‘It’s not polyester!’
‘Whatever. It’s still not the thing to wear when manning the barbecue. It looks flammable. Put on your nice shorts and your blue shirt, you look good in those. You have legs that should actually be seen, unlike mine which have no ornamental qualities whatsoever. Hence the kaftans. And then we will fill up the Land Rover. I’ll come down with Teddy in the minibus.’
* * *
Rosie quickly changed back in the cottage, pulling on her shorts and linen shirt, and stopped and put on some mascara and a spritz of that nice Jo Malone rose perfume Nessa had bought her for Christmas.
She met Grace in the garage, the back of the Land Rover open, ready to be packed.
‘Ooooooh! Switsoo!’ whistled Grace. ‘Who is this smart-casual, beautiful woman?’ Her nose sniffed the air. ‘And is that perfume I detect? And…’ – she peered closer – ‘mascara?’ She nodded, approvingly. ‘Glad that Bertie and I have been so effective in our gentle critique…’
‘Gentle? It was brutal!’ But Rosie was smiling.
‘You just look a trillion times more relaxed. Less like a buttoned-up bank clerk.’ She smiled back at Rosie. ‘Now, come on. We’ve got to load this baby up.’
They packed the car with the gazebo, the fold-up table, chairs, bunting, drinks coolers and picnic boxes. The old Land Rover had seen better days, probably the ones spent living its previous life with its farmer owner. When Rosie had bought it, it still had mud splatters on the inside of the door, the air thick with sheepdog hairs and a powerful smell of manure. The clutch was gone and it made alarming noises if you went too fast but was very useful for trips to the cash and carry or the industrial laundry or collecting guests from Sandycove station when the starter motor on the hotel minibus had gone.
‘Now, the bride and groom have requested Hicks sausages for the barbecue,’ said Grace. ‘But François is poshing them up with brioche buns and his sauce that’s to die for. He won’t tell me what the secret ingredient is. I bet it’s something really French and really esoteric. The kind of thing you can only find in mountain villages. He’s doing a kind of onion confit as well. And we also have my special newly invented cocktail, the Cliff Topper. Un-fecking-believable. Rosemary-infused honey and raspberry syrup and Prosecco. We have smoked salmon bites, roast beef and horseradish rolls, and François has made some incredible salads. One of them is tomato and mozzarella, which made me almost faint with joy. The man’s a magician of food. A fagician.’
And then Rosie spotted the old dessert trolley and dragged it out from under the paint pots and old tarpaulin. It needed a good wipe down, but it didn’t look too bad. ‘What do you say about resurrecting my mother’s old dessert trolley?’ she said. ‘Do you think François would go for lots of big bowls of dessert? Instead of serving from the kitchen, people could just choose from the trolley?’
Grace took the trolley for a trundle, its wheels squeaking. ‘I doubt when he went to cordon bleu school or wherever, he ever thought he’d be serving food from what is essentially a broken-down, filthy go-kart.’
‘Dad said he could clean it up,’ said Rosie. ‘I think it would be a nice touch.’
Grace looked unconvinced. ‘Are we taking the retro thing too far? I mean, what’s next? Corsets? Penny-farthings? Gruel?’ But she was still wheeling it around. ‘You mean, it would be full of the desserts and people would just choose?’
Rosie could tell she was warming to the idea. ‘Shall we try it tonight? I can talk to François about it.’
‘No, you’re grand,’ said Grace, in an offhand, deliberately casual way. ‘I can talk to him. I need to check about the nibbles, anyway.’ She delivered the trolley back to Rosie and Rosie placed her hands on the wooden bar, just where her mother’s would have been and, for a moment, she could almost feel her mother with her. She spotted Teddy walking across the front of the garage. ‘Dad!’
He turned. ‘Hello, girls, getting ready for the beach picnic? I was just going to check on the minibus, give it one last clean and open the windows so it’s not too hot for everyone.’
Rosie was wheeling the cobwebby trolley towards him. ‘Remember this?’
‘Your mother’s trolley.’ He placed his hands on the handle, just as Rosie had done. ‘She loved this, didn’t she? It was such a piece of theatre, wasn’t it? All the desserts being on display and the guests oohing and ahhing.’ He smiled at Rosie. ‘So we’re going to bring it back, are we?’
‘I think it would be nice,’ said Rosie. ‘Grace is less convinced.’
‘I’m changing my mind,’ said Grace, quickly. ‘I can see its charm. Underneath the dust.’
‘I’ll give it a good clean, and oil those wheels.’ Teddy pushed it back and forth for a moment. ‘It’s still holding up. When do you want it by? I could do it after I come back from the beach?’
‘Would you? Grace is going to talk to François about having all the desserts together.’
Teddy was smiling. ‘I’ll have it done. I’ve got a nice wood polish that will bring up the grain and I’ll deliver it to the kitchen and it will look as good as new.’ He pushed it back and forth a few times, gentler now, as though thinking of something else. ‘I remember when your mother brought this home. It was a relic from a big hotel that was selling all its contents over in Seapoint. And she said no one wanted it and she was the only bidder. She was so pleased with it.’ He beamed at Rosie. ‘I think she’d be really happy if she knew it was back in action.’
‘I think so too.’ Rosie smiled back at him.
‘I’ll bring it down to my workshop now, then,’ he said. ‘I just hope I can eliminate the squeakiness completely. See you later, girls.’
When he’d gone, the sound of the wheels receding into the distance, Grace turned to Rosie. ‘Okay, so back to the barbecue. Small coals, and let it glow, slowly add some more.’ She still looked unconvinced that Rosie would be able to actually light a barbecue. ‘And then put up the gazebo. Remember, tie it down, there’s an old rusty ring cemented into a rock, use that to secure it.’
Grace waved her off and the Land Rover bounced off, backfiring as it left the hotel’s main gate, and trundled down the hill into the village, the sea to her right, winding her way down the cliff road and to the beach.
20
PATRICK
