Eva had thought it impossible to reach Oxford at this late hour. But Art knew a night mail porter at Paddington Station. The station looked deserted when they got there, with the public entrances closed. Art cut down a side street however and soon Eva heard voices and the trundle of barrows behind the station wall. Art knocked repeatedly on a small door until it was opened. He mentioned a name and the door closed again, only to be reopened moments later by a bearded figure who shook Art’s hand and called him comrade. It was the first time that she heard anyone address Art by this term. For once it made him not seem a solitary figure. Art explained their dilemma and the bearded man shook Eva’s hand. He motioned them in to wait in a shed crammed with mail sacks. It was quiet there in the heart of the city, with the platform deserted except for the occasional mail train arriving with no passengers and just the sound of sacks being loaded. An hour passed before the bearded man returned as a Western Region mail train pulled in. Art’s comrade tapped on a window, which was opened by a sorter clutching a sheaf of letters. After a short conversation he welcomed them surreptitiously on board. Eva knew she looked incongruous in her evening dress, sitting on a mail sack and listening to Art and the sorter discuss The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. But she didn’t care because this journey reminded her of long train trips home to Dunkineely. All that now awaited them was a deathbed, but finally – even if only briefly – they would be a family together.
The Oxford streets were empty, the house in darkness except for a faint glow behind the curtains in Mother’s room. Eva had a key.
Mother appeared to be in a coma or a deep sleep, with the doctor’s injection keeping pain at bay. Maud looked up as they entered the bedroom, surprised by Art’s presence. But the circumstances of this meeting prevented all arguments or recriminations, anything that might drag Mother back into the grip of conscious pain. In sleep she ruled her unruly children, reducing them to whispers as Art took a chair between his two sisters. The only sounds came from Mother’s irregular breath and the ticking clock. No outside world might exist beyond those thick curtains. Maud looked jaded after her trip from Ireland, but Eva knew that they all felt exhausted as if they had spent decades travelling towards this moment of being reunited.
It was impossible to know if Mother would ever reawaken. From the size of the rationed injection Eva knew that the doctor expected only to be called again to sign her death certificate.
Eva decided against showing Maud the Russian death certificate just yet. Let her grieve for the passing of one life at a time. Eva’s wedding day had been the last time when Mother’s three eldest children sat together. Back when they still knew who they were, when their world was still recognisable. Who were they now? She remembered Art’s phrase: Byvshie Liudi, the former people of a former world. How many former people were scattered across this continent blinking in the light of change, people trying too hard to cling to the past or to let it go. Memories returned from across the broken decades: the excited laughter of children playing musical bumps in the drawing room at Dunkineely, the weekly race to Phil Floyd’s shop for sweets to be shared out. Back then the entire world – from its extremities of Mountcharles to Killybegs – knew and viewed them as special. The golden Goold Verschoyle children. Five children lying in a hayrick to imagine their futures, five children picnicking in the rain, five dolphins in the waters off what she once called Paradise Pier, five eaglets poised for flight on a ledge of Slieve League, ready to swoop up towards the sun, swooning and dazzling each other.
Eva knew that the others must share at least some of these memories from the time when they had a world in common. Art and Maud might remember some moments differently, but this did not make her memories any less true. The one truth they could not differ on was the absolute love of the dying woman in this bed. It awed Eva to have known her parents and borne witness to their love. Perhaps this was what had ill prepared their children for the world, the notion that life could be perfect. The stances taken by Art and the others had shocked many, but while growing up none of them had ever been checked for expressing a thought or an opinion that truly came from within. There had been no bars placed around their minds, no notion that the outside world disallowed such freedom.
When Mother died they would leave this room, quarrel and go their separate ways. But for now they were united by what they were about to become. Orphans. Eva felt certain that Brendan was somewhere in their midst, a small boy in a comical hat, and that Thomas in South Africa could sense what was occurring. The one great love which each of them always knew that they could turn to was being extinguished from this world.
Eva felt more grief for herself than for Mother. Mother was ready for death because all her life she had been preparing for this final adventure to which all stepping stones led. Mother moaned slightly and Eva was torn between a desire that Mother might see Art one more time and a wish for her to be spared more conscious pain. Her lips formed words that were impossible to discern, although Art leaned across to try and hear and then took her hand. Eva clasped Art’s other hand and Maud placed her hand over his fingers that were entwined with Mother’s. Eva’s eyes were closed and she did not remark upon the scent, knowing that the words did not need to be said. Because she knew that the others could smell the familiar hand lotion, the cream that Mother had used after gardening on those evenings when they lay in bed awaiting her step on the stairs and knowing, as they still knew, that they were truly and unconditionally loved.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to the many friends and relations of Sheila Fitzgerald (née Goold Verschoyle) who helped with recollections. None of them is responsible for the factual errors or falsifications. Particular thanks are due to Derek Johns, Clare Reihill, Catherine Heaney, Mandy Kirkby and Philip Gwyn Jones for their faith in my work, and to Trinity College, Dublin and All Hallows College, Dublin, where at stages during the writing of this book I was respectively the Writer Fellow and the fellow who writes.
About the Author
Born in Dublin in 1959, DERMOT BOLGER’S nine novels include The Woman’s Daughter, The Journey Home, Father’s Music, Temptation and The Valparaiso Voyage. His debut play, The Lament for Arthur Cleary, received The Samuel Beckett Award. The author of seven volumes of poetry, he has been Playwright in Association with The Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and Writer Fellow in Trinity College, Dublin. Bolger has been a champion of new Irish writers, firstly through Raven Arts Press, which he started, and later through co-founding New Island Books. He devised and edited the best-selling collaborative novels, Finbar’s Hotel and Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel and has edited many anthologies, including The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction.
Praise
From the reviews of The Family on Paradise Pier:
‘Bolger has written his finest novel: this portrait of a lost Anglo-Irish world reaching out into every struggle of the twentieth century is fantastically adventurous’
SEBASTIAN BARRY, Guardian
‘The novel unfolds with the graceful skill for which Bolger is remarkable’
Sunday Telegraph
‘A beautiful tribute to a fascinating family’
Irish Sunday Independent
‘Possibly his finest achievement…whether he’s capturing the slums of Dublin or the pain of a missed opportunity in love, Bolger’s writing simply sings’
Sunday Business Post
‘Bolger’s writing is so strong, so exact, so much the right colour for each moment. Bare and passionate’
Financial Times
‘The Family on Paradise Pier places Bolger on a new level…the writer is a master storyteller’
Irish Book Review
‘A remarkable novel…The Family on Paradise Pier attests to his being unequivocally one of the best living Irish novelists’
Village Magazine
By the Same Author
NOVELS
Night Shift
The Woman’s Daughter
The Journ
ey Home
Emily’s Shoes
A Second Life
Father’s Music
Temptation
The Valparaiso Voyage
PLAYS
The Lament for Arthur Cleary
Blinded by the Light
In High Germany
The Holy Ground
One Last White Horse
April Bright
The Passion of Jerome
Consenting Adults
From These Green Heights
The Townlands to Brazil
POETRY
The Habit of Flesh
Finglas Lilies
No Waiting America
Internal Exiles
Leinster Street Ghosts
Taking My Letters Back: New & Selected Poems
The Chosen Moment
EDITOR
The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction
Finbar’s Hotel
Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel
Copyright
Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Fourth Estate
Copyright © Dermot Bolger 2005
Dermot Bolger asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007392650
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