The Silver Falcon (20 page)

Patsy Farrant saw the same news item. She was also sitting up in bed, with Roy beside her. He never ate breakfast and she only drank coffee, out of an unnecessary regard for her perfect figure. She didn't read anything about politics or world affairs; she liked the film reviews and the fashion articles; she was an eager reader of Peter Partridge because Roy had featured in it, and so had many of their friends.

She read the lead story and gave a little gasp.

‘Roy – just listen to this!'

He was reading
The Times
; he had a catholic taste and the tabloids were sent in with the prestige papers. He liked to know what was going on everywhere and from all points of view. He glanced at Patsy irritably. ‘Listen to what, for Christ's sake!'

She allowed herself to smile. It wasn't often she got the better of him. He'd just hit the roof when he heard.…

She began to read out loud. He didn't wait for her to finish. He grabbed the paper out of her hands and read it for himself. Then he threw it on the floor and looked at her.

‘The clever bastard,' he said slowly. ‘So that's what he's up to –'

‘I don't see,' Patsy ventured, ‘how it will help us. Over the horse, I mean …' She tailed off because of the expression on his face.

‘I don't either,' he said. ‘The bastard,' he said again. ‘I believe he's been playing me along – keeping me from doing anything about it.…'

‘You shouldn't have trusted him,' Patsy said. ‘I never did. Of all your friends, Roy, he's the only one I never …'

‘Shut up,' he said. ‘Just shut up.' She shrugged and rescued the newspaper. She didn't like Richard and that was true. There was something closed and distant about Richard which worried her, and her instinct, unhindered by intellectual processes, decided he was better left alone.

She couldn't have explained it to Roy, who wouldn't have listened anyway, but there was something about Richard Schriber which actually frightened her. She watched her husband get up and bang into the bathroom. He was in a very bad mood indeed. She was thankful that it wasn't a weekend. He could take out his temper on his secretary. She read the story for a second time. No wonder Roy was angry. It looked like a nasty trick to play on his old friend.…

Riverstown House was in Meath; Isabel drove down with Tim to have lunch with his father. It was a warm, wet day, interspersed with sudden breaks of brilliant sunshine. The press conference had gone off very well. When asked if fears that the horse might be interfered with had prompted so much extra security at the Lambourn yard, Nigel Foster shrugged the question off. Falcon was second favourite in the ante-post betting; he had a duty to protect the public's money. They dined in the hotel afterwards and Nigel congratulated her again on buying the two-year-old. It would grow on into a magnificent three-year-old. He wouldn't dream of trying to pressure her – Ryan wouldn't let him anyway – but he hoped she was going to have it trained in England.

It gave Isabel real pleasure to tell him that she intended sending it direct from Kilgallion to Lambourn. And it wasn't till she'd said it, and been warmly kissed on the cheek by the delighted trainer, that she realized she was already thinking of staying on at Coolbridge after June. They didn't talk much on the drive; the way out of Dublin was through poor and dingy streets, they passed the airport and an Aer Lingus jet pelted upwards over their heads. She hadn't been to Meath before. It was a beautiful county, less spectacular than Kildare with the Wicklow mountains in the background and the elegant studs, but green and gently rural. Tim turned the car off the Slane road and down towards Dunsany. He pointed out the Gothic towers of Dunsany Castle. ‘I used to go there as a child; it's a wonderful place. The old Lord Dunsany and my grandfather were great friends. They were fascinated by ghosts. There was supposed to be a haunted room at Riverstown but I never saw anything. Haunted by debt collectors, more likely!'

They went up a long drive with some fine elm trees lining the road, but the surface was rutted and broken and the grasslands untended. And then she saw the house. The size and grandeur of its façade surprised her; Tim seldom talked about his home or referred to his family. She had no idea the Ryans had lived in such style. It was a square, three-storeyed Georgian mansion, with a fine pillared entrance and the long sash windows of the period. There was a crescent-shaped drive in front of it. It was cracked and overgrown with weeds. When he stopped the car and they got out, she could see the house hadn't been painted for years.

‘I asked my father to open it up,' he said. ‘We can have a quick look at it inside and then I'll take you home for lunch. He's very excited about meeting you.' He took her arm going up the flight of stone steps. ‘It'll be a bit musty,' he said. ‘It's been empty since my mother died and we've been trying to sell it. But no one wants these big old places now. They cost too much to keep up.'

There was a circular hall with a beautiful plasterwork ceiling, and a fine Regency staircase that wound upwards. They stood looking round for a moment. There was a damp, airless smell, and the atmosphere of slow decline that creeps over a house left empty too long.

‘I'll show you the drawing room,' he said. She could tell that he was both proud and unhappy; the paint was peeling from the window frames and there was a blank space like a wound, where the fireplace had been ripped out in the hall. The drawing room was shuttered; she waited by the door while he opened them.

‘Oh, Tim,' she said. ‘It's lovely!'

The room was a perfect double cube, and the ceiling above them was beautifully painted in the classical eighteenth-century style, with elaborately gilded and plastered cornices and a superb Adam fireplace, from which the ornamental grate had been removed. ‘It's a period gem,' she said. ‘Who was the architect?'

‘James Cleave,' he answered. ‘He built the house in 1773; this room is supposed to be his finest creation. It's quite famous among Irish houses.' He said it casually, but she could see by his face how much he cared.

They walked through the ground floor; the library, its empty grilled bookcases stretching to the ceiling, a huge dining room with another fine fireplace and magnificent mahogany double doors, the small study which he told her was his mother's sitting room.

‘She loved the place,' he said. ‘My father kept it going until she died because he knew it would break her heart to have to leave it. But it was just too much for us by then. I won't take you upstairs, or we'll be late. I'd better close the shutters. Maybe someone'll come and buy it one day; if they don't it'll fall down.'

‘And if the Falcon wins?' Isabel asked him. He closed the front door, and locked it.

‘If that happens, I'll be able to move my father back in. Most of the furniture's in store; he insisted on keeping it for me. I can put the house to rights and we can live here again. But I won't let myself count on it. And don't say anything to my father. He's too old to be disappointed.'

‘I won't,' Isabel promised. She put her hand on his arm before they drove away. ‘Thank you for showing it to me,' she said. ‘I want him to win more than ever now. And I believe he will. I think you'll take Riverstown off the market and have the workmen in by the end of June.'

Tim smiled at her. He had never wanted to kiss her so much. It wouldn't be just Riverstown he'd claim back. He'd lost her once to Charles Schriber. Showing her the house where he was born and spent most of his life had brought them closer. ‘I hope to God you're right,' he said.

His father lived in a small modern brick-built house half a mile away from Riverstown. It was a depressing contrast with the elegance and grandeur of the old home; the inside was furnished with taste and there were many fine pieces and some pictures which she recognized were of good quality. Living with Charles's collection had moulded her taste in the direction of sporting pictures. Frederick Ryan was a white-haired version of his son; he entertained her with the unique blend of warmth and informality which was peculiar to the Irish. The food was simple, but the wine had come from a very good cellar. Frederick Ryan and his eldest sister, very frail and rather deaf, were obviously devoted to Tim. His father talked enthusiastically of his prowess as an amateur jockey, and then said how sorry he was to hear of Charles's death.

‘I believe he was a grand man,' he said. ‘Tim wrote us a lot about him. And about you, Mrs Schriber. You were both very good to him. I only hope he's looking after the horses properly for you. Will you excuse him, if he runs upstairs and looks in on my wife's mother? She's got very old and she doesn't get up these days. I don't say she'll recognize you, Tim, but she might. Ninety-eight, she is, and as difficult an old devil as the day I married her daughter!'

The afternoon passed pleasantly; Isabel felt herself relaxing more and more; it was the first time in her life she hadn't felt guilty about wasting a day just sitting and talking. And the quality of the talk was stimulating. Tim's father had known many different kinds of people, from the literary groups who gathered at Dunsany Castle to the great racing figures of prewar days. He roared with laughter at Tim's encounter with Mrs Bartlett Brown.

‘She was the prettiest girl in Kildare – and a dream on a horse. I used to squire her round in the old days, but there was always a crowd round her. She was as sweet as buttermilk – never a cross word, never a sign of temper. But, by God, the moment she married poor old Willy Bartlett Brown, the mask came off! She's a holy terror – I'd give a lot to have been there when Tim talked back at her – nobody's done it for twenty years!'

They drank strong tea and ate home-made sponge cake. There was a cheerful middle-aged woman, referred to by the family as a ‘girl', who cooked and cared for them. Isabel understood more and more where a lot of Tim's salary went. They drove back to Dublin; they were scheduled to fly back to England the next morning. The Prix Lupin took place four days later and she could feel her excitement rising. If the Falcon won as easily as Tim and Nigel Foster seemed to think, then his prospects for the Derby were stronger than ever. And now that she had seen Riverstown and had met Tim's family, it was even more important that he should triumph at Epsom.

She and Tim were having dinner alone that evening and she was looking forward to it. He seemed very happy and in high spirits as they said goodbye to his father and drove back to Dublin.

‘It's been a lovely day,' she said. ‘Thank you for taking me. I must send a note to your father. It was sweet of him and your aunt to take so much trouble.'

‘It was a pleasure for them,' he said. ‘They live very quietly and meeting you was an event. They fell in love with you, you know –' he glanced at her. ‘My father said you were a beauty, and he doesn't pay that kind of compliment unless he means it. And you were very sweet to them. I'm glad you enjoyed it.'

‘I feel as if I'd never been to Ireland before,' Isabel said. ‘It was so different, coming with Charles. We always moved so fast – rushing from one stud to the next, dinner every night and never a moment to relax. I never seemed to
see
the country or really talk to anyone. That's why I've loved it so much this time.'

‘He was that kind of man,' Tim said. ‘Couldn't sit still. It's the American disease. They think they've got to be earning a living twenty-four hours a day.' He grinned at her. ‘It's not something we Irish suffer from.'

‘You suffer from it more than you think,' Isabel retorted. ‘I've seen the way you work – you don't sit still!'

‘No, but I've an object in view,' he said. ‘I needed to make money and I was ready to work for it. I wanted to take good care of my family and at the back of my mind I had the crazy idea of rescuing Riverstown. If you want something badly enough, you'll do anything to get it.'

They went into the Hibernian, and he couldn't resist taking her arm in a proprietary way. The receptionist looked up and smiled at them.

‘Good evening, Mrs Schriber, Mr Ryan. There's a gentleman waiting in the lounge for you, Mrs Schriber.'

She turned to Tim; ‘I'm not expecting anybody – who do you think it is?'

He shrugged. ‘Some journalist, probably. I'll see him off. You've given the interview. Go on up and I'll get rid of him.'

‘Excuse me,' the receptionist had overheard them. She spoke to Isabel. ‘It's not a newspaperman, Mrs Schriber. This gentleman came about an hour ago. He's booked into the hotel. He said he was your stepson.'

‘I wanted to show it to you first,' Richard said. ‘So I flew over.' They were alone in Isabel's suite. She had the newspaper in her hand. She had read Peter Partridge's gossip column. In the Irish edition there was a photograph of her. ‘
WEDDING FOR CHARLES SCHRIBER
'
S WIDOW
?' That was the headline. ‘No comment,' says Richard Schriber. It was a long piece, fluffed out with ambiguities. Mutual friends of the couple have noticed romance blossoming. A reference to the similarity in their ages. Seen dining and dancing at London's smart night spots, millionaire's widow and her playboy stepson. Richard Schriber refused to confirm that he was going to marry his stepmother. It went on in the same vein. By comparison with most of the items printed under Peter Partridge's by-line, it was positively sentimental. An announcement, it ended unctuously, could be expected soon.

‘I rang them and tried to find out how it happened, but they wouldn't say anything. I'm sorry, Isabel. I know you must feel pretty mad, but I don't want you to be mad at me. That's why I came over.'

She shook her head. ‘It's not your fault, Richard. How could I blame you? I suppose we've been seen together – they must have touts who send in stuff like this. It says you didn't comment. Did they approach you?'