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October 6 - October 12, 2022
The past, before everything changed. A million regrets buzzed briefly around his brain – if only things had worked out differently – but he mentally dismissed them; no good came of that.
‘We can’t control what other people do, Lena. We can only control how we react to it.
Eli was good like that; he could see how to walk around a barrier instead of trying to climb over
Hitler might have been little, and he was Austrian, but he wasn’t stupid. Mad definitely, but stupid, never. He knew just the buttons to press, just the things to say to stoke the fires of German national pride so decimated by Versailles. He needed someone to blame for the loss of the Great War, the destruction of German industry, the annihilation of their armed forces, the savage reparations that were keeping the proud nation on its knees economically as well as culturally, and the Jews were as good a target as any.
Yet she could have been any age. The war did that. It did it to everyone, in equal measure. He’d noticed it as he and August had made their way across France to get to Ireland at the end. French, English, Americans, Canadians – it didn’t matter; the war aged everyone far beyond their years.
There is a saying I heard in Ireland that sums them up – they ran with the hares and hunted with the hounds.’
Ireland was one of the few places in the world not directly involved in the Second World War, though many Irishmen and women joined the Allies. She knew Switzerland had been neutral too, but geographically it had no choice but be in the middle of it. Portugal and Spain refused to take a side either, but again, people escaped through those countries so they weren’t ever truly neutral. But Ireland wasn’t in any sense a theatre of war. Of course her country had helped the Allies, rescuing downed airmen and things like that, but her little green island off the coast of that troubled, scarred and
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a framed tapestry of JFK had joined the picture of the pope and Michael Collins. It wasn’t just Skipper’s influence; lots of Cork people had an image of the assassinated American president on their wall these days alongside the pope, although sometimes Michael Collins was replaced by the Virgin Mary or the Sacred Heart.
Jack Kennedy had been the first Irish American Catholic to be president of America, and the whole of Ireland had been so proud when he visited Cork in 1963, just before he was shot. At least 100,000 people had turned out to see him, including her own family – and Skipper, of course. The Lord Mayor, Seán Casey, had conferred Jack Kennedy with the Freedom of the City, telling him, ‘President Kennedy, you have reached the highest
point in American public life, which any Irish man or any man of Irish descent has ever reached before. In honouring you…we honour our own kith and kin beyond the sea. We honour all those who crossed the Atlantic from this tiny island who made their new homes in the United States and who have contributed so much to that country through...
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but the death of JFK had affected him badly, and his usual irrepressible grin had vanished for a whole month.
‘Is there hope?’ ‘Where there’s life, there’s always hope,’ said Eli simply. It was his favourite saying.
We’re different like that. I can’t just give up.’ Eli had his hand over his eyes, his elbow on the table. ‘It’s not about giving up. It’s about not getting dragged down into the swamp of regrets and recriminations and bitterness.’
It hurt Malachy to his bones that his mother’s love for him had not been enough to keep her from suicide.
‘Sometimes. People are too quick to judge. There are such things as kind untruths, you know? I tell lies all the time,
working as I do in the hospice. I tell patients who are dying that it will be all right, that it won’t be painful. I tell their spouses and children that they were peaceful in the end when it was anything but. I’ve even told people their loved one mentioned their name in the time before their death if it brings them comfort. I lied to my family and friends about Emmet and Mike, or lied by omission at any rate, and Emmet lied to you about the nature of our relationship. I told Michael I didn’t enjoy sleeping with Emmet, but I did. All I’m saying is if a lie is intended to ease hurt and not
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Yes, you’re married, but you are the master of your own destiny. Do what’s in your heart – it never lets you down. Your heart, instinct, intuition, whatever you want to call it, is yours alone. Not Eli’s, not some man’s in France, not Malachy’s – yours. So have a think, and ask yourself the question, “What do I really want?” Then go and make it happen.’
‘Is it that simple, though, really?’ Anthea shrugged. ‘Nothing worth doing is ever simple. All I will say is that I got some great advice as a young female doctor competing in a man’s world. Don’t start a fight unless it’s one you at least stand a chance of winning, but once it’s started, make sure you take it all the way.’
No matter the answer, it wouldn’t change anything. It can’t bring back the millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, trade unionists, resisters… Nothing can do that.’
The Irish had been so busy fighting the English for eight centuries, they’d had no energy for other wars.
It’s the same for everyone, German, Jew, Irish, English. But mankind seems hell-bent on destruction of others and can’t see the shared humanity. It baffles me.’
It was true what the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw had said – they were two countries divided by a common language.
It was the winter of 1939. November. We had not been allowed in German schools since ’33, so I was sent to a boys’ Jewish school. Me, Heinrich Belau, Chaim Hoffman, Abraham Goldman and Noah Horowitz were told by our teacher, Herr Levi, to leave, and that we would not be coming back to school. He
Britain officially closed its borders to refugees in 1939, no other country would take us, and we had no papers to get anywhere abroad. But we had to go somewhere.’
It was before they introduced the decree that all Jews had to wear the star, and my father was tall and fair-haired, like me, so we didn’t attract too much attention.
‘Yes, though we were put in an internment camp first, on the Isle of Man.’
But even if that doesn’t happen, I am content with the family I have. I will never forget, I will never forgive, but with you I am happy, because you are my light.’
Lena’s mother couldn’t help her illness, but it was so tiring.
In fact, the person most frequently hurt by her disordered mood was herself.
Such a beautiful spot. Such a dark history.
Actually, lies are what divide us, never truth.
May the roof above us never fall in and those beneath it never fall out.’
