Eden Burning by Deirdre Quiery Page B

Lily was painting, Rose was in her bedroom studying and Tom was fixing a leak in the bathroom toilet. He had screwed in a metal tray to catch drips from the cistern and a tube from the tray ran into the back of the basin beside the bath. It was a temporary measure until how he could find out how to fix it properly.
    While he adjusted the tubing into the basin, Lily went into the kitchen and poured an inch of turpentine into four clean jam jars. She carried them into the sitting room, placed a fifth empty jar for the paintbrushes on a small table. She touched the brushes with her fingers to see if they were soft. She lifted a wooden palette and pressed a line of Prussian blue, Titan Rose, Cadmium Yellow and Platinum White, Black, Violet Blue. She mixed cadmium yellow with blue to make her favourite turquoise green, adding white to make it shimmer. She placed a postcard of Belfast Harbour at sunset on one side of the table. With the canvas on the easel, she mixed more blue with violet, thinning it with the turpentine. The Lough glistened with the lights fromnearby Whitehouse. It was difficult to distinguish the dark blue water from an almost black sky. Streetlights and house lights twinkled like golden stars, studded into the hills. After Lily had finished mixing the colours, she traced the first line between the hill and the sky and the second line between the disappearing land and the beginning of the Lough. On canvas the land and sky merged. Lily placed her brush back into the turpentine and make circles in the Prussian blue on canvas with her fingers. She was not aware of time passing. There was only now, only the mixing, the movement of her hand without thought, the creation of shadows and light. Without thinking her fingers scooped up and mixed on canvas blue with yellow, red with violet, her breathing relaxed, her gaze intently disappearing into the painting.
    “British bastards! Go home!” A clatter of stones hit metal.
    Tom shouted down to Lily, “They’re at it again.”
    Tom ran downstairs into the hallway and placed the metal bar on its hooks. A handful of rioters gathered at the top of Brompton Park hurling broken pavement at the army lookout post.
    “British bastards! Go home!” Within minutes there were more than a hundred rioters outside. Tom walked down the hallway towards the sitting room.
    “What’s happening?” Lily looked up from her painting and wiped her fingers on an old towel.
    “They’re warming up to riot. We should be in full flow in about fifteen minutes. How are you getting on with the painting?” Tom stood beside Lily as she dabbed yellow into the dark mountains.
    “It will have to dry before I can do more. But I have time.”
    “When is the exhibition opening?”
    “Saturday. I’m quitting now. What do you think?”
    “I like it. You don’t need touch it. It’s done. All you need to do is sign it.”
    A bus rumbled along the road, stopping outside the front door. Tom shook his head at Lily, “It’s odd that they are still running the buses.”
    “Get out!” A voice screamed outside.
    “I’ll check.” Tom touched Lily on the shoulder, walked quickly into the hallway and into the parlour. He looked out from behind the white lace curtain. A driver still sitting in the seat fumbled with the catch of the door. Two rioters with guns stood facing him. “Hurry up.”
    “It’s stuck.” The driver kept his head down pulling wildly at the catch. It opened.
    He raised both arms into the air. In a high pitched voiced squeaked, “Don’t hurt me. Take the money.” He pushed a leather bag into the hands of one of the rioters before jumping from the bus and running down the Crumlin Road. Two rioters jumped from the bus. One lit a cloth and pushed it into the neck of a bottle filled with petrol.
    “Stand back.” He threw the petrol bomb through the open door.
    “Get back.” He yelled at the approaching wave of rioters. “The petrol tank is going to explode.”
    The rioters