David Dickinson: Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

Here is Powerscourt himself, sitting on a bench in the shade by the great fountain at the bottom of the cascade of steps that lead down from the back of Powerscourt House. Here he was born. Here he grew up, his boyhood marked by his father’s worries about money, his mother singing with the young music teacher in the drawing room after dinner. He remembered the great parties for all of Dublin society, the bands, the dancing, all the Anglo-Irish excesses that his parents could no longer afford. It was the money or the lack of it that made Johnny Fitzgerald pull his friend from a place that should have been glorious — for its position, its history, the beauty of its interiors — but had turned instead into something like a prison house. Powerscourt had fled to London with his sisters and never looked back.

Now the house was owned by some obscure outriders of the Guinness brewing dynasty and had been perfectly restored.

Orlando Blane, the master forger from the investigation into a murdered art critic, was sitting at a temporary easel on the lawn, producing fake Renaissance-style portraits for all and sundry.

Lord Francis Powerscourt had brought with him for his birthday his son and heir Thomas, and Thomas’s closest friend from Westminster School, Gabriel. The boys had gone off to climb Sugarloaf Mountain and enjoy the views. Also in the party were Powerscourt’s brother-in-law William Burke’s eldest son, a scholar of Merton College Oxford, and his girlfriend, the glamorous Contessa Eleanora Maria Paravicini, eldest daughter of an Italian duke, who had more titles than there are strands of pasta in a dish of spaghetti bolognese. The young Contessa, not yet in her twenties, looked like one of Botticelli’s Madonnas, but a wicked smile hinted that earthly pleasures might not be out of bounds.

Coming down the steps, Burke’s boy and the girl were as close as they could be without actually touching. Some way behind them was a smaller figure with an outlandish hat. It must be Lady Lucy, Powerscourt thought. He suddenly remembered her in an equally dramatic piece of headgear and an Anna Karenina coat, when she joined him in a box at the Albert Hall for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony twenty years before. Lucy had gone in as Lady Hamilton. She had come out almost somebody else entirely, as Powerscourt had asked her to marry him at the end of the third movement. He had written his proposal on a scrap of newspaper inside an advertisement for Bird’s Custard. Lucy, I love you. Will you marry me? Francis. Back came the answer, Of course I will. Lucy.

The former Archbishop of Tuam, now Archbishop of Dublin, who led Powerscourt and his friends on the pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick in the case of the missing Irish ancestor portraits, was sitting quietly in the shade under a tree planted by Powerscourt’s grandfather. He had promised to lead whoever might wish to join him in silent prayers at one of the most numinous holy sites in Ireland, Glendalough, the glen of the two lakes just a few miles away.

The young couple were holding hands now, in that surprised manner young people always have when they hold hands, as if they were the first humans to do so since God created the world all those years ago. They were now about a hundred yards or so from Powerscourt’s position. He sat further back on his bench. He could see Lucy coming down the steps clearly now, waving a tiny wave. Behind her came a couple of waiters with ice buckets and glasses and a couple of bottles of wine. Sauvignon blanc? Pinot grigio? Powerscourt wondered if Lucy had remembered the cases of meursault he had shown her down in the dark Powerscourt cellars, the last wine his father had laid down before he died.

They were embracing now, the boy and the girl entwined in an embrace so passionate you felt as if you were intruding merely by looking at them.

One of the five Powerscourt bands began playing ‘Tipperary, It’s a long way to go’. The fountain dropped for a moment and he could see them very clearly. He thought of the Taj Mahal, another monument to the power of love. These young people — Patrick Burke always called his Contessa Els, to rhyme with bells, he remembered — were making a different sort of monument to love: less permanent but, perhaps, more brilliant. It would be made of crystal, or gossamer or dew, and would fade or evaporate as nature changed its courses. It was as if they were living inside one of John Donne’s early sonnets, where the love burns so bright it could hurt your hands on the page.

Deus est caritas , Powerscourt remembered the young scholar saying the College Grace at a feast in Merton College Oxford that he and Lady Lucy had attended earlier that year, et qui manet in caritate manet in Deo et Deus in illo . God is love, and whoever lives with love lives with God and God lives with him.

The young couple, still graced with the drops and the spray from the fountain, turned into the Japanese garden.

Lady Lucy joined him and took his hand. This place will always be special, Powerscourt said to himself. It will be special for all members of the Powerscourt family and special for all members of the Burke family. Special, above all, for Patrick and Els and the brilliance of their love.

It was Natasha Shaporova who brought the news that finally closed this investigation. ‘You’ll never guess what Monsieur Fokine has just told me, Lord Powerscourt.’

‘And what might that be, Natasha?’

‘Well, you remember there has been a lot of talk about the music Stravinsky has been writing for the new opera?’

‘I do.’

‘Well, he’s finished it at last. It’s going to have its world premiere in Paris next summer!’

‘Do you know what it’s called, Natasha?’

‘I do. Well, I only know it in French actually.’

‘And?’

‘It’s going to be called Le Sacre du Printemps .’

‘How would you translate that into English?’

‘Some English professor has done that already. The new ballet is going to be called The Rite of Spring .’