1999 (29 page)

The marchers included leaders of the trade union movement, city councillors, historians, academics, representatives of the Irish Hotels Federation and of Dublin Tourism, and thousands of ordinary men, women, and children—the latter often marching en masse with their school classmates and carrying banners pleading for the preservation of the Viking city. The Gardai estimated twenty thousand people took part. It was the largest protest march to be held in Dublin since the Workers' Strike of 1913.

An Phoblacht
—although diametrically opposed to the
Times
politically—also gave front page coverage to the subject. The lead article stated, “Wood Quay barbarism is so very much in Leinster House character.”
⁶

Ursula agreed. “What else would you expect from Jack Lynch's government? Of course they'll abandon Wood Quay and all it stands for to the building contractors, because those are the men who donate big to Fianna Fáil.

“Remember how easily Lynch abandoned the Catholics in the north? When I was a girl being a republican meant one gave one's word to create a sovereign, independent, thirty-two-county Irish Republic. An oath was binding to the real republicans. They didn't adjust their integrity to suit their self-interest. But this lot…”

The three national daily newspapers reported an avalanche of letters to their editors, with ninety-nine percent in favour of preserving the national monument. Met with such a concerted public outcry, various politicians not currently in power made grandiose statements of support for Wood Quay. The Committee on Culture and Education of the Council of Europe sent a strongly worded telegram to Taoiseach Jack Lynch. Seanad Éireann
^*
opened a formal debate on the subject of Wood Quay.

Feelings ran even higher when drawings were published showing the proposed civic offices as designed by architect Sam Stephenson. They depicted two giant concrete bunkers reminiscent of World War Two, obscuring the view of historic twelfth-century Christ Church where Strongbow was entombed. Their squat and sinister appearance was a calculated insult to the historic city beside the Liffey.

“Save Wood Quay!” the nation cried in alarm.

What neither the Irish Senate nor the Irish public knew was that the government had long since taken the final decision. The contracts with John Paul & Co. Ltd, Building Contractors, were already signed.

Barbara did not join Barry in his newfound campaign, although in spite of having two small children to care for, she was beginning to show signs of boredom. More and more she relied upon Breda and Philpott for child-minding while she took up new ideas—hobbies, projects—one after another, tried them for a while, put them aside, and found something else.

She bought a pair of canaries and announced her intention to breed the little birds. Then a spider got into the cage and the female died of fright. Upon losing his mate, the male stopped eating and soon died too.

“If anything happened to me would you give up eating?” Barbara asked Barry in bed one night.

“Why would I do that?” he asked in all innocence.

She sulked for days.

In swift succession she tried sketching—using the children as subjects whom she rendered as unrecognisable blobs—then furniture refinishing—until the smell of the chemicals made her nauseous—and next turned to the homely skill of bread making. Philpott schooled her in the essentials.

On one of the rare days when Barry returned home early he found her alone in the kitchen. He stood in the doorway, transfixed by the sight. Watched her kneading the yeasty dough; smooth, elastic, as sensuous as flesh.

The need rose up in him then. Blind, primordial. He reached for her without thinking; without weighing the consequences. He did not even lock the kitchen door.

 

Shortly before Christmas of 1978 the IRA's new M-60 killed three members of a British army patrol in Crossmaglen.

The winter of 1978–79 was bitterly cold. Britain was disabled by labour union strikes. Rubbish collectors, health workers, and grave diggers all suspended their services. The situation did not bode well for a parliamentary form of government with no fixed limit to its life span.

 

In the Republic of Ireland on the twelfth of February, 1979, Mr. Justice Gannon granted an interlocutory degree restraining Dublin Corporation from proceeding with new construction on the national monument site at Wood Quay. The media reported him as saying, “Wood Quay is of national importance, irreplaceable if destroyed and beyond value in monetary terms.”

The corporation appealed.

With very little discussion, the Supreme Court found unanimously in their favour. Dublin Corporation was free to demolish the ruins of the ancient Viking town and build whatever it wanted. The bulldozers moved in the following day to begin destroying history.

The Friends of Medieval Dublin were far from through, however. Once again they took their case to the Council of Europe, hoping to pressure Dublin City Council to take up the cause. The council was an elected body representing one of the three different areas encompassed by the county of Dublin. These three local authorities comprised Dublin Corporation. If the City Council could be persuaded to weigh in behind the effort to save Wood Quay, surely there was a chance?

At least some of the city councillors were willing. When they tried to represent their preservation-minded constituents they ran into a bureaucratic stone wall. If they pushed too hard they received vague threats of personal legal difficulties or the withdrawal of city services. Dublin Corporation was a monolith. Deaf and blind, a law unto itself. Greater than the sum of its parts.

City councillors decided their time would be better spent planning for the next election.

The Friends set out to find and support candidates of their own who would be more sympathetic to Ireland's heritage.

 

“You could run for the City Council,” Ursula suggested to her son. “You're just what they need right now, an intelligent man who's interested in history.”

“There's only one thing wrong with your idea; I have no desire whatsoever to wade knee-deep in shite,” Barry stated flatly. “Forgive my language, Ursula, but that's what politics is. Corrupt and self-serving. Some of them may be idealistic when they go into office but the system gets hold of them and grinds them down, until one's no better than another. A warrior faces you. A politician sneaks around behind your back and puts the knife in when you're not looking. Brendan Delahanty once told me politics is the only alternative to war, but if he's right it's a damned shame. Pardon my language again.”

Ursula sighed. “No need. I agree with everything you said, including the profanity.”

Barry continued the fight for Wood Quay in his own way, as he was continuing so many fights.

Because he was a warrior.

 

March thirteenth was the date when the Republic of Ireland joined the European Monetary System, breaking its link with the British pound sterling.

A month later schoolchildren, exploring rubble the bulldozers had cleared from Wood Quay, found a Viking sword. Barry Halloran's photograph of the sword went out on the international wire services. “Dublin Wants to Destroy Its Own Past,” was one of the headlines given the story.

The attention of the Irish public was sharply refocussed on the issue.

The corporation countered the unfortunate publicity it was receiving by claiming that the concept of building centralised civic offices was important to the overall scheme for the city; undertakings had been given to the contractor involved that would result in legal difficulties if they were not adhered to, and finance already allocated to the project would be “wasted” if any alterations were made in the plans. “Taxpayers' money would be lost!” the corporation cried.

“I can't be pregnant again!” Barbara wailed.

“Of course you can,” said Ursula. “It's the most wonderful thing you can do, bringing new life into the world.”

“That's easy for you to say, you only did it once.”

“In a way I'm sorry about that now,” the older woman admitted. “I think I would have enjoyed having more children—if my life had been different.”

“Well, my life was going to be different; I was going to be an opera singer. I never meant to be saddled with all of this.” A dramatic wave of the hand indicated the house and all its denizens.

Why does she deliberately make remarks that get up my nose?
Ursula wondered. “I'm sorry you look upon us as an inconvenience.”

“I didn't mean it that way. It's just that…didn't you ever want something so bad you could taste it?”

Ursula gave a faint smile. “I have,” she said softly. “But something one desires so much might be the worst thing one could possibly get.”

“Not in this case. An operatic career would have given me a wonderful life with all my dreams come true. Now they're lost.”

“Dream new dreams,” Ursula advised.

“I knew you wouldn't understand.”

 

A British general election on the third of May provided a decisive win for the Conservative Party, returning them to power. Party leader Margaret Thatcher officially became the first female prime minister in British history. She promptly began waging war on the trade unions.

 

Archbishop Tomás Ó Fíaich was elevated to the title of Cardinal, making him a member of the College of Cardinals and a prince of the Church.

 

In recent weeks there had been a substantial increase in the damage done to Wood Quay. Meanwhile the local elections had brought in a new Dublin City Council, many of whose members said they were favourably disposed towards preserving the national monument. The Friends began to have hope.

But first the work on the site must be stopped entirely.

Friday the first of June was a day the defenders of Wood Quay had been working towards for months. Occupation Day.

“Operation Sitric” was carried out that morning with military efficiency. An advance party arrived at dawn, carrying the black raven banner of the Vikings. A proclamation by the poet Thomas Kinsella was read. Promptly at seven-fifteen
A.M.
hundreds of men and women came marching up the quays. The lord mayor was among them, as was a pair of Alsatian dogs rejoicing in the names of Thor and Olga. Mothers had brought their children for the occasion. People had even come from abroad. Members of the Dáil and the Seanad were also much in evidence, expounding to the swarming reporters on how much they loved “our nation's great history.”

People wore costumes. People sang.

A limited number were allowed access to the site itself. They entered through a door in the corrugated iron walls erected by the builders. Blankets were unrolled and spread on the rubble-strewn earth in the very shadow of the bulldozers. There was a nip in the air; a reminder that the elusive Irish summer had not yet arrived. Gas rings were soon at work boiling kettles for tea.

Writers and academics rubbed shoulders with priests and labourers, sitting together on the earth where Viking houses once had stood. The widow of a former president of Ireland poured tea.

Accompanied by his mother and Séamus McCoy, Barry was on hand to photograph the event. When they arrived almost the first person they met was Éamonn MacThomáis. His last imprisonment had wrought a change in Mac-Thomáis. He seemed to have shrunken physically. He greeted Barry's little party with a broad smile, but there were shadows in his eyes that nothing could banish.

He drew Barry aside to have a few words in private.

“Portlaoise has done for me,” MacThomáis admitted when no one else could hear. “I don't think I'll ever be the man I was. The worst of it was the abuse I took came from our own. From our own,” he repeated; his voice a growl of pain. “The dissidents, the new splinter groups, the men who think they have the right handle on republicanism and the rest of us are wrong. They can call themselves by any name they like but in the heel of the hunt they're outlaws, or what I call outlaws. They refuse to accept authority and make it up as they go along. They're doing the name of republicanism terrible damage.”

Barry nodded agreement.

MacThomáis gave a wry smile. “When I tried to talk to them they did me some damage too.” He did not elaborate. But Barry could imagine.

He changed the subject. “What's your current take on the Wood Quay situation, Éamonn?”

“It's another example of outlaws doing what they like and to hell with everyone else. We have to do everything we can to stop it. The photographs you've been feeding to the international wire services help. I was just talking to a couple who came all the way from Boston to protest this…villainy.”

“Will it do any good, do you think?”

“Hard to say. Once I would have told you, ‘We can make a difference!' Now I'm not so sure. One of life's little ironies is that might doesn't make right, but neither does right make might. If they are strong enough the bullies win.”

“Not if we can help it,” Barry vowed. “I'm planning an extended photographic essay on Wood Quay, setting it in context. If I can sell it into the right markets it will add substantially to the pressure.

“You're a Dub born and reared, Éamonn, and you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the old parts of the city. Do you have the time to take me on a tour of the area around Wood Quay? I want the history of all the little streets and laneways. I know that some of them, like Fishamble Street and Winetavern, date back almost to Viking Dublin.”

MacThomáis's glum visage brightened slightly. “I'm your man,” he said. “Shall we go now? Will your mother be all right?”

Barry laughed. “She has the best bodyguard in the world.” He winked over at McCoy, who winked back.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Seeing old Dublin through his friend's eyes, Barry took photograph after photograph. Forgetting everything else. Absorbed in the past.

Meanwhile McCoy found a level spot with a view of the site entrance and arranged Ursula's blanket to hide the wheelchair. “It's supposed to be the first day of summer,” she remarked, “but that wind would cut right through you.”

“I'll bring you a hot drink.” He was always happy to find something else he could do for her. “What would you like, tea?”

“See if the pubs are open, I could murder a hot whiskey.”

She sat for a time watching the crowd: the participants and the passersby, the committed and the merely curious.
What would the Vikings think if they could see us here?

Can they?

How many ghosts surround us?

Ursula shivered.
I hope Séamus hurries with that hot whiskey. He's likely to meet someone he knows and start talking and forget all about me.

When a tall, smartly dressed man with beautifully cut silver hair walked past her, the set of his shoulders looked vaguely familiar…and then she recognised him.

“Lewis Baines!”

He whirled. Stared at her a moment longer than good manners allowed, then bent over her extended hand. “My wild Irish rose. I don't believe it.”

The voice that once had thrilled her had no effect on her now, she discovered. His eyes were still—almost—as blue, and his bearing every bit as elegant, but he might as well have been a stranger.

“Did I hear that you were married, Lewis?”

“I was for a while, but she died years ago. In an auto accident.”

“Oh, I
am
sorry,” said Ursula with genuine feeling.

“And you—are you married?”

“I have a son who's taller than you.”

“Does he resemble his father?”

“Very much, in some ways. They both had pointy ears.”

“Had?” He was quick, Lewis;
quicker than he used to be,
she thought with vast indifference. “Your husband is dead also? Then perhaps you would care to join me. I'm going back to my hotel for something to eat since this could be a very long day.”

“Thank you, Lewis, but I'm waiting for someone.”

“Ah.” Baines hesitated. “Not me, I gather?”

Ursula laughed.

In the nearest pub McCoy had ordered a glass of hot whiskey and asked the bartender to wrap it in a cloth napkin to hold the heat in. He headed back for Wood Quay, walking carefully and watching where he put his feet so as not to spill the drink. He had almost reached Ursula before he looked up.

She was talking to an exceptionally handsome man.

McCoy stopped in his tracks. Scowled. Then hurried forward to challenge the stranger. No longer watching his feet, he tripped on a broken stone and nearly fell. The napkin caught most of the whiskey, but some splashed onto his shoes.

Ursula was asking Baines, “Do you still have relatives in Belfast?”