Whitewells took a downturn as (inconceivably) the Europa enjoyed a vogue with journalists; in fact, his concern had run in the red for some time, so Farrell’s more expensive eccentricities were forced to go. Belt tightening refreshed him, actually, like losing weight. It seems many of his idiosyncrasies were decorative. When he swept his own floor the sky didn’t fall down, and it didn’t take very much time. What had that cleaning girl been doing eight hours a week? With the demise of Whitewells he could no longer afford the taxis zigzagging the Province, the blind rampages on suits. So Farrell economized on his character.
While he missed the extravagance of earlier incarnations, Farrell was beginning to see his life as less a point traveling a line than as an object, present at once: the rabble-rouser of Talisker inhabited the same man reading in his chair. Rising for another cup of hot water, he was at once on the burning barricades, swaying off the overturned bus. As you have ever been, so you remain, and Farrell found the whole crowd in his cup: not just the severe pinstripe magician edging a dowel from the jaws of a clothespin, but also the lonely Queen’s freshman with bad skin, or the fourteen-year-old with a fanatic regimen of visiting the elderly, scratching frantic pages about the nature of goodness till 5 a.m., until one day his mother could no more rouse her son than the dead and left him to sleep through to evening, to wake and take sugar in his tea, lumps and lumps with biscuits, gluttonously, like a real child. These languid nights, after a bit of bad TV, Farrell would reach over and sweep the shock of bright blond hair from the face of a beautiful but fragile five-year-old, almost girlish and so often in bed, staring out the window as the other boys played Kick the Tin and his mother brought stirabout, the smell sickening and thick as it mixed with the air already steamy with pans of friar’s balsam for his lungs. At last Farrell forgave them all, maybe conceding for the first time they were the same person.
In the same way, too, he still had Estrin, though this was the hardest bit to put over—for while you might always have what you ever had, do you ever have what you never had, quite?
And he repudiated drink. In his abstinence, the habit shrank to an unimpressive dependency, a sad compulsive guzzling, such an obvious substitute for something else, if there was anything else. To think you could salve the grief of existence by putting something in your mouth. Pub crawlers appeared no wiser than their mothers, convinced the answer to bereavement was tea. Bars became anthropological curiosities, crowds gathering every night behind long boards and running pints of drugged liquid through their bodies straight from Margaret Mead.
However, to be shut from pub life was not sweet, for while teetotaling revealed the myth of drink, what wasn’t myth at the end of the day? If you took every fancy away, you were left with a huddle of animals rutting and snuffling in the dark, or less: chemicals seething and subsiding on a speck. Farrell had always cherished his pictures of raw ugly nothingness as recherché, but now these visions felt ordinary, nihilism a resort and a cheat, a lack of imagination. He did not care for the planet undressed. He was willing to spin a yarn about the place to keep it cozy. Farrell had studied enough metaphysics at Queen’s to know that after all that maybe-we’re-not-really-here, maybe-green-is-blue, trees falling silent in faraway forests, you were left with just as much illusion as ever. You had to give yourself permission to tell yourself a story, because you were going to tell one anyway. Certainly the most deluded of Farrell’s sort were the ones who thought they lived on specks, bare truth, who stared the gaping maw in the gob—the ones convinced they’d no religion. Farrell’s Catholicism might have lapsed, but there was always some fairy tale to take its place—if not Jesus, Connolly, Bobby Sands, Bobby Fischer, or even Farrell O’Phelan, a myth he had told and retold himself until it rang comfortingly familiar as the Three Bears: Farrell O’Phelan doesn’t check.
So Farrell rounded the last chapter of his tale with an old man who cried a lot. Oh, still dry, astute, and certainly better read than the days he liquored up on British Air. But the most sentimental of films would set him off, Houdini; or little girls on swing sets, the sun through the mists on Lough Neagh … He wouldn’t trust himself in public anymore, for he couldn’t fight the tears when they came. And he would abandon grandiose altruism that was really just a cover for egomania in favor of ordinary niceness. He would keep minding his nieces, and they would come to adore him. (Well, they already did.) He would not tackle apartheid in South Africa, but record tapes of Thomas Hardy for the blind. He would forget the Chilean elections, but remember birthdays. He would volunteer for a soup kitchen and humbly learn to dice carrots, take his turn at the reception center at the Maze, selling Cadbury’s at cost to distraught prisoners’ wives, help dyslexics learn to read …
In all, it was like an OD on Quiet Life that lasted exactly six months. At the start of the seventh, celebrated by a car bomb just two doors down from his house that was surely meant for him, Farrell tinkled through the broken glass to his closet and pulled down the creaky case, with its broom handle sections, fishing hooks, and gnarled paper clips. The leather was dusty and the lines stiff, but the tools were in order. The finishing touch, he slipped Estrin’s Phillips into an empty sleeve, pleased the kit lacked one. He pulled out his expansive canvas bag that fit snugly under a seat. He rested the case in its bottom, and on top piled two shirts, Y-fronts, a sturdy stack of quid. Whitewells had sold way under value, but then Farrell had always considered irresponsible or even downright feebleminded financial affairs a point of personal pride. Ceremonially, at 10 a.m. he cracked a fresh fifth of Talisker and poured a hardy double, tucking the remains of the bottle in his bag. After all, if drink was a sham, they deserved each other—like any good relationship, they had found each other out. Pausing at the door, he enjoyed leaving the house with all its windows smashed, the cool air coming and going through each well-appointed room with all the presumption of a Communist overthrow. Swinging his carry-on down the walk, he ducked into his waiting taxi, and on to Burma.
glossary of troublesome terms
(AUTHOR’S NOTE:)
Ordinary Decent Criminals is a work of fiction set within a real political context. While presumably a novelist is answerable to a different sort of truth, too often the mixing of the invented and the actual can result in ordinary bad information and does readers a disservice. I would clarify, then, that the following are my own embellishments: the Green Door; Union Jackie’s; the Rest In Pieces, not to be confused with “legitimate” paramilitaries; and three organizations: the III, the UUU, and the YYY. Best not visit Belfast hoping to check into Farrell’s hotel; Whitewells rests on the corner where the Metropole once stood, an opulent Edwardian hotel razed some time ago. Furthermore, the Border Poll Farrell and Angus organize at the end of 1988 has not been held since 1973; the conference held to marshal its support, the election itself, and its subsequent fallout are all fictional.
That said, the remaining events referred to in Ordinary Decent Criminals would have taken place more or less as described, from late 1987 through 1988. Since the intricacies of Northern Ireland are daunting for anyone who simply wants to put his feet up and have a good read, I have included this small glossary to illuminate unfamiliar references. No glossary can substitute for an astute exegesis of Irish politics, but that would require another book, or books, and plenty of authors out there—perhaps too many—have taken that project on board. A Monarch Notes, then, of the North:
ANGLO-IRISH AGREEMENT: An international treaty of potentially little importance whose endurance has been ensured and whose significance has been multiplied by its opponents’ determination to get rid of it.
Signed by London and Dublin in 1985, the agreement granted the Republic of Ireland a hazy consultative role in Northern Irish affairs, symbolized by the establishment of a Dublin secretariat in Maryfield, of suburban Belfast—a small toe in the door indeed, but seen by many Unionists as a first step toward a united Ireland. Protestant resistance to the agreement has been both exhaustive and exhausted, though big
banners like LISBURN SAYS NO still tatter on public buildings. Meanwhile, the poor Southerners at Maryfield are hustled in under heavy guard for a week at a time, with very little to do. They issue the odd atrocity denouncement like everyone else. They can’t leave the building for their own security. There is nothing to drink. They play a lot of cards.
BOLLOCKS: A mess; a confusion; a disaster. Widely applicable to all aspects of politics in the North, but most aptly to its source, the original partition of Ireland.
In 1920, Britain granted its Irish colony independence—almost. The northern six counties, predominantly Protestant, were exempted from the Catholic Free State, remaining in the United Kingdom as they preferred. The border between the North and the South was understood to be temporary. Britain planned to sort out this bollocks later, much the way people who dress in a hurry will safety-pin a torn shirt and promise themselves to sew the seam properly when they’ve time. They never have time. Ireland is still put together with a safety pin.
BORDER POLL: A referendum mandated every ten years to determine whether the people of Northern Ireland wish to remain in the United Kingdom, and in what form; when first held in 1973, boycotted by most Catholics. As the poll was effectively meaningless, in 1983 no one bothered.
CATHOLIC: A.k.a., Taig, Fenian Bastard. Associated with the color green. By Protestant accord, two-faced and dangerous. Attends “Mass” instead of “church services,” and while these two ceremonies involve the exact same rituals on Sunday, “church” is civilized, “Mass” is superstitious. Can be found in profusion in the Republic of Ireland and in the Northern counties of Fermanagh, Armagh, and southern Tyrone; in West Belfast, a byword for the Catholic ghetto despite the fact that the Shankill, a byword for the Protestant ghetto, is smack in the western part of the city. The Falls Road, a main artery leading from the center of town to the west, is not a street but a quagmire of treachery—many is the Protestant never to have driven there. While academics have fought to establish some obscure link between the Northern sense of “Catholic” and the Church of Rome, when you come upon the two sects in a punch-up they are rarely arguing over the Reformation.
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT: Seemingly innocuous demonstrations for justice with unprecedented consequences.
Catholics have long been stifled in Ireland—disenfranchised, dispossessed, leasing land at high rents that once belonged to them. At one time no Catholic was legally allowed to own a horse worth more than five pounds, and if you met a Catholic on the road with any horse, you could give him five pounds and take the animal away. In those days, even to sing about Ireland was punishable by flogging. Perhaps down South they are still oppressed, after independence, by their own Church and by something about the essential nature of this island: it is heavy, the air is close. Up North, however, the oppression has been by no means atmospheric. Election boundaries have been gerrymandered, housing and employment inequably distributed to keep Protestants, if marginally, better off.
While more flagrant discrimination had eased up by the late sixties, improving matters somewhat often inspires people to improve them a lot. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed in 1967, the more radical People’s Democracy (PD) in 1968. Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States, the “niggers” of Northern Ireland took to the streets. In newsreels of these marches, it is hard to distinguish the Protestant hecklers from the police, since they are both hitting Catholics over the head. Embarrassed by footage broadcast all over the world, Britain finally took notice and in 1969 sent the army to the North to protect the minority. Along with so many “temporary” arrangements like partition itself, the army is still there.
The civil rights movement initiated the process by which Northern Ireland went to hell. Parts of Derry and Belfast took on the lawless free-for-all aspect of the American Wild West, beginning a tit for tat whereby, whoever started it, rare is the family on either side today who does not harbor a vendetta, and a legitimate one. The IRA, in 1968 a few ancients with rusted Smith & Wessons from an abortive anti-border campaign in the fifties, revived to defend the minority against Orange hoodlums; its ranks swelled with normal, indignant people. Protestants responded with paramilitaries of their own. The civil rights campaign rapidly evolved into a Nationalist one, since apparently Catholics would be treated decently only if they joined their coreligionists in the South. The army became a force of imperialism, and with the arrival of the Brits, the IRA no longer needed the Prods. Two enemies only confuse matters.
CRACK: A good time had by all, as in McBride is good crack, or Last night was good crack. Last night was always good crack. A word you get very tired of. Confusing for Americans.
DIRECT RULE: When in 1972 Secretary of State Brian Faulkner refused to hand over the powers of security to Britain, Westminster took over not only security but everything else. Stormont Castle, the seat of the Protestant-controlled parliament and itself a magnificent if somewhat ludicrous Greek classical building, is now little used, except for the offices of British ministers and the odd swish dinner. Under Direct Rule, Northern Ireland has no government. While the Province limps by with city councils—festive carnivals of sectarian mudslinging—they control little more than admission rates for local leisure centers.
HUNGER STRIKES: In 1981, Republican prisoners in the H-blocks of the Maze prison (see LONG KESH) went on hunger strike for the Five Demands, a list of privileges which more or less reinstated the POW status they had had before 1976, after which political terrorists were thrown in with Ordinary Decent Criminals, or ODCs. Margaret Thatcher remained either firm or inflexible, unintimidated or coldhearted, depending on your point of view. Ten men died. The hunger strikes polarized the North into two alien universes: while women keened and banged bin lids and thousands took to the streets in West Belfast, the Protestants made Slimmer of the Year jokes. And though the strikes officially failed, all five demands have now been instituted across the board in UK prisons, and ten emaciated corpses did successfully stir both local and international sympathy for the Republican cause.
INTERNMENT: The curious democratic practice of imprisonment without charge. Actively employed 1971–76 but to this date still on the statute books of Britain’s emergency powers, internment was exercised largely on Catholics. Consequently, internment recruited more young men to the IRA than any amount of Republican propaganda could ever have done. The IRA has found British reaction to Northern violence infinitely useful. They need never strain resources to achieve an obligingly amplified effect.
IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY (IRA): Or, as if they were simply good-natured if mischievous fellows, the lads. Not to be confused with modern liberation movements—the ANC, the PLO—the IRA is an ancient, venerated institution. That the Republic owes its independence to the ructions of the same violent fringe helps explain why its relationship to the IRA’s current incarnation remains ambivalent.
Like all Nationalist cadres, the IRA aims to dissolve partition (see UNITED IRELAND). However, the IRA is a misnomer. At the moment, the Provisional IRA (the PIRA, or the Provos) have the upper hand; their formal policy of targeting only members of the security forces has not prevented repeated civilian casualties, often Catholic. The Official IRA (The Officials, or Stickies) has repudiated violence and become the Workers Party, a minor but dogged Marxist crew who probably despise the Provos with more vitriol than any other group in the Province. Otherwise, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP, mispronounced the Irps, and now virtually extinct) and the Irish People’s Liberation Army (IPLO) function as lesser competing companies.
LONG KESH: The old name of the prison outside of Belfast, home of the 1981 hunger strikes. While the prison was renamed the Maze some time ago, all diehard Republicans will persist in visiting their relatives in the Kesh; to visit the Maze is to risk conveying Protestant sympathies. There is no neutral way to refer to this place; to use any name is also to choose your side.
Only one of sever
al opportunities to trip people’s switches in ordinary conversation, for language in the North is landmined. In any pub you are faced with referring to security forces or the Brits; terrorism or the Armed Struggle, and you are best off choosing these words carefully in different parts of town. Even Northern Ireland conveys too much legitimacy to a Republican, who would prefer the ungainly the Six Counties, the Twenty-six Counties for the Republic, or, though outdated since 1937, the Free State. Ulster is a Protestant favorite. The North and the South remain the safest, most nonpartisan terms; “The North of Ireland,” halfway between neutral and Nationalist, is not very brave. Londonderry is pointedly Unionist, Derry Nationalist, though the fact is just about everyone calls the town Derry informally because it’s shorter.
LOYALIST: (See also: U-WORDS.)
The loyalty implied is to the United Kingdom. Loyalist is a slightly more passionate word for Unionist, suggesting more emotion and less thought. While he is capable of getting sentimental over “God Save the Queen,” the Loyalist’s fervor is rooted less in dedication to the Crown than in revulsion at a united Ireland. Like his Nationalist counterpart, the Loyalist feels victimized—for though Protestants in the North outnumber Catholics two to one, many perceive the IRA’s intentions as genocidal. Unlike the IRA, which has an international reputation, Loyalist paramilitaries are something of a joke butt. As Britain has usurped the role of the Catholic nemesis, Loyalists feel irrelevant. They would love to defend their culture, if they could only figure out what it is. But British as a Loyalist will claim to be, when he visits England he will be treated, ironically, as an Irishman; as a foreigner. Consequently, the Loyalist feels lost—for apparently Britain has no more interest in the fate of Ulster Protestants than she has in its Catholics. Abandoned by everyone and with no comparable NORAID advocates in the States, Loyalists are suspicious of strangers and reluctant to give interviews. Orange propaganda is poorly produced, sometimes even ungrammatical. Where in Catholic ghettos the street murals are brilliantly drafted, Loyalist murals are childlike; especially the white horses of King William tend to look awkward. Their ballads are painfully colored by Irish traditional music. Their clubs are dark and small. Where Republicans attend IRA funerals in plain clothes, behind a lone piper, dignified black flags whipping on lampposts, Loyalist pageants are anachronistic, swinging with banners, tassels, and fringe, full marching bands; women will wrap themselves in Union Jacks, men parade with maces, in bowler hats and orange sashes. A Loyalist, in short, is a heartbreaker.