“My Daddy knew,” Casey said quietly. “Where is it that I’m standin’ Seamus? I’ve heard all the talk about the blurred peripheries of Republicanism, about workin’ on the fringes, the one step for every generation but I don’t believe in standin’ on the sidelines of history while the British, the Prods an’ all they represent run over us. Compromise was not my father’s legacy, an’ I’ll be no less a man than he was.”
“Oh, so ye’ll follow that heroic path will ye? Will ye hold yer father’s idols up high as well, for yer father did the same as they givin’ his life over to this country.”
“Tone, Pearse an’ Collins were heroes of the Republic, my da’ could have praised much worse,” Casey replied heatedly.
“Oh an’ a fine and glorious end they came to, wasn’t it? Tone makin’ a bungle of slittin’ his own throat, Pearse facin’ the firin’ squad with the whole country jeerin’ him, Collins shot down like a dog by his own friends an’ yer granddad, oh aye have ye forgotten him?” he said to Casey’s wary look, “Yer granddad who could have led this Godforsaken nation up out of the muck, shot in front of his own son, an’ all yer uncles dead while scarcely out of their teens. And Brian, yer Daddy, who was never meant for that sort of life takin’ up permanent residence in Milltown cemetery before he’d even caught sight of his fortieth birthday. It’s a funny thing about heroes Casey, they’re all dead.”
“I’m not lookin’ to be a hero, only a man, no more no less.”
Seamus sighed, if the Irish were believed to be a stubborn lot then surely the Riordans were at the summit of that particular trait.
“Aye well, Casey in the end yer life is yer own an’ ye’ll do as ye like with it, just don’t bring anyone else down with ye when ye go. Now I must be off, we’ve lingered too long as it is, ye don’t want to be attractin’ undue trouble.”
He slid a package under the table, years of careful behavior making it seem as if he were merely scratching his knee. “Yer plane tickets an’ all the rest of the information ye’ll need to have a successful trip. We’ll bring ye back to Belfast when I judge it’s safe to do so. Until then,” he lifted his glass which still held a swallow or two, “in the words of an illustrious former brother, that notorious man of letters Brendan Behan, “up the Republic an’ fock the begrudgers!”
“In front of a priest now, shame on ye man!” The barmaid, who Seamus had not seen sidle up, scolded him hotly.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Father,” Seamus was all contrition, “but I clean forgot meself.”
“Let it be a lesson to ye on the evils of the drink,” Casey replied with a face as straight as any dour old priest could have summoned up. And then as the barmaid once again took her leave, having deposited a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey, ‘compliments of the lads, Father,’ Casey leaned towards Seamus, the irresistible twinkle in his eyes once again.
“Eh, Seamus what kind of odds would ye put on a certain priest gettin’ himself defrocked tonight?”
“Found yer virginity in the kip as well did ye, Father?” was Seamus’ caustic reply as he shrugged into his coat and with a final nod at Casey slipped out the door, ever the master of the quick disappearance.
As he began the walk home, he heard a rousing cheer go up and then the mournful opening notes of The Foggy Dew. He smiled, oh aye, his boy was home, he only wished he could be entirely certain that it was a good thing.
Chapter Four
Divine Circles
Insofar as history was a matter of individuals, a piece of history was sitting listening to what was quite possibly the most boring lecture he’d ever had the misfortune of hearing.
“If indeed History is, as it is claimed, a mere matter of starting points then the dichotomy of the Irish people, even in the assignment of dates, becomes very apparent...”
‘Irish history, you pompous ass,’ thought Pat Riordan while drawing a series of naked women down the border of his paper, ‘has never been a mere matter of starting points. Irish history,’ he stuck his tongue between his teeth concentrating on a particularly round curve of buttock, ‘has always been a matter of circles.’ Dante-esque circles that is, Hell, Purgatory and, he glanced down two rows to where the new addition to Modern Irish History sat, occasionally Paradise.
He continued to draw the same woman, one-quarter profile, three-quarter profile, lying on a bed in a tussle of pillows and blanket. Pat, tongue clenched firmly between teeth, raced with soft charcoal to catch the light as it shone on the head of his unknowing muse. He was listening, with half an ear, to the lecture.
“…from the time of the Norman invasions...agrarian revolt...Battle of the Boyne...Protestant ascendancy...uneducated peasant population, ill-prepared...” The words drifted in and out of Pat’s hearing. History was mere bedtime fodder in the home in which he’d grown up. He’d known the basics of Irish history from the time of his fifth birthday, understood the tenets of the American constitution by ten and could argue philosophy, religion, literature, poetry and all the semantics thereof at twelve. He knew entire portions of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man, off by heart. Robert Emmett’s speech from the dock went without saying; many a young Irishman and woman had been inspired to take up the fiery cross of revolution by the famous last words of the patriot martyr.
‘Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country’s liberty and independence...’ These were words of inspiration certainly, but hardly practical to live by. When it came to revolution and its likely outcome, Pat Riordan, born into endless generations of Republicanism, was of a more prosaic frame of mind.
He brushed a dark curl out of his eyes and dug a piece of white chalk out of his pocket to highlight the shadow in his drawing. He’d have to get his hair cut before Casey got home, which should be any time in the next month or so. Long hair, holey-knee pants and the Young Socialists, there was only so much, Pat knew, that his brother could be expected to accept. So, he pulled his ponytail tighter, the hair would have to be sacrificed.
“…with the post-war collapse of agricultural prices,” the professor was saying and Pat, chalk tilted at an angle, allowed the man’s voice to waver along the surface of his ear until two phrases caught his attention, ‘agrarian aggressors... Ribbonism... Karen Riordan...” ‘Kieran, you silly bastard, the name is Kieran and he’d roll over in his grave if he heard you calling him a Ribbonist.’ He continued on rolling the chalk between his fingers to loosen some of its particles and then realized with a terrible chill up his spine that the class had gone preternaturally silent and some forty pairs of eyes, including the apoplectic looking professor, were now staring at him. He realized in an instant what had happened and wholeheartedly wished the floor would open up and drop him into hell.
“Something you’d like to share with the class, Mr. Riordan?” The Professor said in that maddeningly smart-ass way teachers seemed to pick up with their diplomas.
Pat, not the boldest of souls in public situations, was about to stammer an unintelligible reply but then his muse turned her head and offered him a look of sympathy that shifted the parameters of his world. He answered her smile and from reserves he wasn’t aware of possessing, found courage.
“Kieran,” he said, “the man’s name was Kieran and he was never a proponent of Ribbonism,” he said with an assurance he did not feel.
“Relative of yours was he, Mr. Riordan?” the teacher said with a smirking smile.
“My great-great grandfather actually,” Pat said anger giving him firmer ground to stand upon.
“Perhaps then you’d like to enlighten us as to history as it actually happened.” The professor, smiling creamily, was certain he’d refuse, Pat saw. The teacher, however, hadn’t counted on the rather intense pair of green eyes that were gazing up at him with great interest. ‘Seize the day’, he told himself, ‘or it will seize you.�
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“Ribbonism was a generic term covering a variety of small insurrections; it was a general term to cover a movement that never really came out from the dark of night and the shadows of hiding. It was well over by my—by Kieran’s time. Ireland by the mid-1800’s was leaving its agrarian roots behind and moving into the industrial age. Kieran believed in some of the same concepts but not necessarily in the methods. The industries based on large-scale agriculture, such as linen and brewing, were the industries that prospered but the day of the peasant farmer was over. Ribbonism was like the old Catholic priests in its call to go back to the land, to revert to some golden era that had never existed in Ireland in the first place, Kieran was the sort of man who looked forward not back. He supported the purveyors of change but never saw himself as a devout follower of anyone. He believed that a man should stand alone rather than compromise his beliefs.”
“And what exactly were those beliefs?” the professor, eyebrows arched, was intently polishing his glasses.
“He believed in a system, a world if ye will where a man is not judged by the cut of his clothes or the color of his skin nor the size of his wallet. A world where truth is not to be feared, he believed,” Pat took a deep breath and looked directly into the eyes of his Muse, “that all men should live free and that freedom is worth any price.”
“Bravo,” his Muse said, green eyes sparkling. Pat felt suddenly that, like the mythical hero Diarmuid, he could leap entire forests in a single bound.
“Commendable,” the professor was readjusting his glasses to the bridge of his beaky nose, “but words are cheap at half the price, action is what costs.”
“Well,” said Pat, recklessness still thrumming sweetly in his veins, “perhaps if ye’d read further ye’d know that my great-great-granddaddy was a Fenian an’ was hung by the English for staging an uprising an’ after they hung him they had him drawn an’ quartered, then stuck his head on a pike as a warning to the rest of the croppies not to get anymore ideas. The history of Ireland has been the history of my family.”
“Surely you don’t mean to suggest that in a land of three million people your family constitutes the entire story of a nation, do you, Mr. Riordan?”
“No, of course not,” Pat said feeling angry that the man had picked one point out of what he’d said and deliberately misunderstood it. “Look, you can read every book an’ text on Irish history that was and ever will be written an’ still not get the slightest feeling for it. There are five things ye need to know before you approach Irish history with any real depth of understanding.” He held up four charcoal dusted fingers and one chalk-laden thumb. “First of all ye need to remember that ye are dealing with people, living, breathing, sleeping, eating, laughing, weeping human beings,” he took a breath and attempted to unfurl his tongue, which in any seizure of emotion, his neighborhood and its linguistics took firm hold of. “In Irish history an’ I suppose in any land’s history ye cannot discount the human beings that bled an’ died on the stage of time. Second, an inability to see that the present is merely our past repeatin’ itself with many of the same results an’ as few solutions. Third, that hatred, while a great motivator, tends to get in the way of any genuine progress an’ fourth, an’ this one is perhaps the truest of the lot, we are prepared to take defeat after defeat but we will never accept losing on a permanent basis. We don’t understand the concept. Lastly,” he looked out over the class meeting every eye in turn, “ye need to understand that we are our own greatest enemies, that the Irish have killed the Irish and trodden on their fellow man, have incited hatred merely to maintain a sense of superiority over their neighbor. To the British we are one problem, an’ likely an insignificant one at that, to us they are THE problem an’ in that perception alone lies the reason we cannot bring an end to hundreds of years of rage an’ bloodshed.”
His Muse, green eyes clear and undiluted with admiration, began to clap and was soon followed by the rest of the class. Pat, face red, dark curls slipping out of their bondage acknowledged their tribute with a curt nod.
“You make an impressive orator, Mr. Riordan,” the professor said dryly, “I’m certain your Fenian ancestors would be proud. Now class, if I might beg a moment of your attention, tonight you will be assigned to read pages 300-450 in your text.” There was an assortment of groans and the sound of books sliding into bags amid the general shuffle and babble of a dismissed class. Pat, gathering up his own things realized, to his infinite horror, that his drawings were no longer in the clutch of books and paper. He looked under his chair and on the floor surrounding it, feeling increasingly desperate as several square feet of ground did not yield up the nude studies.
“Looking for this?” asked a lilting voice.
Pat, thinking that his own personal circle in life seemed to be, at present, hell, looked slowly up and met the amused countenance of his muse. She handed him his drawings and he reluctantly took them.
“You’ve a strong, bold hand,” she said, “for drawing that is,” she added as Pat, feeling like he was on fire, turned a beetroot red.
“Aye, well, thank you,” he muttered, wishing she would go away and leave him to drown in mortification alone.
“You’ve a talent there,” she said sincerely.
“Ah, it’s only a bit of a hobby.”
“Have you ever seen Michelangelo’s sketches?” she asked.
Pat shook his head.
“Well I have and these remind me of them, same raw, unleashed talent. Though,” her eyes had a wicked twinkle to them, “it seems you may have a greater love of the female form than did Michelangelo. Oh, by the way,” she leaned close enough that he could smell her scent, vanilla and strawberries, “I’ve got a birthmark on my left hip, I thought you might want to add it in for authenticity.” With that final thought, she left him standing openmouthed, books and drawing instruments puddling around his feet.
“Mr. Riordan you’ll be tardy for your next class,” said the professor in his best uptight teacher voice. “Thinking up more revolutionary rhetoric are you?” he asked as Pat still stood unmoving. Blinking like a stunned owl, Pat turned and said in a soft voice,
“No sir, I was just wondering if maybe the circles of Hell and Paradise don’t sometimes overlap.”
“Of course they do, Mr. Riordan,” the professor, laying out his books for the next class, looked over the top of his spectacles, “that’s what we call Earth.”
Perhaps, thought Pat, at last gathering up his papers, pens and charcoal, perhaps the man wasn’t totally hopeless after all.
Pat had meant it when he said the history of Ireland was the history of his family. He was not bragging, for the Lord above knew that in Ireland to have your past generations mirror the events of its nation was not a happy situation. His statement was simple and unexaggerated; the fortunes of the Riordans had paralleled those of Ireland. Which is to say, in no small manner, that neither had ever known peace, nor much prosperity or happiness. It was also to say that both had seen more than their share of bloodshed, sectarian violence and longing for an unattainable dream, something that over the years had taken on the ethereal form of normality, a life of simplicity and small happinesses. However, in all truth, neither the nation nor the family understood what dreams had to be discarded and sometimes crushed to attain these things. In either case, neither was willing to find out.
There had been a tradition of a rising in every generation since the days of Theobald Wolfe Tone and his tragically failed uprising of 1798. Irish history tended to remember the men who failed gloriously with greater fondness than the men who actually won some sort of advancement. The Riordans too had their tradition of a rising in each generation and as a result, not a man of them had seen his fiftieth birthday, some falling a few decades short even of that.
The story of Ireland was a tale as old as mankind itself. A story of resistance in the face of insurmountable odds, of a refusal to put one’
s neck under the master’s boot willingly. The boot in this case being the stiff-legged and unwieldy one of British imperialism.
The trouble of Ireland fit quite nicely into an old Vietnamese proverb in that Ireland was ‘too close to England and too far from Heaven.’ Some would say that the problems all started when King John thrust his tri-leopard banner into Irish shores, for after that the successive English monarchies, Tudors, Stuarts, Old King Billy et al, considered Ireland as an English island just off their west coast. It was in this frame of mind that James I of England ‘planted’ colonies of English and Presbyterian Scots in six of the northern counties, cutting a nation in two irrevocably. The blood from that cut would still be running freely some three hundred years later.
Catholic farmers were pushed off their land and the Protestant landlords with large holdings were forbidden by law to give them tenancy, the landlords with smaller holdings were permitted to grant them tenancy but were taxed at a higher rate for the sin of doing so.
The list of Thou-Shalt-Nots for the Catholics were formally disguised as penal laws.
Thou Shalt Not own land.
Thou Shalt Not Vote.
Thou Shalt Not be educated within Ireland nor without.
Thou Shalt Not hold public office, nor work in the civil service, nor own a weapon, nor earn more than one-third the value of your own crops. Nor be a doctor, a lawyer, a merchant nor a professional of any sort.
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