Chapter Five

After the final dinner guest had wished them goodnight, Thomas retreated to the garden. Alice watched him go and shuddered when she noticed he still wore the sagging tweed jacket she so hated. She couldn’t recall if it had been his father’s or perhaps even a grandfather’s. Either way, it needed burning.

She said goodnight to the staff and went up to her private study which overlooked the back courtyard. Outside, light from an outside oil lamp reflecting off the bonnet of the car her father had treasured, a 1904 Mercedes Simplex, and she had argued when her father told her he’d be leaving it to Thomas in his will. It had been, and still was, the only car in Queenstown that she knew about, and she liked the status its presence gave the hotel, but also when she was taken out by Thomas, people stopped to stare, wave at and admire her.

If only she could learn to drive it herself, then she could take her lover away, smuggled in the vast space behind the doors of the luxury saloon. She allowed herself to dream a moment before lighting another cigarette and noting how dirty the windows still were.

With the Atlantic only a few yards from the front of the hotel, saltwater residue on windows was a year-round problem. Thomas had been instructed on numerous occasions to get them cleaned, and yet each time she came home she found he’d not done them. Alice watched her lazy husband for a moment through the murky glass, his cigar smoke spiralling in a straight line where he stood by the stupid rowing boat at the edge of the garden. It was a rare night when the air in the port was still. He turned and looked up, and she jumped back from the window.

Perhaps her outburst in the dining room had been unwarranted and unwelcome, but she felt particularly grisly today. Your standards are slipping, Thomas. It’s revolting. They were short-staffed, which didn’t help, but what had disappointed her more than anything was the person she’d dearly hoped to see was too busy looking after an ailing mother to spend any time with Alice.

She’d met Thomas at the rowing club on the banks of the River Lee one summer. Her father had taken her with him to help with some catering for a regatta. Astonishingly, growing up, she’d never before set eyes on him even though Thomas and his mother had kept the run-down boarding house right next to her father’s hotel. But looking back, she’d probably not have noticed a grubby little boy playing with all the other grubby little boys on the quay.

At the club, she’d found the sight of half-naked men preparing to row somewhat repulsive. It was sporting gear, her father had reassured her when, aged fifteen, she’d been unable to carry the tray of sandwiches through the clubhouse.

Thomas had spent every summer at the club in the days before his mother became too unwell. After that first regatta, Alice’s father encouraged her spending time with ‘the boy next door’, telling her she could do much worse. So, to appease him, she’d agreed to a handful of dates with the quiet man while she planned how to end it. Then, one day, her father had dropped the bombshell.

‘We’re buying them out.’

‘Buying who out?’

‘Thomas’s place. His mother is gravely ill and has had to close her business. I’ve offered to incorporate her rooms into our hotel extension. My builders are planning it already and we’ve got it for a song. But there is one condition.’

Alice had looked at him warily. ‘What condition?’

‘I need this place to be successful. To expand and grow with the times. We need a man at the helm and you need a husband.’

‘I do not need a husband!’ Alice stepped back and banged into a table in one of the bay windows of the dining room. Waiting staff moved respectfully to the other side of the room and placed cutlery for breakfast. ‘This is the new century, Father. You cannot arrange a marriage for me. I won’t have it. I want to be an actress and be free to travel.’

‘That’s a silly dream and you know it,’ he said, gesturing grandly around his empire. ‘This is where your future lies, and you’ll be very good at the entertaining and front-of-house. Consider it your stage. However, every ship needs a captain, my dear, and Thomas is perfect. He knows the trade, albeit on a smaller scale. He’s local and very soon, he won’t be bothered by family ties.’

 

Thomas was twenty when he married the beautiful daughter of the grand hotelier next door. It saved his mother having to work through an illness which had been silently and slowly stealing her away, cell by cell. Within weeks, the rooms he’d known as a child had been incorporated into the confines of The Admiral, newly designed and wallpapered, no expense spared.

His mother had been well looked after in a private room which had once been their scullery. Before pneumonia finally took her, she spent her last evenings listening to Thomas reading out loud to her. It had been his greatest pleasure to see her smile and his greatest pain to watch her tiny frame sinking further into the pillow.

Alice’s parents paid for a funeral festooned with flowers at the Sacred Heart church overlooking the sea, the place where Thomas’s mother had worshipped for seven decades. Alice’s father had taken Thomas to one side and assured him in quiet tones that love for his daughter would come in time. That all he had to do was dedicate his life to Alice. That they would find common ground and passion would grow. Thomas had no reason not to believe him.

 

‘I’m off now, Mr Thomas.’

He turned and waved. ‘Thank you, Aoife. See you tomorrow.’

He watched the head housekeeper pull her bicycle from the wall and wheel it away. With the tip of a finger, he pushed the little cardboard tray of matches through its outer casing and retrieved one. He inhaled the sweet smoke of his pipe, the flame drawn down into the tobacco. His finger secured the small mass into the bowl and heard the sizzle of partly charred tobacco reigniting. A smoke was one of life’s small pleasures.

Perhaps 1911 would become the year when boats might feature once more in his life. In his ten-year marriage, he’d missed the companionship of the men at the club. His promise to Alice’s father had been harder and harder to keep. His assumption that when Alice was home from tour, she would at least try to look like she was happy to be home, had been misplaced. He felt despised, and the notion was catching. And as for that eejit of an agent, with his greasy skin and belly full of beer. Thomas could only assume that Clive would deliver on his promise of making Alice famous. Why else would she spend that much time with him? Alice was a beauty and Thomas knew she turned heads but had always prayed his wife would have enough self-respect to not play into the hands of men who wanted more. He dropped the end of the cigar on the floor and stood on it, twisting it into the ground so there was nothing left.

He’d met Alice when he was twenty-three, and quickly become besotted with her confidence and lipstick. She’d taken an immediate shine to him, and swift approval was given by her father. Thomas had been swept away on a tide of what he now concluded was lust rather than love and agreed to propose after she’d insisted they become official.

The day she’d run her fingers down his thigh, his insides had fizzed. She told him that no-one had made her feel loved like he did and she hinted they would start a family as soon as they were married. She’d even expressed a desire to teach drama in local schools if time at the hotel allowed.

He’d believed it all.

His toes had cooled while dew soaked through the soles of his shoes. He reached out to the canvas covering the rowing boat and lifted a corner. A pot of black paint had long since dried up. The little brush was stuck fast to the rusted rim. As he ran his finger over the capital ‘A’, he recalled how his plan to name the little craft and surprise his wife had failed so spectacularly. What the hell is that? Alice had spat the words when she’d found him, paintbrush in hand.

She’d left him in no doubt that she hated small boats. In fact, she wouldn’t be seen dead in one and went on to declare that her father had not left the hotel in her capable hands for it to be ignored in favour of silly pastimes.

Thomas dropped the cover and swallowed the hurt which still niggled like an itch after sunburn. In a few days’ time Alice would be gone again, chasing her dream. Yet he worried about her still. He sensed she was no happier now than when she’d first insisted she wanted to try making it big on the stage. He’d been shocked at his wife’s sudden change in direction. I thought you wanted to run the hotel. Your father thought that’s what you wanted? She’d argued her father had never listened to her desires or bothered to find out what she wanted from life.

Back in his office, Thomas slid open his desk drawer and felt for the hip flask which he kept nestled behind the accounts books. The whiskey caught in the back of his throat and made him cough. He’d never been a drinker, not like his father-in-law, who’d been able to down half a bottle after dinner and still oversee breakfast the next morning. This was not another pleasure, more a necessity to dull the unhappiness which filled his days from morning to night.

He stared at the papers on his desk. Invoices needing cheques, letters from hopeful suppliers wishing to supply the well-known, highly respected hotel on the quay. He should be content with this life, but the gaping hole might one day consume him. Alice’s father’s prophecy had yet to come true.