‘Nearly there, Francis.’ Fitzgerald took a brief break from the oars and drank deeply from his hip flask. ‘Look! You can just see the lights through the trees.’
The river had taken them round a bend. Hammersmith Bridge was no longer visible behind. Ahead the cold black waters of the Thames reached out towards the waterfront of Barnes, a mile or so away on the opposite bank. A couple of rooks stood sentinel on the top of the trees around the house.
There were lights on all across the top two floors. Powerscourt thought business must be brisk. Maybe it was one of those special evenings, a dinner dance or a masked ball. There was a stone balustrade running right round the top of the building, shafts of moonlight blinking intermittently through the clouds. Sentinels, he thought, watchmen on duty, searching a dark London for the unexpected visitor, the sudden rush of officers in uniform towards the front door.
‘It’s a grand place if you want to be alone, isn’t it?’ Fitzgerald was panting slightly from his efforts, holding the little boat steady in its place. They could see a small jetty to their right, a couple of boats moored, ready for a quick escape across the water. ‘I had another chat with my friend, Francis.’
‘The one with the Pomerol?’
‘The one with the Pomerol,’ Fitzgerald agreed. ‘He said two things that are relevant to our purpose, I think. The first . . .’
A muffled sound came to them from very close by. It echoed slightly across the water and disappeared into the trees.
Fitzgerald rowed on, past the house, round another bend in the River.
They waited. Neither spoke. They waited for two minutes, perhaps three. The River Thames was silent save for the timeless murmurings of the water. Then Fitzgerald turned the boat around. The current took them back towards London. Only slight adjustments were needed to hold their course.
‘What the hell was that?’ said Powerscourt as the house disappeared from view.
‘I think it was the front door opening and closing. Another member, another client. He must have been bloody quiet going up their driveway. We didn’t hear any footsteps, did we?’
‘No, we didn’t. That place gives me the creeps. You were saying, Johnny?’
What must we look like, thought Powerscourt? Two men, huddled in a tiny boat, going up and down the river in the middle of the night. Excise men, perhaps, going to inspect some forbidden cargo, or grave robbers, avoiding the main roads.
‘Two of them have died in the past two years. I think that’s what I was about to say. My friend shuddered when he told me about it. I expect he wondered if that was how he was going to go. Mad or blind or paralysed, or all three, his bones eaten away.
‘But I talked to him about blackmail, about whether any of our friends back there might have been blackmailing each other. He said he thought it was virtually impossible.’
Fitzgerald was whispering. Powerscourt had to lean forward to catch his words, the little boat bobbing precariously once more.
‘You remember the constitution of their club, Francis, each member having to give the names and addresses of two referees who didn’t know about their perverse habits. That threat is always there. Step out of line and you’ll be exposed. My friend said they were all so frightened of being blackmailed by their own club that they couldn’t possibly think about blackmailing anybody else.’
These were calmer waters, thought Powerscourt, a little bit choppy, perhaps, tiny waves beating helplessly against the shore, sailing craft bobbing about, minute bow waves inching across the pond.
The Round Pond in Kensington Gardens was host to Powerscourt and Lady Lucy and two small boys on a peaceful Sunday afternoon.
Lunch had been taken quickly in Markham Square. Lady Lucy had christened Robert’s boat Britannia by pouring a glass of champagne across the front.
‘I thought it might break. The boat, I mean. If I broke the bottle across the bows in the approved manner.’ Lady Lucy sounded as if she had been launching ships all her life. Perhaps she had, thought Powerscourt, a thousand of them, maybe, sailing across the blue waters of the Aegean to a tryst with death at windy Troy.
Robert’s friend, Thomas St Clair Erskine, recently released from jail or temporary domestic confinement, informed them solemnly that his ship was called the Victowy, his rs rolling like the original Victowy on patrol out in the Atlantic.
‘Can we go now? Can we go and sail them?’
Even Lady Lucy’s cook’s best apple pie, laced with slivers of orange and fortified with nutmeg, could not hold them. The boys ran, not too fast in case they dropped their boats, the grown-ups following more sedately behind.
Anxiety, great anxiety, surrounded the maiden voyage of the Britannia. Robert, his face drawn with nerves and concentration, kept making final adjustments to the sails. There were learned seven-year-old conversations about the direction of the prevailing wind. At last she was off, wobbling at first, then making steadier progress on an arc of a journey that left her marooned on the shore once more, not far from the launch position.
‘I do hope it’s going to be all right. The boat I mean. Think what would happen if it didn’t work.’ Lady Lucy turned to Powerscourt, a male consort who ought to know about such things.
‘We didn’t learn much about sails and things in the Army,’ said Powerscourt defensively.
‘Oh dear. Oh dear.’ Lady Lucy hurried towards the shore. Robert’s boat had performed two more irregular journeys before returning to port and refusing to move at all. There seemed to have been a mutiny on board. Robert was close to tears. His friend was urging him to let the sails out so that Britannia could take advantage of the breeze, blowing strongly across Kensington Gardens.
‘Then it might fall over and sink. I don’t want it to sink. Why won’t it go, Mama? Everybody else’s boat is going fine.’
Lady Lucy’s look of helpless despair brought rescue from an unexpected quarter. An old gentleman, dressed in a dark blue coat, buttons brightly polished, muffler round his neck, had approached the sad party.
‘Could I offer you assistance? I have some experience in these matters.’ The old gentleman addressed his request to Lady Lucy. The two boys looked up at him warily. ‘I do know about sailing ships, I promise you. I sailed in one of them for years.’
The two boys stared at him, wonder in their eyes. Here was a man in a sailing ship. Perhaps he had climbed all the way to the top of the masts when he was young. It was nearly as good as meeting W.G. Grace himself.
‘How very kind of you,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘If you’re sure it’s no trouble.’
‘No trouble at all. We can’t have these boats not sailing properly, can we?’
‘It’s Wobert’s boat, sir.’ Thomas had obviously decided that the old gentleman must have been a naval captain, if not an admiral. ‘It just wolls awound in the water, sir. The wigging must be wong.’
There followed a long inspection of the errant Britannia. The old gentleman bent down slowly to the water’s edge. Powerscourt wondered if he had back trouble, or stiff joints. Lady Lucy thought she had seen a miracle. Knots were undone. Rigging was adjusted. The tiny rudder was repositioned on the advice of the ancient mariner.
‘If you put it like that, the ship is bound to go round and round,’ he said kindly. ‘Now, Robert, just make sure all those knots are tied properly. They are? Good. Put her back in the water. Give her a little push. Big ships have tugs to tow them out to sea when they are launched. Nothing wrong with giving it a push. Same thing really.’
This time around the Britannia performed creditably, sailing steadily across the pond and ending up beached on the far side beside a very large dog. The two boys hurried to the rescue. ‘I told you it was the wigging,’ shouted Thomas triumphantly. ‘The wigging must be wight now.’