‘Okay, then, diverting. Tell me about more Granny and this Finty,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe she used to have aboyfriend.’
‘Finty! Oh God. She was mad about him.’I said. ‘He was her long-term on-off-on again fling, fancy-man, lover, whatever. They were together I would say for at least ten years and when the peace camp disbanded, he moved to a tepee nearby. She used to go and see him there. But eventually it all kind of fizzled out. So she left the tepee and came home.’
‘Was it really a tepee?’
‘Yes, anactualtepee. I saw photos. It was like theLastof the Mohicans. Finty wrapped in some kind of rug, bare chested and toothless...’
‘Toothless?’ Rosie was loving this story and she was eating up her dinner, I was so relieved and pleased to see. Maybe the West Cork magic was already weaving its spell.
‘Dental hygiene was low on his list of priorities,’ I said. ‘He was more interested in pursuing a… how shall I put this? Pursuing an unconventionallife. Anyway, he no longer lives in a tepee because it collapsed one night, nearly suffocating him to death, so now he’s in a caravan.’
‘Why did they split up? I think Finty’s charms ran out in the end. And Nora did say she’d had enough of his particular bodily fragrance. She said it wasn’t so much eau de unwashed man as eau de decaying sheep. I think the passion had well and truly waned.’
She laughed again.
‘He would arrive up to Dublin with only an old sweet wrapper in his pocket. Never any money or anything. But Rosaleen would always give him food. And Finty would hold court and tell stories and then always pretend to offer to do the washing up but at the last moment his back would go or he’d remember that he promised to find something in a book and by the time he found it, everythingwould have been done. Let’s just say he’s a man who was popular with a certain kind of woman. Hippies, bohemians, free spirits. I saw him in his element down on the Peace Camp that time. He was like a god. Well, one that smelled a little of decayed sheep.’
Rosie laughed. ‘Not Dad’s sort, then,’ she said.
‘No, he’s the kind of man your father would have to wash his hands after meeting. Celiawould be clutching her pearls and passing out. And now he wants to see your Granny for one last time.’
