The invitation promised light refreshments, but the amounts of food served at Gray's Guest House, Achill Island last Wednesday turned out to be of biblical proportions. There were mountains of salmon. The ham, turkey and chicken from Kelly's in Newport seemed to multiply as I stood in front of the buffet table.
Violet McDowell of Gray's was asked to host an afternoon meal for up to 100 people following the official opening of the Heinrich Böll Cottage in the village of Dugort. No bother to Vi, who celebrated her 95th birthday on Sunday. With her usual style she proceeded to organise the reception, for which she would need a staff of nine. She ordered a special commemorative cake from Dublin.
Vi was born in 1910, the daughter of William Robert Gray and Rebecca McNally, in a house at the foot of Slievemore mountain. Her father was an engineer with Lawrence of Arabia. Based in Cairo, he made a survey of Egypt from aeroplane photographs of battle areas. Her mother was a native of Achill.
In 1940 Vi married Arthur McDowell of the Ulster Bank. The couple opened Gray's Guest House in 1970, after Arthur retired. They developed the business over 25 years, earning a listing in the Egon Ronay Guide. After Arthur died in 1995, Vi continued to run Gray's, where she remains to this day, a tireless hostess and storyteller, Paul Durcan's Midnight Lady of Dugort.
"I don't want people to find out my age," Vi said, to laughter and applause from the gathering of 105 people at the Böll Cottage reception, including Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue; German ambassador Dr Gottfried Haas and his wife Béatrice; representatives of Mayo County Council and Ireland West Tourism; and a group of island residents, visitors, painters, writers, and composers, some of whom had stayed in the cottage. With walking-stick in hand, Vi stood for a long time, smiling and observing her guests, making her way round the dining-room for a brief chat.
The occasion was a proud one for Achill, marking the purchase and refurbishment of the former island home of the German writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972. The cottage provides a haven for artists and writers from all over the world, particularly those in difficult or restricted circumstances. Heinrich Böll himself led the way: he used to bring other writers and artists to stay with him on Achill.
Buying the cottage had seemed "an impossible dream", Dr Edward King, chairman of the local committee, said earlier at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, held in the refurbished courtyard. Edward thanked the many people involved in the project, especially the committee's secretary, John McHugh, poet and founding member John F. Deane, and the Achill men who carried out the renovations conceived by Patrick Carr.
It was a trilingual day in Dugort. There were speeches in Irish, German and English, punctuated by bird-song, applause and the occasional honking of someone's car security system. The Mayo flag flew and the pipe band played. We stood in cold but brilliantly sunny weather beneath a Paul Henry sky, enjoying a reprieve from howling winds and horizontal rain.
Mr O'Donoghue looked up briefly towards the sun and tried to imagine how a survivor of Hitler's war must have felt coming to Achill, "this beautiful part of Mayo". Standing in the courtyard of the great writer's house, he was able to appreciate the inspiration and peace Böll had found.
The German ambassador, smiling and urbane, said he and Béatrice had braved "Siberian conditions" that morning to drive the 200 miles from Dublin to Achill in snow and sleet. Dr Haas said Böll's Irish Journal, published in 1957, had given generations of Germans their first impression of Ireland.
He noted how much Ireland had changed since Böll lived here.
It was a rare opportunity to view the cottage where Böll had done much of his early writing. People wandered into his study with its view of Blacksod Bay and Gleann na gCuach, the Valley of the Cuckoos.
Some sat by the fire in the sitting-room, or walked around the spare rooms in the horseshoe-shaped house.
Memories of people who did not live to see this day hung poignantly over the proceedings: Böll himself, who died in 1985; his widow Annemarie, a translator of 100 works of literature, who died in November 2004; Dr King's mother Clodagh, a founding committee member who passed away in 1995; and Donncha Ó Gallchobhair, former minister for the Gaeltacht, who led the delegation which obtained a crucial grant of £60,000 from Síle de Valera, former minister for the Arts, in 2001. He died soon after the grant to purchase the cottage was awarded.
Towards the end of Vi McDowell's reception, I listened as two men at my table spoke Irish. Michael Mullen from Castlebar, whose historical novels are on my son's reading list at Scoil Damhnait in Achill Sound, and Tom McNamara, owner of the Boley House in Keel, another Achill landmark, were having a chat.
I asked them for their reflections on the day. "Thar a bheith sásta," Michael Mullen said, and Tom McNamara nodded.
"Beyond our expectations."