The Family on Paradise Pier

The children had brought food and it felt like a picnic to share it out by the fire in the study. The mantelpiece clock had long stopped and she had no idea what time it was when the young Goold Verschoyles left. But it was too late to do anything except retire to the main bedroom where the sheets felt damp. Her husband was asleep within minutes and she knew that he would not wake. She slipped from bed and walked from room to room, trying to reclaim all this space and make it feel that it belonged to her. But she felt uneasy, as if hordes of strangers might arrive at any moment to stake a claim to the kitchen or the locked room overlooking Donegal Bay that had been once intended as a nursery. She longed to immerse herself in a bath but knew that she could never scrub herself clean. Closing her eyes she could still smell in her pores the stink of foul breath and unwashed clothes in that Moscow room. So why was it that she could not hear the voices of the children who had clambered onto her knee to stare at her like a curio? She could not feel their fingers that had gripped hers, hoping that she might produce a morsel to feed them. Why was it that the single experience she treasured seemed to be erased from her mind, so that all she could hear was silence as she wandered from room to room, barefoot in her thin nightgown?

EIGHT The Studio

Donegal, August 1924

The more that Eva drew, alone in her studio, the less she could hear of the raised voices from the house. Her fingers shook, giving the elfin figures a slightly blurred outline. She had intended painting in oils today but once the shouting started she reverted to using this sketchpad on her knee, hunching over it to make herself as small as possible. She longed to escape and sketch wild flowers in the hedgerows, but was reluctant to leave her studio and cross the courtyard where the angry clash of voices would be impossible to ignore. Eva hated these arguments and the terse silence that followed them. During the fragile suspension of hostilities her brothers and Cousin George would individually visit the studio, ostensibly to comfort her, but each would start to justify their case, anxious to convert her into an ally.

Eva had no wish to take sides in the quarrels that had raged all summer. The Free State’s civil war was over, with de Valera’s Diehard Irregulars defeated. But just as an uneasy normality settled over the new nation they found themselves in, a civil war had commenced in the heart of her family. Friends and relations who visited earlier in the summer had helped to paper over the fault lines by dragging them back into a childhood world of tennis and picnics on the strand. These visitors inscribed amusing notes of thanks in the visitors’ book and carefully avoided politics like an unmentionable family illness. So perhaps Father was foolish to invite Cousin George to stay for Eva’s birthday party because Cousin George knew Art and Thomas too well to allow for any pretence. As a true Verschoyle he was as headstrong as they were. To him the family’s reputation was being indelibly eroded by Art’s wilful madness in embracing communism, which he considered to be a cancer gradually infecting them all. Such lunacy might be all right for pagans like the Ffrenches, but his uncle was always too soft in allowing inflammatory discussions at the table.

If Eva was forced to listen to George she knew that she would be swayed by the power of his argument but Art’s impassioned defence would equally convince her in turn. Her beliefs were more obscure and less dogmatic than either point of view. Although influenced by Mother, Eva found it hard to believe in the occult world as passionately as she did. Seances – with desperate women holding photographs of slain sons – seemed a form of voyeurism, making her as uncomfortable as these political arguments. This was why she locked herself away in her studio when the quarrelling started – not to avoid venturing an opinion, but to avoid favouring one family member over another. Ironically her silence seemed to lend weight to her opinions, with the others frequently appealing to her as if she were a judge who, when she finally spoke, could attest to the rights and wrongs of their dispute.

The voices grew louder as Eva crouched over her sketchpad, focusing all her attention on the tiny figures she was conjuring. They had wings and asexual bodies, flitting like bees around blooming foxgloves growing in a ditch. Her fingers were steadier now and she sketched the ditch with intense concentration. After some time Eva ceased to hear the arguing voices and initially thought that this was because she had managed to block them out. Then she realised that hostilities had paused. Soon the first petitioner would arrive to solicit support – George or Thomas, who generally sided with Art while maintaining his own slant on things, or Father, weary of trying to see both sides. By now Mother would have retreated to her bedsitting room to read the few books from the Rosicrucian Order in London which made it past the censorial new Irish post office, or some volume sent to her by Madame Despard – the elderly English suffragette who had settled among the Dublin poor and shared Mother’s interest in theosophy. Eva closed her eyes, allowing the sketch to become saturated with colour. She could visualise the ditch she had drawn from memory, with a tumbled-down, dry-stone wall. But, try as she might, she could not believe in the fairy figures. That childhood belief had died in London along with any belief in her ability as an artist. Art school had stripped her of illusions.

It did not seem like eighteen months ago since she had spent an autumn and winter sleeping in the tiny cubicle of a London hostel for shopgirls, with a sprig of Donegal heather beneath her pillow. Mother had considered London as the ideal tonic to lure Eva down from the ivory tower of this studio where she had locked herself up to secretly mourn the loss of her young New Zealand officer. It was only after Jack left that Eva fully understood her feelings. By then it was too late because no girl could write and ask for such a proposal again: Eva had constantly painted and destroyed portraits of him, grieving alone in this studio. Her obvious distress more than her talent made Mother enrol her in the Slade Art School. Eva had felt like a princess in a fairy tale, forced to plait her hair into a rope and descend into those bustling crowds to try and start a new life.

Her brief time in London was good in every respect except for painting. What slender spark of talent she possessed was quickly extinguished under the glare of her tutors at the Slade. The more they tried to teach her the less she found that she could paint. She discovered that she had more in common with the shopgirls in the hostel than her chic fellow students. Their cosmopolitan sense of surface gloss and parroting of the tutors’ techniques to create deliberately grotesque compositions made her retreat into herself. By comparison her paintings seemed naive, the childish work of an Irish country simpleton.

But back then Eva was certain that there had to be a purpose behind her stay in London, beyond avoiding the increasing vicious conflict in Ireland. When Art had visited her in the hostel between university lectures, Eva used to show him her poems urging the rebels to fight, fight, fight for what is right, right, right! But, in truth, at the age of nineteen in London her patriotic bursts were outweighed by her preoccupation with a different search for independence, the struggle to find a religion to which she might truly belong.

Converting to Catholicism like the Countess did after the Easter Rising was never an option. Instead the Christian Scientists had been Eva’s first port of call. While shopgirls gossiped about boys outside her cubicle she had studied the Christian Scientist bible, absorbing their mantra that no life, truth or intelligence existed in matter alone. Next she spent long afternoons in a High Church where women wore blue robes and their elaborate rituals, though beautiful to watch, made her wary. She needed something simpler and more direct. She tried a Jewish synagogue and, after that, sampled every religion in London for pleasure and interest. Yet no matter how comfortable she felt, an intuitive inner voice warned: ‘Move on, don’t mistake this stepping stone for a summit.’ In the end she felt herself to simply be a child of the universe, blown about like a sycamore sepal at the creator’s will. That wind had carried her back to Donegal as the civil war spluttered to a smouldering halt soon after Michael Collins’s death.

Eva glanced up from her sketchpad now, having become so absorbed in drawing that she had been unaware of a presence in her doorway. It was Brendan but Eva felt she had stepped back in time because he wore the comical hat that he used to love. At fourteen-and-a-half, it made his face seem younger. His serious expression recalled the days when he would visit her, upset because his brothers kept excluding him from their schemes.

Eva smiled. ‘Where did you find that hat?’

‘In the attic. Mother must have put it away.’

‘She was always threatening to burn it,’ Eva said. ‘But I like it on you.’

‘I’ll take it with me so.’

‘It would give the boys in school a laugh, but I doubt if you’ll be allowed to wear it.’

‘From now on I wear what I like.’ There was no rebellion in Brendan’s voice, just the quiet resoluteness that was in his character. He was not prone to Art’s passionate oratory or a stickler for logic like Thomas. Indeed, he rarely ventured opinions aloud but once he made up his own mind about something nobody could alter his beliefs.

‘What do you mean?’

Brendan’s tone was apologetic, anxious not to offend. ‘I’m rather tired of all these rows, aren’t you? The fact is I won’t be returning to school. I have decided to make my own way in life. I just announced the fact and, you know, for the first time I saw both Cousin George and Art lost for words. I can’t see why they are so surprised. Plenty of chaps my age have been earning their keep for years. Art and Thomas talk the good fight, but still cling to the privilege of a university education. Well, wild horses wouldn’t drag me back to Marlborough. Not one chap there knows a thing about life or could manage without ten servants. What’s the point in being educated for a world which, as Mr Ffrench rightly says, will soon be swept away?’

‘Does Mother know?’ Eva asked.

‘You understand, don’t you?’ Brendan’s voice faltered, anxious for approval.

‘Does Mother know?’

‘Well, I didn’t rightly know myself until it came to me as I listened to them argue. I want a proper job making something, not pen-pushing in some corner of the Empire. I want to become an engineer. Marlborough doesn’t teach you anything useful like that.’

‘Will you go to Dublin?’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Brendan smiled to show that he meant no offence. ‘In Dublin I’d still be the youngest Verschoyle brother. I want to be known only for myself. I hardly know a soul in London, so that’s where I’ll go. One cannot wait for life to come to you like a gentleman caller. You must go out and confront it.’

They both turned as Thomas entered the doorway.

‘This is entirely Art’s fault,’ he announced.

Brendan shook his head. ‘You’re obsessed by Art, Thomas. Maybe it comes from being next in line. Being the last born means that I can simply be my own man.’

‘You’re the one obsessed by him,’ Thomas retorted. ‘Idolising him since you were a baby and you’re hardly more than a baby now. A pet hamster has more chance of surviving in the wild than you have of finding a job in London at your age.’

‘I’m old enough.’

‘I’ll give you a fortnight before Father has to pull strings to get you re-admitted to your warm school dormitory. Don’t be stupid, Brendan. You don’t need to renounce wealth because you and I won’t inherit anything to give up anyway.’

Thomas went silent as footsteps ascended the rough steps. Father had to duck his head to enter.

‘Is this a meeting of the Verschoyle Party Congress?’ His mild humour disguised his obvious distress.

‘It will break Mother’s heart if Brendan doesn’t return to school,’ Thomas said bitterly. ‘Though, even then, she won’t bring herself to criticise her golden boy Art.’

‘I’ve never heard her criticise any of her children,’ Father replied. ‘No matter how hard you all hurt her. Cousin George is about to leave. He says he won’t stay to be insulted by the names Art has called him.’

‘Art means no harm,’ Eva pleaded.

‘That doesn’t mean he won’t cause it.’ Father looked around. ‘I heard what you said about inheritance, Thomas. I will try to leave you all something. But it cannot be this house which I only hold in trust for Art and which is legally entailed to his son after him.’

‘You know that weeds will grow through broken windows here before Art will accept it,’ Thomas replied sharply.

‘I know he is young. I know that you see life differently at twenty-two and thirty-two.’

‘Art will never change.’

‘Why should he?’ Brendan asked. ‘I don’t want inherited wealth either. I want to establish my own worth.’

‘You will return to Marlborough and stay there until your sixteenth birthday.’ Father’s voice was quiet but firm. ‘After that you’ll be a child no longer. Hopefully you will finish your education and make something of yourself. That will be your decision. All I request is that you obey me for the next eighteen months.’

‘Why should I?’ Brendan’s voice was not aggressive. It contained an innocent openness that Father also possessed.

‘Because you are a gentleman, it will please your mother and because I will never ask anything of you again. I shall never walk away from any of my children, no matter what you do. Should you choose to walk away from me I will not stop you. But take something with you while I’m alive and you still can. Take jewellery or the family silver if you wish before Art gives it away to a beggar.’

‘I won’t steal from my brother,’ Thomas replied.

‘Art doesn’t own this house yet. Steal from me.’

Thomas looked down awkwardly. ‘I’ll see George,’ he said ‘Maybe I can twist his arm and persuade him to stay for Eva’s party.’

He walked out. Brendan fingered the hat he had removed when Father entered. ‘I give you my word to return to Marlborough until my sixteenth birthday,’ he said. ‘I make no promises beyond that, but you know it is not in my character to break my word.’

‘Define character,’ Father asked.

Brendan pondered. ‘Character is what you are, what you do every day.’ He blushed slightly. ‘I’d better see Cousin George too in case he leaves.’

Father watched his youngest son descend the steps and shook his head in wonder. ‘Character is what you are, what you do every day. If only dictionaries were as clear and noble. He’s a noble boy, you are all noble, but I worry about whether I’ve prepared any of you for life out there.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Eva assured him. ‘I just hate seeing you look so frightfully upset.’

‘Do I? Maybe I don’t understand what’s happening any more. I’ve never harmed anybody in my life. I’ve given my services freely to defend neighbours in court and gave them land behind our house to hold a market every Tuesday. I address every man equally – Catholic, Protestant or dissenter – yet my eldest son thinks I should feel guilty for simply existing.’ He looked at Eva. ‘What terrible crime does Art feel I’ve committed? I’ve only ever wanted to mind your mother and for you all to be happy. We were happy once, weren’t we?’

‘We still are,’ Eva insisted. ‘Let’s go on a picnic tomorrow, all day. It would be lovely.’

‘It would. But then unfortunately we’d have to come home again.’

Down in the yard Maud’s voice called up to them both.

‘Dinner shall be in half an hour,’ she announced, ‘and we shall be sitting down together in peace.’

‘Has George left?’ Eva asked, going to the doorway.

‘I confiscated his bag in the hall and ordered him to give up his nonsense,’ Maud said. ‘I raided the wine cellar and shall have Art and George playing chess peaceably before the evening is out.’

‘You’re a marvel,’ Eva said. ‘Is there any chance of a picnic tomorrow?’

‘We’ll sail out to the island where I shall personally drown every annoying male in the family.’

Father laughed as Maud marched back to the kitchens. ‘Your sister is a marvel,’ he said quietly, ‘but you are one too.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You’re a marvellous shape still emerging with slow wingbeats into the light. Too far away for me to judge the outline of what you will become, but I know it will be truly wondrous.’ His hand strayed into his pocket where a small edition of Walt Whitman was kept. ‘We’ve half an hour before being summoned to the next congress on world affairs. What about a walk?’

Eva smiled and closed the studio door behind them. ‘Just you and me.’ She took his hand and squeezed it.

‘A quick bid for freedom.’

Eva released his hand as they entered the lane. Demonstrative shows of affection were not in their character. Passing the village pump, they took the lane to the Bunlacky shore, saying little because little needed to be said between such soul mates and friends.

NINE Not a Penny off the Pay

London, 1926

Brendan intended being utterly true to his word. Mother would be upset but Father would respect how he honoured his vow. In recent months he had been careful to make no reference to his decision when talking with the other chaps. Eighteen months ago he was vocal about his plans and was ragged because of them. Now he had not even mentioned that his sixteenth birthday occurred this week. Naturally, his two best schoolchums knew his intentions and envied him, but both had too much to lose to follow his example. Being eldest sons, they needed to think about more than just themselves.

Brendan knew that his family loved him, but if he had not been born, little would be different in their world. The last born was always counted as a blessing, but generally counted as little else.

Still Brendan would not wish to swap places with Art or Thomas. Older teachers at Marlborough still paused in the corridors to ask about Art and shake their heads, almost as if sympathising with a bereavement. They recalled Art with affection, even if he had constantly queried every issue with them but they also spoke as if he had perpetually borne a heavy weight on his back. Brendan was not as clever as Art but he sensed their relief at Brendan’s cheerful spirit. He had actually enjoyed his time at Marlborough, making friends and being generally respected as a good sort. Therefore this morning when he made an excuse before assembly and requested permission to see the nurse in sickbay, he felt no resentment towards any person in the school. They were simply misguided, unaware that they belonged to a world shortly about to be eclipsed.

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