David Dickinson - Death and the Jubilee

‘Yes, he was worried.’ The old lady paused, staring at a classical landscape on her wall. ‘Always worries in the bank, Father used to say. Always worries.’

Lady Lucy remembered Francis’ account of their first meeting, repeated virtually word for word in the drawing room in Markham Square, Francis changing seats for the different characters in the little drama, laughing at himself as he neared the end of his little play. This mantra, always worries, had cropped up over and over again. Oh dear, oh dear, Lady Lucy thought to herself. Don’t say her mind is going to start wandering already. I couldn’t bear to tell Francis I’d failed him.

At that moment her husband was greeting Samuel Parker just outside the door of his little cottage.

‘I’ve brought you that book of photographs, Mr Parker, the one I mentioned last time. The book with the photographs of the mountains in it. Look at this one here. It’s extraordinary.’

The two men gazed in awe at a photograph of the high Himalayas, taken some way off, but their snow-capped peaks looked majestic, the two tribesmen in the foreground like ants on the ground.

‘Thank you so much, my lord.’ Samuel Parker took the book with great reverence, ‘I shall look at it later if I may. But come, I promised to take you round the lake and all the places where Old Mr Harrison stopped off.’

Parker suddenly disappeared back into his cottage. He returned with a large ring with a number of different keys on it, each one labelled in stiff awkward capitals.

‘The keys, my lord. I always had to bring the keys with me. For the buildings and that.’

The two men set off down the path. In front of them was the lake, bright in the morning sunlight. Across the water a classical temple stood improbably in the middle of the view. To their left was a fine stone bridge – Palladian again, thought Powerscourt. Verona, or was it Vicenza where he had seen its like before?

‘So you would be walking, Mr Parker,’ said Powerscourt, slowing his pace to that of that of the old man. ‘Old Mr Harrison would be on his pony with his portable table and his papers. Tell me, did you always have keys to the buildings? I mean, were they always locked up in the past?’

‘They were not, my lord.’ Samuel Parker was indignant. ‘Old Mr Harrison only had the locks put on them in the last couple of years.’

‘Did he say why, Mr Parker?’ Powerscourt was looking curious.

‘He did not, my lord. But the man who made them said to me afterwards that they was mighty strong locks. You’d think the old man had the Crown jewels inside them old temples rather than a couple of mouldy statues, he used to say to me. He’s still there. Harold Webster, my lord, up at the big house, the man who fitted them.’

They had reached the path that ran round the lake, disappearing out of sight from time to time as it curved round the water’s edge. A couple of rooks greeted their arrival, striking out over the water to the woods beyond.

‘Which way do we go here, Mr Parker?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Well, my lord, we can go left or we can go right as you can see. I never knew which way the old gentleman wanted to go until we got here. But I think at this time of year we would have turned right.’

Soon the flowering chestnuts and the rhododendrons would paint the path with colour. This morning they walked on, the old man leading, through green conifers and huge oaks.

‘Did he talk to you much along the way, Mr Parker?’ asked Powerscourt, noting that the classical temple had suddenly disappeared from view.

‘He didn’t talk to me, my lord. He talked to himself sometimes though. In German usually, I think, sometimes in some other language.’

‘What was that?’

‘I don’t rightly know, my lord.’ Samuel Parker shook his head. ‘I never had any time to learn any of those foreign languages at school. I found it hard enough learning how to spell this one. But Mabel thought it might have been Yiddish.’

‘How on earth did she know that? Does Mabel know Yiddish, Mr Parker?’ Powerscourt marvelled again at the detective powers of Mrs Parker.

‘Mabel speak Yiddish, my lord? Never a word of it. I think the vicar told her. He’d heard Old Mr Harrison talking to himself too. Yiddish, the vicar said, or maybe some other language beginning with an A. Arabian? Aramaic? I can’t remember.’

They were now approaching another temple, not previously visible on the walk. It was quite a small temple with a portico of four Doric columns and an imposing inscription over the door. ‘ Procul, o procul este, profani ’, the message warned. Powerscourt had sudden memories of translating the Aeneid at school, watched over by an unforgiving master. Be gone, be gone, you uninitiated persons, he said to himself. It’s the Sybil speaking in Book Six, just as Aeneas was about to begin his descent into the underworld to meet his father and hear the story of the founding of Rome, a perilous journey from which few travellers returned. As he stood at the door while Samuel Parker fiddled with his bunch of keys, Powerscourt wondered if he too was entering some private underworld of the Harrisons where filial respect was marked out, not with piety and messages from the Sibyls, but with the bodies of the dead.

‘What was he worried about, Miss Harrison?’ Lady Lucy was looking concerned, hoping against hope that the old lady hadn’t lost her mind again.

‘He never told me very much, Lady Powerscourt. I tried to remember, after your husband called the time before. Germany, I think, it had to do with Germany. It’s not the same now it’s all one. I remember all those little states we used to have before that dreadful old Bismarck got his way and bundled them all up together like a big parcel.’

The old lady stopped suddenly and smiled a vacant smile. She’s going, she’s going, thought Lady Lucy. ‘Was that why he went to Germany in the last years? Was he looking for whatever it was that troubled him?’

‘Berlin,’ the old lady said definitely. ‘I know he went there. On business for the bank, he said. Frankfurt. He went there too. Berlin is full of soldiers now, marching up and down all the time, as if they want to fight somebody. That’s what he said.’

‘And did he have letters from Germany too?’

‘Letters, letters?’ said the old lady wildly, looking round as if the post had not been delivered that morning. ‘Letters . . .’ Old Miss Harrison was lost again. ‘Father used to check we had learnt our letters when we were very small. Letters are very important, my children, he used to say, nearly as important in this world as numbers. That’s what he used to say.’

‘I’m sure he was right,’ said Lady Lucy diplomatically. ‘Did your brother have correspondents in Germany?’

‘All our letters were handed out every morning by the butler at the end of breakfast. We children were so excited when we had letters of our own. I used to look at the stamps and the postmarks.’ She nodded as if confirming the educational value of the postal services. ‘He did have letters from Germany, my brother,’ she went on, ‘I remember the postmarks. Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Frankfurt, one from Munich with a beautiful stamp on it. Mountains, I think. Do they have mountains near Munich?’

Lady Lucy assured her that they did.

‘Did he ever talk to you about his worries at all?’ she continued, stressing ‘at all’ as if she thought it impossible that the two old people could have shared a house without sharing their fears.

‘He talked in his sleep sometimes, he did. When he was sitting by the fire, just where you are now. After supper, he would usually fall asleep and sometimes he would mutter to himself in his sleep. I can’t sleep much now at night. I can get off all right, but then I keep waking up again. Mother never could sleep at all at the end, you know. One of the doctors said if she’d slept better she wouldn’t have been gone so soon after Father passed on. She wouldn’t have gone so soon. That’s what he said.’