An Ark of Light

by Dermot Bolger

  But all of Turlough knew about the unspoken estrangement between father and son. Had Kate’s endless babbling been an attempt to delay the inevitable? The local women would have felt it no more their place to send a boy racing up to Glanmire House to warn Francis than they would think of disobeying their priests by entering a Protestant church. They would not wish to be seen to intervene in a family altercation, but Eva felt certain that, when Freddie extracted himself from Kate and began his journey through the dark, many locals had surely watched his progress from behind darkened windows.

  ‘After you left Kate did you call into Turlough Park?’ Eva asked. Freddie eyed her with suspicion.

  ‘You know exactly what I did. Your blabbermouth boy always ran to his mother.’

  ‘I only know what our son told me in a letter. He didn’t say much, but enough for me to know he was hurting so badly that I sold my typewriter to pay my fare back to London from Tangiers.’

  ‘You always came running at the first sign of tears,’ Freddie said. ‘You never let the boy fight his own wars.’

  ‘Your son isn’t at war with you.’

  Freddie gasped as a spur of pain shot through him. ‘He might have become my son if you hadn’t always interfered. I knuckled down when I enlisted. Do you know how much hard work it takes to be promoted to be a Lieutenant Colonel? Finally by skimping and saving I could afford to enrol him in a good English public school that would give him backbone and contacts. Did you ever wonder what type of man he might have become if that school had time to toughen him up? But no: you had to whisk him away simply because he experienced a bit of character-building ragging for being Irish.’

  ‘You didn’t send Francis to that school for his sake,’ Eva retorted, bitter now. ‘You did it for your own ego, to ape your fellow officers. It didn’t bother you that Francis was on the verge of a nervous breakdown at being bullied for being gentle.’

  ‘Think of the trouble it might have saved if his classmates had knocked the gentleness out of him,’ Freddie countered. ‘Do you think I was not bullied at school for needing to drag one foot behind me? It toughened me up. Think of what damage you did by mollycoddling the boy in Glanmire House where he had no role model except a tutor who turned out to be decidedly queer.’

  ‘You handpicked his tutor, Freddie, persuading a young officer the Mayo air would help him recuperate from his wounds.’

  Freddie quivered with rage, but for Eva – who had seen him in full fury – there was something heartbreakingly pathetic in his inability to summon sufficient strength to properly rant at her. She sensed other patients in the ward eavesdropping on their every word.

  ‘But if I’d known, I’d have had him dishonourably discharged.’

  Eva had resolved not to slip back into the simmering rows that tore their marriage asunder – rows with Francis often at their core. Yet she couldn’t stop her retort: ‘Only one of you got discharged from the army: for drunkenly shouting your mouth off in the Officers’ Mess. Francis’s tutor earned his medals in France. You earned your MBE by shouting at recruits from the safety of a barracks in the Home Counties.’

  Eva instantly regretted these words. She tried to reach her hand out, but Freddie tucked his skeletal fingers underneath the blanket.

  ‘That remark was unworthy of us,’ Eva said apologetically. ‘As newlyweds we brought out the best in each other, but for years we’ve only brought out the worst. Nobody ever doubted your bravery, Freddie. You’d have been the first man up that beach on D-Day if God hadn’t cursed you with your foot.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware you still believed in God.’ Freddie’s tone was mocking but her words had mollified him.

  ‘I believe in a supreme being. I just don’t believe he is an English-speaking Anglican who reads Country Life and agrees with the views expressed on the letters page of The Times.’

  She was rewarded by the ghost of a smile. ‘Trust you to believe that if heaven exists they speak Swahili there. A least you haven’t gone native and started believing that God is an ignorant papist.’

  ‘I don’t know what God is,’ Eva confessed. ‘I don’t believe that any religion represents the summit of wisdom. They’re all stepping stones.’

  ‘To what?’ he asked, genuinely curious.

  Eva’s laugh was self-deprecating. ‘The ridiculous thing, Freddie, is that even at my age I honestly don’t know.’

  Freddie’s voice echoed the amused exasperation he once showed. ‘That’s my Eva. Leaping from stepping stone to stepping stone until you realise you’re stranded in mid-stream with the tide rising and no way forward or back.’

  ‘You’re in no state to row out and rescue me,’ she said in a consolatory tone.

  Freddie looked away, as if frightened of betraying emotion. ‘You’re beyond saving. But at one time I’d have risked rowing through the widest river in flood for you.’

  ‘But not now?’

  His dry-eyed gaze was honest. ‘Look at me: a fairground attraction to gawk at. I’ve a few weeks left at most. Intolerable pain when I’m awake and when I’m not the morphine makes me hallucinate and shout out.’

  ‘Are you in pain now?’ Eva asked.

  Freddie gazed at the ceiling. ‘Pain is determined to keep me company, whether I want company or not.’

  ‘Will I call the nurse? Could you use a shot of morphine?’

  ‘Not as much as I could use a bottle of Skylark and a revolver with a single bullet.’

  ‘Poor Freddie,’ she said softly.

  His eyes were unable to disguise the pain. If Eva left he could succumb to whatever relief the stupor of morphine temporarily afforded him. She knew he was anxious for her to go.

  ‘Tell me why the hell you came?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m still your wife.’

  ‘I don’t have a wife or a son either. I don’t even have my good name left in Mayo anymore. Your son stole it.’

  ‘Nobody in Turlough saw anything last Halloween.’

  ‘Country people see everything. They’ve learnt the trick of acting deferential so we barely notice their presence, but they watch our every move to use any slip against us.’

  ‘Mayo people are not like that. Think of how welcoming Kate Dowling was and even old Mr Durcan struggling up from his fire to shake your hand.’

  ‘Old Durcan isn’t the worst,’ Freddie admitted grudgingly.

  ‘I’ve never known him to be anything other than decent and considerate. I remember arriving back there in 1939. Petrol was rationed and the avenue to Glanmire House so overgrown it was barely passable. But he still insisted on driving Francis and Hazel up there that night.’

  Freddie shrugged. ‘Thank Christ he didn’t offer me a lift last Halloween or he’d have had enough ammunition to destroy the Fitzgerald name in Mayo. I admire old Durcan. He built up his shop from nothing. But he’s never forgotten how he was born by the roadside after my family had to level his father’s cottage. During the war I always warned you to wipe provisions delivered from that shop because you’d never know if anyone spat on them.’

  ‘That eviction was eighty years ago.’

  ‘In Mayo eighty years is like yesterday. I took no lift from anyone last Halloween. Nor did I call into Turlough Park, although I knew my cousin’s wife would set a place for me at dinner because she is the most decent and hospitable of women. I’d have found warmth and sympathy from her but I’ve never sought sympathy. It was late and I was in no mood for company because I found it hard to hide the pain, like someone twisting a blade in my leg. I set out through the rain at my snail’s pace, passing the Protestant church and reaching the abandoned gate lodge at the entrance to Glanmire Wood. The feel of setting foot on my land. The avenue pitch dark, but I know every step of that uphill walk through the trees. I also knew how cold the house would be: pools of water where roof tiles were missing. But I didn’t need creature comforts; I just needed the feel of reaching home. I’d bunk down in the kitchen: an army blanket to soften the stone flags. I’d get a fire
going and feel a brighter flame inside me after I opened the Skylark whiskey. I didn’t mind the rain or my aching leg as I limped up the avenue. But when I came within sight of the house a light was already shining in the basement. I felt panic. I begged to God that it was tinkers or thieves; anyone except your son and some Peter-Puffer bum-bandit.’

  ‘Don’t call them that,’ Eva said, hurt for Francis.

  Freddie glanced sharply at her. ‘Can you imagine the worse names they’re called in any Officers’ Mess? Do you think I never knew? That I’m blind as well as stupid?’

  ‘I always thought you only knew whatever you wanted to know.’

  ‘I know what’s natural in a man.’

  ‘Isn’t it natural to want to be happy? Have you ever been happy, Freddie?’

  He snorted. ‘That’s a stupid bloody question.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What has happiness got to do with anything?’ Freddie’s head lolled as if drained by this effort to talk. The nurse had not reappeared. Eva wondered if she was listening behind the screen. ‘Come out of that ether, Eva,’ he said weakly. ‘Life isn’t about being happy.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘It’s about a man knowing who he is and where he belongs. You belong nowhere – a misfit with your crazy causes. But at least try to understand. That was my father’s home they were defiling, the kitchen I cried in as a boy after he died. For years I’ve avoided your son and he avoided me. I asked him no questions because the bloody fool is incapable of having the manly decency to tell a white lie. What filth he gets up to in London is one thing, but to do it in Mayo?’ Freddie’s voice was weak but his rage undiminished. ‘I stood outside Glanmire House, too wet and cold to turn back. This was my home, yet I felt like the intruder, gazing down at the light pouring up from the basement kitchen. My son, my supposed heir, doing things with another man.’ Freddie’s voice rose. ‘Can’t you understand my shame, woman?’

  ‘Freddie, lower your voice.’ Eva glanced anxiously at the closed screens.

  ‘I’ll speak as damn loudly as I like. The Welsh cur was the first to grasp that they were caught. I didn’t even realise I was making a sound, but every ounce of rage was coming out in one long scream. They were both half-dressed before I stormed down into the kitchen: the Welshman, calm as you like, offering me a cigarette from a silver case, trying to flatter me by using my military rank and casually mentioning how he had served as an army doctor. He had the audacity to mention my leg and how he specialised in treating such conditions. I don’t have a condition, I told him. I have an affliction that never stopped me doing anything in life. But I’m sure your cry-baby boy has told you all this already.’

  ‘Francis is no longer a boy. Thankfully his friendship with Jonathan has survived your vile remarks when turning them out of Glanmire House. But I know it was his worst nightmare come true.’

  ‘And so you decided to track me down and plead for him.’ Freddie’s voice was so feeble he seemed only being kept alive by his anger. ‘Where is that damned nurse? I don’t know why she let you in.’

  ‘I’m not here to plead for Francis. I came because I’m your wife. I can’t bear to think of you dying alone.’

  ‘You’re not my wife,’ Freddie protested weakly. ‘You’re a stranger to me.’

  ‘Then let me visit you as a stranger.’

  ‘I don’t need your pity. I told the doctors to be frank. The cancer has spread everywhere. Every day I have left the pain will only get worse.’

  Freddie’s lips were dry. Eva picked up a sponge on the locker and moistened them. ‘Maybe you don’t need me, but I need to be here. It’s hard to watch you suffer, but harder to know you were suffering and I did nothing to help.’

  Freddie waved a hand feebly; his voice so faint that Eva knew he could not hold out any longer without morphine. ‘So you want me to become your latest fad? It’s too late for either of us to make up for everything that happened.’

  ‘I know,’ Eva said. ‘But at least give me the chance to make your last days a tiny bit more bearable. I have a small bit of money. I can find cheap lodgings in Ryde. I know I won’t be of much real use to you, although then again I never was. But your children need to know you’re dying. If you won’t let me tell Francis, at least let me wire Hazel.’

  Freddie shook his head. ‘I want no fuss and you know Hazel – she’s so strong willed she’ll fly home and drag Francis down here for a blazing row with me in a haze of morphine.’ He paused. ‘Does she know about the boy’s peccadilloes?’

  ‘Francis and Hazel have no secrets. She’s known everything about Francis since she was fifteen years old.’

  ‘I believe it.’ Freddie nodded. ‘The three of you – and the serving girl, Maureen – living secret lives in that wood during the war. Rushing down the front steps to greet me on the odd occasion I got leave, but I knew in my bones I wasn’t welcome. I was paying for everything with my salary but in your hearts, you were all waiting for me to be gone.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Freddie.’

  ‘It felt like that. I swear that my ghost will haunt you if you let your son near me. Don’t even tell him I’m sick or I’ll have the nurses bar you and, I swear to God, I’ll get a boat to Ireland. To hell with morphine. I never feared pain. I’ll stock up on whiskey in Glanmire House. Once I’ve wood for a fire, I’ll manage fine on my own with none of you to torment me.’

  ‘Freddie, you’re raving,’ Eva replied softly. ‘You can’t even get out of bed.’

  ‘Swear you’ll say nothing to him or Hazel. Swear and I’ll let you visit when you like. But I reserve the right to die with no other spectators present.’

  Eva nodded, reluctantly.

  ‘And it won’t matter how often you come,’ Freddie added with weak defiance. ‘I’m leaving you nothing because you’d only leave it to him.’

  ‘You’re leaving me two wonderful children and deliberately breaking one of their hearts.’

  Freddie closed his eyes, making no attempt to reply. Eva reached across to take his fingers. It was so long since she’d held any man’s hand. She suspected that it was equally long since any woman, except for a nurse, touched his.

  ‘Your will is written,’ she said. ‘Let’s never discuss it again.’

  Freddie opened his eyes and she saw tears in them.

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Your final days should be precious but they’re damnably slow. Company would be nice. But please call the nurse. I’m in such pain it’s like the devil is inside me. You’ll find some odds and ends in a shoebox in my bedside locker: the remnants of a life. It’s taking up space so take it away. There’s something in it for you. Keep or discard whatever you like.’

  Eva pulled back the screen to find the nurse already waiting with an injection, as if astonished that he had lasted so long.

  ‘Now, Mr Fitzgerald, let’s attend to your needs.’ Something in the woman’s conspiratorial tone made Eva feel in the way. She removed the shoebox Freddie wanted taken from his locker but had no time to examine it. Freddie’s eyes were so fixated on the injection that he seemed to forget that Eva was present. His expression changed once the nurse began to tend to him: all defiance gone, including the mask of haughtiness which for so long was all he possessed to protect himself against diminishing circumstances. He looked like a wizen old man but also a scared schoolboy no longer able to hold out against the pain. At any moment he might begin to shout, barely conscious of anything except his torment.

  Freddie’s pride meant that he would not wish her to hear him scream. But Eva knew she would witness terrible suffering during the coming weeks as his body caved in. For now all she could do was find cheap lodgings and hope she would be able to survive on her meagre savings. Freddie would grow more argumentative and bitter as he felt death approach. A sense of the horror to come left Eva shaken as she made her way out from the hospital into the midday sunshine. It was still not too
late, if she hurried, to catch the late afternoon ferry to Portsmouth. She could be in London in a few hours’ time, trying to lose herself amid the lights and gaiety of Francis’s barge party.

  Francis would already be on board by now, wearing his favourite wide-brimmed hat and dressed in overalls as he helped Peter – the young labourer he employed – with the final preparations. When Peter’s wife, Pauline, recently gave birth to twins, Francis presented them with all his good bed linen, claiming he was throwing it out, when in fact this meant that he needed to sleep in old army blankets. But, like Freddie, Francis had little interest in his own physical comfort. Maybe if father and son had both travelled alone to Glanmire House last Halloween, they might have finally bonded, each content to sleep on the kitchen flagstones. Unfortunately life rarely worked out like that. Eva was not surprised that Freddie was leaving her out of his will. In truth, Glanmire House and its few areas were almost worthless. Even if left to Francis, it was beyond his means to make it habitable again. But this was always Francis’s dream: he saw Glanmire as his refuge, the only true home he possessed.

  For years Francis had lived in a succession of rented flats. Even now that he was in a sufficiently serious relationship to share Jonathan’s bed almost every night, he still kept his own flat for fear of scandal. Assault and arrest were hovering spectres requiring him to guard against public displays of affection. When Freddie’s will was revealed by the family solicitor in Castlebar, Francis would be scarred, not only by losing his childhood home, but by his father’s public rejection that would have all of Turlough talking, the final spiteful act of an embittered man. Just thinking about this forthcoming public humiliation of her son made the spiteful virago side of her character want to damn Freddie to hell and leave him to die alone on this island. But Eva would never bring herself to board the next ferry and leave Freddie here because she could not change who she was. She was coming to a realisation that she possessed no special gift or talent in life beyond this sense of empathy, which was so engrained within her as to be both a burden and a benediction.