Betrayal at Lisson Grove (19 page)

He seemed to be alone. He looked neither to right nor left of him, and the people on either side seemed to be with others. Not once all the time she was watching did they speak to O’Neil, or he to them, not even to glance and catch the eye at some particularly poignant line on the stage, or a moment when the audience seemed utterly in the grasp of the players.

The longer she watched him, the more totally alone did he seem to be. But she was equally sure that neither did he look bored. His eyes never strayed from the stage, yet at times his expression did not reflect the drama. She wondered what was passing through his mind: other times and events, other tragedies related to this only in the depth of their feeling?

By the time the interval came Charlotte was moved by the passion she could not escape, which emanated from the players and audience alike, but also confused by it. It made her feel more sharply than the lilt of a different accent, or even the sound of another language, that she was in a strange place teeming with emotions she caught and lost again.

‘May I take you to get something to drink?’ McDaid asked her when the curtain fell and the lights were bright again. ‘And perhaps to meet one or two more of my friends? I’m sure they are dying of curiosity to know who you are, and, of course, how I know you.’

‘I would be delighted,’ she answered. ‘And how do you know me? We had better be accurate, or it will start people talking.’ She smiled to rob the words of offence.

‘But surely the sole purpose of coming to the theatre with a beautiful woman is to start people talking?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Otherwise one would be better to come alone, like Cormac O’Neil, and concentrate on the play, without distraction.’

‘Thank you. I’m flattered to imagine I could distract you.’ She inclined her head a little, enjoying the trivial play of words. ‘Especially from so intense a drama. The actors are superb. I have no idea what they are talking about at least half the time, and yet I am conquered by their emotions.’

‘Are you sure you are not Irish?’ he pressed.

‘Not sure at all. Perhaps I am, and I should simply look harder. But please do not tell Mr O’Neil that my grandmother’s name was O’Neil also, or I shall be obliged to admit that I know very little about her, and that would make me seem very discourteous, as if I did not wish to own that part of my heritage. The truth is I simply did not realise how interesting it would be.’

‘I shall not tell him, if you don’t wish me to,’ McDaid promised.

‘But you have not told me how we met,’ she reminded him.

‘I saw you across a room and asked a mutual acquaintance to introduce us,’ he said. ‘Is that not always how one meets a woman one sees, and admires?’

‘I imagine it is. But what room was it? Was it here in Ireland? I imagine not, since I have been here only a couple of days. But have you been to London lately?’ She smiled at him. ‘Or ever, for that matter?’

‘Of course I’ve been to London. Do you think I am some provincial bumpkin?’ He shrugged. ‘Only once, mind you. I did not care for it – nor it for me. It was so huge, so crowded with people, and yet at the same time, anonymous.You could live and die there, and never be seen.’

‘But I have been in Dublin only a couple of days,’ she repeated to fill the silence.

‘Then I was bewitched at first sight,’ he said reasonably, suddenly smiling again. ‘I’m sorry I insulted your home. It was unforgivable. Call it my own inadequacy in the midst of three million English.’

‘Oh, quite a few Irishmen, believe me,’ she said with a smile. ‘And none of them in the least inadequate.’

He bowed.

‘And I accepted your invitation because I was flattered, and irresponsible?’ she challenged.

‘You are quite right,’ he conceded. ‘We must have mutual friends – some highly respectable aunt, I dare say. Do you have any such relations?’

‘My Great-aunt Vespasia, by marriage. If she recommended you I would accompany you anywhere on earth,’ she responded unhesitatingly.

‘She sounds charming.’

‘She is. Believe me, if you had met her really, you would not dare to treat me other than with the utmost respect.’

‘Where did I meet this formidable lady?’

‘Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould. It doesn’t matter. Any surroundings would be instantly forgotten once you had seen her. But London will do.’

‘Vespasia Cumming-Gould.’ He turned the name over on his tongue. ‘It seems to find an echo in my mind.’

‘It has set bells ringing all over Europe,’ she told him. ‘You had better be aware that she is of an indeterminate age, but her hair is silver and she walks like a queen. She was the most beautiful, and most outrageous woman of her generation. If you don’t know that, they will know that you never met her.’

‘I am now most disappointed that I did not.’ He offered her his arm.

She accepted it, and together they walked down to the room where refreshments were already being served, and the audience had gathered to greet friends and exchange views on the performance.

There were several minutes of pleasant exchange before McDaid introduced Charlotte to a woman with wildly curling hair named Dolina Pearse, and a man of unusual height whom he addressed as Ardal Barralet. Beside them, but apparently not with them, was Cormac O’Neil.

‘O’Neil!’ McDaid said with surprise. ‘Haven’t seen you for some time. How are you?’

Barralet turned as if he had not noticed O’Neil standing so close as to brush coat-tails with him.

‘’Evening, O’Neil. Enjoying the performance? Excellent, don’t you think?’ he said casually.

O’Neil had either to answer or offer an unmistakable rebuff.

‘Very polished,’ he said, looking straight back at Barralet. His voice was unusually deep and soft, as if he too were an actor, caressing the words. He did not even glance at Charlotte. ‘Good evening, Mrs Pearse.’ He acknowledged Dolina.

‘Good evening, Mr O’Neil,’ she said coldly.

‘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.