The Little Red Chairs (6 page)

‘I’ll have to talk to my husband,’ she said, which she did and that was that. Jack agreed, made all the practical arrangements congratulating himself on his good judgement, because the new doctor’s praises were increasingly hailed.

It was in the car park at the front of the Castle that he caught up with her again that evening as she stood looking up at the sky, a cold sky with a few stars up there, faint and distant from one another. Huntsmen were also returning, bluff and garrulous, some with their breeched guns under their arms and their gillies also with guns, went towards the side entrance down the three steps, over which a sign read
Bar
. The dogs were straining on their leashes, knowing that they were about to be cooped up in an outhouse, while their masters slaked their thirsts.

Edmond, the manager, stood at the front door welcoming the troupe and seeing her, he came out calling her by her name, saying she and Jack had become loners since they sold the boutique
and scolding her for not having come to the most recent poetry evening. He welcomed the newcomer effusively, said it was an honour to have him and as he led them in, he relayed the Castle’s three hundred years of variegated history, the clans that owned her and the clans that lost her, her woodlands, her flora and fauna, red squirrels, pine martens, the peregrine falcons, spoilt for riches as he said. In the hall there was much commotion, men dismantling and cleaning their guns before they were taken to the safe overnight. He led them through to the bar and sat them on his own special window seat, where they had a fine view of the room, the hunters and the locals all so convivial, enumerating the day’s thrills and adventures. Through a side window they could just see the stretch of river, dark as it crept between the wooded shores and then gone from sight, as it broadened out into that final journey before reaching the sea. Pointing to a spot way beneath Edmond said, ‘That’s the maternity ward,’ and recounted the salmon, back from the lonely oceans and the winds and the trade winds of Greenland, who had made the hazardous journey to hatch her eggs in the very spot where she was born. Himself and the gardener had been watching her closely and what a production it was, to see how carefully she prepared her bed, like a belly dancer, moving back and forth to get it smooth, emptying it of clay and silt, then making it porous for the fresh water to flow through and that done, she sat back and evaluated her suitors. Several swam around her, swam ceaselessly until the strongest fella, the one with the most spunk, got it over her and as he said then in mock lament, the honeymoon was cut short. The funny thing was that the poor males, limp and exhausted, were still dancing around her, still hoping, like those eejits that hung around the court of Penelope in Ithaca.

‘Some of us caught those eejits and ate them,’ a voice was heard to say among the boisterous crowd.

‘So we did,’ another voice joined.

‘It was called the Christmas Pot … it’s what poor people had to make do with,’ the first man said and his comrades agreed and there ensued a friendly altercation as to whether poor people had broken the law in those times, poaching fish from a river that belonged to the gentry.

Like them, Fidelma was in her element, basking in the warmth and the banter. There they all were, locals she knew well, perched on their regular stools, next to the glass cases with the prize trout and photographs of the men who had caught them. Written in silver on the top of the two cases was the weight of each trout and the length of time it had taken a fisherman to hook it in. Now and then they called across to her, as Edmond and the doctor were exchanging hunting expeditions, in Europe, in Africa and all over. Suddenly she heard Edmond ask the doctor did he not think that this woman, the lovely Fidelma, born and bred in the west of Ireland, was some throwback to a noble woman in Spain or Italy. He remarked on her black hair, her porcelain skin, the long neck and the Gioconda smile.

‘Ah now,’ she said, blushing fiercely, the colour running up and down her neck in ripples, as if cochineal was trickling through her. An evening like no other, what with her plunging her face in the freezing water earlier on, then meeting him, the banshee scream that she had let out and now here, he fixing her, with his dark, untelling eyes. She looked up at him in that first sweet exchange of a glance and felt a sudden gladness, for the sake of which all other things were forgotten.

When they came out, he bowed and went on foot along the
back avenue, to the outer gate that led to where he lodged with Fifi. She had scarcely exchanged a word with him in the bar and yet she had a sense of him, how attentive he was, his hands so expressive, as if they too talked, absorbing everything around him, infinitely courteous, yet mysterious and inscrutable.

There were more stars than when they had gone in, a cold silvery night that now seemed full of sudden and sourceless promise.

On the Veranda

It is after midnight and all is still at the Castle. The guests have gone up to bed, windows dark with heavy curtains drawn and the entire place, its ivied walls, its turrets, its broad walks, its steep steps, all engulfed in night.

The kitchen staff have gathered on the veranda, as they do most nights, for the smokes, the odd beer, to unwind. They sink into the bockled armchairs, in their coats, huddled around the tall gas heater, chatting and joking. They are a mixed group, Irish, Burmese, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Slovakian, Polish. In their small bedrooms, which lead off the courtyard, are the emblems of their own land, maybe a flag, or a map, electric and acoustic guitars, family photographs and in Ivan’s room, cookery encyclopaedias. In Mujo the mute’s room, there are no emblems, as he has no past and no family that they know of. They knew so little about him, except that he had been sent from Holland to Ireland, and spent time in a hostel in Dublin. The supervisor there got him the job in the hotel as she was a first cousin of the manager’s. He was called Mujo, short for Muhammad, and with his big sad eyes, kept his silence, always listening with wonder to what others said. His was the lowliest job of all, kitchen porter. His principal duties were to keep floors and surfaces spotlessly clean, to fill the dishwashers and clean all pots and pans separately. Sometimes he did not talk for days, but he could speak in an emergency. He spoke when he was interviewed for the job
and Ivan, who shared a bedroom with him, said that he talked in his sleep and sometimes got very agitated, shouting and thrashing about.

His doves were his friends that he kept in the barn, going to them at all hours and all his wages went on them. They lived like royalty, their nests were terracotta pots, lined with straw, corn and maize for their grub. How quickly they had bred. Five pairs within half a year. He gave them names, names of people from his own country. In the very early mornings when they were let out, the yard was a cascade of white, wings fanning out, as they readied themselves to rise, then up and up towards the woods, where he followed, his tumblers, unerringly roaming and circumnavigating the upper air, long before the songbirds wakened, or the seagulls with their cold caws came swooping in from the seashore.

In a tin box was his most secret possession. It was to be opened in case he was ever taken to prison.

Earlier in the evening, the kitchen was bedlam, shouts and commands and arguments, Olive the assistant chef calling everyone ‘Shithead’. Shithead this and shithead that, staff going up and down the narrow stairs to the dining room, where all was elegance and candlelight, calling ‘Coming through, coming through’ to avoid a collision. Yet inevitably, the unwieldy metal trays kept grazing one another.

Hedda, the tall beautiful waitress from Lithuania, has turned twenty-five and has been crying on and off, at the misery of growing old. Now on the veranda, she has cheered up, demanding that everyone tell her a story. That is her birthday present, along with the Sachertorte, which Ivan the pastry chef has made for her and has arranged on a beautiful cake plate with an elaborate
pink frilled ruff. Nobody is willing to start, they keep teasing each other and even Dara, normally a spinner of tales, can only remember as a kid three boys and one girl trying to make sleds out of cardboard boxes, to skate on the disused railway line.

‘Is that all … is that all?’ they tease him.

‘Ah, buying the first condoms and texting girls over in Galway,’ he says and suddenly baulks.

Tommy takes to the floor. Normally, he would be driving home by now, but has stayed to have a slice of the famous cake. They know all about Tommy, his one hundred and eighty acres of arable land, all along the coast, his expertise with dosing cattle, his Rouge French ram bought at a cost of eight hundred euros, the lambs he has delivered and later castrated so as to get more fat on them. Tommy’s motto is ‘Keep the money turning’. They also know he has a beautiful girlfriend, Camilla, half English, and they have seen pictures of her on his phone, dark-haired, teeth like pearls, always in very high heels and an off-the-shoulder black dress. They know that he’s a volatile man and that he once killed a sheep that was acting crazy because she wouldn’t go in the door of the outhouse and how he struck her with a blackthorn stick, several fierce blows and she fell down dead. Then the dogs and the foxes got her and soon after as he told it, the seagulls came for the guts and the contents of the stomach and how Camilla didn’t talk to him for three days.

‘It’s like this,’ he begins and waits till the sniggers died down, ‘I’m stressed out, I’m going crazy, I drive the whole fecking way to Mayo to get new aluminium wheels for the Volkswagen. I drive in Camilla’s car. I have the measurements and yer man the dealer gets his ruler and measures and assures me that his wheels will fit my VW exactly. Deal done. Three hundred euros cash. I
come home, jack up the car, and the effing wheels are out by half a millimetre. I’m fucking psycho. Camilla says relax, relax, we’ll put them on Dundee. We’ll never fucking sell them on Dundee I tell her and she tells me to relax and she takes a picture and the measurements and she puts it on the site and in five minutes the wheels are sold for exactly the same price.’

Andre, the Polak, is next. He coughs a few times, apologises for his English and begins very seriously, ‘In my small town, they say Ireland good place, good wages. Homeless for one month when I arrive to Dublin. I go to one shelter and another and another, ask
Can I please spend night here
. Mattresses on floor, many men in one room. I keep one eye half open, for I fear I lose my flash lamp, my one possession. In morning, janitor hand out small dishes with cornflakes and we all go out search for work. Anything, anything. After two weeks I get job down in Limerick working with cows. Place very lonely. Only cows and shed where I sleep. I ring my mother and she say
You won’t make it Andre … come back
, but because she say that, I am determine to make it. Late one night I am called from agency that say
Come tomorrow morning eight a.m. for interview to start in restaurant in Finglas.
No trains so early. No bus. I set out in night and I start flagging when I get to main road. Walk. Walk. Walk. At petrol station woman in wellington boots ask me where I going. I tell her I have to be in Finglas before eight o’clock for interview for job. She tell man filling his car
Bring this boy to Finglas
and I get in and he give me coffee in cafeteria in O’Connell Street and afterward money to take taxi. One year there I save and now my friends I am here.’

Hedda is reluctant to tell a story, even though it is her turn. She tells them that her idol is Baudelaire, but he is dead and she
cannot write poetry now, as she has no love in her life. She tells them that she cries a lot and that her only relaxing is cleaning her small apartment. Not lucky in love. It is why she has left the previous job and come here, to get away from Milos, to think. ‘It is like this,’ she says and then begins, a bit shyly, holding back the tears. ‘Milos and me, we work in the same dining room in County Waterford and get to know one another and find us falling in love. He go home on holiday for one month and I think when he coming back and I pray he don’t find another woman. I hug him when he appear. I make marzipan. Light candles. Marzipan cut up in slices and along with it, cheese and wine. He say, “Let’s go for a walk Hedda.” He very insistent. We go along by a river and he stop me and he say, “Don’t move.” Then he say, “Don’t jump in the river.” I am shaking like a little little girl. I say, “What is it.” He say, “Don’t ask,” then he go on his knees and take a small box from his pocket and snap it open and he say, “Marry me.” I am bewildered. One of me feeling “Stay” and one of me saying, “Run to the motorway Hedda.” So many different feelings. He put the ring on. In that moment almost husband and wife. For two months enjoying our feelings. Then we decide to have a holiday in the Caribbean and we start to fight. It is all about arrangements. I pick hotel and he say not enough palm trees. Next hotel he say, mould on the picture frame in the lobby. I throw my computer on the table and tell him do it. What he do then, he call his mother. She find hotel with many palm trees and we go. When we are there he say mans is looking at me, he say I smile at them behind his back. Temperature thirty degrees. Everything go wrong. I book a table for dinner and he doesn’t come. Holiday separated us. We come back and work together and his jealousy is getting worse and worse. He say I
talk to girls more than I talk to him. From the minute I wake up in the morning he criticising me, every bit of me. Everything I do is wrong. If I say I am coming in one hour and am five minutes late he is shouting. He complain to his mother. She say if she was not his mother she would marry him. I say, “Why are you and I quarrelling since we got engaged, is it the piece of metal?” and he say yes and I throw the ring back at him and I leave the hotel and find myself a job here. I did know myself, but not any longer.’