I met both of them over a drink in the bar at the Inn. It was at their invitation, a fact that took me somewhat by surprise. It was the first time I'd seen them alone, that is, outside their family home, without their mother hovering nearby. Despite my inclination to think ill of them, I had to admit I saw nothing to fault. On this occasion, they both seemed to me very nice people, intelligent if a little naive, in Eithne's case, rather more good-hearted than I expected in Fionuala's. I could see that the two of them and Breeta, in addition to being closer in age than I'd thought, were more alike in personality as well.
"We've decided to open a shop," Fionuala said, the bolder of the two. "And we heard that you own one, an antiques shop, I believe, in Canada. We thought, we were hoping, you might give us some advice."
"I'd be delighted to. What kind of shop were you thinking of?"
"Antiques, like you," Eithne said. "There are lots of tourists in the Dingle every summer. And there are all of Da's things, the ones that didn't go to Trinity College, that is, maps and prints and books. Is it difficult to open a shop?"
"A little," I said. "Well, no, it's not difficult to open one. It's staying open that requires some luck, energy, and…" I hesitated, thinking about the rumors in town about their fiscal state. "Cash, frankly."
"Does it cost a lot?" Eithne asked.
"A fair amount. You're fortunate to have some items to begin with, that you don't have to purchase, I mean. But it takes a lot of merchandise to open a shop, more than you'd think. I expect you'd have to build up some inventory even with your father's things."
"How much does it cost?" Fionuala said. Talking about money didn't seem to bother her at all.
"That depends," I said, "on what you've got to start with and what you want to do."
"Well, there's the furniture in the house," Fionuala said. "It's quite good, I believe. And we won't need all of it. We're moving."
"We don't need all that room," Eithne added, with more than a touch of steel in her voice. I wondered just how bad the situation at Second Chance was.
"And how exactly do you go about setting up shop?" she went on as the waiter, at a sign from me, set second rounds in front of us.
It was becoming clear to me that working for a living had never been on either Eithne or Fionuala Byrne's life plan, but I told them what I had done anyway, about how I'd started out as a wholesaler to other stores, importing objects I'd picked up in my travels and warehousing them in the north end of Toronto, and how finally, with some money in the bank, I'd launched my business. I didn't tell them how I'd married my first employee and had been forced to sell the store when we divorced. They might have found that part of the story way too discouraging, particularly with husbands like Sean and Conail.
"But why don't you try working in someone else's antiques shop for a while?" I concluded. "You could learn about keeping the books, ordering supplies, advertising, and promotion and so on. Or why," I said, suddenly having a brainwave, "why don't you go and work in one of your father's businesses, the import/ export one, for example? You could arrange that, couldn't you?"
Eithne bit her lip, and looked over at Fionuala. "Good advice, I'm sure. I'm not certain, though, how much longer there'll be a Byrne Enterprises. Mr. McCafferty has been helping my mother with all the family affairs, since my father died, and I believe we may have to close down the company. It's not doing very well. That's why I'm thinking that I'll have to do something, and I don't really know what else to do. I learned quite a bit about antiquities from Da, so I thought…" Her voice trailed off.
"But I thought your father was very successful," I said. "How could this be?"
"I don't know," she replied. "I haven't had anything to do with the business. Perhaps I should have, but Sean, my husband, works there, and he doesn't like the idea of a working wife. Thinks it's beneath him. He blames Conail, my brother-in-law. He says Conail hasn't been managing the peat business at all well, and it was always the part of the business that helped fund the newer and riskier ventures, the cash cow, I think Sean calls it."
"And Conail says it's Sean who's making a mess of it," Fionuala interjected. "Not that I care what he thinks anymore."
"It's a terrible thing to say, I know, sounding glad your sister's marriage is on the rocks," Eithne said, looking over at Fionuala. "But perhaps…" She couldn't finish these painful sentences, it seemed. She was like her mother in that.
"What she's trying to say is that now that Conail is gone, maybe we can be friends again," Fionuala said. "We were inseparable once, the three of us, Breeta, Eithne, and I. Just like the triple goddess we were named after, our nicknames that is, Banba, Fotla, and Eriu. Breeta never did like being named after a pig goddess, though," she laughed.
"Banba wasn't just a pig goddess," Eithne protested. "She was the goddess who controlled the line between the underworld and the sky. Maybe we could go and see Breeta together," she said sadly, looking over at Fionuala. "Maybe if she could see the two of us, it would help get us all back together again. She's not speaking to us," she added. Me neither, I thought.
"Of course we'll go," Fionuala said. "She'll come around. We're family."
"I think I'd like to have an antiques shop," Eithne said suddenly, as if now she'd started talking, she wasn't able to stop. "I'm not just looking into this because of the money, and the business problems. It's something I often thought of doing, but there hasn't seemed to be an opportunity. Sean would never approve. Now perhaps I can."
I could hardly fault her for wanting to go into the antiques business, so for the next half hour or so, I told them exactly what they would need to do to get started. Eithne, the organized one, got a notepad out of her purse, and wrote everything down, asking some rather intelligent questions as we went along.
"Thank you," she said at last. "You've been just grand. Especially since our family hasn't been very nice to you and to your friend, Mr. Stewart. We hope he enjoys Rose Cottage, we really do. My father told us about Mr. Stewart many times, how he pulled him from the water when Da fell in and might have drowned." Fell in, was it? I thought. That's not the way I heard it, but a quite understandable editorial change, a father's tale for his daughters, when I thought about it. And it sounded as if the lawsuit was off.
"You didn't see any of us at our best, you know," Fionuala said. "Our Da, he wasn't really the way you saw him, on the video, I mean. The cancer, it had spread from his lung to his brain. He was actually a lot of fun. And Mother and my sister and I, well, Mr. McCafferty had just told us about the financial problems of the estate. We couldn't believe it. Everything seemed to be fine when my father was alive. We were in shock, I think, with Da's death and this news. I suppose we resented the idea of anybody else getting anything from the estate.
"And Sean. He looks like a terrible snob, I know, but he's quite good-hearted, under it all. It's just that the more worried he gets, the more standoffish he gets too. I know he seems cold and heartless to an outsider, but that's only because he's been terribly worried about Byrne Enterprises and what will happen to all of us, wouldn't you agree, Eithne?" Eithne apparently did.
"Do you mind if I ask you a question or two? Well, three, actually," I asked them. "Make that four." I was on a roll now, and they didn't seem to mind.
"Ask away." Eithne hiccoughed. She was on drink number three. "Lovely sherry." She giggled.
"Is the family looking for the treasure or not?"
"No," Eithne said. "Mother wouldn't stand for it. She wants to remember my father as he was, not the man on that videotape. I still do what my mother tells me," she added ruefully. "Sean isn't either, I think I can say with some assurance. He doesn't believe there really is a treasure. He thinks my father was too far gone, mentally that is, when he made the videotape, that the clues were just a mean joke from someone who didn't know what they were doing anymore."