The House

by A. O'Connor

  “No, it’s only costume jewellery.”

  “The way this banking crisis is going, there’s going to be a lot of ladies around Dublin swapping their diamonds for costume jewellery.”

  She took his hand and they walked out of the room and down the spiral staircase.

  “This financial crisis seems to be getting worse. I was watching it all on the news,” she said.

  “Yeah, the bottom seems to be dropping out of the country, maybe even the world.”

  She looked at him with a smirk. “Do we need to economise?”

  He smiled back. “No, I think we’re fine.”

  Kate rode intothe forecourt at the stud farm outside Dublin, dismountedand handed the reins to one of the grooms.

  “You’re a natural, Mrs Fallon,” said the head groom as he walked over to her. “Hard to believe you only started riding a few months ago.And, as you’ve asked, I’ve got some fine horses set up for you to buy when you move into your new country house.”

  “Excellent. Thank you! We expect to be moved in over the next couple of months, so be ready to go with them.”

  She strode out of the yard and as she got intoher carher phone rang.

  “Kate, I’ve managed to sort out that film for you. It was very old, but very good quality considering. It’s of a party – I would say in the 1920s or earlier. I’ve transferred it on to a DVD for you.”

  “Wonderful! Thanks, Marty! Send it over by courier to me, will you?” She started the engine and drove off.

  Kate pulled up alongside Nico’s Range Rover and jumped out, carrying her laptopwith her. The landscape gardeners were busy restoring the gardens and rebuilding the pillared walls, garden steps and Victorian ornaments. She rushed up the steps and intothe house.

  “Nico?” she called loudly as she walked quickly past the craftsmen who were busy carving the ceilings and decorating the walls.

  “He’s in the kitchen, Mrs Fallon,” said one of the men.

  She hurried to the back of the main stairs and down the steps to the kitchen which now had an automatic glass door that slid open to allow her to enter.

  Nico was overseeing the final touches to the kitchen’s renovation. As Tony had expressly ordered, the kitchen had been transformed intoa Mecca for the modern chef. A beautiful cream Clive Christian kitchen had been installed with cream porcelain tiles and a round island. There were various glass frosted doors around the kitchen that led intoseparate small rooms including the wine room, the chocolatier room, cigar boutique, the bakery and the refrigerated fruit room.

  “Nico, quick, I’ve got to show you something,” she said, placing the laptop on the island counter and turning it on.

  He sat up beside her.

  “This is the roll of film we found that my friend put on to DVD,” she explained.

  The film started playing on the screen and Nico peered closely. He recognised thewoman on the screen as Clara from her photos. The film was taken in the house and there was what looked like a party going on. The film was concentrating on her as she played up to the camera and danced around the room. The camera was focusing on her face as she smiled, before she fell to the ground laughing.

  “It’s Clara!” stated Kate.

  “I can see that,” said Nico as he peered at the grainy black-and-white footage.

  “Look at them, all so elegant at a party here at the house!” Kate was thrilled.

  “Hmmm, yeah, there’s some good detail of the room we can work with.”

  As Nico pointed out different aspects of the detail to be observed, he realised after a while that Kate wasn’t paying him attention. She was far too busy focusing in on Clara. He spottedKate was wearing the brooch they had found, and her normal array of diamonds were absent.

  All the workers had gone as Nico and Kate walked out the front door and he locked it behind them.

  “Are you heading back to Dublin?” he asked as they made their way to their vehicles.

  “No, it’s a bit late,” she said.

  “Back to the hotel for the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are meeting friends there?”

  “No, nothing planned . . . why?”

  He looked awkward. “You haven’t had dinner.”

  “No.”

  “I thought if you were free we might have something to eat, while we continued to discuss the next steps for the house?”

  “Oh!” She hesitated for a second before nodding and smiling.

  They managed to get a last-minute cancellation at The Ice House restaurant in Ballina, and they were shown to a table at the window with the river below it.

  “So how is all this banking collapse affecting you?” asked Nico.

  “Oh, I’ve tried not paying attention to it. It’s all very worrying, isn’t it?” She smirked at him. “Why, frightened you won’t get paid? Is this dinner a polite excuse to check our cash flow?”

  “No!” He was suddenlyembarrassed.

  “I’m joking!” she said.

  “I find your sense of humour very annoying at times.”

  “Oh, you’ll get used to me in time.”

  “Not really. The house is nearly finished, so I imagine we won’t be in contact from then on.”

  “Well, you’ll still be a neighbour of ours in Hunter’s Farm. I’m sure we’ll be friendly neighbours.”

  He looked at her sceptically. “Come on, I’m hardly going to be invited up to your soirees. I’ve seen the level of people you socialise with.”

  “It really bothers you, doesn’t it? Our wealth?” She was irritated but curious. “Why exactly? Is it because you don’t like self-made people like me and Tony having what you don’t have? Are we a bad reminder of what your family once had and no longer do?”

  “No, I’m not a jealous person.”

  “We all have to adapt to changing circumstance in life. You and your family have had to adapt to becoming normal, me and Tony have had to adapt to becoming not normal.”

  “I doubt you and Tony were ever –normal – in the kindest sense of the word.”

  “I used to be incredibly normal.” Kate took up her glass of wine and took a sip. “Do you ever wonder why we chose to buy your house? Out of all the country houses in the country, why yours?”

  He shrugged. “The views? The price?”

  “In a country full of views, and a bank balance as large as ours, those are not major considerations.”

  “Why then?”

  “I grew up in the local town.”

  “Did you? Castlewest?” He sounded disbelieving as he looked at her.

  “Oh yes. In the Heevenmore area of the town, are you familiar with it?”

  He made a face. “Yeah, but that’s . . .” He paused trying to find the right word.

  “Rough,” she said. “Very rough. The Alsatians go around in pairs there.”

  “But you have an American accent.”

  “Yes. My parents moved to New York in the eighties when I was a teenager. Trying to get a new life. A better life.”

  “And you obviously did.”

  “Eventually I did. My family settled in Queens, in an area that was even rougher than where we came from. And we struggled – oh, how we struggled day in day out. Never enough money to pay the rent or the bills. It was tough. But I wanted more, and I didn’t care how I got it. I had a voice and the camera liked me, I had that going for me, I knew. So I became a singer. Started off in clubs and bars. Moved up to singing in nicer clubs in Manhattan. Eventually started getting a name for myself.”

  “And how did you start acting?”

  “Oh, that was easy. I dated a film director.”

  “I see!” He raised an eyebrow.

  “It wasn’t like that. I was in a long-term relationship with him. And then I started becoming quite famous, especially in Ireland. They love a ‘local girl made good’ story in Ireland.”

  “I saw some of your films,” he admitted.

  “Really?” She was surprised.


  “Em – yeah, they were showing on one of the movie channels.”

  “How did you like them?”

  “Very good actually. I enjoyed them. Why did you give up acting? You’d could have gone on and become a big star.”

  She sat back and sighed. “Might have gone on to become a big star. And then again – might not have. I had a good break, and a good run, but who knows when that would have stopped. And as I got older, they might not have wanted me anymore, and I would be struggling to get parts, and always trying to be younger, prettier – no, thank you. When something better came along, I knew when to quit.”

  “The something better being Tony?”

  She nodded and sat forward. “I met Tony at a function in Dublin. Of course I knew of him – who hadn’t heard of Tony Fallon? He was like me – he had come from nowhere and made something of himself. We were kindred spirits. And he loved me, and I loved him. And I trusted him. I admire his drive – if Tony wants to do something, anything, he does it. Nothing gets in his way. I like being with him. It wasn’t a tough decision to leave acting behind. Not tough at all. We knew straight off we were meant to be together. He proposed to me after one month.”

  “A month!”

  “Well, there was no point in hanging around. We were in San Francisco when he proposed. We got a plane straight to Vegas and got married the next day. You probably think that’s tacky, do you?”

  “Not at all. Who am I to criticise a marriage as successful as yours? But you still haven’t answered your own question – why did you buy this house?”

  “Because I’ve always loved it. We used to cycle out from the town and play in the grounds when we were kids. Even broke in a couple of times. And I promised one day I’d own it and live in it. I didn’t even believe the promise myself. But here I am – doing exactly that.”

  He held up his glass in a toast. “To fulfilling promises then!”

  She chinked her glass against his as the food arrived.

  “Tell me about your daughter Alex,” she said.

  “Alex?” he smiled. “Alex would buy and sell you before you’ve sat down to your breakfast. She’s got all her mother’s determination and all my cynicism.”

  “Quite a combination,” she said.

  “Not a great combination in a marriage though.”

  Kate tried to tread carefully but her curiosity was too strong. “So you had an amicable divorce?”

  He looked at her, surprised.

  “It’s just I spotted her photo still at Hunter’s Farm. Most divorced people I know use their ex’s photos for dart practice.”

  “It came as a shock when Susan asked for a divorce. I just always imagined we would always be together, and of course there was Alex, which was a glue. But she said we weren’t actually happy together. She said we weren’t unhappy either, but she wanted more than that. And she wanted to try and find it before it was too late. We were going through the motions, she said.”

  “You disagreed with her?”

  “Looking back, I suppose she was right. But we still get on very well. We have to, for Alex’s sake. She’s the most important thing in both our lives.Do you and Tony want children?”

  She was surprised that he was being as direct as her. “Yes, I guess. We always planned to anyway. It’s just finding the time . . .our lives are so busy. That’s why it was important for us to find this house and get something back for us, to give us the time to be a family, start a family.”

  “It’s funny with families, isn’t it? One wonders who we take after, who we are like.”

  “It must be interesting with your family as you can trace your family tree so easily, being descended from peers.”

  “I know, but I don’t know what they were like – what they were really like.”

  “Well, the man who built the house, Lord Edward Armstrong, your great-great-great-grandfather must have been a very ambitious man to build a house like this for his bride Anna. You know he imported stone from Germany and there was a handcrafted oak fireplace in the master bedroom.”

  “Where did you find all that out?”

  “Oh, I’ve been researching on the internet about the building of the ‘Big Houses’ and the families who built them. I found some entries about the building of our house.You can see Edward had wonderful vision – maybe he would be an architect if he was alive today, like you!”

  “Hmmm, and I imagine he would be much richer than me if he was alive today aswell.”

  “He was very rich then. He had an estate of eight thousand acres. Imagine that!”

  “I guess.” Nico was thinking that, despite Kate’s extravagant lifestyle, she might have too much time on her hands if she was preoccupying herself with pursuing particulars of the Armstrongs’ history.

  “I wish we could find out more about Clara.”

  “Why Clara?” He looked puzzled.

  “I’ve done internet searches on her, but all I can find is she married Pierce, your grandfather –”

  “I know who he is,” said Nico, irritated that she seemed to be hijacking his family history as well as taking over his ancestral home.

  “– in 1914. I found it on an aristocratic records website. So he would have been sent off to war just after they got married. Isn’t that tragic?”

  “Tragic for him when she was screwing around behind his back, I think,” said Nico.

  “Don’t you know anything about her? About her family?” she pushed.

  “For goodness sake, it’s nearly a hundred years ago, Kate! Who knows – who cares?” He saw the very disappointed look on her face and said, “I believe she was a member of the Charter Chocolate family in England. That’s all I know.”

  “Well, that’s something to go on,” said Kate, excited.

  “Go on to where? What do you care?” He was perplexed.

  “Oh, I don’t!” Kate sat back with a nonchalant air. “Just interested in the people who lived in my house, that’s all. Who happen to be your ancestors, the Armstrongs.”

  “Clara wasn’t. And anyway nobody knows who the Armstrongs are anymore, and nobody really cares.” Except you, Kate, he added mentally.

  “I think if I had your family tree I’d be intrigued by it,” she said as she looked dreamily intoher apéritif.

  Chapter ninety-seven

  Kate was dropping some plans down to Hunter’s Farm and she was surprised to see a young girl answer the door.

  “Hello there!” smiled Kate. “You must be Alex?”

  “That’s right, but how do you know?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard all about you,” Kate smiled.

  “Who is it, Alex?” shouted Nico from the lounge.

  “It’s me – Kate!”

  “Oh, come on in, Kate,” said Nico, popping his head around the corner.

  “Nice meeting you,” said Alex with a grin and she ran up the stairs.

  “Yes, you too,” smiled Kate.

  She joined Nico in the lounge.

  “She looks like you,” she said.

  “Don’t let her hear that, I think she would prefer to look like her mother,” said Nico with a wry smile.

  “I just wanted to deliver these drawings I got from an interior designer to you.” As she handed over rolls of drawings, she spotted the painting of Clara in a corner. “You still haven’t done anything with Clara’s portrait.”

  “No, I’ve been too busy. I keep meaning to bring it up to Dublin for my friend to work on it. I’ll do it this weekend.”

  Alex came bounding into the room.

  “Alex, do you like horses?” asked Kate.

  “Oh, yes, I love them,” said Alex.

  “Well, I’m having a delivery of horses to the stables up at the house today. Why don’t you come up and I’ll show them to you. If it’s all right with your father?” Kate looked to Nico for approval.

  “Yes, fine, Kate,” said Nico, surprised by her offer.

  Kate and Nico worked hard over the following weeks. But it didn’t seem like
work as both of them loved the house and wanted it to be restored to its very best.The walls and ceilings were meticulously refurbished, shining polished wooden floors reinstated, cream tiles in the hallway, thick carpet in the drawing room, chandeliers hung.Kate had scoured modern furniture designers, the auction rooms at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, to assemble the right furnishings. Nico was surprised that her decisions were always the correct ones.

  Landscapers worked around the clock to restore the broken walls and ornaments and the gardens were brought back to life under their attentive care.

  Finally the curtains and drapes were hung and the house was complete.

  Nico let out the last of the workers and walked across the exquisite new hallway and into the opulent drawing room where he found Kate opening a bottle of champagne.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “A celebration. We did it!” She was delighted.

  She poured them both a glass and they went walking through the house, admiring the work. As he looked around at the rooms he decided the house had been given a modern twist but still retained all of its old-fashioned charm.

  They walked into the library which had been turned intoa state-of-the-art office.

  “And I guess here is where Tony will run his empire,” said Nico as he sat down on one of the elongated sofas there.

  “Yes,” she said, sitting beside him.

  “What are you doing about staff for the house?”

  “I’ve arranged housekeepers from the local village, and a part-time cook.As you know Tony likes to do most of the cooking and when we entertain a large group we’ll use caterers.”

  “You’re not having any live-in staff?”

  “No. Tony would hate that, somebody under his feet. I suggested it and he said he was frightened he’d end up getting drunk one night and get into the wrong bed!”

  “Sounds like he’s getting used to the idea of moving down here?”

  “He was only saying this week he can’t wait for the move, can’t wait to get away from Dublin.”

  “He’s changed his tune about the house then? He’s come around to your way of thinking?”

  “Work is very pressurised for him. Building this shopping mall. And everyone is so worried in Dublin these days after the economic crash, so many businesses are closing down. We bought the house for me, but I think it’s going to do him moregood. He’ll be able to switch off, as much as Tony can ever switch off.”