The Family on Paradise Pier. Dermot Bolger

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      Locally their crusade had been considered so laughable that it counted for nothing. The only converts they ever made came from their own class – those marvellous Goold Verschoyle boys. Not that class would count for anything after the revolution, but it still counted for something now. This was evident from the respectful way that people had carried her husband’s body home last month after he collapsed while bicycling to Killybegs to heckle de Valera at a political rally. She had warned him it was too far to cycle but petrol was impossible to obtain. Mrs Ffrench had laid him out in the study, with his maps and books and his tame birds that flew about, soiling everywhere, disturbed by all the visitors. For three days the most unlikely people came to pay their respects, farm labourers who had never previously set foot in the house. Any trouble he had caused with Art Goold Verschoyle was forgotten. But all the neighbourhood could whisper about was his funeral arrangements.

      No one attended the interment but she had sensed eyes watching from across the inlet as four workmen laid her husband’s body in this sheltered corner of the garden beside the pier. In Donegal only unbaptised babies and suicides were buried on unconsecrated ground. But this had been Mrs Ffrench’s wish and where she would lie when her time came. There had been no prayers or speeches; just L’ Internationale played on the wind-up gramophone. Mrs Ffrench reached the headstone and knelt to lay wild flowers. The local stonemason had gone to his priest for advice before chiselling the stark inscription her husband chose as his epitaph: Thomas Roderick Ffrench: The Immortality of the Dead Exists Only in the Minds of the Living.

      The silence outside the prison train was broken by indistinct sounds: the barking of released dogs, guards shouting in panic, a scramble of boots across the ground.

      ‘The bastards,’ an old zek muttered behind Brendan. ‘They’re more concerned with saving the dogs than saving us. Come back, you cowards, unlock these doors.’

      The entire wagon was on its feet now, banging at the roof and wooden walls. Bursts of machine-gun fire came from above, interspersed with cries.

      ‘Aim well, Germans,’ a woman said. ‘Kill every guard.’

      ‘That’s who they want,’ a young man added. ‘I mean, why would the Germans want to destroy us?’

      ‘They don’t,’ replied the old zek. ‘We count for nothing. They want to destroy the carriages, this rolling stock.’

      Noise of frantic hammering came from inside every wagon. Brendan heard the crush of timber and knew that one set of prisoners had broken free. Their shouts turned to screams amid a burst of gunfire, but he could not tell if the bullets came from the plane or if the guards might have set up their machine guns in the undergrowth. Two men beside him hammered at the roof, being lifted up by other prisoners. They broke away a wooden slat, yielding a dazzling glimpse of blue sky. Everyone was screaming now. But Brendan was utterly still, mesmerised by the blueness above him. It was the blue of an Irish summer and crossing that patch of light was a small aircraft, departing or wheeling around for another assault. It resembled a child’s plaything, a sparkling gleam in the bright air that made him catch his breath as it turned in a slow loop. Others saw it too and began to scream louder. But Brendan said nothing because he had become a boy again, standing on Bruckless Pier to draw in the bright kite that his eldest brother had made for him.

      

      Eva looked up from her husband’s letter as Hazel waltzed out from the kitchen onto the lawn in her bare feet. The girl stirred a mixture in the jug she carried, then tossed back her hair to blow the first bubble skyward, laughing as it rose and burst. Francis briefly watched, then lay back with the dog beside him.

      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.

PART ONE 1915–1935

       ONE The Picnic

      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 СКАЧАТЬ