By Deirdre Shanahan.
It’s a sky-blue day. Fern leaves spike as I wade through. Strands of grasses and stray ears of wheat weave. Nubs of rosehips bristle on hedges. From the thick nettles bunched around my knees, I could make soup. I could use dandelions even if the blackberries are frizzled after months of sunshine. Warm days slouch as we settle in, plant and sow. Next spring, Olly says, we’ll reap the bounty. Then we’ll eat like kings.
“Hi.” He sweeps up the road on the rusty bike we found in the hut and draws to a halt, the back mudguard wavering. “Doherty’ll rent part of the field for us to grow veg. For a year at least.”
Would we be there so long? A year or longer?
“And when I was in the phone box, I saw an ad for kitchen work at the hotel. I thought of you.”
“We’re meant to be self-sufficient.”
“We still can be. But anything you earn’d help towards solar panels.”
“I don’t want to work in a hotel. Not in a kitchen.”
“Six months only. You did before.”
“Waitressing. A summer job. You know I hated it.”
“This’d be easier. No hassle dealing with people. Besides, we’ll need money. What if the bike needs new tyres?”
“Okay. I’ll ring and find out.”
A train in the distance rumples my heart. We’d travelled a long way to get here, a cramped top flat in Cork, a caravan in Doolin, and part of an old house on the outskirts, to arrive further north than I’d expected just to have our own place. Or a place we could call our own; a green corrugated ex-army hut a farmer lets us have free. Olly said we’d stepped out from a city that was tired after the night before. But the branches droop and I wonder what we’ve left behind.
At night his breath rises in little gasps. The summer is too hot to talk in. Tongue thick with heat. The shortcut through fields leads to the gnarly old hotel, tight and compact with twenty-three bedrooms, where a glass of house wine costs over a tenner. I rinse the serving dishes and fill the dishwashers after breakfast: egg cups, bowls, side plates, mugs, jugs. More awkward crockery than later in the day, but less mess. Smears of cereal, gunked-up porridge, half a slice of sourdough. Knives poke up. I can fill the machine with my eyes shut, but taking out’s more tricky. I check for cleanliness and stack plates ready for the chefs. I lay cutlery in trays so the pieces rest like sleepers. My shifts are usually early, though they could be anytime and I don’t mind. The busyness of the kitchen excites me. There are more saucepans than I’ve ever seen; copper, steel, non-stick. Serving dishes of every size. It’s like the engine room of a liner as we sail into an Atlantic of orders and demands.
Olly balances a tin of baked beans on the camping gaz.
“Not too bad.” He tastes the soup.
He said living here’d be nourishing, but I long for a thick hunk of bread with lashings of butter.
“We could do with an additional stove,” I tell him.
“Bit of an unnecessary expense.”
At the hotel I find an out-of-date sandwich or a croissant to eat and tell myself at least I wake to birdsong. We have each other and can live as we want.
I slide glasses into the dishwasher to hang upside-down. Orders are called. Max, the head chef, follows them through. There is a sous chef and one for pastry. If it’s desserts, his work is done. But there’s always a chef needing a hand. Duck legs wait for orange jus. Pork for dressing. Fish to douse in lemon butter sauce. Each chef: precise, intent. Against calls of “Service!” or “Where’s the mains?” I get lost in the crossfire.
Olly told me his blood was disordered the first time we met, or maybe the second. He’d say he like the way I crashed through life and he couldn’t. His white blood cells multiply too much, so he gets tired. Not often. Sometimes in the afternoon. He has a porcelain complexion and his body at night is taut silk. No shadows. Like illimitable, white Italianate marble on days of the most intense heat. He said there was a twitch and flicker of pain in his bones. Acute myelogenous. He spelled out the syllables and I wondered was that to scare me, but now I know it was down to the exactitude with which he does most things. He said, “So there’s no confusion.”
The pastry chef is rangy and doesn’t wear a hat. When he leans over the counter to decorate meringues, he touches the other side.
Olly lies on his front on the floor when I come in, even though it’s cold in places where we haven’t covered it in rugs or carpet offcuts. A cobweb hangs in the corner of the window.
“What are you doing?”
“Stretching the vagus nerve. Sets the body in tune.”
“Is that a yoga thing?”
“No. But good to do. The nerve affects so much of the body. It means wanderer. Would you press on my back?” I lay my fingers on his spine and stroke the skin. Since we’d come he’d been well. He’d coughed less and looked stronger. More robust. “Thanks, that’s enough.”
He rises and shakes himself as if to find his body working again. His face is pale as light, as moth wings. He wraps his arms across his chest, clinging to himself like a person drowning. He’s intent upon getting stronger. His own medication. He’ll get stronger. His blood count’ll improve. He’s scoured medical papers and journals. Only a matter of time. Living in the right element will help. “Did you have a good day?”
“Busier.”
“Height of the season, I guess.”
I collect the saucepans from the far end near the ovens. The pastry chef blitzes a yellow paste in a mixer. When the swirling stops he pours in beaten egg, holding back a little.
“Too much can ruin it,” he says.
“What are you making?”
“Choux. For eclairs.”
He pipes pastry onto a tray. Little mounds, like breasts, and lengths. He holds the nozzle and works along the tray until it is full.
“How are they so light?”
“Water. Steam holds them. And the butter has to be right. French.”
“Secret ingredients.”
He smiles.
The hut is dark as evening lengthens, despite the single bulb. Olly has laid a fire in the stove and logs spill over the floor next to it. There’s a sofa, two odd armchairs, and a small table.
“Wifi’d help.”
“That’s not the point,” he says.
“I’d like to be connected.”
“We will be, in our own way. More meaningfully.” His hair catches the light.
Later I lie on the bed and hold him around the waist, gathering him in. He’s warm and full of sun even if it doesn’t show on his face. The walls curve to become the roof in one continual sweep. Maybe it was a garage. The farmer must have done it up and put in the stove later, even if it splutters and smokes.
The pastry chef works under an overhang of saucepans. Steely grey. Shimmering. Shadows of cold light. He’s always making something: chocolate leaves, glacé fruit, icing sugar shapes. When service finishes, calm falls, though it never lasts. Always a hum of irritation towards the next sitting. I take a break outside with a fag. I shouldn’t, so I stand at a little distance from the bins and near the delivery room.
“Late shift?” he asks.
“Someone was ill.”
“Glad you stepped in. Easier to work when someone’s clearing up.” He smiles and swipes around to the oven and opens the door. The tray of pastries is steaming sweet and he sets them on a cooling tray. He aims a kind of syringe into their undersides. “There.” He sucks his finger as he finishes.
I should hang around. Learn something so I can cook more than tasteless soups and lumpen bread. He dunks the pastries into a bowl of melted chocolate and they rise up tonsured, the sauce slicked down.
“Bit lopsided, so I can’t serve this one.” He offers but I don’t have a plate. He raises the éclair to my mouth, sinks it onto my tongue. Airy light. Yellow as a cloud. The cream oozes out.
“Delicious.” My mouth is slick and moist inside. He says his name is Neil and pushes back his fringe.
“Hey, chef. Two galettes.” The instruction comes from Max, the head chef. Neil makes for the warming cabinet. Pans clatter. Then there’s a tinny, echoey quiet. The last of the éclair is full and rich. For months I haven’t tasted anything so rich. The evening is a rush of calls and stacking plates, drying the odd one that comes out wet.
Hollyhocks flourish in the sandy soil, pinky cups of petals towering. Olly buys seeds and old plant pots in town. The evenings are long and dusky. He shops weekly, returning with two bulging bags he balances on the handlebars. We have the calm among the fields. One small place to belong to. The Americans built it when they were stationed up the road. Doherty used it for machinery and tractors.
We were reading when the light bulb fell and smashed onto the floor in a glittering of fibre.
“How did that happen?” Olly pulls up a chair to stand on and checks the solitary flex dropping down.
“The fitting’s rusty.”
“Turn off the switch.” In mid-light he examines the fitting while I sweep up scratchy bits of bulb. “I’ll cycle up in a couple of days and see Doherty.”
“Why not tomorrow?”
“We’ve got candles.” Olly steps down and searches in the canvas holdall. In there was a basic first aid kit, string, torches, matches.
He lights two stumpy candles for either end of the dresser and stretches out on the sofa. In the glow of flickering flames, his eye sockets are hollow, his cheeks thinner. But he wants to be here. We both do. Natural and free. Independent. Except the more we try, we coil back on ourselves.
China gleams white and shiny. Stacks of cups. Neil stirs a saucepan on the hob. Glossy liquid bubbles.
“What’s that? Gravy?”
“Caramelising sugar to make baskets. I want them to hold soft fruits from the garden.” The sugar bursts and simmers and he turns off the heat. When it’s cooler, he spoons dollops onto a baking tray. “Ten minutes should do.” He slips the tray into the oven.
I collect dirty plates from the serving hatch. When the rush quietens, Neil moulds the stiffened sugar over an orange. Its zest spikes the air. He shapes the lattice, smoothing it down, then leaves it for a couple of minutes until the sugar hardens. An odd bonnet he upends and light falls through the crinkly lace.
“Magic.”
He smiles. Sets one down, along with others in a row. Sparkly rust, with flutes and curves.
“Where’d you learn to cook?”
“Lake District. Then France. Australia really fired my interest. I was travelling for a year. I met a chef from Dublin who suggested here, so I came.”
Max calls for petits fours and Neil hurries off. A clatter, then shouts for plating up. Bouillabaisse and turbot. Lobster bisque. Salmon roulade.
The air is tense with the buzz of insects like distant traffic. Olly wants to read about planting. We roll apart at night on the hard metal bed. In silence I pull into myself to warm. I could go on, or leave him. Then what? Who to come back to? Nowhere beckons. In the morning, as temperatures slope down to autumn, I leave for work with time to spare.
The grounds are laid with flowerbeds and a kitchen garden for guests is bordered by a brick wall. I don’t want to go there but when I pass the dining room, I peep in.
We need tea towels from the linen cupboards upstairs. The corridor is panelled and the walls display prints of the hotel when it was a house. All the doors are the same but one under the staircase is open. I peer in. A bed takes up most of the room, though a corner has a fitted wardrobe. In an alcove, a table with a slim mirror could be a desk. It’s snug. Every bit of space cleverly used.
“What’re you doing?” Neil smiles.
“Come for tea towels. And you?”
“Off-duty. Staff block.” He motions to a corridor. “This is a nice room.” He opens a door. The walls climb with leaves and fleshy pink petals. A tangle of luscious green and yellowy tones. The rug is zany, stripped in emerald and mint. “This is my favourite.” He heads up the passage, going deeper into the centre of the house, and starts to climb a staircase. You forget the house is old until the steps creak.
The bedroom has cool blue walls. A little sofa sits at the end of the bed and there’s a small chandelier of blue and green glass. Thick sheepskin rugs. An armchair is duck blue. The bay window draped in heavy brocade has a window seat. Gold swags run from a pelmet with cords. I haven’t seen such lavish curtains since I was in my grandmother’s house
“Up here has the best view.”
I follow up three flights. The horizon is full of light. We touch the sky. The bay opens. I had forgotten the sea was out there.
I sit on the bed. “Won’t the maids come?”
“They’ve finished.” He flicks back the silky eiderdown to reveal piercing white sheets and sits on the edge of the bed. “You can relax here, even if it costs a packet.”
“How much d’you reckon?”
“Three hundred a night? But this is an apartment.” He points to doors either side of a cheval mirror.
“You always look in?”
“Thought you’d be interested.” He sits next to me and smells of vanilla and cardamom. His lips. His eyes, light grey. On me. Seeing. Seeing me seeing him. He presses my shoulder gently, drawing me down. We lie, cool as cutlery. “What’s wrong?”
“This is too good. We’ll spoil the bed.”
“The maids’ll sort it.”
I can’t help this. Can’t help him. Those aromas. Heat and wine. Berries and softness. I want to drink him. He rolls towards me. Eases off my top. Presses my nipples. Sucks. In the end it is a relief. No one will see. We can be ourselves.
At night, Olly’s breathing is light and quick. Always an anxiety about the air. And if we need a hospital, what will I do then? I keep in what I have done. If you crack me open, it might be revealed. But it is nothing. Nothing I can’t handle. And it isn’t often. Once a week. A fortnight.
I hurry upstairs to 127.
“You collecting tea towels?” Max stops me in the corridor. “We need napkins as well.” He loads my arms with a pile.
“Now?”
“Of course. Lunchtime service.”
I retreat downstairs while Neil most likely waits for me. The shift is longer, emptier, full of the clatter of pans.
“Max always thinks he’s in charge.” Neil lays his hands on my shoulders after I tell him what happened. Outside, in the corridor, people pass by. We are intruding on someone’s room. Taking part of their life. We listen to the voices rise and fall beyond the door. We listen to footsteps approach and retreat.
“We shouldn’t be here,” I say. Suddenly, a thud in my gut. I think of Olly.
“They’re only trying to find their room,” says Neil. The fat bed takes us. I haven’t had such ease for weeks. Months. We should leave, but he pats my pillow. Goose feathers.
“What do you do when you’re not in the kitchen?”
“Surf, mostly.”
“Round here?”
“No. The coast’s not so good.”
“That’s what took you to Australia?”
“Maybe. I followed a girl.”
At the hut, I keep getting lost but going nowhere. I go to the lane for dill, but I return with none. I forget myself. Silence leaps between us. The fields are worn, crops gathered in. I scrape the window frame free of moss. I sweep out cobwebs from the spare room where we dumped cases, boxes, and two pallets the farmer said we could have. My case has clothes I will never wear.
We enter other rooms. In one, Neil shows me a clawfoot bath. Another has a double shower. We sit the pillows in chairs and make sure to lie on the eiderdown. We do not watch TV or make drinks. We never eat the biscuits. Outside, guests pull cases into the lift, leaving behind their rooms, their crumpled sheets, their soiled towels. Someone brushes against our door. “Hey,” says Neil. “It’s all right.” He strokes my arm. “They’re only guests checking out.”
A van delivers carpet offcuts that Olly piles in the spare room. Garish floral sweeps with coils and swirls and blocks of blue and red. Nothing matches.
“Insulation,” says Olly. We spread newspaper on the stone floor to lie the off-cuts on top, a crazy jigsaw. Several edges do not match up and have to overlap. “Set us up for winter.”
But winter is way off and I want the slow days of September. I want their warmth to seep in. I should tell him. I should. I must say something about the seasons.
With the brocade curtains drawn, we lie on the pile carpet. Undress each other. Spread ourselves. The walls have sweeps of arching leaves and glowing orange flowers. The intricacy of sepals. Neil extends my arms, first one and then the next. We cling like branches and I taste his skin, the salt on it. He licks me. Softness rising. Afterwards he props up a cushion behind our heads and we inhale each other’s breaths. The days are cool. The mornings hold a nip. On an early shift, starting at seven, I don’t mind. We make our breaks coincide. Creep upstairs. My belly warms. I feel him before I see him. I feel, from a distance, the fire of him.
He is not on duty when I unload crockery from room service trays. Breakfasts never seem to finish. The rush of lunch arrives and the day’s busyness swallows everything. The next day he isn’t there.
“We don’t expect him.” Max checks the fridge for milk. “He’s moved up the coast.”
“Moved?”
“I’m not sure. But he’s not working here. I know he wants to surf and there’s beaches further north. Donegal.”
“Oh.”
“But we have a new chef starting next week. Young men come and go. Though Neil was good and stayed with us two years.” His French accent doesn’t muddy his disappointment.
I retreat to the steel shelves of pots and pans and the clatter of service but I can’t find the small jugs. Ladles hang. Plates lie against each other. Solid white utilitarian crockery. Breakfast and dinner. Funerals and weddings. The gleam of everything is brazen bright. I leave the dishwasher on too long. Max shouts about a lack of plates and I drop one. Gone off without me. Or not without, not exactly, if he’d never intended to ask anyway. What had I been thinking?
Before I finish, I can’t see how a few pastries from the cooling shelf will be missed. I eat mine outside during a break. When my shift ends I carry the rest back in a box used for room service. All the little bits of me are out of place.
On the way home, my stomach rumbles. I grasp a tree. I vomit. Filth splatters into the soil. Fear whispers. Pregnant. But we had always been careful. I wipe my mouth. My saliva smells rancid.
“You okay?” Olly carries a bucket of water up from the river. Dark clouds move across its surface.
“Fine.”
“I’ve been watering the veg.” He crosses to the cabbages, throws water over them, lets it swirl through the beetroots and carrots and sink down into the soil.
I want to swill away the sickness. Wash it out. Olly paces the earth as if he owns it. I walk round the back of the shed and chuck the pastry onto the compost. Stale. Ridden with bacteria. If he was sick, no theorising or explaining would help. Rowan leaves frazzle like torn lace against the sky. The branches of trees touch one another at the very tips.
“Food for all the creatures. Hawthorn and crabapple for the birds. Blackberries for shrews and voles. Nature looks after its own. A larder in the hedgerow.” Olly smiles in a delight I haven’t seen for months. “We’ll get our share soon.” He walks towards the door.
I’d forgotten how he opened up a space in me and light flowed in.
Sitting on a kitchen chair, Olly pulls at his muddy wellingtons. The wonky shelves on the dresser are full of jars of soaking beans, greys and slushy purples like bruises. He slips off his sweater and lies on the sofa, hair flopping over his forehead, longer than when we arrived. I snuggle in next to him. His cheeks are ruddier. Fatter. His hips and legs are firm. His arms and hands. Over two hundred bones are inside him. Inside the bones, the sickly cells had lived until they didn’t, until the hospital did its work, and he was freed to go where he could begin again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deirdre Shanahan was a writer of fiction. Her début novel, Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind, was published by Bluemoose Books in 2019, and her story collection, Carrying Fire and Water, was published by Splice in 2020. This story was one of two she was preparing for publication when she passed away unexpectedly in August 2026.
