Prudence Entwhistle sat in the sun-room at her home in Kingstown, gazing at the sunlight on the glittering waters of Dublin Bay - or rather, she would have done if somebody hadn't built a block of flats in the way when she, Primrose and their brother Cuthbert had been off shrimping in Bognor Regis. Now a tower of windows gazed down upon her little Regency home.
No matter. She had seen the waters of Dublin Bay on ten thousand evenings, and in more tranquil and leisured times than these! She cast her mind back to when they would all cram excitedly into Bertie Protheroe's Daimler and Algie Blenkinsop's Alvis and would absolutely zoom off to the Featherstonehaughs in Greystones or Jed and Clemmie Hackett's place in Queen's County.
Last glimpse
Poor Jed. Bought it on the retreat from Mons. His brother Nigel was gassed at Ypres. Algie copped it on the Somme. Even Clemmie went west - sunk in the Leinster just out there. . .Prudence's eyes opened to search the glittering seas for a last glimpse of the Leinster vanishing beneath the waves, its propellers churning futilely in the air. But of course neither she nor the sea were there, only the tower-block of flats, with those strange low cars without roofs parked outside in the car-park. They were named after part of a house. Veranda, was it?
"Sherry, Pru?" quavered an elderly voice beside her.
"Bless my soul, how you startled me!" cried Prudence to her sister Primrose. "I do wish you wouldn't do that. I was looking at that beastly building there, and those horrid, horrid cars, what do you call them - window-sills is it? - and thinking of those happy days when we could see the sea. Yes, I'd love a sherry. Where's Cuthbert?"
"In the WC," said Primrose, mouthing so that no-one could hear. "Trouble again with the waterworks."
"There's no need to mime, dear, there's only the three of us, and my waterworks are no longer the force they once were, alas." Waterworks. Her mind suddenly raced back to a day long ago, when she and Algie Blenkinsop had slipped into the bushes during a soiree in in the viceregal lodge and he had kissed her and had run his hand up her leg and she hadn't stopped him and then he had. . .
"Are you having a sherry dear?" asked Primrose. "We have some of the Dry Fly here, I think, or perhaps a touch of that rather nice Findlater's own sherry, perfectly good to my mind."
"I think I'll have the Findlater's, if you please," as the memory came back to her of one of the Findlater boys taking her by the hand behind the rocks near Seapoint. He had raised his finger to his lips. Shhh, he mimed. He didn't need to. She knew what she wanted. Such a warm day too. How could she have been so confident that they would not be disturbed? And they weren't, either. The Findlaters. One lost in Gallipoli, the other on the Somme. Handsome boys, rogues the pair of them. She smiled as the memory of two young men lodged in her memory like a hot-water bottle in a cool bed.
Pink gin
There was the sound of distant flushing, followed by an agitated shuffle as Cuthbert approached. "Have we any angostura, Prim, dear ?" asked Prudence. "Cuthbert's allowed back on the sauce tonight, and he has been such a good boy. He really does deserve his pink gin this evening." What was the name of the car? Balcony?
The door burst open, in as much as any door being propelled by a centenarian is ever capable of such explosive movement. Cuthbert was clutching the evening newspaper, the one that they were obliged to take now that the Evening Mail had mysteriously vanished, and brandishing it joyfully.
"The trams," he cried. "They're back! Glory be!"
"The trams, dear? I don't think so. That Mr Andrews got rid of them ages ago." Hearths?
"No, it says so here in the newspaper. They going to reintroduce the trams! I always knew it! I knew once the plain ordinary decent Irish people got their senses back, they'd see the error of their ways. Served with 'em in the trenches. Salt of the earth. Just need a touch of firm leadership and they'll follow you to the ends of the earth, rifles in their hands."
"Pink gin, Cuthbert?" said Primrose, adding: "Luas, isn't it?"
"No, not the Lewis, that was the machine-gun. I meant Lee-Enfield. Pink gin would be topping. Don't you see? This is just the beginning. Trams one day, vice-regal lodge the next, the King on the stamp next, back into the Empire the following day, you mark my words. Chin chin," he said, raising his drink.
Grand Fleet
"I rather think those days are past," said Primrose sadly.
"Never," declared Cuthbert. "We'll see the Grand Fleet sail into that harbour one day now, and not a day too soon."
Prudence stayed silent. They could bring back the trams, and they could rename this place Kingstown, but it would make no difference. Not merely was their Ireland dead and buried long ago, but so too now was the one which had replaced it. An entirely novel Ireland was even now uncontrollably taking shape on this island, one she knew nothing whatever about, except that it zoomed around in strange cars.
"Porches," she said suddenly. "They drive porches."