Liberty

  Cousin Mary frowned, perhaps worried that the music would wake her little bairn, George, and I was struck by how much she looked like our late mutual grandmother on Da’s side. Sombre. Serious. Stern. And there she was, just a year older than me, and old and sour before her time.

  Mary Ann McCracken, a much livelier and spritely Mary, stood up and began to tune her fiddle.

  ‘Will there be a proper revolution like in America and France, do you think, Mary Ann?’ I asked her. ‘You know, we’re all planning and talking and plotting and scheming but it all seems so covert. Will France really come to our aid and help us with our own revolution? Do we get to drag the English into the square and chop off their heads?’

  ‘Heavens, Betsy.’ My cousin coughed into her weak tea. ‘You are speaking treasonous poison. You’d be hung if anyone heard you.’

  I looked to Mrs Boal and she smiled, her eyes twinkling. She was a good loyal Irishwoman.

  The men walked single file back into the room with the strong smell of tobacco accompanying them. We hushed our rebellious talk.

  ‘I hope you knocked the snow off your boots before traipsing through the house!’ I scolded.

  ‘Aye girl, we did,’ my father answered. They all took their seats except Will Boal who stood back from them like he’d seen a spectre.

  ‘Betsy,’ he said, and I gave him an inquisitive smile.

  ‘Yes, what? Will, you look drunk. Are you all right?’

  ‘I wonder, Betsy,’ he stammered, ‘if you would do me the honour of being my wife. An bposfaidh tu me?’

  I laughed. Oh golly, I didn’t mean to. It just up and walloped me like a slap across the cheek. At first, I truly did think he was joking, playing a New Year prank. But he looked stricken and I realised, as I looked around at all the other faces, that he was deadly serious and that they were all in on it. That’s what he’d been doing outside. Asking my father for permission for my hand.

  ‘I, uh, well.’ I smiled and tried to wipe the ridiculous grin off my face. ‘I am taken quite by surprise, Will. But … yes. Yes. A big yes.’

  I was laughing again because I couldn’t help it. I was happy and embarrassed and a little dazed by it all. It was as sudden as a summer thunderstorm. I went to Will and wrapped my arms around him and he kissed me long and deep as everyone in the room cheered and clapped.

  ‘To your good health and the merging of the Grays and the Boals!’ my father said, raising a toast as he pulled out a ceramic jug of Cruiskeen whisky from the sideboard and began filling the good glasses.

  I felt my face flushing. I was in no rush to settle down to the drudgery of married life but Will Boal was a good catch and I loved him so. The thought of being his wife so soon made me a little giddy. The thrill of it all washed over me like a wave of forest fire.

  ‘Oh, Betsy, you will have to hurry to start a family so that Isabella can have a cousin close in age.’

  ‘Oh, wait up, Brigit!’ Will laughed. ‘I haven’t put a ring on her finger yet. There’s time enough to talk of that later. I was thinking a summer wedding.’

  I smiled and nodded at Will, already imagining the day. Yes, a summer wedding would be wonderful and it gave us plenty of time to prepare so that it would be the most beautiful day of my life.

  ‘Let’s celebrate properly,’ Mary Ann said, starting up her fiddle.

  The music began and George pulled out his uilleann pipes to accompany her. It was an up-tempo jig and Will grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the open space of the parlour where he began to dance and I joined him, kicking up my heels with glee. As he romped and stomped and swung me about, I threw my head back and laughed hysterically. Everyone clapped and tapped their feet until my father took Mrs Boal’s hand and the two of them danced beside us. Only the two young mothers stayed at the table with their babes in baskets by their feet.

  As the tune ended, Will took me in his arms and kissed me again.

  ‘All right, all right,’ my father scoffed. ‘There’ll be none of that until you’ve made your vows in the church.’

  ‘Oh Da.’ I laughed. ‘Will is my fiancé now and I’ll kiss him all I like.’

  ‘You’re a wild one, Betsy Gray.’ He smiled back at me, shaking his head. ‘You’ll need to keep her in check, Will. It will be a weight off my shoulders getting rid of her.’

  I slapped my father gently on his shoulder and laughed out loud.

  ‘Not even Will could keep me in check, Da.’ I grinned and flicked my long hair over one shoulder as I looked at my tall beau with his fierce blue eyes and his dark curls. ‘You’re a brave man, Will!’

  ‘I like a challenge.’ He winked at me. ‘Perhaps marriage will settle you down.’

  ‘Will, Will,’ I said playfully. ‘I don’t think you’d like me too settled. You like my wildness, I suspect.’

  ‘That I do! I love you just the way you are, my treasure,’ he said and came close and put his arms around me again.

  ‘You two!’ Brigit laughed from the table. ‘I do think it would be best to marry you promptly. There seems to be way too much fire between you to have to put it on a simmer for six months or so.’

  ‘The only cure for love is marriage,’ the Reverend piped up and everyone laughed.

  Will and I excused ourselves and went for a walk outside to get some air and allow ourselves some privacy to discuss the issue.

  ‘You are happy, aren’t you, Bet?’ he said, a worried crease in his brow. ‘You weren’t just saying so? You do want to be my wife?’

  ‘Of course I do, you dunderhead.’ I laughed incredulously. ‘I adore you, Will and while, yes, it was a shock to me, it is a very pleasant one.’

  His shoulders slumped with relief. We walked on and my boots sunk into the soft fall of snow. I picked up a gloved handful of the crunching white ice and levelled Will with a knowing look.

  ‘You’d better run!’

  He took off, awkwardly sinking up to his ankles as he ran toward the greenhouse. I threw the snowball at him and it exploded against the back of his moleskin jacket. Will laughed and hooted and grabbed a fistful, turning the tables on me as I ran back in the other direction. We were making so much noise with our laughter that I did not hear the approach of the galloping horse until the rider was almost upon us.

  He came at an alarming rate down through the open gate and I feared he might barrel straight over me, but he pulled up in time and his horse gave a whinny as it came to a halt. The rider wore a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat and sat atop a chestnut mare. As he took off his hat, I realised it was Connor Kelly, cousin Mary’s husband, the one we called traitor.

  ‘What can we help you with, Connor?’ I asked as Will came up close to me, looking up at the man. ‘I thought George was taking Mary home later in the wagon and—’

  ‘I’ve come with some news,’ he said, interrupting me. ‘I’ve heard it at the barracks up at Newtownards. Your sister’s husband, Jimmy Ballantine, has been arrested and charged with treason. He’s apparently taken the United Irishmen’s Oath and during a raid the fellows found a stack of pikes under the hay in his stable.’

  Will and I shot one another a look of concern.

  ‘Brigit is here with us now,’ I said. ‘She knows nothing of this, I swear, Connor.’

  ‘Well, I know your da is a loyalist to the King and I’m sure that will help, but they’ll be wanting to talk to your sister in the next few days.’

  I shut my eyes and felt my heart cool in my chest. This would come as a terrible blow to Brigit. What with the new bairn less than three months old.

  ‘I don’t need to remind you that it’s a hanging offence to be hooked up with the rebels.’

  I looked up at Connor’s eyes as they bored into me. I wasn’t sure whether he was telling me this in relation to my brother-in-law, Jimmy, or warning me personally.

  ‘I am duly aware of that, sir.�
� I nodded sombrely. ‘I’m sure they’ll see that Jimmy was keeping such things from his wife. It will come as a terrible shock to her because Brigit is as loyal to the King as my da.’

  ‘And you, Betsy? And you, William Boal?’ he asked us, leaning forward, fixing us with a penetrating stare.

  ‘You won’t find any United Irishmen around this farm, Connor Kelly,’ Will said firmly, lying through his teeth. ‘And we thank you for risking your own hide to come and tell us the grave news.’

  ‘Would you like to come in for a dram of whisky?’ I asked, feeling that I could do with one myself.

  ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘Tell your brother to have my wife and son home before sundown so she has time to prepare my tea. And don’t give her any punch. I don’t allow her any liquor.’

  As he took off back toward the road, his horse kicking up plumes of snow in its wake, I fell into Will’s chest and began to sob.

  ‘Poor Brigit,’ I moaned. ‘They’ll hang Jimmy just like they did Mr Orr. And if they decide that she’s an accessory, they …’

  The thought was too horrible to put into words.

  ‘Why are the police over there?’ I asked Agnes, warily.

  On the corner of Turbot Street, a group of six uniformed policemen stood, arms crossed, staring at all the young people approaching the solid-stone Trade Union Building. It was dusk, yet the heat was still stifling. I could feel the sweat running down my back. We crossed the road to avoid them.

  ‘I guess they’re just patrolling the area, making sure no fights break out or whatnot.’ She shrugged, not looking at all concerned. ‘Or maybe they are covertly photographing all these political subversives and putting them on a black list.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, almost to myself, my nerve suddenly evaporating. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t. I mean—’

  Agnes grabbed my wrist and pulled me along.

  ‘No, no, no.’

  She laughed. ‘I was being funny, silly! There’s a band playing and they have films and stuff. It’s fine. It’s just a cool place to hang out. It’ll be fun. Anyone can get up on stage and do anything. Mime. Music. Dance. Anything.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said, following her, unconvinced, my feet shuffling along the pavement. ‘But if it’s just a bunch of brainwashing palaver being shoved down our throats like at the lunchtime Forum then I’m leaving and we can go catch Bonnie and Clyde at the picture theatre.’

  Inside, we had to pay one dollar to become members of the Foco Club and then another seventy cents for the night’s entry fee. I got my little rectangular cardboard member’s card and put it in my purse. Agnes and I walked into the club, which was fast filling up with loud and excited young people. I recognised a few faces from uni.

  ‘How cool is this place?’ Agnes laughed.

  ‘This place’ was quite spartan and not at all what I had expected. There was a big blank expanse with exposed floorboards. There were some fabric-covered boards that were being used to partition off sections where mats and cushions were scattered on the floor. Music pumped out of the big speakers in the corner and over at the designated disco area, people were contorting themselves as they danced frenetically.

  ‘Is that Creedence?’ Agnes yelled at me over the music.

  ‘I think so,’ I mouthed back at her, shrugging.

  ‘Hey there, welcome to Foco.’ A man in a loud floral shirt smiled at us and gave the two-fingered salute of peace. Agnes and I started to giggle and had to punch each other in the arm to stop from becoming hysterical and making fools of ourselves.

  ‘Bloody hippies.’ I laughed into Agnes’s ear.

  ‘This place is jumping!’ Agnes replied, squeezing my elbow.

  ‘Hey Fi!’ I heard a voice call out and I turned around, confused and disoriented.

  I came face-to-face with Luke, the boarding house cook.

  ‘So great to see you here! Part of the hive mind, hey?’

  ‘Ah … yeah,’ I stammered. ‘I guess so … um … this is my friend, Agnes.’

  ‘Charmed.’ Luke gave her a lopsided grin. ‘I do the lights here every Sunday night,’ he told us and pointed to a dim corner of the room. ‘People just get up and express themselves. It’s a beautiful thing. Wait till you see my light show; it’s totally psychedelic.’

  ‘Cool,’ I yelled and nodded over another blast of music from the speakers as Luke wandered away doing some kind of dance.

  ‘That’s Luke,’ I told Agnes. ‘He’s the guy at my boarding house. He lives there.’

  ‘Tasty!’ she answered back and did something weird with her eyes.

  ‘Yeah.’ I grinned. ‘He looks a bit like Jim Morrison from The Doors, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘Totally!’

  ‘He’s an artist,’ I explained, as we found a quiet corner and sat down on some cushions. ‘He paints really abstract stuff. He showed me.’

  ‘You’ve been in his room?’ she looked aghast. ‘How well do you know him?’

  ‘Well, let’s see,’ I replied. ‘He was half-naked at the time.’

  ‘Stop! Stop it!’ Agnes shouted, putting her hands over her ears, her accent getting thicker.

  ‘Nah,’ I said, giving a dismissive shrug. ‘I’m not interested. My study load is way too heavy to be thinking about boys! Anyway, he’s a bit intense, I reckon.’

  ‘Not as intense as Barton McLeod,’ Agnes said, raising her eyebrows and nodding her head toward a raised platform as the music was snuffed out.

  Barton was on a small raised dais about to start preaching to the crowd, I presumed. A swarm of kids had congregated around him, sitting cross-legged on the floor or lying in other people’s laps. They looked like a sea of zombies, all mindlessly devoted to their messiah, Barton McLeod.

  ‘Might as well go and listen to him,’ Agnes said. ‘And then we’ll watch the open stage thingo and you should sing a song. There are other people with guitars. You could borrow one. Maybe do something by Joni Mitchell. You sound just like her.’

  ‘I’m not going to do that! You’ve got to be joking.’ I slapped her on the hand. ‘But, oh God … listening to the ravings of Barton is not my idea of a fun night out. Really, Ag.’

  I relented and let Agnes lead me over to some spare cushions on the floor. My dad had rung me at the boarding house earlier that afternoon to check in on me. I’d lied and told him I was going to get some takeaway fish and chips and watch television at Agnes’s parents’ place. If he could have seen me there in the Foco Club with the smell of marijuana thick in the air, rock ’n’ roll blaring into the smoky room, with a bunch of upstart political hippies, I think he would have self-combusted.

  The kids all gave a roar of approval as Barton started up by welcoming everyone to the Foco Club.

  ‘The world needs a revolution, people!’

  I sat and squirmed uncomfortably because more than a revolution, I needed to pee. I looked around for a sign pointing to a toilet but decided to hang on. I didn’t want to stand up and walk away while Barton was talking in case he called me out on it and embarrassed me.

  ‘This week Martin Luther King Junior was murdered, assassinated.’

  A murmur of voices reacted. It’s all anyone had talked about at uni for the previous few days. It had made me really sad hearing about it. The world was becoming a messed-up place.

  ‘Martin Luther King had a dream, my friends, and I, too, have a dream,’ Barton shouted passionately.

  ‘Oh boy.’ I leaned across to Agnes. ‘Now he’s going to be the phoenix that rises from the ashes of Martin Luther King and proclaims himself the new king of civil rights. The poor guy isn’t even cold yet and Barton’s pinching the “dream” line.’

  Agnes didn’t take her eyes off Barton.

  ‘I found his speech about Vietnam truly inspiring. So much needs to change,’ Barton said as he strode around the stage with his microphone,
gesticulating with his free hand. ‘We need to stop sending our boys to a war that has nothing to do with us. Conscription is murder. The Foco Club is where we can come to have this dialogue of change. Your voices matter. Use them. Shout. Yell. If enough of us make a noise they have to listen to us! We will march in the streets. We are the youth and we are the future.’

  He went on and on and perhaps I was breathing in the fumes and getting stoned, but I found his voice more sedating than uplifting. I got comfortable on the cushions and curled up like a cat and almost fell asleep.

  After Barton finished firing up the crowd with his speech, Agnes and I stood, stretched and went to buy some lemonade. I saw Barton making his way through the crowd, nodding and shaking hands with his fans. Then he walked straight over to me.

  ‘You made it, Fiona.’ He smiled.

  ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you look like John Lennon from The Beatles?’ Agnes said. There was a hint of adoration in the way she said it.

  ‘All the time, love,’ he replied in a terrible Liverpudlian accent.

  ‘Don’t you think that our government brought in conscription because it is a fair way to call up random people to go and fight alongside our allies, the Americans?’ I challenged him.

  ‘We have enlisted men who choose to fight,’ he came straight back at me. ‘Let them go. I’m safe from the ballot because I’m at university but if I hadn’t been, trust me, I’d sooner sit in a gaol for a few years than go and shoot at Vietnamese people in their own country. I don’t love my country enough to lay down my life for it. It’s just dirt.’

  ‘What if the Vietnamese were threatening us here?’ I continued. ‘Would you fight to defend your country then?’

  ‘Nope.’ He smiled. ‘I’d ask them what their beef was and say let’s go and have a beer and talk about it and I’d try to come to an agreement. Make a friend out of an enemy. War is never the answer. I’m a dedicated pacifist.’

  ‘I agree with you on the conscription issue,’ Agnes said, smiling at Barton as if she was a cat and he was the cream.

  ‘Cool.’ Barton smiled at her just as someone started waving at him from across the room. ‘You birds have a funky time. Check you later.’