Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

  “You didn’t see him. He is falling apart. This is absolutely destroying him. He’s reduced to fretting about how many cigarettes he has left to get him through the day, and when the next batch of potcheen or moonshine or whatever it is he’s been nipping in there will be safe for consumption!”

  “Christ, that stuff can kill you, can blind you, if you don’t do it right.”

  “Tell me about it. A girl I grew up with in Cape Breton, her father died after drinking bad shine. But no wonder Brennan has sunk to drinking prison hooch. As if all this wasn’t bad enough, there was the call from Rome.” Oh, God. Of course. “The priest from Sancta Maria Regina Coeli called Ronan’s place looking for Father Burke. I got this from Gráinne. I know Ronan would have tried to put a good face on a disastrous situation: ‘There’s been a mistake. Father Burke is facing false allegations. He’ll be cleared. Let’s all just wait till it gets sorted.’ But you can guess the rest. Father Brennan Xavier Burke is not going to be directing the music of the spheres in Rome in September.”

  Brennan

  There was one aspect of prison life to which Brennan had managed to adapt instantly: the prisoner’s difficulty in adapting to change. Any change or rumour of change was met with fear, on the principle that things could always get worse. And almost certainly would. An alteration in routine, a new cellmate, a new screw on the wing, all brought on waves of stress. So Brennan’s own anxiety spiked to the sky when, in the middle of June, he got the news that he was being moved. Not to another cell, not to another wing, but to Long Kesh, also known as the H Blocks. Officially, it was Her Majesty’s Prison Maze. The H Blocks were where ten hunger strikers died for the cause, where the blanket protests were held, where history had been made.

  Long Kesh was where Brennan would be held while waiting for his trial, and he now knew the date: September 18. Three months stretched ahead like an eternity to Brennan, but this was in fact a very early trial date; he could have been waiting on remand for years. Reddy O’Reilly explained that another trial, which involved several defendants and which had been forecast to last for weeks, was not going ahead. O’Reilly didn’t say why, and Brennan didn’t ask. So a number of other cases had been rescheduled. O’Reilly did some finagling and managed, because Brennan’s trial was expected to be a short one, to get an early date. Brennan dreaded the trial but dreaded a long prison stay even more. The sooner he got to trial, the sooner . . . but no, there was no guarantee that he would be acquitted and set free, although the alternative was unthinkable.

  Brennan had absolutely no control over the direction his life would take. It was as if he were no longer a subject, an independent human being, exercising his free will and acting in the world. He had been reduced to the level of an object, acted upon and moved at the will of others. And so there he was, being transported out of the city to the Kesh. The sight of it was familiar from his visit to Lorcan’s friend back whenever that was, a lifetime ago. The watchtowers, the walls, the razor wire. After all the rigmarole of getting admitted, the warder led him down a corridor lined with cells that were shut in by massive steel doors, each with only a narrow, horizontal slit of an opening. The screw opened one of the doors and ushered him into a concrete cell with his new roommate, a red-faced man of middle age who sat on his bottom bunk and glared at Brennan. He looked as if he would explode with rage at any minute. And there on the floor was the dreaded chamber pot. Brennan turned his attention to the outer wall but found little relief there. Long vertical openings in the concrete provided the only view out. Not much better than the arrow slits in the wall of a medieval castle. The limited view was of the exercise yard and iron fencing, not the earth and moon and stars above.

  The afternoon after his first night in the Kesh he had to face down the temptation to grab his cellmate by the throat and throttle the life out of him. He gave his name as O’Morda, an enormous, surly fellow who wore a dingy brown muscle shirt that displayed tattoos all over his arms and shoulders. O’Morda of course was present for every second of Brennan’s existence. A screw came by to tell Brennan that a visitor had come for him but she would only be able to stay for a few minutes. Was this the MacNeil, on a flying trip to Belfast and all the way out to Lisburn to see him? His anticipation must have been evident, because the screw laughed and said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Brennan fought the urge to sprint to the visiting area. When he arrived at the cubicle, though, it was not Maura. It was the parish secretary, not from Saint Matthew’s — God knows — but from “his” parish of Holy Cross in Ardoyne. He hoped he had succeeded in masking his disappointment that it was not Maura. He was filled with gratitude that Mary Pat had come all the way out to this frightening place to see him, and he thanked her profusely.

  When he got back to his cell, O’Morda was lolling in bed smoking a cigarette. “So who is she, Burke, the one who had you blasting out of here with a big fuckin’ grin on your face?” As far as Brennan knew, he had never had a big fucking grin on his face at any time in his adult life. But the odious creature went on, “Give me all the details so I can enjoy them after lights out tonight.”

  It took all the patience Brennan had — and he had never been renowned for his patience — to refrain from falling on this gouger and pounding the face off him.

  “What’s her name, Burke?”

  He refused to rise to the bait. All he said was “Ar Éirinn ní neosainn cé hí.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “You haven’t been working on your Jailic, mate. It means ‘for Ireland I’d not tell her name.’ I’m surprised you don’t know that, O’Morda. Maybe you’re on the wrong wing. More comfortable on a Loyalist wing, would you be?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Thank God for small mercies, not everyone on the wing was as unpleasant as O’Morda. And the prisoners were not confined to their cells all day, which meant that Brennan was sometimes able to avoid the round white “convenience” on the cell floor. There were times when the prisoners could go outdoors to exercise and they could socialize with one another in the evenings. So Brennan roused himself from his torpor to sit in on a session of music on his third evening in the place. He walked down the corridor to a spacious room where his fellow remand prisoners were gathered. The walls were decorated with political cartoons and pictures of the ten dead hunger strikers. There was a photo of the scholar and politician Eoin MacNeill, who had been imprisoned during the War of Independence seventy-five years before. Brennan tried to draw courage from MacNeill’s defiant words: “In prison we are their jailers, on trial their judges, persecuted their punishers, dead their conquerors.”

  The céilí was well underway when he sat down. Two men were playing guitars, one a bodhran, another a mandolin. The fellow in the seat beside him looked to be in his late thirties, with thick brown hair and a good-humoured look about his eyes. He introduced himself as Turlough.

  “I’m Brennan Burke. Father Burke in better times.”

  “Oh, aye? Have they made the Church a proscribed organization again?”

  Brennan had to laugh. “Yeah, we’re back to penal times. They caught me saying a Mass out behind the trees.”

  “Were you at the rock?” Turlough sang. It was an old Irish song, about the days when Mass had to be said at midnight at a “Mass rock” and there was a bounty on priests the way there was on wolves.

  “No, in my case, I wasn’t picked up for my religious duties.”

  Turlough offered him a cigarette and lit it for him. Brennan and his new friend smoked and listened to a set of rebel songs. When the current performer bowed to applause and went off for a smoke of his own, a man called out from across the room, “Turlough! Do Maggie for us!”

  “Ah, no . . .”

  “Do it. Or the only spuds you’ll be getting in this place are the unfermented kind your mam used to boil for yer dinner.”

  Brennan perked up at the word “unfermen
ted.” Discounting the prefix “un” implied the existence of an in-house distillery. He wouldn’t ask about it now; he would bide his time and then make a casual inquiry. Tomorrow, or maybe tonight.

  “Turlough, give us Maggie on the Blanket. I’ll be Denis.”

  “You always get to be Denis,” another man groused.

  “Where is my hairstylist, gentlemen?” It was Turlough’s lips that were moving, but the voice and accent were that of Britain’s former prime minister. Brennan had oft heard it said that she was the most hated person in Ireland after Cromwell. “I don’t go on without my hair being perfect!”

  Someone handed Turlough a comb, and Turlough bent forward, shook his hair and then used the comb to do what Brennan’s sisters used to call teasing. He managed to shape it into something resembling a Thatcherite helmet of hair.

  “My bag! My bag! What is the matter with you people?”

  “Yes, Prime Minister!” one of the men said and handed the PM what appeared to be a camera case with a strap. The Iron Lady now had her handbag, which she looped over her arm. She announced to the world at that point that she had been taken prisoner. “The terrorists have won the battle but not the war! Never the war. Now that the Irish Republic’s expansionist policies have led it to invade and occupy this great kingdom of ours, I hereby vow that I shall wear nothing, nothing at all — will be bare-arse naked — until this occupation ends! And Denis will do the same. Denis!”

  “No, Margaret, my little love führer, please no.”

  “Denis, what did I say? Strip! Now!”

  The man whimpered and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  But the PM’s minions cried out in horror, “No, Prime Minister, we beg you! Anything but this! The television cameras are here.” Someone produced a dishtowel. “Take this blanket, and cover yourself, Mrs. Thatcher. Modesty demands it.”

  “I shall bow to no demands. I make the demands around here.”

  “The blanket, Prime Minister. How about we all go on the blanket to show solidarity? You know, like that Irish rabble did a few years back.”

  “I shall not hear of it.” By this time the Iron Lady was down to her skivvies, as was a quivering Denis by her side.

  One of the other fellows then held his fist in front of his mouth like a microphone and announced to the world, “We interrupt our regular programming for this news bulletin. The Irish Republican Army, having recently invaded and occupied all of the United Kingdom, was seen today scrambling to get off our island. They commandeered every ship and every little boat, raft, and water-wing to make the voyage back across the Irish Sea. Their commanding officer said, ‘We have the best fighting men in the world, but our men have been frightened and terrorized by the horrors they witnessed on English soil. The Thatchers, both of them, naked as the day they came into the world! I pray to God and Mary and Saint Patrick that I never again see —’”

  “What are those men doing with their clothes off?” The question was barked from the edge of the room.

  The prisoners all turned to see a shocked warder standing there, his eyes out on sticks.

  “Show some respect for the prime minister, Dickson!” one of the prisoners demanded. “And the poor wee man at her side.”

  “Are ye stark, raving mad, the lot of youse?”

  “Set us free, Dickson. It’s life in this dungeon that has us demented.”

  “Get your clothes on and act like normal human beings, why don’t youse?”

  “Ordinary decent criminals, you mean, sir?”

  “That would be an improvement.” The warder shook his head in bafflement and moved off.

  All the foolishness helped take Brennan’s mind off his plight, for a while at least. And it had another benefit. It gave him something to talk about a few days later when it really was the MacNeil who came to see him. Her first visit to the Kesh. Her last visit to Brennan. She and the children were leaving Dublin for home the following week, the last week of June. He had fretted about the visit all night. Now here she was. He avoided the subject of her departure by amusing her with the Iron Lady naked protest skit. She responded with a tale about protesting against Ronald Reagan years before, when he visited Ottawa. She had made the trip from Halifax to the capital to join a demonstration against the American president and his policies. As the president and his entourage made their way towards the House of Commons, Maura rushed forward so Reagan would see her protest sign. Her sudden movement alarmed the security men and Maura, being a typically polite Canadian, blurted out “Sorry, sorry!” which served to take the edge off her tough-on-Reagan stance.

  “Ah,” said Brennan, “the MacNeil unmasked as nothing but a Reagan apologist. A tool of the military-industrial complex.”

  “And a lackey running dog of the corporate bourgeoisie!”

  But their stories had to end, and they sat there looking at each other. “Brennan, I’m sorry — there I go again, so Canadian! — I’m so sorry to be leaving you in here. As you can imagine. But you’ve got a great lawyer in Reddy O’Reilly. He’ll do his very best to see that justice is done, and you’re let out of here.”

  He made no reply. They both knew there were no guarantees in the Belfast courts. Visiting time was up. They stood, and she opened her arms to him. He fastened onto her. Clung to her like the weak, pathetic man he had become. She was weeping; he was doing his level best not to. Then she turned and was gone.

  He returned to his cell and lay on his bed, for hours and hours on end, staring up at the ceiling and hearing nothing as prison life went on around him. As the night wore on he was once again afflicted with the DTs, once again afflicted with regret for his imprudence and the consequences of his actions.

  There were a few bright moments that week when he attended a class in the Irish language, though there was a shadow of darkness even over that. Brennan commended an older man next to him for his skill with the language.

  “So much better now when we can have classes openly,” the man said. “I was here in the late 1970s, when we weren’t even allowed a pen or paper and had to shout our lessons from one cell to another, and scratch our words on the walls with the broken edge of a toothpaste tube.”

  Another of the men piped up, “We weren’t even allowed to receive Christmas cards with Irish greetings. Irish was forbidden as a ‘foreign language’! In our own country! They’re still censoring letters we get in Irish.”

  The first speaker responded, “That’s right. Hard to believe so many of our lads have the Jailic now. In some of the other blocks, you’ll hear Irish spoken all day.”

  There was a céilí that evening. Brennan forced himself to get up and attend, knowing it would distract him at least temporarily from his plight. He saw Turlough in the room and greeted him.

  “You’re not looking all that well, Brennan.”

  “Ah . . .” Brennan tried to brush it off.

  “You can’t let yourself be defeated by this place. If you can’t hold up now, what will become of you if you have to spend years in here? You have to think about that, as much as you don’t want to.”

  “I know. I appreciate your concern, Turlough, really.” Then he said, “A wee drop would fix me up.”

  Turlough’s answer was unexpected. “No, it wouldn’t. Stay off the stuff, Brennan. It’s a cycle you should try to break now, rather than later. I speak from personal experience; I’m trying to get off it myself.”

  Brennan nodded; he couldn’t think what to say in response to the man’s kindness and his wisdom. But he was saved from having to reply by the other prisoners once again calling upon Turlough to provide the entertainment. “Give us a song, would you?”

  So Turlough fetched a guitar from a corner of the room and gave them some rabble-rousing songs that had them all shouting and pumping their fists in the air. He had a strong, rich voice and was a dab hand on the guitar as well. He switched then to a couple of slow
, poignant ballads and was even more effective singing those. There was a reflective silence in the room after his final song, followed by a thunderous ovation. He came and sat down beside Brennan.

  “That was brilliant,” Brennan told him. “I’m something of a musician myself. I can carry a tune and I’ve directed a number of choirs, so I appreciate genuine talent when I hear it. You were a ballad singer in your former life, perhaps, Turlough?”

  “I was a bomb maker in my former life, Brennan.” Brennan was surprised at the candour. His surprise must have been obvious, because Turlough said, “It’s no secret. It’s been in the news then and now.”

  “Right.”

  “But yeah, I sang in the bars from time to time. Was all set to make a recording with some other lads when I got lifted and banged up in here.”

  “You’re fairly new in the place, too, then.”

  “No, I’ve been accommodated here before. Spent some of what would otherwise have been the best years of my life here. Is Ronan Burke a relation of yours?”

  “My first cousin.”

  “We need more like him. I’m not sure he’s on the right path now, but he’s been a patriot for a quarter of a century. Nobody can take that away from him.”

  “Somebody tried.”

  “Aye, I know. Ronan and I go way back. I’ve known him since the internment-without-trial years. My father was dragged out of bed by soldiers of the British Army and kicked unconscious in front of my mother and me. I was fifteen years old at the time. I wanted to sign up, join the IRA that minute. Me and all the other lads I knew. The Brits’ policy did wonders for IRA recruitment. Ronan was the fella we had to talk to. He told me to come back when I turned seventeen, and to keep my nose clean in the meantime. They had me checked out, made sure I was sound, not a criminal type.”

  Turlough gave a little laugh and said, “I passed muster. But I’ve been designated a criminal by our opponents. I blew up buildings. Military installations, barracks, things like that. That’s against the law; it’s criminal. Fair enough. But what those soldiers did to my father was criminal. What the peelers in Castlereagh did to you — I know what they did, because they did it to all of us — is criminal. But nobody locks them up. We are all fighting in the same war, all committing acts of war. In here we are prisoners of war. Our protests over the years have had the desired effect. We wear our own clothes now; we’re not locked up all day. The prison authorities know they have to deal with our own OCs and staff. This entire complex is a prisoner of war camp in all but name.”