Last of the Great Romantics (41 page)

'She's in there with her father and Daisy and that Scottish guy,' she stammered nervously by way of explanation. 'I don't know exactly what's going on, all I know is that they asked me for some nice camomile tea for Miss Armstrong and now no one will answer the door.'

'This is nobody's fault,' replied Julia, breathing deeply and forcing herself to speak in the calm, measured tones of one who's well used to dealing with nervous brides. 'I'm quite sure it's simply a case of pre-nuptial jitters and that her family will talk some sense into her. And if they don't, I will.'

She pushed the chambermaid aside and rapped firmly on the door, a don't-mess-me-around-any-more-than-you-already-have-done knock. 'Eleanor?' she asked in a surprisingly soft tone, almost coaxing her to come out. 'Sweetie, it's me, Julia. May I come in?'

Silence.

'Will I send for Jasper?' whispered the maid. Even amongst the household staff, he had a reputation for being something of a Mr Fixit.

'Shhh.' Julia glared at her, as though they were trying to coax a nervous thoroughbred out of a stable and the slightest noise might send her scurrying back to safety again. 'Eleanor darling?' she tried again. 'I wouldn't rush you for the world, you come out when you're good and ready, sweetheart, but it's just that everyone's downstairs waiting for you and Mark's already at the altar . . .'

There was a tiny, discreet click as the door opened. Julia needed no further encouragement and was in like hot snot, leaving the poor chambermaid awkwardly loitering in the doorway, not having the first clue what to do.

There was Eleanor, lying on the huge, canopied four-poster bed, still in her dressing gown, surrounded by an ocean of crumpled tissues and looking like she'd been up all night, howling to the four walls. The wedding dress remained wrapped in its plastic cover, swinging innocently from a hanger on the bedpost. Daisy was over at the window and visibly straightened up when she saw who it was. Robert was sitting on the dressing-table chair beside her but immediately rose when he saw that a lady had entered the room. Even at times of crisis, his manners were exemplary. Simon held the door open as Julia barged past him in her rush to get to Eleanor's side, as though she were suffering from a terminal illness and had only moments to live.

'I was just coming to find you,' said Daisy calmly. 'I'm sorry about the delay, but we've all been trying to decide what the best thing is to do.'

The atmosphere here in the Ballroom of Davenport Hall is electric as there's still no sign of the bride. Mark Lloyd is now slumped on the steps of the makeshift altar, looking beside himself with nervous tension. Even the string quartet seem to have thoroughly exhausted their repertoire. But just in the nick of time, here comes the Irish President, Robert Armstrong himself, striding confidently up the aisle and towards the podium where it looks like he's about to address the congregation. Put us out of our misery, Mr President and tell us what's keeping your daughter!

Robert, flanked by Simon, made his way up to the altar and cleared his throat before he spoke. He was cool, clear and, as ever, in command. Even Shakira and Falcon stopped twittering to listen to what he had to say.

'Ladies and gentlemen, firstly, let me apologize wholeheartedly for keeping you all waiting such an interminably long time. That was inexcusable of us.'

He looked down and saw Mark glaring back up at him, defying him to go on. It was a surreal moment, as both men eyeballed each other with the flash of camera lights going off in their faces.

Eventually, Robert calmly returned his focus to the crowd and continued: 'I've had to make many public speeches in my time, but none as difficult as this. The fact is, my daughter has given the matter a great deal of thought and has asked me to make a brief statement on her behalf. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid there isn't going to be a wedding today.'

There was a stunned silence. You could have heard a pin drop as every eye in the place slowly turned to focus on Mark.

From the back of the room, Lucasta piped up, unaware that her voice was carrying. 'I don't fucking believe this,' she said. 'Does this mean that we won't get paid?'

Chapter Twenty-Seven

'I know this will sound funny coming from me, but I really feel I owe you a huge thank you,' said Eleanor, looking a million miles from the wretched, puffy-eyed waif of only a few hours ago.

'I destroyed your wedding day and now you're thanking me?' said Daisy incredulously. 'I just think you're amazing, the way you're taking all this. If it was me . . . well, I'd probably be in the nuthouse by now. And Mark Lloyd would definitely be dead.'

Eleanor crossed the bedroom to where Daisy was standing by the window, gave her a tight hug and launched into yet another litany of apologies for all the trouble she'd caused. 'It breaks my heart, you know, when I think of all the hard work you put in so that the wedding would be a success, I just . . . well, put it this way, it'll be a long time before I hold my head up high in public again.'

'Eleanor, let's get one thing straight. I'm the one who should be apologizing to you. I can't tell you how rotten I felt about what happened, but then I figured, if I were in your shoes, I'd want to know.'

'You did the right thing. It wasn't easy for you or Simon, I know that. But, Daisy, please believe me, you've both done me the biggest favour in the long run.'

'It takes guts to do what you're doing,' said Daisy, in complete awe at Eleanor's cool resolve, and not for the first time that day either. 'Plenty of people would have gone through with the wedding because it was the easier thing to do and then spent the rest of their lives bitterly regretting it. You get ten gold stars for courage and that's for sure.'

Eleanor smiled warmly. 'Do you fancy a coffee?' she asked, making her way over to a linen-covered breakfast trolley parked elegantly by the huge bay window.

'Lovely, thanks,' replied Daisy.

'Do you know that this morning was the first time in weeks I've actually sat down and eaten properly? My father says I've gone to skin and bone.'

'You see? Yet another reason to call the whole thing off. The dress would have made you look like Calista Flockhart,' said Daisy, nabbing the opportunity to crack a joke and lighten things a bit.

Eleanor laughed as she poured coffee from a heavy silver pot into two china cups and passed one over to Daisy. 'You know, I have another apology to make to you.'

Daisy looked at her, unsure whether she should interrupt or just let Eleanor talk. Let her talk, she decided. This is probably the first time she's really been able to get it off her chest.

'When I first met you, I was so jealous of you. I'm completely ashamed of myself now, but when I saw how Mark flirted with you and the way he'd call you up all the time . . . well, all I can say is, if I was ever rude to you or unpleasant, you know where I was coming from.'

'Eleanor, you're incapable of being rude,' Daisy replied, ashamed of herself for ever thinking that she was a moody cow.

'Mark denied the whole thing, you know,' she went on, sipping on her coffee and looking out at the marquee flapping in the wind below. 'But, as Simon drummed into me, that's what men do. Deny, deny, deny, and then only when you confront them with incontrovertible evidence will they say something like: Oh well, I never meant for you to find out. And that's exactly what Mark did.'

Eleanor was too much of a lady to go into gory details about her eleventh-hour talk with the groom, leaving Daisy to draw her own conclusions.

'And I'm sure that's the story he'll stick to when the press are crawling all over him in the next few days and I'll come out as the heartless, cold ice queen. And you know something else? I won't care.'

Daisy took a gulp of coffee and hoped she'd go on talking.

'Do you know Mark sat almost exactly where you're sitting now, only a few hours ago? Honestly, you'd have roared laughing if you'd heard him trying to justify himself. I was drunk, darling, I didn't even know Daisy was gonna be there. She'd had one too many and I just brought her up to my room to have a lie-down, what's wrong with that? I swear on my granny's grave nothing happened. If Alessandro had other ideas then take it up with him. Nothing to do with me. That's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.'

Eleanor was a lovely girl, but couldn't do a cockney accent to save her life.

'But ten minutes later, he'd changed his story so now it was: All right then, so maybe she did throw herself at me a bit but that was it and then I threw her out but she kept trying it on, but I resisted because I love you so much and yadda, yadda, yadda. And you know what? I said nothing, just listened, and as he went on and on, changing his story pretty much every time he told it, I thought: I don't believe you. And if I don't believe you, that means I don't trust you. And how can I marry a man I don't even trust? Daddy was absolutely wonderful; once I'd actually made the decision to call a halt to the whole thing, he really couldn't have been more supportive. Somehow I don't think Mark Lloyd was exactly the kind of son-in-law he would have wished for.'

Daisy sat mesmerized on the edge of the bed. She couldn't believe how calm Eleanor was being. It was almost as if a huge load had been lifted from her thin, fragile shoulders. 'So how do you feel now?' she asked, gently.

'Numb. Still a bit raw, to be honest. But it'll pass. Have you ever had to make a really difficult decision which you know will hurt someone you care about, and yet once the decision's actually made, it's almost a relief?'

'How did Mark take it?'

'Surprisingly well, although he professed himself to be devastated. He's a bit of a drama queen though. You only have to see the way he reacts on the pitch if a rival player as much as brushes against him. Simon claims he's the world's greatest living hypochondriac. He even threatened to head off on the honeymoon without me if I left him standing at the altar. He kept dragging my father into it. Does your old man really need all the bad publicity this is going to generate? he said. Miles easier just to go ahead with the whole thing and then sort out our differences afterwards.'

'What! You mean he still expected you to go ahead with the wedding? After all of that?'

Eleanor nodded. 'His exact words were: Look, darlin', everyone's here and everything's paid for so let's just get married and sort this out on a beach when it's all over. No one knows nothing about what happened, I mean about what didn't happen,' she went on, her cockney accent even worse than Dick Van Dyke's, ' 'cept you and me. And Simon. And some of the lads. And Alessandro. And Daisy. And most of the tabloids by now, probably.'

They were interrupted by a discreet knocking at the door. Eleanor rose gracefully from where she had perched on the bed and moved to answer it.

It was the august personage of Robert Armstrong with Simon standing behind him.

Caught on the hop, Daisy stood and automatically hid her cup and saucer behind her back, as though the mere act of drinking in front of the President was an act of disrespect bordering on the treasonable.

'Ladies,' he said politely, entering the room.

'Is it all over then?' Eleanor asked anxiously.

'All over bar the shouting.'

Daisy would happily have spent the rest of the day cocooned in the Edward VII Suite chatting with Eleanor but there was a grim task to be done. The fallout from the aborted wedding was, of course, catastrophic and there was one person, Daisy knew, who would need her help more than ever right now. Bracing herself in case she ran into any of the Oldcastle set, or worse, Mark himself, she made her way downstairs and outside into the gale that was almost a storm by now.

The marquee was already being disassembled, she noticed, feeling a huge pang of sympathy for all the
Gotcha
magazine people. After all their hard work in organizing the wedding, planning it down to the tiniest detail, not to mention forking out for it, it was hard not to feel sorry that it had all come to nothing. On the TV in Eleanor's room, every news bulletin and chat show was full of the story about what should have been the society wedding of the year. Now all that was left to show for it, Daisy reflected, was an oversized white tent flapping in the blustery March winds and a kitchen full of gourmet food which would never be eaten.

The back lawn was crawling with workmen, struggling to disassemble the marquee in fading light and in the middle of them all was Jasper, barking orders at them like a Nazi SS officer. Julia was there too, sticking out like a sore thumb in her wedding outfit as she strode back into the warmth of the Hall, carting a stunning arrangement of still-fresh flowers with her. As soon as Daisy spotted her, she immediately went over to see if she could help.

'Well, well, well, look who it is. Nice of you to put in an appearance, but everything's under control, thanks,' chirped Julia, sounding in mighty form and not at all like someone whose Herculean labours had all been for nothing. 'It seemed like such a shame to waste all these magnificent flowers,' she explained, 'so I decided I'd pilfer them for the inside of the Hall. It'll look like Kensington Palace the week Diana died by the time I'm finished with it.'