‘They wanted a man of business, Lord Powerscourt! They wanted somebody used to dealing with the affairs of the world. Isn’t that right, William?’
Simmons carried on as if there had been no interruption. ‘I wrote, in confidence, of course, to the Prince of Wales’ Private Secretary, William Suter. I pointed out to him that, thanks to the actions of his master’s son, all of our sons faced a very uncertain future, one where there would be a great deal of expense. There would be medical bills, trips to Europe, maybe to America in search of new treatments. I didn’t ask for any money at that stage. I waited to see what the reply might be.’
‘And there was the worry! The worry and the uncertainty of it all! Five of us mothers needing some form of recompense for all the pain we were going through! Enough to break any mother’s heart!’
Simmons sailed on. ‘I received an immediate reply, requesting a meeting in London. Mr Suter – he wasn’t Sir William Suter then, was he, Lord Powerscourt – said that the Prince of Wales had been thinking about this very carefully for some time.’
I’ll bet he had, thought Powerscourt. I’ll bet he didn’t intend to hand over a penny if he could avoid it. He waited until the loaded pistol was held to his head.
‘Suter more or less told me that we could name our price. So we did. But there was one condition. And I am sure you could guess that in one, Lord Powerscourt.’
‘Silence,’ said Powerscourt.
‘Total and absolute silence. We all had to sign a document drawn up by his lawyers. Even Muriel signed it, didn’t you?’
‘There was nothing to say that we couldn’t talk about it in the privacy of our own homes, William dear. And we did very well out of it in a way. A few years after that we were able to move in here, weren’t we?’
Powerscourt remembered a conversation about blackmail with a very intelligent Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police several years before. They had been on their own in the back room of a quiet pub by the river.
‘It’s like this, my lord,’ said the Superintendent, drinking his pint slowly and deliberately. ‘The first thing the blackmailer has to do is to get his claws into his victim.’ He squeezed the back of his left hand very firmly with the fingers of his right. Briefly, the blood drained away. The skin went white. ‘Then they start asking for more. Year one, it may be just a preliminary finger, my lord. By year two the blackmailer feels he can ask for a bit more. Then a lot more. After a while the blackmailer starts to feel that his victim owes him the money, that he, the blackmailer, deserves it. Very strange that.’
‘Could I ask you about the arrangements, Mr Simmons? How the money was paid and so on.’
‘Oh, it was all very honest and above board, Lord Powerscourt.’
‘William wouldn’t have had it any other way, would you, my dear? What would the bank have said if there had been anything strange about it all?’
What indeed, said Powerscourt to himself.
‘It came every month. The story we all agreed on was that they could be referred to as naval pensions for the boys. If anybody asked. But nobody ever did. The money came like clockwork. From a branch of Finch’s in London.’
‘And did you find that the whole business became more expensive as time went on? What with the doctors and the treatments and all that sort of thing?’ Powerscourt was trying to sound as innocent as he could. He needn’t have worried.
‘Of course it did, Lord Powerscourt!’ Mrs Simmons was indignant. ‘Every year it became more expensive! We’ve been to Switzerland, to London, to America to see the doctors there. We had to buy new clothes and new hats for all these trips. And if we stayed on for a little holiday afterwards, then no one was going to object, were they? Think what we were all going through! Think of the shame if it ever came out! I could never have raised my head in the village again! We’d have had to move! I think silence is beyond price, don’t you agree, William dear?’
‘Have the arrangements always worked smoothly? No unfortunate mishaps along the way?’ His Superintendent came back to Powerscourt. Something he’d said was teasing away at the back of his mind.
‘If any of the arrangements about paying the money ever go wrong, then it’s panic all round, my lord. Frightful panic. Very hard to put the genie back in the bottle again.’
‘They’ve always worked very well,’ said Simmons. His wife had temporarily vanished from the room. ‘They’ve only gone wrong once and that was fairly recently. But we managed to sort that out.’
‘And the boys themselves, young men, I should say. I know that one of them died last year. Are all the rest all right?’
‘As well as can be expected, that’s what the doctors say. Sometimes they go for years with no trouble, then it flares up again.’
‘And your own Alfred? Does he live here with you?’
‘Lord Powerscourt! Do have some of my special cake! My modest effort always wins the prizes here in the village. I once had a third place with it at the Dorset County Show!’
Mrs Simmons had returned, triumphant, with an enormous fruit cake, and a small, leather-bound book.
‘There! A generous slice for you, Lord Powerscourt! William always says there is no point in having mean portions of my cake!’
‘Our son is quite well. He’s our only child,’ Simmons carried on, ‘he lives most of the time here with us.’
‘William was able to secure him a small position in the bank, Lord Powerscourt! So kind of William! And, unlike most boys of his age, Alfred really loves living with his mother! Isn’t that right, dear?’
‘Is he here at the moment?’
‘No, he’s not.’ Simmons was rendered almost speechless by a mouthful of his wife’s fruit cake. ‘He’s been away since the start of this year. He’s gone to a friend of his in Norfolk, somewhere near Fakenham. Alfred goes there often. He’s always been excellent with a rifle. I think they do a lot of shooting.’
Powerscourt took refuge in his cake. One Britannia brother was good with the hunting knives perhaps. Another one was good with a rifle. They could be a deadly pair up there in Norfolk, not far from Sandringham. He began composing another note to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
As he left The Laurels, he was trapped again by Mrs Simmons.
‘Lord Powerscourt! We can’t let you leave until you’ve signed our little visitors’ book! All our guests do! And if you could sign it Lord Francis Powerscourt, that would be too nice for words! Otherwise they mightn’t believe you were really a lord! Dearie me! That would never do!’
For the first time in his life, he signed himself Lord Francis Powerscourt. Simmons shook him warmly by the hand as he left, saying that if he needed further help, then he must come again. Mrs Simmons assured him that he would always be more than welcome in her humble home. There was another cake recipe she could perfect before his next visit.
18
‘Just you sit yourself in the back of the boat, Francis.’
‘I think they call it the stern, Johnny.’
Powerscourt and Fitzgerald were setting off from Hammersmith up the Thames to view the secret house of London’s homosexual rich. Powerscourt wanted to see the building for himself. It was late in the evening, a cold wind blowing across the river. Fitzgerald had procured an ancient rowing boat from somewhere.
‘The thing is, Francis, I’m getting very superstitious about that house. Twice now I’ve seen single magpies on my way back from there. No matter how long I waited I never saw another one. And I’m fed up with being stuck up that bloody tree. So we’ll creep up on them the way they’re least expecting. Christ, Francis, sit still, for God’s sake. We’ll all be in the water at this rate.’
The rowing boat seemed to have a will of its own, swaying, lurching, dipping at unpredictable moments.
‘Which way are we going, Johnny?’
Powerscourt wondered if he could swim back to the bank, as the vessel zigzagged its way towards a fatal rendezvous with the bastions of Hammersmith Bridge.
‘Shut up, Francis! I’ve just got to get the bloody thing into the middle of the river. The current’s not so bad there.’
At last the boat settled into a rhythm, Fitzgerald’s powerful arms moving them upstream. Hampton Court, thought Powerscourt, we could reach Hampton Court if we kept going, or Oxford. Though not at this rate, not this year. Even in the middle the current was still strong, progress very slow, the splash of the oars unnaturally loud in the middle of the Thames.
To Powerscourt’s right lay the waterfront of Hammersmith lined with taverns and fine houses, occasional sounds drifting out across the water. To his left, beyond Hammersmith Bridge, the trees of Barnes kept silent vigil over their progress. Strange pieces of river jetsam floated by on their passage towards the open sea: pieces of wood in fantastic shapes, bits of material that might have once have been clothes, bottles without messages. A rowing eight, dressed entirely in black, shot past them going the other way, a ghostly light at the front of their boat, the current sweeping them downstream towards Putney.
‘Nearly there, Francis.’ Fitzgerald took a brief break from the oars and drank deeply from his hip flask. ‘Look! You can just see the lights through the trees.’
The river had taken them round a bend. Hammersmith Bridge was no longer visible behind. Ahead the cold black waters of the Thames reached out towards the waterfront of Barnes, a mile or so away on the opposite bank. A couple of rooks stood sentinel on the top of the trees around the house.
There were lights on all across the top two floors. Powerscourt thought business must be brisk. Maybe it was one of those special evenings, a dinner dance or a masked ball. There was a stone balustrade running right round the top of the building, shafts of moonlight blinking intermittently through the clouds. Sentinels, he thought, watchmen on duty, searching a dark London for the unexpected visitor, the sudden rush of officers in uniform towards the front door.
‘It’s a grand place if you want to be alone, isn’t it?’ Fitzgerald was panting slightly from his efforts, holding the little boat steady in its place. They could see a small jetty to their right, a couple of boats moored, ready for a quick escape across the water. ‘I had another chat with my friend, Francis.’
‘The one with the Pomerol?’
‘The one with the Pomerol,’ Fitzgerald agreed. ‘He said two things that are relevant to our purpose, I think. The first . . .’
A muffled sound came to them from very close by. It echoed slightly across the water and disappeared into the trees.
Fitzgerald rowed on, past the house, round another bend in the River.
They waited. Neither spoke. They waited for two minutes, perhaps three. The River Thames was silent save for the timeless murmurings of the water. Then Fitzgerald turned the boat around. The current took them back towards London. Only slight adjustments were needed to hold their course.
‘What the hell was that?’ said Powerscourt as the house disappeared from view.
‘I think it was the front door opening and closing. Another member, another client. He must have been bloody quiet going up their driveway. We didn’t hear any footsteps, did we?’
‘No, we didn’t. That place gives me the creeps. You were saying, Johnny?’
What must we look like, thought Powerscourt? Two men, huddled in a tiny boat, going up and down the river in the middle of the night. Excise men, perhaps, going to inspect some forbidden cargo, or grave robbers, avoiding the main roads.
‘Two of them have died in the past two years. I think that’s what I was about to say. My friend shuddered when he told me about it. I expect he wondered if that was how he was going to go. Mad or blind or paralysed, or all three, his bones eaten away.
‘But I talked to him about blackmail, about whether any of our friends back there might have been blackmailing each other. He said he thought it was virtually impossible.’
Fitzgerald was whispering. Powerscourt had to lean forward to catch his words, the little boat bobbing precariously once more.
‘You remember the constitution of their club, Francis, each member having to give the names and addresses of two referees who didn’t know about their perverse habits. That threat is always there. Step out of line and you’ll be exposed. My friend said they were all so frightened of being blackmailed by their own club that they couldn’t possibly think about blackmailing anybody else.’
These were calmer waters, thought Powerscourt, a little bit choppy, perhaps, tiny waves beating helplessly against the shore, sailing craft bobbing about, minute bow waves inching across the pond.
The Round Pond in Kensington Gardens was host to Powerscourt and Lady Lucy and two small boys on a peaceful Sunday afternoon.
Lunch had been taken quickly in Markham Square. Lady Lucy had christened Robert’s boat Britannia by pouring a glass of champagne across the front.
‘I thought it might break. The boat, I mean. If I broke the bottle across the bows in the approved manner.’ Lady Lucy sounded as if she had been launching ships all her life. Perhaps she had, thought Powerscourt, a thousand of them, maybe, sailing across the blue waters of the Aegean to a tryst with death at windy Troy.
Robert’s friend, Thomas St Clair Erskine, recently released from jail or temporary domestic confinement, informed them solemnly that his ship was called the Victowy, his rs rolling like the original Victowy on patrol out in the Atlantic.
‘Can we go now? Can we go and sail them?’
Even Lady Lucy’s cook’s best apple pie, laced with slivers of orange and fortified with nutmeg, could not hold them. The boys ran, not too fast in case they dropped their boats, the grown-ups following more sedately behind.
Anxiety, great anxiety, surrounded the maiden voyage of the Britannia. Robert, his face drawn with nerves and concentration, kept making final adjustments to the sails. There were learned seven-year-old conversations about the direction of the prevailing wind. At last she was off, wobbling at first, then making steadier progress on an arc of a journey that left her marooned on the shore once more, not far from the launch position.
‘I do hope it’s going to be all right. The boat I mean. Think what would happen if it didn’t work.’ Lady Lucy turned to Powerscourt, a male consort who ought to know about such things.
‘We didn’t learn much about sails and things in the Army,’ said Powerscourt defensively.
‘Oh dear. Oh dear.’ Lady Lucy hurried towards the shore. Robert’s boat had performed two more irregular journeys before returning to port and refusing to move at all. There seemed to have been a mutiny on board. Robert was close to tears. His friend was urging him to let the sails out so that Britannia could take advantage of the breeze, blowing strongly across Kensington Gardens.
‘Then it might fall over and sink. I don’t want it to sink. Why won’t it go, Mama? Everybody else’s boat is going fine.’
Lady Lucy’s look of helpless despair brought rescue from an unexpected quarter. An old gentleman, dressed in a dark blue coat, buttons brightly polished, muffler round his neck, had approached the sad party.
‘Could I offer you assistance? I have some experience in these matters.’ The old gentleman addressed his request to Lady Lucy. The two boys looked up at him warily. ‘I do know about sailing ships, I promise you. I sailed in one of them for years.’
The two boys stared at him, wonder in their eyes. Here was a man in a sailing ship. Perhaps he had climbed all the way to the top of the masts when he was young. It was nearly as good as meeting W.G. Grace himself.
‘How very kind of you,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘If you’re sure it’s no trouble.’
‘No trouble at all. We can’t have these boats not sailing properly, can we?’
‘It’s Wobert’s boat, sir.’ Thomas had obviously decided that the old gentleman must have been a naval captain, if not an admiral. ‘It just wolls awound in the water, sir. The wigging must be wong.’
There followed a long inspection of the errant Britannia. The old gentleman bent down slowly to the water’s edg
e. Powerscourt wondered if he had back trouble, or stiff joints. Lady Lucy thought she had seen a miracle. Knots were undone. Rigging was adjusted. The tiny rudder was repositioned on the advice of the ancient mariner.
‘If you put it like that, the ship is bound to go round and round,’ he said kindly. ‘Now, Robert, just make sure all those knots are tied properly. They are? Good. Put her back in the water. Give her a little push. Big ships have tugs to tow them out to sea when they are launched. Nothing wrong with giving it a push. Same thing really.’
This time around the Britannia performed creditably, sailing steadily across the pond and ending up beached on the far side beside a very large dog. The two boys hurried to the rescue. ‘I told you it was the wigging,’ shouted Thomas triumphantly. ‘The wigging must be wight now.’
And so it went on all afternoon. The light was fading when the sailing ships were finally withdrawn from service, their keels inspected for damage underneath, the sails shaken clear of water. The old gentleman took his farewells. He leant down as he said goodbye to the two boys.
‘I was once the captain of a sailing ship, you know, a real one. HMS Achilles she was called. Back in the 1860s that must have been. Very fast she was too. As you would expect with a name like that. I come here most Sunday afternoons. My wife can’t get out any more. Her navigation systems have all gone. Maybe I shall see you here again. Good afternoon to you both.’
‘Wasn’t he a nice old gentleman,’ said Lady Lucy, her hand poised over a Spode teapot back in Markham Square.
‘I think it made his day,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I wonder if he’ll be there again the next time the boys go sailing.’
‘Lord Francis,’ Lady Lucy’s slender arm reached out to pour the milk into his tea. ‘You don’t take sugar, do you?’
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