Chapter 27
The Shamrock was jammers, and Grace’s mouth twitched seeing Hannah, on bar duty, scowling at one of her mam’s awful cousins, Tom, whose finger seemed to be permanently unpacking the contents of his nose as she pulled his pint. She hadn’t been given the hard word to help out because standing behind the bar all evening wouldn’t do her leg any favours. Hannah was claiming discrimination on their parents’ part, because Shannon and Imogen got off scot-free these days thanks to having partners to sit with. It wasn’t fair, she’d said earlier, stamping a Doc Marten boot.
Checking her phone, Grace saw Chris was half an hour away, having gone home for a bite to eat. He’d bring the boxes of flyers they’d had run off in Galway with him to distribute. In the meantime, Grace decided to get to work on Isla Mullins, but Isla had other plans.
‘C’mere to me now, Grace Kelly, and tell me why you’re walking like you’ve been on a week-long horse-riding trek?’ Isla demanded as Grace limped her way through the pub, filled with locals and blow-ins alike, toward the table where Isla and her cohorts were sitting.
Personally, she didn’t get the correlation. Still, she wouldn’t correct the Irish souvenir shop owner, not when she was hoping for her help.
Isla was surrounded by her fellow female local business owners – Carmel Brady, Rita Quigley, Eileen Carroll, Nessie Doyle and the Bus Stop’s Brenda Gallagher. The only woman missing from that particular coven was Freya Devlin. Shannon’s best friend had opted to share a table with her, James, Imogen and Ryan.
‘I’ve not been horse-riding.’ Grace frowned, reading the logo on Isla’s T-shirt and murmuring out loud, ‘“How to Speak Irish: Whale Oil Beef Hooked (say it fast).” I don’t get it,’ she said half to herself.
‘You’ve got to say it fast.’
Grace did so and couldn’t help but laugh.
Isla, never one to miss a chance, asked, ‘Would you like to purchase a shirt to take back to London with you, Grace. Spread the word about Ireland’s finest souvenir shop here in Emerald Bay, like.’
‘Ah, no, you’re grand, thanks, Isla.’
‘You’re not my target market anyway,’ Isla replied snippily, then added, ‘And if it’s not the horse-riding, then why are you walking like so?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Grace replied before smiling a greeting at the curious faces Isla was surrounded by. Faces she’d known all her life.
‘Does it happen to involve a cow by any chance?’ Nessie Doyle, Emerald Bay’s resident hairdresser, leaned over the table toward Grace. Her expression was earnest beneath her latest do. A tight perm would have been all well and good, except Nessie had only permed the hair on top of her head. The back and sides were short, giving her the look of a freshly groomed miniature poodle with a blue topknot.
The women should be impeached for high crimes against hair, Grace thought, wondering how Nessie had caught wind of her and Hannah’s escapades in Enda Dunne’s field earlier. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Because Dermot Molloy and that lot were after mooing when you swaggered past just now,’ Nessie supplied.
‘I wasn’t swaggering,’ Grace muttered, following up with several silent bad words aimed at Enda Dunne. He must have been dining out on what had happened at his farm earlier. She glanced over at the corner of the bar where he could usually be found perching and shot him daggers. As for Ryan, she’d not be responsible for her actions if she caught him doing his ‘How now, brown cow’ bit one more time. The fecking animal had been black, for one thing. ‘Like I said, it’s a long story, one that ends with me having a sprained calf muscle.’
Mercifully, there were no cracks about ‘calf’ and cows but rather murmurings of sympathy as, around the table, pulled-muscle war stories were shared. Eileen Carroll, owner of the Knitter’s Nook, had her knitting needles out. She paused in her clacking. In front of her was a half-drunk glass of wine and an open bag of cheese-and-onion crisps. After slapping at Brenda Gallagher, who was about to help herself to the crisps, Eileen switched her focus to Grace. ‘It’s a meeting we were after having in our capacity as female business owners ourselves over a serious matter presently plaguing our fellow female residents of Emerald Bay.’
That sounded ominous, but Eileen didn’t elaborate, moving on to the task in hand – her knitting. ‘I could easily make this scarf I’m after knitting for my cousin Mary into a leg warmer for you if you like, Grace. The extra warmth around your calf might help your poor muscle heal faster. I’ve only enough wool for the one leg, though. Unless you’re not fussy about whether they match.’
‘Oh no, you’re grand, thanks, Eileen. I’ve a compression wrap around it that’s doing the trick,’ Grace was quick to reply, having no wish to be getting about the place with a mustard-yellow-and-purple-striped leg warmer on one calf.
She turned to Isla. ‘Do you mind if I join you? I want to pick your brains about something.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘Council business.’
‘Well then, best you fetch yourself a seat, because all that standing about won’t be doing you any favours.’ Isla craned her neck, giraffe-like, searching the pub for a spare chair. ‘If you can find one, that is.’
Grace pushed her way over to her sisters and told Ryan to shift it, because she needed the chair more than he did. ‘You can sit on Imo’s chair, and she can perch on your knee,’ she bossed, figuring he owed her one. A smart arse he might be, but Ryan was also a chivalrous chap, and he vacated the seat, no questions asked.
‘You’re looking well, so you are, Grace. Shannon’s after telling me about Emerald Grooves. I’m up for helping out,’ Freya, sandwiched between Shannon and Imogen, piped up.
‘Thanks a million, Freya.’ Grace smiled at her sister’s blue-haired friend before leaving them to it, dragging the chair over to where the rest of Emerald Bay’s businesswomen were waiting.
‘You’re not funny, Dermot,’ she slung over her shoulder at the butcher after he launched into the old nursery rhyme ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’.
Grace needed to get Isla on her side for the festival, because it wasn’t so much picking her brains – they needed her to cut through the red tape for them – so before she sat down, she asked, ‘Can I buy you a drink, Isla?’
‘Well now, I won’t say no,’ Isla was quick to reply.
‘I’m on the rum and Coke.’ Nessie tinkled the ice at the bottom of her glass.
Grace winced as the other ladies fired off their requests, wondering whether she could put the round she was about to stump up for down as a festival expense.
Committing the drink requests to memory, she hobbled to the bar. Her father was down the opposite end of it being brought up to speed on her and Hannah’s escapades by Enda, while Hannah was in conversation with Rory Egan, Ava’s father-in-law, who raised his glass in greeting on seeing Grace. Grace mouthed a hello while she waited for her mam to finish serving.
‘What are you after, love?’ Nora asked, lining Grace up in her sights.
Grace rattled off the various drinks, receiving a raised eyebrow from her mam, who set about fixing them. When she’d lined them all up, Grace went to pay but was told to put her money back in her pocket.
‘I’m guessing it’s the festival you’re going to be chatting to that lot about.’ Nora’s warm-brown eyes flitted over to the table Grace had not long left.
‘I am.’
‘Well then, that’s me doing my bit to help.’
‘Thanks, Mam.’ Grace dimpled. She was pleased at least one of her parents was on her side.
‘And try and rest that leg of yours. Enda’s after telling me what you were up to in his field today. You’re a right pair, you and Hannah.’ She shook her head, but her eyes were twinkling, and the corner of her mouth had quirked. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I will, Mam, and so’s you know, the cow looked like a bull.’ She ran through her big-horns routine once more, demonstrating with her hands how big they were.
‘Are you sure it wasn’t a stag, size of those horns?’
‘Mam!’ Grace was about to tell her mam it wasn’t a joking matter when Father Seamus called out that he needed a top-up. He slid the crystal tumbler, reserved solely for him, across the bar. Then, his eyes alighting on Grace, he asked, ‘Will we be seeing you in church tomorrow morning, young Grace?’
Grace ducked around the question. ‘Actually, Father, I’ve a good word myself I’d like to ask for your help in spreading.’
While Nora fetched his whiskey, Grace informed the priest about the festival and what it was in aid of.
When she’d finished, Father Seamus patted her shoulder. ‘Well now, Grace, I think it’s safe to say yourself and your young man have earned yourself a few brownie points with the Big Man. I’ll be sure to mention it in the service tomorrow.’
Grace could smell Bushmills finest on his breath. ‘Oh, he’s not my young man, Father, he’s my housemate.’
‘I’ll believe you. Thousands wouldn’t,’ Father Seamus replied with a wink, giving Grace the impression he could see all the way into her soul.
Her face was hot as she thanked him, and she was about to fetch the drinks her mam had set aside for her when she saw they were gone from the bar. Isla was raising her glass in her direction.
‘A girl could die of thirst waiting for you, Grace,’ she called out. ‘Sláinte.’
Grace grinned and made her way over, deciding the best course of action was to play to the Irish shop owner’s ego. But first things first, she thought, taking a sip of the wine her mam had thrown in for her. And so she supplied the women gathered around the table with the inside scoop on the festival she was planning and what it was in aid of. As expected, eyebrows shot up when they heard who Grace was working with, followed by furtive glances to the bar where Liam Kelly was pulling pints. There was no need to ask what Grace’s father thought about his daughter working alongside a Dorrance. They knew the answer, and the question that Isla fired at Grace surprised her.
‘It’s a good cause. Of course it is. But what about drugs?’
An echo of ‘Yes, what about drugs?’ whipped around the table.
For a moment, Grace wondered if they were asking whether any would be on offer and nearly burst out laughing at the notion. She managed to rein it in, however, and asked Isla for clarification.
‘Drugs, Grace. You know. The scourge of youth today. Sure, everybody knows what goes on at those music festivals.’
Isla was more in the know than she was, Grace thought as she replied, ‘Erm, not necessarily, Isla. I went to Glastonbury with Ava a year or so back, and nothing passed our lips other than an ale or two.’ Literally, it was the most expensive beer she’d ever drunk, but when they’d run out of what they’d brought in with them, they’d had no choice but to fork out a ludicrous price for a can.
‘Is that right?’
Grace felt as though she should say, ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ Instead, she said, ‘Yes. And Emerald Grooves will be a drug-and-smoke-free event.’
‘Did you hear that, ladies? Drug and smoke free.’
Heads nodded.
‘I suppose it would attract new blood to the area.’
An echoed chorus sounded. ‘It would attract new blood to the area.’
‘And that’s got to be good for business.’
‘That’s got to be good for business.’
Now Grace slapped down her winning card. ‘Of course, if you were to help us out, Isla, you’d have an official title.’
‘An official title, like, and what would that be?’ Isla’s eyes were gleaming.
‘Well, if you were to take over the legalities of organising a music festival for us, then your title would be Event Council Coordinator.’
Isla sat up a little straighter. ‘And would I be getting a badge to wear in my official capacity?’
A brief debate ensued about whether or not she’d be getting a badge with her job title written on it. She wouldn’t, but nevertheless, Isla agreed to take the role on.
She nearly fell off her seat when Grace lunged at her and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Isla!’ It was an enormous weight off her shoulders to hand over the responsibility of ensuring every box needing ticking to get their festival off the ground would be ticked. Isla was many things, but efficient at getting the job done was top of the list.
The other businesswomen of Emerald Bay weren’t to be left out. They were quick to jump in with offers to help pass out flyers to their customers and with whatever other official job titles were on offer, even if there wasn’t to be a badge. Grace was buzzing, basking in their enthusiasm for the fundraiser and the ideas being bandied about the table, like Carmel setting up a coffee-and-cake stand and Brenda a cold-drink stand. She’d known all along that when the villagers of Emerald Bay heard that one of their own was in need, they’d all be on board to turn the festival into a fabulous day out and ensure its successful fundraising. Still and all, to have confirmation of this was heart-warming.
She was envisaging Enda’s field filled with people, young and old, all there to enjoy the music, knowing that by buying a ticket, they’d contributed toward giving a little boy and his hard-working mam a roof over their heads, ensured the children of Emerald Bay had access to the educational resources they deserved and, hopefully, contributed toward a donation to the children’s hospital when Isla butted in by giving her a nudge.
‘I think someone’s here to see you.’
Then Grace realised a silence had fallen over the previously raucous pub. Following the direction in which all eyes had turned, she saw a box and, on second glance, spied Chris’s head poking out above it as he balanced the flyers on his knee and waved over at her, seemingly oblivious to the atmosphere his appearance had created.
This was front-page news in the village of Emerald Bay, because no one supping in the Shamrock that evening could remember the last time a Dorrance had set foot inside the pub.