Spin the Bottle

by Monica McInerney

  ‘Of course you are, and indeed you can have the key, once we have dealt with the necessary legalities, obtained your signature on several documents…’

  Taken our snuff, ordered the coal, chased away some street urchins and enjoyed a fine glass of mead, Lainey thought. ‘Splendid,’ she said, smiling innocently.

  An hour later she was wishing she did have a glass of mead. She’d never heard such a complicated will in her life, or signed her name so many times. She discovered May had also left various amounts of money to a number of local organisations, from the Meath Birdwatching Association to a local ceili band, all with detailed provisos, such as naming a new bird species after her, having an annual dance in honour of her. There was even a car for Lainey, an old but well-serviced Toyota Starlet, Mr Fogarty told her, currently in the local garage being serviced, as directed in May’s will. Lainey could collect it when she returned the hire car he assumed she had been driving. She was quite surprised to hear him say ‘driving’, expecting ‘motoring’ or ‘perambulating’. Mr Fogarty wanted her to be aware of every detail.

  ‘Why did she go to all these lengths?’ Lainey asked, blinking hard, battling either a sudden rush of jetlag or information overload.

  Mr Fogarty peered over his glasses. ‘Did you know your aunt well, Miss Byrne?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. The last time I saw her I was a teenager, when we were back here on holiday, and when you’re that age…’ She left it there. When you’re that age you don’t care about crabby aunts in draughty B&Bs. They hadn’t even stayed with her that time. Her father had thought it wiser for them to rent a house for a month, rather than be in May’s pocket. And in May’s debt, more to the point.

  ‘To put it bluntly, Miss Byrne could be a very contrary woman.’

  Lainey waited for more. And waited. But it seemed that was all the solicitor was going to say. ‘I see,’ she said, even though she didn’t. ‘And am I allowed to change things at all? Or has she left strict instructions on what sheets go on which bed and on which side of the plate I should put the bacon?’ She knew she was being childish but the strangeness of it all was starting to catch up with her.

  The solicitor scanned the document. ‘No, there is no wording to that effect. In fact, she has specified a sum to be used for “living expenses and necessary refurbishments”, as she put it. It’s a little premature to be making such plans, of course, as you haven’t actually viewed the interior of the premises, but it seems she has made provisions for any such decision regarding interior decoration that you may make.’

  Lainey tried to make sense of his words. ‘There’s some money for new paint and curtains if I want it, you mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking hurt that he needed to explain it further.

  ‘And can you give me any idea what sort of occupancy rate she had? Being so close to the Hill of Tara, I presume she was full most nights?’

  Mr Fogarty gave a small cough. ‘I find it is best never to make too many presumptions, Miss Byrne.’

  ‘She wasn’t full most nights, then?’

  ‘No, not most nights.’

  ‘Some nights?’

  ‘As I said, Miss Byrne could be a very contrary woman. Guests sometimes found her, how shall I put it, a little difficult to take. And I believe some of the other local tourism operators may have had difficulties as well.’

  This conversation was like doing a cryptic crossword. ‘Do you mean she rubbed people up the wrong way?’

  ‘Some people may say that.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘I wasn’t paid by your aunt to offer opinions of that sort, Miss Byrne.’

  She tried another tack. ‘Would you be able to find a causal link then between the fact that my aunt was a woman of strong and presumably frequently expressed opinions, and the fact that in recent years fewer and fewer people were staying in her bed-and-breakfast lodge?’ She wished she carried a horsehair wig in her handbag. She would have slipped it on.

  Mr Fogarty squirmed in his seat. ‘Perhaps,’ he conceded after a moment.

  ‘So I have a little bridge building to do in the local area, would you say?’

  ‘That could be one way of looking at it.’

  ‘With who exactly? The tourist association? The other B&B operators?’

  ‘They would probably be good places to start.’

  ‘To start? There are other bridges to build as well?’ She’d come all this way to be a civil engineer?

  ‘I understand she had several differences of opinion with the national tourism body.’

  ‘But wouldn’t they be the people who would recommend her B&B?’

  ‘Under normal circumstances, yes, they would.’

  But not under these circumstances, it seemed. ‘But she advertised the B&B in tourist guides and booklets, I presume?’

  ‘I believe she used to, yes.’

  ‘She used to?’

  ‘Until she had something of a falling out with some of the publishers.’

  ‘What do you mean by something of a falling out?’

  Mr Fogarty looked uncomfortable. ‘I understand there was a disagreement about the placement of one of her ads several years ago and a lawsuit ensued.’

  ‘She sued about the placement of a B&B ad?’

  ‘I think she was unhappy with the way the photo of the house looked, too.’

  ‘And did she win this lawsuit?’

  ‘Oh no, of course not. But unfortunately the publisher was the leading tourism publisher in the area, and I understand they refused to take any more ads from her.’

  Lainey frowned. ‘So if she didn’t get recommendations from other B&Bs, if she didn’t advertise, if she wasn’t part of any tourism association, how did she get any business? Just from a sign on the side of the road?’

  ‘Unfortunately there was a small problem with that sign.’

  ‘What, she broke it in two over someone’s head?’

  ‘No, I believe there was a disagreement with the local council regarding the permitted size of signs and placement on the roadway.’

  ‘All right, Mr Fogarty, I give up. How did my aunt attract customers to her B&B?’

  A long silence. ‘The fact of the matter is she didn’t in recent years.’

  ‘She didn’t?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘No-one stayed in her B&B, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s strictly true to say no-one. It’s probably more accurate to say her B&B didn’t enjoy the highest occupancy rates of guesthouses in the area.’

  ‘Hardly anyone stayed with her, you mean?’

  ‘That’s another way of putting it, yes.’

  ‘Mr Fogarty, can I get this straight in my head. A condition of the will is that we are unable to sell the B&B until we have been running it for a year?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Even though my aunt’s B&B seems to have been less popular as a guesthouse than the Amityville House of Horror?’

  Another nod.

  Her idea of stepping straight into a working B&B, greeting guests and prancing about with a teapot was dissolving before her eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I seem a bit dim, but what am I supposed to do for a year if I don’t actually get any guests? Go out on the main road and club some tourists as they drive past? Drag them home?’

  His little lip twitched into an almost-smile. ‘It could be worse. Looking on the bright side, she did have new plumbing put in last year. That will help when you want to sell it in twelve months’ time.’

  When they sold it in twelve months’ time. A glance in a property shop in Dunshaughlin that morning had given her a rough guide to the sort of price she could get. House and land prices in Ireland had skyrocketed in recent years. The Hill of Tara was less than an hour from Dublin. Lainey knew that the proceeds from the sale would keep her father in top-class medical treatment for more years than he would probably need.

  Mr Fogarty looked at his watch. ‘I’m afraid I have another appointment, M
iss Byrne. If you have any other questions, perhaps we could arrange to meet again later in the week.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fogarty. But in the meantime, may I now have the keys?’ Prithee and forsooth. She’d become as eighteenth-century polite as him.

  He flicked through the pages, checking he had all the signatures he needed. ‘Yes, it all appears to be in order now.’ He reached into the desk and handed her a large bunch of keys. ‘Mrs Gillespie, your aunt’s neighbour, has been keeping an eye on the place these past weeks, feeding the chickens and suchlike.’

  ‘The chickens?’

  ‘It’s a B&B,’ he said mildly. ‘You need eggs. It’s been a while since you were in the house, I suppose?’

  ‘I drove past it yesterday, but yes, it’s been some years since I was inside. This Mrs Gillespie, is there anything I should know about her? Any bad blood between her and my aunt, perchance?’

  Mr Fogarty considered it for a moment. ‘There were a few issues a year or so back, but I understand there had been a thawing of relations in recent months.’

  That sounded ominous. ‘Well, thank you, Mr Fogarty. I’ll be in touch again soon, I’m sure. When I have more of an idea about how things stand.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to seeing you, Lainey.’ She was surprised at his sudden drop in formality. He gave her a warm smile, sweet in his little mouse face.

  As instructed, Lainey swapped her hire car for her Aunt May’s car at the garage, then drove back towards Tara. This time she parked right in front of the B&B and stood looking at it again before she went inside. No, it hadn’t got any cheerier since the previous day. But it was hers now, and she felt her fingers itching to get stuck into it.

  The key opened the front door easily. Lainey was surprised, expecting it to stick or to open slowly with a loud creak, revealing a hall with a suit of armour and portraits with real eyes following her around. She stepped into the hall, conscious that she was holding her breath. There was a staircase going up ahead of her, rooms off either side. She tried a switch – good, at least the lights were working. And it looked clean, at first glance, anyway. No cobwebs hanging in thick grey curtains in the hallway. It was many years since she had been in this house. Had the decorations changed since then? Lainey doubted it.

  It was a big house. There were four rooms downstairs; a living room, a dining room with a long wooden table, a drawing room, then at the back of the house, a large kitchen – with a wood-fired stove, an Aga, in the corner. She was surprised at how pleased she was to see it. It wasn’t lit yet, but she’d do it soon, if she could remember how to light a fire. It was years since she’d had to do anything but flick a switch to get heating.

  She walked up the stairs. The landing had a small table and a dusty vase filled with artificial flowers. They’d be the first to go, she decided, tempted to throw them out right then. She stopped herself. She’d better look at everything first, in case they turned out to be the nicest thing in the house. Beside them was a pile of brochures promoting the nearby tourist attractions. She flicked through the brochures, guessing from the style of photos and layout that they were several years out of date. Still, the attractions themselves were centuries old, after all – Trim Castle, the Newgrange passage-grave, the High Cross and St Columcille’s house in Kells – perhaps it didn’t really matter if the brochures were old, too.

  There were four good-sized guest bedrooms, two with double beds, two with two single beds each. All the rooms had handbasins in the corner, with gleaming new taps. The shared bathroom was at the back, also displaying new plumbing. Behind that was an extension with three smaller bedrooms. Her aunt’s rooms? One had a bed, a large wardrobe filled with clothes, and a small table. The other two had just a cupboard and a single bed each, bare as nuns’ cells. She opened one cupboard drawer. It was filled with blank paper, piles and piles of it. She opened another drawer. Envelopes, all different shapes and sizes. She tried one of the tall cupboards. More paper. It was like a stationery storeroom.

  She returned to the guest bedrooms. They were all clean, but strangely uninviting. The carpet was ancient, the colours faded. Several smaller rugs had been thrown on top but the effect was still drab. She did a quick scan of the walls. The wallpaper and paint looked old, but at least there were no damp patches.

  The house was very cold, though. She’d have to go and chop some more wood for the Aga and keep it burning twenty-four hours a day to get the chill out. Twenty-four-seven, even, she thought, remembering Celia and trying to ignore the sudden sick feeling the thought gave her. Then what she had to do was give the whole house a thorough spring-clean, from top to bottom, from corner to corner. Get to know it all, inch by inch, before she decided how to tackle it from a business point of view. She went downstairs again, ignoring the feeling of jetlag that was trying to overwhelm her. This was no time for sleep – she had work to do. She sat at the kitchen table, pulled out her notebook and started writing a nice long list, hoping that would make her feel normal.

  Clean bedrooms

  Clean kitchen and tidy pantry

  Clean bathroom

  Polish woodwork, furniture and floorboards

  Wash windows and curtains

  Sort linen cupboards

  Sort May’s clothes

  It was like an Olympic event – the cleaning decathlon – and that was just the inside of the house. The garden would have to wait, she thought, looking out of the window. The trees in the garden were bare, the shrubs bedraggled, the flowerbeds empty. There was a ragged-looking vegetable patch beside what she presumed was the chicken run, a small wooden hut surrounded by wire. The grass was a very bright green, completely overgrown, spreading out in a lush carpet towards the wall at the back of the garden. She felt her spirits sink. Not so much a garden as a massively overgrown higgledy-piggledy mess of green leafy stuff.

  She made one more entry to her list.

  Hire gardener

  Then she looked outside again and added one more word.

  Tomorrow

  CHAPTER TEN

  FOUR DAYS LATER Lainey looked around the kitchen and made a high-pitched sound of exasperation. Had she just imagined – dreamed, even, in her jetlagged state – that she had been trying to clean it? She’d been at it since she arrived and it didn’t look a scrap tidier. Every cupboard in the kitchen and all the shelves in the walk-in pantry had been crammed with cans, bags of flour, rice, bottles of oil, vinegar – most of them not even opened. It was as if her aunt had been given some insider tip that there was about to be a nuclear war and gone into a frenzy of food stockpiling. Lainey was discovering items that she hadn’t seen since her childhood – malt, prunes, kippers, some of them in jars so old their seals had broken, the contents now seeping onto the shelves.

  She’d needed to drive into Dunshaughlin twice to buy more cleaning products, having used up all of May’s supplies by the end of the first day. She’d bought all earth-friendly biodegradable products to begin with, including a huge packet of bicarbonate of soda. She’d read in a book somewhere that it was the perfect cleaning product, could be used anywhere. Not in this house, though. Well, perhaps if she had ordered a truckload of the stuff, poured it through the windows, then hired a crane to shift and shake the house up until it went effervescent. She’d driven back to the supermarket and loaded up with chemicals instead. Sorry, environment, sorry, waterways, she thought, as she poured more fierce-smelling cleaning agents into the sink, hoping that would get rid of some of the stains. Her brother Brendan would kill her if he knew. Ever since he’d got the job with the recycling company nearly ten years before he’d been hounding them all to think of the environment and the water supply.

  She jumped as a sudden shower of rain pelted drops against the kitchen window. No problems with the water supply here, at least. The KC and the Sunshine Band tape was playing loudly from the living room. She should have bought a Wet Wet Wet tape instead. She looked out into the garden. At least it was looking a little more under control, even if the hous
e was still a mess. Mr Fogarty had recommended a local man, in his sixties at least, who had appeared the day before, grunted at her once or twice and then set to with a mower and a spade for several hours. Lainey had wandered outside hoping for some conversation but been quickly disappointed. She was going to have to look further afield for friendship, it seemed.

  Hearing a noise outside she dropped the cleaning cloth and practically ran to the front door. She poked her head out just in time to see a tractor heading across into the field opposite the house. She waved to the farmer but he didn’t see her. Damn. Still no chance of human contact. If it hadn’t been for her regular phone calls with Eva she’d be starting to seriously worry for her sanity. She’d quickly learned a personality like hers was not suited to this kind of solitary confinement…

  ‘Can you talk?’ Eva had said in a theatrical whisper when she phoned on Lainey’s first morning. ‘I left it until now so you’d have time to serve your guests’ breakfasts.’

  ‘Guests? The only living creatures wanting breakfast around here are four chickens.’ She filled Eva in on her meeting with Mr Fogarty. ‘Not quite what I expected, really. I’m hoping there’s an entry for “least popular B&B in Ireland” in this year’s tourism awards. I’ll be a shoo-in.’ Lainey was midway through describing the house when she remembered something much more interesting than old wallpaper and dusty cupboards. ‘Evie, forget the B&B for a minute. You’ll never guess who I ran into on Tara the other night – Rohan Hartigan!’

  ‘From school? I haven’t seen him in years! What’s he look like these days? Is he still gorgeous?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell, to be honest. He’s grown this kind of bushy beard.’

  ‘A beard, oh, how awful. What are men thinking when they grow those things? They may as well glue a hessian bag to their chins. Why is he back in Meath? I’m sure my mother told me he’d left Ireland years ago.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. He was all dressed up filming a documentary or something about Tara. Perhaps he’s an actor.’