One by One in the Darkness

by Deirdre Madden

  But then Lord O’Neill, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, resigned on the very day Tigger produced her brood, ‘and bloody well spoiled everything’, as Kate said that night. She’d rushed into the house to announce the news about the cat, only to be hushed by her parents, who were staring at each other with incredulity and anger as they listened to a well-bred voice speaking on the radio.

  ‘He was the best of a bad lot,’ their father said at the end of the broadcast, ‘and if that’s what he thinks of us, you can just imagine how the rest of them see us. What is it, sweetheart?’

  ‘Tigger had her babies,’ Kate said, ‘six of them,’ and she didn’t know why her mother laughed ironically at this, nor why she said, ‘That’s three more than I had!’

  Things degenerated quickly over the following months, and came to a crisis that summer. For a time, the reports they saw on television were still at odds with the world around them. They watched images of policemen in Derry, in full riot gear, battle against people throwing stones and petrol bombs. Deny was little more than an hour away by car, but it wasn’t a city they ever visited, unlike their cousins: Aunt Lucy had a sister there, and Johnny, Declan and Una used to be taken to see her. They watched the black-and-white pictures while their parents fretted, and then they stepped out of the house again into the light of an August evening, where the swallows swooped and dipped in jagged flight around the back yard; where cattle ambled through the long grass; and where the honeysuckle bloomed by the green gate.

  But then the rioting spread to Belfast, and trouble broke into their world. On a television news report they recognised the street where their mother’s friend Miss Regan lived, whose house they visited every Christmas. At the end of the street was a burnt-out car, and the reporter said that many people in that part of the city had been forced to flee their homes. Their father urged their mother to phone Miss Regan and tell her she could come to stay with them if she wanted, until things calmed down, and when she couldn’t get any response, they worried until late that afternoon, when Miss Regan rang them. She told them she had gone to stay with her sister in Newry, ‘although who knows if I’ll ever be able to go back to my own house,’ she said, ‘or if I’ll have a house to go back to. It’s like a war, Emily.’

  Emily tried to comfort her by saying what a good thing it was that the British government had decided to send troops to Northern Ireland. The people who lived in the areas where the trouble took place over the summer were relieved and thought that they would be protected now from further harm. Emily and Charlie also thought it was a good thing, but Uncle Brian disagreed. ‘It would have been better if our own had been able to look after us,’ he said. ‘Dublin has let us down badly. Lynch’ll live to regret his empty promises.’

  ‘But if the Irish army were to get involved, we’ll have all-out civil war,’ his brother protested, and Brian shrugged.

  ‘It looks like we’re going to have it anyway,’ he said.

  The British troops were first in Derry, then Belfast, and then all over the north. It was strange at first to see their heavily armoured vehicles on the quiet country roads. Helicopters would land in the fields near the house, their blades beating flat the grass and startling the cattle where they grazed. ‘I suppose we’ll get used to it,’ Charlie said, to which Brian replied, ‘Well, you shouldn’t. They ought not to be here, and don’t you forget it.’

  Brian was not alone in his growing militancy. By the end of the year, the attitude of most of the people they knew towards the soldiers had soured considerably. Charlie wouldn’t be drawn on this, and protested mildly that they’d done him no harm. His contact with the army was mostly confined to brief exchanges at security checkpoints, until the day the military actually came to call on them at home.

  They were all at table in the kitchen one Saturday in the middle of the day, when Kate, who was facing the window, suddenly said, ‘Daddy, there’s a soldier in the back yard; no, more than one, look!’ At that moment, someone knocked on the back door. ‘You all stay here,’ their father said, as he went to answer it. They sat, hushed, trying to hear what was being said, and when their father came back into the room, there were two soldiers with him.

  ‘These men want to ask us a few questions,’ he said to Emily.

  ‘We’ll go into the front room, then,’ she said, seeing the soldiers glance at the remains of the meal on the table.

  The room into which they all now went was dark, formal and seldom used. Emily and the children perched stiffly on the armchairs and sofa, Charlie stood with his back to the cold hearth, and the younger of the two soldiers, who was carrying a long gun, moved over towards the china cabinet. Through the small, deep windows, they could see the shadow of another soldier standing by the front door, and yet another was hunkered down beside the tree. Taking out a notebook and pen the soldier who was obviously in charge explained politely that their regiment, which he named, was new to the area, and they needed to have some information on people living locally. He said that their help and co-operation would be appreciated.

  ‘I’ll start with you, Sir, if I may. Your name?’

  ‘Charles Quinn.’

  ‘Can you spell that for me, please?’

  The soldier went on to ask his middle names, his occupation and date of birth. ‘And now you, Madam.’

  ‘Emily Mary Quinn,’

  ‘Maiden name?’

  She looked surprised at this, but she answered.

  ‘Date of birth?’

  She flashed a glance at the children, then looked at her fingernails and mumbled something.

  ‘I’m sorry, Madam?’ She repeated what she had said, loud enough to be audible this time, but in sullen tones.

  ‘And now these young ladies,’ he said, smiling at the sisters. They saw their parents look at each other, puzzled and slightly alarmed. Their father shrugged and coughed. ‘Well, that’s Helen,’ he said before Helen herself could speak, ‘and she was born on the tenth of January 1959.’ When the soldier had full details of everyone in the house, down to and including Sally, he asked if anyone else lived with them, or stayed in the house frequently. He wanted to know how many outbuildings there were on the farm, and whether or not they had a dog.

  ‘I suppose you want to know the dog’s name too,’ Sally said, and the soldier, looking up sharply from his notebook, stared hard at her. ‘He – he’s called Brandy,’ she said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

  ‘Is he now?’ the soldier said, smiling. ‘And is he a good dog?’ Sally nodded.

  ‘I have a dog at home in England,’ he said, pleasantly, as he put away his notebook and pen. ‘He’s called Muffin. He’s a Labrador.’

  ‘I don’t know what Brandy is,’ Charlie said. ‘I think he’s a bit of everything,’ and he and the soldier pretended to laugh. Then the soldier thanked them, and Charlie showed the two men to the door.

  And as soon as it was over, they could hardly believe it had happened. They watched from the window as the soldiers walked away out from the shadow of the house and into the bright sun, fanning midges from their faces. As soon as they were out of sight it was as if they had imagined this strange thing, that two soldiers, one in full battle dress and with a gun, the other with an accent they could barely understand, had come into their front room and asked them all sorts of odd, personal questions, and then gone away again.

  ‘In under Christ, what was all that in aid of?’ Emily said when Charlie came back into the room.

  ‘Damned if I know,’ he replied. ‘Did you notice the one over by the china cabinet, the face of him? He was no more than a child; I’m sure his ma isn’t getting a wink of sleep with him over here. I’m glad I was civil to them,’ he went on, digging into his pocket for his cigarettes and matches. ‘There’s no harm in being civil.’

  It was a phrase he repeated that evening to his brother, on whom the soldier had also called.

  ‘You should have told them hell roast all,’ Brian insisted. ‘You’re too bloody soft, Cha
rlie, that’s your trouble. Believe you me, they can find out all they want to know about you without ever asking you, or you telling them anything.’

  ‘I think Brian’s right,’ Emily said. ‘What call have they to be asking the likes of me, in my own house, what age I am and what my name was before I was married?’

  ‘It was the bit about the dog got me,’ Charlie said. ‘What odds is it to them if I have a dog?’ Brian rolled his eyes.

  ‘They want to know that.’ he said, ‘so that when they’re snooping around your five outbuildings in the middle of the night, they’ll know what the likelihood is of there being a dog about that’ll sink it’s teeth in their arses. Christ, Charlie, did you come down in the last shower, or what?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure there’s plenty of them no more want to be here than we want to have them here,’ he said.

  About a week after that, Kate and her father were in McGovern’s shop when a soldier came in, wanting to buy cigarettes.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t serve you,’ Mrs McGovern said.

  ‘Any reason for that?’

  ‘You know as well as I do,’ she replied. The man shrugged, and left the shop again.

  ‘I’m sorry about that, Charlie, but what am I to do?’ she said, lifting down a jar of Clove Rock and starting to weigh it out. ‘I don’t want to antagonise the army, but by the same token, there’s men in this country and if they thought I was serving soldiers they wouldn’t leave me with one stone on top of the other of either house or shop.’

  ‘You needn’t be apologising to me,’ he said, ‘I know the way you’re fixed.’

  ‘It’s not fair of them to come and ask me, so it’s not,’ she went on. ‘They know fine well the sort of area this is, and they’re only doing it to see what I say.’

  In due course the soldiers stopped coming to the houses to ask for information, and they stopped attempting to buy things in the local shops. Stories began to circulate about young men: friends of friends, or the sons of people they knew; driving home from dances late at night and being stopped at checkpoints and beaten up for no apparent reason. In broad daylight Charlie would be stopped at a road block a few hundred yards from his house, and asked his name and occupation. They would look at his driving licence and make him open the boot of the car. They would ask him where he was coming from: ‘That grey house there, beyond the tree,’; and where he was going: ‘Up to the shop, to buy a newspaper.’ When he came back, less than five minutes later, the same soldier would stop him and, poker faced, ask him exactly the same questions again, as if he had never seen him before, and would again make him open the boot of the car. When this happened to him time and again, even Charlie’s legendary patience broke, and he began to feel sullen and resentful towards the security forces.

  That spring, Granny Kate fell and broke her arm. She made light of it; and the whole family was amused when she appeared at Mass on Sunday with the arm tied up in a sling made from a silk scarf which toned in perfectly with the suit she was wearing. ‘Just because I’ve hurt myself doesn’t mean I have to stop being elegant, does it?’ she said. School ended for the summer, and they enjoyed the laziness of long, empty days; while always aware that things were still getting worse in the society around them.

  Then, one morning in August, so early that they were all still in bed, the telephone rang. It woke Helen and she crept to the door of the bedroom to hear what was being said. It was evidently Granny Kate, and she was upset about something, because their father kept trying to calm and soothe her. ‘I’ll be over now, as soon as ever I can,’ Helen heard him say. Then she stood very still as he came up the stairs again and passed the door behind which she was standing. She strained her ears to hear what he said to their mother when he went back to the bedroom.

  ‘That was Mammy. The soldiers came this morning and took away Peter and Brian. They’re all in a state about it; I said I’d go over to them immediately.’

  ‘Can I come too?’ Helen was at the door of her parents’ room now. ‘Please?’ Her father started to protest, but for once it was Emily who argued in her favour. ‘Take her with you. If the soldiers stop you on the road, there might be less of a chance of them giving you trouble if you have Helen there.’

  ‘You’re more optimistic than I am, if you think that.’ he replied, but he told Helen to go and get dressed as fast as she could.

  It was still dark when they left the house, with the faintest tinge of light on the eastern horizon. When they arrived at Brian’s and Lucy’s place, her father called out, ‘It’s only me,’ when he knocked on the door. Lucy let them in through the back scullery and into the kitchen. The place was in uproar. All of the children were out of bed, and all of them were crying. Lucy was red eyed too. Only Granny Kate, tightly wrapped in a pale-blue dressing gown, seemed to have retained any sense of calm, and that was tempered with anger.

  ‘We heard a banging at the front door, that woke every one of us up. Brian was going to answer it; and he was halfway down the stairs when he heard them shouting that it was the army. “What’ll I do?” says he, but at that minute the army kicked the door in. They saw him on the stairs and they came up after him, grabbed him by the hair and said, “Are you Brian Quinn?” Brian says, “Aye,” and they tell him he has three minutes to get dressed; that they’re taking him away. Then Peter comes out of his room, he hears this, and says, “What’s all this, what are youse doing to my brother?” So the soldier that was in charge just nods at Peter and says, “We’ll take you too.” And they half-pushed the two of them down the stairs, and threw them in the back of a big army truck that was waiting outside. I asked them where they were taking them, and why, and they wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘What shape was Peter in?’

  ‘He’s been well this past couple of weeks; he was sleeping here in the house. But the both of them were afraid.’

  ‘Jesus, this is desperate.’

  ‘I was scared they’d have taken you, too. I was that glad when I rang you up, and you answered.’

  Helen’s father suddenly turned to Lucy. ‘Would you ever make us all a cup of tea, love? Look at Declan there, his teeth’s chattering, look at Una. Away into the scullery there, and help your mammy.’

  Lucy and her children went out of the room, and under cover of the sound of the running tap, as the kettle was filled, and the clatter of crockery, Helen’s father said to Granny softly, urgently, ‘Do you know have we anything to fear with Brian?’ Her eyes fixed on the door to the scullery, she shook her head vehemently. ‘Are you sure, Mammy?’ he urged in a low voice. ‘Are you sure he’s in nothing, that there’s no stuff about the place?’

  ‘I’m certain,’ she said, also speaking very quietly. ‘I was afraid something like this might happen. I was afraid of more than that, I was scared that if there was things about the place the children might come across them, or the army, and I could never live here if anybody was hurt or killed about the place. So I got Brian on his own about three weeks ago. I asked him straight out, was he in the IRA, and he said no; and I asked him was he keeping guns or stuff safe for anybody, and he said no again. I told him that if he ever did, it would be the end of all, and I warned him that if he ever did anything that got Peter into trouble, or that got anybody hurt, I’d leave this house and go and live somewhere else. And he told me I could put my mind at rest on that score.’

  ‘So why did they lift him?’

  His mother shrugged. ‘Why did they lift Peter?’ she said, as Declan came into the room carrying a tray with cups and saucers on it.

  Later that morning, when they heard that people had been interned all over the north, and they learnt the names of some of their other neighbours who had been taken away, their father no longer puzzled as to why his brothers had been included; rather, it seemed odd that they hadn’t come for him, too. As well as local known Republican sympathisers like Brian, and Willy Larkin’s father, they’d taken people like Mrs McGovern’s two brothers, one of whom was involved in the civil rig
hts movement, and one of whom had no political involvement whatsoever; although Mrs McGovern remarked grimly, ‘That might change, after all this.’

  Charlie spent the rest of that day trying to find out where Peter and Brian had been taken. Mrs McGovern rang late in the afternoon to say that she now knew her brothers were in an army barracks up near Derry, and that maybe all the men from one particular area were being taken to the same place. The following day they discovered she had been correct in this guess; following a nervous night, in which Charlie had feared that they would come for him too, but saw no way to avoid it.

  They were released in the early evening of the second day, and when Lucy rang to tell Charlie that they were home, he immediately drove over to see them, and again took Helen with him.

  What they found on their arrival, though, confounded Helen’s expectations. She knew that they would be glad to be home, and a relieved, even happy, atmosphere was what she expected to find, instead of the electric anger of the family at the brothers ever having been taken away, and at the rough treatment they had received. It was hard to believe that they had only been gone for two days, for they looked so utterly different; weary and unshaven, as though they had undertaken a long journey. Brian also had a cut just under his right eye. He told them the soldiers had interrogated him for hours, wanting to know the names of people who were in the IRA, and of people he knew who had guns and explosives. They’d bullied and threatened him, and when he said he didn’t know any such names, he’d been hit in the face. His fury and the violence of his language as he described what had happened frightened Helen.