Death Comes to the Ballets Russes (40 page)

‘Breakfast’s at four tomorrow morning. For God’s sake don’t ask me any questions. I might not be able to give you the answers. Official Secrets Act, don’t you know.’

That breakfast was the strangest meal Powerscourt had been present at in all his years on the planet. The General was there, of course, conducting a silent reconnaissance on a pair of kippers. There was a German officer in civilian clothes and a monocle whose name, Powerscourt discovered later, was Ludwig von Stoltenberg, attached to the German General Staff. There was a sleek Frenchman, wearing the finest civilian clothes the Parisian tailors could provide, called Jean-Pierre Poiret. The two foreigners had taken to addressing each other in the other’s language, so the Frenchman spoke to the German in impeccable German and the German spoke back to the Frenchman in near perfect French. A simple question of politeness about the direction of the marmalade became: ‘
Passieren die marmelade, bitte,
’ from the French side of the Rhine, and ‘
Passer la marmelade, s’il vous plaît,
’ from the other.

The usual strange Continental breakfast offerings of
cold ham and cheese were provided as a gesture of friendship towards the foreigners, but all three of them polished off a plate of bacon and eggs. When the marmalade had stopped travelling, Silent Page burst into speech again. Powerscourt noted with interest that the hostile kippers had been completely routed, with only a few bones left on the General’s plate.

‘Ahem,’ he began, ‘ahem, we leave in five minutes. I advise you to wrap up well.’

Each man travelled in his own car, a silent driver at the wheel. After five minutes or so they were deep in the English countryside and had to stop at a serious-looking gate, manned by a couple of soldiers, guns at the ready. As far as the eyes could see, a very tall wall, about eight feet high, guarded what looked like an enormous park. There were no buildings to be seen as the four cars set off up a long and winding drive that Powerscourt thought might lead to a Blenheim Palace or a Castle Howard. Instead they came to a second guardhouse, manned again by armed soldiers with sentries marching up and down the length of another wall, this time a little shorter, perhaps six feet high. Powerscourt wondered if these sentries were condemned to an everlasting patrol like the horsemen who rode round the Tsar’s Palace at Tsarskoe Selo outside St Petersburg twenty-four hours a day.

The little fleet of cars finally stopped at what looked like a large birdwatchers’ hide. Inside there were seats and binoculars and four telescopes and a grandstand view over the countryside. Silent Page suggested they make themselves comfortable.

‘It should – ahem – be fully light in a few minutes. Then the action will begin.’ There was a long pause, as
if he were a weatherman consulting his charts before producing the forecast for the day. He stared out at the fields in front of him. ‘I’m told there will be no wind. We should – ahem – be safe here.’

Wind? Hostilities? Powerscourt felt a terrible apprehension running through his body. What on earth was going on? Why did they have to invoke the Official Secrets Act for something that was about to happen in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere? He grabbed a pair of binoculars and stared straight in front of him. He saw, about two hundred yards away, a series of trenches dug in parallel with a series of connecting trenches at either end, like a child’s parallelogram in a maths exercise book. He couldn’t see how deep the trenches were. He noticed that the trench area was almost completely surrounded by trees or by man-made hillocks, which looked as if they had only been created very recently. The German began walking up and down, muttering to himself in French. The Frenchman began to rub his hands together, as if he were about to enjoy the best meal that the Savoy Grill could provide.

A gun went off, firing from the far side of the trenches, Powerscourt thought. He could see no sign of anything landing. Perhaps it was a blank. The shot had a dramatic effect on his two colleagues.

‘
Achtung Achtung!
’ said the Frenchman.

‘
Merde! Attention! Attention!
’ said the German.

Both whipped fresh notebooks from their pockets and proceeded to virtually glue themselves to the nearest binoculars. Powerscourt did the same, wondering if he would be reprimanded afterwards for not having a fresh notebook to hand. The other two were focused
on the trenches. Powerscourt turned his glasses across the landscape and saw what the others didn’t.

A young shepherd, complete with attendant sheepdog, was driving a flock of about thirty sheep towards the trenches. Fiddling with the controls, Powerscourt saw that the young man – he didn’t look more than twenty – was crying, and that the tears were running down his sweater as if he had been weeping for some time.

The sheep were driven into the enclosure surrounded by the trenches. They did not find them attractive, preferring to wander round their new enclosure. Powerscourt noticed that two large troughs of water had been placed at either end to keep the sheep in place. He glanced back up the hill. He thought he caught the glint of another pair of binoculars lurking at the edge of the trees. But however much he adjusted his controls, he never saw it again.

Looking to his left, Powerscourt saw that half a dozen goats were being driven down the little hill to join the party. They were roped together and their handler, a much older man, drove a post into the ground to keep them tethered as soon as they entered the enclosure. This man was older. He didn’t cry. But he scuttled off back up the hill as fast as his legs would carry him. He seemed to be saying something to himself as he went, possibly praying, Powerscourt thought. For he was now certain that something terrible was about to happen in this parallelogram hidden among the green fields of southern England.

His two companions were scribbling furiously, though Powerscourt saw that their eyes never left the enclosure. Then the gun went off again. This time it
seemed to land in the centre of the parallelogram. A thin mist, or fog, settled over the trenches and the grass. Thinking about it afterwards, Powerscourt remembered that the animals made no noise at all. Their fate was met in silence. One or two of the sheep tried to run back the way they had come, to the safety of the trees and their weeping shepherd. After a dozen paces they staggered to a halt and lay down. Other sheep and a couple of goats began slumping to the ground. The parallelogram was turning into a death chamber.

The German began saying ‘
Ave Maria
’ very quietly in French, his eyes locked on the sheep; they were twitching furiously now, as if they could not control their arms or their legs. ‘Hail Mary full of Grace,
Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce.
’

The Frenchman replied with the Lord’s Prayer in Luther’s language. ‘
Vater unser im Himmel, geheiligt werde dein Name
. . .’

Powerscourt was certain that the animals were dying, killed off by some form of poison gas. He thought of his son Thomas, and all his friends and contemporaries who might man the British trenches in a future war in Europe, spread out in their innocence the length and breadth of England, and he put his head in his hands.

‘
Mère de Dieu, Priez pour nous, pauvres pêcheurs, maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort
. Pray for us now, poor sinners, and in the hour of our death.’

All the animals were sinking to the ground now. Most of them lay flat on the ground, one or two still twitching feebly in their death agonies. The goats too were passing into the next world.

‘
Und vergib uns unsere Schuld, wie auch wir vergeben
unsern Schuldigern
. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’

Powerscourt was close to tears. Why were his fellow countrymen preparing to use this terrible weapon, for he was certain that the animals were merely an alternative to humans who could not be found to volunteer for such a dreadful death. Who had approved it? The Prime Minister? The Chief of the Imperial General Staff? The Archbishop of Canterbury?

The Frenchman was stuck at the end of his prayer, saying it over and over again. There were only a couple of sheep still writhing on the deadly grass. The cloud of fog had passed on and was drifting slowly towards the hill where the shepherd had gone.

‘
Denn dein ist das Reich und die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit
. Amen. For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory for ever and ever, Amen.’

Powerscourt promised himself that he would do all in his power to make sure that this gas was never used. Perhaps, he reflected ruefully, that was why he was here, to spread the word around the upper reaches of London society.

It was as they were leaving, the dead animals left in their place until the gas had totally cleared, that Powerscourt listened to what must rank as the most tasteless remark he had ever heard.

‘We Germans are not good at tact or at jokes,’ the German Colonel began, speaking now in perfect English, ‘but it seems to me that the gas did not draw any distinction between the sheep and the goats.’

Pirouette

A
pirouette
is a turn on one leg, often starting with one or both legs in
plié
and rising onto
relevé
(usually for men) or
pointe
(usually for women). The nonsupporting leg is held in
passé
. A pirouette may return to the starting position or finish in
arabesque
or
attitude
positions, or proceed otherwise. It is most often
en dehors
turning outwards toward the back leg, but can also be
en dedans
turning inwards toward the front leg. Although ballet
pirouettes
are performed with the hips and legs rotated outward (‘turned out’), it is common to see them performed with an inward rotation (‘parallel’) in other genres of dance, such as jazz and modern. Spotting technique is usually employed to help maintain balance.
Pirouettes
can be executed with a single or multiple rotations.

Petroc Danvers Tresilian did not live up to the rich promise of his name. Earlier Tresilians had made their money through smuggling in the eighteenth century.
When large bribes were not enough to satisfy the customs men, it was rumoured that attractive young girls from the servants’ hall or the more formal quarters upstairs were pressed into service. That never failed. Turn your faces to the wall while the gentlemen come in.

Later Tresilians, especially after their union with the Danvers at the time of the Repeal of the Corn Laws, had escaped from the clutches of the customs men into the great bosom of the English middle class. Amelia Danvers, who married Caradoc Tresilian, brought with her the virtues of High Church, high moral standards and a burning desire to make it into the upper reaches of society. One of her brothers became Governor of Bengal, another was a Fellow of All Souls and another kept up the family ambition by becoming a High Court Judge.

Petroc Danvers Tresilian did not seem to possess the buccaneering spirit of his ancestors. As the senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office, he glided around Whitehall, a couple of new recruits accompanying him on his progress. The cynics said he resembled nothing so much as a senior hospital doctor on his rounds, flunkeys and junior doctors in tow, as he pronounced the sentence of life or death on the recumbent forms (or government plans) as he passed on his way.

‘Gentlemen,’ he began, in a private lounge looking out over the river, ‘thank you for attending our little demonstration. English is now the lingua franca of the day. From now on we are all complicit in these matters. We have all broken the Official Secrets Act many times this morning. It applies, as you know, to the clean shaven and the bearded, the washed and the unwashed, to foreigner and native Englishman alike.’

He’s making them dip their hands in the blood
, Powerscourt thought to himself.
We’re all complicit now
.

‘I would just remind you all of the dates we agreed at our last meeting at Baddesley Clinton. Three weeks from now we all travel to the desolate country behind Calvi in Corsica for the French demonstration. The Baddesley Clinton protocol –’ Powerscourt could see how much Danvers Tresilian enjoyed the word ‘protocol’, which spoke, strictly speaking, of private clauses inserted secretly into treaties between states by their despotic rulers – ‘makes it clear that our last demonstration should be in the Ardennes; close, appropriately enough, to the French border.’

The two foreigners nodded in agreement. Baddesley Clinton, Powerscourt thought. Baddesley Clinton. A little jewel of a house, with a perfect moat, in the English Midlands, it had been famous for concealing recusants in the reign of Elizabeth I. Perhaps they’d popped the two foreigners into the priest holes. They would naturally have been suspected of being agents of the Catholic faith – the fact they were foreigners was enough to rouse Elizabeth’s spy master, Sir Francis Walsingham, into action.

‘Now then, gentlemen, questions are allowed, although I cannot give any guarantees of my being able to answer them.’

That means he’s not going to give any answers at all, Powerscourt said to himself.

‘The wind,’ said the Frenchman, ‘would I be right in saying that there was virtually no wind this morning?’

‘You would be right in assuming that,’ said Danvers Tresilian.

‘And there is still virtually no wind now, is that not right?’ asked the German, peering out of the windows at the calm running of the river, swirling on its way to London and the sea.

The man from the Cabinet Office made a brief inspection of the Thames.

‘You too are correct: there is still a dead calm here.’

Powerscourt had managed, with great difficulty, to clear his son Thomas and his friends from his mind. Now he was wondering what on earth was going on. What was this conspiracy all about? Why was the Frenchman here? And the German? Sharing secrets with foreign powers with whom we might be at war in a few years’ time? Had Tresilisan permission from his political masters to be here, offering secret displays of the lethal properties of British poison gas? And if so, which masters? The urbane mandarins of his own department? The Generals in all their pomp and glory on the Imperial General Staff?