The Family on Paradise Pier Read online

  ‘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?’

  ‘Mother says I am not strong enough.’

  ‘They say your mother is a right dreamer too, miss.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  Deciding that she had already revealed too much to one of the gentry, the girl veered past Eva and moved on, viciously whipping the heads off nettles with a hazel switch. Eva felt embarrassed at being seen.

  Where the lane bent to the left the sea came into view. A small sailing ship was firmly anchored in the bay, never changing position despite the buffeting it received from the waves. It was time to go home but Eva could not stop watching the boat. More than anything she wished to be like it, firmly anchored despite the wild seas of emotion she constantly found herself in.

  A queue was forming at the village pump by the time Eva returned up the main street. People greeted her respectfully and she talked to everyone. Possibly because she had never gone away to school for long, the whole village had adopted her.

  Eva’s miserable few months in boarding school last year had convinced Mother that she was not strong enough for sports or other girls. But sometimes Eva wondered if she was kept at home to afford Mother company during the winter when Mother was affected by illnesses that Dr O’Donnell seemed unable to pinpoint. The front door of the Manor House was open and her five-year-old brother, Brendan, ran out half-dressed to chase the ducks splashing in pools along the deeply rutted street. Eva swept him up in her arms and handed him back to Nurse. The clang of the pump followed her as she walked around by the side of the house. Visitors sometimes asked how the family tolerated this constant clank, but Eva only really noticed the pump when it stopped. For her it represented the creaking heart of Dunkineely.

  Her family would be up, chattering away over breakfast, but Eva’s first responsibility was to feed her rabbit in the hutch near the tennis court. Crickets communicated with each other along the grassy bank in an indecipherable bush code as Eva cradled the rabbit to her breast, savouring the special shade of pink within the white of his ears. Sitting on the grass beside the rabbit as he ate, she spied Father through the drawing-room window. His few briefs as a barrister were mainly the unpaid defence of locals in trouble. His real passion was music and Father had left the breakfast table early to work. A black cat – whom he christened ‘Guaranteed to Purr in Any Position’ – sat motionless on his piano as he composed. The cat loved Father, not with a dog’s adoring servitude but as an equal with whom she condescended to share her space. She would sit for hours when he played – her head cocked like a discerning, slightly quizzical, music critic.

  All the house cats belonged to Father. Mother’s pleasure arose from holding any baby in her arms. Eva was the only baby she ever rejected, just for a brief moment after Eva was born. Take her away, she had ordered Nurse because – having already borne one daughter – she was convinced that she had been carrying that all-important son and heir. Mother herself had told Eva this story and though Eva never sensed any trace of rejection within Mother’s unequivocal love since then, it still caused unease. Returning the rabbit to the hutch, Eva plucked some daisies from the grass bank and held them to her nostrils. The scent always conjured her earliest memory of sitting on this slope at toddling age, picking a bunch of daisies to breathe in their smell that swamped her with happiness. In her memory, Nurse sat knitting nearby, her white apron hiding a plump, inviting lap. Eva could remember longing to be on Nurse’s lap and suddenly it had felt like she was already there, as if Nurse’s essence – her warm skin and laughing breath – was reaching Eva through the ecstasy of inhaling the fragrance of daisies. Even now she could still recall racing towards Nurse’s arms, holding out the bunch of daisies to be savoured.

  ‘Eva, quit dreaming and come and have some breakfast! The Ffrenches are calling for us at eight o’clock.’

  Maud’s voice had an exasperated big sister tone as she summoned Eva from the doorway. Eva waved and went to join her family in the breakfast room. In Father’s absence, Art sat in the top chair. Sixteen months younger than Eva, he was the heir whom Mother had longed for, being groomed already to take over the Goold Verschoyle lineage. Thomas sat beside him, a year younger and two inches smaller, focusing on eating his egg with the exact concentration that he brought to every task. Being the middle brother made him weigh the value of everything. Brendan was too small to care about such matters. As the youngest he took it as his right to be spoiled by everyone. Maud was organising the hamper with the cook, having baked the cakes herself last night. The servants looked to fifteen-year-old Maud for instructions, finding Mother frequently too unwell to oversee the running of the house. But this was one of Mother’s good weeks and, spurred by the presence of her Cousin George, she would accompany them on today’s picnic.

  Everyone at the table talked about their plans for the day. All were good swimmers, though Art was by far the strongest – being nearly as fast as Oliver Hawkins who was seventeen. The Hawkins family from Herefordshire had spent all this summer at Bruckless House, two miles away. Last year a young couple, the Ffrenches, bought this isolated mansion, built by two local brothers on the proceeds of selling guns to Napoleon and pickled herring to Wellington’s army. Mrs Hawkins was related to Mr Ffrench who after being commissioned into the Royal Navy had been away since January. But Mr Ffrench had returned home two weeks ago, claiming that he had insisted on his naval shore leave coinciding with Eva’s end-of-summer birthday party.

  Eva had laughed along with everyone else when he said this, but secretly she believed him. This final week of summer was always the most exciting, culminating in Chinese lanterns being hung in the garden for her birthday party, with charades and fancy dress costumes and singers gathering around Father at the piano. After Eva’s birthday the farewells would start at the train station, with the Hawkins family returning to England, Art, Thomas and Maud going away to school and Mr Ffrench rejoining his frigate currently moored in Killybegs Harbour. But Eva refused to let this thought sour her mood as the maid ran in to announce that Mr Ffrench’s cart had arrived and, within seconds, the breakfast room was full of laughing voices.

  Mother entered the room with Cousin George to greet the new arrivals. Cousin George was a wise chameleon, secretly in tune with Mother when discussing the occult and yet indistinguishable from any other Church of Ireland curate when a guest preacher in the pulpit at Killaghtee church before their neighbours. His sermons were the only ones that Eva still enjoyed, although the Ffrenches never attended church to hear them – being of a religious persuasion, the Baha’is – that not even Mother had heard of. No locals minded the Ffrenches’ eccentricity because nobody understood it. Grandpappy, now on his annual summer visit, declared that no such religion existed except among a handful of demented Arabs driven from Iran, and the Ffrenches would forget such nonsense once they began to procreate like decent Christians. But since Father invited them along to a picnic last autumn, the Ffrenches had become part of the family, opening up their house and shoreline garden to the Goold Verschoyle children.

  The ceaseless chatter made Eva fear that today’s picnic might
never start. But Maud coaxed everyone out onto the street where people started to lift picnic baskets up onto Mr Ffrench’s open-backed float, christened the Aeroplane Cart. Maud sat at the back with the Hawkins twins, who were the same age as her, dangling their legs and bending their heads together to gossip beneath wide-brimmed hats. Somehow twelve-year-old Beatrice Hawkins managed to perch between Art and Eva, unable to address either of them. Until ten days ago Eva and Beatrice had been the closest chums, left to fend for themselves when Maud and the twins disappeared to whisper about grown-up secrets. They had searched for nests without disturbing the eggs, taken turns to push Brendan on his scooter along the street with anxious ducks scattering or had gone walking along the shore with Art minding them. But recently Eva could not explain the friction between them, as if Beatrice was jealous of Eva having a brother so wonderful as Art and wanted to push in and play at being his sister also.

  Beatrice’s brother, Oliver, held the reins as the cart left Dunkineely behind. Eva saw Maud watching him furtively and knew that she had fallen in love. When they reached Bruckless village, Oliver gave Thomas the reins and went to sit among the grown-ups. Cousin George had Brendan on his knee, teaching him to shout the responses to a music hall rhyme:

  ‘Who goes there?’

  ‘A grenadier.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A pint of beer.’

  ‘Where’s your money?’

  ‘In my pocket.’

  ‘Where’s your pocket?’

  ‘I forgot it.’

  The adults laughed, demanding an encore as the horse jangled along the Killybegs road. The Donegal hills rose to the right, arrayed in purple, with the sea to their left and beyond it Ben Bulbin screening the distant Mayo mountains. Sunlight lit the gorse, with foxgloves peeping from hedgerows. Father was maintaining that idle moments like this brought us closer to the truths of the universe, while Mr Hawkins countered that the Irish were sufficiently lazy without being given a philosophy to excuse their idleness.

  Eva was relieved to hear the adults not discussing the war because today was too perfect for outside intrusions. The morning passed in a babble of voices that died away as they neared the sea, leaving just the jangle of the harness and the noise of hooves on the dusty road.

  The view from the rocks beside the beach was so striking that Mother had to sketch it at once. Eva climbed up with a sketchpad to keep her company. Both looked out to sea, drawing quietly. Behind them, rugs were spread out on the sand and Maud arranged plates from the hamper as the Hawkins twins poured homemade lemonade. Father sat talking to Art while Beatrice Hawkins lay beside Art in the very spot where Eva wanted to lie when the sketching was finished. Brendan kept pestering Art by presenting seashells to the big brother he worshipped and, although Beatrice Hawkins was normally too quiet to merit notice, Eva saw that she also kept bothering Art by shyly brushing sand with her bare foot over his.

  They had forgotten to bring drinking water, but Mr Ffrench climbed up towards the caves with a copper kettle to collect water from the streamlet trickling down over the glistening rocks. Father went to assist him and suddenly Beatrice Hawkins found the courage to lob a handful of sand over Art’s hair. She shrieked as Art rolled over to trap her in a wrestling hold, gathering up sand that he playfully threatened to make her swallow. Then just as quickly Art rolled off the girl and picked up Father’s book, pretending to ignore her.

  ‘Oh,’ Mother said quietly, distracting Eva. Her pencil went still as she stared across the waves. Thirty seconds passed before she looked at Eva with an air of casual curiosity. ‘How strange. I’ve just seen something interesting.’

  ‘What?’ Eva asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mother replied matter-of-factly. ‘A stone statue rose slowly from the sea to block the horizon.’

  ‘What did it do?’

  ‘Why nothing, dear, obviously. It was just a statue. It rose as far as its navel, then sank slowly without a sound.’ Mother resumed sketching, her seascape bereft of any figure. ‘It looked rather like Neptune,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Or Manannán Mac Lir, the Celtic God of the Sea, the way that AE draws him in visions. Not that AE is a good draughtsman, of course. How is your sketch coming on?’

  ‘Fine,’ Eva replied, accustomed to Mother’s psychic visions. They sketched away with nothing further to say. The stone figure would be their secret. It had no place in the boisterous picnic taking shape on the sands where Mr Ffrench clambered down to applause, jumping the last few feet without spilling a drop from the kettle. Eva was anxious to help Art deal with the pest which Beatrice Hawkins had become for him and, once the kettle was boiled over a fire of twigs, Mother was also happy to join the main picnic.

  The meal was gloriously protracted, with interruptions as shapes in the changing clouds diverted people’s attention or when they paused to hear each other’s favourite quotations. Father, for once, chose not Whitman but Longfellow to share with the gathering:

  ‘And evermore beside him on his way

  The unseen Christ shall move,

  That he may lean upon his arm and say

  “Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?”’

  Cousin George was a master diplomat, encompassing the Ffrench’s strange beliefs by reciting:

  ‘So many gods, so many creeds;

  So many paths that wind and wind,

  While just the art of being kind

  Is all the sad world needs.’

  Eva saw how this gesture impressed Mr Hawkins, who knew that Grandpappy – who avoided today’s picnic by rising early to go into Killybegs – had little time for divergent beliefs, including those of his own daughter-in-law. Mr Hawkins’s good mood was tempered however by Maud’s hot-headed contribution to the quotations:

  ‘Ireland was Ireland when England was a pup

  And Ireland will still be Ireland when England is done up.’

  Home Rule was anathema to Mr Hawkins and Eva sensed how the picnic could be soured by politics. Nobody disputed the absolute rightness of the war in Europe, but people held differing opinions as to what should happen in its aftermath. Father believed strongly that what was good enough for Belgium should be good enough for Ireland and so, in fighting to free that small nation, the Irish boys were fighting for their own right to self-determination. Mr Ffrench appeared less sure. Since his rapid promotion within the Royal Navy he seemed to lean more towards Mr Hawkins who called Father’s attitude treasonous for a Briton. Father laughed off this comment, saying that the Verschoyles lacked one drop of English blood. They were Dutch nobles who came over with William of Orange and later married into ancient Irish clans whose ancestry he had personally traced back to Niall of the Nine Hostages.

  Leaving politics to the grown-ups, Eva joined the other children bathing in the sea, with Maud delighted when Oliver Hawkins joined them. Oliver said little about the war and Eva suspected he felt differently from his father. As Art and Oliver raced each other out to the rocks, Eva lay in the waves and watched Maud secretly cheer on Oliver against her brother and Beatrice Hawkins secretly do the same for Art. At last the time came to pack away the hampers and load the cart, with Beatrice again interloping between Eva and Art. People said less on the return journey, content to relax in the evening sun.

  When they reached Killybegs Harbour a coach was parked along the quay where a travelling showman was demonstrating a wireless set. Mr Hawkins gave them all money to sit among a row of people with earphones over their heads, listening to a crackle of faint voices breaking in from outside. Maud seemed indifferent amid the general gasps of wonder, but these bodiless voices disturbed Eva, breaking into her closeted world with other lives and languages. She couldn’t wait to dismount from the coach but the showman had to shake Art and Thomas before her brothers removed their headphones. Art seemed distracted as they returned to the cart, questioning Mr Hawkins about every aspect of radio.

  Waiting for them there was Grandpappy, a tall white-bearded old man dressed in knickerbocke
rs appropriate to his ecclesiastical station. Two soldiers arranging their posters more prominently outside a recruiting booth respectfully nodded to Mr Ffrench, instinctively recognising his military bearing. Young women leaving the carpet weaving factory studied a poster outside the Royal Bank of Ireland advertising sailings to New York for three pounds and sixteen shillings. Grandpappy wanted to know who would ride in his pony and trap. Eva scrambled up into the trap, with Art behind her. People joked about them being inseparable during the holidays and she hated to think of him returning to Marlborough College. Eva fretted when Mrs Hawkins asked Grandpappy to wait, complaining that her old bones couldn’t take the bumpy aeroplane cart, but although Beatrice longed to join them she was too shy to follow. The old man took Art on his knee, allowing him the reins.