Tag: ira

The Unquiet Land

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“Get out of my sight,” Finn yelled with more passion. “Get out of my sight till Caitlin comes back. And if she doesn’t come back, or if I find out that you’ve harmed her in any way, you’d better stay out of my sight. Otherwise I’ll kill you.”
Michael rose from the table without a word and left the house. He walked like one in a trance as far as the barn, then he leaned against the wall and wept. The tears brought some relief to his tortured mind, but as he climbed the rest of the way to the cottage his fear grew again like a nauseating vision of eternity. Remorse tightened its suffocating lock on his throat. He wished he could die.
Michael opened the door of the cottage and stepped inside. For a heart-lifting second of hope he expected Caitlin to be there, waiting for him by the fireside. But the cottage was empty and cold. In deep despair he was about to flee, about to rush down the hill again and give himself up to the law in Lisnaglass. But fear of the consequences stopped him. Anguished and frightened he lay on the straw-filled tick on his bed and suffered the cruel torture of the demons in his mind.
That which hurt most was Finn’s banishment. To be cast out by such a man was a more atrocious punishment than death. What a strange revenge of fate, Michael thought, remembering the bleak November day when he drove his own father to the railway station and told him not to return. He had used almost the same words as Finn had: “If you come back, I’ll kill you.” His father had not come back. He did not even look back as he walked away from the horse and trap on which his youngest son had driven him to the town. He carried only a canvas bag containing all that his profligate life had left to him. That canvas bag was the last tangible remains of his father that Michael ever saw, for it somehow caught on the door of the train as his father went aboard and fell on to the platform. The stationmaster picked it up and handed it into the compartment.
That memory had returned to Michael frequently during the past ten or eleven years. He often wondered where the bag was and whether his father still owned it. Strange to recall the bag more than the huge, round, florid-faced man who owned it. Stranger yet when the man was as memorable as Thomas Carrick: memorable for his flaming yellow hair and a face that glowed bright red as if burnt by the fiery aureole of his hair; memorable for the mountainous bulk of his body and for the inexhaustible energy with which he drove it to excesses of work, to excesses of drinking, to excesses of lust, to excesses of cruelty.

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In Turbulent Times

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‘Oh I’m in for the long haul, Caitlin. I’ve signed up for twenty-five years. Army life suits me.’
‘You won’t go back to the fishing then?’
‘No,’ Tom replied. ‘The Drumard Maid, your father’s old boat, the one my father bought, she has long since gone. Sold for scrap and probably did her bit for the war effort. No, I’m going to stay in the army.’ Then he turned to his companion. ‘Do you remember Gerard Sweeney, Caitlin? I know you do, Seamus.’
‘I don’t know if I would have recognised you, Gerard,’ Caitlin declared. ‘You’ve been in America a long time.’
‘Not too long,’ said Gerard. ‘Ten years. I was eighteen. Finbar got the farm, and I got sent out to the colonies.’
‘Better not let any Yank hear you say that,’ Seamus warned light-heartedly. ‘You wanted to go to America, if I remember rightly.’
‘Best decision I ever made, Seamus. I love it out there. Married a beautiful woman. I’ve a son aged six and a daughter aged four, a house, a car, a good job when I go back. I’m one lucky guy.’
‘Gerard likes that chick that Michael’s dancing with,’ Tom said. ‘He wants an introduction.’
‘You’re married, Gerard Sweeney,’ Caitlin scolded mockingly. ‘And so is she.’
‘And she’s here with her husband,’ Seamus added.
Tom slapped his friend on the back. ‘Too bad, Gerry, old sod. You’ll have to wait till you’re back in California.’
‘Lots of time, Tommy, my bold soldier laddie,’ Gerard said. ‘As Caitlin has pointed out, this party could go on all night, and what chick can resist a man in uniform?’
‘You’re a reprobate, Gerard Sweeney.’ Tom looked at Caitlin. ‘Don’t listen to him, Caitlin. He’s big-headed like most Yanks. They think they’re God’s gift to humanity.’ Tom paused to pull a swig from his bottle of beer. ‘Well, we just came over to say hello. I’ll call up to the house, Caitlin, before I leave. Have a chat with you and Michael, if he ever let’s go of that girl. And I want to see Nora as well.’
‘She’ll be happy to see you, Tom. And bring Gerard with you.’
‘I don’t know if I should introduce Gerry to Nora. She’s much too pretty.’
‘She’s married too, Tom. Remember.’

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The Unquiet Land

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…was smashed on the back of a pew. As Liam approached, he saw Padraig’s body lying against the altar at the end of the chancel. With heart pounding from fear at the sight of the still body, Liam rushed to its side and knelt down.
“Oh my God. Oh no. Not Father Padraig.” Liam stretched his trembling hand towards the prostrate body, but drew back. The blood on the chancel floor below Padraig’s head frightened him, as did the cuts and swelling bruises on the side of his face. Liam knew that two fingers placed somewhere on the neck could feel if the pulse was beating but he didn’t know where exactly.
“Father Padraig,” he said, as if trying to rouse the priest from sleep. “Father Padraig.”
He looked around helplessly, wishing that someone with more experience than he had would enter the church. Then he looked again at the inert, bloodied body of the priest. Padraig wasn’t moving; he didn’t appear to be breathing.
“He’s dead. Oh my God, Father Padraig is dead.”
Liam rose and ran outside. “Home, boy,” he shouted to the dog as he bounded down the steps. Followed by his old dog, Liam ran all the way to the main street of Corrymore. At the head of the street, the first house on the left was the home of Dr Starkey. Not only would the doctor be able to confirm if Padraig was alive or dead, his house had a telephone by which he could summon the police from Lisnaglass. Frantically Liam pounded on the door until a dishevelled Dr Starkey, wearing a plaid dressing gown, opened it.
“Liam,” said the doctor in surprise. “What’s wrong? Is it your father?”
Ciaran Dooley was known to have a bad heart.
“No, it’s Father Padraig,” Liam replied. “I think he’s dead. I think he’s been murdered.”
“Murdered?” cried the doctor. “Father Padraig? No. It can’t be.”
“I’m afraid it may be so, Dr Starkey. Father Padraig is lying in a pool of blood in the church and he’s not breathing. The pulpit has been knocked over, and I don’t know what other vandalism might have been perpetrated. Can you telephone the RIC in Lisnaglass and then go and see to Father Padraig? If he’s alive he needs help urgently. But I fear he’s dead. Murdered in his own church.”
Liam recalled the glimpse he had caught of the figure fleeing from the church. Could it really have been Michael Carrick? Yes, he was sure in his own mind that it was. But why would Michael do such a terrible thing? Liam troubled himself with questions as he walked down the still-deserted street to his home. Was it because Padraig was preparing Caitlin for the…

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In Turbulent Times

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‘Whatever. Who knows what’s true and what isn’t? But you know Flynn Casey. Always the rebel Republican. Loyal follower of James Connolly, his hero. His socialism got him involved with the IRA in strikes in Belfast in the Thirties. In fact he was shot in the leg during a march in the Lower Falls area that led to clashes with the police. Three years ago he was interned in Crumlin Road jail after that IRA campaign of protest against the arrival of the American forces.’
‘I remember that,’ said Seamus. ‘De Valera considered the arrival of the Americans an intrusion on Irish territory. And he was born in America himself. New York, if I remember rightly. And his father was Spanish. What a mad world we live in, Caitlin.’
‘Let’s hope the real madness is over now, Seamus.’
‘Amen to that. So what’s Flynn doing in Belfast? Apart from stirring up trouble.’
‘He’s managing a pub on the Falls Road, though he longs to be back in his Drumard hills. But he has Dermot in Belfast, and a grandson, if you can picture Flynn Casey as a grandfather.’
‘Happens to most of us,’ Slattery declared. ‘A grandson’ll keep him anchored in Belfast.’
‘Dermot married the youngest Sweeney girl, didn’t he?’ Michael said, without taking his eyes off the dancers.
‘And carried her off to the big city,’ Seamus replied. ‘They’re very happy there, so I’m told. Dermot has his own business as an electrician.’ Seamus paused momentarily. ‘Now there’s another good man gone. Ignatius Sweeney. Got out of bed one morning and dropped dead. And he hadn’t a grey hair in his head when he died. Still that short hair that stood straight up on his head. What your father described as the unravelled end of a rope. Good old Ignatius. I think he ate himself to death.’
‘That’s a terrible thing to say, Seamus Slattery,’ Caitlin chided.
‘Oh you know I didn’t mean it. A poor joke, Caitlin, and I shouldn’t have said it. Though old Ignatius might have enjoyed it. Violet, of course, went to Belfast to live with Dermot and Maire after Ignatius died, but I hear her health is not too good.’
‘I don’t think she ever got over Ignatius’s death,’ Caitlin said. ‘It was so sudden and unexpected.’
‘And Joe Carney’s another one,’ Seamus continued in his vein of In Memoriam. ‘His heart let him down. And young Joe. Joe-Joe we used to call him. Remember?’ Seamus leaned forward. ‘Remember the day you pulled him out of the harbour, Michael?’

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The Unquiet Land

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…his eyes bulged with anger, and his lips curled back like a snarling dog’s. His right hand swung from his side and slapped Padraig so hard across the face it seemed to smash every bone. Then back the big hand swung. The knuckles smacked Padraig across the cheek and nose. The nose spurted blood. Padraig felt the hot stream on his lip and chin.
“You sneaking, cowardly lecherer!” Michael roared. “You guttersnipe priest! You bastard son of Satan! I’ll kill you.”
He burled his fist and crashed it down on Padraig’s face and head and shoulders. Then he pushed the priest away from him with a snarl. Padraig stumbled backwards and fell against the chancel steps. Michael rushed forward, roaring like a bull. With both hands he picked up the priest’s limp body and hurled it the full length of the chancel. Like an empty sack Padraig hit the floor and slid forward. His back struck an upright of the altar-rail, and his body swung round and stopped with a crack of his head against the altar.
Michael’s chest was heaving up and down, pumping his anger. He threw himself against the pulpit; it keeled over and crashed like a felled tree. In a frenzy he could no longer control he turned and ran to the opposite wall, tore down the picture of Christ walking on the water and smashed it against the front pew. Then he raced out of the church.
Michael knew that Caitlin had taken the shore path homewards. He had seen her wend her way through the graveyard and head westwards along the cliff-top. She had pulled her shawl tight around her against the coldness of the bright, clear dawn. He followed her, walking quickly, almost running. He reached the end of the line of low cliffs. The path slithered down a steep hill to meet the shore. Pausing on the lip of the hill, he saw Caitlin ahead of him, hurrying homewards like a cat. He left the path and ran straight down the grass-covered hillside. A few sheep bolted in front of him, then swung away to one side or the other. A couple of gulls rose from a rock in the grass, wheeled in a wide arc through the air and settled again. Michael was blind to them. He saw only the lonely figure in the white shawl to which he was drawing closer. He rejoined the path near a patch of brambles. Caitlin was barely a hundred yards away. Michael chased after her. The chumpf of breaking waves and the roll-rock chinner of the backwash sounded in his pounding ears. Then Caitlin’s head jerked round. She stopped and turned to face him. Fear and guilt froze in her eyes.
“Michael,” she cried, but more in a plea than a greeting.

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The Unquiet Land

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“In what way is he different?” Padraig’s knees, as he sat on the wooden chair, touched Caitlin’s momentarily. He turned to one side and crossed his legs. “I can’t imagine Finn ever changing.”
He said this to reassure Caitlin, but his voice held little conviction. He recalled the wrinkles and the grizzled hair, the tired eyes and the wasted face. He remembered the bitterness that Finn could not hide on the night of the homecoming party and the violent anger on the day he ordered Padraig out of the house. And Padraig heard, as he had a thousand times, Finn’s deep voice saying, “I’m not only ailing, Padraig. The truth is, I’m dying.” He had lived more than a full year since then.
“Finn should have died a long time ago,” Dr Starkey told Padraig. “But that old warrior doesn’t know how to quit.” Sadly the doctor shook his head. “He won’t be fighting death much longer though. Not now. He’s taken too much punishment, Padraig. The referee’s about to stop the contest.”
“How much longer?” Padraig asked, instantly apprehensive.
“I am not the referee,” Dr Starkey replied. “By my watch the fight should already have ended. Personally I’d have stopped it long ago. As it is, I’d give Finn days now, rather than weeks. Certainly not another month. Even with treatment, if he’d ever agree to it. Which he won’t, of course.”
God won’t let him die yet, Padraig thought to himself, his apprehension mounting to panic. He can’t. I have to complete my mission first. I have to save Finn’s soul before God destroys his corrupt old body.
“My father is a sick man.” Caitlin’s voice brought Padraig back to the present. “I can sense it now. Perhaps it is something that has been going on for years, like the erosion of land by the sea. But lately it’s begun to show. And his personality is changing.”
“In what way is it changing, Caitlin?”
“I… I don’t rightly know, Padraig. I don’t know. Perhaps age has at last caught up with him. Perhaps he sees death coming and he’s frightened.”
“Do you really think so?”
Caitlin thought of the painting on the wall for a moment, her concentration fixed on the tallest of the three black crosses. “No,” she said slowly. “It’s something else.”
“Do you know what it is?”
Caitlin thought she did. “It’s as if he is being threatened and doesn’t know how to react.”

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In Turbulent Times

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Nora never let Joe know that they had been espied that night. She continued to write her long letters every week, letters in which she tried to hide her sadness and her melancholy and her bitter disappointment. Three months after Joe’s departure she was pregnant again, and that added to her bitterness. But she hid her gall from Joe. She did not want him to think she was accusing him of failing her. Joe wrote sad, serious letters with only an occasional light or amusing remark. But they were letters full of tenderness and love, like those he used to write before he learned of Nora’s marriage. It was almost as if the marriage had never happened, as if Joe and Nora were the lovers they had been before, with their own marriage to look forward to when the war was over. Nora realised that this was a fantasy to which Joe clung to help him through the bloody butcher days of war, the black, tense nights of watch and wait and pray. She gave him what he needed. She wrote what he wanted to read. She almost came to believe in it herself. Nor was it difficult. That they were both as deeply in love as ever was true and needed no deception. That they could ever enjoy that love outside of their passionate letters was where they lived in a soothing fantasy.
As time passed Joe’s letters became more morbid. He was losing his friends one by one but kept referring to a very old companion who was with him still, who never left his side. This old companion was never named, and it was some time before Nora realised who the companion was. In one of his letters Joe wrote:
He’s been with me since that day your father pulled me out of the harbour. He fought over me with Dr Starkey when I had pneumonia and he lost that time. He wants me to go with him somewhere, but I just turn to him and say, “I’m sorry, friend; but I have this girl back in Ireland and I’m going to her first. We have a lot to do, this girl and I. I hope you can wait a bit longer.” He’s waiting, my darling, but he’s becoming impatient. How long can this war last?’
Joe was excited about a posting to a Buckley-class frigate, the HMS Bullen. On 6 December 1944, the Bullen was torpedoed by U-Boat U-775, in the frigid waters of Pentland Firth, northwest of Scotland. The Bullen broke in two and sank in two hours. Of the one hundred and sixty-eight crew members on board, seventy-one went down with the ship. One of those lost was Chief Petty Officer Joseph Ignatius Carney. His turn had come. And this time there was no Michael Carrick to pull him out of the icy water.
A few weeks later Nora gave birth to a daughter whom she christened Josephine Siobhan.

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The Unquiet Land

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The bottle had been opened but little drunk from it. “As you can see, I haven’t been overindulging.” He pulled the cork out of the neck, poured two glasses and handed one to Caitlin.
“Thank you, Padraig.” As Caitlin placed the glass of wine on the table beside her, she noticed an old, soiled envelope. “This is addressed to my father,” she said, turning to look at Padraig.
“Yes, your father gave it to me when I left Corrymore to go to university.”
“You’ve kept it all this time?” Caitlin idly picked up the envelope.
“Yes. Seven years I’ve had it. You can read the letter if you wish.”
“No, not if it’s personal.”
“No, it is nothing private or secret that you have no right to read. It is addressed to your father after all, not to me.” Padraig took the envelope from Caitlin, removed the letter from inside and unfolded it. “It makes for rather disturbing reading though.”
Intrigued, Caitlin accepted the letter from Padraig and started to read with difficulty the untidy scrawl in which the letter was written. It was dated “Kyle of Lochalsh, Ross and Cromarty, Scotland, 11th March, 1902.” Caitlin turned to the last of the letter’s several pages; it was signed by Dr. Hamish Graham.
Dear Mr MacLir,
Thank you for your letter of 2nd ult. I apologise for my tardy reply but my practice has been busy of late, as is not unusual at this time of year. You requested any information I might have concerning the boy Padraig, over and above what little I was able to communicate to you during our brief meeting in November. You tell me that you have formally adopted Padraig as your son, so I can appreciate your desire to learn more about the laddie. However, until the month of July, 1899, we knew very little, not even his surname which he refused to divulge for fear, I believe, of being returned to the care of his uncle from which he and his mother had been so cruelly expelled. That part of Padraig’s unhappy history you are already familiar with.
What transpired in the month of July following Padraig’s arrival in Kyle was a disturbing court case in which a farm labourer from a community twelve statute miles from Plockton, a man of well-established bad character, was tried and convicted to hang for the brutal rape and strangulation of a vagrant woman who had been given permission to sleep in the hay in a barn belonging to this man’s employer. At the rapist’s trial, about which I read in several newspapers, both local and national, it was revealed that the woman’s father, the Rev. Magnus MacArtan,

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In Turbulent Times

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…no doubt hoping that the audience might have been larger. Denied by religious difference the pleasure of verbally crucifying Liam in front of his congregation in church, the Reverend MacNevin had decided to get compensating satisfaction by birching him in the barber’s shop. Unfortunately for the Reverend MacNevin only the barber was present. The other chairs were empty. Jackie Harrison’s assistant came in from Carraghlin only on Friday evening and Saturday.
‘I would have preferred not to inform you of this highly distasteful matter, Mr Dooley,’ the minister went on disingenuously, ‘but the act was witnessed inadvertently by two teenaged boys, one of whom happens to be my son. They went to collect waste paper at your house and it so transpired that they caught sight of the adulterers through your kitchen window. Fornicating on the floor. On the floor, I repeat. In their lustful passion they could not even wait to go to bed. I have extracted a promise from my son that there shall be no spreading of this unseemly scandal on his part, and he has endeavoured to extract a similar promise from his companion. But I fear the damage may already have been done. You can, of course, imagine the effect that such a sordid narrative must have on the imagination of adolescents. And what kind of an example does it present to them? The schoolmaster’s wife and an officer of the Royal Navy. By the greatest of good fortune, your wife is no longer a teacher at your school. You showed commendable prudence, Mr Dooley, in removing her from that position of responsibility. But I shudder to think what she might have been instrumental in instilling in the minds of her charges while she was so employed. That is why I have made it my painful duty to draw your wife’s gross indecency to your notice. It cannot be allowed to happen again. Furthermore, as a moral lesson to the young people of this village, it cannot be permitted to go unpunished. The very least you can do, Mr Dooley, is to forbid your wife ever to be seen in public with Joseph Carney again. What further steps you take to ensure that your wife does not repeat such immorality is, of course, up to you. I should think, however, that in view of the house from which she comes, such immorality and gross misconduct are indelible aspects of her character. Good day to you, Mr Dooley. And to you, Mr Harrison.’
With that the Reverend Lucas MacNevin, touching his hat to the two men, abruptly left the barber’s.
Jackie Harrison turned to finish the cutting of Liam’s hair. ‘None of this will go any further than these four walls, Liam,’ he promised.
But Liam did not hear what the barber said and would not have believed him if he had.

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The Unquiet Land

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…lack of ambition contrasted remarkably with that of Clifford Hamilton who had different aims on human brains. Yet when Caitlin thought about it, she could not avoid the conclusion that maybe Liam’s desire to fill young brains with learning was more worthy, if less prestigious, than Clifford Hamilton’s desire to open them up for medical probing. She admired Liam all the more for his altruism. He was indeed a true disciple of his idol, Father Padraig.
Beyond the school the pebble-dashed, two-storey rectory stood back a bit from the lane. Lamplight shone through the window of Padraig’s room upstairs; the rest of the house was in darkness. Padraig shared the rectory with Father Donagh Costello, the priest of the neighbouring parish “over the bridge” in Aughnashannagh. The pious widow, Brid O’Flaherty, lived in the same house as servant and cook to the two parish priests.
Caitlin paused outside the rectory, then passed by and climbed the rough-cut steps to the church. Aligned along the ridge, Our Lady Star of the Sea church occupied a spread of flat ground covered with the same beach-pebbles as the footpath from the road. Caitlin paused in the doorway at the west end of the church, stayed for a moment by the clarity and peace of the evening. She gazed out over the gravestones and the grass to the errant line of the cliff-top. Dark grey was the sea beyond, and blue the sky above. The blueness of the sky paled to limpid opalescence where the sun had set. No sound. No movement. Only a shiver in the short grass where the breeze blew across it. Inland the evening shadows darkened the purple hills, the green fields, the grey stone walls, the yellow flowers of spreading whins. Lights in farmhouse windows twinkled like stars. Thin twines of smoke uncoiled from cottage chimneys.
Caitlin felt a surge of joy within her. No-one knows how much I love this land, she thought.
She opened the church door with a click of the latch and closed it gently behind her. The hush of the evening out of doors deepened between the white walls and the dark, varnished roof-beams of the church. Three small windows high up along each wall admitted light by day but they were gloomy now. Below each window a picture hung. Padraig had told Caitlin their stories. Along the right-hand wall that overlooked the sea the first picture showed Jesus calling the disciples Andrew and John as they worked at their nets by the shore; the second showed Him in a crowded boat ordering the stormy waters to be calm; and the third showed Him walking upon the sea, holding an outstretched hand to Peter. Along the opposite wall the first picture was of Jesus pulling ears of corn as He walked through a field with…

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