Everyone was counting on him, were they? Oh well. So, he’d be late, but he just might make it. He knew he would not speed the plane or shorten the journey by worrying about it, so he slept as the plane went eastwards through the night and then they were landing in Ireland.
He looked down at the small patchwork green fields far below. He could see the coastline. Maria Rosa had been to Ireland once with a student group some years back. She said she had enjoyed it. Everyone she met had some kind of story to tell. He thought fancifully about what it would be like to go on a vacation with his daughter. She was now in her early forties – a handsome woman absorbed in her teaching, equally at ease in the flower shop with her mother and Harvey, or having drinks with her father in the top Hollywood hotels.
Still no sign of a romance in her life, but she laughed it away and so Corry stopped enquiring. She might even enjoy a holiday with him. As soon as he got home, he’d call her and suggest it.
He looked at his watch again. This was going to be very close. He would have to run to catch his connection to Germany.
It was, in fact, too close. Corry stood and watched the flight to Frankfurt leave without him.
Tireless Trevor would be waiting at the airport, the publicity machine would meet a plane on which he was not travelling. He called Trevor’s cell phone and held his own phone away from his ear as his agent fumed, protested and raged about the news. Eventually, he ran out of adjectives and abuse and just sounded weary.
‘So what are you going to do?’ he asked.
Corry said, ‘I’m tired. Very tired.’
‘You are tired?’ Trevor’s voice had risen again dangerously. ‘You have nothing to be tired about. It’s the rest of us that have things that are making us tired, like trying to explain what can never be explained.’
‘It was the airline . . .’ Corry began.
‘Don’t give me the airline. If you had wanted to be here, you’d have been here.’
‘Can they not have the meeting tonight or tomorrow?’
‘Of course they can’t. Who do you think these people are? They’ve all flown in specially. They got on planes that didn’t sit on their butts on the tarmac,’ Trevor raged.
‘Then I’m staying here for a week. If it’s too late for the meeting, then to hell with it. I’m getting out for a while.’
‘Hey, this is no time . . . I’ve set everything up.’
‘And I tried to get there, but the airline let me down. Goodbye, Trevor, talk to you in a week’s time.’
‘But where are you going? What are you doing? You can’t go wandering off like this!’
‘I’m a grown man. An old man, as you never tire of hinting. I can have a week’s vacation here or a month, if I like. See you back in LA.’ Corry closed his phone and turned it on to message.
He went to get himself another coffee. This kind of freedom was new to him. He had escaped the meeting he had been dreading. He could now do what he wanted to without consulting any handler, manager or agent. He was actually free.
The airline had done him a favour.
But where would he go? Perhaps he should buy a tourist guide book or find a travel agent. On the tables around there were various brochures offering suggestions of what to do in the region. There was a medieval banquet in a castle. There was a tour to some spectacular cliff face called Moher, which was meant to be one of the Wonders of the World. There were golf packages. None of them appealed to Corry.
But one little sheet advertised A Week in Winter and promised a warm, welcoming house and miles of sand and cliffs and wild birds. He called the number to know if there was a vacancy.
A pleasant-sounding woman said there was indeed room for him, told him to rent a car and drive north. He should call again when he arrived in Stoneybridge for directions to the house.
‘About payment?’ Corry began; he didn’t want to give his name, and there was a possibility that he might even go unrecognised, which would be a real treat.
‘We’ll sort all that out when you get here,’ Mrs Starr was brisk. ‘And your name is . . .?’
‘John,’ Corry said, without pausing.
‘Right, John, take your time, and be very careful of Irish drivers, they are inclined to pull out suddenly without indicating. Assume they are going to do that and you’ll be fine.’
His shoulders felt less tense. He was an ordinary tourist going on an ordinary holiday. There was no press reception, no junket of showbiz writers following him.
It was a cold, bright morning. Corry Salinas put his bag into the back of the rented car and drove north obediently.
He must remember he was called John from now on.
The other guests seemed to have settled in. The house looked just as it had done in the brochure. John turned his collar up to shield his face partially.
He was so used to people doing a double take when they met him and shouts of, ‘Oh my God, you’re Corry Salinas!’ But at Stone House, nobody recognised him. Perhaps Tireless Trevor had been right when he said that Corry Salinas was in grave danger of being a forgotten brand.
He told them, when asked, that he was a businessman from Los Angeles taking a well-deserved week off. And then he began to feel that there was no need to turn up his collar any more. If they recognised him, they were not going to say anything. But it was much more likely that they hadn’t a clue who he was.
The food was good, the conversation was easy, but he felt very weary. He was used to putting on an act, giving a performance. It wasn’t demanded here, which was a relief, but on the other hand he felt somewhat at a loss. What was his role?
He was the first to go to bed. He asked them to forgive him and to believe that he hadn’t invented the International Date Line. They laughed and told him to sleep well.
And indeed John did sleep well, immediately, in his comfortable bed, but jet lag meant he did not sleep long. Still on California time, he woke at three a.m., alert and ready to face the day.
He made himself tea and looked out the window at the waves crashing on the shore below. He wanted to call Maria Rosa. It was eight or nine hours earlier back home. Perhaps she would have come back to her apartment after a long day’s teaching.
He picked up his mobile phone but before he dialled her number, he paused. Would she really be interested to know that he had booked into this bizarre vacation? She was always polite but distant, as if anything her father did happened in an unreal, childlike maze of ratings and reviews and column inches of publicity. To Maria Rosa it had little to do with the real world.
Then he told himself to stop analysing it.
He dialled the number.
‘Maria Rosa? It’s Dad.’
‘Hey, Dad. How are things?’
‘Just fine. I’m stuck in Ireland, of all places. I missed the connection when I was heading for Germany.’
‘Ireland’s OK, Dad, you could be in worse places.’
‘I know. It’s fine. Very wild where I am, right on the Atlantic.’
‘And cold, I guess?’
‘Yes, but it’s a warm hotel. I’m going to stay here for a week.’
‘That’s good, Dad.’
Was she interested? Was she bored? It was so hard to know from six thousand miles away. ‘I just thought I’d call to say hi.’
‘It’s good to hear from you.’
There was a pause. Was she ending the conversation?
‘And you.’ He was loath to let her go. ‘Can you hear the waves crashing outside? They’re really big. They’re like a sort of drum roll.’
‘What time is it there?’ she asked.
‘Just after three a.m.,’ he said.
‘Hey, Dad, you need to sleep,’ his only daughter said.
Corry said goodnight, and felt more lonely and lost than he had ever felt in his life.
He dozed fitfully after that, and felt sluggish and groggy as he went down to breakfast. Several people were already at the table and they commiserated with him over his jet lag. A young woman called Winnie, who was a nurse, gave him sound, practical advice and although he promised he’d follow it, he allowed himself to be persuaded to try a full Irish breakfast as an alternative remedy. Mrs Starr placed a cafetière of coffee in front of him and told him to help himself.
After breakfast, he lingered over a last cup as Orla cleared the table and Mrs Starr busied herself with maps and binoculars and packed lunches for the guests setting out on walks. As the last of them left, he saw her shoulders relax and he realised how much anxiety lay under the surface.
She caught his eye as she turned round and saw that he had been watching her.
‘This is our first week,’ she explained.
‘But you’re no stranger to the business, I can tell,’ he said.
‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘but that wasn’t my own business. I worked for someone else. Now I’m where the buck stops. So listen, John, what would you like to do today? Would you like another cup of coffee, and I’ll tell you what’s around?’
They chatted companionably over another pot of coffee; and so, refreshed, John set out in blustery sunshine for his first day’s walk.
Following Chicky’s advice, he chose to go inland. He walked over a lonely road, saw big sheep with black faces and twisted horns. Or were they wild goats? There had been little time to study nature when he was growing up. There were huge gaps in his understanding of so many things.
He found a small pub and went from the bright, cold sunshine into the dark interior where a turf fire burned in a small grate and half a dozen men looked up from pints, interested to see a stranger come in.
John greeted them all pleasantly. He was an American, he explained unnecessarily, staying at Stone House. Mrs Starr had suggested this pub would be a good place to visit.
‘Decent woman, Chicky Starr.’ The landlord was pleased with the praise, and he polished the glasses with greater vigour than ever.
‘She spent most of her life in America. Did you know her from there?’ an old man asked him.
‘No, indeed. I just saw an advertisement yesterday in Shannon airport, and here I am!’
Was it only yesterday? He already felt completely disconnected from any other life.
A large man wearing a big cap looked at John keenly. He had a broad red face and small curious eyes.
‘You know, you’re sort of familiar-looking. Are you sure you were never this way before?’
‘Never. This is my first visit. You people sure live in a wonderful part of the world.’
That satisfied them. John had perfected the easy transferring of the attention away from himself, coupled with praise for their having lucked out in where they found themselves living.
‘Chicky Starr was married to a Yank, you know. He was killed in a terrible car crash, the poor devil,’ the red-faced man said.
‘The Lord have mercy on him,’ said the others in unison.
‘That’s terrible,’ John said.
‘Yes, she was very cut up. But she’s got great guts altogether. She came back here to her own people and bought the old Sheedy place. She took ages doing it up. You wouldn’t believe all the work that went into that house.’
‘It’s certainly a very comfortable place to stay,’ John said.
‘When you get back home, will you tell your friends in America to go there?’
‘Sure I will.’ John wondered did he know anyone in Los Angeles who would come to an outpost like this.