The Mill for Grinding Old People Young

by Glenn Patterson

  In fact I saw Lord Belfast just once during that time, leaning heavily on the shoulder of a footman as he left the Royal one particularly oppressive night, a little after ten o’clock; I saw his hand a few moments later flop out of the window of the carriage that bore him away from the kerb, but I was taken too much by surprise to do anything other than stare. I scolded myself that I would have to be more alert in the future, quicker to react.

  And then, like that, he was gone altogether.

  Ferris staggered into the Ballast Office one morning clutching his heart. “All is lost.” He collapsed into a chair, scaring the cat out from under it. “Lady Harriet is leaving.”

  “Who says so?” I asked, startled up out of my own seat.

  “I saw her with my own eyes, not two minutes ago, at the head of the dock.”

  I ran to the window, to the one pane not obscured by clutter or grime (thank you Friends of the True Friends of Belfast, replacing the glass was less trouble than cleaning it), and there she was, exactly as Ferris had said, looking not best pleased to have to wait for transport to her ship. There, too, struggling to keep their heads above the ruffs and ribbons of which their clothes appeared principally composed, were the son and daughter, together with their travelling circus of nannies and menservants and maidservants and enough hampers and trunks to provision a squadron of French adventurers.

  Bright, at my shoulder, wondered did this betoken a rift in the marriage, then at once answered himself: if there had been a row the whole town would have heard it.

  Anyway, he reminded Ferris, turning away from the window, the Maze Races were almost upon us. “Think of all those young ladies loosed from the town for the day,” he told him. “Think of all that countryside round about. Think of the barns.”

  I rested my forehead against the glass, the smell in my nostrils of putty not yet dried. This was so unfair.

  I did not see Lord Belfast that morning either. I knew, though, that there was little hope of his remaining behind without his family. More likely that he had already made the crossing on his own, leaving under my very nose. Sure enough, a notice appeared a few days later in one of the weeklies, just arrived from London, confirming that he and Lady Harriet would be spending the summer at their home in the Isle of Wight, where they had in recent years been in the habit of hosting a magnificent ball to mark the start of what in fashionable circles some were now calling “Cowes Week”. Lord Belfast, however, was at pains to stress that he would still be travelling “up to town” for important Parliamentary business. Such as thwarting the desires of the town that gave him his title, he did not say.

  For a day or two more I was at an utter loss. I had not until then understood – have not until now been able properly to put into words – how my feelings for Maria had become entangled with the Earl, my grief and anger, but also (how do I put this even now?) my longing. The shade I had been pursuing around the town these past weeks had been hers as much as his. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that her shade had been behind me, goading me on in pursuit of his. Either way, in losing him I had lost her all over again.

  I had travelled too, in the restless thoughts that accompanied those wanderings, a long way from the watery scene I had first imagined being enacted at the foot of the Long Bridge. It had not taken me many nights to realise that I could do little in the town itself, in this season of all seasons, without bringing people in their tens, their hundreds possibly, spilling on to the street, alarmed, inquisitive, desperate for diversion. My vision now – and it was as vivid as if I had turned a corner in a museum or gallery and met with it executed on an immense canvas – was of a clump of trees, dark, mist-snagged, from out of which a horse was proceeding, its rider tall and straight-backed in the saddle, headed for a breach in an earthen rampart. A little to the right of centre, a second figure was bent over in the act of priming a box-lock tap-action double-barrel pistol in the lee of a broken altar – unmistakably, a broken altar, not a cromlech – of prehistoric stones.

  There was a companion piece. Rooks taking to the air from the trees, the horse rearing up, its rider’s head thrown back, and at the centre now, before the altar, the second figure, gun-arm outstretched, unbending.

  That attitude – rather than that location – was the true measure of how far I had travelled.

  I had been spending too much time on my own. I had been spending too much time with the gun. I had allowed myself to be seduced by it although all I could think then was that I had been thwarted. It was too late now to change tack.

  But not, perhaps, too late to change target.

  Afterwards I could not understand why I had allowed myself to become so focused on the son in the first place.

  I was lying, forlorn, on my bed one evening, the pistol and its parts on my chest, when one after the other the phrases paraded through my head: “should the proposal meet the concurrence of my father . . . merchants and freeholders of Belfast, his papa has ordered him to oppose the very first Bill you apply for . . .”

  I stood up. I made three circuits of the carpet. Stopped. Made three circuits more, my hands clasped in front of my face. It was all I could do to stop myself from laughing out loud.

  All this time I had been pursuing the wrong Donegall.

  *

  The first and lasting cause of Lord Done’em all’s debts went on four legs. As a young man not yet in possession of his inheritance, the Marquis had purchased five horses – at a cost of more than three thousand five hundred pounds, not one of which was paid in advance – from a certain Philip O’Kelly, the son of “Count” Dennis O’Kelly, or Colonel, as he sometimes styled himself. O’Kelly senior had arrived in London from Ireland thirty years before, penniless, illiterate, untitled and uncommissioned, and after a series of scrapes and misadventures had made two fortunes from the incomparable “Eclipse”, the first on the turf, where the stallion was never beaten, the second at stud, where he was never found wanting. It can only have been the prospect of similar riches that caused the future Marquis to agree to spiralling interest terms for the five horses and to offer as security a percentage of the estates that he would one day inherit. His attempts at repayment fell at the first hurdle and by the time he came into his title his debt to the O’Kellys (for the debt had become a kind of shadow inheritance for that family) was, to hear some tell it, not far short of the net worth of Belfast. His life since then had been in large degree a working out of that early indiscretion, though not a learning from it. Horses were still his greatest love – he had lately been appointed steward of the Maze racecourse – and his greatest weakness.

  I took it into my head that someone, I did not yet know who, should write the Marquis a letter.

  Having already broken one great taboo by bringing a firearm under my grandfather’s roof, I now broke a second, stealing a bottle of brandy into my room (on a Sunday, too) to help me discover the author. I set the bottle on the writing table next to the inkstand, although to start with I addressed myself only to the former. I was remembering how the last time I had sat down here to write, to Hannah, the words had flowed almost without my conscious intervention, although on that occasion there had seemed to be a connection still between heart and hand. In order for this letter to convince, I would have to take leave of Gilbert Rice altogether, or imprison him somewhere deep within, well away from the fingers he would claim as his, the voice he thought he commanded.

  So I drank. Drank more.

  As the level in the bottle dropped to the three-quarters mark a gentleman took up the quill and wrote “My Lord Marquis”, then stopped. He made a ball of the paper and tossed it into the basket to the left of the desk. “Dear Lord Donegall,” began a second gentleman, several mouthfuls later, “You will forgive, I hope, my presumption in writing, but I crave a meeting with you on a matter . . .” There was a snort: my presumption in writing indeed! Crave a meeting! That letter too was balled, tossed even further by the same hand that then slapped a clean sheet of paper on to t
he table. “Dear Lord Donegall.” (A swig, straight from the bottle.)

  You have the reputation, fully justified, of being the first in this land in the appreciation of thoroughbreds. I recently had the good fortune (let us say it was “in the cards”) to come by a yearling colt, fifteen hands high, that I intend to introduce a fortnight hence at the Maze meeting, after which his value is sure to soar. I am prepared, however, to show him beforehand to a select few investors, who will thereby “have the jump on” the crowd. I will put him through his paces at the Giant’s Ring at full sunrise on Derby Day, a spectacle which, I am certain, a gentleman of your interests would find not only diverting, but profitable. I will not pretend to altruism here (and you would doubtless be suspicious if I did). I am in a position where, not to be too delicate about it, I must see some early benefit from my windfall. I ask only that all concerned travel with an open mind and without attendants, or that they leave their attendants at some distance off, lest too great a gathering attract the attention of the less discerning and the merely curious.

  I am, my lord, etc. etc., “Hippophile”.

  When this was blotted and folded I raised the sash window a foot or two and took several deep draughts of night air; then I felt my way to the tips of my fingers again and in a hand more recognisably my own, making allowance for a quarter – goodness, a third – of a bottle of brandy, began another letter.

  They would say, when the discovery was made, that it had been the work of Terry Alts, which would be to my advantage in the immediate aftermath. Who would search for Terry Alts on the Flags, in the house of so respected a gentleman as my grandfather? At the same time, though, I was anxious that my role would not go undetected by everyone.

  “Dear Maria,” I wrote . . .

  I told her that I knew what she thought about the triviality of our town in these times, but news would, I was confident, reach her within hours of receiving this letter that would perhaps cause her to think again; something involving the most prominent personage in Belfast, something, it would be no exaggeration to say, gigantic. (Was I pleased to have been able to unite deed and location in this way? As Punch.) Others might attribute the event to which I alluded to “mythical creatures” of one kind or another, but she, I knew, would have no trouble accepting a more mundane agency, an individual hand, even. If she could not find me worthy of her love, I hoped she would one day allow that I had been worthy of her regard.

  That letter I put into a drawer. I would post it on the day before Derby Day.

  The other I took with me the next morning when I left for work.

  It was hot again, even at the Ballast Office end of the quays where we at least got the advantage in summer of whatever landward breezes were blowing. (In winter we just got battered.) In the middle of the morning Sir Clueless appeared among us and announced, to a general hurrah, that we might remove our topcoats. I, though, was careful to keep mine within sight at all times. We did not have pickpockets in the office, but we had pranksters for whom any item left too long unattended began to take on the appearance of a challenge. (The story of the mouse and the purse and the winning lottery ticket was the stuff of legend, the best part of the joke, of course, being that the ticket was all along hidden away in someone else’s drawer.) At noon, while my colleagues were all in the tavern, I took a turn about the quays with the letter now transferred from breast pocket to coat sleeve: Chichester Quay, Hanover Quay, Custom House Quay, back; here and there a “how do you do?” or “another fine one, yes”; Chichester Quay, Hanover Quay, Custom House Quay, back.

  I had been about this for half of my allotted hour when I picked out, under the sign of the European Life Insurance Company, Roddy McCluskey’s head, holding forth. I watched a while, keeping my distance, then anticipating from the flicks and nods his intended route, ran along Store Lane, crossed a courtyard off that, another off that, and emerged at the top of Ireland’s Entry half a step ahead of Roddy, coming, at speed, in the opposite direction. We collided. Roddy staggered backwards a pace or two and I feared for a moment that he would not be able to right himself at all, but carry on down, like a fir tree toppling. I put my hand to the small of his back and with the other hand reached round and tugged the letter from my sleeve, letting it fall.

  “Roddy! I am so terribly, terribly, sorry.”

  He planted his feet wide apart, shook his head. “An accident only,” he said. The satchel had got twisted round behind his back. He dipped and shrugged his shoulders until it hung down in front of him. “There is no harm done.”

  “I am relieved to hear it.” I dusted the front of my coat then made as though to step away from him, but stopped in the act and pointed at the ground. “Look there,” I said. “You have lost a letter.”

  He glanced at it, then at the satchel. A mother hen could not have known her brood better, nor have been more conscious of when something had befallen it. I bent down to pick up the letter. Even in the few seconds it had lain there it had succeeded in attracting to itself some of the dirt and detritus of the cobbles. I wiped it with my sleeve, took a step back in surprise.

  “Lord Donegall!” (I really think I may have missed my calling.) “It would never have done to lose this.” I tried to lift the flap of his satchel, but Roddy shrugged it again out of my reach.

  “I don’t remember being asked to carry anything there,” he said, angling his head to read the address, which the (third) brandy drinker in me had marked as care of the Seneschal’s Office, Castle Place.

  If I am too insistent, I thought, it will only arouse his suspicions. I gambled in the opposite direction. I tossed the thing down on the ground again.

  “What are you doing?” he cried.

  “I am in a hurry back to work. Whoever has dropped this will discover his loss soon enough and retrace his steps,” I said. “Or hers, indeed.”

  It was written all over his face, Roddy could not bear to see the letter lie. “Place it in my bag,” he said at last. “Perhaps it did fall out. I will take it anyway.”

  “If you are sure,” I said, but however he had managed it he already had the satchel open and ready to receive.

  With a final hesitation for dramatic effect, I shoved the letter in with the others, bade Roddy the very best of days, and beat it on down the entry before he had the chance to change his mind.

  *

  The following day, Tuesday, was the Twelfth of July. The Orangemen’s celebrations passed without much incident, in Belfast at any rate. (The countryside had always been another, bloodier story.) In the Ballast Office they passed almost without notice, except that they brought us one day closer to the Maze Races. As Wednesday gave way to Thursday, Thursday to Friday, that week to the next, there was talk, and thought, of little else. Even the progress of the Harbour Bill, due to be read before Parliament rose for the Coronation (itself due at the start of September), was relegated to a back room of the mind. Scarcely a one in the office, old or young, did not intend to take the road out to Hillsborough in the course of the festival. Hertford Livingstone, who kept the Dublin Hotel on Ann Street – a favourite with us, one of the many – erected every year a pavilion on the hill at the centre of the racetrack. All arrangements began with meeting under Hertford’s canvas; quite a few of them ended there too, and got no further in between. On the Thursday, Derby Day, a bigger occasion by far than the Twelfth, or Election Day, bigger even than the Masonic parade, the office, like many another in town, would not open at all, although one or other of the Harbour Masters, decided by the tossing of a coin, would have to remain at his post. On our last night out all together – it seemed to me like years ago, not weeks – someone had proposed that a car be hired large enough to carry all who were interested in going to the big race. Someone else had proposed that the Ballast Board pay for it, which proposal was greeted with a great cheering and a rattling of pots and tumblers, then never mentioned after. A few days later a sheet of paper had appeared next to the cholera map, headed “Derby Glee” (the pin affixing it
had been borrowed from the Ganges, which was too far back in the chain of contagion for it to be missed), with an invitation below it to sign your name for a place in the carriage. Ferris, or Bright, had added my name along with their own. I registered it without comment. I even joined in the counting down of the days, although we were counting down to two very different events.

  *

  Millar was back in town, having managed to slip away from Armagh to oversee the installation of the staircase in Rosemary Street and to check on the progress of the portico, for which eight of the ten columns had already been cast. My grandfather passed on to me the report of an acquaintance who had seen him, “taking the front steps of the church three at a time, looking like he meant to finish the building single-handed”.

  “The opportunity arose very suddenly,” Millar told me. “I would have overtaken any letter I might have sent to let you know I was coming. And then once I was here . . .” He spread his hands, apology and explanation both. We were talking in the coffee house on Waring Street. (I might have dispensed with the street name: we had but one coffee house then in the whole of the town.) It was not busy. It was not often. We were, despite the efforts of Mr Hanlon, as Vice Consul for Brazil and de facto coffee ambassador, a tea-drinking people – when we were not in our taverns, that is.

  My friend looked as though he had been confined to the dungeons while he was in Gosford Castle. Either that or he had been kept all that time from sleeping. I knew the signs: I saw them each time I glanced in the mirror these days.

  We had no sooner sat down and given our order than Millar began explaining to me in mathematical detail a problem he was having with the upper level of the church, which was intended to seat as much as half of the congregation: a floor with a hole cut out, was how he conceived of it, rather than a balcony, the idea being that at least as many would look down on the minister as looked up to him.