1999 (23 page)

Mairéad Corrigan and Betty Williams of the Peace People declared, “We do not equate the vicious and determined terrorism of the republican and loyalist paramilitary organisations with the occasional instances when members of the security forces may have stepped beyond the law.”
⁶

In the Bleeding Horse, the Usual Suspects were incensed by the Corrigan-Williams statement. Luke said, “Let me see if I have this right. Those women think it's okay for the police to shoot us, but not for us to shoot them?”

“The State—any State—has the monopoly on legalised violence,” Barry responded. He sounded bitter.

Patsy lurched to his feet. “We gotta do something about that.” He cast a bleary eye over the other men gathered around the table. “I'll get the drinks in.”

 

Many in Northern Ireland shared the reaction of the Usual Suspects. The Peace People Movement began to lose support.

 

By late autumn there were a handful of “blanket men” in the H-Blocks, both Provos and members of the INLA. As punishment for refusing to wear prison uniforms they were kept locked in their cells twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and deprived of all privileges including reading material. The cells contained no furniture aside from thin mattresses laid on the bare concrete floor—and chamber pots. The blanket men were not allowed to use the flush toilets outside the cells. Shivering in their icy cells, naked except for a blanket, they naïvely hoped their symbolic act would persuade the British to restore Special Category Status.

Instead it elicited the opposite response.

Interrogation procedures grew more brutal. Young men who genuinely believed they had been fighting for Irish freedom suffered sustained beatings of calculated cruelty. Truncheons were held between their ankles so that both inside ankle bones (a more sensitive area than the “funny bone” of the elbow) could be battered at one time. Muscles were torn and joints dislocated with no medical assistance given afterwards.

The protestors in the H-Blocks refused to bow to the policy of criminalisation because it would mean they accepted the authority of the state—the British state, the “conquerors”—and by extension accepted the partition Britain had enforced on Ireland and British right to occupy Irish soil. Every one of the republicans understood this in the marrow of his bones.

In spite of inhumane treatment they fought to remain human. Their unshakable camaraderie was the secret envy of their guards. They lifted one another's spirits by singing rebel songs or love songs or even ancient working songs, their voices echoing down the dismal corridors. Men stood at the doors of their cells and shouted whatever came into their heads: anything that might possibly interest or entertain fellow prisoners. In this way the Blocks learned about fishing on Lough Neagh and the construction of a bootleg radio; the medieval Gaelic poets and the manufacture of
poitín
; last year's World Cup lineup and Napoleon's campaign in Russia.

The republicans were under almost constant scrutiny during the day but the night was theirs. After the last bell check at eleven o'clock, it was story time.

The storyteller pushed his mattress close to the door of his cell. In the H-Blocks sound travelled. When Bobby Sands shouted “the book at bedtime,” he had a large and enthusiastic audience.

During Sands' first imprisonment in Long Kesh he had been in Cage Eleven with Gerry Adams, though he lived in a different hut. A bright-faced young man with a mane of wild red hair and an insatiable appetite for learning, Sands was popular with his fellow prisoners. He was a tough opponent on the football field, read voraciously, studied and became fluent in Irish, would talk to anyone about anything, and had a gift for poetry.

After being released from the Cages Sands was soon rearrested on the most convenient charge, possession of a firearm. This time he was sent to the H-Blocks. There he began keeping a diary of his prison experiences, written on toilet paper and smuggled out. Writing had become central to his understanding of himself.

In his nighttime storytelling Sands specialised in tales in which the hero was an underdog who set himself against the establishment. A favourite subject was the American Indian chieftain Geronimo. Bobby also recited from memory his versions of such politically based novels as
Trinity
and
Doctor Zhivago.

Lying in the dark, listening with their eyes closed and their minds fully engaged, the prisoners escaped Long Kesh. For a while they became free spirits successfully rebelling against all the injustice of an unjust world.

During the day the sanitation issue became a particular bone of contention. A disposal trolley was supposed to visit each cell once or twice every day to empty the chamber pots. Then the authorities stopped sending the trolley around.

With no way to dispose of their contents, the pots overflowed. It was only a matter of time until there was urine and excrement all over the floor. When the prisoners tried to hurl their faeces out the window the warders wired up the windows.

The desperate men began smearing it on the walls.

The Blanket Protest became the Dirty Protest.

 

The Usual Suspects were outraged. “Those lousy Prod scumbags!” Patsy cried. “How can they treat our boys like that! Them guards ain't human. They're filthy maggots what oughta be ground under the heels of real men.”

Barry said, “Insulting the other side is a coward's way to fight. There's nothing honourable about it. The concept of honour may be old-fashioned now, but it was intrinsic to the men of 1916. It is to me too.”

“What else can we do
but
call them names?” Luke wanted to know. “We're not like you, Barry; young and strong. You could be back in the fight tomorrow.”

Barry gave Luke a sombre look. In the depths of his grey eyes, banked fires smouldered.

Getting to his feet, he went to the bar and started ordering double whiskies. When the mood was on him he could drink an awesome amount and still appear to be sober, but he rarely indulged. One thing he never allowed himself was to get out of control.

On this night he almost did. At the last moment he bade the Usual Suspects good night and headed for home.

When someone switched on the light in her room, Ursula fought her way out of a tangle of dreams to see Barry standing in the doorway; or rather, leaning against the doorway.

“I need to ask you a question,” he said. “Was my father a good man?”

Ursula blinked. “Your father?”

“Finbar Cassidy. That was his name, was it not?”

“It was his name.”

“Was he a good man?”

“What do you mean by ‘good'?”

Barry peered at her owlishly. “I don't know.” Ursula realised he was drunk. “Kind, I guess.” He paused; considered. “Or gentle.”

The lines bracketing her mouth softened. An impartial observer might have glimpsed the young woman she once had been. “Your father was the kindest, gentlest man I ever knew.”

“Ah.” Barry turned around very carefully, like a man unsure of his balance, and started for the stairs. Then he turned around again and came back.

“Thank you,” he said with formal politeness.

“Go to bed, Barry,” his mother told him.

The following morning at the breakfast table she chose a moment when no one else was listening. “Why did you ask me if your father was a good man?” she asked in a low voice.

Barry did not swing his gaze towards her but turned his entire upper body in her direction. Slowly. Giving the headache no excuse to roll thunder through his skull. “Just pub conversation. Last night we were discussing nurture versus nature.”

“That doesn't sound like pub conversation to me.”

“How would you know? Ladies don't go into pubs.”

“I am not a
lady,
” Ursula said with disdain. “I am a
republican
.”

 

Breda Cunningham now only came once a week to the yellow brick house. Ursula claimed she did not need a nurse at all, but she looked forward to Breda's visits. Occasionally there was pain she admitted to no one else, which the nurse could alleviate with a hypodermic needle. More importantly, Breda eased her loneliness.

“Sometimes it feels like I'm stranded on a raft in the ocean,” Ursula confided one day when the pain threatened to swallow her whole. “The sharks are circling and I'm helpless.”

“Now don't talk like that, you're a lot stronger than you used to be.”

“Only upper body strength,” Ursula said dismissively. “Basically I'm still helpless. And Barry's wife hates me. Oh, she hides it most of the time. She's too intelligent to start an open war, but not intelligent enough to realise I'm not her enemy. Before my accident I didn't realise how she felt because we were never alone together for any length of time. When I came up to Dublin Barry was always here. And Séamus, of course.”

Breda pursed her lips as she put the hypodermic needle back into its blue velvet case. “Every time you mention Séamus McCoy I hear something in your voice. You'd best tell me about him.”

Ursula searched for a brief summation that would satisfy her inquisitor. “Séamus can do anything he turns his hand to, he's as useful as a little pot.”

“That's not a man you're talking about,” the nurse said, “it's a convenience. Tell me about the man.”

“He's been like a father to Barry.”

Breda gave her a searching look. “And? Is there something wrong with him? Does he have two heads? Two wives? Does the poor fella snore?”

Ursula's eyes twinkled. “I wouldn't know about that—the snoring, I mean. But he's not married and he's quite presentable.”

“So everything's grand for the two of you except he's in prison.”

“You read too many trashy novels, Breda.”

When the new baby came Barbara would have her hands full, so Barry offered Warren Philpott the job of housekeeper. The little man's initial response was negative. “I sold the boardinghouse to you in the first place to be rid of all that.”

“I could hire someone else, Warren, but you know the place better than anyone else. Suppose I offer you double what I'm paying you to cook, and…the old couple in the mews has decided to move in with their married daughter. You can have their flat when they leave.”

An avaricious glint appeared in Philpott's eye. “As a sitting tenant? And for a nominal rent?”

Barry did some quick calculations in his head. “Very well, but the arrangement's just between us. You'll be keeping the books so my wife doesn't need to know.”

Warren Philpott was mightily pleased with himself. When he sold the house to Barry in 1963 he had felt guilty about relinquishing property that had been in his family for generations. Now he had some of it back again. His status as a sitting tenant would mean in twenty years, if he lived that long, the mews flat was as good as his.

For good historical reasons, Irish law no longer favoured the landlords.

 

While the children were small and boiling with energy, Barry often took the morning paper and searched for a temporarily uninhabited corner of his house where he could peruse it in peace.

Barbara hunted him down.

She stood in the doorway, arms akimbo, and said, “Why are you so grumpy all the time?”

He looked up. “I'm not grumpy.”

“Yes you are, and it's awful. Look at you now with your long face. I don't know why you can't at least be pleasant.”

“I thought I was being pleasant. Besides, I'm trying to read the newspaper and I rarely smile and laugh at what I see in the papers.”

“You could at least make an effort,” she said.

And walked away.

 

In November the Peace People held a rally on the Falls Road, the Catholic heartland of West Belfast. The Falls was also Sinn Féin heartland. Party speakers usurped the rally. Loud cheers greeted the remark, “Any call for peace, regardless of the sincerity of those involved, which singles out republican violence and which ignores the nature of the society in which we live, is doomed to failure.”

Writing from Long Kesh, Gerry Adams stated, “Republicans must ensure that our cause and methods remain within the bounds of our own conscience. Revolutionary violence must be controlled and disciplined, a symbol of our people's resistance and the spearhead of their desire for a peaceful and just society.”
⁸

 

The Dirty Protest had no more effect on the authorities than did the Blanket Protest, but it provided the enemies of republicanism with fresh ammunition for denigrating the IRA. “Filthy animals,” was the mildest epithet.