Now and in the Hour of Our Death Page 4

  She fidgeted in her hard-seated chair and doodled in her notepad. Surely someone must have told the man that no visual aid should contain more than five facts, yet there he stood, pointing to the eleventh row of figures on this one slide, his back to his audience, mumbling at the makeshift screen. He turned to face the group of teachers and said, “… and I think that in a, quote unquote”—he extended the first two fingers of each hand like a pair of skinny rabbit’s ears and flexed them rapidly—“student-centred learning environment, we must strive to build the children’s self-esteem.”

  The remains of last night’s migraine gnawed behind her eyeballs. She struggled to stifle a yawn. Glancing round the faces of her colleagues, she could tell that she wasn’t the only one having difficulty staying awake. Fiona watched as her friend Rebecca (Becky) Johnston, who sat on the other side of the table, raised her eyes to the heavens, stared directly in Fiona’s direction, and crossed her eyes.

  A younger man sitting near the head of the table stroked his beard and asked the principal, “But why must we always concentrate on self-esteem at the expense of the three Rs? In the intermediate grades, two and two make four, have always made four, and will always make four … no matter how much that may bruise some little dear’s ego.”

  Other voices were raised, one teacher talking over another.

  Lord above, not that argument again? In the primary grades, kindergarten to three, the school’s mission was to develop the kids’ self-esteem and teach them how to learn. After grade three, in intermediate, the learning of facts began.

  Fiona closed her eyes. Every week they struggled with this, never reaching any kind of conclusion. She thought about the ancient clerics who would argue about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. The old boys had only been rank beginners when it came to the hair-splitting that went on at these meetings. Her colleagues didn’t make the Mourne Mountains out of molehills. They went up and down both sides of a Mount Everest built from a single grain of sand.

  She pushed her chair back from the table, eased her numb backside, and decided not to contribute to the futile discussion. It was far removed from the cut and thrust of the debates she’d grown up with in her years at Stranmillis Teachers’ College back in the ’60s.

  The bearded teacher was pointing at the slide. That man could talk the hind leg off a donkey. She knew he’d hold the floor for what would seem like forever.

  Funny how much he looked like George Thompson. She’d not thought of George for years, but she could see him clearly: beard, granny glasses, briar pipe. He used to stab at people with the stem of the thing to emphasize points he was making.

  She could smell his tobacco, Murray’s Erinmore Flake, hear his high-pitched voice.

  “Look, Fiona’s a Catholic, like the rest of you, and I’m a Protestant, but why should that matter in 1961?”

  There had been a hum of agreement from the twenty other student teachers gathered in George’s rooms in the college’s halls of residence.

  “Because, George,” she said, “we’re living in Northern Ireland. It’s always mattered. Some Protestants have more than one vote. Catholics get shoved to the bottom of waiting lists for subsidized housing, get kept out of the good jobs. Taigs, Fenians as they call us, get beaten up … just because they’re Catholic.”

  “Bloody right.” A boy with ferocious acne stood up. “And do you think we’re going to change that?” he demanded. “Not all Protestants think like you, George.”

  She glanced at him, saw a tiny smile as he said, “You’re right, but once we qualify and get into the classrooms, we can work with the kids. Teach them about tolerance.”

  Paddy, that was the name of the one with the acne, Paddy snorted. “Jesus, George, maybe you will, but the rest of us? We’ll only get jobs in Catholic schools. Worst bloody thing they ever did in this country was to keep the schools segregated.”

  Fiona butted in. “But we can change that, too.”

  “How?” Paddy shook his head.

  “The same way Martin Luther King’s doing in America.”

  “Rather you nor me, Fiona.” Paddy muttered. “A lot of them American civil rights workers have had their heads smashed in. The whites have their Ku Klux Klan. Look what they did in Montgomery, Alabama, when the Yanks tried to integrate a school.”

  Another voice chimed in. “And here the Prods—sorry, George, but it’s true—they have the Orange Order.”

  “And we,” she said, rising and folding her arms across her chest, “we have NICRA, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. One man, one vote. No more discrimination.”

  She heard the murmur of assent, smiled at the approval of the crowd, until Paddy growled, “Aye, and we have the IRA. They’ll chase the Brits out, and then we’ll get one man, one vote.”

  George was standing at her shoulder.

  “No,” he yelled, stabbing with his pipe stem. “Not by violence. You can’t make people love you by shooting them. By throwing bombs at them.”

  “I agree,” she said. “We need to use nonviolent methods, civil disobedience. We need one man, one vote.”

  “Fiona’s right.” George put his arm round her shoulders.

  She snuggled against him and wished that the rest would go home so she could be alone with him, talk more freely, and then they’d take each other to bed. It was a good thing the British government had made the pill available on prescription this year. There were some advantages to having Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom. Bugger what the priests thought. Fiona Kavanagh wasn’t going to get herself in the family way. Not until she was good and ready. She had a career to make, and changes to make to her Ireland.

  Those two resolutions had already cost her. None of her family would speak to her since she’d taken up with a Protestant. They’d thought she was daft when she told them that she was going to be a teacher. Women were housewives or secretaries, and she’d no right to try to rise above her station. She shuddered to think what they’d say if they knew she was here tonight working for civil rights. And work on she would, even if tonight—she glanced over at George—it meant that bed would have to wait. She knew that the arguments would rage on interminably.

  Just like this staff meeting.

  The flicker of slides being changed caught her eye. The principal had changed the subject. “Moving to the final item on today’s agenda…”

  Thank God for that.

  “… the budget.”

  Fiona began to pay attention. This would be interesting. She knew that there was going to be intense competition for funds between Becky Johnston, who mostly taught the primary grades, and Whiskers over there, who worked only in intermediate.

  If it came to the crunch, Fiona would use her position as vice principal to wade in on Becky’s side. Not that she thought she’d have to. Back in Northern Ireland, Fiona occasionally had enjoyed putting a few shillings on the horse races. In this one, she’d put the lot on Becky. The woman would fight with the mathematician for her students as fiercely as Fiona and George had fought in their last few months before their inevitable split.

  He’d been a good lad, George, for most of the four years they’d been together, but she couldn’t be sure if they had simply grown apart or whether their political views had diverged too far. He’d continued to believe in NICRA’s insistence on staying within the bounds of constitutional methods. She’d been swayed by a young woman named Bernadette Devlin and the other leaders of a splinter group, which in 1968 became the People’s Democracy, who went in for confrontational protest marches. Perhaps the cross-sectarian divide between her and George had been too wide to span. She’d missed him for a while, but she’d been young and had taken comfort from the old saying that men were like corporation buses—if you waited for a while, another one would come along.

  Fiona kept a careful eye on her friend Becky as she argued her corner successfully. They’d have a good chat about that on their way home today, and next week they were going to t
he opera together. That would be something to look forward to, like dinner with Tim tomorrow night. She was expecting him to pick her up at seven in the evening.

  CHAPTER 5

  COUNTY TYRONE. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1983

  “Are we expecting anybody, Cal?” Erin O’Byrne stood back from the black cast-iron range when she heard knocking on the farmhouse door.

  “Sammy’s meant to be coming over, but…?”

  Erin watched Cal cross the tiled kitchen floor. It was probably only Sammy McCandless—but it wouldn’t be the first time the Security Forces had paid an unexpected visit. It was no secret about her and Eamon Maguire, and since he was a convicted Provo she’d have been surprised if the O’Byrne family and the O’Byrne farm weren’t kept under surveillance.

  Cal opened only the upper half of the door. “’Bout ye, Sam. Come on in. Jesus, it’s really bucketing down.”

  Erin relaxed as Cal struggled with the lower door half.

  “Bloody thing’s warped.”

  She heard Sam say, “Take your time. I’ll not melt.”

  “Would you move, you stupid thing?” Cal tugged at the door. “Never been right since Da died.”

  And you’ve still not got round to fixing it, big brother, she thought. One day I’ll do it myself.

  The door screeched open. Sammy came in, shaking himself like a spaniel after a water retrieve. He pulled a cloth cap off a mop of badly cut, straw-coloured hair and slapped the duncher against his thigh. “Morning, Erin.”

  “Get them muddy boots off you, Sammy,” she said, crossing the kitchen. “Don’t you be dragging all that clabber in here.”

  Sammy left his Wellington boots beside the door. She heard the cackling of a hen trying to come in, Cal yelling, “Get away on out,” and grunting as he pulled the door shut.

  “Gimme your cap and coat.” She held out one hand.

  “Just a wee minute.” Sammy bent, pulled a pair of bicycle clips from the ankles of his moleskin trousers, stood, untied a length of baler twine that served as a belt, and shrugged out of his Dexter raincoat. “Here y’are.” He handed her the sopping coat and cap. He rubbed his hands. “I’m foundered. It would cut you in two out there.”

  “Fancy a cup of tea?”

  “I do so.”

  “Sit down at the table.” Erin hung the clothes on a coat stand in the corner of the kitchen. “Would you make Sam some tea, Cal? The kettle’s nearly boiled.”

  “Not at all. That’s woman’s work.” Cal’s tone was bantering. “You don’t buy a dog and bark yourself, do you, Sammy?”

  Sammy had enough sense to keep his mouth shut.

  “I’ll kill you, Cal O’Byrne, but I’ll see to it.” Erin went back to the range. She smiled at her brother. He was allowed to take liberties.

  He’d done it for as long as she could remember. He’d teased her even more since she’d been up at Queen’s University in Belfast and discovered that women didn’t have to spend their time barefoot in the kitchen or dropping babies like a brood mare. Like poor old Ma, dead of a haemorrhage after number six, Fiach, the youngest. He was off playing in a hurling match today.

  The other three were scattered, two sisters in America and a brother, Turloch, in Australia. She’d half-thought of going off to Australia herself. Maybe finish her degree there. It was warm in Brisbane, so Turloch said, and nobody was shooting at anybody.

  But then there was the Cause—and the farm.

  She’d grown up here, knew every hedgerow, every ditch, and the fairy tree in the back ten acres that no one would plough within fifty yards of for fear that the little people might sour the cow’s milk or have the lambs stillborn. Superstitious rubbish—and yet—Da had told her about the leprechauns. He’d believed in them, just as he’d believed in Irish freedom. And, like Da, she’d never budge in her belief that one day Ireland would be reunited.

  And until that day, she’d stay here on the farm that Cal as the eldest son had inherited after Da died of cancer two years ago. Sometimes she felt it was time that old custom went. Why shouldn’t a daughter inherit? Bridget, one of the two sisters in America, would have been first in line then.

  But better one child got the whole thing than under the old Irish Brehon law that divided the property equally between all the sons. In about three generations the descendants were lucky to have a couple of acres each. Only sufficient for one crop—potatoes. And in 1845, the crop had failed. No one needed to remind her of the Potato Famine, or any of the other horrors inflicted on the Irish people by their English overlords.

  Da had made sure that all of his children had learned their history, or at least his version of their history. It was very black and white. The Irish were good. The British were invaders and must be driven out. According to Da, the O’Byrnes had been fighting the British since the eleventh century. It was a family tradition. He’d explained to her their family name came from the Irish Ó’Broin and that meant “raven.”

  “Here.” Cal set a tray of cups and saucers on the counter beside the range.

  “I’ll just warm the pot,” she said, lifting a heavy iron kettle. That thing had stood on the range for as long as she could remember. How many times had she set it to boil on the old turf-fired range in this kitchen? The old kettle, the range, and the kitchen were the heart of the O’Byrnes’ farm. And for her the farm was home.

  After Da passed, working the farm had been too much for Cal and wee Fiach, even with the help of Sammy McCandless as a labourer, so she’d left university, not without regrets, and come home to help them.

  She emptied the teapot, spooned in tea leaves, and refilled it. “Just be a minute.”

  She’d become used to playing the part of the farmer’s wife, cooking for them—Cal would burn the water if he tried to boil an egg—keeping the house clean. But she’d made sure that her three years studying agriculture hadn’t been wasted.

  Cal was only too happy to listen to her suggestions about how to increase crop yield. She could plough a furrow as straight as anyone and chuck sheaves of barley into the threshing machine at harvest time when it was all hands on deck to get the ripe crop in before the rain.

  She’d be willing to go on doing her job here—until the Provos sent the British packing. And she and Cal and Sammy were working hard to that end.

  She watched Sammy pick his nose. He always did that when he was nervous. And he had reason to be. He wasn’t here just to talk about the weather. He had a job to do that would, with the help of Cal and her, bring the day closer when the Brits would be gone. Then she’d go back to university, not just to finish her degree but also to further her education and aim for a faculty position at the Hillsborough Agricultural Institute.

  She felt the warm side of the teapot and asked, “Do you fancy some bread and butter with that?”

  “Dead on,” said Sammy, wiping his finger along the side of his pants.

  “Right.”

  She cut thick slices from a loaf of wheaten bread. The butter was hard, so she put the butter dish on the range top. As she waited for the butter to soften, she looked at the familiar faces of the men seated at the big bog-oak dining table.

  Cal, twenty-seven, two years her senior, had craggy, ruddy cheeks, badges given to all Tyrone farmers by the sun and the rain and the winds that swept down from the Sperrin Mountains. He had green eyes—not as green as her own—and an unruly red mop that hung over the nape of his neck. She’d collected the family colouring herself, but she kept her shoulder-length hair piled into a ponytail, russet and shining as a polished horse chestnut.

  Sammy was no oil painting. He reminded her of a ferret. Little black eyes that were never still, set to the sides of a sharp nose. Protruding front teeth. He only shaved every two or three days, and his mousy stubble completed the illusion.

  And where Cal was broad, Sammy was so skinny and had such narrow shoulders that she could imagine him slipping down a rabbit hole to chase terrified rabbits out under the guns of the hunters. Where Cal was easygo
ing, Sammy McCandless had a vicious streak. And with the work the three of them did as an Active Service Unit of the Tyrone Provisional IRA, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  The cell had had four members. Eamon was in the Kesh, but she’d not much longer to wait for him. He’d be out very soon. And a bloody good thing. The look on his face when she’d given him that wee gun last Thursday. That look had been worth the risk she’d taken.

  She tested the butter’s softness with the flat side of a knife. The knife was stiff, the butter soft, soft as she’d be when Eamon brought his hardness to her. She held her arms to her sides, feeling her nipples being thrust against the stuff of her blouse, forgetting Cal and Sammy and thinking only of Eamon.

  His family farm bordered theirs. She’d thought when he’d started courting her four years ago that he’d only been after her so that he and Cal could set up a family partnership, with her as the gift to seal the bargain. It was the way the old kings of Ireland cemented alliances, but it had been her he wanted. And she’d wanted him. Wanted him from the first day he’d kissed her. Wanted him for the nearly three years he’d been inside. The waiting hadn’t been easy. She’d nearly given up two years ago.

  A harder piece of butter stuck to the bread, and the pressure from the knife tore the slice apart. Erin would eat that herself. She pushed it aside.

  Just like she’d tried to push Eamon aside. She’d nerved herself two years ago to tell him that she loved him but that no woman should be expected to wait for twenty-five years. It was all very well for the women’s libbers at the university to argue that men and women should be equal. Erin had no doubts on that score, but slogans like, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” had been coined by someone who was out of touch with reality—or a nun or a lesbian. Erin needed a man, and not just for what he could do in bed, although what Eamon did made her gasp and shudder, and claw at him like a wild cat. She squeezed her thighs together at the thought of it.

  But to expect her to remain celibate for twenty-five years?