Chapter 19
ROSIE
Rosie found Maureen in the laundry room, her feet in a plastic washing-up bowl of water, with ice cubes floating around.
Bertie was on a chair beside her, his feet also in a washing-up bowl, the legs of his linen trousers rolled up to his knees.
‘You know, Maureen,’ he was saying. ‘I think you might be on to something here. It’s working a treat. ’
‘I’ll keep the ice bowls going, Bertie,’ she said.
‘Any time you need a dip, quick dunk, and you’re done.
’ She looked up at Rosie. ‘I have discovered the secret to staying cool,’ she said.
‘Freeze your feet and the body follows suit. Want to join me? Pull up a stool there, now, and honestly, it’s working. I feel actually cold from the inside.’
‘It’s a miracle, that’s what it is,’ said Bertie. ‘I’m actually cold. Maybe even a little too cold.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing, Albert,’ said Maureen.
‘Should have done this years ago when I was having all those hot flushes, the blood racing to my head and I’d be a puddle in no time at all.
’ She lifted up her feet, the water draining off them.
‘My God, this is mighty, it really is.’ She began drying her feet with a towel.
‘Maureen, can you fix this?’ Rosie handed her the broken cup and Maureen took it into her lap.
‘Your mother’s special Belleek.’ She examined the handle, placing it against the cup, seeing how clean the break was. ‘I’ll give it a go,’ she said. ‘I’ve repaired worse. How did it break?’
‘I dropped it in the garden.’
Maureen didn’t say a word, just pursed her lips.
‘I’m going to get you one of those plastic cups that people have permanently glued to their lips these days.
Honestly, why do people need to drink coffee while they’re walking?
I don’t know why people don’t just have coffee on a drip, and drag it around after them. ’
‘I was just sitting in the garden, like a normal person,’ insisted Rosie. ‘I was not inhaling coffee. Anyway, it was tea.’
‘Leave it with me,’ said Maureen. ‘Now, are you sure you don’t want a go of my icy water?
Sure? Okay so.’ She smiled. ‘Your mother would be glad that you’re using her cups.
She was always like that to me. “Maureen, good things are to be used, not admired.” She loved her china, she really did.
Bought this in one of those house clearance auctions things, up in Killiney.
Was delighted when she returned to Cliff Top with it all.
There must have been hundreds of bits, big plates, tiny ones.
I think three sizes of milk jugs.’ She smiled at Rosie.
‘I’ll have this back to you as good as new. ’
Bertie had dried his feet and slipped back on his socks and loafers. ‘I feel human again,’ he said, following Rosie out of the laundry room. ‘Maureen, you are a lifesaver. And a genius to boot.’
He and Rosie walked along the corridor towards the main hotel, in silence for a moment as though she could sense what he was going to say. He cleared his throat.
‘I was wondering, if… ahem, well, how you were holding up? If indeed you are holding up? Ahem. Well, with a certain Mr Power having arrived after a long hiatus.’
They had stopped. Rosie didn’t know what to say. She and Bertie didn’t speak about affairs of the heart, but his eyes were so soft and fixed on hers, as though he’d been worried about her.
‘I’m holding up fine, thank you, Bertie.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes… well, as much as possible.’ She tried to smile.
‘I don’t want to pry, obviously, but just wanted to say that if you need to talk, I’m a good listener. My mother used to say that I had ears like an elephant, which sounds like an insult, but she meant that you could tell me anything.’ He paused. ‘You’re not upset?’
Rosie sighed. ‘A little, I suppose. He just left me that time, so abruptly. I wish he hadn’t. Or had explained it better.’
‘I always liked him when he used to come into the Shelbourne,’ said Bertie.
‘Thought he was a fine young man. But he was young, I suppose. People make mistakes.’ He was looking at her again.
‘If you need a break, I can take over. Anything. It’s all hands to the pump this weekend, and now with Maureen’s ice bucket invention, I’m not in danger from keeling over in the heat. ’
‘Thanks, Bertie. I appreciate it.’
* * *
Grace collapsed into the armchair in Rosie’s office after her walk up from the village while glugging down a bottle of water, a small battery-operated fan in one hand. ‘It’s so hot. That walk is going to kill me.’
‘Take the bus?’ suggested Rosie, who had been staring at her computer screen for the last hour but not actually achieving very much, a combination of heat and her mind brimming with Patrick.
‘The bus? The bus?’ Grace looked horrified.
‘I can’t take a bus. Walking up to the hotel is the only time my legs actually function as legs.
Otherwise they are just useless appendages and my muscles will waste away and, by the time I’m forty, I’ll have none left and you will have to wheel me around in a basket chair, a rug over my lap.
’ She brightened. ‘Sounds quite nice, actually. Not the rug, obviously. I’d die of heatstroke before my legs had totally withered away.
’ She peered out of the window. One grey cloud hung in an otherwise blue sky.
‘It’s not going to rain for the beach barbecue, is it?
I think it might be getting hotter, I really do.
’ Her phone vibrated and she read her message.
‘Oh, God… Aoife is ill. Some kind of bug and so can’t help at the beach or barbecue or the picnic tomorrow…
’ She looked at Rosie. ‘I’ll have to do it on my own… perhaps Bertie might…?’
‘He doesn’t do beaches,’ said Rosie. ‘You know him and sand… I’ll do it.
’ And she realised that of course she wanted to do it.
She didn’t want to hide away, she wanted to see Patrick, even if she was serving drinks.
Now she and Patrick had talked and broken the ice, it would be fine and she’d only be in the background, helping, invisible.
‘Are you sure? Because I can ask someone else. One of my friends. Claudia?’ She brightened. ‘Which reminds me. She’s getting married. She was wondering if we could hold the wedding here?’
‘This is a trial only,’ warned Rosie.
‘But you might change your mind…?’ Grace looked hopeful. ‘Anyway, thanks for stepping in, if you are sure you can spare yourself?’
‘Quite sure…’ Now it seemed like the most important thing in the world to be at the barbecue and there was no way she was staying in the hotel. She felt a surge of excitement, for some reason, which was silly and yet… he would be there.
‘You don’t mind leaving the hotel today?’ queried Grace. ‘You’re not going to worry about sinkholes or gas explosions or Bertie running amok or Maureen having a conniption because one of the staff haven’t been doing hospital corners?’
Rosie laughed. ‘I’ll be fine, honestly. It’ll be good for me.’ She hoped she was presenting as calm and relaxed, inside she was on fire. She was all for packing up the Land Rover and heading down there now, screaming in excitement.
‘What’s wrong with your eye?’ said Grace, peering at her. ‘It’s twitching. Are you okay? Is it the heat? Are you having a stroke?’ She grabbed her water. ‘Drink this… get it down you… Here, have my fan…’
Rosie fended her off. ‘I’m grand. Please. Look, I’m perfectly capable of leaving the hotel for a couple of hours and assisting you. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. No drama, no chaos, just me helping you.’ She hoped her eye had stopped twitching.
‘Okay then…’ Grace didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘We’ll put Teddy on sinkhole watch and you can assist.’
‘I’ll do the set-up,’ insisted Rosie. ‘I’ll take the Land Rover and the gear and get the barbecue lit.’
‘Have you ever lit a barbecue before?’
‘Of course! All the time! I love a barbecue.’
Grace still looked sceptical. ‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘But on one condition, you have to wear beach-suitable clothes. You cannot wear a polyester navy skirt suit to the beach.’
‘It’s not polyester!’
‘Whatever. It’s still not the thing to wear when manning the barbecue.
It looks flammable. Put on your nice shorts and your blue shirt, you look good in those.
You have legs that should actually be seen, unlike mine which have no ornamental qualities whatsoever.
Hence the kaftans. And then we will fill up the Land Rover.
I’ll come down with Teddy in the minibus. ’
* * *
Rosie quickly changed back in the cottage, pulling on her shorts and linen shirt, and stopped and put on some mascara and a spritz of that nice Jo Malone rose perfume Nessa had bought her for Christmas.
She met Grace in the garage, the back of the Land Rover open, ready to be packed.
‘Ooooooh! Switsoo!’ whistled Grace. ‘Who is this smart-casual, beautiful woman?’ Her nose sniffed the air. ‘And is that perfume I detect? And…’ – she peered closer – ‘mascara?’ She nodded, approvingly. ‘Glad that Bertie and I have been so effective in our gentle critique…’
‘Gentle? It was brutal!’ But Rosie was smiling.
‘You just look a trillion times more relaxed. Less like a buttoned-up bank clerk.’ She smiled back at Rosie. ‘Now, come on. We’ve got to load this baby up.’
They packed the car with the gazebo, the fold-up table, chairs, bunting, drinks coolers and picnic boxes.
The old Land Rover had seen better days, probably the ones spent living its previous life with its farmer owner.
When Rosie had bought it, it still had mud splatters on the inside of the door, the air thick with sheepdog hairs and a powerful smell of manure.
The clutch was gone and it made alarming noises if you went too fast but was very useful for trips to the cash and carry or the industrial laundry or collecting guests from Sandycove station when the starter motor on the hotel minibus had gone.
‘Now, the bride and groom have requested Hicks sausages for the barbecue,’ said Grace.
‘But Francois is poshing them up with brioche buns and his sauce that’s to die for.
He won’t tell me what the secret ingredient is.
I bet it’s something really French and really esoteric.
The kind of thing you can only find in mountain villages.
He’s doing a kind of onion confit as well.
And we also have my special newly invented cocktail, the Cliff Topper.
Un-fecking-believable. Rosemary-infused honey and raspberry syrup and Prosecco.
We have smoked salmon bites, roast beef and horseradish rolls, and Francois has made some incredible salads.
One of them is tomato and mozzarella, which made me almost faint with joy.
The man’s a magician of food. A fagician. ’
And then Rosie spotted the old dessert trolley and dragged it out from under the paint pots and old tarpaulin.
It needed a good wipe down, but it didn’t look too bad.
‘What do you say about resurrecting my mother’s old dessert trolley?
’ she said. ‘Do you think Francois would go for lots of big bowls of dessert? Instead of serving from the kitchen, people could just choose from the trolley?’
Grace took the trolley for a trundle, its wheels squeaking. ‘I doubt when he went to cordon bleu school or wherever, he ever thought he’d be serving food from what is essentially a broken-down, filthy go-kart.’
‘Dad said he could clean it up,’ said Rosie. ‘I think it would be a nice touch.’
Grace looked unconvinced. ‘Are we taking the retro thing too far? I mean, what’s next? Corsets? Penny-farthings? Gruel?’ But she was still wheeling it around. ‘You mean, it would be full of the desserts and people would just choose?’
Rosie could tell she was warming to the idea. ‘Shall we try it tonight? I can talk to Francois about it.’
‘No, you’re grand,’ said Grace, in an offhand, deliberately casual way.
‘I can talk to him. I need to check about the nibbles, anyway.’ She delivered the trolley back to Rosie and Rosie placed her hands on the wooden bar, just where her mother’s would have been and, for a moment, she could almost feel her mother with her.
She spotted Teddy walking across the front of the garage. ‘Dad!’
He turned. ‘Hello, girls, getting ready for the beach picnic? I was just going to check on the minibus, give it one last clean and open the windows so it’s not too hot for everyone.’
Rosie was wheeling the cobwebby trolley towards him. ‘Remember this?’
‘Your mother’s trolley.’ He placed his hands on the handle, just as Rosie had done. ‘She loved this, didn’t she? It was such a piece of theatre, wasn’t it? All the desserts being on display and the guests oohing and ahhing.’ He smiled at Rosie. ‘So we’re going to bring it back, are we?’
‘I think it would be nice,’ said Rosie. ‘Grace is less convinced.’
‘I’m changing my mind,’ said Grace, quickly. ‘I can see its charm. Underneath the dust.’
‘I’ll give it a good clean, and oil those wheels.’ Teddy pushed it back and forth for a moment. ‘It’s still holding up. When do you want it by? I could do it after I come back from the beach?’
‘Would you? Grace is going to talk to Francois about having all the desserts together.’
Teddy was smiling. ‘I’ll have it done. I’ve got a nice wood polish that will bring up the grain and I’ll deliver it to the kitchen and it will look as good as new.
’ He pushed it back and forth a few times, gentler now, as though thinking of something else.
‘I remember when your mother brought this home. It was a relic from a big hotel that was selling all its contents over in Seapoint. And she said no one wanted it and she was the only bidder. She was so pleased with it.’ He beamed at Rosie.
‘I think she’d be really happy if she knew it was back in action. ’
‘I think so too.’ Rosie smiled back at him.
‘I’ll bring it down to my workshop now, then,’ he said. ‘I just hope I can eliminate the squeakiness completely. See you later, girls.’
When he’d gone, the sound of the wheels receding into the distance, Grace turned to Rosie.
‘Okay, so back to the barbecue. Small coals, and let it glow, slowly add some more.’ She still looked unconvinced that Rosie would be able to actually light a barbecue.
‘And then put up the gazebo. Remember, tie it down, there’s an old rusty ring cemented into a rock, use that to secure it. ’
Grace waved her off and the Land Rover bounced off, backfiring as it left the hotel’s main gate, and trundled down the hill into the village, the sea to her right, winding her way down the cliff road and to the beach.