Betrayal at Lisson Grove (18 page)

‘The Irish have the longest memories in Europe.’ He bit into the toast.

‘And the greatest patience too?’ she said with disbelief. ‘People take action because something, somewhere has changed. Crimes of state have that in common with ordinary, domestic murders. Something new has caused O’Neil, or whoever it is, to do this now. Perhaps it has only just become possible. Or it may be that for him, now is the right time.’

Narraway ate the whole of his toast before replying. ‘Of course you are right. The trouble is that I don’t know which of those reasons it is. I’ve studied the situation in Ireland and I can’t see any reason at all for O’Neil to do this now.’

She ignored her tea. An unpleasant thought occurred to her, chilling and very immediate. ‘Wouldn’t O’Neil know that this would bring you here?’ she asked.

Narraway stared at her. ‘You think O’Neil wants me here? I’m sure if killing me were his purpose, he would have come to London and done it. If I thought it was simply murder I wouldn’t have let you come with me, Charlotte, even if Pitt’s livelihood rests on my return to office. Please give me credit for thinking that far ahead.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I thought bringing someone that nobody would see as assisting you might be the best way of getting round that.You never suggested it would be comfortable, or easy. And you cannot prevent me from coming to Ireland if I want to.’ He was not Pitt’s superior any more: he was simply a clever and dangerous man who had been a good friend, and was now in trouble of his own.

‘I had to tell you something of the situation, for Pitt’s sake,’ he said. ‘For your own, I cannot tell you all that I know, of Ireland or anywhere else. I don’t know any reason why O’Neil should choose now. But then I don’t know any reason why
anyone
should. It is unarguable that someone, with strong connections in Dublin, has chosen to steal the money I sent for Mulhare, and so bring about the poor man’s death. Then they made certain it was evident first to Austwick, and then to Croxdale, and so brought about my dismissal.’

He poured more tea for himself. ‘Perhaps it was not O’Neil who initiated it; he may simply have been willingly used. I’ve made many enemies. Knowledge and power both make that inevitable.’

‘Then think of other enemies,’ Charlotte urged. ‘Whose circumstances have changed? Is there anyone you were about to expose?’

‘My dear, do you think I haven’t thought of that?’

‘And you still believe it is O’Neil?’

‘Perhaps it is a guilty conscience.’ He gave a smile so brief it reached barely his eyes and was gone again.‘“The wicked flee where no man pursueth”,’ he quoted. ‘But there is knowledge in this that only people familiar with the case could have.’

‘Oh.’ She poured herself more tea. ‘Then we had better learn more about O’Neil. He was mentioned yesterday evening. I told them that my grandmother was Christina O’Neil.’

He swallowed. ‘And who was she really?’

‘Christine Owen,’ she replied.

He started to laugh, and she heard the raw note in it just a little out of control, too close to sadness. She said nothing, but finished her toast and then the rest of her tea.

 

Charlotte spent the morning and most of the afternoon quietly, reading as much as she could of Irish history, realising the vast gap in her knowledge and a little ashamed of it. Ireland was geographically so close to England, and because the English had occupied it one way or another for so many centuries, in their minds its individuality had been swallowed up in the general tide of British history. The Empire covered a quarter of the world. Englishmen tended to think of Ireland as part of their own small piece of it, linked by a common language – disregarding the existence of the Irish tongue – and of course by the Crown and the government in London.

So many of Ireland’s greatest sons had made their names on the world stage indistinguishably from the English. Everyone knew Oscar Wilde was Irish, even though his plays were absolutely English in their setting. They probably knew Jonathan Swift was Irish, but did they know it of Bram Stoker, the creator of the monstrous Count Dracula? Did they know it of the great Duke of Wellington, victor of Waterloo, and later prime minister? The fact that these men had left Ireland in their youth did not in any way alter their heritage.

Her own family was not Anglo-Irish, but in pretending to have a grandmother who was, perhaps she should be a little more sensitive to people’s feelings and treat the whole subject less casually.

By evening she was again dressed in her one black gown, this time with different jewellery and different gloves, and her hair decorated with an ornament Emily had given her years ago. Then she was worried that she was overdressed for the theatre. Perhaps other people would be far less formal. They were a highly literate culture, educated in words and ideas, but also very familiar with them. They may not consider an evening at the theatre a social affair but an intellectual and emotional one. They might think she was trivialising it by making such an issue of her own appearance, when it was the players who mattered.

She took the ornament out of her hair, and then had to restyle it not to look as if it were incomplete. All of which meant she was late, and flustered, when Narraway knocked on the door to tell her that Fiachra McDaid was here to escort her for the evening again.

‘Thank you,’ she said, putting the comb down quickly and knocking several loose hairpins onto the floor. She ignored them.

He looked at her with anxiety. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes! It is simply an indecision as to what to wear.’ She dismissed it with a slight gesture.

He regarded her carefully. His eyes travelled from her shoes, which were visible beneath the hem of her gown, all the way to the crown of her head. She felt the heat burn up her face at the candid appreciation in his eyes.

‘You made the right decision,’ he pronounced. ‘Diamonds would have been inappropriate here. They take their drama very seriously.’

She drew in a breath to say that she had no diamonds, and realised he was laughing at her. She wondered if he would have given a woman diamonds, if he loved her. She thought not. If he were capable of that sort of love, it would have been something more personal, more imaginative: music; a cottage by the sea, however small; a carving of a bird.

‘I’m so glad,’ she said, meeting his eyes. ‘I thought diamonds were too trivial.’ She accepted his arm, laying her fingers so lightly on the fabric of his jacket that he could not have felt her touch.

Fiachra McDaid was as elegant and graceful as the previous evening, although on this occasion dressed less formally. He greeted Charlotte with apparent pleasure at seeing her again, even so soon. He expressed his willingness to help her to understand as much of Irish theatre as was possible for an Englishwoman to grasp. He smiled at Charlotte as he said it, as if it were some secret aside that she already understood.

It was some time since she had been to the theatre at all. It was not an art form Pitt was particularly fond of, and she did not like going without him, even though occasionally she went with Emily and Jack, and enjoyed it enormously. What was most fun was to go with Aunt Vespasia, but Vespasia was presently so very distressed over the outcry against Oscar Wilde, and the whole case between himself and Lord Queensberry, that she had not felt inclined to visit the theatre at all.

Here in Dublin it was quite different from London. The theatre building itself was smaller; indeed there was an intimacy to it that made it less an occasion to be seen, and more of an adventure in which to participate.

McDaid introduced her to various of his own friends who greeted him. They seemed very varied in age and apparent social status, as if he had chosen them from as many walks of life as possible.

‘Mrs Pitt,’ he explained cheerfully. ‘She is over from London to see how we do things here, mostly from an interest in our fair city, but in part to see if she can find some Irish ancestry. And who can blame her? Is there anyone of wit or passion who wouldn’t like to claim a bit of Irish blood in their veins?’

She responded warmly to the welcome extended her, finding the exchanges easy, even comfortable. She had forgotten how interesting it was to meet new people, with new ideas. But she did wonder exactly what Narraway had told McDaid. From the way he answered the enquiries of one or two more curious ladies, again Charlotte thought perhaps he knew quite a lot more than Narraway had implied.

She searched his face, and saw nothing in it but good humour, interest, amusement, and a blank wall of guarded intelligence that intended to give away nothing at all.

They were very early for the performance, but most of the audience were already present. While McDaid was talking Charlotte had an opportunity to look around and study faces. They were different from a London audience only in subtle ways. There were fewer fair heads, fewer blunt Anglo-Saxon features, a greater sense of tension and suppressed energy.

And of course she heard the music of a different accent, and now and then people speaking in a language utterly unrecognisable to her. There was in them nothing of the Latin or Norman-French about the words, or the German from which so much English was derived. She assumed it was the native tongue. She could only guess at what they said by the gestures, the laughter and the expression in faces.

She noticed one in particular. His hair was black with a loose, heavy wave streaked with grey. His head was narrow-boned, and it was not until he turned towards her that she saw how dark his eyes were. His nose was noticeably crooked, giving his whole aspect a lopsided look, a kind of wounded intensity. Then he turned away, as if he had not seen her, and she was relieved. She had been staring, and that was ill-mannered, no matter how interesting a person might seem.

‘You saw him,’ McDaid observed, so quietly it was little more than a whisper.

She was taken aback. ‘Saw him? Who?’

‘Cormac O’Neil,’ he replied.

She was startled. Had she been so very obvious? ‘Was that . . . I mean the man with the . . . ?’ Then she did not know how to finish the sentence.

‘Haunted face,’ he said it for her.

‘I wasn’t going to . . .’ She saw in his eyes that she was denying it pointlessly. Either Narraway had told him, or he had pieced it together himself. It made her wonder how many others knew; indeed, if all those involved might well know more than she, and her pretence was deceiving no one. Did Narraway know that? Or was he as naïve in this as she?

‘Do you know him?’ she asked instead.

‘I?’ McDaid raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ve met him, of course, but know him? Hardly at all.’

‘I didn’t mean in any profound sense,’ she parried. ‘Merely were you acquainted.’

‘In the past, I thought so.’ He was watching Cormac while seeming not to. ‘But tragedy changes people. Or then on the other hand, perhaps it only shows you what was always there, simply not yet uncovered. How much does one know anybody? Most of all oneself.’

‘Very metaphysical,’ she said drily. ‘And the answer is that you can make a guess, more or less educated, depending on your intelligence and your experience with that person.’

He looked at her steadily. ‘Victor said you were . . . direct.’

She found it odd to hear Narraway referred to by his given name, instead of the formality she was used to, the slight distance that leadership required.

Now she was not sure if she were on the brink of offending McDaid. On the other hand, if she were too timid even to approach what she really wanted, she would lose the chance.

She smiled at him. ‘What was O’Neil like, when you knew him?’

McDaid’s eyes widened. ‘Victor didn’t tell you? How interesting.’

‘Did you expect him to have?’ she asked.

‘Why is he asking, why now?’ He sat absolutely still. All around him people were moving, adjusting position, smiling, waving, finding seats, nodding agreement to something or other, waving to friends.

‘Perhaps you know him well enough to ask him that?’ she suggested.

Again he countered. ‘Don’t you?’

She kept her smile warm, faintly amused. ‘Of course, but I would not repeat his answer. You must know him well enough to believe he would not confide in someone he could not trust.’

‘So perhaps we both know, and neither will trust the other,’ he mused. ‘How absurd, how vulnerable and incredibly human; indeed, the convention of many comic plays.’

‘To judge by Cormac O’Neil’s face, for him at least, it was a tragedy,’ she countered. ‘One of the casualties of war that you referred to.’

He looked at her steadily, and for a moment the buzz of conversation around them ceased to exist. ‘So he was,’ he said softly. ‘But that was twenty years ago.’

‘Does one forget?’

‘Irishmen? Never. Do the English?’

‘Sometimes,’ she replied.

‘Of course. You could hardly remember them all!’ Then he caught himself immediately and his expression changed. ‘Do you want to meet him?’ he asked.

‘Yes – please.’

‘Then you shall,’ he promised.

There was a rustle of anticipation in the audience and everyone fell silent. After a moment or two the curtain rose and the play began. Charlotte concentrated on it so that she could speak intelligently when she was introduced to people in the interval. To know nothing would imply that she was uninterested, which would be unforgivable here.

She found it difficult. There were frequent references to events she was not familiar with, even words she did not know. There was an underlying air of sadness as if the main characters knew that the ending would include a loss that nothing could ever alter, no matter what they said or did.

Was that how Cormac O’Neil felt: helpless, predestined to be overwhelmed? Everybody lost people they loved. Bereavement was a part of life. The only escape was to love no one. She stopped trying to understand the drama on the stage and as discreetly as she could, she studied O’Neil.