Chapter 5 #4
‘This is a great house,’ he said to Grace.
‘Yes, isn’t it? I suppose it’s very decadent of us to have two such beautiful homes when some people haven’t even one,’ she said.
‘“All property is theft” and all that,’ Brian said jauntily.
Jack bristled visibly. ‘Not this property, son,’ he said, glowering owlishly at Brian from the far end of the table. ‘I’ll dig out the deeds later and show them to you.’
‘Oh no, I didn’t mean—’
‘Dad built this house himself,’ Rachel said to Brian reprovingly.
‘You know that’s not what he meant,’ Kate said crossly. ‘It’s just an expression.’
She looked at Will, who was opposite her. ‘Thanks for giving me a plug at the wedding, by the way.’
‘Oh, no problem. Did you get any work out of it?’
‘Yes – a couple of dinner parties and the charity bash I catered last night.’
‘Brilliant! So, you’re pretty busy, then?’ Will said cheerfully, hoping she’d be unable to accept the job in Tuscany.
‘Well, nothing long-term, but at least I won’t have to bonk the landlord.’
Hearing this, Brian said, ‘The Haven has an opening for a cook over the summer – it’d be three months’ steady work.’ The Haven was the centre where Kate had met Brian.
‘They don’t pay much, though,’ she said. ‘I can’t afford to work there.’
‘But you’d get your accommodation and meals thrown in,’ Brian pointed out, ‘and a free workshop.’
‘I don’t need accommodation,’ Kate protested. ‘I have my flat.’ And I don’t need a bloody workshop, she thought. ‘Besides, it’s in Galway.’
Will was aware that Grace was gazing at him expectantly. This was his cue to ask Kate to work for him in Tuscany. ‘If you don’t want to go to Galway for a job,’ he began hesitantly, ‘I don’t suppose you’d consider Tuscany?’
‘Tuscany?’
‘They’re hardly the same thing,’ Grace put in.
‘Yes,’ Will answered Kate. ‘I’m taking the band to Tuscany for the summer to work on the new album. We’ll be staying in a villa just outside Florence. It’ll be a chance for the guys to chill out and get some work done at the same time.
‘Anyway, we’ll need a cook,’ he continued, ‘and I was wondering if you’d be interested. It’ll be pretty relaxed, just me and the guys most of the time. There’ll be a few house guests in the last couple of weeks, but, up until then, it’s strictly a working holiday.’
‘Wow!’ Kate was unable to contain her excitement, her eyes sparkling. ‘It’s an amazing offer. How long are you going to be away?’
‘A couple of months. I’d understand if you don’t want to be away from Dublin for that long.’
‘Well, I have just got back,’ Kate said, glancing at Brian and trying to stop herself automatically jumping at the chance to spend the summer in a villa in Tuscany cooking for one of the most famous bands in the world…
and Will. She was engaged now, she reminded herself. She had to consider Brian’s feelings.
‘Nonsense, Kate,’ Grace said briskly. ‘You can’t miss out on an opportunity like this.’
‘They don’t come along every day,’ Conor advised her. ‘It would open lots of doors for you.’
‘I don’t know…’ Kate procrastinated. She could sense that Brian, beside her, seemed rather put out.
‘Well, think about it,’ Will told her.
‘What is there to think about?’ Grace said imperiously. ‘It’s the chance of a lifetime, Kate.’
‘I’d pay well over the odds,’ Will added, sensing the silent power struggle that was going on between Kate and her boyfriend and suddenly wanting her to say yes.
‘That’s settled, then,’ Grace said.
‘Nothing’s settled, Mum,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll have to discuss it with Brian.’
‘And there’s the job at the Haven,’ Brian reminded her.
‘Kate, you can’t work for nothing just to keep yourself from starving like some… hobo!’ her mother declared. ‘Especially when Will has offered you this fantastic job – well-paid and working for really important people.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Kate said firmly.
With Kate’s next career move sorted out to his satisfaction, Conor was haranguing Brian about his work.
‘What you do really taps into the Zeitgeist right now,’ he was saying.
‘The whole new-age thing is huge. Look at Deepak Chopra or Louise Hay – they do sell-out gigs at big venues. But you want to strike now while the iron’s hot, before the bottom falls out of the whole thing. ’
‘I hope there’ll always be people willing to grow,’ Brian countered.
‘Well, hoping’s not enough,’ Conor said bossily. ‘You want to get yourself firmly established before people have moved on to the next big thing and you find yourself left behind. How do you do in terms of bums on seats?’
‘Well, I don’t really…’
‘You’ve got to quantify,’ Conor told him sternly. ‘Got any merchandise?’
‘Merchandise?’
‘Self-help books, inspirational CDs, stuff like that?’
‘Oh, um, no,’ Brian stuttered, knocked off balance by Conor’s rapid-fire interrogation.
‘Well, you’d want to get cracking,’ Conor advised him. ‘Don’t let the grass grow under your feet. Do you have an agent?’
‘An agent?’ Brian looked confused.
‘Yes, someone to help you get your message out there, book you onto talk shows, that sort of thing. You can bet Louise Hay has an agent.’
‘Well, I’m sure she has, but—’
‘And Deepak Chopra.’
‘Probably,’ Brian said sourly. ‘Wherever there’s talent, you’ll usually find a whole rake of people leeching off it, usually ripping people off. The music industry is rife with it, isn’t it?’ he said conversationally to Will. ‘Every other week some musician’s suing their manager for embezzlement.’
Will looked at him with a mixture of hostility and amusement.
‘I hope you’re not suggesting that Will—’ Grace was outraged.
‘Oh no, I was just speaking generally,’ Brian said innocently. ‘No offence,’ he said to Will.
‘None taken.’ Will smiled pleasantly. No offence my arse, you little shit.
Grace continued to glower at him. ‘Will takes extremely good care of those boys. God knows where they’d be without him.’
‘In jail, probably, in Owen’s case,’ Conor said.
‘Or up the Lady Mayoress of Cork,’ Kate muttered, and Will laughed.
‘You need to focus on something that’ll capture the public imagination,’ Conor continued.
‘Doesn’t matter what it is – yogic flying, finding yourself through pole-dancing, whatever.
The madder the better. If you could get a few big stars interested, you’d be laughing.
Will might be able to help you with that – he knows lots of people. ’
‘I really don’t think—’
‘Is there any way you could tie in a diet?’ Conor asked.
‘Well, not really. I follow a wholefood vegetarian regime but—’
‘Have you lost any weight since you started?’ Conor pounced on this enthusiastically. ‘Have you got any “before” pictures of yourself as a fatso?’
‘Er… no, I’ve always been pretty much the same weight.’
‘Ah, pity! The number-one way to sell anything, these days, is to connect it to weight loss. Look at Tessa Bond – lost a few pounds and now she’s reinvented herself as a diet and fitness guru.’
‘Is Tessa as much of a pain in the hole in real life as she always seems?’ Josie asked Will, in her thick Galway accent.
‘Oh God, no, not at all,’ Will said.
‘Really?’
‘She’s twice as awful in real life,’ Will drawled.
Josie giggled. Sam and Jake were giggling, too, thrilled that Josie had said ‘pain in the hole’. She was always using forbidden expressions.
‘You’ve got to admit, she does look amazing now,’ Rachel conceded. She had just been reading a magazine interview in which Tessa had talked up her new book.
‘Do you think so?’ Will asked. ‘I think she’s too thin.’
‘Oh, we all know how you feel about curvy girls, don’t we, Will?’ Grace winked at him.
‘You’d hardly call Tina curvy,’ Rachel scoffed.
‘Not without risking a black eye,’ Will said.
‘Don’t you think Kate’s looking wonderful?’ Grace asked him.
‘Yes, I think she looks great,’ Will said.
Kate blushed, wishing her mother wouldn’t draw attention to her.
Grace sat back contentedly, surveying the table.
‘It’s so lovely to have all my family around me.’ She twinkled at each member in turn.
‘Except Lorcan,’ Kate said.
‘Yes, it’s a shame he couldn’t make it,’ Grace said, with an edge to her voice, as if she was annoyed with him.
‘And, of course, it’s lovely to have Brian and Carmen here too.
And Will.’ She turned to him. ‘You know we regard you as one of the family. In fact, there was a time when I thought—’ She broke off, with a wistful smile. ‘Well, a mother can dream.’
Oh God, who’s she being? Kate thought, throwing a panicked look at her mother.
Please not the mad old bint from Long Day’s Journey into Night.
Or one of Tennessee Williams’ nutjobs. If only Lorcan was there.
He knew Grace’s repertoire better than anyone and always won when they played ‘Name That Character’.
‘You thought what?’ Helen asked innocently.
‘Well,’ Grace smiled coyly, ‘there was a time I thought Will might actually be family,’ she said, throwing significant looks at Will and Kate.
‘You mean you thought… Kate and Will?’
‘Well, they were sort of childhood sweethearts, Helen.’
‘Really?’ Brian said.
‘We were not, Mum!’ What the hell had gotten into her?
‘Well, no,’ Grace conceded. ‘I mean you weren’t exactly children.’
‘I never knew!’ Helen beamed.
‘That’s because it’s not true. Mum—’
‘Oh, I’m sure Brian won’t mind me saying this, darling. No doubt he has a past himself, haven’t you, Brian?’ She smiled at him encouragingly.
A past!
‘They were inseparable,’ she said to Helen. ‘When we came down here I wouldn’t see them from one end of the day to the other. They’d be off cavorting on the beach together—’
Cavorting! Kate didn’t dare look at Will but she glanced at Brian: he was scowling at her.
‘Have you been speaking to Lorcan, Grace?’ Will interrupted. ‘This production of Streetcar seems to be causing him problems.’
‘Yes,’ Grace said, apparently a little startled by the sudden change of topic. ‘I can’t understand why these producers will insist on casting their wives, no matter how unsuitable they are.’