Somewhere above her she heard a child weeping. It’s Olivia, she thought, come for her midnight cry. She began to compose herself. As she trudged slowly off to comfort her weeping daughter, she tried to steady herself with the words of Dr Tony: ‘Of course there’s hope. Let us not forget that. Let us never forget that. There is always hope.’
Next morning the children continued their progress through Treasure Island, Olivia, possibly because she wasn’t reading, becoming much better at hopping round the room on her crutch broomstick. If she were allowed outside with it, Johnny Fitzgerald felt sure, she would begin hurling it at her enemies like Long John Silver himself. Just after lunch Edward and Sarah arrived and their engagement was toasted in champagne. Edward apologized for daring to bring any glimmer of happiness into such a tragic household and was immediately told to shut up by Johnny Fitzgerald. Olivia wanted to know what an engagement was. She thought gauges had something to do with trains. She remembered a long story her father had told her once which involved, for some reason, train gauges. Were Edward and Sarah going on a train? If so, could she come too? Like her father, she was very fond of trains. When all was explained to her Olivia decided that she had better not ask any more questions. She thought now it would be like the twins’ christening all over again but with Edward and Sarah having to put their heads in the font.
After lunch Johnny Fitzgerald ordered a change in the reading matter for Francis. Lady Lucy and he, Johnny informed the company, were going to read Tennyson. Tennyson, after all, had been one of Francis’s favourite poets. Johnny did not think it wise to mention it, but he remembered Francis saying years ago in India that he would like someone to read the last section of the poem he, Johnny, was going to read at his, Powerscourt’s, graveside after his funeral. And, Johnny remembered, it was a poem Francis knew off by heart.
Lady Lucy gave a spirited rendering of ‘The Lady of Shalott’, the children and the nurse enchanted by the rhythm and the romance of the story. Then Johnny began ‘Ulysses’, a poem about the Greek warrior hero who finally comes home to his island of Ithaca after twenty years of war and wandering. Soon he is bored, he cannot rest from travel.
‘Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.’
The twins were asleep beside the bed. Edward and Sarah were sitting beside the flowers. Lady Lucy was by her husband’s side and Thomas and Olivia were on the opposite side of the bed. Thomas remembered his father telling him stories about Troy, about Achilles sulking in his tent, about the body of Hector being dragged round the city walls, about the wooden horse that finally ended the war. He looked at his father’s face and began to cry silently. Only the nurse noticed the tears running slowly down his cheeks and slipped him an enormous handkerchief when nobody else was looking. Johnny was thinking as he read of the various Indian councils and the even stranger Indian governments he and Francis had seen. He went on.
‘I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!’
Lady Lucy suddenly wondered if her question to Francis in Positano would be fair. How dull he would find it to make an end to detection, to give up what had become his career since he left the Army for what he might call a woman’s whim. No, she corrected herself, casting a guilty glance at her husband, he would never say that to her. But he might think it. He would hate it, Francis, rusting unburnished. Had she the right to ask him? Johnny Fitzgerald remembered that there was a tricky passage coming up about the passing of Ulysses’ life: ‘of life to me little remains; but every hour is saved from that eternal silence.’ That, he felt sure, would not seem appropriate in these circumstances. Nor would the lines about handing control over Ithaca to his son Telemachus. That might set Thomas off. So he moved on, hoping nobody would notice.
‘There lies the port; the vessel puffs her saiclass="underline"
There gloom the dark broad seas.’
It was at this point that they heard a low muttering noise from the bed, like thunder far away. There was a faint stirring of the bedclothes as if Powerscourt was wriggling about in his sleep. Johnny Fitzgerald read on. Edward and Sarah left their chairs and tiptoed over to take a closer look. Olivia had grabbed hold of Thomas’s arm and wasn’t going to let go.
‘My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a welcome frolic took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads -’
During this passage the murmuring turned into a recognizable voice. The voice was weak but it was definitely Powerscourt’s and he was speaking the words of Tennyson’s poem in unison with Johnny Fitzgerald. Lady Lucy began to cry. Thomas was squeezing the bedclothes in disbelief. Olivia stared at her father as if she had never seen a male person before. On they went, the two friends, Powerscourt and Fitzgerald, that had ever with a welcome frolic taken the thunder and the sunshine so many times together in so many different parts of the world in days gone by.
‘. . . you and I are old,
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes alclass="underline" but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.’
We’re not finished yet, Francis and I, Johnny Fitzgerald said to himself. He paused as if Powerscourt’s return from the dead should be properly celebrated.
‘Don’t stop, Johnny, please don’t stop.’ Lady Lucy felt the thread, the skein of her husband’s life was tied up with the poem, that they had to continue together, she was certain of it. Powerscourt’s voice was almost normal now. The nurse and Lady Lucy had raised him to a semi-sitting position. He smiled weakly at the people around him as if he had just come back from an afternoon nap.
‘The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.’
If the return of Powerscourt’s voice was the first miracle of this extraordinary afternoon, the second was just about to begin. Master Christopher Powerscourt, youngest of all the Powerscourts, was waking up in his Moses basket.
‘Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.’
Christopher knew that voice. He had been listening to it nearly every day of his life, except for the last four or five. He liked the voice. He raised a small hand. Then he smiled at his father. It was a beautiful smile. It lasted a long time. It was the first time Christopher had smiled at anyone in his life. Lady Lucy and Thomas and Olivia all saw it, those deep blue eyes lit up, the great beam going right across his tiny face, his look of intense happiness. Powerscourt began to cry. Tears of joy were running down his face until he saw that his twin son might follow his example and start crying too.