The O’Hara Affair (14 page)

Decluttering must be your number one priority. When it comes to decluttering, be ruthless. Declutter, declutter – then declutter some more.

Hell. This was useless. Dervla was bored by her own book, and if
she
was bored by it, it stood to reason that the reader would be bored by it too. She’d looked at the word ‘declutter’ for so long that it no longer made sense. Was it even a word? Should there be a hyphen between the ‘de’ and the ‘c’? Should she put ‘unclutter’ instead? She was utterly clutterly clueless. She wished she hadn’t accepted the commission to write the damned thing. But the contract was signed and the advance spent, and she could hardly back out now.

She stood up from her desk and moved over to the window, easing herself into a stretch and trying to think positively. Fleur was a great one for positive thinking. Dervla remembered how, way back when she and Fleur had first met, Fleur had shrugged off the break-up of her marriage with the words: ‘What can I say? The Mountie always gets his man. In this case, it just happened to be my husband.’ It had been a fantastic icebreaker, and Dervla and Fleur had kept in touch ever since. Now that Dervla had moved back
to Lissamore, she was glad to have Fleur to turn to if she needed guidance. Río couldn’t be relied upon for objective advice, because Río was family
.

So. What were Dervla’s alternatives –
faute de mieux
, as Fleur would say? If Dervla hadn’t accepted the commission, what would she be doing with her life instead? Everybody knew that writing was a solitary occupation, but she’d be even more solitary, rattling around in the Old Rectory with nothing to keep her busy. Christian was at work most of the day, so she had no company apart from the dog, and there was only so much dog-walking a gal could do. The decorators were finished, so there was no home-decorating to be done, and – because there was so little furniture – there wasn’t even much housework to contend with. Because Dervla’s passion for property had been so all-consuming in her auctioneering days, she had few hobbies or pastimes. Her gardening knowledge was rudimentary, and she didn’t enjoy cooking much – Christian had more culinary nous than she. How could she – a woman in her prime – be such a waste of space?

Hel
lo
? Wasn’t she supposed to be thinking positively? Maybe she should put in a call to Fleur – Ms Positivity Personified – or better still, meet up with her friend face to face.

Moving back to her desk, she was just about to reach for her phone, when it rang.

‘Christian!’ she said, into the receiver. ‘Thank God! I’m having a horrible day, and I need someone lovely to talk to!’

‘I’m afraid this won’t be a lovey-dovey call, sweetheart. I need to ask you a favour.’

‘What might that be?’

‘Can you come and take over in the shop for an hour or so? Something’s come up that I need to take care of, and I can’t man the till.’

‘Isn’t Lisa there to do that?’

‘Business was slack, so I gave her the afternoon off.’

‘Sure I’ll do it. I’d be delighted to have an excuse to skive off. But you do know that my wine savvy doesn’t extend much beyond
The Bluffer’s Guide
.’

‘No worries. You’ll be lucky to shift a bottle of house plonk the way things are going today.’

‘So. What’s come up?’

‘Julian’s broken his pelvis, and won’t be able to do the tasting tour.’ Julian was Christian’s partner, who ran the Dublin branch of the business.

‘Oh, shit! How did that happen?’

‘He was in a prang with an SUV.’

‘Oh, how horrible! Poor Julian. I’ve
always
said those things should be banned. I’m going to write to the Minister for Transport.’

‘Atta girl!’

‘How long’ll he be out of commission?’

‘Fucking forever. There’s no way he’ll be accompanying our oenophile friends to France next month.’

‘Oh, Christian – what a bummer.’

‘I’m going to have to spend the afternoon confirming reservations. If enough people haven’t confirmed, we can refund those who have already paid, and cancel.’

‘But isn’t that wine-tasting tour one of your biggest earners?’

‘Sadly, yes. And we’re going to lose a lot of goodwill as well as money.’

‘Hey – hang on. What’s there to stop you going instead of Julian?’

‘Have you forgotten what else is happening at the end of next month, Dervla?’

‘What?’

‘Nemia’s on two weeks’ leave.’

‘Oh, Christ. I
had
forgotten.’

‘I’m kicking myself now that I didn’t take Josephine up on her offer.’

Josephine – Christian’s sister – had volunteered to come over from Australia to help out while Nemia was away, but Christian had assured her that it wasn’t necessary, that they’d be bound to find someone to cover. However, their efforts to find a replacement carer had been unsuccessful. The local girl who stood in for Nemia on her weekends off was employed elsewhere during the week, and so far only one person had responded to the ad they’d put up in the local shop. Christian and Dervla had agreed that it would not be appropriate to have a twenty-something youth in a Radiohead T-shirt looking after his mother, and had decided to do the caring themselves, with Christian taking time off work and allowing his assistant Lisa to run the shop.

‘Look – don’t worry about it, Christian,’ Dervla told him. ‘We’ll work something out. I’ll do some homework on the internet – we can always get professionals in for a couple of weeks. Or…’ She allowed a silence to fall.

Christian picked up on his cue. ‘I know what you’re going to say, love. You’re going to say that we could put Mum in a home.’

‘Christian – it’s just for two weeks!’

‘I couldn’t do it to her, Dervla. I just couldn’t.’

‘They say some of them are really nice now—’

‘Dervla. This is my
mother
we’re talking about.’

‘Oh, Christian, please let’s not row about this. Please let’s just have a look.’

On the other end of the phone, she heard him sigh. ‘OK. Have a look online and if we can’t find someone to move in we’ll pay a couple of them a visit.’

‘I’ll do that. What time do you want me down there?’

‘Around four o’clock?’

‘Four o’clock’s fine. I might head into Lissamore afterwards and persuade Fleur to go for a drink.’

‘Or a walk. It’s a beautiful day.’

‘Good idea. A walk, then a drink. I’ll see you at four, love.’

‘Thanks, Dervla.’

Dervla felt a little shaky as she put the phone down. Maybe she should ask Nemia if she could postpone her holiday? But she had booked a fortnight in Malta with a crowd of girlfriends, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask. And as for cancelling the wine-tasting tour? That would be disastrous. Christian was right: aside from the monetary loss, it would mean that people might decide to take their custom elsewhere. Bacchante Wines had a loyal clientele, many of whom looked on the annual French tour as a kind of pilgrimage. They’d be deeply disappointed if it were cancelled. And, anyway, what if—

Aiiee! Here she was, painting a worst-case scenario. Positive, positive – be positive! Emulate Fleur! They’d be bound to find somebody to take care of Daphne. Dervla took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself. Accessing her internet browser, she typed ‘professional care workers for elderly’ into the Google search bar.

The first few sites she visited extolled the virtues of their care givers, but were coy about their rates. There were, instead, lots of references to ‘dignity’, ‘individuals’, and ‘community’. Finally Dervla found an agency that boasted a tariff page. Sweet Jesus! Twenty-four/seven care
started
at €1250 per week (dementia and Alzheimer’s sufferers extra: to be negotiated on assessment). Nemia – at €650 – cost just under half that. Oh – this was barking. There had to be a cheaper alternative.

Maybe a home would be cheaper? If so, then surely
Christian couldn’t object to his mother spending just two weeks in residential care. Rather than trawl through the internet, Dervla decided that the
Golden Pages
might be easier to pinpoint the likely-looking ones. She reached for the directory, and went to Nursing Homes.

There were hundreds listed. Some could have been holiday resorts, to go by the descriptions, with ‘Cuisine of High Standard’, ‘En Suite Luxury’, ‘Dedicated Activities Coordinators’, ‘Breathtaking Views’, ‘Hair Salons’, ‘Bespoke Furniture’, ‘Ayurvedic Massage’, ‘Hydrotherapy Pools’ and ‘Sun Lounges’. Dervla wouldn’t mind taking time off somewhere like that! But again, when she visited the relevant websites, price was an issue.

Money, money, money! How expensive it was to grow old. How scary, how stressful, how – Oh! – she couldn’t hack this right now. What she really wanted was a walk by the river, a blast of ozone-enriched air, a bucketload of endorphins, and someone to talk to. She ran down the stairs and called for Kitty.

The Dalmatian came lolloping from the kitchen, knocking into the umbrella stand. For such an ostensibly elegant dog, Kitty was incredibly clumsy. Dervla often wished that she had a videocam handy, so that she could send footage off to
You’ve Been Framed
– she had once seen the dog bang into a plate-glass window and apologize to her own reflection.

‘Come, Kit!’ she said now. ‘We’re off for a walk.’

They set off down the driveway of the Old Rectory, Kitty running ahead, checking to see that there was nothing sinister around the next bend, then coming back to report that all was well. And all
was
well – Christian had been right when he’d made the observation earlier that it was a beautiful day. How lucky was Dervla to be alive and well and living in the
most beautiful corner of the west of Ireland! She should count her blessings! And yet, and yet…

‘The thing is, Kit,’ she told the dog, ‘that I love your master very, very much, but I don’t love my life right now. And of course I wouldn’t want to go back to my estate-agent days – even though I was a bloody good estate agent – because I’m not the person I used to be. But I’m not the person I thought I might become, living a Cath Kidston lifestyle in the Old Rectory, because let’s face it, nobody lives like that except in catalogues. And I’ve never had money worries before, and I’m frightened. And I wonder if everybody is frightened, or if – oh! Oh my God – Daphne, what are you doing?’

Daphne was sitting on the edge of the lawn, under a rhododendron bush. She had taken off her cardigan and blouse, and her vest was ruched up around her neck.

‘I was too hot,’ she told Dervla. ‘So I’m taking off my vest. Help me, will you?’

‘Oh – of course.’ Dervla went over to Daphne, and helped her pull her vest over her head, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to be doing on a sunny June afternoon, with a skylark singing madly overhead, and sheep baaing in the field next door. ‘It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?’ she remarked conversationally.

‘Yes,’ said Daphne, from under her vest. ‘And I shouldn’t be wearing a vest on a day like this. I wonder what made me put it on? What a silly old fool I am.’

Dervla tugged, and the vest came free. She rolled it up, and handed Daphne her blouse.

‘Would you mind helping me on with this?’ Daphne asked. ‘I seem to be all fingers and thumbs today.’

Dervla took Daphne’s left hand and slid it into the cerise silk sleeve. ‘What a beautiful blouse,’ she said, feeling like Alice in Wonderland as she did up Daphne’s buttons.

‘Thank you. Oh, look! A spotty dog. The spottiest dog you ever did see. That’s from the
Woodentops
, you know.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Dervla, even though she hadn’t a clue what Daphne was talking about.

Kitty was dancing around her heels, smiling at Daphne. ‘Here we go looby loo,’ said Daphne. ‘Here we go looby lay. Can you do my bow for me? It’s called a pussy cat bow, you know.’

‘Of course.’ As she put the finishing touches to Daphne’s pussy cat bow, the sound of running footsteps made Dervla look up.

‘Daphne! Thank God!’ Nemia came careering around the corner like Road Runner, naked but for a bath towel and trainers. She doubled over, clutching her hands to her chest. ‘Oh, dear God,’ she managed. ‘Oh dear God – I thought you might have fallen in the river.’

Looking around, Dervla wondered if this surreal moment would end up on Google Earth, and if so, how could it be explained?

‘What happened?’ she asked, when Nemia got her breath back.

‘I was taking a shower,’ Nemia told her, ‘and when I got out, I saw that the front door was open.’

‘She escaped?’ said Dervla, realizing even as she said the words that it was a most politically incorrect observation.

‘Yes,’ said Nemia, who was probably too distraught to notice that it was equally politically incorrect of her to concur. ‘I forgot to deadlock the door. Thank God you found her. Daphne!’ she said, turning to her charge. ‘You silly billy! What are you doing, sitting under a bush?’

‘I went for a walk,’ said Daphne. ‘And because I was far too hot, I decided to take my vest off. I think that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, don’t you? It’s not as if there was anybody around to see me.’

‘You’re right. It’s far too hot to be wearing a vest. I shouldn’t have put it on you this morning.’ Nemia held out a hand to Daphne, who clutched it like a child holding on to Mummy. ‘Come on, darling, let’s get you home.’

‘Home?’

‘Yes. There’s egg salad for lunch, and then you can watch David Attenborough or Monty Don before we go off on our jaunt.’

‘Not the
Woodentops
? That was a joke, you know.’

‘Of course it was. Hup, hup, and away!’ Nemia sang as she hoisted Daphne to her feet.

Dervla looked down at the vest she was holding and thought she was going mad.

‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am,’ Nemia said, stooping to brush grass cuttings off Daphne’s skirt. ‘I hope it’s not a firing offence?’

‘God, no,’ said Dervla. ‘It was a mistake anyone could have made.’

Nemia straightened up, and took Daphne’s arm. ‘Would you like to join us for lunch, Dervla?’