The O’Hara Affair (26 page)

‘Hi, Audrey. Beautiful day, isn’t it?’ said Fleur, as she lobbed a bottle into the ‘green glass’ bin. They’d got through rather a lot of wine last night, and it had been good to hear the sound of their laughter competing with the jangling of halyards against masts in the marina. ‘Did you get the keys I left for you in Ryan’s?’

‘I did, thanks, Fleur. In fact, I’m just after cleaning up Mr O’Hara’s place. Here – I’ll give you the keys back.’ She rummaged in her bag and produced an envelope.

Fleur was tempted to ask in what state Mr O’Hara’s place had been left, but then realized that it might look as if she was snooping for info on Corban. Audrey wasn’t to know that the penthouse was being used for illicit trysts – at least, she
hoped
Audrey didn’t know.

‘Had you a party yourself?’ Audrey’s gimlet eyes were clearly calculating the number of bottles Fleur was slinging into the maw of the bin.

‘Yes. I had some friends around last night.’ Fleur moved on to the ‘drink cans only’ bin.

‘It’s good to know that there’s still fun to be had,’ said Audrey, shaking her head lugubriously. ‘I’d love it if I could afford to drink stuff like this.’

Fleur turned to see Audrey examining the label of an empty wine bottle. It read
Riondo Pink Prosecco Raboso
.

‘Ooh. Who’s been drinking pink fizz?’ asked Fleur.

‘Whoever’s been staying in Mr O’Hara’s penthouse,’ said Audrey.

Fleur found herself smiling. If the culprit was Jake Malone, she hoped he’d had a lot of fun.

After the bottle bank, Fleur dropped by Ryan’s corner shop to pick up French
Vogue
, which was on perpetual order specially for her.

‘
Bonjour
, Fleur,’ said Peggy Ryan. ‘
Comment ça va, aujourd’hui
?’ Because Peggy was doing a Linguaphone course, she loved to practise on Fleur. It was another great way of finding out the village gossip, Fleur had discovered, because the locals seldom understood what they were saying. She segued into her native tongue, glad to be able to converse
en Français
. The only time she spoke French these days was on the phone to her brother and – on occasion – to Daisy.

‘
Bonjour
, Peggy,’ she said. ‘What’s new?’

‘Well,’ said Peggy, in her Irish-accented French, ‘the latest from the film set is that Noreen Conroy found a bag of what she thinks is cocaine when she was cleaning that Nasty Harris’s trailer.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ said Fleur. ‘It might explain those mood swings she’s prone to. Río says she’s a nightmare to work with. If she’s not careful she’s going to end up as box-office poison.’

‘Noreen says so too. Apparently she insists that her sheets have a thread count of at least 250, and the door handles are to be disinfected every half-hour. And did you know that poor Pat “Hackney” Carmody was instructed to polish the upholstery in the car every time he chauffeurs her? He’s got so pissed off now that he just sprays the inside of the car with leather polish so it smells like he’s done it. And her latest food fad is for fresh lobster.’

‘I’m glad, for Seamus’s sake. Yikes – there she is now! Doesn’t Des look stupid in those shades?’

Big Des O’Shaughnessy – who worked occasionally as a bouncer in a nightclub in Galway – had been hired as Anastasia Harris’s bodyguard. It was yet another of the riders her contract had insisted on, but Corban had drawn the line at flying in her personal goon from LA. Since Big Des had got the gig, he had taken to wearing baseball caps and wraparound shades and T-shirts with slogans like ‘Live Fast, Fight Hard’, ‘Harder than Hardware’ and ‘Kicking Ass for Cash’ emblazoned upon them. Fleur wished he’d wear one with ‘I’m with this Idiot’ on it, and an arrow pointing to Nasty Harris, but she didn’t think that even big Des would be that thick.

As Nasty passed the shop, she pointed at something in the window and gave a disparaging little laugh. The object of her derision, Fleur saw, was the photograph on the front of the
Coolnamara Gazette
of the current Rose of Lissamore, who was wearing a dress that she had designed herself. ‘How parochial!’ trilled Nasty.

Fleur bridled. She’d show Nasty Harris just how ‘parochial’ people in Lissamore were.

‘
Au revoir
, Peggy,’ she said, moving towards the door.

‘
Au revoir
, Fleur!
Bonne journée!
’

Fleur was glad to see the expression on Nasty’s face change, as she got a load of the
Vogue
under Fleur’s arm. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘They stock
Vogue
in that quaint little store?’

‘But of course,’ said Fleur, with a sweet smile and in her classiest Parisienne accent. ‘French
Vogue.
But I’m afraid I got the last copy.’

And Fleur strode down the street, very glad that today she’d been channelling Coco Chanel in No 19, matelot stripes, loose trousers and a little straw cloche.

Dervla found visiting the famine village that had been built specially for
The O’Hara Affair
quite harrowing. The famine was a period of Irish history that had fascinated her when she’d studied it at school, and to see it now represented in the burned-out cottages and the wretched hovels that comprised the fictional village sent shivers along her spine. She remembered an account she’d read of starving children looking like decrepit ancients with wrinkled faces and bent bodies and dead eyes, and she wondered how these well-fed-looking extras could convey the real horror that had been inflicted on Ireland by the famine, which had killed a million people and sent another million – including Scarlett O’Hara’s father – overseas.

It was unsettling, somehow, to witness these people knocking back their skinny lattes and cans of Diet Coke while kitted out in rags and smeared with cosmetic filth. It was even odder to see starving peasants idling over Amazon Kindles and electronic notebooks and talking on their mobile phones. But then Dervla had been feeling odd and unsettled for days. The red star in her diary marking the date when Christian would fly to France and Nemia to Malta was encroaching ever nearer, and every day when she consulted her calendar, Dervla felt her stomach lurch.

She’d done a lot of thinking about her future. She’d finish the damned book asap: she’d have to, otherwise she’d be in breach of contract. But Dervla had realized that the life of a writer didn’t suit her. It was too sedentary, too insular and too lonely. She missed the buzz of buying and selling, missed the competitive element of the auctioneering game, the cut and thrust. She was restless: once the book was done and dusted, she would need to embark upon a new project.

She’d thought about getting an art gallery going in Ardmore, but two had recently gone out of business. She’d thought about maybe acquiring the plot of land next to Río’s and setting up an organic vegetable suppliers with her sister. But Río was still vacillating about the future of her smallholding. If Finn came home still full of plans for starting his scuba-diving outfit with Izzy, it wouldn’t surprise Dervla if Río surrendered the two acres to him. Well then, maybe Dervla should go into business with Finn? Scuba-diving holidays abroad might be less popular nowadays, but staycations were proving more and more attractive alternatives. Or maybe she could set up a travel business aimed at ex-pats hoping to trace their Irish roots? Maybe she could do tours of Irish movie sets, like this one? But then, maybe
The O’Hara Affair
would bomb and there would be no demand for visits to the repro famine village
.

Maybe, maybe.
There were so many maybes. But surely there was a project out there that was right for her? She hadn’t forgotten Corban’s suggested book title:
Women Entrepreneurs: Kicking Ass and Getting Results.
As soon as her stint as Daphne’s carer was up and her book was finished, she’d start kicking ass again. She’d earned her place on that short list for female entrepreneur of the year, and she damned well wouldn’t relinquish it.

Corban wasn’t available today to show them around the
set: Fleur had told her he’d been detained by business in Dublin. Instead a very good-looking assistant director called Jake took them on a grand tour of the location. He showed them the Big House, which was supposed to belong to the evil landlord played by Shane. It was a genuine castle, built by a wealthy industrialist in the nineteenth century, and Dervla longed to explore. It was the kind of joint that – if she’d had it on her books in the glory days of the Celtic Tiger – she would have adored to show off, with the proviso that only rock stars need apply. As she walked through the main entrance hall, she began to compose the sales blurb, a habit she hadn’t been able to kick.
A grand oak staircase, six feet wide with oakpanelled dado, massive newel posts and ornamental balustrade, lit by beautiful tracery windows with rich stained-glass panels in sixteen divisions, with above a handsomely decorated ceiling with corbels, moulded panels, centrepieces, bosses and openwork cornice of artistic design…

Beneath the openwork cornices of artistic design, oblivious to the beauty of the stained-glass window and impervious to the crew members going about their business around him, Shane Byrne was sitting in a canvas chair studying his script.

‘I’d introduce you,’ said Jake, ‘only I don’t want to interrupt while he’s working.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Fleur airily. ‘We’ve known Shane for years. I even shared a squat with him once.’

‘You did? I can’t imagine a classy dame like you living in a squat.’

‘Oh, I was a wild young bohemian in my time,’ said Fleur, with a baroque gesture and an entrancing smile. ‘Still am, at heart.’

‘It’s just as well Corban isn’t here,’ Dervla told Fleur later, when they were ensconced in the canteen bus, having coffee. It was crammed with extras on their tea break.
‘You’ve spent the entire afternoon flirting with that boy Jake.’

‘I can’t help but flirt with preposterously good-looking men,’ said Fleur. ‘It’s wired into my DNA. Don’t you remember that before Corban I’d never dated anyone who was older than me?’ She looked admiringly through the bus window at Jake, who was now sitting on a dry-stone wall, gazing intently at the screen of his BlackBerry. ‘It’s true, you know, what they say about young men in bed. They can keep it up for hours.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Fleur made a moue. ‘But sometimes that can get a little boring. I find that sex with Corban is more…im aginative.’

Dervla didn’t ask. She never talked about sex with anyone other than Christian, and simply couldn’t understand why those
Sex and the City
gals were so vociferous on the subject. She picked up her phone to check the time. ‘Río’s late,’ she remarked. Río had arranged to meet them for coffee on the bus.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Fleur. ‘She looked run off her feet.’

Dervla had watched her sister earlier as she’d gone about her set-dressing duties, assessing objects with that critical eye that Dervla remembered so well. In the days when Río had worked for her as a home-stager, she had been a perfectionist: today she’d prowled the set dismissing here a clock as being of the wrong period, or there a bowl of fruit for being out of season, and at one point telling off an extra who was sporting lip gloss. Most of the extras lolling around on the bus were now wearing hoodies over their rags, but there was one girl sitting at the back dressed in a ladies’ maid get-up, complete with lacy cap and apron. She was, incongruously, working away on a laptop.

‘Have you read the script of this film?’ Dervla asked Fleur, who was rummaging in her bag for something.

‘Yes.’

‘What did you think?’

‘I enjoyed the scenes set in the great houses,’ said Fleur, opening a little compact and inspecting her face. ‘And the character that Shane is playing is a real out-and-out villain. And the double bluff played on him by the O’Hara family is brilliant. But I’m not sure about the famine scenes. I prefer my movies to be escapist. There’s a lot of dead and dying and weeping and wailing in this film.’

‘The Irish famine wasn’t pretty.’

‘No famine is.’ Fleur produced a lipstick, and retouched her mouth. ‘They say that we French hit upon frogs’ legs and
escargots
as a source of nutrition during times of war and famine when there was nothing else to eat.’

Dervla looked down at the controlled mayhem below, at the sparks unrolling spools of electric cable, and the lighting men angling klieg lights, and the make-up girls powdering faces, and thought how odd it was that a multi-million-dollar movie was providing jobs for people whose ancestors may have starved to death in Coolnamara.

Oh! Why was she allowing such morbid thoughts into her head? She had to snap out of this, have some fun, do some positive thinking. Shane had invited them to join him in his trailer for a drink once work was done for the day: that would be something to look forward to. She’d change the subject.

‘It’s weird to see someone in period costume working on a laptop, isn’t it?’ she observed, nodding at the black-clad ladies’ maid.

Fleur followed the direction of Dervla’s gaze. ‘Oh! It’s Bethany,’ she said.

‘You know her?’

‘I told her fortune when I was Madame Tiresia.’

‘I wonder has it come true yet,’ joked Dervla.

‘You’d be surprised. Some aspects of it very well may have.’

‘No shit! How do you know?’

Fleur tapped her nose. ‘Intuition,’ she said.

In Second Life, Poppet and Hero were building their very own cottage. Hero had paid for it in Linden dollars: Bethany hadn’t a clue how much it might have cost him in real money, and was too embarrassed to ask. They’d furnished it with a pleasing rustic simplicity: a grandfather clock that ticked and told SL time, a table with a gingham tablecloth, two reed-bottomed chairs. There was a fire burning brightly in the grate, a kettle steaming on the hob, and a jug of marguerites on the windowsill. Upstairs wasn’t finished yet, but Bethany pictured a bed with crisp linen sheets and plump pillows and a patchwork coverlet. She hummed as she swept the floor with an old-fashioned besom. She was pleased with the way she looked today, like an olde-worlde serving wench, with a puff-sleeved blouse, full ankle-length skirt, and bare feet. She’d given herself the kind of boobs she’d have loved in real life (nothing too ostentatious – more Cheryl Cole than Jordan), and she’d grown her hair down to her waist.