‘Because they don’t all have your talent,’ replied Serge, his voice growing fainter.
As soon as they were out of sight, Jimmy D. bellowed at the top of his voice, ‘Wardrobe! Get a costume on this woman immediately! Places, everyone, we’re taking it from the top!’ Then, beaming down at a shell-shocked Mrs Flanagan, he said, ‘So. Like all good little understudies, are you ready to step into the spotlight?’
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE LAST PERSON in the world Portia ever thought she would have found herself arguing with was Steve, but, whether she liked it or not, that’s exactly what happened. She had begged and cajoled him on the phone, but he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. And so, completely against her better judgement, she found herself sitting in the passenger seat of his Jeep on their way to a meeting in, of all places, Chief Justice Michael de Courcey’s house.
‘I don’t understand what your problem is,’ Steve said as they sped down the driveway. ‘You’ve no idea the favour he’s doing us. He’s only got about a half-hour to spare and it’s incredibly decent of him to give us his time so freely.’
‘But whatever it is, didn’t you already discuss it with him at your meeting in Dublin? I just don’t understand why I need to be here,’ she said, pleadingly.
‘Trust me. You do. Look, tell me where to go if you think I’m being intrusive, but is this something to do with Andrew de Courcey?’
For once, Portia was delighted to have the distraction of the hordes of press and TV cameras gathered at the front gates. As they sped through them, the crowd parted a bit and the customary round of flashes went off in their faces. Portia was well used to the photographers by now, was even on first-name terms with them, but Steve wasn’t.
‘One of these days those bastards will cause an accident,’ he swore under his breath. ‘Do you know what my secretary told me the other day? Apparently there was a photo of you and me in one of those bloody rags. She gave me a right slagging about it.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry,’ Portia replied. ‘No one pays the slightest bit of attention to the tabloids. And besides, they’ve been big allies of Mummy’s ever since the news broke about the Nolans buying us out, you know. “Save the Hall” and “The Fall of the Hall”, all that sort of thing. Daisy and I think she creeps down here at dawn each morning feeding them stories. Nothing that woman does would ever surprise me.’
Steve smiled a bit, just at the mention of Daisy’s name. ‘And how is she doing after the whole Guy van der Post debacle?’ he asked shyly.
Portia glanced sideways at him, unsure whether or not to tell him that Paddy was now leading the field in the race for Daisy’s affections. She decided not to, on the grounds that discretion was always the better part of valour. Although she certainly would be letting Daisy know how Steve was practically busting a gut to help the family, probably with her foremost in his mind.
Well, that’s the difference between him and Andrew, she thought. Steve clearly adores the ground Daisy walks on and is bending over backwards to help all of us for her sake. Whereas Andrew . . . needless to say, she hadn’t heard a word from him since the Hunt Ball two days ago. For someone who’d always prided herself on being a good judge of character, Portia was now having to admit that she couldn’t have been more wrong about him if she’d tried. Even thinking about all the promises he’d made her was enough to make her blood boil. She remembered the night they’d sat together in the Yellow Drawing Room till dawn, plotting about how they’d renovate the Hall and turn it into a super-posh country house hotel. He’d even offered to invest money in the scheme. Talk about lip service, she thought.
No. Whatever way she looked at it, there was only one conclusion that made any sense of his behaviour. He’d just been killing time with her, nothing else. He and Edwina were clearly very much a couple again, no doubt about it. There was nothing for it but to accept that she’d been simply a harmless diversion to while away the long summer nights for as long as he stayed with his parents, waiting on his penthouse apartment to be finished. And when Portia thought of his mother, it was hard not to blame Andrew for wanting to escape to Davenport Hall, if only to get away from that old cow.
Her eyes welled up a bit when she thought of how unlucky she’d been to fall for someone who was so clearly out of her league. It was just the callousness of it all that upset her. The way a guy could sweep her off her feet, make her believe that they really had something together and then . . . hasta la fucking vista, all over in a heartbeat. Like it or not, it was time she faced the hard, cold reality. He was just out of an eight-year relationship and was only interested in having a final fling before he inevitably went back to the perfect Edwina.
She glanced sideways at Steve, who was concentrating on the road. ‘Why is it that I do this drive at least four times a week and still manage to hit the same potholes?’ he was saying, intruding on her thoughts. For a moment, she was tempted to ask him if this was the way all guys behaved or had she just had rotten luck with Andrew. She decided against it, remembering that it had been a very long time indeed since he’d produced a girlfriend. So long, in fact, that Lucasta, with her customary lack of tact, used regularly to tease him about being gay. (‘I think you and Serge would be sooo sweet together!’ was her latest.)
And to think I was worried about barging into Andrew’s parents’ house for this bloody meeting, she thought. She was fairly certain that the chances of bumping into him were slim (his apartment in Dublin must be finished by now, she reasoned, so what would he be doing in Ballyroan?) but, after that awful episode in the Four Seasons, you never could be really sure.
Well, if he was at home, this time he could be the one to be embarrassed.
Portia was in luck. No sign of his Mercedes parked in the immaculate front garden. She heaved a sigh of relief as she and Steve crunched up the pink gravel to the front door, remembering the last time she’d been there and how Andrew had gallantly escorted her to the car and even helped pile Lucasta and Daisy in. And then sent flowers the next day . . . Automatically, she forced herself to brush the thought aside. That was then, and this was now.
Steve rang the doorbell and Portia wearily braced herself for another encounter with Mrs de Courcey but the Chief Justice himself answered.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said, struggling to insert a pair of gold cufflinks into a silk dress shirt he was wearing. ‘Will you follow me into my study?’
Portia and Steve did as they were told, and he led them into a beautiful oak-panelled room just to the left of the hall door. Once again, Portia was struck by the huge contrast between Davenport Hall and the sheer, unadulterated luxury of this ultra-modern palace. She was almost walking on tiptoe across the deep white carpet, she was so afraid of leaving a mark; she could see Steve doing the same. As far as the de Courceys are concerned, I must live in a mud hut compared with this, she thought.
‘Sit down, please,’ said the Chief Justice, for once toning his booming voice down a little. Then, turning to Portia, he smiled kindly. ‘My dear young lady, I must apologize for all the secrecy attached to this meeting, but as I said to Steve the other night, things are at a critical stage so we can’t be too careful. That’s why I insisted on our meeting here, where we can talk freely.’
Portia looked blankly at him, utterly at sea.
‘You and your family have been through a dreadful time recently, I hear,’ he said, sinking deep into his leather swivel armchair.
‘Well, yes,’ she replied, wondering what in hell he had up his sleeve. Surely it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with Andrew? No, she thought, because then why would Steve be here?
‘I don’t wish to alarm you, my dear, but the fact is, I have some news which may be of great interest to both you and your family.’
Daisy often used to say that if the presenters of the reality TV show How Clean is your House? ever visited Davenport Hall, they’d have to be treated for shock. Her own bedroom was a case in point; every time she opened the doo
r, she wondered if she’d been burgled, such was its customary disarray. But this time, she really did get the shock of her life.
Egged on by Portia, she’d tried to spend some time packing her things – or more correctly throwing all of her clothes on to the bed before eventually stuffing them into bin liners. But, never a great one for applying herself, she gave this up as a boring job after five minutes and went out to exercise Kat Slater. When she came back a few hours later, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
Every stitch of clothing belonging to her had been tidily put away, the bed had been made and for the first time she could ever remember, the windows had actually been cleaned. For a split second, she wondered if Mrs Flanagan had completely lost it and had decided to clean up the Hall, just as they were moving out. But then she noticed a CD player on her dressing table, with a stack of Metallica CDs beside it. And above the bed was a life-size poster of Elvis Presley. And hanging from the bedpost was a pair of Arsenal boxer shorts . . .
‘Where is he?’ she screeched, not caring who overheard. ‘I will fucking kill him!’
‘So what do you make of it all?’ Steve said to Portia in a low voice as the Chief Justice briefly excused himself to answer the door.
Portia rubbed her temples and tried to catch her breath. ‘If this was happening in a film, I wouldn’t believe it,’ was all she could say in reply.
‘There’s an awful lot of ground work to be done, but if we pull together, we’ll nail him.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘As Michael just explained, a lot depends on this contact he has in the planning office and exactly how much he’s willing to put on the record. But even if we can’t get him to co-operate, we certainly should have enough to open a full judicial inquiry—’
‘To hell with that!’ interrupted the Chief Justice, who’d just re-entered the study and was pulling on a dinner jacket. ‘We’ll get a nice, juicy Tribunal out of this at the very least. “The de Courcey Tribunal” – doesn’t that have a good ring to it? I could retire a wealthy, happy man after a few years in Dublin Castle knowing that I was instrumental in putting Shamie Joe Nolan where he belongs. Behind bars.’
Portia smiled.
‘What?’ asked Steve.
‘Oh, nothing, I just had a mental picture of Bridie Nolan visiting him in Mountjoy prison, wearing one of her outfits.’
Steve laughed. ‘Yeah, the other prisoners will think he’s married to a Russian mail-order bride.’
‘It’ll happen, believe you me,’ replied the Chief Justice. ‘None of his cronies or his golfing buddies in Government Buildings can get him out of this one. The facts are there, plain and simple. A senior Member of Parliament bought the Davenport land cheaply in the full knowledge that a motion to rezone it was in the bag, thereby trebling its value. It’s cases like this that make me regret that we ever scrapped capital punishment.’
Portia turned to him, with her eyes beginning to fill. ‘You’ve been so kind. I really don’t know how to thank you.’
‘I hate to see injustice, my dear, I’m just doing my job really. Although, if you ever saw your way to introducing me to the lovely Ella Hepburn, I’d be eternally grateful. Huge fan, you know. Ever since she appeared in that superb Hitchcock thriller Mental.’
She smiled up at him, and for the first time noticed that he and Andrew had exactly the same ice-blue eyes. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
‘That really would make my day,’ he replied and, for a split second, Portia reddened, remembering how she’d taken a dislike to him when they’d first met and wondering how on earth she could have misjudged him so badly. ‘And now I’m afraid I’m going to have to be very rude and excuse myself,’ he went on. ‘That was my driver at the door so I really must dash, I’m already late as it is.’
‘Going anywhere nice?’ Steve asked politely as he showed them out.
‘The Unicorn restaurant in Dublin,’ he replied. ‘For a wedding rehearsal dinner. And the wedding’s not for another week, you know. Dreadful waste of time, if you ask me. In my day, you had one wedding day and that was it, but now all these Americanisms are creeping in – bachelor parties and rehearsal dinners and baby showers. But the bride wants it to be a three-day extravaganza. She’s quite a famous model, actually; perhaps you know her? Edwina Moynihan?’
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘YOU HAVE PULLED DOWN YOUR KNICKERS AND SHAT ALL OVER MY CAREER, YOU STUPID FUCKING BITCH!’ Lucasta’s screaming could be heard as far away as Ballyroan.
‘That’s showbiz, dear heart,’ Mrs Flanagan replied coolly, standing at the door of the trailer she’d been given to rest in between takes. ‘Get fecking used to it.’ Then, calling out at the top of her voice to no one in particular, ‘Security? Could this person be removed please? I’ve more shots to do this afternoon and yer one here is messing up me process!’
‘Is everything OK, ladies?’ Johnny asked innocently on his way to grab some lunch in the catering truck.
‘No! Everything is not all right,’ Lucasta snarled. ‘I now know exactly how Bette Davis felt in All About Eve when her career was cruelly snatched from her by a conniving bloody bitch!’
‘Excuse me, I’ve a few things I need in me caravan, Johnny,’ said Mrs Flanagan, totally ignoring her. ‘Can ya bring me a gluten-free meal and a bowl of M and Ms with all the brown ones taken out, and, emm . . .’ She paused, trying to think of all the other ludicrous demands rock stars insisted on before live gigs, which she’d read about in gossip magazines. ‘And twenty, no, forty John Player Blue and a twelve-inch portable telly. Oh yeah, and no snow, no show, whatever that means, so you better get me a bowl of snow, in fact maybe I should just get me own personal chef.’
Johnny rolled his eyes to heaven. ‘You create a star, you create a monster, I’ve seen it ten thousand times before,’ he whispered to Lucasta. ‘Ehh, yeah, sure, I’ll get someone on to that for you right away!’ he called up to Mrs Flanagan, who was still standing at the door of her trailer, humming the theme tune from A Star is Born, just in case she hadn’t pissed Lucasta off enough.
‘With the Ascendant Masters as my witnesses,’ Lucasta growled threateningly at her, ‘I tell you this. By the laws of the universe, there is a boulder of bad karma on its way to you.’
‘Oh, and another thing,’ Mrs Flanagan called after Johnny as he disappeared from view, ‘get me some carbonated water, with the fizz taken out of it. And none of that Eau de Davenport shite. I wouldn’t flush me toilet with it.’
‘Can I just ask what the fuck you thought you were doing?’
‘Love, you’re standing in me sun, can ya just move out of the way a bit?’
Daisy stomped furiously to one side and glared down at Paddy who was sunbathing at her feet. He’d stripped to the waist and his scrawny, spotty body was getting redder by the minute.
‘Did you honestly think that you could just move in with me without telling me first?’ she yelled, oblivious to the stares she was attracting from the rest of the crew who’d come outside to enjoy the sun on their lunch break.
‘Don’t be getting narky, baby, yer’re wrecking me buzz,’ he said, hauling himself up on to one elbow so he could light a fag. ‘This is just a natural progression in our relationship. There’s feck all point in me shelling out cash in that useless b. & b. in the town when we’re sleeping together anyway. By the way, I hope me Elvis poster isn’t a problem for ya, I broke up with me last girlfriend because she criticized his performance in Jailhouse Rock.’
‘I don’t give a tuppenny fuck about your last girlfriend! Are you listening to me? I want you and Elvis Presley out of my room now!’
Paddy lay back down on the grass again, cool as a breeze. ‘All right, so, luv, yer’re an old-fashioned chick, ya don’t wanna live with me, I can respect that.’
‘If your stuff isn’t gone in the next five minutes, Paddy, I’m warning you, it all goes out the window!’ she shouted over her shoulder at him, stomping towards the Hall.
Padd
y nonchalantly took another pull from his cigarette. ‘Nothing else for it then. Plan B it is.’
The combined furies of hell had no wrath to match Lucasta’s as she stormed her way to the drinks cabinet in the Library. She was ranting something under her breath about wreaking vengeance when the phone rang beside her.
‘Whoever the fuck this is, you’ve got a really shitty sense of timing,’ she barked into the mouthpiece.
‘Lucasta? This is Andrew de Courcey. I just wondered if I could have a word with Portia? It’s really important.’
‘You’ve some fucking cheek ringing this house. Now piss off and leave us alone before I set my cats on you, arsehole.’ Banging the phone down, she poured herself a treble gin and tonic, lit a cigarette with a trembling hand and left the room.
Seconds later the phone rang again, but this time there was no one around to hear.
‘If you think I’m just going to take the children and hide away in the Isle of Man like some feckin’ fugitive, you’ve another think coming, Shamie Nolan.’
‘Ah, it’s not that straightforward, darling,’ Shamie replied, shifting uncomfortably in his armchair. ‘Ya wouldn’t understand, it’s complicated.’
Now he’d done it.
‘Are ya saying that I’m some kind of thick? Is that it? Me, that hauled you up from fecking nowhere? I have not spent the last twenty fecking years of me life shaking hands and planting trees and freezing me arse off at the back of the halls while you made yer boring aul’ speeches for this!’
‘Now, darlin’, it’s not as bad as all that. Sure, the lads in the County Council are hardly going to do the dirty on an aul’ pal like me, are they? There’s not one of them would have their holiday villas in Marbella or their children in private schools if it wasn’t for me and the odd brown envelope I’d throw their way. The Planning Office above in Dublin can try to clean up their act all they like but the fact is this is the only way anyone gets anything done in this country.’
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