The Family on Paradise Pier Page 7

  ‘Hymns?’ he said. ‘You’d swear we were at a funeral. Now, what’s this about a motor car?’

  ‘It belongs to my family.’ Maud stood up. ‘What possible use could you have for it?’

  ‘Sure, if I told you that I’d have to shoot you.’

  ‘Please. I need it for my mother. She has terrible arthritis. She can only get around if I drive her.’

  ‘You?’ The man laughed louder. ‘Don’t tell me they let a wee slip of a thing like you behind a steering wheel?’

  ‘They let a slip of a thing into the House of Commons, only my father’s cousin wouldn’t take her seat.’

  The man nodded, as if Maud had scored a point. ‘But they also say you have an uncle an Orangeman who would burn every Catholic out of Belfast.’

  ‘My father is a Home Ruler, on the same side as you.’

  ‘To hell with Home Rule,’ the man said. ‘Home Rule was a bone thrown from the English table to keep the Irish dogs gnawing away quietly. This struggle is about freedom…a Republic.’

  ‘Hear, hear.’ Art spoke for the first time.

  The man eyed up Art. ‘Did you say something, sonny?’

  ‘I’ve argued this same point with my father who’s a pacifist. But for me it’s full independence or nothing.’

  ‘Glad you think so.’

  ‘I do more than think. I offer you a fair trade. Give my sister back her motor car and you can have me. I wish to volunteer my services for the Irish Republic.’ Art ignored Maud tugging at his sleeve, anxious to shut him up. ‘I have received comprehensive training in how to use a rifle at boarding school.’

  ‘Bully for you.’ The Corkman sat down, amused. ‘What exactly would the Irish Republic do with your services?’

  ‘Are you insinuating that I’m a coward?’

  ‘I’m suggesting that you stay out of what doesn’t concern you.’

  ‘Of course it concerns me. I want what you want.’

  ‘What exactly is that?’

  ‘Freedom for us all.’

  Maud could no longer contain herself. ‘Sit down for God’s sake, Art, and stop being an ass.’

  Art turned, annoyed. ‘Stay out of this. I’m sick of other people mapping out my life for me.’

  ‘Listen to your big sister, sonny,’ the Corkman said. ‘Run off and join a circus if you want, but you’re misinformed about our fight. It’s not about freedom for you, it’s about freedom from you. The best way you could help Ireland’s freedom is to pack up and return to where you came from.’

  ‘Where exactly is that?’ Art was so furious that the two volunteers appeared in the doorway with their rifles.

  ‘England.’

  ‘More Irish blood runs through my veins than through yours. My father can trace our family back to Niall of the Nine Hostages. Can your father do that?’

  ‘My father was too busy trying to earn an honest wage. That’s more than you parasites have ever done.’

  Maud was no longer interested in the motor. She simply wanted to get Art safely out of this cottage. Of late he frequently took notions, but rarely as dangerous as this. Was it his way to rebel against Father who was shocked by each bullet fired on either side in this Irish conflict? She wanted to speak, but any interruption would only further inflame her brother.

  ‘So what constitutes an Irishman now?’ Art demanded.

  ‘An Irishman is someone with Irish blood in his veins and in his father’s and grandfather’s before that.’

  ‘Where does that leave the half-breed Patrick Pearse?’ Art retorted. ‘His father was indisputably an Englishman. At least my distant ancestors had the decency to be Dutch.’

  The Corkman rose and took a pistol from his holster. ‘Don’t ever take Pearse’s name in vain,’ he hissed. ‘I fought with him in Easter Week. He was a true Irishman.’

  ‘I am not saying he wasn’t.’ Art was calm, exuding an unconscious superiority in the face of the man’s anger. ‘It’s your definition that excludes him, not mine.’

  The commander turned to the volunteers. ‘Give them their blasted car and shoot them both if they turn back.’ He looked at Maud. ‘Take this child away and put him somewhere safe, miss. Let this be a lesson. Property required by the Irish Republican Army will be requisitioned in the name of the Republic. Any collaboration with the army of occupation will be seen as an act of treason. You understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How can it be an act of treason if we’re not even Irish?’ Art queried. ‘I suppose you call my father’s cousin a foreigner too.’

  The commander replaced his gun, calmer now. ‘You’re sharp, sonny. If debating points were bullets you’d have killed me long ago. But the Countess gave up everything. Could you do likewise? Revolution is not a half-way house. Your accent would be a liability to any flying column. You’d stick out, like a motor car. Stay in your own world. We leave this cottage tonight and won’t be back. If you reveal where you found this car the roof will be burnt over the old couple’s heads. Such a thing would not be forgotten. The peelers have just abandoned the barracks that I had planned to attack with your car tonight. They probably got a tip-off. Go home and keep your mouth shut. And tell them to do likewise in the pubs of Dunkineely.’

  ‘Nobody said a word to us,’ Art said quickly.

  The commander escorted them out to the yard where the old couple silently stood. ‘If I had to shoot every loose-tongued Irish fool, I’d have no bullets left for the British.’

  The car started at the second attempt. Art loaded their bicycles into the boot while the volunteers stood back as if expecting Maud to crash into the gate. Only after she drove into the lane did her hands start shaking.

  It was dark as they descended the rough track and she steered cautiously, knowing how easy it would be to snap an axle. Father would be angry when he discovered the risk they had taken, but Maud could now convince him not to contact the police. Art stared ahead in silence.

  ‘Did you really want to volunteer?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he replied, though Maud knew he was lying. ‘I was merely winding up the blither. Can’t say I’d fancy the type of country he would build.’

  ‘I’m not sure he will get the chance,’ Maud said. ‘The Prime Minister can flood Ireland with troops.’

  ‘True. There’s no way these fools can win. I’m just not sure they can be beaten either. Don’t mention my offer to Father.’

  They drove on in silence because the dark world beyond the windscreen felt different now. Maud wondered if the Corkman’s story about the barracks was a ruse. Perhaps some poor man had been driven in this motor to a remote spot last night, shot and his body dumped? She would spend hours scrubbing the upholstery, yet the motor would never feel like it fully belonged to her again. At the bend beside Bruckless House a Crossley Tender was parked, with a party of British soldiers blocking the road. A local man was being searched, his hands raised as a soldier roughly kicked his feet apart. The man looked up, relieved that there were witnesses to his search. A sergeant stopped the car and put his head in the window.

  ‘And where would you two lovebirds be heading?’

  ‘This is my brother,’ Maud replied, tersely.

  ‘Is it necessary to search the man like that?’ Art asked.

  ‘I assure you it is.’ The sergeant relaxed upon hearing Art’s accent. ‘The Shinners would shoot loyal citizens like you in your bed.’ He called back. ‘That will do. Let him go.’ Watching the local man cycle quickly away, he turned back to the car. ‘Can’t say I like this posting. At least in France you knew who the enemy was. It must be hard for you, barely able to trust your own servants.’

  ‘I trust everyone in my village,’ Maud replied.

  ‘What village is that?’

  ‘Dunkineely.’

  The sergeant whispered softly, ‘We’ve heard rumours of a car stolen in Dunkineely.’

  ‘Was it reported stolen?’

  ‘We get reports in many ways.’ His manner was brisker. �
�Where have you just come from?’

  ‘We were out taking the air.’

  ‘What if I don’t believe you?’

  ‘Are you calling my sister a liar?’ Art demanded.

  ‘I want to know your exact movements. I’m keen to encounter a certain party of men. I have a little silver present for each of them.’

  ‘We met nobody today,’ Maud said.

  ‘For God’s sake, miss, whose side are you on? If they take your car today it will be your house and lands tomorrow. The savages won’t leave you with a roof over your heads.’

  ‘Please move your lorry,’ Maud replied. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘And I want to know where you’ve been.’

  ‘What is the problem here, sergeant?’ Two figures emerged from the driveway of Bruckless House. The soldiers raised their rifles, then lowered them, sensing Mr Ffrench’s military bearing as he stood beside Dr O’Donnell. The sergeant saluted.

  ‘Just carrying out our duties, sir. Keeping the peace.’

  ‘Go and keep it somewhere else so. And don’t salute me, I’m a civilian.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. It’s just obvious you were in the services.’

  ‘We all make mistakes.’

  ‘The Commodore has returned from service off Murmansk this evening,’ Dr O’Donnell said mildly. ‘We can vouch for these young people. Kindly let them pass.’

  ‘Damned hard luck about the withdrawal of the expeditionary force from Russia, sir,’ the sergeant addressed Mr Ffrench. ‘I hear the Bolsheviks are savages.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Mr Ffrench replied, ‘the Bolsheviks are men of principle, which is more than can be said for the White Russians we were shoring up, for whom I could not give a horse artillery hoot. Our retreat was bliss for me.’

  The sergeant searched Mr Ffrench’s face as if this was a black joke that he was missing. His tone stiffened.

  ‘I lost a cousin there, at the battle on the Ussuri River.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Mr Ffrench replied. ‘Good men died needlessly. I made it my business to write to their widows.’

  ‘He was just twenty-two,’ the sergeant said. ‘He fought bravely. His kids will be proud of him. What did you do?’

  ‘I fought my best to ensure that as few of my men as possible died. I don’t have children yet to be proud of me. If I had I might have been truly brave for their sake and joined the Bolsheviks to fight for the liberty of all men.’

  The sergeant looked at his men who were all watching this encounter, then, very deliberately, he spat and gave the order to board the truck. He climbed in without speaking. Headlights lit up the dark road as it pulled away. The darkness was more intense after it was gone.

  Mr Ffrench approached the car.

  ‘My word, you pair have got so big. Come down tomorrow and we’ll have a picnic on the pier like old times. Maybe you’ll give the doctor a lift as far as Killaghtee church.’

  Mr Ffrench sounded relaxed and jovial, but Maud wondered if when she woke tomorrow she would suspect that his conversation with the sergeant had formed part of a bizarre dream. Mr Ffrench shook their hands, then strolled back up his avenue. The doctor got into the back seat and Maud drove on.

  ‘Is Mr Ffrench feeling all right, Doctor?’ Maud asked.

  ‘I’m afraid that diagnosis is out of my league,’ the doctor replied. ‘Our neighbour appears to have embraced a new faith. He has spent the evening preaching the benefits of communism for all mankind. I have not heard such ardour since travelling medicine men used to pontificate on the virtues of their elixirs at fair days, curing everything from croup to baldness. In Mr Ffrench’s favour he makes no claim that communism will cure either. A few weeks’ rest should sort him out. Ffrench always took up hobbies with enthusiasm. Reading between the lines, it seems that he was relieved of the command of an assault on Archangel. It was given to a well-connected young English officer whom the Admiralty were keen to blood. I put Ffrench’s zeal down to pique, but we old doctors are a cynical breed. Here will do fine, Maud. I’m glad you recovered your motor.’

  Maud stopped to let him out.

  ‘How did you know it was missing?’

  The doctor laughed. ‘Who doesn’t know? Good night.’

  Brother and sister drove on and entered the village. Two men leaned on the low windowsill at MacShane’s pub to watch the car go by. One gestured a silent greeting. Only after they passed however did Maud wonder if it was actually a greeting or had his fingers been cupped in the shape of an imaginary revolver. She didn’t know. Indeed, as she turned into the lane to the coach house Maud realised that there was little she was truly sure of any more.

  FIVE

  The Boat

  Donegal, August 1920

  Nobody else called this the Fairyland Road, but in her mind Eva never referred to it by any other name. It was a rough track over bogs and rocks that cut the trip to Killybegs by two miles. Sometimes at dawn she loved to sketch here, knowing there would be no traffic and rarely another person to disturb her. But it was barely passable to cycle on as she had discovered with Jack this morning, going to the Killybegs Regatta when they struggled to lift their bicycles over exposed rocks where the track had vanished. Still, she was happier to travel independently rather than be squashed between her boisterous brothers in the battered motor with the roof tied down with rope.

  This morning, Mother had seemed perturbed at allowing the recently demobbed twenty-two-year-old New Zealand officer to accompany her alone down this isolated track. But – as if to encourage Eva’s growing friendship with Jack – her brothers and, more reluctantly, Maud, had all expressed a fierce determination to travel by motor.

  Jack looked slightly comic now, as his long legs struggled to cope with Maud’s small bicycle, but the family was lucky to have two bicycles left. Eva dismounted as they reached another outcrop of rock. Her wicker basket was crammed with eggs purchased from an old woman who resembled an amiable witch and kept eggs for sale in a chamber pot under her box-bed in a tiny cottage near the road. Cook would be glad of them for tonight’s regatta party. Jack also dismounted to offer Eva a hand, but she blushed and said that she would manage. Twice already she had taken his hand at awkward parts of the track and twice he seemed hesitant to let it go.

  They discussed the afternoon regatta in Killybegs where crowds had lined the harbour walls. Eva explained how British submarines based there during the war had created great local excitement. She was careful when mentioning the war, having never ascertained how Jack received his injuries which required such a lengthy recuperation. Two months ago Father had acceded to a request from an army friend that the family might take in Jack for some rest before he undertook his long return voyage to New Zealand. Luckily Cousin George had been leaving after a summer visit, so it was agreed to offer the young officer his room. When asked to inscribe the visitors’ book on his last day Cousin George had listed an entire alphabet, with his Q & R causing particular hilarity. Q is for all the impossible QUESTIONS discussed at dinner. R is for the RESULT: indescribable babble.

  The New Zealand officer was initially bewildered by the Goold Verschoyles’s indescribable babble on the night he arrived. Mother – engaged in ‘table turning’ with her psychic friends in the drawing room – had suggested that Father play a march on the piano to see what the spirits did. As Eva had answered the front door and led Jack into the room, the table started to move by itself in time to the jaunty music while Mother’s friends with outstretched hands linked across it, needed to stand up to keep pace with its swaying. Father was impressed, although her brothers’ disbelief remained unaltered. But that night Eva and Maud had been more preoccupied with their new arrival than with any occult manifestation.

  The sisters had expected a pale invalid, perhaps mildly deranged like several local ex-soldiers who had been exposed to nerve gas and were prone to fits. But apart from a slight limp, Jack seemed in perfect health. Eva did glimpse a scar down his leg on the first occasion when Jack a
ccompanied Art and her to the pier beside Mr Ffrench’s house. The tide had been in, with high waves washing over the stones as they splashed down the pier to jump feet first into the sea. The water was deep and exhilarating, so intensely cold that for several seconds after each jump Eva feared that she would never surface again. But excitement kept her warm as she repeatedly clambered out to do it again, suddenly conscious of how tightly the bathing suit clung to her eighteen-year-old body.

  She had never imagined that anyone could jump higher than Art, but after several timid attempts, Jack suddenly charged through the spray to launch himself forward with a roar that scared Eva because she instinctively knew this was how he had been trained to bayonet German soldiers. Jack never uttered such a yell again as if his leap off the pier had exorcised some terrible vision trapped in his heart. But afterwards Eva never used her nickname for the pier again as if the sight of his muscular body had altered her innocent vision of paradise.

  Indeed, Eva never really thought of him as a British soldier until the night, soon after his arrival, when loud knocking disturbed the house. Father was away. Eva and Maud had looked down to see armed men outside. The IRA guerrilla campaign was ongoing, with hardened British auxiliaries ransacking villages and shooting bystanders in reprisals. Little of this had filtered into Dunkineely since their motor was stolen, but Maud understood the danger and had whispered for Eva to wake Jack and smuggle him out the back door. Eva had often visited the spare room when Cousin George slept there, but to enter it with a stranger in the bed felt different. Jack’s shoulders had been bare and for a terrible moment Eva feared that he was naked. Jack woke once she touched his arm. His hand covered her fingers as he gazed up in a cryptic way she could not understand. He seemed unsurprised at her presence.

  ‘Armed men are here,’ Eva had whispered. ‘They may have come for you.’

  ‘Turn your back.’ Eva heard him slip into his trousers.