expose the freckled stomach she wanted rubbed.
Eva had a list of urgent tasks to jot down, but despite having taken pencil and paper outside she was too caught up in this miraculous heat to focus on responsibilities. Hazel emerged from the stables where she had been brushing down her pony and went to fill a bucket with water as the pump handle creaked in rusty protest.
‘I’m going to the kitchen,’ she announced. ‘I’m going to make bubbles.’ But the girl paused to stare past the branches of the sweet chestnut framing the avenue. Hazel had sharp hearing but soon Eva also heard the jingle of a bicycle circumventing the deep ruts on the overgrown path. She could not prevent herself being seized by a familiar fear, a residue from her childhood in the Great War when silence would envelop Dunkineely village whenever the postmaster left his office with a telegram. Was it news of Brendan or her parents? Surely Freddie, with his club foot, would not be sent into battle, no matter how desperate the war effort. But perhaps age and disability meant nothing, with Mussolini conscripting boys at fourteen, barely older than Francis. Eva lowered her pencil and tried to pray for all those she loved whom she knew to be in danger.
Full-length drapes across the window gave the Oxford bedroom an appearance of twilight, though it was only mid-afternoon when Mrs Goold Verschoyle woke. For most of the night she had fretted about her husband’s safety as he patrolled the blacked-out streets as an air raid warden. So far, Oxford had escaped the fate of Coventry and Southampton, but some nights the fires in London were so great that their glow was said to be glimpsed even at this remove. Only after hearing Tim return safely at dawn had she allowed herself to fall asleep. But there was no sign of him having come up to bed. She lay on for a moment, recalling her dream about Donegal. She could still see Mr and Mrs Ffrench crossing their lawn from Bruckless House down to the stone pier with trays of homemade lemonade for the visiting swimmers. Brendan had loved their lemonade, often prolonging his thirst so as to savour the taste. Brendan, her youngest, had been like a fish in her dream.
A constant struggle with arthritis had left Mrs Goold Verschoyle’s face severely lined. Her disability was so acute that holding a pen was torture: still she refused to stop writing to British and Soviet officials. Each line represented physical agony, but she was motivated by a need to quench the greater anguish in her heart. Today she determined not to upset herself by sifting through the replies piled in the bedside drawer – curt responses expressing regret at being unable to supply any information about her missing son. Today she would make herself look well for Tim. Painfully she brushed her hair, still soft and fine like a child’s. Through the open wardrobe door she glimpsed the mothballed dresses she had once worn at parties in Donegal. She put down the hairbrush on the dressing table beside a copy of The Great Outlaw – her favourite book about Christ – and opened a drawer to examine the small bottles of perfume she was carefully nursing there.
Selecting her husband’s favourite, she rose. Tim would be pleased to see that she was not too frail to leave her bed today. He was probably sleeping downstairs so as not to wake her. But when she reached the drawing room he was not lying on the sofa. His body was slumped forward in an armchair, with a book of poems still balanced on his knee. Mrs Goold Verschoyle watched, too scared to move. It would be typical of Tim for his death – like his entire life – to be so understated that the book had not even fallen from his lap.
Show some mercy, Lord, she prayed. Don’t take him away from me also.
The book toppled over, striking the carpet with a dull thud. Mr Goold Verschoyle stirred slightly, looking down at the book and stooped to pick it up. He became aware of her.
‘How is my darling?’ he asked quietly.
Mrs Goold Verschoyle made no reply, but walked over to place her hand on his shoulder.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I can feel how precious this time is too.’
Tragedy declined to penetrate the Mayo wood today because it wasn’t a telegram boy who emerged beneath the chestnut branches onto the lawn where Eva and her children watched. Instead it was Maureen, their former maid but now their friend and lodger. She freewheeled up to the steps, delighted with her weekly half day off from the shop in Castlebar where she worked. Her wicker basket was full of provisions ordered by Eva, with every item paid for. It was bliss to owe no money and have no fear of creditors.
Glanmire House had undoubtedly gone to seed. Cracked windowpanes had not been replaced, loose tiles let rainwater into disused rooms with walls covered in a seaweed-like vegetation. But the kitchen was dry and warm and the few habitable rooms were adequate for their needs. Just now those needs were simple.
The horror of war was ever present by its absence. This woodland silence seemed artificial, as if punctured by distant cries so high-pitched that only the dog could cock her head to stare off puzzled into the distance.
Ireland was not yet directly consumed by the conflagration, but few doubted an imminent invasion from one side or the other. While the countryside held its breath people learnt to live in limbo. For Protestant neighbours the fact that Freddie had joined the British army was sufficient to reinstate respectability after the debacle of their bankruptcy. With Freddie too engrossed in army life to press her about maintaining appearances, Eva could discreetly go native with the children, talking and thinking as they liked in the privacy of this wood. Without Freddie, Glanmire House reminded her of the freedom of her childhood in Donegal.
Hazel waved to Maureen, then picked up the bucket of water and went to the kitchen. Francis waved and rolled onto his stomach to let the sun warm his back. Maureen laid her bicycle against the steps and strolled over to Eva.
‘That heat’s a terror.’ She flopped down. ‘The chain came off my bike near Turlough and I thought my hands would be destroyed with oil.’
‘Any news from the village?’ Eva asked.
‘Divil the bit, Mrs Fitzgerald. The Stagg boys are off to England for work, though you’d swear half of Mayo had the same idea if you saw the crowds in Castlebar Station and the train already packed from Westport. They’ll be sitting on the roof in Claremorris if it gets that far with the wet turf they’re burning. They say English factory owners are crying out for workers.’
Maureen kicked off her shoes and lay back to let the sun brown her legs. Eva wondered if the girl was hinting at being tempted to go. The young woman reached into her bag to produce a letter.
‘I met Jim the Post and said I’d save him the cycle,’ she said. ‘He looked killed with curiosity wondering what might be in it.’
Both laughed before Maureen picked up her shoes and went to join Hazel in the kitchen. Eva opened Freddie’s letter with trepidation because it was true that his weekly registered one, containing her allowance, had only arrived on Monday. As always his tone was candid, yet circumspect. The mantra that careless talk cost lives was instilled in him, though Eva doubted if his letters were being steamed open by German sympathisers in an Irish sorting office. The Irish preferred to receive news of the tightening Nazi noose by listening to Lord Haw-Haw’s bragging tones on German radio. Even then she suspected that most locals only listened because Haw-Haw was a fellow Connaught man and they took pride to see a local do well for himself in any walk of life.
Typically the first page enquired after the children before Freddie imparted his news. Eva’s fears of him being dispatched to join the fighting were groundless – for now at least. With two million young men called up, the army needed experienced men to provide military training, and Freddie wrote that his time spent shooting on the Mayo bogs might not have been wasted after all. He kept his tone self-deprecating, as if baffled at having to relay the news of being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Educational Corps. But Eva knew he would have impressed his superiors by being the best shot in his reserve artillery company. Such promotion was a dream realised, especially with his disability. Eva knew that he would show each conscript the care he would have taken with Francis had his son betrayed the slightest interest in guns.
Freddie had knuckled down to army life. The routine suited him. He would be popular once he controlled his drinking – his Irishness