It was Constable Bedford who had come running. Within moments he had got down to the beach and joined Austin who was by now trying to launch one of the rescue boats, only for it to fill with water. The men moved onto the second boat. The sea was pushing at them, impeding them, trying to prevent them from their rescue mission. Beyond the wall, they could still see Miss Palmer. She was floating on her back by now. She was no longer swimming. On the third attempt, they successfully launched the second boat.
Coroner George Brown, himself perspiring in the dim odorous room, listened as Austin’s story unfolded, with a mixture of appreciation and impatience. His own task after all was simply to ascertain the cause and the time of death. But a drowning at a popular swimming resort required a story, and, for this woman in particular, Ilfracombe needed to be cleared of any guilt.
Bedford and Austin had rowed to where Miss Palmer was floating, face up. They hauled her in.
‘Was she alive when you got to her?’ George Brown asked Austin.
‘I think there was breath in her, sir. She was gasping when we got her in.’ But then she had slipped away from them.
When Dr Jones took the coroner’s stand, he said that he was on the spot almost immediately and had tried artificial respiration for over an hour, without success. In his opinion, Dr Jones said, Miss Palmer had died from drowning. Her chest was full of water; he thought she must have swallowed a terrible lot while floating. Dr Jones made it very clear that the Tunnels Baths had provided him with everything that was necessary in his attempt to save her.
The coroner made his notes. There was no doubt, he told the jury, about the manner of death. Miss Palmer had died by accidental drowning. The only question of doubt, Brown said, in deliberately calm tones, is in regard to the deceased’s real identity. Although known locally as Cerisa Palmer, he had documents to hand, which proved that Miss Palmer was in fact Catherine Anna Parnell, of Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland.
Thomas Austin was confused. Miss Palmer was Miss Parnell, and she was Irish? But her manner, her accent were so refined. He saw a frown also cross the face of the lawyer, Mr Finch.
Coroner Brown was watching for their responses. He knew the lawyer at least would have memory of the infamous Parnell name. A family of pernicious traitors – to the Empire and their own class. Landowners who disregarded and disrupted the rights of property.
Bob Jewell, the jury foreman, looked interested but not exactly enlightened, as if vague memories were stirring for him. It was over twenty years ago after all. The reporter from the Ilfracombe Gazette was very young; he appeared oblivious. Or perhaps he was just pretending ignorance, playing his cards with a poker face. And Mrs Rowe’s face was already so red and swollen from weeping it was hard to tell if she was hearing anything. Brown now called her up to the stand.
Mrs Rowe said that Miss Palmer had come to stay at 6 Avenue Rd in June 1910. Mrs Rowe had thought Miss Palmer was about 50 years of age but Miss Palmer told her she was in fact nearly 60. Early on in her stay, some letters had arrived addressed to a Miss Parnell. Mrs Rowe had spoken to Miss Palmer about it, just out of curiosity, and after that the letters continued in the same handwriting but never again addressed to anyone with the name of Parnell.
‘Do you know any reason why Miss Palmer should have two names?’ Brown asked the woman.
‘No, sir,’ Mary Rowe shook her head and wiped her eyes. ‘But I always thought sir,’ she said confidingly, as if she and Brown were alone in the courtroom, ‘that Miss Palmer was far superior to what she pretended to be.’
‘I suppose,’ the coroner asked, with some delicacy, ‘she always seemed to have money?’
But Mrs Rowe was affronted. ‘Miss Palmer always had money and paid everything and on time, exactly as a lady would.’
It was clear Mrs Rowe would protect Miss Cerisa Palmer/Anna Parnell in his court. And Brown was only the coroner, not a magistrate. He could not compel. And after all there was no crime committed here, in the drowning of this unfortunate lady, other than those she had committed so long ago, when Michael Davitt’s Land League had roared through Ireland, and even further abroad, threatening the peace and security of the Empire.
Even more notorious than Davitt’s League, had been Fanny and Anna Parnell’s Ladies Land League, inciting and inviting women to leave their homes, speaking at political meetings, defying the police, the government, breaching the modesty of good women everywhere. They had flourished in America, in Ireland, in the Antipodes, and in England itself. They had almost brought Gladstone to his knees. Yet who was remembering any of it now?
Well he did not need to raise these matters any further. No doubt the press would eventually work out who they were burying, but hopefully not until after the funeral.
One hundred and sixty thousand people, they said, had followed Anna Parnell’s brother, Charles Stewart Parnell, to his final resting place in Dublin’s Glasnevin cemetery. The uncrowned king of Ireland who, in his fall from grace, had split his people and taken their dreams with him. Yet in his death they had forgiven him and buried him as the Egyptians did their Pharaohs.
Now, twenty years later, here in Brown’s quiet English seaside town, Parnell’s younger sister, Ireland’s Joan of Arc, had come nameless and alone, to be taken by the unforgiving sea. Here in Ilfracombe, Anna Parnell, accompanied by only a handful of mourners, would at last join her brother and her sister in the grave, where all of Ireland’s hopes now lay.
Part One
a right glorious name
A is the army that covers the ground B is the buckshot we’re getting all round C is the crowbar of cruellest fame D is our Davitt, a right glorious name E is the English, who’ve robbed us of bread F is the famine they’ve left us instead...
Children’s mnemonic for learning the alphabet, Kanturk branch of the Children’s Land League,
Co Cork, 1881.
Chapter 1 - The most beautiful man in the world
‘Lolly rang yesterday.’ Hilary was careful to keep her voice neutral. ‘About his birthday party.’
Loyola Ryan was turning fifty. According to his (much) younger brother Vianney, you would think no one had ever turned fifty before. ‘You wait till it happens to you,’ Lolly had half grinned, half grimaced.
‘They want to invite Xavier to the party.’ Hilary raised her voice a little, although she hadn’t intended to. Vianney hated raised voices.
Vianney, however, gave no indication of having heard anything. He was nodding intently as the iPod whispered the Irish language encouragingly into his ears. His left hand clutched a bottle of Coopers. His glasses rested precariously on the top of his dark hair, falling across half his face, further obscuring her vision of him.
That hair, Vianney’s famous hair, now shimmered occasionally with a silver strand. The black, however, remained as darkly lustrous as when they had first met. And although he had trimmed it back over the years, he had never utterly surrendered its length.
His sister, Siena Ryan, said Vianney’s hair was a bulwark against the cult of Australian masculinity. For which resistance she – and Hilary – loved him fiercely. But they could not say so. Vianney defended his resistance through silence. He would not discuss his hair, but kept it curling over his collars.
‘Mo chara thú go daingean!’ he recited, at last looking up at her. ‘My Beloved, I hold you deep within me.’ And smiled, his words offered up simultaneously as sincere and parody, and then returned to the task of listening to the Irish mysteries, long legs stretched