The Convictions of John Delahunt (11 page)

I paused and looked into the candle flame.

They had described the manner of his death. Alex’s commanding officer had become stranded between enemy lines when he fell beneath a lame horse. My brother took it upon himself to lead his own mount into no-man’s-land. He lifted the injured officer on to the saddle and began walking back to the British side, but was struck in the back of the head by a jezail bullet and died at once. His body was later retrieved and buried with full honours. The officer survived.

I wondered if Cecilia wrote to Alex about my conviction before his death. Even if she didn’t, my trial was mentioned in
The Times of London
, and I knew editions were sent out to regiments in the field, though they took weeks to arrive. I pictured him in a dust-blown tent, being handed the paper by some companion, who’d point to the article and say, ‘Don’t you have a brother called John?’

On a happier note, Cecilia was with child. She had asked Captain Dickenson if she could name the baby Alexander if it was a boy, and he had said he would consider it.

She ended by saying she prayed for me every night. ‘I shall always remember the kindness you showed me, and the gentle side of your nature. In your final hours I hope you find peace. I am, yours ever, Cecilia.’

Our old nursery in Fitzwilliam Street was up four sheer flights, and consisted of two small bedrooms with low ceilings and tall windows. When we were young, Cecilia and I would often lean on a sill and observe the street life below: carriages skittering on an icy road, or barefoot children chasing a dog, or a rag-and-bone man pushing his barrow. I remember once she nudged me and pointed at a figure walking from the direction of Fitzwilliam Square. He wore the clothes and grime of a tradesman, but he carried what looked like a bird-cage in the crook of his arm, and another slung on his back. Inside, several black, sleek forms scrambled and writhed. A short-legged terrier followed behind his master, the rat-catcher, though the dog probably had better claim to that title. Secure in our room, we watched the sinister figure pass below and out of sight, then resumed our idle vigil. Foreheads pressed against cold panes; foggy breaths obscuring the view.

I shared a room with Alex, our sparse belongings separated by an imagined boundary between his portion of the room and mine. His was larger to reflect his age; an arrangement I never thought unfair. Cecilia slept in the room next door with a parlourmaid named Ruth, who also acted as nanny. She was a Catholic girl from Wicklow, who seemed very grown up when I was little, but was probably still in her teens. Cecilia considered her a great friend, and Ruth was a playful, lively spirit in the house. She would often hide behind a curtain and pounce on Cecilia as she entered a room, resulting in shrieks and loud laughter.

Our bedroom was near the top of a deep stairwell, from which one could peer down vertically past each flight to the flagstones in the hallway below. Tall handrails meant there was no real danger, but Alex liked to slide down the top banister. I was anxious every time I watched him do so. He would grab the rail and haul himself up, so he sat as if riding sidesaddle, his back to the void. It only took a moment for him to sweep down the railing, briefly become airborne and hit the landing with a few thumping steps. He never so much as stumbled. I always feared he would lean back too far while gliding down, and he mocked my unwillingness to try it myself.

Cecilia told Ruth what he was doing, and she in turn informed my father. Information, it seems, must always work up through a chain. Fearing that Alex would suffer a catastrophic fall, he had a stout net fixed in the gulf between the second and third floors. It was a blue cargo net, secured by hooks in the wood of the stairwell, and visitors to the house would often wonder at its presence.

Of course, I was the first to be enmeshed. Encouraged by the safety net, I attempted to copy my brother’s trick one afternoon while alone. For the first few attempts I leaned too far forwards, wary of the chasm behind, and slithered off the banister after a few feet. On my third try I over-compensated.

The fall was so brief I can’t recall the sensation. One of my fingers caught in a loop, and was pulled from its joint. The small knots in the rope scraped and burned my face, and the hooks in the stairwell bent. I came to rest face down, my view unimpeded to the stone floor another two flights below. I was scared to move lest the net gave way.

The noise of the impact alerted the household. My father rushed to the banister and gripped the rail with both hands, then bent over it, stretching as far as he could to reach me in the distended cords, as if he was a fisherman that had pulled a child from the deep.

About a month after that, in the weeks before Christmas, Cecilia and I became unwell. We were weak and feverish, and our mother put us to bed early. The following morning, an unpleasant sensation made me lift my bedclothes to reveal a rash of red spots arcing along my side and down the length of my arm. I ran to the room of my parents, woke my mother and showed her the hives.

As would be the case in any household, consternation ensued. I was carried back to bed. My parents examined Cecilia and Alex for similar symptoms. Spots were discovered on Cecilia’s back; Alex escaped the contagion. They took his bed down to the parlour, and he remained there for the duration of the outbreak. My father was adamant that his children would not be sent to the infectious wards, and we were treated in our nursery.

Throughout the day our conditions worsened and we were truly wretched. What I recall most was the agony in my throat. It was so raw and sensitive, the slightest gulp was excruciating, as if I swallowed a thistle. Dr Moore arrived, and examined us both beneath the light of several candles, which hurt my sensitive vision. He noted that Cecilia’s eyes were bloodshot, so he applied two leeches, one on each temple, to effect relief. He spoke in low tones to my parents while still in the room.

‘They have both contracted scarlet fever,’ he said, standing before my father. ‘I must recommend that your wife be sent from the house in these circumstances.’

Dr Moore knew that my mother had suffered from respiratory problems throughout her life. But I was pleased when she told the doctor, there and then, that nothing would prevent her from caring for her children.

The doctor implored my father to exert his marital authority, and induce his wife to leave the house. My father looked into her resolute face, then curtly told Dr Moore that she would not be leaving, and that the doctor should instead concentrate on his ministrations. The astute physician bowed his head.

Our mother sat with us night and day and gave herself no rest. She bathed our inflamed skin in warm vinegar, an old remedy, and I can still recall the acrid smell. She administered various draughts, and spoon-fed us thin, tepid broth. It was always torture to swallow any liquid, and it rarely stayed down for long. Mostly she remained to provide comfort, stroking our feverish foreheads and softly singing.

One evening, she sat on the edge of my bed to hug me goodnight. I put my hands around her neck, and could feel a patch of bumpy, roughened skin beside her ear.

I pulled my face back and said, ‘Mama?’

She kept her eyes on mine as she felt beneath her hair, gently moving my hand aside.

She smiled and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.’ Then she kissed my forehead and leaned me back on the pillow. I watched her silhouette as she took the candle to the door. Before she disappeared from view, she brought her hand up to her neck once more.

Her death affected my father deeply. He hung over her body for hours, anguished at her loss, and full of remorse for ignoring the counsel of his physician. His spirit never fully recovered. In the community, at first, he was treated with much sympathy and condolence. But soon he began to neglect his professional duties. He had never been a teetotaller, but now, more often than not, he would finish a wine bottle after dinner. The interest he took in the lives of his children waned, and he became an irritable figure ensconced in his study or chamber, best unprovoked.

An unhappy year passed. Then one morning, Cecilia whispered to me that during the night our father had entered the room she shared with Ruth. He had climbed into Ruth’s bed and remained for an hour. I looked at Cecilia to see if she understood what had occurred. The thought of him creeping through the house dismayed me. The situation only worsened when Ruth was given her own room downstairs. I lay awake at night and cringed at every creak on the floorboards, or click of a latch.

A few months later, all changed again. Ruth left the household. My father was absent on the day we saw her off. I recall her clinging to Cecilia in farewell, a kiss on the cheek for myself and Alex, her overcoat and hat, and her small brassbound trunk sitting on the steps. At the time, I was relieved she was going. But from then on, the house was bereft of any kindly spirit. Our upbringing was placed in the hands of old, forbidding housekeepers.

The trial of Captain Craddock’s killers concluded with a guilty verdict, and the three men were sent to Van Diemen’s Land. In the days following my run-in with the man with the yellow cravat, I checked the newspapers, but there was no article dealing with a missing coal-porter. Either his absence had gone unreported, or it wasn’t deemed newsworthy.

I kept to myself for the best part of a week, staying in the house as much as possible. One morning, I took the opportunity to speak with my father about Helen. While climbing the stairs to his room, I saw one of the hooks still bent in the wood of the stairwell, after all those years, the white paint surrounding it cracked and discoloured. The cargo net had long gone.

Miss Joyce had left the house on an errand. I knocked on my father’s chamber, and he faintly called for me to enter. Only one shutter was open, but enough afternoon sunshine came through to make the room bright. A fire smouldered in the hearth despite the balmy day. Used bedclothes covered a writing desk in the corner, and beside that, a large terrestrial globe sat squat in its ornately carved stand.

My father lay in his marital bed, propped on several pillows, with folded sheets up to his chest. He suffered from a wasting in his bones, which meant the blood vessels in his skeletal frame were closing off, and he was tormented by arthritic pains throughout his body. Since he had been bedridden for more than a year, he was beset with other complaints: bed sores and rashes, inanition and muscular atrophy. He had never been a powerful man, but now he looked frail and wearied, with silver-yellow hair and an unkempt beard. He seemed to be much advanced in years, but he hadn’t yet turned sixty.

It was rare enough for me to enter, and concern showed in his face.

‘News of Alex?’

Alex had received his commission in the East Kent Regiment the year before. They had been deployed to Afghanistan, to bolster a British force intended to slow the advance of the Russians towards north India, and he’d already sent a couple of letters home describing the alien terrain and desert wastes. The boy who had been inspired by tales of Wellington and Napoleon couldn’t possibly have imagined the geography or politics of that conflict.

I shook my head. ‘There’s been no word since his last letter.’

A bedside locker contained a row of carefully labelled phials. I picked one up, shook the clear liquid, and read the tag, which said, ‘Tincture of Youthwort, one to one hundred thousand, ten drops twice a day’. I eyed my father over the watery tonic.

‘Has the new treatment proved effective?’

‘Please return that to the table. Miss Joyce has them arranged in a particular order.’

I replaced the bottle and pulled a chair to his bedside. He leaned over and ensured the phial was in line with the others.

We sat in silence for a while. Motes descended in the slanting sunlight, falling on the hearth and mantelpiece, and a framed watercolour on the wall above, which had been painted by my mother in her youth. It showed the steeple of a church and haystacks in an adjacent field – a scene from her native Antrim. The last I had seen of her was in that room eight years before: strands of dark hair on her wet face; an angry rash on her neck; a bloody handkerchief; the chamber pot beneath her side of the bed brimming with bile. She smiled at me weakly, and told me I must mind my sister. Then pain crossed her face and she lifted the rag to her mouth. She waved at Ruth to take me from the room, to the sound of her grating coughs.

The front door opened below, heralding the return of Miss Joyce. It was time to broach the subject that had brought me here.

‘How much money do you have?’

He looked over at me, incredulous.

‘You’ll be glad to know that I’ve decided to take more interest in my prospects after college.’ I said I planned to speak with Mr Stokes about the possibility of marrying his daughter, Helen. To do so, I would require a full understanding of our financial position.

He smoothed the bedclothes around his chest. ‘Stokes of Merrion Square?’

‘The very same.’

‘Why would he allow his daughter to marry you?’

‘Because she will tell him that she loves me.’

He laughed, and I was gratified that it resulted in a sharp wince.

‘The consent of Mr Stokes isn’t your concern. What I want to know is what will become of the house?’

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He said that when he was finally relieved of the burden of life, the contents of his will would be known.

‘What does that mean?’

There was a knock on the door. Miss Joyce called in, ‘Mr Delahunt, it’s time to take your tincture of gypsum.’

‘Who will get the house?’

The housekeeper bustled into the room carrying a tray, but stopped when she saw me at the bedside. She looked at my father. ‘Should I come back in a little while?’

He waved for her to come forward. ‘There’s no need,’ he said. ‘John was just leaving.’

Helen went to her father and told him she had chosen a husband. At the same time, I wrote Mr Stokes a letter requesting to meet in order to ask for the hand of his daughter. A response arrived by return in Fitzwilliam Street, saying he, his wife and daughter would meet with me in my home the following evening to discuss the proposed marriage.