Eden Burning

by Deirdre Quiery

  As they reached Anne and Sammy’s house, they stopped. They kissed each other in silence as Anne wiped a tear from her cheek and Sammy sniffed, coughed and cleared his throat.

  “Don’t look back. Keep walking straight ahead. We will see you again. I promise.” Anne pushed Lily and Tom forward. Rose looked over her shoulder to see Anne crying.

  “I told you don’t look back.” Anne searched in her pocket for a handkerchief.

  Lucky buried her head into Rose’s coat and meowed softly. Without saying a word, Lily carried the radio, Tom the two suitcases and Rose, Lucky. They walked slowly. This time they didn’t look back.

  As they approached the Ardoyne Road, the early stages of a riot were evident with young men gathering at the top of Brompton Park. They had to push their way through them, crossing Brompton Park onto the Crumlin Road where they spotted Mr Langley their new neighbour propped up on the garden gate like a gnome, smoking his pipe and watching rioters gathering, the way he would have watched the clouds darkening over the hills in County Tyrone as a child.

  “He’s from the country,” Lily whispered respectfully to Rose, meaning that he was gentle and at one with nature. “I’ve seen him at Mass.”

  There was something in the way he smoked his pipe, blowing small puffs into the air, that was calming. It was as though he brought the peace from planting potatoes and tilling the earth into standing there at the gate. He never raised his voice or said a cross word. He watched it all, unflustered and at peace.

  Tom opened the gate, reaching a hand across the wall to Mr Langley.

  “Good to meet you again Mr Langley. Can I introduce you to Lily and my niece Rose.”

  Mr Langley tipped his cap at Lily and Rose, and then removed the pipe from his mouth before shaking hands and giving them a broad toothless smile.

  Tom turned the key in the door. Rose placed Lucky gently onto the hallway floor where she promptly bolted upstairs, ears back. Tom guided them into the parlour with its large bay window, an open fireplace and a plaster rose in the centre of the ceiling.

  “What do you think?”

  Lily and Rose looked up at the ceiling, turning in circles.

  “It is beautiful.” Lily touched the mantelpiece. Warm golden sunlight fell onto the green carpet. Dappled light from three small stained glass windows with blue, yellow and crimson roses edged in black iron, danced on the wall.

  “There’s more.”

  Along the hallway Tom opened a second door into a sitting room, with a large window overlooking a yard. Leading off the sitting room there was a galley style kitchen with a door opening into the yard where a meat safe hung on the wall, and there was an outside toilet.

  Lily took two pints of milk from her shopping bag, wrapped them in damp cloth and placed them in a bucket of water.

  “One day we will have a fridge.”

  They climbed the first flight of uncarpeted stairs which led to a landing with a small bedroom, a bathroom and two large bedrooms. Up a second flight of stairs where there were two attic bedrooms. Rose chose the back attic bedroom as her room. Lily and Tom picked the back bedroom on the floor below.

  “Let’s keep to the back of the house – the rioters and the gunfire will be mostly to the front,” Tom suggested.

  Within an hour Tom had hammered chicken wire over the downstairs front windows to stop petrol bombs breaking the glass. He found a heavy metal bar for which he made two attachments on either side of the door which allowed him to drop the bar in place at night.

  “That will give us a few minutes to escape if we need to – out of the back of the house down the entry into the middle of Ardoyne.”

  A few hours later, pieces of furniture had arrived from unexpected places. A piano, sofa and chairs from Aunt Mary who had decided to emigrate to Australia. Father Anthony had found a donated single bed, two double beds, a television, plates, cutlery, a whistling kettle, a teapot with cups and saucers, a mirror, a twin tub washing machine, an oak dining room table with four matching chairs, a dozen woolen blankets, eight pillows, cotton sheets and a hair dryer.

  “Someone’s misfortune can so easily become someone else’s fortune. You can thank the McGeraghty family.” Father Anthony wiped his brow pushing the twin tub into the corner of the kitchen.

  • • •

  On 9th August 1971, internment without trial was introduced. The police were given permission to arrest people and to imprison them without the normal requirements of evidence. At two in the morning Tom, Lily and Rose heard the bin lids banging on the paving stones outside, whistles blowing to warn of the arrival of the police and army. Jeeps and Saracen tanks screeched across the Crumlin Road, blocking traffic. Within minutes rioters poured onto the streets in Brompton Park, petrol bombs crashed in flames onto Saracen tanks. CS gas hissed into the seething rioters, followed by single blasts of rubber bullets.

  “You fucking cowards!” Rioters hurled petrol bombs, broken pavement stones and bricks. Tom slithered out of bed to check that the metal bar was still on the door downstairs.

  Rose sat in bed in the back attic, reading with the light of a torch, listening to the cursing, the cheers when a petrol bomb exploded on top of a jeep, the blasting of rubber bullets, more cheers. She listened to it all in the way you would listen to a stormy sea and take comfort in the sound of the crashing waves against a pebbly beach. Or in the way you would listen with interest to the wind howling around the corners of a house and have a sense of peace and calm that you are inside and not outside in the storm. Rose listened to familiar angry voices, the rise and fall of the cursing, the pockets of silence before the machine guns were put into action, the rhythmic single shots from a hand gun or rifle. Even in a riot there were pockets of silence, pinpoints of peace which she developed an expertise in detecting. She listened to the silence in between the gunfire, to the brief silence before the bin lid hit the ground, or to the vanishing of the bin lid clang after it thumped onto the paving stone. She listened for the attenuated cursing with the second of silence before the furious rioters began to launch a new frenzy of expletives.

  She switched off the torch. She slid into the warm sheets, slipped her feet on top of the hot water bottle and listened again to the rioters outside. She ignored what was said, only registering the rhythm and intensity of the noise as it rose and fell, became louder and faded. She listened to the disappearing curses, the vanishing of the rifle shots into emptiness before the next shot rang out. She heard the dying dull thump of plastic bullets as they hit their target. It was eventually the rhythm of the riot that lulled her to sleep.

  Tom lay in bed and imagined the oak tables which he would carve the next day at work with their strong contours – the elegance of sturdiness, the touch of the silkiness of polished oak against his fingers. Beside him, Lily held his hand. The thought that perhaps the time had come for them to leave Northern Ireland had never occurred to Lily or to Tom; not until later, and even then when it flashed across Tom’s mind in a momentary trajectory of possibility, it was rejected. They were rooted in the earth they trod. Tom and Lily felt a part of the community – for better or for worse. He understood the best and the worst of the people he lived with and he felt understood. The horrors of what people were capable of doing to one another only intensified the solidarity of being with them. Who would understand who they were, where they had come from, if they uprooted and went to England? Would they not be dragging themselves away from the very sinews which fastened muscle to their bones?

  • • •

  “Where are we off to tonight?” William asked Cedric. Peter slid off the bench, pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and stared at the floor of the pub.

  “Back to the Crumlin. They’ve been burning buses so the bastards will have to walk if they’re going anywhere. I’m sure they will be glad of a taxi.”

  Outside the Black Beetle Cedric pulled on his black leather gloves, smoothed his hair and thumped the roof of the black taxi with his fist.

  �
��Go, go, go!”

  William struggled to get the key in the lock, staggered, steadied himself placing his hand against the roof of the car, missed the lock at the first attempt and scraped the key along the door from left to right. At the second attempt he dropped the key onto the ground, making circles with his hand to retrieve it. Only at the third attempt he succeeded in opening the door, tumbling into the driver’s seat. Cedric sat in the front passenger seat, straightening the fingers of his black leather gloves.

  Peter sighed again deeply, slumped in the back seat, pulling a cap down over his eyes as they turned left onto the Crumlin Road at Carlisle Circus. William pushed his back against the driving seat, keeping within the speed limit and driving in a reasonably straight line past the Crumlin Road Prison, the Court House and the Mater Hospital.

  It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening. Mass had finished in Holy Cross Church. The church stood on a small hill on the Crumlin Road from which streets ran into the heart of Ardoyne like arteries. You could see Butler Street, Herbert Street, Kerrera Street and Brompton Park from the grounds of the Church. There was a sweeping path from the steps of the Church to the Crumlin Road. Between the path and Tom and Lily’s house across the road, was a small belt of woodland called The Grove. In the Grove the robins hid in holly bushes, the starlings rummaged for worms, and crows nested amongst the tall elm trees. To the left of the Church was the monastery and in front of this on the Crumlin Road itself the old Holy Cross Primary School which was now used as a social club and known as the Ardoyne Hall.

  Tom slid an arm through Lily’s as she tucked her hands into the pockets of her camel woollen coat and slid the other through Rose’s arm as they walked home along the gravel path. Dappled clouds swirled over the waning moon, hiding behind the church spires. The Crumlin was littered with the usual debris of broken glass, pavement stones, rubber and plastic bullets and empty metal cartridges from rifle fire. The shell of the earlier burnt out bus was still smouldering and half blocking the road. The burning petrol and tyres sent out a cloud of black smoke which made Tom’s eyes water. He let go of Lily and Rose to wipe his eyes. Lily coughed as she held onto Rose and helped her pick her way through the broken bottles. The street lamps were out and the road was lit only by the silvery moon disappearing and reappearing from behind the clouds. As they began to run past the smoking bus, Tom took his key from his pocket to open the front door. Michael McGuckin stood in the porch waiting for a bus. The red light from his cigarette glowed in the dark.

  Tom turned the key in the door and said, “Michael, I don’t think the buses will run tonight. It will be tomorrow morning before they’ll put them back on. They’ll clear this one away first.”

  “I have to get home Tom.” Michael glanced over Tom’s shoulder as a soldier walked slowly past on patrol. Another knelt on one knee and pointed his rifle down the Crumlin Road.

  “Take the bus tomorrow morning, Michael.” suggested Tom gently.

  “I’d rather walk. I promised Mary. It’s not a good time to leave her alone with the children. I’ll give it another few minutes and then I’ll walk.”

  No-one mentioned the fact that Michael’s brother had been murdered the week before, killed in broad daylight driving a bus down the Crumlin Road, or that it was more dangerous to walk, especially at this hour of the night. The foot patrol had already passed by and there probably wouldn’t be another patrol for an hour.

  Nobody said anything because you couldn’t be sure that if you told Michael to stay or you told him to walk which option would be the one that would kill him or save him. Maybe he would be killed if he stayed, like Bobbie McCafferty who was sleeping in bed and someone put a ladder outside his bedroom window, climbed it and pointed a tracer gun at the bed, firing several rounds and not leaving until they saw the bullets, like mini missiles, find their way to their target. There was a moment before Bobbie died when he sat upright in bed. He would have seen the bullets coming towards him because tracer bullets are like that. They light up and seem to be approaching in slow motion. To the person watching the bullet, it looks like a rock on fire. That was Bobbie’s last sight – a smoking rock with fire. It seemed to be going so slowly that for a moment he maybe thought that he could get out of bed and run. But for the person who fired it, the shadowy shape on the ladder outside the window, the bullets with their marker flames were going quickly. The man on the ladder could see that there was no way that Bobbie could dodge or avoid the bullets, although he was surprised to see him sit up in bed. Was it the noise of the ladder being against placed against the window that wakened Bobbie? Or was it the voices in street as they cut the telephone lines that wakened him? Or was it an intuition that his life was nearly over that made him sit up in bed only to fall back seconds later onto the pillow dead?

  If Michael McGuckin had chosen to walk up the Crumlin Road instead of down the hill he might have ended up like Bertie O’Hare whom Rose had stumbled over on her way to the Fast Shop to buy a loaf of bread, a month earlier. Bertie lay on the corner of Brompton Park and the Crumlin Road, with his legs splayed out, his back against the wall of the bookies, eyes staring straight ahead, his body unmoving. He looked for the world as if he was in bed for the night and was only missing a candlewick bedspread to cover him. It was nine o’clock in the evening, five degrees above zero, the wind dropping rain which threatened to turn to snow or hail. Bertie with both hands on the ground, the top three buttons of his checked lumberjack shirt open, jeans soaking wet, a striped tie around his waist holding up his jeans instead of a belt, his brown boots laced with white tennis shoe laces.

  “What’s the matter?” Rose bent down to kneel on the ground beside him.

  “I’m OK.”

  “Shouldn’t you be going home? It’s really cold. You’re not dressed for this weather.”

  Bertie looked into Rose’s eyes. His face cracked red, his moustache covered in raindrops, dark hair matted across empty blue husks of eyes.

  “They got me, you see. That’s what’s wrong with me.” Bertie said in a soft, calm, matter of fact voice.

  “Who got you?”

  “I don’t know. They’re still out there. They didn’t catch them. They’ll never catch them. They’re clever.”

  “When?”

  “What month are we in now?”

  “December.”

  “Which year?”

  “1971”.

  “I think it was this year. It was summer. It wasn’t last year was it?” Bertie looked at Rose as if she would know the answer. Rose gently asked him.

  “What happened?”

  “They picked me up in a black taxi. I thought it was an Ardoyne taxi. They took me to a house. I don’t know where. There was music playing downstairs. I heard voices. I could smell cigarette smoke. There were two of them. One of them smoked a cigar while the other drilled a hole in my head with a Black and Decker. The one who had been smoking threw the half smoked cigar on the ground, lifted a pistol from a tool box, pointed the gun into the hole in my head and shot. He shot twice. I passed out. They left me for dead. I opened my eyes and there was no-one in the room. It was pitch black. I saw a door. I crawled out of that place, pulled myself downstairs, onto the road outside. They told me in the hospital that they didn’t know how I did it. I couldn’t tell you how but I dragged myself out of that place. A car stopped. I didn’t know if it was them.

  I remembered thinking, “It’s them. They’ve come back to finish me off.” I heard the car door open. A woman screamed and kept screaming. I wanted to scream too. I couldn’t. I hadn’t the energy. I lay there face down on the wet tarmac with the car headlights on me. The man lifted me onto the back seat of his car. He was gentle with me. His hands were warm and soft. He said, “You’ll be fine. Hang in there. Don’t give up now. Don’t go to sleep.” The woman sat in the front seat. She kept crying and shouting, “Oh my God, look at the blood.” She looked over her shoulder at me and then covered her face with her hands, shouting “He’s going to die. He’
s not going to live.” She had long blonde hair. She was wearing a black and white checked coat, I remember that. It was black and white. It was black and white. I’m sure it was black and white. The man said to her, “Stop crying. Don’t cry. It’s not helping him. You’re frightening him.” I remember her perfume, like freesia. It was so soft and sweet. I didn’t remember anything after that, until I wakened in the hospital bed with a tube down my throat. The doctor told me, “You’re a lucky man.” That’s me, Mr Lucky. Do I look lucky to you?”

  Rose wiped his face with a tissue. “You survived. There are many who don’t. Where do you live?”

  “Etna Drive.”

  “Let me take you home.” Rose took Bertie by the elbow and helped him to his feet.

  “Put your arm around my shoulder.” Rose held onto Bertie’s arm, staggering down Brompton Park, towards Etna Drive. The orange lights looked cosy behind drawn curtains. The rain fell heavily bouncing off Bertie’s brown boots and soaking into Rose’s coat. The drops then turned into soft sleety snow, settling on Bertie’s eyebrows and Rose’s hair like confetti.

  No, life wasn’t predictable enough in 1972 to give sound advice to Michael.

  So Tom said, “God Bless you Michael. Safe home.” He patted him on the shoulder and watched him walk down Crumlin Road. Michael’s hands were in his pockets, his head turned down facing the ground, trying to avoid the broken glass. Tom stood at the gate watching Michael in silence, the way you might watch a ship sail out of Belfast Lough.

  The silence was broken by the low whirr from a police armoured car crawling slowly up Crumlin Road, its front windows covered with wire, metal flaps like eyelids protecting the driver. Two Browning machine guns protruded through the side windows. Michael paused before crossing Herbert Street. Maybe a sniper would take a pot-shot at the jeep. Everything seemed quiet for now. Tom continued to watch. He saw him stop and then start to walk again. He watched until Michael eventually disappeared into the darkness.