Trinity Page 14

  On the Twelfth I proudly wear

  The sash my father wore.

  Bong! Bong! Bong! sounded the angelus. Bong! Bong! Bong!

  Me and my daddy would drop reverently to our knees as Tomas made for Dooley McCluskey's and Conor just stared in the direction of the Ballyutogue diamond.

  "The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary."

  "And she conceived of the Holy Ghost. Hail, Mary. . ."

  RAT A TAT TAT A TAT A TAT!

  The Protestant boys are loyal and true,

  Stouthearted in battle and stout-handed too,

  The Protestant boys are true to the last,

  And faithful and peaceful when danger has passed. . .

  “Pour forth, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy grace into our hearts that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ thy Son . . ."

  RAT A TAT TAT TAT A TAT A TATl

  Then Orangemen remember King William

  And your fathers who with him did join,

  And fought for our glorious deliverance,

  On the green, grassy slopes of the Boyne.

  ". . . by the message of an angel, may by his passion and cross be brought to the glory of his resurrection through the same Christ our Lord."

  RAT A TAT TAT TAT A TAT A TATl

  Begone, begone, you Papist dogs,

  We'll conquer or we'll die. . .

  “Amen."

  Amen.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Brigadier Swan rapped once from his adjacent office, entered and set the report on Sir Frederick's desk.

  "By God, that was fast," Weed said. "Don't tell me how you managed it; I don't want to know."

  "I won't."

  Weed rubbed his hands together gleefully, then snipped the red tape with a pair of sterling silver scissors.

  HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL: COMBINED ASSETS, HOLDINGS, EARNINGS AND NET WORTH OF FOYLE ENTERPRISES LTD., A. HUBBLE — EARL OF FOYLE, R. HUBBLE — CHIEF EXECUTIVE & HEIR.

  "How'd you manage it?" Weed asked.

  "Same old infallibles. Two main contacts: one chap in Dublin Castle, one in Inland Revenue. One malcontent, a former senior clerk recently dismissed by Rankin's office."

  "Lovely."

  "I think you'll find what you want on the last four pages."

  Sir Frederick balanced his specs on nose end and bent over the report.

  Landed Holdings

  24,000 acres in rangeland and pasturage. Herd numbering 3,300 head with annual average shipment to England of 1,500 head.

  4,000 acres in flax.

  2,200 acres of woodlands, hunting and recreational grounds, formal and informal gardens adjacent to Hubble Manor.

  Major fishing patents, Lough Foyle & River Foyle.

  Leased Lands

  90,000 acres on 30-year leases to Roman Catholic tenants. Since Roger Hubble has joined Foyle Enterprises actively, a secret plan has been initiated to reduce and stabilize Catholic tenant acreage at 50,000. This is considered the desired figure needed to support the earldom's agricultural goals. The balance of this land will either be sold to the more productive Catholics or annexed to the earldom's pasturage.

  a. All marginal and encumbered farms will be foreclosed, purchased or otherwise eliminated.

  This will reduce overpopulation and weed out the "weaker strains" of Catholics. Most of this acreage has been poorly farmed primarily to feed outsized families and has made no meaningful contribution to the earldom's agricultural scheme. Conversion of this land into pasture will allow the earldom to increase its cattle herd, which is the major agricultural income earner.

  b. Remaining Catholic acreage will be refined and geared to create a pool of raw material to feed into the earldom's enterprises.

  With the hue and cry of liberalism and land reform prevailing from Westminster and Catholic agitators, Lord Roger has proceeded with great care and deftness. His own estimation is that it will take a decade to achieve all land goals. The old cottage-tumbling tactics have been replaced with highly sophisticated and subtle legal maneuvers, a skill in which Roger Hubble appears to excel.

  20,000 acres leased to Protestant tenants.

  This is a stable and desirable population, 90% Presbyterian, largely stemming from plantation immigrants of 1600. Their farms are larger, their land more productive. Because of the earldom's geographic isolation, this loyal population is deemed a necessity.

  In addition there are some 35,000 acres owned by freeholders dating back to the Cromwell era. These are 90% Anglicans. The Borough and Township of Lettermacduff is squired by the Walby family. Farms run up to 600 acres, are enormously prosperous and the population stable, industrious and loyal. Their production is entirely attuned to the earldom's policies.

  Four coastal villages with mixed Anglican/Presbyterian freeholders. Established originally to protect the earldom's fishing patents from poaching Catholics. An annual royalty to the earldom is paid to exercise Protestant fishing rights on Lough Foyle.

  Other Real Property

  Hubble Manor

  Daars--summer estate, Kinsale, County Cork.

  Town house, Hubble Square, London W.I.

  7-8,000 acres, Warwickshire, England, mostly in wheat on sharecrop leases.

  Extensive holdings connected with mining interests, Powys County, Wales (Precise figures unavailable). Hubble Square, London W.I. This prime London property was developed in the early eighteenth century by Erskine Hubble, 6th Earl of Foyle. Approximately half the sixty town houses on the square were built by Hubble for short-term leases.

  All land was retained by the family on the 100-year leaseholds of privately built residences.

  Industrial Holdings, Fully Owned, Traditional

  Ballyutogue Flax Mill & Linen Industries

  Londonderry Woolen Mill

  Foyle Fisheries

  Recent Acquisitions, Fully Owned

  The Little Northern Line (Portrush, Coleraine & Limavady)

  Witherspoon & McNab Shirt Factory, Londonderry. One of the three largest in the U.K.

  Doles & Doles Distillery, Milford

  Norton Department Store, Liverpool

  Limavady Crystal

  Controlling Interest

  Londonderry Shipyard, Londonderry

  Caw & Train Graving Dock, Foundry & Machine Works, Londonderry L & L Packet Line. The Londonderry & Liverpool operates eight passenger freighters in the 800 to 4,000-ton classes, including two trans ocean vessels. The line accounts for about 50% of Londonderry's import/export tonnage.

  The Donegal Line (Londonderry to Sligo)

  The L.C. & D. Line (Londonderry, Claudy & Dungiven)

  Shareholders or Minority Partnerships

  County Tyrone Mines, Inishowen Quarries, Cavan Mines, Canadian Zinc & Lead, Ltd.

  The Hubbles have traditionally held directorships in Londonderry and various Irish banking institutions and numerous semi-public trust type organizations.

  To the best of our determination, the family has no sizable encumbrances. Numerous bank loans are in the nature of financing acquisitions or for capital expansion. Although cash reserves are limited, cash flow is extensive. Roger Hubble's diversifications have taken a great deal of pressure off traditional dependence from tenant rent revenues. Marginal or money-losing operations such as the L.C. & D. Railroad and Limavady Crystal have more than been compensated for by the earnings of Witherspoon & McNab, etc.

  Under Roger Hubble the Foyle Enterprises have slowly changed from static to mobile. The earldom must be considered extremely sound.

  It is very difficult to come to an exact figure, but best estimations are that the combined holdings represent a net worth of between £ 2,500,000 to £ 3,000,000. Net income to the family after taxes, loans and new investments is in the neighborhood of £ 200,000 annually.

  To summarize, Lord Roger has adopted a completely modern view of things. One might think, on the surface, be has moved too rapidly with changes but he has obviously been considering it all for a long time and, once he took control, he bold
ly cut away the dead wood. Industrial growth and shrinking the holdings of the small farmers will probably be at a much slower rate in the future.

  Sir Frederick dusted the ashes from the report and looked up to Swan, smiling. "By God, you just can't beat old gold. They must be a clever bunch, managing this in that destitute part of the world."

  "It seems that Morris Hubble led Ireland in foreclosures during the famine in order to earn money to finance loan sharks. His gombeen men are alleged to have gobbled up well over a million acres in foreclosures for literally nothing. After the dust of the famine had settled, his lordship resold it at a hundred-fold profit."

  "The famine, eh? Well, that's turning disaster into triumph. Looks like this Roger is a chip off the old block. Max, send him a warm invitation to drop in and see us on his way to Daars. No, no, hold it. I'll do it myself."

  *

  One could count on a single hand the number of people whom Frederick Murdoch Weed was unable to intimidate . . . and have three fingers left over. There was Maxwell Swan and there was Caroline Weed. There were no others. The taming of Caroline had been an unfulfilled mission.

  Her mother, Livia, had been a delicate creature, seemingly an unlikely mate for the bullish Frederick Weed, but he had absolutely adored her. Livia had passed on eight years earlier in an influenza epidemic, leaving the family without a male heir.

  Caroline was twenty at the time, continentally educated, deliriously pampered, and had already collected a small pyramid of the bleached bones of jilted suitors. Although the girl had inherited her mother's splendid looks, what she had the most of was her father's lust and independence.

  Sir Frederick tried to make up for the loss of his wife by attempting to turn Caroline into hostess and companion and to arrange the marriage that would bed her down and produce desperately desired male children.

  Caroline rebelled in olympian fashion, bolting to France and burying herself in a bohemian attic. Her father thrice vowed she could die in poverty, thrice relented and thrice re vowed in a trans channel chase and capture gamble that spanned three years.

  Sir Frederick was considering the desperation measure of taking a second wife for the purpose of a son, when fate intervened in the form of Marco de Valenti, a charming but tattered Italian grandee on the prowl for moneyed English and American ladies. The aristocratic roustabout caught Caroline's fancy in Florence. A short, heady conquest followed. Caroline was induced to convert to Catholicism in a ritual questionably administered by a young priest with a worldly weakness for money. Barely off the altar of that oath, she found herself at a second altar exchanging marriage vows. All of it happened within a week.

  What had caught her fancy about the man in the first place disappeared almost immediately. He proved to be a peacocking bore, a gross lover and whatever svelteness he possessed was overpowered by an omnipresent aura of garlic. Caroline fled her bridal bed.

  Having endured many a lean year, Marco de Valenti was not easily dissuaded. Caroline raced north into Switzerland with her heels being yapped at by a heart-clutching, forehead-slapping, symphonic arm-waving outpour of the jilted groom. She managed to get him off the scent in St. Moritz and fired a frantic HELP, DADDY cable, then holed up and rehearsed a scene of high drama in which she would whimper for forgiveness and bleed with remorse.

  Her father arrived, flushed with victory, and assayed the damage. Count Marco de Valenti was a persistent chap who had to be fended off with a barrage of pounds sterling. Never one to be caught wanting in pressing his advantage, Sir Frederick agreed to bail her out but set down firm conditions. In exchange for getting her out of the mess Caroline would have to return to Ulster, resume her duties as mistress of Rathweed Hall, find a suitable mate of British stock and end the continental horse shit, once and for all.

  In a final glorious tantrum, Caroline Weed denuded her hotel suite of drapes, obliterating breakfronts, vases and other delicate furnishings to the tune of four hundred quid accompanied by language never heard before in that fine old hostelry. The entire performance was witnessed by Sir Frederick doubled over in laughter.

  Caroline limped back to Rathweed Hall and went into a prolonged period of self-purge. Getting her unattached from Marco de Valenti proved not all that simple. In the matter of her conversion to the Catholic faith the Count was proving the least noble Roman of them all. There was not only de Valenti's pecuniary appetite to be appeased but the Weed anonymity to be preserved. It would not sit well in the Orange and Anglican circles of Ulster's strangling atmosphere if word got around that Weed's daughter had married a papist.

  The Brigadier was given holy orders to obtain a quiet annulment. Formidable roadblocks lay ahead and they had to play it by Vatican rules. Swan by-passed the lower echelons, going directly to the Irish Cardinal. From there a trail of payoff money was sprinkled down to Rome where he bought the best canon lawyer in that holy city, who in turn greased his way to a direct petition to the Vicariate Tribunal. The Tribunal then sought a decision of the Sacred Rota, which handled the dissolution of marriages for the Vatican.

  Even with open purse and inside contacts, the theological word games went on for nearly three years before Caroline's case was presented to the Sacred Rota. By any standard this was still considered uncommon speed. Swan had proved a brick.

  Caroline Weed was burned with ultimate humiliation. When summoned to Rome to face a panel of priests on the Sacred Rota, she was questioned for days on end about every minute detail of her relationship with de Valenti. Every sexual expression, diversion and perversion was unearthed. No intimacy could be protected on pain of rejection of the petition. She was grilled into exhaustion by minds which functioned in sharply honed ecclesiastical mazes and traps. No personal mortification was spared.

  At last Caroline pleaded ignorance of what the marriage involved, pretense in going into the marriage, holding secret reservations so that her vows had been given dishonestly and, finally, admission that she had no intention of having children.

  Three years and twenty thousand pounds later the annulment was granted and she was mercifully excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Through this process of humility, Caroline Weed was to become humanized. Swan's work was so clean that there were only a few vague whispers about what had happened and these soon died out as she grew to the archsymbol of culture, charity and gaiety in Belfast.

  The girl was a woman now. She and her father indulged each other's frailties with unstated understandings. Caroline's new affairs were carried on with utter discretion in her beloved Paris in the company of artists, writers and musicians.

  *

  Caroline and Sir Frederick enjoyed one of their rare quiet tête-à-têtes at the Hotel Antrim, unburdened by business or social doings. After dinner they retired to the billiard room.

  "English or snooker, Freddie?"

  "Billiards will do, a fiver a frame too rich for your blood?"

  "You're on."

  Caroline quickly ascertained that his mind was not on his game. She reeled off two easy frames and was well on the way to a third. After she missed her shot, he chalked and stalked up to the table. He lined up a winning hazard, then halfway through his backstroke she said, "You and Max are plotting to exile me to Londonderry, aren't you?"

  He nearly rammed the cue through the cloth. "Nothing of the sort. All I have asked is that you be reasonably decent to Viscount Coleraine during his stay. If we can get his thinking turned around I'll have a railroad at both ends of Ulster, and you know how much I want that."

  "Oh, Jesus, Freddie, you're a wretched liar. . .. Let me see what we have on the table here."

  "You've deliberately upset my game . . . deliberately."

  "It seems I'm always upsetting this particular game of yours," she said.

  "Put the damned cue down, I'm through," he said.

  "You owe me ten, fifteen if you want to concede this game."

  He peeled off the bills and grunted in mock disgust as she naughtily tucked the money in her bosom
and winked.

  "See here, Caroline . . . I am a reasonable man."

  "You are the most unreasonable man in Europe."

  "Well, I suppose the Viscount Coleraine did cross my mind, vaguely."

  "Then let him uncross your mind, vaguely."

  "Before you go into full gale force I urge you to give this serious consideration. I mean, just sort of look the old boy over."

  "I've thought about it," Caroline said seriously, "but every time I see a glimmer of possibility I think about that awful, grotesque, prehistoric mausoleum, Hubble Manor. We were there ten years ago and I've still the smell of mildew in my nostrils. Oh, God, Freddie, to think you'd condemn me to that dreary hole."

  "Well, do the bloody place over!"

  "Do what over? Londonderry? Roger Hubble? The whole damned west is a cultural blob, a nightmare. And from what I remember of Roger Hubble, he's a silly, bloody prig who snorts when he laughs."

  Sir Frederick sighed painfully. "Why am I to be eternally cursed because your poor fragile, lovely mother could bear no more children?"

  "Oh, Freddie, put the fiddle down."

  "I'm not asking you to fall desperately in love with him for God's sake. Just marry the bastard, produce a few heirs, then bugger off to Paris and orgy with the entire bohemian colony for the rest of your life."

  "You are a low, filthy, shocking, disgusting man."

  "Horseshit!"

  The door slammed after her and slammed again as he followed into the hall and into her bedroom before she could lock him out. "For God's sake, Freddie, no heart attacks, no let's remember we are rapidly aging, no tears, no requiems for Mummy, no threats of poverty and, please, no horse shit that you want this more than anything in your life."

  Denuded, he shrugged and softened almost into an object of pity. "But I suppose I do want it more than anything," he said.

  "Yes," she answered sympathetically, "I think you really do."

  "Forgive me for saying this, Caroline, but there are times I wish that de Valenti had kept you still long enough to father a son. I get a feeling of depression, sometimes. Caroline, you're all of it to me, the entire thing. I want it to belong to your sons. Is that wrong? Please don't force me to get married again." He opened the door to leave.