Doherty The Dead Beside Us:

A Memoir of Growing up in Derry
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78117-513-2
Verlag: Mercier Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

In this sequel to the hugely-popular This Man's Wee Boy, young Tony Doherty struggles to come to terms with the murder of his father, Paddy, on Bloody Sunday and the impact it has on his mother, Eileen, and his brothers and sisters. At nine years old, he knows a terrible wrong has been committed against his family but lacks the understanding or the means to do anything about it - yet. For his fractured family, life goes on, with Tony determined to preserve the memory of his father and the bond they shared, even as he becomes increasingly immersed in the violent conflict raging on Derry's streets. As the 1970s unfold his father's absence remains the backdrop to the teenage Tony's newfound friendships and relationships, an ever-present ache amidst the craic and excitement of Sunday dances, first kisses and a trip to Butlins. Then, at seventeen, Tony decides it's time to join the fight.

Tony Doherty was instrumental in setting up the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign in 1992, which led in 2010 to the exoneration of his father and the others killed and wounded on Bloody Sunday, and to a public apology from the British Prime Minister in the House of Commons. He has worked extensively in community regeneration in Derry, is a member of the Big Lottery Fund's NI Committee and is currently Regional Coordinator for Northern Ireland's Healthy Living Centre Alliance.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Doherty, Tony

Leseproben

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...