Last of the Great Romantics (25 page)

I'm a manager now and I made the call and that's all there is to it.

Dxxx

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: Oh dear . . .

You know I trust your judgement implicitly. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. If you say he's OK, you know that's good enough for me. Further apologies if my last email was a bit on the curt side. Just got a bit of bad news. Susan de Courcey arrives tomorrow for an indefinite stay. My nerves are in flitters. Pxxx

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: Oh no!! You poor thing! What are you going to do? Cheer up, though, it mightn't be as awful as you think. It's a full moon in a few days and I'm sure she'll be out on her broomstick ripping the heads off orphans and torching bloodbanks, or whatever it is the old witch gets up to in her spare time.

Hi Sis,

Said it all in the subject box.

Have to go, or Julia will plaster my innards all over the tennis courts.

Dxxx

PS. May I remind you, at least you're in New York with your loving, adoring husband . . .

Chapter Sixteen

The following morning, punctual to the minute for the midday meeting she'd scheduled, Julia's zippy sports car whooshed up the driveway, she did one of her ninety-degree handbrake turns and then tut-tutted when she saw the mess she'd made of the gravel. Eleanor, who was safely strapped into the passenger seat, almost concussed herself as her head jerked violently against the side window. If she was expecting an apology though, she had another think coming. Julia was in particularly rotten form that day, not helped by the fact that it had been well after two a.m. before she'd got home after the shenanigans of the previous night. She had then collected Eleanor from Phoenix Park House on the dot of eight a.m. and whisked her off for a final dress fitting with her designer in Dublin and so, in addition to everything else, was functioning on only a few hours' sleep.

'Can you believe it?' she was ranting at poor Eleanor as though somehow this was her fault. 'D-Day is looming and some Neanderthal Davenport relation turns out to have been living in an outhouse for the last few weeks. Fresh out of prison, if you don't mind, although if someone told me he was fresh out of a mental home, I'd have believed it.'

She glanced sideways just in time to catch a worried look on Eleanor's pale face. 'Oh, it's nothing for you to be concerned about, sweetie, I'm sure Daisy will have sent him packing to the nearest home for the bewildered by now. It's the kindest way to deal with the in-bred aristocracy, really, just lock the whole shower of them up. How Lucasta Davenport has managed to escape a padded cell all these years is completely beyond me.'

'But if he is their cousin, then doesn't he have a perfect right to be here?' asked Eleanor, concerned. 'He is family, after all.'

Julia breathed deeply with her eyes closed, as though she were doing a yoga move. 'Eleanor, you are so like your father, both of you are almost too soft-hearted for your own good. Let me reiterate, this is only a tiny blip and absolutely nothing for you to lose any sleep over. In fact, it's a good sign. Before every big wedding, it always feels like you're on a one-way street to certain disaster with nothing but one catastrophe after another to pave the way. Nothing worse than this can possibly happen now. I'm sure the Neanderthal man has been sent on his way and we'll never have to set eyes on him again.'

Julia's day was about to take a nosedive for the worse, however. Just as she and Eleanor hopped out of the car, Jasper came striding around the side of the Hall from the paddock. 'HALT! DO NOT PROCEED!' he was bellowing. 'No unauthorized personnel beyond this point. State your name and business and kindly produce identification.'

'Holy crap, it's Brad Pitt,' said Julia, suddenly switching into flirtation mode. 'I don't believe we've met.' She proffered an elegantly manicured hand only to have it remain floating in mid-air, ignored.

'You've a short memory,' he replied. 'I only met you last night.'

Julia looked at him, gobsmacked, and you couldn't really blame her. The transformation was truly astonishing. Instead of the giant moth-eaten caveman from the previous night who, if you were unfortunate enough to be downwind of him, could knock you sideways with the smell of stale BO, here was a bona fide Greek god. His light, fair hair had been washed and cut short and the manky beard was gone, revealing an almost babyish face, with lightly tanned skin and those piercing ice-blue eyes so like Daisy's. The transformation was completed by an extremely expensive-looking black suit, very well cut, which accentuated his height and huge, chunky frame. And this time, the only thing he smelt of was Calvin Klein's Obsession For Men.

'Ah, you're all right, I don't blame you for not recognizing me,' he said, correctly interpreting the stunned dead-fish look on Julia's face. 'The barber in Ballyroan nearly passed out when Daisy took me there this morning. I hardly recognized myself in the mirror after he'd finished with me. And then this gear is all Daisy's brother-in-law's stuff, you know? I'm not really much of a jacket and trousers man, myself. Sure I've been wearing nothing but boiler suits for the last ten years.'

'Well, clever old Daisy,' purred Julia, unable to take her eyes off the bulging pecs which were fighting a losing battle to stay restrained inside his jacket. 'You know, as wedding planner, I'm going to be staying here from tonight until after the wedding. You must let me know what room they've given you. Maybe you can tell me a little more about those boiler suits.'

If she'd just come out with it straight and said, 'Take me now, big boy,' her tone couldn't have been any clearer. As it happened, though, Jasper was having none of it. 'Positively no entry without authorization. I need identification for yourself and your friend there.'

'I'm Julia Belshaw and this is the bride,' she replied briskly, but still managing to sound flirty. 'There wouldn't be a wedding without her.'

'It's lovely to meet you,' said Eleanor, smiling coyly and extending her thin white hand to him. 'And it's so great to know how professionally you're handling all the wedding security. My father will be thrilled.'

It had been a long, long time since Jasper had come into any kind of social contact with such an attractive member of the opposite sex and shyness now hit him like a ten-ton stage weight. He was saved, though, from any further embarrassment as Daisy came bolting down the stone steps. 'Jasper, it's quite all right, Eleanor and Julia are wedding party,' she said, out of breath.

'Right, so,' he replied, sounding almost relieved to revert back to demented bouncer mode. 'I'm only letting them in because you're vouching for them, Daisy, but I'm telling you, the retina scan is the only way to go. And they both still have to sign in. I need a permanent record of all personnel within the building at all times. If you wouldn't mind.'

Daisy nodded and led them both inside, leaving Jasper gazing after Eleanor as she tripped lightly up the steps, as if he'd seen a vision.

'Have him scrubbed and sent to my tent,' whispered Julia when they were safely inside the door. 'Come to Mama.'

'I'm afraid he's a little institutionalized,' Daisy explained as they all signed a visitors' book on the hall table which Jasper had left out. 'He's, emm, been away for a long, long time,' she added for Eleanor's benefit.

'I don't give a shit if he's just out of Alcatraz,' said Julia. 'Clever old you to reveal his inner sex god. It's the most fabulous transformation I've seen since Carol Vorderman, so kudos to you. Right. To work. Ice sculptures.'

As they trooped out through the Yellow Drawing Room and into the marquee, Daisy couldn't have been more stunned. She'd been expecting a battle royal with Julia over poor Jasper and was astonished not to have met with at least a degree of resistance. But no, Julia was happily chirping on about how drunk she was planning to get as soon as the newly-weds were safely helicoptered off on honeymoon and how Jasper was exactly the TLC she had in mind.

'Probably been a good decade since he had sex,' she was chirping, 'so I can fill him in on all the advances there have been, if you catch my drift.'

'I'm just glad to have someone to help with the bags,' replied Daisy, astonished. 'He even offered to take care of any guests who didn't pay up, but I had to turn him down. I was afraid he meant "take care of" in a
Goodfellas
kind of way, whereas I want him to take care of people in a more Julie Andrews way.'

'Oh Christ, just as things were looking up,' sighed Julia on seeing one of the ice sculptures which had melted and now looked like a bent willy. 'You see, Eleanor darling, this is why we dress rehearse all of the ice centrepieces. They can so easily begin to look semi pornographic . . .' she happily chirruped on.

Her day had just brightened up considerably.

'So now we have a convicted felon working at the Hall. That just about beats Christmas.' In the build-up to the big day, Tim was stressed enough about the Georgian banquet he was preparing without having to deal with this.

'Appalling. I couldn't agree with you more,' said Molly, putting down the pile of napkins she was neatly folding into cone shapes. Had Tim said that black was white or that Mosney was this season's chicest holiday destination, she would have backed him up one hundred per cent.

'Well, the pair of youse would want to get feckin' used to it then, wouldn't ya?' said Mrs Flanagan, stumping her way through the kitchen on her way outside for a fag. 'Cos take it from me, he's here to stay.' Then, clocking the looks of disgust flittering between the other two, she added mischievously, 'He's just done a ten-year sentence for violent disorder, he's a complete mental case and he's been living in the cowshed for the last three weeks. Sounds a bit overqualified to work here, if ya ask me.'

Daisy, on the other hand, was beside herself with excitement, loving having him around. 'Finally, after all these years, I get to have a big brother,' she beamed at Jasper as they sat companionably in the Dining Room over lunch one day. Or rather, as Daisy sipped on a frothy cappuccino and Jasper wolfed back a cheese sandwich as though he'd just been sentenced to the electric chair and this was his last meal.

'You're putting me off my food, looking at me like that,' he said, not lifting his head from the plate he was hunched over.

'Sorry, it's just that the last time I saw anyone eating like that, I was in boarding school.' It was as if he thought the food would be snatched away from him at any second.

'Where I've been, you either eat quick or not at all.'

Daisy had been filling him in on everything that was going on at the Hall, including the onset of Shelley-Marie. She was amazed at him though; even though he'd been hiding out for the past few weeks, he was surprisingly well clued up on the various comings and goings.

'I've seen her all right, and I've seen all the workmen traipsing inside the Hall with basins and big heavy-looking boxes of supplies. Yeah, I figured she was doing some women's beauty thing, all right. She's kinda familiar-looking, did she used to be an actress or something?'

'Who knows, she changes her story every time she tells it. Nothing about her would surprise me.'

'It's driving me mental where I've seen her before . . .'

'Well, round here she's known as Miss Plastic Fantastic. You'd better watch out for her, seriously. She is without doubt the most conniving, devious, two-faced see-you-next-Tuesday you've ever come across, and you've been in a maximum security prison.'

'That's lovely language for a lady like you to be using. Bet you wouldn't catch Eleanor Armstrong swearing like that. Right, I'll go up to the beauty place and introduce myself when all this wedding malarkey is over, so she doesn't get a fright when I start fingerprinting all indoor personnel, like. So she must only have been married to your father for a few days when he passed on then?'

'Mmm.' Daisy nodded. 'But my own personal theory is that he sobered up and took an instant heart attack when he realized what he'd married. Makes sense. But you can't slag her off or even breathe a word against her in front of Mummy or Mrs Flanagan. They think the sun shines out of her lardy arse.'

'And what about you, Daisy? Why is there no man on the scene for a lovely-looking girl like you?'

She sighed. 'How long have you got?'

'I'm serious. What's wrong with all the fellas around here not to be queuing up for someone like you?'

'Portia says I'm geographically challenged in that there isn't an eligible bloke around here for miles. But personally I think I'm just really, really unlucky. Let's face it, Jasper, all the good guys have taken their grade A loins off the meat market,' she replied, with Mark Lloyd's black eyes not a million miles from her thoughts. 'But then Mummy just tells me to shut up and stop whingeing. She says if Portia can get a husband, then the dogs on the street can.'