Trinity Page 15

  "Freddie."

  "Yes, pet."

  "What would you do if you knew I married unhappily?"

  "That's not fair to ask."

  "But I am asking."

  "If you keep closing your mind, killing off your suitors before you even get to know them, you're not giving me much choice but to start a second family. Caroline, how can you make a happy marriage or an unhappy marriage with someone you refuse to know? But, to answer your question, what do we really have but loyalty to each other and sense of family continuity? I think if you were faced with a poor marriage I might ask you to go through with it long enough to assure our ascendancy and tell you to find your pleasures where you can."

  She sagged to the edge of her bed. "Yes, you are being reasonable. I was hoping it could go on like this always. You've had the indecency to create an empire and lay its riches at my feet. Why should your instincts be any less than that of a salmon going upstream, or the she-wolf trekking above the tundra to have her cubs? Freddie, I love you. It's awful of me to deny you the only thing you've ever asked."

  His hand touched her shoulder and she pressed her cheek to it.

  "Who knows," she said, "Hubble might be a good old shoe, at that. I wish that damned place of his weren't so … oh, Freddie, get the hell out."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rathweed Hall sat candescently opulent on a high knoll in the Holywood Hills just beyond the grasp of East Belfast. It was walled off from that depressing sight by a magnificent mixed woods of Sitka spruce, white beam alder, yew and aspen. The main house was set to afford an alleyway of visibility down on Weed Ship & Iron, then over Belfast Lough.

  It was not that large as stately homes went, a tidy thirty to forty rooms, depending how one counted, contained in a modest compound of three hundred acres of rolling hills and forest. Yet it was second to none in Ireland and often compared to the petit palaces of The Loire in France.

  Disdaining the filigree, dark woods, ponderousness and exaggeration that marked Victorian decor, Lady Livia and later Caroline had thrown it open to air and light, using the ultimate product of imported artisans from a half dozen diverse cultures.

  Livia established the home's Italian pre-eminence in white Paonazzetto marble, delicately veined and hued with pink and purple strands, a dazzle that shouted its name and uniqueness to all of Ulster. The main floor, halls, stairs, salons and columns ran heavily to Paonazzetto, then deepened dramatically into darker breccias and verde anticos in the master suites on the upper floors. What might have been a preponderance of marble was broken by twenty thousand square feet of Savonnerie carpets, each designed to offset its particular area. The grand-drawing-room floor was covered with a thirty by seventy silken-sheened, gold- and silver-threaded "Polish" carpet executed in Persia.

  All of the second- and third-story ceilings, doorways and many of the walls were cast in bluish and alabaster shaded friezes after the Francini Brothers' school and in continuity told the entire mythology of Scotland and Ireland.

  An original set of Cole wallpaper murals was commissioned depicting Ulster scenics. These covered the walls in the less formal rooms, children's rooms, gun room, billiard room, morning room, game rooms, smoking room and library. The scenes were executed in woodcuts. After the single printing for Rathweed Hall, the blocks were destroyed.

  Caroline added France. To upholster the large collection of Chippendale originals, she convinced Francois Bony, the leading Paris designer of the day, to scour the Far East for Chinese damasks and rare brocades of the Mongol and Manchu periods.

  Interspersed amid a breath-taking assortment of Venetian gilt mirrors hung an even more breath-taking and seemingly endless array of Gobelin, Karcher and Boucher tapestries. Everything was selected to give a feeling of pastel euphoria, each Grecian vase, each freestanding candleholder, each artifact. The only part of the house leaning toward the weighty were the massive Viennese lacquers in Sir Frederick's personal quarters.

  In accordance with time-honored tradition, few of the gentry spent their money in Ireland. Sir Frederick did acknowledge his adopted country in the form of three dozen Cork crystal chandeliers. The one in the main foyer weighed over a ton and was hung from special hidden steel beams cast at the Works. The china was Limoges in a formal setting for seventy and the main silver Garrard, in his own pattern.

  Yet there was almost no formal garden, no stable Other than that used for transportation, no portrait of the Queen, no chapel, no flagstaff and not a single coat of arms in what was an ultimate display of reverse snobbery.

  No sooner had Sir Frederick come to Ulster and opened his first modest dry dock of the present shipyard then he decided he had to have a Turner painting of a ship for his office. Finances were close in those days and the particular oil he craved was costly. A large gambling win enabled him to purchase "Steamboat in Shallow Water," which foreran what was to become the most illustrious personal art collection in Ulster. Later, when his interest expanded to railroads, another Turner, "Railway in the Snowstorm," one of the first oils ever done of a train, was acquired.

  Art begat art with the usual Weed zeal. Forays to Venice and Spain burst Hieronymus Bosch and Goya into his life. In bizarre contrast to the clean villa lines of the house and its understatements came a legion of tortured naked bodies, satanists, monsters in the throes of perversions, black masses, grotesque satires of semi-men semi-beasts. Bosch's "Garden of Thorns" and Goya's "The Wounded" fell into the priceless classification. His greatest coup and personal landmark as a collector was discovery of six original sketches which Goya used in his eighty etching masterwork, "Los Caprichos."

  Lady Livia complained that the place was at war with itself and was taking on the appearance of a lunatic asylum. Her gentle rebellion was ignored until she was on her deathbed when he promised to put things in proper order. Sir Frederick kept his word and built the first of Rathweed Hall's two notable outbuildings, a small museum to house the major part of the collection.

  The building, nearly a peer of the art work within, was magnanimously open to the public on the Queen's birthday and numerous other occasions during the year.

  Caroline's Francophilia brought in a new burst of art. During her off-again, on-again affair with Paris she was caught up with both the new wave of art and the artists. They were her friends and she often modeled for them. More than one was a lover. They were unknowns and their work went for minuscule prices. Often as not Caroline had first selection before they went on auction at the Hotel Drouet for a few hundred francs. Sir Frederick had no use for that "horseshit junk" and refused to hang it. Caroline's personal quarters became a clutter of Manets, Monets, Sisleys, and Pissarros. A chap named Degas used her as a model for a dozen wire sculptures of "The Lithe Dancer" series and another fellow, Renoir, painted her twice, "Young Woman in the Forest" and "The English Lady," which she acquired by modeling for the other. The most serious of her lovers, Claude Moreau, did her nude in a passionate outpour of oils, sketches and water colors.

  It was not until a French shipbuilding colleague, Gustave Caillebotte, contacted Sir Frederick with an offer to buy back Caroline's entire collection at an obscene profit that he took notice. The offer aroused his suspicion and an investigation bore out that something indeed was doing with this new art out of Paris. He hung the Renoir of her (one of his few slender models) in the gallery, then found himself spending inordinate amounts of time immersed in it. One day in a table-thumping decision he declared he was turning over one entire corridor of the gallery to Caroline's "French horseshit."

  When all was considered, one would have thought Rathweed Hall had taken a lifetime but not so for the relentless Frederick Weed. With agents dredging the world and an army of experts and artisans in tow, it was completed in a biblical-like designation of seven years.

  Roger Hubble, the Viscount Coleraine and heir to the earldom of Foyle, arrived at the lair. The foxes were immediately at play but it was difficult to say who was stalking whom.

  *


  Roger Hubble possessed all the expected attributes. Had reasonable, sandy, ruddy, good English looks. A bit too tall and a bit too slender, a touch of gangliness seemed to give off a boyish flavor. He was pleasant enough with a minimum of annoying traits: too fast at flashing his teeth into a fixed smile and a few jerky body motions at times when he ought to be standing still. Otherwise, he was palatable in manner. What Caroline and Sir Frederick sized up was an excessively ordinary chap, showing none of those special qualities Maxwell Swan had perceived. Surface politeness and lack of content prevailed in the opening day. Roger was properly impressed by Rathweed Hall, the Weed Ship & Iron Works and the Weed domination of the Belfast scene. He remained totally nondescript at a stag dinner in his honor at the Patrician Club, and if Caroline had tingled any amorous nerves in him, he failed to show it.

  It was precisely this inconclusiveness that began to intrigue both father and daughter Weed. Obviously something was stewing behind Hubble's dull gray eyes. Sir Frederick preferred men like himself, out-in the-open chaps. This one seemed to be making assessments and judgments without revelation. Once or twice Caroline noted a swift expression of frightening intensity that seemed out of context with his character, after which he'd slip back to what he seemed to be, decent and mediocre. There was just enough riddle to keep the venture going.

  On the second day Sir Frederick invited Roger to join him for a trip to his rail testing site on the Newtownards Peninsula. Not least among Weed's capabilities was that of master salesman. The Red Hand Express engine was gaining serious attention beyond Ireland. As part of the selling job he scheduled his rugby team for a tour of the English Midlands each year and transported them about on a private train piloted by the latest model of the Red Hand.

  Rails, like steamships, were on the rise and Britain led the world outside America. England's experimental line, the Liverpool & Manchester, had been nibbling about the Weed Works and although an order from them would be prestigious, Sir Frederick had larger game in mind. Britain and the Continent counted their new rail lines in tens of miles. America and Canada counted theirs in the hundreds and thousands.

  A year hence there was to be the largest industrial fair ever, in Chicago, the nation's rail center. Sir Frederick was determined to come in and challenge Baldwin and all the other great American locomotives for his share of the business.

  It posed a heady problem, calling for an ingenious compromise engine that mollified two different railroading philosophies. The normal British engine was a smaller and more refined piece of machinery built to travel short distances. Working parts of the British engine were covered and more precise and had to be stringently maintained. People and farms in England were closer together so that rail right of way was meticulously controlled with fencing. The rails were solidly seated in such a manner that engines could hit switches and curves at full speed with safety and didn't even carry headlamps. Contrary to this, the American distances were reflected in engine bigness. Trams often traveled in the open parts of the West for hundreds of miles between stops. Therefore, right of way was exposed, rails were more raggedly laid and engine maintenance not nearly as strict.

  It was the long-haul, high-speed American goliath versus the British jewel.

  The Red Hand engine was an attempt at a compromise, a mid-sized affair still with enough precision for British rails, yet hardy enough for the long run. The Red Hand had spectacular success in the Australian outback, which gave Weed's people hope it could handle the American and Canadian prairies.

  Selling was the one thing the Americans understood. Sir Frederick knew that the real key lay in a single word, speed. He was determined to bring into Chicago a compound engine that had set a record by breaking the ultimate barrier of a hundred miles an hour.

  It seemed within grasp. The basic design, a Pacific type configuration originally built for New Zealand, had been successfully modified by Littlejohn. The four-wheel pilot truck and two trailers delicately balanced the forty five feet and sixty tons of sleekness. Her six sets of drive wheels ran seven feet in diameter with the stroke meticulously increased from fourteen to sixteen inches, still a bit more than half the stroke on the largest American leviathans.

  Saddle tanks had been removed from the engine and replaced with a water tank in the tender car holding three thousand gallons along with six tons of coal. Again, this was about half the fuel and water of the American standards.

  What made it a feasible competitor was the compound formula, two uses of steam by recycling from a double cylinder, a system the Americans could not match.

  It was now possible for the Red Hand to travel the same long distance as an American counterpart, pull the same load using half the coal and water, and at higher speed.

  Littlejohn reluctantly gave in to some of the ragged American requirements. Some of the moving parts were left exposed so the engineers could slop on oil. Valves and driving apparatus were shifted so the driver would be on the right side of the cab. Littlejohn was perplexed over why the Americans insisted on driving on the wrong side. It seemed utterly idiotic but they had to go along with the idiosyncracy.

  Three earlier sets of time trials had brought about more modifications so that Red Hand #367 was breaking ninety miles an hour regularly on the Greyabbey-Portaferry straightaway under the brilliant hand of Driver Cockburn and Fireman Henry Hogg.

  Things were getting agonizingly close.

  The party milled about at the beginning point of the test site. Sir Frederick circled his creation with his crew and Littlejohn. He spoke to Driver Cockburn in hallowed undertones with the confidential air of a trainer giving a jockey instructions. A final imparting of wisdom, a wish of luck and he made off to the observation tower. From its platform there was a view of the greater part of the three-mile clocking section. A telegraphic communications system tied the starting and finishing lines to the tower. The suffocating calm was broken only by the clicking key announcing first a delay, then that the run was under way. The gallery raised their field glasses and telescopes to a man. Rhythmic puffs of smoke through the distant trees heralded the assault on the record.

  "Here she comes!"

  The first of five runs was shrill-whistled in and as the Red Hand hit the starting line a cluster of watches with sweep second hands made rough note. The engine billowed into view around a mild bend, then bore down the straightaway. As she passed below, the tower shook from the impact of iron on iron. A black pall of soot blew upward, attacking the lungs of the onlookers, who had their ears covered against the rush of deafening sound. The Red Hand seemed to hurl herself at that ultimate time barrier looking for her own breaking point, then vanished, vanished, vanished.

  Gripping quiet ensued until it was punctured again by the telegraph key which Sir Frederick was able to read along with the telegrapher.

  "Ninety-six point two."

  Deflation, then a restless renewal of hope as the return run was under way. Eighty-nine point three.

  Depression.

  It would be the third run that would make or break. Even the stoic Littlejohn clutched the rail dry-lipped and heart-throbbing, for the naked eye told that an extraordinary run was taking place. Sir Frederick chomped through his cigar as the Red Hand blew past. He paced insanely for confirmation that the official clocker matched his own time and that they had inched over the goal.

  Ninety-eight miles flat.

  They all groaned as he threw up his hands and roared. The final two runs were academic. Taunting doldrums set in and the circle around Sir Frederick widened to give him flailing room. He shut himself in a small office in the executive car on the return trip to the Works. Speaking not a word, he whisked off at the siding inside the yard to his office and slammed himself in. After allowing him ten minutes to simmer to a mere sizzle, Brigadier Swan braved entry.

  "Fucking son of a bitch!" Weed greeted his aide. "Fucking son of a bitch! We had it there, right there. Cockburn choked up, that's what! He has the heart of a cur. All he had to do was op
en a few bloody valves a half turn, a quarter turn. Heartless, gutless bastard! They just don't make men any more, Max. I want their resignations, immediately."

  Swan laid two sheets of paper before Sir Frederick.

  "What the hell is this?"

  "Their resignations. Both Cockburn and Henry Hogg want out."

  Weed ripped the papers and threw them in the wastebasket. "Well, they'll not get off that easily. What, what, what possible explanation did Cockburn have? What possible excuse for that performance?"

  "None whatsoever. He said everything was wide open."

  "A likely story."

  "He says the train won't go any faster, Sir Frederick. He pushed it well over its limit today."

  Weed paced. "Of course it won't go any faster. I told that bastard Littlejohn to increase the stroke to two feet. Four dirty little inches more. I told him from the moment I saw the plans six months ago. "Two-foot stroke, Little John." Those were my words, as God is my judge. Where the fuck is Littlejohn!"

  "He prefers not to see you for a day or two."

  "Oh, he does, eh? And I suppose you've got his resignation as well?"

  "No, I don't, but he did say that if you mentioned the two-foot stroke to tell you that the train would have been scattered all over County Down today. He says you're lucky it didn't do it on the third run anyhow."

  "Horseshit! All I get is horseshit!" He hung his head and tears formed. "Do something about Cockburn and Hogg, will you, Max? Bonus, pat on the back. Send them down to the fishing lodge, let them hook a few salmon. Tell Littlejohn and the boys we'll meet first thing in the morning. See if 367 can take one more modification. Otherwise we've got to get cracking on a new job. Time is running against us now."