The Family on Paradise Pier. Dermot Bolger

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      ‘I should visit Mrs Ffrench,’ Maud said. ‘She must be upset about Oliver.’

      ‘The poor woman has lost both brothers in this war already,’ Mr Tim replied. ‘She has aged so much worrying about Ffrench, who is seeing plenty of naval action. He’s quite the rising star but she just wants him safely home.’

      ‘How is Eva?’ Maud asked.

      Mr Tim smiled. ‘Eva is Eva. Yesterday she decided to aid the Dublin rebels by climbing into a tree and writing a poem for them.’

      The front door opened and Maud’s mother stood waiting to comfort her daughter. Father and son watched them embrace and disappear indoors. Glancing down the empty street Mr Tim felt a disconcerting sensation of being watched. He went inside where his son followed him into the study.

      ‘Are your two chums back yet?’

      ‘Last night one wanted to know where we kept the guns. He couldn’t believe that we don’t have a single one in the house.’

      ‘I’ve always hated shooting. However if they want to go hunting birds I’m sure we can arrange it with a neighbour.’

      ‘He meant guns for protection.’

      ‘Protection?’ Mr Tim smiled. ‘What does he expect, our neighbours to rush the house? Still I shouldn’t laugh. This trouble in Dublin is disconcerting. Such madness, with Irishmen already dying every day in France.’

      ‘Maybe that’s the problem. They’re dying in the wrong land.’

      ‘The problem, Art, is that they are dying at all. War solves nothing and cleanses nothing. It just leaves more bitterness waiting to spill over again.’

      ‘The fighting in Dublin is different,’ Art argued.

      ‘In what way?’

      ‘No one is forcing them to fight. There is no officer to shoot anyone who turns back. That’s one of the tasks they prepare the older boys for in school. That and being first out from the trench with a drawn sword to spur on your men to follow.’

      ‘You like your school, don’t you?’ Mr Tim probed. ‘I mean you’re popular, you have good chums.’

      ‘Some times I feel totally at home there. Other times I think I don’t fit.’

      ‘Being Irish can make you feel that.’

      ‘It’s not being Irish.’

      ‘What is it then?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Art struggled for the words. ‘One to one I like most chaps there. Even the teachers are good eggs when not being jingoistic. But…sometimes when they are all gathered together…I find myself hating them. I hate their superiority, the sense of their absolute right to rule.’

      ‘The English have that,’ Mr Tim agreed. ‘Even our friend Mr Hawkins – poor man – is unshakeable in his self-belief. But they cannot be blamed for being what they are, any more than a fox can be blamed for being a fox.’ His father paused. ‘Maybe there’s something else you hate?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Maybe you see the same qualities buried inside you. I mean no offence, but when asked to describe what we least like in people we often end up inadvertently describing ourselves.’

      ‘I’m not like my fellow students,’ Art stated angrily.

      ‘I know. But maybe deep within yourself you see a seed which, if not careful, might one day make you become like them. They will all find jobs ruling the Empire when this war ends. If that is what you want then doors will also open for you. Ffrench went to a poor school, yet see how well he is forging ahead. Imagine what you could do with your contacts.’

      ‘Is that why you sent me to Marlborough? What you want?’

      ‘I wanted to give you the best education I could afford. After that I merely wish you to be happy. I disappointed my father, our cousins too. They wanted me to achieve things. One said that I was a lotus-eater, lacking ambition, hiding away in my own little paradise here. But my ambitions were different from theirs. Perhaps I am inventing excuses and I have been a failure, but only on their terms. Because I never accepted their right to put their ambitions on my shoulders, I have no right to place my ambitions on yours. I’m merely saying that you may be afraid of being contaminated by the outside world. My days in Oxford were the loneliest time in my life. Young men boorishly drinking in societies. Grandpappy claimed that I ran away and I needed to toughen up to survive in the world. But I didn’t want to toughen up because something inside me would have died. You’re different. You have steel. Find your own path and stick to it.’

      ‘What if you don’t like my path?’

      Mr Tim stared at the brooding portrait of Martin Luther. ‘The one thing I wish to give all of you is a conscience. If you trust to your heart you will not go wrong, no matter how others may judge you. Go and see if your chums are back. I want to finish something before I dress for dinner.’

      Art left Mr Timothy Goold Verschoyle alone. Upstairs Maud would be crying, comforted by her sister and mother. Thomas would be glad all his siblings were home because he seemed happiest when they were all together. Brendan was probably reading in his den in the coach house. Of all his children Brendan was the one Mr Tim knew least about. He spent many evenings walking with the boy, but it was never fully clear what Brendan felt. Being so young, he made the others seem grown-up. Opening a drawer, Mr Tim took out new lyrics for the latest song cycle he was composing. The villagers thought his music remarkable. Neighbours often said how much they enjoyed hearing the sound of his piano filtering out onto the street. But no orchestra had yet played a single composition. Music companies returned his compositions with polite notes of refusal. But still he pressed on, motivated by a desire to bring beauty into this world or, maybe at a subconscious level, to feel some vindication in succeeding to prove his cousins wrong.

      In Dublin now rebels were fighting behind barricades, with buildings shelled and slum dwellers looting amid the corpses of horses and soldiers. Boys trapped on barbed wire in no-man’s-land in France were screaming for comrades to end their agony with a bullet. Rats grew fat on corpses. Young Oliver Hawkins’s body might never be found. Mr Tim remembered how handsome Oliver had looked last summer. What must it be like to lose a son? He prayed that this war would end before his boys were old enough to be drawn in and that the Dublin madness would end without too many deaths. Scrutinising the lyrics he wrote this morning, they seemed a feeble pastiche of his favourite poets. At heart he knew this cycle would fare no better than the others, but still he worked on, knowing that these imperfect songs were the only poultice he could offer the world.

       THREE Four Thousand Lamps

      December 1917

      Local Catholics had such long memories that Mrs Ffrench was careful not to betray any hint of proselytism about her activities. Older people still cursed the visiting Protestant clergymen who had tried to steal souls during the famine by offering soup to any starving wretch lured into attending their church services. Last year a Dublin Protestant was sacked after his Catholic employers discovered how he served tea each Sunday at the Free Breakfasts СКАЧАТЬ