Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

  Ronan said, “Give us half an hour, Brennan?”

  “Take all the time you need.”

  He turned to the Reverend Rayburn and made a bit of small talk till the minister said, “I’ve a taxi coming for me at four o’clock. Thought I’d step out for a bit of refreshment first. Would you care to join me, Father?”

  “I’d be happy to. Please call me Brennan.”

  “Clark,” the other man said, and they got up and ventured out into the rain.

  “We’d best duck into the first place we see,” Brennan suggested, and it didn’t take long before he spotted a bar on the Falls Road and started for the door.

  “Ach, I was thinking of something more in the line of a cup of tea,” said Clark, almost apologetically.

  “Right. Sounds good,” Brennan hastened to say.

  They found a café a few doors down and went inside, shaking off the raindrops. They sat at a table, ordered tea and a plate of biscuits, and enjoyed a friendly chat about their respective vocations. Clark Rayburn had entered the ministry after completing a master’s degree in biology. He had considered going into medicine but “I’m too queasy in the presence of sickness and blood! I’m much more effective ministering to people with no open wounds.”

  “I hear you, brother,” said Brennan, who was the same way himself.

  “Open minds and open hearts are what I look for in people. Not everyone has those gifts!” He cast a rueful eye to the television in the corner of the café, where Old Saint Nick filled the screen, his face nearly purple.

  “We’ve got close-minded, hard-hearted bas . . . people on our side of the line, too,” Brennan allowed. “But I’m not telling a Belfast man anything he doesn’t already know!”

  “You’ve got your gunmen and bombers, and we have ours,” said Rayburn. “You’ve got your sectarian killers and we have ours. We had the Shankill Butchers!”

  Brennan knew about them, a gang who patrolled Catholic neighbourhoods in a taxi and picked victims off the street to be slashed with knives and murdered.

  “I was about to say, Brennan, that I condemn them all equally, killers from both sides, forgetting for a moment that I’m a minister of the Word. I’m supposed to say ‘forgive,’ not ‘condemn’! What happened to all my years of bible study?”

  “I’ve a bit of trouble with that part of the Lord’s message myself. Whenever I hear of civilians being killed, whether by Republicans or Loyalists, I find myself in a far from forgiving frame of mind. And I’ve never been clear in my own conscience about what I would do if I received a terrorist in the confessional, someone who had killed or injured civilians. Would I be able to grant genuine absolution, or would I only mouth the words while secretly hoping the killer would be damned for all time?”

  Rayburn laughed. “You’ve thought about this, I see, Brennan.”

  “I have, much to the detriment of my sleep, I’m afraid.”

  The minister glanced up at the television. It was obvious that Old Saint Nick was in high dudgeon about something, but the TV’s sound was mercifully muted. “He’s no Alec Reid!”

  Brennan searched for a reply that would not sound sectarian and settled on, “How many of us are?”

  “Alec is a modern-day saint.” Clark said. “You’ll have seen the photograph.”

  Brennan nodded. There was no need to ask which photograph. It was an image that had flashed around the world, illustrating the horrors of the war in the North of Ireland. Two British Army corporals in civilian dress had driven — unwittingly, it was said — into a Republican funeral procession. This was on March 19, 1988, three days after the murder of the three mourners at the funeral in Milltown Cemetery. The March 19 funeral was for one of the victims of the Milltown massacre, Kevin Brady, an IRA man. Feelings were running high, and people were afraid of another Loyalist attack, so Sinn Féin had stewards on hand, checking cars. When a steward directed the soldiers to turn around, they tried to find an exit, reversed at speed, and ended up scattering the mourners. The crowd set upon the car and tried to get into it. One of the soldiers drew his gun and fired a warning shot into the air. This of course intensified the fears of another attack. The crowd eventually managed to drag the two men out of their car and proceeded to beat them. It was a horrific incident. Then the two were taken to another location nearby.

  At that point Father Reid, risking his own life, tried to save the two men from further harm. But the IRA shot them. Afterwards, the priest walked to where the two men were lying on the ground. Believing one was still alive, he tried to breathe air into him. He then knelt and anointed them both. A photographer had left the funeral procession and managed to record for all time the image of the priest and the slain soldiers in that desolate field.

  Priest and minister were silent for a few long seconds after that. Then they finished their tea, paid up, and returned to Clonard.

  Ronan and Father Reid were waiting when they arrived.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Clark said.

  “Not at all,” Father Reid assured him. “We just finished solving all the North’s problems seconds before you came in the door.”

  “That’s all it took, you two gentlemen having a wee gab by yourselves?”

  “Simple really.”

  They all laughed. The complications involved in any attempt at détente were clear to everyone in the room.

  Ronan and Brennan took their leave after expressing their appreciation to Father Reid and the Reverend Mr. Rayburn. When they were in the car on the way back to Andersonstown, Ronan said quietly, “There’s something in the works. Stay tuned to the news over the next day or so. That’s all I’ll say for now.”

  “Fair enough.” Then, “Clark Rayburn is a fine fellow.”

  “He is.”

  “We talked about Father Alec and the two soldiers.”

  “Did you know what Father Alec had in his pocket that day?” Ronan asked. Brennan shook his head. “He had a letter from Sinn Féin, setting out the party’s position on a solution to the conflict, a letter he took later that day to the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Derry. It was all part of his attempt to get the two Nationalist groups onside with one another for a possible agreement for peace. As he bent to assist the soldiers, blood got on his face and on the envelope holding the papers. How’s that for symbolism?

  “It was an English photographer who captured the image of the priest with the blood on his face, Alec on his knees by the battered and nearly naked body of one of the soldiers. Will I ever forget the anguished look on Alec’s face as he knelt there?”

  Brennan had never forgotten it either.

  * * *

  Back at Ronan’s place, Gráinne told Brennan that a Mr. Tait had rung from America. Brennan called the number and spoke again to Harold Tait.

  “That little disruption you mentioned, Brennan. Some guy who questioned Hiram Stockwell on the clear and present danger of Catholicism infecting the good Protestant nation of America.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, a colleague of mine was there when that happened. The incident stuck in his mind because he’s keen on the ecumenical movement. Why can’t we all get along, that kind of thing. He recalled Stockwell being very polite to the questioner. He made an attempt to smooth things over by quoting from the Statue of Liberty, ‘Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ And apparently somebody hollered out, ‘Yeah, and your wretched refuse!’ But Stockwell talked about the principles on which the United States was founded, and how its protections and freedoms are for everyone who comes to our shores. And that was the end of it.”

  “And that wasn’t reported.”

  “No, things like that go on all the time. Not newsworthy.”

  “Thank you again, Harold.”

  That and the deluge from the sky, which Tait and MacAllan both mentioned, everyone running
for rain gear. MacAllan was telling the truth. He really had been in the United States when the bombing of Dublin and Monaghan took place. Brennan sank down into his chair, deflated. He could say goodbye to the only promising opportunity to seek justice for Paddy Healey and all the other victims after twenty-one years.

  * * *

  Ireland made headlines around the world the following day, Wednesday, February 22. The governments of Britain and the Irish Republic released a “New Framework for Agreement.” Brennan sat at the dining table and read all about it in the papers. There would be new institutions. Any new political arrangements were to be based on “full respect for, and protection and expression of, the rights and identities of both traditions in Ireland and would even-handedly afford both communities in Northern Ireland parity of esteem and treatment, including equality of opportunity and advantage.” The British government stated that it “is for the people of Ireland alone . . . to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish.” But, hold on: “the Irish Government accept that the democratic right of self-determination by the people of Ireland as a whole must be achieved and exercised with and subject to the agreement and consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland.” Nationalists and Republicans would see this as the same old Unionist veto. One of the most interesting statements in the proposal was the British government’s declaration that it had “no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland.” The Irish government pledged to amend its constitution to give up any “territorial claim of right” to the entire island. But it would continue to be the case that every person born anywhere on the island had the right to be part of the Irish nation.

  When Ronan came in the door, Brennan said, “What’s new, Ronan? Anything at all?”

  “It’s been a long and eventful few days.”

  “So I see.”

  Gráinne came downstairs and gave her husband a hug and kiss. “Home from the field, good soldier that you are.”

  “Soldier? Good diplomat, my love.”

  “Ronan, you could charm the birds off the trees and the Paisley family up the hill of Croagh Patrick, with beads a-rattling.”

  “I only wish. All this,” he said, pointing to the newspapers, “is only the beginning. All the good feeling and fine intentions have been committed to paper. Now we have to find a way to make it work.”

  “You mean ‘we’ in the particular sense and not just the general sense, I’m thinking.”

  “Well, you’re right, there, Brennan. I hope to be able to contribute.”

  Gráinne said, “If there really is any sharing of power — and I’ll believe that when I can see, smell, and touch it — Ronan here will have a new life as an elected politician. We’ll have to make sure he doesn’t become too grand to remember all us wee folk here in Andytown.”

  “Ach, we have enough memorable characters here not to be forgotten.”

  They shared a laugh but Gráinne turned to Brennan and mouthed the words, “He really will be voted in.”

  Chapter XIII

  Brennan

  Brennan worked from early morning to noon on Thursday at Holy Cross church, then slipped off his collar, grabbed a sandwich at a convenience store, and planted himself on a barstool at Madden’s. He had a few scoops and enjoyed some barroom banter, and he toyed with the idea of staying on for a trad music session scheduled for the early evening. But that would inevitably — why should it be inevitable, he asked himself but received no answer — inevitably entail a gargantuan quantity of Arthur Guinness’s draught before the night was done. He would do the responsible thing and take a black taxi to Andersonstown.

  Ronan greeted him upon arrival. “I believe you told me you do prison visits as part of your ministry over in Canada. Do I have that right, Father?”

  “You do.”

  “So you wouldn’t go weak at the knees at the sight of barbed wire and guard towers.”

  “Not in the least. Are you turning yourself in to the authorities?”

  “No, not yet, anyway. Lorcan and I are going to visit a young prisoner, friend of the family.”

  “Right.”

  “And where you fit in is this: Lorcan thinks it would benefit this young lad to speak to a priest. Don’t get me wrong now. Lorcan is not exactly an altar boy, but if his mate needs a sagart, he should have one. So, fancy a trip to the Kesh?”

  “I’m ready when you are.” And I’m relieved that this sagart didn’t linger any longer in Madden’s, skulling pints and killing off brain cells. “Should I don my priestly garb?”

  “No need, Father. Your sanctity shines through, no matter how you are attired.”

  Ten minutes later Brennan, Ronan, Lorcan, and the bodyguards were driving along the M1 motorway. They saw a sign for Lisburn, and Brennan said, “Now that the peace framework is in place, does that mean we can stop in at HQ for tea?”

  “We’re not quite at that point yet, Brennan.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Lisburn was home to the headquarters of the British Army in the North of Ireland. Long Kesh prison, widely known now as the H Blocks and officially named Her Majesty’s Prison Maze, was just outside the town.

  “The H Blocks are not unknown to you, Ronan.”

  “They are not, go deimhin. I was there at the time of the hunger strikes.”

  The Republican prisoners had refused to wear prison clothing and do prison work because they considered themselves political prisoners, not criminal prisoners. Paramilitary inmates had enjoyed special status for several years in the early 1970s, organizing themselves like prisoners of war, answering to their own officers, wearing their own clothes. Their logic was that they were fighting a war against the British Army and that their actions were considered criminal while the actions of the British soldiers and their commanders were not. But those privileges were taken away in 1976, and the protests began. The government of Margaret Thatcher refused to make concessions, and ten young men died on hunger strike.

  “I knew all those lads,” Ronan said, “and saw what they went through as they starved. Their suffering was horrific. No matter where you stand politically, there’s no denying the courage and dedication of people who gave up their very lives. And of course there were the routine beatings our fellas endured till the blood flowed, perpetrated by the soldiers of the empire. Pretty well every month, there were prisoners who were made to walk a gauntlet past the soldiers and their dogs, and sometimes the dogs attacked the boys, too. It was a savage place.”

  “Dogs!”

  “Stick around this part of the country for a while, Brennan, and nothing will surprise you. I was so enraged by what our boys were putting up with — the rest of us were abused, too, of course — I was so enraged that all I wanted to do was get out of there. For selfish reasons, yes. But also to resume the fight, to bring the war to those savages.”

  Brennan could hear the rage in the voice of his normally cool and affable cousin, all these years later.

  “Well, the war was brought home to some of them,” Brennan recalled. “A number of prison officers were shot to death during those times.”

  “They were.”

  “Served the fuckers right,” Lorcan muttered.

  Brennan said nothing but reflected on the fact that they were not the first or last people in this conflict who were shot before or after committing acts of violence. Shot instead of arrested and brought to trial. But he knew that the chances of prison officials being arrested and tried for brutality was as unlikely as a statue being raised to Margaret Thatcher on the Falls Road in Belfast.

  Their driver approached the compound, and Brennan saw the watchtowers, the barbed wire, the cameras. “It’s a gruesome sight from the outside, Ronan. I’m sure I’d lose the will to live if I were confined inside it.”

  “N
ot easy to do your whack without complaint in a place like this. Suicides, alcoholism — places like this take their toll.”

  “Inevitably.”

  “I wanted to top myself after only three weeks in there.” That was Lorcan. So, two members of the family — at least two — had served time in Her Majesty’s prison. Brennan didn’t ask for details.

  “Now, it’ll take a bit of time before we see Jonno, as you might expect,” said Ronan.

  It did indeed take some time to get through the screening process, but they eventually found themselves in a crowded room where the families of the prisoners waited for their turn. When Jonno’s name and number were called, the Burkes got up and were led outside where they were loaded into a van for transport to the visiting area. The windows of the vehicle were blacked out; this was no tour bus. They got out and were taken to yet another waiting area. The protests and hunger strikes of the 1980s had borne fruit to some extent; inmates were permitted to wear their own clothing. The warders were in uniform: dark trousers, a white shirt with epaulettes and a tie. Some wore peaked caps. One of the warders called Jonno’s name and, once their passes were examined, the Burkes were told that the prisoner was ready to meet them. They entered a large hall and walked past rows of numbered cubicles with low dividing walls until they got to the one where Jonno was waiting. Ronan made the introductions and the three visitors sat facing the prisoner across a narrow table.

  “Jaysus, you’re not on hunger strike, are you, Jonno?” Lorcan exclaimed.

  “Not intentionally, Lor.”

  Jonno was dressed in a shabby grey track suit. It was well worn. He was ginger-haired and pale, so thin you could almost see through the front of him to the back.

  “Jonno, meet our cousin, Father Burke from Canada. Or most recently from Canada, anyway.”

  “How about ye, Father?”

  “All my cousins call me Brennan. But don’t be concerned about how I am, Jonno. It’s you we’re concerned about here. Do they not feed you?”