Blessed Are the Cheesemakers Read online

  Since then, it had been offered sparingly to those who heard of its powers, and the previous year bidding for a Coeur had reached an all-time high of $2,067 on eBay. That particular cheese had been given free of charge by Corrie and Fee to Maureen McCarthy’s niece Sheila, who was thirty-nine and unmarried—and, as Fee pointed out when they heard the price the cheese had fetched, obviously not as silly as she looked.

  Corrie looked at this year’s version. He couldn’t really understand how it was going to help them but then he couldn’t really understand much right now. He had always thought that having Abbey back home would fill in all the gaps in his happiness, but it had been hours now and his heart felt more like Emmental than ever.

  “It’s all happening so fast, Joseph,” he said in a shaky and unfamiliar tone. “Your back, the curd turning, the boy from New York City, and now Abbey.” His voice tripped uncertainly over her name. Fee said nothing and let him continue. “I’ve waited so long for this day, for Abbey to come home, but now that she has, I’m at a loss. She seems so far away from the little dote that lived here all those years ago. I don’t know her at all, Joseph. And she seems all sort of broken. Who did that to her? Was it Rose? Am I somehow to blame? I just can’t make sense of it.”

  Fee found it hard to watch his old friend in such distress. Corrie liked to make sense of things, always had; it was one of the big differences between them. Fee, who didn’t care much for sense, trusted fate, perhaps because he usually knew where it was taking them. Most of the time, he could twist what he knew with what Corrie wanted to hear into some semblance of rationality and order, but tonight was different. He knew Corrie wanted to hear that time was a great healer and that if he left well alone it would work out all right in the end. That was Fee’s stock advice and he was nearly always, in the end, proved right. But in this instance, Fee happened to know that leaving well alone was not the answer. Time was not on their side. It was of the essence. They couldn’t waste it. There was none to spare. He thought carefully about how best to broach this.

  “I think Abbey had a bad run on the husband front and the sooner she gets back in the saddle, the better for us all,” he said, flooring his friend.

  “Why does everything have to be about the one thing?” Corrie spluttered.

  “I don’t know,” Fee answered agreeably. “Peculiar, isn’t it?”

  “No, no, no,” Corrie shook his head, frustrated. “What I mean is that not everything is about the one thing.”

  “It is so.”

  “It is not.”

  “It is so.”

  Corrie knew better than to pursue this sort of conversation with Fee. He had more than seventy years’ experience of getting nowhere. Still . . . “It is not,” he repeated.

  “It is so,” Fee said robustly. “But it’s also about our cheese and her salvation, so would you stop it with your bellyaching and open a bottle of wine. I’m dying of thirst over here. And you can take that face off you, too, Joseph Corrigan, I know what I’m talking about.”

  “And what’s wrong with your own arms and legs that makes moving about the place such an impossibility?” Corrie wanted to know, moving nevertheless toward the wine rack.

  “So you’d mock a man in constant pain,” Fee said to Corrie’s back, arching his own in dramatic fashion until he saw his friend’s shoulders slump despondently as he stopped in front of their wine collection. “Not that I am in constant pain,” he added almost guiltily.

  “I’ve always felt that I could fix things,” Corrie explained to the wine rack. “And up till now, apart from Rose, of course, and Maggie I suppose, I think I’ve done a pretty good job. But I’m not so sure about this, Joseph, and this is probably the most important thing that needs fixing of them all. What if I can’t do it?”

  It hurt Fee to hear his friend so rattled, and he considered reiterating the business about Abbey getting back in the saddle but thought better of it. “You’re forgetting,” he said instead, “that you are not on your own, Joseph. You never have been and you never will be.” He watched Corrie as his hand reached out, trembling, and tinkered with the wine-bottle tops as if their touch was somehow reassuring.

  “Abbey is going to be all right,” Fee continued in a tone that suggested it was ridiculous that anyone would think otherwise. “Everything’s going to be all right. It’s business as usual, Joseph. She’s like a fresh Coolarney Gold sitting in the cave. She’s got to the right place at the right time, and given a good rub and the chance to let whatever’s in the air do its bit, we’ll get our result and it will be grand. Like it always is.”

  Corrie’s hand lingered on a Californian red.

  “Saintsbury Pinot Noir,” Fee breathed enthusiastically before Corrie had even slid it out of the rack. “Perfect.”

  Corrie shuffled back to his chair with the wine in his hand and a pain in his heart. He envied Fee his certainty at a time when all he felt was doubt. Doubt that he had lived up to the promise he’d always assumed he had. Doubt that it had all been worthwhile. Doubt that he had done anything special in the world. He’d thought for a long time that the cheese was his major contribution. He knew that the cheese they made was better than anything with which the previous generations had trifled. That was thanks, mainly, to his thirst for ways to modernize and improve production, something his forefathers might have fought, and Fee’s certainty about which direction was the right one. There was never any fiddling around with decision-making when Fee was involved. And to be sure, the cheese was special, but he knew that wasn’t it. That there was more.

  Then, when he met Maggie, he thought maybe she was the something special, or the woman with whom he could do something special. When it became clear that was probably not the case, he poured his hope into Rose. As she grew up, however, he had cause to doubt his confidence in himself, and when Maggie left he wondered what he had done wrong to invite so much heartache. And that was only the beginning of it.

  “Would you stop fiddling with the wine and open it?” Fee demanded, snapping Corrie out of his reverie. “It’s not communion wine, you don’t have to pray over it. I’m dehydrating in front of your very eyes and the cork is still in the bottle.”

  Corrie wound in the corkscrew and felt his heart give a little jump at the happy “kloop” the cork sang as it popped out, letting the pinot vibes escape.

  Fee sniffed the air like a dog at the beach and smiled. “And by the way,” he said, “if you could stop wallowing in your misery over there for a minute you might like to remember the small matter of Avis O’Regan and the Coolarney milkmaids.”

  Could a man never be alone with his thoughts? Corrie wondered silently.

  “No, he cannot, now pour the fecking stuff, would you?” Fee answered.

  When Kit walked back into the rattle and hum of the country kitchen at nine, the table was heaving with food. The dairymaids were buzzing around like overstuffed honey bees, rearranging huge platters of food around the cheeses, jams, chutneys, mustards, pickles, loaves and dishes already on the table. Two heavy candelabra, one at each end, glowed with a dozen burning candles, and at their base bunches of fresh trailing rosemary and violets added to the evening’s heavy scent. Avis was heaping more vegetables into a dish and Fee was carving the beef, while Jack was trying to decide which end of the table should be vegetarian.

  Lucy, still ecstatic over Jesus’s miracle of birth, grabbed Kit’s hand and slid onto the bench seat behind the table, dragging him behind her. “So,” she said, pointing her little pixie chin at him, “you’re from New York.”

  Kit flinched. It had been bugging him—who did the little troll remind him of? But the fluttering eyelashes had just clinched it. It was Jacey. Not Jacey herself but perhaps Jacey’s kid sister. Or even a young version of Jacey before the modeling and the big city and, well, everything.

  “Yeah, I’m from New York,” Kit said, conscious that everyone could hear him now that they were settling down around the table. “Just flew in yesterday.”

&nb
sp; He looked up to see Corrie walk in with Abbey, who looked bleary with sleep and in desperate need of a hairbrush. Her russet-colored locks were sticking out in all directions except on the left side of her head, where they remained stuck down flat, giving her a hopelessly lopsided look. She slipped in behind the table to the other side of Kit and slumped back against the wall as Avis did a quick round of introductions during which she just blushed and nodded.

  She was a strange fish, thought Kit, almost out of place, despite being, as far as he knew, the only one truly entitled to be there. Fee brought the meat over and sat it at the carnivore end of the table where the smell of rich, juicy beefy gravy reminded Kit he hadn’t eaten since Maureen McCarthy’s that morning. He licked his lips and salivated; he couldn’t remember the last time he had looked forward to food. Corrie sat at Kit and Abbey’s end of the long table and Fee at the other, while Avis perched in the middle on the kitchen side between the twins and Jamie.

  “Joseph,” she said, looking at Corrie, “I think it should be you says grace tonight.”

  The dairymaids bowed their heads and Abbey and Kit followed suit.

  “Bless us, Oh Lord,” said Corrie, his voice clear and strong despite his earlier brush with doubt and depression, “bless this food and each and every one of us sitting here tonight. And thank you, Lord, for bringing Abbey back home and for looking after her all those years, and thanks too for sending us Kit, and also for giving us a closer look at Jamie Joyce, who could you remind me tomorrow, Lord, to ask would he mind giving us a hand with Old Fart Arse.”

  The girls tittered.

  “Amen,” said Corrie. A staggered collection of Amens spread around the table like a Mexican wave before food started being piled onto plates with alarming haste.

  “So how long are you going to be staying with us, then?” Lucy asked Kit, as she put Brussels sprouts onto her plate.

  “I’m really not sure. As long as you’ll have me, I guess,” Kit answered, taking the sprout bowl out of her hands.

  “Oh, we’ll have you for as long as you like, won’t we, girls?” Lucy said saucily, and the Pregnasaurs fell into a group titter.

  Kit looked up, embarrassed, and caught Avis’s eye, which was rolling in the direction of Lucy. “I believe I am going to have an attempt at making some cheese,” Kit said, to get the conversation back on an even keel.

  Abbey felt a twinge of something that she thought could have been resentment. She had thought she was going to be making the cheese.

  “Well, we’ll be thinking of you tomorrow when we milk,” Lucy said to Kit, making a slightly obscene pulling gesture that had Wilhie ramming a table napkin between her legs to keep from peeing herself.

  “Ah, now come on,” Avis said disappointedly. “Is this any way to behave in front of our new guests?”

  “Don’t worry on my account,” Kit said, smiling at Lucy, “I’ve handled worse.”

  “I’ll bet you bloody have,” chipped in Jack, “and now’s the time to raise your standards.”

  “Stop them will you, Joseph,” Avis said looking at Fee. “I’ve seen all the Carry On movies I want to see.”

  He stopped carving his beef and looked at her. “You’re a dark horse, Avis O’Regan,” he said, then went back to his dinner. “Who’s got the potatoes?”

  Abbey picked the heavy bowl of spuds up from in front of her and handed it to Kit, for passing along. His little flirtation scene had permeated her armor of numbness and annoyed her. She supposed all good-looking husbands were the same. Shameless, the lot of them.

  “So what do you know about cheese, then?” she asked Kit, trying for a casual tone but getting a slightly snarky one by mistake.

  “Not a lot, I guess,” Kit said, “although my mom was always a big cheese fan so we ate a lot of it when I was a kid. And I used to live around the corner from this great cheese shop in New York, called Murray’s. You guys know that?”

  Corrie and Fee nodded enthusiastically. Coolarney Gold and Blue sold like hotcakes at Murray’s and he imported a healthy percentage of their Princess Graces as well. He also sent them a bottle of vintage champagne every Christmas. They liked Murray a lot.

  “Your mother was a cheese fan, did you say?” Avis wanted to know, a sparkle suddenly glittering in her eye. “Where does your mother live, Kit?”

  Kit swallowed and tried not to feel sick. “She’s in Vermont,” he said, wanting a drink.

  “And your wife?” Abbey asked, again missing casual and getting snarky again instead.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your wife,” Abbey said, pointing at the slim gold wedding ring on Kit’s finger. “How does your wife feel about you being over here in Ireland making cheese for as long as you’ll be had?”

  The table’s jovial feel disappeared as the milkmaids fell quiet and the sound of cutlery slowing on crockery scorched the air.

  “My wife,” Kit said, his voice suddenly husky. All eyes were on him, his knife and fork frozen and hovering just above his plate. “My wife,” he started again, conscious of everybody’s attention, as his cutlery clattered clumsily to his plate.

  “Leave the poor bugger alone,” Jack suddenly said, crossly. “It’s okay, mate. You don’t have to explain anything to anybody.” She leaned across Lucy to glower meanly at Abbey.

  “You’re not gay, are you?” Lucy asked with thinly disguised horror. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the wedding ring herself.

  “You can leave him alone and all,” Wilhie said hotly. “Look at the poor sod.”

  “It’s okay if you are gay,” Jack said kindly. “A lot of people are.”

  “Yes, but not fecking everybody!” cried Lucy.

  Jack shooshed her quiet. Kit tried to manage a smile and failed. He slowly pushed his knife and fork neatly together on his plate, intersecting the meal he no longer had the appetite for, then cleared his throat.

  “I lost my wife three months ago,” he said, without looking up.

  Fee looked over at Avis, who was concentrating studiously on the contents of her own fork. Ah well, he thought to himself.

  “Oh,” said Abbey, retreating behind her numbness again. “Sorry.” She sensed the dairymaids looking at her with contempt and didn’t blame them, she was a horrible person. Kit seemed like a nice guy; she didn’t know what rubbed her the wrong way about him—apart from the fact that he seemed perfect and everybody liked him.

  “So, you’re not gay,” Lucy said, trying not to look too relieved.

  “I’m married myself, you know,” Abbey said loudly to the table, wishing as she mouthed the words that she wasn’t. “But my husband has been sexing my neighbors.”

  Nobody spoke. For a start, no one was quite sure what sexing was. Jamie looked as though his eyes were about to pop out; Jack’s mouth, full of food, was dumbly hanging open; Lucy looked thunderous. Abbey herself couldn’t believe what she’d just said. She had meant to say screwing or bonking or shagging but sexing had popped out instead. She felt a frightening wave of dangerous emotion sweep over her.

  “Leastways, he was getting biblical with them,” she said, maniacally pushing a pile of beans around on her plate as she felt tears spring, cartoonlike, from her eyes. “And they were having his children.” She abandoned her food and sat up, wiping at the tears on her cheeks and fighting to control herself. “In clumps, as it happens. Unlike me.”

  Corrie looked at her flushed face and felt tears prick the back of his own eyes. Such misery! What had happened to his beautiful little girl?

  Avis looked across the table and did what she had to. “I had a husband once, too,” she said cheerfully, “and a more miserable bollocks you never met in your whole entire life. Now Abbey, will you pass the greens up to Wilhie, please? She’s a demon for skipping her spinach and God knows it’s the only iron the girl’s ever likely to get.”

  “Joseph,” Fee called from the other end of the table, “would you be unwrapping the Coeur de Coolarney instead of sitting there gawking at the pot
atoes?”

  “I thought we were going to have mashed as well,” Corrie said, entering the spirit of changing the subject as knives and forks around the table were picked up again.

  “Well, I didn’t see your highness volunteering his services in the kitchen,” Fee returned.

  The hum of good-natured banter picked up and slowly buzzed once more around the kitchen, so that only Abbey and Kit were left silent and still at the table. Corrie unwrapped the heart-shaped cheese and, after translating a series of frightening facial expressions from his friend at the other end of the table, pushed it as surreptitiously as he could between them, both too steeped in misery to notice. The fumes of the Irish love cheese rose up and whispered invisibly between them.

  “I really am sorry,” Abbey finally said, “about your wife.”

  Kit, still unable to speak or look at her, just shook his head. “I’m sorry about your husband,” he answered, in time.

  The tentacles of the crafty Coeur were sensing resistance, but nevertheless wrapped themselves around him. Kit wanted to get up and leave but he couldn’t. He felt frozen to the seat. Naked and exposed and more in need of a drink than ever.

  Abbey too felt as heavy as lead and was suddenly desperate to undo the damage she’d done. She wasn’t a mean person, she knew that, and now she wanted everyone else to know that, too. She tried to think of a witty way to get around bringing up Kit’s recent bereavement but couldn’t.

  The love cheese tendrils waved and wafted around her.

  “Shake?” she finally offered timidly, holding out her hand in Kit’s direction as, unseen, ghostly coils of ardor essence slid over it like a glove.

  Kit looked at her hand. She could stick it up her ass, as far as he was concerned, and he was about to tell her that when the Coeur lashed out and slapped him.

  “Sure,” he said instead. “Why not,” and he took the hand she had offered in his own.

  The fromage d’amour screamed with triumph and Kit felt a jolt, like an electric current, run up his arm, across his shoulders, and shoot down through his chest, via his groin, to the tips of his toes. He felt shocked, literally. He let go of Abbey’s hand with a gasp and dazedly examined his palm, amazed to find there wasn’t a raging red burn mark there. He swore he could still feel the tingle of her touch. He turned back to look at her and noticed, with another tremor, that her formerly flattened hair was now sticking out at right angles to her head. She was staring right back at him with a stunned look in her eyes, and he knew in an instant that she’d felt something too.