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6
Ireland, January
Georgie was delighted to find Soldier Hill House empty when she got there. The radiator in the hall welcomed her with a rumble and a blast of soft heat that promised to negate the cool mist that had settled on her clothes as she’d made her way from the taxi into the house. After lugging her cases upstairs and putting her clothes away, she sat on the bed for a moment. She had arrived early, with two weeks to spare. Well, when she’d looked about her in London there hadn’t seemed much point in hanging about. There wasn’t anything to keep her there now. She hadn’t let anyone know she was coming, so there was no hot dinner prepared today, but as she walked past the sitting room, she’d spotted kindling and wood for the fire. Later she could sort herself out for dinner. But she wasn’t hungry yet. Perhaps it was the excitement – was that even the right word? – of coming here, but it set her on edge a bit, so she felt she couldn’t settle just yet.
Instead, she decided to put on her walking boots and go for a long tramp in the rain. She couldn’t remember the last time she had just gone for a walk in the countryside when it was raining.
Rather than heading towards the beach, Georgie opened the gate and veered through the field that bordered the property. It was a shortcut down to the distillery, and on the spur of the moment, she decided that she might just pop her head in and see what the old place looked like these days. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone down there. It had probably been to call her father up so he could have dinner with them all when they’d been young and sitting around the kitchen table was the one ritual that kept them on track after their mother died. Back then, the distillery was little more than a huge, ramshackle outbuilding, painted in various shades of red as bits had been added to it or patched up after storms that had bitten down hard on anything that jutted far enough from the landscape to sink windy teeth into.
She checked her watch: just before five. Surely there would be someone about to let her in if she knocked on the door.
*
Wow! Georgie could hardly believe her eyes as she stood outside the distillery.There was a main front door now?To her best recollection, there had only ever been huge garage doors that had taken two men to open and close at either end of the working day. It seemed the place had quietly undergone a complete facelift. It looked – well,beautifulwas the word that sprang to mind. Notwithstanding the fine gin her father had produced and gifted them that night of his funeral, she had still expected the place to be almost dilapidated. How naïve of her. Quite aside from dabbling in making gin, the Delahaye Distillery produced a world-class whiskey that was carried in some of the finest American hotels and bars. It was a boutique product, but there was a loyal customer base and in any food or drink production setting, Georgie knew there would be rigorous health and safety standards to be adhered to. It seemed that even if the gin packaging hadn’t, the Delahaye Distillery had moved along with the times and her father, or whoever was overseeing operations these days, had done it with vision and style.
The whole building had been spruced up, painted a crisp white over pebble-dash walls with accent panels of ash between long gleaming windows giving a tantalising view of the huge vats within. She walked about the perimeter and at the other side, she could see inside long picture windows, the huge silver and copper drums where the whiskey sat waiting to be barrelled. A brand-new roof sloped down on one side to just about eight foot off the ground and it gave the building a slightly dapper air, as if it had just had one gin too many. The place looked great – well, apart from the sign. Everything about the logo and what she’d seen of the packaging made her wince.
‘Hey.’ A voice behind her startled her and she turned around to see Robert English. ‘Remember me?’
She found herself smiling and extended her hand. ‘How could I forget you, after you personally hand-delivered the most delicious bottle of gin to us.’ He had a strong handshake; it was easy to warm to him.
‘Want to come in for a guided tour?’ he asked, holding the door open for her. ‘Not that you need to be shown around, but I’d imagine it’s a while since any of you were here – not since the renovations, I think your father said.’
‘No,’ Georgie said softly. ‘When was that?’ It was too long ago – she was certain of that much. She wasn’t really sure she wanted to know exactly how long.
‘Let me think, it must be five years or so,’ he said easily, and from the way he looked around the place, she could see he had as much pride in it as if it was his own. ‘We had to talk your father into it. He was thinking of letting it go altogether, but then the government started to hand out grants to small businesses, everything from building repairs to upgrading the marketing spend. Once we got going, he really enjoyed sprucing the place up.’
‘It looks amazing; my memory of this place is that it was little more than a glorified spirits-still in a shed.’ She laughed softly at the silly notion of it being able to continue into the twenty-first century in that state.
‘No, we wouldn’t have been able to operate if it was just left like that,’ he said, and then he turned to her. ‘So, what did the three of you think of Iseult’s Gin?’
‘Seriously, you have to ask? It’s gorgeous. I’m surprised you haven’t changed the sign over the door from whiskey to gin.’ She laughed.
‘No, I’m afraid we’re not quite there yet.’ He started to lead her up the cast-iron steps to the little office she remembered so clearly her father sitting in. That too had changed completely. The last time she was here, her father’s desk had dominated the room and from every spare inch of wall, receipts and notes had been pinned, as if it was being held together by BluTack and sticky tape.
Now, there were two desks, with gleaming white computers on each. Had her father learned how to use a computer? She couldn’t imagine it and didn’t want to let herself down by having to ask. There was no mistaking his desk though. It had a photograph of her mother, one she remembered clearly from the house, taken one afternoon as she’d walked along the shore, the sun amber on her skin, her eyes dancing in that way they did when she expected to laugh at something that hadn’t yet been said.
‘And anyway, we’d be mad to give up on the whiskey; it’s kept us all in jobs and allowed us to expand when other businesses were falling by the wayside.’
‘And the gin?’
‘It’s a new product.’ He smiled now and Georgie found herself smiling back at him. He was easy to like. ‘Well, when I say new, it’s never been launched. It’s been a labour of love for years with your father, but he knew he had completed his work on it before he…’
Georgie pushed past the sticky moment. ‘He was happy with it?’ That meant a lot; Georgie knew her father was a perfectionist.
‘He was.’ Robert smiled sadly. ‘Anyway, it’s going to be up to you and your sisters what comes next.’
She couldn’t help it – there was that niggling feeling that always crept along her spine at the prospect of a new project. Except it wasn’t hers. She couldn’t do a single thing here without Iris and Nola agreeing to it, and that thought brought her back to earth with a thud.
He looked out at the distillery floor beyond the office. ‘We’ll keep the place running until you decide exactly what you want to do with it,’ he said, and she had to admire him for not pushing for any firm answers.
‘That’ll be a decision for a few months’ time.’ It seemed wrong to have people working here not knowing what would happen to their jobs, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be clearer.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll still have jobs. Your father was beating away the offers to sell this place over the years and now, with the new product line, I’d say you’ll have no shortage of buyers. Delahayes will keep distilling; the question is whether you or your sisters are going to continue to be involved or if you’ll decide to sell it on to one of the bigger brands.’
‘That’s a question indeed.’ Georgie felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of handing over her father’s life’s work to some corporate suits that would see nothing more than a bottom line. In some ways, it was a pity they were planning to sell.
A light mist descended across the fields on the walk back up to the house, but Georgie hardly noticed because she was so lost in her thoughts. For the first time since she could remember, she wasn’t agonising over her job with Sandstone and Mellon; rather, she could feel a rising anger in her towards her sisters, neither of whom she suspected would care very much one way or another about the legacy of their father’s work. She assumed Iris and Myles would spend their portion of the estate on foreign cruises and perhaps a swanky new car for Myles to drive about in. As for Nola, it would undoubtedly be frittered away on parties and the social whirl of thespian London.
As Georgie reached the house, she realised that, far from bringing them closer together, her father’s will could drive them further apart than ever.
