The Wake - Table of contents

The Wake - afters (17)

“So it’s orange versus green is it? You’re hoping to dig the IRA up out of their graves? How does this fit with all the socialist stuff you’re on about? All these intersections?” Good that, I thought.

I saw the anger building across from me and heard Aisling start to say something and then stopping.

“There are two things you have to understand,” hissed the dyke, nostrils widening. “Number one, I am talking about a socialist revolution here. And number two, to get the thing started you have to bring matters to the boil and then you lance the boil you see, bring out the badness.”

“She’s right Jeremiah,” Aisling said reasonably. “If this doesn’t come to a head soon it’ll go on generation after generation. It has to be dealt with. The other things can come later. All-Ireland socialist republic, integrated comprehensive education, nationalisation of the banks, cancellation of the Third World’s debts.”

Jesus. I stared at her. “Do you really think, Aisling ...”

She waited. Patient, raising her hand to quieten Frances who looked ready to let fly again. “What? Do I really think what?”

I lowered my eyes. “I don’t know,” I said. “It all seems so, I don’t know, inconsistent.”

“In case you didn’t realise,” said Frances, “no worthwhile political change has ever been brought about without violence. Do you think the people of Poland are going to get their rights by sitting on their backsides?”

“For Poles read Fenians?” I asked. Her face flashed with hate. I smiled bitterly at her sitting there themed in black like one of these freaks you’d see in the front of the National Enquirer or something. Was Aisling out of her mind or what going to bed with that?

“The word you should be using is imaginative, not inconsistent,” said that. “But if you prefer to live in some kind of armchair dreamland, well ... all I can say is, your political ignorance is staggering.” And she turned her head away from me and shook it at the wall.

Aisling spoke, her voice a little shaky. “The march on the first is based on the Selma marches in Alabama. Sixty-five wasn’t it Frances?”

“March sixty-five. Selma to Montgomery. There were some broken heads there all right. Bloody Sunday the first one was on. The police laid into six hundred of them with their billy clubs. Sunday the seventh of March it was.”

“There’s one thing I’m not looking forward to,” Aisling said, “and that’s John Hume and these ones trying to hog the limelight when we get back to Derry on the fourth.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, unless there’s a blue moon those four days we’re going to get a rough ride all the way from Belfast. And the minute we land here you’ll have these middle of the roaders that haven’t an original political idea between them standing up spouting from the backs of lorries with the TV cameras on them and most of us will probably be in casualty.”

“Sure it’s the same all over the place, sure what do you expect?” said Frances. She seemed to weary then, the effort of going on talking not worth it anymore. She gripped the arms of her chair and raised her ugly bulk slowly to a standing position, then straightaway plodded to the toilet without another word. We heard the bolt noisily secured and looked at each other.

“Stay, won’t you,” she said softly pleading.

“How?”

She looked around her helplessly. “I wish you and Frances had got on.”

“How? How can I stay?”

“Do you want to?” I wished we were alone so I could have her right then. Maybe right there standing up when Frances went to bed. Or. I looked at the sofa next to me.

“I love you,” I said. “I wanted to see you, I tried to find you I don’t know how many times. I wanted to tell you I was all right about Audrey. I’m sorry for what I said that night you came to the wake.”

She covered her face with her hands and sobbed into them. I sat there trying to get the right thing ready to say for when she was able to listen again. She took away her hands then and her eyes and nose were running. The toilet flushed noisily and Frances emerged heading straight for the bedroom looking at nobody. “Night,” she said.

“Goodnight Frances,” Aisling said. “I won’t be long.”