The Family on Paradise Pier

by Dermot Bolger

  The workers were quiet. Few were willing to look Mr Goold Verschoyle in the eye, especially those he had defended for free in court. One man who still held a turf sod dropped it with a shake of his head. ‘Begging your pardon, Mr Tim, and no disrespect on you or your family, but we were mightily provoked. They came at us from nowhere with rigmarole and blasphemy. We were only trying to protect our souls.’

  ‘I know, Seanie. There’s no harm done.’

  ‘There will be if they ever come back,’ a second man said, emboldened now. ‘I’d sooner take soup in church than poison my soul listening to their talk. There’ll be hell to pay when the priest finds out. Father Danaher is a hard man and he’ll make out we were up to something.’

  ‘Aragh, we were up to nothing beyond mischief,’ a sandy-haired young man interrupted. ‘And what were they saying – only what we’re never done blathering about ourselves? That we’re paid lousy, that Henderson is a bag of guts who treats his cattle better than us, that after a life of work all that will await us is the County Home.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ the old man with the pitchfork said.

  ‘You’ve said it yourself often enough, Seanie.’

  ‘What we say amongst ourselves is a different class of matter entirely to what we have to listen to. I already spend half the year working in Scotland. There’ll be no work left for me here at all if Henderson finds out what’s been happening on his land.’

  ‘Who says it’s his land?’ Art emerged from the bothy hut with Mr Ffrench who looked rather shaken. ‘You are the men who work it and your fathers before you. Why are his sons fat and your sons in rags?’

  ‘My grandfather worked this same land for your great-grandfather,’ the old man replied, ‘and he made Henderson look like a decent Christian. You’ve no rights to this land any longer, so you can stop your notions of bossing us about.’

  The sergeant intervened, urging the labourers to move away. ‘It would be better for you all to let the gentry sort this out while you clear up those sods before Henderson flays the marrow from your bones.’

  Mr Goold Verschoyle approached Art, reasoning in a low voice. ‘Your sister is getting married tomorrow. Half the village is calling in tonight. You swore there would be no trouble for her sake.’

  Mr Ffrench interrupted. ‘We were causing no trouble, Tim, merely telling these men what their rights are.’

  Mr Goold Verschoyle eyed him coldly. ‘This is between me and my son, Ffrench. You are not part of my family and I curse the day I was foolish enough to take you into our company.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Mr Ffrench protested.

  ‘Neither is life, as you’re fond of pointing out. Is it fair that you brought mayhem into our lives by poisoning the mind of my son and heir? What do you intend leaving him?’

  ‘That’s your problem, Father,’ Art said. ‘Can you not see the reactionary way that money has warped your brain? I don’t wish to be left things I have not earned. Do you ever look beyond your nose?’

  ‘Perhaps I can’t afford to, with five children to consider, including a daughter being married tomorrow.’

  ‘To a fool, to the narrow-minded product of a fatally diseased class. He’s highly unsuitable for Eva’s temperament and you know it.’

  ‘I know that he proposed and it was Eva’s decision alone to accept him. I also know that her pool of eligible men was considerably reduced by the reluctance of many families to be associated with us since your little spell in an English jail following the General Strike.’

  ‘Say what you will, but, as her eldest brother, I do not approve.’

  ‘If you love her then why are you out here making us the talk of Donegal?’ Thomas demanded, and pointed at Art’s companion. ‘With this hypocrite.’

  Art squared up to his brother. ‘Ffrench is a good man.’

  ‘Is he?’ Thomas refused to step back so that it looked like they were about to strike each other. ‘Then why has he more servants mollycoddling him now than before he went away to Moscow?’

  ‘Not servants! Fellow workers!’ Mr Ffrench interjected. ‘If I did not employ them they would be forced to emigrate to Scotland. I see no reason to be attacked for keeping Irish families at home.’

  ‘You’re a fairground attraction,’ Thomas said bitterly. ‘Along with the crab apple stalls and quacks selling cures for rheumatism. With your unfortunate wife forced to hand out leaflets to any illiterate who stumbles into her path.’

  ‘Leave my wife alone,’ Mr Ffrench hissed, incensed.

  ‘And you do the same to mine,’ Mr Goold Verschoyle said, shocking both his sons into silence.

  ‘What exactly are you insinuating?’

  ‘That your recent attentions are neither appreciated nor returned. Your hobbies may stray from cabinet-making to acquiring sons by proxy, but my good lady wife shall not be your newest fad to covet.’

  Mr Ffrench bristled. ‘Except that I am an officer I would strike you.’

  ‘Except that I am a pacifist I would have horse-whipped you years ago.’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ the sergeant who had kept his distance intervened. ‘Mr Goold Verschoyle, please, my point in bringing you here was to avoid trouble. If there are disputes between the gentry haven’t you got high walls to settle them behind? I was counting on you to show some example.’

  Mr Goold Verschoyle became aware of the labourers observing proceedings from a distance. Their anger at Art was defused by amusement at the notion of the quality publicly quarrelling. He was shocked by his own lapse in behaviour, even though he had been observing Mr Ffrench’s attempt at over-familiarity with his wife for months now. He needed to take control and keep these events quiet until the newlyweds drove away after the celebrations tomorrow. At least it was better for the two brothers to argue out here in the open, rather than in front of Eva’s future in-laws.

  He looked at Art. ‘Will you come home? And cause no further trouble until your sister is married?’

  ‘I didn’t start trouble. I simply came here to speak with these men.’

  Mr Goold Verschoyle turned to the sergeant. ‘I take it there will be no charges.’

  ‘That depends on how far away your son is willing to travel after the wedding.’

  ‘Am I to be banished?’ Art demanded. ‘What sort of a Free State is this?’

  ‘One where you were free to have your say with these men.’ The sergeant glanced back at the scattered sods near the bothy door. ‘And they were free to give you their reply. Be a decent man and go home because they don’t want you out here. And maybe after the wedding you’d take yourself off to Dublin where it would not be my responsibility to lock you up for disturbing the peace.’ He looked over Art’s shoulder. ‘Oh, merciful God, look who’s coming.’

  Mr Goold Verschoyle followed his gaze and saw Henderson stride across the bog with his two sons. All three carried shotguns. The labourers shifted uneasily.

  Henderson fired a warning shot in the air, then saw the sergeant and held up a restraining hand to prevent his sons doing likewise.

  ‘You’re trespassing,’ he roared. ‘Every man of yous is trespassing! Are you going to stand there, sergeant, with your gob hanging open? Arrest them, you hear me! They’ve little enough right to still remain in Ireland and damn all right to be on my land.’ He addressed his labourers. ‘And you lot needn’t think I don’t know you’ve been plotting against me, organising communist meetings on my time and my land. Do you think the sun shines out your arses and you can’t be replaced? I’d have a queue of men here in the morning ready to do your jobs with no whining. I’m giving every name here to the priest.’

  ‘I’m handling this, Henderson,’ the sergeant said.

  The farmer snorted. Everyone knew that he had been a de Valera supporter until de Valera deserted the IRA Diehards and started his own party, Fianna Fáil. Henderson’s most venomous attacks in the Donegal Democrat letters page were now on de Valera for being a turncoat who legitimised the Free State and abandone
d the Republican ideal by taking the oath of allegiance and leading Fianna Fáil onto the opposition benches in the Irish parliament. However his true ire was reserved for men like the sergeant who had sided with the new state during the civil war. ‘I’ll go to someone with authority,’ he sneered, ‘not a jumped-up quisling traitor!’

  ‘And what did you do during the war with England, Henderson?’ the sergeant retorted. ‘If you want your idle lumps of sons to do something useful they could carry down the bed you hid under when I was fighting the British in the hills.’

  ‘I never sold out to the British in no treaty,’ Henderson roared.

  ‘That didn’t stop you selling their troops stringy, overpriced turnips. You’d sell souls to Cromwell if he passed this way.’

  ‘Hold me back,’ Henderson roared, ‘or your Free State quisling uniform won’t be enough for you to hide behind. These foreigners are trespassing. Will you arrest them or not?’

  ‘The gentlemen are just leaving,’ the sergeant replied, with studied calmness. ‘I must ask you to hold your tongue or the only arrest here will be for breach of the peace.’

  ‘Are you threatening me in front of my own men and a pack of communist Freemasons?’ Henderson raised his shotgun, infuriated by the sense that he was being made to look foolish.

  ‘It’s not the first time I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun,’ the sergeant said, ‘and so little has changed that some mornings now I wondered why I bothered. If our Saviour was born in a stable on your lands, Henderson, He’d pray for Calvary.’ He turned. ‘If you’d follow me now please, gentlemen.’

  Mr Goold Verschoyle walked beside the sergeant with his two sons following in silence and Mr Ffrench behind them. He sensed Henderson watching them and heard his frustrated roar at the workmen. ‘God blast you! What are you pack of lazy bastards doing standing there? There’s work to do and you can stay an extra hour to finish it.’

  They reached the car. The sergeant got into the passenger seat beside Thomas, while Art sat in the back between his father and Mr Ffrench. They drove in a terse silence before Mr Goold Verschoyle leaned forward.

  ‘Thank you for the way you handled that, sergeant.’

  ‘It will be bad for your family if Henderson poisons the new priest into denouncing your son from the pulpit. You are well respected here. That could change.’ He looked at Art. ‘Do you want this for your parents?’

  ‘Did you think of your parents when you were fighting in the hills?’ Art replied.

  ‘No. My only thought was for an Irish Republic. The roof was burnt over their heads twice and I thought it worth the sacrifice because they would be revered for their suffering when we won. But my father never lived to see that. The second time he lost everything he turned his face to the wall. The British were watching the cottage – or the ruins of it – hoping to catch me if I was lured into visiting him when he was dying.’

  ‘Do you regret fighting?’

  ‘If we did nothing we regret, there’d be no point in being young. One day you will regret making a holy show of yourself just now on that bog. I regret that I never quite knew exactly what I was fighting for. We were idealistic, with a vision of freedom, but you can’t feed a family with a vision. We imagined that there would be a new tomorrow where everything would be different, but young people think that in every generation.’

  ‘You were right to fight,’ Art insisted. ‘Lenin said: Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. Your problem was in mistaking the enemy for an occupying nation when it was really an oppressive class.’

  The sergeant shook his head. ‘My problem, sonny, is that every morning from my window I see the children of the murdered RIC sergeant who once sat at my desk. His sons are growing up to become the spit of the man I looked up to when I was a boy.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  The sergeant coldly stared at Art. ‘That’s a question that maybe a man could ask another man in fifty years’ time or a son could ask his father on his deathbed. But, seeing as you ask, the answer is no. However, every day I see the man who did and the sergeant’s children see him too. That’s in the past. I’m pledged to uphold the law, not question it. In my first month in this uniform I had to arrest workers who blockaded Henderson’s farm in protest at their conditions. Aye, and lock up a Dublin bigmouth from the Transport Union trying to organise them. I didn’t like doing it because I didn’t fight for the likes of Henderson. But I did it because it was the law and, as revolutionaries go, we were the most conservative revolutionaries in the history of this planet. So I’ll lock you up just as quick for disturbing the peace if you open your stupid gob around here again.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to lock me up,’ Mr Ffrench insisted. ‘I remain true to my beliefs and refuse to be silenced. So don’t think you can intimidate me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother trying,’ the sergeant said. ‘I look into your eyes, Mr Ffrench, and see a man who imagines he is a revolutionary. I look into the eyes of your young friend and see someone who imagines he is Jesus. If the lad insists on looking for nails for his own cross then I’m going to make sure he doesn’t find them in Donegal.’

  They sat in momentary silence as Thomas navigated a bend where most of the road surface had been washed away.

  ‘You all think me a hypocrite.’ Mr Ffrench spoke quietly. ‘Especially you, Thomas. Maybe you’re right, but maybe that’s not such a terrible thing. If we are born under any star sign it is the sign of contradiction, with our nature pulling us in a dozen ways at once. Some days I want to return to Russia, but I won’t do so because my wife was unhappy there, surrounded by children when life has blessed us with none. Maybe the revolution was too big and new for an old sea dog like me to learn or maybe I still dream of building a New Jerusalem in these hills.’ He looked past Art towards Mr Goold Verschoyle. ‘You ask what I intend to leave Art, Tim. He seems to reject all that you wish to leave him, yet he has inherited your character, your absolute sense of right and wrong. What I would wish to leave him are the contradictions we need to acknowledge within ourselves to make the necessary compromises by which we each live.’

  The sergeant glanced back at Art. ‘Does your sister still like Protestant hymns?’

  Art looked up, surprised. ‘Were you in that cottage years ago?’

  ‘My brother cycled for miles to find those gramophone records. The cottage was burnt out afterwards, though we knew it wasn’t you who gave the old couple away.’

  ‘What happened to the IRA officer in charge?’

  ‘He died in the civil war in a Longford wood. Free State lads who worshipped the ground he walked on pleaded with him to come out and drop his revolver. He charged at them, screaming threats and waving his gun. They’d no choice but to shoot. Afterwards they found a pile of bullets among the trees where he emptied the pistol in advance. They never told the priest in case he refused to bury him as a suicide.’

  ‘He was a brave man,’ Art remarked.

  ‘He was a bloody fool.’ The sergeant turned back. ‘If he had waited another two days he would have read de Valera’s order to surrender. He achieved nothing, like you achieved nothing today. Henderson will sack every one of those labourers. They’ll starve or have to make new lives for themselves in Scotland.’

  ‘But they did nothing,’ Art protested. ‘They refused to listen to one word we said. They even attacked us.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. His authority was challenged, his ownership of the land. He’ll sack them to show you who is master around here now. He sees you as an interfering Protestant still trying to tell him what to do with it.’

  ‘The bastard.’

  ‘Finish your sentence, sonny. The bastard upstart.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘Maybe not, but every time you open your mouth that’s how it sounds like. Go away and let him think that he’s won. Then just maybe he won’t do it.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Art said. ‘Very
soon I plan to be in Moscow.’

  ‘That’s what you keep saying,’ Thomas taunted, ‘but you never get around to going.’

  ‘Stop the car!’ Art demanded suddenly.

  ‘That’s typical.’ Thomas braked. ‘The first home truth and you walk off in a sulk.’

  ‘I’m not walking anywhere. Wait.’ Art climbed out and scrambled up the hillside to where a clump of purple wild flowers grew. He gathered up a huge handful, then returned to the car. ‘Eva will love these, they’ll brighten up her room.’ He looked at Thomas. ‘What’s keeping you? We have a sister getting married, you know.’

  They drove on, dropping Mr Ffrench off at the entrance to Bruckless House and leaving the sergeant at the barracks in Dunkineely. The three of them were alone then, saying little because nobody wished to breach the truce they were determined to observe for Eva’s sake. The back garden was empty when they parked in the coach house, but Eva came out from the kitchen, looking so happy and exhilarated that all three men shared an identical fear for her future.

  ‘Where were you?’ she asked. ‘You all vanished. People have already started to call in. It’s all so exciting!’

  ‘I was getting you wild flowers.’ Art presented them to her. ‘Take some with you when you leave tomorrow so that when you wake up as a married woman you can look at the vase and think of Donegal and how we love you.’

  Mr Goold Verschoyle watched his three children enter the kitchen, with Eva dwarfed between her two brothers. He felt drained but these days he always felt this way. He did not want to contemplate the loneliness of life here when Eva was gone. Disaster had been averted, for now at least. Pulling himself together, he practised a smile and walked indoors to greet his neighbours.

  ELEVEN

  The Two Fredericks

  Donegal, 13 September 1927

  From the moment she woke at dawn on the morning of her wedding and saw Art’s gift of wild flowers, Eva longed to go walking along the narrow lane to the Bunlacky shore. But she could not vanish, even during this half-hour before anyone else woke. Now that she was virtually a married woman, Eva had responsibilities. She stared at the empty bed where Maud once slept and recalled the excitement of her sister’s wedding three months ago, with guests squeezing Eva’s arm and saying how much they looked forward to her own big day. The weeks since then had been thrilling, but she would have still loved the chance to spend some final moments as a girl wandering by her beloved shore.