The Family on Paradise Pier. Dermot Bolger
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