They left him to his soup and his pint of Guinness. He felt oddly at ease in their company, and listened while they talked about old Frank Hanratty who had painted his old van bright pink so that he could find it without any difficulty. Frank was still driving round the place peering through his glasses, seeing nothing ahead of him or behind. He had never been in any accident. Yet.
Frank had never married, apparently, but had a better social life than any of them; he called here, there and everywhere and was welcome wherever he went. He was mad keen on the cinema and would drive the pink van thirty miles every week and see at least two films in the big town . . .
Their conversation drifted around John. He had an image of this peaceful, undemanding life the man Hanratty lived, happy with the way the cards had been dealt. He wondered if he should buy everyone a drink. That’s what would happen in a movie. But life wasn’t a movie. These men might be affronted. He gave them his big, enveloping smile and promised he would come back again.
‘Great soup that, lumps of chicken in it,’ he said.
He couldn’t have said anything that pleased the landlord more.
‘That chicken was running around the back yard yesterday morning,’ he said proudly.
The day’s walking did wonders for his jet lag, and he slept soundly that night. He woke at six but found himself happy to lie in bed listening to the sounds of the wind and the sea. It was louder today, he felt sure. The wind seemed to have changed direction and was battering against the windows; when eventually he got up, there was a dark and angry look to the waves.
Sure enough, Mrs Starr was issuing weather warnings to everyone over breakfast. He had thought he might try the walk down to the shoreline with the little rocky inlets, but thought better of it, given her advice. Not sure what alternative route to take, he found himself lingering over a last cup of coffee, the other guests bustling around the doorway; as the last of them left, he smiled at Chicky Starr and, raising an eyebrow, invited her to join him.
‘I hear you were in New York for a while,’ he said.
He started to look forward to their chats. There was something restful about being able to have a normal conversation with people who had no preconceived notions about him, no idea about his other life and no expectations. The following morning, once again, John stayed back and was the last to leave after breakfast. He watched as Orla cleared away the plates.
‘You are lucky to have family to help you here,’ John said.
‘Yes. Orla had different plans but they didn’t work out, so I think she’s happy to be here, for a while anyway.’ Mrs Starr never usually seemed in a hurry but this particular morning, she seemed slightly preoccupied.
‘Am I keeping you from anything, Mrs Starr?’
‘I’m so sorry, John, I am indeed a little distracted. My car has died on me and Dinny from the garage will be up to fix it but not until this evening. Rigger, that’s our manager, has to go to the doctor with his babies – they’re having inoculations. We need to go shopping, Orla and I. I’m just working out how we can . . .’
‘Why don’t I drive you?’ he suggested immediately.
‘No, that would never do. This is your holiday.’
Orla was at the table, listening in. ‘Oh, go on, Chicky, John doesn’t mind. And it’s only fifteen minutes down the road. I’ll go with him and get myself a lift back.’
It was settled.
They drove companionably to the town. Orla was a handsome girl with easy conversation.
‘It’s unfair to ask you to do this on your holidays but it’s Chicky’s first week ever. She has enough to think about. I thought you wouldn’t mind.’
‘No, I’m very pleased to help. And by the way, I’ll come with you. I actually like going to the stores,’ John offered. He was indeed captivated by Orla’s conversations with the butcher, the cheesemaker and all the feeling and prodding of vegetables in the greengrocer’s. Soon it was all packed and paid for.
Orla was very grateful. ‘Thank you so much. I’ll ask one of the O’Haras for a lift back now, so off you go and enjoy your day.’
‘I was going to have yet another coffee,’ John admitted. ‘I see a place over there. Why don’t you put the shopping in the car and we’ll go to the café for ten minutes.’
They chatted easily. Orla told him how she had nearly gone to New York to see Uncle Walter and Chicky, but then of course there had been the accident. Poor Uncle Walter had been killed.
Orla said she had done a course in Dublin and then she and her friend Brigid had gone to London to work. It had been good fun for a while but then her friend had got engaged to and married a madman and anyway, she had been feeling restless and longed for the seas and cliffs of Stoneybridge. There would have been no work for her without Chicky. There was something healing about this place. It helped to take the ache out of her heart.
‘I think I see what you mean about this place being healing,’ John said. ‘I’ve only been here a short time, and I can feel it getting to me.’
‘It must be very different from the life you’re used to,’ she was sympathetic.
‘Very,’ he said, without elaborating on the life he was used to.
‘I suppose you couldn’t sit and have a cup of coffee in a place like this out where you live . . .’
He looked at her sharply. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked eventually.
‘John, of course we know that you are Corry Salinas. We knew the moment we saw you, Chicky and I.’
‘But you didn’t say.’ He was stunned.
‘You came here as John. You wanted to be a private person. Why should we say anything?’
‘And the others, the guests? Do they know?’
‘Yes. The Swedish guy copped you the first night, and the English couple, Henry and Nicola, asked Chicky discreetly if you were here incognito.’
‘It’s true what I said. I was on my way to a business meeting in Germany, and I did come here on the spur of the moment.’
‘Sure. And call yourself whatever you want to, John, it’s your life, your holiday.’
‘But if everyone knows . . .?’ he said doubtfully.
‘Honestly, they’ll respect your wanting to be an ordinary person. They’re mainly concentrating on their own lives anyway.’
‘It would make life easier, certainly, if they know already. It’s just that I was hoping to leave that world behind, at least for a while, just spend some time without all that baggage.’
‘It must be desperate having to explain everything and be asked if you know Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt.’
‘It’s not that so much as they have such high expectations of me. They think I actually am the guys I play in the movies. I always feel I disappoint them.’
‘Oh, I doubt that. Everyone here thinks you’re full of charm. Me too. I’ve sort of gone off men myself personally, but you’d put a spark back into the eye.’
‘You mock me. I’m an old, old man,’ he laughed.
‘Oh, I do not mock you, believe me. But I suppose I wish you got more fun out of it: being world famous, successful, everyone loving you. If I had done all you’ve done, I’d be delighted with myself and go round beaming at everyone.’
‘It’s only role-playing,’ he said. ‘That’s my day job. I don’t want to have to do it in real life as well.’
Orla considered this seriously. ‘But you can be yourself with family, can’t you?’ she asked.
‘I don’t have any family, apart from one daughter. I called her in California the other night.’
‘Did you tell her about Stone House? Will she come and bring her family here one day?’
‘She doesn’t have a family. She’s a teacher.’
‘I’m sure she’s very proud of you. Do you go to her school and talk to the kids?’
‘No. Lord, no. I’d never do that.’
‘Wouldn’t they love to meet a film star?’ Orla said, surprised.
‘Oh, Maria Rosa wouldn’t want that,’ he said.
‘I bet she would. Did you ask her?’
‘No. I don’t want to push myself and my kind of life on her.’
‘Lord, aren’t you the most marvellous father. Why didn’t I get parents like you?’
Corry was back in listening mode, where he was always at ease.
‘Are they difficult?’ he asked, full of sympathy.
‘Well yes, to be honest. They want me to be different, I suppose. They think it’s a bit fast to have my own place to live. They think I’m wasting myself washing dishes for Chicky – that’s how they put it. They want me to marry one of the God-awful O’Haras and have a big vulgar house with pillars in front of it and three bathrooms.’
‘Is that what they say?’
‘They don’t need to say it, it’s there in the air like a great mushroom cloud.’
‘Maybe they just wish the best for you and don’t know how to put it.’
‘Oh no, my mother always knows how to put it, usually in four different ways all saying the same thing – which is that I am wasting my life.’
‘And leaving what you call the God-awful O’Haras aside, do you have anybody you do like?’ He was gentle, not intrusive; interested.
‘No. As I told you, I’ve sort of closed down a bit on men.’
‘That’s a pity. Some of them are very good people.’ He had a wonderful smile, slightly ironic, full of conspiratorial fun.
‘I don’t want to take the risk. I’m sure you know that yourself.’
‘I do know. I’ve been married twice and involved with a lot more women. I don’t really understand them but I didn’t ever give up on them!’
‘It’s different for you, John, you have the whole world to choose from.’
‘You look to me like a girl who would have a fairly wide choice, Orla.’
‘No. I can’t get my head around it. At best it’s a kind of compromise. At worst it’s a nightmare.’
‘Were you never in love?’
‘Truthfully, no. Were you?’
‘With Monica, my first wife, yes, I am sure I was. Maybe it was because we were young and it was all so new and exciting and we had Maria Rosa. But I think it was love . . .’
‘Then you had more than I had.’
‘Do you set out to avoid it, the love thing?’
‘No, but I do set out not to be made a fool of and not to compromise. I’ve seen too much of that. My mother and father have very little to talk about, supposing they ever had . . . My aunt Mary is married to a man who is about a hundred because he owns a big property, but he really doesn’t know what day it is. Chicky did marry for love, but then her fellow was wiped off the face of the earth in a car crash. Not much of a recommendation for love, any of this!’
‘Maybe you have a suit of armour up before they get a chance to know you,’ he suggested.
‘Maybe. I don’t want to be a ball-breaker or anything. That’s just the way it seems to turn out.’
‘No, I didn’t mean to suggest that . . .’
‘And I suppose the real irritation is my parents. They are much too interested in my life. It’s getting harder and harder not to show them how annoying it is.’
‘Oh, parents always get it wrong, Orla. It goes with the territory.’ John sounded rueful.
‘You seem to have it sorted though with your daughter.’
‘No way. I want so much for her. I want her to have the best but I know I’m not delivering it. I get it so wrong.’
‘And what kind of parents did you have?’
‘None. I have no idea who my father was, and my mother never came back to find me.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Orla reached out and laid her hand on his. ‘I’m such a clown. I didn’t know. Forgive me.’
‘No, it doesn’t matter. I’m just telling you why I’m so hung up and holding on to family,’ John said. ‘I never knew any one thing about my mother except that she spoke Italian and left me wrapped up at the door of an orphanage nearly sixty years ago. The hours, weeks and years I’ve wondered about her, and hoped she was all right and tried to work out why she gave me away.’ Orla’s hand was still on his. She squeezed it from solidarity.
‘I bet she was thinking of you all the time, too. I bet she was. And look what you did with your life! She would have been so proud.’
‘Would she? OK, I got to be famous but, as you say, I don’t get enough joy from it, enough fun. She might have liked me to have a good time and been happier, less restless.’
‘Let’s do a deal,’ Orla suggested. ‘I will have more of an open mind about men. I won’t assume they are all screaming bores. I’ll do that American thing of assuming that strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet!’
‘I don’t think it’s just American,’ John said defensively.
‘Possibly not. Anyway, I won’t vomit at the thought of going out with one of Brigid O’Hara’s awful brothers or uncles. I’ll give them a chance. Does that sound reasonable?’
‘Very much so.’ He smiled at her intensity.
‘You, on the other hand, are going to enjoy being who you are. People love to meet a celebrity, John. It does them good. We live dull lives. It’s just great to meet a movie star. Be generous enough to understand that.’
‘I promise I will. I didn’t think of it like that.’
‘Oh, and about your daughter; maybe you should tell her the kind of things you’ve told me about love. I’d love a father who could speak like that.’
‘I never have before,’ he said.
‘No, but you could start now and maybe tell her that you would love to see her and meet her friends, if it wouldn’t embarrass her or them. I bet she’d be pleased.’
‘I guess I’m afraid she’ll reject me.’
‘I’m going to face men who might reject me. This is meant to be a deal, isn’t it?’
‘Right. And will you cut your parents some slack too? They may be driving you nuts but they do want what’s best for you.’
‘Yes, I’ll try. I will probably be canonised in my own lifetime, but I’ll try!’ she laughed. They shook hands on the deal and began to drive back to Stone House.
On the way they passed Stoneybridge Golf Club. A few hardy golfer souls were out on the course. Outside the door was parked a violent pink van.
‘Oh Lord, Frank’s at the hot whiskeys already,’ Orla sighed.
John braked suddenly.
‘I’d love a hot whiskey myself,’ he said.
‘You can’t, you’re not a member of the Club. Anyway, you’ve only just had your breakfast.’
But John had parked the car and was striding to the main door.
Alarmed now, Orla ran after him.
Alone at the bar, on a high stool, peering at a newspaper with a magnifying glass, sat a tousled old man. He looked up when the door opened with a crash. A total stranger came through, a man in his fifties in an expensive leather jacket.
‘Well, if it isn’t Frank Hanratty, as I live and breathe,’ the stranger said.
‘Um . . . Yes?’ Frank was rarely approached by people who did know him, and scarcely ever by people who didn’t.
‘Well, how are you keeping, Frank, my old friend?’
Frank peered at him. ‘You’re Corry Salinas,’ he said eventually in disbelief.
‘Of course I am. Who else would I be?’
‘But how do you know me?’
‘We were only talking about you in the pub yesterday. I know you are a great film buff, and now today I find you in here.’
‘But how did you know I was in here?’ Poor Frank was bewildered.
‘Isn’t that your van outside?’ John said, as if it was as simple as that.
Frank nodded thoughtfully. It made sense, sure enough. ‘And will you have a hot whiskey, er, Corry?’ Frank offered.
‘I’m no good at morning drinking. I’d love a cup of coffee, however. And do you know my friend Orla?’
They sat and talked about movies, and the boy who served them brought their coffees to a table.
‘I can’t believe you came in here to see me.’ Frank was happier than he had ever been.
John and Orla exchanged glances.
The bargain had been made.