‘He already has,’ I murmured. But she did not hear. Nor did I intend her to. For I shared her confidence that she would hear from Charnwood. Whether she meant to tell me when she did so was, however, quite another matter. And I was determined to be prepared for every eventuality.
It was possible, we both admitted over a late breakfast back at the Shelbourne, that the letter would not reach the appropriate sorting office in time to be collected by Charnwood that day. It was Saturday and the onset of the week-end was against us. The only certain reward for our promptness was to know it definitely would be waiting for him on Monday. But Monday, with so much resting on his response, seemed an agonizingly long way off.
‘Have you really no idea where he is?’ I asked in my frustration.
‘None,’ Diana replied. ‘He said he would contact us when the time was ripe. Until then, the less we knew, the less likely we were to let something slip.’
‘What about the bank accounts he siphoned the money into? Are they here?’
‘Presumably. But I’m only guessing. We were to suggest they might be in Switzerland if we thought we needed to.’
‘To draw attention away from Ireland?’
‘I suppose so. But, wherever they are, they’ll be well hidden.’
‘Like the man himself.’
‘Yes. But Guy—’ She reached across the table and fleetingly touched my hand. It was no more than the lightest of pats, but carried with it a sort of electric memory of the pleasure her slender fingers had given – and taken. ‘He will respond. I have no doubt of it.’
‘And meanwhile?’
‘We wait. As best we can.’
The week-end slowly elapsed. We accompanied each other on aimless walks round the mist-wrapped city, never going far from the Shelbourne in case a message arrived. We took meals together in the hotel restaurant, maintaining an outward show of ease and harmony, while in the secrecy of our own thoughts … But our relationship was false on too many levels for certainty about what we felt. Platonic friends; breathless lovers; venomous foes; dispassionate allies: we had played every part and lost ourselves in none of them. What was there left, then, but the recognition of two dissemblers? What was there left but the blankness beneath the masks?
Yet, still and all, we were united in our attempt to topple the Concentric Alliance. When I told Diana all I had learned from Duggan – when I listed the evidence and led her along the long-extinguished powder-trail from the guns of August to her father’s door – I saw in her eyes the certainty growing that what he had done was unforgivable.
The Shelbourne stood on the northern side of a broad square, the centre of which comprised a public park. There, among the falling leaves, the laughing family groups and the ducks begging for bread, Diana turned to me as Sunday afternoon was wearing towards dusk and said without preamble: ‘He’s ruined both of us, hasn’t he, Guy? But for the war, we might have become admirable people. Instead, what are we?’ She gave a resigned smile. ‘A confidence trickster and a spoilt bitch.’
‘They’re not the descriptions I’d choose,’ I protested.
‘But accurate?’
‘Perhaps. The war probably changed as many people as it killed. To find that one man may have been responsible for so much …’
‘And that man is my father.’
‘Yes. He is.’
‘When Mama died,’ she said, looking into the distance, ‘I was twelve years old. I held the whole world responsible, not just the Germans. And I resolved to make the world pay. By taking everything I could from it and giving nothing back. By breaking other people’s hearts just as mine had been broken. By proving I couldn’t be made to care as much for anyone or anything ever again. Except—’ She broke off and I sensed we were close to the truth about herself, or part of it. ‘Except my father,’ she resumed. ‘I turned to him for love and shelter. And he gave them – unstintingly. But the irony can’t have escaped him, can it? Just as it can’t escape me now. I blamed everybody. Except the one who was truly responsible.’
‘What will you do … when you meet him?’
‘What I’ve said I’ll do.’
‘I mean … about your mother.’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, glancing round at me. ‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘Would it help if I came with you?’
‘No. He might see us together before showing himself. And then he never would. Besides …’
‘Yes?’
‘This is between my father and me.’ Her jaw stiffened. ‘Between us and nobody else.’
Monday came, but with it no word from Charnwood. ‘Watch her, old man. Watch her like a hawk.’ And so I did, Max. But her calmness – and the words she had uttered in the park – sowed suspicion in my mind. She had a telephone in her room. There were porters galore to bring a letter to her at any hour of the day or night. How could I be sure he had not already communicated with her? And how could I be sure what she intended to do when they met? ‘Between us and nobody else,’ she had said. But what had she meant?
I had to know. Too much was at stake to leave to chance – or to a daughter’s desire for revenge. I had to find a way into her thoughts. And that was why – so I told myself – I behaved as I did on Monday evening.
After dinner, I escorted her up to her room. On the three previous nights, I had left her at the door. But not tonight.
‘May I come in?’
‘Of course. But …’
The door clicked shut behind us. She was standing very close to me, breathing with nervous shallowness. So beautiful, swathed in an inky blue dress. So desirable. And I had the perfect excuse. ‘All those times in Venice,’ I said, looking into her dark inviting eyes. ‘Each one better than the last. I can’t forget them, can you? The things we did. The ways we loved.’
‘Loved? Is that what we did?’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps the word doesn’t matter.’
‘But the act?’
‘Oh yes, Guy.’ She took my hand, raised it to her breast and pressed my palm against her nipple. ‘The act matters. The act is everything.’
Everything? No. But close to it. Close to something precious – something I could no more forget than regret – as I slid the clothes from her body and took her, oh so slowly, in the Dublin night. Again. And yet again.
‘I’ve wanted us to do this so badly.’
‘Why?’
‘To prove I was right. I didn’t choose you, Guy, because I was afraid you’d come to matter too much to me.’
‘Another lie?’
‘No. Not this time. Not a lie. The truth.’
The truth? Maybe. Or maybe the truth was the one intimacy withheld, the eighth veil she would never drop. After the shock of finding we both wanted so much – and could both have it – there was still doubt waiting for the ecstasy to fade.
Next morning, while she was bathing, I searched her belongings for a letter from Charnwood. There was none. Instead, there was something far worse, something cold and hard, waiting to meet my grasp beneath a silk peignoir in the bottom drawer of a tallboy. There was a gun: an evidently brand-new derringer. And it was loaded.
I complained of a headache over breakfast and retreated to my own room, claiming a few hours’ rest would see me right. Diana was solicitous but, so far as I could tell, unsuspecting. As soon after she left me as seemed safe, I slipped out of the hotel, using the service lift and the side-entrance in Kildare Street. Then I headed for the GPO.
There was no sign of the clerk we had spoken to on Saturday and the one who dealt with me turned out to be an embodiment of Hibernian rectitude. My pleas of desperate life-or-death urgency left him unmoved. The names and addresses of box-holders were a sacred trust. He would never part with them. My hints at bribery only made matters worse. In the end, I did well to escape without the police being called.
I decided to try my luck at the Sheriff Street sorting office, to which a passer-by gave me directions
. It lay half a mile east, behind Amiens Street railway station. I struck out across O’Connell Street, pausing between the tracks in the centre to let a tram rattle by. Did she really mean to kill him? I wondered. Did she really mean to make him answer so finally for her mother’s death? If so—
‘Begging your pardon, sir!’ A boy’s high-pitched voice was followed by a twitch at my sleeve.
‘What the devil do you want?’ I snapped. Seeing his ragged clothes and importunate face, the answer seemed obvious. But I was wrong.
‘This is for you, sir.’ He pushed a blank white envelope into my hand. ‘From the gentleman yonder.’
‘What gentleman?’
‘The old fellow outside the Metropole.’ He pointed back at the hotel adjacent to the GPO, then scratched his head. ‘Well, sure, he was there a moment ago.’
‘Old, you say?’
‘White-haired. And British, like yourself.’
I raced across to the hotel and looked in both directions, then tried the side-streets to south and north. Nothing. No sign. No trace. I launched back into the GPO. He was not there. Nor in the palm-fringed foyer of the Metropole, where I sank into a chair and, with shaking fingers, opened the envelope.
Dublin,
10th November 1931
My dear Horton,
Congratulations on your persistence. It has quite confounded me. I have, of course, received my daughter’s letter. But you should know that I have also received a letter from my sister, forewarning me as to your intentions. Naturally, I have no choice but to yield to your demands. But Vita’s intervention enables me to impose one small condition. I will meet you to surrender the documents. But only you, Horton. Not Diana. If she accompanies you – or I see her nearby – I will not show myself. I hope to deliver this letter to you in circumstances that will enable you to withhold its contents from her. Certainly, I think it would be wise to do so. And also wise not to alert her to our meeting. I suggest the Wellington Monument in Phoenix Park at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, early enough for you to leave the Shelbourne without Diana noticing and for there to be few if any witnesses to our encounter. Pray excuse the lack of a signature. I think you will agree it is a sensible precaution. Until tomorrow.
It took me as far as O’Connell Bridge to decide what to do. There I screwed up Charnwood’s note and dropped it over the parapet into the Liffey. Then I walked swiftly back to the Shelbourne, pausing at the taxi rank just short of it to tip a cabby ten shillings in return for his guarantee that he would be there at half past seven the following morning, ready to drive me out to Phoenix Park.
I had hoped to gain the safety of my room undetected and so postpone facing Diana for as long as possible. But luck was against me. As I entered the hotel and made for the stairs, the lift doors slid open and she stepped out, frowning in surprise at the sight of me.
‘Guy! I thought you were resting.’
‘Er … I was. But then I … decided to see what a breath of air would do for my head.’
‘And what did it do?’
‘Cleared it. Very effectively.’
‘Good. I was going to take a stroll in the park. Would you care to accompany me?’
‘Certainly.’
We went out, crossed the road and entered the park by the nearest gate. Neither of us spoke and the silence stretched itself into something tense and expectant. We followed a curving path along the edge of a pond, walking slowly, each waiting for the other to say something, anything. Then I realized what I should already have asked and blurted out the question in sudden haste.
‘Have you heard from your father?’
‘No. I confess … I’m beginning to worry. Surely I should have done by now.’
‘He probably didn’t receive your letter until yesterday. He might even have gone away for a few days. We’ll have to be patient.’
She frowned at me once more. ‘You have changed your tune.’
‘I’m only trying to be realistic.’
‘Realistic?’ She stopped and stared at me. In seeking to cover my tracks, I had gone a long way towards arousing her suspicions. ‘Is that what you were being last night, Guy – realistic?’
‘Last night has nothing to do with it.’
‘Hasn’t it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You’ve been to the GPO, haven’t you?’
‘What?’
‘You’ve tried to wheedle Papa’s address out of them – or buy it.’
‘No.’
‘The headache. The sudden desire for fresh air. Do you think I’m a fool?’
‘As I told you, I—
‘You’ve been gone nearly an hour.’
‘No, no. Nothing like as long.’
‘I telephoned your room. To see how you were. You might have slept through the bell. But I don’t think you did, do you?’
‘Er … No.’ My brain raced in pursuit of a convincing lie. In my desperation, I remembered an old maxim: alter the truth as little as possible. ‘You’re right. I thought I could bribe one of the clerks into supplying your father’s address.’
‘What happened?’
‘I came away empty-handed. As no doubt you could have told me I would.’
‘Yes, I could.’ Her expression lightened. Her sense of superiority was appeased – and hence deceived.
‘It was a stupid thing to do. I—’
‘It was worse than stupid!’ She was angry with me but no longer suspicious: I had escaped. ‘Papa’s quite capable of having an informant on the staff ready to alert him to just such an attempt.’
‘Don’t worry. I never specified which box-number I was interested in. The clerk we saw on Saturday wasn’t on duty.’
‘We must be grateful for small mercies. What I can’t understand is … why you did it.’
‘Perhaps last night was the reason. Perhaps I wanted to get what we came here for … before our truce turned into something else.’
‘You think it might?’
‘Let’s say I’m afraid it might. I can’t forget Max, you see. I—’
‘Guilt? Is that it, Guy? Is that what you woke up with this morning? Not a headache, but bad attack of conscience?’
‘I suppose it was.’
‘I thought we’d accepted each other for what we really are. But it seems I was wrong.’
I faced the contempt in her gaze and nodded. ‘Yes. It seems you were.’
‘Then let’s hope we hear from my father very soon. Before our truce disturbs your re-discovered conscience any further.’ At which she turned on her heel and strode back towards the hotel, leaving me to follow some paces behind, with my pride dented but my secret intact.
It was still intact that evening, when I escorted Diana to her room after a dinner during which we had exchanged barely a word. So was her contempt. But that, it seemed to me, was a small price to pay for the prize I would shortly claim.
‘Perhaps something will happen tomorrow,’ I disingenuously remarked as she slid the key into the lock.
‘It well might,’ she replied, pushing the door open and stepping across the threshold. ‘My father has always had an impeccable sense of timing.’ Glancing round, she caught my nonplussed look and added: ‘Tomorrow is Armistice Day.’
‘Ah, yes,’ I said, marvelling at my ability to have overlooked such an obvious point – as I felt sure Charnwood had not. ‘Of course. It had—’ But before I could finish the sentence, Diana had closed the door in my face. A second later, I heard the bolt slide home. ‘Until tomorrow,’ I said to myself as I turned away. ‘Until the truce is over, darling mine.’
14
IT WAS BARELY light when I left the Shelbourne, a still black night giving way reluctantly to a still grey day. The cabby was waiting as promised, lured back by my generous tip of the previous morning.
‘Phoenix Park, wasn’t it, sir?’
‘Yes. Near the Wellington Monument.’
‘Right you are, sir. The Iron Duke’s Needle it is. Sure, he was bor
n in Dublin. Did you know that?’
‘I don’t believe I did.’
‘Oh yes. But, like many a sensible man, he didn’t stay to die here.’
There was to be more, in a similar vein, as we headed west. I said little, but it made no difference. The fellow’s chatter was self-sustaining. I sat back in my seat and smoked a cigarette and wondered just what I would find waiting for me. Charnwood had no choice but to do as he was asked. He had said so himself. And yet …
I must have lost track of time, for suddenly, it seemed, we were there, turning into the park through open gates hung from pillars topped with lanterns still lit against the faltering darkness. Ahead stretched an arrow-straight tree-lined avenue, while to the left, through the bare branches and the slowly lifting dusk, loomed a tall stone obelisk.
‘Is that the monument?’
‘It is, sir.’
‘Then stop here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’
‘Just as you like, sir.’
I paid him off and checked my watch. It was ten minutes to eight. I had wanted to arrive a little early, for Charnwood, I felt sure, would not be late. I started along the avenue, trees, bushes and a wrought-iron fence denying me a complete view of the monument for some way until abruptly they ceased and there it stood, stark and steepling, at the centre of a wide lawn.
I crossed the lawn to the foot of the monument and gazed up at it. It must have been all of two hundred feet high, a tapering stone pillar with a pyramidal top, resting on a vast square plinth, from the base of which radiated a dozen or so sloping steps that ran down to where I stood. A tarmacadammed path linked it to a road, screened by trees, that turned off the main avenue from which I had approached. Absolute silence reigned in the gathering brightness. And when I looked at my watch I saw it was now only a few minutes to eight.
I began to walk round the monument, glancing up at the bronze reliefs of Wellington’s victories that adorned the plinth. Then, as I neared the south-western corner, a flight of rooks rose cawing from the trees at the far end of the path and a figure appeared, heading slowly towards me along it. A slim erect figure in hat and overcoat, carrying a Gladstone bag in his right hand, moving with the faint stiffness of an old but agile man. Fabian Charnwood, beyond doubt and question. And somewhere far off, a clock was striking eight.
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