It was Strafe who found Glencorn for us. He’d come across an advertisement in the Lady in the days when the Malseeds still felt the need to advertise. ‘How about this?’ he said one evening at the end of the second rubber, and then read out the details. We had gone away together the summer before, to a hotel that had been recommended on the Costa del Sol, but it hadn’t been a success because the food was so appalling. ‘We could try this Irish one,’ Dekko suggested cautiously, which is what eventually we did.
The four of us have been playing bridge together for ages, Dekko, Strafe, Cynthia and myself. They call me Milly, though strictly speaking my name is Dorothy Milson. Dekko picked up his nickname at school, Dekko Deakin sounding rather good, I dare say. He and Strafe were in fact at school together, which must be why we all call Strafe by his surname: Major R.B. Strafe he is, the initials standing for Robert Buchanan. We’re of an age, the four of us, all in the early fifties: the prime of life, so Dekko insists. We live quite close to Leatherhead, where the Malseeds were before they decided to make the change from Surrey to Co. Antrim. Quite a coincidence, we always think.
‘How very nice,’ Mrs Malseed said, smiling her welcome again this year. Some instinct seems to tell her when guests are about to arrive, for she’s rarely not waiting in the large, low-ceilinged hall that always smells of flowers. She dresses beautifully, differently every day, and changing of course in the evening. Her blouse on this occasion was scarlet and silver, in stripes, her skirt black. This choice gave her a brisk look, which was fitting because being so busy she often has to be a little on the brisk side. She has smooth grey hair which she once told me she entirely looks after herself, and she almost always wears a black velvet band in it. Her face is well made up, and for one who arranges so many vases of flowers and otherwise has to use her hands she manages to keep them marvellously in condition. Her fingernails are varnished a soft pink, and a small gold bangle always adorns her right wrist, a wedding present from her husband.
‘Arthur, take the party’s luggage,’ she commanded the old porter, who doubles as odd – job man. ‘Rose, Geranium, Hydrangea, Fuchsia.’ She referred to the titles of the rooms reserved for us: in winter, when no one much comes to Glencorn Lodge, pleasant little details like that are seen to. Mrs Malseed herself painted the flower-plaques that are attached to the doors of the hotel instead of numbers; her husband sees to redecoration and repairs.
‘Well, well, well,’ Mr Malseed said now, entering the hall through the door that leads to the kitchen regions. ‘A hundred thousand welcomes,’ he greeted us in the Irish manner. He’s rather shorter than Mrs Malseed, who’s handsomely tall. He wears Donegal tweed suits and is brown as a berry, including his head, which is bald. His dark brown eyes twinkle at you, making you feel rather more than just another hotel guest. They run the place like a country house, really.
‘Good trip?’ Mr Malseed inquired.
‘Super,’ Dekko said. ‘Not a worry all the way.’
‘Splendid.’
‘The wretched boat sailed an hour early one day last week,’ Mrs Malseed said.’Quite a little band were left stranded at Stranraer.’
Strafe Jaughed. Typical of that steamship company, he said. ‘Catching the tide, I dare say?’
‘They caught a rocket from me,’ Mrs Malseed replied goodhumouredly. ‘I couple of old dears were due with us on Tuesday and had to spend the night in some awful Scottish lodging-house. It nearly finished them.’
Everyone laughed, and Γ could feel the others thinking that our holiday had truly begun. Nothing had changed at Glencorn Lodge, all was well with its Irish world. Kitty from the dining-room came out to greet us, spotless in her uniform. ‘Ach, you’re looking younger,’ she said, paying the compliment to all four of us, causing everyone in the hall to laugh again. Kitty’s a bit of a card.
Arthur led the way to the rooms called Rose, Geranium, Hydrangea and Fuchsia, carrying as much of our luggage as he could manage and returning for the remainder. Arthur has a beaten, fisherman’s face and short grey hair. He wears a green baize apron, and a white shirt with an imitation-silk scarf tucked into it at the neck. The scarf, in different swirling greens which blend nicely with the green of his apron, is an idea of Mrs Malseed’s and one appreciates the effort, if not at a uniform, at least at tidiness.
‘Thank you very much,’ I said to Arthur in my room, smiling and finding him a coin.
We played a couple of rubbers after dinner as usual, but not of course going on for as long as we might have because we were still quite tired after the journey. In the lounge there was a French family, two girls and their parents, and a honeymoon couple – or so we had speculated during dinner – and a man on his own. There had been other people at dinner of course, because in June Glencorn Lodge is always fulclass="underline" from where we sat in the window we could see some of them strolling about the lawns, a few taking the cliff path down to the seashore. In the morning we’d do the same: we’d walk along the sands to Ardbeag and have coffee in the hotel there, back in time for lunch. In the afternoon we’d drive somewhere.
I knew all that because over the years this kind of pattern had developed, We had our walks and our drives, tweed to buy in Cushendall, Strafe’s and Dekko’s fishing day when Cynthia and I just sat on the beach, our visit to the Giant’s Causeway and one to Donegal perhaps, though that meant an early start and taking pot-luck for dinner somewhere. We’d come to adore Co. Antrim, its glens and coastline, Rathlin Island and Tievebulliagh. Since first we got to know it, in 1965, we’d all four fallen hopelessly in love with every variation of this remarkable landscape. People in England thought us mad of course: they see so much of the troubles on television that it’s naturally difficult for them to realize that most places are just as they’ve always been. Yet coming as we did, taking the road along the coast, dawdling through Ballygally, it was impossible to believe that somewhere else the unpleasantness was going on. We’d never seen a thing, nor even heard people talking about incidents that might have taken place. It’s true that after a particularly nasty carry-on a few winters ago we did consider finding somewhere else, in Scotland perhaps, or Wales. But as Strafe put it at the time, we felt we owed a certain loyalty to the Malseeds and indeed to everyone we’d come to know found about, people who’d always been glad to welcome us back. It seemed silly to lose our heads, and when we returned the following summer we knew immediately we’d been right. Dekko said that nothing could be further away from all the violence than Glencorn Lodge, and though his remark could hardly be taken literally I think we all knew what he meant.
‘Cynthia’s tired,’ I said because she’d been stifling yawns. ‘I think we should call it a day.’
‘Oh, not at all,’ Cynthia protested. ‘No, please.’
But Dekko agreed with me that she was tired, and Strafe said he didn’t mind stopping now. He suggested a nightcap, as he always does, and as we always do also, Cynthia and I declined. Dekko said he’d like a Cointreau.
The conversation drifted about. Dekko told us an Irish joke about a drunk who couldn’t find his way out of a telephone box, and then Strafe remembered an incident at school concerning his and Dekko’s housemaster, A.D. Cowley-Stubbs, and the house wag, Thrive Major. A.D. Cowley-Stubbs had been known as Cows and often featured in our after-bridge reminiscing. So did Thrive Major.