The Family on Paradise Pier

by Dermot Bolger

  The woman shook her head. ‘Not to me. He turned up some weeks back after hearing the back attic was free. He’d been in jail and before that was staying in Crumlin with Mrs Behan who used to live in Russell Street – though that poor woman has her own sorrows with the Liverpool police after catching her eldest lad with an IRA bomb. You’d think Art would have had his fill of jail but he was barely settled in upstairs before the cops got him for creating a nuisance on the bogs of Kildare. Trying to unionise turf workers.’ She snorted. ‘You might as well unionise donkeys. Still you couldn’t talk to Art with the weight of the world on him. Is your other brother cracked too?’

  Eva did not want to discuss Brendan. She had been stupid to yield to the hope that he could be lying low here. Her old mistake of wanting reality to fall into step with how she wished the world to be.

  ‘Can I see his room?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to? The police left a queer mess.’

  Eva and the children followed the woman up flights of stairs that grew steeper as they neared the attic. The door was smashed open, with papers and books scattered on the floor.

  ‘Rowdies from the Catholic Young Men’s Society did most of the damage.’

  Eva knelt among the debris to salvage any personal items. But nothing here reminded her of the brother she loved. It was like Art’s life was now only lived through slogans. Unsold copies of Moscow News and crudely printed pamphlets had been torn apart in a frenzy.

  ‘This one is for children.’ Francis gathered up some pages from a magazine called Sovietland. The cover showed five boys playing violins, standing behind another boy at a piano. Eva read the headline: ‘The Bolsheov Corrective Labour Commune for Juvenile Delinquents attracts worldwide interest from educationalists.’

  ‘Take anything you want,’ the woman said. ‘If you need more copies they’re hanging from a nail in the toilet in the yard.’

  Eva searched around, feeling she should take something. A few books had survived the onslaught, including a play entitled Round Heads and Pointed Heads by someone called Bertolt Brecht. Published by International Literature in Moscow it was in English. Eva would have returned it to the heap of papers had she not spotted the translator’s name in small type: Art Goold Verschoyle. Another secret he never mentioned, denying Father the chance to feel proud. She saw Francis pocket a copy of Sovietland.

  ‘Do you think they might let me visit him in jail?’ she asked the woman.

  ‘Ask for a warder named McCarthy. He’s a good skin or at least as good as a screw can be. Say Mrs Fleming sent you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And tell Art his neighbours say hello. It’s a lie but it might make him happy. He cares too much for people nobody else gives a toss about.’

  Eva and the children trudged along the North Circular Road, avoiding the mess left by beasts being walked from the cattle market down to the Liverpool boat.

  She caught the vague impression of a face behind a grille in the huge iron gates of Mountjoy Jail when it was pulled back in response to her knock. It slammed again after she asked for Mr McCarthy and nothing occurred for so long that she thought they had forgotten her. Francis and Hazel felt intimidated by the high walls and foreboding atmosphere. But eventually a small door opened and an elderly man stepped through. Mr McCarthy listened to her story, then shook his head.

  ‘Visiting is not till the afternoon,’ he said, ‘and Goold will be gone by then.’

  ‘Set free?’

  ‘Far from it, mam. I follow the rules but that doesn’t mean I always agree with them. De Valera has introduced internment for subversives. Goold is being transported to the Curragh camp today along with a young Murray Bolger, an IRA bowsie from Wexford. But your brother is no gunman, he’s just a public nuisance. There’s no reason to intern him, unless de Valera wants to stir things up by throwing a few jokers in among the IRA.’

  ‘How long will he serve?’

  ‘For as long as there’s trouble in Europe. Dev is taking no risks of any lunatic dragging us into it.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The army will be here at eleven to collect them. Hang about and you might sneak a word or two.’

  The day had turned bitter, with squalls of rain. Eva was afraid to move away in case the soldiers came early but it was half-eleven before the truck reversed up to the gate. Four soldiers entered the prison, while two more kept watch from the back of the lorry. One winked at Francis. Another soldier got out of the cab to survey the narrow road, his rifle cocked. Children from a row of warders’ cottages came to watch. Hazel stared back at them, feeling humiliated. Finally the door opened and two soldiers led out a handcuffed young man. He laughed, turning back to jeer at a warder.

  ‘You have your mother’s looks, McCormick. She must have been a Kildare man.’

  ‘You’ll be wasted in the Curragh, Murray,’ the warder replied. ‘You should be on stage in the Gaiety…with some fecker sawing you in half.’ He stepped aside to let the other soldiers through. ‘Here, don’t forget your comrade.’

  The young prisoner threw his eyes to heaven as he climbed onto the truck. Mr McCarthy must have forewarned Art, because Eva’s brother stopped after stepping through the door. Mr McCarthy nudged the soldier Art was handcuffed to. The soldier halted nervously, concerned lest his colleagues object.

  Art had been allowed to wear his own clothes. His greatcoat was open over a black suit which – were it not for his high-laced old army boots – would have given him the appearance of a pietistic, down-at-heel cleric. He held himself erect, but had a haunted look as he stared at Eva.

  ‘Are they treating you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you heard from Brendan?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know where he is? Is he alive or dead?’

  ‘I…’ He hesitated, with the soldiers growing impatient. ‘I know nothing…for certain.’

  He glanced towards the truck as if it were not a vehicle to bear him into incarceration, but one that would allow him to evade her questions.

  ‘What do you mean, Art? Could he be with your family in Moscow?’

  He shook his head, his distress obviously to everyone. The soldiers stood on either side of him, reminding Eva of the crucified robbers. ‘I don’t even know where my wife and child are.’

  Eva grew frantic, knowing he was about to be taken away. ‘Write to me in Mayo? Why are they locking you up?’

  ‘I don’t know. My country is not at war.’

  ‘And we intend to keep it that way,’ one soldier said, indicating that it was time to board.

  Art turned. ‘I don’t refer to Ireland. I’m a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.’

  ‘It could be worse,’ the soldier scoffed. ‘Your mother could be a Kildare man, like McCormick.’

  The soldiers laughed and Eva couldn’t bring herself to ask anything else. No good answer could be forthcoming in such a desolate place. She went to embrace Art, and Mr McCarthy intervened, embarrassed.

  ‘He’s been searched, mam. They don’t want to have to search him again.’

  She stepped back, abashed.

  ‘I will try my best,’ Art muttered, leaving Eva unclear as to what he meant.

  She pushed Hazel and Francis forward and they were allowed to shake their uncle’s hand before the soldiers helped Art up to join the IRA prisoner. Art sat upright with a more militaristic bearing than his guards as the truck drove off.

  The children waved. When Eva turned to thank Mr McCarthy, the iron door was already closed behind her.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Camp

  The Curragh, 17 November 1939

  The irony was that Art had passed along this same winding Kildare road three weeks ago, handcuffed and being driven towards Dublin by the Civic Guards on the day after his return from visiting London. Now, Free State soldiers were bringing him back, past the same stooped figures harvesting turf on the bog who had leaned on their long-handled loys back then to re
gard him like an escaped lunatic. In truth, Art knew that he must have appeared insane, both out on the bog when he preached until the Civic Guards came and the next morning in court when it took four Civic Guards to carry him from the dock. One garda knew about the colleague Art had punched in Crumlin last year because he mentioned him by name, swinging a boot at Art as they hurled him into the cell below the court.

  The prison warders in Mountjoy had cleaned the blood off his face in a kindly fashion. They were mainly the offspring of peasants, fond of regulations, wary of the city and not overly intelligent. Art had caused them no trouble during previous incarcerations because he recognised that they were merely doing their job in the same way as he was doing his. They might not have understood that his duty was to ferment revolution, but they recognised him as no ordinary criminal. Life in Mountjoy Jail had a structure that he had liked and the food was better than in Moscow. He knew little about the Curragh except that it was an army base which, until recently, had been served by a tribe of wrens – prostitutes living in makeshift holes on the bog, their hard lives shortened by the odium of local people and diseases carried by the troops.

  De Valera’s Diehard Republican followers had been interned here during the Civil War. And now – fattened by power – de Valera was repeating the medicine. Art was unsure how this new camp was run, but at least it would contain a body of politically active men whom he might convert. Ordinarily he would have felt a surge of excitement at this challenge, similar to that which Cousin George had described in letters from Africa when, finding himself with a dwindling Irish congregation, he emigrated there as a missionary. But Art had been rattled this morning by Eva’s appearance outside Mountjoy. He knew that his family was seeking answers. Eva and Maud and Thomas held him responsible and had him condemned. He could cope with this if only Brendan would stop staring at him in dreams. Art asked nobody to follow him, but even when he walked into the desert his family had still insisted on walking behind him.

  Yet if he was not his brother’s keeper, why had he visited London last month? Uncertainty had gnawed at him as he watched the Spanish Republic fall and the Trotskyite POUM scum attack the good communists in Barcelona so that the fascists could storm the city. Rumours about Brendan were circulating and last month Art had travelled to London convinced that somebody in the British Communist Party must know about his brother. He had not recognised the sour-faced woman with cropped hair whom he was eventually allowed to see in party headquarters, until something about her features recalled the General Strike and he said her name aloud – Ruth Davis. Agitated, the woman had walked to the window, dragging one foot behind her, when he mentioned Brendan.

  ‘Volunteers keep returning from Spain,’ she said. ‘Some seem to think we owe them something instead of recognising that we did them a favour in allowing them the privilege of fighting against fascism. They come looking for handouts like we were a relief agency. Your brother did not enlist through this office, so he is not our administrative problem.’

  Thirteen years had altered her character, though Art knew that she could recall bandaging Art’s head while Brendan stood in her kitchen as a runaway schoolboy. Had thirteen years utterly changed him too or was his problem an inability to change? At that moment there had been so many memories that Art wanted to talk to her about. But when Ruth turned, he realised that he could say nothing, because she was aware of how Art knew that she had left Brendan for a renegade aristocratic comrade who abandoned her to suffer at the hands of a quack abortionist.

  Ruth had promised to make enquiries and arrange for a letter from Art to be delivered to Georgi Polevoy in Moscow. Art had spent the next week sleeping in a shelter for the homeless and attending political gatherings. The bitter talk of many Spanish veterans angered him, with their inability to grasp the larger picture. But Spain was being forgotten as London prepared for war, with air raid sirens and the giddiness of people caught between terror and excitement.

  A week later he had returned to party headquarters. At first Ruth would not see him, but six hours later when he still refused to leave, she relented and summoned him in. Her manner was curt. Their encounter lasted a few seconds. She had torn up his letter to Polevoy and although Art should be reported to Moscow for trying to communicate with a counter-revolutionary, on this one occasion she would not do so. Thankfully she had discovered in time that Georgi Polevoy was arrested as a fascist spy after his return from Spain. His trial was reported in Pravda, along with the names of large numbers of fellow traitors whom he also named as involved in a spy ring in Spain. Ruth had refused to answer any more questions and harried Art from her office as if he were contaminated.

  With a jolt, the army truck reached the gates of the Curragh camp. Art looked up at a line of tin huts behind two rows of barbed wire. Men stood about, watching the new arrivals. The young IRA man from Wexford had spent the entire journey discussing horse racing with the solders, ignoring Art. To be incarcerated was lonely and to be imprisoned among reactionary monolithic nationalists was to be doubly alone. But just now Art welcomed the lines of barbed wire because he felt like a penitent, needing to atone. That was why he had provoked the court after his latest arrest, why he had screamed his allegiance loudly despite there being nobody left to hear. Because if Georgi Polevoy was a traitor then Art was lost for having trusted him and Brendan had probably been betrayed by him too. Everything Georgi had said about his brother denouncing him was untrue. A wedge had been deliberately driven between the brothers, when Art should have trusted his instincts. Despite all his labours here for the Party and his reports sent back to Moscow, perhaps nobody in the NKVD cared or remembered him. His name might be removed from all records, his wife declared unmarried. The only hope was that with Georgi arrested, the Party might realise its past mistakes. Art could be sure of nothing, except that he must keep faith with the Party because the fate of no individual could stand in the way of the great push forward.

  The truck passed through the cordon of barbed wire and the first two soldiers jumped down as an orderly appeared from a hut with a list of names. Murray Bolger sprang onto the ground, stomping his feet with the cold. The orderly looked at his list and then at him.

  ‘What are you?’

  ‘IRA.’

  ‘Are you?’ He looked at Art who had dismounted and was staring at the barbed wire, resisting an irrational urge to run his fingers over the knotted strands as if, at a human touch, they might blossom into flower.

  ‘Guilty,’ Art replied. ‘I’m guilty.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  The Man from Spain

  Mayo, 17 November 1939

  Francis’s hand-painted sign remained in place above the front door where he had nailed it up two years previously, with the boy refusing to climb into the dicky seat of his father’s motor until certain that any intruder into Glanmire Wood would spot it. He had grown tall in the intervening period – as Delia O’Donnell from the small shop and the Durcan women had exclaimed, clucking around in delight when the Castlebar bus deposited Eva and her children in Turlough an hour ago. Yet as Eva watched him stand on the twilit overgrown lawn, she knew he was still the same child who had painted in white letters: Please keep out. This is my home.

  All three of them were finally home. Twelve-year-old boys were not meant to cry but Eva knew that tears were not far from Francis’s eyes. Hazel looked sullen, though Eva suspected that the girl was simply exhausted after their journey from England. Two full days of travelling had left Eva worn out as well.

  A noise made Eva turn. Mr Durcan was unloading their cases. His headlights casually illuminating the lawn seemed extravagant after the blackout darkness of England. She knew he would be insulted if she offered him money: he was no hackney man. He picked up a heavy case with an ease that belied his years and carried it up the steps to the door. ‘Stand yourself up on that yoke,’ he told Francis, his gruffness belying an instinctive understanding of the boy’s emotions. ‘You won’t be needing that old sign to frighten th
e crows away now.’

  Straining on his tiptoes, Francis stretched high enough to prise the wooden sign from the wall. He stared at it in silent triumph, then stepped down, nodding to Mr Durcan. The nod was a perfect replica of the almost imperceptible gestures through which local men communicated. Hazel plucked at Eva’s sleeve.

  ‘When is the man leaving?’ she whispered.

  Mr Durcan looked back, though Eva felt certain he could not have heard.

  ‘You’ll be wanting to get warm inside, Miss Hazel. If you’ll unlock the door, mam, Francis and myself will shift these cases into the hall.’

  Eva knew Mr Durcan was not being sly in the different way he referred to each child. Hazel was instinctively a Fitzgerald, fitting in more at Turlough Park than here. She was recognised as such locally, whereas Francis was allowed to belong, in so far as a Protestant could, to the closed fist of village life. It meant a great deal to the Durcan women that Francis had written to them each Christmas from England.

  The house – although freezing – did not smell as musty as Eva had feared. But when she pulled back the shutters the last vestige of twilight outside took on a green tinge because of ivy colonising the windowpanes. The icy drawing room – with its few remaining pieces of furniture draped in dustsheets – had a curious echo. She knew that the children would find everything smaller than they remembered.

  Mr Durcan carried in the last case and joked with Francis while Hazel sat, holding her rag doll, beside the cold fireplace. Eva thanked him and the two adults walked outside.

  ‘You’ll be grand entirely here, mam, but be careful in the times they are in it. Some class of a tramp was mooching about over the weekend.’

  ‘Up here?’

  ‘Aye. My wife ran him from the shop on Saturday evening. She felt he was a young blackguard on the lookout for anything to rob, but from the window he looked harmless enough to me. Still he wouldn’t be the best paying guest if you were thinking of opening the guesthouse again.’