Dermot Bolger - The Family on Paradise Pier

Eva laid down Freddie’s letter and, feeling a sliver of guilt at her idleness, purposefully picked up her pencil to start making the list of tasks planned for this afternoon. But Hazel’s laugh made her glance up at the extraordinary way the child twisted her supple body to keep the bubbles aloft. The girl was totally immersed in this game, enjoying her triumph whenever a bubble stayed intact, laughing at the silent plop of its extinction, then starting anew with a fresh bubble stream. Nothing else existed for Hazel at this moment: no war, no bombers circling Europe’s skies, no threat of invasion or nerve gas, no future complicated by adult decisions. Just these weightless globes to be savoured for the brief totality of their existence.

Eva stared down at the jotting pad, the list of tasks banished from her thoughts. It was years since she last held a pencil for any reason except to scribble down lists. Her childhood instinct to draw – dormant for so long – had unconsciously taken over. She discovered a swirling sketch of her daughter already half finished. Eva examined it with a quickening of the heart. She could draw again if she didn’t think about it. Let the pen do the thinking. A second image shaped itself on the page. Of Hazel stationary this time, back arched and head held back to blow a bubble upward. Eva could see her own reflection within the girl, as if she was the same age, experiencing the same joy. The second sketch was barely finished before her fingers commenced a third. If the girl looked over, the magic would be ruined. Hazel would demand to see what Eva was doing, minutely examining each sketch. But these drawings felt as light as bubbles. At the slightest pressure her ability would burst asunder. It was like a sixth sense returning to her fingers, with the tension of adulthood banished.

Francis spied Maureen’s bicycle beside the front steps. He mounted it and freewheeled deftly across the lawn. Two quarrelling birds chased each other among the trees. There was so much that Eva could add to her sketch: their crumbling house, cattle in the fields below, the crooked stable door. But there was no need to include these because Eva merely wanted to draw happiness. As Hazel spun in giddy circles she seemed like an axis, a fulcrum, a whirlpool of happiness, drawing the whole world into her on invisible threads.

The dog barked, chasing the weaving bicycle. Maureen came from the kitchen to say that tea was ready. But nobody moved as if nobody could hear. Hazel scooped into the jar to unleash a final stream of bubbles. They soared above her, rainbow-coloured in the light. This was how her family had been in Donegal, Eva realised, diving into the waters at Bruckless Pier, beautiful, impractical, living in the moment with no awareness of how short-lived that paradise would be. Hazel danced beneath the last bubble, throwing her head so far back that it seemed impossible she would not fall. Borne by her breath, the bubble rose so high that Eva had trouble following it. Maureen stopped calling and even Francis halted the bicycle to watch. The bubble balanced in midair and Hazel balanced on the grass, equally poised and beautiful until, without warning, it burst and there was nothing left. Hazel toppled backwards, rolled over to gaze at her mother and laughed.

August 1915

Eva thought it was glorious to wake up with this sense of expectation. The entire day would be spent outoors, with her family chattering away on the back of Mr Ffrench’s aeroplane cart as Eva dangled her legs over the swaying side and held down her wide-brimmed hat with one hand in the breeze. Surely no other bliss to equal this.

Her older sister Maud was asleep in the other bed in the room. Dust particles glistened in the early sunlight, creeping through a slat in the wooden shutters, the thin beam making the white washbowl beside the water jug even whiter.

It was barely six o’clock but thirteen-year-old Eva could not stay in bed a moment longer. Nobody else was yet awake in Dunkineely. Soon the endless clank of the village pump would commence, but until then Eva had paradise to herself. If she rose quietly she could go walking and be home again before the Goold Verschoyle household rose to prepare for today’s picnic.

Dressing on tiptoes so as not to wake Maud, Eva slipped downstairs. An old white cat beside the kitchen range lifted his head to regard Eva with a secretive look as she lifted the latch and escaped into the garden. The clarity of light enraptured her, with spider webs sketched by dew. Eva followed a trail of fox pawmarks along the curving path leading to the deserted main street, then took the lane that meandered down to the rocky Bunlacky shore. The sea breeze coming off St John’s Point swept away her breath, filling Eva with a desire to shout in praise. She closed her eyes and formal hymns took flight in her mind like a flock of startled crows, with new words like white birds swooping down to replace them. The prayers that meant most were the ones which came unbidden at such moments:

‘ O Lord whom I cannot hope to understand or see, maker of song thrush and skylark and linnet. Do with my life what you will. Bring me whatever love or torment will unleash my heart. Just let me be the person I could become if my soul was stretched to its limits. ’

Eva opened her eyes, half-expecting white birds to populate the empty sky. Instead a few bushes bowed to the wind’s majesty.

As son of a Church of Ireland bishop, Father took his task seriously of instructing the boys in religion but Mother claimed that secretly he only went to church to sing. It was Mother’s responsibility to instruct the girls. Yet even without Mother’s Rosicrucian beliefs and indifference to organised religion, Eva knew that she would have outgrown their local church in Killaghtee, where sermons were more concerned with elocution than any love of Christ. She needed a ceremony which encompassed her joy at being alive. But if Eva did not belong with her family in the reserved top pew in Killaghtee church, where did she belong? Neither in the Roman Catholic chapel which Cook and Nurse attended nor with the Methodists in their meeting hall next door to her home. Right now this lane felt like a true church, filled with the hymn of the wind. Freedom existed in this blasphemous thought, a closeness to God that might have heralded the sin of vanity had it also not made her feel tiny and lost. Eva closed her eyes and slowly started to spin around, feeling as if she were at the axis of a torrent of colour. Behind her eyelids the earth split into every shade of green and brown that God ever created. The sky was streaked in indigo and azure, sapphire and turquoise. Prisms of colour mesmerised her like phrases in the psalms: jade and olive and beryl, rust and vermilion. At any moment she might take off and whirl through the air like a chestnut sepal. Her breath came faster, her head dizzy.

‘ Can you see your child, Lord, dancing her way back to you? ’

A sound broke through her reverie, a suppressed laugh. Eva opened her eyes but the earth declined to stop spinning. A young barefoot girl grasped her hand with a firm grip, steadying her. The girl looked alarmed.

‘I’m sent for the cows, miss,’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes.’ The world still swayed dangerously but Eva let go her hand, able to stand unaided.

‘Was it a fit? My sister has fits. She’s epil…’ The girl struggled with the word. ‘Epileptic. They took her to the madhouse in Donegal Town. Are you mad too?’

‘No. I’m just happy.’

The girl mused on the word suspiciously.

‘Your father defended my Uncle Shamie in court for fighting a peeler, miss. They say you’re a fierce dreamer, and your father is for the birds. Why don’t you go to boarding school like your sister?’