, as if preventing a giggle. “You didn’t get that from me,” she said. “We didn’t,” Siún said politely, and everyone exhaled. Cian turned to Ais with a look that said, I saw you. She pretended to take a bow. They moved a festival in four hours because of course they did. The bunting came down like a wave and went up again across the hall’s low ceiling. The school choir moved from steps to stage. Colm parked the traffic-light trailer like a king. The generator hummed; Cian’s labels glowed like Rosary beads for electricians. In the kitchen, they changed the menu to what the room could carry when shoulders were damp and breath made clouds—stews and toasties, chowder, apple slices with cinnamon sugar. Mei from the Chinese takeaway sent over egg rolls at cost because “you helped my brother with his van,” and Cian, blinking, said, “Did I?” and was told that yes, he did, and he better eat one now before they were gone. He did and made a small, happy sound that scandalised no one. “You did that like a man who’s changed nappies in a moving car,” she said. “Have done, actually,” he said, dazed and proud. “Hers,” he added, nodding at the small, indignant princess currently telling Maeve how glitter works. “Add that to your CV: steward, father, paramedic, glitter consultant,” Ais said, and he laughed and stopped shaking. Siún’s press piece had done its work. People who didn’t know where Claddaghmore was on Thursday showed up with notes on Saturday: “Saw you in the Tribune,” “My brother played with your uncle,” “I came for the chowder; I stayed for the choir.” The lights jar on the bar filled like a hand being held. If you counted the coins with your eyes, you’d be sick at how far there was to go; if you watched the children tip in 20c pieces until the jar sang, you’d be fine forever. “Sing,” Máiréad told the choir, and they did, tiny mouths round on “Óró, Sé do Bheatha ‘Bhaile.” Somebody cried. It was allowed. At three, the county’s inspection team arrived because of course Declan had sent them, and of course they were actually decent people who wanted a plan not a scalp. Orla walked them through the map and the routes and the cones and the backup cones. She showed them the steward numbers and the fire exit signage printed large by a teacher who knew how to make things you couldn’t miss. She introduced them quietly to Dara, who smiled in a way that said, I’m tired but you’re safe here. They left with cups of tea and a map to copy for other parishes, because competence begets competence if you don’t hoard it. At five, rain hammered as if to see how stubborn they were. They were stubborn enough. The pub filled. The hall glowing looked like a heart lit from within. In the crush and the steam, Ais found a rhythm that was older than ambition—feed, check, laugh, breathe. Cian moved through the room the way a captain moves: seeing, adjusting, never letting his people feel the blow. He was stopped every twenty seconds by someone who needed a socket, a lift, a look. He gave each as if it were a dessert. Between sets, he leaned at the pass. “Proud of you,” he said, not performative, just true. “Proud of us,” she corrected, and then, because the night was loud and she could get away with the brave things, she added: “Stay. After.” “Command received,” he said, and went to fetch his gran a chair that wouldn’t hurt her back. When the raffle winner held up the knitted blanket like a trophy and the hall cheered like they’d won a medal, Ais felt something settle inside her like a boat finding good water. Home wasn’t a place you were trapped; it was where people made space around you when you needed to lie down. They closed late. The lads carried chairs as if they were points. The floor, for once, did not float away. Cian found her at the door with her coat half on and took the other sleeve as if dressing a soldier. “Walk?” he asked. “The long way,” she said. “Past the quay we didn’t get to use.” They walked in a weather lull that felt like permission. Lights bobbed on the river. Her hand found his without anyone asking and then, mindful, she said, “This okay?” “It is,” he said, the breath in it a laugh you could hold a candle to. “I was wrong about us at nineteen,” she said into his shoulder. “I was afraid that choosing you meant choosing less of me. I think now it means choosing the more that someone else holds up to your face when you forget.” “I didn’t know how to ask you to stay without making it sound like a request to be smaller,” he said. “I think now it would have been a request to be bigger together.” “Look at us,” she said. “Having a mature conversation in the rain.” “My gran will be disgusted,” he said solemnly. “She prefers roaring.” “She does not,” Ais said, chuckling. “She prefers winning. Roaring is optional.” “Then we’ll win,” he said, and did not mean the county, not only. He meant lights and nights and kitchens that worked and small people who felt safe. He meant us. Sunday came quieter, kinder. After the morning’s last kid collapsed in glittery satisfaction, after the school’s little tinny piano sang itself hoarse, after they poured the coins on the table and counted the notes with the altar-boy reverence small parishes bring to sums, they had a number that might, with luck and a grant that stopped being an email and became a cheque, buy lights good enough to turn winter into usable time. The jar’s scrape at the bottom sounded like salvation shaped by hands. “Don’t look at the gap,” Niamh said as mathematicians do. “Look at the distance covered.” “The gap is my hobby,” Ais said, then corrected herself, remembering. “But not my job.” “Correct,” Niamh said, satisfied. “Your job is to feed us on Friday and make a plan for the next ask. The county review board meets Thursday. If our friend Declan isn’t on his best behaviour, I’ll stand up and ask why the algorithm hates our parish.” “Do not,” Siún said from under a pile of posters. “Not yet. Let the clerk call us with the recommendation. Then, if Declan ignores it, we write about policy failure not personalities.” “Look at us,” Seamus said, wiping the counter like a stage. “Government.” “Community,” Bríd said. “Better.” Cian arrived with a coil of cable over his shoulder and grease on his knuckles, as reassuring to Ais as any national anthem. He put the coil down and kissed her temple as if this were a house they already shared. “Tell me one thing you’re proud of that isn’t on a poster,” she said. “I asked for help,” he said, not shy. “And nobody died of it.” “Correct,” she said. “You’ll live to ask again.” He looked at her mouth. “This okay?” he asked. “It is,” she said, and they proved that competence and desire can be the same language if you let them. Monday was for aftermath—bin bags, thank-yous, a spreadsheet that looked like hope. It was for a phone call from Siún’s friend in County Archives that made a small needle move in the red: a list of fixtures emails somebody shouldn’t have sent that showed a kind of sense that looked less like fairness and more like favour. It was for nothing dramatic, yet—the story wanting proof not heat. Wednesday evening, with the hall still smelling faintly of new competence and old wood, the circuit class took back their hour with a right to it, and Sea & Soil became a story people told at other counters: Do you know what they did in Claddaghmore? I’ll send you their stewarding plan. The jar moved to the pub’s shelf, half full and humming, where small people were lifted to tip in coins like rosaries; where men who’d worked a ten sat down and put in a fiver because pride is pride and also because the chowder had been very good. Ais took out her pebble before bed and put it on the windowsill. The sea said nothing. It didn’t need to. It had been doing this longer than them. Thursday found them all with their good clothes ironed, which is to say not much better than their ordinary clothes but with more intention. The county review board sat in a room designed to drain souls—grey carpet, chairs that did not know the word comfortable. Niamh went in with her notes; Siún sat with her phone and her journalist’s eye for how rooms behave; Cian, who would have rather eaten his own headtorch than be in a meeting, came because sometimes you show up and that is the job. Declan sat three seats down from a woman with a clipboard who looked like she both believed in the rules and knew when to apply them properly. It was possible she had not met Declan before. The clerk—kind, brave—presented the fixtures “algorithm” with quotations marks so audible that even the carpet blushed. “We’ve identified weighting that, while neutral in description, did not result in neutral outcomes,” she said. “We recommend an immediate review and a manual override procedure for fairness.” “Manual overrides invite bias,” Declan said, silky. “Only if the manual operators are biased,” the clerk said sweetly. In the back, someone coughed a laugh into a coat. “Claddaghmore’s festival was lovely,” Declan tried, switching flanks, “but we can’t bend for sentiment.” “This isn’t sentiment,” Niamh said, standing with the sort of principled rage that can strip paint, “it’s safety and fairness. And if you talk about sentiment when I say safety, I’ll bring my entire school in here and let them cry on your shoes, and then you can write a report about saltwater damage.” The room, to its credit, snorted. The clipboard woman’s mouth did a tiny, traitorous smile. “We’ll take the clerk’s recommendation,” she said. “And I would like to see Claddaghmore’s stewarding plan—it sounds like something we could roll out county-wide.” “We’ll email it,” Siún said, as if this had not been the plan all week. “With biscuits.” After, outside, under a strip of honest sky, they stood in a little, relieved knot. “We’re not done,” Siún said. “He’ll try something else. But the board isn’t inclined to be his cloak anymore.” “Let him try,” Niamh said. “He’ll find us at the gates.” Cian did not punch the air, though you could tell he wanted to. He looked at Ais instead and let the feeling come out as plain words: “We’re getting there.” She touched his cheek with cold fingers. “We are.” They did not parade. They went to work. Friday came like a second wind. The last of the festival money went into an envelope for a deposit on lights that would make night not an enemy. Orla got three quotes and chose the one that didn’t assume they were idiots. The electrician from Rosmuc who sold them the poles looked at Cian’s labels and said, “Were you the fella who did the Storm Lantern after the flood?” and when Cian said, “No,” the man said, “You should have been,” which, in Galway, is how you offer a man your respect. Saturday morning, kids in ear defenders ran fingers along the new poles as if they were trees grown overnight. The switch-on would come later, after one more practice and one more game and one more small miracle, but the sight of the steel in the ground made people stand straighter and look at their own boots as if to say, I walked here and it was worth it. That afternoon, after an away draw that felt like a win because they had played not to not lose but to win and nearly had, he found her on the Storm Lantern’s back step, eyes on the sky where a line of light was becoming possible. “I’ll say this now, when we’ve both had not enough sleep,” he said, nerves making him precise. “I want this. Not just the work. You.” She swallowed. “I want it too.” “I’ll do the asking,” he said, slow. “But you don’t have to answer on my pace.” “I’ll answer on mine,” she said, smile like a small sun. “And I’ll tell you when I’m scared and let you hold the bit you can hold. You’ll tell me when you think asking is failing and I’ll tell you it’s not.” She took his hand and set it on her waist, so careful, so deliberate he could have wept. “This okay?” “It is,” he said, eyes closing because sometimes the right thing is too bright to look at. They stood there while the pub breathed around them and someone tried the new lights in the distance and a hum went up that sounded like the parish practicing being a team in the dark. It was not the county. It was not a miracle. It was better—the thing you make when you decide to show up and keep showing up and call that love. Monday’s damp slid into the pub with every opened door. Ais took the morning for aftermath and the afternoon for honesty. She brought tea to Máiréad’s snug and set it down like an offering. The old woman’s cardigan had a snag near the elbow and her hair was in the soft disarray of someone who’d done ten jobs before breakfast. “Will you sit and stop clattering in the doorway,” Máiréad said, not unkind. “You look like a girl who can’t settle her heart.” “I can’t,” Ais admitted. “Not without learning something you didn’t teach me then because I was too young to hear it.” “Ah,” the older woman said. “The price of pride.” She poured, milk first because the cup was cracked and she knew how to mind what could break. “Ask.” “You carry the room with a smile,” Ais said. “But the year Seamus went into hospital—” “I made the pub a kingdom of saving face,” Máiréad said, seeing the steps before they were taken. “I asked for help when I could have had a heart attack if somebody had told me to do it twice.” She folded her hands, the veins like small roads on the back. “I thought if I told the town he was failing, I’d fail him. Fool talk. He wanted me to tell them. He said it would give them the pleasure of being useful. I waited and it cost me weeks of sleep I’ll never get back. And it cost him dignity—because when I finally asked, I asked in a rush and people came in a scramble and there was no grace in it. He forgave me. I forgive me. Learn off me.” Ais sat with that. “You taught me to be competent.” “I did,” she said. “It’s half the lesson. The other half is letting other people be competent around you. Or else what’s the town for?” She looked over the rim of her cup with a particular softness. “That lad of mine—your lad—he thinks asking is failure. He learned it from me and I meant it kindly but I meant it wrong. Don’t you two repeat me. I’d like my mistakes to have grandchildren too.” Ais laughed then, the laugh you make when you have been seen and forgiven for all the years in one go. “I’ll tell him.” “Chowder and brown butter hake,” Ais said. “And a tarte so lovely you’ll forget your own name.” “I’m eighty,” the older woman said. “You’re not the first to try.” But her mouth smiled in a way that said: brave girl, carry on. The week did what weeks do: ran its own race and dared them to keep up. The board meeting had ended with a recommendation and no immediate relief. The fixtures would stand for now; the override process would be built while they took the bruises. A small win that didn’t taste like one yet.