My big sister Kathleen is leaving me here soon. I will have to sleep alone in the dark at The Hill. Lights cannot be left on to burn perfectly good electricity for stupid little girls who should know that there is only one thing to fear and that is losing the love of Good Holy God and His Virgin Mother. I am seven but she is seventeen so it’s past time she had a proper job and stopped getting under people’s feet, way past time.
She’s worked every Saturday at the chemist’s but there’s a danger she will develop airs and graces behind the counter so she is going to scary Derry to be a nurse. She looked after me when I was sick so she will be a good nurse but people die in Derry all the time. I’ve seen it on the TV. She’s going to wait until I’ve made my First Holy Communion, she promised.
Auntie Eileen says I am not to worry my bee-ya-ootiful wee head about her going to Derry. I am her Mary-Moo. I worry anyway because Kathleen is the only one who can shush my bad dreams away.
God is Jesus and the Holy Ghost all rolled into one and very soon I’ll get to eat Him for my Holy Communion. He’s a wafer about the size of a ten-pence piece and made out of flour and water not flesh. I’ve checked and He’s entirely different from the wafers in ice-cream sandwiches. Auntie Eileen says that’s the best way to think about Him, like a very holy biscuit, and Kathleen sniggers and tells her to try and behave even if it’s only this one time. I’ve already heard far too much for a seven-year-old.
I just have to make it through my First Confession and get all the black marks wiped off my soul before I am allowed to take Communion. One of the black marks is as black as coal. Mammy put the coal under my nose so I could picture the blackness. Afterwards there will be a Sandwich Tea in the parish hall. The tea will not be strong enough for Mammy or hot enough or sweet enough but she’ll suffer it in silence because she’s a better class than some people around here. Some people around here shouldn’t be allowed out in broad daylight. I’ll have to ask Mrs Johns down the back lane how much badness it would take to have somebody shut in. I can ask her anything and she will never tell on me, she promised.
Auntie Eileen is the only person I know who isn’t scared of Mammy. She even knows Mammy calls her ‘a one’. ‘A one’ is bad because it means T.R.A.M.P. When Mammy sees Mrs Cohan going around Carncloon in her too-short skirts she always says, she’s another one. We all know she’s a T.R.A.M.P. because she goes up to the big barracks to see British Army soldiers and you’re not even supposed to speak to soldiers. We were trained to not even look at them and their bloody rifles on the main street. They hang out of the doorways and watch the bombed-out shops for people with stones in their hands. They walk in the road because cars go slow in Big Town because of the ramps. The ramps are there to stop the bombers on both sides. Bombs go bang if they get shaken.
Mammy barges past them because they don’t belong here. No harm to them, they’re all someone’s son, says Daddy. One day there will be no English boots on Irish soil, No Siree Bob, and that day can’t come soon enough, says Mammy, who stands like she has a broom up her arse when the National Anthem comes on the wireless after her ceilidh programme. Auntie Eileen is bold to say things and Kathleen’s never done telling her to behave because I have ‘ears like a bat’. I’d never tell on them, though, in this house we don’t carry tales.
Daddy says the worst boots aren’t English at all: they are the boots of the UDR who are just as bad as the USC because the UDR is made up of the lately disbanded B-Specials. It’s not hard to keep up because Mammy goes over my letters with me and I write them in my rough jotter and learn them by heart every time the men add a new set – the RUC, the UUP, the DUP, the IRA, the PIRA – into the mix. Maybe it’s because bad things have to be spelt out?
Mammy always spells out B.I.T.C.H. when she’s talking to her sisters, Auntie Vi and Auntie Harriet. She thinks I don’t know she’s talking about Auntie Eileen who did something terrible in America. She swanned off with an Eye-talian and came home with my Cousin Bernie who’s not well. Bernie’s never spoken a word and she’s older than me by a year. Good Holy God has a way of making sure some people pay for their dirty sins in this life, says Mammy.
When you marry out of sight you must have something to hide, especially when you come home with your tail between your legs and no husband. Auntie Eileen says he died but Mammy says, pah, I’d be surprised if he ever existed! But sure, he must have existed or where did she get Bernie from? It takes a husband to give you a baby.
We went to Carncloon to buy a brand-new pair of white knee socks for the Communion. Daddy stayed in the car because the army blows up unattended vehicles so I carry the bags for Mammy. Shopping is a woman’s job. She made me look at a wall where someone had painted the words: UP THE PROVOS! I don’t know why I had to look or what it means but if she smiles, I smile too. It’s safer.
My head bounces from Belfast to Derry to Dublin and back to Bloody Westminster, which I know now is a big castle in London. Granda Ban says it’s called the Houses of ParleyMint. I’m glad there are only two sides in this war. The Loyalists are them and the Nationalists are us. The Loyalists have King Billy the Dutchman on a white horse from Orange, the Queen of England and the red, white and blue of the Union Jack which flutters on every tree and telegraph pole for miles in the Protestant areas.
The Nationalists want the border to be taken away so that the Six Counties can join back up with the other twenty-six counties of Ireland and we can be a nation once again because we already have a song that says that. Our flag is green, white and gold. It flies from every telegraph pole lining the road in from The Hill to Carncloon. We have had to pay dear for the civil rights.
Auntie Eileen caused a load of bother when she left Bernie with us and headed off to Derry last year because she wanted to march up and down for the civil rights. But marching is not allowed and the British soldiers shot at us. Not all of the bullets were rubber. Daddy made us say extra prayers when it came on the news and Auntie Eileen still hadn’t appeared. Her day out is called Bloody Sunday now because loads of Catholics died.
In Carncloon, Mammy blesses herself if the RUC cross in front of her. RUC stands for Royal Ulster Constabulary and anything with the word ‘Ulster’ in it is not good for us. She makes out that they smell, holding the corner of her headscarf across her nose and mouth. Never forget, as long as you’re spared, Mary Rattigan, that these so-called policemen are little more than poodles for the British Army, she says. I don’t know what a poodle is but I do know she really doesn’t like the British Army. It has come here to keep us in line and she doesn’t like being told what to do in her own country, No Siree Bob.
I have to be a good Catholic because of the Troubles, better even than Mammy and she is a top sayer of prayers. I am the next generation and I must be ready to fight because my grandfather, Captain Sean McPartland, gave his very life for Ireland. He was a patriot.
The sounding of the Angelus bell on the wireless at six in the morning, midday and six at night is devoted to him and his sacred memory and we all must stop to pray. Mammy drops to her knees like a pig hit on the head with a hammer and knocks out a dozen Hail Marys and a few Our Fathers double-quick time before getting on with her day.
She likes us children to be quiet. Empty vessels make most sound, she says if she catches us talking. Talking is best left to adults who understand the world like she does although she would never blow her own trumpet, that would be a sin. The name of that sin is pride. I have the sin of pride to confess. I thought I could keep a S.E.C.R.E.T. in The Hill. Mammy does not allow secrets.
My brother Mick thought we could fool her too. I worry about him. Even though he’s older, he’s softer than me. He wets himself now since the bad thing happened and it’s my job to strip off the sheet and tell him not to cry over spilt milk. Crying is for cissies and Mammy would rather lose all of my brothers to the UVF than rear a cissy. UVF stands for Ulster Volunteer Force.
He has the same scary dream as me. We dream of drownings, of choking water and little lungs being shut down, of Mammy laughing as we cry, but he tries to do the job of a big brother. Just screw your eyes tight shut, he says, until you can see nothing but blackness. If it doesn’t work for you, Pish-the-Bed, why would it work for me, says I, and we both snigger even though it’s not funny.
Auntie Eileen does that, laughs when stuff isn’t funny. Might as well, she says, if you don’t laugh, you’d cry. I am not allowed to stay with her because she is a bad influence so she comes to me at The Hill, bold as brass. This is my brother’s house, Sadie, and don’t you forget it, she says.
Their mother, my Granny Moo, could see people walking down her street when they were actually heading straight for St Peter at the pearly gates. Her second sight was so sharp she could have the priest with the dying for the last rites, a sacrament which gets you into the Kingdom of Heaven even if you’ve been bad all your days. You don’t need a doctor because bodies come and go but souls are forever.
I’ve been comparing sins with Lizzie Magee for our First Confession. I’m saying I’ve lied and been disobedient and she’s going to copy me. I’ve not told her the really bad thing in case she copies that too and gets me into more trouble. One day, we’re going to be missionaries and go off out to Africa and save the heathens from themselves so that they get to go to Heaven. Otherwise, their unclaimed souls’ll be wandering about, maybe in some other horrible place like Limbo where all the little babies with Original Sin have to float in the pitch-black nights that never turn back into days.
Pray for Purgatory, says auld Miss Lynch as she twists the chalk until it snaps, when you’re in Purgatory you’re in with a chance but in Limbo you’re lost for all eternity!