Last of the Great Romantics

by Claudia Carroll

  For the second morning in a row, Portia woke up without her husband in bed beside her. She gazed sleepily up at the bedroom ceiling, thinking about last night and about everything she had to do that day, willing herself to snap into action. Funny how the whole night seemed like one big blur, she thought, still in that dreamy, half-asleep, half-awake state. Robert Armstrong being all regal and Augustan, Susan de Courcey being her usual snide self, Julia bossing her around, a string quartet playing, the heat, the overcrowded rooms, celebrities she'd never heard of wafting around, her stuck in that God-awful, stinking bloody tracksuit and then Andrew . . . There was something she was trying to remember, something life-alteringly huge he'd dropped on her last night . . . and then with a jolt, she was wide awake.

  New York. He'd been offered a contract there and had accepted it, without even talking it over with her first. Bloody hell, she thought, dreading the discussion/ argument/screaming match which lay ahead. Suddenly the phone on her bedside table started to peal. It was just seven-thirty, she noticed on the alarm clock as she stretched across to answer it. It was Daisy, sounding teary and snuffly as though she'd been bawling all night.

  'Look, I just wanted to let you know that Daddy's arriving into Dublin airport, probably the day after tomorrow. I'm going to drive down to meet him. All by myself. On my own. But that's fine, I understand you probably have much better things to get on with. But if you could just find the time to pick up the phone and contact the parish priest about arrangements for the memorial service, though, that would be great . . .' More hysterical tears. In fact all Portia could glean through the sobs were the words 'airport' and 'parish priest'.

  'You know I'll come with you, darling,' Portia said in a classic Pavlovian response to the emotional blackmail being laid on with a trowel. Besides, Daisy was liable to wrap her car around a lamppost on the long drive to Dublin, given the state she was in. 'That's not something you want to do alone. And I'm sure Andrew will drive us.'

  'And someone's going to have to pay for all this.'

  'Don't you know we'll take care of that?'

  'You're a star,' came the muffled reply as Daisy blew her nose down the phone. 'Andrew was here, actually. I think he's just left. He should be with you any minute.'

  In a leap, Portia was out of bed and into her dressing gown, kicking aside the famous tracksuit which was now strewn across the floor. She hadn't had a chance to say two words to him since last night. He'd spent the evening giving guided tours of the Hall to various guests and freeloaders while she'd done her best to keep out of sight. She had stayed till the bitter end, though, helping Tim with the big clean-up in the kitchen before realizing it was well after four a.m. By the time she'd got home, Andrew was out for the count and snoring so loudly you'd think there was a large Zeppelin passing overhead. Small wonder, she'd thought, slipping into bed beside him. He smelt like a brewery.

  Tripping down the stairs, she was just in time to hear his car pull up at the front door of the lodge. She opened the whitewashed wooden barn door to see him stepping out of his Range Rover, laden down with the morning papers.

  'I declare the evening to have been a veritable triumph!' he called out theatrically, sounding like a ham actor in a Victorian melodrama. 'We're in every single paper, fantastic photos, brilliant write-ups, all of them raving about the Hall, how it's going to attract all the jet-set glitterati. What did I tell you? Julia Belshaw is worth her weight in gold!'

  He absent-mindedly kissed Portia on the forehead as he made his way down the dark, narrow passageway which led to their bright and airy kitchen, expertly dodging the overhead beams so as not to thump his head. Portia followed him, amazed as always by his boundless energy and enthusiasm. Particularly as he was functioning on only a couple of hours' sleep, not to mention the monster hangover he must be nursing.

  'Isn't it fantastic?' he said, spreading the papers all over the long pine kitchen table. 'You just couldn't have bought press coverage like this, not in a million years. Eleanor Armstrong's plastered over every paper, no surprises there. Here's a great one of Robert Armstrong making that big speech and doesn't the Ballroom look well in the background? Hey, look at this!' he said, folding over one of the tabloids as his eye fell on something else: a colour photo of Tiffany Richardson posing in her hot pants, 'WHAT A CHEEK!' ran the banner headline. 'All publicity is good publicity,' he added, clocking the blank look on Portia's face. 'Oh, look, here's one of Lucasta,' he said as Portia peered over his shoulder. It was indeed a full-length photo of her proudly standing in front of the new bar in the Long Gallery, looking as though she'd just put down hammer, nails and a power drill having gone to IKEA and then built it from scratch out of a flat pack all by herself.

  'We should have it framed,' Portia said, dryly. 'Be nice to have a photo of Mummy without a drink in her hand.'

  He roared laughing, but didn't lift his head from the papers.

  Portia moved over to the kettle and filled it with water, looking out of the window on to her tiny kitchen garden as she did. It was a gorgeous, sunny morning and a gentle mist was beginning to lift from the distant fields. Spring had come early to Kildare, it seemed.

  'By the way, everything's running like a dream up at the Hall,' Andrew went on, still not making eye contact with her. 'Tim's cooking up the most fabulous breakfast: eggs en cocotte; marinated kipper fillets; he's even baking poppy seed bagels from scratch. Too bad none of our overnight guests are out of bed yet.'

  He was beginning to sound a little edgy now, as though playing for time. Portia continued to gaze out at the early morning mist, not responding.

  'Fantastic, though, to have all thirty-six rooms full on our first night, isn't it, darling? OK, so they're all freebies, but one hundred per cent occupancy is what I call starting as we mean to go on.'

  She still didn't answer. It was as though there was a huge white elephant in the middle of the room which both of them were completely ignoring.

  'God, Eleanor Armstrong is really something, isn't she?' he said, noisily turning over the pages of a tabloid paper. 'She's so photogenic, it's almost impossible to take a bad picture of her. I gave her the full tour last night and she was well impressed with the place. Asked me all sorts of questions about guest capacity and how many the Dining Room could seat and what the outdoor facilities were like, she's really well clued in.'

  Portia took a deep breath. Clearly, it would be up to her to raise the subject he'd landed on her so suddenly last night. 'So. New York,' was all she said, still looking out at the garden.

  He gave a long-drawn-out sigh and turned to face her. 'Come and sit down,' he said.

  She obediently did as she was told, steeling herself for what was coming. There was a silence while he ran his fingers through his floppy fair hair, something he only ever did when he was nervous, Portia knew of old. Nervous or evasive. She let the silence continue, determined that he should speak first and knowing that, in a head-to-head situation like this, whoever broke the silence automatically put themselves into a much weaker position. Marriage to a lawyer had taught her one or two tricks as well.

  'Portia,' he began before breaking off. For the first time that morning, she noticed how tired he looked. Exhausted. 'OK, OK,' he said, rising to his feet and beginning to pace the room, hands in his pockets, as though he were opening a case in the High Court and she were judge and jury. 'We both know how much the restoration of the Hall has set us back. Money well spent if you ask me. I know the venture is going to be a huge success and that we'll die rich and happy. But . . .' He turned to face her now, resting his hands on the back of a kitchen chair and looking at her square in the face. 'Darling, we have major cash-flow problems. It could take up to three years for us to start recouping our investment capital. In the meantime, we run up more debts paying staff and keeping the Hall afloat, never mind trying to meet our mortgage repayments. I'm being offered a small fortune to handle this case for Globex; they've headhunted me personally. It's only for twelve weeks, that's nothing.
You could come with me, you'd love New York. God, I can just see you now, parading up and down Fifth Avenue laden down with shopping bags, going to all the art galleries and the Broadway shows . . .'

  Portia looked away. Andrew could be so persuasive when he wanted something. And he really wanted this job . . .

  'Portia, the plain and simple fact is that I can't afford not to take this contract. We need the money.'

  'How can we leave here for three whole months with no one to manage the place? You know I can't go with you. One of us has to stay.'

  'Daisy can take over when we're gone. Bit of responsibility will do her no harm.'

  'Daisy? Do you want us to be out of business by Easter?'

  'Honey, we've been married for, what, all of eighteen months? Three months is roughly a sixth of that. I'm sorry if I sound selfish, but I'm not prepared to be away from you for that length of time. It's just too long for us to be apart.'

  She looked at him, softening. No, she didn't want to be separated from him for all that length of time either, that went without saying. He had moved around the table and was now standing behind her, massaging her shoulders. She rolled her head back, allowing his strong fingers to unravel the knots of tension there.

  Andrew, she knew, was the kind of man who adored nothing more than a challenge. It had been a huge challenge to him to restore the Hall and open the hotel, one he'd relished and thrived on. But now that he'd accomplished that . . . in a flash of insight, she realized exactly what he was thinking. He'd successfully completed one feat and now was anxious to move on to the next; simple as that. After this case in New York, it would be something else and then something else and on and on and on . . . Like all high-achieving people, he bored easily and was now impatient to scale the next mountain peak.

  How can I prevent him? she asked herself, suddenly flashing forward to life if he stayed at Davenport Hall. How can I hold a conversation with him about laundering the linen table napkins and blocked U-bends in the toilets when he's longing to be sitting at a high-powered business lunch in the Plaza Hotel? 'Back in the game', as he'd drunkenly let slip to her last night. If I make him stay, she thought, he'd only end up resenting me for it and anyhow, it's wrong to try to hold another person back. After all, he'd financed her in the pursuit of her dream and now it was her turn to return the favour. There was nothing else for it. That's how marriage worked.

  She turned to face him, forcing a bright smile. 'So tell me again about the apartment on Park Avenue?'

  Two days later, Andrew and Portia, accompanied by a snivelling Daisy, were driving towards Dublin airport and the grim task that lay ahead. Dressed in a long, black hooded coat, with her wild blonde curls tied back in a ponytail, Daisy looked like a beautiful study in grief. She had the foresight to bring a man-sized box of Kleenex with her and started to sob almost as soon as she clambered into the back of the Range Rover.

  'Try and remember the good times you shared with him, Daisy,' Andrew had said kindly, looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing the state she was in.

  'Thanks so much for that, but how many parents have you lost?' Then, remembering herself, she muttered, 'Sorry, Andrew. It's just hard seeing him so unmourned at home.'

  It was a tough call to try and remember something good about Blackjack Davenport, but Portia was racking her brains in an effort to console her sister. It was no use though. Every time she thought about him, it resurrected painful memories she preferred to keep buried. The time he gambled a college fund bequeathed to her by her grandmother and she had to be unceremoniously yanked out of a degree course she loved; all the Davenport treasures he'd flogged for almost nothing just to pay off his debts; there was even an occasion when he ended up in court for non-payment of his account at his club in Dublin – the list went on. Daisy, in fairness, tended to see her father through rose-coloured glasses by virtue of being fourteen years younger than Portia. She was just too young to remember Blackjack at his very worst.

  'Come on, girls,' Andrew said gamely, 'focus on your happy memories.'

  There was a long, long silence. They'd gone through three sets of traffic lights before Portia spoke.

  'Well, I remember at my Confirmation he did something nice.'

  'What?'

  'He turned up. Sober. And he didn't gamble all of my Confirmation money at the races later that day. There was lots left over.'

  There was a hint of a watery smile from Daisy. Andrew took up the baton next. 'And didn't you once tell me a hilarious story about how he smuggled one of his girlfriends into the Hall and she ended up staying for about three weeks? About your mother thinking she was one of her spirit guides that she'd manifested into human form by accident? The clincher being that the girlfriend never spoke, so Lucasta was fully convinced that she was from the other side.' He made himself laugh then suddenly stopped, seeing a well-known hurt look on Daisy's ghostly pale face.

  Another three sets of traffic lights and a roundabout passed them by before the silence was broken again.

  'He had wonderful hair . . .' Portia trailed off lamely.

  The arrangements at the airport mortuary were impeccable. They were met by the undertaker who told them that Blackjack's final flight had been slightly delayed at Heathrow, but was expected on the tarmac in the next few minutes, where a hearse was waiting for him.

  'Would you like to wait for Daddy on the tarmac?' he asked.

  'Right, come on then,' Daisy said snappishly, his gluey professional sympathy clearly getting on her nerves. The undertaker merely nodded gravely and led the way outside.

  It was pitch dark by now with an icy wind beginning to whip up a gale. Andrew slipped his arm around Portia and she clung to him, delighted that he'd come and only wishing that her baby sis had someone to support her. Daisy just looked so frail and alone as she strode ahead of them, wiping her snotty nose with the back of her hand and not caring who saw. They walked a few hundred yards over to where a small commuter 737 aircraft, safely landed from Heathrow, was slowly taxiing to a halt. Following the undertaker like shivering sheep, all three of them moved over to the waiting hearse, which was parked right beside the aircraft's cargo hold.

  'Daddy will be coming out in just a few moments,' said the undertaker in his gloomy monotone, sounding as grave as a newsreader on the six o'clock bulletin. Daisy flashed her blue eyes angrily at him and then began to rummage inside her big leather handbag. A few seconds later, she produced what looked like a few raggedy tea towels stitched together with some sort of coloured picture on it.

  'Oh darling, no, not that,' said Portia, alarmed.

  'What on earth is it?' asked Andrew.

  'It's the Davenport family standard,' replied Daisy, clinging to it as reverently as though it were the Turin Shroud. 'All of our ancestors who died abroad had it draped over their coffins on the way to the Mausoleum. It's our way of honouring the dead.'

  Portia thought that there was a bit of a difference between dying gloriously on the field of battle, as many of their antecedents had, and dropping dead in a casino in Las Vegas, but she said nothing for fear of Daisy clocking her one. When fully unfurled, the standard bore the family crest, an image of two cats chasing each other with a Latin motto inscribed underneath. However, after years of wear and tear, not to mention being torn apart and then very badly stitched up again, it now looked like nothing more than a pair of mangy strays bonking.

  By now, dozens of tired-looking commuters were treading down the steps of the plane, braving the harsh wind on their way inside to the warm, bright terminal building. Suddenly, the hydraulics on the cargo door cranked into action and Daisy, Portia and Andrew all braced themselves for what was coming. The undertaker moved forward, head tilted and hands loosely clasped, as though ready to say Mass.

  A very small tin box, barely large enough to hold a mobile phone, came clattering down the conveyor belt. Nothing else. Portia and Daisy glanced at each other in shock as the undertaker moved forward to examine it. There was a tiny brass plate on i
t which read, simply, 'John Davenport, 1945-2004'.

  Too stunned to speak, they were barely aware of an Amazonian giant of a woman, dressed in a clinging black mini-skirt and tight spangly black jacket, who had just disembarked and moved over to join them. No one could see her face as she was wearing a large feathery, plumed black hat, with a thick veil which entirely obscured her features. 'You all mus' be Miss Daisy and Miss Portia,' she said, in a breathy southern drawl. 'Your papa has told me just so much about you folks, I do declare I feel a kinship with you already.'

  Portia looked to Daisy whose jaw was about to drop.

  'Were you a friend of his? Have you come all this way for the funeral?' Portia asked, dreading the answer.

  'I sure have,' replied the stranger. 'I come to bring ol' Jackie home and to meet my new family. I know this must be a big surprise for you all but . . . I'm your new stepmother!'

  Chapter Five

  'Well, I suppose the old bollocks must have divorced me. He certainly sent me enough bloody forms to sign.'

  'Mummy, did it occur to you for one minute that maybe you could have passed on this particular nugget of information to Daisy and me? It's not at though it's none of our business.'

  Portia was at her wits' end with Lucasta, who sat calmly at the grand piano in the deserted Ballroom, squalling away and occasionally taking slugs from her overflowing gin and tonic. She'd spent the day happily working on a new composition, entitled 'They're No Undersized Mangoes, They're My Prize Brussels Sprouts', and now greeted the news that Blackjack had remarried with the same mild irritation as when she ran out of fags.

  'Oh, for Christ's sake, Portia, do you honestly expect me to remember every teensy boring little thing that happens? You'll be harping on at me for forgetting to tell you that it's bin day next.'