Chapter 45
ROSIE
Rosie had barely slept and in the cold light of the morning, instead of leaving the cottage and drinking her coffee outside, she stayed inside, the blinds down.
She wouldn’t be needed in the hotel because Grace was there to see everyone off and to say goodbye, so Rosie stayed at home, her phone switched off.
So this is it, she thought, this is my life for the rest of my days. Soon it will be another ten years and another and another. If I’m lucky. And I will grow old here, in this beautiful place, where I’ve always been. She was just like Rapunzel. Except her hair wasn’t even that good.
The guests would be finishing breakfast now, chatting and laughing, checking out, getting on the road back to their lives and facing into another working week.
Rosie hadn’t even gone on holiday for years.
Taking over the hotel had been her destiny, she had thought.
But it wasn’t. It was her mother’s dream.
She couldn’t bear to let it fade away. She had nothing, really.
She had hidden herself away, behind these walls, scared of the outside world.
While she was in here, other people were having lives.
Nessa was married with two children, Teddy had his garden, Grace was dating and relishing her role in the hotel.
Bertie was off to Indonesia for his orchid trip.
Maureen had a whole other life with her sea swimming tribe, her five children and all those grandchildren.
Seán and Niamh were excited about this life they were about to have.
In comparison, she had so little. And worse, she hadn’t trusted anyone with the hotel.
She had kept squirrelling all the responsibility away for herself, as if she was so special.
She wasn’t. And Grace and Nessa both had brilliant ideas, they were full of them and they were enthusiastic and hard-working and this wedding had been such a success, it really had, because of them.
And she’d realised that the hotel wasn’t enough.
She wanted more from life. To spread her wings and travel.
She wanted adventure and excitement. She wanted a chance.
She’d been scared to leave these walls, to venture much further from the hotel.
It had suited her and she had spent years telling people that this was what she wanted, to carry on her mother’s passion.
Except she had forgotten to have one of her own.
And she wasn’t sure if she was capable of having her own.
Her future wasn’t bright or glittering. She had nothing.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She nearly dropped the milk. Someone was knocking on the door.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
‘Rosie?’
It was Bertie. Oh God. The hotel had burned down. A guest had fallen down the steps to the lawn. Someone had choked on a peanut in the bar.
‘Rosie?’ He spoke gently, without urgency. Perhaps it wasn’t an emergency.
She had to open the door.
‘I found you,’ he said.
‘Why were you looking for me?’
‘I met Mr Power this morning. He told me he was leaving later today and I wondered how you were.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps you are perfectly all right, but I wanted to make sure.’
Bertie didn’t often refer to her private life but of course he would be thinking about Patrick, knowing how their story had begun. ‘Would you like to come in?’
He nodded. ‘I would. I very much would. Have to rest the old leg. It’s a bit wobbly.
I was worried about my trip to Indonesia, you know my “in the footsteps of the orchid hunters” trip?
Well, I called them and said I have a dodgy leg and all that and the lovely man on the phone said he would personally make sure that I would be all right.
He said he would carry me on his back if needs must…
’ Bertie laughed for a moment and then sighed, almost dreamily.
‘He owns the travel company. Seems like a lovely man. Barry Desmond. Lives in Delgany, so just down the road. Has quite an impressive orchid collection himself. His variegated phalaenopsis has come into flower he was saying.’ He looked around. ‘Why are we sitting in the dark?’
‘I wanted to be alone.’
‘Ah, Ms Garbo. I have ruined your solitude.’
‘You don’t count.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘You should.’ They smiled at each other.
‘So, why, Greta, do you want to be alone?’
She shook her head, unable to speak for a moment.
Bertie took the tea caddy from her. ‘I’ll make it,’ he said, gently.
‘Do you remember the lesson in tea making I gave you, all those years ago? The Irish tea ceremony, I called it.’ He smiled.
‘I was pretty pretentious, wasn’t I? But at the Shelbourne we liked all of those little flourishes.
Teapot warmed…’ He poured boiling water into the china teapot.
‘Leave for ninety seconds. Now, the tea itself. Presume this is Irish breakfast?’ He jabbed his nose into the caddy, inhaling.
‘No, Ceylon. Lovely.’ He nodded approvingly. ‘Single estate.’
‘Only the best. You taught me well.’
‘It’s the little things in life. A decent cup of tea.
If you’re going to spend money, spend it on the things that bring maximum pleasure.
Now, where are we? Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine.
Ninety.’ He swirled away the boiling water from the pot down the sink and began spooning in the tea leaves. ‘How hot should the water be?’
‘Around 96 degrees.’
‘That’s right.’ He quickly felt the outside of the kettle. ‘Which is what we have in here.’
She watched as he made the tea, taking down two Belleek bone china cups.
‘Beautiful cups,’ he said, approvingly.
‘They belonged to my mother,’ she said. ‘She had a whole tea set. But she was like you, hated mugs, only drank out of proper china, a thin rim.’
‘Quite right.’ He placed the pot on one side, as Rosie reached for the milk from the fridge and poured it into the small, delicate matching Belleek jug.
There would be no way Bertie would pour it from the carton into the cup.
There was reassurance in his tea-making ritual.
It wasn’t just for show, for guests of the hotel, you had to make the effort for yourself.
The next stage was leaving it stand for a moment or two.
‘How’s the leg?’ Rosie asked.
‘It’s not too bad,’ he said. ‘Doing surprisingly well. Not bad for a man in his late sixties.’
‘Never! I would have said late forties, at the most.’ She smiled at him.
‘Oh, you know, it’s the Pond’s cream I slap on every night.
Makes me look like a teenager.’ He picked up the pot and poured out the tea.
‘You were a great protégée,’ he said. ‘When you walked into the Shelbourne on your first day, all fresh-faced, beady-eyed, excited, I thought to myself, here is someone who wants to be here…’
‘I did, I really did. And you were a great mentor.’
‘Well, we were a good team, were we not? But there is something bothering you, isn’t there? What is it?’ He placed the cup in front of her, the tea poured to exactly 2 mm from the rim, just as he always instructed.
Rosie sighed. ‘I feel lost, as though life is happening to everyone and not me. I feel trapped.’
Rosie looked at Bertie, waiting for him to tell her she was being ridiculous and of course she wasn’t trapped and what about people who actually were stuck, those in loveless, controlling relationships, or in countries with no human rights or people in actual prison.
But Bertie gazed at her, taking in what she was saying.
‘I wanted to take on the hotel… for Mum,’ she went on, encouraged by his kind and solicitous interest. ‘And I love the hotel, don’t me wrong.
I love everything about it. And you and Maureen and Grace, you’ve made it a lovely place to be…
it’s just that it’s too much for me. I’ll miss Dad and Nessa, and of course the twins, like mad.
But I just feel as though I need to try something new. There has to be more to my life.’
‘You’re right,’ Bertie said gently. ‘There is more to life.’
‘But I don’t have the more. While I was busy with the hotel, I forgot the more bit.
So everyone I know has a hinterland. And I have the hotel.
And at the end of the day, it’s only a hotel.
It’s not a relationship. Or a hobby. It’s a business that was someone else’s passion which I took on, because I didn’t want her passion to die.
’ Rosie paused, clearing her throat. ‘Like she did.’
Bertie smiled at her. ‘And you succeeded brilliantly. You should be proud of yourself. But I think what you’re saying is that you forgot yourself in all of this. And you’re not happy, am I right?’
Rosie shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, and then nodded. ‘I mean yes, you’re right, and no, I’m not happy. I mean, I’m happy… enough. But not fulfilled. I am starting to panic that this is all I will ever do.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, presently, placing his cup on the saucer and surveying her. ‘So you have to get out there?’
‘You’re saying I need a hobby? Like sea swimming?’
‘That’s part of it. Except not sea swimming.’ Bertie shivered. ‘It’s far too cold.’
‘We went down earlier… it was lovely.’
‘So do more of it. But that’s not what I am saying.
You don’t want pastimes, things to make life and time go past more quickly.
One needs passions and preoccupations to be happy, you need your brain to be alive, you need it to fizz and to dance.
You need something to think about – me with my orchids, Maureen with the grandchild, Lucinda and Pedro…
something… to love, to think about, to care about…
My grandmother used to say, Albert, dear, never stop thinking because then you stop feeling and then you stop living.
She taught me about being alive to life. ’
Rosie nodded. Passions and preoccupations. She used to have them once. And now she had whittled her life down to just one preoccupation – the hotel – and she wasn’t sure if she was passionate about it any longer. It had been her mother’s passion, never hers.
Bertie delicately sipped from his cup, his little finger pointing up. ‘Would this crise de nerfs have anything to do with a certain Patrick Power? Could he be a passion that is preoccupying you?’
‘No…’ She shook her head, and then changed her mind, a nod and a shake. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What would your mother say to you? Would she want you feeling trapped?’ He paused. ‘Where is Patrick now?’
‘He’s gone. It’s like… nothing’s changed but nothing’s right. All I know is that I’m all wrong.’
Bertie calmly put down his cup again. ‘My dear Rosie. What on earth are you waiting for? Go and put it all right.’
Rosie nodded. Yes! That was exactly what she was going to do. But before she could focus on her own passions and preoccupations, she needed to talk to Nessa.