Breakfast at Darcy's (27 page)

Eamon narrows his eyes. ‘Why?’ he asks suspiciously. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘Er, we do?’ Paddy says, turning away from Eamon. He pulls a
well, duh
face at me.

Eamon pulls his computer protectively towards him. He looks between the two of us. ‘Why?’ he asks again.

‘Because I could really do with being able to advertise the cottages properly over the internet. We haven’t got any bookings
so far.’

And without any bookings, I can’t guarantee enough people constantly on the island, and without enough people on the island
not only will there not be any work for anyone, or enough money coming in, but I won’t be allowed to inherit any money at
the end of my year here …

Eamon looks at me, and for one awful moment I think he’s going to snap the laptop lid shut in my face. But he doesn’t, and
his eyes dart to and fro across my face as through he’s considering something. Then his expression softens as he speaks.
‘Yes, you can get the internet here, and the phone too, if you want to.’

‘What? How?’ I ask in astonishment.

‘Let me just put this away first,’ he says, closing the lid of the laptop, ‘and then I’ll show you.’

Eamon re-emerges from his front door a few moments later and beckons for Paddy and me to follow him around to the back of
his cottage. He pauses at a tall, fenced-off structure that I had wrongly assumed was a small shed when we had hurriedly made
our way around here before. But while we’d been trying to take a peek through the windows, I hadn’t really been taking much
notice of anything else – let alone a garden shed where Eamon probably kept his fishing rods and tools.

But now as I look at it properly, while Eamon unlocks the padlock holding the door bolted shut, I realise the structure doesn’t
actually have a roof; it’s simply four walls bolted together like a large square fence.

Eamon pulls the door open and Paddy and I peer inside.

‘It’s a satellite dish,’ Paddy states unnecessarily, as hidden behind the fencing we find a large round dish about two feet
by three feet sitting on the ground, pointing up at the sky.

‘That’s right,’ Eamon says.

‘But that’s what you use for Sky TV and stuff, isn’t it?’ I look at Eamon in confusion. ‘How do you pick up the internet from
it?’

‘Is there a satellite near here?’ Paddy looks up into the sky. ‘Is that how you’re managing it?’

Eamon nods.

‘And I bet you’ve got your coaxial cables running under the ground to your modems in the cottage, right?’

Eamon looks impressed.

‘You must need two, though, for satellite internet,’ Paddy says. ‘One for uploading stuff and one for downloading. It’s more
complicated than your bog-standard dial-up, or even your broadband.’

‘You certainly know your stuff, young Paddy,’ Eamon nods at him in approval.

Paddy grins. ‘Bit of a techno dude, me. Did all the computer stuff at the hotel. Got a bit of a taste for it, so I set up
some more advanced systems while I was there. Mary had no idea how to work any of it, bless her.’

‘Just hold on a minute,’ I say, holding my hand up. ‘I’m not following this. Are you saying that this satellite dish picks
up the internet, here on the island? Like some sort of WiFi signal?’

‘No, Darcy,’ Paddy grins. ‘If only it were that simple. The dish can pick up the internet for any computer plugged into it,
that’s all. I’m right, aren’t I, Eamon?’

Eamon nods.

‘So if I wanted to use the internet …?’ I look hopefully at Eamon.

‘You’d need to get your own dish,’ he helpfully suggests.

I sigh.
Great.

‘Couldn’t I just have a go on your computer, Eamon? Just temporarily, until I can get my own system set up?’

Eamon shakes his head. ‘No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘But why not? I wouldn’t be long, I promise. I just need to set up a proper website for the island, and maybe get on Facebook
and Twitter, and … ’
So maybe I
would
be a little while.

‘I’m not comfortable with people in my cottage, Darcy. I just like to keep myself to myself.’

‘Please, Eamon?’

Eamon looks at me, and for a moment I think he’s going to crack. But then he quickly closes up the gate on the satellite dish,
padlocks it and begins to walk back to his cottage. ‘I’m sorry, Darcy, my answer is still no,’ he calls behind him. ‘Now,
if you’ll just go and leave me in peace, please.’

We watch in silence as he disappears around to the front of his cottage.

I turn to Paddy.

‘We made a right hames of that,’ Paddy says, removing his baseball hat and ruffling his black curls up from their flattened
state.

‘Hames, Paddy?’

‘Hames. You know, er … a right balls-up.’

‘Oh, I see, yes. It was hardly our fault, though. I just don’t see why Eamon won’t let anyone inside his cottage. Do you think
he’s got something hidden in there?’

Paddy shrugs. ‘Don’t know,’ he says, whistling Brogan over to his side. ‘Hey, maybe he’s got old Finn McCool’s treasure hauled
up in there, and doesn’t want anyone to find it.’ Annoyingly, Woody and Louis come running over to Paddy too. I can barely
get them to respond to their names, let alone come on a whistle.

I think about this for a moment. ‘You don’t really think that, do you, Paddy?’

Paddy grins. ‘Na. If I was you, Darcy, I’d just forget about him,’ he says, beginning to walk away. ‘Put a Santa hat on it
and call it Randal.’

I shake my head.
What did Paddy just say?

I run to catch up with him. ‘Say that again, Paddy?’

‘What?’

‘What you just said – something about a Santa hat?’

‘I said put a Santa hat on it and call it Randal. It’s something one of my pals from up north used to say. It means the thing
is crazy, messed-up, beyond your understanding.’

‘Just like this whole island, then.’

‘You wouldn’t be far wrong there, Darcy,’ Paddy says, as we descend back down the hill towards the rest of the cottages and
O’Connell Street again. ‘You wouldn’t be far wrong there.’

‘Niall,’ I shout, banging on the door of Niall’s cottage early one June morning. ‘Niall, wake up!’

A bleary-eyed Niall eventually opens the front door, standing in a burgundy dressing gown and navy-blue slippers. ‘You’d better
have a good excuse for waking me up at … ’ he pulls back the sleeve of his dressing gown and squints at his watch, ‘six thirty-five
in the morning, Darcy!’ Niall unfolds his glasses, places them on his nose and runs his hand through his unkempt hair.

‘I have, Niall, I have,’ I say excitedly. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Er … ’ Niall looks back into his cottage. ‘It’s just, it’s not very tidy at the moment, and—’

‘Don’t be daft, that doesn’t matter. Come on, I need to tell you something.’

‘Well, all right, I suppose so then.’

Niall lets me in through the cottage door and leads me into his front room.

‘What are you talking about, it looks fine in here,’ I say, looking around at Niall’s immaculate living area.

‘I didn’t mean in here, I … I meant in the kitchen,’ he says hurriedly.

‘Oh, right. Well, that doesn’t matter now, ’cos guess what? We’ve only gone and got a booking.’

Niall stares at me. ‘Darcy, have you run all the way over here and got me up at this ungodly hour just to tell me that another
person has rented a cottage? I know since you persuaded me to let you have all that satellite equipment, you’ve felt the need
to inform me every time you’ve felt it’s “paid its way”, but this is getting ridiculous now.’

‘No, Niall,’ I’m barely able to contain my excitement. ‘It’s not just any old booking, it’s a
massive
one! All the cottages are being booked out by the same company at once, for one of these team-bonding sessions that companies
do. They’re going to want to do everything while they’re here – fishing, walking, nature trails, the lot.’

Niall removes his glasses again and massages the bridge of his nose. ‘When?’

‘In a few weeks. Apparently they had somewhere else booked, but they’ve been let down – a flood or something at the venue.
They need somewhere last-minute, and we’re it.’

Niall nods, and I can see him thinking this all through in his usual meticulous way. ‘Can we cope with this, do you think?
I know we’ve already had
some
visitors, but that was just a few at a time. This is big stuff, Darcy; we’re not used to it yet.’

‘We can do it, Niall, I know we can. We’ll just have to rally everyone around. Get people organised. And now Dermot’s almost
finished the pub, that’s going to be an added bonus.
Plus,’ I add, knowing just how to push his buttons, ‘think of all the revenue it will pull in.’

Niall’s eyes light up. ‘Hmm, perhaps spending all that money on getting internet access installed wasn’t such a bad thing
after all.’

Of course, after our little trip up to see Eamon, there was no way I wasn’t going to have internet access on the island, however
much it cost. And as I had suspected, it didn’t come cheap. After I found out just how much it cost to set up,I did wonder
how on earth Eamon could afford it. Basically you had to pay a monthly cost to the satellite company providing the internet
signal, depending on how much of their signal you used every month – much like you would your usual internet provider. But
it was more the initial cost of all the equipment that made Niall’s glasses steam up, and almost caused him to self-combust
when he had to write out a cheque to cover the cost. But when all the equipment eventually arrived, and Dermot had set it
all up and I was finally allowed to use it, it was like heaven to be back online again and definitely worth every penny and
all my hours of gentle persuasion with Niall. I still let him deal with the financial side of things; now that I had the internet,
I didn’t trust myself when it came to some of my favourite shopping sites. Although I hadn’t actually had a chance to browse
any of them yet, I’d been so busy with the cottages, which was a surprise to me; usually they would have been my first port
of call when logging on.

My first priority had been to set about blogging, Facebooking and Tweeting all about the island, and then I’d spent a very
happy day designing my own website for Tara, after I’d spent another taking photos and videos of all her scenic places
and all the cottages we had to let. I’d had to wait for the weather to change so I could show Tara at her very best, but when
it had, it had taken me just a day to take the photos.

And then I’d sat back and waited.

But for once, luck had been with me and I hadn’t had to wait too long before we had our first cottage booking, and then there’d
been another, and soon a steady flow of them had come in to take us right through the summer months. It wasn’t enough to support
a community of fifteen people permanently with work, but it was a start.

With the cottages now complete, Dermot is at a bit of a loose end. I’ve discovered that Dermot is the type of person that
always needs to keep himself busy. He’s not like Conor who, once his daily tasks are done around the island, and he’s made
any boat trips needed, is quite happy just to take himself off fishing for the rest of the day. Dermot always needs a new
project to tackle, and it worries me that if I run out of things for him to do he’ll get bored and want to move on. As much
as Dermot and I don’t see eye to eye most of the time, I wouldn’t want him to leave. Tara just wouldn’t be the same without
him.

So with my bet to find Roxi something interesting to do still in mind, I’ve come up with what I think is a rather fantastic
plan to keep both Roxi and Dermot busy – Tara’s first pub! It will be a place for the islanders to meet when the weather is
too wet to gather outside in O’Connell Street, and another way to keep Niall and his account book a little happier, although
he wasn’t that overjoyed when he’d had to pay out yet more money from his ever-thinning chequebook for Dermot to begin the
alterations to one of the cottages.

*

I’m heading back now towards my own cottage, full of the joys of spring − well, technically now that its mid-June, it’s officially
summer − and for once I’m smiling.

‘Come on, you guys,’ I call to the puppies, who are hardly puppies after four months. ‘Let’s have an early-morning walk while
everyone’s still in bed.’

But I’m wrong. As we follow one of the paths around Tara’s rocky west coast, we stumble across Orla doing what looks like
yoga out in the sunshine. She turns to face us as we approach.

‘Good morning, Darcy,’ she says, still continuing with her postures. ‘You’re up early today.’

‘Morning, Orla. I had some good news that I went to tell Niall. We’ve had a large booking come through overnight for a few
weeks’ time.’

‘Excellent,’ Orla says, still moving gracefully around on the grass. ‘I can see that’s brightened your day.’

‘Is that t’ai chi you’re doing?’ I’m sure I’ve seen Orla’s graceful, flowing moves being demonstrated before at a health and
beauty exhibition I’d attended for work.

‘It is. Would you like to have a go?’

‘No, not me, I’m not coordinated enough.’

‘You’d do just fine, Darcy. It would help with your stress, too.’

‘But I’m not stressed!’ I let out a nervous laugh.

Orla ceases what she’s doing and bows before she turns to face me properly. ‘Darcy, even if I didn’t know you, I can tell
you’re emotionally wrung out just by looking at you.’

‘You could?’

Orla nods, ‘You really should try and find a way of easing your worries.’

‘Caitlin gave me this a few weeks ago.’ I feel around in my pocket and pull out the little pink stone I always carry around
with me.

‘Oh yes, a rose quartz,’ Orla says knowingly. ‘That will help with any emotional stress.’

‘You
know
about these stones?’ I ask her in surprise.

‘Uh-huh, I use crystals in healing too.’

‘You do? What sort of healing?’

‘Oh, just to help myself along sometimes, when I’ve got the old ailment or I need a boost. I don’t do anything more complicated
on the healing front, though, so if it’s something like reiki you’re after then you’d be better talking to Siobhan, she’s
been attuned.’