Everybody in Killhope knew of the Bishops. Frank Bishop owned an impressive portfolio of rental properties in Dublin’s inner city and operated several thriving businesses. Sally Bishop ran an NGO helping refugees enter Ireland. Graham Bishop was a champion debater in Trinity College, and Gorgina Bishop was a freelance journalist for the Indo who helped her mam assist refugees. Now everyone in Killhope hated the Bishops.

They started turning up in twos and threes, then a crowd was there every day outside the family home in Dalkey, chanting relentlessly. On the Easter Sunday, as Frank went to greet his younger brother and family in their creeping SUV crunching along the gravel drive, the chants dominated Sunday morning again. 

Frank’s admiring brother, Brian, stuck his head out of the window. “Have they no heart turning up here every day?”

“They’re a bunch of scumbags,” said Frank, bursting past his two grown children with the poorest impersonation of his notorious mettle.

“They’re not,” said Georgina, taking the opportunity to shove patriarchy aside and stood in front of him on top of the twelve steps, waving to her little cousins piling out of the SUV. Side-eyed, she muttered through her teeth, “They’ve no other options left.”

Frank thinned his vacant-looking eyes. After a hesitant pause, he coughed, wrestling with his daughter’s dominion over his chest cavity. “Go home, you’re wasting all our time,” he bellowed towards the conveyor belt of tricolours blocking the gates. 

Brian shut his door. “On bloody Easter, Jesus.”

“Forget them,” said Frank, loud enough for the crowd of fifty or so to hear. “They’re only a bunch of far-right lunatics. Come on,” he said, parodying his effervescence once more. “Happy Easter. Deirdre has put on a great spread.” As Brian and his wife, Fay, reached the top of the steps, Frank took Brian’s shoulder and shook it until they were something of their old selves again. “She had the former head chef from the Gresham do most of it, but don’t let on.”

Brian, Fay and three ginger curly mops, all boys, followed Frank inside his splendorous eight bedroom home. 

Georgina marched down to the twenty-foot high electric gates and stood with her hands on her hips. “I understand why you’re here, but we’re having a family day. Can ye not just leave it today for God’s sake?”

The troop of protestors ignored her; chanting another of their bannered slogans.

“This is intimidation” she said, doing what the head of the family could not despite her empathy for them. “It won’t do ye all any good.”

A man with a neck as wide as his head and cultivating a long ginger beard, looked at her with frantic blue eyes as he breathed thick steam onto his fingerless gloves. Something about her weakened air of authority made him break ranks, and he stood facing her through the bars. “We know who’s been doing the evictions and we know why.”

“You’ve lost it. Liam isn’t it? It’s conspiracy theory. We’re not involved.”

The chants got louder: “Stop the monopolies, vultures are a disease.” 

What seemed like an air of simmering violence to Georgina sent her running back up the gravel. She stopped below the steps, feeling like a girl again as she turned back to the mob.

”Leave it, George’,” said her younger brother, Graham, sticking his head around the hall door. “Get in, it’s bloody freezing,” he said, and blew on his hands.

After he shut the door behind them, Georgina sat on a hot radiator. “They’re there for the day.”

“Probably,” he said with a sheepish look, hung his head, sighed, raised his chin and barreled his chest. “Forget them. Dinner’s ready.”

Both families had seated themselves around a big kitchen table as Deirdre served them breakfast. The room had a wonderful view of lavish gardens with well-maintained beds of chrysanthemums, begonias and tiger lily’s, each circling a stone fountain. The garden was kept private by a perfect line of thick fir trees, except at the rear, where they had epic views of a misty Bray Head this morning. Solemnly, they ate, commenting on the Michelen Star food, until Georgina burst into tears. 

“What’s the matter, love?” asked Deirdre, over a generous glass of Buck’s Fizz.

“It’s them out there, Mam. I can’t take it.”

Deirdre held a warning, looked at Frank, who put down his cutlery. In his crisp white shirt, topped-up San Tropez tan and refreshed air, he was less intimidating than was typical when he wasn’t working. 

Georgina’s voice, usually hoarse, cracked. “This isn’t right, Dad.”

“Georgina,” he warned.

“Quiet sis,” said Graham, darting looks and dropped his head; he knew what was coming. Georgina’s dissension had marred their private conversations since Frank had sacked half his workforce, without prior notice, and replaced them with lower paid foreign workers. Graham had told Georgina, ‘It’s just business. They don’t teach ethics in business school, you know that, George’.’ She had nodded in agreement, but there was that look in her eyes again: compassion!

Georgina gazed at her mother who glugged the orange juice and Champagne cocktail. “You convinced me to help set up our NGO. You said we’d be helping people, Mam. We’re exploit…” hoarsely, she trailed off.

Deirdre gave Brian and Fay apologetic glances as she lowered her glass, and she received hard swallowed nods before her in-laws looked away. “We’re not doing this at Easter, Georgina,” said Deirdre, palms flat on her pristine white tablecloth.

“Are we the bad guys?”

“Georgina, drop it,” said Frank. “Boys, take your breakfast into the living room. Graham, turn on the XBox for them, will ye?”

“Yeah Dad. Come on boys.”

Georgina stood in front of her little nephews, barring the door. “No, I want them to know. I don’t want them growing up under the same lie I did, thinking they’re good. That’s just the worst.”

Deirdre sneered, “What are we, traitors? You’ve let that rabble out there get to you.”

“They can’t get new jobs because Dad and his accomplices from the golf club can get away with paying college grads minimum wage.” 

Frank laughed, “Accomplices. Would ye cop on.” 

She threw her hands up. “You don’t care about those people out there. You ship in their replacements from Pakistan and Nigeria and put them up in accommodation that we own. On Friday we pay them whatever we like and on Monday we take back the money that they earned. Them out there, they’re our own people.” 

”They’re not my people,” said Brian. ”Filth.”

”Because you’re a snob since you made your money. We are vultures, like they say. When they can’t go on working to pay for all this…,” she flipped her  plate, sending her ketchup-smothered crab omelette across the tablecloth, ”we take their homes. We, the famous fucking Bishops of Dalkey, make business out of putting people on the street—to sleep, to scrounge around in bins. How can you all keep pretending this is alright?”

Brian cleared his throat. “It’s a very complicated matter, Georgina. It’s not as simple as—”

”Brian, it’s very simple. We’ve created competition for minimum wage jobs and awful accommodation so we can pay them pittance and charge a fortune in rent, and they bite our hands off.”

Brian smirked as the same pride lifted Frank’s eyebrow. 

Georgina picked up bits of crab from the stained tablecloth and ate them. ‘Refugees, Irish, it doesn’t matter, they’re fighting over scraps. They’ve no life. Nobody in this country has but us.” 

”Ah relax and enjoy your food,” said Frank, expecting her to get over it and return to normal.

”I don’t want us to ruin lives anymore, Dad. I want us to make amends, to be happy again.”

”Georgina, stop this carry-on,” said Deirdre. ”We are happy.”

”Look at ye Mam, drinking again at breakfast because you’re riddled with guilt. That’s what gave ye cancer.”

Brian reddened with embarrassment. “You’re out of line. Your parents have worked their whole lives so you could–”

She let her arms fall and hands clatter against her thighs. “What choice have they on Easter but to come to our house? It’s not our bloody house. They paid for it. And this Buck’s Fizz,“ she said, glugging from her mother’s glass as she tugged at thick drapes. “And this.” She picked up a vase and smashed it on the ground. 

Frank got up and took her wrist and pulled her towards the door. “If you love them so much, go stand with them in the cold.”

“I will, you vulture.”

She went to the hall, put on her coat, marched to the bottom of the garden, pressed the buzzer on the iron gates and turned towards the house as they opened, eyeballing him. “Bastard.” Then she was weaving through the large crowd, calling out “Liam, Liam. Is Liam still here?”

“He’ll be back in a while,” said a stout blonde-haired woman with a bullhorn, after giving her a double-take. 

“Can I have your megaphone thing?”

The woman scowled. “I wouldn’t give the likes of you nothin’.”

“I’m  sorry for what we did.”

“Go wan outa dat. You lot are all the same, money mad.”

“I’m sorry, really. Just let me help. I want to fight with you.” 

”Fight? You? You haven’t an ounce in ye. Pampered all yer life. A strong breeze would knock you down.”

Georgina began marching in step with the crowd, shouting the loudest: “Stop the monopolies, vultures are a disease.” She smiled at an elderly man holding a placard and helped him to hold it up. “Stop the monopolies, vultures are a disease.” When she reached the gates again, she pushed her nose through the bars and yelled at her father at the door. “The Bishops are a disease!”