Powerscourt wondered about the ratio between connection and wandering in her mind. It seemed to be about half and half. He felt he couldn’t in all decency stay much more than an hour. He wondered if he would get any information at all.
‘I was wondering,’ he said in his gentlest voice, ‘how he spent his time when he was down here, your brother.’
‘Carl lived very quietly when he was down here. He loved walking in the gardens and by the lake. It must have been in ‘35 or ’36 that Father took us to Garda,’ she went on, her mind slipping out of gear once more. ‘Carl used to take me rowing in a boat.’
‘Was he worried at all in the last year or so?’ Powerscourt cut in quickly, trying to bring her back.
‘Anybody involved in banking has reasons to worry, that’s what Father used to say. Worries all the time. I think he was worried about something, yes. There were such dances in Garda,’ she went on, a faint smile playing across her withered lips, ‘and all the young men looked so handsome. Sometimes they would build a platform out on to the water so you could dance on top of the lake. Not any more, not any more . . .’ she was muttering now, shaking her white head sadly from side to side.
‘What do you think he was worried about?’ Powerscourt tried again.
‘And the mountains!’ She was happier now, her eyes bright with the memories inside her head. ‘The mountains were so beautiful. And you could walk up into them for such a long way. Carl used to take me up to look at the flowers. He was so worried that he went to Germany quite a lot in the last year. He went several times. On Saturdays we used to take a family party to row out down the lake and stop at some of the little villages by the waterside. Sometimes we would take tea in them. They had very good cakes. Do you know the cakes in the Lakes, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I do,’ Powerscourt lied, ‘very fine cakes they are too. Where did your brother go when he went to Germany?’
‘I sometimes wish we had never left, you know, that we’d never come all the way from Frankfurt to London. Carl said business would be better here than it was in Germany. Frankfurt and Berlin are such fine cities, don’t you think, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘Very fine.’ Powerscourt felt faint stirrings of irritation creeping over him. ‘Was that where Carl went? To Frankfurt and Berlin?’
‘So big now, they say, Berlin. And getting bigger all the time,’ the old lady went on. ‘Carl said he could hardly recognize it. Great big buildings for the Parliament and things. It wasn’t like that when we were young.’
‘Why was he going to Frankfurt and Berlin? Was it a holiday?’ Powerscourt was finding politeness increasingly difficult.
‘You never can take a holiday from a bank, Father used to say. There was something wrong at the bank. Even when you are away you take the worries with you, even to somewhere as beautiful as the Lakes. Poor Father.’
‘Did Carl think there was something wrong at the bank? Something wrong at his bank in the City?’ Powerscourt was struggling now to hide his irritation.
‘Father used to say the only time a banker could ever feel at peace was when they put him in his grave.’ Old Miss Harrison stared defiantly at Powerscourt. ‘Well, Carl is there too now. I hope he’s found some peace there. He said there was precious little peace left to him in his last years.’
‘Was it Carl saying that, or your father? About precious little peace?’ Powerscourt realized that he wanted to shake her but he knew it would be hopeless.
‘Father was buried in that big church in the middle of Frankfurt. So many people there, such a fine service. It rained too, I remember, even though it was early summer. Not as bad as the rain here. I can hear it upstairs, you know, rattling on my window and making noises on the roof. There are very strange noises on the roof sometimes. They seem to have stopped now.’
‘What was Carl worried about?’ I’m on my last throw now, Powerscourt thought to himself, I can’t take much more of this.
‘Mother’s buried there too,’ the old woman said to him, ‘in the same church, just eight months later. She never really recovered, you know. They say that sorrow brought it on. Do you think that can be true, Lord Powerscourt? If sorrow could kill us there wouldn’t be so many people left in the world, would there?’
‘Indeed,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Was it the bank that Carl was worried about?’
‘Always worries in a bank, Father used to say. Always worries, yes. Worries. All the time.’
‘Did Carl say what it was that worried him about the bank?’
‘Always worries in a Bank, Father used to say . . .’
Powerscourt wondered if the old lady was better in the mornings. Probably she was. Maybe he would ask Lady Lucy to come and speak to her in German. Will I end up like that, he asked himself, my mind meandering round the past like a stream making its way to the sea? He thought he would rather be dead.
There were only two facts he could take away with him, the confirmation of what Fitzgerald had told him about the trips to Germany and the knowledge that Old Mr Harrison had been worried about the bank. At the very back of his mind he had filed away what she had said about the noises on the roof, terrible noises that the rain could not have made. But something else could have made the noises. A body perhaps, being pulled along above a household meant to be asleep, a body due to be decapitated in the woods, a body destined to be dumped in the river, a body destined to be found many miles away bumping alongside a ship moored by London Bridge.
As he walked the two hundred yards to the head groom’s cottage Powerscourt wondered if Samuel Parker would be better in the mornings too. The light was fading fast now. He could see the church clearly on his left and below that, partly hidden by the trees, the faint outline of Blackwater lake.
‘Do come in, Lord Powerscourt, please.’ Samuel Parker met him at the door. He was in his seventies now, but still tall and upright in his bearing. Years of work in the open air had turned his face brown to match his eyes. ‘Mabel isn’t here just now. She’s over at the church helping with the flowers and making sure the place is tidy.’ He showed Powerscourt a chair by the fire. Blackwater logs burned brightly in the Blackwater grate. The walls were covered with pictures and sketches of horses.
‘Are these splendid animals ones that have passed through your hands over the years, Mr Parker?’ Start with what they know best, Powerscourt reminded himself, wondering if he had adopted completely the wrong tone with the old lady in the big house.
‘They are, Lord Powerscourt, all of them. Those three just to your right were all born in the same year. Aeneas, Anchises and Achilles, they were. Old Mr Harrison always gave them names from the past and we had a different letter of the alphabet for each year. One year we had Caesar, Cassius and Cleopatra. Old Mr Harrison used to say to me, “We’ve got to watch these horses this year, Samuel. The original Cassius went in for stabbing Caesar to death in some great building in Rome and before that Caesar had been carrying on with that Cleopatra woman in Egypt.” It always used to make him laugh, that, even when he was telling me for the twentieth time.’
‘Was Achilles very fast, Mr Parker?’ Powerscourt saw that the horses were a splendid introduction to Samuel Parker’s world. He had, after all, spent his entire life with them.
‘Achilles fast, Lord Powerscourt? Fast? That he was not. Oh no. He should have been with a name like that, but he was a slow creature, very slow. Very good-natured, mind you.’
‘We used to have some splendid horses in the Army, Mr Parker, really magnificent.’ Powerscourt thought that Samuel Parker might have served in the Army as a young man. A lot of the grooms had learnt their trade in the Royal Horse Artillery or the Transport Divisions.
‘Was you in the Army, my lord? I wanted to join when I was young but my mam wouldn’t let me. You’ve got a good steady job here, she used to say, no point in joining up to get killed in foreign parts. I don’t know but she might have been right. But did you see the world, my lord?’