High Island Blues Read Online Free PDF Page A

should meet up in twenty years time. A reunion at the Oaklands Hotel, High Island. Something to look forward to. Something to blow away those High Island blues.
    The woman who ran Oaklands then, Mrs Cleary, had been an aunt of Laurie’s. There had been a tension in the relationship which was never explained. She had been surprised to see Laurie on her doorstep, not hostile but wary. And though she must have been related to the girl’s parents she never asked about them. Laurie’s life was never discussed.
    Elsie Cleary had a twelve-year-old daughter named Mary Ann, who had taken a bit of a shine to Rob. When they left for home he promised to write to her. He had kept his word and sent her postcards from exotic places, funny notes about other birdwatchers, poems and limericks. She wrote back with news of the peninsula. After he’d been appointed leader with the tour company he wrote to Mary Ann to tell her. He still thought of her as a child although by then she’d been away to Business School. She wrote back on smart headed notepaper telling him that her mother had died and she’d taken on the running of Oaklands herself.
    ‘I’d like to run it along the lines of an English country hotel,’ she’d written, so he supposed she must have travelled to Britain, although she had never said. ‘Kind of relaxed and homely. Would your company consider using it as a base for High Island? I’d give you a good discount for a regular booking.’
    The first year he had gone there with some trepidation not knowing what to expect. It would be more convenient than the motel in Winnie where they usually stayed. Oaklands was within walking distance of the Audubon sanctuaries. But most of his customers considered travelling to Texas as adventure enough, and he did not think they would relish the Oaklands he remembered, with ants in the kitchen and lizards in the baths. In fact, the hotel had been transformed. It had been painted gleaming white, the timbers mended, the garden weeded. There were a couple of elderly residents rocking gently in chairs on the porch. Rob suspected that Mary Ann kept them on not out of sentiment but sound commercial judgement. They added to the atmosphere like the hand-sewn quilts on the beds and her grandmother’s furniture. They shared iced tea with the English visitors and talked in soft Texan voices about the old times.
    Mary Ann still managed Oaklands single-handed. There had never been a boyfriend so far as Rob knew, certainly not a husband. She was a slim, dark woman, very smart, never bare legged even in the hottest weather. She reminded Rob rather of some French women he had met – formidable, stylish, independent. He had kept on good terms with her but he would never have dared intimacy though he found her attractive, and he enjoyed a challenge. After all he could not afford to offend her. His clients liked staying at Oaklands. It had become a success. It was hard to get a room there even in the winter and the restaurant was full every night.
    He watched her walk down the veranda steps to greet his group and thought that she was one of the most successful and contented people he knew.
    Mary Ann was unusually agitated, though neither her guests nor the staff would have realized it. She had learned control from an early age. Her mother was a friendly and easy woman but Mary Ann had seen that she had more than enough to do in keeping the boarding house. She would not have the energy to deal with teenage traumas and tantrums besides. Living at Oaklands meant more to Mary Ann than anything, so she had stayed clear of unsuitable boyfriends and drugs, of mood swings and emotional demands which might have side-tracked her mother from the task of making just enough money to keep the hotel ticking over. And Mary Ann had worked hard at school and worked her way through college so she would learn how to do more than just keep the place solvent. She was determined to make it a success.
    But throughout the