One by One in the Darkness by Deirdre Madden

Author:Deirdre Madden [Deirdre Madden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571254569
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2013-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Now all the newspapers from London and Dublin, as well as those from Belfast, were full of articles about what was happening in Northern Ireland. On television, there were reports of marches which ended in violence; of bomb attacks on water and power installations; and endless political wrangling. The children knew all this was important because of the attention given to it not just by their parents, but by almost all the adults they knew; who spent hours talking about what was happening, what might happen, and what ought to happen. The sisters quickly learnt not to interrupt any of these discussions, nor to make a noise while the news was on the radio or television; but they were still too young to understand fully what was happening. There was tremendous delight and excitement at home when Bernadette Devlin was elected to Westminster; but Helen’s, Kate’s and Sally’s lives were still more completely focused on such matters as a spelling test at school, or a trip to the dentist’s, or the prospect of an outing to the cinema in Magherafelt or Ballymena. They discovered in April that year that their cat Tigger was going to have kittens, and they happily watched her swell over the weeks until she was like a furry torpedo waddling around the back yard. They petted her and prepared a new bed for her; pleaded with their mother for the cat to be given extra food and milk; speculated on how many kittens she might have, and what names they would give to them.

But then Lord O’Neill, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, resigned on the very day Tigger produced her brood, ‘and bloody well spoiled everything’, as Kate said that night. She’d rushed into the house to announce the news about the cat, only to be hushed by her parents, who were staring at each other with incredulity and anger as they listened to a well-bred voice speaking on the radio.

‘He was the best of a bad lot,’ their father said at the end of the broadcast, ‘and if that’s what he thinks of us, you can just imagine how the rest of them see us. What is it, sweetheart?’

‘Tigger had her babies,’ Kate said, ‘six of them,’ and she didn’t know why her mother laughed ironically at this, nor why she said, ‘That’s three more than I had!’

Things degenerated quickly over the following months, and came to a crisis that summer. For a time, the reports they saw on television were still at odds with the world around them. They watched images of policemen in Derry, in full riot gear, battle against people throwing stones and petrol bombs. Deny was little more than an hour away by car, but it wasn’t a city they ever visited, unlike their cousins: Aunt Lucy had a sister there, and Johnny, Declan and Una used to be taken to see her. They watched the black-and-white pictures while their parents fretted, and then they stepped out of the

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