Whitethorn Woods Page 5

  And he came with me to Keno’s that night. We walked right through the dancers and the punters to the office at the back. To say Keno was surprised is putting it mildly.

  I introduced them formally and then Neddy spoke.

  He told Keno that he sympathised with the situation, and how it must be hard running a business with all the staff problems and everything, but it wasn’t fair to take away my dream, as I had always wanted to be a teacher ever since I was a schoolgirl.

  ‘Clare was a gold star at school,’ Keno said, more to make conversation, I think, than anything else.

  ‘I’m not at all surprised,’ Neddy said, beaming at me proudly. ‘So, you see, we can’t make Clare do anything else except concentrate on her teaching. Neither of us can.’

  Keno pulled a big brown envelope from his desk drawer.

  ‘The pictures?’ he said to Neddy.

  ‘They’re very beautiful, Clare showed them to me earlier tonight,’ he said.

  ‘She did?’ Keno was amazed.

  ‘Of course, if we are to be married we must have no secrets. I have told Clare about my brother Kit who has been and still is in prison. You can’t keep quiet about things that are part of you. And I know that Clare is very, very grateful for the start you gave her. So that’s why we are here.’

  ‘Why exactly are you here?’ Keno was totally bewildered.

  ‘To know was there any other way we could help you.’ Neddy spoke simply as if it were obvious.

  ‘Like what way, in God’s name?’

  ‘Well, I have a great friend who does wrought iron, he could do you really nice windows outside which would look well and also be good and strong against unwelcome visitors. And let me see, what else could we do? If the dancing girls were tired and wanted somewhere to stay, it’s very peaceful by the woods where we live … Perhaps some of your dancers might need a nice restful holiday. They could come to stay with us. There’s lots to see in Rossmore. There’s even a wonderful well in the woods. People can wish there and it comes true.’ His good-natured face was straining with good ideas for Keno.

  I begged God not to let Keno mock him, or tell me I was marrying a simpleton. I spoke to God very strongly in my mind. ‘I never bothered you about things, did I, God? I didn’t go up to that well rabbiting on to your grandmother, St Ann, now did I? No, I sorted out my own problems and looked after my little sister. I didn’t go round doing much sin, unless the dancing is a sin? But it’s so silly, it can’t really be a sin, can it? And now I want to escape from all this and marry a good man. So that’s the kind of thing you’re meant to be for, isn’t it, God?’

  And God listened. This time.

  Keno turned on the shredder and put the pictures into it.

  ‘There aren’t any more,’ he said. ‘Get your wrought iron man to give me a ring, Neddy. And now get the hell home, the two of you, to plan your wedding. I have an ailing business to run here.’

  And we walked out of the club together hand in hand and down the cobbled street.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Singles Holiday

  Part 1 – Vera

  It was very clear from the moment I saw the advertisement:

  Holiday for Singles

  fun, sun, sea and relaxation

  That was exactly what I wanted.

  And they were so slow back at the Active Retirement Association, and they were so scornful at the cardiac exercise class. They were positively hostile at the Gardening in Later Years Group. My cousins back in Rossmore were the most disapproving of all. They said that sort of holiday was only for young people. Undesirable young people who would probably have sex on the plane on the outward journey, and be drunk for fifteen days when they got there.

  But where did it say anything about that in the advertisement?

  Nowhere.

  I paid my two hundred Euro deposit and then the rest when they sent the invoice. At no time did anyone ask me my age. And proper order too. I had not asked them their ages. I turned up at the airport with my little purple and yellow label saying Holiday for Singles.

  That’s what I was, single.

  I could easily have married Gerald, and quite possibly I could have married Kevin. But Gerald was very, very dull. So I didn’t marry him. And the woman who did marry him went sort of mad from the tedium of it all. And I didn’t try to make Kevin infatuated with me or anything because truly he was very unreliable. I wouldn’t have had a moment’s peace with him.

  And I never regretted being single. Never for one moment – except sometimes on holidays.

  You had to pay a single room supplement. You were often given a very small, poky table away from other people’s eyes. It was a bit lonely not having anyone to talk to like other people had, someone to laugh over the day with. That’s why I was thrilled to see a holiday that catered for exactly what I needed.

  At the airport I saw lots of those purple and yellow labels and, yes, the fellow travellers did seem to be very young, like about forty years younger than me, but then that was just who I saw now. The older crowd would turn up later.

  They didn’t as it happened. And as I stood in the line waiting for check-in, I got a few odd glances. But then I have always had a few odd glances. A sixty-something woman in jeans and a big floppy sun hat does often attract a second look. People often look again just to check that they haven’t imagined all those lines and wrinkles under a floral, cotton hat and over a trim pair of jeans.

  The check-in girl asked me if I was sure I had booked the right holiday and I assured her that I was indeed single and greatly looking forward to it. On the plane they were all introducing themselves to each other, so I joined in too.

  ‘I’m Vera,’ I said and shook hands heartily with those nearest to me. They were nice young people called Glenn and Sharon and Todd and Alma. None of them had ever been on a singles holiday before, and neither had I, so we had that in common anyway.

  ‘Where did you go last year, Vera?’ Glenn asked.

  I told them about the Active Retirement Association’s walking holiday in Wales, and the year before the bus tour of Scotland for the cardiac exercise class. I had been planning to go on the Gardening in Later Years Group trip to Cornwall and the Eden Project but suddenly I had seen this advertisement and decided that it had everything I really wanted.

  Sharon, who was a very pretty girl with a lovely smile, asked did I have family at home and I said sadly, no, I had been an only child, I had never married but I had lots of good friends. And plenty of time to see people nowadays since I had retired.

  Todd wanted to know where I was from. I explained Dublin nowadays, but originally from Rossmore – they probably wouldn’t have heard of it. It turned out they all had.

  There had been some kind of documentary on television about it. There was what they called a cool kind of wishing well, which gave you whatever you wanted. Alma said maybe we should all be going there on holiday rather than Italy, imagine getting what you wanted from a holy well. I thought of telling them that the well wasn’t really holy, it had been there for years before St Patrick ever came to Ireland. But it was a mistake to give young people too much information.

  Glenn asked had I been to Italy before and I told them a bit about Rome and Florence and Venice but said that I’d never been to this place, Bella Aurora, where we were heading. In fact I had never heard of it until I got the brochure which said it was full of places of interest. I was eager to see what they were.

  ‘Mainly clubs, I think,’ Alma said. Her friend had been here last year, and said it was great, that she had been locked day and night.

  Locked? I wondered but didn’t say. Young people get so irritated if you sound bewildered.

  ‘Sounds good,’ I said with a bright smile and maybe it was only my imagination but they seemed to look at me with more interest.

  After we arrived and got our luggage at the airport, two almost naked girls with purple and yellow bikinis checked us all off on clipboards and put us on a bus. We went t
hrough several very big resorts until we got to Bella Aurora. All had huge white hotels facing the sea, lines of cafés, pizzerias, ice cream parlours, bars. And Bella Aurora looked just the same.

  Hard to see where all the interesting things were. But I never start by complaining. Hard to know how it could be exactly relaxing either – very loud music blaring everywhere – but no point in finding fault before you have settled in. There might well be fun, though not much room for it, the beach looked very crowded. But they had promised fun and no doubt it would be delivered.

  Three more near-naked courier girls with clipboards were waiting for us at the hotel to assign us our rooms and we were told we had half an hour to unpack and then there would be welcome drinks by the pool.

  So I hung up my clothes and had a shower, put on a nice clean T-shirt with my jeans and down I went.

  To my surprise almost all the people who had travelled on the plane were almost naked too, like the courier girls. A lot of them were very white-skinned but some, like Alma and Sharon, had been on electric tanning beds. Sharon looked very beautiful, like someone from Hawaii. They looked as if they had been here for weeks.

  There was a kind of fruit punch served and very nice and refreshing it was too; and we were all quite thirsty what with the heat and the travelling and everything. And the almost naked courier girls told us of all the interesting things to do, which was mainly a list of clubs that opened at midnight and were lively, and cool, and full of action. And then I began to feel a bit odd and as if the swimming pool had started to slide away so I lay down for a while and closed my eyes.

  When I woke up it was much darker and the others seemed to be dancing beside the swimming pool. There was very loud music.

  Todd was lying on one of those slatted wooden sunbeds beside mine.

  ‘They put a fair whack of vodka in that punch all right,’ he said appreciatively.

  Vodka? I had been drinking vodka in the afternoon, in this heat?

  ‘You’re a great old stayer, Vera, I’ll give you that,’ said Glenn who was holding his head. ‘I like a woman who can hold her drink. Personally I think I’m going to have to pace myself a bit. See you at dinner …’

  Dinner? I thought I had slept through it. I thought it was bedtime. But maybe food was what I needed.

  The dining room was decorated with paper flowers and you could sit where you liked. I sat beside Sharon, who was depressed and didn’t want to eat. She told me that she fancied Glenn. But in the way of things, he didn’t seem to see her. Only that noisy Todd came on to her and then he had passed out at the cocktails. Life was very hard, wasn’t it?

  I said it was, but that it was early days yet, maybe she was better off not to be fancied too soon. She brightened up at this and ate a huge dinner.

  Just after midnight they all headed off to one of the interesting clubs down the road and I went to bed and passed out again.

  Next morning I went down and swam three lengths of the pool and felt much better. I looked around for my new friends but none of them showed up. So I went back to the pool and read. I would normally have taken a walk and found an old church or museum but I didn’t want the Singles people to think I was being aloof. So I waited and waited and nobody turned up at all.

  Then I thought there must have been Something Interesting arranged and I had missed it when I had sort of passed out from the vodka fruit punch the night before. One of the near-naked courier girls had given us her card in case of any problems, so I phoned her and wondered had I missed anything Interesting.

  The near-naked girl sounded upset, annoyed almost, to be woken so early. Early? It was past midday, I had been up since eight. No, of course nothing was planned for the morning, she said. People didn’t want anything in the morning. There would be a seafood buffet lunch any time after two-thirty, which would be followed by water polo. It was all written up on the hotel notice board. And now if I would excuse her, she had to get back to sleep.

  So I read my book and waited for the seafood buffet lunch. About 3 p.m. everyone started to appear, very tired still and hung-over. They all had about three cups of black coffee and an occasional orange juice, which must have been breakfast, then they moved on to cold beers and ate mountains of prawns, squid and mussels. And then amazingly they all had the energy to play water polo. I don’t think there were many real rules, it had a lot to do with removing the tops of other people’s bikinis.

  I watched it and said that I didn’t usually take exercise for two hours after a meal. It used to be the way in the olden days. And they listened, interested, as if I were telling them news from the planet Mars.

  And Sharon said that Glenn did fancy her a bit now, which was terrific, and I had been right to tell her to hang in there. And Todd told me that Sharon was a proper little slapper. And Alma said she thought that Todd was divine. And Glenn said to me that he thought this was a fantastic holiday and wondered, was I enjoying it? And because I was brought up to be polite and always to say that things were great even when they weren’t, I said that I was loving it.

  But the truth was that I didn’t think there were all that many interesting things to do, and I was a bit too old for their kind of fun. Still there was the sea and the sun and nice people to have meals with, so while they were playing what they called water polo I went off and got postcards and sent them back to my friends in the Active Retirement Association, and to my cousins in Rossmore, to the Gardening in Later Years Group and the cardiac exercise class, saying it was all delightful. Which it mainly was.

  I watched the fruit punch carefully the second evening and at dinner Sharon confided that Glenn wanted to be with her even when they got back home. Todd said that Sharon was a tease, Alma said that Todd was only loud because no one had understood him. They all went to another cool club this time and I went off to bed.

  I realised of course that I had the whole morning to do my kind of interesting things. Just as long as I was back for the seafood buffet lunch at three no one would miss me. I went to the museum in the Old Town, which was delightful, and I saw a really old-fashioned hotel, completely unlike the rest of Bella Aurora. It was so different from all the very noisy places along the seafront, full of near-naked people, that I decided to go in and have a cup of coffee.

  They served it in a big shady garden. This was much more my sort of place really, except that it would have been lonely here. And there would be nobody’s lives to get involved in as I had on my Singles holiday.

  In the hotel garden there was an older man in a sun hat doing a sketch. He nodded at me graciously and I nodded back hoping that I was being gracious in return. Forty-eight hours with these wild young people had made me speak differently, think differently almost. Eventually he came over and showed me the drawing.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  I said it was excellent and that he had a great sense of detail.

  He said that he was called Nick and he had been here for two days. It was a lovely hotel but quiet, and then of course everyone else was a couple. I sighed with him and said it was always a problem. He told me he was a widower with no children, he quite liked his own company but was not entirely happy as a retired person. I told him I had never married, and that because of discrimination against solo travellers I had signed up for a Singles holiday.

  He was astounded.

  ‘Aren’t they for much younger people than us?’ he said.

  ‘It didn’t say in the advertisement,’ I explained and this seemed to please him. He laughed and said I was a fine person.

  I explained that of course they didn’t get up until 3 p.m.

  ‘And what are they doing?’ Nick wondered.

  I said that I honestly didn’t know. I couldn’t believe that they would all be having sex all morning, I assumed that they must stay up so late all night at these clubs that they were all exhausted.

  Again Nick said I was a very interesting person and he wondered if I would have a late lunch with him. I explained that I had t
o be back for the seafood buffet lunch at three.

  And he patted my hand as if I were an old friend.

  ‘Well, please say you’ll come back here tomorrow morning and we’ll explore somewhere while the Singles all sleep on?’ he asked.

  I said that would be great.

  At the buffet lunch, Alma said she and Todd had got together last night and it was great. I didn’t enquire exactly what ‘got together’ might mean. I just nodded enthusiastically. Sharon didn’t know whether she should be easy or hard to get with Glenn. It was so difficult to know. I advised them as best I could. There was a wet T-shirt contest instead of water polo but it seemed more or less the same. At dinner Todd said that Alma was a slapper and Glenn seemed to have eyes only for one of the near-naked courier girls. They went off to another club and I went to bed and listened to the music coming from all over Bella Aurora.

  I was looking forward to meeting Nick next day. And then the days got into a very nice easy rhythm.

  Nick and I went out every day together. Sometimes we took a bus to various inland villages and on two occasions I skipped the 3 p.m. buffet lunch but I never missed the dinner.

  ‘Could I come to the dinner one night?’ he asked.

  Nobody had ever brought a guest in so I said I’d have to enquire.

  ‘I’d pay, of course, and bring some wine,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll tell them that,’ I reassured him.

  One of the near-naked courier girls said it was not normally allowed but that it was no problem in my case. So I invited Nick.

  ‘I’m a bit nervous, as if I were meeting your family,’ he said. I had told him about Todd and Glenn and Sharon and Alma and their complicated lives. I had told them nothing about Nick.

  The night he came to dinner Glenn was kissing the near-naked courier girl instead of eating his dinner, Sharon was crying, Alma was telling everyone that Todd was a toe-rag.

  ‘What is that exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘A scut,’ Alma said, which didn’t make things any clearer.

  Nick took it all in.