An Ark of Light

by Dermot Bolger

  Alan, who had first befriended Francis when they were both schoolboys at Aravon School, came from a prosperous but undistinguished Glenageary Protestant family. His bedside manner was as stoic and discreet as his everyday persona, as if Alan had made a conscious decision to render himself invisible in public. His sole distinguishing feature was a neatly trimmed beard, which leant him a nautical appearance, but Eva slowly realised that even his beard had been grown to deflect and disguise. As day boys in Aravon, Francis and Alan had recognised their shared secret in being homosexual. They had also recognised – with an initial disappointment and then relief – that neither was attracted to the other and they would never be lovers. Being both drawn to very different types of men meant that they would never be rivals ether. This made their friendship strong and unstrained: no jealous tantrums or lovers’ tiffs, just mutual support when needed. Alan’s visits helped to calm Francis, but Max’s more lively ones drew Francis out of his despondency and, even if only for short periods, restored her son’s gregariousness. Max had started to visit Frankfort Avenue so frequently that Eva initially wondered if the American was a closet homosexual positioning himself to become Francis’s new lover. But Max seemed too overtly heterosexual and had started to speak about harbouring clandestine feelings toward some girl. He was too shy to reveal her name, but Eva was glad that Max had found someone special because he seemed slightly lost in Dublin.

  The thought of Max waiting outside the Gate Theatre made her pay for her unfinished meal and hurry from the restaurant. It was at Francis’s instigation that she and Max had started to attend Gate productions together, attracted by the more innovative drama on offer there than at the Abbey Theatre. Max’s conservative parents in Ohio would possibly be horrified at some plays they saw and perhaps baffled that Max enjoyed attending them with such an older companion. But Eva had reached an age when she felt sufficiently free of convention to make friends without reference to age, sex or creed. What she loved about Francis’s college friends was how quickly they became her friends also.

  She needed to hurry now, weighed down by the bag containing the catalogues for tomorrow’s exhibition. But rushing about kept Eva feeling young. She might be penniless but marital separation granted her enough consolations to make life exciting again. The richest consolation was friendship. In Dublin she kept finding her own kind: free spirits, even if some were initially cautious about revealing their private beliefs. Friends so varied that they occasionally clashed if brought together; impassioned young artists and seemingly staid middle-aged civil servants whose idealism was camouflaged behind the conservative appearances they needed to publically project.

  Eva was convinced she had known some of these friends in previous existences, whereas others were kindred souls she was meeting for the first time. Max felt like one such soul. Eva possessed no sense of having shared a past with him, but – from how they instinctively felt at ease together – she suspected that in a future life they would be more closely linked. He was waiting outside the Gate Theatre, when she appeared, slightly out of breath. He waved two tickets to show that – despite her protests – tonight was his treat.

  ‘No pickets this time,’ he laughed. ‘It won’t be as exciting.’

  When they first attended the Gate some months ago protesters were picketing the theatre, distributing a pamphlet entitled Red Star over Hollywood because the actor Orson Welles was attending a performance of Tolka Row. The mob from the Catholic Cinema and Theatre Patrons’ Association shouted such abuse at Welles as an alleged communist that the author of Tolka Row, Maura Laverty, sang ‘The Red Flag’ from the greenroom window above their heads to further provoke them. When Eva told Art about the jostling Max and she had received her brother scornfully proclaimed that Welles was no Marxist, merely a failed capitalist masquerading as one. But if Max’s parents knew that their son occasionally fraternised in her kitchen with an actual communist like Art, Max would almost certainly be on the next liner home from Cobh.

  Tonight only a small crowd were in to see a revival of Denis Johnston’s The Old Lady Says No. Eva and Max took their usual cheap wooden seats at the back. He was often mistaken for her son until people heard his American accent. Eva loved the play’s ending – with Robert Emmet’s ghost gazing down on Dublin from the Wicklow Mountains – partly because it conjured up Esther O’Mahony’s Wicklow cottage where she planned to spend this coming Saturday, if Francis seemed well enough to be left alone. After the final curtain Eva lingered in the narrow foyer to watch the courteous director, Hilton Edwards, stand with one hand on the shoulder of his lead actor, Micheál MacLiammóir, who delighted in looking conspicuous with extravagant hand gestures and a refusal to remove his makeup. The two men fascinated Eva for being Dublin’s only openly homosexual couple, tolerated as exotic theatrical creatures because they seemed so utterly true to themselves.

  Afterwards she strolled leisurely with Max down O’Connell Street: its atmosphere so different from the war years, when cowling had dimmed the streetlights and everything was rationed. Window shoppers gazed at the fashions in Clerys. Bicycle minders smoked, standing sentry over the piled-up ranks of bicycles parked beside the statues. Because Max had paid for their seats and deposited a coin in the collection box held by Lord Longford on the theatre steps, Eva treated him to a knickerbocker glory in an ice-cream parlour opposite the Metropole ballroom. A dinner dance was taking place, girls arriving in billowing dresses topped with sequin-studded lace netting. They discussed how Francis was recovering from his heartbreak; her exhibition tomorrow night; the White Stag art group show where – to his joy – Max’s first paintings were soon to be shown; and how different Dublin was from Ohio. They never discussed their age difference: there being no need too. Max was simply a friend in his twenties who found in Eva a sympathetic ear who took his dreams of being a painter seriously. Theirs was a meeting of minds until, as Max escorted her to her bus stop, Eva unselfconsciously linked his arm. Then as her bus arrived it became a brief and – for Eva – utterly unexpected meeting of lips, initiated so quickly by Max that at first Eva didn’t fully grasp what was occurring. His kiss was followed by an intense whispered request.

  ‘Can I come back with you? Please.’

  She was a mature woman, yet in that moment she felt as flustered as any inexperienced girl. She didn’t know what to do or say, so she said, ‘Not tonight. Not with Francis there.’

  Max stood on the pavement staring in at her as the bus pulled away. He was trembling so much that his desire was unmistakable. Eva didn’t know what other passengers were thinking or what to think herself. She was too embarrassed to look up at the strangers around her. Her emotions were a cocktail of guilt, dread and confusion. But she could not contain an unexpected gush of girlish joy: a painter half her age had kissed her and asked to stay the night. Eva now realised that when Max had dropped hints about harbouring clandestine feelings towards someone he was referring to her, although Eva had been too much in the ether to recognise the signs. What did she feel for him? She didn’t know, having never given herself time to contemplate such things. When the bus reached her stop she deliberately stayed on it: the double decker almost reaching its terminus before she got off. She needed the long walk home.

  As a girl she loved walking alone at night in Donegal. Now, walking back towards Rathgar, she felt like a confused girl again. The problem was that she was no girl. Forty-eight was a dangerous age: her hormones flaring up one last time. Friends claimed she only looked half her age: the illusion of youthfulness aided by her slender figure and passion for causes that her contemporaries had grown too cynical to believe in. Yet no matter how young she looked, Max was only a year older than her son. Eva fretted that she might have led Max on by linking his arm as they left the theatre. This was the relaxed way she walked with Francis, but perhaps Max had sensed a latent desire she was not conscious of. Eva had enjoyed friendships with men since separating from Freddie, but nothing physical ever arose, because life was simpler w
ith her sexuality suppressed, seeing as her separation had no legal basis in Irish law.

  Francis was not at home tonight: this was merely the first excuse to occur to Eva at the bus stop where it felt like all of Dublin was watching. If she had acted impetuously and allowed Max to accompany her home, she might now be experiencing sensations that she had only ever read about in Obelisk Press editions of Henry Miller books which daring friends smuggled home from Paris. Not that intimacy with Freddie had been unloving, at least in the early years, but even in her naivety she had recognised it as perfunctory and one sided. In the past the men for whom she felt genuine desire were always snatched away from her.

  In 1920 she lost the first man she loved through her own immaturity: a young New Zealand officer who was staying with her family while still recuperating from wounds following the Great War. He had wanted to marry Eva and take her to the other side of the earth, away from the atrocities gripping Ireland as it lurched towards independence. A new life might have beckoned in New Zealand, a sense of light and freedom as she painted in the studio he promised to build for her on his family’s land in Hawke’s Bay on the North Island. But at seventeen Eva was not ready to leave behind the safety of Donegal – never realising how porous that sanctuary was and how quickly her family would be riven apart by politics. Her inexperience and hesitancy about embracing adulthood held Eva back when the officer set her a test: a midnight boat trip out to an island where they could finally be alone. Eva would never know how life might have panned out if she had not dragged along her youngest brother at the last minute as an unwitting chaperone. But without Brendan’s presence Eva would never have summoned the courage to traverse the narrow road to the jetty where the officer waited. Only when it was too late had Eva realised how desperately she longed to be alone there with that officer who could not delay his return home until Eva sufficiently grew up to recognise that she was blossoming into a woman with desires as strong as his.

  Seven years would pass before another visitor to Donegal captured her heart. This time she was ripe with longing but this suitor chose her sister instead, panicking Eva into an unsuitable marriage. Eva recognised that she was not blameless in the slow fracture of her marriage: after her children were born she became too emotionally preoccupied with being a mother to make time to try and please a husband who was happiest drinking with cronies or out shooting on his beloved bogs. During her marriage she needed to suppress any yearning for love to protect her children. But in the summer of 1944 Eva almost made a fool of herself over another young officer recuperating from a different war.

  This was after Francis could not cope with the regime of casual cruelty and bullying considered essential for character building in that prestigious English boarding school where Freddie disastrously enrolled him. Returning with Francis to Glanmire House, Eva tried to turn their woodland home into a refuge for her son. But an unexpected surge of desire caught her off guard in this isolated sanctuary when Freddie sent over a young army officer, Harry Bennett, recuperating from his wounds, to act as a tutor who would, in Freddie’s unfortunate phrase, ‘stiffen up’ Francis. Harry Bennett’s arrival caused emotional mayhem, with Eva recognising Harry as a soulmate; a fellow idealist who loved to sit up by the fire and read French poetry aloud to her at night. An unspoken rivalry for his attentions even simmered between Eva and Maureen, the young maid. But once again this brief glimpse of personal fulfilment was snatched away when Eva realised – why was she always so slow to read signs – how the sanctuary her son truly craved was secretly being provided by this officer who shared his bedroom, tutoring Francis in ways Freddie could never have imagined. Indeed Eva spent a month sheltering her son’s lover before becoming aware for the first time of Francis’s sexuality. After Francis confided in her, Eva’s role yet again became to act as the bridesmaid to other people’s happiness, the keeper of a secret during that summer when Francis blossomed into manhood and she found herself burdened by a new worry for the son whom she worshipped.

  In the six years since then no man had entered her life in any physical sense. But tonight, when she finally reached Frankfurt Avenue after her long walk, Eva lay awake for hours, haunted by how easy it would have been – finally with no need to put other people’s happiness first – to have said ‘yes’ to Max. ‘Not tonight. Not with Francis there.’ Those hasty words had not entirely spurned Max, but had bought her time to examine her confusion. If the roles were reversed, Eva would find nothing wrong in a young girl seeking an experienced older lover. Yet no matter how alluring this temptation felt when confronted by the loneliness of her bed, she knew in her soul that the notion of an older woman and a younger man did not feel right.

  Yet she still lay awake paralysed by indecision until she rose at dawn, too perturbed to eat breakfast, and began stacking paintings in the hall, ready to be loaded into Esther O’Mahony’s car. When Esther arrived she seemed surprised by Eva’s unusual quietness. The top-coated doorman outside the Brown Thomas department store helped them to carry the artworks down into the basement gallery. Esther offered to stay and help but Eva had an exact sense of how she wanted the walls to come alive with colour and it was simpler to achieve this vision alone. Some parents had wanted to buy proper wooden frames but Eva opposed this, knowing that not every family could afford the expense. Frames and mounting boards would also disrupt the seamless vista of colour Eva was striving for. Pinning up every painting individually was exhausting work but Eva welcomed how this task required all her focus, leaving no time to think of anything else.

  As the exhibition slowly came together, Eva grew so intoxicated by its vitality that she allowed herself to believe in the credo above her studio door: With a blank canvas everything is possible. Was it possible that a brief radiance of love could light up a middle-aged woman’s life? The time was gone when anyone truly needed her. Freddie had settled into life at his prep school as if a life-long bachelor. Smart admirers besieged Hazel. Francis needed her during this present crisis, but youth was resilient. As his horticulture degree would be of little use in Dublin he was already seeking work in London. When he finished college and emigrated she would be truly alone.

  Finally content with the display of paintings, Eva stepped out into the sunshine of Grafton Street at three o’clock, knowing that if Max repeated his question in the right circumstances she might find it hard not to be tempted.

  She believed in signs and it seemed like fate was sending her one. After chatting to the elderly doorman outside Walpole’s and pausing in Lipton’s doorway to breathe in the musty reek of rich cheeses, Eva saw Max approach among a cluster of college pals, including Valerie O’Mahony. They were passing Woolworths, strolling down the less prosperous half of Grafton Street. Eva stopped outside Vine’s antique shop to greet Max, then realised that he intended to stride past. His companions seemed taken aback by his uncharacteristic snub. Valerie waved as if to compensate for his rudeness and Eva waved back. But she felt so crushed that she needed to lean against the plate-glass: it was as if somebody had struck her.

  The students reached Brown Thomas and stopped to study a poster for her exhibition. One young man offered around a packet of cigarettes, but Max shook his head, patting his pockets as if searching for his own. He liked to smoke an American brand that few Dublin shops stocked. He muttered to the others and turned back as if heading for Noblett’s tobacconists at the top of Grafton Street. Hurt and confused, Eva walked quickly up the street. But once his friends turned the corner, Max must have started running because she heard him approach. He slowed down, maintaining a discreet distance so that no casual observer would think them together. It felt like being trapped inside a Hitchcock spy film.

  ‘I have to see you,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’

  ‘Then why pass me by without a word?’

  ‘We don’t want people talking. It would look bad if they knew.’

  Knew about what? He made it sound like they had reached an understanding. Max s
lipped a folded sheet of paper into her hand.

  ‘You’re a free spirit,’ he said. ‘The freest spirit I’ve ever met.’

  Without another word, he veered into Noblett’s doorway so quickly that at first Eva didn’t realise he was gone. She stopped to stare beyond the display of sugary canes in the tobacconists’ window and watched Max address the assistant. Then she walked on, feeling stupid as she realised that he didn’t want her to wait. It felt as if people were watching: Grafton Street filled with prying eyes. She had known this feeling before, when walking through Castlebar in the 1930s with Freddie in debt to every shopkeeper. It was not a feeling she liked. Reaching St Stephen’s Green, Eva sat on a bench to open Max’s sheet of paper. It was a love poem, addressed to her though she was unnamed. She could not prevent a flush of joy at imagining him writing these lines late at night. The poem made Eva feel special, but also furtive. An artist’s mistress, a secret locked away like Francis had been in Colville’s flat. That was who she would become if she let Max share her bed. He was offering a clandestine affair that she would be crazy to embark on, but maybe it was more than anyone else was offering.

  Eva placed Max’s poem in her bag where she kept treasured possessions and returned to Brown Thomas. She reread Monk Gibbon’s introduction to the catalogue. As paintings were not for sale there was no chance of making any money. Nor was there any question of an entrance fee, because Eva wanted as many shoppers as possible to wander in. She could not even attract additional pupils, as she was already stretched to her limit. What she wanted was for others to follow her example and open studios for children whose imaginations were stifled by conventional education. Hazel would scoff at some of these pictures, claiming that any child could do them. But this was the point, to show what any child could do if given imaginative freedom. Eva nervously re-hung an entire wall, just to prevent her thoughts from wandering back to Max.