Where on earth did this lot come from, Joseph said to himself, as he inspected his waiters for the day in the Great Hall. The Inn’s normal complement was insufficient for the numbers and complexity of the feast. Recruitment of these worthies was not his responsibility, but that of the Head Porter, a man with whom Joseph did not share the most cordial of relations. Desperately he tried to remember how he might have offended the Head Porter. It came to him in a flash. Three nights before there had been a drinks party for the benchers, an elaborate occasion graced with some of the finest wines of the Queen’s cellars. Custom and practice dictated that two or three bottles from this occasion should have found their way to the Head Porter’s cupboard. Joseph had genuinely forgotten. So here was the Head Porter’s revenge. Four boys who looked as though they were sixteen or so, an age which found it, as Joseph knew only too well, extraordinarily difficult to stand still for more than two minutes at a time. Four old men, hovering, Joseph thought, somewhere between sixty and seventy. They might have been waiting at table long before the Congress of Berlin, but they would need regular and repeated trips to the lavatories to see them through the evening. One of the old men, Joseph noticed to his horror, seemed to be nodding off on his feet, asleep where he stood. If he could do that in the middle of the day, what, in God’s name, would the greybeard be like in the closing stages of the feast way after ten or even eleven o’clock in the evening? Comatose in the buttery? Passed out, maybe even passed on, in the pantry?
Good generals know how much depends on their relations with their troops. Joseph would have liked to shout at this ludicrous collection of humanity but he knew it wouldn’t work. Charm, kindness, that’s what’s needed here, he said to himself, I’ve only got to keep them on their toes for ten hours or so.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ Joseph addressed his little army, his perfect teeth gleaming at the heart of his smile. ‘Tell me this, have you all waited at table for a feast like this one before?’
There was a general chorus of affirmatives.
‘You,’ said Joseph, pointing dramatically to his eldest recruit, ‘you are serving vegetables that accompany the main course. Which side do you serve from?’
A pair of sleepy eyes gazed at Joseph, as if reproaching him for daring to ask such a question. ‘The left, sir.’
‘Excellent,’ said Joseph, flashing a smile at Methesulah, ‘and you, young sir,’ he pointed to a youth with huge sad eyes and curly hair, ‘which wine would we serve with the fish course, Chablis or Chateauneuf-du-Pape?’
‘Chablis, sir,’ said the youth, and for a brief second his eyes looked happy before returning to sad.
‘Very good,’ said Joseph. ‘I can see we are all going to get along fine. If you suddenly find that you have forgotten something about the distinguished art of waiting, just ask me and I will tell you the answer. Now, let me tell you the programme for the rest of the afternoon. All around you you can see these canteens of cutlery, with two large cloths and a bottle of polish beside them. That is the first task for you, to polish these knives and forks and spoons until you could shave in them. Then we will do the same for the glasses, the two wine glasses and the glass for the liqueur or port. Then we lay the table, under my supervision. Then we all have a rest before the final briefing after supper. Let us show honour today and this evening to the memory of Theophilus Whitelock, gentlemen. He may not have mentioned us waiters in his bequest, but without us it could not be fulfilled.’
There were nine of them gathered round the font, the cold water very calm inside the marble. The boy twin had two godfathers, Powerscourt’s particular friend and companion in arms, Johnny Fitzgerald, and his brother-in-law, William Burke the financier. Burke had recently astonished the family by pulling off the roof of his enormous villa in Antibes and adding a further two storeys to the property. Powerscourt had inquired if he intended accommodating the entire family under this roof at the same time. Powerscourt’s eldest sister was godmother to the male and various members of Lady Lucy’s tribe did duty for the girl. The canon held his prayer book well away from his face as he read the Exhortation, as if he was losing his sight.
‘Doubt ye not, therefore, but earnestly believe that Christ will likewise favourably receive these present infants; that he will embrace them with the arms of his mercy; that he will give unto them the blessing of eternal life, and make them partakers of his everlasting kingdom.’
Powerscourt looked down at the tiny bundle in his arms. The little boy was fast asleep with a blond curl lying on the top of his head. His elder brother and sister had been most eager to attend this part of the service and had been bitterly disappointed when told it was impossible. In vain had they said they had every right to be there. Olivia, the younger child, had pointed out that she already had more practice in holding the two babies than her father and that she would, obviously, be closer to the ground to catch her infant brother or sister if their father or the vicar dropped them. Thomas, the elder, had announced that it was sure to bring bad luck on all of them if he and his sister were not allowed to attend the christening. Lady Lucy had to resort to bribery to buy them off in the end.
Now the canon was conducting the interrogation of the godparents.
‘Do you, in the name of these children, renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that you will not follow nor be led by them?’
There was a general murmuring of ‘I renounce them all.’ Powerscourt thought Johnny Fitzgerald and William Burke were not too emphatic on that one. Burke was not an avaricious fellow but he did make his living out of the covetous desires for money of his fellow men. Powerscourt felt Lucy’s foot tapping lightly on his shin. She nodded to the pew behind him which had been empty as they came down the aisle. Kneeling happily on it, their faces wreathed in smiles, Thomas and Olivia had left their place to find the closest spot to the action they could find. Powerscourt grinned at them and made a further inspection of his infant.
Then the preliminaries were over. Very gently the canon leant over and took Powerscourt’s bundle from him. Powerscourt felt a sudden, irrational spurt of alarm when he remembered how far away the prayer book had been. Would Olivia’s worst fears be recognized as the canon dropped his charge on the hard floor? Looking slowly round the assembled godparents the canon said, ‘Name this child.’
‘Christopher John Wingfield Powerscourt,’ they chorused. Very gently and very slowly the canon dipped the head into the font. A mighty wail of protest followed. Powerscourt wondered if the child would be able to make more noise later in life than the two coachmen outside.
‘Christopher John Wingfield Powerscourt, I baptize thee in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.’
The wailing bundle was handed back to the earthly father. Then it was the turn of the other twin. Elizabeth Juliet Macleod was added to the Powerscourt family in total silence. Powerscourt could hear Olivia whispering to Thomas that girls were much braver than boys as her sister hadn’t made a single squawk during the ordeal.
Six weeks or so after the end of one of Powerscourt’s cases the year before, a dramatic and dangerous affair in a West Country cathedral, he had taken Lady Lucy to St Petersburg. It was there, in their beautiful hotel bedroom overlooking the Nevsky Prospekt, that Lucy believed the twins had been conceived. She was absolutely certain of it. Johnny Fitzgerald had suggested calling them Nicholas and Alexandra after the Tsar and his wife but Powerscourt had demurred, pointing out that at some point in the future Britain might be at war with Russia and two children wandering about the country lumbered with the Christian names of the Russian royal house might not be a good idea.