Closing Time

The notice went up on a wet Monday in February, taped to the inside of the window where the darts results usually went. Phelan's, it said, would close its doors on the thirty-first of March. The building had been sold, subject to contract, to a developer who planned to turn it into eight apartments. The brewery that had owned the pub for forty years thanked its loyal customers for their custom.

"Their custom," said Declan Ryan, reading it for the third time. "As if we were a till receipt." Declan was a retired solicitor who had been drinking in Phelan's since before most of the staff were born, and he took the notice as a personal insult. Around him, at the long table by the fire, sat the rest of what everyone in Kilkenny called the committee, although no committee had ever been formally elected: Bridget, who ran the quiz; old Martin, who had not missed a Friday since 1979; and Inma, who had come from Cadiz nine years earlier to cook for a summer and had never left.

Inma's kitchen was the reason half the town came to Phelan's at all. She served Irish stew and Andalusian croquetas from the same small hatch, and nobody had ever found the combination strange. "So we buy it," she said. The others looked at her. "We buy it," she repeated. "In Spain we would make a cooperative. Here also, no?"

It turned out that you could, and that people had done it before in other towns. Within three weeks, Declan had drawn up the paperwork and Bridget had turned the quiz night into a fundraising machine. Two hundred and twelve people pledged money, some of them a few hundred euros, one of them, anonymously, a great deal more. By the middle of March they had promises worth five hundred and twenty thousand euros. The developer had offered eight hundred and fifty.

The brewery sent a man called Aidan Hartigan to meet them. He was polite, young and plainly uncomfortable, and he sat at the end of the long table with a folder he did not open. "I'll be straight with you," he said. "I'd love to help. But unless you can come close to the other offer, my hands are tied. The board won't look at anything under eight hundred."

Declan folded his hands in front of him, the way he used to in court. "Then let's talk about what close means," he said. "Supposing we were able to raise six hundred, and supposing we could complete within six weeks, with no conditions attached. Would the board consider that?" Aidan shook his head slowly. "Six hundred is a long way from eight fifty." "It is," Declan agreed. "But eight fifty is only eight fifty if the developer actually gets planning permission. Has he?"

There was a short silence. Aidan looked at his folder. The building, as everybody at the table knew, was over two hundred years old, and half the town had already written to the council objecting to the apartments. "That's a matter for the council," Aidan said carefully. "Of course," said Declan. "And if the council says no, you'll have a buyer who walks away and a pub with no customers, because we'll all be drinking somewhere else in protest. Whereas if you sell to us, you'll have your money by May."

Aidan said he would take it back to the board. A week later he returned with an answer: seven hundred and fifty, and not a cent less. The committee went quiet. Bridget did the sums on a beer mat and shook her head. Even if every single person who had pledged money doubled it, they would not get there. Martin said, to nobody in particular, that he had always known it would end like this.

It was Inma who broke the silence. "You make beer," she said to Aidan. "Good beer. But nobody in this town drinks it at home, because nobody in this town knows it is good. They think it is just the beer in Phelan's." Aidan frowned. "I don't follow." "If you sell us the pub," Inma said, "we serve only your beer, for ten years. Written in the contract. And once a month I make a dinner, five plates, each one with one of your beers, and you bring whoever you want: journalists, buyers, people from Dublin. You will sell more beer from my kitchen than from any advertisement."

Aidan looked at her for a long moment. Then, for the first time, he opened his folder and wrote something down. "Ten years exclusive," he said slowly. "And the dinners. Provided you'd let us film them for marketing." "Provided you pay for the ingredients," said Inma. Declan, who had negotiated contracts for forty years, kept his face perfectly still and kicked Bridget gently under the table.

The final figure was six hundred and sixty thousand euros, with a ten-year supply agreement and a dinner on the first Thursday of every month. The two hundred and twelve pledges became two hundred and eighty, and the anonymous donor, who everybody suspected was Martin, quietly doubled his. When the deal was signed, Aidan held out his hand across the long table. "Let's shake on it," he said. "Before my board changes its mind."

On the thirty-first of March, the night the pub was supposed to close, Phelan's was so full that people were standing on the sidewalk outside with their glasses. Somebody took down the notice from the window and put the darts results back up. "If you hadn't said anything about the dinners," Declan told Inma, "we would have walked away." Inma shrugged and went back to her kitchen. "In Cadiz," she said over her shoulder, "nobody walks away from a good table."