Easter 1945
The three Dublin families – chosen by Art for having never previously known a holiday, beyond day trips to Skerries – would share her slow journey up to Donegal. The route through Northern Ireland was simpler, but Eva knew that – with one husband wanted there for Republican activities – the families were reluctant to cross the border. Standing in Dublin’s Broadstone Station Eva enjoyed watching the excited children clamber in and out of the carriages. Curiosity made her wish to travel alongside them. The three mothers anxiously glanced back along the platform for any sight of their husbands. The guard had appeared with his flag before three men emerged from the public bar to vault the barrier and join their families, joking that they would feel homesick by the time the train passed the Cabra siding.
Climbing into her carriage, Eva leaned out to watch the last man board the train as it slowly began to move. She was right not to introduce herself. They might plague her with questions about the Manor House that she couldn’t answer. The size of the families concerned her, but Art knew what he was doing, having told Eva about his study of Soviet sanatoria. It would be intrusive for her to tell the travelling children how some of them would sleep tonight in the room where she once slept as a child. Their mothers might misunderstand and think that she resented their arrival. But Eva felt no regrets and was simply pleased that Art had found a role for himself. Unexpectedly writing to her some months ago, he had radiated a crusading enthusiasm when outlining his plans to renovate the Manor House as a rest home where slum families might experience the sort of holiday enjoyed as a right by Soviet citizens.
Eva was not sure what intrigued Francis and Hazel about Art’s letter but they had persuaded her to let them spend their Easter holidays working with him in Donegal before the Manor House received its first guests. Now she would join them for the opening, returning to her village after eighteen years.
During this time she often longed to revisit Dunkineely and see the faces that populated her dreams. But she could not have borne to see the Manor House lying empty, with nobody to repair the roof tiles or stop rain splashing through the broken windows. It would have felt like a fairy tale gone wrong. The bewitched castle, not hidden by an enchanted forest but simply abandoned by the prince with the only key who refused to return. Sometimes she still dreamt that her younger self was trapped in those rooms, with neighbours unable to see her banging on the windows as they passed.
Now at last the house would come alive, with laughter again on the stairwell. Francis’s postcard had mentioned rigging up a tent beside the tennis court where Maud and Eva had often slept out in summer in long cotton nightgowns. Tonight she would sleep out there with her daughter and son and tomorrow they would bathe at Paradise Pier. The old pet name for the pier excited her, with memories flooding in as the train slowly journeyed across Ireland.
When they eventually reached Boyle there was a long delay as more fuel was sought before the train crawled past Ballymote and Collooney to terminate at Sligo where Eva was glad to step onto the platform. She could smell the sea and her heart thrilled at being in the west. The Dublin mothers looked apprehensive, surveying this foreign world but their children were ecstatic to be liberated from the cramped carriages. As they raced around the crowded platform, one small girl bumped into Eva. She stepped back and Eva smiled, bending slightly down to the child’s eye level.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Theresa. What’s yours?’
‘Eva.’
‘You’re very small, missus. Why did you stop growing?’
‘I just did. Are you excited?’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘I’m sure there’ll be lovely food in Dunkineely.’
The child ran back to whisper something to her mother who glanced sharply at Eva. The husbands were unloading suitcases tied with twine, though one family’s possessions were in flour sacks. Art had supplied tickets for the unreliable bus service to Donegal town, which, Eva knew, might not depart for hours. The way the families clustered together for protection filled her with foreboding. She should not have mentioned Dunkineely because all the adults were staring at her now. Eva smiled at Theresa who glanced up at her mother for permission before waving back shyly. Walking out through the station forecourt, Eva claimed a window seat on the bus so as to be able to look out at Donegal Bay.
Finally the vehicle chugged into life, with the children crushed into the back seats, complaining of feeling sick. The vehicle was slow and the road badly-surfaced, but every bend drew her closer to home. Rosses Point was visible before they turned inland. Then, after a long wait, came the first view across Donegal Bay, with Slieve League rising up from the vast expanse of sea. There was Kilcar and Killybegs where the fishing fleet would be out and – at the base of the jutting finger of St John’s Point – stood Dunkineely. From here it was only a speck, but she could picture it clearly in her mind.
The bus reached Bundoran, where a sign outside the Atlantic Hotel boasted of every modern convenience, including hot and cold water in the bedrooms. The Corner Teashop retained its handpainted slogan for Dainty teas at moderate prices.
The Dublin children stared excitedly at the holidaymakers along the promenade. The sands stretched for miles, packed with bathers. Cordoned-off sections were equipped with changing huts for women and children, with mixed bathing allowed in some areas. A deputation from the back of the bus asked the driver if this was Dunkineely. The man laughed.
‘You see the priests’ bathing pool out among the rocks? You could drown all of Dunkineely in that puddle without a soul noticing. You need to get another train from Donegal town.’
The two women began to walk back to their disappointed children. Theresa’s mother stopped as they passed Eva.
‘Are you following us, missus? My daughter says you knew where we’re going. Are you from the church?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Me and me sister were snatched off a boat by priests when a Liverpool family offered to feed us during the 1913 Lock-Out. It was the sight of us starving that drove my father back to work. But I’ll not see my chislers denied a holiday because it doesn’t have your blessing.’
‘I’m not Roman Catholic. Art Goold is my brother.’ Eva reached into her bag for two nut roasts she had brought to eat herself. ‘Share these among the children, they must be hungry.’
Both women suspiciously examined the offering.
‘What are these yokes?’ the other mother asked.
‘There’s no meat in it. I don’t eat meat.’
‘No more than ourselves. Sure, who can afford it, missus? But I’ve two pigs’ heads wrapped up in a cloth and we won’t see you stuck tonight.’
The women returned to their seats to share out the food among the children who were too hungry to grumble at the unusual taste. At Ballyshannon, Theresa was sent up with an older girl to say thanks. Eva quoted for them lines written by the town’s poet, William Allingham, about Donegal.
‘Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men:
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!’
The older girl was inhibited and keen to retreat, but Theresa laughed at the poem, with her open face reminding Eva about the paints and brushes in her bag. In recent years Eva had only ever painted walls and ceilings, often working all night, caught up in the hypnotic rhythm with a meditative quality in the strokes letting her open her soul to prayer. It always felt like brushing away the past, making every surface new. Eva knew by now that she would never be an artist, but lately she had started to wonder if she might possibly have a vocation to teach. This evening she planned to erect an easel in the garden in Dunkineely. If children gathered around with their natural fascination, she would pin up a clean sheet and let each child paint whatever possessed their imaginations. She would encourage the others to leave the working child alone, with neither jeers nor comments allowed to interrupt the joy of creation.
‘Give us more of them words.’ Theresa resisted the older girl’s efforts to drag her away.
‘High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and grey
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieve League to Rosses.’
‘Are there really fairies in Donegal?’ Theresa asked.
‘Don’t be silly.’ The older girl finally managed to drag her away. ‘There’s only cow shite and bogmen.’
Eva smiled and stared out as the bus neared Donegal town. Francis and Hazel had promised to collect her by pony and trap, but Art would be unable to transport the Dublin families except by the irregular CDRJC train that meandered towards Killybegs. Exhausted babies cried from the back seat as faces peered out desperate for this journey to end. The bus chugged into the Diamond and everyone clambered off. Hazel and Francis were waiting, bronzed after their week in the sun. Her heart thrilled to see them. Francis could have been Brendan at the same age, good-looking and good-natured, brimming with zest. He kissed her and bowed, pointing to a pony and trap outside Flood’s Garage.
‘Your chariot awaits,’ he said, ‘and darn difficult it was to get.’
Hazel laughed as she kissed Eva. ‘Hello, Mummy. We would never have managed to steal it except that Francis unveiled his Goold Verschoyle cloven hoof and the owner ran off blessing himself.’
Francis gave Eva a gentle squeeze. ‘It’s not that bad. When Mr Floyd in the shop heard you were coming he was thrilled. He harnessed his pony up for you himself.’
Hazel gazed across at the Dublin families. ‘Don’t tell me all those are Uncle Art’s brood. Uncle Art has no faith in Christ, but I hope that Marx is as dab a hand at the loaves and fishes miracle.’
‘Is the house that bad?’ Eva asked anxiously.
‘On the contrary,’ Francis said. ‘It’s so shipshape that a People’s Commissar could eat off the floorboards.’
‘Or even eat the floorboards,’ Hazel added. This physical work had suited them, their eyes tired but happy. Being in Donegal made Eva feel like a girl again, but the plight of the Dublin families troubled her. The Killybegs train was not due for an hour and a stand-off was developing between the children and local youths who taunted them. Eva climbed into the trap and they headed out the road with every bend familiar. Hazel held the reins, though the pony knew his own way. Francis presented Eva with a bar of dark chocolate and two packs of her favourite cigarettes. She scolded him for spending what little money he had.
‘We’re loaded,’ he told her. ‘Uncle Art insisted upon paying us. At the same trudoden as himself.’
‘The same what?’ Eva asked.
‘It’s a labour Day Unit,’ Hazel explained with an edge of good-humoured exasperation. ‘What a peasant on a kolkhoz earns. But collective farms being thin on the ground in Donegal, he based it on the rate that a farm labourer gets. Not that we qualify as peasants, of course.’
‘Or, worse still, kulaks,’ Francis said.
‘Heaven forbid.’ Hazel rolled her eyes. Eva knew that she was dying to regale schoolfriends with stories about her uncle, though in certain circles Hazel was careful not to betray any connection to Art Goold. ‘We’re Byvshie Liudi.’
‘We’ve had long chats on this subject,’ Francis explained, ‘seeing as we had every evening to debate the issue. At first the locals didn’t make us over welcome.’
‘Some villagers hurry their children into their cottages and bless themselves if they see Art coming,’ Hazel said.
‘Not the old men though,’ Francis added. ‘Some still touch their cap to him, out of respect for Grandfather, but their servitude infuriates Art more than the others sprinkling holy water after him.’
‘A brick came through the window the first night we stayed there,’ Hazel said. ‘Glass everywhere. People thought we were two more of his Dublin aficionados. But when they discovered that we were your children their attitude changed. Yesterday people told us about your wedding day.’
That was the last time Eva had travelled along this road, gazing back from the huge car as the crowd ran to the bend of the road to wave her off. She took Francis’s hand as the miles passed. Every bush and stone wall was sacred, every gap where honeysuckle or wild roses grew. This was her dream landscape. Walking with Father past green banks while he recited Walt Whitman poems. Running behind Brendan to hold his bicycle steady as he pedalled furiously before telling her to let go, thrilled to travel thirty yards on his own before tumbling into the ditch. Those were her good dreams. In the bad ones she ran through the dark here in search of Brendan, knowing that a terrifying creature was loose on this road and only she could save him.
‘What was that Russian expression Art had for you?’ Eva asked.
‘Byvshie Liudi.’ Francis pronounced the words carefully. ‘The remnants of the despised tsarist class who refused to play their part in the revolution.’
‘What it means literally is former people,’ Hazel explained. ‘We are former people. Or formerly we were people.’
‘What are we now?’
Francis watched two men working on the bog and laughed. ‘Whatever we are, we’re earning those fellows’ wages and are in dire need of a bath.’
Hazel laughed and spoke of her plans to spend hours soaping in the tub when they got back home to the small house that Eva currently rented during term time in Dublin. But neither that nor Glanmire House or indeed any other address lived in had ever truly felt like home to Eva. For her there had only ever been one true home and she was finally returning there. A childish song entered her mind, composed by her and Maud as girls. Eva could still see herself banging out the notes on Father’s piano while Maud chewed a pencil and strove to find the words.
‘Dunkineely, Dunkineely, Dunkineely wondrous fair,
Many visitors this summer your many joys did share.
First came the Hawkins family, brother, sisters, Ma and Pa,
Then Eric, Percy and Cecil from the Royal School, Armagh…’
Dunkineely, wondrously fair. They were getting close now. First she would spy the slated roofs that never knew thatch and then, climbing the hill, the shaky village pump where children constantly queued during her childhood. Would ducks still splash in rain-filled potholes along the street? Had anyone bothered to tend the wealth of sweet peas beneath Father’s window – the smell of which, after rain, always made his heart swell with life’s ever-budding freshness? They were finally here now, mounting the hill with everything the same and everything different. Mr Floyd must have been watching out because he rushed from his shop to halt the pony and present Eva with a white twist of paper brimming with sweets.
‘Welcome home, Miss Eva.’ She had not been called that in decades. Other faces congregated around before she could finish thanking him. Mr MacShane and his son from the pub, Lizzie Cunningham and Kathleen Lynch whom Eva had held on the day she was born. Hazel and Francis stayed back, letting her savour the euphoria of homecoming. She was momentarily too preoccupied with embracing childhood friends to turn around and see the Manor House. A slight silence occurred when she did so, with people letting the sight speak for itself. The knot of neighbours drifted away as Art appeared in the doorway. The garden had obviously become a wilderness, which he had mown with a scythe. Broken panes were replaced and the windowframes painted, but the walls seemed scarred and desolate. Still it radiated the aura of home as she ran towards it.
‘Welcome back.’ Art stepped aside to let her enter the hall. The carpets were gone, the bare floorboards unvarnished. The walls were freshly painted, but the paint was the colour of amnesia. The drawing room door was open. Father’s piano was there, discoloured, with the keys yellow. It seemed small. The only other recognisable features were the fireplace and the window.
Art had assembled an assortment of furniture, with chairs crammed into every space and a long table piled with leaflets and magazines about the Soviet Union. He had also acquired a wind-up gramophone. Eva flicked through a selection of symphonies by unfamiliar composers like Tikhon Khrennikov. She imagined the Dublin families here, men sweeping these books aside to play cards, children still dreaming of Bundoran. Art watched her.
‘The records ate into my budget,’ he said. ‘I had to cut back on other things, but music is so important.’
‘Do you know how many are coming?’ she asked.
‘By Soviet standards this will be quite uncrowded.’
‘We’re not in the Soviet Union,’ Hazel reminded him from the doorway.
Art smiled. ‘We’ve had good discourse,’ he told Eva. ‘You reared them as Father reared us, to be independent thinkers. The important thing is not to agree but to be able to discuss issues openly.’
‘And is that what you get in the Soviet Union?’ Hazel taunted. ‘Try discussing something there and you wind up in a salt mine.’
Art shrugged indulgently. ‘How can I blame you for parroting lies when you only know Western propaganda? Stay another week and you’ll see that to Dublin slum dwellers this is paradise.’
Hazel snorted and went to help Francis unharness the pony. The visitors would arrive soon, these rooms crammed with people. Eva welcomed life returning to the Manor House, but she coveted one quiet moment to confront each room again. Father’s study had become Art’s makeshift office, with the word Caretaker painted on the door. A picture of Stalin displaced Father’s portrait of Martin Luther.
Her shoes were loud as she climbed the bare stairs to open her old bedroom door. Only the windowframe looked the same and the slope of the ceiling meeting the eaves. The room was spotlessly clean, but in a militaristic functional way. Art had obviously built the five tightly cramped wooden bunks. Two tiers of rough canvas were tacked across each frame. A child rolling off the top tier would face a terrifying drop. The walls were the same antiseptic colour as the hallway, reminding Eva of an army barracks. She approached the window and heard Art enter behind her. For a moment Eva imagined that he was Mother on that distant evening when mackerel swarmed to their death and her perfect childhood seemed turned upside-down. She could almost feel Mother’s hand inches from her hair.
‘It has been difficult,’ Art said. ‘Local people are not keen to co-operate. The priests poison their minds. I should have brought more supplies from Dublin.’
‘Are you nervous?’
‘Once we co-operate as a collective everything will go smoothly. I don’t mean you, of course. You must go visiting with your children. Those neighbours who speak to me ask always about you and Brendan.’
‘What do you tell them?’
Art was silent. They had learnt not to discuss Brendan. Eva looked down, imagining Mother tending the flowering beds of sweet peas, with the sound of Father’s piano and the thud of tennis balls from the back garden.
‘Do you remember a sandy-haired boy herding sheep with bruises down his legs?’ Eva asked.
‘What boy?’
‘Grandpappy let you drive the trap. We were returning from a picnic when sheep blocked the road. You wanted to give him your shoes.’
‘I don’t remember.’
Eva turned, shocked. ‘You must remember. That was the moment which led to all this.’
Art shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ve forgotten. I recall no interest in all this, as you call it, till poor Ffrench educated me. You should visit his grave. He was a good man, stuck to his beliefs, yet people here accepted him in a way they can’t seem to accept me.’
Eva knew that local people had seen Mr Ffrench more as a likeable eccentric than a threat. Art’s intensity was different and as dangerous as a Christian actually trying to live like Christ.
‘Do people ignore you?’
‘They’re civil, generally. Two evenings a week I go down to MacShane’s pub for a bottle of Swithwicks and a quiet talk with Mr MacShane about the old days. But mostly I’m too busy with my work.’
A babble of Dublin voices filled the street below. The pump went silent. Eva knew that every door in the village was closed, with locals standing behind lace curtains to watch the families arrive.
‘You should meet your guests,’ Eva suggested.
Art surveyed the room for dirt and then, as a last touch, hung a silver picture frame from the nail in the wall. It was the same nail that once held Eva’s picture of a girl kneeling in prayer. She recognised the frame as having previously held a family photograph. It now contained a quotation, typed in capital letters.
‘WE DEMAND THAT OUR COMRADES BE GUIDED BY THE VITAL FORCE OF THE SOVIET ORDER – ITS POLITICS. ONLY THUS CAN OUR YOUTH BE REARED, NOT IN A DEVIL-MAY-CARE ATTITUDE BUT IN A STRONG AND VIGOROUS REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT.’ ANDREI ZHDANOV
Eva read the slogan, then had to leave the room. Art’s old bedroom was similarly rigged out as a cramped boys’ dormitory with iron beds set up in the remaining three bedrooms for the adult couples. Eva looked out of the back window. No clue remained that a tennis court ever stood in the mown meadow of the garden. But a tent was pitched beside the slope. Hazel appeared at the top of the stairs.
‘Did he not think that the children might want to sleep in with their parents?’ Eva asked.
‘Art claims that communal sleeping will foster closer comradeship among the children. He threw out all kinds of old family documents and books before we came. They’re piled in the yard. I don’t know if there’s anything you might want to keep.’
Eva carried her case down the back stairs to avoid the families crowding into the hall. Children’s boots stomped on the bare floorboards. A child tunelessly banged the piano keys. The kitchen was stark and spotless but contained little food. It was the first time Eva had entered this room without some cat raising its eyes to observe her. Out in the yard Art had dumped what he regarded as rubbish: mildewed novels more likely to be read than the political tracts inside, and gramophone records like Yes, We Have No Bananas – out of date but with more chance of being played than Khrennikov’s symphonies. Old family snapshots had become stuck together among Father’s papers, illegible after the rain. The remnants of Byvshie Liudi, former people.
Eva wanted to turn away from this ugly rubbish tip. But she kept sifting through the past, searching for something to hold onto. Some books near the bottom were unsoiled, but it was two sheaves of pages typed in crude columns and sewn with thread that she extracted with a surge of excitement. Maud’s photograph was on the cover, with the legend, ‘The Editor at her residence’. Above it was the letterhead that Eva had designed: The Dunkineely News, summer issue. Price 4d. There had only been summer issues. Eva remembered the hours Maud spent compiling this family newspaper. Father had written an essay for each one, with poems coaxed from Brendan and Art. Eva had provided the illustrations while Maud as editor recorded every tiny event:
The Goold Verschoyle staff reporter has made careful notes about the behaviour of our English visitor, Mr Oliver Hawkins. Reports indicate that he plays tennis smartly and wets his hair on Sundays. He started smoking cigarettes at the age of seven and is rumoured to wear pink pyjamas. While watching the ladies’ tennis, Mr Oliver Hawkins was seen – at a crucial moment – to wipe his nose with his green handkerchief which matches his socks…
Eva’s hand shook as she read these pages that had somehow survived. No issues were ever as carefree after news of Oliver Hawkins’s death at Ypres. Maud had been changed by her first encounter with death. They all had. A dress rehearsal for the deaths to come.
Voices were raised inside the house as Art argued with the exhausted travellers.
‘If I wanted my son to share a prison cell I’d have stuck him in Mountjoy. St Joseph himself couldn’t stop those bunks collapsing if a child bounced on them.’
‘This is no prison,’ Art retorted. ‘Anyone can walk out the door at any time.’
‘Walk where?’ a woman said. ‘There’s nothing here.’
‘There’s fresh air and sand.’
‘If we wanted them we could have walked to Dollymount and got a few chips at least. You promised us things for the kids.’
‘There are books and…’
‘Fuck your books,’ another man interrupted. ‘You’d want a few amusements. Somewhere like Bray. I mean is there even a bookie’s in this kip?’
‘There’s a bookmaker’s in Donegal town.’
‘What use is that if I want to stick on a bet? You’d need Hannibal’s shagging elephants to make that trip.’
‘Never mind the bookie’s,’ some woman said. ‘I’m not sticking my kids in with strangers we don’t know.’
‘I’d mind you not to cast accusations on my kids,’ the man retorted. ‘Especially as your sons nearly wore their fingers to stumps scratching their scalps all the way here.’
‘Please, comrades,’ Art interrupted. ‘Nothing is achieved by arguing. We can vote on sleeping arrangements in council. Remember this rest home is a collective. Now I have a rota of duties for us all drawn up.’
‘Hold your horses, pal,’ the first man said. ‘My wife is not skivvying for strangers. We look after our own brood and that’s it.’
Eva moved off, not wanting to hear the arguments. Further down the garden it was possible to ignore the voices. She closed her eyes and recalled holding her pet rabbit while watching Father practise at the window with a black cat motionless on the piano. That was the room where Father had written his essays for The Dunkineely News, delighted when he occasionally managed to later place one as An Irishman’s Diary in the Irish Times. She sat on the slope to read his words in the family newspaper:
How our idle moments bring us closer to the wider truths of the universe. These truths buried within us all. Take our gardener, a man of few words, yet I have heard him set forth the beauties of cliff and bay with a clarity quite worthy of one trained in word-painting. The pity is that in a country so fair there should be room for fancied differences of caste and creed…
Perhaps this last line had been a spark to Art’s rebellion. He did not recall encountering the sandy-haired boy on the road, just like Eva in turn could not remember reading this essay before. Maybe Maud and Thomas and Brendan also had completely different memories of childhood in this paradise which none of them had ever recaptured. However perhaps on this trip she might recapture the magic of painting at least. Opening her case she erected the portable easel, pinned up a sheet and took out brushes and paints. She sat on the slope to mix the paints and raised the brush, but an invisible force prevented her touching the sheet. Painting had been instinctive once, a world of lines begging to be drawn. She remembered Father’s phrase about the ever-budding freshness of life and realised that she no longer knew how to capture it.
A sound made her turn. Theresa and the older girl from the bus were observing her, along with a tiny child whose hands they both held.
‘What are you writing?’ Theresa asked.
‘I’m painting.’
‘We’re going home tomorrow,’ the older girl announced. ‘This is an awful Godforsaken kip. Bundoran looked like a bit of gas but the silence here would drive you daft.’
Theresa ignored her companion, her eyes fixed on the sheet of paper.
‘Well, go on then,’ she said, ‘show us how you do this painting stuff.’
Eva held out the brush. ‘You have a go.’
‘Don’t be stupid, missus, sure I can’t paint nothing.’
‘Try. It’s fun.’
Theresa laughed nervously.
‘Come away, Theresa,’ her companion urged. ‘She’s making a cod of you.’ The girl went to move off but Theresa held her ground, although still refusing to accept the brush that Eva held out. ‘Stop being thick, Theresa,’ the older girl snapped. ‘They’re all mad Protestants in this dump. I’ll leave you here for them to snatch your soul if you’re not careful.’
Theresa reached out to take the brush. ‘Can you teach me?’
‘I can help you to teach yourself.’
‘Jaysus, Theresa!’ The older girl stormed off in disgust, dragging the tiny child behind her. Theresa stared at the sheet, terrified to dirty it.
‘Me teacher in school is always jeering that I can’t draw a straight line.’
‘You don’t have to only draw what’s outside. Draw what’s inside your mind, draw your emotions. They don’t have straight lines, do they?’
‘I don’t know. How much do the sheets cost? Me Ma will kill me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. What were them words you said on the bus?’
‘Up the airy mountain…?’
‘Yeah.’
‘…Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting,
For fear of little men.’
Theresa dipped the brush in the green paint. It came out smeared with too much paint and a blob landed on the grass. Eva showed her how to regulate the amount of paint and create a brush stroke instead of just smudging the paint on. Other than that she remained silent and simply watched. This was where a teacher belonged, not up on a platform but at the child’s shoulder. And even the term teacher was wrong. Rather it should be evoker, someone willing to be a silent instrument drawing out what already resided within the inner radiance of a child’s imagination.
Theresa progressed laboriously at first but gradually gained confidence. Her eyes were fixed on the sheet, oblivious to the children who came to gape but were reluctant to approach too closely. The adult voices went silent in the house, with a temporary truce negotiated. Smells of cooking came from the kitchen and Eva imagined the two pigs’ heads boiling away. She wanted to ask if people were really leaving tomorrow, but didn’t wish to interrupt her first ever pupil. The thrill she had known as a child, the limitless possibility of every brush stroke, was back – only now Eva was experiencing it through Theresa’s excitement. She didn’t know who was more apprehensive when the girl stepped back with uncertainty in her eyes.
‘It’s the airy mountain,’ she explained.
Eva examined the sheet, saturated from corner to corner with streaks of green paint. She had never seen anything so tangibly and visibly green.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
The small girl’s eyes shone with pride. ‘Can I do another then? Will you pin up a sheet?’
‘Put it up yourself,’ Eva said. ‘That’s what artists do.’
‘Am I an artist?’
‘You are what you want to be. What will you draw next?’
‘The sky over the airy mountain, teacher.’
Eva taught her how to clean the brush, then watched the child work with renewed energy. She was quicker now, singing as she painted. It was the first time anyone had called Eva ‘teacher’, but Eva knew that the child was teaching her. Not to interfere or judge or suggest. Mother had known this, never trying to improve Eva’s sketches as a child, letting what was inside find its own way out.
Art stood at the window, looking utterly alone. Francis appeared behind him, talking kindly as Art shook his head. The Dubliners were wrong about the bunks. They were strong and when this experiment collapsed and Art returned to Dublin, one day Eva would hire him to build twelve miniature easels, paying him the daily rate of a jobbing carpenter. Tonight she would cross Dunkineely to visit old friends. But after that she would be glad to return to Dublin and find the courage to start planning her freedom, the chance to live her own life in her own way.
Theresa stepped back, smearing a thick trail of blue paint down the wooden easel. The child was so excited that Eva knew she wanted to dance. The sheet was soaked in blue, her fingers were blue and there were blue streaks in her hair as she called out in triumph: ‘Would you just have a gawk at the blueness of that blue sky!’