Last of the Great Romantics

by Claudia Carroll

  'Hardly the same thing, Mummy.'

  'Amazing, isn't it,' Lucasta went on, 'how your father can still act like such a tosser even from beyond the grave? Well, all I can say is I hope he comes back as a hair louse on a filthy five-year-old child's head in his next reincarnation. Serve the bastard right. Where is his new bit on the side anyway?'

  'In the family room with the others. Come on, Mummy, you're going to have to meet her and get it over with. She's staying for the memorial service, you know.'

  'Bugger,' replied Lucasta, taking another large gulp of gin. 'What's this one called, anyway?'

  'She's called Shelley-Marie. Oh, and one more thing: I think you'd better prepare yourself for a shock. Andrew's already christened her Miss Plastic Fantastic.'

  'Oh, you have art!' Shelley-Marie exclaimed as she walked over to a giant tapestry in the family room. 'I love art!'

  Mrs Flanagan merely grunted in reply, eyeing this upstart new arrival suspiciously, as though she was going to rob them blind at any moment. Daisy, true to form, had saddled up a horse and ridden as geographically far as it was possible to get from Davenport Hall. Unusually for her, she barely said two words on the whole dismal journey home and didn't even bother going into the house when they eventually arrived back. She just headed for the stables, white-faced and red-eyed, still clinging to the family standard as though it were a security blanket. Shelley-Marie, meanwhile, continued to waltz around the room, exclaiming in wonder at everything that caught her eye. 'Oh my good Lord, WINDOWS! I have never set eyes on windows that big in all my born days!'

  By now, she had taken off her veiled hat and coat and thrown them over the back of an armchair, making herself completely at home. She couldn't have been more than about thirty years old, although she looked older, mainly because of the heavy pan-stick make-up she was wearing. She was big in every sense of the word, six feet tall and large-boned with big brassy blonde hair backcombed to within an inch of its life, Dolly Parton style. She was a good hefty clothes size to boot and the miniskirt she wore with three-inch-high hooker boots was at least two sizes too small for her. She had long false fingernails with a diamanté stud in each of them, worn with a wedding band and an engagement ring the size of the rock of Gibraltar on the third finger of her left hand. She was happily galumphing around the Drawing Room, declaring that there as sure as hell were no homes like this in her home town back in South Carolina and that if only her poor family could see her now, they'd darn well bust with pride.

  'Cos you're finally in a house with a roof on it?' muttered Mrs Flanagan under her breath from the far corner of the room, where she sat slumped in an armchair watching the sideshow.

  'I sure wish you were here to see me now, Jackie my darlin',' Shelley-Marie went on, addressing the tin box containing his ashes on top of the fireplace and shouting, as though all those who'd reached the afterlife were hard of hearing. Her voice was like a southern version of Marilyn Monroe's, breathless and little-girlish, totally at odds with her colossal frame. 'Can you hear me, Jackie my love? Here I am, welcomed into the lovin' bosom of your first family like I truly belonged. It's just so fittin' that I can give them the deep comfort of knowin' how happy you were in your final few days with me—'

  At this morbid thought, she broke off, fluttering her hands in front of her face as though to indicate deep emotion. 'Oh, I sure do apologize,' she said, her voice trilling like a soprano's, 'it's the grief hittin' home. I declare I'll never find another lover like ol' Jackie as long as I live. Why, right up till the morning of the day he passed on there was no stoppin' him. He had the sex drive of a high school teenager.' She began to sniffle, dabbing the corners of her eyes with a long, floaty chiffon scarf she was wearing, being extra careful not to rub off her industrial strength eye make-up.

  'Jaysus,' muttered Mrs Flanagan, 'it's The Jerry Springer Show come to life.'

  Meanwhile, Portia and Lucasta bumped into Andrew on their way down the long corridor which led to the family room.

  'Bad news, I'm afraid,' he said, slipping an arm around each of them. 'I've finally got through to the registrar at the Little White Wedding Chapel and her story checks out. Shelley-Marie married your father exactly ten days ago. Even the serial number on her marriage cert. is authentic'

  Shelley-Marie wasn't quite so grief-stricken on the long drive back to Davenport Hall that she forgot to whip a copy of her marriage certificate out of her faux-crocodile handbag. That and a wedding photo clearly showing her towering over Blackjack, beaming at the camera and waving her bouquet while her bridegroom looked as though he was having great difficulty standing erect. There was no best man in the picture, but she had five bridesmaids, all of whom must have been related to her; they were all Amazonian giants, well over six feet tall, all with the same big hair, big teeth and big boobs. Her enormous fluffy white train must have been about fifteen feet long; it cascaded over all of the bridesmaids' feet like there'd just been a foam fight, virtually obscuring her new husband.

  'The registrar particularly remembered the wedding,' Andrew went on, 'because he said the bride had a ludicrously long train with her dress which didn't even fit through the door. He didn't recall much about your father, just that he was a bit the worse for drink.'

  'Shower of bastards!' said Lucasta, suddenly furious. 'And now the trollop thinks that she can just waltz in here, waving her marriage certificate and that we'll welcome her with open arms? Does she honestly think that's what deathbeds are for? Remarriage? Where is she? I'll wrap the wedding train around her deep-fat-fried neck.'

  'Mummy,' said Portia warningly but it was too late. Lucasta swept into the family room as though clad in battle dress ready to see off the upstart invader and not dressed in her customary floor-length nightie with an oilskin jacket thrown over it.

  'Fag!' she commanded as soon as she burst through the heavy oak door. Mrs Flanagan immediately sprang into action, waddling over to the fireplace and grabbing a box of Marlboro Lights which were sitting there.

  'Light!' Again, Mrs Flanagan did as she was told, sniffing that there was a battle royal ahead. Shelley-Marie turned to flash her toothy smile at her, a bit unsure of what to make of this weird-looking woman glowering at her. Then the fog lifted as she put two and two together and, without hesitating, rushed towards Lucasta, throwing her arms around her neck.

  'Oh, Lady Davenport, it's just so wonderful to meet you! Your ex-husband, I mean my husband, oh hell, you know I'm talkin' about ol' Jackie, well, he told me so much about you! He always used to say that his first wife was a deeply spiritual person who had a real connection with the other side and not just a washed-up ol' booze hound like some unkind folks said.'

  There was a long silence as Portia and Mrs Flanagan looked at Lucasta to see how she'd take this. Andrew moved over towards them, ready to leap in and break up a fight at any second.

  'Did the old git really say that about me? That I was deeply spiritual?' she asked, pleased.

  'He sure did, my lady,' replied Shelley-Marie without a trace of guile. 'Why, as a matter of fact, I was gonna ask you to do my star chart for me. I'm an Aquarian.'

  She'd hit a home run.

  'Well, I'm Libra but I do have Aquarius rising,' replied Lucasta, totally disarmed. 'That means we get on.'

  'Oh my Lord above, I am mighty pleased to hear that,' gushed Shelley-Marie, hugging her tightly in a big bear grip. 'Jackie talked 'bout you all the time, said he was sure that you and me would have a whole lot in common. You wanna know somethin'? I'm a little bit clairvoyant myself and I'm wonderin' if you and me maybe met up in a past life somewhere? I just feel such a strong connection with you. Have you ever been regressed?'

  Yet another bull's eye.

  Lucasta was known to be a great believer in past lives and regularly visited a new age spiritualist in Kildare in the hopes that it would unearth something spectacular which she could brag about for years to come. Not with great success, however: up to this point she had only discovered, after several very exp
ensive hypnosis sessions, that she'd worked as an assistant dung-gatherer during the Black Death. Ever the eternal optimist, though, she continued to fork out large chunks of cash, convinced that one of these days it would turn out she'd really been Queen Elizabeth I.

  'Oh, you really won't believe this,' said Lucasta, completely taken in, 'but I get my regression done as regularly as other women get highlights. How very interesting. And what have you uncovered so far, my dear?'

  'Why don't we Irish up some coffee and I'll tell you all about it,' said Shelley-Marie, linking arms with Lucasta companionably. 'You know, already I have the strongest feelin' that you're a kindred spirit with my ol' grandma back in Kentucky. Why, you could even be her celestial twin.'

  'Really? How astonishing.' Lucasta was mesmerized.

  'For sure. She used to wander around the projects wearing nothin' but her nightgown too. It's a sure sign that you're in touch with the angelic realm.'

  'Have you ever seen anything like it?' Portia whispered to Andrew and Mrs Flanagan. 'She's playing her like a violin.'

  'She's certainly done her research all right,' said Andrew grimly.

  'Yeah, she has the poor unfortunate eating out of her hand,' said Mrs Flanagan. 'It can't be right, though, to take advantage of the afflicted like that. Yer mother's bad enough without being encouraged.'

  It was hours later when Daisy finally hacked back to the Hall, frozen to the bone. The Hall was in darkness as she stumped her way up the great oak staircase, still clutching her riding crop, with her boots caked in mud. She kicked her way up as far as the second flight of stairs, knowing full well that her muddy boots were destroying Portia's brand-new Persian carpet and, for once, not caring. She was well beyond tears now, too emotionally drained for anything but sleep. As she thumped her way across the landing which led to the family bedrooms, she heard a voice coming from Lucasta's room. There was a light shining under the door which emboldened Daisy to knock.

  'Oh, there you are, sweetie; I was just doing my nightly release meditations. Where on earth have you been all evening?' said Lucasta, standing at her dressing table enthusiastically mixing a drink and studying the measures as meticulously as a scientist in a laboratory.

  'Out.' Daisy sounded sullen, like a wounded child with no shoulder to cry on.

  'Well, you silly goose, you completely missed Shelley-Marie's cocktail-making lesson. Apparently she's worked in bars all her life to support herself through . . . beauty school, I think she called it; anyway, she's certainly picked up a trick or two. That's how she met your father, you know.'

  'So mixing drinks wasn't the only thing the bitch picked up.' Daisy's temper, never far from the surface, was really starting to flare up now.

  'She's just taught me this wonderful new way of making a g. and t.,' Lucasta rambled on, concentrating on the bottles in front of her and ignoring the fountain of bile spewing from Daisy. 'You add crushed ice, then a pinch of vermouth over the gin and then shake the bejaysus out of it before serving. Revelation. A most talented young lady. Wish I'd had the foresight to send you off to work in a bar when you were a teenager, you might have got yourself a husband by now.'

  'Where is she?' asked Daisy furiously, the riding crop in her left hand starting to twitch dangerously. Not just at her mother's customary lack of tact, she was well used to that, but at the fact that she appeared to have been won over with so little effort on Shelley-Marie's part.

  'Well, the Mauve Suite was free so I've put her in there. Portia almost had a fit because she wants to keep it ready for proper paying guests, but I told her to get lost. I mean, now that the opening night freeloaders have all buggered off, they're not exactly battering the door down to come and stay here, are they? Anyway, Shelley-Marie is family now, whether you bloody well like it or not. Perfectly lovely girl. And let's face it, anyone who'd go and marry your bollocks of a father without a gun being put to her head deserves sainthood.'

  Poor Father Finnegan, parish priest at Ballyroan for over thirty years, had never seen a memorial service like it. Quite apart from the low turnout (aside from the family, only a dozen or so people had turned up to pay their last respects, most of whom had got the date confused and thought they were coming to parish bingo) there was the delicate question of who the chief mourner was going to be.

  It was unprecedented, certainly in Ballyroan, for the widow of the deceased to be accompanied by his considerably younger second wife, especially as it seemed that the ink was barely dry on the marriage licence. Most irregular, he thought, although he knew the Davenports to be, well, an eccentric family to put it mildly. They certainly weren't regular churchgoers, that was for certain. And if Father Finnegan had one pet hate, it was parishioners who didn't show their faces inside the tiny church of Saint Claire from one end of a decade to another, until they wanted a religious service on demand, be it a wedding, a christening, or in this case, a memorial service. True, he had married Portia Davenport himself the year before last, but she was such a gentle, lovely person, always so friendly and warm-hearted, that it was hard for him to refuse her. Her mother Lucasta was quite another story though.

  He could still recall the time, years ago now, when she set up a rival church in the grounds of Davenport Hall. The Temple of Isis she had called it, although it was really just a fancy word for paganism as far as he could see. There was a lot of nudity involved and cavorting in Loch Moluag on the estate and, pretty soon, a whole load of undesirable types had descended on Ballyroan, new-age hippies who were systematically destroying the peaceful calm of the town. They all seemed to have tattoos and drove dirty great camper vans that smelt of marijuana. Then there were the women who openly breastfed in public as they signed on for social welfare in the tiny village post office, which did little to impress the more conservative element of the parish. Word had quickly got back to his bishop in Kildare who demanded that poor Father Finnegan put a stop to this lunatic debauchery once and for all. However, it took a brave man to talk sense to Lucasta Davenport, he reflected, a braver man than him. She'd unceremoniously thrown him out of the Hall in language no lady should ever use.

  'You'll be looking for tithes next, you narrow-minded fascist bastard!' she'd screeched at him as his Fiat Panda backfired its way down the driveway. 'As far as I'm concerned, my tithes are something that are attached to my buttocks.'

  And now here she was standing outside the tiny church with her family waiting for the service to begin. 'Now look here,' she'd said to him imperiously, as if she were doing him a great favour in gracing the church with her presence, instead of it being the other way around. 'It's all very straightforward really. This is my husband's wife, simple as that,' she said, waving at Shelley-Marie who was hovering by her side like Mrs Danvers. 'I know, I know, it would have been a lot easier if Blackjack had just been gay, like the rest of the aristocracy, but there you are. Now let's just get this over with and pray that none of the retarded cousins show up.'

  As if this wasn't bad enough, there appeared to be an altercation of some sort, Father Finnegan couldn't help noticing, between that pretty young Daisy Davenport and the new widow.

  'No member of my family has ever gone to their final resting place without this being laid over them,' Daisy was snarling at Shelley-Marie, waving the tattered standard threateningly under her nose. 'If you don't like it, you can shove it up your lardy arse.'

  'Why, all I said was that it looks like a picture of two cats doin' the business, that's all. I'm pickin' up so much hostility from you, Miss Daisy, when all I want is for us to be friends. Your papa often visits me in my dreams and I know that was his dyin' wish. Don't take it out on me just because you don't have a boyfriend.'

  'Perhaps we might get started now?' Father Finnegan, trained in conflict resolution, judged this to be an opportune moment to intervene. The priest was at his wits' end, however, to think of something respectful he could say about the deceased in his eulogy. It was doubly hard, given that he had barely known him and also that his private life
seemed so, well, colourful to say the least.

  'John Davenport was, emm—' He broke off as his eye wandered down along the front pew. There were his two wives, sitting companionably side by side, Portia and her husband holding hands and then young Daisy looking distraught and sitting all by herself at the very end of the pew. Mrs Flanagan, whom he knew only slightly, was sitting in the back row by the door, and kept popping in and out for a cigarette. 'John Davenport was a family man,' he said without very much conviction. 'He valued his family above all else and, emm . . .' He silently racked his brains to think of more. 'He was a compassionate man, he certainly cared about, emm, about . . . those he loved.'

  Portia glanced across at Andrew, deeply embarrassed at a priest having to He so blatantly from the pulpit. Agnes and Lucy Kennedy, two elderly spinster sisters from the nearby town of Newbridge, were sitting behind them looking equally at sea.

  'Excuse me,' Agnes whispered to Portia, leaning forward in her seat. 'Are we at the right funeral?'

  Portia nodded, not blaming her a bit for being confused.

  'Sure, God love poor Father Finnegan,' said Lucy, who was a bit deaf, in a loud stage whisper clearly audible around the church. 'What a dreadful job to have to eulogize Blackjack Davenport. Do you remember the time, Agnes dear, he can't have been more than ten years of age, when he called around to our house and ate my gerbil?'

  There was a stony silence as the tiny congregation turned to look at her.

  'Oh, for God's sake, can somebody just say one good thing about him, please!' hissed Daisy, at the end of her tether.

  'Well, there is one thing you can't take away from him,' replied Agnes after a long pause. 'He had the most wonderful head of hair.'

  'Yes, you're quite right,' said Lucy, nodding at her, 'just like Clark Gable's. Not a bit oily at all.'

  Pretty soon the whole awful ordeal was over and Blackjack's remains were being ceremoniously carried down the aisle by a red-eyed Daisy. That was, until Shelley-Marie overtook her and snatched the tiny tin box out of her hands, marching triumphantly ahead of her like a rugby player who'd just scored a try. Lucasta, meanwhile, had made her way around to the church organ behind the altar, but instead of playing a suitable hymn, she was bashing out one of her favourite songs: 'Make a Bonfire of Your Troubles'.