‘I’ve never understood my wife and I never will,’ Sir Lemuel had once said. ‘I served with her brother in the Peninsula: a fine man. Killed at Vittoria. I knew him better than I ever knew Mary, for all that we lived together for more than twenty years.’
‘Might I ask, sir,’ Richard had said, ‘what took her back to Ireland?’
‘God knows, my boy. She gave me neither warning nor reason. And I’ve not cared to beg for an explanation. She packed her bags and left, one summer’s day in 1838, while I was in London. Since then, she’s never so much as written me a letter.’
The gig set off down the drive between the dank ill-kept lawns and the straggling hedges of fuchsia. The sun was shining on Richard’s back now, but still he felt cold, chilled beyond the reach of any warmth by the sudden realization that the truth was close at hand.
III
If Freddy Cleveland ever admitted to feeling the pangs of a genuine emotion, it was only in the privacy of his unspoken thoughts. No gentleman, he believed, should display anything but the most studied indifference to the dramas of life. He would, therefore, have been hard put to explain why, on calling at Hugo Davenall’s new residence in Duke Street only to learn that his friend was spending the afternoon at Lazenby’s Gymnasium in Hammersmith, he had not simply strolled towards Pall Mall and a few quiet hours at the billiards table.
Instead, he found himself ascending a rickety staircase beside one of the least salubrious of Hammersmith’s alehouses and enquiring, of a short, broken-nosed, bald-headed man in a tiny office festooned with programme cards for recent boxing bouts, whether his friend was truly to be found in such improbable surroundings.
‘You mean Sir ’Ugo Davenall?’
So. Hugo was still making free with the title he had forfeited: it was worrying. ‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘There’s a shootin’ gallery aht the back o’ the gym. You’ll find ’im there, like as not.’
Freddy followed a narrow corridor, partitioned off from the gymnasium so that he could hear, but not see, the exertions of assorted weightlifters. It led him into a high-ceilinged brick-walled range, where the reports of rapid gunfire pounded at his eardrums. In one of the cubicles, he found Hugo, whose attention, after much shouting, he managed to attract.
‘What the devil are you doin’ here, Hugo?’
‘What does it look like?’
‘Shootin’, of course, but …’
‘I’m no marksman. Isn’t that what you said? Watch this.’
Hugo raised the old-fashioned gun he held in his hand and trained it on the target at the end of the range, about thirty feet away. As he pulled back the cock and took aim, Freddy glanced at the target and saw that it was the two-dimensional wooden likeness of a man, carved as if the man were standing side-on. There were circles marked in red on the head and chest, circles within which small jagged holes had already been torn in the wood. Hugo fired.
When the noise of the shot had faded and Freddy had unclenched his eyes, he saw that another hole had been added to the topmost circle. Hugo had scored a direct hit. ‘Not bad, eh?’ he said, smiling back at Freddy.
‘You’ve been practisin’ this?’
‘Of course. Practice makes perfect, after all.’
‘But … why?’
‘Why do you think?’
Freddy could hardly believe what he was forced to conclude: that Hugo was still indulging his fantasy of challenging Sir James Davenall to a duel. ‘Can we talk somewhere, old man? I don’t think well under fire.’
They adjourned to the alehouse downstairs, where the landlord was induced to open the snug for their use. Hugo looked better than he had all year, fitter, harder, unnaturally self-assured.
‘I’ve not seen you at the club lately,’ Freddy remarked, sipping at his whisky and soda.
‘Didn’t Bullington tell you? I’ve resigned.’
‘Resigned? Why?’
‘Because they’ve gone ahead with their invitation to Norton. And he’s accepted. Bullington told me so.’
‘Good God, old man, there was no need to—’
‘But that’s neither here nor there. He won’t have long to enjoy his membership.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘As soon as he sets foot in London, I intend to challenge him.’
Anywhere else, at any other time, Freddy would have laughed in Hugo’s face. Duelling had long been regarded by their generation as the most absurd of anachronisms. But the intensity of his friend’s expression forbade such a reaction. Instead, he said, in sober responsible tones he scarcely recognized as his own: ‘It’s not on, Hugo. You must forget the very idea.’
But Hugo merely smiled blithely back, ‘I wasn’t going to leave you out of it, Freddy. In fact I’m glad you’re here. It gives me the opportunity to ask if you’ll do me the honour of acting as my second.’
‘You are jokin’, aren’t you?’
But Freddy was wasting his breath. It was obvious Hugo had never been more serious. ‘Will you do it? Grass before breakfast, old man. It was a common enough way to settle differences in our fathers’ day.’
‘But this isn’t our fathers’ day. You’ll make a laughin’-stock of yourself.’
‘I don’t think so. If Norton accepts the challenge, I’ll be ready for him. If not, I’ll have exposed him as a coward.’
‘He’ll never accept. Dammit, why should he?’
‘Because, if he were really James, he’d do the decent thing. Wouldn’t he?’
‘I don’t know. Twelve years ago, a chap might still sneak off to France and take a pot-shot at a rival without bein’ called a ninny by all and sundry. Jimmy might have done it then, yes. But not now.’
Hugo drained his glass and stared levelly across the table. ‘Will you act for me, Freddy?’
‘It’s a tomfool idea, Hugo. You must—’
‘Yes or no?’
It was strange, thought Freddy, to discover, so far advanced in his feckless existence, that there was a genuine fund of loyalty his friends could call upon at direst need. The amoral code he claimed to live by should have led him to desert Hugo in short order. But that, he now realized, he could not do. ‘Yes,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll act for you.’ He, too, drained his glass. ‘Damn it all.’
IV
Denzil O’Shaughnessy, self-appointed spokesman of the thinking classes of Connaught, stepped sprightly from the platform of the Salthill tram as it turned into Eyre Square, Galway, plucked a sheaf of papers from the inside pocket of his coat and struck out towards the offices of the Connaught Tribune Printing and Publishing Company.
His progress across the square was impressive in its own right. A tall, heavily-bearded, broad-shouldered man wearing a dashing if dented top-hat, and a flapping overcoat in the fashion of a cloak, he flourished the papers in his hand like a swagger-stick, glanced about to right and left with his head tossed haughtily back and flipped coins to the beggars huddled beneath the Dunkellin monument as if throwing handfuls of seed to birds at his feet.
If any observer had judged O’Shaughnessy, by this display, to be some arrogant local magnate indulging in a piece of tastelessly conspicuous expenditure, they would have been sorely mistaken. He could, in fact, ill afford to give even loose change away. His clothes, though stylish and well made, were threadbare, his stout boots painfully thin-soled. For an educated man nearing sixty, he was scandalously ill-prepared for the privations of old age, and the air he exuded of leisured contentment owed nothing to the cramped lodging he had set out from not half an hour since.
Denzil O’Shaughnessy’s finances were, in truth, ransomed to his integrity. His forays into journalism had so often betrayed a contempt for the landed and Protestant gentry of Ireland that his more remunerative occupation – tutoring the same gentry’s children – had lately been in short supply. Not that he felt restrained by this from continuing to inveigh in print against the tide of violence sweeping his homeland or the reasons for it, for he w
as a man who always acted according to the promptings of his conscience: a rare phenomenon indeed.
Breezing into the Tribune offices, his face wreathed in the broadest of smiles, O’Shaughnessy was already preparing some artful rejoinder to the misgivings of his editor when he noticed a well-dressed grey-bearded man leaning against the counter, to whom the clerk, young Curran, said as he entered: ‘You’re in luck, sir. Here’s Mr O’Shaughnessy in the flesh.’
The stranger turned towards him. Middle-aged and rather weary-looking, O’Shaughnessy thought. Probably English. Too watery-eyed for any kind of commerce, too doleful to be a tourist. Not, whatever else, a happy man.
‘This gentleman was enquiring where he might find you, Denzil,’ Curran put in. ‘I was just after giving him directions.’
‘I’m Richard Davenall,’ the stranger said, holding out his hand. ‘Perhaps you recognize the name.’
O’Shaughnessy did. ‘Your family owns the Carntrassna estate,’ he said, shaking the man’s hand.
‘Yes. Sir James Davenall is my cousin. I represent his interests.’
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mr Davenall. What can I do for you?’
‘I wonder if we might have a private word somewhere?’
‘I was thinking of stepping over to the Great Southern for a glass and a bite to eat.’ He caught Curran’s eye: the lad clearly knew he had formed no such intention until confronted by a man who might willingly pay hotel-bar prices on his behalf. O’Shaughnessy’s generosity of spirit, it will be understood, had never excluded himself. ‘You’d be welcome to join me.’
‘It would be my pleasure.’
O’Shaughnessy grinned triumphantly at Curran and slapped his article down on the counter. ‘See this reaches Mr McNamara with my compliments, Liam. It’s for the Friday edition. Explain I couldn’t linger.’ With that, he turned to his English visitor and led the way.
‘You’ve still not told me why you sought me out, Mr Davenall,’ O’Shaughnessy said, half an hour later, relaxing in the afterglow of a meal which his companion had already paid for. ‘It can’t be on account of my scribblings in the Tribune. They ruffle no feathers in Dublin, leave alone London.’
‘Mrs Kennedy spoke highly of your work.’
‘You amaze me. I should hardly have thought the Kennedys shared my views.’
‘You’re acquainted with them, then?’
‘Slightly.’
‘Kennedy’s sure my aunt’s murder last year had nothing to do with politics. Do you agree?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Because she was the last of the Fitzwarrens, a well-liked family. And, even as absentees, the Davenalls haven’t been bad landlords. Besides, there’d be no sense in the Fenians committing a murder and then not claiming the credit for it. There have been enough political killings in Connaught these past few years – more than enough – for their hallmarks to become well known. In your aunt’s case, they were entirely lacking. But I’m sure the police have already told you that.’
‘Yes. They have.’
‘So in what other respect do Sir James Davenall’s interests concern me?’
‘You followed the court case?’
‘Naturally. Who could resist such a romantic tale? Even here, amidst all the feuds and vendettas, it had them by the ears.’
‘Have you ever met Sir James, Mr O’Shaughnessy?’
‘No.’
‘Or Sir Gervase before him?’
‘No. I haven’t been to Carntrassna for more than thirty years.’
‘What took you there then, might I ask?’
‘My work.’
‘As a journalist?’
‘No. As a teacher.’
‘Mrs Kennedy said you were tutor for some time to the son of their predecessors as agents – the Lennoxes.’
‘That’s right, I was. The Lennoxes educated their boy Stephen at home. They engaged me as his tutor.’
‘A bright boy?’
‘Stephen Lennox was my star pupil, Mr Davenall. I think you could say he had a gift for scholarship. I wish I could have done more to cultivate it. The wilds of Mayo were no place for him, that’s certain. I wanted him to put in for Trinity College, Dublin. He’d have walked it. But his family decided to emigrate instead.’
‘Did that surprise you?’
‘I had no warning, if that’s what you mean. I saw the boy up to Christmas of fifty-nine. Then, without a word, they left.’ It was strange, he reflected, how keenly he still remembered the disappointment of Stephen Lennox being plucked away from him, so near the culmination of eight years of tuition. He had harboured a genuine affection for the boy and felt it still, despite all the years that had passed since. ‘It came as a bolt from the blue.’
‘How old was Stephen Lennox at that time, Mr O’Shaughnessy?’
‘Oh, sixteen.’
‘He would have been born when?’
‘1843.’
‘And would be, what, forty now?’
‘Yes. I suppose he would. Still in Canada, presumably.’
‘Where did your classes with him take place?’
O’Shaughnessy frowned. What the devil was the man driving at? ‘The Lennoxes’ home at Murrismoyle, of course.’
‘Not Carntrassna House?’
‘No.’
‘Yet you said your work took you there.’
‘It did on one occasion, when I was first appointed. 1851, that would have been. Lady Davenall interviewed me for the post.’
‘Did that not strike you as odd? After all, strictly speaking, the Lennoxes were your employers, not my aunt. In fact, did it not strike you as odd that the Lennoxes were able to afford a tutor for their son at all?’
‘I was in no position to look a gift-horse in the mouth, Mr Davenall. Andrew Lennox was scarcely the man to bother overmuch about education, it’s true, but he must have made an exception in his son’s case. I was well and regularly paid. I wish I could find such clients now – and such pupils.’
‘You missed the boy when he’d gone?’
‘I confess I did, even more than I missed my fee. He was growing into a fine young man.’
‘What do you remember about him?’
‘He was the model pupil, Mr Davenall. Quick, perceptive, studious, witty. A voracious reader. A considerable intelligence in the making. And courteous to boot. It was a pleasure to teach him. A real pleasure.’ He smiled and cast back his thoughts to the hours he had spent with young Stephen in the attic-cum-schoolroom at Murrismoyle. Much of the best of his own learning he had left there, in the ever eager, absorbent mind of that boy. Would that Stephen could have followed him to Trinity College and then made more of his life than he ever had. He remembered their explorations of the classics, their literary sparrings, their historical debates, their nature rambles by the shores of Lough Mask.
‘Would you still recognize him?’
‘I should hope so.’
Richard Davenall reached into his jacket pocket and took out a crumpled photograph which he laid on the table between them. It was a head-and-shoulders portrait of a young man, well groomed and faintly smiling, in ermine-trimmed graduation robes. ‘Could that have been Stephen Lennox at twenty-one?’
O’Shaughnessy looked at the picture in amazement. ‘It could well be. He’d have changed a good deal from the sixteen-year-old I knew, but it has the look of him. In fact I could almost swear it is him. Where did you—?’
‘This is a photograph of my cousin, James Davenall.’
‘The devil it is!’
‘You look surprised.’
‘I am. It’s almost as if …’
‘As if there’s a family resemblance?’
‘Yes. But … there can’t be. Can there?’
V
Since returning to England and moving into Bladeney House, Sir James Davenall had taken up a solitary style of life. Constance, it had been agreed, should remain in Salisbury until her divorce became absolu
te. In the interim, James did not appear to desire much company of any kind. Such invitations as he received to balls and soirees were declined. Those who called at his home were turned away. The successor he appointed to Greenwood (who had insisted on following Hugo to Duke Street) became a specialist in polite refusal.
The one exception James made to this shunning of society was to resume his membership of the Corinthian Club. There, two or three times a week, he would spend a few hours at the bar, in the affable if scarcely intimate company of assorted idlers, loungers and men-about-town who had, he did not doubt, been as sympathetic to Hugo in the past as they were to him in the present.
It is possible that James chose the club as a refuge because it was the one place where he could be sure of not meeting Hugo, his brother having resigned his own membership in a fit of pique. If so, he can have been ill-prepared for the encounter which awaited him there one mid-week evening at the end of October. Hugo, it was to transpire, could not be avoided for ever.
Standing at the bar, swapping improbable solutions to the Sudanese problem with a clutch of fellow-members, James could have been forgiven for failing to notice Freddy Cleveland put his head round the door, then hastily withdraw. Nor, when Freddy returned a short while later and slipped away to a corner, looking furtively unlike his normal gregarious self, did James have cause to pay much heed. After all, if Freddy wished to avoid him, so much the worse for Freddy.
There was, however, more to it than that. After a few minutes, something quite startling occurred. Hugo walked into the room. Without looking at Freddy or anyone else, he stared straight at James and began threading his way towards him through the knots of people, jogging elbows and spilling drinks as he went. By the time he had reached the edge of the group James was standing with, he had caused quite a commotion. Several people had recognized him and called out, several others had protested at his clumsy progress. But Hugo ignored them. His face was gaunt and drawn, his gaze unflinching, his concentration absolute.
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