The Celtic Riddle

EITHNE Byrne was born forty-five, forty-five and Irish. I have a theory, one not supported by so much as a particle of scientific evidence, that some people come into the world with a particular age stamped all over them. These are the people who seem so much older than the rest of us when we're young, but seen again after many years, a high school reunion for instance, look exactly the way they did in school. Eithne Byrne was one of these. Not that there's anything wrong with forty-five-I'm perilously close to it myself-but I realized when I got a chance to talk to her one on one, she was actually much younger, almost ten years in fact, than I'd initially thought that first time I'd seen her at Second Chance, and later when she was playing acolyte to her mother over tea.

She was also born Irish, with green eyes, slightly reddish hair, frizzed by the constant moisture, glowing skin, and a certain charming loquaciousness brought out by a few sips of sherry. She even dressed Irish, if there is such a thing, in a blouse with a lace collar, a short boxy wool jacket in dark green, and a long, pleated green skirt to match.

Her sister Fionuala, on the other hand, was the party girl, talkative, charming, and a flirt. She wore bright colors, in this case, a red suit, the jacket done up, but with no blouse under it, revealing a fair amount of lightly freckled skin and cleavage, the short tight skirt constantly riding up to show off more than a little leg.

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?"