A Taste for It

by Monica McInerney

  With that he took her by the hand and pulled her quickly across the road, expertly dodging the traffic which seemed to be coming from three different directions.

  “Welcome to Cormac’s Concise Tour of Dublin,” he said, pulling her to a stop just outside the gates of Trinity College. “Over there, the old Irish Parliament building, now the head office for the Bank of Ireland. In front of us a statue depicting the Children of Lir. Behind us, statues of Thomas Moore and Oliver Goldsmith.”

  Maura spun around, trying to keep up. “And who are they all?”

  “I can’t tell you everything, madam, this is the Concise Tour. If you want the details you’ll have to take Cormac’s Longwinded Tour. Now, hurry along, we’ve plenty more to see.”

  Laughing aloud, Maura struggled to keep up with him as they ran through a little stone archway into the massive cobblestoned courtyard of Trinity College. She stopped to look around.

  “Yes, yes, very old, very historic, very cobbled,” Cormac said, rushing her along. “Over four hundred years old. Famous old scholars include Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, even our last President – Mary Robinson. Your ten seconds here are up, this way, madam.”

  He took her by the hand and led her toward a nearby building and up a flight of stairs.

  He gestured expansively around him. “This is the famous Long Room. And if you ask me why it’s called that, I’ll leave you here and now to the fate of the muggers.”

  Maura gazed around. The Long Room was at least 200 feet long, lined on both sides at the height of both walls with the largest collection of books she had ever seen. The high windows let in a muted, mote-filled light, which added even more to the atmosphere.

  “Two hundred thousand books, apparently,” Cormac whispered beside her. “I could never see the appeal of it myself. A library’s a library, if you ask me. Come on, we’ve more to see.”

  She followed him down through the Long Room, tiptoeing without realising it. Cormac had bought two tickets for the next attraction before she even realised where they were.

  “The Book of Kells?” she whispered.

  “The Book of Kells!” he whispered back, laughing at her excitement.

  She had planned to visit this famous Dublin attraction anyway, before the mugger had upset her plans. Fortunately for Cormac’s schedule, there was only a very small queue into the display room. As they shuffled along, Cormac read aloud the highlights from the brochure in a comic, deadpan voice.

  “A Latin text of the Four Gospels. Dating from about AD800. Named after a small town in County Meath.”

  “You sound more like a Dalek than a tourist guide,” Maura whispered at him. As they reached the top of the queue, Maura leaned over the glass case and gazed in at the intricately illuminated pages. Behind her Cormac was humming and tapping his toes impatiently. “It was done by monks,” he whispered to Maura again, but loudly enough for others in the room to hear. Several people looked up, thinking he was a guide. Catching their eye, he spoke louder. “Well, no TV, no cinema, what else did they have to do in their spare time?”

  Maura gave him a mock glare. This was hardly a cultural tour of the city but she was enjoying herself hugely. She’d just have to come back again and do it all properly another time.

  The rest of the tour went by in a blur, as she tried to keep up with his whistle-stop pace. They virtually ran out of Trinity College, down into Westmoreland Street, across the Liffey, into O’Connell Street, and past the General Post Office – “The headquarters for the 1916 Easter Uprising,” Cormac called over his shoulder, not stopping to explain any further.

  Cormac took a sudden turn left into Henry Street. “This is where the statue of Molly Malone really should be,” Cormac said as they rushed past small groups of women selling everything from fruit and vegetables to jewellery, out of prams. “She’d have never gone anywhere near Grafton Street and the posh end of town.”

  Cormac hustled her down two more streets and across the Liffey again over the iron railings of the Ha’penny Bridge. They went through an archway into a mass of cobbled streets and colourful buildings. It was teeming with people, spilling in and out of bars, restaurants and shops.

  “Welcome to Temple Bar!” Cormac said, as proudly as if he had built it himself. “It was completely rundown until about ten years ago, now it’s the hottest spot in town. And here is our final destination, one of our main wine-selling rivals – but all’s fair when you’re promoting Australian wine.”

  They stepped into an old warehouse building which had been converted into a very stylish wine bar and cellar.

  Maura recognised Rita, Aidan and some of the other faces from the previous night’s reception. Fortunately there didn’t seem to be any sign of Dominic Hanrahan and the lovely Carla or Sylvie and William Rogers. She assumed they’d be attending a similar function at another wine bar in the city. The Society seemed determined to ensure they all covered as much ground and met as many people as possible.

  Rita greeted them warmly, expressing surprise to see them arrive together, until Cormac explained Maura’s unfortunate brush with a mugger outside his shop.

  Rita was immediately sympathetic. “Oh, Maura, what an awful thing to happen on your first day here, and you still jet-lagged and all. Do you feel like your head has caught up with your body yet? Are you up to all this?”

  “Just about,” Maura grinned back. “And I’m fine, honestly. I just got a bit of a shock. I’m raring to go now.” She looked around the wine bar with interest.

  “It looks well, doesn’t it?” Rita said with a wide smile, pointing at the huge display of Australian wine in the centre of the store. “We’ve asked all the wine stores involved in the Australian promotion to put up a display and send us photos. There’s an incentive, which may explain their enthusiasm – the winner gets a trip for two to Australia.”

  “And because of Aidan’s connections, I’m ineligible to enter,” Cormac said in mock disappointment. “And I had such great ideas – a scale-model Ayers Rock, a wire coathanger for the Sydney Harbour Bridge – it would have been spectacular.”

  Rita groaned, as Maura looked at the display in front of her with pleasure. The Temple Bar wine merchants had gone to a great deal of trouble. They had recreated a bush setting with an elaborate display of exotic-looking foliage, creating an effect like a huge, artistic bouquet of wildflowers. They had also hung prints of Aboriginal and other Australian art on the walls of the shop, with bottles of Australian wine placed beside each one. She was delighted to see that Lorikeet Hill wines were in the middle of the display.

  Rita had also hung a huge banner over the door, inviting people to a free tasting of Australian wine that afternoon.

  A commotion at the door made them all turn around. A bunch of young men already the worse for drink and wearing what looked like underpants on their heads were trying to get in. The security man at the door asked them politely to go away, to which they responded with a few rowdy choruses of ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’.

  Rita rolled her eyes. “Stag parties from England,” she explained. “Dublin’s very trendy at the moment -this is the price you pay.”

  The wine-tasting went very smoothly and Maura was pleased to see quite a lot of sales of Lorikeet Hill wine. Her formal presentations didn’t begin until the next day and she enjoyed the opportunity to chat casually to the group of local restaurateurs and wine writers. She answered their questions with an ease that surprised her, explaining Nick’s winemaking methods and the differences between Clare Valley wine and the other regions in Australia.

  She really did feel like an ambassador, she realised, hearing herself paint a particularly poetic picture of the scenery around their winery. She hadn’t appreciated herself how beautiful it was until she saw it through other people’s eyes. All the yellow paddocks, blue skies and green vineyards did sound nice. Especially the thought of blue skies, she realised, looking through the window. The drizzle was back again.

  After the wine-
tasting, Maura was happy to be swept along with Rita, Cormac and the others to a nearby Italian restaurant for dinner. Cormac made sure she was seated between him and a friend of his who had also been invited to the wine-tasting. “Bridget’s a researcher at a local Dublin radio station,” Cormac explained as he introduced them. “And the source of the best gossip in this whole town.”

  Bridget was very curious about her opinion of Irish food and Maura admitted she hadn’t really had the opportunity to try much yet, apart from breakfast in the hotel and a sticky bun at Bewley’s.

  It was a bit like being a doctor at a party and hearing about people’s symptoms, she thought. When she went out to dinner, people always expected her to be overly critical of the food or especially watchful of every aspect of the restaurant’s service. In fact she was the opposite. She always enjoyed going out for the company and the meal and believed a successful restaurant was one where you weren’t really aware of how much trouble had gone into the whole presentation.

  The sound of a car alarm outside the restaurant brought the conversation around to the growing crime rate in Dublin. Cormac entertained the group with a highly exaggerated tale of Maura beating off her would-be mugger. She laughed as he made it sound as though she had suddenly metamorphosed into Wonder Woman and zapped the mugger with a radar gun.

  Bridget was particularly interested in Maura’s experience. “Unfortunately yours isn’t a rare story at the moment,” she said, suddenly serious. “There’s been quite an increase lately. It’s certainly no worse than any other major city but I think many tourists come to Dublin fresh from watching Ryan’s Daughter and forget that you have to take the same safety precautions here as anywhere else.”

  Maura smiled, thinking back to her own expectations.

  “Is there a big problem with crime where you live in Australia?” Cormac asked.

  “Not where my house is, right in the middle of a vineyard. There’s more danger of a cow wandering in than a burglar. But it was a real problem when I was working in a restaurant in Sydney.”

  Maura explained that the restaurant she and Richard had run had been in the inner city, in an area notorious for petty crime. Muggings and pick-pocketing had grown to such a level that they had decided to attach a little printed card to each bill, reminding people to be careful of their bags when they left the restaurant.

  “People coming out of restaurants are easy pickings for muggers,” Maura explained to Bridget. “They’re usually relaxed after a good meal and a few drinks, their guards are down, and they’ve usually just put their wallets or purses at the tops of their bags or pockets.”

  “Didn’t it scare people off coming to your restaurant?” Bridget asked.

  “Not at all, it was the opposite if anything. People saw we were being realistic and that we had their safety at heart.”

  Bridget was very interested. She mentioned that her radio programme was running a series that week on the rise of petty crime in Dublin, particularly among tourists.

  “Would you be interested in doing a quick interview? You’ll get the opportunity to talk about Lorikeet Hill and your cooking school and restaurant nights too,” she added persuasively.

  Cormac was enthusiastic. “That’d be great, you can set the record straight about your first meeting with Dominic Hanrahan too and get your own back on that gossip columnist.”

  Bridget roared laughing at the story when Maura recounted it. “That’d be great, our presenter will enjoy that story.”

  Rita was delighted for the interview to go ahead and for the Wine Society trip to get publicity. Bridget arranged to ring her in her hotel room early in the morning, before bidding her a warm farewell.

  As Maura walked through lively Temple Bar on their way back to the Shelbourne, she could feel Cormac’s arm occasionally brushing her back protectively. They walked past the wine shop where the tasting had been held that afternoon and she caught a glimpse of Lorikeet Hill wine in the window display. Her heart lifted. This trip would be a success, she just knew it.

  Chapter Eight

  Maura was wide awake, dressed and packed for her trip by the time Bridget rang from the radio station the next morning and put her on air with the presenter.

  She thoroughly enjoyed talking to him. It felt more like a chat with a very curious friend than a formal interview. He was very welcoming, apologised on behalf of the city of Dublin for the mugging incident and gave her lots of opportunities to promote Lorikeet Hill and the forthcoming cooking residency in Dominic Hanrahan’s house.

  The presenter himself brought up the snippet from the gossip column and said he’d heard she might like to take the opportunity to give the other side of the story. Maura took pleasure in quickly recounting what had happened at Lorikeet Hill. She was encouraged by his laughter as she painted the picture of Rob’s antics and her final gesture with the vase of cold water.

  “Well, as I always say, listeners, don’t believe everything you hear or read in the papers. There are always two sides to every story. So, Maura, what delicious dishes have you got planned for our delicate Irish palates?”

  Maura described a couple of the dishes she would be cooking and spoke about the Lorikeet Hill wines she would serve with them.

  “It sounds very tempting, and after hearing about your way of dealing with critics, well, I’m sure you won’t be getting any complaints!”

  * * *

  She was sitting on a delicate armchair in the hotel foyer with her bags beside her when Dominic and Carla came through the revolving doors. Dominic was polite, while Carla barely managed a smile, instead giving her a very pointed inspection, her mocking expression showing her contempt for Maura’s clothes.

  Maura felt her chin lift defiantly. She had dressed with great care this morning in a tailored fine-wool suit and knew she looked stylish and comfortable.

  Carla broke away from her inspection to rummage in her large and obviously expensive handbag. With a malicious smile on her face she held out a folded newspaper.

  “I’ve brought you yesterday’s paper in case you didn’t get the chance to see it. You got a very big mention, and you do know of course that it’s Ireland’s biggest-selling paper. Thousands of people all over the country would have read it,” she added, smirking.

  “And even more would have heard her on the radio this morning, wouldn’t they, Maura?”

  Maura spun around, smiling broadly at the sight of Cormac.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I just had to say goodbye and congratulate you on your interview this morning. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the presenter laugh so much.”

  “Yes, it was very entertaining,” Dominic added in a quiet voice.

  Maura looked at Dominic, surprised to see something approaching a smile on his face. She hadn’t expected a millionaire businessman to do anything as ordinary as listen to the radio. She also hadn’t expected him to have a sense of humour.

  Not knowing what they were talking about, Carla looked back and forth at them, fury evident on her face.

  Cormac put his arm around Maura. “Our little Aussie was interviewed on the radio this morning, and it was great listening, especially when you got to hear both sides of the story.” He glanced at the newspaper in Carla’s hand.

  As Carla’s eyes narrowed, Dominic smoothly broke in. “We haven’t met. I’m Dominic Hanrahan.”

  Cormac put out his hand. “Yes, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Cormac Sheehan, of Graham’s Wine Merchants. I understand you’ve stepped into the breach for Miss Carmody. I’m sure the Wine Society is very grateful.” Cormac turned briskly from Dominic and to Maura’s surprise, swept her into his arms for a hug and a kiss. “Well, goodbye and good luck, Maura. Have a great time and I’ll look forward to seeing you in Clare one night.” He left with a flamboyant wave.

  Dominic stood back silently. If he was surprised at the sudden friendship she had formed, he didn’t show it. He checked his watch.

  “We’d better be goin
g, if we’re to make Sligo for your first appointment. Do you have everything, Maura?”

  Carla pouted and started to speak in a little girl’s voice. “I wish I didn’t have this appointment. I want to come with you.”

  Dominic touched her arm. “I’ll call you tonight. Remember you can ring me if you need me.”

  Maura guessed it was a modelling appointment. Carla certainly had the looks and the body for it. It was Maura’s turn to study Dominic and Carla closely, especially in light of all she now knew about their setup. It was definitely an unusual arrangement. Carla was a pouting mixture of sex kitten and little girl, while Dominic seemed to be looking at her with almost clinical detachment. Watching his investment, Maura decided, imagining the sound of a cash register.

  She suddenly wished again that the next four weeks were over and she was home, writing up the article, putting a golden gloss on everything. She could hardly leave now and write a four-page article on her two and a half days in Dublin. Unless it was a warning piece about muggers.

  As Carla dragged out her farewell with Dominic, Maura settled herself into his luxurious car. When Dominic finally joined her, she became acutely aware of the strained silence between them. One half of her still wanted to apologise properly to him about the misunderstanding at Lorikeet Hill. God knows she and Nick needed this trip to be a success.

  But the other half thought ‘To hell with the apologies’. Now she knew his whole story she felt it wasn’t up to her to make things any easier for him. All right, so he hadn’t been responsible for Gemma’s restaurant closing, but he certainly hadn’t stopped Carla from feeding vicious gossip to her columnist friend. And if Cormac was right, he was using poor Bernadette’s misfortune for his own ends.

  If he was a moral vacuum, then any apology from her would just go to waste in any case. She held her chin up high. On Saturday night he had questioned her professionalism. She’d show him she was professional right down to the tips of her toes. She’d show him, and Carla and anyone else, that she had the ability to make a real go of this trip.