Last of the Great Romantics

by Claudia Carroll

  Ordinarily, Portia slept like a log but not tonight. For once, the soothing, whooshing sound of the sea right outside her window didn't work its tranquil magic. Hours after she and Jennifer had hauled themselves upstairs to bed, she was still wide awake and staring at the ceiling.

  Suppose it was true.

  Suppose Jennifer was right and Andrew really had no intention of coming home. Or worse, that he would come back to Ireland with her all right, but only grudgingly, wanting all the time to be back in New York. Could she hack it? Could she really spend the rest of her life, as Jennifer put it, as a Macmillan Burke widow? The thought of ending up alone, husbandless like Jennifer, wasn't something that appealed to her, but the thought of Andrew ending up like his best friend Ken was something much, much worse . . .

  An image of Andrew and Ken out nightclubbing in some midtown hotspot flashed through her mind and wouldn't go away. Ken collecting phone numbers of the beautiful women clustered around him the way he did and Andrew with him, beside him, being his charming irresistible-to-women self. . .

  She immediately banished the thought from her head. Of course she trusted her husband. That was what marriage was all about. She trusted him implicitly. It was just getting harder and harder to keep trusting someone you never saw, that was all.

  Another half-hour passed and she was still tossing and turning. It didn't help that when she tried to text him, to see if he was up yet, his bloody phone was switched off.

  Was this how her life was going to pan out? Away from the Hall she loved so much, never seeing the man she loved so much and trying to call his cell phone, upset and agitated and really needing to talk to him and just getting through to his voicemail? And Jennifer was certainly right about one thing.

  She wouldn't trust Lynn Fairweather as far as she'd spit her either.

  In the space of a few short days, Portias stay at the Hamptons had settled into a kind of routine. Every morning at daybreak, Amelia, followed by Lucy, who could barely waddle never mind walk, would bounce into her room, hop up on her bed and demand money from her. Invariably, Portia would oblige for the sake of peace and slip five-dollar bills into her grasping hand, on the premise that the tooth fairy must have got their rooms mixed up in the night.

  'Stupid dumb tooth fairy,' Amelia would say, stuffing the cash into the breast pocket of her Barbie pyjamas as discreetly as a wine waiter, to be cannily locked in her safety deposit box later, safely out of harm's way.

  'You are way too generous to that child,' Jennifer would tease over breakfast and Portia would laugh and cuddle Lucy and stuff her face with the divine maple syrup pancakes the housekeeper would rustle up.

  In the early mornings, before the school run, they would all pile into the huge Chevrolet and go shopping at Bert's minimart, the nearest convenience store where you could buy everything from freshly caught lobster to a kite-surfing kit, along with the wax which went with it. ('The thing for your stick.') It had a wonderful seaside-ish quality to it and made you feel like you were on a permanent bucket-and-spade holiday. Jennifer and Portia would stock up, while Amelia pestered the staff by constantly asking, 'How much is that?' about every item she could reach, then trying to haggle them down. In the afternoons, though, they took turns collecting Amelia from the Quaker school she grudgingly attended in West Hampton and then, ?weather permitting, would spend the rest of the day at the beach. 'School's dumb,' Amelia would whinge as she changed into her Barbie tankini. 'All the other kids in my grade want to talk about Bratz all day long. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Just take the doll's clothes off and then put them all back on again? How lame is that? I asked my teacher about investing in blue-chip shares and she made me sing a verse of "Barney".'

  The days were warm now, and bright till well after eight each evening, which was easily Portia's favourite time of day. Much as she adored the girls, she found herself exhausted by the time they'd gone to bed, which was religiously on the stroke of eight every night, no discussion. Amelia would moan about missing CNN's financial report, but Jennifer was firm. 'Time for grownup chat,' she'd say, tucking them in before escaping out on to the veranda with Portia.

  There they'd drink crisp white wine, eat barbecued shrimp freshly caught that morning, and talk about anything and everything. The more they drank, the more they giggled and invariably at some point in the night they'd try phoning their husbands and would howl with laughter if either one of them actually got through.

  After the weeks and months of stressing and fretting Portia had endured, firstly about the opening of the Hall, then about whether to leave Daisy with the wedding to manage and finally about being in New York with Susan de Courcey driving her insane, this was the perfect antidote. She looked and felt far better than she had done all year too. The bags under her eyes were starting to disappear, she was lightly tanned from the sea air and all the fresh, healthy food was giving her skin back its old glow. She'd also worked through a lot of how she felt about Andrew working so hard and never seeing him. Instead of feeling second best or shunted to one side, as she had done when she first came to the States, now she just couldn't wait to be with him again. She had the days counted till Susan's departure and it was almost there.

  One bright sunny morning she woke earlier than usual, feeling queasy. She lay awake for a bit, trying to ignore it and doing her usual first-thing-in-the-morning ritual, which was mentally ticking off the number of days left until Susan buggered off back to Ireland, out of Andrew's apartment and out of their lives. Not counting today, only four days to go, she figured, almost hugging herself at the thought of seeing him again. She sat up and reached across the bedside table to fumble for her watch. Five-thirty a.m. No wonder the house was so quiet. You could count on at least another hour of peace and quiet until Amelia came banging on the door, looking for cash. She was about to drift back to sleep but lying on her back seemed to make the rumbling in her tummy worse, more persistent.

  Seconds later, she had her head over the toilet bowl, heaving her guts up for all she was worth.

  When the house eventually woke and they were all sitting around the breakfast table tucking in, Jennifer, in full mommy mode, instantly copped that Portia had touched nothing and was just gingerly nibbling at the corner of a dry piece of toast.

  'Not like you,' she remarked. 'Thought you liked our east coast blueberry pancakes.'

  'Maybe not this morning,' Portia answered, white as a sheet. 'I think I may have overdone it with those scallops last night. I was as sick as a parrot this morning. I had to go feed the chickens, as we say in Kildare.'

  'You mean you had to talk to God on the great white telephone?' asked Amelia, who missed nothing.

  'Into your school uniform in the next ten seconds,' Jennifer barked at her, in her cross mommy voice. 'Up the stairs, NOW!'

  As soon as she'd gone, Jennifer said, 'You know, honey, I had those scallops last night too and I'm fine.'

  Their eyes met over the kitchen table for a second.

  'Whaddya say we go to the drugstore and buy you a pregnancy test?'

  'Portia, this is not a proposal for the Nobel Prize, it's stunningly simple. Two lines, you're pregnant; one line, you're not.'

  She and Jennifer were standing on the landing outside the family bathroom, having this debate in hushed tones, mainly so Amelia wouldn't overhear.

  'But I just couldn't be!' said Portia, for about the fifteenth time.

  'Honey, Immaculate Conceptions rarely happen outside of Old Testament movies with Charlton Heston in them. Are you on the pill? Diaphragm? Any kind of contraception?'

  'Yes. I'm married to a man who works a one-hundred-hour week. Highly effective it is too.'

  'In the last month, dopey.'

  Portia thought back. She was too embarrassed to say aloud what she was thinking, which was that since she and Andrew had arrived in New York, their sex life had been disastrous bordering on non-existent. They so rarely saw each other and when they did, he was usually too exhausted to do anything except
drop into a deep sleep beside her. Added to that, Susan landing on them had effectively put an end to any intimacy they may have had, given that she was a light sleeper and had no compunction about thumping on the dividing wall if they as much as had a conversation, sotto voce. 'Do you mind?' she would screech at the top of her voice. 'I'm trying to watch David Letterman.'

  In the blissful days before Susan had arrived, there had been a couple of early-morning quickies – all right, very early morning, given that Andrew was usually in work by seven. But she couldn't be pregnant. Yes, her period was late, but that was nothing unusual in itself. She'd never been what you might call 'regular' in her whole life and had put being a few weeks overdue down to all the stresses she'd been shouldering. She couldn't be . . . could she? Surely she couldn't be . . .

  'Honey, you're thirty-six years old, these are the fertile years. It's entirely possible. Now get in there and go pee on a stick.' Jennifer was insistent. She'd even put on the cross mother voice.

  'OK, OK, I'll do it just to shut you up.' She was about to turn on her heel when Amelia flounced by and took in the situation at a glance.

  'Knocked up, huh?' she said, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  FROM: portiadavenport@aol.com

  TO: daisydavenport@davenporthall.ie

  SUBJECT: Wedding update please!

  Didn't hear from you all day yesterday, which is odd, but then . . . maybe you're just up to your eyes with all the wedding stuff. Do let me know that everything's OK. You know me for worrying!

  Much love,

  Portia

  The Last of the Great Romantics

  FROM: portiadavenport@aol.com

  TO: daisydavenport@davenporthall.ie

  SUBJECT: Get in contact!

  Me again.

  OK. It's been all day and still no word from you. Really starting to fret now . . . Pxxx

  FROM: juliabelshaw@davenporthall.ie

  TO: portiadavenport@aol.com

  SUBJECT: The wedding. Just in case anyone in this family actually remembers that there is a wedding happening tomorrow.

  Portia,

  I'm very sorry to bother you when you're probably having such a wonderful time of it in New York but I'm afraid there's a problem. In a word, Daisy. Bad enough that she disappeared off to a soccer match yesterday, but I'm reliably told that she drank her body weight at a party afterwards and hasn't been seen since. She's holed up in her room, refusing to budge, when I need her here, helping me. It's D-Day minus one day, for God's sake . . . The bride is in Dublin at her hen do, needing to be collected and the groom will be arriving tomorrow with a list of demands the length of my arm . . . I do not have TIME for Daisy's juvenile carry-on. If she wanted to go out and get pissed and make a show of herself, she should have waited till after the wedding, as I intend to do. Honestly, of all the days for her to go AWOL on me.

  Can you have a strong word with her, please?

  Yours, in a rush,

  Julia

  PS. Love to Andrew.

  Julia wasn't exaggerating when she said she was up to her tonsils trying to cope without Daisy. All morning long, she never even got a chance to draw breath. A steady stream of wedding guests had begun to arrive, everyone from the Oldcastle team, their manager, their wives and assorted trophy girlfriends all the way up to the top of Julia's A list: Robert Armstrong, the President himself, now safely ensconced in the Library enjoying tea and scones by the fire. Only the groom was missing; he was scheduled to arrive in discreet, subtle style, by hot-air balloon, the following morning. Everyone was enchanted with the magnificent grounds, the Hall itself and the exquisite rooms they'd all been allocated. Well, almost everyone.

  Just as Julia was thinking so far so good, there was a diplomatic incident which only someone with her flair for soothing bruised celebrity egos could have dealt with. She and Amber were both at reception, meeting and greeting, when ear-piercingly shrill voices could be heard wailing from the top of the great oak staircase. Even though the hall was thronged with new arrivals, all heads automatically looked up to see what the commotion was. Clacking down the stairs in impossibly high heels came Shakira Walker and Falcon Donohue, both looking exceptionally glamorous and virtually indistinguishable, at least to Amber's eyes.

  'Are you the manager or what then?' squealed Shakira in her shrill Essex girl tones. 'Cos I got a bleeding complaint to make.'

  'Yeah, me and all,' whined Falcon in an unmistakable south London accent, almost falling headfirst over a Louis Vuitton matching luggage set carelessly dumped at the bottom of the stairs. Julia steeled herself as they clickety-clacked across the marble hall, oblivious to the stares they were attracting from other guests who stood calmly waiting to be served, enjoying the sideshow.

  'Sweet God, it's the blonde leading the blonde,' she muttered under her breath to Amber. 'You continue checking guests in, let me pee on this fire.'

  'You answer me this then,' said Shakira, pointing a fist laden down with diamonds and acrylic false nails into poor Julia's face. 'How come that dirty slapper gets a better room than what we got, wiv a view over a genuine Irish lake, when me and Ryan only get a box room overlooking the bleeding stables. I'm not joking, the smell of shit almost made me gag.'

  'Smell of shit probably came off your own filthy arse, dinnit?' replied Falcon, shaking her waist-length hair extensions in fury. 'Now are you gonna explain to me why slaghead 'ere got a goodie bag in her room wiv a voucher for the Spa and all I got was a poxy bottle of Irish whiskey I wouldn't brush me teeth with? I'm a miles bigger name than what she is any day. Did I eat a tarantula on live TV for this?'

  'You piss off!' shouted the other, pointing her breasts at her.

  'Ladies, ladies, let's all calm down,' said Julia soothingly, sounding like Kofi Annan giving a keynote speech to the UN Security Council. That a fist fight didn't erupt was entirely down to Julia's innate tact, not to mention years of experience in dealing with celebrities and their easily bruised egos.

  Shakira kept screaming that just because Falcon had been buried in a pit full of cockroaches in the Australian rainforest, that didn't entitle her to any kind of preferential treatment. Then Falcon demanded to know how come Shakira got a room with a four-poster bed when she only had a lousy headboard. Only Julia's lightning-quick action in promising both of them unlimited treatments in the Spa the following morning before the wedding saved the day It worked a treat though; the pair of them were like pussycats for the rest of the evening.

  And still no sign of Daisy.

  'I had that dream again. Something catastrophic is about to befall us, there's absolutely no getting away from it this time, I'm afraid.'

  Lucasta was standing in the middle of the Red Dining Room, still in her nightie, oblivious to the stares of other newly arrived wedding guests who were trying to enjoy Tim's award-winning buffet lunch. (She would have been murdered for appearing in a public area like that when Portia was around, but standards had slipped a little since her departure.)

  'The one where ya find Shergar's head in the downstairs pantry?' asked Mrs Flanagan.

  'No, you moron, that dream unfailingly brings good luck. The one where I'm naked and covered in mud and that boring priest from the village is droning on about reporting me for indecent exposure.'

  'That wasn't a dream, ya gobshite. That happened. Two months ago.'

  'Oh shit, so it did. I'm so upset, it's bound to confuse me a bit. I meant the dream where I'm being burnt at the stake and all the munchkins from The Wizard of Oz are roaring laughing at me and singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". Something awful is going to happen. I hate that I'm always right, but that's the cross I have to carry through this life.'

  'And I have to put up with ya. That's me own personal cross.'

  'Oh, why do none of you ever fucking listen to me? This is like a Greek tragedy about to unfold in front of our very eyes! I feel like Cassandra, my predictions are always deadly accurate but doomed to be forever i
gnored!' Lucasta was screeching at the top of her voice by now, really working herself up into a state.

  'Excuse me, Lady Davenport,' said Molly, coming over to the table they were sitting at like a bullet. 'But I'm afraid I must ask you to refrain from using language like that in front of guests. The gentleman at table twenty-two says you're putting him right off his flambéed frittatas.'

  'Fine. Just don't any of you come crying to me when the whole place goes up in flames, or worse. The only consolation I have is that I'll be able to stand by your gravesides and say I told you so, you absolute shower of arseholes.'

  Daisy physically couldn't move. All she wanted to do was stay in her room and shut out the world. Dealing with the hangover she was nursing was bad enough, but when she thought about Mark Lloyd and Alessandro and what might have happened . . .

  What might have happened if it weren't for Simon, she corrected herself.

  It was already lunch time, she had a thousand things to do, she knew Julia would come thumping on her door again any second now, yet somehow she couldn't even bring herself to leave the sanctuary of her room. She tried to make herself think about Portia and how she'd entrusted her with the smooth running of the wedding, but not even that amount of self-inflicted guilt-therapy worked.

  No one will really miss me if I don't go downstairs, she reasoned. Between Molly and Tim and Jasper and all the staff at reception, the place was practically running itself these days. Besides, the thought of having to go downstairs and face all the Oldcasde glamour-hammers, Buffy and Shakira and the one that ate slugs in the Australian outback after last night . . . and then the one sickening thought which was really making her stomach churn came back to her. Eleanor. Yeah, sure, she'd pissed Daisy off by being a bit sullen over the last few days, but up until then she had been lovely – ladylike and gentle. And now, in less than a day, she'd be marrying that scumbag, sleazeball git . . .