The Family on Paradise Pier. Dermot Bolger
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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.
Eva might be Grandpappy’s favourite but in time Art would be his heir after Father, with the Manor House perpetually indentured by law to be passed in trust to the eldest son of the eldest son.
On a bend with fields falling away towards the sea, a flock of sheep halted them, crowding through a crude gateway from the lands of Mr Henderson, a local farmer. Frightened of the pony, they shied into the ditch. A sandy-haired boy of Art’s age darted after the sheep, fiercely waving a stick. Welts formed a mottled pattern down his thighs. His bare feet were brown with dust and his face had a pinched hungry look.
‘Gee-up!’ Grandpappy encouraged Art to take control and urge the pony forward. The boy lowered his stick to stare at Art. For a moment Eva saw them observe one another, each boy intensely sizing up the other. Then Grandpappy flicked the whip and the pony jogged past, scattering the sheep.
‘Why does he have no shoes?’ Art asked, as if their staring contest had only now brought home this everyday disparity.
‘What would he need shoes for?’ Grandpappy laughed. ‘His feet are as hard as the hob.’
‘He wasn’t born with hard feet.’
‘He was born poor. He looks a strong lad who’ll do well for himself if he works hard. He won’t be left standing at the Strabane hiring fair when his time comes. Tyrone farmers know the measure of everything from horseflesh to boys. He’ll find a good master.’
‘Better a farm than the Glasgow mills,’ Mrs Hawkins said.
She and Pappy fell silent, but something troubled Art. The reins went loose, the pony slackening as if sensing a lessening of authority. Eva looked behind to spy the aeroplane cart encountering the sheep.
‘What if he doesn’t want to stand at a fair like an animal?’ Art asked.
‘That’s how life is ordained.’ Mrs Hawkins broke into a verse of All Things Bright and Beautiful:
‘The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them high or lowly
And ordered their estate.’
‘Stop the cart,’ Art said with sudden fierceness. ‘He’s my size. I want to give him these shoes. It’s stupid that I own five pairs and he has none.’
Pappy laughed, wrapping Art in a bear-hug till the boy ceased to struggle.
‘You’re a good boy, but you must harden yourself or be fooled by every beggar and three-card-trick-man on the street. He’ll have shoes when he earns them. It’s how the world works. You’ll have men under you one day. Firm but fair is how to win respect, not by throwing away your possessions.’
Distant laughter rose behind them as Father joked with the boy who managed to harry the sheep into an enclosure. Brendan was asleep, being rocked on Mother’s lap. Eva envied Art his place on Grandpappy’s knee, like she envied him the status she would have enjoyed if born a boy. Art was her special friend, but since Beatrice Hawkins started talking too much or going silent in his company, Eva had been disturbed by a recurring dream. In it Art was bound in a dungeon with Eva advancing on him, holding the terrible steel contraption she once saw a farm boy carry. When Eva had asked what it was the boy snapped it shut and smirked, ‘To castrate young bulls, miss, and put a halt to their jollies.’ Eva did not know what castration meant until Maud, who knew everything, said it was ‘to cut off the slip of a thing men make such a fuss about’. This dream mortified her because she could never hurt Art. Shivering, Eva reached guiltily across to ruffle Art’s hair. He loosened Grandpappy’s bear-grip enough to smile back, although she saw how he was still upset.
Dunkineely village was deserted when the pony cantered past MacShane’s public house. Mr MacShane emerged and said that a shoal of mackerel had swum into the inlet at the Bunlacky jetty. Grandpappy whipped the pony so as not to miss the excitement. The lane was crammed, with people lining the rocks beside the tiny jetty as the trap came to a halt. Youths had only to cast fishing rods in the waves to instantly haul out more silvery bodies. Women waded into the water using turf creels to capture the fish battering senselessly against each other. Barefoot children outdid one another in savage bravado as they killed the gasping fish with stones. Grandpappy laughed with approval, urging Art to dismount. Eva watched her brother join in the orgy of slaughter, blood and fragments of gut staining his shirt. The air was festive, pierced by warlike shouts of Take that, you Hun. Finally the aeroplane cart arrived and Beatrice Hawkins watched Art spatter a mackerel’s brains with as much admiration as if he were harpooning a whale. Father noticed Eva sitting very still beside Mrs Hawkins. ‘Run along home,’ he said quietly, ‘and tell Cook we’re having mackerel for supper. I’m sure the Hawkinses can be prevailed upon to stay. Aye, and tell her we’ll be having mackerel for breakfast, lunch and dinner all next week too.’
Eva had seen Art fish with Father and even helped them to kill sea trout out on their small boat. Sea fishing had felt noble but now she couldn’t bear to look back in case she saw Art hold up the dead mackerel amid the slaughter for Beatrice to admire. Eva ran home to give Cook the message, then went to her room. Her perfect day in paradise felt ruined. Pressing her face against the cool sheet on her bed, Eva closed her eyes but kept visualising a floundering shoal of mackerel. They refused to die, wriggling furiously with their battered heads. Fish eyes stared up, having got separated from scaly bodies. They became the eyes of dead soldiers in the war that Eva hated people discussing. She had always loved the taste of mackerel but knew that she could never bear to bite into their oily flesh again.
Maud entered the room, kicked off her shoes and threw her hat on her bed. She flopped down. ‘Come on, Eva,’ she said. ‘The Hawkins girls are staying and Mother says we can play musical bumps. Surely there’s some way to persuade Oliver to join in. My word, it has been such a day.’ She stopped and looked across. ‘What’s wrong, Eva?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You look like you’ve been crying.’
‘Haven’t.’
‘Cook says we’ll have a feast.’
‘What is she making?’
‘Fish, you goose. Get changed. It will be such fun. Father says we can use the gramophone.’ She sat up to observe Eva closely. ‘Shall I call Mother?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘I think I will.’
Maud went out, leaving the door open. Rising, Eva poured water into the white basin to wipe the smudge of tears from her eyes, then walked towards the window overlooking the street. The carpet ended a few feet from the window, the floorboards cool on her soles. The windowpane soothed her forehead. She felt so small suddenly in that long room, imagining the lonely winter months of solitary lessons ahead. Sketching for hours by the Bunlacky shore, reading to Brendan or sitting with Mother while she read books of sermons sent from London. Each Tuesday Mother would engage in planchette with her psychic friend, Mrs O’Hare – both women calmly attempting to decipher spirit messages, with the table moving beneath their outspread hands. But despite such loneliness it was better than the horrors of the bustling school dormitories to which the others would return.
A sound betrayed Mother’s presence.
‘What’s wrong, Eva?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s