“Never mind,” said Fee.
Coolarney House probably wasn’t the best place in the world to get a feel for what the average vegetarian looked like, now that he came to think about it, what with the gestation situation and all.
Kit stood up behind the table. “Look,” he said, “I really should go find Avis O’Regan.”
“Not at all,” said Fee. “You’ve waited all day, you can wait a bit longer. Besides, I need help peeling the potatoes and I want to talk to you about cheese.”
Nothing this guy said ever quite hung together, Kit had noticed. Yet strangely, it didn’t seem to matter. Fee handed him some sheets of old newspaper, a bowl filled with dirty potatoes, and a small instrument with a rubber handle and a blade, which Kit presumed was a peeler of some sort. Where he came from, potatoes didn’t have skins and were brought to you on a plate by a whippet-thin would-be actress with attitude. Since Jacey, he had not eaten a single meal in his own apartment, and even with her he’d only cooked a handful of times. He sighed at the thought of Jacey and concentrated instead on trying to operate the peeler without removing the top three layers of skin from his thumb.
Fee, watching Kit slyly out of the corner of his eye, was standing at the kitchen counter preparing a leg of beef. He knew he was right to feel the way he did about Kit. The poor devil had waited all day in the boiling sunshine but still had the brains to work out what a dote was. He’d arrived at Coolarney on the right day at the right time. And he had great long fingers on him. These were currently having trouble wrangling potatoes, true, but manual dexterity aside he bore all the signs of a natural cheesemaker.
“So, you’ve not done much with your hands, then?” Fee suggested, as another potato rolled away from Kit’s grasp and onto the floor.
“Well, that would depend on what you call much, I suppose,” said Kit, looking under the table for the escapee and locating it with his foot. “I work in finance, as an investment broker, so I’m on the phone and the computer a lot.”
“Oh, like a secretary?” Fee said, without much interest.
“Kinda,” admitted Kit, “I guess.” Take away the zeroes and he supposed it was a bit like being a secretary. “So Abbey and Corrie haven’t seen each other in a while, huh?” he asked, changing the subject, his face contorting with the concentration required by the petulant potatoes.
“That’s right,” said Fee. “She’s been over in the Pacific Islands doing good works.”
That figured, thought Kit. She did have that slightly bad-haircut Christian look about her. “And she’s what? Like, his granddaughter?”
“That’s right,” said Fee again, bashing thyme, garlic and lemon rind together with olive oil using an ancient mortar and pestle.
“So where are her folks?” Kit asked, accidentally grating himself and watching ghoulishly as a trickle of blood seeped into his badly scarred spud.
“Well, we’re her folks,” Fee said, as a clatter of feet outside the kitchen door heralded the arrival of what sounded like at least a dozen chattering females. “Although she has a mother in London.”
At that moment Lucy, hugely overexcited, burst through the door with Jamie and a string of cranky-looking pregnant women in tow.
“Hasn’t Jesus only just gone and had six of the most gorgeous kittens,” Lucy chattered, reaching across the sink to fill a glass with tap water. “You can fit two in your hand at once, although it’s hardly advisable,” she said, holding up a scratched wrist.
As her jacket fell open and he caught the curve of her exposed belly, it dawned on Kit that she too was pregnant.
“She looks totally knackered, poor cow. So who do you think the father is? And what will Mary and All The Saints make of it? Oh, hello,” she said, suddenly noticing Kit and looking horrified. “Jaysus feck! I’m after forgetting to tell Avis you were here!”
“Hi,” said Jack, sitting down next to Kit and taking the potato peeler away from him and pointing it at Lucy. “Ignore her. She’s high on life. Who are you?”
“I’m Kit,” said Kit, feeling awkward again. What was this place?
“I’m Jack, six months,” said Jack, scooting over so the pregnant twins could fit in beside her and peeling potatoes at lightning speed, “this is Tessie and May, four-and-a-half, and that,” she said, pointing to Wilhie, who was pushing her spine into the doorjamb and squealing with relief, “is Wilhie. Nearly eight. We are the pregnant singing vegetarian milkmaids.”
Kit laughed but he laughed alone.
“It’s not a joke,” said Lucy from the sink. “We’re like a new species.”
“Yeah,” said Wilhie, ferreting through the contents of the cupboards in an overcrowded wooden dresser by the side window, “the Pregnasaurs.”
Again, Kit laughed. He was sure now that he had stepped through some magical looking glass and was in a parallel universe. Wilhie eventually found the large tin of biscuits she was looking for, at which point the commotion in the kitchen grew to a frightening level. Plates and glasses rattled and banged, cupboards opened and closed, the refrigerator door seemed to be permanently swinging and somebody had turned the radio to a jazz station, which was bebopping in the background.
Into this melee appeared the figure of what Kit instantly knew to be Avis O’Regan.
“He’s here,” he heard Fee say from somewhere across the clatter.
“You’re here,” Avis said. She bent down to where Kit was sitting and pressed her warm, smiling face to his cheek. She smelled of roses and dark chocolate, and for a moment Kit felt faint in her presence. He thought she whispered, “You’re safe now,” but before the words had even tripped over his ear, she seemed to be on the other side of the kitchen inspecting Fee’s beef.
“Abbey’s come home,” Fee said. “I’m cooking a roast.”
“Abbey’s come home?” Avis stared at him in disbelief, a tremor of excitement jiggling her stays. So that’s why he’d been so cool and calm all day, the old fox, she thought. Of course, he’d seen it coming. That’s why he’d insisted on sprucing up Rose’s room. A less lovely thought occurred.
“So she’s seen Rose then?”
Fee nodded as he seasoned the meat. “She has.”
Avis searched his wrinkly round face. “And is she all right?”
“I’d say not particularly, just at the moment,” said Fee. “But I’d say she’ll be right soon enough. With a little help from her friends. And perhaps one in particular.” He grinned and nodded his head in Kit’s direction.
“Oh no! Now you’re not cooking things up that don’t need cooking, are you, Joseph?” Avis warned. “We’re not talking about people in tip-top condition after all. Wilhie—you should not be drinking that orange fizz at your stage,” she said in a louder voice. “Have milk. God knows there’s enough of it. Speaking of which”—she turned her attention back to Fee—“what are we going to do about a cheesemaker?”
Fee nodded again at Kit. “We’re going to be all feckin’ right for cheesemakers, Avis. We’ve got yer man and we’ve got yer woman. Who could believe such luck?”
Avis looked over as Kit tried unsuccessfully to open a jar of pickles Lucy had handed him.
“Give it here,” said Jack, snatching it off him and opening it in half a twist.
“Are you sure, Joseph?” Avis said doubtfully, as Jack teasingly tried to goad Kit into an arm wrestle. “He doesn’t look like a cheesemaker. He’s not here for cheesemaking.”
“You can trust me on this the way you can trust me on everything else, Mrs. O’Regan,” Fee said knowingly.
“Do you know about the wife?” Avis asked, worried.
“I know about the wife.”
“And a man in his state is all right for cheesemaking?”
“In my experience there’s not a state in the world,” Fee said matter-of-factly, “that cannot be greatly improved by close proximity to cheese. Especially ours,” he added.
Avis was distracted suddenly by an unfamiliar pair of legs. “And who’s that?”
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Fee hadn’t really noticed Jamie up until that point, but it was hard to ignore him now, being as he was standing on a stool in the middle of the kitchen, fixing the chain that held the pot rack hanging from the ceiling. It had snapped about thirteen years ago and ever since the pots had been held up by one of Corrie’s old ties. Jamie, though, had a pocketful of tools and was fixing the missing link.
“Oh, it’s you,” Avis smiled. “I didn’t recognize you from that angle.” She peered up and watched a blush creep up Jamie’s neck to his chin, which was all she could see. It was the first time he had ever ventured into the house and she supposed standing on a stool in the middle of the kitchen must have somehow made him feel less conspicuous. She looked quizzically at Fee, who shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands out in a “search me” gesture.
“May!” Avis called, spotting the goings-on at the table. “Don’t feed Kit biscuits if he doesn’t want biscuits. You’re scaring the poor man half to death!”
“Yer man and Abbey,” Fee said, smiling again, “I’m telling you.”
Avis thought about this for a moment. It worried her. But there was no point arguing with Fee. Now or ever. It was better just to wait and see. She thought instead about the thrill that had begun in her toenails and ended at the tips of her Danish pastry hairdo at the thought of Abbey once again being under their roof. After all these years. She and Kit arriving at the same time, just when Corrie and Fee needed a new cheesemaker. It did scream of the magic of coincidence, thought Avis. Her favorite kind.
“Girls, girls, girls!” she called in a bid to quiet the rabble. The noise was high-pitched and quite deafening, and it was hard to tell who was talking to whom. “Girls!” she shrilled again, finally getting everyone’s attention. “A new and very special addition to the family arrived today.”
Jack clapped Kit so hard on the back he nearly coughed up a lung as the girls cheered raucously around him.
“Shh,” said Avis. “I’m sure Kit is special too but I am talking about Abbey Corrigan, Joseph’s granddaughter.”
The girls babbling bubbled to a stop.
“Abbey has come home today after a long time overseas,” continued Avis, “so we’re going to make a bit of a splash on the dinner tonight. Fee is cooking meat for the carnivores”—she ignored the chorus of “oooohs” and “yucks”—“and I suggest you get back to the cottage and perhaps Jack could organize a bean casserole?”
She looked at her watch—it was after 7:30 already. The summer light always had her in a fix over the time. “Back here at nine, then?”
The girls got to their feet with an astonishing array of different groans and whines, then filed noisily out, leaving Jamie standing sheepishly under the pot rack and Kit sitting, totally shell-shocked, where he had been for the past three hours.
“I thought I could come back after the cows tomorrow,” Jamie said to the room, looking studiously at his feet, “and help you with the factory roof. The iron’s coming away on the dairy side”—he cringed at his own noisy sibilants—“and you’ll lose three or four sheets if not the whole thing in the next big easterly.”
“Perfect,” said Fee. “Would you be staying for a bite to eat in the meantime?”
Jamie blushed again and grinned, then pulled a little screwdriver out of his pocket. “I’ll take the squeak out of that cupboard door while I’m here, then?” He jumped down and set to work immediately, as Avis gestured for Kit to follow her over to Fee’s cottage, where he would be staying.
“Eight years!” Avis said, shaking her head as she marched across the courtyard. “Eight years and barely a peep out of the boy. What a day.”
“He’s not usually that chatty, huh?” Kit asked, making conversation.
“He’s been working the herd since he was twelve and I’ve hardly heard a word,” Avis said. “The poor thing is so shy he can’t even look a Maria in the eye. I must have asked him a hundred times to come into the kitchen for a cup of tea and he’s never shown the slightest inclination, but today . . . well, between the jigs and the reels it’s a strange one, all right.”
“So Mr. Feehan lives here, too?” Kit asked.
“Ah, you’ll hardly notice him,” said Avis, opening the door of the cottage. It was tucked behind a stand of sycamores on the opposite side of the drive from the other farm buildings and had the same red roof as the factory and dairymaids’ cottage, but was smooth stone painted white, not the exposed gray slate of its neighbors. Kit, who had to bend his head to get in the door, found himself in a simple room with a fireplace at one end, another room off to the right and a tiny stairway at the back.
“I’ll leave you to make yourself at home,” Avis said. “You’re upstairs. Mind your head. You should be all right without a fire but if you get cold, there’s wood in the cupboard beside the hearth and there are extra blankets in your wardrobe upstairs. See you at nine over at the house.”
She turned to go but Kit found himself suddenly desperate to ask her more.
“Avis,” he said. “Do they all know why I’m here?”
She turned to look at him and he felt swamped again by her presence. “Why are you here?” she asked him, more directly than he expected.
“To straighten out?” he said, feeling stupid. “You know, to get back on my feet?”
“I’m sure you’ll work it out eventually,” Avis said cheerfully, as though he had answered the question incorrectly. “And in the meantime, perhaps a spot of cheesemaking could be considered therapeutic?” She stretched the last word out so long that it took Kit a while to recognize it.
“Cheesemaking?” he repeated doubtfully.
“That’s settled, then,” said Avis. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a bit of a madhouse here. Nobody really knows much about anybody else and it seems to work pretty well that way.”
Kit looked uncertain.
“No one will judge you here, Kit,” she said, her warm eyes soothing his doubts. “You are here to get away from it all and away from it all is exactly where you are—although away from what and for how long is your business and your business alone. You can do as much as you want here, or as little. We don’t really care. It’s gas, isn’t it? We’ll look after you, no matter what.”
In the blink of an eye she left the cottage and Kit, exhausted yet at the same time strangely excited, climbed the narrow staircase to his tiny upstairs room.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Of course, there is such a thing as a dead vat, which is when you have all the raw ingredients in the right place at the right time but the milk stays milk and the cheese never arrives. It hasn’t happened to us but it does happen.”
JOSEPH FEEHAN, from The Cheese Diaries, RTE Radio Archives
Corrie and Fee had escaped to the quiet of the smoking room for a predinner snifter.
“Crack open the Coeur de Coolarney, would you, Joseph,” Fee directed casually, as if he ordered such a thing every day of the week.
Corrie looked at him with surprise. “The Coeur de Coolarney?” he repeated. “What would we want with the Coeur de Coolarney?”
Fee looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Stop flootering around and get on with it, would you?” he commanded, rubbing his back for some diversionary sympathy.
“Well, I would if we hadn’t given it to your woman from Goleen with the carbuncle on her face,” Corrie said. “Unless . . .”
“Your woman with the carbuncle decided being single wasn’t such a terrible thing, after all,” Fee informed him. “And you can stop looking at me like that and just fetch the blessed thing.” At which he waggled one of his fat little arms furiously in the direction of the bookcase.
Corrie, mostly out of curiosity, did as he was told and went to the C section of the bookcase. He hooked his finger into Cheeses of the World and opened a fake section of the library to reveal a small refrigerator-sized fromagerie. He and Fee had seen a similar fake bookcase in an old episode of Get Smart and had gotten one of their own installed immediately.
It never failed to enthrall visitors who were keen to read Cheeses of the World but got to eat them instead. Corrie delved into this cheese supply on a daily basis and knew for a fact that the Coeur de Coolarney was long gone. Yet when he opened the door, there sat the heart-shaped brie, bold as brass and wrapped in cheesecloth, looking for all the world as though your woman with the carbuncle had taken a vow of chastity after all.
He carefully plucked it out and turned to his friend.
“That’s for the new arrivals,” Fee said, by way of an explanation. “You can bring some Gruyère out for us while you’re over there.”
Corrie plucked a wedge of the Swiss cheese from the back of the fridge and carried it with the Coeur over to the cheese altar. He was at a loss to understand what was happening. The Coeur de Coolarney was a secret and scarcely used weapon in the battle for love. They made one of the brie-style cheeses every year on the first of June, the day that Corrie’s grandfather Joseph Corrigan had decided to propose to Corrie’s grandmother Mary Roberts in 1893. As soon as he’d decided to plight his troth, Grandfather Corrigan had walked up the hill behind the house and cut a tender new branch from the magnificent oak that had stood there as long as anybody knew. He bent and shaped the wood into the shape of a heart, and with the milk of his favorite cow developed a soft curd, which he scooped into the mold and left in a dry box in the basement with two glasses of Spanish sherry. Every two days he turned it, and after a month it had developed into a firm, smooth heart-shaped custard covered in a white penicillin mold. Two weeks later, he met Mary under the oak tree, where they shared the cheese, drank the sherry and began a love affair that spanned another seventy years and was accepted as the happiest marriage in all the county.
Ever since then, the cheese had been sought after by the lovelorn, and while it couldn’t keep people together, it could certainly bring them together. Corrie had used it to help lure his wife-to-be Maggie into his arms, and Fee had used it the following year to help persuade Mary-Therese McGrath into his.