The Family on Paradise Pier

by Dermot Bolger

  He should still be interned in the Curragh now, preparing his speech for this evening’s political discussion forum where he had planned to demolish their misguided petty nationalist shibboleths and once again argue for this change of direction. It should not be viewed as collaboration with Britain, but as using the Allies as a vehicle to crush fascism under Stalin’s leadership.

  The discipline of camp life had suited him over the past two years. It was the sole advantage gleaned from having attended public school. The difference was that in the Curragh every internee was equal. There were no prefects or fags, no casual bullying or ritualised beatings. In Marlborough you were force-fed lies, but until this morning Art had felt that a forum existed in the Curragh for genuine discourse. Few IRA men possessed open minds but most had grown relaxed with him, especially after he began to kneel alongside them at night while they recited the rosary. Art did not pray, but he considered it essential to morale to show respect for their beliefs. At heart they were kulaks who would need to be prised from their few boggy acres when the time came. But the Curragh was an ideal environment to recruit and educate them. However the camp leadership had grown afraid of him since Hitler’s recent treacherous invasion of the Soviet Union. He saw this in a reduced attendance at his Russian language class.

  He had been going to give a language class this morning when two men pinned his arms and bundled him between the huts where a deputation awaited. The IRA camp commander held a knife to Art’s throat, announcing that he had been court-martialled for subversion and sentenced in absentia. He said they had informed the governor that unless Art was gone from the camp by today he was a dead man. Art had been forced to walk towards the gates, where the Irish soldiers had orders to shoot anyone encroaching too close. If he turned back he was told that he would be found with a hundred knife wounds in the morning. The sentries had shouted at him as he neared their watchtower, but knowing that the IRA were watching he had refused to betray fear. Then for some unknown reason, as the sentries cocked their rifles, he remembered Brendan swimming alongside him in a dream and had stopped, not through fear but because he was overcome by déjà vu. A sense of foreboding had made him shake as he closed his eyes, trying desperately to grasp what was occurring. It felt like the sort of experience that used to happen to Mother when playing planchette. Art did not know how long he had remained trembling in no-man’s-land until arms grasped him and he knew that the soldiers had descended from the watchtower. They bore him, not roughly but like a sick man, up two flights of stairs and into the governor’s office overlooking the gates.

  Art had sat, trying to recover his composure, as the governor turned from the window where he had been watching proceedings. He examined Art’s file on his deck. ‘The funny thing with extremists like the IRA,’ he said eventually, ‘is that they always keep their word. I am exercising my discretion in releasing you in light of the changed circumstances.’

  ‘What changed circumstances?’

  ‘You may huff and puff, Goold, but you’ll not do much harm by yourself. I would return your possessions but you appeared to have none when taken into custody two years ago. I will give you the train fare to Dublin, but you must make your own way to London.’

  ‘Why would I go to London?’

  ‘You have this camp in uproar demanding that the IRA throw in their lot with the RAF. If you are so keen to fight England’s war then go and fight in it.’

  ‘I’ve been fighting a war for twenty years,’ Art replied. ‘You just couldn’t see it.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be fighting it on your own now.’ He leaned forward. ‘You’re not a bad man, Goold. You never gave me trouble. I feel responsible for you. The Curragh is a grand billet to sit out this mess. Three meals a day, good company. Sometimes I envy you lot. But if I keep you here you will be found dead. Could you not just have kept your head down and your mouth shut?’

  ‘Who runs this camp?’ Art had asked. ‘The IRA or you?’

  ‘I run it and handle all sorts. When English pilots crash we tell them they’re interned, then release them on day parole on their word of honour that they won’t escape across the border, handing them a train ticket to do just that. If they break their bond what can we do? To show our neutrality we also give the Germans similar day parole and if they want to start swimming towards France that’s their business. The IRA is a genuine threat to security, which is why we’ve hung several members since the Emergency started. You’re no threat, Goold, and certainly not since last week. But if I keep you here we’ll need to hang another IRA man when we already have enough martyrs. If you want this war so badly then get a boat to England.’

  With those words the governor had pushed Art’s release papers across the table. Money was pressed into his hands and he was driven to the station with two soldiers to ensure that he boarded this train.

  He should feel liberated now after two years of incarceration, he should be savouring every mile of this slow journey. But he could not shake off a feeling of unease. What had happened last week to change the situation? The important thing was to re-establish contact with his comrades in the Communist Party of Ireland and develop a position to galvanise public support in favour of Stalin’s rallying call to fight fascism.

  Eventually the train entered Kingsbridge station, with people pushing towards the doors. The German officers politely stood back to allow him to climb down first. He ignored them, with no time for minor confrontations. A party discussion group met every Tuesday at seven. If he walked quickly he could make it. Irish public opinion would be hard to change but proposals must be well advanced to counter these monolithic prejudices. Art strode along the Dublin quays, so intent on making the meeting that he barely had time to look around. Contact with the Party was difficult while interned but Art had managed to get letters out to their broadsheet, the Irish Worker’s Weekly, on any issue where he suspected deviation from the official line.

  It was ten past seven when he climbed the stairs up to the room used as party headquarters. At first Art was unsure if he had entered the wrong building. The room was empty apart from an old desk on which a workman stood, removing shelving. Art only recognised him when he turned.

  ‘Hennessy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Jaysus, Art Goold, when did they let you out?’

  ‘Today.’

  He laughed and raised his eyes. ‘Word spreads fast.’

  ‘What do you mean, Hennessy?’ Art looked around. ‘Where is everybody? What happened to the Tuesday meetings? Are they finished?’

  Hennessy gave the shelf a last blow with his hammer and it came loose. ‘The Tuesday meetings aren’t finished, the Party is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There no longer is a Communist Party of Ireland. We dissolved ourselves last week.’

  ‘Under whose orders?’ Art gripped the desk in his fury. ‘Who instructed you to do so?’

  ‘Under nobody’s orders, for God’s sake, Goold. The few of us left did so ourselves. We discussed the impossible position we were in, then voted to break up as a unit and integrate ourselves as individuals within the trade union movement to guide them to embrace socialist principles. This way we can help to fend off the attacks being launched on the conditions of Irish workers. It’s the first time we ever passed a practical resolution. It makes sense, Goold, even to you. We were a lost tribe baying in the wilderness. From now on we can work as individuals on the inside, bringing people around to our way of thinking instead of always being on the outside hectoring them.’

  ‘But nobody asked me? I never voted.’

  ‘What did you want us to do? Dig a tunnel into the Curragh and consult you?’ Hennessy attacked the next shelf with his hammer. ‘You’re not Moses. You didn’t part the sea from Russia with two stone tablets. Maybe nobody thought to contact you because nobody considered you to be one of us.’

  Art banged his fist on the desk. ‘I’m the only true believer among you. You people are an opportunist faction of traitors, sham c
ommunists and Trotskyite renegades.’

  Hennessy aimed another blow at the shelf. ‘Save me the shite, will you? You’re not in Russia now.’

  ‘I know what this is about. You are petty nationalist cowards. The Soviet Union is being attacked and you haven’t the courage to align yourselves with Stalin and fight in his hour of need.’

  Hennessy ripped down the shelf and turned, holding aloft the hammer. ‘Don’t talk to me about fighting, pal. I was dodging bullets in Spain – half of them Russian – when you were running around the Irish bogs frightening donkeys and screaming at turf workers.’

  ‘I couldn’t go to Spain. My orders were to build communism here.’

  ‘Maybe there’s more to life than taking orders. Do you ever think for yourself? I met your brother in Spain and saw what your precious Russia did for him. Do you know where he is or have you simply passed a resolution to wipe him out of history?’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘What happened to him wasn’t fair either. I became a communist because I believed in James Connolly, not Joseph Stalin. You couldn’t build a fucking sandcastle, Goold. Do you honestly want us to stand on the streets and urge the Irish people to throw in our lot with Britain because Stalin clicks his fingers? Go ahead and see how popular you become by suggesting that the Dublin slums get blitzed too.’

  ‘I have a wife and child in Russia.’

  ‘Then get on a boat to London and fight for them.’

  Art gathered himself up with quiet fury. ‘That’s what you want. You wish me gone so you can poison Irish communism with your counter-revolutionary plot. Maybe it was you who falsely denounced my brother in Spain and arranged for me to be locked away in the Curragh so you could spread your lies.’

  Hennessy turned back to the shelves. ‘Yeah, me and de Valera take tea and scones regularly. You’re cracked, Goold, with one foot in and one foot out of everything. If you’re too chicken to fight then bugger off to the colonies and find a few misfortunate heathens to take soup in a Protestant church. We Irish natives like to do our own thinking. Now, fuck off.’

  Art walked back down to the street where hawkers screamed the price of apples and urchins shouted the names of evening papers. Flocks of office girls passed on bicycles. Art felt cold and sick. All day this sense of catastrophe and betrayal had been looming. He had been sent back to Ireland on a mission and failed. He should have known that Trotskyite saboteurs were everywhere. Never had he felt so alone. Whoever held his file in Moscow would blame him for the liquidation of the Irish branch of the Party.

  He began to walk through the drizzle, unsure where he was going. For a moment he longed to be in Eva’s wood in Mayo where he could reflect and know that someone still cared for him. But he could not go there because Eva would want to talk about Brendan. Over the past two years he had fought with his guilt about Brendan and won. Still Hennessy’s words hurt. The strange thing was that Brendan’s spirit had never felt closer than during these last few hours. Art had not eaten all day but the hunger he felt went deeper than anything he had previously known. It reminded him of stories in Donegal about the hungry grass growing over unmarked famine graves. Art tried to focus on the crowded streets, but could not shake off a feeling of being watched, as if he had only to turn his head to see Brendan behind him, dogging his footsteps. The feeling grew so strong that he began to walk quicker, pretending that it was to savour the sense of not being trapped by barbed wire. Eventually he stopped in Mountjoy Square and, breathing heavily, turned to confront the emptiness behind him.

  Hennessy’s reference to Brendan was a typical counter-revolutionary smear tactic. Stalin had never imprisoned any man unjustly. After Georgi Polevoy’s arrest Brendan’s case would have been re-opened and scrutinised. The slightest doubt would lead to Brendan’s release. Brendan might be living in Moscow now as a free man, maybe serving in the Red Army. Even if Brendan was still imprisoned, Soviet camps were places of re-education with higher living standards than many Western countries. It was Art who had suffered false imprisonment for the past two years but Hennessy had only sneered at him, hatching plots with other traitors to destroy every last trace of communism here. But communism would never be dead as long as there was one righteous man still standing. If Art had to restart the movement from scratch then he would be Stalin’s rock on which truth was built.

  But just now a cold dread returned as if unseen eyes were watching. He leaned back against the railings of Mountjoy Square, exhausted by twenty years of constant struggle. He would have slept on a park bench but the summer drizzle was turning into heavy rain. Art wondered who lived in his old attic and what had happened to his few possessions there. Crossing the street he entered his former doorway and climbed up the bare staircase. Mrs Fleming answered the knock on her door.

  ‘The dead arose.’ She surveyed him. ‘There isn’t even a shoebox for rent here now. Besides, I doubt if the landlord would want you back causing trouble.’

  ‘What happened to my stuff?’

  ‘Burnt years ago by the Catholic Young Men’s Society. I tried to save a few books but sure we couldn’t even pawn them.’ She sighed. ‘Have you a bed for the night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A lady showed up here some years back claiming to be your sister. Said you had a lovely big house going empty in Donegal.’

  ‘It’s not empty, it’s full of ghosts.’

  Mrs Fleming opened her door fully. ‘We’ve barely room for the living never mind the dead. There’s space on the floor for a night or two at most. Just mind that himself doesn’t fall over you staggering in from the pub.’

  The children were asleep, six of them in the one bed, three at each end. Art took the blanket Mrs Fleming offered and lay on the floorboards near the window. It was so long since he had heard traffic at night or girls’ voices calling. He tried to savour every sound in this city that refused to accept him, but found himself shivering beneath the blanket as if he would never feel warm again.

  THIRTY

  The Plane

  The Soviet Union, July 1941

  A parched twilight began to close around the unlit prisoner train. For over a week the zeks in Brendan’s wagon had jolted across an arid landscape they rarely glimpsed, crushed together in putrid darkness. Only those crammed against the wooden slats ever saw the small worms of daylight flicker in through the slight cracks there. Little sound penetrated into the wagon either, just the ceaseless rumble of the tracks. Sometimes the train stopped and prisoners shifted eagerly, yearning for guards to untangle the barbed wire around each carriage and eventually wedge open the doors. In the stampede to relieve themselves, dignity would be forgotten as men and women squatted together under the gaze of the guards and their dogs. But often those stops occurred for no obvious reason. There would be no sound after the wheels came to a rusty halt, no footsteps, no safety catches unleashed, no orders screamed for zeks to get onto their knees and be counted. Instead the train would remain motionless for an indeterminable period until eventually the wheels slowly jolted forward again and each zek felt a stir of relief amidst their disappointment because no decision had yet been made to liquidate them.

  Three weeks ago Brendan had known that his position had become perilous when the music on the camp Tannoy was abruptly replaced by a voice from the radio denouncing Germany’s treacherous attack on the Soviet Union. Even the guards stopped their morning count and during those few seconds guards and zeks were suddenly equal, stunned that anyone – even Hitler – could dare to defy Stalin’s confident declaration that there would be no conflict in Russia. But the crackling voice spoke of German troops on Russian soil and German planes destroying the Soviet Air Force. The voice had carried defiance, exhorting comrades everywhere to give their last breath for the Motherland. But the voice also betrayed panic and indecision until it was suddenly replaced by static, with guards starting to yell at the zeks as if even this invasion was their fault.

  Kolyma barely had enough food in times of peace.
But, being no longer people, the zeks knew that they would suffer in this war, even though the invasion was on the other side of the USSR. That day had been like no other on the gold fields. The zeks had worked in silence and for once did not want their labours to end. June was milder and as nobody could recall zeks being shot while out on the actual gold fields, they had felt safe sieving there. That evening the guards had needed to shout at them to march quicker back to camp.

  Nobody knew if they would live through the coming night. During the long count the guards had gone through lists of prisoners, weeding out those with German surnames. Brendan had been unable to stop shivering because his nationality confused the guards. Most considered him English, but some who had heard him deny this might think him German. Few guards admitted to having heard of Ireland because expressing a knowledge of countries outside the Soviet Union could be misconstrued as treason. Brendan had not known if his file still contained details of having been seen drinking with German members of POUM in Barcelona. Such information might have been enough to have him rounded up with the German prisoners that evening who were told that they were being marched to catch a boat with no time to collect their personal belongings. Few had believed it but Brendan saw them cling to this desperate hope as they were counted and then led away from the Kolyma camp.