The Tour (26 page)

Corlene was bewildered, and by now feeling a little nervous. Desperation forced her to try again. ‘I – am – looking – for – Pa…’

The woman observed her for a second or two and then put down the glass she had succeeded in making even filthier as a result of rag-wiping efforts.

‘Shtay there letchoo, ‘till I call him,’ she mumbled, as she shuffled off.

Corlene wasn’t sure if the woman had understood her or not, but decided it was best to wait. She considered sitting down but then thought the better of it. Not just because every surface in the place seemed to be filthy, but also because she presented a shapelier figure standing up. A second but equally important reason for remaining standing was that her ultra-strong underwear was putting up a tough fight against her tummy bulge. She knew from experience that her underwear lost the fight whenever she sat down. So, for both of these reasons Corlene stayed where she was, standing in the middle of the floor.

The silence was broken by the sound of the woman returning, this time accompanied by a small, fat man whose girth seemed to take up the full width of the doorway. He stood looking Corlene up and down, without uttering a word. From what she could make out, he was almost entirely bald except for a rim of hair that grew in wisps over his collar. His face was adorned by a pair of glasses with lenses so thick they could have been made from the bottoms of jam jars and, worse, what appeared to be his last two or three remaining teeth were an alarming shade of yellow. The sleeves of his horrible, hairy suit jacket were so shiny Corlene would have bet money, if she’d had any money, that neither jacket nor sleeves had ever been within a mile of a dry cleaner. Under his hideous jacket he wore an equally hideous mustard polyester shirt with a long pointed collar in a style that may have been popular in the early 1970s. His trousers, which appeared to be on the short side, were held up by a piece of yellow string. On his feet he wore manure-encrusted wellington boots.

Calm down, calm down, Corlene told herself silently. This is nothing more than a misunderstanding. I will leave here, go down the street to the other Pajo’s Bar, where a sophisticated, casually dressed man will be anxiously checking his watch while sipping a martini and helping himself to the olives supplied by the young waiter. How she and the sophisticated, casually dressed man will laugh their heads off when she regales him with the story of the old crone and this,…this leech-like nightmare of a creature standing in front of her, assessing her as if she was nothing more than a piece of meat.

She had almost reached a state of calm at the prospect of meeting her real date when she became aware that the creature was walking around her in circles. Before she could react, he gave her a massive whack on her rear end – much in the style of a farmer at a cattle fair – and growled ‘You’ll do.’

Wheeling around towards the old crone, he wheezed: ‘She’s grand eh Mam? No spring chicken like, but she’ll do.’

Oh God, she thought, this is the right pub after all. There will be no casually dressed landowner, no martini, and no olives. This was it. This was what she was reduced to. As she looked into the eyes of this hideous creature, and the old woman who was presumably his mother, the true depths of her situation struck her. Even she could do nothing with this guy. He was beyond all help.

With as much dignity as she could muster, she looked the pair of them in the eye and said: ‘I’m afraid there’s been a terrible mistake. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’

Turning on her heel, she half limped, half ran out of the door and didn’t stop until she found a park bench, where she collapsed and slowly came to terms with the fact that she had burned her last bridge.

Corlene Holbrook decided that for the first time in her life, and terrible and all as that prospect was, she had no other option. She would simply have to get a job.

She hobbled back to the hotel. Rounding a street corner, she almost tripped over Dylan who had just got off the bus from Cork. ‘Hey Mom. Something amazing just happened. I must find Ellen and Conor to tell them.’

‘How ‘bout you tell me instead?’ Corlene responded coolly.

Dylan looked at her, clearly taken aback. ‘Well, I don’t think it’s really your thing, but OK sure. I went for an interview today to a music college here, well not here exactly, in Cork. That’s where Laoise is from. You know my friend I told you about…’ he blushed as the words tumbled out. ‘Anyway they said I could enrol and learn to play the uilleann pipes. That’s the instrument I was talking about at dinner the other night. Laoise’s dad, Diarmuid, he plays them. They’re just so cool. Anyway, they said they’d help me, Diarmuid and Siobhán, that’s Laoise’s parents. So, they’re gonna help me to get set up and all that and I’m gonna stay here and study music.’

Corlene was temporarily speechless. The fact that her son didn’t feel the need to ask her permission to stay on in this country hit her like a truck. Here was the only person in her life who would notice if she dropped dead, and yet she was such a crap mother it had never occurred to him that certain choices he made would impact on her. He most likely thought she would be delighted to get rid of him. Suddenly, an emotional dam burst inside her. She was his mother, she couldn’t let him go, he was only seventeen, he’d never lived away from her. Surely he didn’t mean it. All her years of neglect came into sharp focus and she finally realised that he had made a sacrifice to leave his friends and his band and come to Ireland with her in order to prevent her from doing something stupid yet again. All his life she dragged him from place to place, from school to school, never once taking into consideration how he felt about it.

The accumulation of the day’s troubling events were by now taking their toll. Corlene had often heard that in order to make a better life for themselves eventually, alcoholics and addicts often had to first go through the experience of hitting rock bottom. Stealing from that young hairdresser, and the encounter with the dreadful Pa and his crone of a mother, and now the prospect of losing Dylan had achieved precisely that for Corlene. She had sunk lower than ever before. Enough was enough.

‘Hey Dylan, I think it’s time we talked, properly I mean’, Corlene said. ‘Let’s go up to my room and order some food’.

While they waited for room service, Corlene began to explain the detail of her dire financial situation. She apologised for being such a lousy mother, admitted to the credit card scam with the hairdresser, and described the full horror of the Pajo’s bar encounter and everything that had led up to it. Hard and all as it might be for him to believe, she added, she loved him and was proud of him. She, on the other hand, had run out of cash and had no skills to fall back on. All they could do was go home, stay with her mother for a while and maybe she could do a computer course or something. It broke her heart to say it, she added tearfully, but there was no way she could afford six thousand euros to let Dylan stay on in Ireland.

Dylan was bitterly disappointed but tried his best to hide it. It was comforting to hear his Mom say she loved him and he felt enormously relieved that she was giving up manhunting and was going to get a real job. But what about him? All this meant that he had to leave Ireland, abandon the prospect of proper music training and, worst of all, abandon Laoise. He felt like a flash of a new, better life had been offered to him and then quickly snatched away again.

Grandma didn’t have the kind of cash he needed, Corlene told him gently. Even if Diarmuid and Siobhán allowed him to stay in their house, there would be college fees, books and materials as well as transport to pay for. Reluctantly, he had to agree she was right. His mother was being honest and kind for the first time in her life, and he believed her when she said that if there was a way she could do help him financially she would do it, but unfortunately there wasn’t. He resolved to not make her feel bad about it. Maybe he could go home, get a job and reapply next year.

Chapter 28

Conor leaned over to silence the persistent trilling of his mobile phone alarm clock on the bedside locker. He had slept badly, for what had seemed like only a few minutes. Now, it was time to get his tour group on the road once again. Running through the itinerary for the day, he squirmed at the prospect of the most immediate drama to be dealt with, and all the logistical and other complications associated with it – Dorothy’s court appearance.

He had spoken to her solicitor who seemed to think that the charges against her were serious. She couldn’t go into any detail without her client’s permission, but she needed him to know that Juliet and Anna could be called as witnesses and there would most likely be a preliminary and possibly even a full hearing of the case that day. By God, this had turned into a right fiasco he said to himself as he stood under the shower.

And that wasn’t the only fiasco on his hands. There was the whole Sinéad situation to contend with. In her latest email she was going on as if they were already a couple, and he wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that. Neither Ellen, Bert nor Anastasia seemed overly enthusiastic about it either: to a man and to a woman, they reckoned she was an opportunist. And then there was this whole business about the cancer. She had mentioned in one of her early emails that it wasn’t looking good but, despite him asking repeatedly her how she was doing, and if she was having treatment, she just ignored these questions. Maybe she just doesn’t want to talk about it, he thought. But, moving countries in the middle of cancer treatment surely cannot be advisable. On the other hand, maybe it’s too late…maybe she’s come home to die.

This realization struck him forcefully. God Almighty, how was he supposed to deal with that? Not to mention deal with the young lad. Conor wasn’t at all sure he was the right person to take this boy on. Sure they were related but he only found out he existed last week!

If she was coming home to die, she wouldn’t be writing emails hinting at coupledom. Would she? Conor thought his head would explode with the worry of it all.

In the meantime he had no option but to head to the dining room, round up as many of his charges as he could find, and take it from there. As he put on his jacket, he heard his mobile beep with an incoming text message. It was from Anastasia.

‘Have a good day! :) X’

Well, at least she was still talking to him. She had obviously put their somewhat strange conversation of the previous day behind her. Maybe she had patched things up with her boyfriend. He wondered who he was, couldn’t remember ever seeing her with anyone. Well, he was a lucky man whoever he was anyhow.

‘You too x’ he replied

At least that was one less thing to worry about, he sighed, as he gathered up his wallet, keys and phone. It was going to be a long day, he groaned inwardly.

As he walked into the small private dining room reserved for his tour group, his eyes alighted on Cynthia. She was chatting away animatedly to Patrick. Aha, so that’s what’s been going on, Conor said to himself. That’s where Patrick disappeared to on his free day!

Corlene, Bert and Dylan were finishing breakfast. Dylan looked completely different. So did Corlene, come to think of it.

Anna and Juliet appeared in the doorway behind him. ‘Juliet! How are you doing? God love you, you must have got a terrible fright altogether. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to help, but I was driving Ellen over to West Cork, to see where her ancestors came from. I feel terrible for abandoning you.’

Juliet smiled. ‘Conor don’t be silly, I’m fine…a bit battered and bruised but I’ll live. You …nobody could have predicted what happened. Have you heard any news of Dorothy?’

‘Only from her solicitor. Spoke to her last night. She said Dorothy is in serious trouble. There’s a court hearing this morning. They don’t usually deal with things this quickly, but I suppose it’s because you’re all here for such a short time. Anna, I’m afraid both you and Juliet are to be called as witnesses. The solicitor asked me to tell you to be in court at 10am this morning. Lord save us, I can’t believe how things have turned out.’

Anna put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Conor please stop blaming yourself. None of this is your fault. Dorothy just flipped. We should be grateful that Juliet needed nothing more than a few stitches. It could have been so much worse.’

‘What about the tour?’ Juliet asked. ‘I don’t want everyone else put out because of this’

‘I think the best thing to do is to get everyone together, and have a chat about it. If the hearing is this morning, who knows, maybe it will be all over by lunchtime and then we can just carry on. I suggest we just see how things go this morning and we’ll make a decision at lunchtime when we know more.’

Bert finished his breakfast and observed Corlene as she sat, staring into her coffee despondently. She looked different. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, her face devoid of make-up. Her hair was scraped back into a clip of some kind. Bert thought she looked much nicer that way although she probably wouldn’t have believed him if he told her. He strolled over to her table.

‘Well good morning Miss Corlene. Do you mind if I join you?’

‘Sure,’ she sighed, all trace of the coquettish charm gone. ‘No Dylan today?’ asked Bert kindly.

‘He’s upstairs I guess,’ ‘Is everything OK?

Corlene sat back, weighing up whether or not she should confide in this man.

‘We had a big talk last night. First one in, oh I don’t know, maybe
ever
. It seems he has decided that he wants to stay here and learn to play some unpronounceable Irish musical instrument. It’s strange really. I’m the one who came to Ireland looking for something, but he’s the one who’s actually found it.’

‘He’s a nice kid. I must admit, however, that when I saw him first I thought he looked like something from a fright movie. But, over the past few days, I’ve gotten to know him a little bit. Ellen gets on so well with him so I just kinda tagged along. He’s really fired up about this music you know. You can hear it in his voice when he talks about it.’

‘Yes I know. The thing about it is this Bert…you see...eh…I haven’t been a great mom to him and that’s the truth. He’s been the one taking care of me if I’m honest with you. He only came on this trip to try to stop me doing something dumb like finding a rich new husband.