A Week in Winter (12 page)

‘We’re not talking about all the girls, we’re talking about you, tonight. How about it?’ he said, taking her remarks at face value.

Orla looked at him, astounded. He hadn’t realised she was sending him up. If Conor and Foxy were bankers, it was no wonder the Western economy was in the state it was.

‘If I were to die wondering what sex was about I wouldn’t go within an ass’s roar of you, Conor,’ she said, smiling at him pleasantly.

‘Lesbian,’ he spat at her.

‘That must be it all right.’ Orla was cheerful.

‘OK, be a ball-breaker then. I was only asking because it was expected.’

‘Of course you were, Conor.’ Orla’s voice was soothing.

Miss Daly had been on a great trek across the mountains to avoid going to the wedding. She had met two French dentists who were on holiday there. They were heading up to Donegal tomorrow. Miss Daly was going to go with them. They had a car with a roof rack – perfect for her bicycle.

Orla sat and gaped at her.

‘I know, Orla, the world is divided into people like me and people like Brigid. Aren’t you lucky to walk a middle road.’

She had little time to think about it. Rigger’s wedding was upcoming. This was going to be a much more normal affair.

Chicky was going to serve roast lamb in Stone Cottage, and they made a magnificent cake for Rigger and Carmel. Compared to the nonsense in the marquee and the posturing of the Farrell and O’Hara factions, this was very relaxed and full of charm.

Chicky, Orla and Miss Queenie sat and congratulated each other when it was over and the Hickeys had gone home happy.

The major building work was almost completed now on Stone House; there only remained the design and decor to be agreed. Chicky still wanted to hire professionals, and Orla insisted that nobody be paid any money until they proved they could do the job. Orla thought Chicky would be well able to do it herself. She had the original source material, after all. Miss Queenie could tell them what the place looked like in the old days.

Chicky understood comfort and style, yet she was hesitant and holding back about her own ideas.

‘We are charging serious money for people to come and stay here. We don’t want to have them saying that the place is phoney or tatty or anything.’

‘I met a lot of these designers in London,’ Orla said. ‘Some of them were brilliant, I agree, but a lot of them were cowboys. Real emperor’s new clothes. You’d want to watch them like a hawk.’

They settled on a couple called Howard and Barbara. They came well recommended by Brigid, who had met them with Foxy Farrell at a party in Dublin.

Orla hated them on sight. They were in their early forties, with affected accents and made lots of use of the words ‘darling’ and ‘so’, usually when dismissing something.

‘Darling, you mustn’t even
think
about having that grandfather clock in the hall. It will be
so
disturbing and unsettling for sleep rhythms.’

‘There was always a grandfather clock in the hall,’ poor Miss Queenie said, mildly.

‘Hallo, we
are
talking about making this place acceptable, aren’t we? That’s what we’re here for, darling.’

They gave Howard and Barbara one of the best bedrooms with the big windows and balcony looking out to sea. They sniffed as they looked around the room. They exchanged glances as they came downstairs. They shuddered slightly at things they didn’t like, like the stone floor in the kitchen. It should be ripped out and replaced by a very good solid-wood floor. Orla said that the stone floor was authentic and had been there since the house was built in the 1820s.

‘I rest my case,’ said Howard. ‘It’s time for it to go.’ But Orla won that battle. The stone floor was not negotiable.

Barbara and Howard didn’t want the morning room called the Miss Sheedy Room. They said it was rather
twee
, and, darling, if there was one thing that could let a place down it was to have an element of tweeness about it. They left their own room in a great mess, with wet towels thrown on the bathroom floor and an amazing amount of dirty coffee cups, glasses and ashtrays despite the no-smoking policy that had been mentioned several times.

They didn’t rate the walled garden, saying it was very amateur; the guests would be used to much bigger and more manicured landscaping. They frowned darkly at Gloria and said it was unhygienic to have a cat anywhere near food. In vain did Miss Queenie, Chicky and Orla try to convince them that Gloria was a cat with impeccable manners who would never approach a dining table when a meal was in progress. Admittedly, Gloria did mistake Howard’s leg for a scratching post and, when alarmed by his screeching, tried to climb up inside his trouser leg. Barbara shouted and waved her arms at the poor cat who ran behind the sofa and hid, trembling, until rescued by Miss Queenie. By now, Orla was not the only one who hated Howard and Barbara.

Defeated by the pro-Gloria lobby, they turned their hostility towards the fact that Carmel was so obviously pregnant. They hoped that she would be kept well out of the equation when the baby was born. The last thing guests wanted, darling, was the sound of a screeching infant. It would be
so
full of bad vibes.

They never praised the delicious food that Chicky and Orla served them; instead they suggested that Stone House should have a proper wine cellar, and asked for large brandies after dinner.

Orla became very firm. After breakfast on the second day, she said that she hoped they were ready to give practical advice about the decor, materials and colours that they would suggest, together with recommendations on where they should source everything.

Barbara and Howard were slightly startled by this. They had envisaged several days soaking up the feel of the place, they said. This is what Orla had suspected. She brought a coffee percolator into the office after breakfast and sat down expectantly beside the computer.

‘It’s a very late Georgian house, of course,’ Orla said confidently. ‘I’ve been online to research images of this kind of house at the time, and printed some of them out for discussion. I was wondering what references
you
were going to offer us so we could compare.’

They looked at her, alarmed. ‘Well, of course we all know the classic Georgian great houses . . .’ Barbara began. Orla could spot somebody blustering at twenty miles distance.

‘Yes, but of course this isn’t a great house. It’s a small gentleman’s residence and almost Victorian, really, rather than what was distinctively Georgian. We wondered what colour schemes you had come up with.’

‘It all depends very much on where we are coming from, darling, doesn’t it? It’s
so
like saying how long is a piece of string. Just asking for colours,’ Howard began sonorously.

‘And where do you think we should source fabrics?’ Orla was shuffling a heap of further printouts. She saw Howard and Barbara exchanging glances.

Chicky joined in.

‘We have our own ideas, of course, but we were anxious to have real professionals to guide us. You will have so much more experience and so many more contacts than we do.’

‘I didn’t realise you were so computer-savvy,’ Barbara said to Orla, coldly.

‘You’re talking about my generation,’ Orla smiled. ‘I was wondering, by the way, why you don’t have a website.’

‘Never needed one,’ Barbara said smugly.

‘So how do people find you, then?’ Orla’s look was innocent.

‘Personal recommendation.’

‘Yes, that’s how they find your
names
, but how do they know what you’ve actually
done
?’

Again, the face was innocent but the challenge was there.

By the time the meeting was over, it was clear that the parting of the ways had come.

Barbara mentioned a payment for their time and input so far. Chicky and Orla looked at each other, bewildered. Howard suggested they part as friends, no harm had been done. They wished the enterprise success. They spoke in tones of regret and disbelief that Stone House would remain open for longer than a week,
if
it ever opened at all.

Rigger drove them to the station.

He reported afterwards that they sat in complete silence for the journey. When he asked would they be coming back to supervise the decorating, they had said that it wasn’t on the cards.

‘Well, I hope you enjoyed your visit,’ Rigger had said.

‘Enjoy would be
so
too strong a word, darling,’ they had said as he lifted their luggage on to the train.

Chicky, Carmel and Orla chose their colours and fabrics that night and got the show on the road the next day. It had been a lesson to them. There might well have been superb designers out there, but they had not found them. There was no time to try again. They would have to trust themselves.

Little by little the place took shape.

Their website was up and running, with pictures of the views from Stone House as well as full descriptions of what they could offer. They got many enquiries but as yet no definite bookings.

Orla set up a press release which she sent to every newspaper, magazine and radio programme. She offered a Winter Week at Stone House as a prize in several competitions, on the grounds that it would bring them publicity. She bought a big scrapbook and asked Miss Queenie to keep any cuttings that might result. She contacted airports and tourist offices, book clubs, birdwatching groups and sporting clubs; she set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

Chicky loved being able to access such a world from their little office in Stone House. They had perfected their menus and posted them online; now they had their daily routine, with the suppliers and deliveries worked out and timed to run smoothly. Gradually the definite bookings came in, and they were within sight of receiving their first visitors when Carmel gave birth to twins.

Miss Queenie told Orla that she had never been happier. There was so much happening in Stone House these days, and she was here at the centre of it all. The morning room was now officially called the Miss Sheedy Room. There were restored photographs from their childhood showing Beatrice and Jessica and Miss Queenie as girls. She knew everybody in Stoneybridge nowadays instead of only a very few. She had delicious meals and a warm house. Who could have guessed that life would get so much better as she grew older?

‘I worry about Chicky, though, she works so hard,’ Miss Queenie confided in Orla, shaking her head. ‘She’s still a young woman, well, to me she is, anyway. She gets a lot of admiring glances but she never thinks of looking at anyone as a possible husband.’

‘And what about
me
, Miss Queenie? Don’t you worry about me too?’

‘No, Orla, not even a little bit. You will work here with Chicky as you promised until your year is up then you’ll go off and conquer the world. It’s written all over you.’

Instead of being pleased with such a vote of confidence, Orla suddenly felt lonely. She didn’t
want
to go off and conquer the world. She wanted to stay here and see it through.

‘I’m in no hurry to go off from here, Miss Queenie,’ Orla heard herself say.

‘It’s dangerous to stay too long in Stoneybridge. We can’t marry the seagulls or the gannets, you know,’ Miss Queenie said.

‘But didn’t you say yourself that you were never happier than you are now?’

‘I made the best of things, and I was lucky. Very lucky,’ Miss Queenie said.

Next morning when Orla brought the old lady her tea, she knew from one glance at the bed that Miss Queenie had died in her sleep. Her hands were folded. Her face was calm. She looked twenty years younger, as if her arthritis and aches had gone away.

Orla had never seen anyone dead before. It wasn’t very frightening.

She carried the cup of tea to Chicky’s room.

Chicky was already awake. When she saw Orla she knew at once what had happened.

‘There
can’t
be a God. He wouldn’t let Queenie die before the place opened. It’s so unfair,’ Chicky wept.

‘You know, in a way it might be for the best,’ Orla said.

‘What
can
you mean, Orla? She was dying to be part of it.’

‘No. She was nervous. She asked me more than once whether she would sit down to dinner with the guests or not.’

‘But of course she would have.’

‘She was afraid she might be too old and feathery . . . Her words, not mine.’

‘How can you be so calm? Poor Queenie. Poor, dear Queenie. She had no life.’

Orla stretched out her hand. ‘Come in and see her, Chicky. Just look at her face. You’ll know she had a life, and you gave it to her.’

They walked into the room where Miss Queenie had slept for over eighty years. From back in the 1930s when Ireland was only ten years old as a state.

Gloria the cat came in too. She didn’t get up on the bed but looked respectfully from the door as if she knew that all was not well. They stood and looked at Miss Queenie’s face. Chicky leaned over and touched Miss Queenie’s cold hand.

‘We’ll make you proud, Queenie,’ she said, and they closed the door behind them and went to tell Rigger and Carmel and to call Dr Dai.

Stoneybridge said a big goodbye to Miss Queenie Sheedy. A great crowd gathered outside Stone House to walk behind the hearse as it drove her slowly to the church.

Father Johnson said that next Sunday would be the first time there would not be a Sheedy in this church for many decades. He said that Miss Sheedy had called in to him last week and asked if they could sing ‘Lord of the Dance’ at her funeral, whenever that was to be. Father Johnson had said that we would all have long gone to our heavenly reward by the time Miss Queenie herself was ready to go, but the Lord was mysterious and now she had gone to join her beloved sisters, leaving behind her a memory of a life well lived.

The congregation all sang ‘Lord of the Dance’. They blew their noses and wiped away a tear at the thought of Miss Queenie peering good-naturedly at them and their children for years, back as far as they could remember.

Rigger was one of the four who carried the small coffin to the graveyard. His face was grim as he remembered how the old lady had welcomed him to her home and been so excited about everything, from the walled garden to Stone Cottage to the drives around in his van and then the arrival of the twins.