Tag: england

In Turbulent Times

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‘Yes, Nora. Yes, I honestly do.’
‘I wish I could share your optimism.’
‘You’re becoming cynical in your old age, Nora. You need cheering up.’
Nora looked behind her towards the door. ‘I don’t know what’s keeping Janet.’
‘I wouldn’t even like to hazard a guess,’ Clifford said with a smile. ‘Would you like me to order drinks for you now? What were you and Janet … ? Ah, here she comes.’ He stood up as Janet rushed in.
‘Sorry I was so long, Nora,’ Janet said, ‘but I kept meeting people. Robert Purdy’s here with his fiancée. And the whole Morgan family from Clondarragh.’
‘Janet, you know Dr Hamilton, don’t you?’
‘But of course I do. How are you, Dr Hamilton? We haven’t seen you down in our part of the world for ages.’
‘I’m fine, thank you, Janet. It’s a pleasure to see you again. I hope your mother and father are well.’
‘Hale and hearty, Dr Hamilton. I’ll tell them you were asking after them.’
‘Yes, please do,’ said Clifford. ‘I actually came to invite you and Nora to join us at our table. My wife, my son, his girlfriend, and some friends of ours are there.’
‘That would be very nice,’ said Janet. ‘We usually have more company with us, but they all had other things to do this evening.’
Clifford led the way to his own table and made the necessary introductions. Nora and Janet sat down on two extra chairs that John had already added to the group.
Nora sat between John and Ian, Janet between Ian and Clifford.
‘Now, what is everyone drinking?’ Clifford asked.
Fiona and Susan had had enough, they said. Janet and Catriona asked for lemonade. Julian a Macallan single-malt Scotch—‘If they have any.’ Nora ordered gin and orange.
‘Mother’s ruin, Nora,’ said John. ‘Make mine a John Powers, Clifford.’
‘Julian’s choice of Scotch for me too,’ said Ian.
‘Do you ever drink anything else, Ian?’
‘Only Drambuie, but not now.’
Clifford smiled. ‘You’ll have Coca Cola in your whiskey, I suppose.’
‘Get away with you, man,’ Ian scolded. ‘Even though I know you’re joking, you should still be horse-whipped for a crack like that. In Scotland we don’t joke about our Scotch.’

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The Unquiet Land

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…she died of consumption, God rest her soul. Flynn was well up in his teens by then and already working in McGuigan’s quarry. But he grew up with a chip on his shoulder as big as a boulder and a fierce hatred of the English that he’s nurtured for years.”
“He needs to learn the lesson of forgiveness,” Padraig remarked.
“Forgiveness is a rare commodity in Ireland, Padraig,” Mother Ross said. “Irishmen never forgive and never forget. That’s their nature.” She paused, staring into the hearth. Then she asked, “What about Caitlin?”
“What about Caitlin?” Padraig repeated with more feeling than he meant to show.
Mother Ross looked suspiciously at Padraig, but gave him no inkling of the thoughts that rushed through her mind. “Is Caitlin ready to be married in church?”
“She is now, yes,” Padraig replied with a touch of petulance.
“Finn didn’t know, did he?”
Padraig walked across to the door and leaned against the wall beside it. His shoulder and his broken ribs were painful. “Oh Finn knew all right,” he said, but his face had an uncomfortable, guilty look.
Mother Ross made no comment. She felt that Padraig and Caitlin together had indecently betrayed the man who had been closest to both of them. And yet she could not see how anyone but Finn MacLir himself could live outside the Church. She was happy for Caitlin, but disappointed at the same time. “Then they won’t have to wait long before they can be married.”
“They have only to name the day.”
Neither Mother Ross nor Padraig spoke, and they were still silent when voices and footsteps were heard outside, and doors opened both in the front and the back of the house.
“I still think we should have buried his wine alongside of him,” someone said.
“Yes, think how happy he’d be if he woke up one night and found it there beside him.”
“He wouldn’t want to get out.”
“Not till the bottle was empty at any rate.”
“Bottle be damned; he drank it by the barrelful.”
“What an old sot he was.”
“Ay, but you don’t find his likes below every hedge.”
“I’ve heard many a woman between Iceland and the Isle of Wight say the same thing about him.”

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In Turbulent Times

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‘Susan, that’s unkind.’ Clifford considered Susan rather trying at times.
‘It’s also unkind of you two to get on to shop-talk when we’re out enjoying ourselves,’ Susan countered. ‘Ask her to join us. Let’s give her a good time.’
‘Maybe I will in a moment.’ Clifford took a thoughtful sip of his brandy.
‘I suppose Liam’s looking after the children,’ said Fiona.
‘Or Nora’s mother is,’ Clifford suggested.
‘You mean that pretty girl has children already?’ John could not conceal his surprise.
‘Two of them,’ Fiona answered. ‘A boy and a girl.’
‘She didn’t waste any time,’ Ian remarked.
‘They’re young, of course,’ said Fiona. ‘Four years and two and a half, I believe.’
‘Don’t look now, Ian Anderson,’ said John, ‘but Clifford has just gone to get you a woman: a dark beauty of black, remorseless tragedy.’
‘You’re drunk, John Simpson,’ Susan said. ‘How many sneakies did you have at the bar?’
‘Listen to her, Ian,’ John said. ‘Not a month married and she’s nagging the hell out of me already. Are you sure you really want a wife?’
‘Very sure,’ Ian replied firmly.
‘I don’t imagine that you would be nagging Julian, Catriona,’ John said, ‘when you are only a month into your marriage.’
‘I’d wait for two months,’ said Catriona. Like Ian’s, her voice too was richly seasoned with Fiona’s lost ‘oats and haggis.’
‘You’d better watch that one, Julian,’ John warned light-heartedly.
‘What Clifford didn’t tell you,’ Fiona began, leaning forward to speak in confidence, ‘is that he delivered that young lady—at her birth, I mean—when he was barely two months into his internship. It was a very difficult placenta previa delivery that required a C-section under the most primitive conditions. He almost lost the mother and the baby too.’
‘Good old Clifford,’ said John. ‘A born surgeon and one of the best we have in the country.’
‘But the sad result of Clifford’s first major surgery,’ Fiona said, ‘is that the mother was left unable to bear children. Clifford blames himself for that. Unfairly, I think. Given his age and inexperience at the time, he did well to save the lives of both the mother and her baby. But he rarely talks about it. He has received both high commendation and strong condemnation from the local doctors in the area.’

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In Turbulent Times

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‘This has been a splendid day.’ Clifford Hamilton pronounced each word separately, distinctly and with obvious satisfaction.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ said John Simpson, a prematurely balding colleague of Clifford’s at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. He was an English-trained heart specialist who had come to Belfast from the Royal Army Medical Corps after the war.
‘I think we can all drink to that.’ Clifford’s wife Fiona displayed her prominent teeth. ‘And to your fiftieth birthday, darling. What a wonderful way to celebrate.’
A chorus of ‘Hear, hear’; ‘Happy five-o, Clifford’; ‘Great day altogether’ responded to Fiona’s remarks.
The five members of the jovial party had spent the day in Clifford’s new Bentley—a birthday present to himself—driving around the countryside of the Drumard hills and visiting places that Clifford had known as a boy. He had amused his passengers like an Irish jarvey with stories and histories and half-remembered ballads about drumlins and dolmens, outlaws and rebels, murders and massacres, big houses and castles, and their restless ghosts. The sun had shone all day from an unblemished sky; the road had shimmered in front of them; the sea glimmered and sparkled; and the mountains languished in a lavender haze, like a herd of huge animals sprawling in the sun at noon. The journey had ended at the Drumard Strand Hotel, a large red sandstone building on the green foreshore at Carraghlin, where Clifford and Fiona’s twenty-year-old son Julian and his girlfriend Catriona had joined them.
‘I admit it’s not my favourite bit of architecture,’ Clifford had said of the hotel. ‘But here we can dine in a manner befitting the mood of the day—splendidly. A grotty little cafe on the main street just wouldn’t have been right.’
‘And what can you tell us about this place, Clifford?’ asked John Simpson’s recently married wife, Susan, a short, slim, sharp-featured young woman from a wealthy, landowning politician’s family in Oxfordshire.

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The Unquiet Land

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“It’s like I told the police, Ignatius,” Liam replied. “It was early morning. And I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I did see someone running from the church, but he was disappearing over the ridge in the direction of Lisnaglass.”
“Just one man?” Sweeney asked.
“I saw only one,” Liam told him.
“Lisnaglass is full of Unionist louts,” someone observed. “So you didn’t see who it was?”
“No, I didn’t.” Liam was almost certain that the culprit he had seen running from the church was Michael Carrick, but he saw no reason why Michael, of all people, would have given Father Padraig so severe a beating and carried out such vandalism in the church. By the time the police interviewed him he had convinced himself that he had been mistaken. He had also decided that even if it had been Michael, he could not have informed against him. Michael Carrick, everyone knew, was going to marry Caitlin MacLir, and Liam could do nothing that would destroy the happiness of a woman he hopelessly fawned on, like a devoted pup.
“You weren’t at the burying, Padraig,” Sweeney remarked.
“No, in all conscience I felt that I was unable to be there, Ignatius,” Padraig replied. “The burying, as you called it, was not a Christian one. And the graveyard at Killyshannagh is no longer consecrated ground. As a priest I felt that I could not honestly take part. However much I loved Finn MacLir. It was not the way I wanted to see him go.” A feeling of having been cheated by God Himself strengthened insuppressibly in Padraig’s breast. “But it was Finn’s own wish.”
Padraig’s words were like rocks tied to his ankles that sunk the priest in Sweeney’s estimation.
You could have put on a suit, Sweeney thought, forgot you were a priest for a few hours, and come to the funeral of the man who rescued you, raised you, paid for your education. You’re a sanctimonious hypocrite, Father Padraig. You deserved that hiding. I’d love to give you one myself. Sweeney walked away, disappointed and disgusted.
The general conversation in the MacLir house splintered, as those present addressed their neighbours rather than the group at large. Jim Patterson, finding himself with no one to talk to, caught the eye of Clifford Hamilton in the far corner of the dining room. Clifford, in a tailored black suit and white shirt, was leaning against the wall between the window and the bookcase. Jim Patterson crossed the crowded room and joined him. “How are you, Clifford?”
“Can’t complain, Jim. How’s yourself?”

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In Turbulent Times

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Caitlin was clutching at straws and she knew it. In her heart of hearts she knew that ten-weeks-old Rowan Hanlon had been left to their care. This conclusion was reinforced within a couple of hours when Michael returned from his walk to the telephone kiosk.
‘The Hanlons’ telephone has been disconnected,’ he announced. ‘It seems that they’ve gone.’
‘And left us with their baby,’ Caitlin added. ‘What are we going to do, Michael?’
‘What can we do? We either adopt and keep him, or put him up for someone else to adopt.’ Michael was feeling nervous and guilty. ‘We always wanted a boy. Maybe we should keep him.’
Caitlin looked at the sleeping baby, and her heart warmed to him in a way it never did to her daughter Nora. ‘I’m fifty-four, Michael. Do I want to start rearing a baby again at my age?’
‘I don’t know, Caitlin. That’s for you to decide.’
A week later Michael came in from the fields for his dinner. The baby was asleep in a large basket in front of the kitchen range, and Caitlin sat in the armchair beside it. Michael crossed the room and kissed her on the cheek.
‘What have you got there?’ he asked. ‘A letter?’
‘This came this morning. It’s addressed to you.’ Caitlin opened all the post that came to the house, no matter to which one of them it was addressed. ‘The envelope is postmarked Baile Átha Cliath, and my first thought was that Flynn Casey had gone back to Dublin. But it’s not a letter; it’s Rowan’s birth certificate.’
‘From Robert and Connie.’
‘But there’s no letter. Just the birth certificate.’ Caitlin looked up at Michael who was standing before her. ‘Michael, you are named as this baby’s father. Look.’ She handed the certificate to her husband. ‘At first I thought, No this can’t be true. Then I remembered that week last May when Connie stayed at the cottage on her own. You were having sex with her then, weren’t you?’
Michael shuffled uneasily, staring at his own name as the father of Rowan Michael.
‘May to February is nine months, Michael.’ Caitlin’s voice was calm and controlled. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
Michael at last looked at Caitlin. ‘I’m sorry, Caitlin. I’m truly sorry. But ….’
‘But you just couldn’t resist her. Isn’t that it? You just couldn’t resist her.’

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The Unquiet Land

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“And it will come to two sides,” Dr Starkey agreed. “As I was saying, Lloyd George’s Liberals will pass a Bill for the Protestant North and another for the Catholic South. He doesn’t have much choice now.”
“De Valera’s Sinn Fein party in Dublin won’t accept it,” Joe Carney asserted. “They won the last election by a large majority.”
“But maybe they’ll settle for half a loaf rather than no bread,” said Sweeney.
“Never,” cried Flynn Casey. He was a broad-shouldered, muscular young man, with a tousle of uncombed, curly, red hair, and the tanned face and hands of one who worked out of doors. “We want the whole loaf. We’ll fight to the death to preserve Irish unity. We’re not going to let the North fall into the hands of a weedy little bastard like Edward Carson.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Flynn Casey,” Jim Patterson challenged. He was a caustic young cynic who worked with his father as a barber in the village. Of medium height and build, with wispy, thinning dark hair, he was about the same age as Flynn Casey but as fanatically committed to Unionism as the other to Republicanism. “Edward Carson is no weedy little bastard. He’s a great leader. He has united everyone who’s opposed to Home Rule and Sinn Fein and he’s going to lead them to victory.”
“Victory over who?” Flynn Casey asked contemptuously.
“Victory over the Nationalists. Victory over all you romantic riders of the Celtic Twilight.”
“And victory over England?” Flynn glanced around to see how his parry had been appreciated. “For it seems to me,” he went on, observing that some of his audience was impressed, “that the great Sir Edward Carson is prepared to fight even the British for the worthless privilege of remaining British.”
“Should it come to civil disorder,” Dr Starkey began, “the British government will be powerless to cope with it. The officers in the British army have already made it clear that they would choose dismissal rather than obey an order to put down Protestant resistance in Ulster.”
“So we’ll win our fight for freedom from Irish Catholic domination by not having to fight it,” Jim Patterson said awkwardly. “England will back down. Dr Starkey is right. Separate treaties for the North and the South. England won’t throw us like scraps to the mangy dogs that slobber round the table legs of Dublin and Rome. We’re determined.”

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The Unquiet Land

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NINE
Finn MacLir lay in a plain wooden box in the dark, still winter of death. He wore his navy-blue fisherman’s jersey and trousers and his best black boots. Harry and Ted Robinson, the undertakers from Lisnaglass, had laid out the body and, with Michael’s help, had carried the heavy coffin down the stairs. It stood for three days on trestles in the sitting room where the sofas and chairs had been pushed aside to make room for it. Mother Ross and Finn’s twin daughters had held vigil over the corpse, with Finn’s closest friends in attendance. It was a quiet, solemn wake for one renowned—and excoriated—for his regular parties.
Now the coffin lay on two ropes beside the open grave where the two Robinsons and two of their assistants stood silently, heads bowed respectfully, hands clasped in front of them. Around the grave men stood in sombre suits and black ties, hats in their hands, their tanned faces clean and almost shining, like those of boys going to Sunday school. Some spoke to neighbours in hushed, reverent tones. A cool breeze blew in from the sea, shivering the short grass of the old graveyard behind the ruins of Killyshannagh church where sheep grazed unconcerned at a distance from the men assembled around the grave. A polished granite headstone bore the graved inscription, Roisin MacLir, neé Corrigan, 1858-1892. Finn’s name would be added later.
Dressed in a black suit with a knotted black tie, Clifford Hamilton stepped forward. “I have the duty and the honour of saying a few words about the man lying in death before us.” He glanced around at the faces of the forty or fifty men standing in front of him. He felt that the unfortunate Padraig, Finn’s adopted son, should have been here, making this farewell speech to his earthly father. Or Seamus Slattery or Ignatius Sweeney who had known Finn for so many years. Or the more experienced, respected Dr Starkey. “I say ‘honour’,” he continued reluctantly, “without hesitation or qualification. Because Finn MacLir was one of the greatest men it has been my honour to have known. He was a close friend of my father and my father’s family, but he was a friend of rich and poor. Whether a man was a lawyer, a banker, a farmer, or a fisherman made no difference to Finn.

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In Turbulent Times

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‘So there you have it, Michael. A rather sad or maybe a tragic story. I’ve had lovers myself, but nothing serious. And I’ve always insisted on Durex. I was caught once before and I was determined not to get caught again. I thought I was safe with you. I wanted sex with a man without a condom for a change. You don’t mind me saying that, do you?’ She smiled. ‘You let me down, but I forgive you. It wasn’t your fault. I’m actually enjoying being pregnant again.’ She squeezed his hand and reclined again in the armchair.
‘You’ve had a baby then?’
‘When I was sixteen. Much too young to be a mother. So I gave it up for adoption.’
‘So no children with Robert.’
‘No, and none likely. The father of my first baby was an eighteen-year-old boy. He’s a fisherman in Lisnaglass now. Married and has four sons.’ Connie looked at Michael again. ‘Poor Michael. I think you would have liked to have had four sons yourself.’
‘I’d have been happy with one,’ Michael said, then paused in silent reflection of the fickle trickery of nature. He took his first drink, then, returning Connie’s look, he asked, ‘What will Robert say or do when he finds out you’re pregnant?’
‘Probably nothing. I am nothing to Robert now. The sad thing is that I love him. I truly love him.’ Her voice faltered, and she let her head fall back on the chair again, her eyes closed. ‘But I think it’s only a matter of time before there’s talk of divorce.’
‘Did Frank and Kathleen have any children?’
‘A son. Five years old now. Little Bobbie. Robert is very fond of him. Spoils him really.’
‘Will you tell Robert that I am the father of your baby?’ The question secretly thrilled Michael. He was going to be a father. He was not a sterile mule after all. He was a whole man. Able to father children. And Nora. The chances were that Nora really was his daughter. Not Padraig’s. Praise be to God, he thought. What a happy, happy day. He drank with a greater feeling of elation than he had ever experienced. He felt like getting drunk, but his glass was empty and he wasn’t bold enough to ask for a refill.
‘No, I won’t tell Robert that you are the father of my baby,’ Connie was saying. ‘No need to. He thinks you’re sterile, remember. There’s a man I see in Belfast. Robert will think the baby is his, and I won’t tell him otherwise. Least said, soonest mended, Michael. Don’t worry. He won’t be challenging…

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The Unquiet Land

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Caitlin lifted her hand and stroked the back of Michael’s head. “Please don’t cry, my love,” she said. “Please don’t cry.”
Michael raised his head. “I’m sorry, Caitlin. I’m truly, deeply sorry.”
Caitlin smiled. “You big baby. I’ve never seen you in such a state.”
She kissed his cheek and snuggled into his arms.
Michael kissed her hair, her forehead, her cheek. Then he tenderly kissed her swollen mouth. “Are you cold?” he asked. He saw the long rip in the front of her dress and felt guilty.
“Yes,” Caitlin replied. “I’m so cold my blood has frozen.”
Michel gallantly took off his woollen jersey and gave it to Caitlin. “Pull that on,” he said.
She did. “Oh, that feels so much better. Thank you, Michael. Here, let me drape this shawl over your shoulders. It’ll help keep you warm. Or a bit warmer.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Run away up here.”
“I don’t know. It seemed appropriate. I needed to think.”
“Did you see him?”
Caitlin looked at Michael with a puzzled expression. “Did I see who?”
“Jesus. On the cross. Out there over the sea.”
Caitlin lowered her head again and pressed herself more tightly against Michael’s body. She paused thoughtfully. Her face was perturbed. “No,” she said at last. “Not Jesus on the cross.”
“Did you see anything?”
Caitlin’s fingers twisted Michael’s woollen jersey. “Oh Michael. I fell asleep for a while. I was exhausted. I had the most awful dream.”
Michael held her with both arms. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
“I don’t know if I could describe it as it was.”
Caitlin was quiet a while. Then in an agitated voice she said, “I saw the sea, Michael: a stormy sea, with big waves breaking and the spray flying, the way I love to watch it in its winter rage. And then it was calm, as calm as a mill-pond, and dark, almost black, and thick like tar, as it is in that picture in the church. And the sky was dark. And everything, everywhere, was as still as midnight. It’s the way the world will look when it’s ended and we’ve all gone.
“Then I saw something on the water, floating towards me, even though there was no movement of waves, no wind to drive it.

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