Perhaps there was no tramp and this was the man’s subtle attempt to extract the gossip that his wife and daughter would plague him for.
‘I’ve no plans,’ she replied. ‘Just for now we’ll live in one or two rooms and see.’
‘Still you got away home in time, judging by the news from Scapa Flow.’
‘What news?’ Eva asked. ‘I’ve been travelling all day.’
‘Herr Hitler has just sank the Royal Oak at anchor. Hundreds of young sailors are dead without ever seeing the ocean. This could be a short war.’
‘My husband is enlisting,’ she said quietly. ‘The Territorials.’
‘Aye.’ Mr Durcan’s tone was neutral, his opinion kept to himself, though all of Turlough would know the news by morning.
‘Who do you think will win?’ she asked quietly.
‘There’s a question, mam.’ Mr Durcan shrugged. When the IRA Diehards raided his shop during the civil war he had refused them supplies, even when they stood him against his gable to stage a mock execution. Eva could imagine him staring down the barrels of British or German guns with equal stubbornness. He got into his car and the children waved with her as he edged down the overgrown avenue. They kept waving until he was gone from sight, dreading the moment when they had to confront this desolate and rapidly darkening house.
Hazel lowered her hand first. ‘I’m cold,’ she complained. ‘Why is this place always so cold?’
‘We’ll get it warm,’ Eva promised. ‘And maybe Maureen got my letter and will cycle over to visit soon.’
While Eva lit a candle, Hazel entered the drawing room and gazed at the empty grate. Eva remembered how she used to rub Hazel’s bare soles here to get them warm and wondered would her daughter still allow her to do so. ‘Are you glad to be home?’ Eva asked and Hazel placed her rag doll on the dustsheet covering the sofa.
‘The flat in Winchester never seemed like a home, did it, Mummy?’
‘No.’
‘Not when you’re used to space. I always loved the silence here at night and the stars are brighter in Mayo. The other girls bored me anyway, droning on about how much money their fathers have. We don’t have any, do we?’
‘Daddy will send some every week.’
‘Will Hitler come here?’
‘Ireland’s not at war with Germany.’
‘Why not?’
‘It just isn’t. Not yet anyway.’
‘Can I go out to the stables? I want to check they’re okay. I have this silly fear that the roof will have caved in and we won’t be able to keep a horse there.’
The girl glanced sharply at Eva as she spoke. Hazel knew in her heart that Eva barely had money to feed a horse let alone buy one. Their only hope lay in begging Freddie’s uncle for the loan of a mare, but relations with Turlough Park had been strained by the disgrace of the bailiffs two years ago. Freddie entering trade as a shopkeeper hardly helped. His nephew would redeem himself by enlisting, but Eva’s pride meant that she dreaded making the trip to Turlough Park.
‘Come on,’ she told Hazel, picking up the candle. ‘Let’s ensure we have a roof to keep the poor horse dry.’
Hazel took her hand as they entered the dark hall. A light shone from Mr Clements’s old room. Eva pushed the door open. Having found a paraffin lamp, Francis knelt on a rug beside an open trunk of books. A horsehair mattress was neatly folded on the bed. On top of an empty chest of drawers lined with dusty newspaper the Commander had left his gramophone and two records, The Moonlight Sonata and Handel’s Water Music. Francis looked up.
‘Mr Clements left these behind, Mummy. Do you think he’s coming back?’
Eva shook her head. That old sailor was probably back in uniform somewhere. Maybe he had trained some of the young sailors who lost their lives on the Royal Oak. Mr Clements had remained here for some days after the family left in 1937, awaiting the men due to ferry his possessions to London. Perhaps there had been no room for this last trunk, but she suspected that he deliberately left part of himself behind, to remind her of him when she returned. She wondered if he sometimes lay awake, in whatever quiet hotel he had secreted himself away, to imagine this moonlit room with the door ajar for mice and his silent gramophone like a faithful dog patiently anticipating its dead master’s return?
‘Perhaps he left the books for you to read one day.’ Eva longed to escape from the unbearable sadness of his absence. ‘We’re going to the stables. Will you light the way?’
The hall had grown pitch-dark in the few moments they were in the Commander’s room. Hearing a branch knock against a window they stopped and moved closer together. Then Hazel laughed slightly, unable to bear the unspoken anxiety. ‘I wonder what the girls in school are doing now?’
‘Writing French essays on how to be little pests,’ Francis replied.
‘I should write one this weekend,’ Hazel sniped. ‘Called “My cowardly brother, the weakling who cried at school”.’
‘Stop bickering,’ Eva ordered, anxious for Francis not to be reminded of the unhappy letters he had sent them all. They went quiet as she opened the door because the basement stairs looked forbidding. Francis shone the lantern down and hesitated. Then, mindful of Hazel’s taunt, he walked ahead with Eva following and her daughter close behind.
They had grown up hearing stories about the ghost in the cellar and Eva suspected that they had embroidered them into elaborate sightings when whispering after lights out in school. She did not know what she expected to encounter after two years away but if any presence emanated from the wine cellar it almost seemed to be welcoming them. She stopped to stare into that cramped vault as Francis moved on and Hazel anxiously brushed past her to join him. The atmosphere in Glanmire House had never seemed as cold after the night she stood here to pray with the trapped spirit. Eva raised a hand to the empty cellar as if in greeting, then saw her children back away from the kitchen.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Someone’s been in there,’ Francis replied. ‘The range is lit.’
Eva took the lamp from him and entered the kitchen. The range was low but had obviously been stoked up earlier. On the table a loaf of soda bread was wrapped in a towel beside some homemade butter in a twist of newspaper.
‘Has anyone been living here?’ Hazel asked anxiously.
Eva realised how isolated she was with two children and not a soul for a mile. Previously there were always dogs and people. She missed the dogs more than servants or guests. The house seemed soulless without them padding about. She remembered Mr Durcan’s warning. It was important not to betray fear. ‘Maybe Maureen called in,’ she said.
Mr Devlin had arranged a shop job for Maureen as a last favour to Eva, but, as the girl never replied to letters, Eva didn’t know if she remained in Castlebar or had emigrated like her older siblings. Eva had written to Maureen last week, not because she could offer the girl work but because she longed to confide in somebody. When she told Freddie she was leaving, he had understood her to refer to England and not to him. But Eva wasn’t merely fleeing the war, she was fleeing the strictures of an unwise marriage. Truly she had been ‘in the ether’ when imagining that their polar opposites could live in harmony. She still loved Freddie and respected him for pulling himself together after his dream of a life in Glanmire died. His drinking had moderated since moving to England, never affecting his work in Culpepers. He had created a new life for them, knuckling down to learn the herbal trade – even if he believed that many products, based on Nicholas Culpeper’s seventeenth-century remedies, were poppycock. He often joked that they only stopped short of recommending customers to cover their bodies with leeches. Life in Winchester had been peaceable, without the terror of being confronted by final demands each time the postman arrived. But it was dangerous for the soul to slip into the routine of thinking that a day had been good simply because it wasn’t bad. Only when Mr Durcan’s car bumped its way up the tree-lined avenue this evening did Eva realise how free her spirit felt at being
alone.
Except that it seemed they were not alone. At any moment a tramp might intrude upon them. Perhaps the stranger had heard them arrive and left the untouched bread as a parting gift. Eva unwrapped it, knowing the children were hungry. ‘It wasn’t baked by a ghost anyway,’ she joked. ‘I’m sure it’s safe to eat.’
The old cutlery remained in the drawer. Eva deliberately used the sharpest carving knife to cut the bread and kept it beside her while Francis and Hazel ate slice after slice. She should have checked the rooms upstairs for signs of inhabitation. Her courage failed her now as she kept imagining noises in the creaking house. She didn’t know what she wanted to find. A vague flicker of hope was gnawing at the edge of her consciousness since Mr Durcan mentioned a tramp. Eva didn’t want to extinguish that hope just yet. Instead she watched Hazel take the torn copy of Sovietland from Francis’s coat. The girl glanced through it incredulously.
‘Russia has the world’s stupidest children,’ she said. ‘In this questionnaire the average French girl’s ambition is to own a bicycle, but for a Russian girl it’s to…’ Hazel glanced down. ‘…overthrow capitalist oppression and build communism. French girls hate doing homework and Russians hate the bourgeoisie.’
‘Are we the bourgeoisie, Mummy?’ Francis asked.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Hazel snorted, sounding old beyond her years. ‘We’re Fitzgeralds. I’m going out to the stables. Who’s coming?’
They all went in the end, having only one lamp. The bolt on the stable door opened smoothly for one that should have been untouched for two years. Hazel held the lantern high. The roof beams were solid and the ladder still in place up to the loft where Freddie had sometimes slept. But Eva was gazing at a heap of straw in the stall nearest the wall. Blackened stones were arranged in a ring where a fire had been lit. Francis went to investigate.
‘Somebody has slept here,’ he said. ‘This ash is cold but fresh.’ He looked up, fearful that an intruder could be lurking in the loft. Eva realised that if anyone outside pushed the door shut and bolted it, they could be locked in the stable for days until villagers came to investigate. Trying not to show panic she hurried the children out and dragged the door shut.
‘Let’s go inside,’ she said.
It was only twenty yards to the house, but the overgrown path never seemed so dark. Francis stumbled and cried out, unnerving them further. They pushed in through the open back door, which Eva quickly bolted. She leaned back, breathing a sigh of relief, while the children hugged her for comfort. Then the sound of footsteps crossed the kitchen flagstones. Eva tightened her grip on the children, but Hazel broke free to call: ‘Who’s there? Show yourself!’
The kitchen door opened and a voice spoke. ‘I would if I could find a light.’
‘Maureen!’
The children ran towards their former maid, while Eva raised the lantern to make out the young woman’s features.
‘The back door was open…I didn’t know where yous had gone. My goodness, how you’ve grown.’ Maureen released the children and smiled at Eva. ‘I called earlier, Mrs Fitzgerald. I’ve a key these years back. You got the soda bread?’
‘We didn’t know who brought it.’
‘I was never one for writing notes. I lit the stove. If I’d had more time I could have done more.’
‘You have your own life, Maureen. Are you still working for Mr Devlin?’
‘God save us from harm, mam, but if I slice another rasher for that skinflint I’ll go crazy. I wasn’t cut out for shop work.’
‘I haven’t the money to employ anyone, Maureen.’
‘Don’t I know it, mam. Still I thought I’d spend the night here if you wanted and get you settled in. I can cycle into work in the morning.’
‘And come back tomorrow evening,’ Francis urged. ‘I mean it’s not half the cycle from here to Castlebar as it would be from Ballavary.’
‘I’m sure Maureen wants to be with her own family,’ Eva said, attempting to cushion his expectation.
‘She wants to be with us,’ Hazel insisted. ‘Don’t you, Maureen? It will be like old times, only you could be the guest and have the Commander’s old room. Say she can stay, Mummy, say it!’
Eva watched Maureen laugh at the children’s enthusiasm. The young woman glanced at her.
‘Well, my sister Cait would welcome a bit of space in the bed for a night or two.’
‘You’d be more welcome than you could ever know,’ Eva said. ‘But you’ll freeze here in winter.’
‘Sure we can all freeze together so.’
Thrilled, the children sat Maureen down at the table, competing to tell her about England. Eva’s pleasure was tempered by knowing that someone had slept in the stables. A tramp might have thought the house deserted, but Mr Durcan’s warning made her uneasy. Maureen was suggesting that they sleep on mattresses in the kitchen for tonight, as it was the only warm room. The children loved the sense of anarchy and adventure in this idea. Eva unpacked more candles and arranged them around the room. She gave the children the lantern, ostensibly for them to check if the mattresses in the nursery were damp, but really so that she could speak to Maureen alone.
‘Was there anyone around here when you cycled over earlier?’
‘There was and he gave me a fright,’ the girl replied. ‘I didn’t see him until he stepped out from the woods as I was leaving. A stranger. I think he’d been sleeping rough.’
‘A tramp?’
‘I don’t rightly know, mam. A quiet-spoken class of man. Something odd about him, like maybe he’d been in jail. It was his half-starved face and his skin burnt like he’d been somewhere foreign. I didn’t think him Irish until he spoke.’
‘What age was he?’ Eva couldn’t prevent a desperate hope from overwhelming her.
‘Not old, mam, but he looked old.’
‘And his accent?’
Eva’s agitation made the girl nervous. ‘He spoke like a man not much used to speaking English any more. Hoarse like he’d been ill. He asked for you by name and when I said you were across the water but due home he said nothing but went on his way. I felt desperately sorry for him, mam. Did I do right to say you were coming back?’
‘I need you to look at a photograph, Maureen,’ Eva said. ‘This is very important.’
Francis barged in and was surprised by the brusque manner in which Eva sent him away. But she had no time for her son now. She was remembering another boy his age in a funny hat holding her hand on the Bunlacky road at night. A boy everyone adored who had vanished off this earth. How often in Winchester had she sat up in bed, convinced that a knock had woken her, with Brendan outside, having found his way to her? But he would not have known her English address. With the Dunkineely house lying empty like a cursed palace, if Brendan had reached Ireland then Mayo was the only place where he could come for help.
Eva led Maureen to the basement bedroom where she had stored any personal possessions they could not take to England. There were pictures of Brendan as a boy in an album here. But pressed between the pages of Goethe’s poems she had kept the last photograph received from him, taken by a London street photographer in 1936. She showed it to Maureen.
‘Take a good look.’ She tried to stay calm and not scare the girl. ‘Take as long as you want. Then tell me if this could be the man you saw in the woods.’
The girl held the candle so close to the photograph that Eva was afraid it would become stained with wax. She seemed to take an eternity to make up her mind.
‘He’s good-looking in this photograph,’ she said, ‘but he’s gaunt in real life now – if it was him. Mam, I can’t tell. He’s lost so much weight and his hair…there was grey in it despite him being so young. And his teeth were like an old man’s whereas in this photo he’s a picture of health. I can’t say if this is him or not. It’s your brother’s picture, isn’t it?’
Eva did not reply, as if any articulation of her hope would see it wither. The children were calling from the kitchen. Their anxi
ety had vanished with Maureen’s appearance and they were giddy, the best of friends. Maureen knew better than to question Eva further. The girl returned to the kitchen and Eva heard her scold them playfully, sending them to fetch pots as she prepared supper with the provisions Eva had purchased in Mr Durcan’s shop. Eva was glad that Maureen could distract them and give her time alone to think and pray.
There were more candles in her bag upstairs in the hall. Eva collected an assortment of empty bottles from the cellar and, using them as holders, set a lighted candle in every window. This was how she remembered Dunkineely at Christmas, with candles in windows and doors ajar to offer shelter if Mary and Joseph should pass. Bruckless House was also once festooned with candles, but – although Eva loved the Ffrenches – to recall those lit windows reminded her of the false beacons with which shipwreckers lured unwary sailors onto the rocks. But perhaps Brendan had survived this voyage that Mr Ffrench had inspired. She opened the front door to stand out in the freezing night with three candles spluttering on the hall floor behind her as she scanned the dark trees.
Her mind was strangely calm. She had placed herself at God’s mercy and was waiting for his pattern to be revealed. Prayer would be superfluous in the rich silence. She would wait until dawn if necessary. She was no Thomas needing to put her hands into the wounds. Perhaps this was the reason why she had chosen to return home tonight.
Making no effort to stay warm, she waited, so lost in meditation that she did not hear Maureen and the children calling until they came upstairs to find her.
‘Whatever are you doing, Mummy?’ Hazel asked, exasperated.
‘I’m waiting, dear.’
‘For what?’
‘Whoever is out there.’
Both children peered anxiously into the dark, unnerved by her behaviour.
‘There’s nobody out there,’ Hazel said decidedly.
‘You’d best come in, Mrs Fitzgerald,’ Maureen urged. ‘You’ll catch your death on such a night.’
The Family on Paradise Pier Page 35
