Irish Blood, English Heart, Ulster Fry

by Annie Caulfield

  As we retraced some of his beat, I asked Uncle Joe if Bimpa had been in danger.

  ‘It was quieter then. And these hills were quite mixed – the lower slopes with the good land were Protestant, it’s only higher up it’s Catholic. There were outbursts of spitefulness, but I don’t remember any directed at him. People knew he’d converted so he was almost all right with both. Later, that sort of subtle distinction ceased to apply. There was a policeman shot up here a few years ago. There’d be no going around on a bicycle now.’

  Impressive though, long gradients on forty Senior Service a day. Possibly the sportiness acted as an antidote to cigarettes, because Bimpa lived till the mid–1990s. He was a long time without Granny, who’d died in the seventies. From the generation of men who couldn’t even bring themselves to glance at a cooker, he moved down to the Portadown district to be near family who’d feed him. And to avoid possible spitefulness in Tyrone.

  In Portadown he had a modern terraced house where he was regularly visited by grandchildren. He bought a very large colour television that delighted him, all the sport as like as life. And he claimed he had the children’s programmes on in the day to amuse any grandchildren who might drop round, but my uncle Eamon suspected he enjoyed them himself. ‘All those strange wee creatures in bright colours, I think he’s fascinated. He’s fixed in front of that television from the moment the children’s programmes come on.’

  When I’d gone over to visit Bimpa and his television, Eamon said, ‘Don’t worry if he doesn’t have much to say. He doesn’t have much to say.’

  The first shock for my uncle was that, as I sat down, Bimpa turned down the sound on the television.

  ‘He never does that for any of us,’ Eamon confided later.

  Bimpa asked about my parents, my work, but soon the conversation ran dry. I had no clue what to ask him but wish now I’d asked a million questions. Not that he’d necessarily have answered; he’d been a closed book for a very long time. He did give me a talk on his favourite topic, the trouble Ian Paisley was to the country… Then we hit another lull. He picked up his Senior Service and asked me if I smoked.

  I wondered if it was a test, to see how nicely I’d turned out, but then was grateful for the real wonder of smoking, the bonding in it and the chance of a long conversation about smoking. He agreed it wasn’t good for you – but look at the number of people killed on the roads… He could quote car-crash statistics as if he’d witnessed every accident in Europe himself.

  Uncles and cousins told me the cigarette was a sign I’d been a hit with him. I’d have had no other way of knowing.

  When Bimpa died, a few years later, my brother conducted the funeral mass. My brother had managed to recover from the post-traumatic stress I’d caused him in the turkey sheds and gone through the tough years of training required to become a Catholic priest; or he became one because of the turkey shed, to minimize female presence in his life. In all the vast number of cousins it had been one of us English ones who’d taken up the old faith with determination. I’d completely failed to understand why he’d have done such a thing. But at Bimpa’s funeral, my little brother, up there in front of a large congregation of people at a sensitive moment, delivered the perfect blend of personal and authoritative in his eulogy.

  My brother had been at a seminary in Dublin and had spent a lot of his holiday time over in the North with the relatives; he knew them better than I did. They’d been far more caring and supportive through his long haul to ordination than a punk rocker, heathen sister back in London. I still didn’t understand, but I was proud of him. More so when we were all leaving the church after the funeral and I spotted him, snuck out a side door, thinking no one would see, weeping like his heart was going to break. I had a big sisterly urge to rush up to him – but realized he didn’t want anyone to know this had happened to him.

  Five minutes later, he joined everyone on the walk to the cemetery, calm, coaxing and comforting people twice his age. There was something about him.

  There was something about Bimpa too. For all his taciturn distance, he’d set up something in our family that prevailed. A belief that you walk down the middle and follow your heart, because sectarianism is nothing to do with real life. And by being whoever he mysteriously was, he created one of those moments that can be held up as an example of Northern Ireland not being the place people think it is.

  At his funeral, senior RUC men, who’d started in the force under his training, attended respectfully – they said he’d been an inspirational teacher. The Portadown RUC lined the route to the Catholic cemetery saluting him and his Catholic family. People from houses along the road came out and asked whose funeral it was. They’d remember what they were told. It wasn’t just a funeral, it was a pause, where someone was given his due, regardless.

  He was buried beside Granny. From what I’ve heard not so much resting in peace as in long, cross silences and irritated bickering. But they had far more to them than that. Somehow they catapulted four sons and a daughter way off the farm and knew that education was the way to do that. A route through higher education into a good future was found for all of them, whether they’d liked it or not.

  Perhaps Uncle Joe had become a great educator because he had hated his own schooling so much. His boardingschool days in Derry had been so torturous, he’d still scowl at a mention of the city. Another pupil at this grim boys’ school had been the playwright Brian Friel: ‘We weren’t in the same year but he did something that marked him out to me as someone interesting. There was a headmaster who was a bit of a wag, or rather fancied himself as a bit of a wag. One morning, he was giving a school talk that he sprinkled with jokes, and pupils sniggered dutifully as appropriate. Suddenly at one of his jokes, Brian Friel started laughing really loudly, holding his stomach, choking… Then he fell off his chair, rolling about the floor, still convulsed with laughter. A master hauled him to his feet. The headmaster asked him what was wrong. He said, “I am sorry, sir, it was just so funny.” And he appeared to make a great effort to pull himself together. His excuse was made so convincingly it had to be accepted – but you could see the headmaster had a tiny doubt about whether Friel was taking a rise or not, as did the boys. And Brian Friel never said anything about it afterwards, never bragged about it, just kept it to himself – something he may or may not have done to amuse himself.’

  Stories, stories. We were up in the hills of Bimpa’s beat now, passing the old police barracks house where the family had lived for years. Uncle Joe pointed out the house of a neighbour who played the piccolo. He’d worked in the steel mills of Middlesbrough and taken up the piccolo in the works band. Over there was a hotel where Bimpa would have to rest himself in the bar after his long cycle tours.

  The bar had been run by a woman who’d stayed single and prosperous for years. Late in life, she’d taken up with a younger man from Strabane, a bit of a layabout. Everybody feared he was a gold-digger and waited for the worst. But the hotel and the older woman were the making of him, he made it even more profitable and expanded the business, so then all the doom-sayers were the ones saying, ‘People always predicted the worst but I knew she was too shrewd to marry a gold-digger.’

  This hotel was in a district where everyone had strange long names. Allison Kate Mary Brian Lockrie; Paddy Kate Brian John Lockrie. Because so many people had the same surname, the names of parents and grandparents were thrown in to differentiate.

  Another common surname was O’Kane. Granny’s surname. Originally they were the OCahans, a very old clan name. The OCahans were from the hills round Dungiven and they spread out all over the area, right down to Strabane.

  Near Dungiven town, in the remains of the Augustinian priory, was the tomb of Cooney na Gall OCahan, who died in 1385. A sculpted figure wearing armour lay in the chancel. In niches below were carved warriors in kilts, representing his Scottish mercenary troops, hence his nickname, ‘na Gall’, meaning foreigners.

  Whatever ancient Irish clout we’d had the
n had diminished somewhat by the time of Granny’s parents, although Uncle Joe was sure her mother was a native Gaelic speaker – a fairly ancient Irish kind of thing. And in what would have been OCahan hill territory, Granny’s brothers farmed, living side by side in low grey houses. As children we’d take a long, long trudge up from Sion Mills with Granny to see them. Worth it, because one of the houses was full of ornamental china dogs and in the other was a great-aunt-in-law who made bright pink marshmallow cakes.

  In the early nineties, Uncle Joe and I had found the houses empty but standing as if ready for new occupants. This time we nearly missed them, they’d become so overgrown – weeds twining through empty window frames, roofs caved in, saplings straining through the gashes in the walls, a tree fallen across a door… I don’t know how old it made my septuagenarian uncle feel, but I felt ancient to see trees growing through rooms where I’d once coveted china dogs and gorged on marshmallow cakes.

  ‘There was a family down there.’ Uncle Joe pointed out a cottage still in use. ‘They were all what you’d call a bit slow. You know, the types whose IQ is written on their forehead. One time me and my brother James had the mumps and seemed to get better very quickly. So the father from the slow family came over and said to my uncle that his boys had the mumps and he wanted them to have the ancient OCahan cure that we’d had. My uncle didn’t believe all the old pagan country nonsense but felt it would have caused neighbourly ill feeling to refuse. He took the two boys with mumps to a barn and put them inside a big plough horse collar. He gave them a bridle to hold, turned them round three times, then led them to the spring down the road. He told them to drink three times from it and led them back up the hill to their sickbeds. In a few days they were up and about. So…’ my uncle puffed on his pipe smiling, ‘now us clever modern ones might talk about the power of suggestion but my uncle said the idea of what to do with them came into his mind as he went along, so he couldn’t be sure if he was making it up as he went along, or if he was being inspired by mysterious forces.’

  The two slow brothers had lived till a very old age: ‘They’d never have made it in the city but out here they’d pleasant enough lives. They’d farm in the daytime, have a meal about five o’clock, and rest until it was time to go out socializing. They were great socializers.’

  They may have been the boulevardiers of the backwoods but where would they go? The hotel was miles away, the pub was miles away…

  ‘They’d visit people in the houses around, talk and play cards. Of course, all this went on from about ten at night till one in the morning. It wouldn’t do for ones reared in England who can’t sit up at night.’

  ‘I don’t usually tire out so easily. I think it’s the fresh air, too much ozone.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what it is.’

  I certainly couldn’t get into the rhythm of life at my uncle’s. I’d be thinking I might go to bed just as they’d be heading out to play cards. People would arrive for visits at times of night I’d take to mean an emergency – but it was just the hours people kept.

  Card-playing had been a major recreation with the adults on our Buncrana holidays. Uncle Joe and Aunt Helen still played two or three nights a week, although their card school was not what it was.

  ‘It’s more in the nature of something you’d see on a comedy programme than anything like the Cincinnati Kids we used to fancy ourselves as when young. Two of the players are nearly blind and one is nearly deaf. There’s another one who’s very blind but won’t admit it. So there’s chaos, with me the only one with any faculties left trying to keep patience. Helping people see the cards who won’t admit they can’t see them and shouting the bids for the deaf one. And then there’s a lot of time spent discussing our ailments; the ailments or passing away of others known to us, or unknown to us but in the newspaper… So the actual card-playing time is very restricted. Some ruthless card sharp could join us one night and make a fortune. If they were a ruthless card sharp with a limited idea of a fortune. Your aunt cleaned up on Sunday night and made twelve pounds, so it’s all highrolling stuff.’

  He said card-playing was regarded by some of Bimpa’s Protestant kin as a vice, but it was the pastime of country people who didn’t want to go to pubs. It gave shy people something to do if they couldn’t make conversation; it gave scattered communities a harmless focus and enabled older people to keep tabs on each other. I asked if he thought it kept people’s brains sharp.

  ‘If they have the blind and the deaf and the lame to coordinate diplomatically like I have, then it certainly would.’

  Our anniversary journey through County Tyrone didn’t take in a diversion to walk the Giant’s Causeway coastal path.

  ‘That’s one I’ll have to admit old age has cancelled out for me,’ my uncle said. ‘Although when we did it before, you in your innocence didn’t realize you were walking miles with a man who’d just had a heart operation.’

  ‘I did know. I just thought as you’d said you wanted to do the walk, that walking must be good for you.’

  He laughed. ‘At that stage in my life, telling a young niece a stroll on a coastal path was beyond my abilities wasn’t part of a habit of life I’d got used to. I still liked to see myself as a fellow just past middle age and of heroic disposition.’

  ‘It was pretty heroic, I was exhausted.’

  ‘It stands out as a heroic piece of walking in my memory.’

  We’d walked the steep path slowly and made stops to look at seabird nests, or ships on the horizon – really rest stops for both of us. Reaching the end, it seemed we’d have to turn round and walk all the way back – but I spotted what I thought might be a short cut across the fields to the car park.

  ‘What if it wasn’t?’ my uncle had said. ‘What if it was some way that actually turned out to take longer, wouldn’t you just die?’

  I don’t know if we’d have died, but we might have had to sit down in the fields and weep until rescued.

  There wasn’t just my uncle’s better adjustment to the constraints of age making him less enthusiastic about another trip to Giant’s Causeway. According to him, Giant’s Causeway and the Antrim coast were sights all visitors to Northern Ireland should see once, but they became a bit less exciting every time. Unlike the Sperrins – an enduring joy, because the Sperrins were changeable: gaunt and full of secrets in winter shadows; exquisitely pretty in the sunlight. They had no well-trodden paths or gift shops. They had the sort of unoccupied ancientness people expected of the Irish landscape but found less and less.

  Not that the bizarre basalt columns of Giant’s Causeway were a bad thing, they just got all the attention.

  The honeycomb rock pavement was created by volcanic rock shrinking and splitting as it cooled, forming a platform of 40,000 stepping stones that disappeared into the sea. The basalt columns were a natural feature that looked too geometrical to have just happened, but apparently they did. There were many legends to explain them away, the most well known concerning local warrior and giant, Finn McCool. Finn McCool was supposed to have constructed the causeway to bring over a lady giant from Scotland to be his bride.

  There were similar rock formations on the facing Scottish coast, so if we clever modern types didn’t know about volcanic rocks…

  Our previous journey had taken us to a very different Strabane. From the sleepy market town of my childhood, it had become a heavily shuttered shell of a place by the early nineties. There were massive steel-protected army and police bases, armoured cars had rolled through the streets at all hours. It was strange to try and imagine that in the eighteenth century, publishing and printing had been the town’s genteel industry. Strabane hadn’t returned to genteel with the removal of all the armoury. There were new shops, one selling racks of white satin holy communion dresses at a massive discount. There were new cheap food marts, refurbished pubs serving Italian coffee, a few tubs of plants stuck around the central car park, but unhappiness seemed to have welled up in Strabane and couldn’t really be disguised
with mock Victorian street furniture, new shops and a lick of paint.

  Strabane had been poor for a long time – emigrants flooded out of the area long before the famine – publishing, linen, whatever business was thriving in the area excluded vast numbers of the Catholic population. This exclusion had festered to make Strabane one of the worst places in the Troubles. Levels of unemployment, crime and vandalism were still very high.

  Exemplifying the perversity of human nature, one of Ireland’s funniest writers came from poor old Strabane – Brian O’Nolan, aka Flann O’Brien/Myles na gCopaleen. People assume he was a Dubliner, the archetypal Dubliner, but there was an easily missed blue plaque by a car park, marking the Strabane house where O’Nolan/O’Brien etc. had been born into an insistently Irish-speaking family. He went on to a brilliant academic career at University College, wrote mind-bending comic novels and a column in the Irish Times, called Cruiskeen Lawn, in which he championed the Irish language and mocked any stupidity and pomposity that he came across in his Dublin life.

  If the writer’s family house had been in Dublin it would probably have been a museum by now, full of O’Nolan/O’Brien/Myles na gCopaleen mugs, pencils and mouse mats. But Strabane had barely caught up with itself, let alone had a chance to cash in on its overlooked treasures and chase after the lucrative literary teatowellery that thrived in Dublin.

  There was a small National Trust museum in Gray’s Printing Shop on the main street. In an upstairs room were glass cases of war memorabilia belonging to men from Strabane who fought for Britain in both world wars, alongside a display of pottery by local children. Downstairs, an exhibition named Strabane as the birthplace of John Dunlap, printer and distributor of the American Declaration of Independence. Another Strabane printer who emigrated to America was James Wilson, grandfather of President Woodrow Wilson.