Powerscourt thought he knew now what was coming.
‘I’ve had enough, Powerscourt. If we don’t sort out the intelligence, we’re in danger of losing this war. Losing a war to a couple of tinpot South African Republics populated by a lot of fanatical Protestants with long beards who don’t even have a regular army. For God’s sake! Our international reputation is in tatters. I don’t mind if the French and the Germans are jealous of this country. I don’t mind if they’re afraid of us. What I take exception to is that they should laugh at us, that we should become a figure of fun among the Great Powers of Europe. It’s intolerable.’
The Prime Minister paused. Powerscourt saw that the portrait of Disraeli was still there on the wall, the one that had inspired him on his last visit to 10 Downing Street. Wellington was on the other side of the room. Wellington, he felt sure, would have been pretty angry abut this military and political debacle. But then Wellington had always been fanatical about the importance of intelligence.
‘I asked McDonnell here,’ the Prime Minister continued, ‘to find me the best intelligence officer, serving or not, in the country. His inquiries led him directly to your good self, Powerscourt. Will you undertake this mission for me? Find out what’s wrong with the bloody intelligence. Make a plan to get it right. Report directly to me. I want you to leave immediately. There is a fast destroyer sailing from Portsmouth this Thursday. Will you do it?’
Powerscourt paused. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to leave his family for months, maybe years. ‘My service was almost entirely in India, Prime Minister. I have served only once in Africa, and then in a very different country.’
‘Nonsense, man,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘doesn’t matter where you’ve been. What’s needed is brains, intelligence applied to the problems of intelligence. You’ve got all that. Why, only today, McDonnell tells me, you’ve solved another bloody murder mystery here in London.’
Powerscourt felt encircled. He knew he had no choice. But then, he had known that all along. ‘I accept, Prime Minister. I hope I can be of service to you. Might I make one small request?’
‘You may indeed,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘I would like to take two or three former colleagues with me, men who have served with me in India, Prime Minister.’
‘Powerscourt,’ the Prime Minister smiled at him, ‘you can take whoever you want. Just give McDonnell the details. He’ll sort everything out. You can take the bloody Landseer Lions from Trafalgar Square with you, if you think it’ll help.’
Two days later Powerscourt took his children on another visit to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. Sergeant Major Collins who had served with him in India was waiting to greet them.
‘So your Papa’s going off to war,’ he said, crouching down to a lower level. Powerscourt had sent him a note the day before.
‘Yes, he is. He’s going to sort out the intelligence,’ said Thomas, proud of his big new word.
‘He has to write a lot of letters to the Prime Minister,’ said Olivia whose knowledge of letters was largely confined to the ones she received from her grandmother.
‘Did you know,’ said the Sergeant Major, smiling at the children, ‘that they looked all over the country to find the best man for the job? They looked everywhere.’
Thomas wasn’t quite sure who ‘they’ would have been. Hundreds and hundreds of Sergeant Major Collinses, he suspected, searching the country day and night.
‘And they found Papa?’ said Olivia. ‘Mama could have told them that in the first place.’
‘Look, children,’ said the Sergeant Major. ‘I’m going to show you something.’ He took them along a corridor of rooms inhabited by the Chelsea Pensioners. Thomas and Olivia peered inside, fascinated as they had been before by the beds that folded into the wall. ‘This man here, Corporal Jobbins, he went off to India where your Papa was with me. He’s come back. Next room, Lance Corporal Richardson, he went away to Africa, he’s come back. This man in here, Private Jenkinson, he went off to Egypt, he’s come back. This one at the end, Gunner Bishop, he went off to Afghanistan, he’s come back.
‘And,’ he went on, ‘see this big room here where we’re going to have our tea, all of these soldiers have been sent away. They’ve all come back.’
Sergeant Major Collins put Olivia on his knee and helped her to bread and butter. Over a hundred veterans looked on in envy and delight. Thomas said the bread and butter was the best he had ever tasted. They had slices of an enormous chocolate cake, Sergeant Major Collins intervening personally to secure a second helping.
‘Wish I was going with you, sir,’ said the Sergeant Major to Powerscourt as they left.
‘I’ve got the next best thing, Sergeant Major,’ said Powerscourt. ‘William McKenzie and Johnny Fitzgerald are coming with me.’
‘God help them Boers,’ said the Sergeant Major. ‘They should give up now if Major Fitzgerald is on his way.’
On his last night in England Lord Francis Powerscourt put his children to bed. He found Olivia in the kitchen, watching the cook preparing grown-up dinner.
He took her in his arms. She snuggled into his shoulder. Olivia said goodnight to every room in the house on her way upstairs.
‘Goodnight, cook, goodnight, kitchen,’ she said.
‘Goodnight, Olivia love,’ said the cook with a smile.
‘Goodnight, dining room, goodnight, chairs,’ said Olivia.
‘The dining room bids you a very good night, Olivia,’ said her father solemnly.
‘Goodnight, drawing room, goodnight, sofa.’
‘Both drawing room and the sofa wish you pleasant dreams,’ said Powerscourt.
‘Goodnight, stairs,’ said Olivia, still clinging to her father’s shoulder.
‘The stairs wish you a very good night too,’ said Powerscourt.
He was putting her into bed now. She was nearly asleep. ‘Goodnight, Papa,’ she said, almost disappearing underneath the covers.
‘Goodnight, Olivia.’ Powerscourt bent down and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Goodnight.’ He waited quietly by the side of the bed. Olivia was asleep. He waited another ten minutes, watching the innocence on the face of his daughter, praying for her future.
Thomas wanted a story. Thomas was very fond of stories. Powerscourt reached for a book on the table and began to read:
‘At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away,
Spanish ships of war at sea! We have sighted fifty-three!’
‘What’s a pinnace, Papa?’ asked a sleepy voice.
‘It’s a little ship, Thomas, a messenger ship,’ Powerscourt whispered back.
‘Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
And Sir Richard said again: We be all good English men.
Let us bang those dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turned my back on Don or devil yet.’
Thomas stirred again. He was nearly off. ‘The Dons are Spaniards, aren’t they, Papa?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Powerscourt.
‘And the sun went down and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with their dead and their shame.
For some were sunk and many were shattered and so could fight us no more.
God of battles, was there a battle like this in the world before.’
Thomas had not stayed until the end of the conflict. He was gone. Again Powerscourt watched and waited a full ten minutes by the bedside of his sleeping child. He prayed for Thomas. He prayed for his mother. Then he tiptoed slowly from the room.