In Turbulent Times

excerpt

Nora looked into the fire with a fixed stare. ‘The first two weeks, Joe, were sheer hell. When the first few days went past I thought nothing of it. Then that sudden awful fear—real fear, Joe—that I might be pregnant. You must try to imagine what it was like. I wanted to die just to be rid of it. By the time the third week was over and the fourth began I was certain of the worst. I resigned myself to it. I had to marry Liam. He was the child’s father. And I had to marry him quickly. I was banking on the baby being late, as first babies often are, so that those who counted back nine months might give me the benefit of the doubt.’ Nora smiled wryly. ‘I thought of you the whole time, Joe. I knew you were going to ask me to marry you. I had even started putting things away. I was saving …’
Nora covered her face in her hands and cried with heart-rending sobs. No matter how much she had wept before, she had not yet dried up inside. Joe rose from the armchair and knelt beside her, comforted her. Her crying stopped. She lifted her cup, drank some tea, set the cup down again.
‘Three days after we were married my bleeding started.’ Again a fleeting smile of irony. ‘So cruel, Joe. How can God be so cruel? Not just to me. But to you also. The finest man in the world.’ Nora reached out and took Joe’s hand in hers, held it tightly, turned it, looked at the palm. ‘You’ll find someone else, Joe. Someone pretty. Someone good. Someone … Oh Joe, I’m so miserable. I wish I could die.’ She threw her arms around his neck as he was kneeling before her and cried again, her cheek against his. She clung to him for a long time in silence, then withdrew her arms and dried her eyes and cheeks on a handkerchief retrieved from under the sleeve of her dress.
‘I brought you a little gift,’ Joe said. He stood up and pulled the present out of his pocket. ‘It’s a Russian doll.’
‘She’s pretty,’ said Nora, standing beside him. ‘Carved out of wood.’
‘That’s not all,’ said Joe. ‘See? There’s another one underneath. And look, yet another. And another. And another.’ He lined the complete set of dolls—amazingly ten of them—along the fender.
‘She’s such a teeny wee one,’ Nora said, picking up the last of them.
‘That’s when she was a little girl,’ said Joe. ‘Driving the boys wild.’ His voice trailed off. ‘Anyway, I thought you’d like them.’ He stacked them into one again and handed it to Nora. ‘Inside that teeniest one, Nora, is my heart. I’m giving it to you to keep. It’s always been yours anyway. It’s just wrapped up differently now, that’s all.’
He took Nora in his arms and kissed her, held her to him tightly. Fresh tears flowed down her cheeks.

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The Unquiet Land

excerpt

“God had nothing to do with it,” Finn roared, thumping the arm of the chair. “The boy was going to live anyway. Padraig poking his nose in, muttering his abracadabra prayers, didn’t make the slightest bit of difference.”
Caitlin was kneeling on the rug on the kitchen floor near Finn’s feet, sewing embroidery on the smock of a dress. The firelight from the range shone on her face and arms, and they glowed like the burning turf. She wore a heavy green dress with a white, woollen shawl draped across her shoulders. Her fingers moved deftly at their work. She watched the pattern of coloured thread inching across the smock and avoided looking at Finn. He was unable to see the confusion in her eyes.
Finn scraped out the bowl of a pipe with an old, white-handled pocket-knife. The blade was almost black and barely half of its original width, but it glinted along its sharp edge. Finn took a block of tobacco from a ledge beside him and began to pare it with the knife.
“If all we had to do was pray to God, we’d have no need of doctors,” he said. “What credit are you giving Dr Starkey when you say that Padraig’s prayers saved Joe-Joe Carney? Did Dr Starkey have nothing to do with it?”
Caitlin felt guilty and ungrateful. Four times a day, midnight as well as noon, the little doctor with the black bag and balding head had gone to the bed of Joe-Joe Carney. Once, when the boy’s temperature reached one hundred and seven and it looked as if the pneumonia would kill him, Dr Starkey stayed all night, heavy-eyed and stubbled, his face ash-grey, his cranial hoop of black hair in tangled disarray. Padraig had arrived as the doctor was leaving.
“I can do nothing more, Padraig,” Dr Starkey had said. “I can do nothing more.”
At Mass Padraig asked everyone to pray for Joe-Joe Carney. And Joe-Joe recovered. The people in the village said it was a miracle.
“Miracle, miracle, miracle,” Finn fumed. “They don’t know the meaning of the word. Everything that happens these days is a miracle.

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The Unquiet Land

excerpt

“Oh Mammy, all the talk of trouble is exaggerated. There’ll be no trouble. Just you wait and see.”
Mother Ross withdrew her hand and straightened up again in her chair. “I hope you’re right, my dear. I sincerely hope you’re right,” She took a mouthful of tea and reached into the biscuit tin for another wedge of shortbread.
҂
Caitlin sat on a boulder by the path along the shore. She was waiting for Michael. The cool breeze swept her hair across her face like a mourning veil, and she kept pushing it back with unconscious flicks of her hand. Her dark eyes looked out across the green and purple sea. She watched the sprightly dance of sun-sparkles on the water, listened to the boom of breakers and the sighing roll-back of the shingle. Sighing like a lover, Caitlin thought. But such rough kisses. Like her father’s bedtime kisses when she was a little girl. He never seemed to realise how strong he was. He had always been awkward with her and Nora when displaying his affection. He had rarely cuddled or caressed them. When either of them sat on his knee, he would hold her at arm’s length in his two big hands, as if to press her close to him would crush and bruise her like an armful of flowers. Rarely was Nora or Caitlin able to slide down into his lap and lie against his chest, feeling the rough, woollen jersey against their cheeks. Even then he would never attempt to encircle either sister with his thick arms as Ignatius Sweeney would do. Only when they were going to bed would they receive a kiss from their father, standing on tiptoes in their nightdresses with rag dolls clasped in the crooks of their arms. His mouth was hard; his cheeks and chin were rough.
Had he ever shown tenderness to her mother? Caitlin wondered. Or had he foisted kisses on her too in the same obligatory way in which the sea foisted waves upon the shore?
“What was my mother like, Mother Ross?” Caitlin had asked once when she was still quite young.
“A gentle, unassuming cratur, Caitlin. A good woman. Tall and black-haired like you and Nora. Attractive in her own quiet way. Nora has inherited her mother’s temperament; you are your father’s daughter.” Mother Ross had looked thoughtfully into the fire in the sitting room that day, remembering other days. “Your mother was the sister of your father’s best friend, Tom Corrigan. There was gypsy blood in the Corrigans. They all had black, black hair and dark skin. Your mother’s name was Roisin, but your father always referred to her as his gypsy lady. Even called her Gypsy at times.”

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The Unquiet Land

excerpt

“I can’t think of you as anything else,” Caitlin had said.
“Nobody can now. Except Finn and Nora. Finn calls me Jinnie, and Nora calls me Mammy. Anyway, when Dr Starkey and his wife came to the village, he started delivering the babies. My services were no longer required. When my mother died six or seven years after I lost my husband I stayed on in the only home I had ever known except for the fisherman’s cottage in the village where my husband and I had lived for the short five months of our marriage.”
Mother Ross stood motionless for a few moments, lost in memory’s dense fog.
“Here, let me dry those for you, Mammy.”
Mother Ross jumped and turned her head sharply from the window toward the doorway leading to the kitchen. “Nora, you made me jump. I didn’t hear you come in. How are you, dear?”
Nora crossed the stone floor and kissed Mother Ross on the cheek. “I’m just great, Mammy,” she said with a broad smile.
“Well, you certainly look as happy as a saint in heaven,” said Mother Ross, lifting another plate from the water. “I haven’t seen you look so happy in ages. Do you want to tell me what it’s all about now or can you wait till I finish these and we sit down with a cup of tea?”
“Let me dry them for you,” Nora offered again.
“Oh there’s no need,” said Mother Ross. “I won’t be a jiffy. Why don’t you wet a pot of tea? The water’s boiling in the kettle on the range. What have you done with Dermot?”
“He’s in Maura Slattery’s, playing with her little boy. Maura and I exchange baby-minding duties every now and then. It’s good for Dermot and Donal to become playmates and pals.”
“They’ll be going to school together soon enough,” said Mother Ross.
Nora disappeared into the kitchen. “What were you muttering about when I came in?” she called.
Mother Ross walked to the doorway as she dried a couple of plates in a towel. “I was watching your father up there on the hill. He doesn’t look well at all these days, Nora. I’m worried about him.”
“He’s over seventy-five, Mammy.” Nora poured boiling water into the teapot. “He’s bound to be slowing down at his age.”
“Yes, but Finn MacLir had more energy than a dozen men,” Mother Ross argued. “Then all of a sudden it’s gone, and he’s old almost overnight. It’s not natural, Nora.”

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In Turbulent Times

excerpt

and feeling a kind of emptiness inside him. Yes, he definitely had had that feeling at the time. But it did not last. He went home and ate his dinner, and then later the recollections started coming to him, bringing new emotions with them. They never left him for long after that. When he was repairing nets or splicing rope on board his father’s fishing boat in the harbour, or when he was lying in his bunk at sea, or hauling in the nets or standing in the wheelhouse in a North Atlantic fog, he saw Nora’s sweet, pale face before him and smelled her fragrant hair and felt her young, firm breasts against his chest, her gentle fingers holding on to his. Even when he walked out with his girlfriends he could not chase the face of Nora from his mind.
She was only fourteen when he first held her close to him in the village square that afternoon. He was a nineteen-year-old fisherman, hardened to the salty gales and storm-tossed seas from Iceland to the Isle of Wight. What did this schoolgirl mean to him? But soon she was no longer just a schoolgirl but a young woman. She had a dimpled smile that tempted him and eyes that looked at him alluringly each time they met. He found himself going out of his way to meet her often, even to the point of waiting in ambush for her and pretending, when they met, that he had just happened to be there and, what was more, just happened to be going her way. Then he asked her to be his partner at a Boxing Day dance in Carraghlin. She had just had her sixteenth birthday. He had just reached adulthood. He was in love. He was still in love. So long ago it happened. So many memories ago. So many letters ago. Those vital letters. He could recite long paragraphs from each of them, like poetry learned at school. He had lived for those letters. They had been longed-for daily sustenance for a hungry sailor. Perhaps it was fortuitous that he had not received that last letter. He could not have endured the pain. Why had she done it? Why? He could not understand it. Though he puzzled over it till three in the morning, he could not understand it. Then, aching and stiff and heavy of heart, he trudged sadly and slowly home to his sleepless bed.
Next day his torment continued. No one said anything to him at home about Nora’s marriage, but everyone knew by his appearance and manner that the Carricks must have told him. The MacLir house would have been the first place he visited, looking for Nora. In Joe’s house the Carney family went about its sorrowful duties in almost unbroken silence. Even the sobbing of the women, Joe’s mother and sisters, was subdued. For Joe the day was agony. The only good thing was that Liam Dooley did not make it to the funeral. He must have been delayed in Belfast. Joe felt relieved, …

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The Unquiet Land

excerpt

FOUR
Mother Ross was washing dishes from the previous night’s party. Humming an air she had learned long ago, she washed the last greasy plates in a basin of hot, soapy water on a wooden bench that ran the length of one wall of the scullery. The scullery opened off the kitchen at the back of the house, and while she fussed over the dwindling pile of dirty dishes Mother Ross could look through the window and see, above in the gap between the barns and the stable, the mountainside rising steeply to the rocky tors on Donevan. Loose frills of swiftly driven cloud swept across the black rocks, but the cloud was patchy and the sky was mostly blue. Halfway up the hill Mother Ross could just make out the tall, round-shouldered figure of Finn MacLir in his dark-blue jacket and tweedy, grey jersey. She paused for a moment and watched the old seaman and his favourite dog slowly climb the hill. A gloomy foreboding, a mixture of fear and sorrow, shuddered through her breast.
“Your days on the mountain are numbered, old man,” she murmured. “You just don’t have the wind anymore.”
Her mind drifted back to that day long ago, that early morning in June, when Finn MacLir, tall and straight and in his prime, had come upon her, sitting on a granite boulder outside the smoking, blackened ruin of her once neat cottage near the Tamnagh Bridge. The air stank of burning. Smoke drifted slowly upwards into the limpid sky from the charred roof-beams and the smouldering cling of thatch. The windows were broken. Half of the door had burned away, and flames still flickered along its black, crackling edge.
“Jinnie, are you all right?” Finn shouted, as he approached with that long, determined stride of his.
Her real name was Sinead, but few ever used it. When her mother died, the name of the former village midwife had passed to her, and she had been known as Mother Ross by everyone ever since. Even after her brief marriage to Jimmy John O’Neill, she was still known as Mother Ross. Finn MacLir had always called her Jinnie.

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In Turbulent Times

excerpt

Slow tears slid down Caitlin’s cheeks and she brushed them away with the back of her hand.
‘Who did she marry?’ Joe asked.
‘Liam Dooley,’ Michael answered.
‘Liam Dooley. But he’s … Oh my God.’
‘It took all of us by surprise too, Joe.’ Caitlin was in command of her voice again. ‘We knew she saw Liam every day at the school, of course. We knew she stayed late some afternoons. We also knew that she cooked him a meal now and then; and that they went to hear The Messiah together in Belfast last Christmas. But for the life of me, Joe, none of us ever suspected there was anything more than just friendship between them.’
‘Then six or seven weeks ago,’ said Michael, ‘home she comes and says they’re getting married.’
‘And it was all over and settled in a month or less. Banns read and all. Quickest bit of marrying I’ve ever seen.’
Joe heaved a sad sigh. ‘So she couldn’t wait,’ he said almost inaudibly, as if talking to himself.
‘Joe, please …’
‘There’s nothing to be said, Mrs Carrick. There’s nothing to be done. She’s married, isn’t she? And to Liam Dooley of all people. No wonder no one at home wanted to tell me.’
‘They’ve all got other things on their minds, Joe,’ Michael said.
‘Ay, that’s true enough.’ Joe sighed a sigh that he heaved up all the way from his feet.
‘Joe, go and see her,’ Caitlin said soothingly. ‘Go and talk to her. And please don’t be hard on her. Perhaps she can make you understand.’
‘Ay, go and talk to her, Joe,’ Michael urged, ‘if only to try and convince her that you bear her no ill-will. I don’t think she could stand it if you did.’
Joe turned and resting one hand on the mantelpiece stared into the fire.
‘Now more than ever, Joe,’ Michael went on, ‘you’ve got to act like a brave man. This will most likely be your hardest battle.’
‘It’s a battle with yourself, Joe,’ Caitlin said. ‘They’re always the hardest.’
A long, silent lull was broken only by the tick of the clock and by the unbecomingly merry chuckle of flames from the fire in the range.
‘Where is she?’ Joe asked at last.
‘In the schoolhouse,’ Caitlin answered. ‘And she’s on her own this evening. Liam’s away in Belfast. I suppose you heard that the Germans bombed Belfast again on Tuesday night.’

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The Unquiet Land

excerpt

heard you, Finn, you were daring Death to come and fight you for your life. ‘Stay out of this, God; this is my fight.’ That’s what you shouted. Even though you don’t believe in God, those were your very words. You were standing right there, with the statue of the Victory behind you. What has happened, Finn?”
“Death is a dirty fighter, Padraig.” Finn smiled at the recollection of that night so long ago. “Yes, I dared him. But he didn’t come fighting in the open like a man. He crept up behind me in the dark of night and slid his knife between my ribs. And the blade was tipped with poison. Death is a coward, Padraig. He never fights in the open. We could beat him if he did. And now he sits on the end of my bed every night and waits with a cynical, ugly grin on his face. And he’s getting madder and madder because I’m not afraid of him. I spit on him. So he waits till I’m asleep and then stabs me again with his poisoned stiletto. He twists it with a coward’s viciousness. He wants to see me writhe in pain, but I refuse to give him even that pleasure. I suffer. Oh yes, I suffer. But no one knows how much I suffer but myself.”
“You and God,” said Padraig. “And God will help if you ask.”
Finn smiled again. “You never give up, do you, Padraig?” he said. “God is a figment of your imagination. A figment of man’s imagination. God is the most despicable hoax ever perpetrated on gullible humanity. Don’t talk to me about God helping anyone; and least of all helping me. ‘Stay out of this, God; this is my fight.’ Remember?”
Finn looked at the grandfather clock. “I think I’ll go to bed and take up my fight with Death,” he said. “He’s going to wonder where I am tonight. He’ll think I’ve turned coward and gone crying to that God of yours for help. Ha, he should know me better than that by now.” Finn gave Padraig a grin of obstinate determination, the kind Padraig remembered from the past except that now the joyousness of challenge was missing. Instead, the grin showed only forced bravado and it died quickly. “It’s time you went to bed too, Padraig, and wrestled with that tortured soul of yours.”
“Yes, I’m going now,” Padraig replied, ignoring Finn’s taunt.
“When do you move into the priests’ house?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And when do you start ministering to your flock?”
“Tomorrow.”
Finn felt again, as he had frequently during the evening, his growing estrangement from Padraig the priest.
“Will you come to church to hear me, Finn?”

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The Unquiet Land

excerpt

She’s still being pounded by heavy seas and very much in danger of falling apart. There’s an overloaded, gutsy, little lifeboat called The Unionist. It has on board a cold huddle of twenty-six stolid Protestants, all of them from the northeast of Ireland, all united under a Dublin lawyer called Edward Carson. They’ve decided to abandon ship and they’re rowing like hell through the stormy waters in a do-or-die attempt to make it into the safe port of London. Behind them the waves are beating around the foundered ship, and the storm that drove her aground is raging still. Can you see it, Padraig? The black night of Ireland’s agony.”
Finn raised his tired eyes from the wine glass and fixed them on Padraig’s gaunt, sallow face. His voice faltered, then started again. “Everything’s in a turmoil. The heavy fusillade of rain; the fiery flashes of lightning in the dark; the thunder booming like artillery. It’s a war situation, Padraig. War for possession of a storm-battered old wreck that might never float again. And everyone’s waiting to see what the ship’s owner is going to do. The help he sent to dislodge the ship and bring her into harbour hasn’t been able to get much of a hold on her. So he has a decision to make. Should he wait till the storm passes and hope that the tide will lift her off the rocks and drift her safely into port? The trouble there is that the ship might not survive the storm. Then there’s the possibility that the ship isn’t worth saving anyway. The cost of the salvage operation might be more than the value of the battered old hulk is worth. So maybe the best thing to do is to concentrate on the people in the water: that desperate lifeboat and its threatened passengers. They at least can be saved without too much trouble. Unless the mutineers decide to raid it first and claim it back as theirs. After all, it came from their ship, or from what they now claim as their ship. So what we need, Padraig, is swift decision-making and speedy, determined action. Leave things too long and the lifeboat itself might be wrecked as well as the ship. What’s the ship’s owner—or its former owner—going to do?”
“I don’t know, Finn.”
“Nor does anyone else. But you see the situation you’ve come home to?”
“Vividly,” said Padraig. “Sinn Fein and the Republican Nationalists have triumphed. Seventy-three seats out of a hundred-and-five. The papers I read in December referred to it as ‘the defining act of Irish self-determination.’ It shows how much the Irish hate the British and want to be free of British rule. It is a dangerous situation, Finn.”

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