1999 (28 page)

Five of the dead woman's eight surviving sons came home from their construction jobs in England. All seven daughters were with their father in the front pew of the church for the Requiem Mass. At graveside Patsy was close to collapse.

Barry, Barbara, and Séamus McCoy piled into Apollo to follow the party back to Patsy's house in Summerhill for the wake. “He must have loved her very much,” Barbara commented.

“Don't know,” said McCoy, staring out the window. “He never talked about her.”

She turned towards her husband. “Do you talk about me?”

Barry looked shocked. “Not in the pub!”

“Well, what do you talk about then?”

“Politics, sports, that class of thing.”

“But not your wife and children?”

“Of course not, it's not the place.”

“You could invite your friends to our house and talk about politics and sports there.”

“In our house?”

“Of course.”

“I thought you hated political conversations.”

“Well I do, but I'm trying to…I mean…invite them anytime you like,” she finished lamely.

I'm too wise to fall into that trap,
Barry told himself.

He watched Barbara out of the corner of his eye as he parked in front of the house where Patsy lived. After she and McCoy got out he carefully locked the car. He doubted if his wife had ever been in a neighbourhood like Summerhill before. Technically it was in the same Dublin as Harold's Cross, but in reality it was light-years away.

Summerhill, the street with the lovely name, lay two blocks south of Mountjoy Square and ran from Portland Row to Gardiner Street, where it became known as Parnell Street. Once the whole area had belonged to Luke Gardiner, a self-made eighteenth-century property developer who had conceived of Dublin as the Second Capital of Empire and set out to make it so. Gardiner and his son, also named Luke, had laid out handsome Georgian residential blocks and broad thoroughfares such as Sackville Street—later renamed O'Connell Street—without realising that nothing is permanent. By the time Ireland freed herself from Empire, much of Gardiner's Dublin had fallen into decay.

Some of the worst slums in the city were those of Summerhill.

Wide-eyed, Barbara took in the coal dust-blackened tenements crowded together as if to keep each other from falling down. The ragged children playing in the street barefoot in spite of the winter weather.

“Your friend lives
here
?” she asked in a tone of disbelief.

Barry's smile was bitter. “A number of my friends have come from here.”

At the wake Barry was careful to introduce Barbara to Luke, Danny, and Brendan without mentioning either their politics or the Bleeding Horse Pub. Nor did he describe them as the Usual Suspects.

The tradition established for Irish wakes over many generations was strictly followed. Food and drink were provided in abundance. Anyone who could think of something good to say about the dead woman did so. Then the members of her own sex gathered in the kitchen while the men congregated in the tiny front room to talk about things that really mattered.

Barbara was the only woman who did not adjourn to the kitchen to exchange gossip and household hints. She skirted around the edges of male conversation, trying to pretend she belonged. Her husband's equal.

As drink continued to flow and the shadows gathered outside the windows, one of Patsy's neighbours predicted in a loud voice, “If they ever try to force a united Ireland there'll be another civil war.”

“Civil war?” Barry lifted one eyebrow. “There's already a civil war in the north but no one calls it that, because to give it a name would be to admit it exists. Which would nullify it as a threat.”

Suddenly Barbara said, “How can anyone threaten people with a situation that's already an accomplished fact?”

All eyes swung toward her; most of them with disapproval. Then they swung back to Barry to see how he would react.

He would not insult her by being patronising. “We on this island are perfectly capable of holding two contradictory viewpoints at the same time, Barbara. With a loaded gun held to our heads we can genuinely be afraid someone will hold a loaded gun to our heads.”

“I don't understand.”

“Sure you don't, Mrs. Halloran,” another man said kindly. “They're brewing tea in the kitchen and we could all use a cuppa; would you not go in and help them bring it out?”

She threw Barry a desperate glance but he would not intervene further. She stalked off to the kitchen. Her departing back was rigid with anger.

McCoy remarked, sotto voce, to Barry, “I'm afraid you let her down, there. She just wanted to be included.”

“She's always wanting something I can't give her.” Barry sounded exasperated. “I can't make her an honorary man, Séamus.”

“One of these days some bright spark will invent a roundy yoke he'll call ‘the wheel' and humanity will start to make real progress,” McCoy said dryly. “I can hardly wait.”

Once it really got going, the wake looked likely to last all night. The Hallorans had small children at home so Barry explained they must leave early. He and McCoy took turns shaking Patsy's hand and clapping him on the shoulder. Then they headed for the door.

Barbara lingered for a moment to speak softly to the bereaved man. Barry turned around, looking for her, in time to see Patsy's face crumple.

With no further word Barbara simply gathered the little man into her arms and pressed his sobbing face against her bosom. Paying no attention to anyone else in the room, she held him while an absolute tidal wave of grief washed over him and gradually receded. At last she released him and smiled down into his face. “You'll feel better now,” she said.

Patsy seized Barbara's hand and kissed it.

Barry had never seen his wife make such a gesture; would never have imagined such a response from Patsy. He was amazed and moved and deeply proud.

And he loved her.

On January 18, 1978, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg found Britain guilty of contravening Article 3 of the European Human Rights Convention by subjecting internees in Northern Ireland to inhuman and degrading treatment.

That same month the Provos unveiled a new weapon during a Bloody Sunday commemoration. The U.S. army's M-60 was a general-purpose machine gun that could fire six hundred rounds a minute and take down a helicopter in flight.
¹

 

What the IRA considered a war to free Ireland, Britain chose to call a crime wave. The British policy of criminalisation was not limited to the Provisional IRA but extended to the entire movement. The treatment of imprisoned republicans, whether in Ireland or England, became more brutal. Men and women alike were subjected to physical and psychological abuse far in excess of customary prison policy.

Anger grew.

In February La Mon House, a hotel southeast of Belfast, hosted the annual dinner dance of the Irish Collie Club. The jovial atmosphere gave way to horror when an incendiary bomb planted on one of the restaurant windows exploded, sending a huge fireball billowing through the room. As was customary the Provisional IRA had issued a warning about the bomb so that civilians could be evacuated. Unfortunately the men making the call had not been able to find a telephone box in time to clear the hotel.

Twelve people, seven of them women, were incinerated by the blast, and twenty-three more were injured.

The botched bombing was a major public relations disaster for the IRA. A wave of revulsion swept all thirty-two counties of Ireland. In its aftermath the security forces arrested everyone they could find with republican or Provo credentials—including Gerry Adams. He was charged with having been a member of the IRA since his release from Long Kesh the year before, and spent the next seven months in the Belfast's Crumlin Road Prison. The groundwork he had been patiently laying and that he hoped would bring a political dimension to the republican struggle was left in disarray.

By March more than 150 men were “on the blanket” in the Maze, a number that would swell to five hundred by the end of the year. The three H-Blocks originally involved were so full that newcomers to the protest were being put into other Blocks. Protestors were routinely and severely beaten in an effort to make them give up.

They gritted their teeth and endured.

 

On the second of April a soap opera premiered on prime-time television in the U.S. It was entitled
Dallas.
The network had little enthusiasm for the programme and at first agreed to run only five episodes.

 

Speaking on RTE, a spokesman for the infant computer industry told the Irish nation, “You missed out on the first Industrial Revolution, but you could be in the forefront of the second.”

 

A covert operation was set up by the Garda Siochana to monitor the actions of a growing number of dissident republican groups operating south of the border as well as in Northern Ireland. Unwilling to accept the discipline of the IRA, they were determined to operate in their own way—which included random criminality and gratuitous violence.

 

“In my family,” Barry remarked to McCoy, “republicanism was more a faith than a political philosophy. I joined the IRA to help create a nonsectarian republic where all the children of the state would be cherished equally. But the longer the struggle drags on the less we seem to be the sort of men Pearse would have been proud of.”

“Come on, Seventeen; you don't believe that.”

“A lot of people will. If you doubt it just look at history. Ignoring the fact that Sinn Féin was elected by a landslide to form our first government in 1919, the other political parties accused them of every crime in the book because genuine, egalitarian republicanism was a threat to their own ambitions. It wasn't just a demonstration of Irish begrudgery, it was a calculated attempt to manipulate public opinion for political advantage. But before it could succeed we were plunged into the Civil War.

“When the Free State side won—with a lot of British help, it must be said—the majority of journalists quickly joined in condemning the republicans. To preserve their jobs they demonised both Sinn Féin and the IRA with little regard for the truth. It eased off when they thought we were a spent force, but when we started to recover the accusations began again. Unfortunately now some republicans are playing into their hands by becoming as bad as they make us out to be. I realise there's a large element of frustration involved, but that doesn't justify random brutality.”

“You can't accuse the whole IRA of random brutality.”

“No, Séamus, but the mud's rubbing off on us. When your average Joe Soaps reads lies in the papers day after day, and hears them on the radio night after night, he's going to believe them because it's easier than finding out the truth. I need to go north and take more photographs of the men in the H-Blocks. When people see with their own eyes what's going on there, what's being done to their fellow human beings…”

McCoy was shaking his head. “I don't think they'll let you, Seventeen. Not again. You did too good a job the last time.”

“Then what
can
I do?”

McCoy gave him a level look. “You know the answer to that. Do what I'm not strong enough to do anymore. You still have the reputation you won during the border campaign and you're a born leader. Thousands of men would follow you, no questions asked.”

Barry's face tightened. “I can't do it.”

This was important enough to make McCoy break his rule about not asking personal questions. “Will you tell me why not?”

Barry started to reply; stopped himself. Flashed his old reckless grin instead. “Will you tell me your nickname in the Kesh?”

The question caught McCoy off balance. “That's private, Seventeen.”

“Exactly.”

McCoy never asked Barry again, but he often thought about their conversation.
Something terrible happened to Seventeen at some stage, and I don't think it was the death of Feargal O'Hanlon, either. I'd hate to go to my grave without knowing the answer.

I wonder if Ursula knows?

With Séamus McCoy home again to keep her company, and Breda Cunningham on hand to care for her physical requirements, Ursula began to come to terms with her changed life. She would never stop trying to walk again but the imperative was no longer there. She was beginning to accept life in a wheelchair.

Or so she tried to tell herself.

 

From the time Barry's daughter could walk she was called Trot. Ursula gave her the nickname. “The child's always in a rush,” she said, “and trying to be Grace is unfair to a little girl in a rush. Trot describes her better.”

And it did.

On pleasant summer days Philpott would pack a box lunch and two flasks of tea. In late morning a small procession would set out from the yellow brick house on its way to the village green. Ursula rode like a queen in her wheelchair, pushed by Séamus McCoy.

At first she had been self-conscious about appearing in public in the chair, but McCoy was so matter-of-fact she soon forgot there was anything unusual about her mode of transport. He walked and she rode and the children toddled along beside them.

The adults never ran out of conversation. Often it was about politics; everything seemed to come back to politics. “I used to be able to stride along like a boy, almost as fast as some people could run,” Ursula once remarked. “Even after I bought the Ford I thought nothing of walking into Ennis to the market, or over to Quin to buy a mare. But now…” She shook her head. “I'll never forgive the loyalists for that; for making an old woman of me.”

“You'll never be an old woman,” he said.

But when the chair was parked at the green so they could watch the children playing, he was careful to drape the blanket around her body and legs so the wheels of the chair were not visible.

He knew she was a proud woman.

Brian was under strict orders to hold his little sister's hand at all times. Grace Mary, not yet two years old, had other ideas. She was forever pulling free and darting away, so that McCoy had to abandon the wheelchair and pursue her while Ursula sat laughing.

Why, we're a family!
she thought to herself one day.

The idea delighted her.

 

U.S president Jimmy Carter described Iran under the leadership of the shah as “an island of stability.”

Two popes died in swift succession, as did the fifth president of Ireland, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh.

Polish-born Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II.

Martin McGuinness became chief of staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

And Gerry Adams finally faced trial for IRA membership. The charges against him had been based on a
Panorama
programme broadcast on BBCTV, showing him making a speech at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis.
^*
(An occasion that could not be televised in the Republic.) During the speech Adams had used words such as “billet” and “war zone,” which had been deemed sufficient by the RUC to prove his membership in the Provisional IRA.
²

The judge who heard the case, Lord Chief Justice Sir Robert Lowry, disagreed. The case was thrown out. Gerry Adams was a free man.

In August Archbishop Tomás Ó Fíaich visited the H-Blocks at the request of Sinn Féin. Afterwards he commented, “One could hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions, let alone a human being.” The archbishop went on to say that the nearest approach to life in the H-Blocks was “the spectacle of hundreds of homeless people living in the sewer pipes of the slums of Calcutta.”
³

 

Four young Dubliners calling themselves The Hype went in search of a record contract. They got the contract and a new name as well: U2.

 

September saw a new war begin.

This time England—aka Perfidious Albion, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, the “Ancient Enemy”—was not involved in any way and could not be blamed.

The situation had its roots much earlier in time, and lay much closer to home.

Ursula's explosion of anger disrupted the breakfast table. “Just look at this newspaper!” she cried, waving the offending item in the air. “Did you know that the largest Viking town outside of Scandinavia was found right here in Dublin, at Wood Quay? There are ancient timber streets and house foundations and everything. Hundreds of artefacts have been discovered and the archaeologists say they haven't even uncovered the entire town yet. But now Dublin Corporation's going to bulldoze the whole area.”

Barry put down his fork. “Are you serious?”

“It says so right here.”

“I know about Wood Quay, of course; the ruins were first discovered in '69 or '70, and I've been there a number of times as the archaeological work progressed. It's slow going; they have to be very careful and they're always struggling to get more funds. I must have taken a hundred photographs over the years because the place fascinates me for some reason, but I haven't been down there in a long time and had no idea this was in the wind. Hand me that paper, will you?”

With growing astonishment Barry read that Dublin Corporation, the governing body of County Dublin, planned to build a huge new complex of civic offices that would obliterate the early Viking settlement.

A private group called the Friends of Medieval Dublin had been trying to have the signing of the building contracts postponed if not set aside altogether. But the corporation was determined. They had lined up a cadre of experts to support their argument, spearheaded by Michael J. Kelly, head of the Department of Archaeology at University College, Cork. In an interview Kelly claimed that money spent elsewhere would give a much better view of life in medieval Ireland than “this hole in Dublin.”
⁴

Barry was disgusted. “This country is desperate for money and here we have a ready-made tourist attraction that would bring in tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people every year, and city government wants to destroy it to put up a monument to themselves? It defies logic.”

Barbara reached for another slice of toast, thought of her waistline, and drew back her hand. “It's progress, Barry,” she said. “You can't keep every old thing in Ireland; the country's full of old things.”

Barry shoved back his chair. “Well, by God…I'm sorry, Ursula…by God we're going to keep this one!”

By the end of day both he and his mother were members of The Friends of Medieval Dublin.

On the fourteenth of September Barry was among the two thousand people from every walk of society who crowded into the Mansion House, official residence of the city's mayor, to listen to speakers every bit as eminent as Michael Kelly. At the end of the evening they passed strongly worded resolutions to protect the Wood Quay site and have the civic offices built somewhere else.

On the twenty-third Barry took part in a massive protest march calling for the preservation of Wood Quay. McCoy pushed Ursula's wheelchair; she carried her son's camera equipment on her lap. During the march she chatted with a number of other people who felt strongly about the issue, including an impassioned young lawyer called Mary Robinson. “I would have been a good lawyer,” Ursula remarked, rather wistfully, to McCoy.

The next edition of
The Irish Times
read “Save It!” above Barry's twin photographs of Wood Quay and the protest march. The editorial went on to point out that the Viking ruins had been designated by the High Court as a national monument, a fact that the corporation was choosing to ignore. The article concluded, “The decision has all the appearance of a deliberate and brutal opting for the uncouth, for the short-term, and to hell with heritage, history, and higher values.”
⁵