That Gallagher Girl (13 page)

‘What is it?' she asked.

‘It's a painting. It looks like the sea view from the Villa Felicity.'

Río joined him, and looked over his shoulder at the brush strokes jostling for space on the improvised canvas. Her eyes went to the bottom right-hand corner where she saw, as she fully expected to, the tiny signature: ‘C A T'.

‘You're right,' she said. ‘It's the southerly aspect. And it's by the same person who left a painting behind in your cottage. Remember? I sent you a photograph when I recced the joint.'

‘I wonder who the artist is?'

Río took the painting from Adair and looked at it appraisingly. It was easily as good as the one she'd found in the ramshackle house down the lane. ‘I think I know who the artist is. I think it's a girl Finn has hooked up with.'

She remembered Finn's phone call of three days ago.
There's someone I'd love you to meet
. . .
A girl I think you'd like
. . .
She's a really talented painter
. . .

‘Finn? You mean, Finn is back in Ireland?' asked Adair.

‘Yes. He's . . . Oh, shit . . . There's no easy way of telling you this, Adair, and you're going to find out sooner or later. Finn is refurbishing the Villa Felicity.'

‘
Finn
is?'

‘Yes. Shane has bought it.'

‘Shane. Shane Byrne? Your ex – the Hollywood film star – has bought my old house?'

Río nodded. Adair looked puzzled for a moment, as if trying to do some complicated calculation, and then a smile spread across his face. ‘Well, whaddayaknow?' he said, with a robust laugh. ‘Good luck to him, the bollix!' Reaching for the champagne flutes, he handed one to Río and chinked his glass against hers.

‘You're not upset?'

‘Why should I be upset? Sure, doesn't it mean I'll get an invitation to the housewarming party?'

‘Except . . . I don't think there'll be a housewarming party.'

‘What makes you think that?'

‘It's not Shane's intention to live there. Finn's converting the place into a scuba-dive centre.'

‘The way Izzy and Finn planned to do, once upon a time?'

‘Yes.'

Adair looked thoughtful; then he shrugged. ‘I wish them well. Sure, it was always far too grandiose and rambling a joint to be a home. I'm glad to see some enterprising spirit is prepared to take a chance on the place. I'm just sorry I was never able to do it for Izzy.' Raising his glass to his lips, he took a sip; and for the first time since she'd broken the news, Río saw hurt in his eyes. ‘My girl deserves better than to be working for some narky git in marketing.'

‘She seems to be doing well for herself.' Río remembered the nifty Alfa Romeo and the designer handbag.

‘She's doing all right. But money isn't everything. I know that, Río, to my cost. I wasted years of my life making it, only to lose it all.'

‘Are you really poor now, Adair?' asked Río, curiously. ‘Things can't be that bad if you can afford a state-of-the-art Massey Ferguson.'

‘Things are complicated. I've had to sell a lot of assets in order to get my life back on track. But you needn't worry that I can't keep you in the style to which you have become accustomed, Ms Kinsella.'

‘That wouldn't be hard,' smiled Río. ‘I'm very low maintenance.'

He pulled her into him. ‘And once the oyster farm is up and running at full throttle again, won't we be laughing? The added plus is that we can dine on Pacific gigas every night.'

‘Hm,' purred Río, raising an eyebrow. ‘You know what they say about their aphrodisiac qualities?'

‘I don't need no aphrodisiac when it comes to you, sweet thing. You're the sexiest woman I've ever met. Just looking at you turns me on.' He took her hand, and held it against his crotch. ‘Let's go back to bed.'

‘
Again?
No, Adair. I've things to be doing.'

‘Such as?'

‘Such as organising a wedding.'

‘When'll we do it?'

‘ASAP. We could have a Celtic ceremony, somewhere lovely. How about barefoot, on Coolnamara Strand?'

‘Sounds good. Means I won't have to bother with a tux.'

‘I'll have to get myself a pedicure,' said Río, contemplating her unpainted toenails. ‘But aside from that, let's not go to a huge amount of trouble. We can put “Shabby Chic” on the invites.'

‘We're inviting people?' said Adair.

‘But of course,' Río told him with a smile. ‘Everybody's coming. It's going to be the best damn party Lissamore has ever seen.'

Chapter Nine

Cat was on the roof, helping herself to some rays. Finn was below on the terrace, mending a gate. She could hear him banging away and whistling lustily, if tunelessly. The Villa Felicity was getting there. Between the two of them, they were putting manners on the place, and Finn was sending his father progress reports on a regular basis.

Cat was completely fascinated by Skype. To watch Finn and Shane talking together on the screen of Finn's MacBook Pro was like nothing she'd ever seen. In the Crooked House – before the advent of Oaf – there had been no broadband, no satellite television, no wi-fi. There'd not even been a phone, effectively, since the ancient Bakelite yoke in the hall was not conducive to having laidback chats like the ones Finn conducted with his father.

These chats were a revelation to Cat. She found it astonishing that a person could talk so openly to a parent. Any ‘chats' Cat had ever had with her own father were comprised of either maudlin ramblings on his part, or lectures, or rants, and Cat's input had been negligible. She'd just glowered, taciturn and contemptuous, waiting for Hugo to run out of steam.

She remembered one of the last conversations (actually, it had been a flaming row) that she'd had with him shortly before she'd left the Crooked House to go and live on the houseboat, during the course of which he'd told her that she was a bird-brain and a good-for-nothing and a bitter dis -appointment to him, and how dared she squander the talent that had been his bequest to her. He'd used words like ‘prodigal' and ‘profligate' and ‘ingrate'; and then – when she'd finally told him to fuck off to hell and back in a handcart, and stormed up to her bedroom and locked herself in – he'd languished on the landing for an hour with a bottle of Jameson, begging her to come out and sobbing about how much he loved his baby girl. And indeed, Cat had come out, finally, and put a blanket over him and snuggled down on the floor beside him, and told him the stories she knew off by heart – the ones that her mother had told her. And he'd smiled and stroked her hair and said that sometimes he felt as if he were the baby and she was the parent. And the next day he had, of course, forgotten all about it.

How other-end-of-the-spectrum was Finn's relationship with Shane! Finn called his father ‘punk', his father called him ‘dude'. Finn didn't bat an eyelid when Shane lit up a joint, and Shane didn't bat an eyelid when Finn told him that the girl he'd found squatting in Coral Mansion was living there still. He'd just said, ‘Introduce me, why don't you?' and when Finn turned the webcam on Cat, his father had flirted shamelessly with her. Cat had flirted back, thrilled to be shooting the breeze with a Hollywood star (even one as ancient as Shane) and hoping to piss off Finn, but Finn was as laidback as ever when they finally cut the Skype connection and went back to work.

Finn was highly amused by the fact that Cat was such a Luddite. He'd laughed at her phone when he'd first seen it, and told her it was like looking at some antiquity from the Iron Age. Cat couldn't take or send photographs on her phone, she couldn't access the web, she couldn't even play any games. Whereas Finn seemed to spend half his life when he wasn't working doing esoteric phone-centric stuff, or lounging in front of the screen of his MacBook Pro, living a vicarious virtual life out there on the worldwide web.

‘Let me teach you the basics,' he'd suggested to Cat. ‘It'll change your life once you get internet savvy.'

But Cat had demurred, and continued to shy away from all things technical, with the exception of Finn's iPod, which she adored. ‘You do know,' she had told him, ‘that every time you log on to the internet or hook up with someone on your phone, Big Brother is monitoring your every move?'

‘So?'

‘So they get loads of information about you that way. Like, what kind of subversive literature you're into, or the deviant porn you're accessing.'

But Finn just smiled at her – that lovely, lazy smile he'd inherited from his father. ‘I don't do deviant porn,' he said. ‘I just do the bog-standard stuff.'

‘And they know where you're going and where you've come from. They're like Santa Claus. They know when you are sleeping. They know when you're awake. They know when you've been bad or good . . .'

Finn finished the lyric for her. ‘My ma used to sing that song to me every Christmas. It really pissed me off. I was always convinced I'd get no presents.'

‘And now you should be well pissed-off that Big Brother's going to be on to you every time you commit a mis demeanour.'

‘Big Brother holds no fear for me,' said Finn, with equanimity. ‘I'm a law-abiding citizen. Unlike you, Cat burglar, going around breaking into houses all over the place.'

‘I'm not a burglar. I never steal stuff.'

‘Liar. You stole my iPod.'

‘I'll buy you a new one,' she said airily, ‘when I sell another of my paintings.'

‘And like, when is that going to happen? Have you booked yourself a slot in the Museum of Modern Art or something?'

‘The Museum of Modern Art doesn't sell paintings,' she told him. ‘It buys them.'

‘Maybe you should stick a couple of your wallpaper doodles in the post to them then, and ask them to make you an offer.'

‘Ha ha.'

‘Although . . .' He gave her a thoughtful look. ‘That's not as outrageous an idea as you might think. You might think about circulating JPEGs—'

‘What are you on about?'

‘You could send JPEGs––'

‘What's a J-peg?'

‘Oh, Jesus.' Finn had put his head in his hands. ‘I won't even begin to try to explain.'

‘Do. Please. I like the sound of a J-peg. Like J-Lo, only Irish. J-Peig.'

‘Honestly, Cat, you're hopeless. It's like talking Klingon sometimes, talking to you.'

‘Go on, Finnster,' cajoled Cat. ‘Tell me what a J-peg is.'

‘Well, when you send an email, you can attach an image to it.'

‘Like, a photographic image?'

‘Yeah. And the person at the other end opens the JPEG—'

‘Kind of like opening an envelope?'

‘I guess so, yeah – a virtual envelope – and then they get to see the image you've sent. I could take a picture of this view, for instance,' he said, waving a hand at the picture window, ‘and send it to Da in LA. Or I could take a picture of your painting of this view, and send it.'

‘So you could send images of my paintings through the internet, to galleries and places?'

Finn had nodded. ‘Except I was thinking more along the lines of sending them to Da.'

Cat gave him an interested look. ‘Why him?'

‘He has loads of contacts in LA. Rich ones. One of them might take a fancy to your paintings and offer to buy one. Artists are selling stuff through the internet all the time, now.'

Cat threw him a sceptical look.

‘It's true. Take a look at this.' Finn typed something on the keypad of his laptop, and then – lo and behold – the screen became a display case for a series of rather lovely linear images – most of them female nudes. ‘It's the website of the mother of a friend of mine, who does etchings.'

‘Hm. Show me more.'

Finn clicked again, and some words came up on the screen. ‘I don't want the words,' said Cat, leaning closer to the screen. ‘I just want to look at the pictures.'

‘They're good, aren't they?'

‘They're grand,' said Cat, noncommittally. She was more interested in the prices than the paintings. ‘How much do they fetch?'

‘The price list is on another page.' Finn clicked again. ‘Two, three hundred euros. Cheaper than yours. But I suspect you'll have to bring your prices down, to stay competitive. There are an awful lot of other people out there with their wares on display.'

Cat gave him a look of hauteur. ‘Someone was prepared to pay seven hundred and fifty euros for one of my paintings the other day.'

‘What do you mean, the other day? You haven't been anywhere you could flog your paintings.'

‘It was a stranger passing on the beach. She came in when you were off getting the T-bones.'

‘You let a stranger into the house? Are you out of your mind, Cat? She could have been a psychopath!'

‘Oh, she was fine. She was just a little old lady from a neighbouring island. A bit like Peig Sayers. Tell me more about these J-peg thingies. Do you really think it could work?'

Finn shrugged. ‘It's worth a try, ain't it?'

‘Cool! Why don't you do it, then? Take some pics and send them to your dad.'

Finn yawned. ‘OK. I'll do it in the morning.'

‘Can't we do it now?'

Cat was impatient, thrilled by the notion of so-called JPEGs of her paintings flying through the ether across the ocean to Los Angeles and all Shane Byrne's film star friends. They liked Irish artists in LA. She'd heard that Sylvester Stallone and Robert de Niro owned a fair few of Graham Knuttel's paintings, and Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell had bought stuff from Rasher. OK, so Graham Knuttel had earned a diploma from the art school in Dun Laoghaire, but Rasher was a self-taught maverick, like her.

‘I'm not doing it tonight,' Finn had told her, categorically. ‘I'm knackered. And if I leave off until the morning I can take them in natural light.'

‘I can't wait!' said Cat, hugging herself.

And the next morning she had set up her paintings to their best advantage in the light-filled sitting room, and watched excitedly as Finn took the pictures with his iPhone.

‘But shouldn't you be doing it with a proper camera?' she asked. ‘Wouldn't you get better quality images?'

‘Nah. These'll work perfectly.' Finn had connected his phone to his computer and droned on about how it was connecting via Bluetooth to Windows Live Mail and blah blah blah, and Cat pretended to listen until she was finally satisfied that, by some arcane and mystical process, her paintings were now safely ensconced on Shane Byrne's hard drive in the Hollywood Hills.

‘How long before we know for sure?' she asked.

‘We'll Skype him tonight,' said Finn.

And then he had lectured Cat some more about how she ought to get internet savvy, and droned on about packets and bandwidth – whatever they were – and now Cat was taking her ease in the sun listening to Finn banging and whistling below, indulging in a fantasy of getting a phone call from Johnny Depp (who, Finn had told her, was a friend of Shane's) or Keira Knightley or Helen Mirren, or even Oprah Winfrey, to say that they wanted to buy all her paintings. She'd have to put her prices up. She pictured herself on
Oprah
, and was glad that Oaf had insisted on having a Sky Box installed in the Crooked House, because it meant that Hugo could watch her on the show.

‘So, Cat,' Oprah would say, ‘how does it feel to have Hollywood at your feet? I'm told you can hardly keep up with the demand from the stars who are clamouring to own one of your paintings. Your father Hugo must be very proud of you. I hear your work is selling for twice as much as his and—'

‘Finn!'

It was a woman's voice, calling from the beach. Uh-oh, thought Cat. Could that Izzy girl be back in Lissamore so soon? Buggeration. She'd get into trouble now for not telling Finn she'd called in to the house the other day, especially since she had lied and said that Izzy was like Peig Sayers, the original cranky auld wan. Crawling to the parapet, Cat looked over.

It wasn't Izzy on the beach. It was one of the women Cat had seen having the
fête champêtre
in the allotment, the one who'd gone in swimming.

‘Hey, Ma!' said Finn. ‘What brings you here? Are you on your way to the Bentley?'

Aha! thought Cat. This must be the famous Río that Finn had told her about.

‘No,' said Río, moving from the beach to the orchard gate and pushing it open. ‘I've just come from the Bentley.'

The Bentley! That was the posh mobile home that Finn had told her about, the one that had recently been delivered to the junk yard a mile or so down the beach. Cat wished it had been there ten days ago. She'd much sooner have stayed overnight in a state-of-the-art mobile home than in that poxy cottage she'd broken into. She'd never jemmied the lock on a mobile home before; she reckoned it would be a piece of piss.

Making herself comfortable on the hammock that Finn had strung up on the roof, Cat closed her eyes against the sun and lay back. She was glad when she heard hammer blows ringing out again. There was nothing nicer than listening to someone else grafting when you were taking your ease.

Río moved across the shingle to the embankment and pushed open the gate to her orchard as Finn resumed work, raining down hammer blows on something tinny. She wished he'd come racing down to wrap his arms around her as he'd done earlier that day when they'd bumped into each other in the middle of the main street, but she could hardly expect a touchy-feely demonstration of affection from her son every time they met. He'd done a good job of demolishing the pavilion, she noticed: there was nothing left of it, apart from the concrete base. Maybe that could serve as the foundation for his air room? That would mean fewer trees would need to be cut down to make way for new buildings. Río knew she was clutching at straws, but the less Finn's project encroached on her land, the better as far as she was concerned. Leave her with at least one of her two precious acres!

She saw that there was a widening gap in the fence by the gate where a new rabbit trail had been established – she'd have to get that mended soon, otherwise stray sheep would find their way through, and her vegetables would end up as organic fodder for her neighbouring farmer's ewes. But she'd hardly find time between now and the wedding.

The wedding! She and Adair had done a bit of online research and made a few phone calls, and they'd found a lovely Celtic priest who had a window for a wedding next Monday. If they were going to hold out for a civil ceremony, they'd be waiting months before they could make it legal. A Celtic wedding on a beach would be more romantic anyway, Río decided, and Adair could do with a little romance in his life.