Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1

by Ian St. James

  She wept for fully ten minutes.

  They flew to the States direct from Sydney.

  In New York Kate stayed in the suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, pacing up and down, smoking endless cigarettes - asking herself again and again if they were doing the right thing. She remembered her own childhood. Pulled one way, then the other. Not that Sean had neglected his son, but Gloria was the boy's mother.

  "I know that," Sean had snapped. "If she were a real mother, maybe it would be different. But he's just another symbol to her. I don't know what it is about Gloria but she's screwed up emotionally. People are as possessions to her, adjuncts to her own importance."

  But most days Sean was downtown with his lawyers - and Kate waited alone.

  Then, unexpectedly, Freddie Mallon called to see her at the hotel.

  Kate was surprised, "Oh," she said, "Sean's not here. He's -"

  "With the lawyers, I know. I wondered if you would have lunch with me."

  She liked Freddie. She would have liked Margaret if Margaret had let her. Freddie and Margaret were Sean's oldest friends, and Kate would have liked anyone on that basis. Even so she couldn't resist a smile as she walked into the dining-room. "Aren't you afraid someone will see us? If your wife heard you were lunching with a notorious femme fatale ..."

  Freddie chuckled, "She wouldn't turn a hair. I'm the jealous one in our family."

  But despite his rueful laughter he seemed ill at ease. He ordered the meal, then gave a little grin to hide his embarrassment. "About Margaret," he said, "you don't understand. She put a lot of work into Sean's marriage. She was wrong, but that's not the issue. She thought she was acting for the best," he shrugged, "then things didn't work out and she's got a conscience about it. Her easiest way out is to blame you. I don't say she rationalises it - but that's what it boils down to. Now she's all mixed up and doesn't know what to do." His embarrassment deepened, "Don't get me wrong, I'm not apologising for my wife - but, well Margaret is so special to me it upsets me for someone to think badly of her."

  Kate was unsure of how to respond. Of course it was an apology and she was grateful. She thought Freddie was one of the kindest men she had ever met.

  He scowled. "That's not why I wanted to have lunch, but I just thought I'd say it."

  "It's not why I came either," she smiled, "I was just pleased to see someone I always think of as a friend - and he just proved it."

  Freddie relaxed a notch after that. Then he said - "Sean's going about things the wrong way. Gloria's got the law on her side. Sean's only chance is to make a deal with her, not attack her through the courts."

  Kate thought so too. In fact she had said so to Sean. She sighed - "I know, but be fair - Sean did go and see her -"

  "And they had a furious row," Freddie nodded, "I know, I heard about it." He gave her a searching look. "Tell me Kate, how do you feel about Patrick living in England?"

  She had asked herself that a thousand times. She was afraid - afraid of anything that might mar her happiness. On the other hand she wondered if Sean would ever be truly happy with his child on his conscience.

  "Well?" Freddie said.

  She took a deep breath, "I want whatever Sean wants. If he wanted to go and live in Timbuktu it would be all right with me. If he wants me to make a home for his son, that's all right too ... but it won't be easy. Patrick might resent me, he mightn't like me, but if he gives me half a chance I swear I'll do everything in my power to make him happy."

  Freddie sat looking at her for a long time. Then, to her utter amazement, he said - "OK, I believe you. Tell Sean it's all fixed."

  She gaped. Her mind reeled as she listened. Freddie had arranged everything. He chuckled at her expression - "Really it wasn't that difficult. All you've got to do is understand Gloria. What she really wants in life is recognition - so I made her an offer she couldn't refuse. She's going to be the new Dorothy Parker. She's going to write a column on Hollywood, starting next month. The Gloria Connors page. It's to be syndicated coast to coast. Of course she'll have to live out there -"

  "She's leaving Scarsdale?"

  "She's going to be very busy, too busy to devote time to young Pat so she has agreed, he can go to England with his father -"

  "Oh Freddie!" Kate clasped his hand across the table. "Sean will be delirious! How can I ever thank you -"

  "By making the son happy," Freddie said firmly, "as well as the father."

  She was too excited to eat. When Freddie left she sat in a fever of impatience waiting for Sean. He returned at half past three, grey and tired from his meeting with the lawyers. "Bloody hopeless," he said bitterly - and then she told him.

  In all the time she had known him she had never seen him so happy. His joy overflowed onto her - but not enough to douse all of her worries - "Oh God, Sean, I hope he likes me. Supposing -"

  "Darling he'll love you!"

  And so it turned out. When Patrick arrived in London a month later Kate took him everywhere. The Tower, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey - she retrod the path she had travelled with Jenny and Aunt Alison so many years before. She and Pat got on well, although he was more reserved than she had expected of Sean's son. But gradually Kate broke the barriers down. Sometimes she wondered what his mother had told him about her - but never dared ask.

  They moved into a large house in Hampstead. Kate was never busier but she always made time for Pat.

  The months flew past to the end of the year. Seven Days continued to report on a changing world. The war escalated in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson struggled to run Washington in the wake of the Kennedy legend. And the British Empire shrank like a snowball on a bonfire. Giving independence to the colonies became almost routine. Jomo Kenyatta was elected Prime Minister of a self-governing Kenya. Zanzibar achieved internal rule. Nigeria became a republic, Nyasaland a self-governing protectorate. Macmillan's "wind of change" swept through the continent. The colonies were going but, as Seven Days noted, they were leaving with British goodwill. In Lancaster House and the Colonial Office, even in the House of Commons itself, Michael O'Hara's reporters told the same story - "It's like the kids growing up and leaving home, Westminster seems sad and proud about it both at the same time."

  Changes were taking place on Westminster's own doorstep. In Northern Ireland Lord Brookeborough at last stepped down from office. In twenty years as Prime Minister he had never once crossed the border to Dublin, never once visited a Catholic school, or even attended a civic reception in a Catholic town. His successor, Terence O'Neill, promised changes - and Belfast soon realised what he meant. When Pope John died O'Neill not only sent a message of condolence to Cardinal Conway in Armagh, but allowed it to be published. Belfast gasped at the headline - "The Pope: Ulster Premier's Message of Sympathy" - and Belfast gasped again when flags were lowered to half-mast over Stormont.

  "Oh dear," Kate smiled when she read the papers. "Poor Tim will not approve at all." "The wind of change indeed," she said, looking at pictures of O'Neill visiting Catholic schools.

  But Kate paid only a passing interest. Her life was full of her new house, and of Sean and Pat Connors. When Pat went to school Kate wrote every week, and sent him hampers from Fortnums and books from Hatchards. Sean wrote too, but his contributions were often a scrawled PS on Kate's long letters. He did get down to the school for sports day, however, and at half-term he did take Pat to watch Tubby's football team play in a cup tie. He did care ... he was just so damn busy. Sir George Hamilton retired, Brian Tillets was smashed up in a car crash, Thornton had a blazing row with the new Chairman and walked out... "But once I get that sorted out we'll spend more time together," he promised his son, "meanwhile if you want anything, Kate will take care of it."

  And Kate did. When Pat was struck down with chicken-pox Kate rushed down to the school to sit at his bedside. When Pat broke his arm in the gym, it was Kate who arrived bearing gifts and messages of sympathy ...

  Pat grew used to it. He knew his father was a busy man. Besides Kate's visits
were greatly welcomed. Other boys were visited by middle-aged mums, nobody had anyone as glamorous as Kate. "Is she your father's girlfriend?" Tommy Hillary wanted to know. "She's his mistress," Pat said proudly, "international tycoons don't have girlfriends."

  Kate guessed what was said but paid it no heed. "So long as he doesn't resent me," she told herself, "I can cope."

  She coped, more and more with every passing year. She could cope with anything as long as Sean loved her. And he did. He told her so every day.

  So Kate did more than survive, she triumphed - but her happiness was never easily won. No mention is made in The Power in the Back Room of the snubs and the slights and the spitefulness with which she had to contend. Nor of her devotion to young Patrick.

  Her contact with Tim was minimal. He was never in London. Kate sent him cards on his birthday, and wrote now and then, but rarely received a reply. So as time passed whole weeks slipped by without her even thinking of Tim. Ireland, north or south, was light years away from Kate's life in Swinging London.

  But as those golden years gathered pace, Ireland became very much more in the news - until Kate was not just reminded of Tim, she saw him, staring up at her from the pages of a newspaper or bellowing from the television screen. Tim was making a name for himself.

  Chapter Eleven

  People said Tim O'Brien was more of an Averdale than Mark ever was - but then Tim's life was never complicated by anyone like Ziggy Beck. Tim saw events in uncompromising black and white, especially when it came to politics. In his view Prime Minister O'Neill was betraying the first tenet of Unionism, that of "No Surrender" - and when O'Neill invited the Taoiseach of the Irish Republic to lunch in Belfast Tim erupted with anger. O'Neill had been nothing but trouble since he took office - forever encouraging Catholics to expect more than their due "Good grief, isn't it enough we give them grants for their schools, subsidise their housing and pay them unemployment benefits. Money for this and for that ... I don't know what O'Neill thinks he's doing, but he's a bloody disgrace to the Unionist Party!"

  And a growing number of Unionists agreed with him.

  In the years after Mark Averdale's death Tim's energies had been devoted exclusively to business. The Averdale empire was still substantial. But many Averdale interests were losing money. Shipbuilding was a disaster. The linen industry was in decline. Tim drove himself hard. In a series of shrewd moves he expanded on other fronts. He switched from linen to synthetic fibres, he invested heavily in carpet manufacture, he built up a controlling interest in a whisky distillery. It all took time and a great deal of money. Tim borrowed from the banks and when they protested he raised more cash by borrowing from Kate. He had no qualms about that. The money was rightfully his anyway. It would have been his but for his guardian's infatuation! What irked Tim most was the matter of the paintings. He had wanted to sell them outright but Kate had insisted on loaning them to the Tate. Tim fumed.

  He lacked time to be curious about Kate. Throughout the early sixties he had worked an eighteen-hour day to salvage his inheritance. Every ounce of his dogged tenacity was applied to achieving business success - and by the time that policy was paying dividends Captain Terence Bloody O'Neill had come to office and was threatening to shake Stormont to its very foundations.

  Unionists took to the streets in protest. Protestants throughout the whole of Ulster were alarmed that O'Neill was going too far. In Belfast photographs of O'Neill talking to nuns were burned on street corners. A fiery new orator, Ian Paisley, railed and ranted at mass meetings - and always in support was Tim O'Brien.

  But Ulster's Catholics were organising their own protest marches and spawning a spate of new organisations, all committed to winning a better deal for the Catholic minority.

  Protestants reacted by assembling the Ulster Protestant Volunteers. Paisley published a virulent campaign in his newspaper, the Protestant Telegraph, urging that the B Specials be mobilised to put down an imminent Catholic uprising.

  And Tim O'Brien went on television to preach the same message.

  In the Spring of '66 Catholics were attacked by petrol bombs ...

  In May a woman died when the Catholic-owned pub next to her house was hit...

  In June, three Catholic barmen were shot as they left a Protestant pub...

  In London few people paid much heed to Northern Ireland. Michael O'Hara's reporters monitored the story as a matter of routine - but nobody at Westminster seemed greatly concerned. Harold Wilson's Labour Government was predictably cagey ... the internal rule of Northern Ireland was traditionally left in Stormont's hands ... which is where it should stay according to a Labour spokesman. Few people seemed really interested. But the men from Seven Days dug deep. In the House of Commons Gerry Fitt, a Republican Socialist MP for the Dock seat in Belfast, had a good deal to say about Stormont - and none of it complimentary. A handful of Labour MPs were beginning to get restless - it seemed incredible to them that the principle of "one man, one vote" did not apply to every part of the United Kingdom - a surprise shared with others when Seven Days reported the fact later that week.

  But generally there was little interest. Fleet Street headlined other stories and banished Northern Ireland to an inside page.

  Yet, perversely perhaps, the men from Seven Days kept the story alive. In August, when the Northern Ireland Prime Minister was in London to meet Wilson and Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, Seven Days reporters were disinclined to believe that the talks were merely routine. Backbench MPs were quizzed ... civil servants were questioned ... rumours were sifted, two was added to two until it made four ... and then a theory emerged.

  Michael O'Hara listened carefully when it was explained to him.

  "Wilson doesn't want to know. According to him any politician who gets involved with Ulster needs his head examined. But some of his backbenchers are getting restless, so he'll have to do something ... and that means he will push O'Neill to go faster on reforms."

  "Go on," Michael O'Hara said.

  "The situation stinks over there. A quarter of a million Catholics are disqualified from voting in local elections, and things like housing allocations are a farce. Something has to be done, and Wilson can only go one way. He and Jenkins will shove O'Neill to go faster."

  "And then?"

  "Well it's bloody obvious. O'Neill is already in trouble with his party. Most of them are up in arms. Paisley is roaming the streets and this other fellow, what's his name - this Tim O'Brien - was on the box the other night talking about a Protestant backlash."

  But Michael O'Hara remained sceptical. "It's not big enough to warrant special coverage, but maybe keep an eye on it." He grinned, "Sure you've got to be Irish yourself to know these things often blow over in five minutes."

  Even so, as Michael drove home later, he thought it would be something to talk to Sean about when he got back from the States.

  But Michael did not mention Northern Ireland when Sean returned from America. He hardly had time. Sean and Kate were only in London for a month before setting off for Australia to pursue Sean's television interests. During a frantic four weeks Sean attended nine board meetings, opened three new office blocks built by the Mallon Property Company, spent days negotiating with the television companies, sanctioned the take-over of two building contractors ... and devoted hours to meetings in the City with institutional investors.

  Kate was busy too but never too busy for Patrick. In fact Pat provoked a rare argument with Sean.

  "I don't care how busy you are, Sean, that boy is a darned sight more important than improving your balance sheet!"

  After which Sean spent a weekend with his son, messing about with boats on the river. It did not satisfy Kate - "I'm leaving you, Sean, next Friday!"

  "You're what?"

  The horror in his face did her heart good. She smiled, "I'm sorry darling. I'm going to Paris for a week, with a much younger man."

  She took Patrick - and they had fun. Whatever he wanted to see, they saw - including the floor-show at
the Lido. "Heck Kate, the boys at school will never believe this! Can we go to that other place, the Crazy Horse tomorrow night? Someone said the girls there hardly wear anything at all!"

  Yvette flattered him outrageously - "Another year or two and every young girl in Paris will be waiting when you arrive."

  Pat's chest expanded a good two inches and he felt seven foot tall.

  Kate telephoned Sean every night. It was the first time they had been parted since she had resigned from running Crispin's office in London. She missed him desperately - and he missed her - "Do you realise what this is doing to me? I'm not eating properly, I can't sleep at nights ..."

  "Get used to it, darling. I'm going on a cruise with Pat when we get back -"

  "A cruise -"

  "To Australia."

  "But Kate, we're flying to Australia. Going by ship takes too long."

  Kate had her way. When they left for Australia at the end of that month, all three of them sailed on the Ocean Queen. Pat and Sean spent twenty-seven wonderful days together - swimming in the pool, playing deck games, sight-seeing at ports of call. They were the best-looking "family" aboard ship. Kate never felt more proud in her life. When Pat left the ship at Hong Kong to fly back to London and school he squeezed her arm in a grown-up way. "You're the best pal a boy ever had, Kate. Not only that, I bet no one ever had a pal who looks as good as you in a swimsuit."

  "Cheeky young bugger," Sean growled afterwards. "Another few years and I'll be fighting him off for your favours."

  "Oh I don't know," Kate mused, "I hope I don't have to wait anything like as long as a few years."

  Kate was never happier. She belonged. She loved and was loved in return. In a way, she had come to symbolise the sixties. Old taboos were giving ground in the face of a social, and sexual, revolution. Not that Kate saw herself as a revolutionary - she merely lived her life according to the advice Yvette had given her - "Always remember," Yvette had said, "it's what you feel in your heart that matters."