The children’s arrival had led her to suppress many of what Freddie described as her ‘notions’ as she focused on the role of being a good mother. It seemed that finally this was the person she was meant to be, not some mystic artist. Only the rich could afford to indulge such conceits and Glanmire House had made them anything but rich. The Goold Verschoyles were soft compared to the Fitzgeralds because they were raised soft. Freddie had grown up without that cushion of money after his father died when he was seven, leaving him to survive by evolving a hail-fellow-well-met mask to hide any pain from the world and from himself. Eva should never have expected him to understand her abstract spiritual search. He understood the best cover for shooting woodcock, the relative merits of retrievers over red setters, the measure of good whiskey and how to deal firmly but fairly with servants – the attributes the Fitzgeralds were steeped in. Over the past eight years, as their guesthouse flagged, Eva had learnt that unfortunately he did not understand money.
Marriage taught Eva to understand camouflage, singing hymns each Sunday because she was expected to in the Fitzgerald pew in the small Protestant church beyond Glanmire Wood where Freddie always gave the reading. Back at the house her old books rested on high shelves that even the housemaid had stopped dusting. Some afternoons, lying down for her hour’s rest, Eva tried to get lost within them, but more often turned to the American thrillers loaned to her by Mr Clements. It was hard to see herself as a questing child of the universe now: she was a Fitzgerald wife and mother – more mother than wife if honest. Since the children’s birth she had thrown herself so utterly into their imaginative lives that Freddie was gradually being frozen from her emotions. She had little energy for anything but sleep by the time of night when guests could be left to nurse their whiskey and swap tales of poor shooting luck.
This emotional retreat caused intense guilt when she saw Freddie locked out from his children, unable to find a key to enter their fantasy world. He was growing old before his time, already acquiring the settled mannerisms of a middle-aged man. Behind his occasionally explosive anger she knew that he desperately needed love and, when she possessed energy, she tried to reach out. But her priorities were elsewhere and she could not help magnifying his faults when she grew exhausted. Unsurprisingly, he increasingly spent his time outdoors in baggy trousers with his Holland ejector 12-bore gun and the few guests they could muster. This was his domain. To Eva, he left the house and the hiring of maids who rarely stayed long before being lured away to England or the American cities glimpsed on celluloid in Castlebar on their evenings off.
Eva turned over in bed, with all thought of sleep banished. It wasn’t just this sense of being confined that kept her awake. There was something unsettling beyond her window, an intruder in the wood. Eva thought she had heard a distant motor ten minutes ago. Perhaps Freddie had returned by the late train and gone drinking in the town. He could have driven into the ditch at the turn for their wood and be stumbling up the avenue trying not to waken her.
She glanced at the other single bed in this damp basement to which they decamped whenever a full complement of guests was staying. The lord and lady of the manor cooped up beside the ghost in the wine cellar. Its sole advantage was that serving girls were less likely to disturb her here over trivial matters, too scared of the presence they claimed to sense in the nearby doorway of the wine cellar. A curious melancholic foreboding did pervade that narrow crypt-like room, radiating onto the passageway step directly outside it. Initially Eva was not told how a former butler once hung himself from a hook there, after being wrongly accused of stealing a misplaced five pound note. Freddie’s mother in Dublin had worried lest the tale frighten her, so at first Eva never understood the maids’ apprehension on being asked to store provisions in the cellar or why she herself often shivered at that step. It was two years before their elderly neighbour, Miss MacManus of Killeaden House near Kiltimagh, told Eva how the butler had been unable to contemplate being dismissed when his honesty was challenged. ‘Let him know you’re there for him,’ old Miss MacManus urged. ‘These Fitzgeralds are too practical to understand. Pray for his release because he can no longer pray for himself.’
The butler had acquired a limp from three decades of breaking in his master’s new shoes and Mary, the housemaid from Foxford, and the kitchen maid, Brigid, claimed to hear his distinctive squeak of leather at night. They locked the room they shared in the outhouse loft, maintaining that an unseen presence often tried the doorknob. Hurrying down the twilit avenue on evenings off, they used to scream when Francis followed them through the trees in a white sheet, until Eva discovered his tricks. The boy was more gallant now, an eight-and-a-half-year-old chaperone who escorted them through the darkening woods that he loved, utterly unafraid as he scampered back alone.
The young farm labourers who had accompanied various maids back up the avenue were always more fearful of encountering Fitzgeralds than ghosts. They gravitated towards the shadows when within sight of Glanmire House. From this basement window, Eva had sometimes observed their barely visible shapes among the trees. With a muted ache, she would envisage the brush of hands along thighs. The scrimmage over each button slowly undone, with outer fortifications surrendered between kisses until the girl knew it was time to break free and flit across the lawn, fleeing from ghosts and aroused young men.
Freddie dismissed talk of ghosts as superstition yet always suggested that Eva let Bess, their sheepdog, sleep in the basement when he was away. But Bess – though normally fearless – grew so unsettled on the only night when Eva tried this, pacing the room and whining, that she had merely increased Eva’s unease. Still she wished she were here tonight as she sat up in bed now, because this sense of an intrusive presence made her apprehensive. Five minutes ago Bess and the two gun dogs had commenced a fierce barking from their kennels. She wondered could it be Mary, sneaking out to meet her Blueshirt boyfriend. Perhaps they lay breast to breast now on the overgrown slope beyond the lawn, with the maid’s low cries smoothed by his kisses. Eva knew that she was allowing her views on Mary’s morals to be swayed by Mrs McGrory’s dislike of the maid’s politics. Mary gave cheek unlike the local girls whom Eva generally employed. But surely the maid had more sense than to take such risks with a man?
The intruders could be robbers or IRA men from Leitrim – where rumours of communist unrest were rife – come to raid Freddie’s gun cabinet. Last month the IRA had murdered Admiral Boyle Somerville in front of his wife in County Cork, accusing him of being a British recruiting agent because he gave a reference to a local man wishing to join the Royal Navy. In recent years, their conflict against General O’Duffy’s Blueshirts had divided the locality. With the Blueshirts now in disarray, the IRA might feel free to attack whomever they wished. They could be hunting for Mr Clements to deliver their summary justice. Although anonymous threats were made to burn out the Fitzgeralds during the civil war, they had probably not emanated from Turlough where the family was respected. Still she discovered hidden fault lines when asking the local grocer and publican, Mr Durcan – the first local Catholic to own a car – where he had been born. ‘On the side of the Bohola Road, mam,’ he’d replied tersely. ‘After my father died from apoplexy when your in-laws evicted us from our cottage.’
Eva rose to peer up through the basement window, trying to convince herself that she was mistaken. With a house full of guests, she didn’t need a phobia about intruders to add to her existing cocktail of worries. Becoming acutely conscious of her nakedness, she donned some underclothes and a nightgown. Goethe’s poems lay open on the table under the window and she recalled the poem she had read before blowing out the candle, about an erl-king luring children to their death in the woods. Entering the passageway she passed the wine cellar, unable to prevent a trickle of cold sweat down her backbone from the irrational dread that a ghostly hand might seize her. She breathed a childish sigh of relief as she climbed the stairs and pushed open the baize door into the silent main house.
&nbs
p; Francis and Hazel were sleeping quietly in the nursery where the fire’s dying embers cast patterns on the ceiling. It was impossible to check the four guest bedrooms, though she doubted if the Dublin Roman Catholic, the Tyrone gentleman and the two Staffordshire guests who shared a room were wandering about at this hour. Mr Clements was in London on business, so his room was empty. She wondered could it be the elderly governess, Miss Crossan, whose proprietary way of sitting up at night drove Freddie to distraction. A low fire in the hall grate made her feel exposed to any prying eyes at the window as she unlocked the gun cabinet and chose the lightest gun. She did not bother loading it, hoping that the sight alone might scare off intruders.
At the front door Eva hesitated, suspecting that nobody would feel intimidated by her shaking with fear in a dressing gown. She only needed to cry out for guests to emerge from their bedrooms, pulling up braces and lighting candles as they gently ridiculed her fears. She dreaded them ribbing Freddie if no intruder was found almost as much as she dreaded a confrontation with one. But now she could discern definite sounds outside as several pairs of boots crossed the gravel. They passed the front steps and veered to the left. Eva opened the door and stood in the night air, clutching the gun. Traces of blood lingered on the steps where guests had displayed their bag of slaughtered game, after being taken out by Mikey in his master’s absence.
Three men were ahead of her, crouching down to peer at her basement window. These were not IRA men or robbers but voyeurs. Perhaps they often spied on her, with the village aware of Freddie’s absences. Had they seen her kneel in prayer with her back to the window or cry herself asleep with a pillow between her knees? She was about to confront them, when one man tossed a pebble against the glass. His action confused Eva. Perhaps they wished to make her wake up and walk sleepily towards the window, unsure if she had heard something? Yet they didn’t back away from view. If she were down there Eva would be able to identify their faces. The man scooped up another pebble but his older companion put out a hand to restrain him, listening intently. Eva remained as still as if she were the voyeur. Still she must have made some noise because the older man rocked on his heels and sprang back to knock the gun from her hands, sending her sprawling on the grass with his hand covering her mouth. She bit into his palm and he winced and drew back his hand as if to slap her. A whisper stilled them both.
‘Let her go, for God’s sake. That’s my sister!’
The older man rolled off, nursing his palm, and left Eva to stare up into her brother’s face. Art’s clothes were ragged but the branding iron of Marlborough College meant that he could never pass for a tramp. Even in a mud-streaked suit he looked handsome, with the stubble of several days’ travel making him seem older than thirty-four. By comparison the youngest of the trio was an earnest baby-faced youth.
‘We didn’t mean to scare you.’ Art reached down to help Eva up, then hissed at the older man: ‘Never attack a woman, Gralton.’
‘She startled me, Goold,’ his companion protested in an accent that blended West of Ireland intonations with a pronounced American twang. ‘Sensing a gun at your back is darn uncomfortable.’
The man’s use of Art’s abridged surname was more shocking than his previous lunge. ‘Goold’ made Art sound like an amputee. Verschoyle was their true name. Grandpappy had merely assumed his wife’s name of Goold when coming into her Limerick estates. Art shrugged, recognising her distress at another family connection severed. But Eva’s heart thrilled at his unexpected appearance. He towered over her as they embraced and she felt safe no matter how bizarre the hour. Art was always her minder who made every day special. She remembered him bringing home schoolchums who played the balalaika, laughed a lot and let her win at tennis – boys utterly unlike his current companions who eyed her mistrustfully.
‘Could we go inside?’ Art whispered. ‘It’s not safe out here where we might be overheard.’
Eva didn’t want to risk them making noise by trooping through the main hall. Indeed she didn’t want his companions in her home at all. She longed to have Art to herself, to sit in the kitchen and feed him, talking openly to someone who understood her. The family only knew that he had returned from Russia because last year his name appeared in a Dublin court case concerning the banning of the Friends of Soviet Russia. Eva told them to slip around to the servants’ door. She re-entered the hall, locked the door and quickly went downstairs with more than ghosts to fear now. Darting along the narrow passageway she unlocked the back door. The youngest man brushed past and when they reached the kitchens Eva heard him brusquely mutter, ‘The first thing we ban, Goold, is the tradesman’s entrance.’
‘What do you want, Charlie?’ Art snapped. ‘To wake every imperialist tourist in Mayo?’
Yet when the youth sat at the table where she could see his face, he looked more hungry and exhausted than belligerent. She felt sorry for him, whatever he was doing with these men.
The range was almost out but she raked it up before adding turf and putting on the heavy kettle to boil. Art came over to place a hand apologetically on her shoulder. ‘I’d never have come here had I somewhere else to go.’
‘You know you’re always welcome, Art.’
‘I’m not the one who’s staying.’
She glanced at the table. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That’s Jim Gralton.’ He saw her blank look. ‘Do you never read newspapers?’
‘I’ve two small children to raise.’
‘What sort of country do you want to raise them in?’
‘Don’t lecture me,’ Eva said. ‘You’re not on a platform now, Mr Goold.’
‘You changed your name too.’ Art sounded defensive.
‘It’s hardly the same thing. I got married.’
‘So how is the old duffer?’
‘Freddie and I are both fine.’
‘Mother doesn’t think so.’
‘I haven’t written to Mother for months.’
‘That’s why she doesn’t think you’re fine.’
Eva saw his companions hungrily eyeing the soda bread wrapped in towels to cool for the morning. There was so much she wanted to tell Art and much that he might reveal if they were alone.
‘I like the old duffer,’ Art said. ‘Freddie is solid, he earths you to reality.’
‘Freddie thinks you’re insane. My crazy Bolshevik brother that nobody here likes to mention…’ Eva’s fingers brushed against his stubble. ‘Are you happy, Art?’
‘Who could be happy back in this country?’ Tiredly, he leaned against the wall. ‘I see children die in Dublin every day from the most curable disease – poverty. Twenty-five thousand families packed into four thousand tenements where the landlords only spend money on thugs to evict those falling behind in their rent. In Russia I saw how life could be when a genius co-ordinates a blueprint. Here people are happiest being led like sheep by their priests.’
‘Do they accept you?’
‘Who?’
‘The people you’re with.’
‘Why wouldn’t they? I work as hard as any man on the docks.’
‘You’re still not one of them.’
‘Every man is equal in this struggle,’ Art said. ‘You imagine me better educated than my comrades but I was a hundred times more ignorant. There were so many lies I had to unlearn. People look at me now and actually see me. They don’t see you. They see a Fitzgerald and before that a Goold Verschoyle. In Dunkineely, villagers were trained like dogs to fawn at our name. It’s not until you see yourself reflected in a policeman’s polished baton that you realise who you really are.’
Eva remembered a summer’s day and a sandy-haired farm boy with mottled bruises on his legs staring up at Art in Grandpappy’s trap. The slow process of losing her brother had commenced there. Art took her hand for a moment.
‘I visited Dunkineely last week, the first time in years. I called to see Ffrench and tried to talk to Father but we only quarrelled again. Mother is worried for you. Did she ever climb t
o the top of this wood?’
‘With her arthritis I doubt it.’
‘She said that in a dream she watched you run in distress towards three oak trees in a clearing here. You put your arms around one which gave you comfort. It sounds nonsensical, but you were always on her wavelength.’
‘I’ll get your companions some food,’ Eva said, agitatedly.
‘Do the oaks exist?’
Eva shrugged and entered the pantry, where three recently slaughtered ducks hung. She wondered had she mentioned the oaks in a letter to Mother. They marked the wood’s most inaccessible border, guarded by briars and hawthorn bushes. But the spot remained precious to her since Francis’s birth. Eva turned to Art who had followed her into the narrow room.
‘It isn’t that I’m not on your wavelength too,’ she said. ‘But often I feel life here closing in on me. It’s hard to keep my antennae open. Circumstances are difficult, Freddie and I are poor.’
Art examined the shelves. ‘You’re not. I’ve seen poverty.’
‘There are different types of poverty, like different types of need. Your struggle is not the only one. Go in to your friends, I won’t be long.’
There was whisky that Freddie didn’t know she had hidden and cold meat for sandwiches during tomorrow’s shoot. Eva brought in anything she could spare. Art’s companions ate like they had not seen food for days, though she noticed how he held back. She made more tea, alert in case the maids stirred early.
Art introduced his youngest companion. ‘This is Charlie Donnelly, student and poet. More poet than student these days, I’m afraid. His university studies have suffered since he fell into bad company.’
The older man laughed but Donnelly scowled.
‘Activist,’ he corrected. ‘More party activist these days. Poetry is a luxury that must earn its keep.’
Despite his intensity Eva thought that he looked impossibly young to be involved in whatever they were doing.
The Family on Paradise Pier Page 21