The O’Hara Affair (50 page)

‘Thank you. And you are the most dynamic man I’ve ever had,’ said Fleur, reaching down a hand and cupping his crotch, thinking that, actually, maybe he
could
start again. Should she encourage him? No. She shouldn’t be greedy. She’d promised herself she’d go out with a bang, and that’s exactly what she had done. She’d had the best no-frills sex of her life right here on her kitchen floor, and if they decided now to go to the bedroom or the bathroom there would be nothing spontaneous about the act. Besides, she’d had her teeny tiny taste of him, and it was now time for her to send him off in pursuit of Bethany.

She’d cook for him, then bid him adieu.

‘Let me take over,’ she said, moving to the stove. ‘I don’t want any more burned saucepans.’

She took another pan from the cupboard and set about making a roux. ‘Did I see you on the beach at Díseart the other evening?’ she remarked, casually.

He had the good grace to look a little guilty. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I was worried for a while about Bethany O’Brien staying down there on her own. I really admire her. I’m not sure that I’d have had the guts for that kind of solitude when I was her age.’

‘She loves it. She’s been going there since she was a child. I suppose when you’ve been visiting a place all your life it can hold no fear for you.’ He poured more wine. ‘It must get lonely here for you, in the winter. Bethany tells me Lissamore is like a ghost town then.’

‘It is, but I rather love it. In winter in Coolnamara you get the most astonishing weather – big blue beautiful skies and crystalline air. There’s nothing like wrapping yourself up to go walking on the beach, and then come back to a
blazing fire. I usually treat myself to a holiday somewhere exotic after Christmas. I’m thinking of Belize this year.’ It would, Fleur realized, be the first time she’d taken a holiday on her own. Last year she had gone to Barbados with Corban, and in previous years she had usually been accompanied by her dish of the day. It would be nice to go off on her own for a change, footloose and fancy free. It would be nice not to have to take someone else’s agenda into account when deciding which sights to see or where to eat or what time to get up in the morning. It would be nice to spend some time enjoying the pleasure of her own company.

‘I spent time in Belize,’ said Jake. ‘Best beer in the world.’

Fleur smiled. Beer!
Quel garcon!

‘Oh – I heard from Daisy today,’ he added. ‘She wrote on my Facebook wall.’

‘Oh, good! There will be a treat in store for me when I log on later.’

And Jake and Fleur continued to chat idly as she prepared the pasta. They talked about holidays they’d had, and they talked about Jake’s ambition to direct his own film one day, and they talked about whether or not Fleur should get herself another dog, and when they sat down to eat Jake said, ‘Wow! This is even better than my mother makes!’ and Fleur smiled and said that the secret was to add grated mozzarella and Gruyère to the cheddar. And when Jake suggested that they open another bottle of wine, Fleur said no.

His face fell. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘Because if we have another bottle of wine, we might end up on the kitchen floor again,’ said Fleur, ‘and I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘You don’t?’

Fleur shook her head. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret
for an instant what happened. But it was a one-off, Jake, and it’s not going to happen again.’

His downcast expression gave him the look of a small boy deprived of sweets, and made Fleur want to laugh.

‘Now. It is time for you to go,’ she told him. ‘I have an early start in the morning and I want to check out Facebook before I go to bed to see if my beautiful niece has sent me a message.’

‘What’ll you put as your status?’ he asked.

Fleur thought about it, then gave him a minxy smile. ‘Extremely satisfied,’ she said.

‘I’m glad to know it.’ He smiled back, before leaning across the table and kissing her lightly on the lips, and then they both got to their feet.

‘Oh, look,’ said Fleur. ‘The rain’s stopped. Let me just nip out onto the deck and fetch that photograph I was telling you about.’

As Fleur took the photograph down from its pride of place on Babette’s shrine, she saw Bethany leaving Ryan’s corner shop. She was peeling the wrapper from an ice cream, and heading towards the place on the sea wall where she liked to sit. Fleur went back into the kitchen.

‘Here’s my Babette! Isn’t she gorgeous,’ she said, waving the picture under Jake’s nose.

‘Yes.’ Jake tried to take the photograph from Fleur so that he could examine it more closely, but she set it face down on the kitchen table. ‘Now! Off you go,’ she said, briskly leading the way to the front door.

‘Um. OK.’

As he followed her, looking a little baffled, Jake reached for the smallest of a series of hand-carved Russian nesting dolls that stood on the console table in the hall. ‘A matryoshka doll!’ he said. ‘I remember my sister had—’

‘Did she? Keep it,’ Fleur said, ushering him out.

‘But I can’t—’

‘Keep it as a souvenir of your – erm – sister,’ she commanded, holding the door open for him.

‘Oh. Well, thanks,’ said Jake, sliding the tiny doll into his pocket.

On the threshold, he tried to draw her into an embrace, but Fleur just allowed him a perfunctory kiss on the lips. ‘Be off with you!’ she scolded. ‘I’ve a list of things to do before I go to bed.’

‘Oh. I thought you were just going to have a leisurely perusal of Facebook.’

‘No. I’ve to water the plants on the deck and have a bath.’

‘But I thought you’d just had—’

‘
Au revoir
,
chéri
.’ And Fleur shut the door on Jake’s surprised face.

Back in the kitchen, she opened another bottle of red and poured herself a glass. Then she strolled back onto the deck, where her plants were all dripping and glistening with rain. There was a smell of moist earth in the air, and a rainbow told her a pot of gold was hidden somewhere near Díseart. She reinstated Babette on her shrine, then turned to survey her view.

Down near the harbour, Jake had joined Bethany on the sea wall: she was swinging her legs, he was sitting astride it. He was laughing at something she’d said, and she had let her hair down from its scrunchy, and was shaking it back over her shoulders. She held out the ice cream to him so that he could have a taste, and then Jake put his hand in his pocket, withdrew it and handed something to Bethany. The squeak of delight she gave made Fleur smile: she just hoped that Bethany hadn’t spotted the matryoshka dolls the night she had stayed over.

But when Bethany leaned over to give Jake a spontaneous kiss on the cheek, Fleur’s guess was that she hadn’t.

Dervla and Christian were clearing out Daphne’s house.

‘What’ll we do with this thing?’ asked Dervla, looking disconsolately at Daphne’s electric bath chair, which they’d just dismantled.

‘Sell it on eBay.’

‘A second-hand bath chair!’ Dervla turned aghast eyes on Christian.

‘That was a joke,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to get a skip. There’s loads of stuff here that can’t even be recycled.’

‘You’re right. Look at this.’ Dervla turned back to the medicine chest she’d been about to sort out, and swept the entire contents into a bin bag. These were followed by loofahs, sponges, flannels, baby wipes, nail scissors and disposable gloves.

‘What do you think we’ll be like, Christian, when we get to Daphne’s age?’ mused Dervla. ‘I always thought that we’d wear Boden clothes and go on Saga cruises and play golf, but now I’m not so sure.’

‘Why? You think we might end up in nappies too?’

‘Nappies might be preferable to Bottom Buddies.’

‘What are Bottom Buddies?’

Dervla explained.

‘Jesus!’ said Christian. ‘Just think of the kind of rows we’d
have if we got confused. “That’s my Bottom Buddy!” “No – that’s
my
Bottom Buddy. Yours is the green one, mine is the purple.” “No, yours is the purple
tooth
brush, not the purple Buddy.”’

‘And any time we went away, we’d have to pack our Buddies,’ said Dervla. ‘Could you imagine security saying: “What is this suspicious object?” “Oh – it’s just my Bottom Buddy.” “Well, I’m afraid you can’t take it in your hand luggage. It could be classified as a dangerous weapon.”’

‘“But it’s a long-haul flight!”’ put in Christian. ‘“What’ll I do between here and New Zealand?”’

Dervla started to laugh until the tears ran down her cheeks. ‘Oh, God! Do you think we’ll die before we get old, Christian?’

‘We’ll be grand,’ he told her. ‘We’ll keep our brains active by eating lots of fish and doing Sudoku. And we’ll exercise on the Wii Fit.’

‘And Kitty will look after us, like Nana in
Peter Pan
.’

‘And it’s probably just as well that we’re going to down-size here, because you won’t be able to manage the stairs to your turret room.’

‘I could put a stairlift in,’ suggested Dervla.

‘I don’t think they make them for spiral staircases.’

‘They’ll have the technology by then.’

‘But they still won’t make them in case the old person gets dizzy going up and down the spiral staircase and falls off and sues.’

Dervla fired a rubber bath mat into the bin bag.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Let’s stop. I need fresh air.’

‘And I know just the place to get it,’ said Christian.

‘The beach? Or the bog road?’

‘Neither,’ said Christian. ‘Let’s go to Coolnamara Castle and walk around the lake, and then have dinner.’

‘But it’s expensive!’

‘I don’t care,’ said Christian. ‘We deserve a treat. And anyway, it’s on Daphne. I found an envelope full of petty cash in the drawer of her bureau. We might even run to a bottle of champagne and an overnight stay in a lake-view room.’

‘Oh, Christian!’ Dervla flung her arms around her husband’s neck. ‘I would love that more than anything! It’s so long since we had a treat! And I can dress up!’

Dervla dressed with care. She chose a timeless Betty Jackson LBD and heels that had cost her a fortune a decade ago and had now come back into fashion. Her underpinnings were chosen with equal care – lingerie that Christian had bought her for her last birthday. She slid on own-brand stockings, and decided that they were easily as sexy as the Wolfords for which she had used to fork out silly money. And before they left, she made sure that she’d packed her walking boots and socks and a raincoat.

They walked for miles through the woodlands surrounding Coolnamara Castle, around lakes and over bridges and beside rivers. And as they walked, they discussed their future together. Moving into the cottage made sense. Dervla outlined the practicalities behind renting out the Old Rectory. It would be a gamble. It was unsustainable as a holiday rental, and too remote for a family to live there. It was, however, perfect for a residential home.

‘You mean for old people?’ said Christian, apprehensively.

‘Yes.’

‘But you had such a hard time looking after my mother.’

‘I won’t be doing the hands-on caring,’ said Dervla. ‘I know quite well that that’s not my vocation. But I’m thinking pragmatically. How lucky were we – in retrospect – that we
weren’t able to afford to furnish the place. We can start from scratch. If we set up a business that caters for the elderly – the most booming demographic in Europe – we’re bound to get a loan. And if not, I’ll sell my apartment in Galway for whatever I can get and be done with it. We’ll install all the latest high-tech equipment—’

‘Bottom Buddies?’

‘They go without saying. And we’ll have no problem hiring staff, and we’ll get a great chef, who won’t just cook cabbage and sausages and mashed potato and old people pap. You see, Christian, my idea is that there are hundreds of people out there who don’t want to be stuck in residential care plagued by animators or non-stop
Sky News
or singsongs. I’m convinced that there’s a market for old people who may not be physically capable of doing much, but who are still mentally alert enough to want to watch art house films instead of
Teletubbies
or
Judge Judy
, or read the broadsheets instead of
Now!
magazine, or listen to Proust or PD James on audio book.’

‘You could be right. In one of the homes I went into, an old lady was looking crossways at an article in some magazine with the headline “I Slept with My Brother, then Shot Him”. And Lyric FM was playing – but it wasn’t soothing, classical stuff. It was the movie theme programme, and the movie theme in question was
The Terminator
.’

‘You see! There’s so little thought put into what old people really want. I mean, how many of them are going to want to eat crap and drink orange squash and listen to movie theme tunes? They should have their own stuff downloaded onto iPods so they can listen to Chuck Berry or the Beatles or Beethoven or whatever they want. We could provide chess sets in the drawing room, and backgammon and Scrabble and Wii. We could have wine tasting evenings – you could do those – or poetry readings or music appreciation classes.’

‘The people I saw in the homes I visited didn’t look as if they could appreciate anything very much,’ Christian pointed out.

‘But that’s exactly why they turn into zombies! They don’t get enough stimulation! Think about it. We could have Wifi, so that the residents can keep up to spin with friends and family on Facebook, or talk to their grandchildren in Australia via Skype and webcam. And we have our garden! Maybe the more physically able could have their own plots to tend. Maybe we could keep chickens and goats. Maybe we could allow pets!’

‘You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, I have. I’m going to approach the matron in La Paloma and ask her if she’d be interested in being headhunted. I know there’s a market out there for top-end care, and both you and I are business people who know a good idea when we see one. It’s bloody awful that both our businesses have been bashed by the recession, but the mark of a truly clever business person is the ability to forecast coming trends. And quality care for the elderly is the next big one.’