The Bogside Boys Read online

  She went back inside and flopped down on the couch beside her father, who had changed the channel. She smiled at him and put her hand on his. It took him a few seconds to look at her, but when he did, a smile broke out on his face.

  “I just want you to be safe,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I’m just trying to do the best for my community, for the people most important to me. If we don’t stick up for ourselves, no one else will. The British government would just as easily cast us aside if we don’t cling onto them. They won’t want their soldiers dying for this part of the country. Not now that the economic importance of this province is fading. They’d get out of Ulster altogether if they could and leave us in a civil war.”

  “I know that too.” She hugged him and then got up to go into the kitchen. The phone was hanging on the wall. Melissa hesitated. This wasn’t something they usually did. Phone calls were meant to be for emergencies only. Surely this constituted that. Seeing him on TV and not being there for him was more than she could bear. She needed to hear his voice, to offer some measly part of herself to him. The flowers she’d sent were no doubt lost in the avalanche he’d receive. Her mother was in the lounge with her father. Her sister was in her room. The receiver felt heavy in her hand as she dialed the number. The phone rang twice before an unfamiliar voice came on.

  “Hello,” she started, “is Mick there?”

  “He’s not available right now.” It was a man’s voice. An uncle?

  “Can you tell him that it’s Melissa? I do think he’d want to speak to me, I think I met you at the march on Sunday.”

  “I wasn’t on the march. Nice try.” It wasn’t one of his uncles. “Can’t you hacks just leave us in peace for one day?”

  The phone went dead.

  Chapter 6

  Three days passed, and Mick had run out of reasons not to open the barbershop again. Celine came into the shop with him that morning and placed a large framed picture of Peter on the wall. She didn’t cry, just stared at it for a few seconds and left. Mick opened up. A steady line of men came in that day, not all in need of a haircut. It was easy to nod and chime in with the right answers at the right time because they all said the same things. The pain inside him ground their good intentions to dust. Lunchtime came as a relief, an escape. The phone rang. It had rung several times that morning, each time a concerned voice on the other end offered commiseration or support. No one said what he was thinking. Was it because they didn’t dare say it out loud or that they just didn’t know? More and more boys from the neighborhood had joined, John and Phillip among them. But Pat wouldn’t discuss the possibility. He said that they should wait, that it wasn’t their role to hand out justice, that they should wait for the results of the inquiry and let the government handle it. Mick agreed with his brother. They would wait.

  The phone was still ringing. Mick took his head out of his hands and looked at it. He walked over and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?” It was her.

  “Melissa,” he breathed out hard. “Oh my God, it’s so good to hear from you.” Her voice was enough to drag some light into the black reaches inside him. “Where have you been? I feel like it’s been months since I saw you.”

  “I tried calling your house, but I couldn’t get through.”

  He savored each syllable she uttered, waiting a few seconds to reply. “My house is full of people. Most of the time when the phone rings we ignore it. Everyone calling is a journalist or worse.”

  Melissa wanted to ask what he meant by ‘or worse’ but decided not to. “I’ve been thinking about you all the time. I wish I could be there for you.”

  “I wish you could be here.”

  “How have you been?”

  “As bad as I ever could have imagined.” His voice was diluted, hollow, a carbon copy of a carbon copy.

  Thoughts raced through her mind. What to say? How could she make this better, or at least bearable? “How’s your family? How is Patrick? How is your mother?”

  “My mother is tough, but this is so much. I’m trying to be strong for her, but it’s difficult.” His father was looking down at him, the serious face in the black and white picture on the wall. It didn’t suit him. He should have been smiling. Pictures and memories were all he’d ever be now. “Pat is a rock. I don’t know what we would have done without him. He’s back at work since yesterday.”

  “Don’t think that he’s any stronger than you, Mick. We all deal with things in different ways.” Mick didn’t answer; just stared into his father’s eyes. Pat was a better man than he was. He always had been. “You’ve both got great qualities…” Melissa continued.

  “People think because you look the same, you are the same. They’ve thought that about Pat and me our whole lives. But really, I’m not half the man he is.” He was glassy-eyed as he spoke, not exactly conscious of seeing anything or being anywhere. “I want to handle this the same way he does, with the same strength.”

  “I love you, Michael James Doherty. I don’t love Patrick. You look almost exactly the same, but I know you’re not and I love you.”

  Mick let the words caress him, swirl around him like a sweet aroma.

  “I want to see you. I need to see you.”

  “OK, I’ll be able to a little bit later. I’ll get away then.”

  “Come and see me in the shop, after I close, about six.”

  “That’s great. I’ll see you then.” She went to hang up, but he caught her attention one last time.

  “Oh, and Melissa, I love you too.”

  He heard her laugh before the click of the receiver.

  He felt her with him for the rest of the day. Her words were like a lantern thrown down into the chasm of pain within him, its gentle flame flickering through the deep darkness.

  The rains poured down that afternoon. The shop was empty. Mick turned up the radio to full volume as he tried to focus his attention on the wrinkled pages of the newspaper in his hand. The bell above the door chimed. A man stood in the doorway, shaking the rain off. Mick helped him take off his coat and led him to the chair. The man was in his early forties, small, but solidly built with a round face leading up to an egg-shaped head. He wore a full brown mustache. His thinning hair didn’t need the trim he asked for, but Mick didn’t question him. Mick began in silence, not really in the mood for conversation. The sound of the radio and the soft rain on the glass outside was the only noise in the otherwise empty barbershop.

  “This is my first time in the barbershop. I’m from Creggan, myself.”

  “Welcome,” Mick smiled but stopped there.

  The man in the chair caught eyes with Mick in the mirror in front of them. “I see the picture of your father over there. I hear he was a great man, a respected man in the community. I wanted to offer my sincerest condolences.”

  “Thanks,” Mick coughed. “It’s strange not having him here. It’s a hard time.”

  “I can only imagine.” The man shifted in the seat. Mick withdrew his hands.

  “I wasn’t on the march last week. That’s not my struggle,” he said.

  Mick looked at the man staring back at him in the mirror. “It’s not my fight. It wasn’t my father’s fight either. We’re not the types of people to get mixed up with politics.”

  “Sometimes politics gets mixed up with you.”

  Mick didn’t answer. An uneasy silence settled in the barbershop. Mick wished he’d closed the shop today, wished that Melissa had come early, wished that his father was here, the person he needed to speak to most. The silence grew. It was huge. The man looked up at Mick again.

  “I heard about your father,” he said. “I spoke to a lot of people who were there. They told me how he died.”

  “I don’t need to speak about it, sir, I saw it myself.” His words were sharp as the scissors in his hand.

  The man ignored Mick’s tone, pressing on. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. There can’t be many worse things that could happen to a man.
” Mick didn’t answer. It was too hard. He stood back, wondering if he could finish, could get this man out of the shop now, but there was still some to do at the back. “A lot of people around here have suffered the same grief as you did, and not just on that day. Everyone knows someone who’s been affected in the last few years.”

  “It’s been a hard time.”

  “It has. It’s been a very hard time for the Catholic people of this city. Mass unemployment, lack of housing, a political system that doesn’t recognize them as the majority that they are.”

  “And then Bloody Sunday happened,” Mick added.

  “Yes, it did. And who’s there to stand up for the Catholic people of this city? Who’s to stand between them and the British Army next time they decide to use Catholic people for target practice? The RUC? The politicians in Stormont?”

  The anger flamed inside Mick. “Don’t make me laugh. They don’t care a jot for the Catholic people here.” The words sounded strange coming out of his mouth; as if he were listening to someone else speak through him, his same voice, and his mouth. The other man seemed encouraged.

  “There’s no police force for the people of this city, no government that speaks for them. Why else was Free Derry formed? You think people would have barricaded off Free Derry if there weren't the need?”

  “Of course not.” He felt fortified by the man’s words. It felt good to agree with him.

  “There’s only one organization that is in place to protect the Catholic people of this city and this whole province.”

  The clamor for revenge, or some measure of justice that had driven John and Paul to join up began to grip him, choking him from the inside. “The IRA?” he said. It had only been a matter of saying it out loud.

  “Of course, the Provisional IRA.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s David McClean. Apart from that…. I’m just a concerned citizen getting a haircut. If you lock that door, we can talk. If you want to help your community, to strive to improve the lives of the Catholic people of this city and this province, then we can talk. If you want to make sure that the perpetrators of the killings on January 30th don’t go unpunished, lock that door and we can talk.”

  Three seconds passed with no words. The invitation hung heavy in the air. Mick put the scissors down on the counter. His father’s face on the wall remained unchanged. Mick went to the door, his steps slow and deliberate. The raindrops were still running down the window, leaving silver trails. He brought down the sign saying the shop was closed and locked the door. “All right, I’ll see what ye have to say.”

  The man didn’t move, was still sitting in the barber’s chair. “I’m a member of the Derry Brigade. In the six days since the murders on Bloody Sunday, we’ve seen our membership almost triple. I’m sure you have friends who’ve joined.”

  “Aye, I do.”

  “The young people of this city have realized, have seen with their own eyes, the utter contempt the unionist government in Stormont and their masters in London hold them in. They’ve realized that they need to take the situation in this province into their own hands.”

  “Why are you here, talking to me about this, if you’ve so many new recruits?”

  “One of our new recruits asked that I speak with you. He told me that you have a twin brother and that you’re both very smart, capable young men, and he told me about what happened to your father.”

  “My father didn’t approve of violence, or the Provos.”

  McClean smiled, seemingly amused at the nickname Mick used, but the smile melted, and his face was stern determination once more. “When we were talking earlier, I mentioned the fact that sometimes, even though we’ve no interest in politics, it drags us in. Well, these are the times we live in, Mick. Can I call you Mick?”

  “Aye, of course, a lot of people do.”

  “You can’t avoid politics living where we do. The simple fact of it is that we’re at war. You didn’t believe that before, but you believe it now, don’t you, Mick?”

  Melissa came into his mind, her smile, and her touch. He felt the picture of his father behind him, could feel the energy from it without even looking. His father had fought for what he believed in, even though fighting wasn’t his way. “Aye, I suppose I do believe it now.”

  “What the Paras did last Sunday was an act of war, no doubt about it. We can’t allow that to happen again. We can’t as Irish Catholic men, stand by while soldiers of the British Empire murder our people in front of us.”

  “What about the inquiry into the killings?”

  McClean reared back in his seat, almost as if the words had burnt him. “Are you serious, an investigation by an English Lord into killings by the Parachute Regiment of Catholics in Northern Ireland? Are you seriously expecting anything other than a whitewash? The Ministry of Defense has already come out backing their troops. Widgery can’t do anything but corroborate their stories. Anything else would be an admission of guilt. Anything else would be an admission that their whole sectarian system in Northern Ireland is wrong. How would that look for the British Empire on the world stage?”

  Mick thought about what Pat had said. ‘I think the British deserve a chance to dish out justice.’ But those words seemed more absurd with every passing day and Mick wondered if Pat had only uttered them for the sake of their mother.

  “You’re expecting justice from a government who sends in those animals, who subjugates the Catholic people of this city? You’re just plain wrong, Mick. The only justice we’ll get from the British government is justice we take.” He had balled his fingers into a fist. “The only reason our people in the south got their Independence was that they fought for it. But they sold us out and left us in the hands of the Protestant ruling class. The British Empire doesn’t give anything away. If you want something from the British, you have to take it, by force.”

  “My father deserves justice.”

  “It’s not just about your poor father, God rest his soul. Your dad was an honest man, a good person, trying to raise his children and make a half-decent living. Not one of those people murdered on Bloody Sunday was a terrorist, but the government has lied with every statement they’ve made about the march and that’s not going to change. It’s not only about taking some concept of justice; it’s about providing peace and security for our people so that good, honest men like your father don’t get murdered in the streets. It’s about providing freedom for our people and the only way the Catholic people of this province will ever be truly free will be if the British are thrown out.”

  Mick sat down, ingesting McClean’s words, his legs suddenly heavy. What would Pat say to this man? “So, why did you come to see me today?”

  “Just what I said before; I heard about you and your twin brother, your identical twin brother. I wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences, and then tell you that there are options. There are things that you can do to help the cause of your people both here, in this city, and throughout the province as a whole.”

  “You want me to join the IRA, to fight for the rights of the Catholic people?”

  “There are plenty of ways to help the cause. That would be one of them.” McClean’s stare was so intense Mick thought it might burn a hole through him.

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t leave my mother, or my brother, I’d have to see what he’d say.” Mick shuffled the newspapers on the bench, tidying them into an orderly pile.

  “Everyone’s got their own path in life, Mick,” McClean said, his tone softening. “Your brother’s path might be different than yours, but if you did want to join us together, we could find a lot of uses for you both, together and separately. As for leaving your mother - you wouldn’t have to. You could stay right here in the city.”

  Melissa. How could he be with her and be with them? Not now, not ever. He looked at his watch. She would be here in the matter of a few minutes. A knock on the door sounded through the shop.

  “There’s someone else here to see m
e,” Mick said, his voice betraying his nerves.

  McClean stood out of the chair. Mick brushed him down, fully aware that Melissa was stuck in the rain outside the door. She knocked again.

  “Who is that?” McClean asked. “Your girlfriend? She seems pretty eager to see you.”

  “Just a friend, no one important really,” he smiled. “I’d better let her in though.” He paced to the door, unlocked it.

  “What are you doing locking the door when you knew I was coming?” Melissa began. Mick tried to quiet her with his eyes, but she didn’t take the hint. “I walk all the way up here from…”

  “Melissa, I was having a conversation with my friend here.” Mick interrupted, and some realization came over her.

  McClean stretched a hand to Melissa. “David McClean, pleasure to meet you.”

  “The pleasure’s mine,” she smiled. “Melissa O’Hara.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Melissa. Look after your man here.” He slipped into his coat as Mick handed him the umbrella. No words were spoken. No glances exchanged. “Goodbye folks,” he said as he strode out into the rain.

  Melissa waited until she saw McClean running across the street before turning to Mick. “Who the hell was that?”

  “No one, just one of the organizers of the march last week, come to get a statement from me. No one to worry about.” The weight of the lie slowed the words as they came out of his mouth, but she seemed to believe him, merely nodding her head b

  efore she leaned in to kiss him

  Chapter 7

  Dawn came as a tender mercy to Celine Doherty. Sleep was beyond her. The loss of Peter was still fresh inside her, an undressed wound. The dark ocean of the rest of her life without him spread out in front of her. The letter her mother had sent her, urging her to come home, was on the bedside table. The boys were old enough now, she’d said, they could find their own ways if they didn’t want to come too. With Peter gone, what was left to keep her in a city where ‘innocent people were mown down by Imperialist British soldiers.’ Celine picked up the letter again, read the impeccably written words on the most expensive paper her mother had. Celine’s father still worked six days a week in the grocer’s shop he’d run since 1925, the year she was born. Her mother had suggested that she could help him with the running of the store. Age had withered him, only his grim determination keeping the store afloat now.