walls. He had called out against the harsh sounds of the waves, the gulls crying in the air above. ‘Miss Palmer, time to be getting in now.’
She had waved back at him. He would swear to that. He assumed that she had heard. And even at that stage he was not very concerned. She’d been coming down to the Baths in the middle of the day, regular as clockwork for well over a year. Sometimes she had brought her paints and easel, most days she swam. She had not much conversation with him. She was, after all, a lady. But there was always an acknowledgement of him, of his presence. He had grown fond of grave little Miss Palmer.
She had swum determinedly through the winter months. Despite her small form, and her strange way of swimming almost upright, she could easily swim the length of the Ilfracombe baths. So he had not really been concerned about her safety, until he had turned, just in time, and seen her go.
Austin had run and grabbed the long pole, and then raced back along the seawall to her aid, calling and shouting for others to come to his. He got within ten yards of her before the sea beat him back. And then Miss Palmer was being taken too far away for the pole to ever reach her. He said she was still alive then. She appeared to be swimming still.
A woman in the courtroom sniffed and dabbed a tear from her eye. It was Miss Palmer’s landlady, Mrs Rowe. Austin appreciated her gesture, the recognition of the power of his storytelling. He was not a man used to public speaking, yet he felt strangely uplifted on the wave of their listening.
Thomas Austin had his own private, dark view of the sea. Oh yes, it put on a nice face in summer for the visitors, those thousands who poured out of their grimy cities to come and gawk and walk about the villages, and to crunch their boots on the stony beaches of Devon. But what the sea really was, in its deepest nature, was a sullen, grim beast. Hungry, too. And look what it took yesterday to feed its ever-gaping maul.
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
