The Family on Paradise Pier

by Dermot Bolger

  The child nodded seriously, straining to derive comfort from her words. But his eyes strayed back to the moss as if only seeing blood properly for the first time, despite all the birds that Freddie had hauled out from the huge pockets specially sewn into his hunting jacket so as not to be burdened by carrying a bag. When Francis was three, Eva had seen him lift an unplucked pigeon from the kitchen table and hold it skyward in the doorway, saying, ‘Go on, you silly, fly.’ But he had grown so accustomed to dead birds that the actual killing may have been a blur until now.

  ‘Where is Miss Crossan?’ she asked.

  ‘Lying down. The new girl, Maureen, played with us for a while. She tells great stories but had to leave to walk home to Ballavary. I brought her down the avenue.’

  Miss Crossan was meant to be doing lessons with Francis, yet Eva was glad to find him here. Mr Devlin would be seeking a quiet word before the shooting party left, knowing that Freddie only made vague unkept promises, whereas guilt would force Eva to honour hers. This constant struggle to find money left her exhausted. Four guineas a week was not expensive for comfortable quarters and shooting, but if Gralton did anything crazy no amount of money would prevent their house of cards from tumbling down. What was Freddie hinting at by raising the notion of running a herbal shop in England? Why mention the idea if it was crazy? It wasn’t only Mr Clements who was using Glanmire as a retreat from the world. At times Eva was relieved at how their poverty ensured that Francis did not yet have to attend a boarding school because she often wondered if he would cope with the bullying that Art had witnessed and frequently tried to halt.

  ‘Let’s walk in the woods.’ She offered Francis her hand.

  ‘Have you time?’ The boy was surprised. ‘What about your work?’

  ‘To hell with the work,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Let’s see if we can find flowers for Hazel.’

  Eva refused to look back towards the house where Mrs McGrory and Mary would soon also be seeking her. She should confront Devlin, have words with Miss Crossan, prevent Gralton bringing a loaded gun onto the same bog as Patrick Belton. Yet with every step into the woods her guilt lessened as if retreating back into being a child herself. As they climbed through the trees she remembered Goethe’s poem about the erl-king. The terrified boy in the forest whose father refused to believe that it was not the wind calling but a bearded goblin luring children to the land of death. Eva could not shake the notion that an erl-king stalked them now. She didn’t want to look back, but focused purely on walking with her beautiful son and seeing the shafts of light between the trees through his eyes as he invented stories for them both to believe in.

  Francis halted and placed a finger to his lips, then crept forward with the instinctive Fitzgerald talent for stalking. Two rabbits lifted their heads in a clearing, unsure if they had heard something. Francis did not move during the time they grazed there. His absorption was absolute, his features transfixed with delight until the rabbits finally sensed his presence and darted off. He led her on through the trees, the words babbling from him barely able to keep pace with the thoughts spilling out. As Eva climbed she remembered Mother’s strange dream and several times tried to steer Francis towards the oaks. But the boy had his own destination in mind. He relished having Eva to himself and letting her share his secret places. He led her up an overgrown slope where she had to stoop at first, then crawl on her hands and knees. But she didn’t care how dirty she got or what the maids might think when they saw her. In fact she never wanted this adventure to end. The sun emerged again with slats of dusty light through the trees, creating fantastical mosaics of colour and shade. Francis reached a small clearing and looked back to ensure she was still following. A rusty trowel lay beside three mounds of pebbles, with withered flowers arranged beside each one. The boy replaced some stones that had toppled from one mound.

  ‘This is the birds’ graveyard,’ he said, imparting a great secret. ‘Two blackbirds and a thrush. I found them dead and didn’t want to leave them lying there for the foxes. Promise you won’t tell Daddy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He might think it sissy.’

  ‘Daddy only wants what’s best for you.’

  ‘I know, but Mummy…I didn’t want to kill the rabbit.’ Suddenly his eyes were unable to contain the tears. ‘I wanted to stroke it and keep it as a pet. I’m afraid I’ll see it in my dreams. I don’t want to be inside the house when it’s hanging up and I don’t want to eat it. I want to bury it here, but now that Daddy has bought me the gun I’ll have to go out killing things every day.’

  ‘You won’t, darling.’

  ‘You know it’s what Daddy wants.’

  ‘He’ll understand if I tell him.’

  ‘He won’t. He’ll think I’m a big baby.’

  ‘Come here, darling.’ Eva held out her arms. Normally Francis never refused a cuddle, but he hesitated as if firing that shot had changed everything, leaving him frightened to display weakness. Softly she urged him and reluctantly he moved forward to put his head on her lap. Eva let him cry for a long time while she stroked his hair and knew not to speak. Eventually Francis stopped and they both lay still like hunted creatures whose least movement might betray them to predators.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ Francis asked eventually and Eva started one of the imaginary tales that she never found time to write down, or which – if she attempted to do so – always died on the page. Being a writer was a dream that she never mentioned to anyone. But now in this forest clearing her story sounded so magical that they were both caught up within it. Gralton was right in one sense to claim that she was in hiding. But this did not mean that she was unaware of injustices in cities teeming with starvation. There were different ways to fight injustice, though her way would make no sense to Gralton as it barely made sense to her. But it was an equally vital struggle to try and remain true to your inner core, refusing in your heart to become other than yourself. In trying to be a perfect mother she had failed to do this, being too anxious to blend in and be what people expected her to be. Fleeing from her failure as an artist and her inability to unlock the truths which always eluded her. She wished that belief for her could be as simple as it was for Art. If there was only one reality, one sphere of experience, then perhaps mankind could be transformed by the rearrangement of wealth like he believed. She respected his belief despite the pain it caused her family, because Art was being true to himself, even if he seemed to have now quarrelled with Brendan too. But Das Kapital was too complex to be true. Just like the Bible and the Koran and every other sacred book, it was encumbered by rigid absolutes. Truth existed at the core of each, but only when stripped down and glimpsed at its most fragile. Truth was the radiance within every child that was quickly lost, the inner stillness that men of action were scared of, the intuition within the heartbeat of migrating birds who instinctively knew their path home.

  Eva shivered, imagining the plovers’ fate over Toomore bog, tumbling from the sky to be retrieved by dogs. She had lost her innocence through living off this slaughter and was unsure how to gain it back. But from tonight she swore that, although forced to pluck those birds, she would never eat their flesh again. She would never allow a fascist to sit again at their table and, for Francis’s sake, she would persuade Freddie to sell that cursed gun. Her acts of rebellion might be small, but she would hold firm. She would learn to grow up, but not just yet. For another few moments she wanted to hide away and glimpse these woods through the innate sense of wonder in Francis’s eyes.

  ‘I’m never going to leave here, Mummy,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll plant more trees and the animals will be safe with nobody allowed to shoot them.’

  Several times Eva heard Mary anxiously calling. But she ignored everything until eventually the noise of a motor along the avenue forced her to confront the present. Her foreboding returned. Taking Francis’s hand she crawled from the clearing, hoping to reach the house unnoticed in her muck-stained clothes. But the car stopped along the avenue, not
far below them. Doors opened and she heard Freddie’s voice.

  ‘Drive on, Mikey. I’m sure our guests would enjoy a whiskey before dinner. Mr Fortune and I shall stroll the remainder.’

  Freddie’s barely suppressed anger made him sound pompous. The door slammed and the motor drove off. Through the trees she saw the two men confront each other, guns at their sides. A boy cycling down the avenue swerved around them and sped away. She prayed that he had delivered a telegram from Art.

  ‘You’re a damn fool, sir!’ Freddie barked. ‘I may be too much of a gentleman to dress you down in public, but by Jove I’ll do it to your face now.’

  ‘I filled four times the bag of your fascist guest,’ Gralton replied in a surly voice.

  ‘We are not discussing the bags!’

  ‘You notice he didn’t stay around to honour his debts.’

  ‘Mr Belton owes you two pounds, I’ll warrant you that.’

  ‘He owes his unfortunate workers an awful lot more.’

  Eva reached the avenue with Francis lagging behind. ‘What’s after happening?’ she asked, alarmed and trying to catch her breath.

  ‘Nothing,’ Gralton replied.

  ‘Thanks to the grace of God,’ Freddie expanded. ‘Our American visitor apparently has no notion about the etiquette of a shoot. We had a fair afternoon on Toomore, though not to Mr Belton’s liking. Fortune seemed to delight in provoking him by jumping from tussock to tussock like a mountain goat while Mr Belton, determined not to be outdone, found himself twice up to his shoulders in mud and needing to be pulled out.’

  ‘He wanted to be one of Mussolini’s Blackshirts,’ Gralton interrupted. ‘At least he’ll look the part tonight.’

  ‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Freddie reproached him, then turned to Eva. ‘Finally after Mr Belton fired enough shots to frighten off every bird between here and Clew Bay, we were returning to our motors when a man ran across from a cottage, looking highly agitated. “Why the devil didn’t yiz shoot over my patch of bog?” he says. “Shure there’s always a few shnipe there.” Back we went to please him, with myself guiding Belton in from the right so he might have more than one bird in his bag. Next moment a snipe rises up low before us and Fortune lets loose from the left with both barrels, almost taking Mr Belton’s head off. There’s no excuse for a dangerous shot, sir. You could have killed him.’

  Gralton aimed his gun towards a loose stone down the avenue. He fired and the stone bounced off into the undergrowth. ‘If I’d wanted to hit him I would have.’ He made little attempt to disguise his accent.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Freddie demanded. ‘Who the hell are you? I have my doubts as to whether you’re a Yank at all?’

  ‘That is what my passport says. I take it yours is British.’

  ‘I’m a Mayo man. I’ve never had need to apply for any passport.’

  Gralton lowered his gun, wearily. ‘Lucky you. I apologise for abusing your hospitality. Allow me to change and I’ll be on my way.’

  Freddie drew himself up to his full height. ‘You’re going nowhere. You took your dressing down and now you’ll take your dinner like the rest of us. You’re a damn fine shot and, by Jove, you gave me a laugh, even if I couldn’t show it, watching our poor grocer trying to haul his fat friend out of bog holes with the pair of them black from head to foot like Zulu warriors. Walk on, Mr Fortune, and enjoy a drink before dinner.’

  Gralton glanced at Eva. ‘I hope you will not fall out with Mr Devlin.’

  ‘Sixty years as esteemed customers of his family,’ said Freddie. ‘These things count for something in an Irish town – as perhaps you already know. Your gun, sir, the boy will carry it.’

  Gralton handed his gun to Francis and walked on, leaving Eva alone with her husband and son.

  ‘It is a terrible thing,’ Freddie said, watching him go, ‘for a man to be ashamed of his peasant roots. You’re too taken in by people, Eva. That man is no more named Fortune than I am. He’s a “Mac” or an “O” I’d wager. Made his money in the States and is now too proud to be associated with his impoverished relatives. I wasn’t long fingering him and even Mikey spotted it once we reached the bog. It was the quick furtive way he fired. The telltale sign of a man who learned to shoot as a poacher.’

  Freddie’s smile was meant to convey man-of-the-world wisdom, but its boyish quality touched her. The vulnerability it revealed made her aware of how much she loved him still despite his flaws. She longed to end this terrible falsehood between them.

  ‘Do you think Belton suspected him?’ she asked.

  ‘Of being a peasant? Oh no, Belton hasn’t time to notice somebody else playing his own game.’

  ‘How close were the shots?’

  ‘Oh, well over the blither’s head,’ Freddie snorted dismissively. ‘Though by Belton’s theatrics you would swear his scalp had been scorched.’

  ‘Was Mr Devlin annoyed?’

  ‘Funnily enough I don’t think so. Devlin will dutifully gather his men tonight but I don’t see Belton recruiting many converts for his master’s new movement. Devlin can’t wait to be shut of him.’ Freddie looked down at Francis holding Gralton’s gun.

  ‘How’s my little hunter?’

  ‘Fine, Daddy.’

  ‘Come along and you can help bring the bag in from the car.’

  Freddie patted the boy’s shoulders, steering him towards the house. Mikey had parked on the gravel. As Freddie reached the motor Eva saw a tremor pass through Francis at the prospect of the dead birds. But no sooner did the boot lid open than a plover flew out. It did a low circle of the lawn before disappearing over the trees, leaving Freddie openmouthed.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said. ‘I swear that’s the only shot Belton got in all day and he must have just winded him.’

  Francis excitedly stared after the plover, then looked down at the blood-soaked corpses as if praying for them to follow.

  ‘Take these, son.’ Freddie reached for a brace of birds. He looked up in amazement as Francis sobbed and ran off.

  ‘What the dickens…?’

  ‘He’s upset about the rabbit, Freddie.’

  ‘But why?’ Freddie seemed perplexed. ‘He shot it clean through the head. The boy is a natural. He’ll be a better shot than his old father.’

  ‘It was a fluke; he had his eyes closed. Francis isn’t like you. He loves you and wants to please you but shooting is not in his nature.’

  ‘Nonsense. It’s in his blood. He’s a Fitzgerald. We’re fighters.’

  ‘Hazel is a Fitzgerald.’

  ‘You cannot bring a girl out shooting.’

  ‘You cannot bring him either. It will break Francis’s heart.’

  ‘I tramped half of Dublin for the perfect starter gun.’ Freddie dropped the birds back into the boot and turned. ‘What do I do, Eva? I never know what to do with that boy.’

  ‘Sell the gun to Devlin. Buy him a small canoe instead. Francis is like a fish in the water. The streams aren’t deep around here and he would love exploring them.’

  ‘With the Crossan woman paddling alongside?’ Freddie snorted. ‘Do you honestly think she’s up to any outing that doesn’t involve getting her hair done?’

  ‘Miss Crossan does her best,’ Eva protested, though Freddie echoed her own thoughts.

  ‘The guests find her presence odd. Men want to relax at night, have a whiskey and swap stories they can’t tell with a woman about.’ Freddie rooted in his long pockets as if searching for one last slaughtered bird. ‘Maybe Francis will grow to like shooting. It’s a noble sport, roaming the bogs with just a dog for company.’

  ‘He won’t, Freddie. But he won’t stop being your son either.’

  Freddie removed his hand and glanced at his fingers blackened from the bog. ‘A canoe wouldn’t be the worst present.’ He tried to sound cheerful. ‘Get him outdoors, build up his muscles and sense of responsibility. You might pretend it was my idea. Make him think that his father understands.’

  ‘Of course.
’

  ‘I try to, you know. Understand him and you. I know you think me not very good at it. Still you can be slow too, old girl, in different ways. Infernally dreamy, in the ether. But we knock along together. I mean we’re happy here and…what I’m trying to say…I’ve not disappointed you, have I?’

  ‘No, Freddie.’

  ‘The boy is too dreamy for his own good but he’ll grow into a man, won’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And things will pick up for us, eh? If we just keep our heads down through this rocky patch. We’ll need money for a good school for Francis soon. But that doesn’t mean we have to stick herbs into little bottles in England, eh?’

  ‘No.’

  Freddie smiled at the incredulity of the thought. ‘Our Yank is in the way. I was looking forward to coming home…to…’ He stopped. ‘I guess it will have to be the barn for me. You’ll take the nursery floor again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Makes sense. Though it might rather be nice if we were both outdoors. As a boy it was a great treat to be allowed to sleep in the loft above the horses. An owl nests there, swooping in and out, a deadly hunter. I’ll not mind him and he’ll not mind me. I’d swear his grandfather nested there when I was a boy. You’d like it…both of us in the straw…’

  Eva knew how difficult he found these words and that she was being unfair in offering neither discouragement nor acquiescence, whereas at one time she would have grasped at any tiny chink of bohemianism within him.

  ‘Still,’ he said quickly, ‘I suppose it would be broadcast the length of the county. The Fitzgeralds bedding down like a pair of tinkers in the stable.’

  ‘The Yank is only staying another night.’ Eva desperately hoped that this was true.

  ‘Good.’ Freddie turned to pick up the dead birds, awkward now, feeling he had revealed too much. ‘I’d better bring in these blithers, what, before any more decide to fly off.’

  He strode towards the kitchens and Eva saw Hazel in the doorway. ‘Where were you all afternoon?’ she demanded. ‘Sneaking off with Francis. Why won’t you spend time with me?’