Last of the Great Romantics (3 page)

But there was something in the tone of her sister's voice which made her stop dead in her tracks.

'Portia, it's me. Get here at once, will you? It's urgent.'

It was a magnificent, cloudless day as Portia stepped out into the watery winter sunshine and hopped into her car, foot to the floor for the two-mile drive up to the Hall. It's just Daisy being theatrical, as usual, she thought. Her sister was prone to exaggerating somewhat; she'd never have a mild headache, when a brain tumour would do. Probably just another slanging match between Tim and Mrs Flanagan which needed refereeing, as if she didn't have enough to get on with.

Tim Philips was the new head chef at the Hall, headhunted by Andrew from L'Hôtel de Paris, one of only three Michelin-starred restaurants in Dublin.

'If this venture is going to work, then the Davenport hotel has to become famous for its restaurant,' Andrew had said, justifying the huge salary he was offering Tim to relocate. 'I want it to be easier to win the Nobel Peace Prize than it is to get a table here. That's the way all the top restaurants in New York are run now, honey,' he'd gone on, seeing the worried look on her face. 'The more difficult it's perceived to get a table, the more people will pay. Build it and they will come.'

So Tim had arrived some weeks ago and proceeded to make himself at home in the newly refurbished state-of-the-art kitchen. He was nothing like what Portia had expected: he was in his early forties, small and wiry with an oversized bald head like a scrubbed potato and a comb-over hairstyle which only attracted attention to his shiny, greasy pate. Within days, he'd proved his mettle though, designing a mouth-watering menu and helping Portia whittle down to a manageable few the dozens of applicants who were practically queuing up to work as sous-chefs for him.

There was only one fly in the ointment, though. The Davenports' original housekeeper and old family retainer, Mrs Flanagan.

'She's been here ever since I was in nappies,' Portia had patiently tried to explain to Andrew. 'It's hard for her to be unceremoniously turfed out of the kitchen she's worked in all these years.'

But turfed out she was. Poor Mrs Flanagan was already feeling a bit miffed at having been made redundant by a hotshot like Tim Philips, when, on top of ruthlessly throwing out every knackered kitchen appliance she'd held on to for years, he also removed her TV from the kitchen, along with the tatty armchair she used to sit in for hours watching daytime TV. (Mrs Flanagan's idea of a hard day's work was one where she managed to fit in
Ricki Lake
and
Oprah
on top of all her beloved soaps.)

'Bad baldy aul' bastard with yer electronic fucking juicer!' Mrs Flanagan had roared at him. 'Be careful now ya don't juice one of yer testicles by accident, won't ya?' The final straw had been when he put a blanket ban on smoking outside in the kitchen garden.

'It's far too close to the food-preparation area,' he had explained to Portia in his snivelly, nasal voice, 'and it's playing havoc with my sinuses.'

'I'm within me rights to smoke outside!' Mrs Flanagan had ranted. 'Forty years I'm working here and all of a sudden I can't have a fag? I get through sixty a day and no one's ever complained before.'

'That's because they're all too poisoned by her Dublin coddle to speak,' Andrew had remarked to Portia later. 'You've really got to toughen up and stop being so bloody sentimental here. She is without doubt the most useless housekeeper I've ever seen. And anyway, at her age shouldn't she be thinking about retiring?'

In eighteen months, it was the only thing they'd rowed about. Portia had resolutely stuck to her guns though, insisting that Mrs Flanagan was as good as family and that letting her go was out of the question, not to mention the fact that she had nowhere else to go. They eventually reached a compromise of sorts by giving her the job and title of 'Housekeeping Supervisor', with full responsibility for the small army of chambermaids now employed at the Hall. The job came with a smart black uniform and a nametag, which shut Mrs Flanagan up for the time being, although violent flare-ups still regularly broke out between her and Tim.

'Hand on heart, I've honestly never met anyone like her,' Andrew used to gripe. 'She is quite capable of having a feud with someone and carrying it well into the next generation – over a single oven chip.'

Portia had arrived at the main entrance to the Hall by now and, once again, felt her spirits soar at how impressive it looked. Having spent a year and a half looking at filthy scaffolding and the cracks of builders' arses, as Daisy so poetically put it, it never failed to make her soul sing to see the finished result. The outside stone walls had been sandblasted and were now gleaming white in the watery winter sunshine. Some of the sash windows at ground level were thrown open and she could see Molly, one of the new chambermaids, vigorously polishing the insides of them till they shone. The restoration work had extended to the grounds as well and a whole team of landscape gardeners had collectively bust a gut to have the front lawn looking as elegantly manicured as it did now. A huge surge of pride filled her as she took it all in and, for a moment, she felt all Andrew's confidence was completely justified. The Davenport Hotel was going to work, she could feel it. They'd all worked so hard and the place was looking its pristine best, better than it had done since it was built, over two centuries ago. What could go wrong?

Snapping out of her reverie, she noticed that the van of Fitzpatrick's, the local florist, was parked in the forecourt. Brilliant, she needed to talk to them about the centrepiece arrangement in the main hallway. She'd requested a colossal, towering display of white lilies dotted with long-stemmed red roses, like you saw in all the posh magazines. Hopping out of her car, she was purposefully striding across the gravel when the main door was thrown open and Daisy came bolting out, white as a ghost. Something about the expression on her face sent a sharp stab of worry right to Portia's heart.

'Thank God you're here,' she said, out of breath, 'I've been watching out for you . . . Oh Portia, there's been some awful news.'

'Darling, tell me,' said Portia, starting to feel sick.

'We've just had a phone call from the Irish consulate in the States. It's Daddy.' Daisy was starting to sob by now. 'He's dead.'

Chapter Two

'So sad to think that the last words I ever spoke to my husband in this life were: "Is that smell you, you dirty bollocks?"' Lucasta, Lady Davenport, was nothing if not a gifted actress and now slotted into the anguished role of grief-stricken widow with comparative ease. 'And you know, darling, I had a premonition that something awful like this was going to happen. My toenails didn't grow at all yesterday.'

It was past midday, but she was still tucked up in her enormous four-poster bed, wearing a green wax jacket over her nightie and chain-smoking as she cradled Edward and Mrs Simpson, two of her favourite cats, close to her. Daisy was sitting on the edge of the bed beside her, clutching a snotty Kleenex and red-eyed from crying, when Portia finally came back into the bedroom.

'Did you manage to get him?' asked Daisy, dully.

'Mobile's switched off.'

She'd spent the past half-hour trying to contact Andrew to tell him the news, but couldn't get through to him. Suddenly a searing flush of anger came over her. 'I mean, where in God's name is he? What could be more important to him than being here and today of all days? And now, on top of everything else, I get this news and he doesn't even have his bloody phone switched on.' Hot, stinging tears of frustration started to roll down Portia's face.

'Shh, darling, shhh,' said Daisy soothingly, rising to hug her tightly. 'It's very common to feel anger at first when you get news of bereavement. Just let it out. It's OK.'

'There's bugger all about this that's OK if you ask me,' said Lucasta from the bed, lighting one cigarette from another. 'Of all the rotten days for the bastard to die on. Never in all my past lives have I come across anyone as inconsiderate as your gobshite of a father. The word wanker is bandied about so freely these days but, by Christ, it's the only way you can describe Blackjack Davenport. Even from beyond the grave, he's still pissing me off.'

It was one of the rare occasions when Portia actually found herself in agreement with her mother. Lord Davenport, known far and wide as 'Blackjack' because of his addiction to the game, was never going to be eligible for a father of the year award, certainly as far as his elder daughter was concerned. He'd casually walked out on his wife and family a couple of years back, with his nineteen-year-old girlfriend in tow, made it as far as Las Vegas, Nevada, and stayed put. His family had only seen him once since then, but from what Portia could gather, he'd lived out the rest of his days in a suite at the five-star Bellagio Hotel, dating a string of younger women who worked in what's euphemistically known as 'the entertainment industry', boozing heavily by day and gambling by night, almost like a caricature of a lord from days gone by. In short, it was a lifestyle even George Best would have envied. He'd died of a massive heart attack at his beloved blackjack table, clutching a winning hand close to his chest. The barman had gone looking for him, twigging that something must be amiss when Blackjack went for a whole half-hour without demanding that his whisky and soda be freshened up.

'Not exactly a beautiful death, but at least it's the way he would have wanted to go,' Daisy had said through fresh bouts of tears. Unlike Portia, she had adored her father; helped by the fact that she'd only seen him once in the last couple of years, they only kept in touch by phone, and also by virtue of being a full fourteen years younger than Portia. She had been in nappies when Blackjack's excesses were at their worst and consequently too young to have seen him for what he really was.

The show, however, had to go on. Close to four hundred people had been invited to the grand opening that night so whether the Davenport ladies liked it or not, they had no choice but to put a brave face on things. Lucasta, once she finally got out of bed, was revelling in the role of widowed martyr and anyone who overheard her could easily have been forgiven for thinking that she'd been happily married to a devoted husband. She swanned down the great oak staircase, still in her nightie and wax jacket, with waist-length grey hair streeling down her back, accepting condolences from the staff as though her husband had died in her loving arms a mere ten minutes ago.

'The only proven way to heal the deep grief I'm feeling,' she said to Molly, who was frantically giving the marble floor in the main entrance hall a final going-over, 'is to bathe naked under moonlight in the sweat of ten virgins, so you can see the obvious difficulty involved there.'

'Ehh, yes, I think so, your ladyship,' replied Molly, patiently mopping up the drops of gin and tonic Lucasta was freely sloshing all over the place.

'Yes. Three whole weeks till the next full moon' – Lucasta went on gazing into space – 'which means I'm stuck in mourning until then.'

Daisy did what she always did at times of crisis; she went straight to the stables, saddled up her favourite mare and galloped off towards the low-lying hills which edged the Davenport land. Be a miracle if she's even back in time for the opening, Portia thought, watching her slim outline disappear over the horizon at a rate of knots. Even though she was totally reliant on Daisy's help that afternoon and now had been well and truly landed in it, she found it hard to feel any resentment. Daisy had always been something of a Daddy's girl and was genuinely devastated at the news. She'll be back when she's good and ready, Portia decided, grudgingly thanking Andrew for forcing her to hire the services of a publicist.

Julia Belshaw was exactly the kind of tornado of efficiency they needed to get through the opening tonight. The human equivalent of eight strong cups of espresso coffee, she'd arrived at the Hall about a month previously, instantly impressing both Portia and Andrew with all of the amazing ideas she was brimming over with for the big night.

'Oh, it's just got to be the event of the season,' she'd enthused to them over a coffee meeting in the Library, pushing her Gucci sunglasses into her sleek blonde bobbed hair and wrapping one long, toned, suntanned leg over another. (How did she manage to get a tan in January? Portia had innocently wondered.)

Julia was the epitome of fabulousness, instantly demanding that they both guess her age and then gleefully telling them that she was, in fact, forty-five.

'Wow, I thought you'd have difficulty getting served in pubs, you look so young,' Andrew had gushed, barely able to take his eyes off the permatan.

'Oh, that is just the
sweetest
thing to say,' she replied, playfully touching his arm, addressing Andrew and Andrew only. 'Now, why aren't there more guys like you out there? If a single man said something like that to me, I can tell you right now he'd be on a one-way ticket to panty land.'

Had Julia gone the whole hog and come out with: 'I could just spread you on a cracker, right this minute, you big hunk of gorgeousness,' she couldn't have flirted any more outrageously. Andrew, who had been provoking this reaction in women ever since secondary school (the only boy in his class who never got a single spot), was completely oblivious but Portia bloody wasn't. She knew in her soul that her husband didn't have a wandering eye and that they'd most likely have a good laugh about Julia afterwards, but it still bugged her when other women flirted with him. Particularly with his wife sitting right beside him. Rude, she thought. Really rude . . .