The Closer The Bone

Excerpt from

The Closer The Bone

 

Chapter One

 

“It’s blue!” Otis said, staring in disbelief at the building before us. He had that straight. “Navy blue!”

I’d call it indigo myself, but why split hairs? Especially when I gathered Otis objected to the darkness of the color.

“Never mind, hon,” I said, patting his arm. “We go home in four or five months. You can always call it Gator Blue and paint the door orange for our stay.”

“Besides,” said Miss Letty, pouring oil, “think of Rainbow Row in Savannah and Charleston.” She referred to a row of attached houses in both cities, identical except for the different color paint of each.

Otis threw her an impatient look. “At least they used pastels.”

Personally, I considered us fortunate that our Irish hosts hadn’t painted their B & B emerald green. After a gander at Aer Lingus, the Irish airline, emerald and sporting a shamrock, we lucked out in my estimation.

I doubted culture shock would end here. Not since our Irish colleen flight attendant had asked us, mid-flight, if we were English. How can anyone mistake the American South accent for anything but the American South?

We had arrived a few hours earlier, tired, jetlagged, and cranky. The flight from Orlando to Atlanta hadn’t been bad—it didn’t have time to be bad—but the nine and a half hour flight across the pond had taxed us. I never sleep on a plane, shoehorned into those tiny seats. Plus, I had the added worry of the toll the flight might take on Miss Letty…and Sophie.

Miss Letty, aka Letitia Lorraine, a ninety-one-year-old silent screen star, was the former owner of Belgrath, the historic B & B in Daytona Beach, Florida, where my husband and I, Otis and Clarice Campion, function as caretakers. Miss Letty had deeded the house to the Restoration Committee, keeping one room for her lifetime. When our twins, a son and daughter attending the University of Florida, had decided to spend their junior year abroad with a semester each at Trinity and Cambridge Colleges, Otis searched out fellow innkeepers willing to exchange with us. So here we stood, in the Year of Our Lord 1993, in front of our home (and place of work) for the fall semester (or whatever they call it in Ireland). Term?

The house was a square box, a navy blue one, as Otis had pointed out. It sat, among its fellows, on the Esplanade at Bray, about twelve miles south of Dublin. I knew Bray for an old seaside resort; we had done that much research. But the affinity I immediately felt for the place caught me off guard. I looked to left and right at other B & B’s, small hotels, and guesthouses. Each was a different color, I noted. I turned my back to the house. To my right rose Bray Head, a cliff jutting out into the bay. Far in the distance to my left, I could make out Howth Head, north of Dublin. I longed to explore them both. I then directly faced the Irish Sea; grayish-green, sending up white caps, moderately angry. I would learn all of her moods eventually.

How can I describe this place? Weathered? Seedy? Past its glory days? Ah! Now I had it. It reminded me of a Victorian Old Daytona. Not Daytona Beach ocean-side, with its high rises blocking the view for everyone else. No, it evoked Old Daytona, the settlement on the west side of the Halifax River, with its one- and two-story dwellings, boxy storefronts, and peeling paint. Otis claims everywhere reminds me of Daytona. I took in a salt-laden, sea-weedy breath and exhaled pleasurably.

I could adapt. Could Otis and Miss Letty?

Breaking into my musings, the taxi driver plunked suitcases on the pavement. From Dublin Airport we had taken the DART - Dublin Area Rapid Transit - during morning rush hour. Then we’d hailed a taxi at the train station.

Otis and I hefted a few of the bags being piled on the walk by our taxi driver. “I’ll take them,” the driver said, effortlessly hoisting the two largest, having tucked two more under his armpits.

“We can manage…” Otis began. I don’t know if the driver offended his manhood or if he grudged the extra tip.

“No problem,” the driver replied, advancing to the front door. I found during our stay that nothing was a problem for the Irish; you couldn’t put them out.

We straggled behind with the rest of the luggage. The driver slowed to open the door to the entranceway, but a red-haired (natch) young woman forestalled him. She looked typically Irish, right down to the blue eyes, except for flecks of dark brown and yellow. She wielded a broom. A scarf secured her hair, stout brogans shod her feet, and tailored tweed slacks enclosed shapely legs. She relieved the driver of one of the heavier bags.

“Ah, Paddy, don’t be straining yourself,” she admonished him. I wondered if his name was really Paddy or if she was being politically incorrect. Although, I don’t suppose political correctness comes into play if like speaks to like.

“Don’t worry aboot me, Kathleen,” he said, his eyes twinkling at her.  Maybe they did know each other.

The glass-enclosed porch didn’t really constitute a lobby, but I figured it did duty as a mudroom or a hedge against cold blasts of air. I had visited other climates where a dual entrance protected the house from the elements.

Our driver deposited his share of suitcases in the entry hall and turned to Otis. I hurriedly dug out my wallet and counted out the Irish punts—like English pounds—into his waiting paw.

“Thank you very much, indeed!” he said, leading me, and Otis, into thinking I had over-tipped. Again, as I found out later, a standard Irish phrase.

“You’ll be the Campions, eh?” Kathleen asked. Maybe she was Canadian?

I acknowledged that and hastily introduced Miss Letty.

“Are you the shanmhathair, then?” she asked.

“What?” we three asked in unison.

“Grandmother, grandma,” she replied, smiling.

“Certainly not!” said Miss Letty. She hates to admit that she’s old enough to be anyone’s grandmother, but especially mine. She might claim Otis, in a pinch.

“And the bairn?” Kathleen asked?

“This is Sophie,” I said, pushing her forward gently. “Our foster daughter.”

“With the lovely curls,” Kathleen crooned. The Irish love children. “How old?” she asked.

“Six.”

She smiled kindly on us all. I guessed her age to be late teens or early twenties, but her self-confidence made her seem older. “You’ll be tired,” she said, gathering up more bags, preparatory to whisking them out of the foyer. “I’ll just pop these in your rooms, let you wash up a bit, and wet the tea.”

I assumed that meant that she would brew a pot of tea. I could have used a pint of beer, myself, but the sun wasn’t past the yardarm yet, at least in Ireland, and I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with so willing and efficient a worker. So we meekly followed her down a long, dark hallway, made dark by the rich wood paneling perhaps, and sighed with relief to plop down in our accommodations.

The past year had been grueling, what with finding a skeleton in the dumbwaiter at Belgrath House, followed by another murder on the grounds, and ending with a Category Four hurricane. As a respite, we had offered ourselves as exchange innkeepers in St. Augustine. There, a series of break-ins, the discovery of the body of a homeless man, and the finding of a skeleton in an icehouse had enlivened our visit. We looked forward to a change, though warily. What next?

The one good thing that had come out of our stay in St. Augustine was Sophie. A homeless child, for various reasons her family was temporarily unable to care for her. Otis and I had taken in the shy, thin, pasty child and made it our mission to feed her, love her, and spoil her. She blossomed under this treatment, the kindness of our twins, and the briskness of Miss Letty.

I hoped Miss Letty wouldn’t be crowded, sharing her room with Sophie, but she had insisted. “A married couple needs privacy, Clarice. Besides, the very old and the very young go to bed at the same time!”

At least the room allotted to me and Otis wasn’t cramped. Although, like the hall, it was dark, probably due to the wallpaper of cabbage roses on (you guessed it) a navy blue background. The armoire and dresser were of dark, heavy wood, but the brass bed boasted an enticing, puffy comforter, which would come in handy, judging by the meager size of the slim, modern-looking radiator. Even though it was August now, I knew the coming fall breezes off the Irish Sea would chill us to the marrow.

Otis immediately thrust up a window, which opened onto a lush herb garden. He brightened considerably, and I knew he looked forward with enthusiasm to growing things in a soil other than pure sand. A native Floridian, you’d think he’d have given up by now on producing anything but citrus. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I, a Midwesterner, can never accustom myself to all the bugs Florida crops fall victim to.

“I’ll check on Miss Letty and Sophie,” I murmured. I wanted to see that their room was more than just adequate.

Otis grunted something that I could interpret any way I chose, as I stepped into the dim hall, noticing that it disappeared into murky depths a fairly long way off. The boxy appearance of the house from the outside deceived. Perhaps the box was rectangular. I stepped next door and tapped lightly.

“Come,” Miss Letty said, barely audibly. Good soundproofing, I thought.

I entered and found that Miss Letty had been allotted a room only slightly smaller than ours, but the twin bed instead of a double gave it a bigger feel. The furnishings mirrored our own, but—what was that along the wall? A fireplace? Otis would be pea green! He has always longed for a fire in our bedroom. He even searches out B & B’s that have them when we travel. I’d better keep mum about this one, or he’d change rooms with Miss Letty and force me to share a twin bed with him. A double is bad enough, thank you very much. Otis takes his half diagonally, but always denies it.

But one twin bed? What about Sophie’s sleeping arrangements? Even though she had slept in a broken-down car in Cardboard Town, she was now used to her own light, airy, frilly room at Belgrath.

Miss Letty looked up from the carry-on she was unpacking. She had already opened a dresser drawer and busily stowed her underwear. “In there,” she said, motioning.

I followed in the direction her head gestured and found Sophie, perfectly content, in probably a former dressing room. Though small, the diminutive bed and dresser, large window seat, and miniature table and chair delighted her. I left her curled up on the window seat and gazing out on that same herb garden.

 “Go wash your face,” Miss Letty said to me.

I had slept in my make-up, a cardinal sin to Miss Letty who still slept with a chinstrap and a sleep mask even on planes.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

She sniffed. “Don’t do the meek and mild with me.”

I shrugged. “Do I have to wash my face before my tea…and before exploring?”

She hesitated, torn. Miss Letty had already done a complete make-up job, including false eyelashes, in the plane’s lavatory. She wouldn’t want to wait around for me.

“Actually, I need a shower and complete change of clothes,” I said.

That got her. I knew it would.

“I suppose your face can wait a while,” she said with deceptive unconcern.

She folded a sweater and tucked it away. Then she and Sophie joined me in the hallway, and we began our search for the kitchen.

“Otis?” she asked.

I opened the door of our room. Empty. Otis had begun his own exploratory expedition, and I knew what he sought: a place he could call his own. At Belgrath, it was the basement. At Castle Keep in St. Augustine, he had made his nest in the former stables.

I guessed the kitchen lay at the rear of the house, but such was not the case. A front room, on the right as you faced the house, might once have functioned as a parlor, but now obviously served as the breakfast room for the guests. Behind it, concealed by a swinging door, lay the kitchen.

Kathleen looked up and smiled as we entered. She fitted a tea cozy over an earthenware pot, which she set on a round maple table with a built-in Lazy Susan. Cream, sugar, and fresh lemon slices completed the picture.

I’d have killed for an American cup of coffee. But I had decided before leaving home to embrace the Irish experience and drink and eat like the Irish. Besides, I had been warned about Ireland’s version of coffee (except for the kind with Jameson’s Irish whiskey and whipped cream added), and English coffee, for that matter. So I pasted a bright smile on my face and murmured appreciation.

Kathleen joined us at table and deferentially asked me to pour. Since I had flunked Pouring 101 in the South, I let her do the honors.

“One lump or two?” she asked, with miniature tongs poised over the sugar bowl.

Oh, Lord, I thought. How many teaspoons in a lump? And brown sugar? “Er, two,” I said. “And a dollop of cream.”

She looked doubtful at dollop. Good, I thought. Score one for me.

“Would the bairn like some fresh cream?” she asked.

Actually, Sophie would probably have drunk hot tea, coffee, or anything else put in front of her. When you’ve lived as deprived as she, you don’t turn up your nose at much. One of the delights of our foster parenthood had been introducing Sophie to new foods. She’s the only six-year-old kid I know whose favorite food is lobster tail (South African) with drawn butter. A budding gourmand.

“Mr. Flanagan (the guest house was named, imaginatively, Flanagan’s) put your names on the guest house’s automobile insurance while you’re here,” Kathleen said.

Wheels! Freedom! Otis would be thrilled. I had had visions of being stuck in Bray, with occasional trips by train to Dublin to see the kids, or of having to rent a car for the duration. Bless Mr. Flanagan! Too bad we hadn’t done the same for him. Of course that meant turning Otis loose with a reversed car driving on the left side of the road. I had tried driving in England once, years before. I think I’d have been all right if the mirrors, windshield wipers, and turn signals had been in their proper places. And if there had been no roundabouts. Then it would have been like driving in the left lane on a one-way street. And Otis learned to drive on a tractor; he still thinks he’s the only one in the furrow.

“How nice of him,” I said warmly.

“Oh, yes,” she said, nodding. “He’s a dear wee man.”

Wee? Short? A strange way to speak of her employer.

Those oddly flecked eyes took on a clouded look.  “They don’t make them any better than Uncle Fergus.”

Uncle?

Protesting a wee bit too much, Kathleen? (Now she had me doing it with the “wee.”) Trying to convince me she was the one really in charge? Or trying to convince herself? Just why hadn’t Fergus Flanagan left his niece in charge? Why bother with Otis and me at all? Why not just turn the running over to Kathleen and take a holiday?

While these questions exercised my mind, Miss Letty entered the discussion. She had kept unusually quiet until this moment. Now she made a beeline and voiced my unspoken question. “Why didn’t he just leave you in charge?”

“School,” she replied. “I go to school. Or I will as soon as term starts. So I can help only in the mornings.”

That made sense, at least to me. Miss Letty looked less certain, and Kathleen the least certain of all. I wondered: was she disgruntled? Or merely hurt? Would she regard the three of us as interlopers? American interlopers, at that.

 

* * * *

 

The rest of the day passed predictably. We cleaned up, napped, and then Miss Letty, Otis, and I groggily staggered out to a restaurant a few doors down to eat, of all things, pizza and Budweiser. I know, I know: my vow to eat like an Irishman. I promised myself that tomorrow I’d have fish ’n chips washed down by a Harp’s. Sophie had eaten a traditional tea of beans on toast with Kathleen and then zonked. And in spite of our naps, Miss Letty and I retired early, trying to jog our body rhythms onto Irish time. Otis went for a walk and a smoke on the boardwalk. I had just nodded over my book when Otis erupted into our room.

“Get your glad rags on, Woman! It’s TGIF in Bray!”

I groaned, but threw the comforter back and thrust my feet into my sandals. I staggered to our miniscule bathroom, applied mascara and lipstick, threw on a decent pair of slacks and top, and proclaimed myself ready.

We stopped at Miss Letty’s door. I knocked and turned the handle gingerly while Otis, fine Southern gentleman that he is, turned his back. Miss Letty, face creamed and hair crimped, looked regretful for an instant, but snuggled back against her pillows. “You children go on. Enjoy yourselves. I’ll go another time. Besides, what if Sophie woke up, frightened?”

Otis and I hurried out the front door. “I walked down the way a bit and heard all of this noise coming from the lounge in a hotel. Talked to the guy at the front desk. Evidently, this is the last gasp of summer - equivalent to our Labor Day Weekend. He says there’s a bachelorette party in progress.”

A bachelorette party in Ireland! I was glad our daughter Kitty didn’t know; it might give her ideas.

We huddled against each other, buffeted by the wind and the ever-present Irish mist. A block or so away from Flanagan’s we heard the rumble of loud music, laughter, and shouting. It sounded like Anywhere, USA.

We paused on the threshold of the lounge, taking it all in. We should have brought Miss Letty so as not to be the oldest ones there. Under-thirties packed the place. The young adults of Ireland on a howl. Bemused, we stood rooted to the spot. One lone older man (not as old as we), balding, stood at the bar. He had come to the wrong place to troll for chicks. Yes, they outnumbered the guys, but they weren’t that desperate. We wove our way to the bar.

I ordered a Bailey’s on the rocks; Otis ordered Heineken. Having secured our drinks, we turned from the bar, scouting a place to sit. We threaded our way halfheartedly through the crowd when suddenly two high stools opened up next to a miniscule round table barely large enough for our drinks. Not because someone left. Two polite young Irish girls relinquished their seats to us. I felt ancient. Otis probably felt emasculated.

The guy standing next to us eyed Otis’s Heineken and said, “Stateside, mate? You’ve got to try a Guinness. A Guinness for my friend here.” He signaled to the barkeep who, amazingly, could hear above the din.

Otis demurred. He prefers not to take freebies, especially from strangers. “I really don’t care for…”

“Guinness? In the States? Me neither, mate. I’m Irish, born and bred, but I’ve lived in Miami the last twenty years. I don’t drink the piss that passes for Guinness over there. Not the same. Here, now,” he said, passing the dripping pint to Otis. It had a good head on it. “You’ve got to get past the foam.”

Otis hesitated, and then plunged into the pint.

“Good man!” Otis’s new best friend said, clapping him on the back. Then he turned away, his work done: a new convert.

Or so he thought. Otis grimaced at me, and I knew he longed for his Heineken. Just then a young woman I had noticed at a large table of young women, presumably the bachelorette party, came past and jostled Otis’s elbow.

She turned to him, concern registering on her face. “Are you all right?” Otis allowed as how he was fine. “I meant: Did you spill your beer?” They have their priorities straight in this country, I thought.

By the time we had finished our drinks we decided we’d had enough culture for one day. We surrendered our table to a couple, lost in each other. They made me feel even older.

We braced ourselves at the door for the mist and the wind again and plunged outside. We walked, heads tucked down, until next door to Flanagan’s. Then, above the sound of the wind, we heard two Irish voices, raised in recrimination.

“I’ll be thanking you, Sally Quinn, to take down that ridiculous sign in your front yard. The idea, a woman your age acting like—”

“My sign stays where it is, Maggie Donovan. ’Tis a free country, ’tis, and I can say anything I want on me own property—”

“Did you never be hearin’ about the laws of slander, then?”

“’Tis only slander if it’s not true, Maggie Donovan…”

Otis and I, reluctant eavesdroppers, walked resolutely across the parking lot of Flanagan’s and entered. We almost tripped over Kathleen, ears unabashedly flapping in the breeze.

“Shh!” she said to Otis, as he opened his mouth to speak. Her eyes twinkled. “Our local feud. The neighbors on either side of us.”

Great. Otis rolled his eyes and headed to our room.

 

Chapter Two

 

We arose the next morning early enough to watch the sun rise over the Irish Sea. A beautiful day beckoned, but in Ireland, I’m told, you never know.

“Always have a rain slicker handy, and keep on truckin’,” a friend from the States had advised me. “The weather’s like Florida: give it five minutes, and it will change! Don’t let it interfere with your plans.”

I turned from the window and prepared to confront the Monster in the Bathroom. Kathleen had explained it to us the day before. Flanagan’s boasted no hot water tank. Instead water ran through a heater mounted on the shower wall. On-demand heating, they called it.

It enraptured Otis. I could see the wheels churning in his engineer’s head, wondering if he could adapt this device to our daughter Kitty, who could empty a 120-gallon hot water tank with one shower.

I turned it on and gave it time to warm up while I laid out my clothes and the washcloths I had brought with us. Europeans don’t know about washcloths, I found to my dismay on a previous trip abroad. Now, I travel with bar soap and a washcloth in a plastic bag. A few minutes after I emerged from the shower, Otis appeared, carrying a cup of tea for me, courtesy of Kathleen. Since tea contains roughly one-fourth the caffeine of coffee, I figured I’d need four cups to pry my eyelids open every morning. I’d slosh in the middle of breakfast preparations.

Today, Kathleen planned to initiate me into the mysteries of the Full Irish Breakfast and instruct me in the idiosyncrasies of Flanagan’s. Most of the guests would check out this weekend as the official high season ended. In the letters we had received from Fergus Flanagan, he indicated that the fall, or low season, wasn’t nearly as busy and optimistically predicted no problems.

Thus we met our first example of that famous glass-is-half-full outlook which characterizes the Irish. Too bad ole Fergus was mistaken.

I made my way to the kitchen where I found Kathleen grilling link sausages and something that looked like patty sausage, only it wasn’t.

“Blood sausage,” she said in answer to my query.

I broke off a piece to taste. It reminded me of liver sausage, the kind we used to buy from the German butcher in St. Louis. We’d fry it in Crisco and pile it on buttered bread.

Otis appeared just then, sniffing the air appreciatively. “What’s that?”

“Oh,” I said airily, “it’s Irish sausage. Try a bite?” I hefted a forkful.

Otis eyed it warily. He’s so suspicious. “What’s in it?”

What should I say? Liver? Blood? One mention of liver would be the kiss of death. He won’t eat any kind, even chicken livers. Said if I’d ever seen what went through a chicken’s liver, I wouldn’t eat it, either.

“Pig’s blood,” offered Kathleen. Her back was turned to me, so she couldn’t see my fierce eyebrow signals. “We call it black pudding.”

“I’ll pass,” said Otis. He narrowed his eyes at me, accusing me silently of trying to poison him. Just as well he hadn’t tried any; he’d have embarrassed me by hawking it up like a lugie.

I sighed and turned back to the stove, an Aga, Kathleen had told me. She swirled boiling water in a saucepan, preparatory to slipping an egg into the vortex, and managed to look cool while she did so. My hair would be straggling and beads of sweat would pop out on my brow.  

“Why don’t we just make scrambled eggs?” I asked.

Kathleen looked horrified as if I’d suggested laying them myself.

“O.k. I’ll try one.” I wondered what would happen if I swirled the water counterclockwise. Would time reverse itself? I thought longingly of my little egg poacher at home.

We worked in tandem for a while, but then Kathleen tactfully suggested I take orders in the dining room.

“It’s the same breakfast, isn’t it? I mean, they don’t have a choice?”

“We offer a German breakfast for those that want it,” she said, rather reprovingly, I thought. “Cold cuts, cheese, bread, hardboiled egg.” Ah! But not fried or scrambled.

Sophie sat in a corner of the kitchen, by the stove, plowing through, I noticed, what appeared to be a combination of both breakfasts. She dipped Irish brown bread, topped with cold cuts and cheese, into the oozing yolk of her poached egg. The best of both worlds. I couldn’t fault her; my own mother ate peanut butter, jelly, and Velveeta sandwiches, while my father put sugar on his cottage cheese. So do I.

 I passed through the swinging door and grabbed a breadbasket on my way in. I deposited this, filled with Irish brown bread, on the first table I came to, one occupied by two elderly ladies with “widow” written all over them. I recited my litany: Corn flakes? Rashers? Sausage? Egg? Tomato? Fried bread? Yes, indeed. The ladies ordered it all. And tea.

I didn’t even need to write it down. Just then, a couple stepped into the room, a burly man with a red face and massive beak and, I assumed, his wife, formidable bosom preceding her. She nodded unsmilingly at me. Dour, not to say sour. German, I guessed.

Wrong. They were Americans, from New England, actually. They didn’t thaw one iota when they learned I hailed from America, too. They resignedly ordered the Full Irish breakfast. With coffee.

I trotted dutifully back to the kitchen. Kathleen nodded to four glasses of orange juice on a tray. Canned, I learned later. Or, no, tinned. How had she known two more people had entered the breakfast room? She must have eyes in the back of her head; she’d make a great mother someday.

The morning gathered speed as a family of Brits joined us, their children exceedingly well behaved and polite, saying, “Yes, please,” to every choice offered. A group of Manchester University students, backpacking their way through Ireland, completed our household. Finally, the last of them departed, and the ‘help’ could sit down to a belated breakfast. Then, and only then, did Otis appear again. I’d need to ‘have a word,’ as the Brits say, when we were alone. I seriously doubted that he had been repairing anything.

But in the meantime…“So why are our two neighbors feuding? Is it” —how to put this delicately—“a Catholic/Protestant thing?”

“Oh, no,” said Kathleen, breaking her brown bread into chunks and spearing each viciously with her fork. “And it’s not a British/Irish thing, either.”

Did she mock me?

“Then why?”

She frowned, sipping her tea in lazy fashion. “It has lasted for so many years now that I don’t know what really started it. Uncle Fergus may know. But they’ve been at it hammer and tongs for donkey’s years.”

“One of them last night complained about something. A sign?”

“Oh,” said Kathleen. “I believe Mrs. Quinn allowed a sign to be placed in her yard, favoring one candidate over another…”

Ah. Politics.

“Would that have anything to do with the IRA?” I asked.

Otis landed a kick on my shin. It’s usually the other way around. But if you want to know something…

Kathleen froze. “That’s Northern Ireland.” And she began gathering plates to carry to the sink.

She stalked off. Miss Letty, Otis, and I eyed one another. I had struck a chord, a discordant one at that. But politics aside, what did a political sign have to do with slander? Unless someone’s campaign was getting nasty.

Miss Letty and I egged Otis on to check out the sign on Sally Quinn’s front lawn. He hemmed and hawed and finally admitted that he had done so as his first daylight act.

“Something environmental or historical. Something about a candidate named Kenelm Doyle ‘selling out to developers and degrading sacred sites.’”

“Sacred sites? Like…what? Stone circles? Beehive huts? Druid altars?”

“Dunno,” said Otis. With an implied, ‘Don’t care.’ He’s the original Mind Your Own Business guy. He deplores Miss Letty and me sticking our noses in, which is why I went outside, in the back yard, to make the acquaintance of the neighbor on either side: Sally Quinn and Maggie Donovan.

I took a couple of tea towels to hang out, just to make it look authentic. Fergus’s yard boasted one of those round clotheslines, a couple of metal lawn chairs, and a few straggly rose bushes. Obviously he didn’t invite the guests to consider it an additional room. I surreptitiously studied the yard on either side. Not a penny to choose between them. Each lady must toil out there every day, weeding, sweeping. I remembered the story a colleague of my father’s told me, of the woman who sat in her yard, coaxing the blades of grass to lie in the same direction. But I’d bet she was German, not Irish.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not knocking the Irish or the Germans, for that matter, being a little of each. However, my German genes are the ones to feel guilty if I don’t scrub the veranda every Saturday. My English genes couldn’t care less.

So I had two at least yard-proud neighbors who hated each other. I wondered, were both ladies innkeepers? Most places on the Esplanade fell into one of four categories: B & B’s, guesthouses, hotels, or restaurants. Maybe the two ladies rivaled for the tourist trade. Maybe they rivaled for love! Maybe they fought over Fergus Flanagan! Get a grip, I told myself.

My towel-hanging virtue was rewarded. Sally Quinn herself, poster of signs, neighbor on the left, as you face the houses, hailed me. A short, stout, rather dowdy-looking woman, she pulled her thinning hair back into a meager knot at the nape of her neck. Otis’s mother, a no-nonsense country woman, would say she didn’t have enough hair to wad a shotgun. She wore a flowered dress with a belt and men’s bedroom slippers, leather (or plastic). But she seemed friendly—not gushy, just pleasant.

“You’ll be the new hosts,” she said, over the hedge. “Where be ye from, then?”

I never know whether to offer my hand to another woman to shake (or a man, for that matter), but ten years of Toastmasters had conditioned me. I automatically extended mine. Mrs. Quinn looked dubious, but, evidently thinking this some Americanism, followed suit.

I explained that we hailed from Florida. Europeans may not know every state in our union, but Florida they do, thanks to Disney and the Space Shuttle.

“Just you and your man, then?”

Don’t tell me she hadn’t peered from behind the ever-present lace curtains to check us out on our arrival the day before. “No, we have Miss Letty, our, um, permanent guest, and little Sophie, our daughter. Our older children are up at Trinity.”

Mrs. Quinn oozed sympathy. “Ah, I remember just when I thought my family was complete my Seamus came along. And such a blessing -”

“Ma!” came a shout from the house. “Where’s my cuppa, then?”

Speak of the devil. Didn’t sound like a blessing to me, at any rate.

I could tell Mrs. Quinn was torn between interrogating me and answering that demanding voice. She murmured a quick apology and waddled off.

“He’s a real piece of work, he is,” came from the yard on the other side.

I jerked around. Mrs. Donovan, I presume.

“Maggie Donovan,” she said. “I see you’ve already met that one. Don’t believe everything she tells you.”

I sized her up. As unlike Sally Quinn as she could possibly be, Mrs. Donovan was tall and so spare she didn’t seem to have enough meat to cover her bones. She exuded a no-nonsense air. She wore a long, narrow skirt and a blouse with a high neck. She jerked at a hose and turned the faucet. Not one to waste time gossiping over the hedge then. But willing to talk and work at the same time. I’d bet no son of hers would summon her in a peremptory fashion.

“Clarice Campion,” I said. “Is there anything…I should know about Seamus Quinn?” Wild thoughts of child molesters raced through my mind.

She sniffed. “Just a layabout. Mother’s precious boy, can do no wrong. Well, if you don’t lay down the law when they’re lads, you’re stuck with them in your old age. And they’re not a comfort.” She aimed the nozzle at a patio made of irregular slabs of slate.

“I wondered,” I said, abruptly changing the subject, “are your houses—yours and Mrs. Quinn’s—also B & B’s?”

“Mrs. Quinn takes in boarders, not casuals. And she chars, on the side.”

Chars? Oh. Cleaning lady. I wondered if she might “oblige” a couple of days a week for us, seeing as Flanagan’s was considerably larger than Mrs. Quinn’s. I wondered if she did “the rough.” (I’ve read far too many British mysteries.)

From the tone with which Mrs. Donovan said the word chars I’d bet she wouldn’t so demean herself.

“And your, er, establishment?” I asked.

“I do teas,” Mrs. Donovan said. “High teas.”  Skimped, too, I’d bet.

“Well, I’ll have to come over for tea one day,” I said, maybe too heartily. I wanted to be on ‘terms’ with both of them and not be caught in the middle, but I didn’t know how Irish feuds worked. On my German side, if Aunt Gertie wasn’t speaking to Aunt Melva, she expected the rest of the family to follow suit; ditto Aunt Melva. So we all landed in the soup no matter what.

“Maaagggie?” came a thin, querulous voice. “Where’s the cream, then?”

“Same place it always is, you old coot,” she muttered, coiling the hose.

Another demanding male, just older. Once again I thanked God for Otis, able to putter around the kitchen enough to make coffee and nuke his lunch. I feel sorry for women who have to wait on their men hand and foot.

I re-entered the house and flung myself into bed-making and cleaning upstairs after Kathleen had shown me where she kept the cleaning supplies. The second floor boasted six bedrooms, several ensuite (the ones with a sea view) and several with a shared bath (the ones overlooking Fergus’s glorious back yard). All emptied onto a shared gallery. Guests in the sea view rooms faced a trade-off: the guests paid for a view and private bath, but sacrificed space. The rooms were tiny because the bathrooms, added later, cut into the room space. I could just barely walk around the beds.

Work done, I climbed a set of unfinished stairs to the partially finished attic. Not finished enough to be rentable, but fit for our children, Kitty and Pat. All in all I felt that our own accommodations beat the guest rooms.

I walked to the side of the house overlooking Mrs. Quinn’s and peered through a small, dusty window. I could see directly into the windows on the second story. An elderly woman sat in an overstuffed chair, with a mending basket on her lap. She slipped a stocking—one of those thick cotton ones like my grandmother used to wear—over a darning spool. My overactive imagination quickly created a scenario of an old age pensioner, hoarding her shillings, living out her twilight years in wintertime in a cheap seaside resort. Except it wasn’t winter yet and she was still paying high season rates.

My eyes moved on. I saw into Mrs. Quinn’s kitchen. Seated at a heavy wooden table was the famous Seamus Quinn. He looked about forty, unshaven, and clad in an undershirt, pants, and suspenders. A cigarette dangled negligently from his full lips. I saw Mrs. Quinn grab a dustpan and broom and, stooping, sweep up, probably, ashes. Her mouth went full speed, and I guessed she gave him what for. As she rose, he swept out his arm and brushed her against the wall. She placed her little finger to her mouth in a childish gesture both fearful and placating. She backed away from him and scurried from the room.

Shock rooted me to the spot. Finally, I shook myself and found my heart pounding. I don’t know what prompted me to stagger to the other side of the attic and look out on Mrs. Donovan’s house. Her kitchen showed another domestic scene, with Maggie at the kitchen sink by the window. A weak-looking, elderly man limped over to the sink and deposited a cup and saucer. Almost. The china slipped to the floor. He looked aghast, but the expression changed rapidly to…fear. Maggie Donovan backhanded the old man, who cowered at her touch. I saw his little finger creep up to his mouth, mimicking Mrs. Quinn’s gesture.

Elder abuse. Two different kinds.

I backed away from the window, but not soon enough. Maggie Donovan had turned back to the window and looked up. Had she seen me?