"Am I supposed to interpret that as positive a.s.surance we'll see them this week?"

"We'll go to Shannon and drive them here, won't we, kid?"

"I thought I was supposed to rewrite the solid-gold-doubloon-on-the-mast scene, John."

"Oh, h.e.l.l, we both need a few days off. Ricki!"

Ricki reappeared in the door, her face the color of snow and lilacs. She had been waiting for the call she knew would come.

"Ricki," said John, beaming at her as on one of his children. "G.o.dd.a.m.n, listen-here's the planl"

Tom and Lisa got off the plane fighting. They fought inside the door of the plane. They fought coming out the door. They yelled at each other on the top step. They shouted coming down the steps.

John and I just looked up, aghast. I was glad Ricki was off somewhere, shopping until suppertime.

"Tom!" cried John. "Lisa!"

Halfway down the steps, Lisa turned and ran back up, raving. She was going back to the States now I The pilot, on his way out, told her there was a rather slender chance of this, for the plane was not going back immediately. Why not? she demanded. By this time Tom had bounded back up to her side, yelling at the pilot that he should indeed turn the d.a.m.n ship round and fly this madwoman back, he would pay double, triple, and if he could manage to crash on the way, fine.

John, listening, sat down on the steps of the unloading platform, shut his eyes, shook his head, and bellowed with laughter.

Hearing this, Tom came to the rail above and looked down sharply. "Jesus Christ, John!"

John went up and hugged and kissed Lisa a lot, which did it. We finally saw them through customs, packed them into the Jaguar, and tooled across the vast green pool table of Ireland.

"Beautiful! Beautiful!" cried Lisa, as the hills rushed by.

"What weatherl" said Tom.

"Don't let it fool you," John announced. "Looks lovely, but it rains twelve days out of ten. You'll soon be at the whiskey, like me!"

"Is that possible?" Tom laughed, and I laughed with him, looking over. What I saw was what I had seen for years around Hollywood, a man lean as whipcord and leather; hard riding, tennis every day, swimming, yachting, and mountain climbing had fined him down to this. Tom was fifty-three, with a thick shock of iron-gray hair. His face was unlined, deeply tanned, his jaw was beautifully sharp, his teeth were all there and white, his nose was a hawk's nose, exquisitely prowed in any wind anywhere in the world. His eyes were blue, water bright and intensely burning. The fire in him was a young man's fire, and it would never go out: he would never let it go out himself, and there was no man with an ego powerful enough to kill it. Nor, for that matter, was there a woman in the world whose flesh could smother Tom. There never had been, and now, this late, there never could be. Tom was his own mount and saddle, he rode himself and did so with masculine beauty. I could see by the way Lisa held his arm that she both angrily and happily accepted him for what he was, a single-minded man who had roamed the world and done what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it, without asking anyone and without apologies. Any woman who tried to lay tracks down for Tom, why, he would simply laugh and walk away. Now, this day, he had decided to come to Ireland. Tomorrow he might be with the Aga Khan in Paris and the day after in Rome, but Lisa would be there, and it would go on that way until someday, many years from now, he fell from a mountain, a horse, or another woman, and died at the base of that mountain, horse, or woman, showing his teeth. He was everything men would like to be if they were honest with themselves, everything John wanted to be and couldn't quite live up to, and a hopeless and crazily reckless ideal for someone like me to admire from a distance, having been born and bred of reluctance, second thoughts, premonitions, depressions, and lack of will.

"Mr. Hurley," I couldn't help asking, "why have you come to Ireland?"

"Tom is the name. And . . . John ordered me here! When John speaks, I come" said Tom, laughing.

"d.a.m.n right!" said John.

"You called him, remember, Tom?" Lisa punched his arm.

"So I did." Tom was not in the least perturbed. "I figured it had been too long since we saw each other. Years go by. So I pick up the phone and call the son of a b.i.t.c.h and he says, Tom, come! And we'll have a wild week and I'll go on my way and another two years will pa.s.s. That's how it is with John and me, great when we're together, no regrets apart! This hunt wedding, now ..."

"Don't look at me," I said. "My ignorance is total."

"Lisa, here, didn't quite warm up to it," Tom admitted.

"No!" cried John, swiveling to burn her with one eye.

"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 Kilc.o.c.k 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 l.u.s.ts of two Hollywood characters, although Lisa Helm was from Boston and a thoroughly nice lady, but Tom Hurley was from all the points of h.e.l.l, 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 Kilc.o.c.k. 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 a.s.sume the task because he was promised his rewards on Earth by John Huston rather than in Heaven by a G.o.d who was rarely named, so as to save embarra.s.sment.

"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 a.s.sistant, 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 sc.r.a.p!" 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d; it's going to be the greatest G.o.dd.a.m.n event in Irish history. They'll start the uprising over. Are the flowers there?"

"The d.a.m.n 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. G.o.d, I'll pay for it. It's time Tom scared the moths out of his wallet, but h.e.l.l! 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 h.e.l.l 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"

"Fell off?"

"Shh! Don't let Ricki hear! She'd cancel the hunt! I'm okay. Just some pulled ligaments. Unconscious five minutes and limping like mad. The Gimp, by G.o.d, the Gimp. But I'll be home late today. Check the last flight from London. I rode at Longchamps at dawn two days ago."

"I thought you were casting-"

"Sure! But the d.a.m.n horse jumped when some car horn blew. I flew a mile high. I'm okay now. With a slight tendency, without warning, to fall down and writhe in agony when my back gives. Don't let me scare you, kid."

"I'm scared, John. If you die, I'm dead!"

"Nice sentiment. You're the screwed-tight optimist. Just tell me I won't fall down and writhe with Saint Vitus at the wedding."

"Heck, you'd do it just to steal the show."

"Why not! Hire a cab, pick me up at the airport tonight, tell me the Saint Elmo's fire scene on the way. Can I stay in your room at the Royal Hibernian overnight? I should be walking without crutches by morning."

"Holy G.o.d, John, crutches?"

"Pipe down! Is Ricki in the room, for Christ's sake?"

"She went to answer the door. Wait ..."

Ricki stood in the hall looking at a piece of paper in her hand. Her face was a fall of snow and her eyes were beginning to drop tears. She came and handed me the paper.

John's voice said, "I hear someone crying."