But different did not necessarily mean better.
In spite of the Tourist Board’s claim that Dublin epitomised Georgian elegance, Barry’s camera discovered an appalling number of beautiful old streetscapes being wantonly destroyed to make room for blank-faced office blocks and so-called social housing designed without any degree of aesthetic sensibility. The new Dublin being erected on the lovely bones of the old had neither character nor grace. The Fianna Fail government gave tacit acceptance to wholesale architectural vandalism so long as the developers kept slipping brown envelopes under the table.
AT irregular intervals Barry received postcards from Barbara Kavanagh. Almost every postmark was different, but the messages had a certain sameness. She was fine, she was doing well, she was happy.
Nothing that she wouldn’t write to a maiden aunt, Barry thought sourly. I should be thankful she’s off my hands. She’s far too unsettling.
Yet whenever he found a postcard with her distinctive American scrawl amongst his letters, his heart leapt.
IN June, Cathal Goulding was the principal speaker at the annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration at Bodenstown, in County Kildare. Since 1962 the IRA as an active organisation had all but ceased to exist, yet attending the commemoration remained a ritual for Volunteers past and present. Séamus McCoy stood in the crowd beside Barry Halloran. McCoy’s cough was worse than ever.
In his speech Goulding refuted the doctrine of physical-force republicanism and urged public service work instead.1 When the speech was over, Barry turned to McCoy. “What do you think about that?”
“Not much, to be honest. I’m a soldier, that’s what I volunteered for, not marching up and down carrying a placard, for God’s sake. You opted out of active service, Seventeen, and I respect your decision, but I can’t. Things may seem quiet enough in the north but … remember the Malvern Street murders last year? The loyalists think we’re out of the picture so they can do what they like, but sooner or later they’ll go too far.”
“How far is too far, Séamus?”
“We’ll know when it happens,” McCoy said. His eyes were bleak, but a tight little smile twitched the corners of his mouth.
The bright sky had clouded over. A sodden drizzle began to fall. Barry said, “You in a hurry to go back to County Tip?”
“Not at all, I’m headed the other way. Connolly Station and the Belfast train.”
“Stop at my place first for a chin-wag. I’ve half a bottle of Jameson’s under the bed.”
“I’m your man,” said McCoy.
They hitched a ride with a fellow Volunteer who was taking several other men into the city, to the Bleeding Horse Pub. “Join us,” they urged. “A lot of the lads’ll be there.”
“Some other time,” Barry said. “Séamus has a train to catch.” He did not see McCoy very often and did not want to try to carry on a conversation over the rowdy noise of a pub. A short walk from the Bleeding Horse took the two men to Harold’s Cross. Barry put a tumbler of whiskey in McCoy’s hand and seated him in the one good armchair. “Now, Séamus. What’s this about you going north?”
“The commemoration of the Rising stirred up a lot of interest in Belfast. Some of the younger generation want to recover the spirit of 1916, and they’re interested in the IRA. Unfortunately nothing’s left of the Belfast Brigade but a few old veterans from the forties. However, Sinn Féin has suggested I might give the lads a series of lectures on republicanism.”
Barry raised an eyebrow. “Recruiting lectures?”
“Educational lectures. The Army’s not actively recruiting, but these are working-class Catholic lads who can’t get jobs and they desperately need something. If nothing else comes along they might be drawn into the worst of the militant splinter groups; you know which ones I mean.”
Barry nodded. “The IRA dissidents who’ve become involved in criminal activity that has nothing to do with furthering the cause.”
“Aye. And that’s no place for decent boys, in my opinion. So we’re going to offer the lads a lecture a week and teach them the true meaning of the republican movement.”
“I recall the first lecture you gave me, Séamus. You said the Army demanded absolute commitment, dedication, and honour. Or else. You had me scared to death.”
McCoy grinned. “You weren’t scared, you loved it. Young men always think they can be valiant—until they’re pushed to the pin of their collar, that is. But you proved you were able for it, didn’t you?”
Barry tried to look modest, though he was intensely pleased.
“My next step,” McCoy went on, “will be to explain when and why the republican movement began. I didn’t have to do that with you, but I surely will with these lads. Northerners aren’t told about the centuries of brutal oppression, or how our land was looted. They’re taught only English history, which claims England is the source of all good things. For all they know in the Six Counties, Ireland was inhabited by ring-tailed baboons until Queen Liz and her toadies came along to civilise us.
“Once they’re enlightened on that score we’ll go into republican ideology and aspirations. For the grand finale I’ll explain that being a Volunteer means having little money and few friends, and the distinct possibility of imprisonment or death.”
“If you have even two or three still with you after that depressing news,” said Barry, “what will you do with them?”
“Teach ‘em a wee bit of military drill. Call’em reservists. Don’t look at me like that, Seventeen. You know the struggle’s not over.”
“I know.”
“Don’t suppose you’d like to come with me? Help teach history, maybe?”
Barry felt a sudden, almost overpowering longing. For comrades who felt as he did, men who spoke the same language. Maybe someday we’ll drive the bastards out of Ireland once and for all! It was frightening to realise how quickly the surge of excitement came back, in spite of the man he thought he was. “My place is here now,” he said firmly. As much for himself as for McCoy.
“Aye.” McCoy slumped in his chair, hugging his midriff. “And you’re right too. I can see you’re well dug in and making a few bob; that’s a new coat hanging on the peg.”
“It is a new coat.”
“Well dug in,” McCoy repeated. “Nice place.”
“Next you’ll be telling me that all it lacks is a woman’s touch.”
“That’s your business. There was a time I thought of marrying, though. A couple of times, in fact, but it never worked out. The Army. You know.”
“I know.”
“What about yourself, Seventeen?”
Barry kept his voice light. “What woman would be willing to live the way I do?”
“There’s that,” McCoy agreed. “I’ve never heard a single one say she wanted a stone nose under a bell jar in her parlour.” He lit a cigarette and began blowing smoke rings. Both men watched the amorphous circles drift upward, lose shape, disappear.
Barry asked, “Would you like to listen to the gramophone?”
“How about the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem? You have them?”
“’Fraid not,” Barry admitted. “Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Ella Fitzgerald.”
“Let’s hear her, then.”
McCoy closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the chair. Except for the singer’s voice the room was quiet. Peaceful.
“Nice,” McCoy pronounced with the record ended. “Not as good as Hank Williams, but nice. I’d best get on the road, though. That train won’t wait for me.”
At the front door he paused. “One of these days,” he told Barry, “we may need an experienced engineer to teach newcomers about explosives.”
“Nelson’s Pillar was my last bomb, Séamus.”
“For certain?”
“You have my word on it.”
Barry watched the older man walk away down the street. The rain was falling harder. McCoy coughed and turned up the collar of his coat.
That night Barry dreamed he was
trying to cut lengths from a roll of commercial fuse with a dull pocket knife. Suddenly the cord pulled away from him and reared up above his head, swaying back and forth and hissing.
He heard Barbara Kavanagh’s voice say, “That’s a Texas rattlesnake. If it bites you you’re dead.”
JEREMY Seyboldt was no impresario. Barbara had soon discovered that he was a self-aggrandising hustler with no scruples. His knowledge of music was superficial at best, but this was Swinging Sixties London. The Beatles and Carnaby Street. Anyone who could Keep Up with the Beat stood a chance of Making It Big.
Jeremy spoke in superlatives, unlike most Englishmen but like many Americans. Barbara warmed to him for that reason alone. That, and because he was absolutely determined to succeed at something. Anything. No matter what it took.
She felt the same way herself.
Glowing letters to her mother gave the impression that she was rising steadily in the musical firmament. She made offhanded references to famous people she claimed to have met in Britain. “It’s only a matter of time before I’m as big as any of them,” she wrote.
Isabella’s reply was a short note to the effect that she was planning to have the house painted.
In the latest dreary closet that served as her latest dreary dressing room, Barbara wadded the note into a ball and threw it at the wastebasket. The basket was already overflowing with tissues stained with cold cream and makeup. The letter bounced off and rolled a short distance across the floor.
Barbara folded her arms on the cluttered dressing table and put her head down on them. “I’m going to be a star,” she whispered into the darkness between her elbows. “I am.”
She was determined not to cry.
BARRY’S photographs covered a wide range of subjects. He was proud of some of them. Others were simply pictures he took because he knew he could sell them. Freelancing was never easy, but he relished the uncertainty. As long as he kept his expenses down he could be his own man.
When Barbara Kavanagh commandeered his fantasies he reminded himself that he could not afford her.
Barry had not crossed the border since his injury, but knowing that Séamus McCoy was in Belfast refocussed his attention. The electronic media and southern newspapers gave little coverage to Belfast and almost none to the rest of the province. As far as southern Ireland was concerned, the north was a planet apart.
As far as the world’s concerned, Northern Ireland is a planet apart, Barry thought sourly. But the problems are still there in spite of O’Neill’s efforts. Unfortunately he’s too liberal for the unionists and not liberal enough for the nationalists. Séamus is right. Sooner rather than later, there’s going to be trouble. Then we’ll need someone who can show the rest of the world what’s going on.
I could do it.
The gun’s on the shelf, but the camera isn’t.
Barry had been confident of his courage, which was rooted in a cold rage he could summon almost at will and aim in any direction he chose. Rage had made him invincible.
But that was before Derry.
Now his body knew on a cellular level the awful dimensions of pain. When he thought of returning to Northern Ireland his bones remembered. I don’t have to go back there. No one expects it of me.
ON December eleventh, Taoiseach Jack Lynch had his first meeting with Northern Ireland’s prime minister, Terence O’Neill, at Stormont. As Lynch’s car arrived, the Reverend Ian Paisley bombarded it with snowballs.
Barry Halloran was disappointed that he had not been on hand to photograph the shameful incident.
The following day an opinion poll in the north revealed that if the people were given a choice between O’Neill and Paisley, 90 percent would choose O’Neill.
Chapter Thirty-two
THERE was something in the air in 1968, and the name of it was revolt. Around the world young people were taking to the streets, vehemently protesting injustice. In Paris and Prague and Philadelphia, students, dissidents, and anti-war activists were prepared to shake the foundations of the establishment.
Meanwhile, in the Six Counties the first generation of Catholics to attend university was coming of age.
The British administration was about to see the results of its neglect of Northern Ireland since 1921.
IN February, Father Aloysius wrote to Barry, “The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association has proposed a programme for one man, one vote, to put an end to gerrymandering. NICRA is also calling for a fair-housing policy for the underprivileged, plus repeal of the Special Powers Act that keeps this province effectively under martial law. Last but by no means least, NICRA wants the disbanding of the B-Specials. There is a rumour that some Sinn Féin activists are working with NICRA now,1 helping to organise nonviolent demonstrations to call attention to the civil rights issue. You might like to come up and photograph the protests.”
Holding the letter in his hand, Barry looked around his comfortable room. On the table was a new edition of Yeats’s poems. On the gramophone Julie London was singing “Cry Me a River.” That evening he was going to the cinema with one of the young women he took out from time to time. With a bit of luck the evening might end with the two of them in bed. He had reason to believe that the young woman was expecting it.
Barry looked back at the priest’s letter. What about what I expect of myself?
Dear Father Aloysius,
When NICRA’s plans for a civil rights demonstration are confirmed, please send me the details.
As ever,
Barry
On the fourth of April, 1968, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
THE civil rights movement in Northern Ireland was gaining momentum. Because there was a small but visible improvement in the lot of Catholics in the eastern part of the province, Catholics west of the River Bann felt more disenfranchised than ever.
In County Tyrone hundreds of Catholic families, many of them with a large number of children, had been on waiting lists for as much as ten years in hopes of being allocated public housing. Then a Protestant woman became engaged to an Orange politician and was immediately given a house. Two outraged Catholic families staged a sit-in in protest.2
When Austin Currie, a newly elected Nationalist MP, joined in the protest, the result was a flurry of publicity that infuriated the Unionists.
“A sit-in does not offer much in the way of photographic possibilities,” Father Aloysius wrote to Barry, “but there may be more dramatic events soon. I’ll let you know.”
In August the priest informed Barry, “NICRA is joining with the Campaign for Social Justice to hold a full-scale, nonviolent civil rights march in County Tyrone on the twenty-fourth.”
County Tyrone.
Derry was close to the northern tip of County Tyrone.
Derry, which lay at the root of his fear.
If I fell off a horse Mam made me get back on as soon as possible. Even if—particularly if—I was hurt. She said it was the only way not to lose my nerve.
I refuse to be afraid for the rest of my life. That would be worse than pain.
In the grey light of dawn Barry packed up his camera equipment. After breakfast he paid his rent for a month in advance.
“You are coming back?” Mr. Philpott asked anxiously. “If not I’ll be wanting to let the room.”
“I only intend to be gone for a few days, then I’m coming back, I promise.” That promise made Barry feel better.
As soon as he boarded the train for the north he took out his book of Yeats’s poetry and read with ferocious concentration. Strangely, once he crossed the border his apprehension faded. I’m committed now. The campaign’s begun.
MAY Coogan answered his knock on the door. “Yes?” she ventured warily.
“Don’t you know me, May?” Barry whipped off the knitted cap he had pulled over his hair and stood tall, abandoning the slouch he had affected since leaving the train station. “You took care of me when I was broken in bits.”
Her jaw dropped “Merciful hour, it’s you!”
Barry laughed. “The proverbial bad penny.”
“Just wait’til I tell Father. He’ll be so pleased.”
“Is he here?”
“He’s taking Mass to his shut-ins, but he should be back in an hour or so. Come through and I’ll put the kettle on; I want to hear everything that’s happened since we saw you last.”
They were still sitting at the kitchen table when the priest returned. May called out, “Father! You’ll never believe who’s come back to us.”
Father Aloysius wrung both of Barry’s hands, exclaiming several times, “I can’t believe you’re really here.” Time was not being kind to the priest. He had gone totally bald, while the furrows in his face had deepened dramatically. His head resembled a knobbly hill above a ploughed field.
Barry explained, “I’ve come to photograph the civil rights demonstration you wrote about. Since Derry’s close to Tyrone I was hoping you could put me up for a night or two.”
“Gladly. And I can drive you down, too. I have an old car now, a banger, but it will get us there and probably get us back.”
“Why, is it far?”
“They’ll be marching from Coalisland to Dungannon at the other end of the county. You’d be a lot closer if you stayed in Belfast.”
Barry shook his head. “I’d prefer to be in Derry.”
“I’m glad to hear it, I’d prefer to have you here. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
That evening Father Aloysius invited Terence Roche to join them for supper. Before Roche would even sit down at the table, he insisted on examining Barry’s leg with professional thoroughness.
“It’s mended much better than I expected, I have to say. Does it give you any trouble?”
“Nothing to moan about.”
“You had a narrow escape, young man. You should have been dead. After you left here, I told John you’d be crippled for the rest of your life.”
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