Always and Forever (8 page)

‘A good hotel-owner needs to be able to cook if the chef doesn’t turn up,’ Cleo’s father always said. And Harry Malin could certainly cook. In the early days, it was from him that Cleo had learned her love of the business - and her skil with people. Dad just had that way with people that made them comfortable in his company. It was the perfect gift for an hotelier. The kitchen was warming up for dinner time with Jacqui, the chef, surveying her empire with pride before she sloped off for a quick break before the rush.

Jacqui had been with the hotel for a year now. The same age as Cleo and just as eager, she was always having arguments with Harry about innovative new menus. Harry liked substantial French cuisine with an Irish twist. Jacqui liked Pacific Rim food, worshipped lemongrass and longed to be al owed to create exotic recipes with coconut milk.

Cleo waved a greeting at Jacqui, fil ed a mug with coffee from the pot on the counter, then kissed her mother on the cheek. ‘Where’s Dad?’

‘He and Bil are looking at the hot-water pump.’ Bil was the!

hotel’s part-time handyman and a genius with machines.

He needed to be, given the age and decrepitude of most of the hotel’s equipment. ‘It’s gone again and Bil has some new yoke to fix it.’

‘Cardiac paddles are the only things that’l work on that pump,’ Cleo joked. ‘Or else a novena to St Jude.’ It would take the patron saint of hopeless cases to perform a miracle. Her mother nodded absently over her sewing. ‘For sure.’ ‘Mum, look at these.’ Cleo spread the interiors magazines in front of her mother.

Sheila moved her mug to make room. ‘Those magazines are very expensive, love,’ she muttered, peering through her glasses at the price stickers. Since she’d started wearing the spindly gilt bifocals, she looked so much older, Cleo thought sadly. For years, Mum had looked so young and lively, with her hair, same uncontrol able nut-brown curls as Cleo’s, tied up in a bouncy bun with tendrils trailing around her neck. But suddenly her hair was almost al grey and the lines around her silvery blue eyes were so deep they looked as if they’d been carved with a compass. Her hands were misshapen with arthritis, the knuckles on both hands swol en, and where she’d once made an effort with pearly nail varnishes, now her nails were bare. Even her clothes looked aged. There was never any money in the Malin family for clothes. Every penny was ploughed back into the business. Cleo’s school uniform had been patched so often it looked like a quilt, to her shame. Mrs Hanley had been right: her mother was worn down by everything. Cleo felt a surge of remorse at not having noticed this herself before now.

‘Bit of a waste of money, Cleo. If you’re going to have enough money to buy a car for when you’re working in Donegal, then you’l have to stop spending it on magazines.’

Cleo bit her lip. She stil had to tel them she’d turned the job down. Everyone had been so pleased when she’d blurted out that she’d been offered it, particularly Mum and Dad. It had been almost upsetting. You’d think they were glad to get rid of her.

‘Mum, I had this great idea. Wel , I’ve been thinking about it for ages. We do need to upgrade the place a bit and then I saw this magazine and, what do you think of us doing some new paint effects? It wouldn’t cost much,’ she added hurriedly. She opened the magazine on the correct page for her mother. ‘The dining room could do with a bit of work and just think if we had something like this paint effect on the far wal …’ She got no further.

The back door opened, and Sondra and Barney arrived in a whirl of cold wind and Body Shop White Musk, a perfume Cleo had once liked and now hated because Sondra seemed to wear a pint of it every day.

‘Hel o, just thought we’d drop in to say hi,’ Sondra said, newly pregnant and radiant in ful make-up and a chic black dress.

‘We’ve nothing in for dinner so we came up here to cadge a couple of free meals,’ said Barney, who was nothing if not frank. ‘Sit down, Sondra, love. Chef’s got lovely sea bass and I can get her to rustle up some chips for you.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Cleo could see Jacqui smile as she came back from her break. She loved being cal ed Chef. ‘Great.’ Sondra sighed as she sat down in the comfiest corner of the pew and flicked through Cleo’s magazines while Barney scavenged in the main part of the hotel kitchen for a snack. Jacqui knocked his hand away as it slid towards the chil drawer where the smoked salmon was ready. ‘Don’t touch.’ Barney got a fistful of almond cookies that had been made to accompany Sheila’s homemade vanil a ice cream instead and squashed in beside his wife. She’d come to the trompe-l’ceil page. The house real y did have a look of the Wil ow about it - the same big windows, high ceilings and similar coving. ‘That’s nice,’ said Barney, munching.

‘Isn’t it?’ Sheila said. ‘Cleo wonders if we could do something similar here.’

Sondra raised careful y painted eyes to Cleo. ‘But impossible I to copy,’ she said. ‘It’d cost a fortune.’

‘You think?’ Cleo said, wondering why Sondra complained about how she’d hated exams at school, since she was so scarily I sharp about everything post-school.

‘Lord, Cleo, don’t they teach you anything in col ege? Paint effects cost a fortune. You weren’t thinking of doing it yourself, were you?’

The first stirrings of anger roared through Cleo’s veins. ‘I was, actual y,’ she said. ‘The whole place needs work and this is one option that wouldn’t cost too much. We weren’t ful over Christmas and it’s about time we al faced facts and did something about it. We don’t want to lose the place, do we?’ She could sense rather than see her mother stiffen at these

words.

‘Cleo, the Wil ow wil be going strong when we’re al dead and buried,’ came her father’s voice.

Harry Malin stood in the kitchen unwrapping a scarf from his neck. ‘The pump’s fine. Bil has it working like a dream.

How’s my favourite daughter-in-law, then?’ He smiled down at Sondra.

Cleo’s inner fire roared a bit more. He was doing what they al did: deliberately avoiding any mention of the hotel’s shortcomings. Like ostriches with their heads in the sand.

Cleo steeled herself. ‘I wish I could agree with you about the hotel, Dad,’ she said, ‘but I can’t. I love this place but we’re on the slippery slope. We need to do something.’

‘I think your father knows what he’s doing,’ Sondra shot in.

‘He’s been running this hotel for thirty years.’ Cleo’s plans to be diplomatic took a dive. ‘So a hotel management degree is a waste of time and money, is it, Sondra, and I know nothing about hotels?’

‘You said it, not me,’ smirked Sondra.

‘Please don’t argue,’ said Sheila.

‘Al I’m saying is that the hotel is in trouble and nobody’s even talking about it,’ Cleo argued hotly. ‘We might have managed in the past because people love the Wil ow but it’s getting older; the whole hotel needs refurbishing. If you could see the money they spend in some of the hotels I’ve worked in … Customers expect that now …’

‘The Wil ow doesn’t stand up to the other places you’ve been then?’ her father said evenly.

‘No, Dad, that’s not what I mean at al .’ Cleo’s eyes pleaded with him not to take offence. ‘They were different sorts of hotels. We run a smal , intimate house hotel where people feel welcomed into our world and that’s what I love.

That’s what you created, Dad.’ Her eyes were stil pleading.

‘But we need to improve the place somehow. Carrickwel ’s changing al the time and we’ve got to change with it, be ready for the future or else …’ ‘Or else what?’ asked Harry.

Cleo couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say they’d close down. ‘Or else we’l see the profits dive,’ she added lamely. ‘Cleo, we’ve got twenty covers for dinner tonight,’ Sheila Malin added. ‘That’s hardly bad for a week night.’ Everyone but Cleo smiled at this clear proof of the hotel’s success.

‘Make that twenty-two covers. Or even twenty-three.’

Sondra patted her bel y happily.

‘You don’t have any steak, Jacqui?’ cal ed Barney. ‘I’m ravenous.’

‘Chef does not have time to whip up private meals for you, Barney,’ Cleo snapped at her brother. ‘You’ve been up here four times in the past week for dinner. Can neither of you cook?’ ‘I’m pregnant,’ Sondra said, looking daggers at her sister-in law. ‘Cooking makes me sick. I don’t know why they cal it morning sickness, when it’s al -day sickness.’

‘Lots of women have to work when they’re pregnant and they can’t afford to give up their jobs at the drop of a hat because their husband’s family business wil keep doling out! money to support them,’ Cleo said, taking the gloves off. She I knew that her parents supplemented Barney’s income with handouts. Handouts that Barney felt were entirely his due. ‘It’s a loan,’ snarled Sondra.

‘Four loans in the past two years?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘It’s my business when the hotel profits are being siphoned

“I off into your pockets.’

‘Cleo.’ There was a warning in her father’s tone but neither Cleo nor Sondra took heed.

‘You could be contributing something if you were stil working on reception, Sondra,’ Cleo went on. ‘We al know that Tamara is hopeless. She spends the whole time doing her

nails.’

‘How dare you talk about my sister like that?’ shrieked Sondra.

‘Don’t, please,’ Sheila begged her daughter.

‘Yeah, who do you think you are, Cleo?’ Barney said, remembering his husbandly duty. ‘Apologise.’

Cleo was just about to say that she had no intention of apologising because every word she’d said was true, when Harry interrupted. ‘Yes, apologise, Cleo.’

Stunned, she spun round to look at her father. ‘For tel ing the truth?’ she demanded.

‘We don’t have big rows in this family, Cleo,’ Harry went on.

‘That gets nobody anywhere. Please apologise to Sondra.’

Cleo felt betrayed. Her father rarely interfered in squabbles and it was hardly a family secret that she and Sondra didn’t get on. They were grown-ups; they were entitled not to get on if they didn’t want to. She loved and respected her father but he wasn’t always right. Al she’d done was tel the truth and she was being punished.

Although she knew why: her father hated rows and tried to avoid conflict at al costs. His mother had been what he euphemistical y cal ed ‘fiery’ and Harry had grown up watching his parents face each other like bul fighters, circling in rage, screaming insults several times a week. A person could have too much plate-throwing in their life, he used to say. Cleo knew she’d inherited her grandmother’s passion - although not her harsh tongue. She would never hurt anyone with a rash word - she knew better than that, no matter how passionately she felt about something. Her grandmother’s way was not the right way to do things.

‘You’re right, Dad,’ she said calmly now. ‘I went about it the wrong way. I’m sorry for talking about Tamara like that,’ she said to Sondra. But not sorry for the other parts. ‘That wasn’t fair. I’m going out for a walk.’ And she got up to go.

Her father muttered something about going into the office for a few moments, and he left too, by a different door.

Cleo went and sat where she’d always gone when she was wildly annoyed but trying to hide it. Down at the bottom of the garden, behind the orchard wal , on the cracked stone seat under the apple tree. The bark of the tree was coated with silver and there were no acid-green buds appearing.

The tree was dying from neglect. Nobody in the Wil ow knew the first thing about trees and the men who worked on the garden had their hands ful sorting out the front in the limited time available. Some of the hotel’s brides had found this secluded spot over the years and had been photographed there, just the bride and the groom, smiling under the apple tree. For that reason alone, the tree should have been taken care of but nobody had listened to Cleo when she said it. They never did. And they probably never would, Cleo realised with a jolt. She knew she’d changed from a tomboyish kid, but to Mum, Dad, Jason and Barney, she was stil the baby of the family. Idly, she picked a bit of bark off the tree. Several beetles fel out, shocked at losing their home. Feeling like a murderer, Cleo tried to replace the bark but it wouldn’t stick.

‘Sorry, boys,’ she said to the beetles who’d made a rapid exit on the stony ground at her feet.

They’d lost their home and the Malins would lose their home too.

She took the piece of newspaper from her jeans pocket and unfolded it for the nth time. Nat had seen it in a trade paper and had sent it to her. He’d understood what it meant. ‘Roth Hotels Expansion Plans’ ran the headline. The article reported how the vast international chain of Roth Hotels had decided to turn their attention to the Irish and UK

markets. Not city hotels, the article went on to say, but some of their hugely successful country resorts complete with golf, health club and riding facilities. Locations mentioned included the eastern part of Ireland. Cleo felt sick to the pit of her stomach when she thought about it.

If a Roth Hotel opened up in Carrickwel , it would sound the death knel to the Wil ow.

Daisy Farrel had thought that tidying out her wardrobe was the perfect way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon when Alex was away in London for the weekend working. But the task had pal ed somewhat as the day dragged on. Five o’clock and dusk arrived at the same gloomy moment, and every single item of clothing Daisy owned was stil piled on the bedroom floor in their normal y immaculate apartment, in so many tottering piles. Al black, of course. Despite the fashion bibles screeching that red or pink or white were the new black, Daisy knew like every fashionista worth her salt

- that black would always be the new black.

Black made every lump and bump disappear and turned slender into skinny. Who needed bulimia when you had black? She had so much stuff, she reflected, wishing she’d never started. How was it that a woman whose very job was picking clothes for other people - she was a buyer for Carrickwel ’s chicest designer shop, Georgia’s Tiara -

seemed to have so many fashion mistakes in her own wardrobe?

‘This wil have to go,’ Daisy decided, holding up a tweedy skirt that had never quite suited her. ‘And this.’ Drapey chiffon shirts had never been her style, yet she loved them.