The Troubles (3 page)

     My brother younger Quinn has met me for my pithy twenty-minute lunch break at Harland and Wolff Shipyard. The massive, imposing shipyard is the plot where I have imperiled limb and life for years in the assistance of launching the first supertanker of our era. The ship, finally making its long awaited departure down the slipway is the awe-inspiring grand, long voyage, vessel, the Myrina. This heavy, industrial shipyard has been in our clan for two generations with my grandfather having worked on the RMS Olympic, Britannic and the ill-fated Titanic from 1909 to 1914. The obligation then falling upon his son, my father, bending his body like molten steel, not surprising he could not withstand the physically taxing daily grind. At fifteen years old I was then given no choice but to learn the dangerous trade and provide the basic necessities my younger siblings would clamor around a penniless father for.                    

     Quinn is wheezing discordantly, his little chest pumping as his slight asthma has reared from head. I am nervously perplexing over what he has just told me. It is often that a person’s mouth breaks his nose but in my case it was my impetuosity in recent events that has sealed my fate and brought my family name to Cathal Goulding’s cognizance. He is an ominous figurehead of the Official Sinn Feinn Worker’s Party of Dublin. Offering little in policy reform and withering the championed causes all the while he uses his position to further us into a battle during his controversial tenure. His quick temperament that of a criminal, having spent as much as fourteen years in different prisons, mastering the criminal mind. Upon his release he has embraced the ethos of Marxism and stubbornly governs against his own party from the polarizing viewpoint. He is valid in that he believes the British state has deliberately divided the Irish working class onto sectarian grounds to exploit them and keep them from overthrowing their bourgeois oppressors by skirmishing amongst their fellow neighbors. Though there is a naivety that the United Kingdom would ever relinquish its capitalistic greed for the more humane socialism that Marxism demands.

     Not at any time in my twenty-four years did I surmise that I would be coerced (by bulletin of Quinn) to take a trip to Dublin and parley with the auxiliary authority of the Official IRA. From chest height Quinn summons his burgeoning tenacity and with a quip to his speech out spills the inevitable appeal I’ve come to expect from my persistent brother. “I’m coming with ya!’’ An expectant chortle escapes me with affection.

      “There is no way in bloody hell ya’ll ever meet that man Quinn!” I lower my voice and cast an eye to see if any of the shipyard workers are paying heed. We are ignored as the boisterous men swear and joke all the while unhygienic, eating their brown-bagged lunches with blackened nails. “That man is dangerous and I will not have ya near more rubbish talk.” I am more unyielding in this than I have been about most direction in my rearing of Quinn. “Da needs you at home taking heed of the small children.” I see before me, this child less a brother to me but a son taking a fraction of the weight that is anchoring me. Unseen moisture creeps tenderly from my eyes and I am flustered by my own fitting emotion.

     Quinn has unfortunately caught this and with his voice deepened with awkward adolescent hormones he acquiesces. ‘’Fine Alastar, this is a good thing ya’re doing for us.”

     “What ya mean? Good thing?” I simply cannot see the obvious initiation waiting in Dublin culminating in anything but a variant of disastrous outcomes.

      ‘’Ya can get banjaxed dead with that kind of talk. Hush Alastar. We’ll be tory’s dead!’’

     Quinn has fulfilled his duty to me and has returned to our childhood home without too much chagrin; the departing view of his slight frame determines his innocence. He wants nothing more but to come to Dublin with me. His wide-eyed innocence remains unaffected and I know his considerations of service are forth right as he is a benevolent boy, but the comprehension that comes with maturity he has yet to acquire. I have made a concession, agreeing to contact my schoolteacher who has in recent years, become my paradigm into the world of the metaphysical. Lanary Sloan is the founder and sovereign of the Order of the Verdant River, a self-manifested pagan fellowship. He is to meet me in the glasshouse conservatory at the Belfast Botanic Garden Palm House. The park being our habitual rendezvous when time or circumstance dictates our prolonged imprisonment in the concrete shackles of Belfast.

     As I make my way into the dome of the tropical wing; an overwhelming kaleidoscope of alluring scents and vivid wondrous tropical colors cascade like a waterfall in my purview. The tropical wing is the feat of the architecturally avant-garde visionary Richard Turner, cascading with a sixty-five feet long tunnel with the girth an ample twenty feet wide. Most impressively is the forty-six-foot cathedral of the glass dome above. Cool grey light streams through the six-foot long window panels gently coaxing the growth of the subtropical and tropical palms and trees. Sweet hibiscus scented perfumed condensation floats above the flowers and curled ferns encircle the rare tropical trees, the man-made botanical union creating a rarefied ambience that will only ever exist in this place in Belfast. Droplets of the precious humidity ruminate through plants of the bio dome and quickly beads of sweat come to my brow. Though Northern Ireland spends two-hundred days a year in rain and Belfast sits on the North Channel's cool temperate ocean waters yet this tropical garden purifies me more than the noxious drink the Belfast clouds recycle in their failed attempts of baptism. 

     A voice splits through the stillness with a deep guttural resonance echoing off the glass walls. I turn quickly paranoid and having been through so much recently I exclaim, ‘’Oh Jesus Christ! Lanary it’s ya!’’

     ‘’Of course it’s me, I was told ya needed me.” His eyes glimmer with slight amusement at my obvious duress. Lanary might be a spiritual creature but his satirical humor is his dominant emotion. I see not an uncomely man with remnants of his handsomeness buried in his age, though I have never been certain how old Lanary is. All that is known is that he was a solder in World War 11 and that this awful forbearance has not visibly breached the sanity of his mind as it did to so many others. It seems instead to have propelled him on an investigatory journey of the spirit. This is perhaps why I trust him separate from my immediate family. His tone shifts to paternal concern and he rivals my gaze slightly bowing his neck to adjust to my slightly lower height. 

     ‘’Son, how is it that ya’ve become embroiled in this mess? Reardon has... rest his soul... obviously ya were there and now, Cathal Goulding of all people, would like to see ya?”

      I am shamefaced with my response. “Lanary I couldn’t have been more of a fool. We were there I guess to show support in the face of those friggin’ peelers. I am now entrapped in a sticky web I fear I can’t get out of.’’

     He is kind with his words but his face remains stony and coolly removed. “Son I am here for ya, since ya and I met fortuitously just outside this very place.” He pauses for a long minute and touches a lime green leaf, which bares the distinct markings of a feather. “I have seen by yer desire to learn throughout all of our years, that ya will apply what I have imparted on to ya. These dastardly people are going to manipulate this the second ya step foot in Dublin!’’

     The benevolent advice he is imparting cause me to feel disconcerted as there is disconnection within his steeled expression and his words. For a fateful split second I have a lurching pain in my gut, the same gnawing ache I had a few days ago when I had taken my neighborhood friend Reardon to the high-minded revolt which had descended into awry riot. The stoic man’s demeanor rearranges itself into severity so quickly I question my sane eyes. ‘’I will do me best to deescalate any tension but you must come with me.”

My stomach queues again with a tight quake. “I’d expect no less me mate!’’

     Lanary grins a white gleaming smile unfurling from beneath his shaded beard like a hand from beneath a glove. “May the road rise to meet ya.''

CHAPTER 7: Ni heolas go haontois (You must live with a person to know a person)

     Kiera Flanagan…My behind is stinging painfully from the lashed markings, which have disfigured my blush baby skin and the whippings have taken on the monotonous sound of chopping wood. There are only three times in my life I have ached this deeply, the pain so raw I found myself as a voyeur watching the torture.

     I have been found out. How could I not have caught, when in the confusion of the tossed molitave cocktail, my bedroom had been destroyed and was now being dismantled and rebuilt by my family? I failed to remember my journal under the floorboards in which I fully divulged my dissidence to the Protestant church on paper, the actions truth onto them revealing my true interest in my ancestral birthright, the Celtic worship of nature. I have dimwittedly allowed my secretive politics to appear potentially destabilizing my peaceful family dynamic. 

     My father had been waiting; sitting proudly like the master he is, on the front stoop with an expression not of disappointment, but one of stern fear when mother and I had returned from the West Kirk Presbyterian Church. Immediately she knew my father would mar me as he’d done year’s earlier as customary punishment. “Kiera…” She had hastily whispered. “Stand behind me girl.” I took the searing whipping on the worn wooden chair in our family kitchen. With every single strike of flesh meeting leather she had gasped and begged her husband to bestow leniency towards their only child.

     Tears flood down my now reddening furious face. I croak out a final plea. “This is not okay, Da. I’m not a child anymore!’’  He stopped midair.

     “What ya are writing will get yerself murdered!”

     “I have not shared me thoughts with anyone else!’ That was a lie.

     “That you could turn from Jesus Christ and worship that blasphemous pagan shite is shame to me!’’ He bellowed spitting in frustration. “Ya are spitting in the face of the only family ya have and ever will Kiera. Jesus is the only son of yer Lord and ya best remember that.”

     Tenuously I had crept away limping and embarrassed, my face marked by tears as black mascara painted my white cheeks.

     I now hear their hushed voices getting more and more raised. He is blaming her for her soft pliancy while she indicting him for his rigid strictness and painful discipline. There has been no love lost between them throughout their 30-year union as they usually have a soft love language and romantic physical gestures that signal their deep intimacy. I feel certain the harsh discipline that has just transpired is the fallout from the chaos beyond our four walls and not reflective of the warm loving household I have grown up in. I do honor them as the commanders of our vessel by doing what they ask without any hesitation or words spoken in retort, as I have always desired to become someone they would be proud of.

     Mother ends the conversation briskly with chores to be done as I watch her walk her through to the kitchen. This is not a time for a kiss to her husband’s brow as he has hurt her child she loves more than her own self. I ache with with hurt hormones bubbling to the surface for my parent’s reconciliation but Mother has made her disappointment in my father impeccably clear.

    Father is the most dogmatic protestant I know of in our limited social circle and I have yet to share or fully comprehend his orthodoxy. I wonder if his apparent devotion to church and state over familial devotion has caused my rebellious behavior or have I out of sound adult mind, simply revealed my true nature, little by little. 

     Sleeping off my bruised ego I have little choice but to get up before dusk and join my parent’s for dinner though my thick deep slumber did not withdraw so quickly. I have again dreamt of the man that has been haunting me and as I eat my stewed potatoes I fantasize about grasping the hand he had extended to me in the dream. My night passes fitfully and I awake startled and obsessive. There is no time to moon over my dreaming man, as I must get myself to the Aerospace Factory. The nepotism that has been shown for me through my birth’s standing is on shaky ground as the unemployment rate for Protestant women is matching that of Catholic women. I also have my slight frame and nagging fatigue working against me, with nights spent reading pagan verses by candlelight. I withstand every day trying to negate my physical flaws. I am usually more proficient than others, using my quick intellect to problem solve and utilizing less strength to maneuver something heavy with straightforward mathematical engineering. I am kind though, yielding, avoiding confrontation with my male co-workers even when they leer at me and hiss under their breath that they would bed me the moment the floor manager leaves so I carry a switch blade in my back pocket, a gift from my intuitive street smart mother. I might have hesitated to use it two years ago when I had applied for a position, but I have complete confidence, I would now do anything to persevere and survive.

     To make my daily journey to my job I must past by the newly risen peace lines (colossal concrete dividers which have been constructed in a seemingly futile attempt to lessen the bloodshed between the warring parties). They are stark reminders to me of the segregation, we, as Protestants, are imposing upon our own kin. I, in my newfound astuteness, am foreseeing this to be viewed as oppressive with a more and more encroaching warlike leadership using the walls as symbol to take a stance against the British paramilitary force, the UVF.

     Murals with rifles and fists raised to a bleak sky above have immediately been painted over the long snaking walls. I stare straight forward as though I am wearing a horses set of blinders as I try to ignore the site of the infamous Gusty Spence UVF bombing of a pub which had killed my innocent great aunt whom had resided next door in a small, in descript cottage. This happened three years ago and while one of my dearest mother figures had perished it was still seen as a righteous cleansing in my household.  ‘’All this bloodshed for the greater good of the empire,” my father had rudely said at her wake in spite of the fact she had been such a peaceful, harmonious woman of her time, as her death seemed the epitome of collateral warfare. She had doted on me while I would sit in her humble kitchen dining on her delicious baked goods while she would blow on her hot tea quietly. She would meekly tell me that in the future I was to become a woman of strength and if I did not desire a husband I should not be forced to marry as she had lamented that her generation had little decision in their own destinies. I felt as though she relished living vicariously through me.