Last of the Great Romantics (6 page)

'Lady Davenport?' She turned round to see Robert Armstrong standing beside her, extending his hand.

'Jesus, you gave me a fright,' she answered. 'I'm only ever called that in court.'

'I just wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about your husband's death.'

'Why's that?' asked Lucasta, taking a slug of her drink. 'Did he owe you money or something?'

Ever the diplomat, Robert just nodded and smiled, well aware that grief did funny things to people. 'I'm a widower myself, you know, and I just wanted to say that the pain does get easier. You must miss him dreadfully.'

'Easy come, easy go,' she replied, bored now with playing the grieving widow. She was squinting at him intently, racking her brains to figure out why his face was so familiar. 'I know you. Are you that idiot who does the National Lottery draw on a Saturday night? If you are, then your chakras are a complete disgrace. I've lost count of the number of spells I've done for my numbers to come up and they never bloody do.'

Although the President had probably never been spoken to like that before in his entire life, he didn't seem to mind. In fact, this eccentric-looking creature in her oilskin jacket and wellies was the first person really to make him laugh all evening.

'Oh, I know, did we sleep together in the sixties?' asked Lucasta, signalling to Gorgeous George to top up her gin.

'I'm afraid I'm going to leave you guessing,' Robert replied, kissing her hand politely as he took his leave. 'But I'm very glad to see that you're not entirely prostrated with grief

'Weirdo,' Lucasta muttered drunkenly. But at least she waited until he'd left the room.

Much later, he and Eleanor were back in the presidential limousine zooming down the motorway to Dublin, heading for Phoenix Park House, their official residence.

'So what did you think?' Robert asked his daughter.

'Perfect,' she replied with her eyes shining. 'Oh Daddy, it's absolutely perfect.'

'That's settled then. We have a plan B.'

Chapter Four

The night had been an overwhelming success, but that was the last thing on Daisy's mind. She'd slipped away from the party at about midnight and gone straight up to the estate office on the fourth floor to start making the necessary arrangements for Blackjack to come home. There was an eight-hour time difference between Ireland and Las Vegas, so at around four in the afternoon US time, she started making phone calls. Even though it was a weekend, everything was handled with typical American efficiency; by the time she contacted the Bellagio Hotel, where her father had been living for the past year, his body had already been released from the post-mortem inquiry. All that remained for her to do was sign a note of permission and fax it through so that his cremation could go ahead. It did flash through her mind that this would probably all cost a fortune, but she was too upset to care. She'd talk to Andrew about that later. All that mattered now was getting her dad home.

'We'll all miss him here,' the manager had sympathized with her. 'Your pop sure was a real one-off.'

Even on such a long-distance line, the manager could still hear the sound of a hooley in full swing in the background. 'Sounds like you folks got a real Irish wake happenin' there, Miss Davenport. I know that's just what your pop would have liked. A right good send off to the heavens above, without any weepin' or wailin' or gnashin' of teeth.'

Daisy put the phone down, knowing full well that apart from hers, there'd be precious few tears shed over her father's passing. There were a lot of big decisions to be made and she made all of them alone, knowing that if it were left to her mother, Blackjack would be buried in bin liners in the city dump.

'I wouldn't even dream of sullying the Grand Canal by dumping that bollocks in it,' had been Lucasta's final pronouncement on the subject, the previous day. 'The sewer rats deserve better bedfellows.'

There was no point in even trying to talk to Portia about the arrangements. For a start, she hadn't set eyes on her all evening and anyway, she and Blackjack had never really seen eye to eye. One of Daisy's earliest memories was of the sixteen-year-old Portia standing in the Library in her school uniform, bawling her eyes out because her father had gambled away her boarding school fees and she had been sent packing just before her exams. It had to be said that when Daisy's turn came to be sent to school and there was no money for her fees, it never really bothered her much. She had never been remotely academic like Portia and the loss of an unwanted education barely knocked a feather out of her. Spoilt rotten and thoroughly indulged by her father, she was perfectly happy to stay at home helping out with her beloved horses whenever the mood took her.

Since her early teens, she'd had a string of unsuitable boyfriends, spotty local adolescents mostly, who, like Daisy, had great difficulty in holding down any kind of job. But instead of being given the third degree, or shown the door as they would in any normal home, Blackjack had always welcomed them with open arms, taught them how to play five-card stud and introduced them to the advantages of having a single malt whisky still in the cellar. Her memory flashed back to one particular ex-boyfriend who would have made any normal parent's blood curdle.

He was a twenty-year-old recovering heroin addict whom Daisy had drunkenly picked up in a bar in Kildare and who'd subsequently given her a crossbar home on a stolen bike.

'So, you're on the dole then?' Blackjack had breezily asked when Daisy first introduced them. 'Wonderful. Got any cash on you? Even better. You cut the deck and I'll deal.'

Not exactly a conventional upbringing, she knew; in fact Portia often used to say that if a social worker had ever visited the Hall, both she and Daisy would have been sent into a children's home immediately. (The ten-year-old Daisy was temporarily swayed by this notion; mainly because there was a pool and a trampoline in the kids' home.) But Blackjack was the only father she had and now he was gone and she never even got to say goodbye properly. Even the last conversation she ever had with him hadn't exactly been a golden memory. 'My test results came back clear!' he'd raved from across the Atlantic. 'And they're negative!'

There would be a small, simple memorial service in Ballyroan church, she decided, and then the family Mausoleum would be his final and proper burial place. A magnificent eighteenth-century folly perched on top of a gently sloping hill, it commanded breathtaking views of the land for miles around. Nine generations of the Davenport family were buried there and now there would be ten, she reflected, starting to sob again. It was a wonderful, peaceful spot though and it gave her some comfort to think that her father would finally be at rest there.

The Irish consulate in Nevada had also promised to contact her as soon as his remains were en route to the mortuary at Vegas McCarran international airport, from where they'd make their final journey home. His body would probably arrive at Dublin airport in about two days' time, Daisy calculated, where she'd be waiting to meet him. With or without the rest of her bloody family.

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.'