No doubt she would often return to Dunkineely, but things would feel different when this room no longer belonged to her. Marriage changed you and changed how people perceived you. This was obvious in the way in which Maud held herself and the increased respect shown to her. Being a married woman was different in more ways than just in the night-time business that girls whispered about. It was about waking up every morning to share joys and concerns as you charted life together. There could be no greater adventure and Eva looked forward to savouring every aspect of it, because she truly believed that opposites always attracted. When she next woke up, she would still be herself and yet would have become someone different, equal in status to her mother and sister.
These two weddings would complete her parents’ duty towards Maud and Eva. Frequently over the past five years they had rented houses in Dublin so that suitable young men could help the sisters disembark from trams in the ruins of O’Connell Street and be escorted to the Abbey Theatre. Eva had been thrilled one night to notice William Butler Yeats appear at a side door during the curtain raiser, his white shock of hair visible as he scanned the near-deserted auditorium in what seemed a mystic trance. It took her pragmatic escort to point out that, as the theatre’s business manager, Yeats was simply reconciling the number of patrons present with the box office returns.
This summed up Eva’s problem. Her escorts were generally too pragmatic – focused on working their passage through the closed hierarchy within the Protestant fraternity of Dublin firms – and Eva was too free-floating and fanciful to prove more than an exotic diversion in their quest for practical wives. Maud enjoyed more suitors, although her fiercely independent thinking shocked some potential mothers-in-law and scared off young men who preferred women on pedestals rather than on platforms. Still, in an age of upheaval, Maud’s steely character was valued.
Last spring Father had arranged for Eva to visit galleries in Italy and Germany in the hopes of resurrecting her ambition to be an artist, but inwardly she felt lost with no clear vision to sustain her as the clock ticked into her mid-twenties. Therefore when two suitors undertook the long trek to Dunkineely to visit the sisters last summer, Eva had sensed a chance to grasp at something tangible and uncomplicated. Today, her wedding would complete that transformation.
Eva rose from bed, stripped off her nightgown and filled the basin with cold water. She would bathe properly later before the fuss commenced about her dress. She washed slowly now, closing her eyes to imagine a hand touching her breast tonight for the first time. Her eyes quickly reopened when the hand she suddenly envisaged belonged to the New Zealand officer who had once courted her. This upset Eva because she loved her husband-to-be and he loved her. They shared the same dreams and would be happy together, so why did she have to remember Jack on this morning? It was nerves, she decided.
A knock came to the door and she slipped back on her nightgown before saying, ‘Come in.’
Agnes, the young chambermaid, entered with a tray. ‘I brought you a cup of tea. I knew you’d be awake, Miss Eva. I could barely sleep myself with the excitement. Cook is banging away at the pots and pans downstairs, planning enough breakfast to feed a regiment. How are you?’
‘I’m fine, Agnes.’
‘I believe that Master Thomas will play the bagpipes in his kilt all the way from the church back to the house for the wedding breakfast. The whole village will be cheering. Have some tea before the world lands in on top of you. Did you think I should bring…’ The girl stopped, knowing that the title Miss Maud was now incorrect. ‘…the newlyweds up something?’
‘Let them lie on.’ Eva imagined Maud and her husband entwined in the bed where Jack had once slept.
‘Aye, I will. I just wanted to say good luck to you and say that we’ll all miss you sorely about the place.’
The girl seemed near tears as she left the room before Eva could reply.
The house would seem empty with both daughters gone. Mother and Father were lucky in being perfect company together, constantly chatting and still fascinated by each other. But Art rarely visited and trouble followed when he did. Mother could not bear to think ill of her son, while Father generally restrained his comments to observing that each man deserved the right to make his own mistakes. The only brother who seemed genuinely happy last night was Brendan, despite him being a source of friction between the others. Eva prayed there would be no rows today. Her brothers had sworn to do nothing to disrupt proceedings and she knew that they would keep their word because they loved her.
Eva opened the shutters to survey the empty main street. Chinese lanterns still hung in front of the house after last night’s party when almost every soul in the village had called to examine the presents and wish her luck. Local farmers came in Sunday suits along with visitors from as far as Ardara. Even Mr Henderson, who rarely seemed friendly, had knocked on the door and apparently spent half an hour passing on his good wishes through Father in the study, though he was too shy to do so in person among the crowds in the drawing room. Most Protestants present had stayed aloof from any political discussions, beyond agreeing with the Pope’s pronouncement that, having survived another assassination attempt in Rome, Il Duce enjoyed divine protection. Sensing Art about to deliver a counterview, Maud had interrupted the discussion by placing on the gramophone a copy of Ain’t She Sweet, which a guest had brought from London. Eva’s happiest moment had been when Phil Floyd, the local sweetshop owner, presented her with a cone-shaped twist of paper brimming with sweets, like the ones she had bought from him as a child with her pocket money.
A child crossed the street now with a bucket and the pump’s clank heralded the new day as people started to appear. Samuel Trench emerged from the Manor Lodge to cut the flowers he was carefully tending for the wedding. His daughter would help today in the house. Eva wondered if Art remained sweet on her. Such secret infatuations seemed part of childhood whereas marriage was a sober business. She knew this because of the time it took Father to hammer out a marriage settlement with her husband-to-be and his solicitor from the Dublin firm of Moore, Keily and Lloyd. Eva did not know the details, but both parties had seemed content when the brandy was uncorked to seal it.
Her wedding arrangements had been quick in the end, because, after Maud’s betrothal, a second marriage seemed the natural and correct course of action. By contrast, last summer’s courtship had been a leisurely, rather thrilling period of shadowboxing. Jokes were written in the visitors’ book about the two Fredericks sharing the long train journey from Dublin. Frederick Cunningham was first to come, ostensibly to court Maud, but distinctions grew blurred amidst that summer’s gaiety, especially when Freddie Fitzgerald began to visit her and they all went for picnics together.
Freddie was a young mathematics teacher in a Protestant school in Dublin who talked constantly about transforming Glanmire House, his currently empty ancestral house in a small Mayo wood, into a shooting guesthouse that would sustain a family. He was one of the Turlough Fitzgeralds, though from a poorer branch than his uncle who owned the huge mansion called Turlough Park. Freddie came into his own when outdoors, with a humour that made both sisters laugh. Due to his club foot Freddie rarely swam, but Frederick Cunningham was a superb swimmer. Eva would race him in the sea, enjoying his powerful, intelligent presence beside her, and emerge to spy Maud and Freddie on the sand, heads bent together laughing at some joke. Within weeks Eva had reached the dangerous conclusion that she loved Frederick Cunningham almost as much as she had loved the New Zealand officer, only now she was a woman who understood her feelings. Watching Maud and Freddie Fitzgerald clown about, she had concocted a fantasy where they both fell in love and she was left to console Frederick Cunningham.
Looking back, she realised that this was her problem, a tendency to retreat into fantasy and imagine that life should proceed in the way she wished it to. Even when Maud rushed into their bedroom to announce Frederick’s proposal of marriage, for an instant Eva had convinced herself that Maud
meant Freddie Fitzgerald. The realisation that Maud had merely been kind to Freddie all summer for Eva’s sake had left Eva feeling deeply vulnerable. But her distracted attitude towards Freddie Fitzgerald had inflamed his desire. With Maud preoccupied by wedding plans, Freddie had courted her anew with such zeal that it had felt like she were only now looking beyond the disability of his bad leg to glimpse his soul. Slowly Eva grew to love Freddie’s slightly lost-boyish nature, although his love for the outdoors was different from hers. Whereas Eva longed to sing the praises of every tiny scurrying creature, Freddie’s desire was to blast them out of existence with an Eley Maximum snipe cartridge. But his opposite nature appealed to Eva, though she knew that Mother remained unconvinced. Here was a man who made her feel special and offered her a simple role to slip into. Her feelings for Freddie were different from those she had felt for Jack or Frederick. But perhaps this was what mature love felt like, instead of silly infatuation.
Freddie had shown her photographs of Glanmire House, and its winding woodland avenue looked beautiful. With her marriage settlement, they could live independently with a few servants to cater for the guests who would flock there for the best rough shooting in Ireland. Freddie had worked it out and as a mathematics teacher he understood figures. He made everything simple. During his visits Eva could cease wrestling to comprehend Mother’s books on awakening the soul and discover the pleasure of wrestling with a man, one year her junior, who had never attempted to overstep unspoken limits until they were married.
The street outside was busy now, geese scattering everywhere as two civic guards cycled past in the direction of Bruckless. Most of Freddie’s guests had already arrived. Eva’s in-laws-to-be seemed very different from the Verschoyles. Their family scandal occurred over a century ago when Freddie’s ancestor, mad George Robert Fitzgerald, had provoked duels with strangers, locked his father in a cave chained to a pet bear and formed his own Turlough militia. When they tried to hang him in Castlebar he had placed the noose around his own neck and leapt forward only for the rope to break. At the second attempt, his courage failed but the rope held firm. He had bequeathed to his descendants the appellation of The Fighting Fitzgeralds, but it was not signs of eccentricity which made Eva slightly uneasy in their company, but their narrow Anglo-Irish conformity.
The Fitzgeralds understood their social position and expected others to remember theirs. Therefore the practice of village children playing freely in the Manor House garden seemed to irritate poor Freddie. Still, Eva knew that his flash of temper yesterday had been to cloak his sensitivity. Thankfully Mother didn’t see it but Eva had been watching from an upstairs window. Freddie had chosen to wear shorts while reading the Irish Times in a deckchair, with a blanket covering his legs. One village girl mis-hit a tennis ball, which landed on Freddie’s newspaper. Startled, he stood up, revealing his club foot that the children had never previously seen. The village girl’s laughter had been a nervous reaction but it enraged Freddie whose subsequent curses terrified the children. But this was just Freddie being nervous over the wedding and acutely sensitive about his leg, imagining ridicule in any casual reference to it. Eva was convinced he would lose this trait with the confidence gained by having a wife, because she could nurture his gentler side in Mayo.
The bedroom door opened suddenly and Mother stood there smiling. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked and Eva nodded, not fully sure what Mother was referring to. Ready to be dressed, ready to leave home, ready for life as an adult. As a child she had longed to know what sort of man she would marry, imagining various gallant figures. None had possessed a club foot, but it was the inner qualities that mattered, the love people could radiate. Tomorrow she would finally be anchored like the boat she had seen years ago out at sea.
She glanced at the cheap print of a child kneeling beside a bed still hanging from the same nail. It had seemed too childish an object to pack, yet she took it down to bring with her to Mayo for courage.
‘Let’s get you started,’ Mother said. ‘We’ll have you looking beautiful. Maud is going to do your hair.’
Eva smiled and walked towards her, but Mother blocked the doorway so that Eva had to halt. They did not embrace because Mother never went in for embraces, but Eva could feel her love and knew that Mother was reluctant to let her cross the threshold to where a different life waited to claim her.
‘Father and I are always here for you, you know that?’
‘Yes.’
‘And even if you cannot come to me, you and I never needed words. If you think of me then I will know that you’re in trouble and I’ll pray for any problem which you cannot talk about.’
Eva smiled. ‘Mother, Freddie and I love each other. We won’t have problems.’
‘I know. But mothers always worry. Strive to be a good wife and a good mother in time. But above all there is one thing you must never lose sight of. No matter what life deals you, promise me that you will strive tooth and nail for the right to be happy.’
‘I will.’
Eva smiled again and Mother let her pass to where Maud waited on the landing with Agnes beside her. They beckoned, laughing and fussing about having so little time to get her ready, but saying that even in her nightgown she looked beautiful. Clutching the print, Eva glanced back at Mother who urged her on, then softly closed over the door of Eva’s childhood room.
TWELVE
Eccles Street
Dublin, March 1928
At eight o’clock the four Trinity students gathered opposite the Catholic Pro-Cathedral in Marlborough Street where the Men’s Mission was taking place. Owen Sheehy-Skeffington had alerted Thomas to rumours of a march on Madame Despard’s home in Eccles Street, which housed the Friends of Soviet Russia Society. Following last week’s Mission, a Catholic mob had burnt out the Revolutionary Workers’ Group’s headquarters in Little Strand Street. Thomas was sick of public meetings being broken up by zealots from St Patrick’s Anti-Communist League and the Catholic Young Men’s Society. Within Trinity, most societies were dully conformist, with the Provost keen not to antagonise the Free State government who viewed the college as an enemy statelet. But a few radical minds still existed among the staunchly Unionist student body, chaps like Sheehy-Skeffington who argued for women’s rights and risked blows by refusing to stand whenever the college band played God Save the King.
Grimes from the rowing club had come along as a lark, relishing any chance of a skirmish with the new Catholic state. He intended following his father into the British army and was unable to take anything outside the college walls seriously, convinced that at the first bad harvest the Free State would lapse into famine, with the London government forced to step back in. The fourth student, Foster, was more serious, aware of the danger of assault and expulsion, but determined to make a stand.
‘Last week every policeman between here and Little Strand Street turned a blind eye,’ Sheehy-Skeffington said. ‘The mob knelt on the road saying the rosary to prevent the fire brigade saving the building whilst the Redemptorists were tucked up in their presbyteries disclaiming all knowledge of the attack.’
‘Surely they won’t actually attack Madame Despard,’ Grimes said. ‘I mean she stood shoulder to shoulder with Sinn Fein during their rebellion. Her own brother, as Viceroy, had to arrest her for treason.’
‘She was a suffragette long before she became a Shinner,’ Thomas reminded him. ‘And a Protestant before she turned communist. Those are sins the priests won’t forget.’
The mission ended and men began to descend the church steps, donning their hats. Most slipped away but the hard core who lingered glanced over at Thomas and his companions, sensing their foreignness. A priest emerged to address the men, with some bolder women in the shadows coming forward. A cheer arose and a bareheaded man shouted, God Bless our Pope. His words were taken up as a chant. A barefoot girl tugged at Thomas’s sleeve, begging for a few coppers. When he looked up, the priest was gone and the men had suddenly organised themselves into ranks moving t
owards Eccles Street.
Even Grimes looked cowed by the size of the mob. But Thomas knew that Grimes would not turn back because – despite Madame Despard having renounced her class and squandered her wealth on the Dublin poor – for him she remained an elderly English aristocrat who needed protection from the lower orders she was trying to befriend.
Initially the students walked behind the mob but as it stopped outside tenements to exhort others to join, they managed to slip up North Great George’s Street and reach the terrace of tall Georgian houses first. Eccles Street was crowded, with people anticipating trouble. Thomas spied James Connolly’s son, Roddy, push through the throng to enter Madame Despard’s home, protected from assault, at least for now, by his late father’s aura as an executed 1916 Rising martyr. The door closed as Thomas led the way up the steps. The marchers were approaching Dorset Street, their chants growing louder. Thomas knocked and the door opened a fraction as a young man eyed them.
‘Bloody students. Run away home to your mothers, this will turn nasty.’
‘Let me in.’ Sheehy-Skeffington stepped forward. ‘My mother is secretary of the Friends of Soviet Russia.’
The young man extended a hand in welcome. ‘Sure, I have you now and your poor murdered father. Liam Hennessy is the name. Get inside quick and maybe you can persuade the old dame to escape out the back way. This is too dicey a conflagration for an eighty-five-year-old to sit around in taking her ease.’
The Family on Paradise Pier Page 15
