The Troubles Read online

  “What choice do I have? We are not free men, never have been. Tis worse and worse in Belfast and if we live in this shite, why shouldn’t we fight and die for this shite?”

  “Seems awful extreme, Quinn. Innocents are caught up in the fight and then we are all named murderers.”

  “Aye, Miss Kiera, but the damn peelers blame us when they instigate violently most of the time.”

  “Do ya wish for peace then Quinn?” The boy’s tired grey eyes flicker concernedly as he registers my question and I realize that the notion of a just treaty to him in his young life appears to be elusive, as he has seen the worse of the bloodshed and corruption.

  “Can’t say I exactly know what ya mean. How ‘bout just liberty from oppression. Tis a lofty goal that one. I’d say independence would cease the wicked nature of me kinfolk.”

  I youthfully smile an illuminating appeasement to the boy. “I’m afraid all I can give ya is me hand in proper motions for equality, but it ain’t much.’’

  “It’s enough that we’re having a gaff all together,” Ena chimes in and as I regard the eleven-year-old young man before me there is something familiar to his stoic expression when he gazes directly into my eyes. To place the odd notion that I have seen him previously to this serendipitous encounter is plaguing me into the furthest recesses of my mind. His dark hair gleans as the artificial light of oil lamps bathes us as all in their warm glow.

  “Quinn, ya will spend the eve and ya lasses might as well too, as it is too cold to walk and ya’ve been through enough,” Mrs. McGurk warmly insists as she directs the three of us to their apartment above the pub.

  “Aye Mrs. McGurk we’ll be grateful too.”

  Ena has once again wrapped her arms around Quinn and myself and with much less trepidation than our earlier embrace we head up the single file stairway with Quinn limping between us.

  The following mid-winter days since my encounter with my own ruination had been adequately filled with terse words of warning from my respective father as apparently my twenty-four hour absence in the height of the scrimmage in and near Shankill Road had heightened his security measures. To once again be in the newly stripped comfort of my bedroom was consolatory and therefore I had chosen to forget that I was grounded and even though I am the age of an adult, with of age responsibilities, I would not resist my father’s imprisoning. I now had a vivid, bitter taste of why he was deathly afraid. There was reason to be.

  Frost was biting my new window in crackling snowflake formations and still my eye was drawn down to the treacherous floorboard. It too had been removed, as soot and fire damage had licked their fury into every corner of the room. The pungent smell of kerosene and wood smoke vapors indelibly permeated the once effeminately perfumed private refuge and my small bed was no longer in its previous location. I lay down only to find myself maladjusted to the rough redecorating that had paid little heed to the previous furnishings. ‘Just breathe, Kiera ya are in the bosom’, I remind myself.

  I must have slept past dawn, which is rare for me, as I have been conditioned to rise with my parents when the sun would rise. To rest past their awakening would be disrespectful. I had not done so since an introduction to my monthly menstrual cycle when I had not only felt the contracting and pulsating warm blood pour out onto the bedding and had laid in absolute shame unable to remove myself from the human matter that was, supposedly my own sin at the formative age of thirteen. Menstruating, being yet another repercussion of my mother’s phobia-inducing interpretation of her Protestant Bible.

  It is December 3rd. The year of ’71 will soon be over and the rapture be done with it. How more further gruesome can it get? My diary has been destroyed as my father thought my words to be too incendiary and provoking to remain in penned calligraphy. Perhaps what he feared most was his fellow Protestants somehow finding proof that his only daughter was traitorous with compassion for the opposing side. Creeping into my mind is the ridiculous notion that the paranoia now is so rampant that freedoms of beliefs are dangerous.

  I still have remnants of the bitter cold imbedded in my fingertips as I wash in our porcelain bathroom basin. I scrub my hands roughly as though I am washing away any sin I might have been complicit in. The clock rings hard and true in the hallway and my heart jumps violently as I realize my skittish reaction is one of posttraumatic stress. Mother and Father are at early morning mass and as grateful I am to have not been coerced into attending the exceedingly dull and political attendance, I am wary of being alone in the home that was not so long ago attacked, for no other reason than my parent’s devotion to their church.

  Boredom is creeping its way methodically into my consistently creative mind. I am not accustomed to forced confinement and even though my work carries little stimulation it still enables me to be of some use. I have scrubbed the wooden planked kitchen floor while enjoying the release of tension that exercise gives me with hands made raw from soap and water. There are little groceries in the home as we have been recently displaced and Mother and Father have had more imperative duties. I calculatingly surmise conceivably, that Father would not be disconcerted if I only go to the grocer and complete a chore of necessity for them.

  Linen Street is rightly named for the industry of linen production that has enabled prosperity for the neighborhood. As my feet amble before me my thoughts are of a different location as my internal compass is my body’s trusted navigation. There is an eeriness and still quiet to the street where cityscapes of war tend to transform citizens who attempt normalcy. The fog has dissipated to uncover those atrocious symbolic ill-conceived peace lines and the faint figures of gashing black Gaelic text glare at me with paradoxically bright colors of painted heroic figures standing looming and imposing, their visages each depicted with similar expressions of glory and victory.

  I snake as ghostly and indiscreet as possible, as a nineteen year old may, through the aged grocery, with its dirty, curled, tiled flooring and cracked plastered walls. The building is anything but cavernous and the provisions bear the sight of impoverishment. There is an apparent vanishing limit of fresh fruit and vegetables, which with the impressive amount of nearby farmable land, seems sadly deceptive. With every truck that is bombed on its way, with fresh produce, there is the inevitable suffrage of the city dweller; especially for the northern city of Belfast, where there has always been an abundance of potatoes, sheep, and whiskey and one does manage to subsist healthily on such a starkly innutritious combination.

  “Hello there. Kiera dear. Bout ye?” The gentlewoman who owns the modest grocery kindly smiles as I exchange meager Irish pounds for my lot of wilted produce and a pound of tough cuts of mutton. My potatoes are pockmarked with telling green sprouts as I begrudgingly exchange what little income I have earned for the last month for the composting vegetables.

  “Aye. Mrs. O’Leary. Mother and Father will be pleased to know Mr. O’ Leary and ya are still open for business given the current state of things…” I trail off not knowing how to politely address the perilous state of the streets and I am just acquiescent that they have the fortitude to stay open to the public at all. I awkwardly squint bearing witness to Mrs. O’Leary shedding a solitary tear that gives sheen to her plump apple red left cheek. This public display of despondency would have inspired a natural empathic reaction but my mind is maladjusted as my emotions are frayed perhaps beyond repairing and I look down immediately and with a shameful display of impropriety, leave her establishment in a deafening silence.

  “Ma, ya home? Would ya like me to cook up some lunch?” There is a cavernous muteness to my childhood home. “Father I’ll make yer favorite stew. Got the potatoes for it.” I holler into the still air. I am starting to have concern for they should be home by now. There has never been a variation in their routine after church service.

  My beggar’s bounty is haphazardly put down on the stained floor of our kitchen and I continue my search throughout the home for my parents and as I lastly knock upon their bedroom door, I hear a rus
hing sound like waves violently hitting sharp rocks by a lighthouse shore. It is my blood again, pounding in my eardrums with a powerful gush of adrenaline. The door handle turns with a creak as the door gapes wide before a box shaped master bedroom with religious icons displayed throughout, giving it the visage of a nunnery.

  CHAPTER 19: Brigh gach cluiche gu dheireadh (The essence of a game is at its end)

  Alastar Taggart… “A square questioning that was.” Lanary and I have been expelled from the conclave of the buildings maze in a blur of Cathal Goulding’s bought muscle, and we stand stock still in the street commiserating over the bizarre line of questioning the obvious interrogation had taken. “We’ll have to keep on the sketch Lanary, when we get back to Belfast.” I directly order my friend to resist any attention drawing actions as now we surely are in the cross hairs.

  “Aye, I ain’t a fool ya know!” Lanary hisses, stressing his archetypal dominance over me, his younger stead. “He was the snake we all have been warned of aye?”

  “Aye s’pose he was particularly formidable. How else could he currently sit in that chair if the man was no gombeen?” I am with great effort deemphasizing the perturbation the man clearly upholds with clenched boa constrictor tight fists of authority for which there might not be an escape of.

  ”So what did Cathal Goulding ask of ya? It was peculiar that ya of all people would be summoned so aggressively all the way to Dublin. With, especially the state of the borders now, it’s as though he didn’t give a shite if you were caught or caught dead!” Lanary has keenly picked up on my own pressing concerns and for the latter, I have no answer, for what else do they ever ask upon men to do.

  “Lanary don’t be daft.”

  “Friggin! Alastar ya haven’t a clue what ye’re doing!” He grabs my arm again, his strength surprising as his fingers push deep into my forearm, bruising as they increase in their grasp. I’m extremely defeated and exhausted from the barrage of naïve questions.

  “Get the hell off me Lanary! What else am I to do? Ya knew that was why I was brought here. Bloody Quinn and Bobby Sands. He’s threatened by that damned poet!” My instinctive guilt is tearing my innards to shreds as my mind grapples monotonously with every encounter, folly and momentary decision that I have made regarding my life and now fortuitously, Quinn’s future involvement and every Taggart’s safe keeping. There has always been a puzzle or perhaps a chess game to heed and I have had neither the knowledge nor power to play but to be the lowly pawn of the IRA.

  Lanary and I are haphazardly policing back to our halfway, humorous looking, borrowed bantam-sized fiat. Our silence is slicing through the cool breeze that is flowing west; it’s icy pitch of derision so fine the ring pierces my eardrums. Perhaps this is my body shutting down from fatigue as my senses are betraying me with hallucinatory behavior.

  Bobby Sands is the antithesis to all that is known to be the violent nature of the republic yet he is the aforementioned public face of protest. His methodology is perhaps opposite to the cruel arm that has slowly morphed over decades of attempted silencing, but he is such a young man and my little brother even younger. Are we truly being monitored to the level of being essentially controlled? Of course, yes.

  There was that intrusively prying mention of Reardon and now I am considered an adept combatant through his demise and this has affected my will of participation, which has been one of retreat until now and the realism that it will all end in bloodshed kicks me straight in my gut. I have the memory of his skull cracking with a dull thud as my eyes had watched his eyes become unnaturally dim as life faded from them. I can also recall the vivid electric pulse that still to this very moment emanates, jumpstarting my heart into ravenous revolutions at the memory of the beautiful, wistful girl who had peered awestruck from her vantage point safe from the chaotic montage of the violent hurricane. Transfixed to the eye of the storm was I, as Reardon had passed in my arms from this perilous existence into the wonder of the Otherworld. Perhaps he is now overlooking that serendipitous brief encounter and he, in his mighty spirit, will draw us near. Six million Irish scrape by one another in this existence and I am sure many are brushed with preternatural serendipitous meetings. Perhaps I should not jeopardize and sully the memory of the young woman, for to do so would also mar Reardon’s unintentional sacrifice.

  CHAPTER 20: An ni chi na big, s e ni na big (What the little ones sees, the little one does)

  Kiera Flanagan…The hours have passed creaking with a deliberate slowness that is etching panic and pain into every atom of my stressed musculature. I have walked across every floorboard and through every cranny of my childhood home as my diligence lessens, I am feeling little hope flowering deep in the pit of my despairing stomach. My eyes have been staring blank back at me like gray pristine clouds in wait of the wild storms to come. My gaze has fallen upon the parlor’s oval mirror, which is the one my mother put up after my grandmother passed and was given to us as an heirloom.

  “It is to be yers one day,” she had whispered while caressing my brow. “So take care of Grandma’s mirror, so ya can give it to yer own daughter.” I had giggled sweetly and looked into the reflection at my mother while standing diminutively at her breast height myself. My features were not yet womanized and the yearning to be grown into full bloom just like the beautiful mature woman by my side was apparent, as my eyes had been drawn to her picturesque reflection.

  There is a pattern to every home unique to one’s ruling and dominion of leadership and I appear to be quaking in the absence of the comforting repetition of this household. It is boldly apparent that Father, in the wake of my disappearance, would have no variation to the habitual stewardship he had possessed over me.

  I am sitting against the wall directly in front of our doorway with my heads weight mightily bearing down on my neck and shoulders, slumping further and further as the hours go by. I am as fatigued and defeated as I am anxious and fueled. The waiting game is a dark foul one bringing the sick of stress into my body. My mind, perhaps protecting itself, is not yet terrified, but focused with laser like attention. There is only one possible outcome to this day; that Mother and Father will come through their doorway and I will be embraced and smothered in both their arms as my parent’s apologize for their unusual tardiness and shower me with their unbridled affection. The telephone’s pitchy shrill ring breaks the seal of silence that has enclosed around me. Smashing into the doorframe I am quick to respond, as I rush with fragile limbs too frail to not succumb to such force, as I can immediately see blue bruising form on my forearm and my left wrist appear gnarred, I imagine, with a burgeoning sprain. “Damn it!” I curse spitting the immoral verbiage loudly into the empty home. “Aye? Tis Kiera Flanagan. May I ask who is ringin?” Using my dominant right hand I breathlessly respond into the cold object. A quiet small voice familiarly responds from the other end.

  “Kiera, thank God ye are at home!”

  “Ena?”

  “Aye.” My best friend is sobbing.

  “What tis it Ena?”

  ”Oh God ya haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?” I am aghast as to what else could be wrong as not only are my parents missing but also my best friend obviously has traumatic news to share with me?

  “Kiera, maybe I should come over?”

  “Nay please just tell me!’’ I am screeching with a scratchy throat.

  “It’s the church! That awful West Kirk Church! It’s been…” She draws a long deliberate breath perhaps to steady her delivery. “It’s gone! They bombed it! Every precious soul has perished! Not a woman or child has survived!”

  CHAPTER 21: Filleann an feall ar an bhfeallaire (The bad deed returns on the bad deed doer)

  Alastar Taggart…We had driven straight through the night and Lanary had said with a roguish grin, we would not be returning the vehicle to its rightful owner. His reasoning being, that Jamie Egerton was a boorish drunkard and we had a righteous use for the transportation while he was a simpleton with little operatio
nal use of the vehicle lest in a political fortitude. While I did agree with Lanary’s assessment of Mr. Egerton’s disposition I was not as keen to break the law for something as menial as transportation, but Lanary has disturbed me lately with his unglued paranoia and occasionally aggressive behavior so I conceded with a terse nod. “Tis Coraline to contend with though.’’ My responsibility was to the animal surpassing the practical feasibility of our mapped journey home.’’ Shall we visit upon Finn to acquire her?” Lanary had regarded me quizzically as though he had consigned to oblivion any recollection of the boy Finn and my adopted pet Coraline.

  “Yer givin’ me a dose, but I’ll not be responsible for that puss face of yers.’’ I had attempted to muffle our predawn ingress into the still sleepy town of Newry by shifting into a mute first gear and turning off the headlights, as though the unpolished child held a telepathic connection with me when we stilled before the corrugated roofed, dilapidated and withering farmhouse, Finn had told me of. Below moss rotting bricks, the slight boy had crept stealthily with an Irish indigenous, light-footed prowess and proudly delivered Coraline into my grasp. The cat had sleepily opened one slew eye in kitten like contentedness and immediately her shape had molded into my strong-armed embrace. “Thanks young buck. Ya’ve got the gait of a cat.’’

  I had felt the sadness Finn was trying to obscure with his lopsided pleased grin and suspected it was manifesting from both the prospect of losing his feline friend and subsequently his newly acquired human one also. “Ya think the IRA would take a boggin’ lad like me?’’ He had chided me sincerely, lingering chest height with eager eyes peering up at me as my verdant sharp green eyes reciprocated intensely in return. The chamber in which my deep-set eyes dwelled was blackened from fatigue and had unintentionally given me a more acerbic umbrage as I shook my head in response. Perhaps mourning the possible adventures that our association might usher in on his trite, unvaried existence, our meeting was a brief one and the lad politely backed away into the shadows of predawn.