I tried not to soften too quickly towards John but even Bridie noticed when I lightly touched the back of his neck at the dinner table. She raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Well, now this is a real breakthrough,’ and the children all looked up in time to see me go bright red when she guffawed. He was telling me that peace was breaking out in the countryside a lot quicker than it was in the cities. There was no fanfare in Carncloon but slowly roadblocks disappeared and there were fewer torn Union Jacks and ragged Tricolours hanging from every tree and lamp post.
The edges of the pavements which had always been kept in pristine red, white and blue or green, white and gold were allowed to fade. The weight of all those colours drifted away like a rainbow of smoke and I found myself walking taller and breathing easier. I put it down to the joy of my family being safer than it had ever been. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that I had smiled at John Johns – only once so far – and he had smiled back. Nothing at all to do with that, No Siree Bob!
We limped on to the Northern Ireland Assembly elections and we got the UUP’s David Trimble as leader and the SDLP’s Seamus Mallon as his deputy. It felt as if the Six Counties might just make it if everyone played by the rules. We planned what fields we’d change from hay to corn the following year, what walls needed strengthening, what fences needed repair to keep our beasts protected.
What none of us could have predicted was the hellishness of the first Twelfth of July after the peace deal. The brand-new Parades Commission banned the Loyalist march down the mainly Catholic Garvaghy Road in Drumcree as it was likely to be contentious. Contentious? Where had they been for the last few decades? As we watched, Drumcree imploded again. Lizzie Magee called us to check that the Irish news was the same as the English news because she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She rang off in tears but said that her and Kenny were still thinking of coming home, one day.
What she could see and what we could see was a battle raging between the Loyalists and the Nationalists on either of the barricades made of steel, concrete and barbed wire. It had only taken three months for violence, threats of execution, roadblocks, attacks on security forces and Catholic homes, gunfire, blast bombs and plastic bullets to be back in the headlines. So this was peace? It’s only sixty miles away, Mammy, says Eugene, and we all hold still a minute in case we can hear Saracens coming on the river but the mighty Cloon was silent. We thought it couldn’t get much worse and then it did.
Three little boys, three Catholic brothers, died in a fire when their home was petrol-bombed by Loyalists. Bridie slammed her rosary beads back in the drawer before she went outside for a cry. Marius went after her to tell her the lie that it would be alright, that it would get better one day. What kind of God lets things like this happen, Dada? Serena managed as the tears tripped down her face. John had nothing to say because he would never lie to the waynes.
John followed me from bed to bed that night as we kissed and kissed our precious boys and our precious girl. We were so blessed, so very lucky. Without a word we ran back to the bedroom. His skin was so cool it burned me. Just as I was about to cry out he silenced me with his lips and I latched on to him, back in the fold at last! We made love for what seemed like hours but still we lay wide-eyed side by side, staring at the eaves. The windows were open and the blackbirds picked out their bright song and every time the breeze threatened to cool us too much, he reached for me or I reached for him.
Sleep must have come for I dreamt that helicopter blades were scything through the darkness. I felt the breeze as first they moved towards me and I braced for the agony. As they came close they stopped and veered away, making straight for John Johns. He was smiling, a smile that could light up the hedgerows, when they sliced the top of his head off like an egg. His eyes, his lips, his teeth ran with blood and there was nothing I could do to stem the flow.
We knew that something even more terrible was brewing. We could feel it in the air. The clouds settled once more over Carncloon and over every small and big town in the Province. Protestant neighbours were as shook up as us as we set about getting in the first crop of hay together. It was heartbreaking that the extremists on both sides could cause such damage in our name. We had no control over the mad bombers, the murderers; we knew they would be impossible to stop – if three dead children couldn’t stop them, what would?
The waynes had grumbled a bit about working on the farm; they had wanted to go to the last day of the carnival week in Omagh. It was summer, it would be busy, fun, loads of people would be there, Serena could go shopping! Nora Reilly was allowed to go, why couldn’t Serena go? It was unlike her to keep on long enough to get the boys to join in. All five of them were convinced they were missing out on something special.
– It’ll be a day to remember, Mammy!
– Every day you get to live healthy and free is a day to remember, Serena Bridget!
– Oh Mammy, puh-lease don’t even start up with your fluffy nonsense about us all being together and all being safe and all being grateful that we have eyes to see the grass with!
It made me smile to hear that she had taken in my daily prayer. John smiled too but she carried on with her tutting and pouting a bit too long and he told them all to remember their manners and they knuckled down.
I drove the tractor, pulling the reaper, and the men and Eileen piled the cut grass into windrows. When it looked like rain, we got Daniel to drive instead so we could double up. The children were fine workers; John praised them up the field and back down it again and they worked faster and faster to please him. Bernie and Bridie were in charge of the tea-making down at Arthur Rowley’s place and they brought us a box of flasks around midday. We sat at the foot of an oak and let it burn our thirst away.
Serena, long dark hair shining, was leaning against my daddy; they sat back to back to hold each other up and I ached to feel or to be close to him. She was sixteen. She had my face, my body, but not my sin. She had my father’s love in spades.
I bit back tears and stared hard at the high white clouds hung in the blue sky over the valley. There was hardly a sound aside from the chirrups in the blackthorns; the swallows swooped and soared, picking off the exposed insects. No one wanted to talk about anything other than making hay.
Shane took his turn on the tractor and we made good progress, getting through two more fields before Arthur called it a day and insisted we came in for a beer; the waynes could have lager shandies and he’d even bought in a few auld packets of crisps for them. I’m game, says Eileen, very, very game! Every cell in our bodies was tired; the sweet smell of cut grass clung to us, its juice staining our legs and hands green.
The boys ran on ahead, making for Arthur’s water. John walked with his arm around Serena’s shoulder and I risked another inch of my heart to link mine lightly through Daddy’s. When he pulled me close to him, I thought I would burst. I could feel his lean old body through his shirt as he fumbled with his pipe and baccy before he lit up and bathed us both in sacred smoke. We strolled on, the evening gently folding in on itself as it swam in my eyes.
– Mammy! Daddy! Something’s wrong!
All the boys were shouting at once. We all started to run towards the street and the house where Bernie was standing. Her arms described big circles, her face all pulled out of shape; she pointed at the door and drew more circles. We knew that sign: it meant Boom Bang Boom. Bridie was dry-eyed in front of the telly. The six o’clock news was showing a town ripped up by a bomb; nothing but dust, grey dust, registered at first.
– It’s Omagh, says Bridie, stunned.
We all looked and saw the familiar high street, the spire of St Columba’s Church of Ireland still standing in the background, but to all sides there was destruction. People were lying on the street wounded; some of them were not moving. How had the television people got there so fast? The fire brigade showed up in their yellow jackets; ambulance crews picked up one, two, three from the tarmac. Everyone was running with horror on their faces and bits of cloth in their hands as if they might be able to clean up.
– Whose side did it, Bridie? asks Arthur.
– Nobody’s saying, says Bridie.
Not that it mattered a pile. We let the images roll on while Arthur pulled the rings on the cans of Harp and put out the Tayto crisps for the waynes. They all looked a bit peaky. There was nothing to say except prayers for all the poor families who would never be whole again. God save us all, says Arthur, his voice catching. He raised his can and we raised ours, clinked and drank deeply to the hollow toast.
It seems that Ulster Television had been given a warning, the Samaritans had been given a warning, and the army had been given a warning. But the car had been parked on the wrong street, not in front of the intended target of Omagh courthouse, so the RUC were actually moving people on to it when it exploded. It was just another mistake in a swollen sea of mistakes. Omagh, our county town, was once again in the news.
It’s hard to adjust to such a sickening scene when you’ve just come in from fields swamped with buttercups and daisies, growing lush and perfect and impossible to make any sense of it. It would be days before we knew how many were dead, how many were injured, but we knew from experience it would be a lot. There was nothing to see but damage. Fear grew back into a knot in my guts: would I really have peace to finish rearing my sons? Would they be safe? It was only a few hours earlier that we’d made the decision not to let our children go. It would be a day to remember.
I look at them all now, white-faced and staring, speechless like John. Bridie, Auntie Eileen and Bernie are crying but they too are silent. Arthur had stepped out to mourn in private. Like everyone we were watching, picking their way through the shattered glass from blown-up shops, covered in dust and blood, Serena had only wanted to go out shopping and laughing in the sunshine.
I realise that she’s left my side. I hear her on the phone sobbing. I know she’s finally got through to the Reilly house. She shouldn’t have to have this conversation, I think to myself. No one should ever have to have this conversation, never mind a sixteen-year-old. She’s hardly done being a child, although she doesn’t know it. I want to be back, back, all the way back through the years, holding her against my waist and kissing her face until she squirms away to see to her dolls and teddy bears and their many picnics. Her pain and her words tear through me like shrapnel. I can’t keep any of us from harm.
– Oh Nora! Thank God! I thought you were dead! I thought I’d lost you!
Even the worst of nights go in eventually. We had drifted about until I got everyone around the fire with a slice of bread on a fork each. We need toast for these fried eggs, I said, and we all managed a small smile. Bridie mashed the tea in the old brown teapot and we sat at the table together. John was raging inside but that’s where he kept it, inside and away from the waynes. I touched his neck; it was hard as marble but he breathed out and the atmosphere cheered up a notch.
The next day we found out how many had died. It was twenty-nine. The news kept saying ‘civilians’. Over the next few days we found out how many were injured, over two hundred – some left without limbs, others blinded or disfigured. Men, women, children all chewed up by sectarian violence. A young woman who had been shopping with her mother and her little girl was killed. She had been pregnant with twins – all five of them wiped off the face of the earth. It could have been me, Bridie, Serena, Eugene and Marius. Then we found out who was responsible: it was our very own Real IRA. Would my darling mother’s rampant Nationalism be robust enough to spin this one?
We’ll soon find out. She’s been invited down for a slice of cake to celebrate Serena’s GCSE results and her A in art A level that she did ‘just for fun’. I didn’t invite her but my much more forgiving child did. Bridie groaned and Auntie Eileen announced that she, for one, would not be doing the party sober, No Siree Bob! Daddy’s coming too, although he won’t stay long. Serena’s done well, and her and the beloved Nora Reilly have their eyes on Belfast. I can’t bear to think about it but I nod away as she explains they want to get to Queen’s University to study law. There’s no flies on my girl. I should never forget that as I see her frown at me where I stand decorating today’s main attraction.
– Why have you made a coffee walnut? You know that’s Dada’s favourite, not mine!
– You like it well enough. Don’t mither!
– I always get a coconut raspberry sponge; that’s my cake!
– Serena, one more word and I’ll scrape the whole bloody thing into the bin and you can explain to your Auntie Eileen that’s she bought a load of silly fizzy wine that won’t exactly go with plain biscuits!
I can feel my whole ‘When I was your age’ speech coming on when she stomps away but I swallow it down to not ruin the day. The last few days haven’t been good for any of our nerves. But when I was her age I had a baby and no running water to contend with! When I was her age I had no idea what life would throw at me next! When I was her age I had successfully shut every door that I thought would be open to me! When I was her age my O-level results resulted in a big fat nothing and Mammy gloating over it like a cat swimming in cream.
I hear her on the phone again to Nora Reilly, complaining like a champion, and I think, yes, today is as good as it gets! The pure joy that we were arguing over a cake and not a coffin bubbled inside me and I put every ounce of love I had for her, for them all, into arranging the walnuts around the edge. It had to be perfect.
Mother dearest arrives to darken the half-door. She’s early, not because she’s polite but because she’s trying to catch me out. She has no idea how well-prepared I am today. I’ve been scheming all night. All the death of the last week has made me feel foolish for wasting so much of the life I’ve been given. She scans the kitchen and can’t find a single thing to complain about: a first.
The sound of my father’s tractor rounding the bend before he gets to the street brings all the children running and I hear the gate to the river field whine open and clang shut. John Johns is coming. I watch for him to appear in the far window. I know he will stop by the water butt and wet his face and hair with the still-cool rain. He will wipe his hands on his jeans and turn back to look at the river field before he ducks to get into the kitchen. He will smile at me today. I hold myself absolutely still so that he can’t miss me.
I have scrubbed this house from top to bottom. I have even polished myself. I have made a perfect cake. I have laid a perfect table. Everyone he has ever cared about is in this room except Catherine. I can’t do anything about her but there must still be time to do something about me? I’m here and well and living right under his nose.
He has stopped to talk to my father. I hear the rumble of their voices and the shouts of the waynes. The wait is agony. Any minute now Bernie might start swiping scones or messing up my napkins and the whole thing will be ruined! I need to be viewed in the scene that I’ve set, the perfect wife and mother at large. Eugene runs in screaming. We’re all going to the river for a swim and then a picnic! Auntie Eileen’s delighted; she can smoke her guts out in peace in the fresh air. My mother’s eyes roll so far back with rage that I’m shocked when they roll back again.
Before I can stop it, every child has grabbed an armful of the food they want to eat and Eileen and Bernie follow them with a bottle of fizzy wine under each arm. I remember seeing a wildlife programme once where a cloud of locusts covered a field of grain in seconds. I was the last ear of corn standing, bewildered. Mammy was so happy! The whole place was trashed, so she satisfied herself by just laughing at me and my cake when she stepped out into the sunshine.
John has been in the milk house gathering up the rough rugs we keep for the fields. He sees me standing alone, chewing my lip.
– Aren’t you coming?
– I’d set the table … I made a cake …
– So? Bring it, or leave it and we’ll have it when we get back!
– No! It’s all ruined! The whole thing’s ruined …
– Oh for God’s sake, Mary! Only you could cry over something so trivial! After everything we’ve seen this last week, it’s just typical of you not to learn the lesson! It’s a beautiful day! Life is short and when it’s gone, it’s gone!
He walked off without me, shaking his head. It was nothing to him, all that effort. I watched the set of his shoulders as he jumped the gate before striking for the river. I wanted to call out to him, to ask him to wait, but he was moving fast and soon disappeared behind the big sycamores. It was a beautiful day. The shadows of the high clouds raced along the ridge of Combover Hill and Shanagh Bog was a purple jewel in the clear, bright light. I loved it here. I loved Johns Farm and everyone on it. And I had learned a lesson – a hard one, one I would try not to forget the next time I got a soppy notion in my head. Girls like me just don’t get smiles handed to them on a plate.
Autumn brought my favourite shade of red in the shape of the bold Lizzie Magee. She kept her promise and started to come home more often when the retaliation we thought was inevitable for the Omagh bomb never materialised. With her to pick me up and keep me company, I started to go into town more. She was around the week the steel barricades were taken away. The sparks from the grinders flew silver as they chopped through the metal poles and every barrel of concrete was lifted on a forklift and put in the back of a van. Carncloon looked naked without them and when we were able to walk from one end of the town to the other it just didn’t seem right. We kept meeting Protestants who looked as lost as we did, all of us like pigs going to hoke.
Cars could be left unattended, they could be parked right outside shops, there were fewer and fewer roadblocks. All the shops in the Diamond, a triangle of buildings which had been used to bookend the security gates in and out to the bottom of the town, were demolished: Carncloon was going to have a village green. Lizzie Magee and me nearly wet our drawers! Why would a town need a tragic patch of grass when five green hills loomed around it?
The Long Lounge was finally going to be rebuilt and I had stammered a ‘yes’ when John Johns suggested we might go there together when it was finished. I thought of all the kissing I had done with Joe Loughrey in the burned-out dance hall at the back but the next time I set foot in there it would be to stand at a bar and have a drink with the man who had become my husband. Life was a strange beast. I’d never thought we would go out together when all we had ever had was the staying in. Not that I was complaining; the staying in was a high point of every day.
The barracks remained, huge and grey at the top of the town, but the rest of the place started to look normal: a few shopkeepers even licked on a bit of paint, a lot of green and white appeared at our end, a lot of red and blue at the other – old habits die hard in Northern Ireland. By Christmas, even a cheery string of white bulbs survived the season, strung across the air above the marks of the border, casting a weak festive light between us and them. Progress was being made!
Life took on a different rhythm, with Lizzie coming and going. She was jolly when she was at Johns Farm, fussing over the children and making John laugh at the stuff she got up to in London. When they started comparing tube-train rides and pubs, I tried not to look jealous even though a little green-eyed maggot was chewing through my heart. I wanted to be the worldly one; I wanted to be ordering drinks at bars and hailing black cabs. I wanted to be the one he was paying attention to, just once. Sometimes it felt as if the fabric of the sofa had grown over me and no one had noticed.
We refused the invitation to have our Christmas dinner at The Hill for the sixteenth year in a row and we didn’t extend an invitation for them to come to us. The hostility was burning a hole in me and I resolved to try harder. My father showed up; as usual he wasn’t ‘stopping’, just dropping by to wish us all the cheer of the season and he had a pile of stuff for the waynes, including a selection box each. The rain was beating down and he had on his ancient drover’s coat, gone shiny round the pockets and buttons. I managed to get him past the half-door where he stood in a puddle of his own making. Would it be alright if himself and Matthew came down on Boxing Night to play cards with the waynes and us as usual? Of course it would, Daddy, I said as the boys and Bridie took the stuff and put it under the tree. There was a bottle of whiskey and another of sherry, all wrapped in the cheapest paper Mammy could find.
When we were on our own he reached into one of the huge pockets and handed me a damp little cat that had been soaking up raindrops. That’s just for yourself, he says before turning back for The Hill. I thought my head would burst. It was a kitten of every colour: black, white, brown and orange with little amber eyes! I buried my face in her furry belly. She wasn’t much but she was mine. I called her Ginger after Lizzie Magee and, before the day was out, she had every claw she owned lodged in my buttery heart. I told you there’d be other cats, says Bridie as she wipes the tears off my cheeks with the heel of her hand.