A Week in Winter(30)

They gave Howard and Barbara one of the best bedrooms with the big windows and balcony looking out to sea. They sniffed as they looked around the room. They exchanged glances as they came downstairs. They shuddered slightly at things they didn’t like, like the stone floor in the kitchen. It should be ripped out and replaced by a very good solid-wood floor. Orla said that the stone floor was authentic and had been there since the house was built in the 1820s.

‘I rest my case,’ said Howard. ‘It’s time for it to go.’ But Orla won that battle. The stone floor was not negotiable.

Barbara and Howard didn’t want the morning room called the Miss Sheedy Room. They said it was rather twee, and, darling, if there was one thing that could let a place down it was to have an element of tweeness about it. They left their own room in a great mess, with wet towels thrown on the bathroom floor and an amazing amount of dirty coffee cups, glasses and ashtrays despite the no-smoking policy that had been mentioned several times.

They didn’t rate the walled garden, saying it was very amateur; the guests would be used to much bigger and more manicured landscaping. They frowned darkly at Gloria and said it was unhygienic to have a cat anywhere near food. In vain did Miss Queenie, Chicky and Orla try to convince them that Gloria was a cat with impeccable manners who would never approach a dining table when a meal was in progress. Admittedly, Gloria did mistake Howard’s leg for a scratching post and, when alarmed by his screeching, tried to climb up inside his trouser leg. Barbara shouted and waved her arms at the poor cat who ran behind the sofa and hid, trembling, until rescued by Miss Queenie. By now, Orla was not the only one who hated Howard and Barbara.

Defeated by the pro-Gloria lobby, they turned their hostility towards the fact that Carmel was so obviously pregnant. They hoped that she would be kept well out of the equation when the baby was born. The last thing guests wanted, darling, was the sound of a screeching infant. It would be so full of bad vibes.

They never praised the delicious food that Chicky and Orla served them; instead they suggested that Stone House should have a proper wine cellar, and asked for large brandies after dinner.

Orla became very firm. After breakfast on the second day, she said that she hoped they were ready to give practical advice about the decor, materials and colours that they would suggest, together with recommendations on where they should source everything.

Barbara and Howard were slightly startled by this. They had envisaged several days soaking up the feel of the place, they said. This is what Orla had suspected. She brought a coffee percolator into the office after breakfast and sat down expectantly beside the computer.

‘It’s a very late Georgian house, of course,’ Orla said confidently. ‘I’ve been online to research images of this kind of house at the time, and printed some of them out for discussion. I was wondering what references you were going to offer us so we could compare.’

They looked at her, alarmed. ‘Well, of course we all know the classic Georgian great houses . . .’ Barbara began. Orla could spot somebody blustering at twenty miles distance.

‘Yes, but of course this isn’t a great house. It’s a small gentleman’s residence and almost Victorian, really, rather than what was distinctively Georgian. We wondered what colour schemes you had come up with.’

‘It all depends very much on where we are coming from, darling, doesn’t it? It’s so like saying how long is a piece of string. Just asking for colours,’ Howard began sonorously.

‘And where do you think we should source fabrics?’ Orla was shuffling a heap of further printouts. She saw Howard and Barbara exchanging glances.

Chicky joined in.

‘We have our own ideas, of course, but we were anxious to have real professionals to guide us. You will have so much more experience and so many more contacts than we do.’

‘I didn’t realise you were so computer-savvy,’ Barbara said to Orla, coldly.

‘You’re talking about my generation,’ Orla smiled. ‘I was wondering, by the way, why you don’t have a website.’

‘Never needed one,’ Barbara said smugly.

‘So how do people find you, then?’ Orla’s look was innocent.

‘Personal recommendation.’

‘Yes, that’s how they find your names, but how do they know what you’ve actually done?’

Again, the face was innocent but the challenge was there.

By the time the meeting was over, it was clear that the parting of the ways had come.

Barbara mentioned a payment for their time and input so far. Chicky and Orla looked at each other, bewildered. Howard suggested they part as friends, no harm had been done. They wished the enterprise success. They spoke in tones of regret and disbelief that Stone House would remain open for longer than a week, if it ever opened at all.

Rigger drove them to the station.

He reported afterwards that they sat in complete silence for the journey. When he asked would they be coming back to supervise the decorating, they had said that it wasn’t on the cards.

‘Well, I hope you enjoyed your visit,’ Rigger had said.

‘Enjoy would be so too strong a word, darling,’ they had said as he lifted their luggage on to the train.

Chicky, Carmel and Orla chose their colours and fabrics that night and got the show on the road the next day. It had been a lesson to them. There might well have been superb designers out there, but they had not found them. There was no time to try again. They would have to trust themselves.