Anders thought not. There
was
a pleasant American there, all right, but he hadn’t seen any sign of a romance.
‘Oh, is that Corry Salinas? I heard he was staying there,’ Matty said.
‘You did?’
‘Yes, he was trying to keep it a secret but everyone here recognised him. Frank Hanratty was only telling some daft story that he came into the golf club to buy Frank a drink because he saw his pink van outside the door. Frank had better take a hold of himself.’
Just then they heard the van arrive and John Paul ran into the house.
‘Da, the cattle had got through a fence up in the top field. They were wandering all over the road. Dr Dai was trying to get them back into the field through the gap with one of his golf clubs. He was worse than myself. And by the time we got someone to fix the fence—’ He broke off when he saw Anders. His big face lit up with pleasure.
‘Anders Almkvist! You came to see us!’ he said, delighted. ‘Da, this is my friend . . .’
‘Don’t I know all about him. We’ve had a long chat waiting for you to get back, and I know all about why the Swedes are better off with their krone than the euro,’ Matty said.
John Paul looked on, open-mouthed.
‘
And
he brought me my dinner as well,’ his father pronounced. The final accolade. Anders got another mug and poured out tea for John Paul.
There was no rush. There would be plenty of time to explain everything.
John Paul drove Anders back to Stone House. ‘Imagine you coming back here and up to Rocky Ridge to see me!’ he said.
‘I was hoping to hear you playing in one of the local pubs, but they say you work too hard. You’re too tired.’
‘I was hoping that
you
had come to tell me that you’d left that office of yours,’ John Paul said.
‘No. Not just yet.’
‘But you might . . .?’ John Paul looked pleased for his friend. ‘So miracles do happen.’
‘Wait until I tell you about what
your
father really wants, and then you’ll think twice about miracles,’ said Anders.
Anders was most apologetic when he slipped in at Chicky’s big dining table. ‘I’m sorry I’m a bit late,’ he said as he sat down next to the doctor and his wife.
‘No problem. It’s duck tonight. I kept it hot for you. Everything all right with John Paul?’
‘Fine, fine. What’s St Joseph’s like as a place to stay?’
‘As good as they come. If they could only persuade Matty to go in there, he’d love it. I have an aunt in there, and she barely has time to talk to you when you visit.’
‘No, he
wants
to go in. It’s John Paul who has the doubts.’
‘We can sort him out on that. And you tell John Paul he should go away and travel a bit, let some of the other brothers and sisters come back and pull their weight here. Visit Matty from time to time, instead of leaving it all to John Paul.’
‘I do have an idea at the back of my mind.’
‘If it means giving John Paul a bit of a chance in life, I’m all for it.’
‘I was thinking of opening an Irish bar in Sweden. Asking him to come and set up the music side of it for me. I can deal with the business side.’
‘So
that
is what you were doing here. I did wonder.’ Chicky seemed pleased to have found out without interrogating.
‘No, it wasn’t what I intended. It just sort of evolved.’
‘Things
do
evolve around here. I’ve seen it over and over. There’s something in the sea air, I think.’
‘I haven’t spoken to my father about it yet.’
‘And if he is against the idea?’ Chicky was gentle.
‘I will explain it to him. I will be clear and courteous, as he has always been. I will not pour any scorn on
his
dreams; just point out that they are not mine.’ His voice sounded very much more confident.
Chicky nodded several times. It was as if she could see it happening. ‘And when you’re hiring, you might ask my niece Orla out there, for a season anyway, to do the food for you. It would be the making of your pub, and prevent her from growing old and mad with me.’
‘There are worse places to grow old and mad,’ Anders laughed. He hoped he could explain all this to his father, and that he would not be too disappointed. Klara would take over Almkvist’s. The company was in her blood just as much as it was in his. She knew and loved the business in a way he never would. Now all he had to do was persuade his father that a woman could head up a prestigious company like Almkvist’s. He sighed and settled back in his seat. And who could he get to help him persuade his father? He pulled out a pencil and pad and started to make lists of things that he had to do. Calling Erika was top of the list.
T
hey never introduced themselves as Ann and Charlie, they always said, ‘We are The Walls’.
They signed their Christmas cards
from The Walls
also, and when they answered the phone they would say, ‘Walls here’.
Possibly it was an act of solidarity. You rarely saw one without the other, and they always stood very close to each other. They apparently never tired of each other’s company, which was just as well as they worked together in their Dublin home correcting and marking papers as postal tuition for a correspondence college. They had both been teachers, but this was much more companionable and less stressful. They had a little study in their house where they went in at nine a.m. and came out at two. The Walls said it was very important to have total self-discipline when you worked from home. Otherwise the day ran away from you.
Then, in the afternoons, they would walk or garden or shop, and at five o’clock settle down to what was the high spot of the day – entering competitions.
They had won many, many prizes. Anything from choosing a name for a chocolate Easter bunny to writing a limerick in praise of garden sheds. They had won a holiday in the South of France because they wrote a slogan for a new perfume; they got a set of heavy cast-iron cookware for guessing the weight of a turkey. They had won the latest television, a top-of-the-range microwave oven, his-and-hers sports bikes, velvet curtains and a whole range of smaller items like trendy electric kettles and leather-bound photo albums. It was a poor week when they didn’t win
something
. And they so enjoyed the fun of the chase as well as the extra comforts that came from the prizes.
They had two sons who seemed to play very little part in their lives. This had always been the way. When the boys were at school they always went to play in other boys’ houses: The Walls weren’t into entertaining groups of children. Then one son, Andy, was taken on by a major English football club and became a professional soccer player; the other boy, Rory, had become a long-distance lorry driver and drove for hours on end all over Europe.
Both of these careers bewildered The Walls, who could not fathom why their sons didn’t want to go to university, and the boys, on their part, could not begin to understand a mother and father who raked the newspapers and magazines in search of winning something like an electric toaster.
But the years went on peacefully for The Walls. They were very satisfied with the life they lived. They chose their competitions carefully and only entered for something where they felt they had a reasonable chance of winning. They scorned the kind of competitions they saw on television: a multiple-choice question asking if
Vienna was the capital of a) Andorra b) Austria or c) Australia. Choose option a, b or c
. These were not
real
competitions, they were only schemes to make money from premium-rate call lines. No self-respecting competition entrant would consider them.
They knew also that you must not make your jingles or rhymes too clever. They had seen that the middle of the road was the way to go. They would examine each other’s solutions looking for puns or references that might be beyond the ordinary punter. They must beware of stepping outside the mainstream. And so far, it had all worked very well.
As they sat one summer’s evening on the garden seat that had been theirs because they had matched twelve garden flowers with the months in which they bloomed, and drank from Waterford Glass tumblers that had come from the competition to write an ode to crystal, The Walls congratulated themselves on their twenty-five years of happy marriage. They were in a great state of excitement this evening: they planned to win something quite splendid to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary in a few months. There was a cruise to Alaska, for one thing. That would be heavily subscribed. Competition entrants from all over the world would be trying for that one, so they should not be too confident of winning. There was a residential cookery course in Italy, which would be nice. There was a week in a Scottish castle. The possibilities were endless. It was not a question of being mean or careful with money; The Walls could well afford a holiday abroad, but the thrill of winning one was much more satisfying, and they filled in forms and made up slogans with great vigour.
Then they found the dream prize. It was a winter break in Paris, a week in a luxury hotel. There would be a chauffeur-driven car at their disposal with an outing planned for each day of the week: Versailles, Chartres, as well as city tours, meals in internationally known restaurants. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
It looked a very good bet. They had seen it in a rather elegant magazine with a small circulation; this was helpful. It meant that it would not have caught the eye of millions of readers. The task was to explain in one paragraph why they
deserved
this holiday.
The Walls knew not to make it jokey. The judges were the editor of the magazine, a travel agent and a couple of hoteliers in Ireland and Britain who were offering second and third prizes. These were people who took their product seriously. No satire or disrespect would win. The question must be addressed with equal seriousness.
And they were pleased with their entry. The Walls explained quite simply that after twenty-five years of contented partnership, they would love to bring back a little romance into their lives. They had never been people with a glittery lifestyle but, like everyone, they would love it if some magic was sprinkled on their lives. They had used words like ‘sprinkle’ and ‘magic’ before in captions or slogans, and they had worked well. They would work again.
They were now quite certain that the prize was theirs, and were unprepared for the shock of hearing they had won
second
prize – a holiday in some remote place on the cliffs over the Atlantic at the other side of the country. They looked at each other, dismayed. This was a poor reward for all the effort they had put into composing the burningly sincere essay about the need to have a little stardust shaken over them!
The woman on the telephone expected them to be very excited that they had won a week in this Stone House place, and because The Walls were basically polite people they tried hard to summon up some degree of enthusiasm. But their hearts were heavy as they thought of someone else in what had started to become
their
chauffeur-driven car in Paris, and
their
reservation at a five-star restaurant.
Ann Wall had been laying out the wardrobe she would pack. It included a designer handbag and a Hermès silk square that they had won in previous competitions. Charlie had reluctantly put down the guide book he had bought so that they would appear well informed about the Paris buildings and art treasures when they got there.
They both fumed with rage and annoyance that they had been so wrongly confident about winning the first prize. They were desperate to know what the winning essay had been about, and were determined to find out.
The Walls telephoned Chicky Starr, proprietor of Stone House, to make the arrangements for their visit. She was cheerful and practical as she gave details of train times and arranged to have them collected at the station. She was, they had to admit, perfectly pleasant and welcoming. If they had intended to win this holiday, they would have been delighted with her, but Mrs Starr must never know how very poor a consolation this holiday was going to be for The Walls.
She checked if they were vegetarians and advised them about bringing warm and waterproof clothing. No place here for designer scarves and bags, they realised. She said she would post them brochures and reading matter about the area so that they could decide in advance what they would like to do. There would be bicycles to ride, wild birds to see and a group of like-minded people to have dinner with in the evenings.
Like-minded? The Walls thought not.
Nobody else would be going there with such an aura of second best.
Mrs Starr said she would not mention to anyone that they were competition winners: it was up to them to discuss it or not. This puzzled The Walls. Normally they were very pleased to tell people they had won a competition and had got there by their wits rather than by handing out money. Still, it was thoughtful of Mrs Starr.
With heavy hearts they agreed on the train and bus times, and said insincerely that they were looking forward to it all greatly.
Their two sons came back to Ireland to celebrate the silver wedding. They took their parents to Quentins, one of the most talked-about restaurants in Dublin.
The Walls marvelled at how sophisticated the boys had become. Andy, who was used to a high life now as a soccer player in a Premier League team, went through the menu as if he were accustomed to eating like this every night; even Rory, who mainly dined in transport cafés and places where long-haul drivers met to eat quickly and get back on the road, was equally at ease.
They asked with baffled interest about their parents’ recent successes in the competition stakes. There had been a set of matching luggage, some colourful garden lights and a carved wooden salad bowl with matching servers.
Andy and Rory murmured their approval and support. They spoke about their lives, and The Walls listened without comprehension as Andy spoke of transfers and relegation in the League, and Rory told them about the new regulations which were strangling the whole haulage business, and the money that they were constantly offered to bring illegal immigrants in as part of their cargo. Both boys had love lives to report. Andy was dating a supermodel, and Rory had moved into an apartment with a Spanish girl called Pilar.