Patriot

CHAPTER 16

Gradually, life at Teakettle Cottage returned to something resembling normalcy. Vivid reminders of Spider’s explosive and bloody midnight visit were still readily apparent throughout the property, both inside and outside the small house. Hawke was determined to soldier on in his bombed-out house. And why not? he reasoned. Stoicism and the stiff upper were, after all, twin arteries that ran like broad motorways through the Hawke family bloodlines.

During the last war, in the midst of the London Blitz, his beloved grandfather had gone on with life despite the utter destruction of his large Belgrave Square mansion. It had all come tumbling down around his ears when a barrage of Nazi bombs during the wee small hours had reduced it to smoking rubble.

Grandfather Hawke had cheerfully pitched a striped canvas atop the great mountain of smoking debris, installed a surviving lounge chair, bed, and table, and remained happily ensconced atop his ruined residence for the duration. Or, something like that, so the story goes.

In this present situation, Hawke had so far replaced his splintered front door with one of solid Bermuda cedar, varnished to gleaming perfection. The antique Georgian door knocker, a snarling bulldog, had survived and was remounted. Same with the Georgian dresser in his bedroom.

He and Pelham then set about the thankless task of patching up all the countless bullet holes in the plaster walls and applied paint touch-ups where necessary throughout the bloodstained house.

They had, Hawke reckoned, been able to bleach almost all the blood spatter out of the rear hallway, scene of the final confrontation, as well as the dark brownish-orange splotches from the rugs in the living room. A few years and you’d never notice it, he assured Pelham.

The sprays of bullet holes in the ceilings proved somewhat more problematic for want of a ladder of sufficient height. “Mere pockmarks,” Hawke said to Pelham, staring up at them. “Like the souvenirs the Nazis left along the Mall during the Blitz. Lends the place a certain plucky authenticity, wouldn’t you agree, Pelham? Battle-scarred. I mean to say, it all adds a certain rough-hewn character in my view. Rather charming. Yes?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Not really, m’lord.”

“Not really?”

“No.”

Still, Hawke thought the old place had cleaned up pretty well, he told a weary Pelham later that afternoon in the gardens. They were even now hard at work on the shrubbery and flower beds around the entrance to the house. Digging up the blackened trellis and remains of the climbing roses and burned boxwood hedges that had surrounded the entrance and replacing them with morning glories, high among the pantheon of Hawke’s favorite flowers.

Much of the masonry surrounding the front door was still blackened and gunpowder blasted, but Hawke was not willing to replaster the whole house and repaint it. Damned if he would agree to such a waste of blood, sweat, and treasure. No, he would not. Ivy, more climbing roses, and trailing wisteria would cover a lot of sins, he assured his old friend.

“Looks almost as if nothing sinister had ever happened, wouldn’t you say so, Pelham?” Hawke asked, swiping a soaked handkerchief across his glistening brow and standing back to admire his handiwork. It was a brutally hot day for Bermuda, and he couldn’t wait for his daily ocean swim up to Bloody Bay and back. Six miles, but worth every inch of it.

Pelham, regarding their joint efforts with something akin to dismay, considered a measured response. These conversations were always dicey. His lordship was decidedly upbeat about their progress thus far. And Lord Hawke never, ever, appreciated rain on any of his many and various parades.

“Not quite, sir.”

“Really? What do you mean, ‘not quite’?”

“I mean, m’lord, that the cottage still very much looks like some battered ruin in a war zone. Like someone blew a hole in the house with high-powered explosives and a platoon of heavily armed and jackbooted infantry marched through the place firing at will. With all due respect, m’lord, all that smoke damage up under the eaves, the charred remains of the two lovely old carriage lamps to either side of what was once the front door, the—”

Pelham saw the anger at being challenged in such a way welling up in Lord Hawke. It was most unusual, though sadly more common lately. He’d come to notice the odd tic recurring, a slight trembling of the right hand at moments of stress.

Privately, he had felt for some time that his lordship had suffered a far graver wound over the loss of his cherished Anastasia than even he could admit to himself. He thought the man suffered from a malaise the French called a folie circulaire, a madness that rose up only to recede and manifest itself again and again later.

These horrible disorders afflict, haphazardly, the smart and the simple, and men as well as women. Even great warriors, like Hawke himself, can suffer the affliction, even with the best luck and the most supportive families and the warmest encouragement and the wisest of friends. It’s the inability of all those other things to keep them sane that makes them tragic heroes.

At that moment they heard the distinctly Italian two-tone toot of an automobile horn and turned to see a long, low, red 1927 Lagonda roadster swerving into view, crunching over the shell drive. The former Lady Mars, now Diana Congreve since her joyous wedding last Christmas to Ambrose, was behind the wheel, a colorful scarf streaming from beneath her proud chin.

She appeared to be frowning as she applied the emergency brake.

“Good afternoon, my darling Diana!” Hawke cried, striding toward her automobile, an oversized grin on his face. “Wait until you see all the progress we’ve made today! By God, we are nothing if not two workaholic beavers, am I right, Pelham?”

“Progress?” Lady Mars said, looking askance at the charred devastation around her. “It’s appalling! You two men simply cannot go on living in this horrific state of disrepair,” Diana Congreve said, climbing out of the car, the skirt rising on her long tanned thighs. She turned and lifted a large casserole dish from the rear seat.

“This is for you two bachelors. A cassoulet des legumes. Still warm. I made it myself. Ambrose says the gas and power lines into your house were cut or blown up in the melee and that you two have no ability to cook. Or see. Is that correct?”

She handed off the casserole dish to Pelham and strode with quiet determination into the rubble, stepping over some very sizable chunks of bomb-blasted limestone scattered about what used to be the lawn.

“My God, just look at this place!” she exclaimed.

“Fabulous, is it not?” Hawke beamed, seeing her obvious excitement. “Take note, Pelham. Lady Mars is known throughout the civilized world for her great style and extraordinarily beautiful homes.”

“Indeed she is, m’lord.”

“Fabulous it is certainly not, dear boy,” she said, cocking one eyebrow.

“Well, I think we—” Hawke said, looking hastily to Pelham for some support, “we haven’t quite gotten around to repairing everything that was damaged. But, still and all, this… uh… aromatic cassoulet is awfully kind of you, Diana, and — well, we’ve got to be getting back to work. Finishing touches, you know, the icing on the cake.”

She waved him off and pulled a long handwritten list from inside her green Kelly bag.

“Alex, dear, please take this list and use it. I insist.”

“What is it?”

“The names of everyone you’ll need. My architect. My interior decorator. My painters and roofers. My plumbers. My gardeners. Everybody. I will be happy to provide on-site decorative oversight of the project. In fact, judging by the mess you’ve already made, I must insist upon it. Think of it as spring cleaning!”

Pelham raised a fist to his mouth and coughed his thoroughly discreet cough. He said: “With all due respect, Lady Mars, it will come as no surprise to you to learn that his lordship is a gentleman who likes his spring without the cleaning.”

Diana threw her head back and laughed as Pelham endeavored mightily to maintain a straight face.

“No surprise at all, dear Pelham.”

Hawke looked from one to the other, afraid that he might have missed a joke somewhere along the way.

He said: “Oh, I don’t think any lists and such will be at all necessary, Diana. You see, Pelham and I are quite capable of this kind of thing and — both handy, you know, and—”

Pelham snatched the list out of Hawke’s hand.

“Thank you, madam. I shall make sure this list is put to good use immediately. Last night the rain off the ocean poured in through his lordship’s roof and smashed windows all night long, thereby soaking his bedclothes and leaving him soaked to the skin in the doing of it. Small wonder he hasn’t caught pneumonia. But of course, as you well know, listening to reason is not his strong suit in matters of this nature.”

Hawke snatched the list back from him, crumpled it, and jammed it down into the side pocket of his paint-spattered khaki trousers.

“Pelham, listen very clearly. I cannot, and will not, live in a house full of carpenters and painters and whatnot. I won’t do it! Enough to drive any man insane. I can’t do it!”

“Of course you can’t, m’lord,” Pelham said.

“Of course, you can’t, Alex, dear. No one would expect you to,” Diana chirped. “Would we, Pelham?”

“Certainly not, your ladyship.”

“I wonder…” Hawke said, eyeing his octogenarian valet through narrowed lids. “You didn’t by any chance summon Lady Mars to the premises this morning, did you, Pelham? Nothing in the way of a conspiracy here?”

“Certainly not, sir!”

“Oh, my, Alex, I just happened to be passing by en route to Trimingham’s,” Diana trilled. “To do a little shopping for Ambrose’s big birthday next week. Thought I’d bring you a cassoulet.”

“Hmm.”

“No good deed goes unpunished, as they say.”

Hawke looked from one to the other, dubious to say the least. Finally, beaten by this conspiracy of angels, he said, “And, for heaven’s sake, Diana, please don’t ask Pelham and me to come stay with you and Ambrose at Shadowlands. Oh, no. I hate being a guest. Not my cup of tea by a long shot. Sleeping upon some downy bed swathed in fancy French linen. Coming down to breakfast every day, trying to be polite in the bloody morning before I’ve even had a cup of my morning joe and, besides—”

Pelham, sensing her ladyship’s bristling offense at this tirade against guesting skills, coughed, again ever so discreetly, into his closed fist.

“With respect, sir, I would remind your lordship that the small sailing yacht you recently purchased in Jamaica, Santana, arrived early yesterday from her refit in the Turks and Caicos. She’s moored at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club docks as we speak.”

Diana brightened.

“Well, there you are, Alex! Perfect solution! Your new sailboat! There’s your answer, right there, isn’t it? After all, it’s only for a fortnight or so and then — there are far worse places on earth for two young bachelors than the bustling RBYC docks, if I’m not mistaken.”

Hawke considered this new notion for a long moment and grinned. His club was notorious for the numbers of beautiful women prowling the docks in search of suntanned old salts like himself, the young and the old, the strong and the infirm, the rich and the poor… Hawke had once said that the best thing about winning the annual Newport to Bermuda Race was that the prettiest girls had not yet been plucked away at the finish line.

He considered the notion of such a move to his club. As Pelham might say, such a move was “not without its particular merits and feasibilities.” That was certainly true in this case, wasn’t it? Diana, after all, for all her smothering motherly instincts, was in fact a good egg who had only his best interests at heart.

Why fight it?

Opportunity, as Shakespeare or someone of that ilk once said, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of life is bound in shallows and miseries.

Quite right, as usual, Shakespeare.