A YEAR LATER…
The hotel was looking resplendent in the July sunshine. There had been seventeen weddings over the last year, from a large one with a hundred guests to a small, sweet and perfectly formed one.
As events manager, she hadn’t been just in charge of weddings, of course, they had hosted all sorts of events, from Communions to the local book festival, and even the latest gathering of the orchid hunters of Ireland and Britain. Grace thought she could never imagine so many people wearing spectacles and tweed. ‘It was like we were hosting a Miss Marple convention,’ she said to Nessa.
This weekend was a private, family-only event, because there was so much to celebrate. Nessa had brought a vigour to her management and had made some radical but ultimately brilliant changes. For one thing, she had turned the old garage at the back of the hotel into a new bar. She retained the corrugated roof, and rusty front, but a full fit-out was carried out over winter, to reveal something which looked half-shebeen, half-secret den, with benches and tables, a large seating area which was covered by a canopy of sail. There was a pizza oven, and fairy lights, and a blackboard sign with the day’s special cocktails chalked on. François had designed the pizza menu and had taken it so seriously and made them so authentically Italian – apparently, he had Italian heritage as well as French and Welsh – that the hotel had already won a Foodie award, and the Old Garage was open four nights a week. This summer, the place had been thronged with guests, all looking for a slice of pizza and a Cliff Topper cocktail.
François was already hard at work in the kitchen, rolling out the pizza bases. They’d had to take on extra kitchen staff to keep up with the demand. Nessa had also brought in more bar staff and was midway through a second renovation which was to build four small lodges for guests. Laurence was overseeing the build, having resigned from his family’s golf course. ‘I just wasn’t being trusted to do anything,’ he’d explained to Grace. ‘It’s like my dad just saw me as old useless Laurence, not the grown-up version of me.’ He’d still gone to Portugal earlier in the year with the lads for a golf trip, but there seemed to be fewer stories of derring-do, as Wiggy was about to be a father for the third time, and Kip was just out of rehab.
Maureen had decorated the hotel with flowers and it was looking shinier and cleaner than ever.
Nessa smiled at Grace. ‘Do you think she’ll approve? Or do you think she’ll think we’ve made too many changes?’
‘Well, she’ll be here shortly, and we’ll know then,’ said Grace. ‘But I think she’ll approve.’
They were in the office, both holding a small fan. ‘It’s not as hot as last year,’ said Nessa.
‘Hot enough.’ Grace held the fan down the front of her dress. She and François had gone to France for a long weekend last Easter and she’d met the whole Jones clan. Papa Jones wore a Welsh rugby jersey and spoke French with a really strong Welsh accent. Maman Jones was your archetypal French woman, petite and elegant, but instead of intimidating Grace, she couldn’t have been warmer or friendlier.
‘At last,’ she had said, in perfect English, ‘he’s found someone normal, someone not ’ighly strung, yes?’ Grace had never been called ‘normal’ before and had to decide if it was a compliment or not. She decided it was, and she and Maman Jones spent the entire time quaffing champagne and discussing books.
Teddy had been busy not just with the garden but the build of the Old Garage and he’d made the beautiful benches and requisitioned Martin Moore to build the canopy and the wooden bar, which they’d found in a reclamation yard in Kilkenny. Nessa and Grace had ordered cushions for the benches, along with some lovely Avoca rugs for when the temperature dropped. They’d even had a glowing write-up inThe New York Times, when one of its editors was on a trip to Ireland and was recommended a night in the bar.
Martin was coming this evening, and bringing his girlfriend Jessica, who worked in one of the boutiques in the village. She had two small children, Ellie-Mae and Frankie, and Martin was now taking them swimming every Saturday morning to the local pool and then this summer, as the weather heated up a little, he’d brought them to the Forty Foot, building their water confidence. They had won their Newt badges. ‘Next step is Tadpole,’ explained Martin. ‘We’re hoping to get that by Christmas.’
Martin was here already, fixing up the fairy lights, replacing the three bulbs which were missing. Teddy was holding the ladder. ‘You all right up there, Martin?’ he called.
‘Grand, as long as you don’t shake the ladder,’ said Martin. ‘Is Lucinda coming this evening?’
‘I think Nessa did mention it to her,’ said Teddy. ‘I mean, we don’t want her to feel excluded, but now she’s so busy with Rory Armstrong-Doyle and his family, we don’t see her very often.’
‘What does he do again?’ asked Martin, with a laugh, and then they both said in unison, ‘He’s a barrister, don’t you know?’ in a Lucinda-voice.
There were two voices from beyond the garage. ‘Granddad! Granddad!’
‘Over here,’ called Teddy, as Killian and Isabelle raced around the corner, their little sausage dog Sossy at their heels. ‘The guests are arriving!’ they said, breathlessly. ‘It’s Seán and Niamh!’
‘We’ll be there in a moment,’ said Teddy.
The twins stared up at Martin Moore. ‘I can see right up your nostrils,’ said Killian. ‘And into your brain.’
‘At least I have a brain,’ said Martin. ‘Sometimes I wonder.’
‘Will Ellie-Mae be coming?’ asked Isabelle. ‘And Frankie?’
‘They’re not going to miss this for the world,’ called down Martin. ‘Pizza, I said to them, and the company of Isabelle and Killian? And they became very overexcited, and began charging around, and then I said there might even be fizzy pop. Well, they became so excited that they both needed a nice lie-down to recover.’
Isabelle looked pleased. ‘I think that people who don’t get overexcited about nice things aren’t my kind of people.’
‘I quite agree, Isabelle,’ said Martin, hopping down the ladder. ‘Right, Teddy, you ready for the big switch on?’
‘Everyone count down,’ said Teddy, who was inside the Old Garage, his finger on the switch.
‘Three! Two! One!’
And the place lit up.
And then it was a swirl of people arriving, Grace was carrying around a tray of Cliff Toppers. ‘I know,’ she was saying, ‘they are magnificent. My own invention, would you believe?’ And François managed to grab her for a quick kiss in between shovelling pizzas in and out of the oven, his face red with the heat, hers red with a passion for life.
