Redemption - Leon Uris [57]
Caroline was a positive and assured woman whose soft touch moved the big house with lightness and gave Londonderry a taste of creative spirituality. At this moment, Caroline felt very down about Caroline and no shopping binge in Paris would rectify it.
The screen and its decade-long perplexity loomed before her. She could possibly throw herself into another restoration attempt but she knew she could only be building herself up for a fall.
Like the compromise of her marriage to Roger, the great screen was another aspect of her life that would never be whole or free.
What was that strange soul-stirring emotion that swept through her when she saw the iron vase on Andrew’s desk coming like a message from an unknown messenger?
As Andrew Ingram was closing the door behind himself, he wondered if he had unwittingly opened the door to something else? She admitted to herself that she had a schoolgirlish curiosity about this blacksmith in the Bogside, in a mild flirtation with herself. She had come to middle age with charm replacing dazzling beauty and she was an older woman… good Lord, how silly.
She had never felt the creeping of age until now. Was she not being ridiculous to dare even think this individual couldrestore the great screen?
Wasn’t it all so odd how one thing seemed to be flowing into another? As she studied the screen, remembering her history with it, images telescoped backward…She gasped and rang for Adam, the chief butler, a servant of three decades’ standing.
“The Countess rang?” Adam asked.
“Adam, how many times has this screen been shored up before I came to the manor?”
“Oh, hard to say exactly, m’lady. Once or twice a year some bolts would fall out of the overhead beams. The manor house blacksmith shop always had it in on schedule for maintenance. There was an annual cleaning of the parts that could be dealt with”
“Do I recall correctly that the screen shifted and tilted rather ominously?”
“Oh m’lady, what an incredible memory. Yes, fourteen years ago it took a dangerous tilt.”
“Lord Roger and I were on our honeymoon. My father recalled us because Randolph Churchill was going to make an appearance in the Long Hall to play his famous Orange card. We used outside help on the screen, did we not?”
“Astonishing you should remember, what with all the excitement and your own honeymoon cut short. Our late blacksmith, Mr. Leland, God rest his soul, was rather limited in his skills. He would generally call on Mr. Lambe, a very talented smith who served the area around Ballyutogue. Old chap is still alive.”
“And this Mr. Lambe came and shored up the screen?”
“He did, m’lady, and just in time for Lord Churchill’s address.”
“I know this is going to stretch your memory, Adam, but did Mr. Lambe have an apprentice boy with him?”
Adam broke into an uncharacteristic smile.
“Don’t tell me you know him, Adam?”
“Conor Larkin is the one lad most likely to be remembered. Catholic boy but from a very, how shall we say, special Catholic family. Rather famous footballer. Brought Donegal a regional championship.”
“You don’t say.”
“I won a few bob on him. He now has his own forge down in Londonderry and is well considered.”
“Thank you very much, Adam.”
Well, that’s Ulster, is it not? Caroline thought. Everyone mixed up with everyone… a young boy of twelve or fourteen had stared at her and she had asked him why and he had said because she was very beautiful and he went on to snap out the forbidden name of Charles Stewart Parell….
“Anything else, m’lady?”
“Yes. Send around a carriage. Immediately.”
Having prepared himself for the playing out of his fairy tale in a decade and a half of daydreams, Conor Larkin was as cool as an autumn breeze off Lough Foyle when the Countess of Foyle’s carriage came to a halt in the muddy Bogside lane before his shop.
A small crowd gathered about. It wasn’t often they got a pair of