For her needs? Eva stopped walking now in the evening light as the dirt track rounded a bend and a small mountain lake appeared before her. The mocking inner voice returned. The hillside was deserted, unless a shepherd was crouched among the stunted scrub where a sound of bells betrayed the presence of goats. On the first evening when she bathed here, naked and alone, Eva had worried about being spied on. This evening she was not here to bathe. She had chosen this spot so as to be alone when opening the long-anticipated replies that had finally arrived: the world’s response to her dreams. These letters could only be from the editors to whom she submitted her first attempts at writing: nobody else – not even her children – knew her present whereabouts. Her dream of a new life was proclaimed in green fountain pen under the heading of ‘Gairm/Profession’ in her passport. It was this description of her occupation which caused the border guard to look at her warily; the posadero to carry a writing table up to her room; the villagers – whom he surely alerted – to regard her with cautious respect. Now these letters would decide if she actually possessed any right to travel under her officially listed profession of ‘schíbheoir/writer’.
This title felt fraudulent with nothing yet published, but Eva had been unable to think of another occupation to list on the passport application which Freddie had agreed to sign. She refused to be classified as a ‘housewife’, but could not call herself a teacher since her studio closed. Some months after Hazel’s marriage Francis had made his long-anticipated move to London. For three days after his departure Eva had sat in silence in her bedroom in Frankfurt Avenue, studying her half-completed in passport application form. Rain leaked through broken roof tiles, splashing into old jam-jars once filled with paint, but Eva had refused to panic, because she was not alone. She had the words of Meister Eckhart and Martin Buber and Rudolf Steiner for company, while the postman pushed bills through her letterbox. Only by meditating in silence could she hope to discern what purpose God intended for her. On the third night, when descending the stairs to empty jam-jars of rainwater, it occurred to her that great freedom must exist in being considered a writer. Such an occupation allowed you to move about like a blown leaf without attracting comment. Until then she had left the space for her occupation blank on the passport application, knowing that whatever she filled in must be a statement of intent. That night she entered her profession as ‘writer’ and slept more peacefully than in months. The next morning she visited an auctioneer to put her house up for sale.
The lake was silent now: the evening sky still except where a vulture circled high up, eyeing her with indifference. Eva weighed each envelope in her palm. Two contained more than one sheet of paper. This signified rejection and a manuscript’s return, though perhaps editors sent stories back with suggested revisions before publication. Eva knew nothing about the writing business, except what could be gleamed from the Writers and Artists Yearbook. She felt too nervous to open the envelopes. If they contained rejections, she feared that the entire village would sense her disappointment when she returned. For just a moment longer she wanted to savour the possibility of acceptance, imagining what it must feel like to be a published author, like Max who had one poem published in Envoy before graduating from Trinity to return to Ohio last year.
The moment of truth could be delayed no longer. Eva had no choice but to open the first envelope. It contained a rejection from BBC’s Woman’s Hour of a travel piece entitled Night Train in Spain. ‘Not for us,’ the letter read, ‘but you have a gift for words and the ability to create atmosphere and character. Tidy this up and try Blackwoods Magazine or the Irish papers.’ The second envelope contained a rejection from a woman’s magazine, with some words of encouragement scribbled on a pre-printed slip: ‘far too sad for us, but full of local colour. Might be perfect for a novel.’
Eva was half afraid to stare back down the dusty track in case a procession of jeering figures waited there: the Irish passport official, the border guard, the posadero ready to subdivide her room back in two. But there were no witnesses to her failure. Friends had always assured her that her stories would fascinate editors. But her inner voice – which bore a semblance of Freddie’s mocking tone – reminded her that thousands of women of her age clung to this same illusion. How many rejection slips did BBC’s Woman’s Hour dispatch to them every day? Eva opened the third letter, from a literary agent picked at random from the Writers and Artists Yearbook.
‘Dear Mrs Fitzgerald,
We have read your sample chapter for a book about teaching child art. We are prepared to submit this manuscript, when finished, to publishers on your behalf for our standard handling charge of one guinea per submission…’
Eva’s hand shook. She had nothing published but if she had an agent surely she could call herself an author. If she worked hard she could finish the child art book within months in this village by writing short practical chapters. It surprised her that literary agents charged writers a fee, regardless of acceptance. She didn’t know if this agent was a confidence trickster, but it felt like a star to steer towards. She would struggle to find a guinea, and several might be needed before the book was accepted. Maybe it would never be accepted and she would end up like her old Mayo neighbour, Dermot MacManus, who had been talking for so many years about producing a book on the supernatural that nobody took him seriously anymore. But life was full of risks. Before leaving Ireland she had posted some money from the sale of Frankfort Avenue to Freddie, knowing that Hazel’s wedding had left him mired in debt. Her typewriter was purchased second-hand in London. As things stood, Eva existed mainly on bread and fruit. Now she would need to forfeit the occasional luxury of cigarettes or dark chocolate and put off buying new shoes, even though these roads had cut her old pair to pieces.
But this was the price of being a writer and at least in Spain she had no appearances to maintain. Eva didn’t know what the old men who saluted her outside the village café really thought about her. But here she could observe life without becoming personally involved. She could eat simple food and sleep and rise when it suited her. It felt good to own nothing and finally have no responsibilities. Opening her bag, Eva took out the notebook intended for her own writings, although its pages were crammed with quotations to sustain her – like D. H. Lawrence explaining how true happiness only came after the experience of being goaded by life. She began to reread lines by Shelley. It brought back her mother’s voice reciting her favourite poem:
‘Life, like a dome of many coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity
Until Death tramples it to fragments.’
Eva started to walk back down the mountain, closing her eyes to visualise this dome of many coloured glass. At times it felt like her life had been lived inside a prism where every experience merged into a spectrum of colours. If she had become a successful painter, life might have been different, with a reputation and a studio with windows open to sunlight and night stars. But would she have known this serenity only experienced by those who survive journeying alone through hurt and loneliness? She was lonely, but needed to ensure that her loneliness never became a burden on other people who might feel guilty. She longed to be in London because Francis was there, but he had a new life and she would be in the way, with Francis acutely sensitive to her moods and needs. This was one reason why she chose this remote village and had still not written to him from here. If Francis did not possess her address, how could he feel guilty about her loneliness when there was nothing he could do to relieve it? Eva had contacted Francis’s friend Alan, asking him to let her know if any mishap or malaise afflicted her son. If she felt that Francis needed her she would move to London at once. But while a mother always had to be aware of her son’s needs, it was vital to never let a son feel burdened by hers.
It was getting dark. Maria would be putting her children to bed above the post office. A friendship had sprung up between them, a form of mutual education whereby each night she taught Maria simple English words a
nd Maria taught her Spanish nouns. Eva didn’t want to learn verbs, knowing she could never grasp the proper tenses. She just wanted enough words to communicate about everyday life. Maria was one of the few young women left in the village. Eva never again saw the young couple who consummated their marriage in her partitioned bedroom. Next morning they had left, probably for a shantytown outside Madrid or Saragossa or to seek labouring work in France. Maria’s husband was determined that his children be raised in his native village, but the price of this was his almost continual absence, as he chased seasonal work in French sugar beet fields or during the olive harvest in Jaén.
As Eva approached the village an elderly man passed her, carrying three hens strung upside down a long pole, legs tied together. They were still alive but too exhausted to flutter. The man hailed her cheerfully in Spanish, oblivious to the birds’ suffering. Eva gazed after him, sickened not just by their anguish but by his casual indifference. Why could she not accept that cruelty was constantly intermingled with life? Why did she feel such affinity with every living creature, that she shared the pain of every tussled hen and starving alley cat? Eva walked on towards the village rooftops – those domes of many hidden colours – knowing that she had lied when filling in her passport application. Instead of the term ‘writer’ she should have simply stated ‘pilgrim’.
The jangling bell above the post office door alerted Maria to her arrival. The young woman smiled, raising a finger to her lips to indicate how her youngest child had just fallen asleep. Yesterday Maria showed Eva her wedding photograph and – when Eva explained how her own daughter got married last year – she had asked Eva to see a photograph from Hazel’s wedding. Sitting now in the back kitchen, where Maria could listen out for customers entering the shop, Eva produced the single wedding photograph she had brought on her travels, tucked with other mementoes inside the small bible her father had given her as a girl. Looking at Freddie’s ashen face in the wedding photograph, Eva remembered a premonition outside the Dawson Street church that this might be the last time the four of them ever gathered together as a family. But Eva forget this sombre thought, caught up in Maria’s excited curiosity in studying every detail of the photograph, asking a babble of questions in Spanish and broken English about Hazel’s dress, the comical garb of Geoffrey’s pals from the Trinity Boat Club who turned up with oars to provide a guard of honour, and about herself and Freddie standing awkwardly together on the church steps.
The two women’s heads were bent over the photograph: both laughing as Eva tried to use a tattered English-Spanish dictionary to translate her replies. Then after a time Eva realised that Maria was no longer asking about Hazel’s wedding, but inquiring about Eva’s own wedding day. Eva had no photograph of this, but using a mixture of simple English and Spanish words, she began to describe her wedding in Donegal by drawing small comic sketches on white sheets of shop wrapping paper. The easy fluidity that Eva once enjoyed with a pencil came back in this relaxed atmosphere: Maria laughing in fascination and demanding more sketches to show her children in the morning. Eva’s wedding was the last occasion when all five Goold-Verschoyle children gathered together. Eva sketched in the narrow main street of Dunkineely and the last glimpse she’d had, of all of her siblings standing together, from the back window of the car that took her away: all her family and neighbours waving and young Brendan running down the road after the car, both hands raised in joy. Maria pointed to this figure, amused by how Eva had captured his elation.
‘Que?’
Eva had not cried during Hazel’s wedding, but, without warning, this casually conjured sketch of Brendan proved too much. Maria held Eva’s shoulders as unexpected tears came, then pointed again to the figure, trying to understand.
Tu amante?’
Eva shook her head.
‘Hermano?’ Maria guessed correctly. ‘Se murio? Accidente?’
‘Conflicto.’
‘Conflicto? Donde?’
‘España.’
Maria crossed herself and walked out into the empty shop, glancing anxiously around as if it were filled with prying eyes. She removed Franco’s framed portrait from behind the counter and returned, closing the kitchen door so that nobody entering the shop would see them.
‘De qué lado?’ she demanded. Which side? Eva dried her eyes, bewildered at how stupidly she had let her secret slip, despite Hazel’s warning about never mentioning Brendan in Spain. Maria’s eyes blazed as she pointed at the portrait again. ‘De qué lado?’ Eva had travelled here to escape her past, but the sanctuary of this village seemed about to be shattered. Yet even if she lost Maria’s friendship and her room at the posada, it had not been in Brendan’s character to lie and nor was it in hers. Eva picked up Franco’s portrait and placed it face down on the table. Maria glanced over her shoulder as if expecting the door to burst open.
‘My brother too. I too young to know him, but still I cry.’ She turned over the portrait to spit vehemently on Franco’s face, then wiped it clear with a rag and quickly re-hung it in its designated space in the shop. A child came in and Eva listened to Maria serving him. Brendan’s story was too convoluted to explain by simply turning a dictator’s portrait one way or the other, but this complexity was impossible to convey in pidgin Spanish. Maybe Maria’s brother’s story was equally complex, as were the tensions and fault lines existing beneath the seeming tranquility of this village, where Eva now sensed that, just like in Ireland, the Civil War would never truly be over. When Maria returned, Eva pleaded that it must be a secreto. The young woman nodded and mentioned the posadero’s name, placing a finger to her lips to indicate that Eva should never confide in him. She pointed at the sketch and asked: ‘Cúal era su nombre?’
‘Brendan Goold-Verschoyle.’
Maria produced a bottle of brandy and two glasses. She poured them drinks and raised her glass, making an effort to pronounce Brendan’s name. This gesture touched Eva. Brendan had come to help the Spanish people and not just as Stalin’s stooge. Songs would never be written about him, because no side wished to claim him. But this toast felt like an unblemished gesture in his honour. The brandy warmed her, going to Eva’s head after having so little to eat. She was foolish to have imagined that cheques from editors would start arriving within weeks. Her stories had been rejected but the editors took her dream seriously. ‘Too sad for a woman’s magazine … perfect for a novel…’ It was a start to build on. Fifty-four was not too old to begin another chapter. She remembered the good-luck card Francis placed in her luggage before she left London, knowing how she would laugh when she discovered it. It depicted a naked middle-aged woman dancing with a rose between her teeth, under the heading: Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. This is what Eva would do in this village: writing her book each morning, walking in the hills each evening, listening out for faint whispers emanating from the unattainable.
The bell jangled over the shop door. Maria’s father entered the kitchen with his limp, surprised to see the brandy bottle. Maria had sworn it would be a secreto, but Eva knew that she was about to tell him, because he had also been part of that war. Eva now realised where his limp came from and how difficult it must have been for his family to retain this post office amid Franco’s reprisals. The old man fetched a third glass and sat down, refilling Eva’s glass before offering a fresh toast. Eva touched her glass against his and drank, praying that somehow – whether alive or dead – Brendan’s spirit might sense these glasses being secretively raised in his honour in a remote Pyrenean village.
Chapter Six
Who We Truly Are
The Isle of Wight, 1960
The schoolboy sitting opposite Eva was absorbed in reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island all the way from London’s Waterloo Station to Portsmouth Harbour. It was Francis’s favourite novel as a boy of that same age, back when he was petrified of Freddie, yet still desperate to win his approval. The boy’s mother smiled, catching Eva observing him. The boy reluctantly closed the book and took his m
other’s hand as they dismounted onto the crowded platform in Portsmouth. Eva longed to tell him her favourite quote from Stevenson: ‘To miss the joy is to miss all’. But she remained silent because she was back in Britain, where – unlike Tangiers – strangers regarded you oddly if you addressed them.
As she walked along the wooden pier to catch the Isle of Wight ferry, the sea air brought back memories of her Donegal childhood. Eva was starting to feel more alive and like that untarnished child now, at fifty-seven years of age, than at any time during her trapped years of marriage. Or at least she had been until last week, when a letter arrived unexpectedly from Freddie’s relations in Turlough Park. The Mayo postmark had induced a sense of foreboding, reducing Eva to being Freddie’s wife once again – or at least the wife which he regarded her to be: impractical, perpetually in the ether with daft ideas, and unsuited to upholding the surname he had bestowed on her.
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