The Star of the Sea (29 page)

Brandy made him nauseous, and always had, and its popularity among sailors had helped to ruin his days in the navy. But he fetched her one anyway and watched her sip it. She hummed along quietly with the elegant music, sometimes whispering a joke as a graceless dancer passed: sometimes touching the back of his wrist.

They had admired the ancestral portraits on the third-floor landing; the grave gazings of the long-gone Wingfields. Outside her room she had shaken his hand. A kiss to his cheek was awarded like a medal. Before he knew what was happening the door had closed and he was alone beneath those gazes with the empty brandy glass.

She was the only daughter of a Sussex industrialist family; her father’s home was near the coast. He owned several large manufactories of pottery and delftware. She was three yean younger than David Merridith but twice had been engaged before: once to a cavalry lieutenant who had died of consumption, the second time to
a businessman her father knew. It was she who had ended the second engagement. She had no regrets about making the decision.

When the weekend was over and the guests had wearily departed to prepare themselves to be wearied at the next weekend, the Viscount of Carna had remained at Powerscourt. In later years he was often to think of that time as having a carapace around it; the happiest period in a less than happy life. Certainly the happiest if you shaded Mary Duane from the picture, as by then he tended to do.

He and Laura Markham had gone with the Wingfields up to Dublin, attending the theatre and several concerts; going to a masked ball at the Duke of Leinster’s. Seeing them waltz, their sodden old host had tottered up and congratulated them on their excellent news. ‘Nobody informed me your new fiancée was such a corker, Merridith. I dare say I should have nabbed her for myself if they had. Thoroughbred in a roomful of trotting ponies.’

After he had staggered away in a fog of halitosis and gin fumes they laughed together at what he had said. But there was a new quality to their dancing after that. It was as though what was happening between them had finally been spoken. The closeness which dancing permitted became a way of acknowledging it.

Merridith had accompanied her to the Italian circus; had ridden out with her in Phoenix Park in the early mornings. There they would watch the troopers parading to the screeches of the monkeys awakening in the zoo. By the end of the fortnight they were almost inseparable. On the afternoon she was leaving for Sussex, he had gone to see her off at the ferry at Kingstown. Snow was falling. Emigrants were queuing along the pier. When he tried to kiss her at the gangway she had drawn away silently, though the look in her eyes had given him hope. He tried again, but she drew away again. Yes, she said gently, of course she had feelings for him; but she wouldn’t act unfairly towards another girl.

She didn’t envy Merridith the choice he faced now, but she wouldn’t push him or ask him to do anything. Only he could know what his true feelings were. He must do what he thought was correct and nothing else. The happiness of several people was at stake. To cause hurt to a person to whom you had given your word was a serious thing and could not be done lightly. He was to think about it calmly and carefully, she said. Every choice involved a rejection.
She would understand his decision whatever it might be and would always respect it and remember him fondly. But she would only contact him again if he contacted her first. That was not to happen unless his engagement to Amelia Blake were broken off.

On the mail-coach back to Galway, Merridith had known what would happen. There was a nobility behind Laura’s reluctance which had only made him want her more; a decency which he knew he probably lacked himself. He, a man who was promised, after all, had thought nothing of speaking of love to another woman. He would have gone further if going further had been possible. What that implied would not be easy to confront but it would have to be confronted or he would always regret it.

Dusk was descending as the coach crossed the Shannon. A blizzard had swelled the river to breaking; farmers in drenched oilskins were banking up sandbags. Soon the landscape began to change, the prosperous meadows of the lush midlands giving way to the stonewalled scrubs of Galway. The cold air smelt of peatsmoke and the sea. He would never forget the fear that had clutched him when he saw the lights of Kingscourt Manor in the distance.

His father was seated at the table in the library, examining a fist-sized yellow egg with a magnifying glass, making notes in a leather-bound accountancy ledger. Though it was only three weeks since Merridith had seen him, he seemed to have aged by several years. It was not long after his second stroke; the attack had left him with a tremor and greatly reduced sight. The black leather glove he usually wore on his right hand was twisted on the blotter like a poisonous spider.

Merridith gave a knock. Without looking up, his father murmured: ‘Enter.’

He took one anxious pace but he didn’t really enter. ‘I wondered if we might have a short talk, sir.’

‘I am quite well, David. Thank you for asking.’

‘Forgive me, sir. I should of course have asked.’

His father nodded grimly but still did not look up. ‘This – short talk – which you would like to have. Does it concern your use of my house as an hotel to which to repair between social gatherings?’

‘No, sir. I apologise for the length of my absence, sir.’

‘I see. Then what does it concern? This short talk you would like to have.’

‘Well – concerning matters with Miss Blake and myself, sir.’

‘What about them?’

‘I have. I seem to have. That is to say.’ He gathered himself and began again. ‘I have formed an attachment to another person, sir.’

Calmly the Earl took a tiny paintbrush from a drawer and started dusting the egg with an unsteady motion. ‘Well,’ he said, quietly, as though to himself, ‘you had better unform it in double-quick time then. Hadn’t you?’ He held the object up to the pale gold firelight; ran a finger along its circumference as though coaxing it to hatch.

‘I seem to recall,’ he almost whispered, ‘that certain of the “attachments” you formed in the past were not wise either. They, too, had to be unformed.’

‘I believe this is different, sir. In fact I am certain of it.’

Now his father looked up at him. His eyes were like stones. After a while he rose from the table and pulled on his glove.

‘Come closer,’ he murmured. ‘Into the light.’

Merridith was trembling as he moved towards his father.

‘Is something the matter with your shoulders, David?’

‘How – do you mean, sir?’

Lord Kingscourt blinked slowly, like a sleepy cow. ‘Perhaps you would do me the inestimable honour of standing up straight when you speak to me, if you please.’

He did as he was told. His father stared. Wind clattered the windowpanes; moaned in the chimneybreast. Slates were clacking on the creamery roof.

‘Are you afraid, David? Answer me honestly.’

‘A little, sir.’

A long moment passed before Lord Kingscourt gave a nod. ‘Do not be ashamed. I know what it is to be afraid.’ He shuffled slowly and heavily to the mahogany sideboard where he felt for a stone decanter and awkwardly unstoppered it. Carefully he poured out a goblet of brandy, though the quake in his grip made it difficult to pour. Without turning, he asked: ‘Will you have a drink with me, David?’

‘No sir, thank you.’

His hand with the decanter was hovering over a second glass, as though about to make a judgement that might have lasting implications. ‘Mayn’t a man have a drink with his own son
now, without having to go up to Dublin for the privilege?’

The grandfather clock gave a click and a whirr. The time it was telling was wrong by many hours. Somewhere in the room a lighter timepiece was ticking, as though in rattish argument with its solemn forebear.

‘F-forgive me, sir. I will, please. Thank you. Perhaps a small glass of wine.’

‘Wine,’ said Lord Kingscourt, ‘is not a drink. It is a kidney-flush for Frenchmen and prancing fops.’

He poured the second glass of brandy to the brim and placed it on a side table beside the piano. Merridith went and took it. It felt cold to the touch.

‘Your health, David.’ Lord Kingscourt drained half his glass in one swallow.

‘And your own, sir.’

‘I see you do not drink. Perhaps your toast is insincere.’

Merridith took a small sip. His gorge rose.

‘More,’ said his father. ‘I want to be healthy.’

He swallowed down a mouthful: eyes moistening with disgust.

‘All of it,’ Lord Kingscourt said. ‘You know I am very ill.’

He finished the glass. His father refilled it.

‘You may be seated now, David. Over there if you please.’

Merridith crossed to the overstuffed sofa and sat down, and his father inched painfully into a dark leather armchair, his face distended with the effort of moving. He was wearing unmatching slippers and no stockings. The eczema from which he suffered had blistered on his bony ankles, its livid scars raked with the ragged trace of fingernails.

Again he said nothing. Merridith wondered what would happen. From somewhere in the distance a donkey gave a ludicrous bawl. When finally his father began to speak again, it was in the exaggeratedly deliberate and enunciated way he had employed to conceal his slur since the seizures had struck him. A drunk man trying to disguise his drunkenness.

‘I was sometimes quite afraid of your grandfather when I was your age. He and I did not enjoy the close relationship which you and I enjoy. He could be a portion of a tyrant as a matter of fact. Old-fashioned and so on. Or I felt so, at any rate. It is only in recent
years that I see he meant well. That what I perceived as strictness was actually loving kindness.’ He gulped hard; glottal, as though swallowing a piece of gristle. ‘But when one is young, one always feels that about one’s father. Natural for a boy to feel like that.’

Uneasily Merridith wondered how he was supposed to respond.

‘And in battle, too; I have often been afraid.’ He pursed his pallid lips and gave a soberly rueful nod. ‘Yes. You appear surprised but it is true. At the battle of Baltimore I was certain I should die, David. We were cut off at one point. And I was afraid then.’

‘Afraid of dying, sir?’

His father peered absently into his glass as though he could see strange pictures in the vapours rising from it. Though the room was cold, his beard looked matted with sweat. ‘Yes. I expect so. Of the pain, I expect. When a young man has seen other young men die – when he has had the duty of sending them out to certain death – he will know that death is not a glorious thing at all, but a loathsome one.’ He gave a small shudder and brushed the dust from his sleeve in a desultory way. ‘All the lies we spout about dying for one’s country. That is all they are, you know, David. Barbarities and lies.’

‘Sir?

‘I have formed the view that these absurdities are a way of stopping us being afraid. Crush the fear that might otherwise drive us together. Religions. Philosophies. Even countries themselves – they are a kind of lie, too. As I see it.’

Merridith was confused. ‘In which sense, sir?’

‘I mean we are all comparable under the outward appearance. Human, I suppose. If you prick us, et cetera.’ He nodded again and took a long sip of brandy. ‘Except the French, obviously. Garlic-eating savages.’

‘Yes, sir.’

His father frowned. ‘That was a joke.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Yes. I am sorry, too. More than you know.’

He gave a short, sour laugh. ‘Matter of fact, I sometimes think the old Frog had it right. Liberty, equality, fraternity, et cetera.’ He gaped around the dismally cold room as though he despised it. ‘Wouldn’t say no to a slice of liberty. Would you?’ His words had a shading of irony which David Merridith couldn’t understand.

‘Well – no, sir. I shouldn’t think so.’

‘No indeed. No indeed. And neither should I.’

The grandfather clock gonged from deep in its chest: a sad sound, spent, a cough of chronometry. Shadows moved. The fire fizzed. The ratchet of windings readjusting to their drudgery. The father looked up at the warped brown ceiling; then at the clock; and then at his son.

‘What was I saying to you, David?’

‘You were talking about death, sir.’

‘Was I?’

‘Yes, sir. About the battle of Baltimore.’

Slowly his father began to speak again. ‘What I feared. Even more. Than that possibility’ – and Lord Kingscourt’s eyes seemed to dissolve with tears.

Merridith was as horrified as if his father had lost control of his bowels. For a moment he sat still, his head bowed very low, his left hand clenching at the length of silvered braiding which attempted to decorate the arm of the chair. Then his shoulders began convulsing as he quietly wept. Sobs racked his chest and still he tried not to move. Small sounds of resistance. A shake of the head. His breath came in gasps that seemed to stab into him.

‘Are you – quite all right, sir?’

Lord Kingscourt nodded but did not look up.

‘May I fetch you a glass of water?’

No answer was made. A dog was heard barking; an insistent, repeated two-tone yelp, and the whistle of a sheepman calling it to heel. Lord Kingscourt’s quivering fingers went to his forehead; shielded his eyes like a man in shame.

‘You must forgive me, David. I am a little out of sorts this evening.’

‘It’s quite all right, father. Is there anything I can do?’

‘Your mother … was the finest person who ever lived.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Her compassion for people. Capacity to forgive. Not an hour goes by without my feeling her loss. As a crippled man would miss a limb.’

Tears were seeping down his face again and Merridith was by now afraid to speak. He thought he might cry himself if he did.

‘You will be aware that we had our good days and our bad ones, David. God knows I was very far from what she deserved. I failed her so often. Through anger and stupidity. I have wasted so much that I cannot bear to think of it. But you must never think there was no love between us.’

‘I never would, sir.’