Chapter 34
Seventeen Years Earlier
Nothing could have prepared Blythe for what she felt when Siggy was born. The birth had been much easier than she’d expected, but then, the midwife told her, it was often the way. She’d done her suffering before the labour ward; everything should go smoothly from here.
She’d been right.
Siggy was a perfect baby. Blythe knew she was biased, but truly, what newborn baby can make wind look good?
Within a week of arriving home from the hospital, Siggy was sleeping most of the night, she was feeding well, and she was generally, the most agreeable baby anyone had ever clapped their eyes on.
Blythe was captivated by her.
The fact was, she could lose hours each day, just holding her, watching her, hanging off her every breath. She had fallen madly, deeply in love with the child from the moment she was born.
Kip, too.
He balanced Siggy in his huge hands, so she looked even smaller than she was and the tenderness in his eyes when he looked at her, almost made Blythe cry with love for both of them.
How could that be? She wondered, when her whole life had been spent with only one true love, how could it be that suddenly, a person so small, so tiny, could push everything aside.
Hormones.
That’s what the district nurse said, and she warned against the tide turning and detailed the various things to watch out for if she found herself succumbing to the baby blues.
Not a chance.
Blythe was high on life. High on motherhood.
All thoughts of the hotel and Marcus Johnson swept aside, none of it mattered. Even when she thought of Rae, living in the hotel, taking up the space that was always meant to be hers. Somehow, it didn’t make her blood boil over in the same way as it had before.
Blythe supposed it was mother nature’s way of taking care of her young.
All notions of going back to work in the hotel had suddenly fallen from the table of her mind.
She was content to stay in Still Water House and take care of her baby, while Kip cooked for them, and his mother visited and kept the laundry piles moving through the washer and dryer.
Rae was smitten too, of course, no great surprise there. Blythe felt a swell of happiness in her, when she saw that the baby seemed to settle in Rae’s arms, but when Marcus had held her, Siggy railed.
Good girl, Blythe thought to herself, good girl Siggy.
The name had been Blythe’s choice. She called her after her grandmother. She knew on some level it would give Pappy great joy to think his beloved Gisela’s name was living on, long after his dear wife had died. She promised Kip, the next one would be named for his mother.
It took all of three weeks of this domesticated harmony before Blythe began to feel as if she was somehow being trapped by it all. She woke up with a start one morning and knew, she was ready to go back to the hotel.
So, as soon as she and Siggy were fed and presentable, she set off for Hope Square. Her grandfather was of course thrilled to see the baby. Despite his reluctance to join in any baby excitement before Siggy arrived, he was completely hooked from the moment he set eyes on her three weeks earlier.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, you can’t come back to work now,’ Pappy almost choked on his tea when she mentioned that she was ready.
‘Why not?’ She was ready for his resistance. After all, hadn’t he basically replaced her as soon as Marcus turned up on the doorstep?
‘Because you have a baby, that’s why not…’ He shook his head as if it was obvious.
‘Pappy, women go back to work every other day of the week after giving birth.’ She stopped, lowered her voice.
They were sitting in the lounge, Pappy had, for the last few weeks, commandeered a spot next to the fireplace, from where he could watch the comings and goings and still direct everything – without having to leave his chair.
‘Seriously, if I was in a third world country, I’d have been out picking crops an hour after she arrived. ’
‘Well, fortunately for all of us, you’re in Ireland and in the relatively comfortable position of being able to take your time.’
‘Pappy, I need to get back to work.’ Blythe bit down on the anger that was rising in her. ‘Aside from anything else, I need to start earning wages again and…’
‘And what about Kip, doesn’t he have money?’ Pappy said now. ‘Really, Blythe, you have a lovely baby and a beautiful home. You have an able-bodied husband who needs to find himself a proper job.’
‘He’s actually coaching with the Connaught Rovers,’ she said quietly, although of course, that was paying peanuts, barely enough to cover his ferry and car costs to and from training sessions.
‘Well, then, there you go…’ he said as if that was everything.
‘I don’t understand, Pappy, why can’t I just come back to work, nothing has changed, I’m as committed to the hotel as I ever was, and I have big plans for the season.’
‘Ah, but Blythe, that’s the thing. Marcus has big plans too and we’ve already agreed to put some of them in place. He’s on top of all the bookings and they are well up on previous years, so… really, I need to keep him on board until the end of the year, at least.’
‘At least?’ She whispered, hardly able to push the words through her lungs. This could not be happening. Was her grandfather telling her that she no longer had a job in their family hotel? Was he throwing her over for Marcus bloody Johnson? ‘You can’t do this…’
‘Do what?’
‘Pappy, I know you think you’re acting in my best interests, but this isn’t fair, I’ve given years of my life to making this place into what it is today.
’ She looked around her, tears threatening on the very edges of her eyes.
She began slowly to take in the lobby around her, noticing little things at first, how had she not seen it before?
Marcus Johnson, aided and abetted by her own sister and Pappy too, had come in here and systematically undone every single improvement she had made.
From the white linen throws that she’d had some of the local women run up on their sewing machines, which he’d changed to a blue and white-striped material, to replacing the single lit candle on each table with tiny, but elaborate, floral and driftwood arrangements, giving the whole place a Nantucket vibe that would be lost on most of their regulars.
Oh, the place looked fantastic, undoubtedly, but Marcus had only upgraded what she’d already made.
The fact was, whether Pappy could see it or not, the original template had been hers alone.
‘You can’t just get rid of me,’ she said flatly.
‘It’s not like that, Blythe, but we’ve all moved on. You have a new baby, you are a mother now, you’ll have more children, and you won’t have time for this place.’
‘Who says?’ She snapped at him.
‘No one says, but that’s life. And the hotel will go on, regardless. We’re lucky to have Marcus, he’s agreed to stay, when anyone half-decent would be gone again after the one season…’
‘Lucky, hah!’ She wanted to wring Marcus Johnson’s neck right now.
‘Look, you know, he could pick up a job anywhere in the world and in a year or two, probably name his price.’ Pappy stopped and she thought for a moment, maybe he was going to give her some hope, say something that would put a timeline on this nightmare.
‘The fact is, Blythe, the only reason he’s here is because he’s in love with Rae…
and he’s been good for her. She’s a completely different person to the wild thing she was before she met him. ’
‘Oh, Pappy, you think it’s a good thing that she seems to have put all her own dreams on hold? That she’s dressing like the old ladies in the church choir and hasn’t time for anything other than making him happy?’
‘I think, it’s settled her down and the way things were going… well, she was out of control. Marcus has been a good influence on her.’
‘You’re wrong,’ she said then and she knew, she sounded like a stubborn child. ‘You’re wrong about everything,’ she said, getting up and placing the baby in her pram. ‘And most of all, Pappy, you’re wrong about Marcus Johnson.’
There was no moving Pappy. He had made up his mind. For the next few weeks, Blythe managed to live on her state maternity payment, because certainly what Kip earned wouldn’t keep a cat and kittens.
But, as summer faded into autumn and Still Water House grew colder, the bills seemed to come more quickly and more often through the letter box. It seemed every job Kip applied for was already given to some other man, more qualified or under the good fortune of nepotism.
It was one afternoon, sitting in the kitchen with his mother that set Blythe thinking.
‘Seems a shame to have this big empty house and no money coming in. Could you not rent out some rooms?’ Kip’s mother was talking about taking in some of the students who came across to the island each year to help on the national park’s survey work.
‘That’s seasonal and I’d hardly cover the electricity bill with the amount they can afford to pay,’ Blythe said, and she cut another slice of rhubarb cake for them. Siggy was fast asleep in her cot next to the Aga, blissfully unaware of her parents fast approaching financial ruin.
‘Well, then, why not do it properly… you know, make it into a guest house?’ She was looking at Blythe now as if this was a no-brainer.
‘A guest house? Here at Still Water?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, it’s not really set up for it, for a start, I mean… I’d need ensuites and a proper kitchen and…’ The truth was, they hadn’t lived in almost three-quarters of the house in decades.
‘So, why not get to work on doing one room at a time. Take the winter months, let Kip do the donkey work and you be in charge.’ She stopped and smiled.
‘He might not be qualified, but he’s very tasty at odd jobs.
He did a whole big job on Mrs O’Flaherty’s bathroom when she had her leg amputated, pulled out everything and made it all workable for her.
He did most of the plumbing and all the painting too. ’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Oh, it was years ago, you were probably off in college, but there’s no better man to put up wallpaper or paint to the tip of a hair.
I swear, I often wonder, if he’d had a chance, he might have single-handedly had a go at the Sistine chapel, if that other buck didn’t get in there before him.
’ She laughed at that, and Blythe found herself laughing too.
She had grown to love this simple, kind-hearted woman and she could see why Kip adored her.
‘I’ll think about it.’ But even sitting there at the kitchen table, with a washing machine full of baby clothes, Blythe felt that familiar surge of ambition rise within her. Her own business, right here under her nose. It sounded perfect.
‘I’ll just say this, Blythe, you could have your own boat built and seaworthy a long time before your old grandfather’s ship steers into your port.’
‘I suspect that ship is sailing towards the horizon without me.’ Blythe confessed the fact that even to herself she’d found hard to admit.
*
That very evening, after she’d eaten dinner with Kip and they’d settled Siggy in her cot for the night, they took themselves off to the first floor of the house and the bedrooms that looked out across the island.
These rooms hadn’t been slept in for years, not in Blythe’s memory.
There were six on this hallway alone, but probably only four, if you factored in the renovation work to make them what she needed.
‘We could easily keep guests here and it would all be separate from our own room and the baby’s,’ she said to Kip; they’d walked through the rooms so many times and now she was brimming with ideas.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘I do, if you’ll help me,’ she said then, because it would not be possible without a lot of cosmetic work and some reconfiguration.
‘Blythe, you know I’d do anything for you, but when it comes to keeping guests, I’m not sure how much help I’ll be at that. I mean, you’ve seen how I can’t boil an egg without some calamity.’ He laughed then.
‘Don’t worry, that part, I can do standing on my head, and if it really takes off, I can always get people in to help at busy times.’
‘You think it could be that busy?’ He was dubious, even though he was trying to hide it.
‘I think it could be,’ she said softly, but in her heart she had already decided, she was going to make Still Water House into THE place to stay on Pin Hill Island. She’d show Marcus Johnson a thing or two, and her grandfather would see what a huge mistake he’d made.