the Italianate sweep of which told him more than all the brown fields and woodlands that he was home. He holds his daughter closer as the blanket of sea disappears among hedges. Her limbs have filled out and her eyes stare up at him with a knowing that is independent of him but that must have come from him. He comes to realise as the car speeds towards Bray how much
she has grown, between himself and the woman he rarely sees now, miraculously filling the absence between them, garnering her own life from the chaos between theirs. And the suspicion rears in his mind again with an elusive truth, with perhaps the last truth, the suspicion in Hyde Park, in the London railway hotels, in the figure of Casement being escorted from the club between a phalanx of policemen that the events which would take hold of him, whose pattern he thought he had divined at the time, were weaving quite a different pattern, that the great hatred and passion, the stuff of politics and the movements of men, were leading him merely to this child on his jaded knee, and that without this child on his knee those movements would have been nothing and would not, he almost suspects, have taken place.
This is Bray, he tells her, you have been here before, and she accepts this information and stares, as the driver turns left off Main Street at the promenade. There is a tiled walk and railings to one side and below the railings, a beach. There is a line of hotels to the right with a striped canvas canopy over each porch. He motions the car to a halt and tells the driver, whom he calls Jack, to wait. He takes his daughterâs hand and walks along the prom and the clasp of their hands is tight and warm as if they both feel, in their different ways, at home. He leads her to an ice cream stand, outside which there is a board, arrayed with postcards for sale, each postcard bearing a picture of the sea front. She shakes her head when offered an ice cream, and so they walk on, her hand bouncing off the railings as if trying to grasp the beach. He misses the canvas huts lining the seaâs edge but realises they are out of fashion now, their usefulness outlived, since the stray bathers are undressing in full view of the promenade. He considers the same question as he walks, remembering the sweetness
of his bathing hut, of the woman to whom he has long stopped sending postal orders. He wonders which is the greater event, his encounter with her or the war of that year, this walk along the promenade or the Treaty bother. They have reached a line of sad Edwardian facades which sweep from the town to make a right angle with the prom and on the patch of green in front there is an old man painting. Rene stands behind the man and stares at his dabbing brush. Michael stands behind Rene. He can tell even though the picture is half-finished, even though he rarely looks at paintings, that this one wonât be good. But the picture still moves him. It is of a shoreline and sea, but not the sea towards which the man is looking; his sea is a brilliant blue while the real one is dull metal, grey, and it is lit by a dazzling, garish light that could belong to Italy or Greece, but not to Bray. The naive sheen of those colours seems to come from a sea the old man carries with him. He has a shock of white hair, a high stiff collar and a grey-black suit baggy round the knees, that balance between fine cloth and shabbiness which could be termed Bohemian. His concentration on the canvas has a slight pose about it, as if he is conscious of the figure he cuts and of them watching. And sure enough, he turns to them suddenly without halting the dabbing brush and tells them in a gruff, Protestant voice that they are blocking the light. Look by all means, the painter says, but leave me my light.
The beach has finished now and the promenade has tapered into a small stony walk between the hulk of Bray Head and a rocky sea-line. They veer from the walk and go up through a field to the terminal
she has grown, between himself and the woman he rarely sees now, miraculously filling the absence between them, garnering her own life from the chaos between theirs. And the suspicion rears in his mind again with an elusive truth, with perhaps the last truth, the suspicion in Hyde Park, in the London railway hotels, in the figure of Casement being escorted from the club between a phalanx of policemen that the events which would take hold of him, whose pattern he thought he had divined at the time, were weaving quite a different pattern, that the great hatred and passion, the stuff of politics and the movements of men, were leading him merely to this child on his jaded knee, and that without this child on his knee those movements would have been nothing and would not, he almost suspects, have taken place.
This is Bray, he tells her, you have been here before, and she accepts this information and stares, as the driver turns left off Main Street at the promenade. There is a tiled walk and railings to one side and below the railings, a beach. There is a line of hotels to the right with a striped canvas canopy over each porch. He motions the car to a halt and tells the driver, whom he calls Jack, to wait. He takes his daughterâs hand and walks along the prom and the clasp of their hands is tight and warm as if they both feel, in their different ways, at home. He leads her to an ice cream stand, outside which there is a board, arrayed with postcards for sale, each postcard bearing a picture of the sea front. She shakes her head when offered an ice cream, and so they walk on, her hand bouncing off the railings as if trying to grasp the beach. He misses the canvas huts lining the seaâs edge but realises they are out of fashion now, their usefulness outlived, since the stray bathers are undressing in full view of the promenade. He considers the same question as he walks, remembering the sweetness
of his bathing hut, of the woman to whom he has long stopped sending postal orders. He wonders which is the greater event, his encounter with her or the war of that year, this walk along the promenade or the Treaty bother. They have reached a line of sad Edwardian facades which sweep from the town to make a right angle with the prom and on the patch of green in front there is an old man painting. Rene stands behind the man and stares at his dabbing brush. Michael stands behind Rene. He can tell even though the picture is half-finished, even though he rarely looks at paintings, that this one wonât be good. But the picture still moves him. It is of a shoreline and sea, but not the sea towards which the man is looking; his sea is a brilliant blue while the real one is dull metal, grey, and it is lit by a dazzling, garish light that could belong to Italy or Greece, but not to Bray. The naive sheen of those colours seems to come from a sea the old man carries with him. He has a shock of white hair, a high stiff collar and a grey-black suit baggy round the knees, that balance between fine cloth and shabbiness which could be termed Bohemian. His concentration on the canvas has a slight pose about it, as if he is conscious of the figure he cuts and of them watching. And sure enough, he turns to them suddenly without halting the dabbing brush and tells them in a gruff, Protestant voice that they are blocking the light. Look by all means, the painter says, but leave me my light.
The beach has finished now and the promenade has tapered into a small stony walk between the hulk of Bray Head and a rocky sea-line. They veer from the walk and go up through a field to the terminal
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