‘Mr Fitzgerald happens to be my lodger,’ Jonathan said. ‘For some time he has been renting my basement flat, from where he runs a garden-design business. Unfortunately his clients seem slow to settle their bills. I have been patient about unpaid rent for months because I know he is presently unwell and addicted to pills for his nerves. But tonight his behaviour became deranged after I gave him notice of eviction. I mean, it is an impossible situation.’ He looked at Eva. ‘Anyone can see it. From now on the matter is in the hands of my solicitor, who will initiate legal proceedings unless he is gone within a fortnight. My patience is exhausted. I’m exhausted. I need to start again.’
There was silence after Jonathan finished speaking. Even the distant late night traffic seemed to have stopped moving. Everything was utterly still, as if the whole world was weighing up the enormity of this lie.
‘Your lodger?’ the young policeman asked finally. ‘Are you not a bit rich to take in lodgers?’
‘The sad fact, Constable, is one can never be too rich.’ Jonathan glanced at Francis. ‘Or too young.’
‘And who is this woman who followed us in from outside?’
‘My cleaner. She does the kitchen and reception rooms at night. You gentlemen are delaying her. If you would take your leave she could begin her work.’
‘Why not do it with a kiss?’ Francis’s voice was barely above a whisper, yet everyone heard it. Eva felt that disapproving neighbours who had waited their moment to summon the police heard this whisper; surely all of London heard her son’s words.
‘We’re just leaving, sir.’ The older policeman glared at his young colleague, warning him not to intervene. Eva knew that he intended taking no further action, not out of awe at Jonathan’s accent but out of pity for her son. ‘I’m sure I didn’t hear what you just said.’
Francis’s eyes held no guile, merely the rawest hurt. ‘I said if someone plays Judas they should betray their lover properly with a Judas kiss.’
Jonathan shook his head, addressing the policemen. ‘You see? The situation is impossible, my tenant must go.’ He turned to face Eva, unable to meet Francis’s gaze. Jonathan, who loved being in control, had been set a test of love and courage which he had failed. ‘I will show these gentlemen out, Eva. You might escort Mr Fitzgerald down to the basement flat that he has a fortnight to vacate.’
Jonathan led the policemen through the French door, the younger officer glancing back at Francis with contempt, disappointed that his older colleague had thwarted his questioning. Only when the door closed did Eva walk towards her son. Francis was so downcast that she needed to take his face in her hands and tilt it upward to stare into his eyes.
‘What do I do now, Mummy?’ he asked quietly.
‘Start again.’
‘What if I’m simply too old to start again?’
‘You’re never too old. Look at me. All I’ve really done for the past twenty years is to restart my life over and over. Let’s get you downstairs.’
Francis looked so weary that he needed to lean on her. Eva was shocked at how thin he had grown, at how she was able to bear his weight despite being so hallowed out by exhaustion that her body felt as if sculpted from brittle glass.
Chapter Ten
The Basement
London, 1st to 14th September 1966
Eva wanted to stay with Francis after the policemen left, bedding down on his small Italian mohair sofa. But she knew that, for now at least, the crisis was passed and, as much as he needed her, Francis also needed space to be alone. He urged his mother to take a taxi home because the Tube had stopped running by now, begging her to take the price of the taxi fare from the small pile of money on his bedside table. To appease him she said that she had more than enough money for a taxi, although in truth she barely had money for food – a fact that, as always, she was careful to shield from him. Before leaving she persuaded Francis to lie down on his bed, though he swore he would never be able to sleep. But having nursed him through so many heartaches, at times Eva knew him better than he knew himself. He was so emotionally and physically shattered that he would fall asleep, despite himself, before she reached the corner of the street.
Tonight it was Eva who wouldn’t sleep, even after completing her long walk home. In Morocco she learnt techniques of transcendental meditation from placid elderly men in shabby sunlit rooms. But such serenity was easy in Morocco when she felt liberated from the burden of being a mother. No mental training could quell her anxieties tonight. These anxieties fitted around her like a second skin. She had suffered through every breakup in Francis’s life, going back to when he was a boy who had felt every emotion with absolute intensity; radiantly happy at the simplest things and devastated whenever life snatched such happiness away. These heartaches stretched back to his first relationship with his wartime tutor, Harry Bennett. Harry never rejected Francis but their parting was no less difficult when the young officer was ordered to end his convalescence and re-join his regiment, with Francis’s newfound confidence crushed and Eva being left to try and pick up the pieces of his shattered happiness
Twenty-two years later, she was still trying to do the same thing. She finally reached her attic flat in Notting Hill at four a.m. The house was silent, save for the timer light switch on each floor going out with a soft plop seconds after she reached the next flight of stairs. Her flat was cold but she hadn’t money to waste on the small gas heater, so she got into bed fully clothed with two blankets and an old coat over her.
Looking around her tiny flat Eva remembered how, in 1950 when she helped Francis to clear out his possessions from Colville’s love nest, all he owned had fitted into a suitcase and two boxes, easily shifted to Frankfort Avenue by taxi. Eva no longer possessed a home beyond this attic and it would take a removal van to shift everything Francis now owned. Where would he go now when forced to leave Jonathan’s basement? Francis was not short of friends, but a dozen tea chests and a broken heart could strain any friendship.
There was Peter – the labourer whom Francis employed. Francis was close to Peter and his wife Pauline, but they barely had room in their tiny house, especially with their twins now attending school. Francis was also too proud to let Pauline see him in this state. After fretting over this problem for an hour, Eva decided that Francis would almost definitely have to stay for a time with Alan, his old Dublin school friend who lived alone in a large basement flat. Francis and Alan had never been in a romantic relationship together and this was one thing that Eva noticed about the homosexual world: the men whom you turned to in times of most need were those with whom you had no unresolved history of physical intimacy. Resolving this problem defused some of Eva’s anxiety because she remembered nothing else until she woke in late morning, dog-tired, but surprised and relieved that she had actually slept.
Francis was still asleep when she rushed over to check on him. He was groggy from sleeping tablets but looked less distressed than the previous night on the roof, when he’d been drinking on top of whatever medication he was taking.
She knew that her daily task for the next fortnight would be to visit this basement to wake Francis, being careful to try and avoid meeting Jonathan leaving by the front steps. She would need to get Francis sufficiently motivated to shave and face the complex financial problems afflicting his floundering business. Eva didn’t care if the business collapsed, but hoped that his sense of responsibility towards Peter would give Francis something to focus on. He might have lost the will to be concerned for himself, but Eva urged him to stay strong for Peter’s young family.
As the fortnight went on, rousing him became increasingly difficult. Francis needed such a cocktail of sleeping tablets and tranquillisers to fall asleep that he found it impossible to wake at any normal hour. His despondency increased when a severely worded letter arrived from Jonathan’s solicitor threatening legal action if Francis had not vacated the basement within the stipulated two weeks. Eva did not know how to rouse his spirits, but midway through the second we
ek – with that deadline looming – Francis’s mood seemed to lift or at least his actions gained a renewed sense of purpose. Each morning when she arrived she saw further evidence of him at least starting to sort through clothes, books and numerous other possessions. One morning she saw he had unlocked the cupboard where he stored his Irish Genealogical Research Society files and was sorting these papers into piles neatly bound up with twine. Eva wasn’t sure how much of this furniture he owned, but with nowhere to store it beyond the small yard used for his gardening business, he would be forced to leave most of it behind. Certainly there was no room for it in Alan’s basement flat. She decided to broach the subject.
‘It is Alan you’re thinking of staying with?’
‘He has offered to take me in. He’s a good man, Alan.’
‘He was always my favourite of your friends. There’s something very genuine about Alan.’
Francis nodded. ‘That’s the irony of love, isn’t it? Only opposites attract.’
Eva smiled and took his hand. ‘Then there’s no fear of you and Alan ever falling in love: you’re both as gentle as each other.’
He squeezed her hand softly. ‘Falling in love just now isn’t part of the plan.’
He said no more and she didn’t ask. Nor did she ask if he had spoken to Jonathan, who seemed to be avoiding his own house: no sign of lights on upstairs on any evening when Eva visited. Francis was making slow progress in moving out but at least he was making a start. Even if it took a few days longer than the solicitor’s letter stipulated, she could not believe that Jonathan would change the locks. Despite the vehemence of their breakup, the surgeon surely still felt something for her son and besides, Jonathan would want to avoid risking a second public scene by calling in bailiffs when the fortnight’s notice expired. She was shocked, therefore, when after ten days, a second and even more severely worded registered letter arrived from the solicitor, warning of the legal consequences of remaining on the premises after the date stated. Francis tried to shrug it off, joking grimly that strong-arm tactics would not make him work any faster, although Eva saw how shaken he was by the impersonal nature of these bullying threats.
She would get him through this because she was well practised in the politics of heartache. But this did not prevent her from constantly fretting throughout the fortnight. On no night did she sleep for more than half an hour at a time on the bed or the single armchair in her flat. Eva should have been exhausted, but her body had entered a state beyond exhaustion where sleep or food no longer seemed necessary. On the day before Francis’s two weeks’ notice expired, she washed and dressed at dawn. It was six Tube stops to Jonathan’s house, but Eva automatically walked, not just because she needed to save every penny, but because her legs seemed to move of their own accord, propelled forward by the adrenaline of agitation and by her all-consuming love. She longed to be with her son but also wanted to let him sleep: sleep being the only time when he seemed to be at peace.
At eight forty-five she let herself into the basement with her spare key. The air was stale as she entered the kitchenette to boil the kettle. She discreetly glanced into Francis’s bedroom, hoping against hope to glimpse a body entwined with his. Not Jonathan: she knew a reconciliation was impossible, but she would have welcomed the sight of any man there, even that rough type who always wanted to fleece men for money afterwards. At least it would mark the start of renewed human contact and surely nothing that a stranger might do could hurt worse than Jonathan’s rejection? But Francis lay alone in bed, his clothes strewn amid an untidy pile of books and correspondence on the floor. Eva pulled the curtains and observed her son for some moments before he stirred. He looked so wretched that she was tempted to close the curtains again to let him at least enjoy his drugged sleep. Then Francis called her name and groggily reached out his hand. Eva grasped it, remembering holding him as a child when he would wake with night terrors.
‘I’ve grown so used to you being here every morning,’ he murmured, ‘that if I wake and you’re not here I’m scared.’
‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘What have you to be scared of? Sit up and I’ll make us some coffee.’
Francis tried to smile, his eyes struggling to adjust to the daylight. When she brought in the coffee, he was sitting up in bed, smoking. Eva knew from his breath that he had been drinking heavily last night, but not in the carefree way she remembered from his barge parties. This was binge drinking, the brooding in unlit pubs that rots your soul. The sort of drinking that was Freddie’s refuge in troubled times. It was a bitter irony that here at last was one trait which his son had inherited, his father’s only true legacy. If Freddie were alive they might even have achieved a momentary reconciliation if they encountered one another by chance, both ruminating darkly in some pub. Though Eva doubted this. Freddie’s public humiliation with his will marked the moment when Francis’s fragile confidence started to disintegrate: a disintegration which culminated in another public denial of him by Jonathan to the police.
‘Where did you go last night?’ Eva asked.
‘Some pub on the Isle of Dogs. I met a strange, dishevelled little man there: a poet, or so I was told. By the name of Paul Potts. Impossible to tell his age because those grey beards make all poets look ancient. Have you heard of him?’
‘No.’
‘Nor I. Oddly enough, the two men I was with knew him, though I doubt if either opened a book in their lives.’
‘What men were you with?’
‘Two conmen who sold me old railway sleepers for a rustic garden feature. Rough and ready chaps. We agreed a price, with a drink thrown in. But one drink leads to another with people like me whose behaviour is deranged.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Eva pleaded, although she knew that this was an insult Francis could not stop picking over.
‘Those were Jonathan’s words to the police.’
‘It was wrong and hurtful but he was scared you would let the cat out of the bag.’
‘Just once I wanted Jonathan to stand up for love. But he is too busy canvassing his contacts in the House of Lords for law reform to bother with me. He’s been cruel for months; that’s why I climbed up on that chimney out of despair. I’m tired of being hurt. Why is it that the people who matter the most are the ones who always hurt you the most? After eight years he just orders me out of his life by solicitor’s letter? Am I that old and unattractive?’
‘Don’t say that about yourself,’ Eva pleaded. ‘You have so many friends. Everyone loves you.’
‘But no one is in love with me,’ Francis replied quietly. ‘I only feel whole when somebody loves me body and soul. We all want to feel we belong somewhere, Mummy. After Jonathan begged me to give up my old flat and move in with him, it felt like all we needed to do was close over his front door and the entire world was kept at bay. He used to plead he couldn’t sleep unless I was in his bed beside him. This house felt like a sanctuary where nothing could hurt me. That was an illusion because I possessed no rights. When I was in such despair that I threatened to jump from the roof, I felt certain he’d take me in his arms and say I could stay.’
‘He might have if the police hadn’t arrived,’ Eva said.
‘I don’t think so, Mummy. I’d have gone to jail rather than deny my love for him before them, but he’s changed. People always change.’
A stack of untipped ash collapsed from his cigarette and scattered over the blankets. Eva brushed it away. ‘He has so much to lose that he’s scared of scandal. When it came to it he was a coward, but most people are. His lies were just to get rid of the police.’
Francis shook his head. ‘They were to get rid of me. He had already dumped every trace of me down here. It upsets me that I acted crazy up on that rooftop. I no longer mind that I embarrassed Jonathan, but I’m still a proud Fitzgerald, ashamed to have embarrassed you and embarrassed myself.’
‘You could never embarrass me, Francis. I could see the pain you were in. But you’ve been through pain before. You have yo
ur whole life ahead of you.’
‘Jonathan was my whole life, Mummy. I accept that I’ve lost him, but I feel so weary that I don’t know how to start all over again.’
The way Francis sat slumped in the bed filled Eva with despair. Yet she could not afford to show her emotions. She needed to stay strong.
‘We’ve come through worse nightmares with other men and we will again.’
‘But why start again if it will only lead to more hurt? More lovers tiring of me until there’s no lovers left. I can’t help what I like, Mummy, and I like older men. The problem is that older men want me to look boyish and I can’t stay a boy forever.’
Eva took the remnants of his untouched cigarette before he burnt himself and squeezed his hand gently. ‘You’re a man, Francis. You have to be strong.’
‘That’s what I told myself last night, trying to prove my worth and show I was no weakling, like Daddy always called me, by drinking these two conmen under the table. But I only grew broody and sunk deeper into myself while they kept ordering drinks until this Paul Potts poet chap arrived with his entourage. Amazing how grey-bearded poets attract a coterie of bright-eyed young acolytes eager to sit at their feet? One of them – a lanky Irish youngster named Paul, with an untidy mop of hair, seemed to be drinking as much as I was. And do you know funny thing, Mummy? His father came from Turlough. I flee to the Isle of Dogs to be anonymous and wind up drinking with the grandson of old Mr Durcan who owned the Round Tower Bar.’
‘His daughters still run that pub,’ Eva said. ‘Lovely women.’
‘It is their brother who has gone on to greater things. A circuit court judge now in Galway. We didn’t speak for long but he just stared at me and nodded when I said that I had been a monumental disappointment to my father.’
Eva remembered a small Durcan boy being brought to her art classes by his mother in the 1950s, eagerly applying vivid layers of colour at his easel and inventing extraordinary titles for paintings that stunned her.
An Ark of Light Page 21
