‘I love you so much, Mary Rose,’ he said, putting his arm round her waist. ‘Will you marry me?’
The girl laughed as she had laughed before. Then she saw that he was serious. ‘Don’t ask me now, Johnny,’ she said, ‘it’s far too soon. We’ve only known each other a couple of months, if even as long as that. Don’t rush me, please.’
Johnny squeezed her ever tighter and settled in for a long siege. Expensive flowers and exquisite chocolates were his weapons of choice. As summer faded into autumn he grew ever more conscious of the date of his return to his regiment at the end of September. Surely he must make her his own before then.
On the last evening of his leave they went for a walk by the lake in the garden of her parents’ house nestling in the Wicklow mountains. Johnny asked Mary Rose to marry him once more. Once more she laughed. ‘I’ve told you before, Johnny, I think it’s too soon. I’ll wait for you, of course I’ll wait for you. It won’t be long until you’re back again.’
‘You know perfectly well that I have no idea when I’ll be back,’ said Johnny rather sadly. ‘Why can’t you tell me now?’
‘It’s too soon, Johnny.’ That laugh again. ‘Don’t let’s spoil our last evening before you go.’
So they went back to the house. Mary Rose played selections of Irish ballads at the piano. Johnny would always remember her seated there, her back as straight as a guardsman on parade, a slight frown on her face as she made sure she played the right notes, the occasional brilliant smile in his direction, those blue eyes sparkling with pleasure as he sang the songs of old Ireland in his finest tenor voice.
The next day Johnny left early for the English boat. He thought of Mary Rose for thousands of miles, down the spine of England in whose armies he served, past the strange waters of the Suez Canal and the dusty roads of India until he rejoined his regiment. The shock came a couple of months after his return. Johnny had gone for an early evening drink in the Club and noticed that all the others present shuffled quickly out of the room as he came in. It was as if he had some contagious disease. Even the barman and the waiters had disappeared to their private quarters behind the drinks counter. Johnny stared around him. Everything seemed to be normal. A copy of The Times, arrived that afternoon from London, was lying on the table. Later, Johnny thought his colleagues had intended to leave him a clue. He noticed one of the announcements in the Marriages column of the newspaper had been underlined.
OSBORNE:LENNOX. On 3rd October 1886, at Christchurch, Delgany, County Wicklow, by the Reverend John Hancock, Jonathan Henry Osborne of Macroom Castle, County Cork, to Beatrice Mary Rose Lennox of Delgany, County Wicklow.
At first Johnny couldn’t believe it. He picked up the newspaper and carried it back to his quarters. There he lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. After the third reading he found the tears streaming down his cheeks. How could she do this to him? Had she been pretending all those weeks? Had she been seeing this Osborne person all the time she was seeing him? Had she been secretly engaged to the Osborne all the time he had courted her with his love and his generosity and his innocence? What did he feel about Mary Rose now, for he felt sure he still loved her. Even an innocent like Johnny in these matters knew that love could not evaporate in an evening, that four lines in a newspaper column could not rearrange his emotional landscape, but that time and distance and propriety meant there was virtually nothing he could do. He thought about writing an angry letter, pouring out his grief and his distress, then changed his mind. The terrible deed had been done. With just two words in a church, ‘I will,’ Mary Rose Lennox had chosen a different path and a different future from his own. Over the weeks that followed Johnny threw himself into soldiering by day and drinking by night. His commanding officer took care to make sure that he was kept very busy. Twice he almost lost his life in skirmishes with enemy tribesmen. It was as if, he realized later, he had been trying to kill himself. Suicide disguised as death on the battlefield. On the second occasion his life was saved by a fellow Irishman, an officer in his own regiment. Over time the two men became very close. They fought together and spied together after they were both transferred to the Intelligence Services. The fellow officer’s name was Lord Francis Powerscourt.
Memories and regrets for his failed love affair pursued Johnny down to County Cork twenty years later, still carrying out the instructions of the friend who had saved his life and his sanity all those years before. But one thought haunted Johnny Fitzgerald on this return visit to his native land. He could still see in his mind the black letters in the fateful announcement. Jonathan Henry Osborne of Macroom Castle, County Cork. Macroom was his destination on this quest for crimes and possible vendettas in the Delaney past. Would Mary Rose still be there? Would he recognize her? What would he say to her if they met in the street or in society? What would he say to her husband?
The village of Conques lay on a hillside, surrounded by trees. Time had hardly touched it. Modernity with its railways and its factories, its great shopping palaces and its telegraphs and its obsession with time had made very little impact. It was one of the few places on the entire pilgrimage where the pilgrim could imagine himself back in the Middle Ages. The pilgrim party entered by the old road over a tiny Roman bridge across the river Dourdou. The Inspector and his colleagues were offering lessons in the chequered history of the place. Conques, they said to whoever would listen, with Powerscourt and Lady Lucy translating at either end of the pilgrim column, had not always been a major centre on the pilgrim route. Sometime in the eleventh century an ambitious abbot hatched a daring plan to put his church, literally, on the map. He sent one of his younger monks to enrol in the community centred round the martyr’s church at Agen. Here were held the remains and a famous statue of Ste Foy, an early Christian martyr beheaded by the Romans for her beliefs and the most celebrated saint of the time in medieval France. The abbot’s instructions to his man were clear. He was to steal the lot, statue, relics, whatever he could lay his hands on, and bring them back to Conques. The young man waited and waited for his opportunity. Years passed. Daily at first, and then at ever decreasing intervals, the abbot of Conques would stare out at the road that led to Agen, hoping and praying for the arrival of the treasure. After seven years he gave up. But the monk had not. After ten years he saw his chance at last when the community was at dinner and the door to the room where the treasure was kept had, for once, been left unlocked. He stuffed the booty into a sack and fled back to Conques, travelling mainly by night to avoid capture and humiliation. The abbot was overjoyed.