Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  “Where’s Sarah?”

  “I imagine that’s meant for me to change the subject,” Sylvie said, raising her brow, “she’s with our neighbor an’ can talk of little other than yerself. Yer in real trouble now, she’s determined to marry ye.”

  Pat smiled and then promptly winced at the pain it caused. “Thank you,” he said, “for everything.”

  “It wasn’t much of anything,” she said shaking her head, a flush of pale pink smattering itself amongst the freckles on her cheeks. “Twas nothin’ compared to what you did.”

  “Aye, it’s hard to match all out stupidity on such a monumental level,” Casey said lightly but Pat saw the worry in his face and the hollows beneath his eyes.

  “An’ how’d ye know who to call?” he asked, the neatness of the situation raising several questions in his mind.

  “There was a wee bit of paper in yer inside pocket that said if ye were found in trouble yer brother was to be called.”

  “Was there?” Pat asked, casting a dark, albeit slitted, look in his brother’s direction.

  Casey was saved from answering by the sound of a scuffle outside the door, several raised voices and the strident tone of a head nurse whose patience was severely taxed.

  Pat saw Casey and Sylvie’s eyes meet in an odd look across his bed.

  “What’s goin’ on then?”

  “That’ll be the papers,” Sylvie said with a rueful look, “they’ve been waitin’ for ye to wake up since ye were brought in.”

  “There’s a lady from one of the English dailies,” Casey said, “an’ her mind seems as sharp as her pen. I’d talk to her first if I were you.”

  “An English reporter?” Pat queried doubtfully.

  “Aye,” Casey grinned, “fame’ll be that way, all sorts of strange things can happen. Yer public is waitin’ boy, do I let them in?”

  Pat swallowed and met the dark and steady gaze of Sylvie Larkin. She smiled and nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Let them in,” he said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

  It wasn’t entirely surprising that a man who found the comforts of whiskey so sublime would, of all his interests, find his deepest pleasure within the walls of the family distillery. Jamie had to admit that making whiskey, the delicacies, the slow painstaking process, the unhurried atmosphere of it all gave him a deep sense of peace and well-being. It was unfortunate for him that he rarely had the time to spend there.

  ‘Connemara Mist’ came in a variety of elixirs. From a light, delicate single malt, to the long sweet-noted finish of the sixteen-year-old distillery reserve.

  When Jamie had been fourteen his father had put him to work in the summers in the distillery, a four hundred year old site on the slow-moving and aptly named River Sweet. He’d worked in all areas of the distillery, learning each stage of the process. The hot and heady fumes in the malting process as sprouted barley was dried in anthracite fueled kilns, the great open kettles of the brewhouse where the barley was boiled down to its fermentable sugars, the dance of sugar and yeast that resulted in the beginnings of alcohol, the low wines of first distillation, the soft-hearted feint of the second and the final mind-glazing spirit of the third. This third distillation was eighty percent alcohol. At each stage, he learned how to separate the less desirable elements from the desired, to achieve the level of quality and taste the Kirkpatrick distillery was famous for worldwide.

  The huge warehouse where the casks were stored and matured was his favorite area though, dry and cool with a sweet vanilla-nut scent in the air, dimly lit by the brown and gold of the bourbon-seasoned barrels. Barrels baptized by the harsher American whiskey to leach out the stronger tannins and oak extracts, leaving the wood nicely mellowed and sweetened for the aging of its Irish cousin. The famous names on reserve casks had given him a thrill as a teenager—writers, actors, politicians who understood that the Kirkpatrick name gave their table a certain distinction or just liked to indulge in the finest whiskey made.

  He strolled the aisles, deep and cool on this late October afternoon and wished he could hide amongst the barrels for just a while longer. It was however, a two hour drive back to Belfast and then he’d have to dress for dinner and prepare himself for what was likely to be one of the most unpleasant evenings he’d spent in recent memory.

  “Alexander,” he nodded and smiled at his Master Distiller who was assessing a cask of the ten-year malt.

  “Have a taste, James?”

  He stopped and accepted the glass Alexander held out to him, noted its clarity and pure gold reflection, took a taste and let it linger on his tongue giving the palate a chance to secure the various flavors. It felt like silk in his mouth, its warmth expanding to fill out into notes of heather and honey, with an undernote of chocolate and a slightly dry finish. Perfection.

  “I’d say it’s ready, what do you think?”

  “Absolutely,” Alexander nodded, his nose drinking in the heady fumes with the look of a man who knows he may very well have the best job on the planet. “Lena was through here a minute ago, said if I saw ye to let ye know that ye’d a call from home.”

  “Thank you,” he returned the glass to Alex and with a sigh turned towards the offices high up in the warehouse that looked out over the casks.

  Once inside he dialed the numbers for home and waited while it rang four times, he was just about to replace the receiver when a breathless and somewhat annoyed female voice answered.

  “You left a message,” he said, trying to sound placatory.

  “I did.”

  “Talk to me then.

  “If—” there was undue stress placed on the word, “you leave right now, you will find you just have time to get home and change for dinner, otherwise you’ll have to swap clothes in the mudroom with my assistance.”

  “I’m leaving now,” Jamie said, smiling at Lena who’d entered the office with a swathe of paper and was now standing and listening most intently to his conversation.

  “Anything I need to sign?” Jamie asked a moment later when he’d gotten off the phone.

  “Nothing,” Lena smirked, “that can’t wait until tomorrow. It sounds as if you are needed rather urgently at home.”

  “Good,” he replied, heading for the door with reluctant speed, only to turn back at the top of the stairs, “call my florist would you Lena, have them send round a bouquet of stargazer lilies to my house would you?”

  “Of course Mr. Kirkpatrick and to whom shall the flowers be sent?”

  “Herself,” Jamie said with a smile.

  “Herself?” Lena gave him a puzzled look, as if he’d taken leave and dropped his senses on the floor in front of her.

  “Yes, she’ll know who they’re for. Have a nice evening Lena, take yourself and Bob out to dinner why don’t you? If you go to Johnny Fortescue’s I’ll arrange to have it put on my account.”

  “Well thank you sir,” Lena said somewhat flustered.

  Leaving the building, Jamie found himself whistling.

  The scene at home was one of severely ruffled calm. The kitchen being the apparent center of the hurricane. Maggie was cursing into a pan of burned pastry, Montmorency was running around with what appeared to be the shank of a cow in his mouth, and Pamela was speaking in severely sweet tones into the phone while spooning a dripping green mess into the garbage. She smiled at him as if the entire scene were normal. Her attempt at having the whole show neatly in hand was rather spoiled by her appearance though. Her hair having been stuffed hastily into a ponytail at some point was either hanging in her face or sticking out at angles from her head. Her white sweater, immaculate when she’d arrived in the morning, had a long greenish streak of some indefinable food substance on it and her face was flushed red with fury.

  “The florist sent round carnations if you can believe it!” She said banging t
he phone down with considerable vigor. “Carnations for a dinner party, they’re funeral flowers for god’s sake. The butcher delivered mutton instead of beef and so when the beef finally did come it went into the oven far too late and won’t possibly be ready on time, the apple tart burned on the bottom because the bake-oven chose today of all days to stop working and—and—,” she sat down on a kitchen chair, Montmorency running in wagging, panting circles around her denim clad calves. “And it’s all going to be a bloody disaster, isn’t it? I should have listened to you and never attempted this in the first place. At least, though, if the undercooked meat kills them we’ll have flowers handy for the wake.” She gave a ragged laugh that was half exasperation and half frustrated tears.

  Jamie wordlessly poured her a glass of wine from one of the decanted bottles and handed it to her.

  “Drink it all and then go upstairs and have a bath. You’ve got an hour before we need to be dressed and downstairs. What’s left to do Maggie and I can sort out between the two of us. I make a champion crème caramel, don’t I, Maggie?”

  “Ye do,” Maggie replied.

  “But I’m not staying to dinner,” she blew a stray lock of hair out of her face, looking warily at him over her wineglass.

  Jamie smiled sweetly, “Oh yes you are, this party was your idea and seeing as your guest list leaves something to be desired I think you should join me in the festivities. Go on,” he pointed out of the kitchen, “and have a soak, you look as though you deserve it.”

  An hour later there was a crème caramel glistering on the counter, Jamie was freshly showered, shaved and attired in a pair of gray Italian silk trousers, a crisp white shirt and a jacket to match the pants. It was rather more casual than dinner party attire generally called for, but it had been laid out on his bed and he surmised that it was all part of some grandly laid scheme.

  He met Pamela coming down the hallway and stopped for a moment to admire the transformation she’d undergone. For a girl who’d no intention of staying to dinner, she’d obviously brought along all the accoutrements that femininity required for just such an evening. Her dress was a floating, ethereal thing of autumnal browns with just a hint of red setting fire to the green of her eyes. Clipped on one shoulder toga fashion, it left the other bare and vulnerable. Her hair was up, parted and twisted down the sides of her face and tied low on her neck. Helen, he mused and just as likely to start a war here at Kirkpatrick’s Folly as the original had been in Troy.

  “You look lovely,” he said, offering her his arm at the top of the stairs.

  “Thank you for the lilies,” she said and took the arm, “how’d you know? They’re my favorite flower.”

  “Educated guess.”

  They parted at the dining room doors just as the bell rang.

  “Ready to enter the lion’s den?” she asked, taking a shaky breath as footsteps sounded along the hall.

  “Only question is,” Jamie said quietly, “are we the lions or the Christians?”

  “I imagine,” she murmured as the Duke and his toothy wife came into view, “we’re a little of both.”

  Dinner was, if not entirely digestible, certainly not dull.

  Jamie, educated by Jesuits, was well-schooled in the art of dissembling. The entire table, with the possible and noteworthy exception of the fair Reverend, was charmed, disarmed and thoroughly under his spell before the second spate of wine had been served. He flirted lightly with the women and skillfully wove banter and business talk, into a tapestry all the more confusing for its variety of threads, with the men. He professed great interest and displayed detailed knowledge of the art of deep sea fishing, (the Duke’s grand passion) then proceeded to flatter, cajole and flagrantly butter the beaming Duke up. Women blushed, men guffawed and all professed to not knowing when they’d had a better time. Lucien Broughton, seated three seats down to Jamie’s right, remained stoic and apparently impervious to the caducean rod of Jamie’s charm. Pamela, seated rather purposefully next to him, could get no sense of his thoughts nor feelings. He ate rather spartanly, refused the wine and later the whiskey and still later the brandy. He answered any question directed at him, was polite and to the point and then returned to a pale contemplation of the rest of the assemblage.

  She herself tried to engage him in small conversation, only to have him answer in words of three syllables or less, apparently untouched by the scent or sight of young female flesh.

  After dessert, the talk inevitably turned to politics, for every man in the room was connected by strings fine or corded to the machinations of government as practiced in Northern Ireland.

  The Duke, face jolly and well shaded by the array of alcohol he’d consumed, had leaned over and looking down the table two places said,

  “What’s this I hear Reverend about you throwing your hat in the political ring?”

  “It’s true,” Lucien replied, carefully placing his folded napkin on the table beside his untouched tea.

  “What would your father think of that, eh Jamie?” the Duke turned to his host, unaware that the whole table had stilled, chatter dying the length of the room like dominoes clocked into silence with one swift stroke.

  Pamela, breath stopped in her throat, watched Jamie’s face for a reaction. There was little to be seen. He sat relaxed, a glass of wine held in his left hand, light refracting through it to cast a puzzle piece shadow of fragmented gold glitter onto his face.

  “I imagine,” he drawled in a tone that held a rapier slice in its edges, “he’d hate it.”

  “What,” the Duke asked, slightly sobered, “d’you have to say to that Reverend Broughton?”

  “I imagine,” Lucien replied, his voice through lack of intonation, matching the cut of Jamie’s own, “Mr. Kirkpatrick is right. But perhaps I’m permitted to ask a question of my own?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “Not having known the gentleman it’s perhaps presumptuous of me to say, but it strikes me that as much as your father would have hated my entering the race, he’d have hated you not entering into the fray even more.”

  “As my father is dead what he would or would not like seems to be rather irrelevant.”

  “Do you not believe in the eternal soul, Lord Kirkpatrick?” Lucien asked quietly, his voice, pale and measured, casting gauntlets before it. “Or does your faith deny heaven to those who leave this earth in an untimely manner?”

  “We leave it to God to damn souls rather than taking such responsibility upon ourselves,” Jamie said easily.

  “How convenient,” Reverend Broughton replied, never once taking his colorless eyes off of Jamie’s face.

  “Well human judgment and error can be a damned inconvenient and ill-informed vice at times Reverend, or have you not found it to be so yourself?”

  “Error at least requires action.”

  “Touché,” Jamie said and rose gracefully from the table, “perhaps all of you would like to join me in the drawing room for drinks?”

  “Of course,” the Duke said with forced joviality and Pamela began to feel rather warmly towards him.

  In the drawing room with the guests scattered about in plush furniture and the tinkle of Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca in the background, the talk turned to real estate, of the new money flushing through the streets of Dublin, the reawakening of the slumbering city on the banks of the tidal Liffey, coming up from the dreaming Georgian days of the last century to find men in mohair suits with harsh accents in her streets. And to witness the death of the old days and perhaps the death even of a nation, brought in chains forged by men who cared only for money. An Ireland of golf courses and resorts, tacky souvenirs and self-mocking patriotism, a Celtic theme park for foreign consumption. So all those who had gone away could come back generations later and shed a tear for the old country.

  “Gentlemen, you speak as if we here in the North had concerns in the Republic,” Lucien said, “w
hen our fortunes are untouched by their own.”

  “Reverend Broughton,” the Duke said coolly, “my family seat is in Cork and has been for seven generations. For many of those generations Ireland was one nation and, God willing, will be again.”

  At this astonishing pronouncement, Mozart’s moonbeam notes paused and fluttered into the opening of Handel’s Water Music.

  “I didn’t know you held such nationalistic notions, Your Grace,” Lucien said and one had to listen very closely to hear the contempt in the words. “However, the facts are that Northern Ireland is part of the Empire, the British Empire and as such marches under a different standard.”

  “D’you think England gives a damn about Northern Ireland?” Jamie’s voice sliced like a seared knife through butter. “Everyone else has shed the bonds of empire and gladly so, even Britain knows when a dead horse has been flogged. Northern Ireland is just the crazed relative in the attic that’s too embarrassing to parade even for eccentric company. The sun has not only set, Reverend Broughton, it’s sunk beyond retrieval and memory. England has used us when it was politically expedient to do so, but she has too many of her own problems at present to care a great deal about a bunch of fanatically loyal Irishmen and, make no mistake Reverend Broughton, to the English you are an Irishman regardless of what flag you fly and what colors you paint your curbstones every July.”

  “In view of the fact that one million people in Ulster are of the Loyalist persuasion that may be a somewhat unfortunate view of things.”

  “Regardless of religion, Reverend,” Jamie said mildly, “everyone in Northern Ireland needs to start looking forward rather than back.”

  “And does looking forward mean looking South?”

  “It means looking in all directions that the compass points, to Europe, to America and yes, to the Republic.”

  “Well said, James,” the Duke said, accepting with a wink and a smile Pamela’s offer to refill his brandy snifter. “This global market notion wafting around in Parliament has its merits. Ireland will need to heal her wounds in order to be fit enough to compete on a world level.”