The man had amazing energy, you had to hand it to him.
Meg joked that she never put a foot on the outside gravel without pulling up a weed, but old Stu had certainly done his bit. When word came out that he’d been a bit keen on tequila followed by the occasional snort of Columbia’s finest, well, people understood where he got his energy from. The gardens, the box hedging, the parties. But he was hardly a serious sort of druggie. Nobody could run a hotel like the Sorrento and be sitting in a room getting stoned. No, he was a force of nature, that was for sure.
He and his old pal Ferdie were down in Dun Laoghaire a lot these days, people noticed, tanning their legs in their sailing shorts on friends’ boats and pretending not to admire women speed walking on the piers.
More than one old neighbour had shared a coffee with them and a laugh at the old days.
‘Fellows of our vintage are still allowed to look,’ Stu liked to say, eyes following a blonde with lean legs and a pert rear end.
He was off the gargle he said, although some people knew this was not entirely true.
Lennie, husband of Lorelei Stanley, beautician and owner of La Maison Beauty Salon near the Sorrento, liked getting out of the house because the salon was very busy, what with all the pre-wedding customers, and when he was at home, Lorelei had a raft of jobs for him.
‘I’m busy so can you go do the grocery shopping,’ and the like.
Lennie hated grocery shopping.
He’d had a glass of wine with Ferdie and Stu, although Stu had stuck abstemiously to just one glass.
‘Just one: I’m allowed,’ he’d said gravely and Ferdie had nodded.
Weddings were tough.
They’d talked sailing and football, discussed why referees were all blind and why women went a bit mental after a certain age.
Ferdie felt they went mental at any age. He had two daughters and they let him away with nothing.
Stu said he was very lucky in that regard: his four were the best ever.
Lennie, who had one son, agreed.
Ferdie did not mention that his youngest daughter had told him he was not sleeping on the couch come September when the kids went back to school.
Stu did not mention that Meg would have his testicles in a mangle if she knew he still had the odd glass of wine. He’d promised her he was utterly clean and sober when they’d decided to try again last year.
Nor did he mention that he sometimes looked at Savannah and worried about her. She was so thin.
Stu’s son-in-law, Steve, had done quite a few trips up to the hotel in his white van which had Ryan Carpenters written on it. Nobody, Steve felt, noticed white vans.
The wedding watchers didn’t and neither did his father-in-law when Steve saw him during the week coming out of the pub with his mate, Ferdie.
The family, and certainly Indy, were of the opinion that Ferdie was a bit of a bad influence but Steve kept his options open. It could all have been innocent except for the fact that his father-in-law and Ferdie were staggering a little bit. Steve was a busy man. He’d been drafted into doing a bit of repair work up at the hotel and he was still doing his normal work.
Weddings were odd, he concluded. They made people act out of character, perhaps?
The wedding watchers who were going had already organised clothes and beauty treatments.
Lorelei herself said it was going to be the wedding of the season and that included some Hollywood young one who was marrying a rock star in one of the marble mansions overlooking the Killiney rocks. Bets were being taken in the local pubs on how long the Hollywood marriage would last.
Till his next tour, said one wag.
Till her next film with a studmuffin, said someone else.
What was a studmuffin, enquired one older lady who had long since stopped telling people her age but had embraced bright pink hair and no longer listened to any of that old claptrap about taking off one piece of jewellery when she left the house. She was old enough to wear all her jewellery any day she felt like it and having a little Prosecco on the pub terrace with her Caprese salad was celebration enough.
Talk of studmuffins ceased.
The pink-haired-lady was going to the Robicheaux wedding and had her nails done in a lovely coral colour.
