David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

‘Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honoured of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.’

The twins were asleep beside the bed. Edward and Sarah were sitting beside the flowers. Lady Lucy was by her husband’s side and Thomas and Olivia were on the opposite side of the bed. Thomas remembered his father telling him stories about Troy, about Achilles sulking in his tent, about the body of Hector being dragged round the city walls, about the wooden horse that finally ended the war. He looked at his father’s face and began to cry silently. Only the nurse noticed the tears running slowly down his cheeks and slipped him an enormous handkerchief when nobody else was looking. Johnny was thinking as he read of the various Indian councils and the even stranger Indian governments he and Francis had seen. He went on.

‘I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!’

Lady Lucy suddenly wondered if her question to Francis in Positano would be fair. How dull he would find it to make an end to detection, to give up what had become his career since he left the Army for what he might call a woman’s whim. No, she corrected herself, casting a guilty glance at her husband, he would never say that to her. But he might think it. He would hate it, Francis, rusting unburnished. Had she the right to ask him? Johnny Fitzgerald remembered that there was a tricky passage coming up about the passing of Ulysses’ life: ‘of life to me little remains; but every hour is saved from that eternal silence.’ That, he felt sure, would not seem appropriate in these circumstances. Nor would the lines about handing control over Ithaca to his son Telemachus. That might set Thomas off. So he moved on, hoping nobody would notice.

‘There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas.’

It was at this point that they heard a low muttering noise from the bed, like thunder far away. There was a faint stirring of the bedclothes as if Powerscourt was wriggling about in his sleep. Johnny Fitzgerald read on. Edward and Sarah left their chairs and tiptoed over to take a closer look. Olivia had grabbed hold of Thomas’s arm and wasn’t going to let go.

‘My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me -

That ever with a welcome frolic took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads -’

During this passage the murmuring turned into a recognizable voice. The voice was weak but it was definitely Powerscourt’s and he was speaking the words of Tennyson’s poem in unison with Johnny Fitzgerald. Lady Lucy began to cry. Thomas was squeezing the bedclothes in disbelief. Olivia stared at her father as if she had never seen a male person before. On they went, the two friends, Powerscourt and Fitzgerald, that had ever with a welcome frolic taken the thunder and the sunshine so many times together in so many different parts of the world in days gone by.

‘. . . you and I are old,

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.’

We’re not finished yet, Francis and I, Johnny Fitzgerald said to himself. He paused as if Powerscourt’s return from the dead should be properly celebrated.

‘Don’t stop, Johnny, please don’t stop.’ Lady Lucy felt the thread, the skein of her husband’s life was tied up with the poem, that they had to continue together, she was certain of it. Powerscourt’s voice was almost normal now. The nurse and Lady Lucy had raised him to a semi-sitting position. He smiled weakly at the people around him as if he had just come back from an afternoon nap.

‘The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.’

If the return of Powerscourt’s voice was the first miracle of this extraordinary afternoon, the second was just about to begin. Master Christopher Powerscourt, youngest of all the Powerscourts, was waking up in his Moses basket.

‘Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.’

Christopher knew that voice. He had been listening to it nearly every day of his life, except for the last four or five. He liked the voice. He raised a small hand. Then he smiled at his father. It was a beautiful smile. It lasted a long time. It was the first time Christopher had smiled at anyone in his life. Lady Lucy and Thomas and Olivia all saw it, those deep blue eyes lit up, the great beam going right across his tiny face, his look of intense happiness. Powerscourt began to cry. Tears of joy were running down his face until he saw that his twin son might follow his example and start crying too.

The poem went on. There was now a ring of hands, Edward to Sarah to Johnny Fitzgerald across to the nurse, weeping uncontrollably, to Lady Lucy, to Powerscourt, to Olivia and Thomas and a last link to Christopher in his basket. A circle of love, with words by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

‘It may that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.’

Christopher smiled once more, this time at his mother. He seemed to like smiling. Maybe he was going to be a happy child. Everybody round the bed felt certain that Powerscourt had turned the corner, that he wasn’t going to die. A very faint colour was beginning to return to his cheeks. Lady Lucy felt incredibly tired suddenly as she looked at her Francis. She wondered if she would have the courage to ask him to give up investigating for ever when they went to Positano. Edward was thinking of the terrible ordeal Powerscourt had gone through in solving a couple of murders in an Inn of Court. Sarah supposed she would have to describe this extraordinary scene to her mother, the return of Lazarus Powerscourt, Powerscourt Redux, helped on his journey back to life by a beautiful first smile from his baby boy. Casting his eyes down to the end of the poem, Johnny Fitzgerald knew how right Lady Lucy had been to insist on his reading to the very end of ‘Ulysses’. For these last lines could be Powerscourt’s epitaph, not an epitaph for him now, but one that would serve so well when his life had run its natural course. Johnny let his oldest and closest friend say the final words on his own, Lord Francis Powerscourt’s voice firm now, his two sons holding hands, his own hands locked with those of his wife and his daughter.

‘Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’