‘Perhaps, but if I had ever met her, then I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions,’ I replied fiercely.
‘Dear Mary, you could never hurt a fly, but I appreciate the sentiment,’ Ambrose chuckled. ‘Although perhaps one day you might think of publishing Nuala’s diary, especially as you now know the end of her story. There aren’t enough factual accounts of that moment in time, and the anguish it caused so many families afterwards, and certainly very few written from a female perspective. The role Cumann na mBan played in freeing Ireland from the British barely gets a footnote in history.’
‘I agree, and maybe I will. In fact, confronting my past has also made me remember my love for academia. I was thinking downstairs that I never finished that Masters I started, because I had to leave...’
‘I still have your half-finished dissertation in there.’ Ambrose indicated his desk. ‘It – and you – were becoming something quite brilliant. Now then, shall I call you a taxi to take you to the station?’
‘I’ll walk down to Grafton Street and find one. I shall be back tomorrow, Ambrose darling. Wish me luck, won’t you?’
‘Of course. I can only pray that you will finally be able to put the past to rest.’
‘I hope so too. Bye, Ambrose,’ I said, then picked up my overnight bag and left the house.
The train to Belfast – which was rather aptly named the Enterprise – caught me by surprise, as it was so modern and comfortable. I watched as countryside flew by, wondering if I’d see a sign when we crossed the border into Northern Ireland. In the old days, there’d been border controls on all forms of transport. Yet today there was nothing, and just over an hour into the two-hour journey, we were stopping across the border at Newry, a place I knew had seen such violence during the Troubles. In August 1971, six civilians, including a Catholic priest, had been shot dead by the British army in Ballymurphy. News of the massacre had only added another spark to light Bobby’s already flammable touchpaper. I had realised that that incident, plus the fact he’d seen me in a bar with Peter, had almost certainly been what had sent him over the edge, and it had happened very close to here.
Today, it looked like any other station that serviced a small town, but back then, it had been the scene of an old conflict brought back to life by extremists like Bobby. So many times he’d set off at me in the pub, raging about the plight of the Northern Irish Catholics and how the IRA would bomb ‘the bastard Proddies’ into extinction. I’d said to him over and over that the way forward was negotiation, not war, that surely a way could be found to make the situation better through diplomacy.
He’d accused me of sounding like Michael Collins himself.
‘That traitor spun us all a tale, told us that signing the truce would be a stepping stone to an Irish republic. But the North is still in British hands, Merry!’ he’d railed at me. ‘You watch and see how we’ll fight fire with fire.’
I had watched, as the Provisional IRA had done as Bobby promised they would, bombing targets in the North and then heading to the British mainland. ‘The Troubles’ had lasted for almost thirty years, and all through them, I had imagined Bobby being part of the death and destruction that the new war had wrought.
No wonder I couldn’t watch the news bulletins on television... they had fuelled my own fire of fear. Yet all those years, Bobby had been sitting in an institution, believing he was back in 1920...
Well, here we were in 2008, and yes, Northern Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom, but the fact that I had just sailed at high speed across the border had to be a sign of progress, surely.
It felt ridiculous even to myself when I looked out of the window and was surprised to see that the surrounding landscape looked very similar to that south of the border –As if a manmade line could change anything, I thought – but coming here to the area that had seen so much bitter conflict was yet another demon in my head that I was trying to tame by facing it.
The train arrived exactly on time at Lanyon Place station in Belfast. Walking through to the exit to look for the taxi rank, I heard the lilt of an accent that was familiar, yet unique to this Northern Irish part of the United Kingdom. Climbing into a taxi, I directed the driver to the Merchant Hotel which, so my guidebook told me, had once been the headquarters of the Ulster Bank.
I looked out of the window fascinated, as we drove into the city that no longer showed any signs of its terrible wounds, on the outside at least.
‘Here you are, madam,’ the driver said, pulling up in front of the Merchant Hotel. ‘It’s a fine wee establishment.’
‘How much do I owe you?’
‘That’d be ten pounds, please.’
Pounds...
I hunted through my purse for what was left over of my British money from my London stay.
‘There you go, thank you.’
I walked up the steps and into a very modern lobby. I checked in and the porter took me and my holdall up to my room, which was beautifully decorated in a cosy, rather chintzy way.
‘I’ll certainly have had my fill of hotels by the time I get home,’ I sighed as I lay down on the bed.
I checked the time and saw it was past seven o’clock. Calling down for room service, I ordered the soup of the day and a bread roll. I then had my usual moment of feeling bad for spending so much money on smart hotels, but then, what were savings for? Jock and I had put a bit aside every month for the past thirty years and, given we had never taken a holiday outside New Zealand, I didn’t think he’d mind.
‘But he might mind about tomorrow,’ I muttered.
I hung up my dress to take out any creases, then I switched on the television as I ate my soup. BBC One was showingEastEnders, a British soap that Mary-Kate had found on a channel of our satellite package back home.
It all felt very strange here, to still be on the island of Ireland, and yet so definitely in a tiny parcel of land that was distinctly British.
I took a long, leisurely bath in the free-standing tub and wondered how I’d feel when I was back in my farmhouse in the Gibbston Valley, which was certainly homely, but had none of the fine furnishings or modern appliances I’d become used to.
