sophisticated and brutal as the boycott, would you? After all, there was no physical violence associated with boycotts. Maybe this is some further refinement. Paintings go
today, maybe people go tomorrow. God knows. And there’s one thing I find very confusing. Lord Brandon with his gout assured me there had been no letters. Letters, whether threatening or
warning, have always been associated with agrarian violence in Ireland.’
‘Do you think he was lying, Francis?’ asked Johnny.
‘I don’t think he was lying, I think the people in Ireland may have been lying to him.’
‘So what are your plans, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy.
‘Well,’ said her husband, ‘I think you should stay here for the time being. When the situation is clearer I hope you will be able to join me. I am going to see the good Mr
Hudson in the morning and a day or so after that I shall set off for Holyhead and the Irish Midlands. Johnny,’ he paused to refill his friend’s glass, ‘could you do something for
me? Go to Dublin and make a mark with the picture dealers so they will let us know at once if anything appears on the market. Better send it to me care of the Butler house for now.’
‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald cheerfully. ‘I haven’t been to Dublin for years. They say it’s one huge slum nowadays but there are great birds
down in the Wicklow Mountains.’
Later that evening Lady Lucy found her husband staring moodily at a map of Ireland spread out on the dining-room table.
‘What’s the matter, Francis?’ she said in what she hoped was her gentlest voice.
‘It’s all this,’ said Powerscourt, waving his hand in the general direction of Powerscourt House, Enniskerry, County Wicklow. ‘This is my past. This is where I was born.
This is where my parents lived and died. They’re buried there, for God’s sake. If you could belong to one of the great pillars of the Protestant Ascendancy, the landlord class, the
Anglo-Irish, call it what you will, then I belong to it. Don’t get me wrong, Lucy. I love Ireland very deeply. Those Wicklow Mountains where I was brought up, the west with its rivers and
lakes and the dark ocean, they are among the most beautiful places in the world to me.’ He paused and looked down at his map again.
‘Forgive me, my love, I don’t see why that should be upsetting you.’
‘Sorry, Lucy. I’m not explaining myself very well.
‘Much have I seen and known: cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments . . .
‘I’ve been lucky enough to see all kinds of societies all over the world. But where Ireland is concerned I don’t know whose side I am on. Who am I? Irish or
English? Can you be both? History tells me I am one of the Protestant Ascendancy. I should be on their side. But I’m not. Or I think I’m not. I’d like to be neutral. But if
that’s not possible I think I’m probably with the other side. In a democratic age, after all, only the Catholic side can win. The Protestants are so heavily outnumbered. But I’m
not Catholic. I’m Protestant. Even so, if you think the Catholic side should win, if anybody wins at all in these circumstances, don’t you see that in this case maybe I should be
advising the people who stole the paintings rather than the other way round?’
Lady Lucy didn’t know what to say. She took her husband by the hand and led him upstairs. ‘It’s a long time since you’ve been to Ireland, Francis,’ she said
brightly, trying to sound more cheerful than she felt. ‘Perhaps it’ll all seem very different when you get there.’
At nine o’clock the following morning a group of three bedraggled men and an even more bedraggled donkey were making their way up Ireland’s Holy Mountain. The
mountain was Croagh Patrick, some seven miles outside Westport on the Louisburg road in County Mayo, about as far west as you could go in Ireland without setting sail for the New World. The Reek,
as the locals called