“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said, coming over to give her a hug. “I didn’t mean to—”
Abbey pushed him back so she could look at him. “No,” she said, her eyes shining. “I love that. I love that it’s a labor of love.” She pulled herself together and held up her paddle, looking at it and tracing the dents her grandfather’s fingers, and his grandfather’s before that, had made on it over the decades. Somehow, the more ridiculous it got, the more it made sense. Her life, finally, was falling into place. But there would be time for celebration, lots of it, later. Right now, there was cheese to be made.
A tingle of excitement ran up her spine as she peered into the vat, the minutes ticking by without either of them noticing, as the thick creamy milk disappeared before their very eyes, leaving the sweet watery whey and shiny soft curd in its wake. Wordlessly, they picked up their blades and started the synchronized series of sweeping arcs that would bring them closer to their cheese. Almost instantly they fell into a compatible rhythm, each focusing on the different patterns their blades were slicing through the curd. The factory was silent but for the ever-present sound of dripping water, the friendly occasional clink of blade against steel and the slip-slop of the whey as the paddles sliced through it. When the curd was as small as it could be, Kit and Abbey looked at each other and grinned, both wet with effort and glowing with satisfaction.
“Bombs away?” Abbey queried. “Bombs away,” answered Kit, and she pulled the plug on the vat, standing back as the whey hissed and spat its way onto the floor, finding the grate and slinking down it like an escaping snake. The factory never smelled better than at this moment, the whey departing, the curd settling and the air thick with promise, and it was at this moment Corrie and Fee, unable to stay away another second, fell in the door, each pushing the other out of the way and the little fat one, for once, winning.
“Gadzooks!” Fee said. “I think they’ve done it!”
“Gadzooks?” repeated Corrie. “When did you start saying gadzooks?” But he could feel it, too. It wasn’t the look or the smell or the feel. It was all of those things and something else, something indefinable, something they had only ever been able to put down to Coolarniness. Kit grinned and invited them to taste the curd but at that moment the door flew open again and a wide-eyed and near-hysterical Lucy burst in, completely out of breath.
“Wilhie,” she gasped. “Wilhie.”
Abbey handed Kit her paddle and went to Lucy’s side, urging her to calm down.
“Wilhie’s gone into labor,” Lucy panted. “I can’t find Avis and I don’t know what to do and it’s happening pretty fecking quickly if you ask me.”
“Where is she?” Abbey urged.
“In the big kitchen,” Lucy said. “I thought with the boiling water and everything . . .”
“Kit,” said Abbey, immediately taking control. “You go and find Avis. I’ll go with Lucy and get Wilhie up to my room. Can you bring Avis up there when you find her? Are you two all right to pack the molds?” she asked, looking at Corrie and Fee. “I’m so sorry, I know today was supposed to be—”
“Go,” said her grandfather, his heart nearly bursting with pride at his wise, warm, wonderful granddaughter. “Go.”
She went, Kit and Lucy with her, and the two old men were alone in the factory.
“What did I do to deserve her?” Corrie asked in wonder, and his old friend clapped him on the back and said, “That you even need to ask, Joseph, makes you the man you are.”
He took up his position on the opposite side of the vat. “Ready?” he asked. Corrie nodded.
“Are you sure?” Fee asked again. Corrie nodded again.
Fee bent down over the vat and lifted a handful of curd tentatively to his nose.
The curd smelled exquisite. Sweet and special. Warm and inviting. Pure and simple. Exquisite. He pulled his hand back just enough to let Corrie see his smile from across the vat and then brought the curd to his lips, sucked it onto his tongue, clapped his mouth shut, closed his eyes and savored the sensation.
Bliss.
It was perfect. Flawless. Faultless. But more than that, it was exceptional. Unique. Unsurpassed.
In a word, it was better.
It was the best.
There was absolutely no doubt about it whatsoever. Kit and Abbey’s curd was the best Fee had ever tasted, and the thought of the cheese their curd would one day become made him shiver from the tips of the last few strands of hair on his head to the ends of the toenails he’d inherited from his grandmother.
His eyes flew open. “Jaysus feck, Joseph,” he breathed. “They’ve only cracked it. They’re only the best fecking cheesemakers in the whole of the world. They’re only fecking cheeniuses! I knew it. I knew it!”
Corrie felt a warmth flood through his tired old bones and settle calmly on his skin as he cherished the look on his old friend’s face. Blissfulness was a wonderful state. This was a grand moment to be relished and remembered.
He leaned in against the vat and stooped down, swinging his arm in a gesture so familiar he couldn’t even feel he was doing it. He scooped up the curd and his skin tingled, seemed suddenly oversensitive, even, to the feel of the silky, warm pulp in his hand. For a moment he felt as though he could feel every molecule, every atom, every element that was being squeezed by his fingers into his palm. It felt like more than curd. It felt like everything. Everything he had ever done. Everyplace he had ever seen. Everybody he knew.
With a difficulty he didn’t understand, he lifted the sweet soft mass to his lips. It exploded in his mouth with a buzz that was so overwhelming his brain could barely process the deep dark thrill as it quickly spread throughout his body, saturating every single cell.
Suddenly everything was happening in slow motion, flickering in front of him like an old home movie. He tasted. He swallowed. He realized that Fee was right. It was better than perfect. It was the best. His hand fell to grab the side of the vat. His other hand clutched at his chest, numb with the tingling that was taking over him. Still everything was happening in slow motion. Everything. Slow. Tasting. Swallowing. Realizing. His eyes widened in panic as he comprehended what was happening and with all his strength he lifted his head to look at his friend.
Fee was standing, stricken, on the other side of the vat, his mouth frozen open in a black, gaping O as tears spilled down his cheeks.
The world stopped moving. The sun stopped shining. The cheese didn’t matter.
It’s me, thought Corrie, his face paralyzed in an expression that was half rapture over the glory of the cheese, half terror at what was happening to him. “It’s me,” he whispered as his legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed to the floor, his head bouncing off the smooth brown teak as the cold claw of death squeezed again at his heart.
“It’s me,” he whispered again as Fee appeared on the floor beside him and pulled the big man onto his lap, so that Fee was sitting against the vat, his faithful old friend lying, shocked and barely breathing in his arms, his head leaning back against Fee’s chest.
“It wasn’t you,” Corrie said, looking in front of himself but finding nothing to focus on, “it was me.”
Fee kissed the top of his old mate’s head and let his tears fall wetly on that glorious mop of silvery hair. “Ah, sure, it was you,” he whispered. “But what’s a fellow to do?” He rocked Corrie, his short stocky arms looped underneath the big man’s armpits, gently rubbing the chest beneath which scarcely pumped the heart that was killing him.
“I didn’t want to tell you, Joseph,” he confessed. “I didn’t want you to worry. I wanted you to make the most of it.”
“But I haven’t . . .” Corrie’s head was muddled.
“Ssshhhh,” Fee soothed. “You have.”
“But I haven’t done it.” Corrie labored over the words. “I never got there.”
“Ah, Joseph, you did. You just don’t know you did,” Fee whispered. He hugged his friend closer to him and was quiet for a moment. He thought of all the
things he’d told Corrie that meant nothing and knew these next words would have to be different.
“You always knew you were here to do something special, Joseph,” he whispered into his bewildered friend’s ear. “You always knew that you were different and that there was a reason for it all and you were right, Joseph Corrigan, you were right, just not in the way you expected.” He felt Corrie shudder in his arms and his own heart contracted with anguish.
“It wasn’t the cheese,” Fee said, extricating himself momentarily to wipe at his eyes with his grubby sleeve. “Ah, the cheese was good, the best even, up until now, but that wasn’t it, Joseph. And it wasn’t Rose, although God knows you deserve a medal for loving the little wagon after everything she put you through.” He pressed his lips to the old man’s bushy eyebrow and kissed him again, his eyes closed and burning with grief.
“Abbey,” Corrie said, or thought he said, but couldn’t tell.
“It wasn’t even her,” Fee whispered, “although she’s a credit to you, Joseph, and your Corrigan genes and she’s able for it just like you were. She’ll do you proud, Joseph, you know that. She got here in time.”
Corrie smiled, or thought he smiled, until the pain in his chest wrenched him away. “What was I here for then?” he beseeched his friend, although he was well beyond speaking. “What’s it all been for?”
“There’s a hundred seventy-four other babies born happy and healthy here because of you, you silly feck,” wept Fee, “and that’s one hundred and sixty-nine girls no one else wanted when they most needed someone to want them. That’s what you were here for, Joseph. It was happening right here under your nose all the time.”
“That was nothing,” Corrie imagined telling his dear old friend. “It was a pleasure. It was nothing. Sure, anybody else would have done the same.”
“That’s why you’re different,” wept Fee, “because not everybody else would do the same.”
“You would,” Corrie felt. “You would do the same.”
“Not without you,” Fee whispered. “Not on my own.” He felt Corrie stiffen himself against the monumental physical pain he was fighting and then relax as though the pain had gone away, or he had decided he couldn’t fight it anymore.
In that moment Corrie thought of all the things he hadn’t done. He hadn’t made peace with his daughter. He hadn’t finished this quarter’s tax return. He hadn’t talked to Ruby and Marie about the pay raise they’d been refusing to accept. He hadn’t told the best friend a man could ever hope to have how much he loved him and how he didn’t want to leave him alone in the world.
“You don’t need to, old friend,” Fee murmured into his ear. “I know.”
A single huge fat teardrop leaked out of Corrie’s left eye and trickled slowly down his cheek.
“Don’t be afraid to let go, Joseph,” Fee whispered into his ear, as a tear of his own fell and landed with a tiny splash on top of Corrie’s, hurrying it down his face. “It won’t be the same without you, it won’t be perfect, but it will be all right. Trust me.”
And Corrie, knowing that’s what friends were for, trusted him. And feeling less than perfect but still lucky and loved and certain, for once, that the time was right, he let go.
EPILOGUE
Fee bounced Baby Corrie on his knee and studied the German lesbian.
“My girlfriend knows nothing,” she said. “I am on safari in Africa and drinking with a young man from Australia when all of a sudden”—her eyes widened as if even being there hadn’t been proof enough that it had happened—“I am in his sleeping bag.”
Fee kissed Corrie on the head and marveled over the baby’s soft blond hair at the breadth of the German lesbian’s hands. She had big strong knuckles and no jewelry. Ideal.
“How do you feel about Austrian nuns?” he asked.
“It is a long while since I have thought about Austrian nuns,” she answered, registering little surprise. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing really,” Fee replied. “I did mention that you will need to sing to the cows, though, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” said the German lesbian. “You did mention that.”
The door opened and Abbey came in, her face lighting up as she saw her baby jiggling on Grandy Fee’s ancient purple tracksuit pants.
“There you are, you gorgeous girl,” she said, reaching for Baby Corrie and lifting her into her arms to be smothered in kisses. “Oh, hello,” she said, turning to the German lesbian. “I’m Abbey, the cheesemaker.”
“Hello, I am Lili,” said Lili. “You have a very beautiful baby. She doesn’t look like you.”
“No,” laughed Abbey, kissing the little button nose between the bright blue eyes, “but she smells like me, that must count for something. Oh, that reminds me,” she turned to Fee, “Lucy just rang, she’s coming down this weekend to see Jamie and us, of course, and guess what, she’s bringing her parents. Can you believe it? She said that meeting Rose has made her realize her own mother is practically a saint. Isn’t that gas? Lucy is a Coolarney mum,” Abbey explained to Lili, “and this one’s birth mother.”
She held Corrigan Lucy Stephens in the air and blew a raspberry into her fat little stomach.
“You keep all the babies?” Lili asked.
“I’d like to,” laughed Abbey, “but my husband has other thoughts on the matter. No, most of them go home with their mothers, Lili, but don’t panic just yet, there’s plenty of time for you to decide what you want to do, as Avis will no doubt explain when she arrives. I think she’s over in the cottage getting your room ready.”
“But how could she be?” asked Lili. “She didn’t know I was coming.”
“Yes, well, you’ll see,” smiled Abbey. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to it, as soon as I choose a cheese for lunch.” She opened the Cheeses of the World section in the library and rustled around in the fromagerie while Fee explained to the newcomer the history of the Feehans and the Corrigans.
“The deal has always been,” he said, “that the Corrigans would provide the cows, the cows would provide the milk, and the Feehans would provide the skills to make cheese—and that’s the way we’ve been doing it for a long, long time now and doing very nicely as a result we are too, thank you for asking.”
Abbey stopped what she was doing and turned around, giving Fee a strange look as she adjusted Baby Corrie on her hip. “The Corrigans would provide the cows?” she asked. “And the Feehans would provide the skills to make cheese?”
Fee looked at her and nodded.
“The Corrigans weren’t cheesemakers?”
“They helped make the cheese,” he answered, “but they were mainly cow people. Until your grandfather, God rest his soul.”
Abbey looked at him, aghast. “The Corrigans were cow people?”
“Before your grandfather, mostly, yes they were.”
“So what happened?” she asked, as Lili looked on with passive interest.
“So turns out your grandfather didn’t care for cows,” Fee said. “Couldn’t stand the creatures. Hated the look of them, the sound of them, the touch of them, the smell of them. They brought him out in boils. I think it was a phobia. He started selling cheese when he was twelve years old so he could afford to pay someone else to deal with the filthy things. That’s sort of how we got going.”
“But what about grand old tradition and it being in the blood and all those things you are always talking about?” Abbey asked, hitching Baby Corrie farther up on her hip.
“Ah, the secret’s not in following tradition, it’s in knowing when to change it,” said Fee, making the baby laugh by poking out his tongue.
Abbey plucked out a chunk of Stilton, closed the refrigerator door and shook her head disbelievingly, a smile on her face all the same.
“You,” she said, bending to kiss Fee’s bald spot as she passed him on her way out the door, “just make it up as you go along.”
“Did you hear that, Joseph?” Fee said to the clock. “Is she a chip off the old feckin’ block o
r wha’?”
“You sing to the cows, you talk to the walls,” said the German lesbian. “What kind of a place is this?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Being naturally nosy myself, I always wonder what other writers are acknowledging people for. In a bid to have no one wonder that about these acknowledgments, I’ve spelled it out so excuse me if I bang on . . .
Veronica and Norman Steele at Milleens in West Cork were the first artisan cheesemakers I met and I could not have asked for a better introduction. I had imagined that cheesemakers were different (in a good way, of course) from the rest of us, and Veronica and Norman backed this up wonderfully.
Similarly I am greatly indebted to the Ferguson family, especially Giana, at Gubbeen Cheese near Schull. Theirs is the warmest kitchen I’ve ever been in, and I don’t mean temperature. It was the inspiration for the hub of Coolarney House. Before meeting Giana I knew that cheese was magical, I just didn’t know how.
In New York City I’d like to thank Ed Needham and Bridget Freer for the unlimited use of their sofa bed with an extra hurrah for Bridget, who worked tirelessly helping me research “sissy boy” drinking and eating emporiums.
I would also like to give a big doff of the cap to Dale and Stuart Blunsome without whom I would not have received the benefit of being represented by the William Morris Agency and in particular Stephanie Cabot in London and Ginger Barber in New York. And what a loss that would have been! For me, I mean. Thanks too to Elyse Green, who gives such good e-mail, and to Jamie Raab, Colin Fox, and the heart-warmingly enthusiastic team at Warner Books.
I’d like also to thank the late Theresa Roberts, God rest her soul, for staying in Ireland, and Ratooragh in particular, when the rest of her family moved as far afield as New Zealand. Without having gone to find her, and the marvelous Mary and Connie Lucey who looked after her in recent years, I’d be two novels down.