The House (Armstrong House Series Book 1)

by A. O'Connor

  They continued to rummage through the items. Suddenly Nico found a large photograph in a box and sat down on a chair, staring at the photo with curiosity.

  “What’s that?” asked Kate.

  “It’s a photo of my grandfather Pierce . . . on his wedding day,” said Nico.

  “Really?” Kate walked over excitedly and peered at the photo of the beautiful couple walking out of the church.

  “You don’t really look like him,” Kate observed. “Or your grandmother,” she added as she studied the stunning bride.

  “Oh, she’s not my grandmother,” said Nico quickly.

  “No?” Kate was intrigued and, pulling up a chair, sat down beside him and took the photo from his hand to study it further. “Who is she then?”

  “It must be his first wife Clara. I’ve never seen a photo of her before.”

  “Clara,” she said the word gently, putting a face to the letters she was reading.

  He took the photo back from her. “She was a society beauty from London. She would have been the last lady of the house here.”

  “I see . . . But what happened to her?” Kate was mesmerized by Clara’s face.

  “She and Pierce divorced. They had no children. In fact, she was a complete bitch to him.”

  “She doesn’t look like a bitch,” said Kate, surprised by his words.

  “Looks can be deceiving. He fought in the First World War, and rose very high in the ranks. While he was off fighting in the trenches, she was having an affair behind his back.”

  “You’re joking me!” She took the photo from him again and peered at it.

  “Yes, she had an affair here in this very house – his house.” He looked around the room.

  “How awful!”

  “Aha – she was renowned for having wild parties here while my poor old grandfather Pierce fought for his life . . . I believe she ended up having an affair with Jonathan Seymour.”

  “The artist?” Kate asked.

  “He wasn’t so famous then. But, yes, that’s the one.”

  He reached down further into the box, scooped up a dozen other photos and started looking through them. They were all photos of Clara, taken with her posing in different rooms of the house.

  “Ah! Now these could be useful!” said Nico. “Look at these!”

  He started handing the photos one by one to Kate.

  “Some of them are taken in the rooms that were destroyed by the fire. These can give us an actual record of what the rooms were like so we can restore them. Brilliant!”

  But instead of concentrating on the décor of the rooms, Kate was drawn to Clara in the photos, this ethereal beauty from another time looking back at her.

  “And since they are all of Clara, this is how the house looked just before the fire.”

  “What happened to her? To Clara?” questioned Kate.

  “After the fire here in the house, Pierce divorced her on grounds of adultery. He went to live in Dublin, where he worked in the diplomatic corp for the British embassy. He eventually married my grandmother, Joan. They had a daughter, my mother Jacqueline. But that was a short-lived marriage as well.”

  “Another divorce?” asked Kate.

  “No . . . The Second World War broke out, and he re-enlisted as an officer and went to fight in France even though he was in his fifties by then. He was killed in his first week there. Shot.”

  Kate went back and looked at Pierce and Clara’s wedding photo again.

  “My grandmother married again after Pierce died – a Dublin businessman – and went on to have more children. My mother Jacqueline, although she never knew Pierce as she was only a baby when he died, had a very happy upbringing. This place came to her on Pierce’s death.”

  “And what about Clara? What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know what happened to her. And after how she treated my grandfather, I’m not really interested either.” He got up and started to work again.

  “Can I borrow the photos, just to study the rooms?” she asked.

  “Sure . . . I wonder what this is?” he said, lifting up a round silver canister and going to open it.

  “Wait!” she ordered, hurrying over to him. “That’s an old reel of film, don’t expose it to the light!” She studied it. “Very old from what I can tell.”

  “I wonder what it’s of?” he asked.

  “I’ve a friend who specialises in adapting these – want me to get him to take a look?”

  He shrugged and handed it to her.

  Hours later they were still sorting through the stuff.

  “Now look at this!” said Nico excitedly and Kate rushed over. He had uncovered a large portrait, the bottom half of which was covered in dust and smoke damage. But Kate immediately recognised the face in the portrait as that of Clara from the photos.

  “It’s impossible to see the signature on the painting,” said Nico, peering at the bottom of the portrait.

  Kate stared at the painting of Clara. “Are you going to throw it out?” she asked, half hoping he would say yes, so she could lay claim to it.

  “No. I’ve a friend who restores paintings, so I’ll get him to take a look at it.”

  He carried the painting out to his Range Rover.

  96

  Back in Dublin, Kate couldn’t stop studying the photos of Clara. She was fascinated with the beauty who had been the last mistress of their house. She almost felt a connection with her. She suddenly spotted a brooch Clara was wearing in one of the photos and hurried to her handbag and took out the one Nico had said she could have. As she compared her brooch to the one in the photo she realised it was the same.

  “Thank you, Clara!” she said, amazed by the discovery. “It’s almost as if you’ve handed it to me through time.”

  “Are you beginning to talk to yourself? First sign of madness, you know,” said Tony walking into their bedroom. He was wearing a tuxedo as they were going to a dinner party.

  Kate tidied away the photos and went to sit at her dressing table to pin the brooch on to her evening gown.

  He came over to her and placed his hands on her shoulders while standing behind her.

  “New piece of jewellery?” he asked.

  “No, a very old piece. We found it in the house and Nico said I could keep it. It used to belong to the last woman who lived there, Lady Clara Armstrong.”

  He bent down and examined it. “Is it expensive?”

  “No, it’s only costume jewellery.”

  “The way this banking crisis is going, there’s going to be a lot of ladies around Dublin swapping their diamonds for costume jewellery.”

  She took his hand and they walked out of the room and down the spiral staircase.

  “This financial crisis seems to be getting worse. I was watching it all on the news,” she said.

  “Yeah, the bottom seems to be dropping out of the country, maybe even the world.”

  She looked at him with a smirk. “Do we need to economise?”

  He smiled back. “No, I think we’re fine.”

  Kate rode into the forecourt at the stud farm outside Dublin, dismounted and handed the reins to one of the grooms.

  “You’re a natural, Mrs Fallon,” said the head groom as he walked over to her. “Hard to believe you only started riding a few months ago. And, as you’ve asked, I’ve got some fine horses set up for you to buy when you move into your new country house.”

  “Excellent. Thank you! We expect to be moved in over the next couple of months, so be ready to go with them.”

  She strode out of the yard and as she got into her car her phone rang.

  “Kate, I’ve managed to sort out that film for you. It was very old, but very good quality considering. It’s of a party – I would say in the 1920s or earlier. I’ve transferred it on to a DVD for you.”

  “Wonderful! Thanks, Marty! Send it over by courier to me, will you?” She started the engine and drove off.

  Kate pulled up alongside Nico’s Range Rover and jump
ed out, carrying her laptop with her. The landscape gardeners were busy restoring the gardens and rebuilding the pillared walls, garden steps and Victorian ornaments. She rushed up the steps and into the house.

  “Nico?” she called loudly as she walked quickly past the craftsmen who were busy carving the ceilings and decorating the walls.

  “He’s in the kitchen, Mrs Fallon,” said one of the men.

  She hurried to the back of the main stairs and down the steps to the kitchen which now had an automatic glass door that slid open to allow her to enter.

  Nico was overseeing the final touches to the kitchen’s renovation. As Tony had expressly ordered, the kitchen had been transformed into a Mecca for the modern chef. A beautiful cream Clive Christian kitchen had been installed with cream porcelain tiles and a round island. There were various glass frosted doors around the kitchen that led into separate small rooms including the wine room, the chocolatier room, cigar boutique, the bakery and the refrigerated fruit room.

  “Nico, quick, I’ve got to show you something,” she said, placing the laptop on the island counter and turning it on.

  He sat up beside her.

  “This is the roll of film we found that my friend put on to DVD,” she explained.

  The film started playing on the screen and Nico peered closely. He recognised the woman on the screen as Clara from her photos. The film was taken in the house and there was what looked like a party going on. The film was concentrating on her as she played up to the camera and danced around the room. The camera was focusing on her face as she smiled, before she fell to the ground laughing.

  “It’s Clara!” stated Kate.

  “I can see that,” said Nico as he peered at the grainy black-and-white footage.

  “Look at them, all so elegant at a party here at the house!” Kate was thrilled.

  “Hmmm, yeah, there’s some good detail of the room we can work with.”

  As Nico pointed out different aspects of the detail to be observed, he realised after a while that Kate wasn’t paying him attention. She was far too busy focusing in on Clara. He spotted Kate was wearing the brooch they had found, and her normal array of diamonds were absent.

  All the workers had gone as Nico and Kate walked out the front door and he locked it behind them.

  “Are you heading back to Dublin?” he asked as they made their way to their vehicles.

  “No, it’s a bit late,” she said.

  “Back to the hotel for the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are meeting friends there?”

  “No, nothing planned . . . why?”

  He looked awkward. “You haven’t had dinner.”

  “No.”

  “I thought if you were free we might have something to eat, while we continued to discuss the next steps for the house?”

  “Oh!” She hesitated for a second before nodding and smiling.

  They managed to get a last-minute cancellation at The Ice House restaurant in Ballina, and they were shown to a table at the window with the river below it.

  “So how is all this banking collapse affecting you?” asked Nico.

  “Oh, I’ve tried not paying attention to it. It’s all very worrying, isn’t it?” She smirked at him. “Why, frightened you won’t get paid? Is this dinner a polite excuse to check our cash flow?”

  “No!” He was suddenly embarrassed.

  “I’m joking!” she said.

  “I find your sense of humour very annoying at times.”

  “Oh, you’ll get used to me in time.”

  “Not really. The house is nearly finished, so I imagine we won’t be in contact from then on.”

  “Well, you’ll still be a neighbour of ours in Hunter’s Farm. I’m sure we’ll be friendly neighbours.”

  He looked at her sceptically. “Come on, I’m hardly going to be invited up to your soirees. I’ve seen the level of people you socialise with.”

  “It really bothers you, doesn’t it? Our wealth?” She was irritated but curious. “Why exactly? Is it because you don’t like self-made people like me and Tony having what you don’t have? Are we a bad reminder of what your family once had and no longer do?”

  “No, I’m not a jealous person.”

  “We all have to adapt to changing circumstance in life. You and your family have had to adapt to becoming normal, me and Tony have had to adapt to becoming not normal.”

  “I doubt you and Tony were ever – normal – in the kindest sense of the word.”

  “I used to be incredibly normal.” Kate took up her glass of wine and took a sip. “Do you ever wonder why we chose to buy your house? Out of all the country houses in the country, why yours?”

  He shrugged. “The views? The price?”

  “In a country full of views, and a bank balance as large as ours, those are not major considerations.”

  “Why then?”

  “I grew up in the local town.”

  “Did you? Castlewest?” He sounded disbelieving as he looked at her.

  “Oh yes. In the Heevenmore area of the town, are you familiar with it?”

  He made a face. “Yeah, but that’s . . .” He paused trying to find the right word.

  “Rough,” she said. “Very rough. The Alsatians go around in pairs there.”

  “But you have an American accent.”

  “Yes. My parents moved to New York in the eighties when I was a teenager. Trying to get a new life. A better life.”

  “And you obviously did.”

  “Eventually I did. My family settled in Queens, in an area that was even rougher than where we came from. And we struggled – oh, how we struggled day in day out. Never enough money to pay the rent or the bills. It was tough. But I wanted more, and I didn’t care how I got it. I had a voice and the camera liked me, I had that going for me, I knew. So I became a singer. Started off in clubs and bars. Moved up to singing in nicer clubs in Manhattan. Eventually started getting a name for myself.”

  “And how did you start acting?”

  “Oh, that was easy. I dated a film director.”

  “I see!” He raised an eyebrow.

  “It wasn’t like that. I was in a long-term relationship with him. And then I started becoming quite famous, especially in Ireland. They love a ‘local girl made good’ story in Ireland.”

  “I saw some of your films,” he admitted.

  “Really?” She was surprised.

  “Em – yeah, they were showing on one of the movie channels.”

  “How did you like them?”

  “Very good actually. I enjoyed them. Why did you give up acting? You’d could have gone on and become a big star.”

  She sat back and sighed. “Might have gone on to become a big star. And then again – might not have. I had a good break, and a good run, but who knows when that would have stopped. And as I got older, they might not have wanted me any more, and I would be struggling to get parts, and always trying to be younger, prettier – no, thank you. When something better came along, I knew when to quit.”

  “The something better being Tony?”

  She nodded and sat forward. “I met Tony at a function in Dublin. Of course I knew of him – who hadn’t heard of Tony Fallon? He was like me – he had come from nowhere and made something of himself. We were kindred spirits. And he loved me, and I loved him. And I trusted him. I admire his drive – if Tony wants to do something, anything, he does it. Nothing gets in his way. I like being with him. It wasn’t a tough decision to leave acting behind. Not tough at all. We knew straight off we were meant to be together. He proposed to me after one month.”

  “A month!”

  “Well, there was no point in hanging around. We were in San Francisco when he proposed. We got a plane straight to Vegas and got married the next day. You probably think that’s tacky, do you?”

  “Not at all. Who am I to criticise a marriage as successful as yours? But you still haven’t answered your own question – why did you buy this house?” />
  “Because I’ve always loved it. We used to cycle out from the town and play in the grounds when we were kids. Even broke in a couple of times. And I promised one day I’d own it and live in it. I didn’t even believe the promise myself. But here I am – doing exactly that.”

  He held up his glass in a toast. “To fulfilling promises then!”

  She chinked her glass against his as the food arrived.

  “Tell me about your daughter Alex,” she said.

  “Alex?” he smiled. “Alex would buy and sell you before you’ve sat down to your breakfast. She’s got all her mother’s determination and all my cynicism.”

  “Quite a combination,” she said.

  “Not a great combination in a marriage though.”

  Kate tried to tread carefully but her curiosity was too strong. “So you had an amicable divorce?”

  He looked at her, surprised.

  “It’s just I spotted her photo still at Hunter’s Farm. Most divorced people I know use their ex’s photos for dart practice.”