saying he was the man? His mother said he should be glad that someone in the family was looking to the practical side of things instead of singing raucous songs and laughing loud laughs.
In Paddy Dunne’s pub all talk of emigration to Liverpool to the brother’s pub had stopped. This was now the hub of the universe. Paddy Dunne had it from one of the travelling salesmen who came in trying to get him to take biscuits. Biscuits in a pub! Anyway this man knew all about Fernscourt: it was an agricultural research place. Foreigners were going to come and test soil and plants and the place was going to be a boom town as a result of it. The smart man would expand now or expand a little and then sell when prices were going up. It provided hours of speculation.
Sheila Whelan sat in the comfortable sitting roombehind the post office and listened to a concert on Radio Eireann. She loved all that Strauss music and it didn’t sweep her into a world of people waltzing in Vienna; instead it reminded her for some reason of the first time she had come to Mountfern with Joe Whelan. He had taken her to Coyne’s wood which was full of bluebells. Literally carpeted with them. They had picked armfuls of them and Joe had told her that he loved music and that he would take her to concerts. He told her lots of things. Sheila lay back in her chair, tired. She knew a bit more about Fernscourt than the others because the telegrams all came through her post office. But she didn’t know it all. She sighed and wondered what the changes would mean.
Across the road in the Whites’, the doctor was telling his wife all the theories he had heard. It was mainly nuns, he reported, but there was a considerable weight of opinion behind a college, and a strong vocal minority thought it was going to be a development of twelve luxury bungalows each with a quarter acre of garden and a river view.
‘What would be the best?’ Mrs White wondered.
‘It depends where you stand.’ Dr White was philosophical. ‘If Jacinta were going to join the Poor Clares or whatever, it would be nice to have her down the road; on the other hand if she were to land a millionaire let’s hope she might buy one of the new bungalows.’
‘It’s going to make everyone look out for themselves,’ said Mrs White suddenly, as if the thought had just hit her.
Close to Dr White’s house, in Conway’s, Miss Barry was having a small port for her stomach. She sat fearfully on a high stool. The Conways wished she would buy a bottle of port and take it home with her, she madeeveryone uneasy by looking around nervously and protesting that she had a cramp which meant that her body was crying out to be warmed.
Miss Barry had heard that there was definitely oil in the ground, that a research organisation was going to come and test it, but they were going to install an order of silent enclosed nuns there as a disguise to keep people away – three theories rolled comfortably into one. She found a ready and unexpected audience in Conway’s. They looked at her as if there might be some truth in it; they had all heard elements of this story and this explanation would at last tie it all together.
In the Classic Cinema twenty-three people sat and watched the romantic tale of
The Glass Mountain
unfold itself on the screen, while Declan Morrissey who ran the place sat in the projection room and read an article he had cut out of a Sunday newspaper. Are the days of the cinema numbered? He wondered should he get out now or wait and see if these daft rumours about half the civil service being transplanted from Dublin to the midlands were true. Wouldn’t it be a very stupid thing to sell the Classic just as the horde of possible cinema viewers were about to arrive?
In Meagher’s, the watch-menders and small jewellers, Teresa’s parents fought on bitterly. Mrs Meagher said it didn’t matter if the Prince of Wales had left and that Mrs Simpson was coming to live in Mountfern and give parties,
In Paddy Dunne’s pub all talk of emigration to Liverpool to the brother’s pub had stopped. This was now the hub of the universe. Paddy Dunne had it from one of the travelling salesmen who came in trying to get him to take biscuits. Biscuits in a pub! Anyway this man knew all about Fernscourt: it was an agricultural research place. Foreigners were going to come and test soil and plants and the place was going to be a boom town as a result of it. The smart man would expand now or expand a little and then sell when prices were going up. It provided hours of speculation.
Sheila Whelan sat in the comfortable sitting roombehind the post office and listened to a concert on Radio Eireann. She loved all that Strauss music and it didn’t sweep her into a world of people waltzing in Vienna; instead it reminded her for some reason of the first time she had come to Mountfern with Joe Whelan. He had taken her to Coyne’s wood which was full of bluebells. Literally carpeted with them. They had picked armfuls of them and Joe had told her that he loved music and that he would take her to concerts. He told her lots of things. Sheila lay back in her chair, tired. She knew a bit more about Fernscourt than the others because the telegrams all came through her post office. But she didn’t know it all. She sighed and wondered what the changes would mean.
Across the road in the Whites’, the doctor was telling his wife all the theories he had heard. It was mainly nuns, he reported, but there was a considerable weight of opinion behind a college, and a strong vocal minority thought it was going to be a development of twelve luxury bungalows each with a quarter acre of garden and a river view.
‘What would be the best?’ Mrs White wondered.
‘It depends where you stand.’ Dr White was philosophical. ‘If Jacinta were going to join the Poor Clares or whatever, it would be nice to have her down the road; on the other hand if she were to land a millionaire let’s hope she might buy one of the new bungalows.’
‘It’s going to make everyone look out for themselves,’ said Mrs White suddenly, as if the thought had just hit her.
Close to Dr White’s house, in Conway’s, Miss Barry was having a small port for her stomach. She sat fearfully on a high stool. The Conways wished she would buy a bottle of port and take it home with her, she madeeveryone uneasy by looking around nervously and protesting that she had a cramp which meant that her body was crying out to be warmed.
Miss Barry had heard that there was definitely oil in the ground, that a research organisation was going to come and test it, but they were going to install an order of silent enclosed nuns there as a disguise to keep people away – three theories rolled comfortably into one. She found a ready and unexpected audience in Conway’s. They looked at her as if there might be some truth in it; they had all heard elements of this story and this explanation would at last tie it all together.
In the Classic Cinema twenty-three people sat and watched the romantic tale of
The Glass Mountain
unfold itself on the screen, while Declan Morrissey who ran the place sat in the projection room and read an article he had cut out of a Sunday newspaper. Are the days of the cinema numbered? He wondered should he get out now or wait and see if these daft rumours about half the civil service being transplanted from Dublin to the midlands were true. Wouldn’t it be a very stupid thing to sell the Classic just as the horde of possible cinema viewers were about to arrive?
In Meagher’s, the watch-menders and small jewellers, Teresa’s parents fought on bitterly. Mrs Meagher said it didn’t matter if the Prince of Wales had left and that Mrs Simpson was coming to live in Mountfern and give parties,
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