The Family on Paradise Pier

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Lenin had died in January but her god was not dead. She could not have uttered such blasphemy in Moscow, but she knew it was true because here at last was Bruckless House and her husband still had both arms intact – even if his left hand would never regain full power. God had steered them safely back home. It was God’s voice she had heard in the hospital when her husband announced quietly over her tears that his wound was a job for his old naval surgeon friend, Geoffrey. When she reminded him that Geoffrey would hardly leave his Harley Street practice for Moscow, Mr Ffrench had patted her arm with his one good hand and said that if Harley Street refused to come to them, they would simply have to go to Harley Street.

The driver stopped the cart at the front door of Bruckless House. Two figures stood there whom Mrs Ffrench had despaired of ever seeing again. Art Goold Verschoyle stepped forward with Eva. Mr Ffrench shouted a greeting and suddenly there was laughter and welcoming smiles and the driver was helping her down onto the overgrown lawn and she did not mind the rain or cold but longed to kneel and kiss the damp earth. She hugged Eva. How could she ever have found Donegal dull? How could she have been so eager to pack up and start again in Russia with nothing but the unuttered hope that a fresh start might make her body finally yield to her husband’s seed?

The cases unloaded by the driver contained nothing from Moscow but new clothes purchased by her in London while the Harley Street doctor treated her husband. Not that Geoffrey had done more than merely examine the job done by a doctor in a private Helsinki hospital after they managed to get themselves onto a train to Petrograd and cross into Finland. Mr Ffrench had kept assuring her that, having freely entered Russia, they were equally free to leave for a short time. She had tried to believe him and not seem scared by the constant inspection of their papers and how soldiers patrolling the railway system shouted at them. But her husband’s arm had oozed pus and he was in such distress that the patrols had let them proceed – less for humanitarian reasons, she suspected, than because they didn’t want to be responsible for an invalid.

In Helsinki they wired their bank in London and contacted the British attaché. Soon Mr Ffrench was in hospital and a new fear replaced Mrs Ffrench’s previous concerns. She had started to dread her husband’s recovery. Helsinki felt strange but it had no slogans on walls or agents of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage seeking out class enemies. On her first night alone in her hotel bedroom she realised that she had been constantly terrified during the previous six months. Now that she had escaped from Russia she did not know if she would have the courage to ever go back.

She had dreaded Mr Ffrench announcing his intention to return to Moscow and reclaim their corner of that pigsty room. However he had kept postponing this decision because it was vital to be able to fully contribute to the new order and he feared being a dead weight who would drag down production targets for their comrades in the furniture factory. Besides he had affairs in Britain to put in order and people should be told at first hand about how exhilarating life was in the new Bolshevik state. Mrs Ffrench had agreed with everything her husband said, unable to decode what was going on in his head. All she could do was trust that, unbeknownst to him, her spiritual master, Abdul-Baha, was guiding her husband’s hand. She had decided it prudent not to force him into confronting any decision. Such careful passivity on her part got them to London and now to Donegal where the mayhem of the Irish Civil War seemed halted and tonight at least everything seemed like it had always been.

Eva Goold Verschoyle shyly released her hand from Mrs Ffrench’s grip as Art eagerly questioned her husband in the doorway.

‘How was Moscow? You have to tell me everything!’

Mr Ffrench gripped the boy’s shoulder joyously. ‘My dear boy, it is everything we dreamt of, the most just society on this earth. Mankind hasn’t known a fresh start since the Garden of Eden. But in Russia the old rules are gone and the people, not their masters, are shaping the new order. Come inside and I’ll tell you everything. Is there nobody about? I wired for your father to reinstate some servants.’

‘You did?’ Art sounded surprised. ‘I fought with Father, saying that he must have misunderstood the telegram. I mean, what would you want servants for?’

Mr Ffrench laughed. ‘What would I want them for? Dear boy, do you know the size of Bruckless House? It would be an injustice to only have two people living here. The important thing is to fill the house with life. Obviously servants is a reactionary term, but you can imagine what Papist clergy would say if I advertised for worker comrades to share my home.’

‘You mean you’re looking for local people to live here with you.’

‘Obviously. They will have the full run of their quarters and we shall have the run of ours.’

Mrs Ffrench watched the boy consider this. In truth he was a boy no longer. Eva’s tiny figure still lent her a girlish look, but Art’s shoulders had broadened out, making him look tough and strikingly good-looking. He reminded her of her brothers lost in the war. Once on a Moscow street she was convinced that she had seen her two brothers side by side ahead of her in the jostling crowd. For a moment she had let herself believe that they had not gone missing in action but simply wandered off from the terrible trenches to find their way to this new land. The hope was ludicrous, but she had been unable to stop herself pushing through the crowd, elbowing strangers and being cursed at until she touched one of their shoulders. Both men turned, neither remotely resembling her brothers now she could see their faces and she had felt their eyes undress her, taking in her manic look and the fact that she was foreign. They had looked hungry, as everyone did in Moscow, but strong and when they addressed her she knew immediately that their remarks were lewd, suggesting that they would be willing to share her body. She had run away and never told her husband what happened.

Mrs Ffrench entered the hallway of Bruckless House and almost cried to see a wood fire burning in the grate. Art and Eva had been busy, with another fire burning in the study. Returning home as a girl from her first term in boarding school, she could remember how small the rooms in her childhood home seemed, but after Moscow the opposite was true of here. Previously she had paid little attention to the size of this study, but now she realised that it was bigger than the awful room where she had been forced to sleep with the squabbling families. Sitting down on the sofa she surveyed its fantastic dimensions. She almost wished for the Goold Verschoyle children and even her husband to be gone so that she could explore each room and luxuriate in the extraordinary space. This physical greed shocked her. She was never greedy before, dutifully sublimating her needs and dreams to those of her husband. But just now she experienced an almost sexual thrill at the thought of cradling the brass doorknob of each bedroom, at pressing her palms against the huge uncracked windowpanes and placing her cheek to the cold mahogany of her dressing table.

Eva’s questions about Moscow were discreet enquiries compared to Art’s frenzied interrogation of her husband. The boy had studied Moscow street maps and knew more about the city’s layout than Mrs Ffrench had learnt in seven months of living there. He wanted to know every detail of the crowds at Lenin’s funeral and quizzed her husband about Comrades Zinoviev and Stalin and Trotsky and Kamenev as if Mr Ffrench had spent his days at internal party congresses instead of manufacturing poor-quality tables and chairs.

‘The failure of the communist revolt in Germany was a blow to Trotsky’s prestige,’ Mr Ffrench was saying. ‘It shows that the spread of the revolution will be slower than expected because Germany is ripe for change and yet the reactionary forces dug in. If our German comrades had won the day all of Europe would rise with us but there is talk of Russia needing to stand alone for a while longer.’

‘But surely Moscow won’t abandon the rest of us?’ Art argued. ‘What is the point in mankind taking one step forward and then simply stopping?’

‘Who mentioned stopping?’ Mr Ffrench replied. ‘Moscow cannot be a wet nurse to everyone. It is up to us who live here to fan the flames of revolution.’

Art went quiet and even Eva ceased to prattle on about the scraps of local gossip that Mrs Ffrench had been enjoying. There was a subtext in her husband’s remark, a Rubicon quietly crossed, a declaration she had not dared to seek from him. Hope surged inside her in direct opposition to Art’s baffled disbelief.

‘What do you mean by us?’ he enquired. ‘Surely once you recuperate you will return to Russia. I understand your desire to come back here and recover your strength, but…’

‘Desire did not enter into it,’ Mr Ffrench interjected. ‘It was necessity. Because I could seek medical treatment elsewhere it would therefore have been a selfish, counter-revolutionary act to deny a comrade treatment by clogging up a Moscow hospital. Medical supplies are crucial, as are able-bodied workers. My arm will never fully recover. The revolution is no rest home for cripples. Do you think I wish to be a parasite in Moscow, living off the sweat of my fellow workers? Mrs Ffrench and I had no desire to ever return to Donegal. Crossing into Finland was the hardest chore we ever did. I curse my disability for dragging Janet away from an environment where I saw her blossom with such happiness and purpose. But personal feelings cannot be allowed to rule. What is vital is that we each contribute to the maximum of our potential. I was shocked in London to read appalling propaganda in the capitalist newspapers. Janet and I have decided that for now our place in the revolution is here where we can counter lies and bear testament to the amazing society that we were privileged to witness and to which one day we will hopefully return. Here we can serve a purpose which you can help with too. The Irish peasants imagine that they have undergone a revolution, but they’ve just swapped one master on horseback for another. We can show them the truth – and do you know the great thing? They will listen to us because even in my short time back I see that the old respect remains for people who speak with authority. They don’t look up to this new Johnny-Come-Lately Free State government trying to lord it over them. Oh, no doubt there will be fireworks with their priests waving sticks and shouting threats from the far side of the bridge leading onto my property but they can’t stop us telling the truth to those who will listen.’

Mrs Ffrench saw Art trying to shape a question, but no words came because the boy needed to believe in her husband. What did she believe? She watched her husband grow so animated that soon Art was caught up in his enthusiasm and asking questions again about the factory and the workers’ debates. Both she and Eva stopped talking so that they could listen too, because his version of Moscow was so wonderful that it felt like a poultice on her mental scars. It was simpler not to argue or even contradict him in her mind because maybe he was telling the truth and she had been too preoccupied with her own petty concerns to appreciate the wonder of revolution.

The children had brought food and it felt like a picnic to share it out by the fire in the study. The mantelpiece clock had long stopped and she had no idea what time it was when the young Goold Verschoyles left. But it was too late to do anything except retire to the main bedroom where the sheets felt damp. Her husband was asleep within minutes and she knew that he would not wake. She slipped from bed and walked from room to room, trying to reclaim all this space and make it feel that it belonged to her. But she felt uneasy, as if hordes of strangers might arrive at any moment to stake a claim to the kitchen or the locked room overlooking Donegal Bay that had been once intended as a nursery. She longed to immerse herself in a bath but knew that she could never scrub herself clean. Closing her eyes she could still smell in her pores the stink of foul breath and unwashed clothes in that Moscow room. So why was it that she could not hear the voices of the children who had clambered onto her knee to stare at her like a curio? She could not feel their fingers that had gripped hers, hoping that she might produce a morsel to feed them. Why was it that the single experience she treasured seemed to be erased from her mind, so that all she could hear was silence as she wandered from room to room, barefoot in her thin nightgown?

EIGHT The Studio (#ulink_d01e7114-0952-5f83-983a-5077c7f692f8)

Donegal, August 1924

The more that Eva drew, alone in her studio, the less she could hear of the raised voices from the house. Her fingers shook, giving the elfin figures a slightly blurred outline. She had intended painting in oils today but once the shouting started she reverted to using this sketchpad on her knee, hunching over it to make herself as small as possible. She longed to escape and sketch wild flowers in the hedgerows, but was reluctant to leave her studio and cross the courtyard where the angry clash of voices would be impossible to ignore. Eva hated these arguments and the terse silence that followed them. During the fragile suspension of hostilities her brothers and Cousin George would individually visit the studio, ostensibly to comfort her, but each would start to justify their case, anxious to convert her into an ally.

Eva had no wish to take sides in the quarrels that had raged all summer. The Free State’s civil war was over, with de Valera’s Diehard Irregulars defeated. But just as an uneasy normality settled over the new nation they found themselves in, a civil war had commenced in the heart of her family. Friends and relations who visited earlier in the summer had helped to paper over the fault lines by dragging them back into a childhood world of tennis and picnics on the strand. These visitors inscribed amusing notes of thanks in the visitors’ book and carefully avoided politics like an unmentionable family illness. So perhaps Father was foolish to invite Cousin George to stay for Eva’s birthday party because Cousin George knew Art and Thomas too well to allow for any pretence. As a true Verschoyle he was as headstrong as they were. To him the family’s reputation was being indelibly eroded by Art’s wilful madness in embracing communism, which he considered to be a cancer gradually infecting them all. Such lunacy might be all right for pagans like the Ffrenches, but his uncle was always too soft in allowing inflammatory discussions at the table.

If Eva was forced to listen to George she knew that she would be swayed by the power of his argument but Art’s impassioned defence would equally convince her in turn. Her beliefs were more obscure and less dogmatic than either point of view. Although influenced by Mother, Eva found it hard to believe in the occult world as passionately as she did. Seances – with desperate women holding photographs of slain sons – seemed a form of voyeurism, making her as uncomfortable as these political arguments. This was why she locked herself away in her studio when the quarrelling started – not to avoid venturing an opinion, but to avoid favouring one family member over another. Ironically her silence seemed to lend weight to her opinions, with the others frequently appealing to her as if she were a judge who, when she finally spoke, could attest to the rights and wrongs of their dispute.

The voices grew louder as Eva crouched over her sketchpad, focusing all her attention on the tiny figures she was conjuring. They had wings and asexual bodies, flitting like bees around blooming foxgloves growing in a ditch. Her fingers were steadier now and she sketched the ditch with intense concentration. After some time Eva ceased to hear the arguing voices and initially thought that this was because she had managed to block them out. Then she realised that hostilities had paused. Soon the first petitioner would arrive to solicit support – George or Thomas, who generally sided with Art while maintaining his own slant on things, or Father, weary of trying to see both sides. By now Mother would have retreated to her bedsitting room to read the few books from the Rosicrucian Order in London which made it past the censorial new Irish post office, or some volume sent to her by Madame Despard – the elderly English suffragette who had settled among the Dublin poor and shared Mother’s interest in theosophy. Eva closed her eyes, allowing the sketch to become saturated with colour. She could visualise the ditch she had drawn from memory, with a tumbled-down, dry-stone wall. But, try as she might, she could not believe in the fairy figures. That childhood belief had died in London along with any belief in her ability as an artist. Art school had stripped her of illusions.

It did not seem like eighteen months ago since she had spent an autumn and winter sleeping in the tiny cubicle of a London hostel for shopgirls, with a sprig of Donegal heather beneath her pillow. Mother had considered London as the ideal tonic to lure Eva down from the ivory tower of this studio where she had locked herself up to secretly mourn the loss of her young New Zealand officer. It was only after Jack left that Eva fully understood her feelings. By then it was too late because no girl could write and ask for such a proposal again: Eva had constantly painted and destroyed portraits of him, grieving alone in this studio. Her obvious distress more than her talent made Mother enrol her in the Slade Art School. Eva had felt like a princess in a fairy tale, forced to plait her hair into a rope and descend into those bustling crowds to try and start a new life.

Her brief time in London was good in every respect except for painting. What slender spark of talent she possessed was quickly extinguished under the glare of her tutors at the Slade. The more they tried to teach her the less she found that she could paint. She discovered that she had more in common with the shopgirls in the hostel than her chic fellow students. Their cosmopolitan sense of surface gloss and parroting of the tutors’ techniques to create deliberately grotesque compositions made her retreat into herself. By comparison her paintings seemed naive, the childish work of an Irish country simpleton.

But back then Eva was certain that there had to be a purpose behind her stay in London, beyond avoiding the increasing vicious conflict in Ireland. When Art had visited her in the hostel between university lectures, Eva used to show him her poems urging the rebels to fight, fight, fight for what is right, right, right! But, in truth, at the age of nineteen in London her patriotic bursts were outweighed by her preoccupation with a different search for independence, the struggle to find a religion to which she might truly belong.

Converting to Catholicism like the Countess did after the Easter Rising was never an option. Instead the Christian Scientists had been Eva’s first port of call. While shopgirls gossiped about boys outside her cubicle she had studied the Christian Scientist bible, absorbing their mantra that no life, truth or intelligence existed in matter alone. Next she spent long afternoons in a High Church where women wore blue robes and their elaborate rituals, though beautiful to watch, made her wary. She needed something simpler and more direct. She tried a Jewish synagogue and, after that, sampled every religion in London for pleasure and interest. Yet no matter how comfortable she felt, an intuitive inner voice warned: ‘Move on, don’t mistake this stepping stone for a summit.’ In the end she felt herself to simply be a child of the universe, blown about like a sycamore sepal at the creator’s will. That wind had carried her back to Donegal as the civil war spluttered to a smouldering halt soon after Michael Collins’s death.

Eva glanced up from her sketchpad now, having become so absorbed in drawing that she had been unaware of a presence in her doorway. It was Brendan but Eva felt she had stepped back in time because he wore the comical hat that he used to love. At fourteen-and-a-half, it made his face seem younger. His serious expression recalled the days when he would visit her, upset because his brothers kept excluding him from their schemes.

Eva smiled. ‘Where did you find that hat?’

‘In the attic. Mother must have put it away.’

‘She was always threatening to burn it,’ Eva said. ‘But I like it on you.’

‘I’ll take it with me so.’

‘It would give the boys in school a laugh, but I doubt if you’ll be allowed to wear it.’

‘From now on I wear what I like.’ There was no rebellion in Brendan’s voice, just the quiet resoluteness that was in his character. He was not prone to Art’s passionate oratory or a stickler for logic like Thomas. Indeed, he rarely ventured opinions aloud but once he made up his own mind about something nobody could alter his beliefs.

‘What do you mean?’

Brendan’s tone was apologetic, anxious not to offend. ‘I’m rather tired of all these rows, aren’t you? The fact is I won’t be returning to school. I have decided to make my own way in life. I just announced the fact and, you know, for the first time I saw both Cousin George and Art lost for words. I can’t see why they are so surprised. Plenty of chaps my age have been earning their keep for years. Art and Thomas talk the good fight, but still cling to the privilege of a university education. Well, wild horses wouldn’t drag me back to Marlborough. Not one chap there knows a thing about life or could manage without ten servants. What’s the point in being educated for a world which, as Mr Ffrench rightly says, will soon be swept away?’

‘Does Mother know?’ Eva asked.

‘You understand, don’t you?’ Brendan’s voice faltered, anxious for approval.

‘Does Mother know?’

‘Well, I didn’t rightly know myself until it came to me as I listened to them argue. I want a proper job making something, not pen-pushing in some corner of the Empire. I want to become an engineer. Marlborough doesn’t teach you anything useful like that.’

‘Will you go to Dublin?’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Brendan smiled to show that he meant no offence. ‘In Dublin I’d still be the youngest Verschoyle brother. I want to be known only for myself. I hardly know a soul in London, so that’s where I’ll go. One cannot wait for life to come to you like a gentleman caller. You must go out and confront it.’

They both turned as Thomas entered the doorway.

‘This is entirely Art’s fault,’ he announced.

Brendan shook his head. ‘You’re obsessed by Art, Thomas. Maybe it comes from being next in line. Being the last born means that I can simply be my own man.’

‘You’re the one obsessed by him,’ Thomas retorted. ‘Idolising him since you were a baby and you’re hardly more than a baby now. A pet hamster has more chance of surviving in the wild than you have of finding a job in London at your age.’

‘I’m old enough.’

‘I’ll give you a fortnight before Father has to pull strings to get you re-admitted to your warm school dormitory. Don’t be stupid, Brendan. You don’t need to renounce wealth because you and I won’t inherit anything to give up anyway.’

Thomas went silent as footsteps ascended the rough steps. Father had to duck his head to enter.

‘Is this a meeting of the Verschoyle Party Congress?’ His mild humour disguised his obvious distress.

‘It will break Mother’s heart if Brendan doesn’t return to school,’ Thomas said bitterly. ‘Though, even then, she won’t bring herself to criticise her golden boy Art.’

‘I’ve never heard her criticise any of her children,’ Father replied. ‘No matter how hard you all hurt her. Cousin George is about to leave. He says he won’t stay to be insulted by the names Art has called him.’

‘Art means no harm,’ Eva pleaded.

‘That doesn’t mean he won’t cause it.’ Father looked around. ‘I heard what you said about inheritance, Thomas. I will try to leave you all something. But it cannot be this house which I only hold in trust for Art and which is legally entailed to his son after him.’

‘You know that weeds will grow through broken windows here before Art will accept it,’ Thomas replied sharply.

‘I know he is young. I know that you see life differently at twenty-two and thirty-two.’

‘Art will never change.’

‘Why should he?’ Brendan asked. ‘I don’t want inherited wealth either. I want to establish my own worth.’

‘You will return to Marlborough and stay there until your sixteenth birthday.’ Father’s voice was quiet but firm. ‘After that you’ll be a child no longer. Hopefully you will finish your education and make something of yourself. That will be your decision. All I request is that you obey me for the next eighteen months.’

‘Why should I?’ Brendan’s voice was not aggressive. It contained an innocent openness that Father also possessed.

‘Because you are a gentleman, it will please your mother and because I will never ask anything of you again. I shall never walk away from any of my children, no matter what you do. Should you choose to walk away from me I will not stop you. But take something with you while I’m alive and you still can. Take jewellery or the family silver if you wish before Art gives it away to a beggar.’

‘I won’t steal from my brother,’ Thomas replied.

‘Art doesn’t own this house yet. Steal from me.’

Thomas looked down awkwardly. ‘I’ll see George,’ he said ‘Maybe I can twist his arm and persuade him to stay for Eva’s party.’

He walked out. Brendan fingered the hat he had removed when Father entered. ‘I give you my word to return to Marlborough until my sixteenth birthday,’ he said. ‘I make no promises beyond that, but you know it is not in my character to break my word.’

‘Define character,’ Father asked.

Brendan pondered. ‘Character is what you are, what you do every day.’ He blushed slightly. ‘I’d better see Cousin George too in case he leaves.’

Father watched his youngest son descend the steps and shook his head in wonder. ‘Character is what you are, what you do every day. If only dictionaries were as clear and noble. He’s a noble boy, you are all noble, but I worry about whether I’ve prepared any of you for life out there.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Eva assured him. ‘I just hate seeing you look so frightfully upset.’

‘Do I? Maybe I don’t understand what’s happening any more. I’ve never harmed anybody in my life. I’ve given my services freely to defend neighbours in court and gave them land behind our house to hold a market every Tuesday. I address every man equally – Catholic, Protestant or dissenter – yet my eldest son thinks I should feel guilty for simply existing.’ He looked at Eva. ‘What terrible crime does Art feel I’ve committed? I’ve only ever wanted to mind your mother and for you all to be happy. We were happy once, weren’t we?’

‘We still are,’ Eva insisted. ‘Let’s go on a picnic tomorrow, all day. It would be lovely.’

‘It would. But then unfortunately we’d have to come home again.’

Down in the yard Maud’s voice called up to them both.

‘Dinner shall be in half an hour,’ she announced, ‘and we shall be sitting down together in peace.’

‘Has George left?’ Eva asked, going to the doorway.

‘I confiscated his bag in the hall and ordered him to give up his nonsense,’ Maud said. ‘I raided the wine cellar and shall have Art and George playing chess peaceably before the evening is out.’

‘You’re a marvel,’ Eva said. ‘Is there any chance of a picnic tomorrow?’

‘We’ll sail out to the island where I shall personally drown every annoying male in the family.’

Father laughed as Maud marched back to the kitchens. ‘Your sister is a marvel,’ he said quietly, ‘but you are one too.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You’re a marvellous shape still emerging with slow wingbeats into the light. Too far away for me to judge the outline of what you will become, but I know it will be truly wondrous.’ His hand strayed into his pocket where a small edition of Walt Whitman was kept. ‘We’ve half an hour before being summoned to the next congress on world affairs. What about a walk?’

Eva smiled and closed the studio door behind them. ‘Just you and me.’ She took his hand and squeezed it.

‘A quick bid for freedom.’

Eva released his hand as they entered the lane. Demonstrative shows of affection were not in their character. Passing the village pump, they took the lane to the Bunlacky shore, saying little because little needed to be said between such soul mates and friends.

NINE Not a Penny off the Pay (#ulink_d4652aa4-3701-5641-9b0d-9911dc5f8db7)

London, 1926

Brendan intended being utterly true to his word. Mother would be upset but Father would respect how he honoured his vow. In recent months he had been careful to make no reference to his decision when talking with the other chaps. Eighteen months ago he was vocal about his plans and was ragged because of them. Now he had not even mentioned that his sixteenth birthday occurred this week. Naturally, his two best schoolchums knew his intentions and envied him, but both had too much to lose to follow his example. Being eldest sons, they needed to think about more than just themselves.

Brendan knew that his family loved him, but if he had not been born, little would be different in their world. The last born was always counted as a blessing, but generally counted as little else.

Still Brendan would not wish to swap places with Art or Thomas. Older teachers at Marlborough still paused in the corridors to ask about Art and shake their heads, almost as if sympathising with a bereavement. They recalled Art with affection, even if he had constantly queried every issue with them but they also spoke as if he had perpetually borne a heavy weight on his back. Brendan was not as clever as Art but he sensed their relief at Brendan’s cheerful spirit. He had actually enjoyed his time at Marlborough, making friends and being generally respected as a good sort. Therefore this morning when he made an excuse before assembly and requested permission to see the nurse in sickbay, he felt no resentment towards any person in the school. They were simply misguided, unaware that they belonged to a world shortly about to be eclipsed.