A more conspicuous hesitation. “Devlin.”
He’d been right after all. Simon felt a brief satisfaction before his thoughts skidded off in several directions at once, all disturbing, all intriguing. How in the world had Devlin got hold of this information? Why on earth should he want it? Could he be planning to use it against the family in some way? Simon couldn’t help thinking how furious Ben and Duncan would be when he told them about this call.
Now he retorted, “The information you want is confidential.”
“I appreciate that, Doctor. I just wanted a general indication of whether she’d got through all right.”
“I’m not a doctor.”
“What?” There was a stunned pause. “But the girl said Who am I speaking to then?”
“This is the family solicitor.”
Another pause. “Your name?”
“Simon Jardine.”
The silence drew out. Devlin’s voice said very coldly, “I was misinformed.”
A click and he had rung off.
With a glare at his watch, Simon strode rapidly out of the building into the last of the rain and, failing to find a cab, arrived at the police station a good twenty minutes after DS Wilson had left for the day.
Chapter Two
TERRY DEVLIN spent the rest of the afternoon in a state of angry self-reproach. The call had been a complete misjudgement, the blunder with the lawyer nothing less than excruciating. What had he been thinking of? Why couldn’t he have waited? It would only have been a matter of an hour, two at the most. The wages of impatience. Now Duncan and Alice would know he had phoned, would be appalled at his intrusion. Daring to call himself a friend of the family! Presuming to ask about Catherine’s operation! Having by some despicable underhand means managed to find out about it! They would be deeply offended, and who could blame them.
Just an hour or two. Why, oh why, couldn’t he have shown a little patience?
He snapped instructions into the intercom, heard the imperious note in his voice, and moderated his tone abruptly. He was leaving, he told Bridget, would she cancel the rest of the day and summon the car immediately. Please this more reasonably. If she would be so kind this contritely.
Bridget came in, wearing her uncompromising face. “You have an interview with the Sunday Independent starting in two minutes.”
“Can’t it be put off?”
“I think that would be unwise since the journalist is waiting just outside and the time and venue have already been changed twice.”
He gave in with a shake of his head. “All right. But nothing after that.”
Bridget asked if he would like the last two meetings of the day rescheduled for the morning.
“No. Tell everyone to go ahead without me.”
This was unheard of, not Terry’s style at all, and he saw Bridget hesitate and eye him cautiously, like someone who has found herself in a cage with an animal of uncertain temperament.
He sighed and raised an upturned palm in a gesture that was partly an apology, partly an expression of helplessness, and she gave a rapid nod of understanding. Terry’s daughter had been seriously ill, the recuperation slow, and during the months of his wretchedness and inattention Bridget had of necessity become a master of flexibility and improvisation, as well as a holder of forts, large and small. Then, just when his daughter seemed to be recovering and Bridget and the rest of the staff had thought life was settling down again, this new and terrible anxiety had overtaken him, a crisis whose cause he couldn’t begin to explain to her, nor indeed to anyone else who found themselves on the receiving end of one of his unprovoked bursts of ill temper.
“And you mentioned you had a seven-thirty appointment this evening,”
she said. “Will you still be keeping ‘
“You bet!” Terry cried with such ferocity that Bridget’s eyes rounded momentarily. He repeated more reasonably, “You bet.”
She plucked up courage to ask, “Where is the meeting, so Pat will know what time to pick you up?”
“The Shelbournc.”
He saw her eyebrows lift in unspoken surprise.
“Shall Pat pick you up from home, then, at seven ten?”
“Seven twenty.”
“You want to be late?”
“I want to be late.”
Moving on from this topic with something like relief, Bridget asked, “Will you want to freshen up?” This was her way of saying he needed to comb his hair and make himself presentable.
Obediently, Terry went through to the adjoining bathroom and faced the glass. He saw a man who looked weary, unhealthy and overweight. Since he had given up all pretence of taking care of himself some four years ago, these were conditions he richly deserved, though this didn’t prevent him from feeling disappointment at the speed and relentlessness with which his body had given up the fight. Three extra stone had fixed themselves to his midriff and surrounding areas, his knees were creaking under the strain, his eyes had grown pouches and his skin had taken on a patchy uneven tone. His hair was beginning to grey and recede and if he was being ruthlessly honest there was a bare patch on his crown which, having been the size of a fifty-pence coin, was gaining currency by the day. His doctor told him the usual things doctors were paid to say, that he should drink less and eat less and take exercise. In the meantime, he looked nearer to fifty than forty. However, it was not his age or weight that preoccupied him as he looked in the glass, but the unprecedented doubt and uncertainty he saw reflected there. Maeve’s illness had pulled him up short. Catherine’s accident had shaken him. It seemed that fate was trying to bring him down off his high perch, and for the first time in his life he felt he had lost confidence and direction.
“It’s a feature article,” Bridget reminded him when he emerged, washed and combed. “For the main body of the paper, to mark the opening of The Kavanagh. Being a feature, you’re to expect all sorts of questions.”
“I don’t want all sorts of questions.”
“Anne did warn you.”
Anne was the PR girl. He hardly remembered the briefing, but then there was no accounting for the things that passed him by these days.
“Anne will be sitting in. She’ll fend off anything unsuitable.”
The journalist was a tiny girl clad in tight black trousers and skimpy top with cropped blonde hair, and so young that she might have been Maeve’s age and straight out of school.
His smile appeared mechanically; he had long since learnt to hide most emotions certainly indifference and impatience behind a smile. Assuming the rest of his required role was more difficult, however. From the time that the business world had started to take notice of him, some fifteen years back, he had been content to take on the various guises allotted to him by the press. First it had been the boy from the bogs on the up and up, the cheeky chap pie who never missed a trick; then, following a round of acquisitions, he had become the daring young entrepreneur with the Midas touch; latterly, by a mysterious process of metamorphosis, he had grown into a pillar of the business community, a champion of the New Ireland. Not that he must ever fail to mention the rockier moments in his career, nor his humble beginnings, nor his gratitude for all that life and a booming Ireland had given him. He had learnt that so far as the press was concerned no cliche was so overblown that it should be left unprinted. Local boy made good. Rags to riches. Golden touch. Sometimes he felt like a living banality.
From the start it had always been easier to give them what they wanted, a Terry Devlin who was confident, outgoing, provocative, quick to joke and quicker to laugh. Over time this simplistic and distorted version of himself had become a habit as well as a shield. But today he could summon neither the energy nor the will to step into his role, and he faced the young journalist with an empty smile fuelled by an empty heart.
The journalist went straight to the large west-facing window at the far corner of his office to gaze at the view.
“That’s why I chose this site,” he said, coming up beside he
r. “It’s the only place you can look straight along the river for such a distance a mile in fact. The only place you can see five bridges in a row.”
Below them, the Liffey was a pale grey beneath an insipid May sun. The water had the smooth stagnant look of a canal. From this vantage point the bridges, one behind the other, seemed to number more than five and to crowd the river.
“Wasn’t it the land prices that attracted you? The fact that this was a derelict area?”
“That too, of course.”
“Two birds with one stone?”
He broadened his smile. “And why not?”
“And you can see The Kavanagh from here, can’t you?”
“Just the top storey.”
“But gratifying all the same, I imagine.”
“Nice to keep an eye. Know it’s still there.”
She turned to face him. “But you’re pleased with it?”
“It’s the best hotel we could build.”
“Was that your purpose, to build the finest hotel in Dublin?”
“Well, it has five stars.”
“That wasn’t quite my question. I meant the hotel that would be acknowledged as the finest in the city?”
“It’s intended to be the best you can get anywhere.”
She tried another tack. “Would you describe yourself as a proud man?”
“Without wishing to split hairs, in what sense do you mean?”
“A man who is proud of his achievements.”
“Ah, in that sense yes. Overall.”
“Only overall? So there are things you’re not so proud of?”
“Inevitably.”
She smiled ingenuously. “Such as?”
Scenting danger, the PR girl moved forward, ready to catch his signal.
“Well, as you will have garnered from the press cuttings I have made a few mistakes in my time.”
“Business or personal?”
He made a gesture as if to award her marks for trying. “Business. I would only count my business mistakes to a stranger.”
“But to yourself?”
“To myself?” He made a show of considering this. “I think I could be relied on to count all my mistakes, honestly and without favour.”
“You have regrets?”
“Everyone has regrets.”
“What are your main regrets?”
“Business or personal?” And he offered a cautionary smile to show that this was just part of the game and he had no intention of answering anything to do with his private life.
“Both.”
“In business I would say that I have most regretted misreading situations. Misjudging them.”
“Does that happen very often?”
“Not often, but occasionally.”
“With serious results?”
He shrugged. “With less than satisfactory results.”
“Are you a forgiving person?”
The question took him off-guard and he must have let it show because she quickly rephrased it more forcefully. “Do you forgive people who have let you down?”
“Forgive? It’s usually irrelevant by the time ... I don’t concern myself with holding grudges, if that’s what you mean.”
“Is that because you can afford to, or because you have a forgiving nature?”
He thought about that for a moment. “Rivalry is perfectly natural, and you could say that rivalry is based on not forgiving or forgetting that someone managed to get the better of you last time, and making darned sure that you are the one to get the upper hand at the next opportunity. Men are naturally competitive. It’s one of things that makes the world go round.”
“But if someone hasn’t played fair?”
“Fair has many interpretations.”
“Done the dirty on you. Tried to cheat you.”
Immediately, he thought of Ben Galitza. “I would not forget,” he said solemnly. “No, I would not forget.”
“Forgive?”
“I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Life’s too short. One must move on.”
“Indeed? People say you don’t move on. People say you never forgive.”
“I can’t answer for what people say.”
“So you don’t care what they say?”
“I care very much what certain people say, people I respect.”
“And in your personal life? Do you forgive and forget there?” She was fishing unashamedly, though more in hope than expectation.
“By definition, that is personal.”
She nodded philosophically. “Would you say it’s necessary to be ruthless to achieve success?”
He laughed briefly but without humour. “It’s a fine word -ruthless. The ruthless businessman. The ruthless operator. The ruthless bastard. Those words always go together somehow, don’t they? But I wouldn’t say they were mutually dependent. And certainly not something to aspire to.”
“But the description might be apposite none the less.”
“It might. But I don’t think it’s necessary to be ruthless. Rather, meticulous. Or, if I had to be described by an adjective beginning with R, resolute.”
“So, you never give up.”
“I’m single-minded certainly. So long as I believe the prize to be worth winning.”
“You’ve never remarried, Mr. Devlin. No prize worth winning among the ladies of Dublin?”
He didn’t attempt to answer this, nor to laugh it off. Instead he gestured her towards the conference area. “Why don’t we talk about hotels now?”
The girl had the cheek to answer, “I thought we were.”
On the journey home, Terry kept going back over his day and found little to ease his agony of mind. At some point after they had crossed the Liffey, Pat asked him if he would like to go round by The Kavanagh, a detour they generally made once or twice a week. But Terry was in no mood for discussions with the hotel staff, nor with anyone else for that matter, and told Pat he would go straight home. So they went on past Trinity and the Castle, towards the southern suburbs, and he was aware of little else until they were turning in through the gates and Pat was confirming that he’d bring the car round again at seven twenty.
Bridget must have phoned ahead as usual because Mrs. Ellis was waiting at the door, one hand restraining Conn, who was struggling to break free and jump against his chest like the crazy dog that he was.
“Well, here you are again, Mr. Devlin,” said Mrs. Ellis, meaning that he was home once more at a reasonable time. “And will you be wanting dinner?”
He explained that he would be going out again at seven twenty, he wasn’t sure how long for, and would find something to eat along the way. “But for Maeve .. .?” He knew that Mrs. Ellis needed no reminding, but he couldn’t help asking all the same.
“She’s sleeping now,” said Mrs. Ellis, ‘but she said to wake her at six and that she might fancy some salmon for supper, though to be on the safe side I’ve prepared those vegetables she likes, the kind for stir-frying.”
For someone schooled in the Irish-French cookery tradition her own incontestable description a stir-fry represented something of a departure not to mention a challenge, and he made a point of thanking her for taking so much trouble.
Over the last few months whenever Maeve was at home and sleeping like this he would often go upstairs and look in on her as he used to do when she was a small child. Today, however, he headed straight for his study, partly because she would be waking soon and he didn’t want to disturb her prematurely, partly because Fergal’s call, now thirty minutes overdue, would be coming through on his mobile at any moment and he didn’t want to take it in a place where he might be overheard.
Conn, the black thief, slunk in through the study door before Terry had the chance to shut him out and limped on his three and a half good legs to his unofficial perch by the bookcase, where, in an attempt to keep a low profile, he curled up immediately and feigned sleep.
Terry sat heavily at the desk and thought: Well, what is to be salvaged then?
What can be done that won’t make everything worse?
Duncan Langley would have heard about his call by now, perhaps Alice Langley too, and would have drawn their own conclusions. There was nothing that could be done about that. But Catherine herself he could only pray to God that the family wouldn’t tell her. It was too painful to imagine how she would judge him. She would think he was prying in the most gratuitous way, or he flinched at each new thought having the gall to patronise her, to take some sort of perverse satisfaction in her tragedy, or most unbearable of all that he still had ‘feelings’ for her and in some demeaning way was trying to win her favour.
Four years ago, in a burst of madness, he’d written her a letter, a foolish outpouring born of loss and loneliness and what he’d imagined at the time to be love. The letter had embarrassed her; it had very rapidly embarrassed him. She had delivered the only reply she could have made, also in the form of a letter, which he’d promptly consigned to the bin, as he very much hoped she had done with his. His phone call today had been nothing to do with this particular aspect of the past. If Catherine thought otherwise, there was nothing he could do to put her right. And yet, and yet .. . the demon pride would not be subdued. It pierced him, and he stung.
For a moment he could see no way forward. He stared at the photographs on the desk top, cased in bulky green leather frames, and felt that everything he held dear had slipped away.
Most of the photographs were from way back: a picture of his late wife, taken a few months after their marriage; a formal shot of the wedding itself, the two of them looking so young and nervous outside the church; then a series of Maeve, as a fluffy-haired baby, as a schoolgirl in uniform with a cheeky spark in her gypsy eyes, and most recently as a student nurse, looking serene and lovely in her natural unaffected way.
These pictures stood to the left. To the right was a picture of his most successful horse, Hellinger’s Dip, a sprinter with three wins to his credit; and next to this, a landscape photograph of Morne, which had been Catherine’s childhood home and was now, largely by chance or so it felt, his own, though he could never bring himself to think of it in that way. The photograph dated back to the late sixties, a time when Lizzie, Catherine’s mother, had herself been a young woman there, and Terry, a feckless boy of eight or nine, had passed the gates every day on his way to school or more likely to snare rabbits, and had known the place, inevitably, as ‘the big house’, though by Ascendancy standards it wasn’t big at all, a long way short of a mansion, more a modest English vicarage. In keeping with his memories of that time this was a distant view, taken from a hill a half mile away, the house a compact oblong sheltering in its verdant demesne, a rolling upward-sloping landscape of gardens, fields and woodland, which from this high angle looked larger and more impressive than its thirty acres. He had found a print of this photograph in an attic and had it blown up, partly because it was a fine picture, but also because he was a nostalgic man and it showed in all its leafy glory a patch of ancient oak forest to the south-west of the house that had been cut for timber a few years afterwards and then abandoned to hazel and scrub.
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