Declan’s here ahead of us, and has pulled over beside a high electronic security gate with a very scary looking sign on it, threatening that this is private property and that trespassers WILL be prosecuted. As if that wasn’t intimidating enough, there’s also a drawing of a security guard with a Dobermann on a lead, enough to make me want to run for the hills.
I should explain. My relations with Dobermanns are thus: I am terrified of them, and they somehow smell the fear and manage to make it all so, so much worse. Like the way a cat will always make a beeline for the one person in the room who’s allergic to them, Dobermanns somehow instinctively sense that I’m terrified, and I’m therefore, naturally, their first target. Our neighbour has one; a particularly scary looking monster with the highly inappropriate name of Mrs Fluffles, and every time the mutt is out in the front garden, cue hysterical, mortified phone calls from me to said neighbour pleading with her to bring in the savage, salivating beast just long enough for me to run to my car without being mauled and scarred for life. James, of course, finds my fear hilarious, and often goes over the fence purposely to pet Mrs Fluffles and make me feel like a total scaredycat/roaring eejit/pathetic coward in the process.
Charming, sensitive man, isn’t he?
Anyway, there’s a wall around the property about fif-teen feet high, with the name of the place discreetly written on a brass plaque embedded into the security gate.
Four Knots Stud.
Yeah, right. Fort Knox, more like.
A second after spotting us, Declan hops out of his car and indicates to James that he’ll press the intercom to buzz both of them in. Stressing just how important this meeting is to them, Declan has for once ditched the rock daddy gear and is wearing an actual suit. James just waves imperiously at him, shades pushed up into his hair, looking like an Eastern European pimp. And I still haven’t opened my gob, on the principle that revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and I really, really want to pick my moment here. A minute later, the steel gates slowly swing open and we’re away . . . down a gravelled driveway so long that you can’t even see the house from it. Honestly, there are five-star country hotels that pale in comparison, and at one stage I even spot someone driving around in a golf buggy. On and on we go, past rolling, manicured meadows on each side of us, and eventually, after what feels like about three-quarters of an hour, we eventually pull up at a house that looks just like Scarlett O’Hara’s in Gone With the Wind. There’s even an actual peacock on the lawn outside, strutting around for pure show and nothing else. All I can think is, my mother, who loves nothing more than having a good nose around other people’s gardens, would have a field day gawping around here. Particularly as there’s not a garden gnome or a boxed hedge in sight, her two personal pet peeves.
We park behind Declan, hop out, and clamber up the dozen or so stone steps that lead up to what has to be the most imposing front door this side of the pearly gates. And believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Firsthand experience and all that. Poor old Declan is laden down with files and folders and a briefcase, and you can practically feel the nerves hopping off him, while my gobshite ex-boyfriend actually has the bare-faced cheek to look relaxed and cool. Like he’s a guest arriving for a few rounds of golf before drinks and a cosy dinner with the host. After a discreet length of time, the door is opened by a real live butler, a dead ringer for Michael Caine in Batman. He’s far too polite and posh to ask for names, he just does a little half-bow and says, ‘Good morning, gentlemen. Sir William is expecting you. If you’d care to come this way, please.’
And we’re off again, trailing through a marble-floored hall the approximate size of the Natural History Museum, completely covered in paintings that I know by looking at them must be old masters. One I even recognize from the cover of a history book I had in third year. To the left is what looks like a giant library, and I’m half-expecting us to be led in there and for the famous Sir William to swirl around in a big leather armchair, like the baddie in a James Bond movie, stroking a white Persian cat and coming out with lines like, ‘Not so fast, Mr Bond.’
But we’re not. Instead we’re ushered through some frighteningly chic French double doors and out on to a beautiful sun-soaked terrace, with a water feature that would put the one in Versailles to shame tinkling elegantly away in the background. In the far distance, I can just about make out someone galloping on a horse that looks about ready for the Grand National and that’s probably won countless other major races already, given how vastly, bottomlessly wealthy our host is. And dadaaaaaa, there he is, the man himself, the mighty Sir William, wearing a dressing gown and with a pair of binoculars around his neck, studying the horse that’s just a tiny speck on the horizon. Small, red-faced and portly with it; out of shape, even for an Irish person.
‘Ah, there’s the lads now,’ he says, spotting us and shaking hands warmly. One of those big firm, knuckle-cracking handshakes. ‘How are you all, great to see you, yeah, lovely day for it. If I’d known youse were going to be on time, I’d have put clothes on, ha ha.’
OK, I should probably fill you in a bit.
The oligarch we now see before us, he with a finger in just about every pie going in the world of Irish business, was actually born into far humbler surroundings than the palazzo we’re in now. Sir William actually started out life as plain old Billy Eames, and grew up selling fruit and vegetables from a barrow on Moore Street with his granny, supporting about sixteen younger brothers and sisters along the way, all of whom had either scurvy, typhoid or polio. They lived in a two-up, two-down corporation house in the inner city, and had to sleep seven to a bed under piles of coats to keep warm in the winter. Oh yeah, and hide behind the few meagre sticks of furniture they had whenever the landlord called to collect the rent money. I’m sure it wasn’t a bit like that in reality, but you know how urban myths are: once they sprout wings, it’s as good as biography. In fact, to listen to the stories of Billy’s . . . sorry, I mean Sir William’s, early life, you’d nearly confuse his formative years with that Monty Python sketch about the Yorkshire men who compete with each other to see who actually grew up in the harshest poverty. It’s all documented, and I’m sure exaggerated way out of all proportion, in his self-mythologizing autobiography It’s A Long Way From Robbing Penny Apples.
Anyway, aged sixteen he got a job as a messenger boy for a tiny domestic airline out at Dublin airport and so, legend has it, the seeds of his entrepreneurial zeal were first sown. In those dark days, air travel was only for the super-rich, and a week on the Costa del Sol meant you were either a drug baron or a multi-millionaire. Or both. Anyway, the myth goes that young Billy spotted a gap in the market, and quickly realized that the future lay in low-cost travel to airports about forty miles from where you actually wanted to go, on flights that left at five in the morning and that charged you extra for everything: from checking in, to carrying baggage, to having the temerity to breathe their oxygen while on board and to using their steps to get on and off the aircraft. The rest, as they say, is history. Within a decade, Billy rose to managing director of the airline, and is now one of Ireland’s most successful exports, with all the trappings which that entails: VIP magazine shoots, appearances on the Late Late Show, the works. A self-made billionaire who came from nothing and hauled himself up by his bootstraps? It’s a wonder he hasn’t been stripped and sold for parts.
Then, only about three years ago, he was knighted for all the commendable work which the charity he set up to help underprivileged children had done, and in a blaze of publicity, plain man-of-the-people Billy morphed into Sir William. I can still remember all the photos and TV coverage he got outside Buckingham Palace; he was dressed like he was off for a day at the races, and came out to meet the press florid-faced and beaming, claiming that the Queen was, ‘A lovely bird, great crack altogether, but I wouldn’t like to see the amount of cash herself and Philip must fork out on heating bills to keep that gaff warm in December, wah ha ha.’
A great supporter of the ar
ts, he kind of fancies himself as a latter-day Renaissance man, and has invested in everything from Impressionist exhibitions to fledgling theatre companies. And, needless to say, over the years, has been more than generous in funding Meridius Movies. In production circles, they refer to rich investors like Sir William as angels. Which, given that I’m sitting in on this meeting right now, is kind of ironic.
Anyway, Billy, sorry . . . Sir William invites the boys to sit down, the butler from Batman brings out a silver tray laden down with tea and coffee pots and we’re away.
Disaster Number One
‘Lovely horse,’ James says, pulling out a wrought-iron chair and plonking himself down, one leg crossed over the other, owning the space all around him, confidence personified. As if this is the style he’s accustomed to.
‘Ehh . . . yeah, yeah, lovely!’ Declan agrees, over-chirpily, on the edge of his seat with nervousness.
‘Ah, do you like her, lads?’ says Sir William, training the binoculars on the horizon. ‘I’ll give you a tip, so. She’s called Sinead O’Connor Ruined My Life and I’m running her in the Gelding Stakes at the Curragh, Saturday fortnight. Worth a few quid each way, boys, do you know what I’m saying? Ha ha!’
James and Declan both do dutiful man-laughs and that’s when it happens. Gobshite James, who always has to push the boat out that bit too far, then pipes up, ‘Who’s that riding the horse now? Is that your jockey?’
‘Ahh, you’re gas, so you are,’ guffaws Sir William doing his big rawl rawl rawl laugh. ‘No, sure, that’s Eloise up there. She’s a natural, isn’t she? Poetry in motion, what, lads?’
The penny instantly drops with me, but not James. Mainly because he’s not as well-up on the gossip pages as I would be. So, I’m half-willing him to say it, and yet half-dreading the response. In the distance, Eloise comes galloping closer and closer, then pulls up at the fountain and dismounts, striding towards us and waving to Sir William. She has a fantastic figure and is gorgeous-looking in a Judi Dench, silver-haired kind of way; looks a fair bit older than anyone else here, but with cheekbones you could grate cheese on, all her own teeth, and a forehead that’s never been within six feet of a Botox jab.
‘Eloise . . .’ says James, as if he’s heard the name somewhere before, and is racking his brains to make the association. Then he sees her coming closer to us, and in his own, inimitable dimwit way, you can practically see him weighing up her connection to Sir William and how he should address her.
‘Ahh, yes, Eloise! Your mother, isn’t she? So how are you doing, Mrs Eames, it’s lovely to meet you.’ He even stands up to greet her, flashing her his cutest, most charming smile, with his hand outstretched, which she completely blanks.
There’s a stony silence all around. A horrified look from Declan, a red flush from Sir William and an icy glare from Eloise herself.
‘I’m not his mother, I’m his wife, actually,’ she snaps. ‘And for your information, it’s Lady Eames, not Mrs.’ And with that withering put-down, she clips back up the stone steps and strides inside the house, not even pausing to be introduced. And, in fairness, would you blame her? She and Sir William have been married for about six months now, and are probably the highest-profile couple in the country, even more familiar to most people than the President and her husband, and they’re, like, on the fifty-five cent stamp and everything.
The only thing that’s slightly unusual about them as a couple is that Sir William is younger than his new wife, by about fifteen years. It shouldn’t have, but at the time, the wedding caused a ripple of shock waves throughout posh Irish society, as I suppose people expected a man like him to go the Hugh Hefner stereotypical route and run off with someone a) young enough to be his granddaughter, never mind his daughter, b) a former pop star/topless model/presenter of a magazine show on TV3, and most of all c) a pneumatic blonde. Eloise is gorgeous and classy, but is most definitely none of the above. In the meantime, Sir William’s ex-wife, who he married aged eighteen, and who he has about seven children with, then went on a publicity rampage, including a now-infamous appearance on the Late Late Show, where she savaged her ex’s brand-new title and brand-new wife. ‘And I wouldn’t mind,’ I can still hear her sniffling, ‘but the bastard didn’t even have the decency to leave me for someone younger.’
It’s a sore, sensitive spot with both Sir William and his new lady, which James just ripped the scab off and poured carbolic acid all over. Round one to me.
And I never even had to open my mouth.
Not yet.
Disaster Number Two
Red-faced, Sir William eventually sits down, and after waving away the two dozen or so mortified apologies from James, and particularly Declan, whose face is hardwired into a grin so wide I think he might pull a muscle, the meeting eventually gets started.
‘So,’ says Sir W in this ‘cut straight to the chase’ way he has. ‘What have you lads got for me, then? Gimme your pitch in one sound bite. I’ve to be in the helicopter and on my way to Dublin in forty-five minutes flat. So you’d want to be quick.’
An encouraging look from James to Declan that might as well say, ‘You be the warm-up act, then I’ll step in with the killer blow at the appropriate moment.’ So off poor old Dec goes, talking up just how much of a blockbusting bestseller Let He Without Sin was, how many languages it was translated into, how many weeks it spent in the Sunday Times top ten list, and how lucky Meridius were to secure the rights at all, when there was practically a bidding war over them.
‘I’ll stop you there, son,’ Sir William interrupts. ‘I only ever read books I wrote meself. Did you read The Twenty-Fifth Hour? Me latest bestseller, about how to squeeze more time out of the day. Read it and weep, lads, wah, ha ha.’
Declan pauses for a millisecond, realizes he’s getting nowhere by talking up the source material, so he then produces budget costings for the TV show which will be based on the book, spreadsheets and projections of investors’ earnings, market demographics; in fact just about everything bar Sir William’s internet horoscope comes in neat folders out of his briefcase. Meanwhile the man himself just looks on, in a Don Corleone way; blank, impassive, patiently waiting to have the socks knocked off him.
And waiting. And waiting.
Eventually, in the middle of Declan’s big spiel about tax incentives for investors, he interrupts. ‘So, lads, let me get this straight. What have we got here? What I mean is, what are we actually dealing with? What’s the heart of the story? Because story, lads, is what it all comes back to. Sure I remember a few years back, a producer coming to me, without an arse in his trousers, looking for cash for a film . . .’
Declan, I notice, politely sits forward, all ears to hear whatever anecdote is coming. Which kind of makes me think that this must be a regular occurrence: Sir William taking these wandering meanders down memory lane, that is. And clearly, if you’re looking for money from him, you’re expected to sit back and put on your ‘enthralled’ face. It’s hard to tell what James’s game plan is; he’s just sitting there, watching, waiting, listening, drinking it all in, cool as you like. Honestly, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he clicks his fingers and orders more coffee from the Batman butler. Arrogance, thy name is James Kane.
‘. . . so I says to them, “Tell me what the film’s about, lads,” Sir William goes on. “It’s about a ballerina,” they said. “Not really my thing,” I said. “For starters, it’s a chick flick.” “Just hear us out,” they said. “It’s a twelve-year-old boy who wants to do ballet.” “So it’s about a kid who’s gay?” I said. “No,” they said, “at least not to start with, but his dad is a coal miner.” “Ballet and coal mining?” I said. “Doesn’t really mix, does it?” “Not only that,” they said, “but it’s set during the miners’ strike in the eighties. In Thatcher’s Britain.” Then they told me the story, they took me on that kid’s journey. Not a word of a lie, there were tears streaming down my face, and do you want to know why?’
‘Eh . . . no, why was that, Sir Willia
m?’ Good old Declan, always so polite. So well brought up by his mammy.
‘Because it got me here,’ Sir William goes on, thumping at his heart dramatically. ‘Pulled me by the aul heart-strings. A film about a kid who comes from nothing and has dreams to make something of himself in the world, now that is a story I can relate to. And do you want to know the name of that film?’
‘I’m guessing Billy Elliot,’ James pipes up, kind of stealing Sir William’s thunder a bit.
‘The very one. And do you know how much I made out of it? A two hundred and fifty per cent return on my investment, that’s how much. Because I trusted my instincts, lads, that’s why. Then Elton John goes and makes it into a musical, and I make the same amount of cash all over again. And I said to Elton, on his yacht at the Cannes Film Festival, I said, “Elton, my lad, this money is a reward for listening to my inner voice.” And he agreed with me, too. Very nice fella, considering he’s gay.’
‘Oh yeah, he’s a terrific guy,’ says James. ‘I met him at a premiere at the Odeon, Leicester Square, once.’
Oh, to hell with this, I’ve stayed quiet long enough.
‘James Kane, you’re a filthy name-dropper. Spotting Elton John from the far end of a packed cinema and waving at him does NOT constitute meeting the man.’
If This is Paradise, I Want My Money Back Page 16
