Trinity: A Novel of Ireland

  "A dirty time to be calling you into Derry," Finola said, "with all those crazy Orangemen ready to go on a rampage."

  "I think Kevin O'Garvey called the meeting deliberately," Tomas answered. "He wants us to get a good whiff of the Protestant temper this year."

  "As if we didn't know it with those drums of theirs beating all day and half the night. And as if we couldn't hear them singing those awful songs from the public house. It's almost unsafe to go to church. . . a fact you wouldn't be familiar with."

  "Aw, woman, your voice could split rocks."

  "As if it weren't bad enough to lug yourself into Derry, you've just got to take Conor with you, don't you?"

  "He's going to be hearing the drums for the rest of his life, woman. The sooner he learns what they're about, the better."

  "And I suppose Liam won't be hearing them? Do you think it's fair taking Conor and leaving Liam so long as you're insisting on dragging children to Derry? What about Liam?"

  "Someone's got to do the work. Conor's got privileges as the oldest."

  "Go tell that to Liam. He's upset and rightly. It's the third time you've gone off with Conor this summer and left him."

  "I'll hear no more of it," Tomas said in that tone that denoted the end of a conversation. Though Conor was my dearest friend, Finola's words were true. Liam was always left out by Tomas and sorely hurt by it. Conor felt bad about being so privileged. More than once he had tried to convince his daddy but Tomas had a blind spot. There was no question about who was his favorite.

  When a decent time elapsed I inched into their best room with the announcement that I would be going to Derry too. It was greeted with coolness, then Tomas told me and Conor to coor the horses to the large communal wagon. It was a big four-wheeled high-stake job for hauling crops and was used occasionally for personal transportation. Not exactly his lordship's coach and four but it would get us to Derry.

  Daddo Friel, who had been traveling the district campaigning for Kevin O'Garvey and had been staying at the Larkin house, was also waiting for the journey to Derry. Tomas led him out of the cottage door, lifted him in his arms and swung him aboard the wagon where Conor and I made him comfortable in the hay. We got close on either side of the old dear because it was a rare treat to be riding with him for so long a distance and him answering all the questions we could think up.

  My daddy threw in a sack of food and got up alongside Tomas on the driver's seat, then they faced their wives standing as glum as if we were all taking a final trip to the hanging tree. My ma and daddy were not much for public demonstrations but the Larkins usually hugged and kissed before taking a journey. Tomas merely waved, released the brake and slapped the nags into motion.

  Three nights before, the Constabulary had carried out a sinister and successful raid on the widows' poteen still and destroyed it, then closed up the village shebeen. The place was in a terrible dry state so we had to stop at Dooley McCluskey's for a few bottles of legal whiskey for the journey.

  Tomas stopped in the shade of the hanging tree as my daddy jumped down and went into the public house. The crossroad was filled these days with celebrating temperance brothers from the Township, as well as many outside visitors, for the Orange doings.

  "Seamus," Tomas called back to me.

  "Aye."

  "Better stick your head in and see after your daddy," he said. "Best to take no chances with this crowd around."

  The barroom was thick with forbidden tobacco smoke and smelled of forbidden ale and forbidden whiskey. Half the good brothers were tore out of their heads. I made myself very little at the doorway, watching my wee daddy moving into the boisterous scene looking neither right nor left.

  Dooley McCluskey was trembling with ecstasy over the speed he was raking in shillings. My daddy tapped his fingers nervous like on the bar top trying to catch the skinflint's eye.

  "We'll be needing six bottles," my daddy said, "half on Tomas' account and half on mine."

  McCluskey deplored credit and never failed to moan about it, but seeing it was for Tomas Larkin, he grumblingly produced the bottles. Six was too many for him to handle so I ventured in to help.

  "Hey, Paddy," a voice said behind my daddy. Oh-oh, that meant no good. It belonged to a stranger who had sidled up and measured my daddy as being too small to be much of a threat.

  "Hey, Paddy," he repeated, "I seen you pulling up. If you go any slower, you'll be meeting yourself coming the other way."

  Dooley licked dry and nervous lips as he slid the bottles over the bar. The room quieted, turning its attention to poor Fergus.

  "Oh, it's a drinking man he is."

  "Don't bother with him, Malcolm, there's not enough fat on him to fry an egg."

  "If it wasn't for his ears his hat would be down on his shoulders."

  "I hear he grew them whiskers because his brother took the razor to America."

  "Don't you go falling down with all them bottles, Paddy."

  My daddy handed me a pair of bottles, pretending not to hear, then loaded himself up. Well, then this Malcolm character blocked his path. As he did I edged back to the door.

  "Up the long ladder and down the long rope . . . God bless King Billy and go fuck the Pope. Ain't that right, Paddy?" this Malcolm character said.

  "Out of me way," my daddy said softly.

  "Oh, but not before ye say a Hail Mary."

  The room was very quiet. Dooley McCluskey was crossing himself as my daddy and this Malcolm looked eye to eye and Malcolm was not joking. He was drunk and mean and large, a fearful combination. Just then I felt someone behind me. Thank God it was Tomas Larkin. The human blockade before my daddy melted with only Malcolm left to contend with. My daddy stepped around him and walked out untouched. A murmur of discontent arose over Malcolm's seizure of cowardice. He hitched up his pants and walked meaningfully toward Tomas.

  "Hold it, Brother Malcolm," the voice of Luke Hanna called.

  "Don't stop him, Luke," Tomas said. "I'd like to make the brother's acquaintance."

  However, Brother Malcolm seemed only too happy to be talked out of it, grunted and snarled his way back to the bar. As Tomas went for him, Luke bisected his path.

  "For Christ sake, Tomas," he said.

  Tomas Larkin looked over the whole room with that devastating expression of contempt of his. "Get him out of here," he said to Luke.

  "I will."

  Luke followed Tomas outside and turned him around. "I'm sorry, Tomas," he said.

  "You could have stopped it."

  "Don't be angry, Tomas. They're like, well, kids at the first fair of springtime after a tough winter. They're just in a playful mood. I wouldn't have let anything happen."

  "I know just what they're like," Tomas answered.

  "Malcolm's not a bad lad. In his own home he's no meaner than me."

  "Maybe. Maybe all of them are all right by themselves. But when they get into a crowd and they're wearing that bloody sash, they turn into a pack of animals."

  "Now, just a minute. . ."

  "A pack of bloody, dirty, devouring animals."

  They was friends, most of the time, those two. At least they had learned how to live with each other. Both men were hurt It was my daddy who led Tomas off, leaving Luke Hanna standing sorely under the hanging tree.

  *

  I fell into a magnificent slumber and remember entering Derry through a haze. Drums and bonfires broke the dark and silence of the night. We had passed through the enemy lines in the hills around the city. All the Scottish clans were in their encampments, their juices stirring for the battle on the morrow. And we was in the lowlands where our own septs had assembled with pikes and bowmen dressed in furs. Our king, holding a pair of wolfhounds at leash, called for his chieftains at the council fire to make plans to repel the usurpers.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Although Kevin O'Garvey's house in Bogside was fine as any, Teresa O'Garvey kept a traditional potato patch in the front yard and pigs and chickens in the rear. T
he potato patch, a hangover from the famine, was a kind of safety blanket The animals were kept because someone was always giving them to Kevin for legal fees.

  Kevin built a second story over the stable which served as a hostelry for the constant stream of Land League petitioners in from the countryside. That is where we slept.

  Excitement over being in Derry brought us awake before the rooster crowed. Our daddies and Daddo Friel were already gone. We scrambled into our clothing, touched our faces at the water pump, then made to the kitchen where a dozen or more visitors had gathered for mush and oatcakes.

  Tomas told us to amuse ourselves for the day as they would be busy, and sternly admonished us to stay away from the Apprentice Boys celebrations. We left the O'Garvey house with our pockets weighted down under a tuppence each, faced with the decision of whether to spend this unprecedented sum in a bakery or the candy shop. As we walked beneath the wall wrestling with our dilemma, music from the inner city taunted us and the memorial column to the Protestant Reverend Mr. Walker who had saved Derry from King James during the siege hovered in stern reminder. I could tell by the way Conor kept looking up what was going through his head.

  "I know what you're thinking," I said.

  "Our daddies will blister the skin off us. Besides, it's too dangerous up there."

  The lure of it was overpowering for the likes of Conor Larkin. "You can stay down here if you want," he said. "I'll see you later."

  "Conor! Wait! I'm coming with you."

  I really didn't want to go but I didn't want to stay equally as bad. Oh, Jesus, Patrick and Mary, my heart was thumping right into my teeth as we raced uphill on Bishop Street Without, me crossing myself every ten steps of the way. Conor stopped momentarily under Bishop's Gate and me hoping some miracle would change his mind. It didn't.

  "Act like a Protestant," he said.

  "How? Look at the color of me hair. It's blazing. They'll cut it off if they catch me."

  "Aw, no matter if you lose your hair, so long as you keep your head."

  We passed into the forbidden land to Bishop Street Within. What we saw was more Union Jacks and Ulster flags than could have possibly existed. Shoving my hands into my pockets in a most natural and unassuming manner, I attempted to whistle my nonchalance but my lips were too dry to even pucker. My courage increased by the minute after realization we wouldn't be tarred and feathered. We raced up to the top of the wall and were able to look into a maelstrom of activity. Suddenly the crowds all surged the length of Bishop Street, over the diamond and down to Shipquay Gate, which was nearest the river Foyle.

  "Oh, look, Conor!" I cried, pointing to the bridge.

  "Jaysusl" he said. "Jaysusl"

  We quickly found ourselves the finest vantage point in all of Derry and stared bug-eyed.

  A black mass of men spewed over Carlisle Bridge With the band ka-booming "Onward, Christian Soldiers." They led a line of gilded carriages holding high officials and aristocrats. I could recognize Lord Hubble and his son and Major Hamilton Walby. The carriages were followed by legions of swaggering Orangemen in black bowlers, black suits and black rolled umbrellas that went together with their black mouths. This black ocean and its black tide was punctuated with sprigs of orange lilies for the Orange Order and sweet Williams for King Billy, which they wore in their hat bands and lapels and their sashes, which told if they were purple men or black men or scarlet men or blue men and on their breasts many-colored ribbons to boast about their military service to the Queen.

  Bands and bands and bands followed. I counted seventy. Bands of pipes and drums and bagpipes and accordions came before the banner of each lodge. Although our reading wasn't too good we could make out the names of some of them. There was the Oliver Cromwell Lodge and Derry's Defenders and Sons of King William and the True Blue Boys of Coleraine and the Faithful Bakers of Belfast and the Loyal Dockers Of Londonderry (they called Derry, Londonderry) and the Honorable Fighting Lads of Enniskillen and the Boys of the Empire and, sure enough, Ballyutogue Total Temperance. And other banners and paintings on their Lambeg drums reading, Faith of our Fathers, Remember the Boyne, In Glorious, Loving and Revered Remembrance of Good King Billy.

  Oh, our eyes was burning and our brains was bursting from doing all that strange reading but after an hour we got the gist of it because it was the same thing over and over.

  There was a preacher man leading every lodge. Alongside him another man holding a velvet cushion and on the cushion a Bible inside a glass case and the glass case topped with a crown. Alongside the Bible-bearer another man walked with a drawn and polished sword. And all along I thought we were the ones who were the crazy Christians.

  They kept coming over the bridge and down Foyle Street near the waterfront, then into the walled city at Shipquay Gate and up the hill and through the diamond past a reviewing stand which now held all the lordships. Once past the diamond, they broke up with some of them mounting the steps of the wall until the wall held a solid mass. They became so packed they couldn't move but they kept marching in place, setting up a thumping with their steps. They ranged over the top of Bogside's shantytown of thin-clad shacks.

  Half of them was singing one thing and half of them another in a mess of discord. Conor and me crept up close to where about twenty Lambeg drums were in a row and they were beating like crazy men. The leather thongs around their wrists cut into their flesh and soon the drum heads was colored with their blood.

  The time has scarce gone round, boys.

  Two hundred years ago,

  When rebels on old Derry's walls

  Their faces dare not show.

  When James and all his rebel band

  Came up to Bishop's Gate,

  With heart in hand and sword and shield,

  We caused him to retreat.

  For blood be flowed in crimson streams,

  Full many a winter's night,

  They knew the Lord was on their side,

  To help them in the fight,

  They nobly stood upon the walls,

  Determined for to die,

  Or fight and gain the victory,

  And raise the crimson high.

  Whistling and hooting and screaming and their drums never stopping, they reached in their pockets and showered farthings and ha' pennies down on Bogside. I began trembling so that Conor had to cover me with his arms.

  "Papist pigs!"

  "Down with Parnell!"

  "No Home Rule!"

  "Fuck the Pope!"

  At last, at last, with one broadside,

  Kind heaven sent them aid.

  The boom that crossed the Foyle was broke,

  And James he was dismayed.

  The banner, boys, that floated

  Was run aloft with joy,

  The dancey ship that broke the boom

  And saved Apprentice Boys.

  Then fight and don't surrender,

  But come when duty calls,

  With heart in hand and sword and shield,

  We'll guard old Derry's walls.

  Don't you know I'd had enough of Prods for one day. I longed to get off the wall and down to the safety of Bogside and my daddy, but Conor Larkin was hypnotized by the growing frenzy and dragged me by the hand all over the place. Oh, Jesus, my hair felt red. The Orangemen broke into small disorganized groups, some on the wall, some in the streets dancing and singing crazy.

  Movement began toward the Anglican Cathedral where all the dignitaries from the reviewing stand were making their way under Constabulary escort.

  "Look," Conor said, "there's the Earl of Foyle again and the whole mess of them."

  "Oh, Conor, please, please, let's get out of here."

  But Conor was inching closer to the Cathedral like it was a giant magnet and it spelled no good at all. The yard was filling with high persons tipping their top hats and bowing to the ladies and shaking hands solemnly, then moving inside the church.

  "We're going in," Conor said.

  I grabbed the iron rai
l and locked my arm through it. Conor pulled on me. "Come on, runt," says he, "we'll sneak in the back." Seeing as he really meant to go inside, I held on for dear life. "Aw, Seamus, once we get into the belfry they'll never know, and I bet we can see the whole inside of the Cathedral from there."

  "Conor," I pleaded, "you know it's a mortal sin to go inside that place. On top of everything else we've done today, we’ll be in purgatory for ten thousand years."

  He let loose of me and walked to the belfry alone. For reasons entirely unknown to myself I was at his side and he smiled and jabbed my ribs as we crept our way toward never-never land.

  *

  The service droned on in uninspired English. Lord Arthur Hubble sat behind the altar in a row of deacons seats filled this day with gentry, Orange Grand Masters, aristocracy, military and government grandees. Arthur appeared outwardly placid, in contrast to his inner churnings. The horrible month would soon be over and he could flee to Clara away from the nightmare of Ulster.

  He glanced down at Roger, sitting in the family pew. Roger had swallowed the Rankin mouse whole and was launched on adventures that terrified Arthur. Next to him, Frederick Weed, that gruff, overpowering man, also acted like a contented cat.

  Arthur shifted in his demi-throne uneasily. Beside him the awful Reverend O. C. Maclvor breathed orgasmic ally adding to his discomfort. The whole business of bringing this person to the Cathedral seemed vulgar.

  O. C. Maclvor sensed Lord Hubble's uneasiness. Despite his smooth face and deceptively angelic appearance, he made an art of causing people around him to squirm.

  He studied the contents of the Cathedral like a wolf closing in for the kill.

  Born Enoch Maclvor, he had changed his name just as he changed everything to serve his cause. Today was to be his giant step, yet, if he were unnerved, he did nothing to reveal it. He smiled smally and nodded to his benefactor, Sir Frederick, down there amid the power and wealth.

  For now he would bide his time and serve that power and wealth until it otherwise suited him. There would be no more sermons in wind-whipped tents with penny collections, no more freak shows of bringing fake "repentant Jesuits" to Belfast, no more low gimmickry by putting on pseudo black masses to terrify his flock, no more faith-healing tricks, no more kidnapping underaged Catholic converts who had seen his light, no more bilking widows, no more phony degrees in theology. From this day forth he would preach in proper Lord's houses and those high and mighty mucky-mucks down there would grow to respect. . . nae. . . fear him.