After more than an hour’s walk from
Blackrock’s small hospital, Lawrence Wilcox made his way up the winding, gravel
front drive of a little white, wooden bed and breakfast, coyly named Chatham
Cove. Wilcox stopped short of the steps leading up to the black mat that lay
before the door. Adorned with hunter green shutters, six windows, three on each
floor, looked out onto the front drive. A faded blue plaque hung above the door
with CHATHAM COVE decoratively
scrawled in white paint. The front door was a black, complimentary to the
ripening sky above him. Lawrence had been worried that he would not make it to
his destination before the storm broke, for meteorologists’ across Ireland were
calling for possibly the worst storm in a century.
He made his way up the two steps
that preceded the door, his eyes coming level with a brass boar’s head with a
ring as a knocker, coming through the animal’s snout. He stepped forward and
gave the knocker two firm hits. The door flung open on its hinges as though on
a pendulum. A small woman, with dark auburn hair graying at the roots stood
before him in navy straight leg pants, a white hand-knitted sweater and soft
pink house slippers.
Both subjects looked surprisingly
at each other, neither saying a word. After a short pause, the man at the door
broke the odd silence, “Err, hello. My father suggested I stay here as it is,
apparently, the only place to stay in town.”
“Oh,” a slight frown came across her
brow and an inkling of distrust in her eyes.
Her reaction to his statement seemed
odd and so he said, “Do you happen to have an open room? It’s just that I’m not
permitted to sleep at the hospital and I’m not from around here, ya see?”
“Oh, Oh! Of course we can get you
in a room, lad, so sorry, it’s just I thought you were somebody else but that’s
no matter now,” her thick Irish brogue made his ears slow in picking out her
words.
She opened the door wider for him
and Lawrence Wilcox took in the front hall as the small woman walked forward to
a reception desk, calling over her shoulder, “The name’s Tara Daley ma dear,
but everyone just calls me Mrs. Daley”. The hall flooring as well as the
staircase to his right was a deep cherry wood. In fact, most of the furnishings
he saw were made of cherry wood, all except the driftwood mounted above the
reception desk. It was twisted and gnarled into a horizontal figure eight that
did not seem to have a beginning or an end.
Wilcox was torn from his thoughts
when the little old woman said, “You’re just in luck, ma dear, a man checked
out of his room, this morning. Much too early I thought, had to check him out
in my dressing gown, can you imagine?” She rambled a little more of the
ailments of having to help her guests when she finally said, “You’ll be in room
201 dear, first door at the top o’ the stairs,” and she handed him a small
silver key with a wooden plate attached to it with Chatham Cove 201 engraved
onto the front.
He picked up his small suitcase and
the khaki trench coat he had shedded on the walk up and made for the stairs.
Just before he reached the second floor landing, he heard a shuffling below him
and the little old housekeeper called up to him, “By the way Mr. Wilcox,
breakfast is served at nine if you want to eat and if you need anything else I
am in room 203.”
He smiled his thanks, turned and
took the last few steps to his room. The door, just as the wooden palate
attached to his key ring, was engraved with the name of the inn and his room
number. Lawrence Wilcox inserted the key into the lock, twisted it and stepped
into the room. He was automatically struck by the blueness of it. The window
was covered in soft, linen, baby blue curtains that hid a view of the ocean. The
hardwood floors of the landing outside his room had given way to a forget me
not blue opulent carpet. His bed covers were white with eyelet lace sewn in on
top with a cerulean blue sheet folded down and a matching pillow above. A small
white lamp stood on the bedside table, also white. The soft glow lightened the
room as he walked forward, closed the door and set down his suitcase, laying
his jacket over the desk chair. With a sigh, he sat on the edge of the bed, slid
off his oxfords without untying them and swung his legs onto the bed, his hands
over his eyes.
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