Chapter 17
I wandered into the parlor around half past ten the following morning, expecting to find it empty, but discovering all three gentlemen sunk in morose musings.
Sidney stood gazing blankly out the window.
Max sat near the hearth with a newspaper open on his lap, though his eyes were trained on the rug before him.
And George hunched over the writing desk, pretending to work on his decryptions while in actuality staring at the wall.
I understood their inclinations for I felt much the same.
It was Armistice Day, after all. While I didn’t wish to speak or be spoken to, I also didn’t want to be alone.
Not at that hour. Not when the memories of the war were so thick about me that it seemed like I could reach out and brush against them.
I inhaled a deep breath, recognizing something had to be done, and I had to be the one to do it.
Moving toward the sideboard, I poured a finger’s worth of our best whiskey into four glasses.
One by one, I pressed them into each of their hands, rousing them from their stupor.
Then I sank down in the middle of the sofa with my own glass and waited as they migrated over to join me.
Sidney and Max flanked me while George drew the chair from the writing desk around to face us.
None of us said anything at first, each lost in our own contemplations.
Truthfully, I didn’t know if anyone would dare to breach the silence.
I only knew that I wasn’t going to be the one who did.
My pouring their whiskeys was my contribution to our comradery.
But then George cleared his throat, his dark whorls of hair glinting like a raven’s feather in the light of the chandelier as he bowed his head.
“Is it silly for me to admit that I was slightly panicked at the prospect of what I was going to do for Armistice Day this year?” He looked up at me.
“It didn’t seem like you and Kent would be inviting us to your cottage again this year, and I …
I couldn’t stand the thought of speaking before a lecture hall as if”—he swallowed—“as if nothing had happened.”
“Same,” Max confessed in a soft voice.
My heart squeezed at the evidence of how much last year’s invitation had meant to them.
I’d initially planned the small house party at our cottage in Sussex as an excuse for Sidney to escape London and the pressures of all the pomp and circumstance being planned around the first anniversary of the armistice.
The authorities had been pressuring him, as a war hero, to take part publicly in the ceremony before the Cenotaph, but that was the last thing he’d wanted.
So instead, our small party of six—including my cousin, Reg, and friend, Daphne—had retreated to the relative quiet of the English coast to mark the day in a quieter manner.
“Well, consider it a standing invitation,” I told them.
George didn’t point out the difficulty this might pose if next year or the year after we were once again out of the country, but I knew he was thinking it.
We fell silent again and I turned to peer at the clock on the mantel. A quarter to eleven. Fifteen minutes to go.
Anxiety began to build inside me, a desire to just see the moment pass, even though it no longer meant anything except in our minds.
By all rights, our thoughts should be fixed on the dangers of the present.
On figuring out what Ardmore was up to and gathering the evidence to lock him away, or at the very least, see him discredited, once and for all.
But we remained fixated on the past. On those bleak years of war, and struggle, and sacrifice.
There had been pain and loss and suffering, yes, but also comradery and purpose.
Though neither of those things could replace the grief that still lingered like the ghosts of those who were no longer there to mark the ticking clock with us.
They crowded around us, filling the parlor and the rooms of the house beyond.
Shades of memory as we’d last seen them, whether in their shiny new uniforms, climbing aboard trains headed toward the front, or broken and tattered from the shell explosion that had killed them.
I could sense my brother, Rob, as if he was just over my shoulder. A single tear slid down my cheek, but I kept the rest of my sorrow contained. Now was not a moment for open weeping.
I snuck another look at the clock. Six minutes to eleven.
The bubble of anxiety inside me continued to expand, until I wasn’t sure if there would be room enough for it and the air I needed to breathe.
Even in his own anguish, Sidney must have sensed my turmoil.
That, or he needed a lifeline of his own.
For his hand slid into mine, clenching tightly.
It eased some of the pressure, as did the burn of the whiskey as I took a drink.
Two minutes to eleven.
I exhaled a long breath, hoping to empty myself of the apprehension holding me in its grip.
Sidney’s leg shifted where it pressed against mine, and I could sense the restless energy pulsing through it, urging him to pace.
He’d always been the type of person who preferred to move, and sitting still too long made him antsy.
It was an impulse he’d had to overcome during the war, for there were long stretches in which he’d been cramped into small confines, and moments when even the tiniest movement would make him a target for the German snipers.
Living in a city, one grows accustomed to the constant stream of noise that accompanies your days and nights, but a stillness settled across the air as the top of the hour approached.
Then the strike of a single church bell in the distance brought everything to a standstill.
Everything but the wind that could be heard faintly clattering the branches of the trees in the garden.
My breath sounded overly loud in my ears and grew labored from my efforts to quiet it.
I thought of the commemorations occurring in London and the crowds that had been expected to gather there.
A permanent Cenotaph in stone was being unveiled to replace the wooden one erected the previous year, and a body exhumed from one of the major battlefields was being laid to rest in Westminster Abbey to stand in for all the war dead.
As a holder of the Victoria Cross, Sidney had been asked once again to take part in the ceremony but had not been sad to have a ready excuse to refuse.
We would visit the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior on our return to London.
As the hand of the clock ticked over to one minute after eleven, I suddenly thought of Nimble and regretted not inviting him to join us. After all, he had also served, as Sidney’s batman and later an infantryman. But perhaps he preferred to mark the passing of these moments alone. I wished I knew.
The church bell chimed again to mark the end of the two minutes of silence, but none of us made a move to break it.
The sounds of the city slowly resumed, and the creak of a floorboard told me that at least one member of our staff was carrying on with their tasks.
After some extra minutes, it was Sidney who decided he was finished.
“Right, then,” he declared, rising to his feet.
“Enough of that.” He approached the gramophone, selecting a record.
None of us objected, though I was glad to hear the dreamlike melody of a song by Debussy issuing from the horn rather than the blazing notes of ragtime or jazz.
The latter seemed somehow inappropriate, though my brother Rob probably would have laughed to hear me say so.
Sidney refilled his glass and began to pace, revealing he wasn’t quite as at ease as he tried to project. “So where do we stand? You haven’t said much about what you’ve been able to uncover at the library,” he told Max.
“Because there hasn’t been much,” Max grumbled, sinking deeper into the cushions on my left.
“As near as I can tell, Ardmore’s father was a cash-strapped Englishman who inherited the title and estate from a distant cousin.
He seems to have married Ardmore’s mother because she was reportedly beautiful and, perhaps more pertinent, because her dowry was immense.
” His tone of voice made clear his disapproval.
“Her father was, indeed, a wealthy banker.” His eyebrows arched high on his forehead.
“Tremendously wealthy, it seems. Wealthy enough for Ardmore’s father to swallow his distaste of the Irish and marry the man’s daughter. ”
“His aversion of the Irish was documented?” George asked.
“Oh, yes. He took no pains to conceal his loathing of all things Irish.” He scowled. “Including his wife and her family.”
“Oh, dear,” I murmured, imagining the implications.
He nodded. “The late Lord Ardmore doesn’t appear to have spent much time here, or with his son when he was young.
But Lady Ardmore must have possessed some sort of backbone, for she insisted upon residing here in Dublin with her child at her parents’ home rather than the Ardmore estate near Cork.
The manor is all but rubble now, so I can’t imagine it was in much better condition fifty years ago.
Particularly when there were numerous complaints and even a few legal challenges from Ardmore’s tenants.
Apparently, he hadn’t been maintaining any of their cottages or the equipment they needed to work the land.
I couldn’t find the answer for certain, but it seems most of them were forced to vacate their homes and immigrate. ”
He sounded like the very worst of absentee landowners. The type the Irish had been complaining about for centuries.
“So Ardmore was raised in his grandparents’ home here in Dublin?” Sidney clarified.