Death and the Jubilee (27 page)

Suddenly he realized that they too must be staring out to sea on this moonlit night, watching for their ship, praying for copious supplies of money and guns and explosives. He turned his glasses
on to the streets of Greystones. Was there somebody down there, watching like him for the sign, for the sails? He thought of Theseus’ father, warned that his son’s boat was coming home
to Athens, watching desperately from the rocky citadel for the ship to come in. White sails meant he was alive, black that he was dead. Legend said Theseus had forgotten to change the sails so his
father hurled himself off the rock to his death, leaving the throne of Athens to the slayer of the Minotaur. Powerscourt thought Theseus had enjoyed power too much on his travels to want to play
second fiddle ever again. The failure to change the sails was deliberate. A patricide ruled in Athens, but only the immortal gods would ever know and they came for Theseus in the end. Powerscourt
wondered if a returning Harrison would have changed the sails. He thought of more black sails in Turner’s painting of a burial at sea, the great ships riding very still, the body lowered
reverently into the water, black sails marking the passage of another English hero.

Every five minutes Powerscourt would scan the horizon from north to south. He checked in the doorways of the cottages to see if his counterpart was lurking there in the shadows, hoping for the
weapons that might help bring freedom to the troubled island. He remembered other night watches, on the side of a mountain in India where he and Johnny Fitzgerald had waited for five days and
nights for a meeting between rebel tribesmen that must have happened somewhere else. Johnny had discovered another way to make his fortune. Luminous playing cards, playing cards you could see
properly in the dark, he had declared, would earn some lucky man his fortune. Nights on duty for soldiers, sailors and sentries would never be the same again. Think of the joy, Johnny said, when
you produced the Ace of Spades at three o’clock in the morning when you could hardly see your own hand in front of your face.

From time to time Powerscourt would walk up and down his room, stretching his legs, rubbing his eyes. By four o’clock he had decided that nothing would happen this night. There was no boat
or pleasure boat to be seen out to sea. No vessel from Hamburg or Bremen had come to disturb the peace of the waters off Greystones. Powerscourt wondered if they had got it wrong, if he should be
in some other desolate cove in Kerry or Connemara, or somewhere on the wild and rugged coast of Donegal, all easier to reach from Germany. He made a final tour with the field glasses. There was
nothing there. As dawn began to climb out of the eastern sky, grey-fingered, Powerscourt thought, he went to bed and slept fitfully as a new day dawned over the Irish Sea.

‘Will you go and see your old home, Francis?’ Lady Lucy’s voice came back to him as he stirred from an uneasy sleep at half-past eleven in the morning. Even
in Ireland, he reflected bitterly, they wouldn’t serve breakfast at this hour. Lucy and Powerscourt had been drinking tea at home when he told her of this expedition to his native country. He
had smiled at her. He had always meant to bring Lucy to Ireland on one of those Journeys to the Unknown as he referred to them. Once he had gone as far as to book the tickets. But he never had.
Perhaps he was superstitious about taking a second wife on the same journey that led to the drowning of the first.

‘I don’t know if I will or not, Lucy. Maybe I’ll be too busy. Do you think I should?’

Lady Lucy cast a protective glance towards the small figure of Olivia who had fallen asleep on the sofa, her left arm wrapped round her face as if to protect her from evil.

‘Yes, I think you should, Francis. It might do you good to look at it all again. And the gardens should be very beautiful at this time of year.’

‘I just wonder about the ghosts, Lucy. I should think they’re very strong too, in the springtime with the soft light lying across those mountains.’

Yet here he was, in the early afternoon, the Wicklow countryside drowned in sunshine, outside the driveway to Powerscourt House, Enniskerry, where he and his sisters had lived until he was a
young man. An old gardener called Michael O’Connell recognized him on his way up through the rhododendrons. Powerscourt wondered if he was the first ghost.

‘Lord Francis, how very nice to see you again. I’d have recognized you anywhere. The family are away just now if you want to have a look around. Nothing much has changed,
you’ll be glad to hear.’

Powerscourt remembered the old man teaching him how to string conkers, how to make bows and arrows, how to ride a horse. He had fought at Crécy on these well-kept lawns. He had hidden
inside the Wooden Horse and sacked Troy, better known as the stables, under the old man’s watchful eye. A small shed behind the house had done service as the Black Hole of Calcutta. He had
lain low on the hills around the house, one of Wellington’s riflemen at Waterloo, while the French artillery pounded their positions, waiting for the final, doomed, onslaught by Marshal Ney
and the Imperial Guard.

Then he was at the side of Powerscourt House. It stood on the top of a hill, looking out over the mountains. In front of it was the most remarkable ornamental garden in Ireland, a copy of some
ornate Italian extravaganza outside Rome. A long long flight of steps led down to a spectacular fountain in a little lake at the bottom. Bronze putti holding bronze urns marked the passage at the
sides of the steps. Powerscourt remembered two of his father’s friends racing their horses up the steps for a bet, the winner making off with fifty pounds. He remembered trying to slide down
them in the winter when they had frozen solid and he had nearly broken his neck half-way down.

He looked up at the house. That window there, third from the left on the second floor, had been his bedroom. He had looked out across the steps and the waterfall to the blue hills beyond. He
remembered his mother coming to see him one day, so excited because she was going hunting on a cold clear winter’s day. He had asked her why she liked it so much. She ruffled his hair with a
laugh, he must have been about ten at the time.

‘Quite simply, my darling, it is the most exciting thing in the world. When you’re riding fast across the countryside, the horse firm and strong beneath you, jumping over hedges and
all that sort of thing, it’s exhilarating, it’s wonderful. It makes me feel so alive.’

Powerscourt had smiled, he remembered. He never liked hunting. The nearest he had ever come to the same feelings was one hot and dusty day in India when he and Fitzgerald had ridden with the
cavalry against a rebel army. He recalled thinking that you were bound to feel very intensely alive because any second you could be equally intensely dead.

He looked down to the windows of the great drawing room on the ground floor. He had tried to hide in there once before a ball. His father loved dancing, especially with his mother, and once a
year the Powerscourt Ball attracted the cream of local and Dublin society. He saw him now, looking very dashing in his white tie and tails, entertaining a group of ladies before the fire, the
laughter rising right through the house and the band playing over and over again the waltzes his parents loved so much.

Then he turned on his heel. The memories were coming too fast. The ghosts were winning the battle. He felt the tears coming and he wasn’t sure he could stop them. He saw his mother in the
soft evening light brushing his sisters’ hair. She always used to do it before they went to sleep, the hypnotic rhythm of the brush, mother and daughters mesmerized by the sheen on the hair.
He could see his father in his study, staring sadly at the account books, telling his only son that it hadn’t been a good year, but that things would look up after Christmas. Powerscourt
thought now that he had been putting a brave face on it for the little boy. Things never looked up at all, not after Christmas, not after Easter, not after the summer holidays.

Powerscourt was fleeing the ancestral home as fast as he could now. The influenza had come back, the terrible influenza that had carried off both his parents, the unbearable funerals, the
torrents of tears by the gravesides, the desolation that seemed to be with them all for ever. He had thought of going to look at the headstone in the church by the side of the front drive. He
couldn’t do it. He set off back to Greystones, his face wet with tears, as the wind rose among the trees and his sodden handkerchief began to drip on to the grass beneath.

He thought suddenly of Lady Lucy. Had she known how terrible it might be for him? Did she realize how powerful the memories would be? Probably she did, he thought. He thought of her, holding
Thomas solemnly by the hand, Olivia clutched to her shoulder, all waving him goodbye to him at the front door in Markham Square before he left for Ireland. ‘Come back safely, my love,’
she had whispered as she kissed him goodbye. I must be strong for Lucy, he said to himself as the sobbing began to subside. I must be strong for Thomas and Olivia. As he thought of his wife and
children, his tears dried and by the time he returned to Greystones he was composed.

There was a storm that night. The afternoon sun had disappeared by tea-time. A strong wind began to blow in from off the sea. By nightfall the waves were crashing against the
walls of the little harbour, cascades of spray shooting up from the rocks beneath the Imperial Hotel. Powerscourt went for a walk along the sea front. The words of a hymn floated out from a tiny
church behind the beach.

He thought suddenly of the sailors on their mission from Germany. Were they somewhere out to sea praying to their German gods that the storm would abate, making everything fast, taking in sail
as quickly as they could? ‘God help sailors,’ an old gentleman with two mufflers said to Powerscourt as they passed each other by the little railway station, ‘on a night like
this.’

He went and sat on the rocks as far out as he dared. The spray rose in front of him. The noise of the wind was matched by the dark waters hurling themselves in vain against the rocks. It’s
like a siege, Powerscourt thought. The sea is laying siege to this little patch of Ireland. The waves are the artillery, pounding relentlessly, night and day, against the enemy ramparts. The
defenders try to close their ears to the onslaught. The defenders are going to win. The rocks are refusing to give way.

Nobody could come into the little harbour on a night like this, he felt sure. However big the mother ship, no little boat with its deadly cargo could make the journey from those great seas into
Greystones.

But he didn’t sleep. All through the night he kept watch from his windows on the empty grey sea, flecks of white on top of the waves. On the beaches the sea pounded in, crashing up the
shore, leaving a trail of dirty foam in its wake. Nothing moved in the streets of Greystones. Even if you had wanted to give or receive a signal, it would have been lost in the fury of the night.
Powerscourt was thinking of where he could take Lady Lucy when this case was over. Verona perhaps, city of doomed lovers, Vicenza with all those buildings by Palladio. He felt sure Lucy would like
Verona. He could buy her a copy of
Romeo and Juliet
to read on the train. Or would she have read it already? She might have forgotten it.

As dawn broke the rain had come. It was now sweeping in from the mountains, lashing the little town, rattling off the roof of Powerscourt’s hotel like gunshot. Powerscourt dreamed of
battles at sea as he fell asleep, the terrible carnage of Trafalgar where the smoke of the carronades hung in thick curtains across the sea, and a sniper high up in the rigging of a French ship
took careful aim at the one-armed Admiral in his gold braid on the deck of the
Victory
. Snipers. Something told Powerscourt that snipers were terribly important and he should remember them
when he woke up.

By then he was in another country. The rain had stopped. The wind had died down. The little town, its grey buildings, its grey beach with the hills behind, were bathed in sunshine. The hotel
gardeners were busy under Powerscourt’s windows, clearing away fallen branches, tending to the roses that threatened to fill one whole wall with red. Along the sea front the more adventurous
citizens were promenading round the bay, commenting excitedly to each other about the change in the weather. ‘Isn’t it grand, just grand,’ floated regularly up to his room.

Powerscourt reached for the binoculars. Johnny Fitzgerald’s timetable for the German invasion was nearly finished. Surely they must come today, or tonight. He had no doubt that they would
have to land under cover of darkness, sending their deadly packages into the tiny harbour while Greystones and County Wicklow slept. He scanned the horizon. A couple of cargo ships could be seen
far out to sea, trudging steadily towards Howth or Dublin. The seagulls were flying regular sorties across the rocks in front of the hotel. A pair of small yachts seemed to have set out from Bray
or Killiney further up the coast for a day’s sailing. They looked too small to have made the journey across the North Sea.

At two o’clock he went for a walk. He patrolled the streets of Greystones, his binoculars round his neck, pausing from time to time to fix his glasses on the birds. He made polite
conversation with some of the local people. Yes, the weather was much better today. Hadn’t it been terrible the last few days. Did they get many big yachts coming into Greystones, putting in
for supplies or to visit the local attractions? No, sir, they did not. Birdwatchers, he decided, were almost as innocent as fishermen in the eye of the beholder. But all the time he knew that his
counterpart must also be watching the seas beyond the town, hiding behind some curtains in an upstairs room, lurking in the heather on the coastal path to Bray, rebellious binoculars scanning the
horizon.