‘She’s put the address on the letter,’ said Colm, picking it up again.
‘What is it?’
‘It sounds very grand. The house is called Holly Lodge, and it’s in North London.’
The present
Somewhere nearby, music was playing – loud insistent music that pounded jarringly on Benedict’s ears. He wanted it to stop, but it did not. Declan’s world splintered painfully, and he was abruptly and confusingly back in the sharp modernism of Nina’s flat, with Nina clattering saucepans in the kitchen and the radio blaring.
But the words Romilly Rourke had written in her frantic, scrappy letter more than a hundred years ago – the words Colm had read out in the peat-scented, fire-lit cottage – were more real than Nina’s flat. The address on the letter that Colm had read out burned deep into his brain.
Holly Lodge, North London.
It’s only another of the fragments, thought Benedict. It’s what the neurologist said about the brain shaping odd memories to clothe the alter ego.
But supposing it wasn’t. Supposing they existed, those two naive Irish boys. Supposing they came to that long-ago London with its gas-lit streets and its raucous tumble of people and the clatter of carriages and hansom cabs over cobbled streets?
We did come to London, Benedict, and a remarkable place we found it . . .
Benedict stared across at the oval mirror on the small dressing table. Something stirred in its depths, and his heart lurched.
You’re there, aren’t you, he thought. But that mirror’s in direct line to the window, and it’s a sunny day, and you don’t like the light, do you, great-grandfather . . . ?
Oh, Benedict, said the faint fragile whisper. If only you knew why I don’t like the light . . . If only you knew what it is that I have to hide from the prying gaze of everyone . . .
Murder, thought Benedict. That’s what you have to hide. But what dark corner of my mind has that fragment come from? Why am I making my alter ego a killer? A killer who was never brought to justice?
Ah, but I had justice in the end, Benedict, and it’s a justice you wouldn’t want to hear about. And it started innocently enough. We came to London to find Romilly . . .
Romilly, thought Benedict, feeling Declan’s world tugging at him. The red-haired waif who looked so innocent the saints would trust her, but who was bold as a tomcat beneath.
‘You lived in that tiny house – the shack.’ The image of the tiny dwelling came again, like old cine footage, uncertain and blurred, but recognizable.
Yes, the shack. There was the impression of sadness – of an ache of loss. He loved that cottage, thought Benedict.
We should never have left it and we should never have left Kilglenn. But we came to London, and whatever dreams we might have had of your London, nothing had prepared us for the reality . . .
London, 1890s
Declan said, and Colm agreed, that whatever wild dreams they might have had of England and London, the reality beat the dreams into a cocked hat.
They did not, as Colm had half-seriously prophesied, actually have to sleep in ditches, but there were a couple of nights when they slept in houses so crowded and so dirty Declan said ditches might have been preferable.
‘Heaving with unwashed humanity,’ said Colm, as they left the second of these. ‘Wouldn’t you die for the scents of Kilderry – the ocean and the grass? But we’re almost there, and travelling like this – begging lifts, working as we go – shouldn’t take more than two days, so that man told me.’
It was an early evening when at last they walked into the city, and the sun was setting. The River Thames was directly ahead with, beyond it, the palace of Westminster, and there was a moment when the dying sun tipped the edges of the buildings with gold and seemed to set the river alight. For several enchanted moments they almost believed the glowing light was tangible – that it was molten gold pouring down over the stones and timbers and glass, and that it would lie in glistening pools on the pavements.
‘Golden pavements after all,’ said Declan, very softly, as they stood still, staring at it.
‘Not really, of course.’
‘Oh no.’
But the image of their childhood dreams was strongly with them, and there was an unreal quality to this final part of their journey, almost as if they might be entering a magical land where anything might happen and where whatever did happen would be wonderful.
As Colm said much later, the pity was that the feeling had not lasted.
At first the sheer size and noise and the crowds of people confused them and, curiously, it was Colm who faltered under the onslaught of London. But then Declan said they should remember this was the fabled city of their childhood dreams, and fabled cities were there to be conquered.
‘You’re right,’ said Colm, squaring his shoulders. ‘We’re on a quest, and we’ll find our way around this place somehow.’
‘We’ll start by asking directions to Holly Lodge,’ said Declan, firmly.
In the event, they had to ask several times, but in the end they found Holly Lodge, which was a large house in a street of large houses.
‘I hadn’t expected it to be so grand,’ said Colm. ‘Rich people live here, d’you think?’
‘I do. Or,’ said Declan, critically, ‘people who were once rich, but aren’t so much now.’
‘Yes. But,’ said Colm, frowning, ‘what will Romilly be doing here?’
‘Working? A housemaid?’ Declan said it doubtfully, because it was difficult to think of Romilly being servile, and yet what other work would there be for her? He did not say this, however, nor did he say that now they were actually here, in the fabled city of golden opportunities, it did not seem as if there would be much work for themselves, either.
They had not worked out a plan for when they actually reached Holly Lodge; they had simply concentrated all their energies on getting there.