The Troubles Read online

  The sun was high in the winter sky yet there was little warmth from it as the earth’s rotation pulls life’s abundance away from Ireland with the dulling of the winters light. The customary Belfast scents collide with my olfactory senses in a forceful imposing manner with the acrid particles of sulfuric gunpowder ensconcing every dwelling and street (indiscriminately), and to my chagrin, every molecule of cherished green space. To the naked eye if one were somehow unaware it would appear to be the scent of chalk and burning paper that was choking the lungs of our children, but this naïve explanation is but a fantasy as we are not environmentally diseased but rather culturally.

  I have not yet returned home to rest and instead have retreated to the use of the driver’s rearview mirror to cauterize my filthy appearance from further deterioration. The sight of a surly, cantankerous character surfaces alien to me and it is so unappealing; I look away with my vain heart reeling with shame. I am not an ugly man and the face that looks back is by no means symmetrically or genetically unattractive but there is something peculiarly sick in the aged beyond my years reflection and no matter how many times my comb pulls through these black, straight as a pin, hairs, I cannot ignore nor remove the burgeoning growth of single grey hairs that peer as plain signs, that my lack of physical strength cannot stave of my stress.

  The Belfast Brigade had been comprised at this point, by at least one thousand two hundred volunteers and I was yet another such volunteer. The influx of membership had increased greatly following Bloody Sunday when at a civil rights march, British paratroopers had killed thirteen unarmed demonstrators. Though each brigade is a loosely formed unit it still had a military-like structure (enabling it to evolve from 1913 into the deadly force it is today in 1972). The Belfast Brigade has been divided into three battalions formed from the west, north and east of Belfast. The Derry Brigade; in which I had just spent valued time, is small, but obviously competent. Derry has been divided into two brigades, South Derry Brigade and another in Donegal. Even the easterly County Armagh has three battalions with two more active in South Armagh and a quietly dormant one in the North. Finally, from the Border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland lies the Tyrion/Monaghan Brigade with smaller units in South Down, North Antrim and Fermanagh, which are not attached. There is a defining hierarchy to each one; a commanding officer, quartermaster, explosives officer and intelligence officer and in addition, pending on the size of the unit, there is, additionally, a training officer and a finance officer.

  I now had daunting orders filed deep into my mind, now a cavernous empty space, and therefore there is not a physical record to incriminate neither my multiple commanding officers nor myself. There is a slick shady inconsistency to my covert recruitment, having been personally pledged by Cathal Goulding, which is being revealed drop by drop, as I am becoming privy to ulterior motives which has plagued my psyche the previous two weeks. To make it clear, I like many others, am not a volunteer. That word offends the core of my being because thousands of my neighbors, brethren and peers have either been tasked with terroristic acts or have been brutally pillaged like criminals easily murdered behind enemy lines.

  Lanary had left me this morning with his signature pagan wisdom falling insincerely from his cracked, nicotine riddled lips. “So, Alastar… whatever may happen, this will fulfill yer destiny and ya shall, were to die, always exist to the west in the Otherworld, if so be it,” he had casually stated with his hand gesturing westerly as though he was my guide into an afterlife. His veneer has been cracking and tarnishing gradually and the pretense that he is a man above an earthly dominion to exist only to seek communion with our shared faith, has been perhaps, the most disingenuous guise or the perfect example of my own paranoid and insidiously, distressed mind.

  My father’s favored pious Gaelic phrasing itches persistently at the back of my skull, “Riseann an duchais tri shuile an chat.” Yes, the true nature of someone’s character is revealed through their eyes and when the smile and the eyes do not mime each other it vexes one. “Coimhead fearg fhear na fhoighde.” My diseased, degenerating father had perhaps lived by that proverb, ‘beware the anger of the patient man’. His floggings had seared past any true punishment or consequence and veered into sadistic torture, but my maturity, now preserved of the much allowed resolute sorrow, has starkly shown me, that there was little carnality or lasciviousness in the man as instead, an absolute, abject broken atheist had shelled his vanquished spirit.

  The recently closed and now abandoned linen factory sits at the furthest reaches of the aptly named Linen Street. The building’s breadth looms overwhelmingly lonesome on this street obscuring the smaller industry. It’s cracked, poorly constructed, mortars no longer are supporting the weight of iron-red hued bricks and it appears to resemble the sinking architecture of Venice, which had attracted my curiosity during my Latin, Geography and Lanary’s Ancient History lessons. Residual scraps of thread hang from every stained windowpane mimicking the growth of cobwebs and the door before me stand partially ajar with the bolted lock appearing to have been smashed in by either gunshot fire or a heavy object. I cannot be dissuaded to persist nor retreat in my entry, but is no longer my choice, therefore with gritted teeth; I extend one long limb before the other into the building. Inside it is not pitch black as meager streams of light casually ease in from a few second story windows and the factory equipment, which looks like ghastly mechanical torture devices, lies abandoned, giving the monstrous space an apocalyptic smirk. “Hello!” I yell into the waiting shadows but the huge space has engulfed my greeting and I sound lithe and flat with little forbearance, let alone perseverance.

  CHAPTER 22: Da fhada an la tagann an traithona (No matter how long the day, the evening comes)

  Kiera Flanagan…When a small star pierces through outer space, its remaining reign of semi-infinite energy begins to collapse and it may cease to exist. When a larger star collapses, its gravitational pull ignites an endless cycle in which the imploding gasses will continue to fall back onto itself thus creating a black hole. Mother and Father’s extremely powerful gravitational pull, has in their material absence, created this vacuous, black hole of extinction, which is culling and enticing my being, enhancing the massive pit of darkness in my soul toward my own obsolescence. My own star is perhaps too small and inconsequential to add girth and presence beneath the growing empty space, which is looming overhead. Clearly, I see this now urging me to slip through the void to join my parents with no chance of return.

  Ena has been mindlessly combing my tangled hair for a borderless period of time with her fixed motions now inspiring pain as the knotted lengths pull at their fragile roots.

  “Kiera darling. I am with ya. I shall never leave ya.” Her poetic words are dully being repeated as she has lulled herself into a recoiled, meditative state.

  “I must away, Ena. T’is me place to be by their side.” I whisper more than once.

  Absently ignoring my suicidal musings, my best friend informs me, “ya will have a grand life, whether ya dwell on the earth or whether ya exist as a fae creature in the Otherworld, cause ya, Kiera, are earmarked for somethin’ momentous. That me friend has been bloody apparent from the moment I spoke to ya and ya took me hand to walk to school everyday…” She trails off with her tears splashing onto my hair as she drops the brush and curls her head over top of me while I rest, catatonic in her gentle, soft lap. Her salty sweet sadness melds with my own as I sob.

  CHAPTER 23: I scath a cheile a mhaireann na daoine. (People live in each other’s shadows)

  Alastar Taggart…I am told by him, the lone figure with the shadowy soot black eyes, that I am ‘doubling’ and these extremely violent situations I have been encountering, are now causing fractures within my psyche. This is common, he informs me, among the many Official IRA compatriots who have bombed and killed for the cause and then returned home to their families attempting to see a righteous meaning behind the madness. The true sign you yourself are mentally divided is when y
ou try to defend your own atrocious sins, but as the anxiety of uncertainty and non-violent monotony vanishes and war hysteria insidiously begins to graft itself like a parasitic twin to your mind, you no longer can resist.

  Cathal Goulding had expressed his interest in my relationship with the young Bobby Sands, perhaps not surprising, as Bobby is the clearest voice of the next generation. ’There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit, to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally, and economically.”

  I must speak soon with Quinn privately but now I am obliged to this task delegated by the designated explosions officer who had met me covertly in the grime of the linen factory. With a Czechnian- smuggled AK-47 lying prone by my feet, the powerful weapon signifying the dangerous exposure I am facing, I kneel in the ashes of Upper Shankill Road’s sullied impurity. It is three a.m. and the darkness of the city allows nothing but the ghoulish shadows of malingering structures, none so imposing as the West Kirk Presbyterian Church. The humble religious enclave stands silent and eerily menacing. Two men sit stock-still in the absence of moonlight with the only signs of their presence coming from heavy drags of their shared cigarette, the cavalier demeanor of the soldiers the result of previous missions resulting in militant precision. My cagey, dim eyed superior, motions to me with a bright wand of red coal and hisses, “Get on with it, ya. Day will be upon us shortly.”

  The bomb made from fertilizer and nitroglycerin, tumbles to the ground before me as the dexterity in my hands fails me with their cowardice. I am in an ironic, prostate position; therefore it is a short drop to the grass just above the sidewalk. Nevertheless, it is merely a stroke of luck that the fearsome combination of chemicals does not detonate. “Aye Sir. Shite forgive me!” Adrenaline quickly maneuvers me in the darkness as I attempt to disguise and distract from the inept and clumsy fumble. I am to desecrate this sacred structure before me and deaden all the morning worshippers to an unnatural grave shrouded in martyrdom. Lilting, strange notes carry on a rare gust of wind at this dormant hour and I think I can hear a girl’s voice crystal clear speaking directly to me. “Alastar…” A faint whisper of my given name kisses my ears and I smell Christmas tangerine blossoms as a rush of wind threatens to penetrate through me.

  “Alastar! Get the hell up, ya damn gob.” I have not been so shrewd as to deceive these war weary men as a draconian faced officer grabs the two pound weapon of mass destruction and grimaces menacingly but inches from my face, his hot breath steaming in the cold night. I forcefully get the full appraisal of the man for whom I will be serving under for an indeterminate amount of time. Nothing will stop us until we are a free nation from our very real binds and chains. I am henceforth, the young disposable soldier with fresh blood to spill drafted from his childhood home onto the neighboring battlefield.

  The wind is now spitting mad and carries with her sand and other debris as we gather, skulking like hyena’s awaiting a lion’s discards, behind the rectangular, peeling white church house. In the bath of dawning light the bomb’s timer glows bright and warning. This is the point of no return; my conscience angrily chides my righteous nature as I know there is no causal factor great enough to maim, lest kill civilians, in their House of Worship. What a coward I was in the assembly in Dublin as I had folded, uncharacteristically, like a common criminal bested by his accomplice. I would do the IRA bidding or Quinn would and I could not allow Quinn to be ingratiated, converted and diseased with blood lust and most likely killed in the forefront as a young republic martyr for the cause.

  Golden morning light is dispersing quickly from the dawn rising in Northern Belfast. Time appears to be cavorting in a personal jest as the seconds on my timepiece pass before my eyes with an invisible eclipse. How am I to detonate this bastardly bombing at the exact moment if my eyes are deceiving me? My factory-forged thumbs rub the itch of sleep from my tired sockets and rest upon my temples. The timepiece whirrs into perfect linear sight before me and I make my way behind the adjacent neighboring building toward the West Kirk Presbyterian Church. I breach the indisposed warped iron wrought lock easily, maneuvering stealth fully past the dormant plank pulpits with black Bibles lining every seat, awaiting the hopeful, to turn their pages and expose the transformative parables within. To the rear of the long building and subjacent to the pulpit, on a weak floorboard, I position the wired bomb thus ensuring the most Protestant, albeit civilian, casualties.

  We have lain hidden in silence until the merriment of voices gathering stirs us from our stakeouts stiffness. In a frenzied confusion a flurry of fingers manhandle the detonator and as I blink my eyes adjusting to the bright morning sun the gale of a hurricane brings with it the force of the blast. As blurs of red fire pelt me furiously, I crouch down, protecting my head from the atomic-like explosion. Fearsome, blackening heat sears and singes every ounce of my visible skin and scorch through thick cotton material as though it’s paper-thin. The pulsating pains reverberate through my exposed nerves as my nervous system threatens to disable itself and cause unconsciousness. A blackout of dead air circulates around my pulsating brain, which feels swollen as though it has outgrown my skull; the full collisions of wood debris, mangled body parts and thrown live flames do not penetrate what seem to be my shattered eardrums. As the destruction of the church continues its purge behind me like a devastating Armageddon, I drag my cramped legs and will myself to run. Just run. Get the hell out there Alastar!

  CHAPTER 24: Is fear rith maith na drochsheasamh (He who runs away, lives to fight another day)

  Quinn Taggart…Quinn’s vision burned and struggled in the dimming light of the subterranean stone cavern, sharpened ornately by bygone worshippers of medieval era. Worn by time’s incessant destruction, edges had softened and pale grey sediment rested upon ancient tablets and Pagan alters. His excitement was palpable as he squinted past his brother’s closest of compatriot’s obstructing presence. “Alastar, tis that ya? Are ya there?” Behind great stone columns there was a fluttering of soft padded paws and gracefully coming into view, wild, abnormally large feline eyes were the only other sentient presence in this shaded cave, making Quinn feel evermore melancholy. “Coraline, come here little one!” The tall figure purred and reached down to stroke the minute beast that had begun to figure 8 the man’s long, strong sinewy legs. Quinn’s confounded bewilderment was painted unapologetically across his handsome, cherub like features, ones that conveyed within him his gentle attributes.

  “Why did ya bring me here Sir? Where is me brother?”

  “Do ya believe in the Lord, Quinn?”

  Dutifully polite, though taken aback, the boy answered, “Aye s’pose I do. But seriously, where is Alastar?”

  The man’s face morphed in the shadows allowing the menace of this soldier’s true sadism full disclosure. Quinn was instinctually afraid, as there was something awry in his companion’s tone and he maneuvered with stalking motions as he was ensnaring his prey and hunting his victim. “Would ya die for the Catholics or is it the bloodlust of the IRA that yer keen on?”

  ‘’I am Catholic Mister. I believe in Jesus Christ.”

  “What of the Bible then, Son? Does it vanquish the need for all the scripture come before it and all that is now to be scribed in this new day?” The interrogating man stood just two feet away from the much smaller and trembling youth.

  “Sir… the Bible has brought peace to me family and I through all this horror, but, but, I would never be so vain as to deny any of me kinfolk’s pagan writing’s. I know, that Alastar believes truly in the Druid like.’’

  “Well son, I have surmised that the Bible’s parables and platitudes are daftly anemic, even unnecessary, as the glory of one’s life surmounts the Christian fear of death. Good, holy Christians fear hellfire, so to avoid it, they are kind to their fellow man. Good pagans like Alastar do not have this fear
, so they can be who they are, good or ill, as their true nature dictates.” The man’s mouth grinned wide displaying his decaying teeth now savoring every word on his tongue with obvious satisfaction. “We have no fear of God so we are accountable to no one but each other.’’

  Quinn desperately attempted to deescalate what was a torrid growing tension. “That tis a terrible, great responsibility, Sir.”

  “Aye that is true, straight from the mouth of babes,” he sneered. With a torrent of agile motions the determined soldier drew an antiquated serrated blade from a undisclosed location, the steel forged with molten force and preserved for human sacrifices. He slid it’s sharp edge across the soft skin of Quinn’s throat and was witness to the boy’s fear and immeasurable sorrow for the child, in that awful instant, knew he would never see his family and life again. From the victims clasped fist, a crumpled token of good luck, a shamrock, fell onto the ground. The insane smile on the mortal’s face flared wickedly against his weather beaten, pale skin. He was jubilant that his grand undertaking had parlayed perfectly into fruition as the plan was then in flight. Embracing the blood soaked limp body of the innocent lad, he murmured quietly into an open ear, “Thank ya child. This ‘tis not yer end but yer beginning. Ya will be held like a king in the Otherworld, riches aplenty, beauty of youth eternal and in time ya will be joined.” Unquenched, unsmiling lips dripping with the pink saliva of his goodbye, stained the aging man’s powder white beard as he bent to kiss the boy farewell.