by Melissa Hill
Some of Elle’s favourite memories growing up there were of dramatic lightning strikes at sea, while she, her family and entranced guests watched from the windows. She knew that the tourists took memories like that home with them, to be taken out and relived when life got too overwhelming.
The hotel was located just a short walk up the coast road from the centre of Mulberry Bay.
There was just one main street in the little coastal town, which led directly to the sandy beach. The street was cobbled with red sandstone and no cars were allowed to drive through, the space being reserved for walking and simply enjoying the pretty little shops and eateries. The lamp posts were old wrought iron style, brightly coloured flower pots hanging from them, in keeping with the town’s tourist heritage status.
Elle knew all the shops in the main street: artisan bakeries boasting homemade bread, charming organic produce shops, little boutiques and craft stores with candles and jewellery made to order: tourist mementoes of time spent at the picturesque seaside town.
The local businesspeople were intensely proud of their produce and the homegrown/handcrafted nature of their wares. Elle loved walking on Main Street in the height of summer; eating ice-cream from Scoops, smells of baking from The Grain Store Bakery, fresh fruit from SunBurst Organics and ground coffee from Pebbles Café mingling in the bright air as tourists wandered down to the beach with buckets and spades and brightly coloured towels and inflatables.
In the winter, it was much quieter and considerably greyer in the absence of bright blue skies and the kaleidoscope of beach accoutrements, and populated solely by locals. The only thing she didn’t like about Mulberry Bay was its size and the fact that you tended to meet just about everybody you had ever known.
The entire community had been buzzing about the tall ship for the past few days. Elle had already seen the vessel twice, and had used the fact that her sister had yet to see it, as an excuse to get out of their hotel duties early and head down to the beach to watch it leave.
It was coming to the end of the heavy tourist season, and the Bay Hotel had held one of its famed ballroom dancing nights the evening before. Elle and Penny had been in the thick of the organising for days leading up to it. There was always so much to do at the hotel, but even more for any event in the ballroom; polishing the dance floor to a high shine, dusting the enormous glass chandelier, ironing the crisp white table linen, and arranging fresh flowers from the garden in the alcoves, and at reception. As well as a host of other boringly mundane tasks like replacing burnt-down candles in the candelabra, polishing the glassware, and tidying any rogue family-related paraphernalia away from the entrance or common areas.
Still, despite the annoying chores their mother, Anna set them, Elle had to admit that there was a great buzz and energy about the hotel in the lead up to such an event, and indeed at the event itself. Her mother was in her element with all the preparations, though Elle couldn’t understand all the fuss about the drinks or the food when ultimately people were coming to dance, and generally tried to hide out in the gardens with her dad, who she knew felt the same way. But inevitably Anna roped them all into participating, like it or not. And despite herself, Elle did enjoy the excitement and the fact that the bigger events always seemed to put a twinkle in her ever-busy mother’s eye and an extra bounce in her step.
Elle and Penny weren’t allowed to attend on the big night of course, but they routinely sat on the stairs and peeped out at the guests’ arrival at reception below. Women in bright red lipstick and glittering jewellery, looking like peacocks in glorious dresses and shoes that exuded pure sophistication like those women in Dynasty, accompanied by handsome men in smart suits that on closer inspection were usually many of the locals surprisingly scrubbed up for the night.
Once the dancing got underway, the ballroom itself was a riot of colour and music, as the band - a group of part-time musicians from the town - played waltzes and lively jives well into the night.
Penny, who like her mother adored a celebration, had as a four-year old, nicknamed these events ‘sparkle nights’, and the name still stuck. Elle agreed that yes their hotel could indeed throw a sparkling party, but Mulberry Bay was just a small town, a tiny community, really. Imagine the likes of such an event in Wexford, or in Dublin even? She could only guess at how sophisticated a party - a proper event - in a big city would be like, but one day she was determined to find out.
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ breathed Elle now, as she watched the boat sail away, fascination thick in her voice.
Penny looked out toward the horizon and shrugged. ‘It’s just a big boat.’
Elle turned to her little sister, a look of amazement on her face. ‘It isn’t just a big boat, Penny. It’s amazing. It’s like a living thing. Can you imagine the places it’s gone? The people who have sailed on it, the adventures it’s been in?’ She wrapped her arms around herself and proceeded to rub her elbows, warding off goose bumps. ‘It just screams excitement.’
Penny considered her sister’s words and turned around, squinting as the setting sun hit her in the face. She shrugged again. ‘Like I said, it’s just a boat.’
‘I can’t believe we’re sisters. Where’s your sense of adventure? You’re just like Mum and Dad. Sometimes I wonder if I’m adopted,’ Elle tisked. Not waiting for a response, she continued. ‘Oh, I wish I was on that boat. I’m destined to see the world. To live a big adventurous life. To get out of here.’
Penny cocked her head, seemingly confused. ‘What’s wrong with here?’ she enquired, genuinely curious.
This time Elle was the one who shrugged. ‘It’s fine I suppose. It’s just…I don’t know. It’s so small, isn’t it? Like everyone who lives here has been here forever. It’s as if none of them know that there is this big, huge world out there. Or if they do, they don’t care. I just know that I’m not meant for this place. And as soon as I can, I’m leaving Mulberry Bay, you know.’
Penny’s mouth dropped open, and she stared at her sister, shocked. ‘You mean you’re going to run away?’
Elle laughed. ‘Don’t be such a baby. No, I’m not going to run away. But when I’m seventeen, and finish school, I’m definitely leaving. Only five more years. And then I can go to college, somewhere that isn’t here, somewhere glamorous and sophisticated and exciting.’
Her younger sister pondered this new information and sat quiet for a moment, as if trying to picture a world where Elle couldn’t be found a couple of doors down the hallway from her own bedroom. ‘Do you mean like Dublin?’
Elle looked out toward the horizon, where the ship was fading into the distance, going on to places and ports unknown.
‘Maybe even further than Dublin,’ she said wistfully.
Penny processed this and bit her lip, as if willing herself not to become upset by her beloved big sister’s impending departure.
Noticing the silence, Elle smiled and placed an arm around her shoulder.
‘Hey kid, don’t worry,’ she said (Elle always felt very grown-up and worldly when she referred to Penny as ‘kid’), ‘I’m not going anywhere yet. Besides, you might want to skidaddle one of these days, too.’
But Penny was already shaking her head adamantly. ‘No, I never want to leave Mum and Dad or the hotel. I love it here. Mulberry Bay is my home.’
Elle repressed the urge to roll her eyes—her mother was always telling her that it wasn’t polite. ‘All teenagers do it in the movies Mum, it’s what you are supposed to do, I’m simply expressing myself,’ she had argued.
‘I don’t care if Molly Ringwald walks around with her eyes constantly in the top of her skull. It’s not nice to have a perpetual look of disdain on your face,’ scolded her mother, ending the discussion. Elle had rolled her eyes but Anna didn’t catch it as she had been walking away.
‘Well, OK,’ Elle said, making an effort not to belittle her younger sister’s (misguided) intentions to remain in their hometown forever. ‘You can just come and visit me then. Wherever I’m liv
ing. In Dublin or London with my gorgeously handsome and insanely successful husband.’
Penny’s eyes were as big as saucers. ‘But where will you live? And where will you meet your husband?’ she asked, wonder in her voice, as if Elle’s words were law and the future was certain.
Her sister smiled and said flippantly, ‘Who knows? I bet I’ll meet him in college—and we will form a big company together, and make crazy money. And then we can live wherever it suits us. London. New York. Paris. Tokyo even. What with me being a high powered career woman with a big business we might just live in multiple places. We’ll … ah, split our time.’ Elle hoped that she was using that phrase correctly—she had caught one of the characters from Dallas saying it on television the other night and thought it sounded very cool.
‘But you’ll come back here to visit won’t you?’ asked Penny. ‘What about Mum and Dad? And me? We’ll really miss you,’ she added tentatively. ‘The hotel will miss you.’
‘Ha.’ Elle laughed. Whatever about her family, she definitely wasn’t going to miss the hotel and that endless parade of annoying visitors, ongoing chores and constant entreaties from their Mum to ‘behave’. Well, of course I’ll come to visit now and then.’ She wasn’t going to admit it, but she was pretty sure that regardless of where she was living or how rich, successful and worldly she might be, she would of course miss her family too. ‘Or whenever you need me.’
‘Promise?’ questioned Penny, holding out her small finger.
‘Promise,’ Elle agreed, entwining it with her own, and the Harte sisters completed their usual ritual, forever sealing the vow.
1
The Bay Hotel always seemed to mirror the mood of those who stayed there, temporarily or permanently, Penny mused.
For decades, its walls had been witness to some of the town’s most memorable parties and occasions. In its prime, women in glistening dresses had made their way up its grand limestone front steps, show bands had shaken the ballroom walls with lively music, couples whirling in a kaleidoscope of colour on the dance floor below the stage.
Of course it had hosted quieter moments, too. The tea rooms overlooking the often turbulent Irish sea provided a dramatic outlook which contrasted with the interior’s delicate Victorian décor. The cream lace tablecloths, dainty silver cake forks, eggshell tea cups and delicious morsels served there, all seemed to encourage words of affection and compassion, and that room had seen multiple proposals and romantic celebrations. Hands young and old joined over its tables, first and last birthdays were held there, and all were remembered.
Yes, any occasion in Mulberry Bay was deemed almost more special, more magical, for having been held at the Bay Hotel. It was as if there was a feeling about the hotel, an alchemy that had nothing to do with the supernatural; so much joy and so many memories had seeped into its walls over the years, adding to its allure.
Today though, the hotel was quiet, the sounds of normal routine muffled, as though a shroud had been laid over the whole building. Guests moved hesitantly about almost on tiptoe, and even those who hadn’t known Anna Harte, or had only met her once, felt an unaccountable sense of nostalgia, of missing something they didn’t quite know how to describe.
Penny could have told them what it was: if the hotel was the heart of Mulberry Bay, Anna had been its welcoming, wide-stretched arms.
She was in one of the back rooms of the property that served as the family quarters, looking out over the hotel’s large gardens, still numbed by what had happened in the early hours of that morning.
Her beloved mother was gone. In the middle of the night, Anna had awoken with chest pains and collapsed. She had died before the ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital.
She didn’t know where her father had got to. Following the shock of Anna’s utterly unexpected collapse, Ned Harte had barely been sighted. He had been with Anna when she died, and all he’d said to Penny about it afterwards was: ‘It was like she’d been hit by a bullet.’ Penny winced at the description, though it detailed pretty much how she felt right then, as though she too had been shot through the heart, but by some cruel fate had gone on living. She suspected her dad felt exactly the same, but there was no point in asking, because Ned would never in a million years reveal anything of such a personal nature.
Penny guessed he was taking long walks on the beach, avoiding the well-meaning sympathies of the locals. And avoiding her. She knew that keeping his feelings to himself, locked away, until he hit on a phrase or a line from a song to express them was just Ned’s way, but at a time like this she wished that there was some way they could comfort one another. She often wondered if Ned was quiet because he was afraid of saying too much, letting out some feeling that once spoken, could not be drawn back in. Her mother was the only one who seemed to instinctively know how to handle him, how to reach him, and now with Anna gone, Penny would be at more of a loss than ever. It was almost like losing both parents at once.
She was going through her mother’s things in their bedroom trying to obscure – for her father’s sake – all immediate signs of his wife that would make the pain of her recent death all the more vivid: the half-read biography of Katharine Hepburn on the bedside table, the lemon lozenges she liked to chew in bed, the little scraps of notes Anna wrote to herself all day long and then promptly forgot about.
It was these intimate things she wanted to clear away, so her dad didn’t have to feel like his wife was about to walk through the door again any moment. The rest – her mum’s clothes, her make-up, her jewellery – that could all wait until Elle came home.
There would be the funeral to get through first, of course: sharing memories with all those in the community who knew Anna, and finding that all of them remembered her a little bit differently.
But then Ned, Elle and Penny would return to the hotel, which in some strange way would also be grieving Anna’s loss. It might limp along without her for a few weeks, but there was no denying that she had truly been the soul of the place. If people came for the beautiful views and the faded splendour of the rooms, soaked in history, they also came for Anna and her slightly off-kilter sense of humour, her way of knowing what you wanted, what you really wanted, without having to ask for it.
Her mother had known people, understood that most of the time they simply wanted a little bit of a reprieve from their day-to-day lives. She strove to give them a break, to make them feel as though they’d almost gone back in time. The hotel was a beautiful stage, and Anna was the director, working to pull the whole experience together. People came for her famous roast chicken, her delicious old-style fairy cakes, the icing that dissolved on the tongue . . . They came for the fifty-three varieties of tea, traditional and exotic, and for her ready smile and easy chat over breakfast. When they came to the Bay Hotel, they were coming because of Anna, even if they didn’t know it.
Of course, over the years, as these things go, local trade had dwindled, and more and more of those born in the little beach town had moved away to bigger Irish towns or cities. They said (much like her own sister had) things like: ‘It’s a great place to grow up in, but it’s so small – there’s no opportunity.’
And as tourist numbers to the town had also begun to falter, there was less money for the upkeep of the hotel. It was still beautiful, no doubt about it, but more like a memory of beauty at this point. Penny had heard more than one guest say: ‘Oh, imagine what it must have been like in its heyday.’ She knew that it was her mother’s dearest wish to see the building restored to its old glory, but there was never enough money.
She couldn’t imagine that Ned would have the heart or indeed the wherewithal for anything with Anna gone. Penny pushed the thought of the fate of the hotel out of her mind. It would have to wait. She couldn’t deal with any of that just now; and it was something she and Elle would need to talk about together when the time was right.
Elle. She felt heart-sick at the thought of her sister. As bad as Penny was feeling, at least she still lived
in Mulberry Bay and was just down the road when all of this happened. She helped out at the hotel and saw Anna every day, had only spoken to her mother yesterday, their last conversation a stupid and meaningless discussion about a linen change in the guest rooms.
But how must her sister feel right now, being away in London? She adored her mother more than anyone else in the world, Penny knew that. Elle was a very strong, stable person, and most of the time went around wearing armour, but Anna was the chink in that armour. Last night on the phone, Penny could only hear her sister’s ragged breathing, the sound of something dropping as she broke the news. Elle had said: ‘I’ll get the next flight home.’ And then nothing. She had hung up, and Penny hadn’t had time to talk to her about anything more.
Elle had been one of those who moved away from Mulberry Bay. In fact, she’d seemed desperate to escape.
Penny was happy to stay behind, helping her parents out with the hotel, and working part time at the local tourist office, while Elle had gone for grand adventures in countries all over the world, testing her limits with bungee-jumping, trekking through jungles, eating wild locusts. Then she had become an architect, the hard edges of the buildings she designed seeming to match the edges of Elle herself. She had come home now and again for visits and holidays, treating the town she grew up in almost like a tourist would: admiring its beauty and the more relaxed pace of life, but in the end itching to get back to the city and her work there.
Last time she had visited, almost a year ago, Penny had enquired if there was anyone special in London.
‘I don’t have time for love,’ her sister had replied easily.