Eden Burning (4 page)

He needed to find someone to blame for the constant sense of dissatisfaction which gnawed away at his innards. He needed to do something to escape the unbearable loneliness of his existence. He learnt survival strategies – to repress what felt uncomfortable, to deny that anything was wrong, and to project onto others all the hate, anger, resentment and disgust which fermented inside. He also learnt to project onto Eileen the qualities of gentleness, kindness and sensitivity which he denied in himself.

William remembered the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 although he was only six at the time. His father lifted every dinner plate from the cupboard and smashed them against the wall of the kitchen, shouting “No surrender!”

His mother, brush and shovel in her hand, swept up every single fragment without saying a word. She served him his dinner that evening on a small piece plate. He made no comment, poured himself a large whiskey, lit a cigar and muttered again “No surrender.”

When William was twelve the British soldiers left Ireland and a bloody Civil War broke out in the South between the Free State Soldiers and the Irregulars. There were stories in the papers every day in the North about dreadful happenings within families, where a father would betray a son or an uncle a nephew. There was treachery and even jealously when someone would be murdered because they were too popular, or had more money or were a rival in love. Eight years after William married Eileen the Republic of Ireland was granted full independence from Britain – it was one of the darkest days of William’s life. William felt that he had lost something. Something had been stolen from him which was a warning of worse to come.

When William was forty-six, he attended a meeting of
Loyalists with Cedric in the Ulster Unionist Party Offices in Glengall Street, committed to defend Protestant areas from the threat of the IRA. He was part of the vigilante patrols, setting up street barricades and drawing up lists of IRA suspects. In the same year with Peter only a baby, William and Cedric were rioting on the Shankill Road and burning Catholics out of their homes. They joined the Ulster Protestant Volunteers in 1966 and were involved in bombing campaigns on behalf of ‘God and Ulster’. In 1969 William and Cedric marched in illegal counter demonstrations against the Northern Ireland Civil Rights movement. Peter had never been involved in any of these activities. He played rugby, strummed the guitar and studied with dreams of going to Queen’s University.

Eileen knew nothing about the rioting, the bombings or the marching. It was of course a curious marriage – very similar in many ways to that of William’s father and mother – with the exception that William seldom raised his voice at home and Eileen never did. It was a family of ‘not knowing’. Eileen didn’t know much about what William and Cedric did when they left 18 Elmwood Terrace every day. Peter didn’t know that behind the screen of running a taxi business, William and Cedric were murderers. Although William had murdered on his own before Cedric joined him, with Cedric at his side the experience of murder created a bond between them which deepened their relationship. Secrecy gave security and meaning within a world which threatened to tear them apart. They were more like ‘blood brothers’ than father and son. Peter, living on the periphery of their lives, was increasingly a threat to this security. If he found out what was happening, he could squeal to the police. They had no concerns about Eileen interfering with what they did – she was too much taken up with life within the walls of 18 Elmwood Terrace, her art and the daily routine of taking
care of Peter, Cedric and William. Peter was different; he had a dangerous curiosity about life.

In December 1971 Cedric encouraged William to get Peter involved in the planned murders. It had become difficult to ignore the fact that not only had Peter curiosity about life, but had a heart. In listening to the Ten o’clock News or reading the headlines in the daily paper, Peter commented on the horror behind the killings. He talked with Eileen about the impact of murder on the family left behind. He commented on the pain, the confusion, the desperation, the fear that rippled through the extended family. William and Cedric stared at each other in silence across the table with a sense of irritation, discomfort and increasing annoyance at each word falling from Peter’s mouth. Without knowing it Peter held up a mirror to William and Cedric. Although they looked away, they still registered what they saw in the mirror. A person with a heart like Peter on the other hand was free. A sensitive heart within a free person was dangerous. It made the person difficult to control.

William and Cedric entrapped Peter by using the oldest trick in the world. They told him a lie. They asked Peter to come for a drive with them on Sunday 2nd January to look at a new house for Eileen. It was on the Woodvale Road with beautiful gardens to the front and back. If Peter thought that the house was something Eileen could be interested in, they would put their house on Elmwood Terrace on the market and they could be moved in before the end of the summer. They had no intention of showing Peter any house. Peter thought that it was odd that they wanted him to look at it on a Sunday when the estate agents were closed.

“If we speak to the owners directly they can skip out the estate agent and save ourselves a fortune.” Cedric rubbed his hands together and nodded knowingly to William.

Peter shifted in his seat and tugged his left ear lobe.

“But the estate agent has already probably put a lot of effort into the sale. He’s been out the cost of advertising and you wouldn’t even know that the house was for sale if there wasn’t a board outside.”

“You have a lot to learn about life,” Cedric replied.

“Isn’t the Woodvale Road unsafe?”

Peter knew that there was no sign of The Troubles coming to an end. How would Eileen be able to do her weeding and seeding plants with the daily riots in North Belfast?

“You can’t have everything for the prices we can afford. The houses are cheaper where there is a little bit of ‘Trouble’. You can’t deny that the Woodvale Road could almost be called residential?”

Cedric leaned forward and patted Peter on the shoulder.

Peter shrugged Cedric’s hand free.

“Won’t Eileen miss the cherry tree?”

Cedric and William laughed at one another, slapped each other on the shoulder and then slapped Peter on the back saying,

“It’s a dream house. She will love it. She can plant another cherry tree and a bloody apple tree and there’s a weeping willow in the front garden. Didn’t Eileen always say that she would love to have a weeping willow? We’re only asking you to have a look. If you don’t like it, we’ll stay in Elmwood Terrace. This is all about Eileen.”

“At seven thirty? It will be dark. We won’t see the garden properly.” Peter wrinkled his nose.

“We can see the garden another day. We’re not going to be living in the fucking garden. It’s the inside of the house that we need to see. It’s fucking dark here for most of the year and so we might as well see what it looks like in the dark.”

They drove up the Shankill Road, and along the Woodvale
Road. Peter saw the spires of Holy Cross Church.

“Which one is it?”

William and Cedric laughed at one another.

“What did we tell you? You’ve a lot to learn about life.”

They swung the car from the Woodvale Road onto the Crumlin Road. They drove past the sentry look out, past Ardoyne Hall and accelerated past Holy Cross Church on the right.

At ten minutes to eight they saw Paddy on the left hand side of the road walking to work.

“I told you he would be here.” Cedric glanced sideways at William before looking over his shoulder at Peter who was sitting upright in the back seat, looking through the front window.

“You’re just about to learn about life brother.”

The car screeched to a halt.

“Let’s introduce you to Paddy.”

Paddy was thirty-five, living on his own in lodgings in a terraced house in Butler Street, off the Crumlin Road. His landlady, Anne, cooked his breakfast during the week and he made his own arrangements for the weekend. Sometimes that meant a Chinese take-away or fish and chips from ‘The Last Supper’ on the Crumlin Road. His bed-sit was on the first floor, with a bed, a wash basin, television and a stove where he boiled a kettle for tea or warmed Heinz tomato soup to take the chill out of his winter bones. He polished the window which looked onto Butler Street with a newspaper. From the window he would watch crowds of mourners hanging around the corner outside Blackwood’s shop with its display of brassieres and men’s socks waiting for a funeral to pass by.

He would count the steps leading up to Holy Cross Church, through the hedges and shrubs into the Grove as a meditation, letting his gaze move to the metal gate at the top of the steps
where soldiers from the Welsh Guards stood looking at him, rifles cradled in arms, bulletproof jackets fastened tightly, hard helmets hanging from belts. He loved the symmetry of Holy Cross Church – with its twin towers reaching into a cloudy sky – a cross on top of each spire, three stained glass windows above the tall arched wooden front door, the jutting side altars. For Paddy the church was like Noah’s Ark – capable of providing safety and shelter in the tumultuous seas surrounding it. Paddy stood at the back of a crowded church for the annual ‘mission’. He listened with gratitude to the practical guidance given by the missionary priests on how to respond to the chaos outside. Each sentence was like a brick from the solid towers stacked one on top of the other in his head to bring the strength and security of Holy Cross Church into the confusion within his mind.

On the bedside table there was a black and white framed photograph of his parents, arm in arm on their wedding day. His mother wore a garland of artificial roses around her head and held a bouquet of fresh lilies. She had a lost look in her eyes, as though she had moved away from the present moment and would return after the photo was taken. Beside her, stood his father with Brylcreemed shiny flat black hair, parted on the left, and a dull, brittle, surprisingly orange moustache suspended over his upper lip like a yard brush. He had a proud look in his eye as if he had returned from safari with a Bengali tiger which he alone was responsible for shooting. Unlike his mother, Paddy’s father’s look knew the historic nature of this opening and closing of a shutter, this explosion of light snatching and preserving a moment in time.

There was a second colour photograph in a shell frame. Paddy stood side by side with a smiling girl, with long brown hair, a psychedelic swirling print T-shirt and bell bottom Levi jeans. Paddy had short dark hair, a broad square face, almond
shaped eyes with long dark eyelashes, a relaxed hypnotic smile – one of those smiles which when you met him face to face, seemed to take a long time to ebb into place. You found yourself falling into a deep state of peace as the smile spread across his face. Paddy held a cigarette in his right hand and squeezed the fourth finger on Molly’s hand with his left. He planned to marry Molly.

The night before Molly’s thirtieth birthday on Friday 25th November 1971, they danced together in Ardoyne Hall to The Wandering Cowboys singing Frank Sinatra’s ‘And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid, like I love you’. Paddy stumbled over the Fox Trot and the Quick Step but when he held Molly for a Viennese Waltz, he moved with her like two waves in love on the sea.

Paddy took Molly’s right hand as they sat together, the smoke settling into a comforting blanket around them, the lights dim against a gentle hum of voices.

“Molly, your hand is empty. We’ll have to sort that out.”

Molly smiled at him with her hazel green eyes. “What have you got in mind Mr Paddy? Are you going to get me a pair of woolly gloves for my birthday then? They’re freezing”.

She held his right hand. Paddy felt the silky softness of her finger tips send shivers of joy right down to his toes. Paddy leant forward, to kiss her softly on the lips. With his eyes closed, Paddy felt the boundary of his lips meeting the boundary of Molly. A fizzy champagne sweetness spreads through him, leaving him not knowing where he ends and Molly begins. For a few seconds Paddy and Molly disappeared into the kiss, into the emptiness, into the place where there is no Paddy and no Molly. He opened his eyes as the Wandering Cowboys took a break and Frank Sinatra sang on tape.

“
If I loved you, time and again, I would try to say, all I’d
want you to know. If I loved you, words wouldn’t come in an easy way, round in circles, I’d go. Longing to tell you but afraid and shy. I’d let my golden chances pass me by. Soon you’d leave me. Off you would go in a mist of days never, never to know, how I love you, if I loved you
.”

Paddy whispered, “Tomorrow it’s your birthday. I’ve booked a table at The Crawfordsburn Inn.”

“Paddy, you can’t afford it.”

“I’m not taking no for an answer. I’ve booked a taxi to take us there and back. I’ll be there to collect you at seven.” It was Friday.

Paddy helped Molly on with her coat in the porch of the Hall. They shouted goodbyes over their shoulders as Molly struggled to open Paddy’s umbrella, stepping from Ardoyne Hall into the lashing rain with its meteorite of solid crystal drops showering in front of the approaching car headlights. A black taxi approached from further up the Crumlin Road, Paddy pulled Molly back into the porch. His breathing quickening, his heart thumping as the rounded contour of the shiny black taxi rolled slowly past.

“You know to be careful of the black taxis Molly? Always order one in advance and make sure you know the driver.”

“Sure, how many times are you going to tell me that Paddy? I don’t plan to take a taxi – the bus does the job for me. It’s only the odd time when Mother has a hospital appointment; Brendan is as good as gold and he gives me a lift. Don’t worry yourself about me.”

She caught his hand as they dashed across the Crumlin Road into Brompton Park, bumping against each other, laughing now as Paddy, holding the umbrella, fought with the wind to keep it from turning inside out.

A six man foot patrol from the newly arrived Welsh Guards
walked down Brompton Park ahead of them. Black silhouettes walking slowly in silence, like Zen monks one behind the other, hugging fences, skimming small brick walls, occasionally bending on one knee, pointing a rifle with its infrared light down the street, signalling to one another, occasionally running a few yards, stopping still, turning backwards, pointing the rifle up Brompton Park towards Ardoyne Hall.