An Embarrassment of Riches (19 page)

Powerscourt had already ascertained the Hudsons' Yorkshire address for him and he had also made enquiries after Genevre.

He wrote to Alexander on House of Lords notepaper in early March:

William Hudson is there and has been since the beginning of the year, but Miss Hudson did not return home from New York with him. She is understood to be enjoying a trip to Italy with an aunt. Sorry not to be able to be more helpful, my boy.

Alexander had been grateful. Powerscourt had done as much as he could and it was more than most men in his position would have done. All that remained now was for Genevre to return from Italy, and for him to regain his health and strength.

In the first week of May he took his first, tentative step. Fiennes-Bourton was euphoric, declaring that he never would have done so if it hadn't been for his constant, caring presence. A letter was immediately despatched to Victor Karolyis. Alexander wrote again to Powerscourt, asking if he could ascertain if Genevre was back in the country again.

By mid-May Alexander was able to walk in the grounds with the aid of crutches. His father had demanded that he return home as soon as he was physically able to do so, and Powerscourt had written to say that it appeared Genevre was at present in London with the aunt who had accompanied her to Italy.

Alexander read and re-read the letter hardly able to control his impatience and excitement. In just a few more weeks he would be able to walk unaided. In just a few more weeks he would leave Ireland behind him and travel to Yorkshire. There, at gunpoint if it should prove necessary, he would get Genevre's address from William Hudson. Within hours they would be reunited and when they returned to New York she would do so as his bride.

Hour after hour, day after day, he struggled with arm and leg exercises, building up his muscles and his strength.

‘It's wonderful to see the change in you, my boy,' Powerscourt said genially when he arrived in June with a party of friends for a couple of weeks'fishing. ‘Fiennes-Bourton has done a marvellous job.'

Alexander had given a small smile and kept his thoughts to himself. It hadn't been Fiennes-Bourton who was responsible for him once again being able to walk. It had been his own, obsessive determination. He had
willed
himself to be able to walk again in order that he could find Genevre.

‘I'll be leaving you in a few days'time, sir,' he said to Powerscourt as they sat companionably in wicker garden-chairs, waiting for Powerscourt's friends to return from a day's fishing.

A slight frown creased Powerscourt's forehead. ‘Are you sure that isn't a little precipitate? You may have recovered, but you haven't yet recuperated. Why not wait until the summer is over before you leave?'

The prospect of remaining in Ireland for even a day more than was absolutely necessary made Alexander shudder. ‘No, sir,' he said with unequivocal firmness. ‘I appreciate your offer and your kindness but I can recuperate at my family home in Dutchess County just as well as I could do here.'

‘Or Yorkshire?' Powerscourt asked, raising a querying brow.

Alexander grinned. ‘Or Yorkshire,' he said, the blood singing along his veins as he thought of how near he was to the moment when he would hold Genevre in his arms again.

The next morning he breakfasted early, before Powerscourt's other guests were up and about. He would leave on the coming Saturday. He would travel by rail to Dundalk and then sail from Dundalk to Holyhead. From there he would travel by rail to York and then he would hire a carriage and driver to take him the remaining fifteen miles to the Hudson mansion at Aysgarth.

Having eaten his fill of devilled kidneys and bacon he reached for the toast and marmalade. It would only take him another day to travel by rail to London. By this time next week he would be with Genevre. He opened the newspaper laying crisply beside his plate, his hand shaking with nervous anticipation. She was only days away from him now, only hours away.

The newspaper was
The Times
, specially despatched from London to Waterford for Lord Powerscourt's enjoyment. He turned the front page with its columns of personal notices without even glancing at them, searching the inner pages for a headline denoting news of the war ravaging America. With rising irritation he saw that yet again priority had been given to a subject of much less importance, the protocol between Britain, France and Russia providing for the incorporation of the Ionian islands into Greece. He was about to turn the page when the name Hudson leapt out at him. It was beneath the heading: OBITUARIES.

He pushed his plate away and opened the newspaper more fully on the table, wondering if the deceased was perhaps a relative of Genevre's, wondering if it might even be William Hudson who had died. A footman removed his plate. Another poured him a fresh cup of coffee. Taking a sip of it he began to read. The words made no sense. He was gripped by a hideous sensation of
déjá vu.
It was as if he were reading Charlie's letter again. He could see the writing on the page but the content was too terrible, too unbelievable, for his brain to make any connection between them and reality.

Miss Genevre Hudson … aged twenty … only beloved daughter of the railway king Mr William Hudson … died suddenly of a fever … a delightfully accomplished young lady … resident for many years in New York … a star in New York's social crown
…

The room was spinning. His hands flailed, seeking for support. The coffee cup was sent flying, scorching hot liquid pouring on to his trousers. He read the words again and again, choking for breath, uncaring of the commotion he was causing as one footman attempted to mop dry his trousers and another one dashed off to inform Lord Powerscourt that his guest had been taken ill.

Dead. Ginnie dead. It wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible. The printed words swam up at him, incontrovertible and irrefutable.
‘Genevre Hudson … only beloved daughter … died suddenly of a fever
…' She was dead and he would never see her again. Never hold her. Never kiss her. Never make love to her. It was too monstrous to be true. Too obscenely vile. Too inconceivable.

Lord Powerscourt burst into the room clad only in his night-clothes and a silk dressing-gown. ‘What's the matter, my boy?' he asked, striding towards him in concern. ‘Are you ill? My footman said you were choking.'

Alexander turned away from the outspread paper and stared at him. ‘She's dead,' he said thickly, ashen-faced. ‘Ginnie is dead.'

‘Oh, my dear boy …' Lord Powerscourt took a step towards the table and read the short obituary, then he turned, motioning for the servants to leave the room. ‘My dear boy,' he said again, resting a hand comfortingly on Alexander's shoulder. ‘I'm so sorry. So very, very sorry.'

Alexander turned towards him and then, as if Powerscourt was his father and he a small child, he laid his head on the older man's shoulder and wept.

That evening, at dusk, he sat alone in the vast garden looking eastwards to where he could see the faint glimmer of the sea. The enormity of what had happened was such that he could still scarcely comprehend it. She had been dead for five days. When he had sat in the hot June sunshine with Powerscourt, and Powerscourt had invited him to stay on in Ireland and recuperate, Genevre had been dead. When he had been exercising, physically strengthening his back and legs, buoyant and dizzy at the thought of being with her so soon, she had been dead. She had died without him even knowing that she was ill. His hands tightened on the arms of his cane chair, the knuckles white. She had died believing that he had abandoned her.

The dusk deepened into night and the breeze from the Irish Sea grew chill. He continued to sit, staring into the darkness, knowing that he would never be the same person again. If Genevre had died as his wife or as his fiancée, his grief would have devastated him, but it would not have changed him from the person he had always been – the person Genevre had loved. But she had not died as his wife or his fiancée. Because of his father she had died believing that he no longer loved her and the thought of her anguish was more than he could bear.

Hatred for his father suffused him. Whatever the nature of Genevre's fever had been, he knew that his father was the true cause of her death. She had died broken-hearted and he was going to have to survive the rest of his life broken-hearted. All because his father had not thought her worthy enough to be his daughter-in-law and had lied and deceived in order to ensure that she never would be.

As the first pale streaks of dawn lightened the night sky he rose stiffly to his feet. He would avenge Genevre's death. Somehow, in some way, he would make his father pay for the destruction he had wrought. And he would honour Genevre's memory by never falling in love again. Not ever.

He left the house en route for the docks and America on the same day Lord Powerscourt had intended leaving for England. Powerscourt had insisted that one of his own valets accompany him on the voyage and, as the young man in question checked for the last time that all Alexander's luggage was present and correct, he said to Alexander with a worried frown: ‘Are you sure you are strong enough for the sea crossing, my boy? Why not defer your return to America and accompany me back to London? There will be plenty going on to amuse you and you could perhaps sightsee. Visit Salisbury and Stratford.'

Alexander shook his head. Touched as he was by Powerscourt's avuncular kindness he could not presume on his hospitality any longer. Nor did he want to. He wanted to confront his father with the news of Genevre's death. He wanted to see his father's face when he told him he was never going to forgive him; when he told him he was going to destroy him, just as he and Genevre had been destroyed; when he told him he was going to make him pay for the heartbreak he had caused.

‘No, sir. Thank you all the same, but my mind is made up.'

Lord Powerscourt accepted defeat. Alexander had been his enforced guest for six months and for a young man of twenty-one they must have been long and wearying months. It was no wonder that he was anxious to return home and be reunited with his family and friends again.

As the coachman cracked his whip he stepped back from the open carriage, saying with sincere affection,
‘Bon voyage
, my boy. And give my respects to your father.'

His father.

There were thin white lines around Alexander's mouth and at the corner of his jaw a nerve began to throb. Out of respect for Powerscourt, when he and his father met he would do as Powerscourt asked. And then he would unleash on his father all of his contempt, all of his bitterness, all of his hatred.

It was forty miles to Queenstown and the docks and from Waterford he travelled by train. Grim-faced, he stared out at grass, grass and yet more grass. To relieve the tedium there were occasional clusters of mud cabins with half-naked children rooting among the rubbish at the doors. Queenstown was even worse. He hired a carriage for the short journey from the railway station to the docks, appalled at the thought of having to pick his way through the filthy, befouled streets.

Powerscourt had made his reservation aboard the Cunard line's
Scotia
for him and he knew, of course, that he would be travelling first-class with his own stateroom. What he hadn't known was that emigrants were also going to be passengers, albeit in the bowels of the ship and at a far remove from himself and his peers.

‘Jesus!' he ejaculated as a woman so poorly dressed as to be half-naked squeezed past him, the mewling child in her arms leaving a trail of snot on his Savile Row reefer jacket.

Teal, his new valet, leapt to his aid, efficiently removing the nauseous excrescence with a handkerchief. ‘Sorry about that, sir. They shouldn't allow emigrants on this part of the dock. Trouble is, not many gentlemen board here and there aren't any proper facilities.'

Alexander could see that. There was only one smartly equipped carriage on the dockside and it was occupied by an elderly lady looking as appalled by the nearby crush and the stench as he felt. Ahead of them a lone gentleman attended by a valet was stepping aboard the first-class gangplank. All the other embarkees were impoverished Irish, pushing a way towards the gangplank at the ship's stern.

‘They're the scum of the earth, sir,' the English Teal said disparagingly as he shifted Alexander's pig-skin travelling bag into a more comfortable position on his shoulder, ‘but you won't be troubled by them when you're aboard. You'll have neither sight nor sound of them then.'

Alexander was pleased to hear it. As they crossed the cobbles towards the foot of the gangplank a fair-haired girl pushed her way free of the mass of emigrants. Her black silk crinoline was startlingly incongruous against the homespun shawls and ragged dresses that had surrounded her and, as she drew nearer, hurrying towards the waiting carriage, Alexander saw that her face was tear-stained. He wondered whether her distress was for her obvious recent bereavement or had been occasioned by her finding herself caught up in the midst of the poverty-stricken embarkees.

‘The landlords often pay for their passage, sir,' Teal said, attempting to read his mind. ‘It's the easiest way of clearing them off the land.'

Alexander nodded. Powerscourt had told him all about the difficulty of removing tenants in order that land could be profitably turned over to sheep-farming. The girl in the black silk dress had now stepped up into the waiting carriage. Though he could no longer see her face it was obvious that her elderly companion was trying to comfort her and that she was still crying.

‘Here we are, sir,' Teal said with relief as they reached the gangplank. ‘I'll settle you in your stateroom and supervise the bringing aboard of the rest of your luggage.'

Alexander leaned with relief against the gangplank rail. Sir Ralph Fiennes-Bourton had recommended that he use a walking-stick until he had regained his usual health and strength and because of vanity he had not done so. Now he was regretting it.