Last of the Great Romantics (40 page)

Daisy looked at him, stunned into silence.

Then Alessandro sidled up. 'You so preeetty. You are remembering me, yes?'

She ignored him.

'I was just telling Daisy here that she'd want to be very careful about who she goes telling tales to, isn't that right, Alessandro?'

Like a faithful lapdog, Alessandro nodded in agreement.

'Cos ten-a-penny dirt birds are always running to the papers making all sorts of allegations about me, aren't they, Alessandro? All the bleeding same, just a bunch of attention-seekers, all looking for their fifteen minutes of fame. Like the other night, for instance. When you practically flung yourself at me. Coming on to me like a bleeding freight train, you were. I mean, only for you turfing her out of my room in time, Alessandro, God knows what would have happened.'

For a second, Daisy really thought she'd smack him across the jaw. Ordinarily, she would have screamed, ranted, roared and yelled enough obscenities at him to colour the air blue, but right now there were bigger issues at stake. And after all, she reminded herself, revenge was a dish best eaten cold. Mark Lloyd would get what was coming to him. No two ways about it. She drew herself up to her full height and summoned up every last ounce of her dignity.

'If you could get a move on, please? Eleanor asked me to tell you it's urgent.'

Chapter Twenty-Six

With just moments to go before the ceremony, the excitement is palpable as guests gather in the Ballroom here at Davenport Hall, where the happy couple will exchange their vows at three o'clock today. Never in the Hall's two-hundred-year-old history can it have seen an event as glamorous as this, as the Oldcastle wives and girlfriends vie with each other to compete in the fashion stakes. As guests begin to assemble and take their places, the gasps of admiration for the Ballroom, transformed for this truly wonderful occasion, are audible.

'Miles better than that shithole in Sheffield we got married in any day, innit, darling?' said Shane Donohue enviously. 'Can't beat a bit of class, can you?'

'Yeah, it's all right I suppose,' moaned Falcon as they inched their way through the other guests and took their allocated seats, no mean feat in her six-inch wedge heels. 'Don't get me wrong, love, I do love old things; I mean our mansion house dates all the way back to the seventies, don't it?'

'Careful, darling, or you'll ruin me bleeding hair with that cockatoo on your head.'

Falcon shot him a dagger look as she carefully rearranged the feathers on the Philip Treacy confection she was wearing on her head. On the terraces, Shane's nickname was 'The Mulleted Messiah' and every hardcore Oldcastle fan knew how precious his hairdo was to him. 'But, Shane darling,' she continued whingeing, 'all of these old houses are totally lacking in home comforts. There's no mini-bar in our room, the TV isn't even flat screen and I had to ask the chambermaid what that ugly fing in the corner was for. She called it an armoire or somefing and it turns out you're supposed to put your clothes in it. I thought it was for DVDs, didn't I?'

Shakira and her husband, Ryan, had just taken their seats on the opposite side of the pew and were, not surprisingly, having a very similar conversation. 'It's not that I'm nitpicking or anything, love,' she said, glancing across at Falcon to check that her outfit wasn't classier then her own low-cut, clinging sheath so short in the leg that the entire congregation could have been her gynaecologist. She was delighted to see that it wasn't. Falcon had gone for a skin-tight white satin trouser suit and the only bit of flesh on show were her boobs, which rumour had it had recently gone from a size 34B to a 38DD overnight, courtesy of a certain Harley Street magician much frequented by the Oldcastle set. 'I mean I do like staying here,' Shakira went on, 'but I'll be ever so glad to get back to London, so I will. When the bloody maid brought us breakfast in bed this morning, there was only a copy of the bleeding
Irish Times
for me to read. How am I supposed to see my photo in some up-its-own-arse Irish paper? I asked her to bring us the
Sunday Sport
tomorrow and she gave me the dirtiest look, so she did. Snobby old cow.'

Just then, the string quartet, all dressed tastefully in black and elegantly perched on a dais by the huge bay window, began to strike up 'Air on a G String'.

'I remember they tried to get me to have that played at our wedding, darling,' said Falcon, fondly reminiscing. 'When I was coming down the aisle. But I put my foot down, so I did. "Air on a G String", I said? You must be off your bleeding bickies. I don't want no smut at my wedding.'

Wedding planner to the stars, Julia Belshaw takes a final look around the stunning Ballroom and beams with pride. How pleased this lovely lady must be, seeing all her hard work in the run-up to the wedding coming to fruition! With just minutes to go, she must be breathing deep sighs of relief, no doubt delighted to think that nothing can possibly go wrong now. We caught her chatting excitedly with Father Patrick Finnegan, a local priest who will perform the service.

'You must be the famous Julia Belshaw I've heard so much about,' said Father Finnegan, looking resplendent in his shiny new golden soutane as he shook Julia warmly by the hand. 'Well, aren't you and Daisy Davenport two great young ones altogether?' he went on, jovially shaking her hand. 'I wouldn't have known the old Ballroom at all, the place only looks fantastic, so it does. A credit to you both.'

'I only wish Daisy could hear you, Father,' she hissed, not wanting her voice to carry over the string quartet. 'But I'm afraid she's completely disappeared. Hasn't been seen all morning. I've totally given up on her. Useless, utterly useless,' she went on, bending down to pick up some imaginary piece of fluff from the red carpet.

'Well, I've done my fair share of weddings in my time, but none in surroundings as grand as this!' Father Finnegan enthused, almost itching to get the proceedings under way.

The Ballroom did indeed look spectacular; Julia's team of florists had surpassed themselves. Huge, stunning arrangements of white lilies dominated every corner of the room, while each row had an elegant posy at the end, all in white, at the bride's specific request. Nothing as vulgar as toning colours for Eleanor Armstrong, it was pure white all the way. Even the gold-backed chairs which had been carted down from the Long Gallery were covered in plain white silk covers for the ceremony.

Although it was only three p.m., the evenings were still quite short and, given the storm that was brewing up outside, Julia's idea of having the entire ceremony candlelit was an out-and-out winner. Just about every candelabra from each corner of the Hall had been carted down to the Ballroom for the occasion so that now the entire room twinkled and glittered with sparkling candlelight. It looked like the most romantic place on earth to be married, a teenage girl's fantasy wedding come true.

'It was good of you to allow the service to go ahead at the Hall, Father,' said Julia. 'We haven't exactly been very lucky with the weather and it would have been a nightmare for me to transport everyone from Ballyroan church back to the Hall in the lashing rain. You saved me several milligrams of Valium.'

'Not a bother, it's only a pleasure to have the service here,' replied Father Finnegan. 'Once a couple have special dispensation from the Bishop, sure I could marry them on the grass verge of the M50 if that's what they wanted. I married a bachelor from Dublin there a few weeks ago on Sandymount Strand. Lovely girl he married too. Malaysian. Met her off the internet. And sure, just as long as Lucasta Davenport stays well out of harm's way, I'm sure everything will go like clockwork.' Poor Father Finnegan shuddered involuntarily, as if she was about to appear over his shoulder at any minute and set up a pagan altar, littered with human bones.

The soprano, specially flown in from London for the occasion, had just stood up to sing an aria from
La Traviata
when the first sign came that something was amiss.

Mrs Flanagan and Shelley-Marie both came galumphing into the Ballroom, looking like they were on their way to a world's worst-dressed awards ceremony, where they'd subsequently be battling it out for first prize. Mrs Flanagan was in a brown shift dress with the belt somewhere up at her collarbone, revealing her bare, wobbly, wrinkly, dinner lady white arms, whereas Shelley-Marie looked like a transvestite entrant in an 'ugly men, uglier women' contest, dressed in a Barbie-pink rubber boob tube, with matching pink plastic orchids in her hair.

'Oh my,' she cooed to anyone who'd listen, 'I just love that song she's singin'! Don't she just sound like an angel from on high? Blackjack insisted on having it played at our weddin' too, you know.' Then, turning to flash her kilowatt smile at Mrs Flanagan, she added, 'It's from, like, this really, really famous opera, my darlin' Jackie told me. La Travolta.'

Julia spotted the pair of them, excused herself from Father Finnegan, and moved briskly towards them, smiling confidently at a bunch of very attractive Oldcastle players, who looked a bit uncomfortable in evening dress and who had yet to take their seats. She was possessed of that rare gift of being able to walk faster in Dolce & Gabbana high heels than in a pair of well-broken-in trainers.

'Well, I'm very glad to see you both had time to get yourselves ready,' she said dryly, checking her watch. 'Shelley-Marie, at this precise moment you're supposed to be in the bridal suite, applying last-minute make-up retouches to Eleanor. You'd better get straight back up there, it's D minus two minutes, you know, or didn't you read your schedule?' Then, turning exasperatedly to Mrs Flanagan, she said, 'You see? This is what happens when people don't stick to the schedule. One simple thing, that's all I asked you to do, one idiot-proof, simple thing . . .'

'I sure hate to interrupt you right in the middle of your hot flush,' simpered Shelley-Marie, 'but Eleanor called us in the Salon at about one o'clock, I think, wasn't it, Mrs Flanagan?'

'Eleanor WHAT?' This was the first time all day that Julia had raised her voice and it wasn't a pretty sound.

'Yeah, yer dead right, luv,' said Mrs Flanagan. 'It was on the dot of one o'clock that she rang. I distinctly remember, cos the Harry Hegarty hit list golden oldies show was coming on the radio—'

'What did Eleanor say!' Julia hissed, a purple vein beginning to bulge out of her left temple.

'And I'd written in with a special request for Eleanor,' Mrs Flanagan prattled on.' "As Time Goes By", by Louis Armstrong, cos my aul' fella and I danced to that at our wedding and it brought us many happy years with nothing but good luck. Apart from him dropping dead of a heart attack at the age of thirty-seven, that is.'

'Give me the last sentence first. WHAT DID SHE SAY?' Julia was talking to Mrs Flanagan as though she were a slow-witted five-year-old.

'Ah, nothin' much. Just that she was cancelling all her appointments, that's all.'

'And it didn't occur to you that this is something you might have TOLD ME?' The bulge on Julia's temple was starting to look scary now.

'Ah relax, luv, Eleanor'll be grand. Sure all that young one needs is an aul' bit of mascara and some lip gloss and she'll look a million dollars.' Mrs Flanagan could see Julia's nervous breakdown fast approaching and had decided to enjoy herself.

'And it is her wedding and all,' Shelley-Marie chimed in. 'I mean to say, it's not like she's not gonna be the focus of attention all day.'

'And to be honest with ya, luv, sure we were so run off our feet all morning washing heads and doing tans, we were only delighted with the extra bit of time to get ourselves ready. There's a lot of very cute-looking footballers wandering round the place, I wanted to be looking me best.'

'If there's anything wrong with that girl, I will hold both of you PERSONALLY responsible,' Julia hissed, turning on her heel and hoofing out the double doors so quickly she almost left a cloud of smoke in her wake.

'I wish to God that one would ever feck off,' said Mrs Flanagan to Shelley-Marie as they made their way to their seats. 'Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans, does she have to be told about every gnat that farts within ten miles of the Hall? Who's supposed to be organizing this wedding anyway, that skinny bitch or me?'

The guests have now all taken their places and are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the bride. Mark Lloyd and his best man, Alessandro Dumas, have just taken their places at the altar. As the soloist's magnificent aria swells to fill the room, we see that Mark is looking a little nervous, twiddling with the cuffs of his simple black tuxedo, impeccably cut and designed especially for the occasion by Ireland's very own Peter O'Brien. He's probably thinking that facing a World Cup final in the Stadium of Light is a piece of cake compared with waiting for his bride to arrive! Alessandro moves over to whisper something to the groom, not looking in the least perturbed that the lovely Eleanor is a little behind time. Perhaps he's reminding Mark that, after all, isn't it a bride's prerogative to be late?

Moving at the speed of light, Julia hared up the oak staircase and down the second-floor corridor to Eleanor's room. One of the chambermaids was standing outside the door, carrying a tea tray and looking ashen-faced. The poor inexperienced girl almost leapt out of her skin when she saw Julia thundering towards her.