The Birthday Party (41 page)

‘My son William is coming at the weekend,’ Elizabeth told her at the end of the week. ‘He comes for a fortnight every summer,
before the season proper starts, and helps with the jobs that need doing. He’s a hotshot lawyer in Dublin.’

Delilah’s heart sank. She didn’t want her peace invaded. She didn’t like the thought of a hotshot lawyer son around the place,
asking probing questions. And possibly recognising her. With no television at Gortnaflor – only an old-fashioned wireless
in the drawing room for guests – it had been no trouble keeping her identity secret so far.

‘By the way, how are you doing with your history?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your family tree. Are you getting on all right?’

‘Um – a bit slow. I’m just enjoying the break at the moment.’

Elizabeth gazed at her and Delilah could sense her wondering just what she needed a break from.

On Friday afternoon, a gleaming silver Mercedes snaked its way up the drive and parked next to Delilah’s Golf. She was in
the drawing room, having devoured Molly Keane and moved onto Somerville and Ross. She watched a man in a perfectly cut navy
pinstripe suit get out of the car. Late thirties, she estimated, with hair that was slightly too long for the formality of
the suit he was wearing, and a tan he hadn’t got in this country.

William Glass. It had to be.

She saw him register her car and take in the details – English, less than a year old, top of the range. Thank God she didn’t
have a personalised number plate. This was a man who didn’t miss much, a man whose job it was to analyse details. She needed
to tread carefully. Keep out of his way if she could. Though she didn’t think there was much hope of that.

Elizabeth seemed very eager for them to meet. She watched as he pulled a nubuck travel bag out of the boot, pushed back his
hair and turned to look at the house.

He stood for a moment taking it in, and Delilah tried to read his expression. Elizabeth had hinted that he was putting her
under pressure to wind down the business. He thought it was too much for her. Was he assessing the house for its potential
value? Probably. No doubt he was going to make it his mission this week to get her out. Move the developers in. Delilah narrowed
her eyes. Why did the next generation always try to spoil things for the elderly? Why couldn’t they leave them in peace?

He strode up to the front door and Delilah curled herself up into a small ball on the sofa, hoping he wouldn’t look in the
drawing room.

‘Hello!’ She heard his voice: confident, educated; British minor public school (Elizabeth had told her that) with a hint of
Dublin; annoyingly attractive. ‘Can I get some service from someone round here? Jesus, it’s like a morgue.’

She could hear him striding around the hall.

‘Mother!’ he called with impatience.

Delilah knew for a fact that Elizabeth had gone into Kil-lorglin for supplies. She had half a dozen Dutch guests arriving
to stay the next morning. But if she divulged this information, she’d reveal her presence. So she kept quiet.

Mistake. He barged into the drawing room. It was his perfect right, of course, but she felt like it was her territory.

‘Aha!’ he exclaimed with glee. ‘Another living soul. Thank God.’

And he smiled a smile that was so disarming that Delilah dropped her book, got to her feet and held out her hand.

‘Your mother’s gone to town. She said she’d be back in time for dinner.’

‘Grand. I’m starving.’ He took her hand and shook it warmly. ‘William Glass. You must be the lonely lodger she’s told me about.’

‘Dee MacBride.’

He assessed her, just for a moment, with his lawyer’s eyes. Delilah waited for a sign of recognition, but there was none.

‘I’ll go and get changed, then will I make you an Olympic-sized gin and tonic?’

‘Sounds lovely,’ murmured Delilah.

The next moment he was gone. She settled back down on the sofa and picked up her book, but she couldn’t concentrate. The arrival
of William Glass had totally altered the feel of the house. Her haven had been disrupted, and she felt anxious.

But a little bit of her was really looking forward to the gin and tonic he had promised.

When he reappeared he was in faded jeans and a grey sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up, his feet bare. He looked totally
different, as if he should be leaping about on the deck of some yacht, not drafting letters in a dry solicitor’s office.

‘I brought my own gin. Hendrick’s. With cucumber, not lemon,’ he said, shovelling ice from a bucket he had found in the kitchen
into two Waterford tumblers. ‘So – what brings you to this neck of the woods?’

Delilah took a sip of her drink, then mumbled her badly rehearsed cover.

‘I’m just taking some time out to … research my family. I suppose I’ve reached that time of life when you need to know your
roots.’

He gazed at her, his eyes the same soft grey as his sweatshirt. She wondered if he was so vain as to buy it for the colour,
or if it was a coincidence.

‘OK,’ he said, not remotely convinced. ‘Moving swiftly on … How’s my mother?’

‘She’s marvellous. She’s looked after me wonderfully. I’m sure I’ve put on half a stone since I’ve been here.’

‘Sounds par for the course.’ He took a sip of his own drink, and nodded in approval. ‘I don’t know that she can go on much
longer. She’s eighty-two, you know.’

‘Seventy-eight, she told me.’

‘She’s been lopping years off to suit herself since she turned forty.’

‘She looks good for her age.’

‘Yeah, but …’ He looked around. ‘This place needs someone young at the helm. I know it’s got all that mad Irish country-house
charm, but scratch the surface and it’s all damp and cobwebs and mould.’

‘I think it’s perfect.’

‘A surveyor would have a heart attack.’

‘So?’

He looked at her evenly.

‘You think I’m a rotten spoilsport, don’t you? You wonder why I can’t just leave her to get on? Well, I have, for the past
five years. By autumn she will have run herself ragged and got her usual chest infection. I keep warning her, it will turn
into pneumonia one day and that will be it, but she doesn’t care. And the truth is the whole place wants gutting. It’s running
at the most horrific loss. She’s gone through nearly all the money my father left, and I settle some of the bills without
telling her. I can’t do it any more. I can’t leave my job and come and work for her. The maths doesn’t add up. She needs my
cash to keep her afloat.’

‘You can’t carry on doing that. It’s insane business practice.’

‘I know. But she’s my mother. What do I say?’

He looked bleak for a moment. Delilah reached out and touched his shoulder.

‘She’s lucky to have you.’

At that moment they heard that crunch of tyres on the gravel and Elizabeth’s battered Fiat Panda hove into view. William jumped
up and rushed outside to greet her. Delilah watched as they hugged in the drive. Elizabeth’s once beautiful face lit up at
the sight of her son, and Delilah felt a sudden pang for her own children – the joy of seeing them after a period of absence,
the relief as you pulled them to you and breathed in their familiar scent. She took another sip of her
drink as William threw open the boot and took out all the shopping, not letting Elizabeth pick up a thing and shooing her
into the house in front of him.

‘Go into the drawing room and have a gin and tonic with our guest,’ he ordered her.

Delilah got the measure of William over the next few days as he strode around the place in a ridiculous pair of khaki shorts
and wellington boots. He was immensely practical, strong and seemingly tireless. He painted the guttering, laid a patio area
outside the French windows, emptied two containers of fresh chippings on to the drive, planted up a load of old stone urns
with bedding plants – it was like watching a speeded-up version of some garden make-over show.

One afternoon Delilah offered to help him varnish the rowing boat she had spotted in the boat house. It was total self-interest
because she was hoping once it was dry he might take her out in it.

‘You’re a guest. You don’t want to be put to work. Anyway, what about your family history?’ He gazed at her, his eyes perspicacious.

‘I’d rather be outside doing something while the weather’s fine.’ It was a glorious afternoon; she didn’t want to be stuck
indoors. ‘Anyway, my ancestors have been dead a long time. They can wait a bit longer.’

‘MacBride – that’s not a Kerry name.’

‘No. Well, it’s my mother’s side I’m researching.’

He nodded in understanding and handed her a paintbrush.

‘So how long are you staying?’ His voice was casual.

‘I don’t know.’ She tried not to sound curt. ‘Your mother says I can have the room as long as I want.’

She looked up as the people carrier containing the Dutch guests swooped up. They had arrived from Cork airport the previous
Saturday. The three couples got out, all dressed almost identically in crisp trousers, short-sleeved shirts,
Timberlands and wire-rimmed glasses, their fair hair cropped, bags slung vertically across their bodies.

‘I still can’t tell which are the men and which are the women,’ William complained.

‘Sssh – they’re no trouble. They’re very sweet to your mother. Very appreciative.’ Delilah tried to stifle a giggle.

William frowned. ‘I thought the Dutch were supposed to be all about free love and smoking dope?’

‘Well, maybe they are. Have you been into their room of an evening?’

He looked horrified at the prospect, and Delilah nearly knocked the pot of yacht varnish over, she was laughing so hard.

‘I like my women to look like women, if you know what I mean.’ He defended himself stoutly. And he looked at Delilah, who
was wearing a very skimpy T-shirt and shorts, her hair tied on top of her head.

She blushed, and bent back over the boat, berating herself for the squiggle of pleasure his comment had brought.

It was just after six o’clock when they finally finished the boat and laid it out to dry. They wandered companionably back
up to the house.

‘God, I stink,’ William said distastefully.

She could see the fine sheen of exertion on his chest. He had two days of stubble on his face, and his hair was tied back
with a big red spotted kerchief. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

She could smell his sweat, his manliness.

‘I hope you’re going to have a bath before dinner,’ she told him, and he twinkled at her.

‘Run it for me, would you? I’ll have some of the Radox in it.’

‘Bugger off,’ she laughed, but it was all she could do not to run and do his bidding.

‘A man can but try,’ he said with a shrug, and loped off up
the stairs. She watched him go, and felt the squiggle inside her again as she noticed just how broad his shoulders were.

The answer to an unfaithful husband was hardly to jump into bed with someone else, she told herself sternly.

The next morning, Elizabeth fell on the slippery moss of the path on the way back from the raspberry patch. When they found
her, she could barely move. She kept insisting she was fine, but it was obvious she wasn’t. William drove her to the hospital,
stretched out on the back seat of his car because she couldn’t sit properly.

He came back at three.

‘She’s broken her hip,’ he told Delilah. ‘I’ve had to leave her there because she’s sent me packing. I’ve got to do dinner
for the bloody Dutch. I told her we’d pay for them to go and eat at Bianconi’s in town, but she practically had a fit.’ He
sighed. ‘The one good thing is she’s in great hands at the hospital. I know all the staff there. Most of them worked with
my father at one time or another.’

‘You know what? It’s no problem. I’ll do dinner.’

‘You will?’

‘Sure. I’m used to cooking for large numbers.’

‘Really?’

She smiled to herself. He genuinely hadn’t a clue. If he had any idea of the sort of things she had catered without turning
a hair, he’d be amazed.

‘Give me her list.’ She drew it out of his hand, and began to read, turning over in her mind what she would do, and how she
would do it. She opened the fridge, assessing its contents, and went to look in the cool, old-fashioned larder.

She wasn’t going to go fancy. There was no point in showing off and rousing suspicion. She would stick to Elizabeth’s style,
which anyway was the sort of heartfelt cooking Delilah believed in.

She made a delicious cold cucumber soup, the most glorious pale green. Then salmon en croute with a tian of courgettes
and tomatoes. And to finish, summer pudding, shamelessly red and served with dollops of double cream.

The Dutch were hugely appreciative, as was William of the leftovers.

‘You’re good,’ he remarked, shamelessly shovelling in the last of the pudding. A drizzle of the red juice stayed on his lip,
and she wanted to reach out and wipe it off. But she didn’t.

By the end of the week, Delilah was exhausted. Elizabeth wasn’t going to be allowed out of hospital for some time, and so
she had wordlessly stepped in to take her place. She had done breakfast, picnic lunches, scones and cakes for tea and a three-course
dinner single-handedly, as well as helping Regine with the beds and the general housework.

‘I have absolutely no idea how your mother manages,’ she told William, who had been carrying on with the running repairs and
maintenance, only coming in for ham sandwiches and industrial quantities of tea.

‘She won’t be able to now,’ he said grimly.

‘What do they say? Be careful what you wish for?’ Delilah couldn’t help being arch.

He glared at her.

‘What are you saying? I wished this on her? Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want her to leave Gortnaflor. For God’s sake, I was
brought up here. I love the place. But I don’t want her to run herself into the ground just to keep some sentimental dream
alive. If getting rid of this place is for the best, then that’s what’s got to happen.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ Delilah realised she had been a bitch, and now had to mollify him. ‘I’m just tired.’