1
Hunger in the Heart
My earliest memory is of my granny’s house in Creggan. It was 1966, when I was three. The singer sang ‘What a Day for a Daydream’ on the transistor radio in the scullery, and me granny was standing at the table, the sleeves of her pale blue jumper rolled up, kneading dough with her floury fists. I stood in the doorway of the sitting room with a mixed-fruit jam piece in my hand as the sun shone through the large window, catching dust and fine fluff in its streaming rays.
I found myself once again standing in the sitting room of me granny’s house, after we buried me da on a cold, wet and windy February day in 1972. The house was choc-a-bloc. A huge fire roared in the hearth as the inviting aroma of homemade chicken soup struggled to win over the gloom and the less inviting smells of steaming hair, soggy shoes and damp clothing. We took turns heating up and drying off in front of the fire as me granny took charge in the scullery. She always made more than enough to feed everyone; her cooking pots were huge and she had enough bowls to feed an army. She’d arranged for Mr McLaughlin, the bread man, to deliver a full wooden tray of Hunter’s sliced pan loaves, which lay, neatly packed in their blue and yellow wrappers, on the floor beside the front door. It was a strange gathering, though, as me granny’s house was always a place for the craic, scone bread and feeling good, and now here we were not knowing what to do or say, feeling the loss of me da in the same room where he’d sung ‘The Black Velvet Band’ to me ma at the Christmas party only a few weeks ago.
When your da dies so suddenly, killed by a soldier’s bullet, it does things to your head and body that you can’t really work out. I felt a terrible hunger of a strange and different kind than I’d ever felt before. At least, I can only explain it as a hunger, but it could’ve been something else, as food didn’t seem to take it away. I could feel it right up to my throat. Food didn’t taste the same and I would still feel the strange hunger soon after eating. In the few days since me da was killed, over the wake and after the funeral, I felt this hunger. Something had changed in me as a nine-year-old, in both body and mind. The mysteries of how, why and where me da died were great unknowns to me that I couldn’t yet begin to explore. I didn’t even know the right questions or who to ask about it.
In hushed, mysterious tones, spoken as much with the eyes as the mouth, word went around the thawing-out gathering that Josie Brown had seen a rath of me da in St Mary’s Chapel.1 Josie was me granny’s friend who lived around the bend of the Cropie, across the street from No. 26 Central Drive. She always had a smiling, thoughtful face, her head shaking slightly when she spoke. It didn’t shake when she was quiet. She smoked, like almost all the older people, but she often kept her fag drooping at the corner of her mouth, gangster-like, allowing the smoke to crawl its way up the side of her face and out through her soft white curls, shrouding her head in a smoky mist.
Josie was special. She saw things differently from everyone else, me granny used to tell us. They held nights in each other’s houses so that Josie could read their tea leaves. She told me ma one such night, after reading her tea leaves, that she would wear two wedding rings.
Josie told whoever was gathered around the scullery table that she’d seen Patsy Doherty’s rath when she was in the queue for Holy Communion at Mass the previous day. She stood near the main door of the chapel at the end of the long queue and saw Patsy Doherty walking towards her with his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes towards the floor. When he reached Josie, he smiled and winked an eye at her as he passed by. When she looked around, he was nowhere to be seen. She said she nearly died with the shock of it.
Word of Josie’s meeting with me da’s rath spread throughout me granny’s packed house. It was Aunt Siobhán I heard it from, when she was telling someone else in the hall beside the sitting-room door. The news brought a strange comfort to me and I’m sure to the rest of us Doherty wains; it was as if he was still here with us and would look after us.
Me granny always served her chicken soup with a few boiled spuds, sitting like floury balls in the middle of the wide bowl. I sat with my sister Karen and brothers Patrick and Paul, lined up along the sofa with the steaming soup bowls on the low coffee table, and we bent forward as best we could to slurp the soup and dip the sliced pan bread into it. Others, including my Uncle Joe (about the same age as Karen) and Aunt Lorraine (three years younger than me), hunkered down on the floor and blew the hot steam from the soup to cool it down, dipping the bread into it and shaping their mouths to trap it before it came away, splashing its soggy weight back into the bowl. The large, metal-framed windows of the sitting room were steamed up, keeping the heavy, grey February day at bay for the time being. If me granda had been himself, he would have said, ‘It’s like a buckin’ Turkish bath in here’; but he didn’t.
***
With me da gone and in his grave, me ma’s head was elsewhere. Her face was pale and angst-ridden, her voice frail and distant. She was twenty-nine. She had six wains, the youngest only seven months old. Everything around us seemed different. The emptiness was everywhere and it was as if we all had to get to know one another all over again. Like strangers. There was always someone else around the house helping out, or just being there – my Aunts Siobhán (about seven years older than me) and Mary, or me Uncle Patsy and his wife Geraldine. Maisie McKinney from up the street came in very often and took us to her house for our tea while me ma rested in bed. We spent time, including a few nights, at me granny’s in Central Drive. Me and our Paul even stayed a night in Maisie’s, had our tea and toast for supper, and got packed into the bed ‘heads and thraws’ beside Dooter and Michael. It was strange falling asleep with someone’s smelly feet near your pillow, like the old days in Moore Street.
We stayed off school for a week after me da’s death. I’d never missed a single day of school before. At the end of Primary Four, Mrs Radcliffe had awarded me a KitKat for the achievement of never missing a day since I started in Primary One.
The following Monday morning, Patrick, Paul and me were sent back to Long Tower Primary School. For some reason we were allowed to go in late, and as we walked from the Bishop Street gate past the Primary One, Two and Three classrooms I realised that there wasn’t another boy to be seen outside. The yard was empty, cold and grey. They were all inside in the warm. We walked in silence through the chilly schoolyard and split up into our separate classrooms. Patrick was in Primary Six; I was in Primary Five; and Paul was in Primary Four. It felt odd that I was at school and when I got home afterwards me da wouldn’t be there.
The three of us walked home together in silence after school. We were watching TV when there was a noise at the front door and Patrick got up to see who it was. Our Uncle Michael was in the hall and he came through the door with a cardboard box in his arms. Uncle Michael was a tall, gangly teenager who always wore jeans and his hair was dark and styled like Rod Stewart’s – spiked at the front and long at the back. When he put the box down on the floor we could see a wee brown pup inside, lying on a bed of straw and newspaper. We had our own dog at last!
‘It’s a bitch,’ he declared.
Maisie McKinney came in shortly after and had her dog, Dandy McKinney, with her. Dandy sniffed around the cardboard box and nosed and licked our new pup, wagging her stubby, sandy-coloured tail.
‘She’s takin’ to the wee pup,’ said Maisie. ‘She loves pups.’
We all sat around the box on the floor while the pup slept on her straw and newspaper, and the older and wiser Dandy lay down beside it with her head between her front paws.
‘Now, make sure and train the wee pup,’ said Maisie. ‘You don’t want it cackin’ all over the house; and a dog has to know that it is a dog or it won’t know its place. Our Terry will give yis a hand. He’s great wi’ dogs.’
Me ma came in with Uncle Patsy and Aunt Geraldine. Geraldine was a small woman with short, dark, curly hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a slight country accent. She drove a car. She was the only woman I knew who drove a car. Uncle Patsy wasn’t that much taller than her. He had black hair and his shadowy face always looked like he needed a shave. They were nearly always together; you rarely saw one without the other.
‘We got a new wee pup, Ma!’ said our Paul.
Me ma came over to the box, sat down on the edge of the sofa and lifted the pup onto her lap. It opened its eyes for a second as it was moved, then settled back into the warmth and slept on.
‘Ach dear, look at the wee critter. What’ll we call it?’ she asked, smiling. Because the wee pup had a brown coat of hair we named her Brandy, after me ma’s favourite drink. Brandy Doherty, one of the family.
Patsy and Geraldine were in the scullery getting something ready for us to eat.
‘We got a couple of beef curries and rice from the new Chinese restaurant in Shipquay Street,’ said me ma. We’d never had curry before and could smell its strange aroma coming from the scullery table, where Patsy and Geraldine were dividing it out from tinfoil cartons onto plates. It smelled really different from anything we’d ever eaten.
‘I’d better get home and get a spud on for the dinner,’ said Maisie, and me ma walked her and Dandy out to the hall and closed the sitting-room door behind them. By the time she came back in we were sitting around the room eating our first Chinese beef curry. We got a cup of tea as well, which tasted strange along with the curry. Everything tasted strange to me anyway since me da died, so I wasn’t that put out.
‘I’m not really hungry,’ said me ma as she forked the curry around her plate.
‘I know, Eileen, but ye have to eat to keep your strength up,’ said Patsy, standing by the scullery door with his plate in his hand, looking concerned. Everyone agreed that the Chinese curry was delicious and we Dohertys all licked the curry sauce from the plates until they were clean.
‘We won’t have to wash the plates now, Patsy, look at the clean of mines!’ Paul said, holding up his white plate for everyone to see. Patsy laughed and said, ‘I know, Paul, but you’ll still have to wash it in the sink.’
Patsy and Geraldine gathered up the plates and forks while we drank our tea. Everyone agreed the tea tasted very strange because of the hot curry sauce, so most of it went cold in the cups. Patsy and Michael went into the scullery to wash the dishes.
‘He was tryin’ to reach his cousin’s flat in Joseph Place, ye know,’ said me ma, drifting her eyes towards the sitting-room window. It was now dark outside.
‘What, Eileen?’ said Geraldine, looking at us through her horn-rims. We were all listening. Brandy was sleeping in her cardboard box.
‘Paddy. I think he must’ve been trying to reach his cousin’s flat in Joseph Place. That’s where he was shot.’
‘D’ye think so, Eileen?’ asked Geraldine, looking around at us as we listened. This was the first time me ma had spoken about it since it happened.
‘We went out after dinner and left Karen to watch the three boys. We took Colleen and Glenn up to me ma’s in the pram and then went over to the shops for the march. We had great craic as we walked down Southway; people were calling to one another and all, but when the rioting started I turned round to see where he was. We got separated. Then I met me da and stayed wi’ him. That’s when the shooting started. He had to nearly drag me over the barricade because I couldn’t get over it myself.’ She smiled a soft smile as she spoke, remembering, but her eyes were dull and sad.
She stopped talking and the room fell silent. She kept looking towards the window. She was probably too pained to look us in our own eyes. The newspaper rustled inside the box on the floor and we all dived down to see Brandy waking up. She opened her brown eyes and we lifted her out and took turns at petting her. Michael brought in a saucer with milk in it and placed it down beside the cardboard box and the wee dog got up on her four paws and started lapping the milk, making slight splashing noises with her tongue. We all laughed at this.
‘Give her a wee bit of space and don’t pet her when she’s drinkin’ or eatin’; dogs don’t like that,’ said Michael.
Brandy finished the milk, licked it off her lips and nose, put her two front paws out in front of her, stretched and yawned with a slight squeak. It was the first noise she’d made. She then began to move unsteadily along the oilcloth floor. We followed her every move with squeals of laughter and excitement, and took turns at holding her in our warm laps.
Just as Uncle Michael said, ‘We’ll have to put some papers down for her …’, our Patrick jumped up from the sofa with the wee brown pup in both hands, saying ‘She’s pishin’! She’s pishin’!’ and put her back down on the floor where she continued peeing, looking up at us as we looked down at her, the pee forming into a yellowy puddle around her feet on the red-patterned oilcloth. Like Pineappleade. Everyone laughed, including Patrick, who went out to the scullery to get dried off.
We had our own dog! Brandy even rhymed with Dandy, the rat-catcher!
‘As I was saying about the newspaper!’ said Michael, and we all laughed again. I caught sight of me ma not laughing, though, and she continued to look out the window into the darkness.
‘I ordered me breakfast by phone from me bed the day he was killed, ye know,’ she said, smiling sadly towards Geraldine, who by this stage was waiting for more.
After a brief silence, Geraldine, looking a bit puzzled, said ‘But yous don’t have a phone, Eileen.’
‘Aye, we do! Aye, we do!’ we all replied, and Patrick bounded out to the telephone table, lifted the receiver of the phone and turned the dial with his finger. The phone dinged upstairs in me ma and da’s room.
‘See?’ me ma said, smiling to Geraldine, who nodded back to her, smiling as well. ‘It only works up and down the stairs.’ She went quiet again for a wee while.
‘He was a wile man, that Paddy,’ me ma said. She always called him Paddy, while a lot of other people called him Patsy. She also said he was a wile man, not is a wile man. It was the first time anyone had spoken of me da as was. She suddenly started laughing at her own recent memory of him.
‘He rings me up and says in a snobby voice, “Hello, Mrs Doherty, this is the hotel manager. Do you want breakfast in bed this morning?” I put on a snobby voice as well and said back to him, “Oh, yes please! Bring me two eggs, toast and tay up on a tray – and make it snappy!” “Did you say tay, madam?” he said down the phone, and I said, “Don’t be ridiculous, man! Of course I didn’t say tay! Now hurry up, man!” and put the phone down with a ding,’ she laughed, as she remembered. She looked both happy and sad at the same time, as she sat on the sofa telling her story. She was laughing but her eyes were tearful. We all laughed as well and were all ears for more.
She went on: ‘He brought the breakfast up and then took the four bigger wains to Mass. Glenn is a great sleeper and so’s Colleen, so I brought her into the bed beside me and went back to sleep.’ She went silent again for a few seconds.
‘It’s doing a cack!’ whispered our Paul, pointing at Brandy the pup, who was squatting down near the hearth over a watery, yellowy-brown cack. We all giggled as Michael lifted the wee cack with his hand through a sheet of newspaper and took it to the bin in the yard. As he came back in he said, ‘Tony, get Terry McKinney the marra and get him to give yous a hand wi’ the wee pup’s training. She’ll shite and pish all over the place unless she gits properly trained.’ Michael lifted the wee pup and went into the scullery with it. The rest of us stayed in the sitting room, wondering if me ma was going to say any more. After a few moments of silence, she started again.
‘Ye know, when he was shot, a man called Paddy Walsh came out to help him. He drinks in Mailey’s.’
Patsy nodded in agreement and said, ‘Aye, Eileen, that’s right. So he does.’
‘He crawled out on his belly as the soldiers continued to fire at him and Paddy. A bullet passed through his coat collar when he reached your daddy. He said an Act of Contrition in his ear as your father passed away.’
She fell silent again as she continued to stare into the blackness of the early evening.
***
I missed me da very much, but I didn’t put it in words to anyone except our Paul at night in bed. Paul and me, at eight and nine, were sent upstairs earlier than Patrick and Karen, who were ten and eleven. They were bigger and were allowed to stay down longer and watch TV with me ma or Uncle Eugene, or whoever else was in.
‘I really miss me da wile,’ I said to Paul as we lay side by side in bed. Paul was always on the inside, with me on the outside. The words nearly choked me and I could feel them tighten my throat. I’d been dying to say them all night but hadn’t.
‘Same as me,’ said Paul, with his head, like mine, resting back on the pillow and us both staring into the dark grey of the bedroom ceiling, which had an orange glow from the streetlights.
Before we went to bed, both of us knelt at the side of it to say our prayers. Me da had trained us to do it every night before we got in, and would kneel himself to say the Hail Mary and ask God to look after the family. Me and Paul kept doing it, saying the Hail Mary together and asking God to look after us all. I said to myself at the end before we climbed into bed ‘but me ma especially’.
After a while I heard Paul crying softly beside me. He’d turned his head to the wall to do it but I could tell he was crying. It’s in the breathing and the stiffness of the body. I felt that I could cry too then, and stayed lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, and let the warm tears come out the sides of my eyes and seep into the white pillowcase. When I turned to go to sleep later I felt the damp patch on my cheek, so I turned the pillow over to its dry side. Paul had cried himself to sleep.
When Karen and Patrick came up a wee bit later to go to bed, I pretended to be asleep but listened to them praying too, getting into their beds and then both of them crying silently into the night. I could tell by their breathing.
One night, as I was lying half-awake, my eyes shot open when I thought I heard me da whistling his way down the street towards our house, and I half expected to hear the front door opening as he came in. But the whistling continued on down the street, passing our house, rounding the corner at Foyle Road and fading away.
Each morning I woke up to a brand new day and, as my brain started to work its way out of sleep, everything was normal for a few seconds, but then I would realise, as I opened my eyes, that me da was dead. It was the same every morning.
