FINTAN WAS STRICKEN as they arrived.
“Voilà!” yelled Gaspard, turning into the wind, where hail had started and spiked into the face like daggers. “Welcome to hell, non?”
Konstantin lurched off the ferry, the difference in the motion between sea and land and the frankly rough wine having a predictable effect. As Isla watched him, horrified, he wobbled over the gangplank and threw up heavily over the side.
“Oh Christ,” said Fintan.
Chapter 10
Gaspard kept up a constant slew of loud questions as they walked to Fintan’s Land Rover, Isla silent by his side. Konstantin had come via some kind of client of Joel’s, and Fintan was utterly dismayed. What kind of young lad got drunk on his way to his first job?
And Gaspard was looking like he was hell-bent on proving why he couldn’t get a job anywhere except at the tail end of nowhere, because nobody wanted to work in the islands, and nobody wanted to work for him. Fintan felt bitterer than the acidic wine sloshing in the men’s stomachs. This whole enterprise—Colton’s pride and joy, the dream of his life—was going to fail. Fintan was going to fall flat on his face.
“So you have cellar?”
“You can’t stay here if you drink,” Fintan said steadily.
“I ’ave not ’ad one seengle drink on this soil!” protested Gaspard noisily. “Not one! It was my final celebration of life as a free man.”
“This isn’t prison,” said Fintan gruffly.
“Oh yes, yes it is, actually,” said the young man, who up until now had been very green and quiet. Suddenly he straightened up and shouted, out of nowhere, “Stop!!”
Assuming he was going to be sick again, Fintan did so. And immediately, Konstantin turned and started running toward the boat, which was filling up, ready for the return crossing.
“Well, he didn’t last long,” observed Isla.
The small party watched him with consternation, waving his arms and shouting, charging down the hill to the men putting away the gangway. “Waaaiiittt!” he yelled.
“I hate this job,” said Fintan despondently.
“Me also,” said Gaspard, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, somewhat miraculously, in the full force of the oncoming wind.
“I FORGOT MY dog!” Konstantin panted to the tall, kindly captain of the ferry, who had been very unimpressed with both of the men coming to work on Mure; he took as keen an interest as everyone else in the success or failure of the Rock.
“Did you now,” said the man. Grudgingly he opened the rope that blocked off the gangway and Konstantin, slightly fuzzily, ran into the hold, where Bjårk was filling his traveling box a little snugly.
“Bjårk! I am so sorry. I am a terrible, terrible man,” he said. “Well, so everyone else says. I was probably just having a bad day,” he added, kneeling down.
Bjårk, as it happened, was happily in the process of forgiving him, as he wanted out and, ideally, a snack, and then perhaps another snack. Indeed, Konstantin felt in his pocket and found a packet of crisps that had been on the bar and that he’d completely forgotten was in there. He opened them up, sniffed them—they were a flavor he was not familiar with—and passed them all on to Bjårk, who didn’t care either way.
The captain had come down to the hold and was staring at him.
“You give crisps to your dog?” he said incredulously. “The dog you didn’t even remember you had?”
He shook his head and felt sorry for Fintan. Konstantin returned a haughty stare. He was used to everyone being nice to him and fussing over him. Being cross with him wasn’t really done, unless of course it was his father.
Instead he hauled Bjårk, who didn’t want to leave the huge raft of fascinating smells coming from all over the boat, down the gangplank with every ounce of dignity he could muster, which, given he was half drunk, splashed with water, and heaving a large, hairy beast whose muzzle was covered in crisp crumbs, wasn’t much.
FINTAN AND ISLA stood watching them approach. Gaspard was delighted and waved cheerfully.
“Hey! Monsieur Chien,” he shouted cheerfully. Bjårk wagged his tail in return.
“Okay. Now we can go,” said Konstantin stiffly, arriving back and slightly peeved that nobody was making a move to carry his ancient leather suitcase for him.
“But . . . but . . .” Fintan started to stutter.
As he did so, the dog walked up to him and licked his palm. Bjårk smelled, inexplicably, of shrimp cocktail. His tongue dangled cheerfully.
“We don’t have room for a dog!”
Isla gave him a side-eye. Colton’s two dogs, ridiculously expensive deerhounds, lived around the place perfectly happily, and everyone quite liked having them around, even though they were trained to tear you limb from limb on hearing a key word that Colton appeared to have taken with him to the grave and Fintan was terrified of saying by accident one day.
“We absolutely didn’t say dogs were allowed. Obviously we wouldn’t offer you a job like that.”
“Okay fine,” said Konstantin, bored now, who made to turn round and catch the ferry back.
Isla gave Fintan a hard stare.
“Okay,” said Fintan finally. “Okay. We’ll sort it out later.”
And the very strange party made their way in silence to the Land Rover.
Chapter 11
It didn’t help that Flora liked almost anyone who came with a dog attached. Back at the hotel, she had found the whole thing patently hilarious, to Fintan’s fury. She looked Konstantin up and down. It was very unlike Joel to make this kind of request for anyone, and it had been very hush-hush. So she knew absolutely nothing about the younger boy except that he was Norwegian and, by the look of things, a bit of a drip. He stood tall in the doorway with his blond hair flopping over his eye, gazing at the Rock as if it were the worst place he’d ever seen.
“Okay, Isla, can you show Konstantin where he’s going to be sleeping and take him round the kitchen? And is it Gaspard . . . ?”
But Gaspard had already disappeared. From the back of the long corridor, Flora could already hear the whoosh of a burner being turned on. She frowned. Fintan had mentioned he was “temperamental.” It appeared to be rather worse than that. Crazy, drunk, and covered in tattoos seemed about the size of it. Fintan himself looked absolutely disconsolate and desperate to get away, even though he should be settling everyone in and leading his new team. Oh lord. This was like herding cats. She felt a sudden wish to be at home, snuggled up with Dougie and Joel in front of some ideally really, really terrible television. She had a bad feeling about . . .
“Oh, hello! Cooee!!”
Flora turned round slowly. There was Pam, who led the Outward Bound group.
Flora would never like to say she had a nemesis. But had she had a nemesis, it would have been Pam, who had never quite forgiven her for, years ago, getting off with her boyfriend. For like two seconds. Actually, Flora suspected, correctly, that Pam found it slightly more annoying that Flora had never given it a second thought afterward, not once she and Joel had found each other.
Pam’s baby, Christabel, was strapped to Pam in a woven homemade baby wrapper that looked oddly confrontational. She was red of face and had her father Charlie’s heavy eyebrows and a permanent frown.