David Dickinson: Death of an Old Master

‘Did you know,’ said the Sergeant Major, smiling at the children, ‘that they looked all over the country to find the best man for the job? They looked everywhere.’

Thomas wasn’t quite sure who ‘they’ would have been. Hundreds and hundreds of Sergeant Major Collinses, he suspected, searching the country day and night.

‘And they found Papa?’ said Olivia. ‘Mama could have told them that in the first place.’

‘Look, children,’ said the Sergeant Major. ‘I’m going to show you something.’ He took them along a corridor of rooms inhabited by the Chelsea Pensioners. Thomas and Olivia peered inside, fascinated as they had been before by the beds that folded into the wall. ‘This man here, Corporal Jobbins, he went off to India where your Papa was with me. He’s come back. Next room, Lance Corporal Richardson, he went away to Africa, he’s come back. This man in here, Private Jenkinson, he went off to Egypt, he’s come back. This one at the end, Gunner Bishop, he went off to Afghanistan, he’s come back.

‘And,’ he went on, ‘see this big room here where we’re going to have our tea, all of these soldiers have been sent away. They’ve all come back.’

Sergeant Major Collins put Olivia on his knee and helped her to bread and butter. Over a hundred veterans looked on in envy and delight. Thomas said the bread and butter was the best he had ever tasted. They had slices of an enormous chocolate cake, Sergeant Major Collins intervening personally to secure a second helping.

‘Wish I was going with you, sir,’ said the Sergeant Major to Powerscourt as they left.

‘I’ve got the next best thing, Sergeant Major,’ said Powerscourt. ‘William McKenzie and Johnny Fitzgerald are coming with me.’

‘God help them Boers,’ said the Sergeant Major. ‘They should give up now if Major Fitzgerald is on his way.’

On his last night in England Lord Francis Powerscourt put his children to bed. He found Olivia in the kitchen, watching the cook preparing grown-up dinner.

He took her in his arms. She snuggled into his shoulder. Olivia said goodnight to every room in the house on her way upstairs.

‘Goodnight, cook, goodnight, kitchen,’ she said.

‘Goodnight, Olivia love,’ said the cook with a smile.

‘Goodnight, dining room, goodnight, chairs,’ said Olivia.

‘The dining room bids you a very good night, Olivia,’ said her father solemnly.

‘Goodnight, drawing room, goodnight, sofa.’

‘Both drawing room and the sofa wish you pleasant dreams,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Goodnight, stairs,’ said Olivia, still clinging to her father’s shoulder.

‘The stairs wish you a very good night too,’ said Powerscourt.

He was putting her into bed now. She was nearly asleep. ‘Goodnight, Papa,’ she said, almost disappearing underneath the covers.

‘Goodnight, Olivia.’ Powerscourt bent down and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Goodnight.’ He waited quietly by the side of the bed. Olivia was asleep. He waited another ten minutes, watching the innocence on the face of his daughter, praying for her future.

Thomas wanted a story. Thomas was very fond of stories. Powerscourt reached for a book on the table and began to read:

‘At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,

And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away,

Spanish ships of war at sea! We have sighted fifty-three!’

‘What’s a pinnace, Papa?’ asked a sleepy voice.

‘It’s a little ship, Thomas, a messenger ship,’ Powerscourt whispered back.

‘Shall we fight or shall we fly?

Good Sir Richard, tell us now,

For to fight is but to die!

And Sir Richard said again: We be all good English men.

Let us bang those dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,

For I never turned my back on Don or devil yet.’

Thomas stirred again. He was nearly off. ‘The Dons are Spaniards, aren’t they, Papa?’

‘Yes,’ whispered Powerscourt.

‘And the sun went down and the stars came out far over the summer sea,

But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.

Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with their dead and their shame.

For some were sunk and many were shattered and so could fight us no more.

God of battles, was there a battle like this in the world before.’

Thomas had not stayed until the end of the conflict. He was gone. Again Powerscourt watched and waited a full ten minutes by the bedside of his sleeping child. He prayed for Thomas. He prayed for his mother. Then he tiptoed slowly from the room.

‘Lucy,’ said Powerscourt later that evening, lying full length on the sofa, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.’

‘Nonsense, Francis,’ she replied with a gallant smile, ‘you’ll be fine. You’ve done this sort of thing before. You’ve got Johnny with you.’

‘I didn’t know you when I was in India, Lucy.’ Powerscourt remembered suddenly that her first husband had also gone off to war. He never came back. He sensed that Lucy must have been thinking the same thought.

‘Promise me one thing, my love.’ Lady Lucy knelt on the floor and flung her arms round her husband’s neck. Powerscourt thought there were tears in her eyes. He held her very tight.

‘There, Lucy, there. Please don’t cry.’

‘Just one thing, Francis.’ She was whispering very close to his ear, her hand stroking his face. ‘Please come back.’

The eight forty-five from Waterloo to Portsmouth harbour was preparing to depart. There were few coaches on the train and fewer passengers. Powerscourt thought they might have the whole train to themselves. He was leaning out of the carriage, holding Lady Lucy’s hands in his. ‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘I love you very much. I shall always love you.’

Whistles were blown. A great cloud of smoke belched out into the morning air from the engine up ahead.

‘I love you very much, Francis. Come back safely. Please come back safely.’

The train had begun to move. Lady Lucy walked along with it, past a couple of porters.

‘Semper Fidelis, Francis.’ The train gathered speed. She had to let go of his hands.

‘Semper Fidelis, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, waving frantically as Lady Lucy’s small figure began to disappear in the smoke. He could see her no longer. Lady Lucy waited until the train disappeared round a corner, heading off down the great tracks stretching out towards the south. She waited a little longer until nothing, not even the rising smoke, was visible.

She left the station and went back to her house and her children.

Sir Frederick Lambert, President of the Royal Academy, was waiting in his sitting room to dictate a new last will and testament to his lawyer.

Imogen Foxe and Orlando Blane were still asleep under the tender care of Mrs Warry at Powerscourt’s house in Northamptonshire.

Alice de Courcy and her daughters Julia and Sarah were standing on the quayside in the northern Corsican port of Calvi, eagerly awaiting the boat that would take them to Nice. From there they would return to England by train.

William Alaric Piper was preparing to open his gallery in Old Bond Street for another day’s business.

Mr William P. McCracken, the American millionaire, was one day out of Southampton, sailing back to New York.

There were but a few days to go before the last Christmas of the century. Colonel Francis Powerscourt and Major Johnny Fitzgerald were going to war.