Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
My first night in Whimsy cottage is also perfect. I am blissfully happy as I lie in bed, stretching and luxuriating in the space. Before I came up I ate soda bread slathered in butter – because some kind soul had also stocked the fridge with basics – and poured myself a glass of wine.
I did a quick video call with June, where she laughed at me for most of it, especially when I told her I might be a bit ‘ossified’. I messaged my dad asking for some info on Nanna Nora, and when I finally made my way upstairs, I knew I was going to sleep well – my insomnia seems to be a thing of the past, and I was filled with a deep sense of everything being right in the world.
That lasted until about two a.m., when I was woken up by a noise outside. I’m from New York, and usually go to sleep to the urban lullaby of sirens and breaking glass, but here in the English countryside it’s usually quiet and peaceful – apart from the occasional hoots of owls or the rain pelting against your windows. I sit upright and rub my eyes, not at all sure what woke me until I hear it again.
It’s a bark, I realise, and the sound of furious scratching against my front door. I drag myself out of the warmth, and pull the drape back. Sure enough, outlined in moonlight, I see Eejit in my snow-covered front yard.
I make my way downstairs, and as soon as I open the door he slinks past my legs. He’s coated in snow, and when I touch his fur he is icy beneath my fingers. I grab the dish towel and give him a quick rub dry, which he endures stoically, his pale blue eyes seeming to say: okay, I’ll let you do this, crazy human, but I am descended from wolves, and this is an affront to my dignity.
‘You okay, boy?’ I ask afterwards, scratching his ears the way he likes. ‘You want a snack?’
I pour him a bowl of water, and come up with a pack of chicken slices from the fridge. He devours it all, and I wonder if he’ll leave again now. I’ve been told that he never spends the night in anybody’s house, despite multiple offers, so I expect he’ll turn tail and run. Instead, he simply gallops up the stairs, leaving me with an empty packet of cooked meat and cold feet.
I shrug and follow him, and smile when I see him curled up in a ball on my bed. I end up crawling in around him, not caring one jot that he’ll be making the sheets damp. I climb under the comforter, and feel the solid lump of his body pressed against my legs.
‘Goodnight, Eejit,’ I say, flicking off the bedside lamp. ‘Sweet dreams, pal.’
I’m out like a light, and when I wake up, he’s licking my face, his tail wagging furiously as I finally start to move. He yips at me, clearly wanting me to get up, and I find myself staring into a pair of insistent blue eyes.
‘Okay, okay, I get the message,’ I say, pushing him gently aside as I extricate myself from the comforter. I have a moment of confusion where I reacquaint myself with the room, looking behind me and smiling again at the beautiful arch of painted flowers over the bed.
We make our way downstairs, and he heads into the kitchen, sniffing hopefully at the fridge.
‘Right. Breakfast. You may be out of luck.’
I rummage around in my supplies, and find nothing especially dog-like to give him. He ends up with a small chunk of cheese and a piece of soda bread, which might not be recommended by vets but seems to keep him happy. After that, he goes to the door and scratches it.
‘You’re off then, are you? Typical. Worm your way into my bed, then leave without a word the next morning… you’ll probably ghost me now, won’t you?’
He shoots away, off to who knows where. I look out at the peaceful village square, and a quick sniff of the air tells me Eileen is already up and about next door, baking bread even though it’s a Sunday, and I wonder where Ryan is. Maybe he’s in his room upstairs – maybe his room even adjoins mine. I could knock on it in code, like I do with June.
I close the door against the cold, and realise that I have no idea how to start the fires up – I really must ask for a tutorial or I might freeze to death.
I take a quick shower, get dressed, and have a tiny slice of coffee and walnut cake. The breakfast of champions.
Charles and I have exchanged numbers, and I ask if he’s up for a chat – a business-type chat. He replies immediately that he is, and says that he’ll pick me up later. I realise that I am actually quite excited to try and help, that my mind has been working away in the background, coming up with plans and suggestions. I feel a sense of enthusiasm that I know I’ve been lacking in my actual workplace, and suspect that my reduced hours and demotion back to children’s parties probably aren’t just down to the economy – they’re also down to me.
I used to be a dynamo, full of energy and professional pride, but over the last few years that has waned. It’s hard to be a dynamo when inside, you feel like a failure. Losing Ted in such a dramatic way made me question everything about myself, it made me see myself as unworthy, and some of that defeatist attitude has definitely bled into my work.
No more, I think, as I grab my coat and wander around to Eileen’s. I will go home filled with new ambition. And possibly cake.
I find her fist-deep in kneading, her blue apron covered in flour, singing along to ‘That’s Amore’ by Dean Martin as she works – she’s very loudly crooning along to the bit about the moon and the pizza pie.
‘Morning!’ I say brightly, raising my voice to be heard. ‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘Ah, Cassie, love! You’re looking fine today – thought your poor head might be banjaxed!’
‘Nope, which is basically a Christmas miracle. I did get a late-night visitor, though.’
She stops what she’s doing and stares at me intently.
‘He didn’t go and break his rules, did he, the devil?’
I’m momentarily confused until I realise she thinks my late-night visitor came in the form of Ryan. I laugh, and say: ‘No! Don’t worry, my virtue is safe. My visitor had four legs and goes by the name of Eejit. He spent the night with me in Whimsy.’
‘G’way! He didn’t, did he? Now that is a Christmas miracle! Poor fella’s been straying around for ages now. You must have the appeal!’
‘Yep, that’s me – irresistible to stray dogs the world over. Anyway, it was nice. The whole night was fun.’
‘It surely was – there’s always a good craic around here. Now, don’t be dawdling – go and get the kettle on!’
I spend the next few hours in her company, brewing the tea, fetching and carrying, loading loaves into the ovens and generally making myself useful. She tells me about her life back in Ireland, and her late husband, Donal. They ‘weren’t blessed’ with children, and when he died, she felt like she’d lost her place in the world. Here, she tells me, she found it again, and she’s been in the village ever since. She’s an easy woman to talk to, and the time flies over quickly.
By the time I see Charles’s dark green Jaguar pull into the square, I feel like I’ve already done a day’s work – but it was good, honest work, and I have plenty of energy left to spare.
I make my farewells, and she watches me as I leave. I can still feel her knowing eyes on me as Charles clambers out of his car, coming around to the passenger side and opening it for me like the gentleman he is.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I say, as soon as I have my seatbelt on.
‘Oh. That sounds serious,’ he replies, grinning. He’s wearing what I now think of as his casual outfit – smart jeans and a perfectly pressed shirt in a shade of blue that complements his blond hair.
‘I was thinking that what we need to do – well, what you need to do – is come up with some absolutely killer marketing materials.’
‘You mean like a website? Because we already have one of those.’
‘I know, but at the moment it focuses on the holiday lets. If you want to attract backers, you have to make Bancroft Manor look as good as it can. You need to show them exactly what’s on offer, and what its potential is. At the moment, you have a good family name, and a beautiful house in a gorgeous location, which is a great start – but, forgive me for saying this, it needs some work.’
‘No apologies necessary,’ he replies, as we drive through the now-familiar country lanes and up the hill. ‘I have eyes. I can see that it’s all very genteel, but most definitely on the shabby side. I’d hoped that my meetings would yield more fruit, to be honest. At the moment we’re surviving, with rentals and the tenants and a few other income streams, but long term, we need to either find a new way of making more money, or look at selling the estate. Which of course would be awful.’
‘It would. Not just for you and your family, but for the whole village, and all of these people who depend on you.’
He nods, and again I am struck by how heavy a burden he carries – which makes me even more determined to help.
‘How did you leave it, with the people you met?’
‘That we would reconvene in the new year, and that I’d come up with a more robust business plan. They seemed interested but not sold, if you know what I mean.’
‘And what did you have to show them, as well as your charming smile?’ I ask. ‘How did you try and convince them that you were a good bet?’
‘I’d hoped the charming smile might be enough, but obviously not. With hindsight, I didn’t show them an awful lot. I had financial projections, and I had comparators – examples of similar places that had successfully diversified. But what I didn’t have was anything unique, or anything that really made them sit up. I did a presentation, but a lot of it was about the history of the place, when I think I needed to focus more on the future.’
‘Did you have visuals?’
‘I did. We have some glorious shots that were taken of the exterior over the summer, the grounds and gardens, and they looked magnificent. The inside, not so magnificent. The cloth sheets in the ballroom probably didn’t exactly give off the right image.’
‘Exactly! And in this game, image is everything. Look, don’t be disheartened – I don’t think it’s unfixable. But you need professional pictures, and you need to show it in action.’
‘What do you mean, in action?’
‘I mean that if you want to market yourselves as an events space, you need to show events – tables set for dinner, musicians in place, a party going on! You need to bring it all back to life again – even if it’s just for one day. Then, Charles… then you have something to sell.’
We discuss it all further as we drive, and I am amazed at how quickly my ideas are coming – it’s like something’s been switched back on inside me.
When we arrive back at Bancroft Manor, Georgie and Roberts are waiting to greet us. Georgie hugs me enthusiastically, seemingly full of youthful exuberance, but I can smell the cigarette smoke on her clothes.
‘How’s Allegra?’ I ask, looking around the lobby.
‘She’s not having a good day,’ Roberts replies simply. ‘So she’s resting in her rooms. I hope she’ll feel up to joining us later.’
I pat him on the arm, and say: ‘I hope so too. She’ll remember this place when it was a social whirl, and I’d love to talk to her about it.’
‘I’m sure she would love that too, Cassie – remembering the past doesn’t seem to be a problem for her. Now, what is it that we’re all meeting about? Or could you simply not stay away from my second-breakfast pastries?’
‘I’m sorry to say this, Roberts, but I’ve spent the morning in Eileen’s bakery. I couldn’t eat another pastry if you offered me a million bucks. I’m here to talk to Charles – and you guys – about your plans for this place.’
‘Cassie has some marvellous ideas,’ Charles adds. ‘Why don’t we discuss them as we walk?’
He fills the other two in on what I’ve suggested, and Georgie gets it immediately.
‘We need to dress it all up!’ she says, fizzing with energy. ‘We need to stop it looking like a dusty old museum, and make it look like the kind of place someone would want to get married in! Like it’s a stage, and we need to set it!’
‘Exactly that,’ I say, as we walk through the various rooms of the house. ‘Like this – the library. Here, we stage it like someone is giving a talk. We scatter books around, get a whiteboard, fill the room with people – find someone to pretend to be the guest speaker. Someone who looks like an author or a playwright!’
‘Jack Mullaney,’ Roberts suggests. ‘He actually is a poet, although I always think he looks rather like Gandalf.’
‘Yes, wizard man – I saw him in the pub, first night I was here. Stick him in a tweed suit, perfect! And you can do the same in the other rooms. Show them how they could be used. So, for example, an art class – stage it so it’s full of people with easels and paints. A meeting room – tables, screens, jugs of water, people having a conversation while they make notes on their tablets.’
They all follow me into the hallway as I speak, like a strange string of eager ducklings.
‘The kitchen,’ I say, ‘that could be so good! Someone demonstrating their baking skills, a few huge cakes scattered around, that whole olde worlde country kitchen thing! Don’t just tell potential investors what it could be – show them! I know from my job that the right marketing sucks you in. Of course you’d go and check the place out in person, but if the look and feel is right, you’ll give it a chance – and honestly, if we’re clever with what we’ve got and find the right photographer, we could do it all in one long day!’
‘But what would happen when they did visit, and saw that all was not as it appeared? That none of it was real?’ asks Roberts, clearly a little daunted.
‘There would be time,’ Charles replies, rubbing his chin and nodding thoughtfully. ‘Time to actually make it real. If we could get the investment, that would allow us to improve things, and by the point we went “live”, as it were, it wouldn’t be fake anymore. Cassie, that’s genius!’
He grins at me as he says this, his mind now very clearly engaged.
‘I don’t know about that, but I am here to help, in any way you need,’ I reply, as we go into the ballroom. It is cold and dusty and empty, but it still shines with star power – or at least it could. ‘And this would be the centrepiece. You need to fill it. You need to make it glow. You need to give it what it needs, no matter how temporarily, to look like the dream venue.’
Georgina heads straight towards the piano, and pulls its dust cover off with a flourish. She lifts the lid, and starts playing something jazzy and fun, maybe Scott Joplin. I shake my head in amazement – this place and these people are full of surprises.
‘There you go – you’ve got your pianist already!’ I say.
Charles is walking around the room, stopping every now and then and tapping his toes to the music as he thinks. By the time he comes back to me, he clearly has questions.
‘It’s a great idea,’ he says, ‘but frankly I wouldn’t know where to start. I mean, even simple things like how to set up a room for a corporate meeting, or how many tables I’d need to hire to fill this place? The logistics feel overwhelming.’
‘Gosh,’ I say, smiling up at him, noticing that his hair is in unruly tufts where he’s been worrying at it. ‘If only you had someone around who was, you know, a professional events planner? Wouldn’t that be useful?’
He laughs, and replies: ‘Well, yes, that would be frightfully useful. Do you know any of those?’
I punch him playfully in the arm, answering: ‘You can do this, you know. It’s not even that big a deal – a lot of it is smoke and mirrors, and I’ve done this before, for the company I work for. Some of the pictures and video we use to promote our services are from genuine events, but some are completely staged. The food doesn’t need to be edible, the guests don’t really need to be drinking actual wine… there ways of doing it quickly and cheaply. There will be some costs, but we can keep them minimal – and at the end of the day it’s an investment.’
‘Where would we get the people?’ Roberts asks, frowning. ‘Do we hire actors ?’
He says this with such dread that I have to smile. Maybe Roberts had a bad experience with an amateur dramatics troupe that has left him bitter.
‘Well, you can – or models at least. But look, I’ve been thinking about this, and I suspect you have more on your doorstep than you think you do. You have a whole village, and from what I’ve seen of the people in that village, there are a lot of skills to go around. You have bakers and cooks, you have people who know how to run hospitality. You have musicians, and you have a poet, and you have so many people who could probably help…’
There’s a definite stiffening of upper lips at this suggestion, from both men. Only Georgina seems to be taking it in and running with it.
‘Ignore Dad,’ she tells me, ‘he’s just tripping over his own importance. It’s a pride thing – asking for help doesn’t come easily to him. You’re right, Cassie – the people in the village are brilliant. Cormac used to run a posh bistro in Dublin, and Eileen’s obviously a genius, and everyone has something to offer – Orla could do hair and make-up, and Mary Catherine would help get it all sparkling. Her daughter Sarah doesn’t just run the tea rooms, in the summer she does catering for outside events, so she’d have the right contacts for hiring tables and all that boring stuff. And Ryan could take the photos.’
‘Ryan?’ I repeat in confusion. I’d anticipated him having a role, but it was more along the lines of brawny general labourer than man behind the camera.
‘Yeah. Ryan. He used to be a photographer, had exhibitions in galleries and stuff. He took all the pictures that are up on the walls in the pub?’
I remember those pictures. I remember thinking how good they were, how they brought the beauty of Ireland to life – that they were gallery quality. I assumed they’d been bought for the pub, and I never would have expected the artist to be Ryan.
I don’t even give Charles the chance to over-react to Georgie’s suggestion, though – I just jump on it.
‘Perfect. Those photographs are excellent, and you need someone top quality. Plus if they were up for it, the rest of the villagers could be our wedding guests, or our business people, or our art class! I honestly think, Charles, that if you explained the situation they’d be happy to get involved – and if they do, I think we can get this done in time for the New Year.’
Charles still looks hesitant, and I know Georgie is right – this is his pride at work. He doesn’t come across as a snob or as a man who thinks he is better than everyone else, but he is the latest in a long line of people at the top of the social tree. Accepting that he now needs to ask for help from the lower branches might not come easily to him.
‘I know you don’t want to wash your dirty linen in public, Charles, but this does affect them as well, from what you’ve said to me? You’ve mentioned putting their rents up, or even selling the estate, which would mean they’d have a new landlord who didn’t have any of the personal connections. Maybe it’s only right to give them the chance to avoid that?’
He seems to be giving it a lot of thought, and eventually nods, abruptly.
‘Okay. That’s a fair point. But we’ll need to move quickly – a lot of them go home for Christmas. We’d need to get the ball rolling straight away.’
‘Shall I call around, Charles?’ Roberts asks, once the decision has been made. ‘Invite a few key players up for a chat?’
‘No,’ Charles says firmly, ‘if I’m going to ask them for their help, then I need to be honest about it – and I need to do it on their turf. Set it up for the pub, and spread the word – if nothing else, I’ll definitely be needing a drink afterwards.’