He Loves Me Not...He Loves Me

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘You know, there’s heaps we could do,’ said Daisy, blowing her nose. ‘We could tell him we’re building a greyhound racing track on one of the fields. That might lure him back. Or we could pretend we won the Lotto, or we could ask Mummy to do one of her love spells . . .’ She trailed off, seeing the stony look of disapproval on Portia’s face.

  ‘Daisy, I know how much you loved him, but honestly, darling, do you really think that’s going to bring him back? He went of his own free will, you know, no one kidnapped him.’

  Portia could see Blackjack’s note, all tear-splodged, in her sister’s tightly clutched hand. She could still make out the opening line: My dearest girls, this is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write . . . etc., etc.

  Typical of him, she mused bitterly, he addressed the letter to us to save himself the bother of writing to Mummy, so we’d have to do his dirty work for him, and certainly not for the first time either. But she kept her thoughts to herself.

  ‘I just can’t believe I’ll never see Daddy again!’ cried Daisy, almost on the verge of hysteria now.

  Portia looked calmly at her, as if she were seeing her for the first time. Even though Daisy had had no sleep, hadn’t eaten in God knows how long and had been weeping buckets, she still looked stunningly beautiful. She’d just turned twenty-one, and with her model-thin figure, light blonde ringlety hair and deep blue eyes, she was a Davenport to her very fingertips. Portia could remember from old the magnificent family portraits that used to hang in the Long Gallery, with generation after generation of blonde, blue-eyed lords and the various local heiresses they’d married. Back in old God’s time the Davenports had been famous for their good looks, and Daisy was certainly carrying on the tradition.

  Thank goodness one of us is. The family features have certainly passed me by, she thought, though without a trace of self-pity. She’d always loathed the way she looked, with her shapeless figure, mousy brown hair and pale, freckled skin.

  Not that it mattered. Davenport Hall wasn’t exactly a lap-dancing club, awash with single, eligible men. In fact, if a good-looking man landed at their door, they’d immediately presume he’d come to burgle them. Except that he’d need to be one of the world’s dumbest criminals; anything of any value at the Hall had been flogged off years ago.

  ‘Darling, don’t cry any more, you’ll give yourself the most awful headache,’ Portia said as her sister continued to wail. But, highly strung and emotional as Daisy was, Portia knew there was no point in reasoning with her in this state. The protective big sister in her took over as she put her arm around her and held her close. ‘We’ll be fine, darling. I just know we’ll be fine. I’ll ask Steve to call over tomorrow. He’ll know just what to do.’

  The Steve that Portia was referring to was a solicitor in the local town of Ballyroan. He was a family friend of many years’ standing, ever since he’d first come to live in the sleepy hamlet, while still a young law graduate. He was newly qualified as a solicitor and anxious to start work when a friend of his father’s, Tom MacLaverty, suggested he apply to his firm, NolanMacLaverty, of Ballyroan, Co. Kildare.

  As a city boy, Steve initially baulked at the idea of relocating to such a remote backwater when an honours graduate like him could easily get work in some flashy Dublin firm; but, to this day, he still remembered driving to Ballyroan for the first time. He could vividly recall that clear summer’s day, seeing the town at its very best: with its wide streets, the fountain in the middle of Main Street, the cinema which was still screening The Rocky Horror Picture Show (always packed on Friday nights) and more pubs side by side than he’d ever seen before.

  ‘How do they all stay in business?’ he’d naively wondered. He needn’t have worried. In fact, at one point Ballyroan had made it into the Guinness Book of Records for having the highest number of pubs per capita than anywhere else in Europe. He remembered the lush, green acres of land that enveloped the town, the most beautiful, peaceful, restful sight he’d ever seen. Right there and then, he’d decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life in this spot.

  Twenty years on and Steve had never looked back. He loved it here. He loved the friendliness of the people, who’d always stop for a major chat with you on the street. (There were times when he thought he should just plonk his desk right in the middle of Main Street; he certainly spent more time talking there than in his office.)

  And the law practice was booming. Steve had a natural way with people: a friendliness and an instinctive knack of making people trust him. He would never dream of putting a clock on his clients and then charging them according to timesheets as plenty of lawyers would. That just wouldn’t be his way of doing business. Instead he’d chat away to people, advising them on conveyancing and making their wills, all the normal work of a country solicitor. But he took the time to explain things really clearly to his clients and never forced them into signing anything or agreeing to anything they didn’t want to. And NolanMacLaverty’s clients loved him for it. Pretty soon, people took to phoning the office and asking to speak directly to young Steve Sullivan, instead of Sean Nolan, who could be a bit intimidating, or Tom MacLaverty, whom they’d known for years, but was rarely sober enough in the afternoons to dispense good, solid advice.

  So when Tom MacLaverty’s boozy lunches finally caught up with him and he died a few years ago, Steve naturally became a partner and renamed the firm NolanSullivan. Sure, his old college pals who were making a fortune working on the various Tribunals in Dublin Castle told him he must be mad, that he could make ten times as much money if he came back to Dublin, but to no avail. In a nutshell, Steve loved his job and the peaceful calm of rural life.

  And he loved the Davenports. They’d first met over twenty years ago, when Steve, as a rookie solicitor, was sent over to the Hall to sort out ‘a delicate matter’ for the family. He vividly remembered arriving there for the first time, driving through the entrance gates, past the gate lodge and on up the two-mile drive to the Hall itself. He remembered being nervous as he knocked at the huge oak entrance door, and then been shown in by the fifteen-year-old Portia, grave and pale and old enough to be deeply embarrassed by the situation.

  Her father, Lord Davenport, had gone on a gambling spree at nearby Naas races and had bet more than he had on him. The bookie at the racetrack had indulged him, probably impressed by his noble punter. But it was a different story when his lordship had lost over ten thousand pounds on a single race and hadn’t a penny to pay up. The police were called and Blackjack was unceremoniously dumped in a Kildare Town prison cell for the night, until bail could be arranged. Except that his lordship’s family didn’t have a single penny to bail him out.

  The solicitors were called, and so the twenty-one-year-old Steve found himself standing in the Yellow Drawing Room, deeply mortified and wondering how on earth he could explain the situation to Blackjack’s teenage daughter.

  He needn’t have worried. Portia had handled the whole thing beautifully. She calmly shook hands with Steve and explained that her mother was looking after her new baby sister and couldn’t come downstairs. She then asked how much her father had lost this time? She never even flinched when Steve told her, she only said that the matter would be taken care of and that a few nights in a police lock-up mightn’t do her father any harm.

  Steve only found out days later that she’d had to sell off an exquisite Fabergé egg, which had been in her family for over a century, to raise the cash. He had never forgotten meeting Portia that day, how his heart had gone out to this teenager, surrounded by all the trappings of wealth and privilege, without two brass pennies to rub together.

  And they’d remained the best of friends ever since. God, when he thought of the scrapes he’d got the Davenports out of over the years . . . The time that Lucasta, in a misguided effort to raise cash, decided to organize school tours to visit the estate and the health and safety authority had closed them down within a week. It had simply never occurred to her ladyship to bother with such boring, mu
ndane details as making sure that there were adequate toilet facilities for the coachloads of schoolchildren that arrived. One small boy found a fingernail in the Davenport jelly Lucasta forced them all to buy, and then, to cap it all, a three-foot stone gargoyle fell from the Ballroom ceiling on top of another particularly unfortunate child, who remained in a critical condition for weeks after. Rumour in the town had it that when doctors in the accident and emergency department of Kildare hospital heard that the kids had just come from a tour of Davenport Hall, they immediately gave them all tetanus jabs, just to be on the safe side.

  Then there was the time that Daisy, aged sixteen, thought she could raise cash by giving guided ghost tours of the Hall: she invented the headless ghost of some distant ancestor and gave visitors a ghoulish rendition of his demise. The problem was that she did such a good job of terrifying her guests that none of them slept a wink that night. The next morning, after a sleepless night listening to the normal creaking of the Hall and imagining the very worst, her guests checked out, bleary-eyed, demanding their money back and vowing to report the Davenports to the tourist board. One even tried to sue for mental distress and anguish. Steve certainly had a job sorting that particular one out! Needless to say, insuring themselves against any of these mishaps was something that would never occur to any of the family, even if they could afford it.

  So over the years, Steve had got to know the Davenports intimately. They were friends. (They were clients too, of course, but ones who rarely paid, and he was far too soft-hearted to be a tough creditor. After all, you couldn’t get blood from a turnip.) And there was nothing he wouldn’t do for them. So when Portia phoned later that day and asked him to come over, he cleared his diary and said he’d be there first thing next morning.

  ‘Actually,’ he added, rather theatrically Portia thought, ‘I was going to call over to see you anyway. The fact is, I have some news which may be of great interest to all of you.’

  Chapter Two

  PORTIA HAD JUST drained the last drops of a lukewarm cup of coffee the following morning when she heard the sound of Steve’s car scrunching up the gravelled driveway outside. Looking out of the estate office window (a posh title for what was really only the old playroom, never used now), she saw him slowly clamber out of his great black Jeep, bringing a briefcase and a thick wad of files with him. He wasn’t handsome, with his ruffled dark brown greasy hair and that slightly unkempt, almost scruffy look he always had about him. In fact, he reminded her of a great big cuddly bear, tall and broad, a gentle giant of a man and a bachelor through and through.

  Portia often thought how different he’d look if he ever married. A wife would smarten him up: make him wash his bloody hair for starters and then get him out of those corduroy trousers and 1980s stripy shirts and into trendier gear. He certainly was a man who would be either made or marred by his wife or girlfriend. She’d be a lucky girl who got him though; he might not be Colin Farrell, but he had a heart of solid gold. Anyway, these were thoughts for more leisurely times, she decided as she ran down the great oak staircase and tripped across the black and white marble floor of the huge, domed entrance hall to meet him.

  ‘Thank God you’re here, Steve,’ she said, standing on tiptoe to hug him. He hugged her back, noticing that she was even thinner and paler than usual. Hadn’t slept for days, by the look of her. Portia, for her part, was finding it hard to let go of him. She’d been through so much in the last few days; it just felt good to have a man’s strong arms around her, for once. Steve would sort things out for her. Didn’t he always?

  ‘There’s no problem that can’t be solved, Portia. Where’s your mum?’ he asked, gently releasing her grip.

  ‘Doing energy clearings on anything Daddy ever laid his hands on,’ Portia replied.

  Lucasta was known to be a great believer in clearing negative energy by chanting, burning incense and ringing bells a lot. ‘May the goddess of purity and beauty cleanse what has been soiled by the negative spirit of my bastard ex-husband!’ she could clearly be heard chanting from the Library.

  ‘She’s been at it all morning,’ Portia explained – not that she needed to. Steve was too well used to Lucasta’s various eccentricities to bat an eyelid.

  ‘And Daisy?’ Steve asked. ‘I need to speak to the three of you together.’

  ‘Out riding, I think. She’s taking this badly, Steve, you know how close she was to him.’

  ‘Will you find her for me? I’ll grab some of Mrs Flanagan’s finest instant coffee and I’ll meet you in the Library. That’s if your mother doesn’t sense any negativity around my aura today and ask me to leave,’ he said, a wry smile playing round the corner of his mouth.

  He wasn’t kidding. Lucasta was famous for throwing people out for the flimsiest reasons: their star signs weren’t compatible with hers; their channels were blocked; she didn’t like the colour of their aura; or they’d somehow pissed her off in a past life unbeknownst to themselves. She’d once accosted a terrified bailiff, who’d come to take back the TV, on the grounds that his spirit guide had brutally assaulted her in the eighteenth century. It worked; she got to keep the TV, free of all repayments.

  ‘Give me five minutes, Steve,’ Portia replied.

  As she went outside to find Daisy, she already felt a bit better. God, it felt good to have a normal adult to talk to!

  Poor Portia had a job dragging Daisy back into the house, after she’d eventually tracked her down, bawling her eyes out in the gazebo.

  ‘Bloody hell, Portia, do I have to talk to him?’ she had wailed. ‘He’s so boring and dreary and I hate the way he just stares at me all the time.’ It was a sort of joke in the family that Steve seemed to have an eye in Daisy’s direction. He certainly reddened a lot on the rare occasions she spoke to him.

  ‘I mean, for God’s sake, Portia, he’s an old man. He must be at least forty years of age. Does he even have his own teeth?’ Daisy ranted as she strode towards the house, her blonde curls gleaming in the sunlight. ‘Why the hell can’t he find someone his own age to leer after?’ she thundered on with all the venom of youth towards middle age. ‘Does he think I’m completely desperate? Who died and made me Anna Nicole Smith?’

  ‘Darling, he’s here to try to help us, so just try and be civil, that’s all I’m asking you,’ Portia cajoled as they went into the Library.

  Steve was waiting patiently, sitting in the huge green leather armchair by one of the bookcases. Lucasta was twittering around the shelves, chanting and squirting Toilet Duck as she went, not particularly caring where it landed.

  ‘May the goddess of all that is pure cleanse this room of all negativity and . . . Oh hello, dears.’ She broke off her chant as the girls came in. ‘I’m just getting rid of any last vestiges of your father’s spirit,’ she said, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. ‘You chant, you spray some bleach and then you burn some bergamot incense to expel negativity. Works a treat,’ she added cheerfully, splashing the Toilet Duck along the shelves as she worked her way around the room.

  ‘Mummy, is it a good idea to burn anything near where you’re squirting bleach?’ Portia asked tentatively.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, sweetie, you’re such a worrier. Typical Capricorn,’ her mother tossed back.

  ‘Ahem, I’ve got another meeting in town later this morning, so if you don’t mind . . .’ Steve said, taking a huge folder stuffed with papers from his black leather briefcase and accidentally dropping a bunch of them on the floor. Daisy silently rolled her eyes to heaven, irritated by his haplessness and making no attempt to conceal it.

  ‘Go on then, let’s get this over with,’ she said, rudely for her. Portia darted a warning look at her but said nothing.

  ‘OK, let me get to the point,’ he continued, more than a little nervous under her gaze. ‘Blackjack is probably living it up in Las Vegas as we speak, with his nineteen-year-old girlfriend. And, of course, the ten thousand euros he cleaned out of the safe.’

  ‘Oh Steve, must
you?’ Daisy wailed, her enormous blue eyes welling up with salt tears.

  ‘Sorry, Daisy, I’m terribly sorry,’ Steve apologized, reddening. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you even more, it’s just that . . .’ He trailed off. Ballyroan was a small town, and Blackjack had provided the gossips with ample fodder for years. His philandering ways were well known locally. Sarah Kelly certainly wasn’t the first affair he’d had and probably wouldn’t be the last either. It was hard to blame Steve for being matter-of-fact about the whole thing.

  But still Portia sighed. Ten thousand euros he’d taken. Ten thousand. When she had it spelt out to her like that, it hit her all over again. When she thought of how she’d sweated blood for that money! The tiny frozen tour groups she’d patiently guided through the Hall, trying her best to ignore their looks of disgust at the state of the place. (She often thought that no living person could have heard the phrase: ‘What a total waste of money that was,’ spoken in Japanese quite as often as she had.) The pony-trekking she and Daisy managed to scrimp a few hundred euros out of in the summer months; and the miserable amount of money she eked out from selling rhubarb, mushrooms and home-grown herbs to the organic greengrocer’s in Kildare. Unfortunately, they were about the only thing she could manage to grow by herself, since she was unable to afford help on the home farm.

  Anyhow. No point in dwelling on the past. It was time to move on.

  ‘Sorry, Daisy,’ Steve repeated, looking sympathetically at her. ‘It’s just that, well, I think I may have a way out of this for you all.’

  He’d finally got their attention. All three women turned to look at him, intrigued. Even Lucasta momentarily put down her bleach and incense.

  ‘I had a phone call a while ago from a film production company called Romance Pictures,’ he went on, consulting his notes as he spoke. ‘They’re coming to Ireland to shoot a film, and it seems they’ve been considering Kildare as a possible location. Apparently, there’s a lot of outdoor filming involved, actors chasing each other on horseback, that sort of thing, and they were looking for a few local pointers. So I suggested they send their location scouts to look at the Hall because the landscape around here is just so beautiful, it’s perfect. Then I received a follow-up call from them yesterday and, in a nutshell . . .’