Betrayal at Lisson Grove

by Anne Perry

  ‘You know Fiachra McDaid?’ Barralet filled in the sudden silence. ‘But perhaps not Mrs Pitt? She is newly arrived in Dublin.’

  ‘How do you do, Mrs Pitt?’ O’Neil said politely, but without interest. McDaid he looked at with a sudden blaze of emotion in his eyes.

  McDaid stared back at him calmly, and the moment passed.

  Charlotte wondered if she had seen it, or imagined it.

  ‘What brings you to Dublin, Mrs Pitt?’ Dolina enquired, clearly out of a desire to relieve the tension by changing the subject. There was no interest either in her voice or her face.

  ‘Good report of the city,’ Charlotte replied. ‘I have made a resolution that I will no longer keep on putting off into the future the good things that can be done today.’

  ‘How very English,’ Dolina murmured. ‘And virtuous.’ She added the word as if it were insufferably boring.

  Charlotte felt her temper flare. She looked straight back at Dolina. ‘If it is virtuous to come to Dublin, then I have been misled,’ she said drily. ‘I was hoping it was going to be fun.’

  McDaid laughed sharply, his face lighting with sudden amusement. ‘It depends how you take your pleasures, my dear. Oscar Wilde, poor soul, is one of us, of course, and he made the world laugh. For years we have tried to be as like the English as we can. Now at last we are finding ourselves, and we take our theatre packed with anguish, poetry and triple meanings. You can dwell on whichever one suits your mood, but most of them are doom-laden, as if our fate is in blood. If we laugh, it is at ourselves, and as a stranger you might find it impolite to join in.’

  ‘That explains a great deal.’ She thanked him with a little nod of her head. She was aware that O’Neil was watching her, possibly because she was the only one in the group he did not already know, but she wanted to engage in some kind of conversation with him. This was the man Narraway believed had contrived his betrayal. What on earth could she say that did not sound forced? She looked directly at him, obliging him either to listen or deliberately to snub her.

  ‘Perhaps I sounded a bit trivial when I spoke of fun,’ she said half-apologetically. ‘I like my pleasure spiced with thought, and even a puzzle or two, so the flavour of it will last. A drama is superficial if one can understand everything in it in one evening, don’t you think?’

  The hardness in his face softened. ‘Then you will leave Ireland a happy woman,’ he told her. ‘You will certainly not understand us in a week, or a month, probably not in a year.’

  ‘Because I am English? Or because you are so complex?’ she pursued.

  ‘Because we don’t understand ourselves, most of the time,’ he replied with the slightest lift of one shoulder.

  ‘No one does,’ she returned. Now they were speaking as if there were no one else in the room. ‘The tedious people are the ones who think they do.’

  ‘We can be tedious by perpetually trying to, aloud.’ He smiled, and the light of it utterly changed his face. ‘But we do it poetically. It is when we begin to repeat ourselves that we try people’s patience.’

  ‘But doesn’t history repeat itself, like variations on a theme?’ she said. ‘Each generation, each artist, adds a different note, but the underlying tune is the same.’

  ‘England’s is in a major key.’ His mouth twisted as he spoke. ‘Lots of brass and percussion. Ireland’s is minor, woodwind, and the dying chord. Perhaps a violin solo now and then.’ He was watching her intently, as if it were a game they were playing and one of them would lose. Did he already know who she was, and that she had come with Narraway, and why?

  She tried to dismiss the thought as absurd, and then she remembered that someone had already outwitted Narraway, which was a very considerable feat. It required not only passion for revenge, but a high intelligence. Most frightening of all, it needed connections in Lisson Grove sufficiently well-placed, and disloyal, to have put the money in Narraway’s bank account.

  Suddenly the game seemed a great deal more serious. Charlotte was aware that, because of her hesitation, Dolina was watching her curiously as well, and Fiachra McDaid was standing at her elbow.

  ‘I always think the violin sounds so much like the human voice,’ she said with a smile. ‘Don’t you, Mr O’Neil?’

  Surprise flickered for a moment in his eyes. He had been expecting her to say something different, perhaps more defensive.

  ‘Did you not expect the heroes of Ireland to sound human?’ he asked her, but there was a bleak, self-conscious humour in his eyes at his own melodrama.

  ‘Not entirely.’ She avoided looking at McDaid, or Dolina, in case their perception brought her and O’Neil back to reality. ‘I had thought of something heroic, even supernatural.’

  ‘Touché,’ McDaid said softly. He took Charlotte by the arm, holding her surprisingly hard. She could not have shaken him off even had she wished to. ‘We must take our seats.’ He excused them and led her away after only the briefest farewell. She nearly asked him if she had offended someone, but she did not want to hear the answer. Nor did she intend to apologise.

  As soon as she resumed her seat she realised that it offered her as good a view of the rest of the audience as it did of the stage. She glanced at McDaid, and saw in his expression that he had arranged it so intentionally, but she did not comment.

  They were only just in time for the curtain going up and immediately the drama recaptured their attention. She found it difficult to follow because although the emotion in it was intense, there were so many allusions to history, and to legend with which she was not familiar that half the meaning was lost to her. Perhaps because of that, she began to look at the audience again, to catch something of their reaction and follow a little more.

  John and Bridget Tyrone were in a box almost opposite. With the intimate size of the theatre she could see their faces quite clearly. He was watching the stage, leaning a little forward as if not to miss a word. Bridget glanced at him, then – seeing his absorption – turned away. Her gaze swept around the audience. Charlotte put up the opera glasses McDaid had lent her, not to see the stage but to hide her own eyes, and keep watching Bridget Tyrone.

  Bridget’s searching stopped when she saw a man in the audience below her, to her left. From where she was, she must see his profile. To Charlotte all that was visible was the back of his head, but she was certain she had seen him before. She could not remember where.

  Bridget remained staring at him, as if willing him to look back at her.

  On the stage the drama heightened. Charlotte was only dimly aware of it; for her the emotional concentration was in the audience. John Tyrone was still watching the players. In the audience at last the man turned and looked back up at the boxes, one after the other until he found Bridget. It was Phelim O’Conor. As soon as she saw his profile Charlotte knew him. He remained with his eyes fixed on Bridget, his face unreadable.

  Bridget looked away just as her husband became aware of her again, and switched his attention from the stage. They spoke to each other briefly.

  In the audience below, O’Conor turned back to the stage. His neck was stiff, his head unmoving, in spite of the scene in front of them reaching a climax where the actors all but hurled themselves at each other.

  In the second interval, McDaid took Charlotte back outside to the bar where once more refreshments were liberally served. The conversation buzzed about the play. Was it well performed? Was it true to the intention of the author? Had the main actor misinterpreted his role?

  Charlotte listened, trying to fix her expression in an attitude of intelligent observation. Actually she was watching to see who else she recognised among those queuing for drinks or talking excitedly to people they knew. All of them were strangers to her, and yet in a way they were familiar. Many were so like those she had known before her marriage that she half-expected them to recognise her. It was an odd feeling, pleasant and nostalgic, even though she would have changed nothing of her present life.

  ‘Are you enjoying the play?’
McDaid asked her. They drifted towards the bar counter, where Cormac O’Neil had a glass of whiskey in his hand.

  Did McDaid know how little she had watched it? He might very well. She did not want either to lie to him, or to tell him the truth.

  Now O’Neil was also waiting for her answer with curiosity.

  ‘I am enjoying the whole experience,’ she replied. ‘I am most grateful that you brought me. I could not have come alone, nor would I have found it half so pleasant.’

  ‘I am delighted you enjoy it,’ McDaid replied with a smile. ‘I was not sure that you would. The play ends with a superb climax, all very dark and dreadful. You won’t understand much of it at all.’

  ‘Is that the purpose of it?’ she asked, looking from McDaid to O’Neil and back again. ‘To puzzle us all so much that we will be obliged to spend weeks or months trying to work out what it really means? Perhaps we will come up with half a dozen different possibilities?’

  For a moment there was surprise and admiration in McDaid’s eyes, then he masked it and the slightly bantering tone returned. ‘I think perhaps you overrate us, at least this time. I rather believe the playwright himself has no such subtle purpose in mind.’

  ‘What meanings did you suppose?’ O’Neil asked softly. He had said it as if it were mere conversation to amuse during the interval, but she thought he was probing to learn something deeper.

  ‘Oh, ask me in a month’s time, Mr O’Neil,’ she said casually. ‘There is anger in it, of course. Anyone can see that. There seems to me also to be a sense of predestination, as if we all have little choice, as if birth determines our reactions. I dislike that. I don’t wish to feel so . . . controlled by fate.’

  ‘You are English. You like to imagine you are the masters of history. In Ireland we have learned that history masters us,’ he responded, and the bitterness in his tone was laced with irony and laughter, but underneath the pain was plainly real.

  It was on her tongue to contradict him, then she realised her opportunity. ‘Really? If I understand the play rightly, it is about a certain inevitability in love and betrayal that is quite universal – a sort of darker and older Romeo and Juliet.’

  O’Neil’s face tightened and even in the lamplight of the crowded room Charlotte could see his colour pale. ‘Is that what you see?’ His voice was thick, almost choking on the words. ‘You romanticise, Mrs Pitt.’ Now the bitterness in him was clearly overwhelming.

  ‘Do I?’ she asked him, moving aside to allow a couple arm in arm to pass by them. In so doing, she deliberately stepped close to O’Neil, so he could not leave without pushing her aside. ‘What harder realities should I see? Rivalry between opposing sides, families divided, a love that cannot be fulfilled, betrayal and death? I don’t think I really find that romantic, except for us as we sit in the audience watching. For the people involved it must be anything but.’

  He stared at her, his eyes hollow with a kind of black despair. She could believe very easily that Narraway was right, and O’Neil had nursed a hatred for twenty years, until fate had given him a way to avenge it. But what was it that had changed?

  ‘And what are you, Mrs Pitt?’ he asked, standing close to her and speaking so McDaid almost certainly would not hear him. ‘Audience or player? Are you here to watch the blood and tears of Ireland, or to meddle in them, like your friend Narraway?’

  She was stunned. She had no idea how to answer. For a moment the rest of the crowd were just a babble of noise. They could as easily have been a field full of geese. Was there any point at all in pretence? Surely now to feign innocence would be ridiculous?

  ‘I would like to be a Deus ex machina,’ she replied. ‘But I imagine that’s impossible.’

  ‘God from a machine?’ he said with an angry shrug. ‘You want to descend at the last act and arrange an impossible ending that solves it all? How very English. And how absurd, and supremely arrogant. You are twenty years too late. Tell Victor that, when you see him. There’s nothing left to mend any more.’ He turned away before she could answer again, pushing past her and spilling what was left of his whiskey as he bumped into a broad man in a blue coat. The moment after, he was gone.

  Charlotte was aware of McDaid next to her, and a certain air of discomfort about him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. There was no point in trying to explain. Reasons did not matter, and she did not know how much McDaid was aware of either Narraway’s present trouble, or his part in O’Neil’s past tragedies. ‘I allowed myself to express my opinions too freely.’

  He bit his lip. ‘You couldn’t know it, but the subject of Irish freedom, and traitors to the cause, is painfully close to O’Neil. It was through his family that our great plan was betrayed twenty years ago.’ He winced. ‘We never knew for sure by whom. Sean O’Neil murdered his wife, Kate, and was hanged for it. Even though it was because she was the one who told the English our plans, some thought it was because Sean found her with another man. Either way, we failed again, and the bitterness still lasts.’

  Murder, and then hanging. No wonder O’Neil was bitter and the grief had never died – and Narraway still felt the guilt weigh dark and heavy on him also.

  ‘It was an uprising that you intended?’ she asked quietly. She heard the chatter around her.

  ‘Of course,’ McDaid replied, his voice carefully ironed of all expression so it sounded unnaturally flat. ‘Home Rule was in the very air we breathed then. We could have been ourselves, without the weight of England around our necks.’

  ‘Is that how you see it?’ She turned as she spoke and looked at him, searching his face.

  His expression softened. He smiled back at her, rueful and a little self-deprecating. ‘I did at the time. Seeing Cormac brings it back. But I’m cooler-headed now. There are better places to put one’s energy – causes less narrow.’ She was aware of the colour and whisper of fabric around them, silk against silk. They were surrounded by people in one of the most interesting capital cities in the world, come out to an evening at the theatre. Some of them, at least, were also men and women who saw themselves living under a foreign oppression in their own land, and some of them, at least, were willing to kill and to die to throw it off. She looked just like them – cast of feature, tone of skin and hair – and yet she was not, she was different in heart and mind.

  ‘What causes?’ she asked with interest.

  His smile widened, as if to brush it aside. ‘Social injustices, old-fashioned laws to reform,’ he replied. ‘Greater equality. Exactly the same as, no doubt, you fight for at home. I hear there are some great women in London battling for all manner of things. Perhaps one day you will tell me about some of them?’ He made it a question, as if he were interested enough to require an answer.

  ‘Of course,’ she said lightly, trying to master facts in her mind so she could answer sensibly, if the necessity arose.

  He took her arm as people milled around her, returning to their seats, courteous, hospitable, full of dry wit and a passion for life. How easy, and dangerous, it would be for her to forget that she did not belong here – she particularly, because her husband was in Special Branch, and his friend Victor Narraway could be the man who had used Kate O’Neil to betray her own people, and destroy her family.

  Narraway was uncertain what Charlotte would learn at the theatre. As he walked along Arran Quay, on the north bank of the Liffey, his head down into the warm, damp breeze off the water, he was afraid that she would discover a few things about him that he would very much rather she did not know, but he knew no way to help that. He knew, from Fiachra McDaid, that she would meet Cormac O’Neil, and perhaps judge some depth of his hatred, and the reasons for it.

  He smiled bitterly as he pictured her pursuing it, testing, pushing until she found the facts behind the pain. Would she be disillusioned to hear his part in it all? Or was that his vanity, his own feelings – that she cared enough for him that disillusion was even possible, let alone would wound her?

  He would never for
get the days after Kate’s death. Worst was the morning they hanged Sean. The brutality and the grief of that had cast a chill over all the years since. Why had he exposed himself to the hurt of Charlotte learning anything about it? Perhaps because he was afraid she would, and he would rather deal the blow himself than endure the waiting for someone else to do it.

  He should know better. His years in Special Branch should have taught him both patience and control. Usually he was so good at it that people thought him a cold man. Charlotte thought it, he knew. Was that the real reason why he risked her discovering so terribly that he was not?

  He did not want her affection, or her grief for him, if it were based on a misconception of who he was.

  He laughed at himself; it was just a faint sound, almost drowned by his quick footsteps along the stones of the quayside. Why, at this time in his life, did he care so much for the opinion of another man’s wife?

  He forced his attention to where he was going, and why. If he did not learn who had diverted the money meant for Mulhare and placed it in his, Narraway’s, own account, knowing anything else about O’Neil was pointless. Someone in Lisson Grove had been involved. He blamed none of the Irish. They were fighting for their own cause, and at times he even sympathised with it. But the man in Special Branch who had done this had betrayed his own people, and that was different. He wanted to know who it was, and prove it. The damage this traitor could cause would have no boundary. If he hated England enough to plan and execute a way of disgracing Narraway, then what else might he do? Was his real purpose to replace him? This whole business of Mulhare might be no more than a means to that end. But was it simply ambition, or was there another, darker purpose behind it as well?

  Without realising it he increased his pace, moving so swiftly he almost passed the alley he was looking for. He turned in and fumbled in the lightless construction of it and the uneven stones under his feet. He had to feel his way along one of the walls. Third door. He knocked sharply, a quick rhythm.