And Thereby Hangs a Tale (22 page)

'Why?' asked the Englishman, sounding puzzled.

'He moved house over a hundred times during
his lifetime.' It was about the only thing Liam could remember about James
Joyce.

Working for an English company, Liam quickly
discovered that if you have a gentle Irish brogue and are graced with enough charm,
the invaders have a tendency to underestimate you -- a mistake the English have made
for over a thousand years.

Another important lesson he learned, and one
they certainly don't teach you at any university, was that the only difference
between a tinker and a merchant banker is the sum of money that changes
hands. However, Liam couldn't work out how to take advantage of this knowledge
until he met Maggie McBride.

Maggie didn't consider the tinker's son from
Cork to be much of a catch, even if he was good-looking and fun to be with, but
when he invited her to join him for a holiday in Majorca, she began to show a
little more interest.

Liam's current account at the Allied Irish Bank
was just enough in credit for him to be able to afford a package holiday to
Magaluf, a resort on the south-west coast of the island, which for three months
of every year is taken over by the British.

Maggie was not impressed when they booked into
a one-star hotel and were shown to a room with a double bed. She made it absolutely
clear that she might have agreed to come on holiday with Liam, but that didn't
mean they would be sleeping together. Liam booked himself into a separate room,
which he knew would stretch his budget to the limit. Another lesson learned.
Before you sign a contract, check the small print.

The next day Liam was lying
next to Maggie on an over-crowded beach in a pair of tight-fitting swimming trunks,
becoming redder and redder by the minute. His mother had once told him that the
Irish have the greenest grass and the whitest skins on earth, but he had not,
until then, realized the significance of the second part of her statement.

On the second day, Liam, still having failed
to make any progress with Maggie, was beginning to wonder why he'd bothered to
take her on holiday in the first place. But then he discovered that the
thousand Englishwomen walking up and down the beach had only one thing on their
minds -- and a handsome young Irishman who would be disappearing back to Cork in
two weeks' time ticked most of their boxes.

Liam was telling a girl from Doncaster how he'd
discovered Riverdance when she said, 'You're getting very red.' So red that he
had to lie on his stomach all night, quite unable to move, which was not at all
what the girl from Doncaster had planned.

The next morning Liam smothered himself with
factor thirty suncream, put on a longsleeved shirt and long trousers, ignored
the signs to the beach and took a bus into Palma, wondering if it would turn
out to be just another Magaluf.

The medieval capital took him by surprise, with
its wide streets lined with palm trees and flower baskets, and the narrow
alleys with picturesque pavement restaurants and stylish boutiques. He could
have been in a different country.

As he strolled down the Paseo Maritimo, Liam
found himself stopping to look in the estate agents' windows. He was surprised how
cheap the houses were compared to Cork, and even more surprised to discover that
the banks were offering 80, sometimes even 90 per cent mortgages.

He considered entering one of the estate agents'
offices, as he had a hundred questions he wanted answering, but as he couldn't
speak a word of Spanish, he satisfied himself with looking in the windows and admiring
the large colour photographs of properties described as deseable, asequible, sensational.
He was thinking of returning to Magaluf when he spotted a familiar green, white
and orange flag flapping in the wind outside a shopfront with a sign which announced,
'Patrick O'Donovan, International Real Estate Co.'

Liam pushed open the front door without bothering
to look in the window. As he stepped into the office, a smartly dressed woman
looked up, and an older man, unshaven and wearing soiled jeans and a T-shirt, swung
his feet off a desk and smiled.

'I was just wondering-' began Liam.

'A fellow Irishman!' exclaimed the man, leaping
up. 'Allow me to introduce myself.

I'm Patrick O'Donovan.'

'Liam Casey,' said Liam, shaking him by the hand.

'Is it to be business or pleasure, Liam?'
asked O'Donovan.

'I'm not quite sure,' Liam replied, 'but as
I'm here on holiday...'

'Then it's pleasure,' said O'Donovan. 'So
let's begin our relationship as any self-respecting Irishmen should. Maria, if
anyone calls, my friend and I can be found at the Flanagan Arms.'

Without another word, O'Donovan led Liam out
of the office, across the road and into a side alley where they entered a pub
few tourists would ever come across. The next words O'Donovan uttered were, 'Two
pints of Guinness', without asking his new-found friend what he would like.

Liam was able to get through most of his questions
while O'Donovan was still sober.

He learned that Patrick had been living on the
island for over thirty years, and was convinced that Majorca was about to take
off like California at the time of the gold rush.

O'Donovan went on to tell Liam that the
island was attracting a record number of tourists but, more important, it had
recently become the most popular destination for Brits who wanted to spend
their retirement years abroad.

'When I set up my agency,' he told Liam between
gulps of his third Guinness, 'it was long before Majorca became fashionable. In
those days there were only a dozen of us in the business; now, everybody on the
island thinks they're an estate agent. I've done well, can't complain, but I
only wish I was your age.'

'Why?' asked Liam innocently.

'We're about to enter a boom period,' said O'Donovan.
'An ageing population with disposable incomes and an awareness of their own
mortality are migrating here like a flock of starlings searching for warmer
climes.'

By the fifth Guinness, Liam had only one or two
more questions left to ask. Not that it mattered, as O'Donovan was no longer
capable of answering them.

The next morning, and every morning for the following
week, Liam did not join Maggie on the overcrowded beaches but took the bus that
was heading into Palma. He had some serious research to carry out before he met
up with Patrick O'Donovan again.

During the day, he made appointments with several
estate agents to view apartments and other properties. What he was shown
confirmed O'Donovan's opinion -- Majorca was about to enter a period of rapid
growth.

On the final morning of his holiday, having not
once returned to the beach in the past ten days, even though his red Majorca
skin had faded back to Irish white, Liam boarded the bus to Palma for the last
time.

Once he'd been dropped off in the city centre,
he headed straight for the Paseo Maritimo and didn't stop walking until he reached
the offices of Patrick O'Donovan, International Real Estate Co. He had only one
more question to ask his fellow countryman.

'Would you consider taking me on as a junior
partner?'

'Certainly not,' said O'Donovan. 'But I
would consider taking you on as a partner.'

Maggie McBride flew back to Ireland, virgo intacta,
while the tinker from Cork remained in Majorca.

Liam's first year in Majorca didn't turn out
to be quite the bonanza his new partner had promised, despite his working night
and day and making full use of the skills he'd honed in Cork. While he spent
most of his days in the office or showing clients around properties, O'Donovan
spent more and more of his time in the Flanagan Arms, drinking away the company's
dwindling profits.

By the end of his second year, Liam was
considering returning to Ireland, which was experiencing its own economic boom,
fuelled by massive grants from the European Union.

And then, without warning, the decision was taken
out of his hands. O'Donovan failed to return to work after the pub had closed
for the afternoon siesta. He'd dropped dead in the street a hundred yards from
the office.

Liam organized Patrick's funeral, held a wake
at the Flanagan Arms and was the last to leave the pub that night. By the time
he crawled into bed at three in the morning, he'd made a decision.

The first person he called after arriving at
the office the next day was a sign-writer he'd found in the Yellow Pages. By
twelve o'clock, the name above the door read 'Casey & Co,
International Estate Agents'.

The second phone call Liam made was to Pepe
Miro, a young man who worked for a rival company and had beaten him to several deals
in the past two years. They agreed to meet in a tapas bar that evening, and
after another late night, during which a José Ferrer L. Rosado replaced
Guinness, Liam was able to convince Pepe they would both be better off working
together as partners.

A month later, a Spanish flag was raised
beside the Irish one, and the sign-writer returned. When he left, the name
above the door read, 'Casey, Miro & Co.' While Pepe handled the natives,
Liam took care of any foreign intruders; a genuine partnership.

The new company's profits grew slowly to begin
with, but at least the graph was now heading in the right direction. But it
wasn't until Pepe told his new partner about an old local custom that
their fortunes began to change.

Majorca is a small island with a large,
fertile, central plain where vineyards, almond and olive trees thrive.
Traditionally, when a Majorcan farmer dies, he leaves any property in the
fertile heartland to his eldest son, while any daughters end up with small
pieces of craggy coastline. Liam's Irish charm and good looks did no harm when
he advised these daughters how they could benefit from this chauvinistic
injustice.

He purchased his first plot of land in 1991,
from a middle-aged lady who was short of cash and boyfriends: a tiny strip of
infertile coastline with uninterrupted views of the Mediterranean. A bulldozer
levelled the ground, and within a few weeks, after a bunch of itinerant workers
had cleaned up the site, a developer purchased the plot for almost double Liam's
original outlay.

Liam bought his second piece of land from a grieving
widow. It had splendid panoramic views all the way to Barcelona. Once again he
flattened the plot, and this time he built a path wide
enough to allow a car to reach it from the main road.

On this occasion he made an even larger
return, which he used to build a small house on a piece of land Pepe had
purchased from a lady who spoke only Spanish. A year later they sold the
property for triple their original investment.

By the time Liam had purchased their fourth piece
of coastal land, which was large enough to divide into three plots, he realized
he was no longer an estate agent but had unwit-tingly become a property
developer. While Pepe continued to woo an endless stream of Spanish daughters
and widows, Liam converted their scraggy inheritances into saleable properties.
As time went by and the company's profits increased, it became clear to Liam
that the only obstacle preventing him from progressing at an even more rapid pace
was a lack of capital. He decided to make one of his rare trips back to
Ireland.

The property manager of the Allied Irish Bank
in Dublin -- Liam avoided Corklistened with interest to the proposals put forward
by his fellow countryman, and eventually agreed to advance him a hundred thousand
pounds with which to purchase two new sites. When Liam delivered a profit of
over 40 per cent the following year, the bank agreed to double its investment.

Liam closed his first million-pound deal in 1997,
and his success might have continued unabated, if only he'd recalled his father's
sound advice. While a wise man can spend all day making a few bob, a foolish
one can lose them in a few minutes.

On the evening of 31 December 1999, Liam and
Pepe held a party for their friends and clients at the Palace Hotel in Palma to
celebrate their good fortune. As they were now both millionaires, they had
every reason to look forward to the new millennium with confidence, especially
as Pepe announced, just before the sun rose on 1 January 2000, that he had come
across the deal of a lifetime. Liam had to wait two more days before Pepe had
recovered sufficiently to tell him the details.

A Majorcan from one of the oldest families on
the island had recently died intestate.

After some considerable legal wrangling, the
court had decided that his wife was entitled to inherit his entire estate -- an
area of land in Valldemossa that stretched for several kilometres, from the
slopes of the Sierra de Tramuntana all the way down to the coast.

Liam spent a week in Dublin trying to
convince the Allied Irish that it should put up the largest property loan in
its history. Once the bank had agreed terms, which included personal guarantees
from both Liam and Pepe, something Liam's tinker father would never have
advised, he returned to Majorca and began to conduct negotiations with the widow.
She finally agreed to sell her twothousand-hectare site for twenty-three
million euros.