Who Guards a Prince? Page 2

“Yes, he was original all right,” said Jopley. “Too much so for some people.”

  Prince Arthur’s mind was schooled to docket odd bits of information about people and something now popped up about Morrison and drink. He’d been pie-eyed at a press conference…someone important…embarrassing questions…Jopley would probably remember but his present assessment was that his equerry should be weaned off the subject rather than urged into reminiscence.

  “What you need is a good night’s rest, Edward. Try to turn in early tonight.”

  “I’m dining too, sir,” said Jopley, in a tone of slight reproof. “Her Majesty is very insistent that I be present at all briefings.”

  “Yes, of course,” said the Prince a little testily. Tonight’s dinner was in part a preliminary to his imminent visit to Canada. He could have done without it. It had been a long day and a couple of chops on a tray in front of the telly would have suited him better. Besides, he’d spent more than a year at school in Canada in the not too distant past and felt he knew the country pretty well. Still, his was not to reason why, not yet awhile anyway…

  “At least he’s not like that Australian,” he added with a chuckle. “The one that mixed port and brandy and stayed till four a.m. You can still make it to your mattress before midnight, Edward. Curl up with a good book. Or a bottle. Or something.”

  Jopley smiled but did not answer and the Prince had to repress his curiosity, which had already brought him unpleasantly close to impertinence, as to the nature of Jopley’s sex life.

  Not that he could be any more open about his own. He closed his eyes and sighed. Had he been more intellectually inclined he might have puzzled over the problem of conventional morality. There had been a time when he was happy to choose discreetly but with no qualms of conscience from the many offers which were continually being put his way. But that was before he fell in love. So now, despite the fact that the object of his love was three thousand miles away and he hadn’t seen her for six months and he had no idea how things at present stood between them, he refused all offers. The result was that the moment he allowed his vivid imagination to wander across the Atlantic he found himself in a state of acute and occasionally embarrassing sexual excitement.

  He opened his eyes and shifted his position on the car seat. “Canada,” he murmured. “You know, Edward, I’m really looking forward to this trip. The fresh air, the skiing, hunting in those forests.”

  “And old friends too,” said Jopley.

  “That’s right, Edward. Old friends too.”

  The Prince sighed deeply. Deirdre, he thought. Are you still an old friend? Or are you just an old friend? He said, “It will do us both the world of good.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Three thousand miles to the west Deirdre Connolly was helping the Granda open his birthday mail.

  Every year brought an increasing load, but today, his ninetieth birthday, had seen all records broken and Old Pat Connolly wanted to enjoy every nuance of every greeting. Some of those postmarked Washington gave him special pleasure.

  “Do you see this, Dree?” he cried in his light, high-pitched but still rapid and articulate voice. “This fellow, now, he’d rather be sending me a wreath than a card. May you live another ninety, he writes, God damn his hypocritical soul!”

  Dree smiled mechanically. She was a little preoccupied. Normally she had first sight of all the mail that came to the house and was able to examine her own in privacy. Not that she usually had anything to conceal but today there was a possibility … she pushed the thought out of her mind but in the same instant Old Pat said, “Now here’s something for you, Dree.”

  “Is there? Thanks, Granda,” she said, reaching for the envelope.

  He didn’t give it to her straightaway, but studied the printed exterior.

  “Now what the devil can Emerson Corporation of Montreal have to do with you, girlie?” he asked. “That’s lumber and mining, is it not?”

  She leaned forward so that her shoulder-length hair, dark red to the edge of blackness, fell across the pale oval of her face, and pretended to sort through the scatter of cards and letters.

  “It’s their marine division, I expect,” she said lightly.

  “I’d been interested in a new dinghy design they were financing.”

  “Boats again, is it?” he groaned. “You’ll end up getting yourself drowned. And don’t we have enough good American firms without getting mixed up with these blasted Englishmen?”

  “Canadian, Granda,” she corrected.

  “Same thing,” he grunted. But he passed her the letter.

  It was another hour before she would escape from her grandfather’s study on the pretext of checking that all the catering arrangements for the celebration ceilidh were under way. She retreated to her bedroom and ripped open the envelope.

  It contained nothing the Granda could not have seen. It merely thanked her for her esteemed enquiry and confirmed that arrangements for viewing were unchanged. But it brought the blood racing over the smooth curves of her cheeks as she looked, unseeing, out of her window across the long lawns which ran on all sides from Castlemaine House towards the shadow of the distant pine-woods that marked the inner perimeter of the Connolly estate.

  The Connollys had not always lived in such style. When the first Patrick had arrived, in the mid-nineteenth century, he had settled his pregnant wife in one squalid room in a Boston dock-front tenement and thereafter devoted more of his time to supporting the Fenian Brotherhood than to his own rapidly increasing family.

  The second Patrick, however, while not disapproving his father’s politics, had observed with envy how some Irish families had already established rich and powerful dynasties in Boston. Determined to be independent, he had moved inland to Springfield and set about establishing a small foundry to service the burgeoning New England armaments industry. For a long time the going was rough, but when the European war-clouds appeared distantly on the horizon, he had gone for broke and thrown all his resources, financial, physical and mental, into being ready.

  When war came, the Connolly business boomed in every sense. The first Patrick died of old age and also of anger at the thought of Irish labor providing arms to help the hated English to victory. But his son was triumphant and with his new wealth eradicated the memory of the one-room Boston slum by returning to that city and purchasing a house on Beacon Street as a prelude to establishing his family by force of wealth in Boston Society. Not content with this, he had purchased the New Hampshire estate, which he had sentimentally renamed Castlemaine, and later on, a hunting lodge in North Maine which he had tried to name “Killarney” but which his family simply called The Lodge.

  Not that the old Irish nostalgia had died in them. His son, Patrick the Third, Dree’s granda and now head of the family, was an even more astute businessman than his father and the family fortunes had burgeoned. But politically he was a throwback to his own Fenian grandfather. The great adventure of his life had been his presence at the 1916 Dublin rising, and thereafter time and distance had only sharpened his detestation of all things English and he had given vast support in money and in arms to the Irish Republican movement in all its manifestations.

  The next Patrick, Old Pat’s only son and Dree’s father, had looked set fair to carry the Connolly political attitudes into the highest councils of the land till his tragic death by drowning in a sailing accident off Cape Cod in the early ’sixties. His wife had died with him, and their four children had come to live with Old Pat, first in Boston and then at Castlemaine as this became more and more the old man’s main residence.

  The eldest of the four, Patrick Xavier, or P.X., as he was universally known, looked set to scale the heights that his father had come so close to. Then in 1978 as a U.S. Senator he had gone to Northern Ireland on a private fact-finding tour. While visiting Belfast he had paused to refresh himself with a pint of Guinness in a Catholic Club in the Creggan. In the storeroom under the bar an aluminium keg packed with one hundred pounds of ge
lignite exploded. And again there were tears of grief and anger at Castlemaine House.

  But today, if Dree had anything to do with it, the house would be filled only with merriment. She knew it wouldn’t be an easy task. Her two older brothers and the Granda could find a thousand new ways of irritating each other, even, or especially, on a day like this. But their mutual irritation would be nothing to the explosion which would follow if one whiff of the secret she was nursing was picked up by Old Pat. She remembered the day of the great row six months before and shuddered. But even that memory couldn’t stop her from feeling weak with joyful anticipation as she studied her calendar.

  She’d better ring Goffman to check that the arrangements for the Lodge were perfectly understood, she decided.

  But the bedside phone rang just as she reached for it. It was the gate man, nearly three miles away.

  “Mr Christie’s car just passed through, Miss Dree,” he said. “And I think I can hear the chopper coming.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Christie was her oldest surviving brother. Assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, he now lived in the Beacon Street house with his wife, Judith, and their four daughters. The other brother, Conal, was the family’s new political hope and had flown up from Washington for the ceilidh to be met by the Connolly helicopter at the airport.

  She went downstairs to tell her grandfather.

  As she expected, she found him still in his study. Family occasions always found him at his most Irish and it was here that he kept his collection of mementoes of great men and the great struggle (most of them, so Conal cynically asserted, palpable fakes).

  He was standing by the window, still an arrow-straight figure despite his age.

  “Granda,” she said.

  When he turned he had a gun in his hand, its muzzle pointing straight at her. It was a Webley .45 revolver, very old but gleaming with the light oil rubbed into it every day.

  “Dree,” he said. “Did I ever show you this now?”

  Not more than a thousand times, thought Dree. But she said affectionately, “What’s that, Granda?”

  “It’s the weapon of our great namesake of glorious memory, James Connolly. He carried it on that famous Easter Monday and when he was laid low with a bullet in the ankle, he gave it into my own hands. God rest his soul. Did you know that when those murdering English bastards killed him, they tied him to a chair for he could not stand? Did you know that? They’re an evil people, Dree. Every last one of them. All tainted, all. From bottom to top, and the worst taint is at the top. You’d never forget that, Dree, would you now?”

  Those piercing pale blue eyes fixed on her as though they would read her soul. She forced herself to keep calm and said, “Christie and Conal are on their way, Granda.”

  “Are they now? Good. There are things I want to discuss with them. And you too, Dree. Before the ceilidh begins.”

  Dree’s heart sank. That didn’t sound good. The Granda’s notion of a family discussion was usually a simple, direct statement of his intentions and desires, backed up by a weapon deadlier than the revolver he still held—control of the family wealth. Christie’s salary at Boston U couldn’t keep him at the level his wife, Judith, reckoned was her due. And as for Conal, he knew that his political ambitions would be somewhere over the rainbow without vast financial backing.

  I’m the only one with real hope of financial independence, she told herself with sudden glee, then frowned, partly because the thought made all kinds of unmakable assumptions, and partly because of the pain that independence would cause this old man she so loved.

  The noise of a helicopter’s vanes was now audible. Old Pat put the Webley on his desk.

  “Let’s see what these brothers of yours have to say for themselves,” he said.

  Outside, the huge station wagon which Christie needed to transport his family was racing towards the house with the chopper keeping pace only a few feet overhead.

  “What’s that fool Patch playing at?” demanded Old Pat. Patch was the helicopter pilot.

  Deirdre said unhappily, “I expect Conal’s flying it. You know how he likes to goose Judith.”

  “I told Patch that Conal wasn’t to be allowed to touch the controls!” said the Granda angrily.

  “Yes, but you didn’t tell him how to stop Conal,” said Dree.

  The station wagon drew up in front of the house and the chopper swung away towards the concrete pad round the side. The car doors burst open and four small girls ranging from seven to three debouched onto the drive and came racing towards the Granda, shrilling, “Happy birthday!”

  Their mother, Judith, followed them, looking angrily after the chopper and obviously complaining to her husband. Once close to the Granda, however, her expression changed to a wide smile and she embraced him affectionately.

  Christie kissed his sister.

  “How’s it going, Dree?” he said. “You all set to come back with us?”

  She nodded and said, “I’m fine, Christie. You look a bit tired.”

  It was true. In fact, at thirty-six, Christie Connolly was already beginning to look middle-aged. His flesh was spreading, his gingery hair receding. He had a broad loose face, strong-jawed but gentle-eyed. On more than one occasion the Granda had charged him with weakness because from the start he had shied away from the only two acceptable careers in the old man’s eyes—practical politics or management of the Connolly business empire. But he had had strength enough to resist every possible pressure and pursue his chosen academic career.

  Now from the helicopter there came her other brother. Conal was only two years younger than Christie, but there might have been a decade in it. Slim, taut, restless, full of burning energy, he had the kind of dark good looks which ought to belong to the true-bred Irish hero. Tipped by many as a future (and not-too-distant future) presidential candidate, Senator Conal Connolly would have been the old man’s pride and joy if he had been willing or able to conceal his amused indifference to the Granda’s Irish extremism. He claimed there weren’t enough votes in it to be worth the hassle, but Dree often suspected that this was his way of snarling defiance at the hand he relied on to feed him.

  “Conal,” said Old Pat, impatiently pushing Judith and her gaggle of girls aside. “Are you by yourself now? Where’s Mary and my little Peggy then?”

  “Hello, everyone. Happy birthday, Granda. Hello, Dree. Christie. Well, how are you-all, sister-in-law Judith?”

  His parody of her South Carolina accent made Judith flush angrily once more. Dree said hastily, “Nothing’s wrong with Mary, is there, Con?”

  “No. It’s just that Peggy’s got a heavy cold and we thought it best they should stay in New York and nurse it.”

  “They’re in New York?” said the Granda, alert.

  “That’s right. I’ll be going down there after the celebration here. I mean, I can’t miss the other St Patrick’s day, can I?”

  “That’s wit for you, is it, Conal,” said Old Pat angrily. “There was a time when a man needed more than a clever tongue to make a mark in the Senate.”

  “Things change, Granda,” said Conal.

  “They do indeed. I want to talk with you two in my study now. You as well, Dree.”

  He turned round and marched into the house. Deirdre dug Conal in the side.

  “For God’s sake, Con!” she said. “Can’t you behave just for today?”

  “For you, Dree, I’ll try,” he said with a grin, putting his arm round her shoulder. It was strange, in terms of simple affection Christie won every time, but in terms of mood and temperament she had always felt closer to Conal.

  The Granda was waiting for them in the study seated behind his desk. Conal rolled his eyes at the sight of the Webley which still lay there, but he said nothing. From an open drawer Old Pat produced a typewritten document which he tossed on to the desk next to the gun.

  “Read this,” he commanded.

  Conal picked it up and
began to read with Christie peering over his shoulder. Dree watched. She felt sick. She had no idea what it was, but she felt a gut-burning certainty that it had something to do with her. From some distant part of the house came the sound of the ceilidh fiddler trying out his instrument. He ran up and down a few scales, then suddenly he broke into “The Wearing of the Green.”

  “What the hell does this mean?” asked Conal through tight lips.

  “You’re a senator, your brother’s a professor,” sneered Old Pat. “You should be able to understand a little bit of legal jargon. But I’ll put it simple, shall I? It’s a will, a new will. To tell truth, it’s just the same old will as before, leaving everything I have to you three. Only now I’m putting it all in trust. And there’s conditions, that’s what a trust means. And there’s one main condition you should all take notice of. In the event your sister marries a Protestant of English blood, and especially one that’s got any connection with those murdering bastards at Windsor, the trust is immediately cancelled and all the estate is to be divided equally between Holy Mother Church and certain patriotic associations dedicated to the liberation of Ireland!”

  “You’re crazy!” said Conal. “It’ll never stand up in court.”

  “Maybe not,” said Old Pat. “But when they get the smell of money in Rome, they don’t shake off the scent easily, and if the will’s to be broken, it could take thirty years and as many millions in the breaking. Do you have that time to spare, Con?”

  Christie carne in now, his face flushed with indignation.

  “Granda, this is a cruel thing you’re doing to Dree. Six months ago in this very room she told us she was finished with that Englishman for good, and I for one was not sorry. But for her sake. I said then that I thought Dree was good enough for a Prince but that that kind of life was not good enough for Dree. But this is different. This is an insane restriction you’re trying to impose!”

  “Insane, is it?” flashed the old man. “You’ll need to prove that, Christie. Perhaps in the meantime it’ll teach you both to take better care of your sister.”