Laws in Conflict by Cora Harrison Page A

Philip Browne, also, was eyeing him with a look of dislike.
    ‘Not James Lynch anything,’ said the mayor stiffly. ‘This school will be named the St Nicholas Grammar School and it will take boys up to the age of fourteen. They can progress from there to a university in England, or a law school, or into a trade in the town.’
    ‘Pointless waste of money – ten free places. How can the town afford to keep this going? You won’t be mayor for ever, you know, and you will leave a burden on your successors and their children. Valentine, do you approve of this absurd business?’ Philip Browne sounded so angry that the two young men and the four girls at the top of the room, stopped talking and turned around to listen. The law scholars politely turned to look out of the window at the back of the room.
    ‘I’ve told him that,’ said Valentine, smiling good-humouredly, ‘but let’s not think of it now.’ He picked up a small bell of chased silver and rang it. A man, dressed as a steward, appeared and bowed towards the mistress of the house, murmuring something.
    It was, however, Valentine, who ushered everyone into the dining room, seating Mara beside himself, and Fiona on his other hand, and sending the angry-looking James Lynch to sit beside the amiable Cecily. In a few minutes all were seated around a long table spread with a purple tablecloth which showed off the elaborate silver plates, silver knives and silver drinking goblets.
    Both young men, Walter and the Spanish boy, Carlos, drank fairly heavily throughout the meal. They were placed on each side of Catarina, which perhaps had been rather tactless of the host. Mara was sorry that this was not an informal household where when the meal was announced people moved to sit beside who they chose to talk to. Mara had wanted to place herself next to James Lynch, but had to make do with his wife Margaret who was on her other side – and she was the better talker of the two.
    However, when Valentine’s wife, Cecily, claimed Margaret’s attention for a moment, Mara immediately took the opportunity of leaning across the table to address James Lynch.
    ‘Tell me some more about your grammar school,’ she said.
    He shrugged. ‘Nothing much to tell; we have to get the building up before any plans for the teaching are made.’
    ‘And you will have no difficulty with the town council?’
    Once again he shrugged, a look of faint amusement in his eyes this time. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They will do what I suggest.’
    And he cast a challenging glance across the table at Philip Browne.
    Not a man to cajole or establish a relationship, she thought. However, as a lawyer, she was trained into taking different approaches to a problem. She had tried being friendly; now she would try a different tack.
    ‘I had a very interesting afternoon in Lawyer Bodkin’s chambers,’ she began, trying to make her voice sound authoritative and intellectual. ‘He was kind enough to lend me his law books. It was fascinating to pick out the differences between your law and ours.’
    ‘Your law,’ he queried with an ironic lift of his eyebrows. His thin lips were twisted into a sneer. The pause he made and the puzzled tone of voice were all deliberately affected, thought Mara. She said nothing, just gazed steadily at him and after a moment his eyes dropped. ‘Oh,
brewone
law,’ he said, deliberately mispronouncing the word, and when she still kept her lips closed, he looked at her with an air of curiosity.
    ‘Yes,’ she said sweetly when she judged that sufficient time had elapsed, ‘of course, here in Galway you are rather cut off from the rest of the west of Ireland, are you not?’ And she saw with satisfaction how his face darkened. She had evoked the familiar nightmare for the dwellers of the city state of Galway. There were about three thousand people with English names and English lifestyles, living inside its strong walls, but outside those walls were millions with names prefaced with