September 1946
Heavy full-length drapes drawn across the window gave the bedroom an appearance of twilight, though it was only early afternoon. The door was ajar and Eva knew that Mother was patiently waiting to say goodbye in the bed by the window. Leaving her bag in the hall, Eva walked back upstairs, stung by an aching familiarity. This might be Donegal except that their roles were reversed. Back then Eva had been the figure in bed, the aftertaste of hot milk staining her tongue as she waited for Mother to stroke her hair. Now at forty-three, Eva realised that she was older than Mother had been on those childhood nights when even the crickets outside the window seemed hushed in expectation of her arrival. And Mother…? For a moment Eva half expected a nine-year-old girl to greet her when she entered the room.
The hired nurse crept out onto the landing and placed one finger to her lips to indicate that Mother had drifted off to sleep. She held open the door, anxious to slip downstairs and savour more of the butter that Eva had brought over from Ireland two weeks ago. Mother’s tea ration in the kitchen was unused and Eva had told the nurse to take it for her children. Since Father’s death Mother had gradually lost interest in everything except the fate of her youngest son.
The nurse’s cigarette smoke lingered in the sick room but could not cloak the musty odours surrounding a dying woman. Eva approached the bed on tiptoes. Mother had shrunk even in the last few days, leaving Eva with severe reservations about venturing into London. Her features were creased with pain but her hair was soft and fine like a child’s. Through the open wardrobe door Eva glimpsed the scarves that Francis had once dressed up in. They were folded beside the dusty hatboxes and mothballed dresses Mother used to wear in Donegal. Maud had inherited Mother’s fashion sense, which had bypassed Eva. Yet Maud – who, home at last from her family’s enforced exile in South Africa, would arrive this evening to take over this vigil – was like their brothers in being immersed in politics.
It was Eva who inherited many of Mother’s ‘beliefs’ – though ‘intimations’ might be a better word. The sense that there might be other states and truths, tantalisingly close yet impossible to grasp, revelations you had to patiently await in the hope that one day they might reveal themselves, those signposts that Mother had sought through spirit messages during planchette. Eva had sought them too as a child by spinning around until dizzy, half expecting – as the shaky world sorted itself to rights – to glimpse a minute crack in reality, a peep into a parallel existence.
However, despite what people termed her unworldliness, Mother had managed her life well, perpetually keeping one foot in reality. Finding a perfect partner in love, maintaining a fine house until her son destroyed it, being always able to hold up her head. This thought increased Eva’s sense of failure. So much of Eva’s life had already occurred, yet there was a sense that she was still only waiting for it to start. Eva moved softly about the sickroom, disturbed by the pervasive odour of oncoming death. The Great Outlaw – Mother’s favourite book about Christ – lay on the bedside locker beside Sir Arthur Eddington’s The Expanding Universe. Opening the drawer she examined the small bottles of perfume that Mother had nursed through the war. But she could not find the hand lotion which Mother had always used after gardening, a fragrance that summoned up the certainty of childhood nights.
How long was it since Mother had been able to garden? Her arthritis had grown so acute that even holding a pen was torture. Eva could sense the first canker of it within her own bones, a legacy of the damp basement in Glanmire House. It was a mystery how Mother had managed to keep writing to British and Russian officials since Father died. Every line must have represented physical agony, yet she had been kept going by the need to quench the greater anguish in her heart. Years of curt replies were filed in the bedside drawer, expressing regret at being unable to supply information. Eva picked up Mother’s most precious perfume and spilt several drops on the pillow. The scent roused her. Mother’s head twitched, a small moan escaping her lips before she opened her eyes to look at her daughter.
‘I thought you were someone else.’
‘I know.’
‘I dreamt he came to see me…only he was an old man like Grandpappy. A white beard and dead eyes…but I knew him…my baby…trying to tell me something.’ Mother lips were so cracked she could barely talk. Eva soaked a face cloth to moisten them and took her hand that felt cold and bony, the fingers permanently contorted.
‘I won’t go to London,’ Eva said. ‘It’s more important to stay with you.’
‘You will go, like we agreed.’ Mother’s eyes were determined. ‘It’s the biggest night of your husband’s life. He needs you beside him when he gets his MBE. Do this for him, then afterwards you must tell him your plans.’
‘I’m afraid.’
‘Of what?’ Mother closed her eyes and Eva knew that the pain had come for her. ‘I’ll still be here when you get back.’
‘Maud will arrive soon. She can phone…if I’m needed.’
‘I need you to see this through.’ Every word was difficult, with the doctor’s injection still two hours away. ‘I should never have let you marry that man. You have the right to be happy. Am I leaving you enough money?’
‘Don’t talk about money.’
‘I have to. I must at least set one thing right. The auctioneer…he’ll wait for the balance until after probate?’
‘Yes. Now try to rest and don’t stress yourself.’
‘How can I rest?’ Mother pulled her hand away and closed her eyes, drained by the effort to talk. The uncharacteristic anger in her whisper surprised Eva. But, as this vigil was unfolding it felt as if a buried seam of pain was gradually seeping out from Mother. She gave a muffled groan, though Eva couldn’t tell if her distress arose from a dream or from the physical pain that she was enduring. These two worlds seemed blurred. Some afternoons with her pain at its apex and the doctor trying to fathom how much of the precious ration of painkiller he could afford to give her, Mother called out to people no longer living. Not just to Father but to her own parents and others whose names Eva barely knew. The one name she never called for was Art who – as Freddie phrased it – was still playing at being Christ in the desert. Mother never criticised Art, but Eva felt that he should be given the chance to be here.
Eva picked up her handbag, undid the clasp and fingered the envelope inside. Mother’s breathing settled into a regular pattern, allowing Eva time to ponder her dilemma. Mother had a right to know about this envelope addressed to her, but only if Eva could be sure that the contents were true. On paper it appeared to answer the question that had plagued their lives for years. This perfunctory death certificate had arrived from the Soviet authorities yesterday without explanation. Brendan did not merit a first name. He was listed as Prisoner Verschoyle B., with a long identification number. The certificate indicated that he had been killed in a Nazi bombing raid on a prisoner train. At one time Eva would have believed the official document and succumbed to grief, mingled with relief that at least they could no longer hurt her brother. But the newsreels of liberated concentration camps made her doubt everything now. There seemed no cruelty or duplicity that mankind was incapable of.
The euphoria of VE Day had dissipated on these Oxford streets where women queued outside shops all night if a delivery of potatoes was rumoured while their half-starved children played in bomb craters. The Allies had splintered apart, with stories appearing about Soviet prison camps that no paper would have printed a year ago. Truth was lost in a fog of propaganda, with nobody sure what words meant any more. Eva had joined the campaign for the release of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews until he disappeared at a checkpoint manned by the advancing Soviet army. With the furore over Wallenberg, it might suit the Soviets to fob off minor cases with a bogus death certificate.
The nurse re-entered the room and sat by the window, moving the curtain slightly to gaze out at the distant view of Magdalen College, while awaiting the doctor whose magic injection would get Mother through another night of muted pain. Being able to lift a curtain without a shout from an air raid warden still felt strange. Eva wondered what the nurse made of Mother. How could you explain the totality of a life to someone who encounters a patient only when she is dying? The nurse had lost her husband at Aden and an eight-year-old daughter in a bombing raid. She had four other children, the eldest girl minding the others now while she worked shifts to let Eva sleep. She once told Eva about her daughter’s death, an account made more harrowing for being focused on the factual problems of queuing to get her ration book altered, then walking miles to procure a death certificate in a makeshift office.
Eva examined the date on Brendan’s death certificate again, trying to recall what she had been doing on that day in 1941. She possessed no definite recollection of it amid the seamless blur of an Irish summer. The children had probably explored the woods, with the dog barking and Eva reading poetry on the lawn while Brendan was penned in a burning railway carriage. Skeletal figures fighting to claw their way out to where bombs were falling. Afterwards, when the plane moved away, the dead eyes would have gazed up like slaughtered mackerel. Would Eva ever know if this was another Soviet lie? Replacing the envelope in her bag, Eva touched her mother’s hand, then tiptoed from the room.
This morning Hazel and Francis had made the crossing from Dublin with Maud. While Maud travelled on to Oxford, they would meet Eva in Paddington Station. Hazel loved Dublin where she was in her final year as a day girl in the school she had previously attended as a boarder and Francis had just entered Trinity. They had occasionally met Maud’s children before the war, but there was great excitement in starting friendships anew after six years of enforced separation from their cousins. Hazel had talked so openly about her trip to London that Eva had needed to warn her how not everyone in Dublin might approve of her father being made a Member of the Order of the British Empire. Hazel dismissed such caution as another of Eva’s eccentricities, replying ‘Obviously not everyone, but everybody important will be chuffed.’ Every important young Dublin man already seemed to know Hazel who relished the freedom of being a day girl able to cycle everywhere. Every Saturday she bicycled to a riding stables near the Dublin mountains to rub down horses, then freewheeled back at dusk to their rented house to meet some young man waiting to take her to a rugby club dance. She could hardly wait to discard her school uniform and embrace the new world which Eva could not hold her back from. Freddie might not approve of such freedom, but Hazel was more than a match for the young men who flocked around. Her tempestuousness scared most of them. She had the looks of a young Ingrid Bergman but would never pass for an innocent Swedish milkmaid, possessing an inherent poise and sophistication that had bypassed Eva.
When the Oxford train pulled into Paddington the children were already waiting, having found her platform with ease. They would stay in the married quarters at the barracks, but neither wished to go there yet. They had deposited their cases at the left luggage hatch and, after enquiring about their grandmother, Hazel was desperate to drag Eva around the shops. Eva wished to avoid the barracks too, which seemed deserted with so many soldiers demobbed. Freddie was currently among the officers supervising security at Buckingham Palace while the damaged wings were rebuilt, but Eva knew that his duties were mainly illusory. The war had been good for him, but lately his bloodshot eyes suggested that the limbo of peace was more dangerous. Eva suggested that the children might have more fun visiting the shops without her. They arranged to meet at six-thirty and as she watched them stroll off to catch a tube to Oxford Circus, Eva felt an inexpressible grief. In the last year they had grown up so fast. They still needed her but not like before. She had surrendered her own happiness to be their mother and now her role was almost finished.
Most young men might be bored accompanying Hazel around the expensive stores, but Francis would happily comment on each shoe Hazel tried on, suggesting that she try just one more pair as they sat besieged by assistants. Both would savour the joke of barely being able to afford a coffee and a Lyon’s bun, never mind the new soft-shouldered Christian Dior hourglass outfits in the windows, which were condemned in parliament for wasting precious fabric with their full-length billowing skirts.
Eva was relieved to let them explore London alone, because it gave her time to try and locate her brother. Eva knew that Art had moved to London last year. He had a right to be left alone, but also the right to know about his mother’s condition. More importantly he was the only person Eva trusted enough to verify the death certificate in her handbag.
She decided to call at the offices of the Morning Star where a young man curtly denied that Art had any connection with that newspaper. The British Communist Party was equally unforthcoming, though the belligerent attitude of the woman there with a slight limp made Eva suspect that she knew who Art was. At a loss, she sought out an afternoon drinking club on the Strand near the BBC studios, rumoured to be frequented by Irish poets, political activists and contributors to The Third Programme.
An Ulsterman descending the narrow staircase heard Eva’s accent and offered to sign her in as a guest. Once inside she felt uncomfortable in the smoky atmosphere which seemed more bitchy than bohemian. No daylight penetrated the cramped cellar where small groups drank. A wireless played behind the counter and Eva was shocked and fascinated when two men began to dance together in what at first seemed a parody but then became a genuine embrace. The other drinkers appeared indifferent but Eva could not stop watching. Was this where Francis would end up, risking a furtive dance to a crackling radio set? These men were the first homosexuals she had knowingly encountered, apart from her son and poor Harry Bennett who had reportedly died during one of the last air raids on London. She didn’t know if Freddie suspected anything about Francis’s brief relationship with his tutor but when discussing the liberated camps Freddie had once expressed satisfaction that while the Jews and Gypsies were freed, the homosexuals were simply transferred to Allied jails.
The two men broke free as the tune ended. One gave a mocking bow, carefully reducing their dance to the camouflage of farce.
The Ulsterman bought Eva a gin that she didn’t want. A poet, whose name was familiar to her from the radio, he knew of Art by reputation but had no idea where he lived. However once the pubs officially opened he offered to take Eva to a nearby bar where Irish labourers drank, because some regulars there had been interned in the Curragh. He insisted on buying a second gin while they waited so that Eva was tipsy by the time they reached the pub which stood alone – the buildings on both sides lying in ruins. The atmosphere here was different, the type of establishment where a woman’s intrusion was unwelcome. Leaving Eva at the door, the poet pushed through the crush, addressing various men who turned to scrutinise her. Finally he returned with a man who had been studying the racing page of a newspaper.
‘This is Murray Bolger from Wexford,’ the poet said. ‘He remembers your brother from the Curragh.’
‘Not well,’ the Wexford man said. ‘But I never approved of him being court-martialled for making crazy speeches. Not that I ever attended his meetings. Life is too short for all that yap-yapping. I just wanted the Brits out.’
‘Do you know where he’s living?’ Eva asked, sensing something familiar about his face.
‘No.’ Murray paused. ‘But I heard that he sells the Irish Democrat around pubs in Whitechapel at closing time, though he gets chased out of most of them.’
Eva wanted to go to Whitechapel immediately, but she was already late for meeting her children in the barracks. When she got there, an orderly had let Hazel and Francis into Freddie’s quarters. Freddie had left a note to say that he would go straight to the Dorchester Hotel where tonight’s banquet was being held for families of officers mentioned on the Honours List. Maud would be in Oxford by now, so at least Mother was being looked after. Eva tried to focus on helping to get Hazel ready for the banquet and on making herself respectable too. Francis fussed around them both, at ease with women in a way that few men were. Eventually they made it into the waiting taxi.
Freddie stood alone in the bustling hotel foyer. From the neck down Eva would have hardly recognised him. His dress uniform was impeccably presented, the attire of a confident man who had made a success of life. But his shoulders were hunched, reminding her of that young boy who must have sat alone in the kitchens in Glanmire House after his father died. A boy who never contemplated surrendering to tears at the grief he could not articulate, with the only visible sign of suffering being his shoulders hunched up like this. Freddie straightened up, seeing his family amid the crowd. Hazel ran ahead to greet him, savouring this glamorous occasion, with every detail to be relayed to her chums back at school.
‘Hello, Daddy,’ she said. ‘You do look smart.’
As Hazel kissed him, Eva saw Freddie thrill at having such a beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter. Francis was less forthcoming, formally shaking his father’s hand. Three weeks into his first term at Trinity College, he towered over Freddie.
‘Congratulations, Father. Give the king my regards tomorrow.’
‘I’m sure he will be chuffed to receive them.’ Freddie laughed, looking past the children at Eva. His whole face suggested happiness except his eyes. ‘Hello, old pet.’
Eva longed to take him into a corner and discover the problem. But she had no time. An officer named Templeton approached, his wife steering him towards them like a decorative tugboat. Eva remembered her piercing laughter from wartime barracks parties and knew that her son was attending the English boarding school where Francis had his troubles.
‘Is it really Eva?’ she gushed. ‘How marvellous to see you, and to see Francis looking so recovered.’
Eva tried to chat back while Freddie clicked his fingers for a waiter to fetch wine and sherry for Francis and Hazel. Hazel was attracting attention as Freddie introduced his children to fellow officers, getting ribbed about keeping such a young beauty hidden away. Less was said about Francis, with several officers aware of his ignominious departure from Castlebridge College. But Eva was pleased to see Francis hold his own in conversation, his gaiety and grace evident as he laughed. Nobody would openly comment on his good looks but every girl in the foyer was acutely aware of him.
Any sadness left Freddie’s eyes as he revelled in the attention his children were receiving. Eva was pleased for him. Most officers of his rank – those who had attended the right schools and drank in the best clubs – would receive the more prestigious OBE tomorrow, but none could boast of such striking children.
‘I imagine you have done nothing except shop since arriving,’ Mrs Templeton was saying. ‘Ireland may be awash in meat and butter, but it must be a relief to encounter stores with a sense of style.’
The woman was half correct in that Eva had spent any free time away from Mother looking in shops. But not for clothes. She had searched secondhand bookshops on Charing Cross Road to find books on child art by Herbert Read and the Austrian pioneer, Professor Cizek. These were two more pieces in the jigsaw of a secret new life forming in her mind. Freddie had reinvented himself in the army and now – with the children almost grown – it was Eva’s turn to grasp at freedom. She had made her last winter plans when the children returned to boarding school and she retreated to spend time alone in Glanmire House. Moving from room to room as shifting winds chased rain through the house, she had finally despaired of the chore of arranging enamel jugs to catch the drops and brought her bed down to the kitchen.
Some abandoned Big Houses in Mayo were starting to be reoccupied as old families returned, horrified at the advent of a British Labour government, in what one Mayo Protestant called ‘the retreat from Moscow’. For Eva, last winter had been the start of the process of letting go of her old life. Snowed in and burning woodwormed furniture, she had reread Rudolf Steiner’s Way of Initiation, slowly absorbing its layers of meaning about how the slow path to inner tranquillity led to a knowledge of higher worlds. She had memorised each initiation stage from preparation and enlightenment to control of feelings. Sensing the companionship of a familiar presence in the wine cellar, some nights she had sung Francis’s favourite hymn from the doorway:
‘Blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see our God;
The secret of the Lord is theirs,
Their soul is Christ’s abode.’
One weekend Francis had arrived from his Quaker boarding school in Waterford, concerned both for her and for a young beech tree he had noticed the previous summer hemmed in by dead wood. Eva had helped him to clear a path for it up into the light and, after he left, realised that this was what she needed to do for herself. Maureen had known it was time to leave their cocoon at Glanmire when she emigrated three weeks after the war ended. There was little prospect of meeting eligible men in Mayo as they flocked to Britain to rebuild its cities. But Eva wondered if Maureen was spurred to choose New York after a postcard of strolling couples on Coney Island arrived, addressed to ‘Any remaining staff, Glanmire House’. There was no message, just the signature of the Foxford maid who quit when Jim Gralton was hiding there.
Mrs Templeton was still addressing Eva in a torrent of words that only required her to nod occasionally. Freddie rescued her and the officer’s wife released Eva reluctantly, like a child not quite finished inspecting an exotic creature in a zoo. Making his way into the ballroom, he commiserated: ‘That woman is a frightful snob, always waiting to stick in the knife. She said nothing, did she?’
‘About what?’
Freddie shrugged. ‘Anything really. Let’s take our places. Hazel has cut quite a dash, you know.’
They were seated down the main table, with Francis and Hazel at a side table where the young people created such chatter that Eva longed to be among them. Still, she liked the old brigadier on her left who had been informed by Freddie about Mother’s condition. When he expressed his sympathy Eva told him how Mother wanted Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar read at her funeral. The old man nodded his approval, closing his eyes to recite:
‘Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea…’
Eva was moved by the lines, wishing that she was still in Oxford as a clink of glasses heralded the first speaker. There were six courses, four containing meat. Freddie glanced at her as the first one arrived, anxious lest she show him up by insisting on what he termed her oddball vegetarian beliefs. With the meat ration in Britain reduced yet again in the latest austerity cuts, any seeming ingratitude at this feast would be frowned upon. Nausea swamped her as she forced herself to swallow the first bite, determined to support Freddie this final time by playing the obedient officer’s wife. After tomorrow’s ceremony she would tell him about her plans. Conversation at the table turned to politics, with the turmoil in the Empire being discussed.
‘I consider it a shame to abandon India to slaughter just because Gandhi has whipped them up,’ a young officer named Cooper stated.
‘Slaughter is too mild a term,’ insisted Templeton. ‘Four thousand were hacked to death after the Muslim Direct Action Day. For all Gandhi’s balderdash the next atrocity will probably top that.’
‘I don’t think Gandhi speaks balderdash,’ Eva said quietly.
Templeton bristled. ‘Do you not? And what has the daft beggar got to stop millions from killing each other?’
‘A vision.’
‘A vision?’ He suppressed a laugh. ‘God help any country where public order is maintained by a vision.’
‘The government is talking of sending Mountbatten,’ Freddie interjected for her sake. ‘He will make a difference.’
‘You might think so, Fitzgerald,’ Templeton replied, ‘but have you actually been to India? Those of us who served there and know what we’re talking about know that the Congress Party are criminals. People will be at each other’s throats within days of our pull-out and it will be left to the army to return and rescue the situation.’
The old brigadier snorted. ‘Thirty years ago your father said the same about Ireland, Templeton, and they have done fine without us.’
‘Even the fish off Ireland are fat,’ Cooper sneered. ‘From feasting on the carcasses of British seamen.’
‘Enough Irish seamen drowned for them to feed off,’ Freddie replied hotly. ‘Irish lads who willingly gave their lives in your uniform. Thousands more from my Free State, Cooper, than from the loyal Ulster province where your cousins sat on their hands. And not one man I ever met felt that de Valera should have joined the war.’
‘So why did your sort fight then?’
‘Gentlemen,’ the brigadier interrupted, with the prerogative of old age, ‘tonight is for celebration, not politics. All I can say is thank God that decent chaps like Fitzgerald did join us. Now were any of you at the MCC when Denis Compton was batting last week? I never saw such cavalier cricket…’
Others agreed, keen to brush over the argument. It was typical of Freddie – while criticising de Valera in private – to publicly defend Ireland. He had been defending Eva too, but she sensed that he seemed outside things at the table. Normally he was in demand for what people termed his Blarney. Officers were avoiding her eye. Freddie touched her hand as the next course arrived. ‘Stick to your guns,’ he whispered. ‘Only eat what you like.’
This evening was not working out as planned, with Freddie’s malaise increasing as the banquet crawled by. Eva picked at the vegetables and wondered how to tell Freddie about the house she saw in Dublin’s Frankfurt Avenue last month, with leaded glass in the fanlight above the door. She had known, with every nerve-end of what Steiner called the ‘faculties slumbering in the human soul’, that this was the house in which to commence her new life. The light-filled kitchen was perfect for children to come and open their imaginations.
Mr Ffrench had been wrong to predict that Eva would be a great artist. What seemed glorious in her mind’s eye was inconsequential to others who dismissed her work as possessing the mere vision of a child. But children should be allowed to express their unselfconscious vision without being corralled by adult expectation. She longed to create a haven where children could realise that vision. Frankfurt Avenue would cost every penny that Mother was leaving her, but Eva’s needs were simple and the art classes would help pay her way. She would not be a burden on Freddie who, once he supported the children, could get on with army life in London. For years they had prevaricated, maintaining this pretence of marriage. But Eva hoped to make him understand that by choosing separate paths they might both be fulfilled.
The banquet finished with a speech in praise of the officers being decorated and a final toast to the King. The young people were impatient for the music to commence. Francis so adored dancing with girls that Eva had briefly allowed herself to hope that his homosexuality was a passing phase. He had laughed when she expressed this hope, saying, ‘You know, Mummy, I love dancing with girls. They’re like rose petals, but I feel nothing else. I don’t fall in love with them.’ Nothing about his appearance suggested the hidden life which he often confided to her. For a second she imagined the scene in this ballroom if Francis’s secret was known. An image of officers in dress uniforms transformed into baying hounds made her shiver. Freddie touched her shoulder as couples left the main table to regroup in tight-knit circles.
‘Are you cold?’
‘Just worried about Mother.’ She smiled. ‘Is there a table you want to join?’
Freddie pointed to an empty table near the dance floor. ‘We’ll keep our own company.’
He led the way, his limp somehow more pronounced in this dress uniform. She knew that many in the ballroom mistook it for a war wound. He ordered fresh drinks, lit the cigar he had chosen when the waiter carried around the box and puffed slowly, casting a disdainful eye over his colleagues.
‘What’s the matter, Freddie?’
‘Nothing that won’t keep, old pet.’
‘Please,’ she pressed. ‘I’d sooner know now.’
Freddie waited until the waiter brought their drinks and moved away. ‘It was decent of you to come with your mother so ill.’
‘She insisted. She didn’t want me to miss your big day.’
‘Aye.’ Freddie sipped his whiskey. ‘When I get my medal and some initials after my name. Other men only get a watch and chain.’
‘You sound like an old man at the end of his working life.’ Eva tried to disguise her apprehension.
‘Forty-six is hardly old, is it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Life is just starting, what?’
‘What are you saying, Freddie?’
‘I planned to say nothing till tomorrow, but you’d best hear it from me rather than from some frightful gossip. It’s cheerio time.’ Freddie affected an English accent. ‘“Do pop back for regimental dinners. We love your ‘Oirish’ stories.”’
‘You’re leaving the army?’
‘Being kicked out without a pension, though they’d use a politer term.’
‘But they know you want to stay?’
‘For so long as a war was on I could be one of them, as British as the next man. Irish first, of course, but still British. Times have changed. They don’t need half-breeds clogging up the system for their sons coming in. It appears that a detailed report about me was posted.’
‘What type of report?’
‘One that claimed me incapable of fulfilling routine tasks by arriving on duty in an intoxicated condition.’ He took a sip of whiskey. ‘It detailed excessive drinking in the mess, disorderly behaviour. There may have been some letting off steam. But how, in all conscience, could anyone present in the mess make such a report when every man jack of us was equally smashed? Whoever reported me lacked the decency to report themselves.’ Freddie looked at her, unable to hide his bitterness. ‘My MBE is a pay-off. I wanted to let you enjoy tonight, but this is as good as it gets. Surrounded by chums with knives behind their backs. I gave them six years and what do I have? What home have I to return to?’
‘Glanmire was always your home.’ A chill gripped Eva, imagining the tiny easels in her new kitchen blighted by Freddie’s uncomprehending presence. The army had been a bulwark for them both. With his excuse gone for staying in London they were stranded in the glare of truth.
‘It didn’t feel like my home these last times I went back,’ Freddie said quietly. ‘I felt an intruder with you all there. Home has become whatever room I’m billeted in.’
‘What will you do?’
Freddie downed his whiskey and watched the first dancers take to the floor. ‘You tell me,’ he said quietly.
Eva lit a cigarette, trying to stop her hand shaking. ‘The thing is, Freddie, with the money Mother is leaving she has encouraged me to buy a house in Dublin.’
‘A wise move. I can help you look.’
‘I’ve looked already. I paid a deposit on one for the children and myself. I thought you were staying in London.’
‘So did I.’ Freddie considered the implication that Eva had not consulted him. ‘You did okay on the price?’
‘I think so. I thought I might teach.’
‘Teach what?’
‘Painting to children.’
‘Teach them to draw?’
‘To express themselves freely. I could be good at it.’
‘What would you think of my chances?’
‘Of painting?’ Eva was surprised.
‘No.’ Freddie smiled. ‘Of teaching again.’
She imagined Freddie stalking between the tiny easels, barking at children to buck up.
‘The thing is, Freddie, I thought I’d teach them alone.’
Freddie looked away, unable to contain a mirthless laugh. ‘Me with a paint brush? I don’t think so.’ He clicked his fingers at a waiter for another whiskey. ‘That’s not what I meant. There is a position which I’m told is mine should I care to accept it.’
‘Where?’
‘A prep school in Wicklow. They want someone to double as a mathematics and games master, a disciplined chap not scared by a few drops of rain. It’s not compulsory to live in, but I get the impression they’d prefer if I did. They need a man on the spot to organise the young chaps. It’s where military experience comes in, you see.’
The waiter brought his drink. Eva wasn’t sure whose feelings he was trying to spare with this face-saving enthusiasm for his new job. ‘Therefore a house in Dublin would be awkward for me, though it sounds perfect for you. Naturally the school would welcome you, but my cottage sounds pretty compact…a gate lodge really. Not that I mind, but I mean you’re used to more space…’
Freddie’s jovial tone could not disguise his hurt. The chatter around them grew louder, making him raise his voice and drown out any last vestige of intimacy. The band struck up Hazel’s favourite tune, A Gal in Calico, and on cue she took to the floor.
‘Not that you won’t be a welcome guest,’ Freddie added. ‘Any weekend you wished to pop up.’
His pause allowed her the chance to say that he would be equally welcome in Frankfurt Avenue. It was cruel not to reply, but while Freddie hadn’t scoffed at the notion of her teaching, even if he didn’t interfere, his sense of unspoken ridicule would pervade the house, crippling her dreams as surely as arthritis had crippled Mother.
‘Of course I’ll come to see you,’ she said. ‘The children too. When do you start?’
‘January. I’ll be a new boy, like Francis in Trinity. I have of course made provision for his fees.’
Freddie approvingly watched Hazel swirl about the dance floor with her young man.
‘The thing is, Freddie,’ Eva said. ‘Hazel is talking about wanting to go there too.’
‘Hazel attend Trinity?’ Freddie looked surprised. ‘With her looks? That seems a tad unnecessary.’
‘She has a good brain.’
‘Undoubtedly she’ll use it to find a good man.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The fact is this damned prep school doesn’t pay well. There’s rather a surfeit of retired officers. MBE doesn’t stand for Mayo Before Eton. The old boys’ network have all the good Civvy Street jobs collared. Surely you can make Hazel understand the need to prioritise. Francis will have to earn his own way in time. He’ll have no one to support him. Hazel has her love of horses.’
‘That’s hardly the same thing.’
‘It’s as good a way as any to meet a decent young man. What about the Irish Times photograph you sent me of her jumping at the Horse Show? Hazel stands out. She’s still at school, yet she’s the finest looking woman in this ballroom. She knows it too, she has the poise and confidence to hold her own with anyone. She won’t be slow getting invited to the Trinity Ball and we’ll let her if a decent class of chap invites her. Let’s see if Francis is as quick to find a partner to invite along.’
‘Young women flock around Francis,’ Eva said. ‘He’s like a bosom pal to them.’
‘That’s a new word for it,’ Freddie replied scornfully. ‘I’ve heard Clark Gable called many things but never a bosom pal. Trinity should knock the soft focus out of him, once he avoids those Yankee ex-servicemen on the GI bill.’ Freddie watched his daughter dance. ‘Will she be frightfully upset not to go?’
‘She’ll understand.’
Freddie nodded, aware that Eva was lying for his sake. Tomorrow in Buckingham Palace he would receive his bauble, a pay-off for the years which cemented their slow separation. Eva would take appropriate snaps with her Brownie camera, playing the role of an officer’s wife. Such memories were all he would have to sustain him when he placed his dress uniform in a trunk and donned the dull garb of a teacher in his native country where few wanted reminders of having sat out the war.
Silently they watched Francis lead a partner out among the couples. He danced with rare grace and the girl in his arms knew it. The dance floor was crowded, though it lacked the frantic gaiety that Eva recalled from the war. These young people did not need to treat each dance like it might be their last. Freddie leaned forward.
‘Since we’ve exhausted our range of excuses for not living together, can I ask one question? Why did you ever marry me?’
‘You know why.’
‘I don’t because I never thought about it back then. I loved you and presumed you loved me.’
‘I did.’
‘You probably actually did, because people like you – God bless them – love the entire world. Trees, birds, bunny rabbits in the fields. Love is easy because you splash it around like rainfall. I loved you differently, I didn’t love anything else. I would have picked you out from a thousand people. You were my favourite living being. I was never even your favourite Freddie.’
‘That’s not true,’ she protested.
‘It is.’
Eva was hurt by the truth in his accusation. The two Fredericks journeying to Donegal twenty years ago as rivals and friends. She had let herself be ensnared in the excitement, imagining that once she had exchanged vows with Freddie all doubts would disappear. It took her two decades to fully wake up. But if Freddie loved her so much, why did it take so long to hammer out a marriage settlement in Father’s study while she had paced upstairs, feeling like a heifer at mart? Freddie might not have spat on his palm to seal the bargain, but pragmatism had guided his love, clinching the best deal between a clubfooted man and a dowered woman edging towards spinsterhood. Still they had done their duty by the children and while the future would be difficult, at least she could now make her own mistakes without being impeded by his disapproval and could stop seeing herself reflected in his eyes as an irredeemable dreamer.
‘Perhaps tomorrow we might talk to the children and work out a civilised arrangement,’ she said. ‘Come down from Wicklow some evening when you’re settled into the new job. Inspect the house. I’d value your opinion.’
‘At least it will be warmer than Glanmire House. I hope to visit Mayo over Christmas for some shooting. I’ll enjoy rattling around the old place on my own.’
Eva could see him calling into his uncle in Turlough Park, drinking in the Imperial Hotel, stopping at Durcan’s shop for cheap Skylark whiskey. He would not mention his MBE, but the news would have gone before him. Everyone would acknowledge it by their comments or their silence. Freddie had fought to keep his neighbours free from war, a truth too uncomfortable to mention. Despite sly remarks about him bowing before a foreign king, there would be local pride in his success.
The band swung into It’s a Pity to Say Goodnight. Freddie watched his children who were flushed with vitality and excitement and who wanted this evening to never end. They were unaware that it was their father’s final encore. He would spend his last weeks in the army as an outsider, knowing that somebody had betrayed him. Perhaps it was planned for months with tabs kept on him, loose remark after remark, last drink after last drink. The war was over and ranks were closing. He would be resolute with his new pupils, teaching them values they would grow to laugh at. Occasionally he would visit her, the homeliness of Frankfurt Avenue increasing his sense of failure. He would make new friends, not all in a bottle. But tomorrow would remain the bitter apex of his life, while Eva was poised on the cusp of both orphanhood and freedom. They would never be as close as this again. Seeing Mrs Templeton watching them, Eva deliberately took Freddie’s hand in hers. He looked down, surprised and pleased, as he grew aware of being watched. A waiter approached, paging Eva who was wanted on the telephone. Freddie accompanied her to the porter’s desk. It was Maud, saying that she had called the doctor again because the pain was worse, with Mother slipping in and out of consciousness. It was probably impossible to reach Oxford tonight, but Mother might be gone by the time Eva got there tomorrow.
‘I’d drive you if I could,’ Freddie said when Eva replaced the receiver. ‘At one time chaps here would loan me a car with petrol but people don’t want to know me now.’
‘I shouldn’t have left Mother,’ Eva said, ‘but she insisted that I come.’
‘You belong with her really. I should never have taken you away from Donegal. You must get the first train in the morning. I’d like the children to stay, see their father in a good light. The thing is that I’d feel bad asking you to return to the barracks tonight, with only one bed and whatnot. I think you would be better off in a hotel. I’ll pay, naturally. Let the children enjoy the rest of the night but there’s no need for you to stay. There’s nothing more to say, is there? I’ll tell them you were called away to Oxford and are trying to get there tonight. I’ll put them on a train to you straight from Buckingham Palace.’ He surveyed his former comrades and added, with such force that she almost believed him: ‘I’ll be glad to get away from this.’
In the end she agreed to slip away without spoiling the children’s evening. But firstly she showed him the Russian death certificate. He snorted, like she knew he would.
‘Oddly enough, this could be good news. The Russians are masters at twisting facts. They may say he is dead to hide the fact that he’s alive. You might as well try to eat mercury with a fork as understand how they operate. I don’t know anyone who could tell you whether to believe this or not.’
But Freddie was wrong in that and wrong to believe that she was going directly to a hotel to await the first train. The porter hailed a taxi outside the Dorchester, with the driver reluctant to let her out on a corner in Whitechapel, where just one terrace of uninhabitable houses remained standing against a flattened streetscape. But Eva wanted to walk from here.
Finally it was done, she had left Freddie and after tonight her world would be different and uncertain. Like the citizens of these bombed streets, she needed to start a new life. Mother’s life was ending and Eva had one last duty to attempt. She reached a street with sounds of life. Turning a corner she found a crossroads miraculously unscarred, with public houses on two corners. Making herself an object of curiosity, she hovered outside an unlit shop, reluctant to venture unaccompanied into either pub. Despite trying to remain unobtrusive, a policeman approached after a time, his voice suggesting that he mistook her for a streetwalker. When her clothes and identity papers revealed her as a lieutenant colonel’s wife his tone grew respectful. He seemed reluctant to leave her standing alone after she explained how she was waiting for someone. But his attitude changed when Art emerged from a side street, carrying a satchel of newspapers. Perplexed, he shook his head and walked away.
Art stopped when she approached, anxiously scanning her face for news of Mother. He was losing the public school accent so at odds with his shabby appearance. Neither of them wanted to enter a smoky pub. Art had a one-room flat nearby on Hungerford Street, with an entire corner devoted to a stack of pamphlets condemning Animal Farm. Apart from a portrait of Stalin, the room was otherwise spartan as a prison cell.
Eva showed him Brendan’s death certificate, which he studied carefully. Art could never utter the heresy that a Soviet document might be a fake, but Eva noted his reluctance to positively authenticate the certificate.
‘He should never have gone to Spain,’ Art said. ‘Enthusiasm is no substitute for discipline.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘This appears to state so.’
‘Conveniently killed by the Germans, with no offer to repatriate the body, no proof of anything.’
‘Proof would be impossible. Do you know how many patriotic comrades died in the war, never mind…?’ Art hesitated.
‘Never mind what?’ Eva asked angrily. ‘Your brother was an innocent man. Did you betray him?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know what I mean,’ Eva said. ‘You’re the one of us who always knew everything. You were the shining light, so you explain it. Mother is dying. Will you travel with me in the morning and face her?’
‘I’ve told you before, my life as a Verschoyle is over.’
‘Then, as a Russian, tell me whether to show her this death certificate if she is still alive when I get there?’
Art spread his hands. ‘Bureaucratic mistakes may occur. We lost millions in the Great Patriotic War. England thinks she won the war because London suffered. But not like in Russia. I can’t say if every prisoner on the train was killed or just marked down as dead after fleeing in the confusion. All I can offer you is my bed for the night. I don’t mind the floor.’
‘There’s a bed for you in Oxford and a house in Donegal falling asunder. Why won’t you face Mother?’
‘She blames me for what happened. I blame myself.’ He rose. ‘I have some customers – not many – here. If I don’t catch them leaving the pubs they’ll be gone.’
‘Sit down,’ Eva pleaded. ‘Stop always running from us.’
Art lowered his satchel reluctantly. ‘In my dreams I often see you and Maud and Beatrice Hawkins laughing in sun hats, sitting up on Mr Ffrench’s cart. I don’t know if my wife and child starved to death. Maybe I dream of Donegal to avoid dreaming about them.’ He hesitated, unsure whether to confide in her. His sudden boyish look reminded her of when he would enter the kitchen in Dunkineely, excited at having discovered wreckage on the Bunlacky shore. ‘That’s why I’m finally going home.’
Mother always claimed that Dunkineely was in his blood.
‘I’m pleased,’ Eva said. ‘But what about Samuel Trench’s daughter? Will you share it with her family or…?’
She stopped as Art stared at her like she was a retarded child.
‘I’m going home to Russia. They have finally issued a visa. They know I never broke faith. I kept the flame alive and they have recognised that.’ His tone held the fervour of a true believer who would calmly confront savage beasts in a coliseum. His gaze recalled Martin Luther’s piercing eyes. ‘The British Empire is finished, with just the fag-ends ready to be swept away. New nations will look to the Soviet Union. That’s why I must be there. I know my place. I hope one day you find yours.’
‘Your place?’ Eva felt a sudden fury. ‘After what they did to your brother?’
‘Your certificate shows that he was a victim of Nazi aggression. The Soviet Union never harmed him.’
‘They kidnapped him in Barcelona.’
‘How do you know that is the true version of events?’
‘Will you promise to find out the truth when you go there?’
‘Brendan may not wish us to find him. He may have requested the Soviet authorities to produce this certificate so that we will give him the freedom to be left alone. I am going to Russia to try and find my wife and child.’
‘And what if the secret police are waiting to put you into a camp too?’
‘There is more than one kind of prison. If a labour camp is the work that Stalin has earmarked for me I will take it, because it is better to be the smallest cog in a great mosaic than to stand alone in exile and know that your life means nothing.’
‘You asked me a favour in Mayo once,’ Eva said. ‘I hid Jim Gralton. Now I’m asking you for the favour back. Come to Oxford.’
‘No.’
‘Are you so proud that you cannot even say goodbye?’
‘I was never proud. I live by the sweat of my hands. There is no work I ever refused.’
‘Watching a mother die is work too,’ Eva said. ‘It’s slow and painful but it must be done because we are only asked to do it once. If you’re brave enough to face a Soviet prison, then surely you can face a darkened bedroom in Oxfordshire?’
Eva had thought it impossible to reach Oxford at this late hour. But Art knew a night mail porter at Paddington Station. The station looked deserted when they got there, with the public entrances closed. Art cut down a side street however and soon Eva heard voices and the trundle of barrows behind the station wall. Art knocked repeatedly on a small door until it was opened. He mentioned a name and the door closed again, only to be reopened moments later by a bearded figure who shook Art’s hand and called him comrade. It was the first time that she heard anyone address Art by this term. For once it made him not seem a solitary figure. Art explained their dilemma and the bearded man shook Eva’s hand. He motioned them in to wait in a shed crammed with mail sacks. It was quiet there in the heart of the city, with the platform deserted except for the occasional mail train arriving with no passengers and just the sound of sacks being loaded. An hour passed before the bearded man returned as a Western Region mail train pulled in. Art’s comrade tapped on a window, which was opened by a sorter clutching a sheaf of letters. After a short conversation he welcomed them surreptitiously on board. Eva knew she looked incongruous in her evening dress, sitting on a mail sack and listening to Art and the sorter discuss The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. But she didn’t care because this journey reminded her of long train trips home to Dunkineely. All that now awaited them was a deathbed, but finally – even if only briefly – they would be a family together.
The Oxford streets were empty, the house in darkness except for a faint glow behind the curtains in Mother’s room. Eva had a key.
Mother appeared to be in a coma or a deep sleep, with the doctor’s injection keeping pain at bay. Maud looked up as they entered the bedroom, surprised by Art’s presence. But the circumstances of this meeting prevented all arguments or recriminations, anything that might drag Mother back into the grip of conscious pain. In sleep she ruled her unruly children, reducing them to whispers as Art took a chair between his two sisters. The only sounds came from Mother’s irregular breath and the ticking clock. No outside world might exist beyond those thick curtains. Maud looked jaded after her trip from Ireland, but Eva knew that they all felt exhausted as if they had spent decades travelling towards this moment of being reunited.
It was impossible to know if Mother would ever reawaken. From the size of the rationed injection Eva knew that the doctor expected only to be called again to sign her death certificate.
Eva decided against showing Maud the Russian death certificate just yet. Let her grieve for the passing of one life at a time. Eva’s wedding day had been the last time when Mother’s three eldest children sat together. Back when they still knew who they were, when their world was still recognisable. Who were they now? She remembered Art’s phrase: Byvshie Liudi, the former people of a former world. How many former people were scattered across this continent blinking in the light of change, people trying too hard to cling to the past or to let it go. Memories returned from across the broken decades: the excited laughter of children playing musical bumps in the drawing room at Dunkineely, the weekly race to Phil Floyd’s shop for sweets to be shared out. Back then the entire world – from its extremities of Mountcharles to Killybegs – knew and viewed them as special. The golden Goold Verschoyle children. Five children lying in a hayrick to imagine their futures, five children picnicking in the rain, five dolphins in the waters off what she once called Paradise Pier, five eaglets poised for flight on a ledge of Slieve League, ready to swoop up towards the sun, swooning and dazzling each other.
Eva knew that the others must share at least some of these memories from the time when they had a world in common. Art and Maud might remember some moments differently, but this did not make her memories any less true. The one truth they could not differ on was the absolute love of the dying woman in this bed. It awed Eva to have known her parents and borne witness to their love. Perhaps this was what had ill prepared their children for the world, the notion that life could be perfect. The stances taken by Art and the others had shocked many, but while growing up none of them had ever been checked for expressing a thought or an opinion that truly came from within. There had been no bars placed around their minds, no notion that the outside world disallowed such freedom.
When Mother died they would leave this room, quarrel and go their separate ways. But for now they were united by what they were about to become. Orphans. Eva felt certain that Brendan was somewhere in their midst, a small boy in a comical hat, and that Thomas in South Africa could sense what was occurring. The one great love which each of them always knew that they could turn to was being extinguished from this world.
Eva felt more grief for herself than for Mother. Mother was ready for death because all her life she had been preparing for this final adventure to which all stepping stones led. Mother moaned slightly and Eva was torn between a desire that Mother might see Art one more time and a wish for her to be spared more conscious pain. Her lips formed words that were impossible to discern, although Art leaned across to try and hear and then took her hand. Eva clasped Art’s other hand and Maud placed her hand over his fingers that were entwined with Mother’s. Eva’s eyes were closed and she did not remark upon the scent, knowing that the words did not need to be said. Because she knew that the others could smell the familiar hand lotion, the cream that Mother had used after gardening on those evenings when they lay in bed awaiting her step on the stairs and knowing, as they still knew, that they were truly and unconditionally loved.