The Family on Paradise Pier

It was seven o’clock, five hours until midnight. It would be impossible to talk to Mother all evening and, even if she could, Eva wouldn’t know what to ask. She longed to knock at Father’s study and ask to speak to him alone because Father understood her, but Eva was too shy to seek advice from anyone about anything so personal.

Eva’s parents were used to her wandering off for walks at night to sketch in the moonlight or simply sing with joy where she could not be overheard. With so many people arriving tonight nobody would miss her or Jack. She imagined cold water soaking into her bathing costume, the sway of dark waves, the white splash of oars. She would need to change back into her clothes when they reached the island, having to render herself naked under a bathing robe before slipping every item of apparel back on. Jack would be kindling a fire with his back to her, aware that she was briefly naked and knowing that when she sat next to him a tang of salt would still linger on her lips if he kissed her. He would definitely kiss her on the island with no one else there. If she allowed him, he would touch her through her clothes in places where Eva had never been touched. Surely it would be the most fleeting of touches because he was a gentleman who wished to marry her and would do nothing that might lessen his respect. Perhaps he would just want to talk or read her poetry.

The coach house was deserted. The family had divided the building into separate dens. Being fascinated by science, Art and Thomas had constructed a laboratory in the part furthest from the kitchen, from which explosions were occasionally heard. Nearby Maud had set up a weaving shed, after visiting local weavers to master the loom. Maud’s den was also the editorial address of The Dunkineely News, the family newspaper established by Maud to record the advent of summer visitors. A flight of rickety steps led to the small loft that Eva used as a studio for painting. Brendan generally flitted between dens, anxious to be with his brothers but knowing he would be teased less by his sisters. He considered the back seat of the motor as his private den. This was parked in the main coach house, and Art and Thomas were summoned to discuss engine problems whenever it refused to start.

Eva climbed the stairs to her studio where she could be alone, except for the mouse behind the skirting board whom Eva had trained to come out and accept food from her hands. Jack was the only visitor to her studio with the patience to sit still long enough for the mouse to emerge. Jack seemed content to sit for hours and watch her paint. At first Eva was too self-conscious in his presence, but she had grown so accustomed to him being there that she found it hard to paint without Jack at her shoulder.

She picked up a paintbrush but put it back, wishing she had socks to darn because she found darning a soothing occupation. Footsteps ascended the wooden stairs and she prayed it was not Jack. It was Brendan, wearing the comical oversized hat that he loved.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Just dreaming.’

‘I bet you’ll be a famous artist when you grow up.’

Eva laughed. ‘I doubt it.’

‘I’ll stand by the door in tails and top hat greeting the crowds pouring into your first exhibition.’

‘I prefer you wearing that hat. What will you be?’

‘A world famous traveller. Foreign correspondent for The Dunkineely News, sending dispatches from Killybegs and Kilimanjaro. I’ll recruit a tribe of pygmies to land at Bruckless Pier and march on Dunkineely to put Art and Thomas in the stocks with people ordered to empty chamber pots over their heads.’

Eva smiled. ‘What have they done now?’

‘Thomas won’t let me into the attics to dress up.’

‘For what?’

‘The dancing, silly. Maud has decided we should wear fancy dress tonight. She says you must go as Becky from Vanity Fair and she is dressing as a damsel from a harem, whatever that is. Will you help me to find a costume and stop the others from teasing?’

Eva took his hand, which felt so small after Jack’s, and left the studio. She envied Brendan being the magic age of ten, just like he envied Eva her grown-up status. At ten she had seemed old compared to her brothers, but, as the youngest, Brendan would always seem young. They crossed the yard, swinging their arms and singing. She knew that the others had not really barred him from the attics, especially Art with his deep sense of justice, but Brendan was sensitive to every slight, convinced that his brothers patronised him no matter what he did. Normally Eva loved to dress up but this evening she found it hard to focus on anything except the slow approach of midnight. Maud had opened a trunk of clothes belonging to Grandpappy’s late wife who had been locked away in an asylum for the incurably insane. Grandpappy had never encouraged visitors, claiming that she recognised nobody, but Eva used to hate imagining the old woman stranded in a ward of strangers.

Maud was dressed in bright silks, set off by a rich Persian cummerbund. She had found a pageboy outfit that Brendan only agreed to wear on condition that he could keep on his favourite hat. For Eva, Maud had a high-waisted, full-skirted pale green satin dress, which had probably not been worn for decades. Normally Eva liked to make her own choice but this evening she didn’t argue, even allowing Maud to put up her hair with a ring of silk rosebuds after they returned to their room.

‘You’re quiet,’ Maud observed, finishing Eva’s hair. ‘Did anything happen on the cycle back from Killybegs?’

‘Like what?’

‘You tell me.’ Maud looked down. ‘You’re blushing.’

‘Am I?’

‘Jack is daft about you. I heard him tell Father and Mother.’

‘What did they say?’

‘That you couldn’t be rushed, you didn’t really understand such things yet. But you do, don’t you? You must do what you alone want in your heart. But a man cannot be put off for ever either. You could lose him.’

Eva knew this. But there was so much else she could lose. She felt safe in Donegal where she understood this peaceful world and it understood her. Jack didn’t just bring the horror of war into their lives by occasionally shouting in his sleep, making Eva long to comfort him, he also brought home the encroachment of adulthood. There was no doubt but they made a wonderful couple, matched in everything except experience. He loved nature like she did and would happily lie out in the fields while Eva recited Tennyson or Whitman. But change was everywhere. This autumn Art would enter the University of London. A suitor could snatch away Maud at any moment. Watching Father check the windows at night Eva knew in her heart that they could wake to find the house in flames. That was why she loved to stop time in paintings. But life refused to work like that.

The maid’s voice called from the landing that Maud was urgently needed to sort out seating arrangements. Left alone, Eva examined herself in the mirror. The Victorian dress made her seem older, the piled up hair emphasising her slender neck. She closed her eyes to imagine Jack’s hand caressing it. Then the dinner gong broke her reverie. At Maud’s chest of drawers she put rouge on her face, then walked downstairs to greet people, sensing Jack watching her every step.

By a miracle they all fitted at the table. Some neighbours disapproved of such mayhem but Eva loved the informality where Cook was applauded and people struggled to make themselves heard. Across the table Jack caught her eye and Eva knew that he thought she looked beautiful. Normally she would have brought down her autograph book to ensure that everyone inscribed a clever remark or fragment of poetry. At last year’s regatta party Mr Barnes’s eldest son had inscribed a poem:

If the wicked old world was swept away

Like dust from your studio floor,

And only those parts of it made again

That were good and fair and pure;

And if the re-making was given to me,

I’d begin with Donegal,

And your studio out in the stables

Would be the first of all.

But the treasured autograph book belonged to her old life and she would have felt childish bringing it to the table now.

As befitted dangerous times, there was no talk of politics, with even Mr Ffrench and Art respecting Father’s wish. Afterwards people crowded into the drawing room, where the rector’s son produced a fiddle to accompany Father on the piano. They launched into old-time waltzes, English folk dances like Sir Roger de Coverley and then, when the room was warmed up, riotous Irish set dances like The Walls of Limerick, with people eager to teach Jack the steps. Eva noticed that he never danced with her, anxious not to spoil the moment when they would finally be alone in the boat. At eleven o’clock, the dancing halted to let people deliver their party pieces. Maud was first, singing the Skye Boat Song. Eva saw Jack slip away and knew that he was about to cycle to Bruckless House to untie the small boat by the pier.

Maud’s song finished and old Dr O’Donnell sang Eileen Alannah, with eyes only for his smiling arthritic wife. The minute hand on the mantelpiece clock picked up speed as more songs followed. Father played a piece by Liszt and Mother who was tone-deaf said, ‘That’s lovely, Tim,’ as she always did whether he played Beethoven or Pop Goes the Weasel. Mr Barnes insisted that Father play a composition of his own and the room was still as he began to sing:

‘Far, far away, across the sea

There lies an island divinely fair

Where spirits blest forever dwell

And breathe its radiant enchanted air.’

The familiar words followed Eva as she slipped unnoticed upstairs. Her room was moonlit, her bathing costume in the drawer. She chose a robe and long white towel, took the band of silk rosebuds from her hair which tumbled down, and then, as an afterthought, washed the rouge from her face. The kitchen was empty when she desperately wanted someone to find her. But nobody came to stop her lifting the latch and slipping into the yard, past her dark studio and around onto the main street. She stopped across the road to look at the open drawing room window where family and neighbours were gathered. The dancing would soon recommence. The noise of a Crossley Tender’s engine in the distance suggested troops were about. The street was deserted, with locals cautious of venturing out. Jack would be waiting at the Bunlacky shore. It was dangerous to leave him alone, in case patrolling auxiliaries mistook him for a rebel. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to move from the scene in the window. Footsteps came down the lane she had just left. Eva recognised the hat before hearing Brendan’s lilt: ‘Who goes there? A grenadier. What do you want? A pint of beer…’

He spied her and stopped. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Swimming.’

‘It’s midnight.’

‘I know. Do you want to come?’

‘I’ve no costume.’

‘You can stay in the boat and explore the island?’

‘What boat?’

‘It will be an adventure, our secret.’

Even as she held out her hand Eva knew that she was making a terrible mistake. But she couldn’t stop herself. All the way down the Bunlacky road she kept intending to send Brendan back at the next bend, but she swung his arm and let him sing, until on the final bend she hushed him.

‘What’s wrong?’ the boy whispered, sensing her tension.

Eva didn’t reply, but walked on, clutching her bathing costume to her breast, feeling so small in the moonlight as she struggled to decide what she wanted. She reached the rocks and spied the boat below, with Jack smoking as he waited. He stood up, tossed the cigarette into the waves and held out a hand which halted in midair as the boy appeared behind her.

‘Hello, Jack,’ Brendan called. ‘Are we going on an adventure?’

Jack didn’t reply. He looked across the dark waves and Eva knew that he simply wanted to row away. But the boy had already run down the crude stone steps and Jack swung the boat around so that he could clamber on board. The young officer put a hand out to help Eva get in, then immediately released his grip. He seemed taut like a coiled spring, saying nothing. Yet Eva knew that he was not angry, merely disappointed and more annoyed with himself than with her. Without Brendan she would never have come this far. She would have hesitated on a bend on the Bunlacky road, lacking the courage to continue. Yet now she was here Eva wished that the boy was gone. She wanted them to sail alone to the island, with Jack’s back turned as she stripped out of this ridiculous Victorian dress to don her bathing suit. She wanted all this when it was safely out of reach, because Eva knew that they could not simply let the child off. Jack had set her a test which she failed. Brendan’s clear voice filled the air: ‘…Where’s your money? In my pocket. Where’s your pocket? I forgot it.’

The child lay back, trailing his hand in the water. ‘This is more fun than the party. Can we do it again tomorrow, Jack?’

‘Not with me, sonny. I’m New Zealand bound. I’ll swing this boat around now and leave you both on dry land.’

‘But it’s great fun having you here,’ the boy protested. ‘Must you really leave?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Jack altered course effortlessly to steer them towards the shore. He was a superb sailor. Eva imagined the pair of them sailing across a New Zealand lake. Only in this fantasy she was older and wiser and he had built a cabin with high windows to allow her to paint by the lakeside. She closed her eyes and tried to keep imagining these things, because she knew that when she opened them he would be regarding her with quiet disappointment. ‘I’m off in the morning,’ Jack added. ‘I was never one for long farewells.’

Eva opened her eyes and stared at him. She wanted to say so many things that she didn’t possess words for. She wanted to explain that she was just not ready. She wanted to be someone older than herself, yet she longed to be ten years of age again.

With a thud the boat bumped against the jetty. Eva wanted the comforting touch of a hand. She reached out in the moonlight and held one tight, never wanting to let go. Brendan glanced at his sister and whispered, ‘You’re hurting my fingers.’

With great courtesy, Jack held the boat steady while she got out.

‘I’m sorry,’ she told him.

‘Don’t be. The fault is mine.’

Eva longed to say more but the young officer had already set his back to her and began to row away along the dark shoreline towards Bruckless Pier.

SIX The Docks

London, August 1922

All night Art had been arguing with university friends about Italian politics in Fletcher’s rooms near Blackfriars. Fletcher was not of like mind to the others: he saw nothing wrong in truckloads of Il Duce’s fascists storming into Milan to end the communist-led strike there with the black-shirted thugs tearing down the Bolshevik flags hanging from the town hall. Fletcher could not understand why Art took such matters so seriously. To him, Mussolini was a clown who would never achieve power, just as Lenin would not hold onto it for long with famine in Russia. Fletcher would have been happier discussing Johnny Weissmuller’s new world swimming record or playing I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate on his gramophone, because, to him, university was merely a lark. Tragedy had set Fletcher’s future in stone, no matter what he studied. With the death of his eldest brother on the Somme, he was set to inherit the family estate. University was a chance to escape from home and discreetly make hay in this unburdened limbo before he came into his inheritance.

Watching him, Art wondered would Thomas possess this same air of haunted gaiety if he had died in battle. So many chaps at the University of London carried a guilty look at having come into their inheritance not by birth but by an elder brother’s death, that Art had learnt to recognise them. The peculiar thing was that they often mistook him for one of their number as if he too was cursed with the stain of underserved wealth. Yet the more he studied politics the more he realised that he was like them. All that distinguished him from his siblings was a fluke of birth, a throw of the dice yielding him absolute access to wealth while the others were left to scramble for minor bequests. Past generations had ensured that this was a chalice he could not refuse. Short of dying, Art had no means of breaking that cycle of indenture.

Yet Art argued now with his college chums that surely to God – if there was a God – the Great War’s slaughter had overturned all previous rules and conventions. Crippled beggars on the London streets were daily reminders that any pretence of innocence was gone. For the Great War to mean anything it had to herald the advent of a new era. Freedom was not about one Kaiser defeating another, it was about granting people the liberty to be truly themselves.

Before the Bolshevik revolution the bulk of humanity had sleepwalked through life, unaware that they could possess total power if they merely looked up from their chains. Every day the imperialist press repeated lies about millions starving in Russia because they were afraid to report what was really occurring there. But once ordinary British workers understood this truth, they would emerge like risen Christs from the tomb, liberated from the inbred fear of their alleged betters. Last year the miners had suffered on strike without the country rising to back them and today it was the engineers’ turn to be locked out. But once the Communist Party was fully organised across Britain a day of reckoning would come.

Fletcher laughed at Art’s intensity and rang the bell for his manservant to fetch more stout. The others agreed with Art’s assertion that the Labour Party had become lured away from its revolutionary roots and was now merely a cloak and dagger ally of imperialist expansion. But Art sensed the hollowness of their convictions. They were flirting with radicalism, like their fathers on Grand Tours of Europe once flirted with exotic dancers. Typically short-sighted, they regarded Lenin’s revolution as too foreign to impinge upon their world. These student discussions were not about genuine revolution, but simply a chance for the privileged idle to enjoy a brief frisson of danger by pretending to be different from their parents. After college they would drop such notions and take up golf and banking, fattening out into premature middle age. Art lost patience with their play-acting and was about to leave, when the manservant returned and sought him out with a sympathetic look.

‘Begging your pardon, Mr Goold Verschoyle, but I thought you should know the news from Ireland. I’m afraid your Michael Collins has been shot dead in an ambush.’

The room went quiet, the others studying his face. They had no interest in the civil war raging in Ireland since the peace treaty was narrowly accepted and British troops had withdrawn. The treaty had divided the country, with the majority of people sick of war and anxious to accept the partitioned Free State which the treaty offered. But Art could not imagine any compromise on a full Republic being accepted by such men as the IRA commander who had once returned the family motor to Maud in the Donegal hills. In the ensuing split he surely sided with the diehards like de Valera and the Countess who were now fighting against Michael Collins and his fellow treaty negotiators whom they accused of betraying the dream of a Republic. Art had initially been excited by this civil war, seeing parallels with the power vacuum in Russia in which Lenin seized authority. But de Valera was no true revolutionary. Art still hoped that both factions might weaken each other sufficiently for a communist takeover, but – with the union leader Jim Larkin sidelined in an American jail – there was nobody of sufficient stature to lead such a coup d’état. Art’s enthusiasm for the IRA had never recovered from his encounter with that Cork commander. It left him feeling occluded from all sides in recent years, as the conflict grew increasingly bloody. The Troubles had taken a toll around Dunkineely, not just in occasional killings and reprisals, but in the way that people came to be judged purely as being on one side or the other. At times in Donegal he was made to feel a foreigner, whereas in London he was viewed as a totally Irish outsider.

Having delivered his news, the manservant slavishly waited for a morsel of acknowledgement.

‘That is shocking,’ Art said. ‘Thank you for letting me know.’

‘They shot him like a dog, sir. Mr Collins claimed that when he signed the peace treaty he was signing his own death warrant and he was right.’

‘Thank you, Jenkins,’ Fletcher interrupted. ‘That will do.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The man placed four bottles of Imperial Russian stout on the table and left. Fletcher leaned over to refill Art’s glass. ‘Damned bad news,’ he said. ‘I liked Collins. He was a murderer but one you could do business with. My sister developed quite an attraction to his picture in the papers when he came to London for the peace talks. The whiff of danger I suppose. You know romantic girls. These must be worrying times.’

‘Yes.’ Art sipped his stout, surprised at how moved he was by this news. Dunkineely would be shocked, even those who felt that Collins had sold out the Republic. He longed to be among people who understood this contradiction. His sister Eva had recently enrolled at the Slade Art School, but she was sleeping in a London girls’ hostel where he would not be welcome at this late hour. Besides, though he loved Eva more than anyone in his family, she was too vague to fully understand what was happening.

He finished his stout and rose to leave, glad to descend into the night air. Collins had been a strong man, a Catholic reactionary, yes, but still a man of both action and thought and he was to be admired. Crossing Queen Victoria Street, Art found himself humming The Soldier’s Song, the illicit anthem sung by rebels during the Easter Rising. The tune attracted a policeman’s attention. He approached Art, then took one look at his expensive clothes and passed by with a surprised nod.

Art knew that if he had been poorly dressed it might have been a different story. He cut down sidestreets, being well-versed in long night walks from Donegal, heading towards Wapping where there were early morning pubs for dockers. Other Irish people might be there, fellow countrymen with whom he could discuss the news. The first pub door he tried was locked, although lights were on inside. He knocked but the drinkers ignored him. It was the same at the next one but when he reached the Thames he fell into step with two young Mayo men, Liam and Tomas, near Tower Bridge Wharf. When he offered to buy them a drink they laughed, claiming that he must be desperate for a cure. Still they knew exactly where to go.

The pub shutters were down to keep out the night. Casual dockers inside were having a pint to steady their nerves before commencing the struggle to find work. More afflicted drinkers sat among them, crippled by alcohol, hands shaking so badly that they could barely lift a glass to their lips. Art bought drinks and then a second round as the three Irishmen discussed Collins’s death and the grip that his new Free State army was gradually gaining over the country. Neither Liam nor Tomas was educated, yet Art felt happier in their company than with the students in Fletcher’s room. Here there was a sense of real life being lived. More Irishmen joined them, distraught at the news, glad of Art’s company and opinions. He bought a final round of drinks, including a whiskey for an elderly English carpenter who initially refused Art’s offer because he had not eaten a meal for several days. The man was seventy-four and told Art he had always found work until his health recently began to fade. Some older stevedores still took him on, knowing that he was a good worker, but most were scared of having a dead weight on their hands. He was a veteran of the 1889 Dockers’ Tanner strike and had been among the first crew two years ago who refused to load coal onto the Jolly George when that ship was due to sail with arms against the Bolsheviks in Russia.