Free Heartstones by Kate Glanville Page A

receipt, the mouse placed the card in a candy-striped paper bag and handed it to Phoebe.
    ‘May I ask what brings you to Carraigmore?’
    I used to come here to visit my grandmother when I was a child. I wanted to see the village again and find my grandmother’s house.’
    ‘Have you found it?’
    ‘Not yet,’ replied Phoebe. ‘She lived down by the beach, in the boathouse.’
    ‘Do you mean the pottery studio?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right. She was a potter.’
    ‘Anna Brennan!’ The mouse gasped and her little pink fingers flew to her chest in excitement. ‘You’re Anna Brennan’s granddaughter?’ Phoebe nodded (as much as her residual hangover would allow.) ‘Oh, I adore her pots, I’d love to own one but I think they’re rather out of my price range now.’
    ‘Did you know her?’
    ‘I’m a recent blow-in from Dublin so I’m afraid I didn’t, but I’d very much have liked to. She was such a talented potter, wonderfully fluid forms and lovely celadon glazes. How exciting to meet you. Are you a potter too?’
    Phoebe shook her head.
    ‘I have a picture of her work here,’ the mouse scuttled away and returned with a large book –  Irish Studio Pottery . ‘It was printed to go with an exhibition at a Dublin museum many years ago.’ With some difficulty, owing to the book’s size and weight, the little woman began flicking through the pages.
    ‘Here we are,’ she said holding up a double-page spread in front of Phoebe’s face. Phoebe took a step back and saw a photograph of eight cylindrical lidded jars of varying heights and sea green shades, each one inscribed with swirling linear decorations. ‘Just look at that depth of colour she achieved,’ the woman said. ‘The subtle changes from duck egg to turquoise, and then look at that deep green, and the quality of line in that incised decoration,’ the woman paused and took a breath before almost whispering, ‘exquisite.’
    Phoebe thought they were beautiful but she liked the little pot she had better; it had love from Granny on the bottom and it had been filled with sherbet pips. Nola had dropped her own pot on Boxing Day, trying to winkle out the last pip from the bottom with a pencil. Phoebe could still see the green shards lying on the quarry tile floor, Nola hadn’t cared; she had a New Year’s Eve party to go to and a bottle of Pomagne cider to smuggle out of the house. Phoebe wondered what had happened to the collection of her grandmother’s ceramics that had lined the kitchen’s dresser shelves: the wide blue fruit bowl on the table, the vase her mother used to fill with tulips in the spring. Where did all that pottery go?
    ‘And, of course, it was in Nigeria that she met the great English potter Michael Cardew.’ Phoebe hadn’t realised that the mousy woman was still talking; she forced herself to look interested. ‘She worked with him in his famous pottery in Abuja and he taught her a huge amount, got her throwing and interested in shape and form, but it was when she came back here that she developed these lovely glazes and really began to make a name for herself in Ireland.’ The woman touched Phoebe’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, I’m waffling on, I’m sure you know all this already.’ Phoebe didn’t know any of it; she knew her grandmother had made pots but nothing of why, where, or how she started or how well known she might have been. ‘It was a tragedy that she died the way she did.’
    Phoebe nodded and looked away.
    Through a huge arched window she could see the backs of the builders retreating down the hill.
    ‘I must go now,’ she said. ‘I want to leave Carraigmore before it gets dark and I haven’t been down to the beach yet.’
    ‘So soon?’ the little woman sighed. ‘Why don’t you stay around longer? I’m sure there are lots of people in town who remember your grandmother and would love to meet you.’
    ‘No, I think I’ve been here long enough.
    The woman peered at Phoebe through a straw-like fringe