David Dickinson - Death on the Holy Mountain

‘Certainly not,’ said Powerscourt firmly. ‘That would be like putting it on the front page of the Irish Times . Father O’Donovan Brady down in the town, my favourite Catholic priest in all the world, would hear of it inside twenty-four hours.’

Dinner that evening was a rather subdued affair in Butler’s Court. The blank spaces reproached them from the walls. Butler carried on a desultory conversation with Alice Bracken about the prospects for the forthcoming hunting season. Powerscourt had a halting discussion with the tall thin young man called James about Irish songs and ballads, a subject on which the young man possessed an encyclopedic knowledge. Only Johnny Fitzgerald seemed to be on top form, entertaining Sylvia Butler with anecdotes about the Dublin art dealers he had recently met, all of them, without exception, he maintained, thieves and villains of the darkest hue, not a single one of them a man you would buy a tea caddy from. After the consumption of a spectacular trifle, almost all the ingredients originating on the premises, Richard Butler proudly told the company, the ladies withdrew. As their host placed a bottle of port in the centre of the table they were joined by a very old gentleman with white hair, a straggly white moustache and a thin white beard. He shuffled slowly to an empty chair, bringing with him a large black notebook. He was wearing a faded dinner jacket under a very old green dressing gown decorated with Chinese dragons of considerable ferocity. Powerscourt wondered if it had come from the East with Marco Polo.

‘Uncle Peter,’ said Richard Butler rather wearily. ‘How good of you to join us.’

‘Didn’t feel like the whole thing, dinner, I mean,’ said the aged uncle, eyeing the port greedily. ‘Had something in my rooms.’

By the look of him, Powerscourt thought, he had been doing rather more drinking than eating in his rooms. His eyes were bloodshot and he carried with him a general air of faded dissipation, like an old sofa that had been left out in the rain.

‘Heard you had visitors,’ Uncle Peter went on. ‘Educated men. Cambridge, one of them. Young James told me.’

The old man nodded firmly at this point, looking with even greater interest at the glasses and the bottle. ‘Thought they’d like to hear some of my book.’ He patted the volume in front of him.

‘Uncle Peter’s been writing a history of Ireland,’ Richard Butler said loudly in the tone he might have used when talking to a small child. ‘He’s been working at it for the past fifteen years.’

‘Really?’ said Powerscourt, wondering what was to follow. Johnny was eyeing their visitor with a look of fellow feeling for a man who so obviously liked a glass of something every now and then to ease the pain of the day.

‘Parnell’s funeral,’ said Uncle Peter, rummaging about in his book. ‘That’s the end of my story. That’s the bit I thought the gentlemen would like to hear.’

Butler filled four glasses and handed them round. ‘Moore,’ he said, laying down the lines for his escape, ‘I want to ask your advice about a piece of land that’s up for sale over at Carryduff. I think it’s quite promising. Did I tell you, by the way, that the bloody man Mulcahy down in the square tried to buy some of my land? Bloody cheek!’ Land, Powerscourt remembered, a subject almost as dear to these people as horses. Powerscourt was to learn later that William Moore was said to have the sharpest eye for a piece of land in the four provinces of Ireland. With that, and a slight bow, Richard Butler led his neighbour from the room.

‘Why did you finish your book with Parnell’s funeral?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘That’s nearly fifteen years ago now.’

‘Will you tell me,’ the old man said, downing most of his glass in a single gulp, ‘what’s happened in Ireland since? I’ll tell you now, so I will. Power, real power, flowing away from the landlord class like an ebb tide. More priests, more bloody nuns, more schools, more of the young playing those stupid games of Irish football and that ridiculous hurling they go in for. Who’s ever going to give them a proper international match in hurling, will you tell me that now?’

‘We’d be most interested to hear about Parnell’s funeral,’ said Powerscourt politely. ‘You see, we were both there, Johnny and I.’

‘Maybe you’ll be able to give me some advice then,’ said Uncle Peter. ‘You’d be amazed at how hard it is to find accurate information in this country. It’s the newspapers, you see. They can’t even agree on the date the great Charles Stewart Parnell was buried. I’m sure the man from the London Times was there on the spot, and the man from the Irish Times and the fellow from the Freeman’s Journal , but I don’t think the chap from the Cork Examiner was there at all, or the man from the Mayo News . Some of them have got the funeral on a different day. One of them, can’t remember which one now, memory’s going like a clock winding down, said Parnell died on a Tuesday and was buried the next day, on the Wednesday. Would you believe it? As if they could put his body in a coffin, transport it from Brighton to Holyhead and then get it on a boat from there to Kingstown inside twenty-four hours. The thing’s not possible. Do you think they make it up, the newspapermen, I mean?’ During this speech Uncle Peter had extracted a pair of battered spectacles from a dragon’s pocket in his dressing gown and was ferreting about in his book, looking for the right place to start.

‘Sunday it was,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the day they buried him.’

‘Friday, I’m sure it was Friday,’ said Johnny.

‘There you are,’ said the old man triumphantly, ‘and you’re not even newspapermen. Young James would have told me if you were newspapermen.’

Richard Butler made a brief reappearance in his dining room. He was carrying a large tray with three further bottles of port and an enormous jug of iced lemonade.

‘I thought it might be a long evening, boys,’ he said, depositing his precious cargo directly in front of Uncle Peter. ‘This should keep the vocal cords in working order.’

‘The commissariat has arrived,’ said Uncle Peter thankfully to the departing Butler. ‘Supplies.’ He had the air of a man who has just found the Ark of the Covenant. As he looked again in his book for the right place to start, his eyes peering down at the pages, his right hand, guided by apparently unseen forces, reached out for the port bottle and refilled his glass. Not a drop was spilt. Even Johnny Fitzgerald, a man with some experience in these areas, nodded his appreciation.

‘Excuse me, Uncle Peter,’ said Powerscourt apologetically, ‘don’t you think it would be helpful if you gave us a brief biography of Parnell before we start? You and Johnny and I have lived through it, after all, but Young James here was only a child when the man died.’ Powerscourt watched as the old man’s mouth opened and closed several times.

Then Powerscourt understood. This was a change of plan. Old men didn’t like changes of plan. In his mind Uncle Peter was already lost in the details of Parnell’s funeral. Now he was asked for the view from the mountain top.

‘Let me try,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it won’t be very good but it might help.’ He paused briefly, marshalling his thoughts. ‘Born in famine times. Protestant landowner from County Wicklow. Elected to Westminster Parliament mid-1870s. By the end of that decade two bad harvests in a row filled the island with the terror of another famine. With Michael Davitt Parnell founded the Land League. Farmers asked their landlords for reduction or cancellation of their rents. Widespread agrarian violence. Landlords who refused were sometimes boycotted. Two results. Gladstone passed a law that made it easier for the tenants to purchase their land. And he imprisoned Parnell in Kilmainham Jail for inciting violence, which guaranteed Parnell immortality in Ireland. Became Leader of Irish Parliamentary Party in 1880. Turned it from undisciplined rabble into formidable fighting force. Parnell and his MPs fought for Home Rule for Ireland. Gladstone was converted to Home Rule, a form of devolution. Through the ’80s Parnell carried on a passionate affair with Katherine O’Shea, wife of another Irish MP. Cited as co-respondent in 1889 divorce case. Savaged by hostile publicity when details of the adultery came out in court. A few MPs stayed loyal, remainder fought him tooth and nail. Pro- and anti-Parnellites contested three by-elections in Ireland through 1891. Parnell lost them all. Married Katherine O’Shea June 1891.’