Herself Alone in Orange Rain

by Tracey Iceton

  Midnight. You call, ‘oíche mhaith dhuit,’ and lie on your bed, another few minutes chat with your cellmate if you haven’t exhausted every possible topic or don’t mind repeating yourself. Then you buzz for the lights to be switched off and darkness engulfs you. On your back between the scratchy blankets, you trace the searchlight’s scything sweep across your ceiling. Outside a helicopter circles, the rapid whoop-whoop looping in your head. You fall asleep to its refrain. Soon it will be that time they tell you is 7.30 A.M. But you have another day behind you. Too many more lengthen ahead like winter nights.

  All captured volunteers feel that they have failed. It’s true enough. I fucked up. Guilt prises a confession from me, about how I let emotions override judgement: about Aiden. Mairead sits on the bunk beside me, holds my hand and makes a confession of her own. She was wearing platform shoes the day they bombed the Conway. In them she couldn’t run fast enough to get away. She says how stupid she felt and how lucky; one of the lads with her was killed fleeing the scene. It is what it’s meant to be, she tells me. It doesn’t help. Danny could’ve been banged up or, worse, banged out, because of me. I’ve let the Movement down, cost them a volunteer. But these are scenarios accounted for in the Green Book. What isn’t accounted for is me.

  On my first evening Mairead takes me round the wing, introducing me to A company, Armagh jail. I’m edgy, aware of our differences, listing them in my head as I shake hands, learn names.

  My hippy childhood was unisex, monosex, polysex; the Ryans believed gendering was a socially constructed artifice designed to maintain power hierarchies. So I didn’t have dolls, wear frocks, play tea parties and house. My toys were Lego, Plasticine, a tambourine; my clothes dungarees, t-shirts, jumpers, ponchos. I grew up with Buddhist mantras not Catholic catechisms. I empowered myself. Handbags are for carrying guns or detonators, not lipsticks and compacts. High heels and a skirt are a disguise. Apart from Briege, my friends are the lads. I think of myself as Vol. not Miss.

  Now I’m one of ‘the girls in Armagh’.

  Always ‘the girls’ no matter what age, whether single, married or widowed, childless or mothers. Reduced to our lowest common denominator. But I’m the awkward remainder left when the fraction is multiplied out.

  I don’t tell Mairead this because I’m worried it’ll sound as stupid out loud as it does in my head, especially when the others are fretting about elderly parents who mightn’t live to see them released, fellas who mightn’t wait around for them, children who won’t remember them. But Mairead’s smarter than I’ll ever be about these things; she points me to the common land. We’re all Republicans. We’ve all been ground through the mill by the Brits. We’ve all lost things we fought so hard for. We all hurt. We’re all in here together. Our strength is in our comradeship: our sisterhood.

  Mairead also explains the system, how to wriggle through the gaps in it, reassuring me that things aren’t so bad since they ended the no-wash and hunger strikes. I try to be relieved that I’m not having to paint the cell walls brown but a spiteful voice in my head says I’m not suffering enough. It takes time, Mairead admits, to adjust. I shouldn’t be afraid of asking for help. But she can’t help me with everything.

  The past has run up behind me. I have to turn and fight it.

  My first visiting day rolls round. Nora and Danny come. He hugs me fiercely.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers.

  ‘Jesus, whatever are you sorry for?’ I demand, punching his arm. ‘This is my own daft fault.’ It’s easier to be strong in front of them.

  Nora dishes out cigarettes and talks of Briege, who is big with baby already. I ask questions, hoping I sound cheerful.

  When they leave, Danny slips a comm into my hand. I transfer it to my knickers, smuggling it past the screws who, as long as we behave, don’t watch too closely.

  It’s from Liam, spurring me to keep strong, survive my sentence. He doesn’t say what’ll happen afterwards.

  ‘Sure, you’ll be alright,’ Mairead says. ‘I’m going straight back, so I am. They’ll want you to as well, if you’re up for it.’ She focuses her brown eyes on me.

  I can’t answer her.

  ‘But let’s get you through this first,’ she adds.

  We lie on our narrow beds, springs poking through thin mattresses. We talk in whispers, two kids having a sleepover. Mairead tells me her story. She got involved after growing up in Belfast, getting a political education on the streets, watching soldiers intimidate and harass Irish Nationalists with indiscriminate enjoyment. Her granddaddy also fought the Black and Tans so, like me, she was Republican before she was born. She understands what’s brought me here. And she’s been in Armagh since she was nineteen because of it: nine years, a third of her life. I think of what I’ve done in that almost decade and want to cry for her but she doesn’t regret a minute. She passes me a book her mother sent, George Bernard Shaw’s collected works. By the glow of a match I turn to the essay ‘Maximums for Revolutionists’ and read the quotation she underlined, ‘the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’ Or woman.

  ‘In here’s just a smaller version of out there.’ She gestures to the tiny window high up the cell wall. ‘You’ve to learn when to be reasonable. Save something for when you get out.’

  The past has been a fiction; I have two years to work out how to deal with the fact. I settle down to reality because it’s what needs doing.

  Patrick requests a visit. Thinking there’s been some legal development I agree.

  He’s at a table in the visiting room when I’m shown in.

  ‘Has something happened?’ I demand, brushing off his greeting.

  ‘No, I just wanted to see how you are. I’ve brought you some things.’ He lifts a sketchpad and an array of pencils onto the table. ‘Nora tells me you draw.’

  ‘Oh.’ I slide the pad over and stroke the stiff, creamy pages.

  ‘There’s this, too.’ He dangles my chain.

  I take it, rub the back of the locket with my thumb as we talk.

  When the hour is up he asks if he can come again. I agree. The locket is warm now from my hold. I could keep it, wear it. We are allowed. But I need something waiting for me on the outside. The chain, ring and locket are slipped back into Patrick’s pocket as we part.

  One Wednesday a letter arrives, envelop bearing an official crest and addressed to Kaylynn Ryan. ‘Devoy’ and my prison number have been scrawled across it.

  Dear Miss Ryan,

  It has come to our attention that your status as a British citizen is the result of a fraudulent claim to British nationality. As a result your United Kingdom passport is hereby revoked with immediate effect. Any attempts to travel on this document will result in your detention under the Immigration Act.

  Should you wish to appeal…

  I use up a precious match burning words telling me who I’m not. One of the screws smells smoke stronger than a cigarette, barges into the cell, accuses me of torching the wing. She calls me a crazy Fenian bitch and hollers for the male screws who loiter upstairs, permanently agitating for agro. Five of them clatter into the cell, grab me and wrestle me to the ground. Savaged by them, I turn savage in self-defence. They beat me down. My wrists are restrained, my ankles gripped and I’m hoisted over their heads, carried to the governor’s office like a trophy carcass bagged on some big game hunt.

  Mairead is there, discussing plans for the upcoming Easter Rising commemorations. Two female screws drag her from the room as the male ones throw me to the floor. I pick myself up, get kicked back down then hauled up by my ponytail.

  The screw, Pam, explains, in hysterical tones, how she caught me fire-starting. The male screws justify my injuries, a bloody lip, black eye and broken tooth, with unexaggerated accounts of my violent resistance. The odds, five hulking shit houses against one wee girl, are ignored. I don’t acknowledge the governor’
s authority and demand my OC be present. Mairead is brought back in. Shaking with rage that she fights to suppress with her invincible eight stone strength, she asks to speak with me alone. The governor refuses. The unburnt part of the letter is retrieved and examined. Mairead pleads the emotional stress of the moment. I get thirty days in the punishment unit; solitary, twenty-four hour lock-up, reduced rations, no parcels and threatened with the loss of my remission. I call the governor a Thatcherite lackey, get slapped by one of the male screws, ten more days on the boards and lose three months remission.

  I’m tossed into a punishment cell, bare apart from a metal bed soldered to the floor and a thin mattress, no blankets or pillows. A screw hurls a Bible in.

  ‘There’s company for you, fucking papist,’ she snarls, banging out.

  I fling it at the door, denouncing her religious accusation; it explodes, showering paper leaves over the floor.

  Lying on the bed, my temper cooling, I notice a chunk of the concrete wall is loose. I prise it free, turning the wedge in my fingers. One edge is sharp. I scratch into the flaking paintwork, scoring a satisfying line.

  By the time the forty days are up I’ve decorated an entire wall with scenes from the Táin, stickmen and women peopling the cell, attacking hordes spilling over distance hills. They are my people, past, present and future. I’ve no home but Ireland.

  The governor come to inspect. I expect forty more days for my vandalism.

  ‘Do you consider yourself an artist?’

  I’m not supposed to reply but give a curt nod.

  ‘Put her back on the wing.’

  In my cell, alongside the sketchpad and pencils Patrick brought, I find a small paint set, hard watercolour nuggets.

  ‘Think he feels bad about what they did to you,’ Mairead says. ‘How’s your tooth?’

  ‘Killing me.’

  ‘Do you want the doctor?’

  ‘That butcher? I’d be as well getting it out via another smack in the mouth from a screw.’

  She laughs.

  ‘What’ll I do with these?’ I point at the paints.

  She shrugs. ‘Might as well use them.’

  ‘That’s OK?’

  ‘It’s hardly collusion. Plus, this place’d be the better for a wee bit of art.’

  I start drawing and painting that night.

  ‘You can say no,’ Mairead advises.

  I stare at the visiting request. The Ryans want to see me.

  ‘It’s OK. There’s something I’m needing to say to them anyway.’

  She nods, lifts the paper from my hand. ‘I’ll tell Chief Rat.’

  They stand as I enter. It’s a wonder we recognise each other after five years and a dozen lifetimes. It’s easiest for me; they’re still wearing corduroy and cheesecloth, beads and bandanas. She snatches his arm, clutching it. He stares blankly, his face greyed by prison lighting and, maybe, something else? I hesitate but a screw prods me from behind.

  ‘You’re blocking the doorway.’

  I sit. They stay standing. He pulls her chair up and eases her down. I clasp my hands in front of me, resting them on the table, inspecting my broken nails.

  She speaks first. ‘Kaylynn.’

  I don’t correct the pronunciation.

  ‘We’ve come a long way,’ he states.

  I raise my eyes to his. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  She gulps down a sob. ‘Nothing, love.’ She glances at him. ‘We just wanted to see you, know you were alright. Whatever you’ve done you’re still our daughter.’

  ‘I’m not though.’

  He stands. ‘This is a waste of time. Susan, let’s go.’

  ‘No.’ She yelps the word like a frightened animal and stretches a trembling hand to me. ‘Is there anything you need?’

  It’s the Winter of Discontent. I’m sixteen, sitting on the cold tarmac outside a car factory in Humberside, sketching with frozen fingers the wind-rippled sea of banners and placards. In the foreground are a middle-aged couple wrapped up in second-hand winter coats and right-on rage. I don’t include myself in the drawing because my apathy upsets the composition. Crisis, what crisis?...

  ‘Wilson’s not fit to run a tea party, never mind the Labour Party. Whenever people like him manoeuvre themselves into positions of power, they forget their responsibility to wield it for good.’

  ‘But he’s done some good, John, liberalised the country.’

  ‘Come on, Suse! He’s sold out socialism. Power perverts principle, that’s always their problem.’…

  For two days I sat in that road, freezing my arse off, trying to draw with frost-burnt fingers.

  ‘Yes, I need to know why you lied to me all those years.’

  ‘We promised your grandfather,’ she bleats.

  ‘We were protecting you,’ he adds, sitting down.

  ‘Yous were protecting yourselves.’ I set my eyes on him. ‘I know what happened to my ma and da.’

  They avoid eye-contact.

  ‘The peelers told me. Thought they’d break me with it.’

  She crumbles into fresh tears. He blinks twice.

  ‘We didn’t want you making the wrong decision,’ he says.

  ‘Then you lost; I won.’ I wave at our surroundings. ‘This is what I chose, my cause. Don’t come here if you can’t accept that. Judging my choices won’t change yours.’ I scrape my chair back. ‘Haven’t you got a march to get to?’ I stand. Two screws step towards us. ‘We’re done,’ I say. I’m led to the door. On the threshold, I turn, give the raised fist salute to the people who taught me the gesture and shout, ‘Tiocfaidh ár lá.’ The visiting room erupts with defiant repetition of my call. I’m bundled back to my cell.

  London—25th June, 1985

  Thirteen Held Over Provo’s Latest

  Terror Campaign

  One Suspect Accused of Brighton Bombing

  Police have today confirmed they have arrested thirteen suspected IRA members in connection with a plot to blow up British seaside resorts at the height of the summer.

  Following a lead, police discovered a viable explosive device in the prestigious London hotel, the Rubens. A controlled explosion was also carried out on a suspect package in a Brighton hotel and a hotel in Hull was evacuated. Both incidents were later found to be false alarms. Police are engaged in a nationwide hunt for further bombs.

  The suspects, held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, include Patrick Magee, also accused of the 1984 attack on the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Magee, 33, and an unknown female accomplice are believed to have carried out the bombing which killed five people and left others with life-changing injuries. Police continue to question Mr Magee about the Brighton attack and this latest terrorist campaign.

  Armagh Jail—30th June, 1985

  Mairead enters the association room.

  ‘Caoilainn, have you a minute?’

  I follow her to our cell where she pushes the door to.

  ‘This came for you.’ She passes me a comm, still tightly folded.

  I read it.

  ‘Should I be worried?’ she asks.

  ‘It wouldn’t help if you were.’

  She slips out. I swallow the comm, wait to digest the news that churns in my stomach. Waiting is all I’m good for now.

  The next day Patrick comes. I’m taken to an interview room. The screw locks us in.

  ‘What’s this?’ I ask.

  ‘I was told to visit you. Something’s happened. What?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have sent me if that was true so tell me.’

  ‘Magee. Brighton.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He won’t give me up.’

  ‘I hope for your sake that’s true,’ Patrick sighs.

  I’m sat on a stove, the gas full-blast beneath me. Fear, for Pat, what they’re putting him through to get to me, torments me. I pace the cell, artwork abandoned. Mairead watches. She wants to help. Tries to reach me. I recoil, because it’s my default sett
ing. Frustrations boil up: over. Mairead warns me to get my head straight if I don’t want to set things off in here; the screws have noticed my agitation. I cover sheets of paper with violent black scribbles, wearing down three HBs. It helps a bit. Days become weeks. I use up ten more pencils. And force myself to ask for her help. Mairead talks me down, up, over and through. Heat fades. Pat gets thirty-five years for Brighton and the planned summer campaign; I calmly ask for my brief.

  ‘Tell him I’m grateful for what he’s done. And sorry he’s had to do it.’

  Patrick and I speak in Irish whispers.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s taken time that I should be sharing.’ I squeeze Patrick’s hand, helping myself to comfort.

  ‘Isn’t that what you do for each other, sacrifice yourselves?’

  I snatch my hand back. He’s still pissed off that I wouldn’t plea-bargain my own sentence down.

  ‘For a Republican brief you don’t understand us, do you?’

  ‘I understand you’re determined to martyr yourself.’

  I leap from my chair.

  ‘I’m determined to do what’s needed. Don’t accuse me of having a martyr complex. Christ, you think I want this? Don’t I wish none of this was necessary, that things were different?’