‘Oh, I know what you mean, Miss Queenie.’ She saw Chicky flash her a grateful look. Orla had no idea what poor Miss Queenie had meant but she was glad she had given the right response.
Back in London, she made brown bread and parsnip soup to welcome Brigid back from Paris.
‘God, you’ve become domesticated,’ Brigid said.
‘And you’ve got something to tell me,’ Orla said.
‘I’m going to marry him,’ Brigid said.
‘Fantastic! When?’
‘In the summer. Only, of course, if you’ll be my bridesmaid.’
‘Only, of course, if I don’t have to wear plum taffeta or lime-green chiffon.’
‘Are you pleased for me?’
‘Come on, will you look at yourself, you are so happy. I’m thrilled for you.’ Orla hoped she was putting enough enthusiasm in her voice.
‘You don’t think he’s just foolish old Foxy?’
‘What do you mean? Of course I don’t think that. I think he’s lucky Foxy. Tell me where and when did he propose?’
‘I do love him, you know,’ said Brigid.
‘I know you do,’ Orla lied, looking into the face of her friend Brigid who, for some reason that would never be explained, was going to settle for Foxy Farrell.
Things moved swiftly after that.
Brigid left her job and spent a lot of time with Foxy’s family in Berkshire. The wedding would be in Stoneybridge.
‘What a pity that Chicky’s place won’t be up and running in time. It would be great if the Farrells could take it over for the wedding. They’ll be appalled by Stoneybridge,’ Brigid said.
‘I was half thinking of going back there,’ Orla said, suddenly.
‘You’re never serious?’ Brigid was shocked. ‘Look at how hard it was to get out of there in the first place.’
‘I don’t know . . . it’s only a thought.’
‘Well, banish that thought.’ Brigid was very definite. ‘You’d only be back twenty minutes before you were on all fours trying to get out of it again. And where would you work, for God’s sake? The knitting factory?’
‘No, I might go in with Chicky.’
‘But that place is doomed, I tell you. It won’t last for two seasons. Then she’ll have to sell it and lose a packet. Everyone knows that.’
‘Chicky doesn’t know that. I don’t know that. It’s only your uncles who say that because they wanted to buy it themselves.’
‘I’m not going to fight with my bridesmaid,’ Brigid said.
‘Swear you aren’t thinking of mauve taffeta,’ Orla begged, and they were fine again. Apart from Orla’s disbelief that anyone could want to marry Foxy Farrell.
As she often did at times of change, Orla wrote to Miss Daly for advice.
‘Am I going mad, sort of wanting to go back to Stoneybridge? Is it just a knee-jerk reaction to Brigid deciding to marry this eejit? Were you bored rigid when you were there?’
Miss Daly wrote back.
I loved the work. You were great kids in that school. I adored the place. I still look back on it with pleasure. I’m in the mountains here. It’s lovely, and I can drive to the sea but it’s not the same as Stoneybridge, where the sea was there at your feet. Why don’t you try it out for a year? Tell your aunt that you don’t want to sign up for life. Thank you for not asking about Shane. He’s having a little time out with something marginally more interesting than me, but he’ll be back. And I’ll take him back. It’s a funny old world. Once you realise that, you’re halfway there.
In Orla’s office, James and Simon were very tight-lipped these days. Business was not good. The economy was sluggish, it didn’t matter what politicians said. They knew. People weren’t booking stands at exhibitions like they used to. Trade fairs were smaller than last year. The prospects were dire. They were placing all their hopes on Marty Green, who was very big in the conference business. They were having drinks in the office to impress him.
‘Ask that sexy redhead friend of yours to come and help us dress the set,’ James suggested.
‘Brigid’s just got engaged. She won’t want to be a party-party girl these days.’
‘Well, tell her to bring her fiancé. Is he presentable and everything?’
‘You’re worse than my mother and her mother put together. Very presentable, richer than God,’ Orla said.
Brigid and Foxy thought it would be a laugh and turned up in high good form. Marty Green was delighted with them all and seemed to be taking the sales pitch on board. He was also very interested in Orla, who had dressed to kill in a scarlet silk dress she had found in a charity shop and really expensive red and black shiny high heels. She passed around the white wine and the tray of canapés.
‘These are very good,’ Marty Green said appreciatively, ‘who’s your caterer?’
‘Oh, I did these myself,’ Orla smiled at him.
‘Really? Not just a pretty face, then?’ He was definitely impressed, which was what this reception was all about. But Orla felt he was rather too impressed with her and not enough with the company.
‘That’s very nice of you, Mr Green, but I wasn’t hired here to make canapés and smile. We all work very hard, and as James and Simon were saying, this has paid off. We know the market and the situation very well. It’s good to get a chance to tell you about it personally.’
‘And very pleasant it is to hear about it personally.’ His eyes never left her face.
Orla moved away but knew he was watching her all the time. Even when James was giving statistics, when Simon was talking about trends, when Foxy was braying about great new restaurants and Brigid was asking if Mr Green was interested in rugby, as she could get him tickets.
Marty Green wondered if Orla would like to have dinner with him.
She saw James and Simon smiling at each other in relief and suddenly felt hugely resentful. She was being offered to Marty Green. It was as simple as that. She had dressed up, spent her lunchtime making finicky, awkward little savouries, rolling asparagus spears in pastry and serving them with a dipping sauce, arranging little quails’ eggs artistically with celery salt on lettuce leaves, and now they wanted to send her out like a sacrificial lamb to be pawed by Marty Green.
‘Thank you so much but sadly I have plans of my own tonight, Mr Green,’ she said.
He was suave; she would give him that much. ‘I’m sure you must indeed have plans. Another time, perhaps?’
And they all smiled different smiles: Orla’s was nailed to her face, James and Simon’s were like a horror mask. Brigid’s smile hid her shock that Orla would pass up on a date with such a wealthy and charming man as Marty Green. Foxy’s smile was vague and foolish, as always.
Marty Green left saying that he would be in touch. Orla poured herself a large drink.
‘Why did you have to be so very rude to him?’ Simon asked.
‘I wasn’t at all rude. I thanked him and told him that I had my own plans.’
‘That’s what I mean. You don’t have any plans.’
‘Oh, yes I do. I plan not to go out with some businessman as if I were an escort or a hooker.’
‘Come on now, that wasn’t remotely what was suggested,’ James said.
‘It was spelled out in capital letters.’ Orla was furious now. ‘Take the nice man out, bill and coo at him, get his name on a contract.’
‘We are all in this together. We assumed that—’
‘Why didn’t you bring a pole in here and put it up in the office and I could have taken off my clothes and danced around it? That would have helped too, wouldn’t it?’
‘It was only dinner,’ Simon said.
‘Yes, and at the end of an expensive dinner I’d be able to get up and say goodbye and thank you Mr Green? What world do you live in? If I’d gone out to a meal with him and then not gone back to his hotel, I would have been a tease. I would have led him on. He’d have been more annoyed still. This way we all save face. Well, most of us do.’
‘Hey, Orla, you’re being a bit heavy about this,’ Foxy said.
Brigid glared at him but he didn’t see.
‘I mean, that’s what tonight was all about.’
‘You never said a truer word, Foxy,’ Orla said.
Next day James and Simon were prepared to be generous. They had discussed it, they could have given the wrong impression. The last thing they wanted to do was . . . well, what Orla had suggested they were doing.
Orla listened politely until they had finished. Then she spoke very carefully.
‘This isn’t just a hissy fit. I’ve been thinking of leaving for quite a while. My aunt is setting up a hotel in the West of Ireland. I just needed something to focus my mind, and this is it. Please don’t take this as a sulk or as part of a campaign to make you grovel. It’s far from that. It’s just a month’s notice, with great gratitude for all I’ve learned here.’
Nothing they said made any difference. Eventually they had to agree to let her go.
Orla had told Chicky it would only be for a year, just to get the place up and running.
‘Maybe it’s hardly worth your while teaching me to cook like a dream.’
‘It’s always worthwhile teaching people to cook.’
‘You might run a cookery school for real people,’ Orla suggested.
‘The main thing we have to offer here is the scenery. They could learn to cook anywhere,’ Chicky said. ‘Anyway, we should keep the magic to ourselves.’
‘How will I manage not to take an axe to my mother when I get back?’ Orla wondered.
‘Don’t live at home,’ Chicky advised.
‘Can I live with you?’
‘No. That would cause bad feeling. We’ll find you somewhere to live. Rigger will do it up. Your own little place. Leave it to me. When will you be arriving?’
‘Any time now. They don’t need me to work my notice out. They’re only going to hire someone part-time to replace me, anyway. Am I stone mad to be doing this, Chicky?’
‘As you said, it’s only a year. You won’t notice it slipping by.’
By the time she arrived, Rigger was busy doing up an old cottage beside the walled garden for himself and Carmel Hickey. He said that there was an old gardener’s cottage and the roof was sound, so it hadn’t ever got damp. It hadn’t taken much more than a good clean-out to make it habitable.
Orla’s new home was ready for her.
‘I hope you’re not going to have the morals of Miss Daly and be the talk of the town,’ Orla’s mother said on her first night home.
‘Oh, Mam, I do hope not,’ Orla agreed fervently. She could see Chicky hiding a smile.
‘Your father and I don’t know what you have to go and get yourself an old, damp cottage like that for anyway. You’ve a perfectly good home here. People will think it’s very strange.’
‘You know, Mam, they won’t. They won’t even notice,’ Orla spoke automatically.
How very wise Miss Daly and Chicky had been about being independent. Now she hoped her instinct about coming back had been right and not a foolish notion.
There was little time to wonder about it. They were plunged into work straight away. Orla began to look back on the busy days in the office with James and Simon as if it had been one long holiday. She had not believed it possible that there would be so much to organise.
Chicky’s financial system left a lot to be desired. It was honest and thorough and the books were kept . . . in a fashion. But it was not computerised. Chicky had never used accounting software and instead worked on a system of ledgers and cardboard files. It was like something from fifty years ago. So the first thing Orla did was to choose a room as an office. Somewhere she and Chicky could store the computer, printer and all the reference books, drawings and filing cabinets they needed.
Chicky suggested one of the several large pantries that opened off the kitchen. Orla managed to get Rigger to leave aside a few hours from doing up his own house to impress Carmel Hickey’s family in order to get the office shelved and painted.
‘It’ll be worth it in the end,’ she insisted. ‘Then we will be out of everyone’s hair instead of spreading everything over the kitchen table and gathering it all up again.’ She found them a computer and set up the programs she needed. Then she insisted Chicky come in and learn it from the start.
‘No, no, that’s your department,’ Chicky protested.
‘Excuse me. I spent two hours last night learning how to make choux pastry. I didn’t say it was your department. Today you’re going to learn to deal with the bookkeeping software. It should take forty-five minutes if you concentrate.’