A Secret in Clover Cove: a heart-warming romance set on the beautiful west coast of Ireland

by Maggie Finn

  He flashed a grin. ‘No idea. I’m a public schoolboy, I’m new to all this touchy-feely stuff, so I’m probably making a pig’s ear of it.’

  ‘Probably.’

  The hedges and trees of the coast road were giving way to the cottages and gardens of Port Quinn now and Tessa felt a rising anxiety as they turned towards the town. Charles was right: she needed to make a big change, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Finally he pulled his car up in the harbor and, ever the gentleman, jumped out and opened the passenger door.

  ‘Okay, here it is, for what it’s worth,’ he said, glancing up towards the gallery. ‘If we do things for love, that’s wonderful.

  But you can make your own life and you can write your own story.’

  He gave her a smile.

  ‘Or at least give it a new ending.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The gallery was closed. Or rather, that’s what the notice on the side door said. Hand-written in red market pen, it said ‘closed for hanging’, with an arrow pointing to a flyer announcing the Simon Drake exhibition.

  Danny stepped back, looking at the building. There was a loading entrance down a side street, but that was shuttered and locked: he jangled the gate. Definitely locked.

  Most people would have given up at this point, but Danny was a trained journalist. Early on, Ciaran had given him a golden piece of advice that had stuck in his head.

  ‘Let’s say you’re writing about Madonna,’ Ciaran had said. ‘Well, Joe Public assumes that whatever it says on Madonna’s Wikipedia page is right. A reporter, on the other hand, assumes that he can go to Madonna’s house, walk into Madonna’s kitchen and ask Madonna.’

  Not that any such wise advice had helped him today. Danny had spent the morning trying to write his piece on Bishop Ray and had barely got started. Stung by Tessa’s words, unsettled by Bishop Ray’s late-night confession, he’d tried to write a balanced piece, but it just sounded flat. The only way to make it sound compelling was to write it as a polemic – a persuasive one-sided argument. ‘Drunken priest disgraces the church,’ ‘Anti-booze campaigner caught by own lies.’ And that just sounded… mean.

  Was Ciaran right? Would the public hate the paper for printing the story? Was Ray right? Could the personal and the public get jumbled up? Was Tessa right? How perfect their night by the sea had been; how perfect she was, until they had started talking about this. Danny had become defensive, she had… well, she had just tried to defend that sweet old man. Which is why he had come to the gallery – to find Tessa. He simply wanted to apologize, explain why he’d over-reacted. And maybe explain why that ‘sweet old man’ wasn’t so sweet to him.

  ‘Let’s try Madonna’s front door,’ said Danny, walking up to the gallery’s entrance. The notice on the door read ‘closed’, but he pushed anyway. It clicked open.

  Straightening his tie, he stepped inside.

  ‘Hello?’ he called.

  A young man was up a ladder holding a framed painting while a woman was standing back, a finger to her lips, considering.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I was looking for Tessa Drake. Is she here?’

  The woman shook her head just as a middle-aged man bustled into the room looking mildly harassed. ‘Oh,’ he said as he saw Danny. ‘I thought we’d left a note on the door.’

  He glared up at the young man on the ladder.

  ‘The private viewing isn’t until seven, so…’

  But by now Danny had seen the pictures. Another of Ciaran’s journalistic maxims: ‘roll with it’ – meaning stay alert, the real story could be right under your nose. And right now, it was. Danny was getting a private first view of the biggest art show the west of Ireland had seen in years. He didn’t know much about art, but he could see this was impressive. Very impressive. Blues and green clashed and swirled, cliffs and waves melting and twisting together. They were spectacular.

  ‘Spectacular,’ said Danny, turning to the white-haired chap. ‘It’s just spectacular.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ the man grinned, his excitement evidently over-riding his desire to throw Danny out. ‘I’m Ted Gervis, I own the gallery. Are you coming to the show?’

  ‘Oh of course,’ said Danny, smoothly switching to a mid-Atlantic drawl, sensing that his Irish twang wouldn’t help right now. ‘Sorry for barging in Ted, my head’s all over the place with the jet-lag. Doesn’t usually affect me like this.’

  ‘Oh are you at the Palace?’ said Ted, his manner brightening. ‘Listen, if you get here a little early, I should think we’ll be open.’ He gave Danny a heavy wink.

  Danny nodded. ‘Great, thanks for the tip. I’ll make sure I have the funds ready.’

  He was just turning away, when something over Ted’s shoulder caught his eye and he stopped.

  ‘I know that painting,’ he said, pointing to a canvas. It was blue, dynamic, visceral.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the gallerist, ‘I felt the same way the first time I saw it. It feels so familiar, doesn’t it?’

  Danny frowned.

  ‘Yes, it really does.’

  It was familiar because Danny had seen it before, through the window at Tessa’s gallery and again inside her studio, just before she had hurriedly thrown a sheet over it.

  ‘It’s such a classic Simon Drake, don’t you think?’

  ‘Simon Drake?’

  ‘Yes. Isn’t it exquisite?’

  ‘It certainly is. It makes me feel as if I was actually looking out the window at the Irish Sea.’

  One particular window, in fact. One particular stretch of the sea. The one that was also right outside the window of Danny’s own bungalow in Clover Cove.

  ‘Well, as you know, that’s the theme of the collection,’ said Ted, ‘Sea, sand, time, evocations of the place, looking to the past and the future.’

  Danny nodded, but his mind was elsewhere. Thinking about a certain spoilt woman, a woman who had recently questioned Danny’s morals and judgement. The nerve.

  ‘So Simon Drake painted this in his studio?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know, it just feels so real.’

  Danny looked around.

  ‘Say, I don’t suppose the great man is here is he?’

  ‘Simon? No, just us three right now.’

  ‘The worker bees, huh? Power behind the throne.’

  Ted beamed.

  ‘But he’s in the area?’

  Ted glanced around and lowered his voice.

  ‘He’s a recluse, as I’m sure you know.’

  ‘Sure, I heard.’

  ‘But between us…’ Ted was whispering now. ‘…there’s a good chance he might make an appearance at the show. First time in decades.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Danny, an idea forming in his mind.

  ‘And you might also like to know that Simon is staying at the Palace too. Perhaps you’ll bump into him.’

  ‘That would be amazing,’ said Danny, meaning it.

  ‘So I’ll see you tonight?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Danny, backing towards the door. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Simon Drake looked terrible. He peered from the crack of his hotel suite door like a hunted animal, then groaned and waved a lackluster hand. Tessa wasn’t sure if he was inviting her in or shooing her away.

  ‘Yeah, great to see you too, Dad,’ she said Tessa. All the curtains were closed and it smelled like – what did it smell like? – the bottom of a linen basket? Simon groaned again as Tessa clicked on a lamp. He had flopped back into the four-poster bed and pulled a pillow over his head.

  ‘Come on, rise and shine,’ she called, whipping the drapes back. ‘You have to be down at the harbor in half an hour looking like, well, like the international playboy you are.’

  Simon said something from beneath the bedclothes.

  ‘Sorry, can’t hear you,’ shouted Tessa. ‘You’ll have to come back up to the surface if you want to have a conversation.’

  She pick
ed up clothes from the floor and dropped them onto an armchair.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ said Simon in a gravelly voice. ‘I’m not going to the show.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ said Tessa, crossing to the bathroom and turning on the shower. ‘We need to make you look human. Chop chop.’

  He groaned again, but Tessa was in no mood for babying her father. She grabbed the corner of the quit and pulled it off.

  ‘Come on, into the shower,’ she cried. ‘No objections, you smell like a teenager.’

  Grumbling, Simon finally rolled off the bed and shuffled into the bathroom, closing the door and locking it behind him.

  Tessa sat down on the bed and rubbed her face with her hands.

  She couldn’t back out now. She had made up her mind and she had to go through with it or she would always regret it. At least, that’s what she had been telling herself for the past day. Those sorts of imaginary conversations were fine when they were going on in your head, but in real life they tended to get messy: people didn’t stick to the script. And Simon Drake had always been very good at deviating from the script.

  Like now, actually, she thought. After months of groundwork and weeks of negotiation, Tessa had finally got Simon to agree to make an appearance at ‘his’ show. She had appealed to his vanity and his natural love of the dramatic. ‘It will be a sensation,’ she had said, ‘It will make headlines around the world: great artist returns to the world’. ‘It will be good for you.’ But her own agenda was more selfish. Tessa saw her father’s attendance as the first step to her own withdrawal from The Big Lie. Once he tasted fame and adulation once again, she reasoned, he would fall back in love with being Simon Drake, artist. And once that happened, once he saw how much people wanted his art, then he would finally pick up his paint brush once more: his ego wouldn’t accept anything less. That was the theory anyway. First, she had to get him there and he’d probably be locked in the bathroom for hours.

  ‘Dad?’ she called. ‘Are you okay…?’

  Just then, then bathroom door opened and Simon emerged swathed in a fluffy robe and a swirl of shower mist.

  ‘Why are you here so early?’ he barked, rubbing his blonde hair with a towel. ‘The gallery doesn’t open for an hour.’

  ‘I thought it would take you longer to get moving.’

  ‘Nonsense, I’m fine, fine.’

  He grabbed a shirt and a suit on a hanger from the wardrobe and disappeared back into the bathroom. Tessa almost laughed: he was a master at confounding expectations.

  ‘So what did Ted say the schedule was?’ called Simon, his voice muffled by the humming of an electric toothbrush.

  What am I? Your PA? thought Tessa, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Get there half an hour early; a lot of the collectors flew in days ago and will want to sneak in early. Ted has a list: a pecking order of buyers I guess, your job is to keep them all talking. You know the drill. Well… you did.’

  Simon put his head around the door, his lips covered in white foam.

  ‘Ain’t my first rodeo, kiddo,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, so then they open for invitees, an hour of drinks and chat, speech from the artist, then Ted counts the money.’

  Simon clapped his hands together. ‘Great.’ He picked up an open bottle of red wine and poured out two glasses.

  Tessa shook her head. ‘And I don’t think you should either.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said, knocking the wine back in two gulps. ‘You don’t know how boring those collectors are.’

  ‘I do actually, but they have all flown in from all over the world for the privilege of paying thousands for your paintings. You should at least be coherent.’

  Simon took another drink, smaller this time and fixed Tess with a look.

  ‘What’s up?’

  She frowned. Even now, it was disconcerting that her father always knew when she was preoccupied with something. There had, of course, been long periods when Simon Drake had utterly ignored his daughter in favor of the flighty and pretentious, but when he did bother to pay attention, it was uncanny how he could pick up on her anxiety.

  ‘It’s nothing, it’s just…’

  Tell him. Tell him!

  Simon put an arm around her shoulders and Tessa flinched.

  ‘Come on, you can tell your old dad anything.’

  ‘It’s just…’

  It’s just I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s tearing me apart. Say it.

  ‘Actually, I’ve been meaning to say something to you,’ said Simon, interrupting her. ‘And I think today’s a good day to say it.’

  Tessa turned to look at him quizzically.

  ‘I think you should put on your own exhibition,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Seriously,’ said Simon. ‘Your work is amazing and it’s about time you stood on your own two feet.’

  ‘Dad, that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking…’ she said, but Simon was still talking.

  ‘I don’t know if you know how proud I am of you Tess, but I really am. And I’m so grateful to you for all you’ve done since your mother left, I couldn’t have coped without you.’

  Tessa put her hand on his knee.

  ‘But don’t you see? That’s why it’s so good that you’re going to your show. You’re moving forward, making positive changes. And soon you won’t need me anymore.’

  Simon laughed.

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘Dad, you never needed me.’

  Tessa stood and crossed to the desk and opening her bag, pulled out her thumbed and smeared copy of Simon Drake: For The Love of Colour. She’d pulled it out of the wastepaper bin and carefully dried it out after Ghost had splashed it with turps, then brought it along for this exact purpose, to show Simon Drake just how good Simon Drake had been.

  ‘Look at this, Dad,’ she said, opening the book. ‘These paintings were magnificent. Genuinely.’

  Simon put up a hand, as if he didn’t want to look at his past.

  ‘That was so long ago,’ he said, ‘I was… different then.’

  ‘No you weren’t, your talent was the same.’

  He shook his head firmly. ‘The talent left me when your mum left.’

  Tessa let out a frustrated groan, throwing the book back onto the desk.

  ‘See? That’s just nonsense, isn’t it? I know you were heartbroken and that you found it hard, but you’re right, it was a long time ago. And now it’s time.’

  ‘Time? To do what?’

  ‘To paint, dad. It’s time to paint again.’

  Simon gave a hollow laugh and grabbed the wine bottle. As he poured, Tessa could see his hands were shaking. Tessa stepped across and took the glass away, then took his hands in hers.

  ‘Dad, look at me,’ she said. ‘You can do it.’

  ‘I can’t, kitten,’ he said softly.

  ‘Yes you can. These are the same hands which created all your greatest works. You can do it again. You’re my hero. You just have to believe in yourself.’

  He looked up at her.

  ‘Your hero? How could I be?’

  ‘You’re my dad.’

  He snorted, shaking his head.

  ‘Some dad. I’ve been leaning on you for years.’ He picked up the book and turned to the back and the famous picture of Tessa and Simon in his studio, side by side in front of a canvas, each with a brush, both painting, both smiling.

  ‘Look at you there,’ he said, ‘Helping your dad out even then.’

  Tessa gave a sad smile.

  ‘I was always glad to help. But now I need to move on too.’

  Slipping her grip, Simon snatched up his wine glass and drained it.

  ‘Dad please, don’t,’ said Tessa desperately. ‘You don’t need to drink, you don’t need me, not really. You’re stronger than you think.’

  He walked back to the desk, picking up the bottle.

  ‘Am I?’ he said. ‘I’m not as strong as you. You’re so like your mother.’

  ‘I’m not sur
e that’s a compliment.’

  ‘Oh it is; it’s meant to be anyway.’ He looked down at the wine bottle, then, after a moment’s thought, carefully set it back down on the desk. He sighed and sank down into a chair.

  ‘You know they say there are five stages of grief?’ said Simon. ‘Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I know them off-by-heart and I’ve been through each of them. Spent a long time in anger and depression, that’s for sure. But you know what? Whichever stage I was going through, I never stopped loving that woman. She was – she is – a firebrand, a force of nature. Just like you.’

  A distant smile crept onto his face. ‘Never a dull moment. A lot of unnecessary drama, but it was never ordinary.’

  Tessa looked down at the Simon Drake book, still lying face-down on the desk, the picture of the child and the parent sitting side by side. Simon was right: that was a long time ago and somewhere along the line, they had swapped roles.

  She looked over at her father, slumped and broken in a chair, then thought of Danny Brennan saying, ‘not all parents are cut out for the job.’ Strange that she was turning to him for lessons in truth.

  Tessa shook her head sadly. One step at a time, eh? Her own exhibition could wait. First, she needed to get Simon Drake to his own.

  ‘Come on, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’d better do your tie, otherwise you’ll look like a tramp.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Palace Hotel almost lived up to its name. Danny imagined that the fading building had fairly sparkled back when it was built in the early twentieth century, when the Edwardian enthusiasm for ‘taking the air’ at seaside resorts and the arrival of the railway had prompted a group of investors to briefly speculate that Port Quinn might become a fashionable spa town. The resort idea hadn’t quite happened – too far from Dublin, too exposed to the whims of the Atlantic – and the hotel was slightly disheveled now, the stone cracked and streaked by the endless winters, but the Palace’s grandeur was still there if you squinted, that glorious neo-Renaissance façade with its curved bow windows and Juliet balconies still looking like a misplaced slice of Belle Epoque Paris. Danny walked up the steps and through the revolving rosewood door imported from London. He knew all the details – the marble wall facings and the Italian tiling in the hallway – because last year he had written a story on the history of the hotel. The polished woodwork on the reception desk was scratched and there was dust clinging to the corners of the swirling ironwork running up the stairs, but it was no surprise that Simon Drake had chosen to stay at The Palace during the exhibition; it was the grandest building in town, the perfect place to welcome and house his wealthy buyers. And the wealthy art collectors were coming, that was for sure: the novelty of having an important exhibition in an out-of-the-way – and beautiful – corner of the world clearly piquing their interest. According to Nathan in the office, who had managed to sneak a peek at the hotel’s bookings, there were at least a dozen well-known names from the art world already in residence: four from London, three from New York and even a couple from Beijing.