A Week in Winter(74)

‘Anders Almkvist! You came to see us!’ he said, delighted. ‘Da, this is my friend . . .’

‘Don’t I know all about him. We’ve had a long chat waiting for you to get back, and I know all about why the Swedes are better off with their krone than the euro,’ Matty said.

John Paul looked on, open-mouthed.

‘And he brought me my dinner as well,’ his father pronounced. The final accolade. Anders got another mug and poured out tea for John Paul.

There was no rush. There would be plenty of time to explain everything.

John Paul drove Anders back to Stone House. ‘Imagine you coming back here and up to Rocky Ridge to see me!’ he said.

‘I was hoping to hear you playing in one of the local pubs, but they say you work too hard. You’re too tired.’

‘I was hoping that you had come to tell me that you’d left that office of yours,’ John Paul said.

‘No. Not just yet.’

‘But you might . . .?’ John Paul looked pleased for his friend. ‘So miracles do happen.’

‘Wait until I tell you about what your father really wants, and then you’ll think twice about miracles,’ said Anders.

Anders was most apologetic when he slipped in at Chicky’s big dining table. ‘I’m sorry I’m a bit late,’ he said as he sat down next to the doctor and his wife.

‘No problem. It’s duck tonight. I kept it hot for you. Everything all right with John Paul?’

‘Fine, fine. What’s St Joseph’s like as a place to stay?’

‘As good as they come. If they could only persuade Matty to go in there, he’d love it. I have an aunt in there, and she barely has time to talk to you when you visit.’

‘No, he wants to go in. It’s John Paul who has the doubts.’

‘We can sort him out on that. And you tell John Paul he should go away and travel a bit, let some of the other brothers and sisters come back and pull their weight here. Visit Matty from time to time, instead of leaving it all to John Paul.’

‘I do have an idea at the back of my mind.’

‘If it means giving John Paul a bit of a chance in life, I’m all for it.’

‘I was thinking of opening an Irish bar in Sweden. Asking him to come and set up the music side of it for me. I can deal with the business side.’

‘So that is what you were doing here. I did wonder.’ Chicky seemed pleased to have found out without interrogating.

‘No, it wasn’t what I intended. It just sort of evolved.’

‘Things do evolve around here. I’ve seen it over and over. There’s something in the sea air, I think.’

‘I haven’t spoken to my father about it yet.’

‘And if he is against the idea?’ Chicky was gentle.

‘I will explain it to him. I will be clear and courteous, as he has always been. I will not pour any scorn on his dreams; just point out that they are not mine.’ His voice sounded very much more confident.

Chicky nodded several times. It was as if she could see it happening. ‘And when you’re hiring, you might ask my niece Orla out there, for a season anyway, to do the food for you. It would be the making of your pub, and prevent her from growing old and mad with me.’

‘There are worse places to grow old and mad,’ Anders laughed. He hoped he could explain all this to his father, and that he would not be too disappointed. Klara would take over Almkvist’s. The company was in her blood just as much as it was in his. She knew and loved the business in a way he never would. Now all he had to do was persuade his father that a woman could head up a prestigious company like Almkvist’s. He sighed and settled back in his seat. And who could he get to help him persuade his father? He pulled out a pencil and pad and started to make lists of things that he had to do. Calling Erika was top of the list.





The Walls

They never introduced themselves as Ann and Charlie, they always said, ‘We are The Walls’.

They signed their Christmas cards from The Walls also, and when they answered the phone they would say, ‘Walls here’.

Possibly it was an act of solidarity. You rarely saw one without the other, and they always stood very close to each other. They apparently never tired of each other’s company, which was just as well as they worked together in their Dublin home correcting and marking papers as postal tuition for a correspondence college. They had both been teachers, but this was much more companionable and less stressful. They had a little study in their house where they went in at nine a.m. and came out at two. The Walls said it was very important to have total self-discipline when you worked from home. Otherwise the day ran away from you.

Then, in the afternoons, they would walk or garden or shop, and at five o’clock settle down to what was the high spot of the day – entering competitions.

They had won many, many prizes. Anything from choosing a name for a chocolate Easter bunny to writing a limerick in praise of garden sheds. They had won a holiday in the South of France because they wrote a slogan for a new perfume; they got a set of heavy cast-iron cookware for guessing the weight of a turkey. They had won the latest television, a top-of-the-range microwave oven, his-and-hers sports bikes, velvet curtains and a whole range of smaller items like trendy electric kettles and leather-bound photo albums. It was a poor week when they didn’t win something. And they so enjoyed the fun of the chase as well as the extra comforts that came from the prizes.