Dermot Bolger - The Family on Paradise Pier

‘We met nobody today,’ Maud said.

‘For God’s sake, miss, whose side are you on? If they take your car today it will be your house and lands tomorrow. The savages won’t leave you with a roof over your heads.’

‘Please move your lorry,’ Maud replied. ‘I want to go home.’

‘And I want to know where you’ve been.’

‘What is the problem here, sergeant?’ Two figures emerged from the driveway of Bruckless House. The soldiers raised their rifles, then lowered them, sensing Mr Ffrench’s military bearing as he stood beside Dr O’Donnell. The sergeant saluted.

‘Just carrying out our duties, sir. Keeping the peace.’

‘Go and keep it somewhere else so. And don’t salute me, I’m a civilian.’

‘Sorry, sir. It’s just obvious you were in the services.’

‘We all make mistakes.’

‘The Commodore has returned from service off Murmansk this evening,’ Dr O’Donnell said mildly. ‘We can vouch for these young people. Kindly let them pass.’

‘Damned hard luck about the withdrawal of the expeditionary force from Russia, sir,’ the sergeant addressed Mr Ffrench. ‘I hear the Bolsheviks are savages.’

‘On the contrary,’ Mr Ffrench replied, ‘the Bolsheviks are men of principle, which is more than can be said for the White Russians we were shoring up, for whom I could not give a horse artillery hoot. Our retreat was bliss for me.’

The sergeant searched Mr Ffrench’s face as if this was a black joke that he was missing. His tone stiffened.

‘I lost a cousin there, at the battle on the Ussuri River.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Mr Ffrench replied. ‘Good men died needlessly. I made it my business to write to their widows.’

‘He was just twenty-two,’ the sergeant said. ‘He fought bravely. His kids will be proud of him. What did you do?’

‘I fought my best to ensure that as few of my men as possible died. I don’t have children yet to be proud of me. If I had I might have been truly brave for their sake and joined the Bolsheviks to fight for the liberty of all men.’

The sergeant looked at his men who were all watching this encounter, then, very deliberately, he spat and gave the order to board the truck. He climbed in without speaking. Headlights lit up the dark road as it pulled away. The darkness was more intense after it was gone.

Mr Ffrench approached the car.

‘My word, you pair have got so big. Come down tomorrow and we’ll have a picnic on the pier like old times. Maybe you’ll give the doctor a lift as far as Killaghtee church.’

Mr Ffrench sounded relaxed and jovial, but Maud wondered if when she woke tomorrow she would suspect that his conversation with the sergeant had formed part of a bizarre dream. Mr Ffrench shook their hands, then strolled back up his avenue. The doctor got into the back seat and Maud drove on.

‘Is Mr Ffrench feeling all right, Doctor?’ Maud asked.

‘I’m afraid that diagnosis is out of my league,’ the doctor replied. ‘Our neighbour appears to have embraced a new faith. He has spent the evening preaching the benefits of communism for all mankind. I have not heard such ardour since travelling medicine men used to pontificate on the virtues of their elixirs at fair days, curing everything from croup to baldness. In Mr Ffrench’s favour he makes no claim that communism will cure either. A few weeks’ rest should sort him out. Ffrench always took up hobbies with enthusiasm. Reading between the lines, it seems that he was relieved of the command of an assault on Archangel. It was given to a well-connected young English officer whom the Admiralty were keen to blood. I put Ffrench’s zeal down to pique, but we old doctors are a cynical breed. Here will do fine, Maud. I’m glad you recovered your motor.’

Maud stopped to let him out.

‘How did you know it was missing?’

The doctor laughed. ‘Who doesn’t know? Good night.’

Brother and sister drove on and entered the village. Two men leaned on the low windowsill at MacShane’s pub to watch the car go by. One gestured a silent greeting. Only after they passed however did Maud wonder if it was actually a greeting or had his fingers been cupped in the shape of an imaginary revolver. She didn’t know. Indeed, as she turned into the lane to the coach house Maud realised that there was little she was truly sure of any more.

Donegal, August 1920

Nobody else called this the Fairyland Road, but in her mind Eva never referred to it by any other name. It was a rough track over bogs and rocks that cut the trip to Killybegs by two miles. Sometimes at dawn she loved to sketch here, knowing there would be no traffic and rarely another person to disturb her. But it was barely passable to cycle on as she had discovered with Jack this morning, going to the Killybegs Regatta when they struggled to lift their bicycles over exposed rocks where the track had vanished. Still, she was happier to travel independently rather than be squashed between her boisterous brothers in the battered motor with the roof tied down with rope.

This morning, Mother had seemed perturbed at allowing the recently demobbed twenty-two-year-old New Zealand officer to accompany her alone down this isolated track. But – as if to encourage Eva’s growing friendship with Jack – her brothers and, more reluctantly, Maud, had all expressed a fierce determination to travel by motor.

Jack looked slightly comic now, as his long legs struggled to cope with Maud’s small bicycle, but the family was lucky to have two bicycles left. Eva dismounted as they reached another outcrop of rock. Her wicker basket was crammed with eggs purchased from an old woman who resembled an amiable witch and kept eggs for sale in a chamber pot under her box-bed in a tiny cottage near the road. Cook would be glad of them for tonight’s regatta party. Jack also dismounted to offer Eva a hand, but she blushed and said that she would manage. Twice already she had taken his hand at awkward parts of the track and twice he seemed hesitant to let it go.

They discussed the afternoon regatta in Killybegs where crowds had lined the harbour walls. Eva explained how British submarines based there during the war had created great local excitement. She was careful when mentioning the war, having never ascertained how Jack received his injuries which required such a lengthy recuperation. Two months ago Father had acceded to a request from an army friend that the family might take in Jack for some rest before he undertook his long return voyage to New Zealand. Luckily Cousin George had been leaving after a summer visit, so it was agreed to offer the young officer his room. When asked to inscribe the visitors’ book on his last day Cousin George had listed an entire alphabet, with his Q & R causing particular hilarity. Q is for all the impossible QUESTIONS discussed at dinner. R is for the RESULT: indescribable babble.

The New Zealand officer was initially bewildered by the Goold Verschoyles’s indescribable babble on the night he arrived. Mother – engaged in ‘table turning’ with her psychic friends in the drawing room – had suggested that Father play a march on the piano to see what the spirits did. As Eva had answered the front door and led Jack into the room, the table started to move by itself in time to the jaunty music while Mother’s friends with outstretched hands linked across it, needed to stand up to keep pace with its swaying. Father was impressed, although her brothers’ disbelief remained unaltered. But that night Eva and Maud had been more preoccupied with their new arrival than with any occult manifestation.

The sisters had expected a pale invalid, perhaps mildly deranged like several local ex-soldiers who had been exposed to nerve gas and were prone to fits. But apart from a slight limp, Jack seemed in perfect health. Eva did glimpse a scar down his leg on the first occasion when Jack accompanied Art and her to the pier beside Mr Ffrench’s house. The tide had been in, with high waves washing over the stones as they splashed down the pier to jump feet first into the sea. The water was deep and exhilarating, so intensely cold that for several seconds after each jump Eva feared that she would never surface again. But excitement kept her warm as she repeatedly clambered out to do it again, suddenly conscious of how tightly the bathing suit clung to her eighteen-year-old body.