“Nonsense,” said Lisa, quickly. “I brought my hunt wardrobe from West Virginia. It’s packed. I’m happy! A hunt wedding— think!”
“I am,” said John, driving. “And if I know me, it might just as easily be a hunt funeral!”
“John would love that!” said Tom, talking to me as if John were not present, riding through green and green again. “Then he could come to our wake and get drunk and weep and tell all our grand times. You ever notice—things happen for his convenience? People are born for him, live for him, and die so he can put coins on their eyelids and cry over them. Is there anything isn’t convenient or fun for John?”
“Only one thing,” Tom added after a pause.
John pretended not to hear.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Being alone.” Tom was suddenly serious. “John doesn’t like being alone, ever. You must never leave John alone, remember that, no matter what.” Tom looked at me with his keen, clear, bright-water eyes. “John once said to me, Tom, the loneliest time in a man’s day is the time between when he stops work and starts dinner. That single hour is as desolate as three in the morning of a long night, he said. Then is when a man needs friends.”
“I said that to you?” said John in fake astonishment.
Tom nodded. “I got a letter from you last year. You must have written it at five, some afternoon. You sounded alone. That’s why I call once in a while. That’s why I’m here. Jealous, Lisa?”
“I think I am,” said Lisa.
Tom looked at her steadily.
“No,” said Lisa, “I’m not.”
Tom patted her leg. “Good girl.” He nodded up at John. “How about giving us a road test?”
“Road test it is!”
We drove the rest of the way to Kilcock at eighty miles an hour. Lisa blinked quite often. Tom didn’t blink at all, watching Ireland loom at him in landfalls of green.
I kept my eyes shut most of the way.
There was a problem having to do with a hunt wedding. Quite suddenly we discovered that none had been held in Ireland for years. How many years, we never found out.
The second and greatest problem was the Church.
No self-respecting priest was about to show up to fuse the lusts of two Hollywood characters, although Lisa Helm was from Boston and a thoroughly nice lady, but Tom Hurley was from all the points of Hell, a cross-country horseman who played destructive tennis with Darryl Zanuck and advised the Aga Khan on the insemination of thoroughbreds.
No matter. For the Church, it was out of the question. Besides which (John had never bothered to ask), neither Tom, despite his Irish background, nor Lisa was Catholic.
What to do? There were no other churches near Kilcock. Not even a paltry small Protestant chapel you might sleepwalk in for a long Sunday noon.
So it finally fell to me to inquire of the local Unitarian church in Dublin. What’s worse than a Protestant? A Unitarian! It was no church and no faith at all. But its keeper, the Reverend Mr. Hicks, agreed, in a rather hyperventilated exchange on the phone, to assume the task because he was promised his rewards on Earth by John Huston rather than in Heaven by a God who was rarely named, so as to save embarrassment.
“Have they been living in sin?” asked the Reverend Mr. Hicks abruptly.
I was shocked. I had never heard such talk before.
“Well …” I said.
“Have they?”
I shut my eyes to focus the bridal pair, loud in the Dublin streets noon and night.
They had had a fight about one wedding ring, then another, a fight about possible flowers, a fight about the day and date, a fight about the minister, a fight about the location of the ceremony, a fight about the size of the wedding cake, with or without brandy, a fight about the horses and hounds, and even a fight with the master of the hunt, a fight with his assistant, a fight with the Courtown butler, an altercation with a maid, a carousal with the pub owner about liquor, another brannigan with the liquor merchant in town for not giving a markdown on three cases of not very excellent champagne, plus fights in restaurants and pubs. If you wanted to keep a record of the fights in one week, the best way to imprint it on the calendar was with a shotgun.
John loved it all.
“Always like a good scrap!” he exclaimed, his grin so wide it needed sewing. “My cash is on the lady’s nose. Tom may ride the days, but she’ll win the nights. Besides, everyone has his foibles. Tom drinks too much Old Peculier—”
“Is that a real name?”
“An English ale, uh-huh. Old Peculier. But that’s Tom. A pal, nevertheless. They’ll finish the fights and settle in for a soft marriage, you wait and see.”
“Reverend Hicks,” I said over the phone, “Tom and Lisa fight a lot.”
“Then they’ve sinned a lot!” the reverend mourned. “You’d best send them round.”
Tom and Lisa fought about going to see Mr. Hicks.
They fought going in.
They argued in front of him.
They yelled coming out.
If a voice can be pale, the reverend’s voice was pale describing the pair.
“This is not a marriage,” he protested. “It is a rematch!”
“Exactly my sentiments, Reverend,” I agreed, “but will you advise them of the boxing rules and send them to their corners?”
“If they’ll promise to stay there four days out of five. Is there a Bible chapter, I wonder? Futilities, verse four, paragraph two?”
“There will be.”
“And will I write it?”
“I have faith in you. Father!”
“Reverend!” he cried.
“Reverend,” I said.
“Well, how in hell we got into this mess is what I’d like to know!” Ricki said into the phone.
John’s voice barked back from Paris, where he was interviewing actors for our film. I could hear him loud and clear as I helped lug in the flowers and place the table for the wedding cake and count the cheap champagne in cases along the wall.
“Mess!” John yelled. “It’s no mess, by God; it’s going to be the greatest goddamn event in Irish history. They’ll start the uprising over. Are the flowers there?”
“The damn flowers are!”
“Has the cake been ordered?”
“You know it has!”
“And the champagne?”
“The worst, but it’s here.”
“Better get hold of Heeber at his pub. Tell him to bring in the best. God, I’ll pay for it. It’s time Tom scared the moths out of his wallet, but hell! Call Heeber!”
“The alien from Mars just did that—”
“Is he there? Put him on!”
Ricki threw the phone at me. I dodged but caught.
“John, I’ve finished the Saint Elmo’s fire scene and—”
“To hell with that, kid. I’ve fallen—”
“With whom?” I said automatically.
“No, no, for Christ’s sake, no woman! This is more important. Off a horse!”