How strange; that the person who has apparently gained the most from Lyra's death should be the one who is now most in need of help…
London
It is five days, not one, before Lady Boreal is fit to travel. She has slept, and woken, and eaten, and demanded to be allowed to use the telephone (and been denied it). She has ordered her staff to bring her business documents to read and sign, and she has been denied them too. She has forced herself to get out of bed and go to the window and look out over London, although she can barely lift herself onto her feet.
Patient, skilled, nurses have come to her then, and taken her by the arm, and led her back to bed and given her warm drinks to sooth her, and glossy magazines to distract her. She has sworn at them, or ignored them, or tried to inveigle them into letting her go back to work, but they are professionals, and they have their orders, so they kindly, professionally, refuse Elizabeth anything which may harm her, or cause a relapse.
Curled around her breast, or looped about her arm, her daemon Parander stays close to her, slowly recovering his health. His markings return to his skin, his eyes brighten and he steadily gains weight.
The doctor knows that Elizabeth will not be able to let go of the obsession which is killing her if she stays in London, or anywhere that there is a Foundation office, so when she herself suggests a place for her to go he is at first doubtful, for it is a house which has long been in Boreal ownership and he fears that she will get back into bad habits there, but he also considers its comparative isolation and finally gives his approval.
'You must not return to London before August at the very earliest!' he orders her. 'If you do I will call round again, with my syringe, and you know what I will do with it!'
'Yes, doctor. But, my business…'
'You may have thirty minutes, no more, with the Managing Director before you leave. Make sure you use them well.'
I surely will, she thinks.
That executive is invited to the flat that evening and leaves, after the doctor's strictly enforced half-hour, with his head aching and spinning; such a long list of peremptory instructions has Lady Boreal given him. Afterwards he sits in his car, hardly less grand than Elizabeth's own, scribbling frantically in a morocco-bound notebook, terrified lest he fail to remember everything that he has been told to do.
In transit
The silver-grey limousine takes Elizabeth to Euston station at ten o'clock the following Saturday morning. She is accompanied by her private secretary and a modest amount of luggage. The bags are loaded into the guard's van and Lady Boreal and her assistant take their seats in a reserved first-class compartment at the rear of the train.
Precisely on time they leave the platform in a cloud of steam and coal-smoke. The gradient is steep for the first mile out of Euston and the fumes from the labouring locomotive's funnel hide the blackened brick walls of the deep cuttings they must pass through on their way north. The secretary stands up to make sure that the compartment's windows are fast shut and rings a bell for the steward to bring them some tea.
They both sit in the window seats – the blinds are pulled all the way down on the corridor side of the compartment – and look out as dirty brickwork gives way to rows of terraced housing. The train is rapidly gaining speed now; they race through Harrow and Cassiobury and, it seems, before they know it they are at Mugby Junction and make their first stop. There is a clattering of doors up and down the length of the ten carriages which make up the train. People get out, holding on to their children, daemons and baggage, calling out to each other, earnestly enquiring of the porters and anyone they see wearing a uniform which platform they should go to for their connection to Cantabriensis, or Stafford, or wherever it may be that they wish to go. The refreshment rooms are packed with people anxious to get a cup of chai, or a railway bun, in the five, or maybe fewer, minutes they have left before their own trains leave.
From her privileged position in a private compartment at the London end of the train Elizabeth looks out on all this busy activity, all this push and shove and bustle and hurry, and finds to her surprise that she is feeling a little envious of these people's close involvement with the details of everyday life. She has long been insulated from the actual business of living, as experienced by the ordinary people whom she has risen above because of her aristocratic birth. And my own hard work, she thinks with a sense of pride. And yet, she thinks, these people work hard too; many of them, no doubt, contributing to the wealth that she enjoys.
There is another feeling too, welling up inside her. A feeling of excitement, such as she has not felt since she was a little girl, holding tight to her father's hand, crying out in delight at the prospect before her, and having to be restrained from running straight into the water, fully dressed as she was.
I'm going on holiday! To the seaside!
Not long after they rumble through Brummagem New Street station, the stewards come and set up a table between Elizabeth and her companion. A light lunch is served – ham salad and summer pudding, with a chilled glass of crisp apple-flavoured Mosel wine for each of them. She leans back in her comfortable seat and dozes as the train passes the Five Towns on its right and turns to the west, travelling along the northern shores of the principality of Cymru. Over the beautiful suspension bridge at Conwy it clatters, past Llandudno, going slower now as the line twists and turns around the deeply indented coast, the estuary of the river Dee to their right broadening out into open sea, and the mountain peaks of Snowdownia, white and slate-grey, raised up to their left.
Just past Bangor, they cross the Menai Strait by the Telford Bridge and enter the island of Anglesea, and at last, as the afternoon shades into evening, the train slowly glides into the station at Holyhead, where the line, and this part of their journey, comes to an end.
A ground-floor suite has been booked for them in the best hotel in town, and Elizabeth and her secretary will stay there tonight, in two bedrooms connected by a spacious salon. They step down from the four-wheeler which has carried them and their luggage up the hill from the station and, while her servant deals with the driver and the porters and signs the register, Elizabeth, ignoring the ministrations of the over-solicitous hotel manager, walks around the side of the building and onto the terrace which overlooks the sea, and the sunset. She leans against the wall and looks out over the water. Out of a cloudless sky the sun, directly in front of her now, shines on her face and a westerly breeze disturbs her hair so that she raises her right hand to shield her eyes and pat her locks back into position. A song comes to her then, out of her childhood, one that she has not heard for many years, but she remembers the words and the melody and she sings it quietly to herself now:
Out of the West, they came to us,
The fortunate and free.
They came to bring a gift of love,
For you, my love, and me.
They came to bring a gift of love,
Although it cost them dear.
They brought it in a merry song,
For you and me to hear.
It's to the West that we must go,
To hear that song again.
It's in the West that we shall find,
A cure for all our pain.
And should it be that we shall find,
A place where we can stay.
We'll take that song into our hearts,
And sing it every day
It is an old tune, and the words are all but meaningless now and she has forgotten some of the verses, but Elizabeth cannot prevent the tears from running down her cheeks as she sings it, and she strokes Parander gently before returning to the entrance of the hotel and the stuffy, over-decorated rooms where she will spend the night.
At noon on Sunday they board the steam-packet Stephen Dedalus which will take them on the next stage of their journey. Lady Boreal's secretary is still very concerned about her mistress' health; she was wearied by the previous day's travel and slept for nearly ten hours that night. She insists that Lady Boreal take a cabin in the middle of the vessel, where its motion will disturb her as little as possible, and only allows her on deck for brief periods of time, as the wind is fresh and the sea scattered with white-capped waves.
They arrive in Dun Laoghaire in the early evening and, disembarking, are carried the few short miles to the centre of the city of Baile Atha Cliath, where they check into the splendour of the Shelbourne Hotel, where it faces onto Stephen's Green.
Eire! At last! All Elizabeth's favourite childhood memories are here; in the rolling hills and soft rains of the Irish countryside, the long sandy beaches of its shores. Here she made her first sandcastle, rode her first pony, climbed her first mountain. Sometimes her father's friend, the beautiful Mrs Coulter, would be there with them and she would always be kind and gracious and loving in a way which surprised and delighted Elizabeth, who did not then, nor for many years afterwards, know that the woman who would come and sing her to sleep – with the same sweet simple song which she had sung to herself the night before in Holyhead – was her natural mother.
It was on the lakes of Cill Airne that she first learned to sail a boat, she remembers, and wonders, even as she sits in the gilt and crystal glory of the Shelbourne's dining room, if there will be a dinghy at the house that she can take out into the bay or a horse that she can ride. 'Not far now,' whispers Parander, and the voice that has been speaking to her all this time agrees with him.
The old grey house stands on the westernmost end of the Dingle peninsula, embedded in granite rocks, surrounded by gardens which are enclosed by high stone walls to protect the flowers, herbs and grass that grow there from the Atlantic winds which blow all the way from New Denmark. It is late and the sun is setting as a pony and trap are admitted through the iron gates, and a solitary servant comes to the door to welcome Miss Elizabeth, for so this elderly woman cannot help but call Lady Boreal, whom she has known since she was a baby.
'Siobhan!' Elizabeth cries out joyfully, seeing the stooped form of the housekeeper waiting for her inside the hall. 'It's wonderful to see you!'
'My lady, you are welcome to the house of Tir-na-nÓg,' the woman formally replies, and stands back to let her in. Elizabeth is worn out after ten hours of travel, first by bumpy CIE train, then in a wheezing old country bus and finally enduring the jolting ride of the house's pony and trap over the unmade roads which lead to this most remote of the Boreal's Irish properties, but nevertheless she flings her arms around the woman and hugs her tightly, startling her and her terrier-daemon very much indeed.
By any sensible financial measure, this place is a business liability and it should have been sold off years ago. It is a money pit, requiring endless maintenance and providing little or no return. But Elizabeth has never considered disposing of it, even in her most ruthless moments. It holds too many happy memories for her ever to think of selling it.
She has been given, naturally, the best bedroom in the house, but she rejects it, preferring to sleep in the modest chamber she occupied when she was a child. The little blue bedroom is just as she remembers it; there is a single bed, a linen press and a chest of drawers and, set low in one wall, there is a window, with a ledge that is wide enough to sit on; looking out towards the west, facing the sunset.
Here, if anywhere, she will find peace, and strength, and the resolution to do what she knows she must do.
