A Taste for It

by Monica McInerney

  Maura hoped she imagined the quick glance Dominic gave her.

  “Carla, I want you to calm down. Come downstairs with me again now and we’ll have a quiet cup of tea together.”

  Carla allowed herself to be steered downstairs, flashing a glance at Maura as she left.

  Maura sat back on the bed, breathing deeply. Enough was enough, she thought. What was supposed to be a business trip was fast descending into some sort of bedroom farce. This had to be sorted out or she would start to think she was in some strange Irish version of Alice in Wonderland.

  “And thank you very much, Mr Hanrahan, for so stoutly coming to my defence when your charming girlfriend calls me a slut. Her bloody gossip-columnist friend has already tried to wreck my reputation here. I don’t need any of this,” Maura said aloud, dragging her heavy suitcase off the bed onto the floor.

  “Yes, you do.” Dominic stopped her rant with a few quiet words. He had silently come into the room behind her. There was no sign of Carla.

  Maura spun around. “What do you mean ‘I do’?”

  “I know you need this trip to be a success. I’ve researched Lorikeet Hill’s financial status. You’re doing okay, but not brilliantly. You need these export sales. And I also know you’ve been commissioned to write an article about the trip.”

  She looked at him, shocked he seemed to know so much. Who on earth had told him?

  “Bernadette,” he answered, reading her mind. “And the Internet. I’ve read most of the Australian wine magazines on-line. I know you’ve had a bad season in South Australia, which means the vintage this year will be smaller than normal.”

  Maura glared at him, hating him knowing so much of her private business. At least he didn’t seem to know about Nick and Fran.

  “And I know your brother’s wife is about to have a baby, so you’re even more anxious to get your export sales moving.”

  Maura took a sharp breath.

  He ignored her surprise. “I want to apologise on behalf of Carla. She arrived here unexpectedly this morning and came up to the room, just as I was going down for breakfast. She took one look at you asleep in the bed and jumped to the wrong conclusion, though I guess it was an understandable one. But I’ve assured her I’d done nothing for her to worry about.”

  Maura’s over-anxious ears picked up Dominic’s careful use of the word ‘I’.

  “We need to call a truce. I’ll ask Carla to stop overreacting and to be civil to you. She’s had some difficult times lately. I won’t go into details, but her father died last year and Carla’s on something of an unsteady voyage. I wasn’t much older than her when my parents died, so I know how bad it can feel. Are your mother and father still alive?”

  Maura shook her head, but said nothing, just glaring at him.

  “Then you probably know how hard it can be sometimes. I’m sorry again that Carla slapped you, but I give you my word you and I can work together to make these next few weeks a success for both of us.”

  Maura had no time to comment. A stormy-faced Carla stalked into the room again and walked straight to Dominic, who put a protective arm around her.

  “And Carla will be as much help to you as she can, won’t you, Carla?”

  The American girl nodded, giving Dominic an innocent look.

  Maura, however, received a different look entirely. One of undisguised loathing.

  * * *

  “You have to stop letting people down like this, Carla, I’ve told you that before. I’ll call them myself and reschedule it for you, will that make it easier?”

  Walking out to the carpark after her quick breakfast, Maura shamelessly eavesdropped as she packed her briefcase into the back of the car. By the sound of things Carla had missed one of her modelling appointments.

  Carla was now sobbing into Dominic’s shoulder. It seemed that she had suffered an attack of insomnia during the night, worked herself into an anxiety state and decided that only Dominic would be able to help her. Not only that, but she had hailed a taxi to take her on the four-hour journey.

  ‘I bet the taxi driver will be dining out on that story for a while, in more ways than one,’ Maura thought with a grin, imagining a run of Dublin taxi drivers scouring the streets of Ireland for distraught American heiresses.

  Dominic walked towards Maura, with a now sullen Carla beside him clutching his arm.

  “Carla’s going to travel with us through Mayo today, then catch the Dublin train from Galway later this afternoon, if that’s okay with you,” he said.

  “That’s fine,” she answered brightly, surprised to have been asked. Though what else could she possibly have answered, she realised. No, Dominic knew that Maura really didn’t have much choice. But by the looks of things Carla was certainly making Dominic earn every cent of those million dollars, Maura thought. If it had been her, she would have taken the poverty choice any day.

  Maura offered Carla the front seat for the drive but the young woman insisted on taking the back, complaining that she was exhausted and wanted to sleep. Maura was tempted for a moment to throw a tantrum herself, just to see how Dominic would cope with two brats on his hands. But by the set of Dominic’s jaw she guessed he wasn’t in the mood for any sort of conversation. Maura sighed to herself, and took out the travel map from the glovebox to get her bearings and distract herself from the tense mood inside the car.

  Westport was about an hour’s drive away, and Maura was glad of the silence and the comfort of the moving car to daydream and enjoy the beauty of the scenery.

  As she settled into her seat, her mind insisted on returning to the scene in the room in the middle of the night. In the fuss of Carla’s arrival she had managed to put it all out of her mind. She almost hoped that she had imagined it. But her face flamed as she cast her mind back. She remembered it all very clearly. What would have happened if the drunken man hadn’t tried the wrong door?

  Not really wanting to think about it any more, Maura dragged her attention back to the day ahead of them and looked through the notes the Society had supplied for this leg of the trip. Rita had done a great job organising all sorts of promotional activities. If the other Australian winemakers were being kept as busy as she was, then sales of Australian wine in Ireland would definitely get a big boost.

  At least, one part of her mind thought about wine. The other part was still thinking about a naked male chest.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Mayo countryside was absolutely spectacular – big mountains, moss-green fields, stone cottages. It was real picture-postcard Ireland. Maura stopped herself exclaiming aloud once or twice. There was something about the mood in the car that wasn’t exactly conducive to excited chat about tourist sights. Dominic was still staring stonily ahead, Carla sulking in the back seat.

  Maura wished again that she and Bernadette were travelling together – it would certainly have been more relaxed than this. Something had clicked between them and she knew they would have had a good laugh. Still, she’d be seeing plenty of Bernadette once she got to Dominic’s house to do the cooking series.

  She sat up straight in her seat as they drove down narrow winding roads into Westport, the main town in County Mayo. She had a reasonably busy schedule here, with two visits to off-licences to encourage them to sell Lorikeet Hill wine, before the afternoon presentation to the members of the local Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club.

  Carla opted to sit in the car, idly flicking through a fashion magazine, while Dominic and Maura called in to the off-licences. She was struck again by the friendliness and the interest in Australian wine. Nothing quite matched the Austrian snow display for inventiveness but she was thrilled to see the trouble the store managers had taken in their bid to win the trip to Australia.

  There must have been a run on corks from the local hardware shop, she thought, seeing her second swagman’s hat for the day, the corks bobbing around a smiling face. Maura turned her attention back to the store manager, who was supplying her with great detail about his many r
elatives who had settled in every part of Australia.

  “Well, if you win the trip, make sure you fit in a trip to our winery,” Maura smiled. “It’s not quite as spectacular as Sydney Harbour or the Great Barrier Reef, but I can guarantee the hospitality.” She tried to ignore the look Dominic shot her.

  To Maura’s amazement Carla expressed interest in watching her lunchtime slide presentation. She also seemed to suddenly discover manners, and even smiled at one or two of the businesspeople as she settled herself in a chair at the back of the meeting room in the local Town Hall.

  Maura looked around at the attentive faces, feeling slightly nervous about timing the slides to coincide with her speech. Carefully operating the ancient slide projector the Chamber had supplied, Maura took her audience through the winemaking process, from vineyard to bottling, giving them a taste of Lorikeet Hill’s history and a feel for life in the Clare Valley as she did so.

  Halfway through the slides, she realised she was actually enjoying herself. She and Nick had taken great care in choosing the right slides and subject matter. Without being conscious of it, they had also included lots of pictures of blue skies, which brought more than a few envious mutters. The drizzle continued outside.

  Maura was pleased to see that she seemed to have everyone’s interest. A few even began to interrupt her talk with questions, which she was happy to answer. She did her best to ignore Carla who had obviously become bored with polite behaviour and was now making a great show of looking out of the window and filing her nails.

  Dominic seemed oblivious to Carla’s rudeness and was watching Maura with close attention. She caught his intense glance once or twice but thinking back to the one public speaking course she had attended she decided to concentrate on the beaming man in the front row. “We finish each vintage with the Clare Valley Gourmet Weekend,” she said brightly, as a slide came up showing groups of laughing people seated at tables scattered around the shining steel wine vats. It was one of the highlights of their year. Each winery presented their own food or linked with a leading South Australian restaurant and offered tastings of their new vintage wines with delicious entrée sizes of food. Lorikeet Hill was always a highly popular venue, not least because of the lively bands they always booked.

  “And now to the reason we’re all here today,” Maura said, turning off the slide projector with relief. “It’s time to taste the wine.”

  * * *

  “Well done, Maura, you painted a very attractive picture today. I just wish we’d had the opportunity to fully experience Lorikeet Hill’s charms when we were there last month,” Dominic said, a glint in his eye, as they walked out to the car after the presentation.

  She was surprised at his words. Had he forgiven her for the case of mistaken identity at last? “Thank you very much,” she said graciously, a smile fighting its way onto her lips. “As I said today, we do try to make each guest’s experience as memorable as possible.”

  “Oh, believe me, I’ll never forget our time with you.”

  She was still smiling as they reached the car and she turned around, hoping to see Carla joining in this new relaxed mood. But Carla had reverted to a stony silence, barely giving Maura time to stow her briefcase and slides carefully under the back seat before clambering in.

  “And now Galway,” Dominic said, buckling his seat belt. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy this part of the trip, Maura. We’re about to see some of the most beautiful scenery in Ireland.”

  He was absolutely right. Maura felt her breath catch at the beauty unfolding around them. It sparked something inside her, she realised, wondering if it was a faint echo of her ancestors.

  But it would take a cold heart not to be moved by this scenery, she thought, as a ray of sun highlighted a distant whitewashed cottage at the foot of a mountain.

  “We’ve got time to stop if you’d like to take some photos,” Dominic said, noticing her interest.

  She nodded enthusiastically. She clambered out of the car and walked back a distance to get the best view. Dominic followed, making his way slowly to where she had clambered up onto a bank of earth on the side of the road.

  “You’ve heard of peat, as in the whiskey-making process?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “This is it, in its rawest form,” he said. “It’s called a turf bog.”

  Maura looked around at what had first looked like muddy fields. On a closer look she realised it wasn’t that the crops had already been harvested, it was the mud itself that was the crop.

  She said as much to Dominic, who gave a low laugh.

  “Not exactly mud. It’s actually old forests that have been buried deep down under the earth for thousands of years.”

  “So it’s something like coal?”

  “Well, if it had been left for another few thousand years maybe. The turf is great stuff, you’ll see it being used as fuel for open fires in Galway, and in the house you’ll be staying at in Clare as well. It has a really distinctive smell when it’s burning – when I was in America one of the local Irish pubs tried to artificially replicate the smell, just to stop us all from being homesick. It preserves things beautifully too. Archaeologists have found everything from ancient bits of oak to butter that was sunk hundreds of years ago.”

  “Butter?” Maura asked in surprise.

  “Incredible, isn’t it? Farmhands hundreds of years ago would bury their lunch under the earth to keep it fresh, and I guess every now and then they forgot where they had put it. People find all kinds of things buried in bogs.”

  “I’m surprised turf hasn’t taken off as a beauty product if it’s that good a preservative,” she grinned up at him.

  “Well, now there’s a market. Perhaps when you get tired of wine and food,” he smiled back.

  She climbed back into the car, feeling energised by the wind on her cheeks. Now she was really starting to feel like she was in Ireland.

  Carla’s petulant voice from the back of the car broke the spell.

  “I hope to God I don’t miss my train with the time you were wasting back there.”

  “So do I,” Maura said without thinking.

  “What do you mean by that?” Carla snapped back quickly.

  “I mean I would hate to think you’d have to catch a later train and miss your appointment,” Maura said, chiding herself for her adolescent behaviour.

  “What do you know about my appointment?” Carla was glaring at her now.

  “Nothing at all,” Maura answered, puzzled at the younger girl’s sudden doggedness. “I just assumed it was a modelling appointment. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  Carla sank back into her seat and smiled a satisfied smile. “I do, if the right job comes up. But I certainly don’t waste my time on catalogues or silly parades in shopping centres. I did a fabulous shoot in Fiji one year. That’s near your country isn’t it?”

  “Well, in the same hemisphere, I guess,” Maura answered. But Carla wasn’t exactly waiting on her answer.

  “It was just fantastic. I was waited on hand and foot, and Raymond the photographer said I had the most delicate bone structure he’d ever seen. He said that I really was suited to . . .”

  Maura wished she could block her ears against the torrent coming from the back seat. Two hours of sullen silence and then this – she knew which one she preferred. She glanced at Dominic, wondering how on earth he put up with it. But to her surprise he was smiling indulgently at Carla through the rear-view mirror. Her estimation of him plummeted yet again.

  After what felt like days of uneasy quiet in the car, she was relieved to see they were coming into Galway. The reminder of Dominic’s affection and financial attachment to Carla had made her feel uncomfortable again. She suddenly longed to phone Nick and Fran, to hear all their news and feel their uncomplicated love down the phone.

  It was her turn to sit in the car while Dominic took Carla into the railway station and got her settled onto a train. She gave Maura the briefest of farewells, nothing mor
e than a mumble, while Maura took pleasure in giving her a particularly cheery goodbye.

  She glanced surreptitiously at Dominic on his return to see if his eyes were wet with tears but he seemed to have come through the ordeal of leaving Carla remarkably well. “Another day, another ten thousand dollars,” she murmured.

  “Pardon me?” Dominic looked over enquiringly.

  “Oh, nothing, an old Australian saying just popped into my head,” Maura smiled innocently back.

  Dominic gave her a sharp look. “Our hotel is just down the road – would you like to go straight there or can I take you on a quick sightseeing tour, just to get your bearings?”

  Maura was about to plead tiredness when a glimpse of the crowds streaming into the centre of town made her change her mind.

  “A tour would be great,” she said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dominic was just turning into the centre of Galway when the car-phone rang. He answered it briskly, flicking a switch to use the hands-free service again.

  A cheery voice filled the car. “Hello there, this is Cormac Sheehan, looking for our beautiful Australian visitor. Maura, are you there too?”

  She gave a surprised ‘yes.’

  “Hello, my lovely, how’s it all going? I badgered Rita until she gave me your contact number. Are you a roaring success? No more Austrian surprises, I hope?”

  Maura was too conscious of Dominic listening beside her to be able to respond openly to Cormac’s unashamed flirting. Cormac seemed to realise the reason for her reticence and to her embarrassment played up to it.

  “I realise you can’t talk easily at the moment. I just wanted to say it looks like I will be able to get down to Clare in the next couple of weekends to take you out for a pint or two. I’ve been thinking about you, I can’t wait to see you again.”

  He rang off before she had a chance to say that his visit might be inconvenient. She had no idea what awaited her yet. And she wanted to catch up with Bernadette.