The Troubles (22 page)

     ‘’We?’’ My question lingers in the air sounding more like a dare.

    ‘’Of course we, but seriously Kiera, one of us needs a bloody job or all of our stomach’s will ache with hunger and ya now need to eat for two.’’             

    ’’Okay, should I go back to the aerospace factory?’’

     ‘’Nay absolutely not! It is too dangerous for you now in your fragile state!”                   

      ‘’Well what then?’’ My voice pitches with the foretold responsibly quelling all previous, naïve romantic illusions.  My arms wrap around the man I love and with fatigue and an inability to argue as right now neither one of us has the constitutional reply to remedy the other’s fears. My flushed cheek rests comfortably on Alastar’s firm pectoral muscles and his breath eases in and out gradually as this physical gesture has calmed him.

    “I love ya, Alastar. I do!  Yer me one eternal love.’’ I whisper a light blessing softly, not so he can hear it but just to affirm my devotion aloud. “Please keep yerself safe. I can’t do this alone.’’ He bends his long tree trunk of a neck and his features meld in a descent of gravity. He doesn’t say a word but habitually every day and night since I have stared at his handsome face when animated in conversation and passively suspended in sleep, my etched memory has given me intuition of his true emotions. I can see an empathic sadness as he reacts to my fears of being alone. The loss of my parents has been apparent, a gaping wound since the beginning of our affair. His heart breaks for me with a compassionate and stoic gaze of concern and protectiveness. He places his chin upon my crown, the weight bearing down as his arms provide a safeguard. Finally I rest.

    Time elapses until the clock strikes noon and we both jump, startled and half sleeping from the warmth our entwined bodies have generated.  “So Alastar, are ya gonna leave me today?’’ I whisper, coyly fingering with his collarbone in a flirtatious manner.

    “Nay Kiera, I’ve got to marry ya before yer belly gets found out.’’

    “Today?’’ I lean back now fully alert and shocked with my heart pounding in my ears and my face flushed. As I look into Alastar’s wide and pleading eyes I can see his cheeks crest salmon pink from my reaction. “I mean, Alastar, I want to marry but it must be the right way.’’

     ‘’Why not just the two of us. Let’s go to the priest and have it done.’’   

    ‘’Which church?’’ I retort in quiet frustration. He looks away and begins to laugh aloud, his unintentional theistic blunder having caught us both off guard.

CHAPTER 39: Ni gnach cosaint ar dith tiarna (Rarely is a fight continued when the chief has fallen)

     Alastar Taggart…’’Yer Protestant priest will not marry us!’’ I gape down at my trembling, visibly irked fiancé, who, though she has pledged her love for me, looks fragile and green in pallor. I understand her well enough by now to know that her agitation will erupt like a volcano for the stress of our dueling religion’s exclusionary tactics might be exacerbating our child’s future.

     “And although I wouldn’t have a problem being wedded by yer’s without me properly being a Catholic… meself and yer baby would not be recognized without us being baptized as such and…’’ She absently clouts her right foot to the floor with the distribution of weight a dull echoing of thick wood. ‘’We…” She clasps her belly signaling to the slight bow of girth beneath her shirt. “We will not be baptized by either church. I will not be yer wife and live in Belfast without ya either.’’

    I just stand there for a moment briefly distracted by the loose bunch of curls that is framing her perfectly oval face like an ornate bronzed frame of a masterpiece. I yearn to gather my hands into her hair and pull gently bringing her cupids bow lips up to receive a hearty dose of my twitching mouth.

    ’’Alastar, are ya listening to me?’’ Now both of her hands have bunched into tiny fists and are resting at the crescendo of her arced hips. “Either ya stay in Belfast or we go to Derry with ya.’’ The urgency of my beloved pregnant fiancé’s condition and the commitment I have made to the Official IRA might have been easily sorted out if perhaps leaving the IRA to start a family would have been feasible, but the moment Gerry Adams had surreptitiously blackmailed me with his knowledge of her I had been theirs. If they challenge me to anything at this point, murderer I would be.  They could torture me and a martyr, I would be. Kiera, and now our viable bloodline is all that matters. One may assume my sacrifice seems impulsive, but when I am with her nothing else in this broken city touches me; her constructed shroud of kindness and unwavering joy provides the isolation and reprieve I have desired, perhaps always needed, but never had the proper context to receive.

    The proverbial beatings and everlasting cavalry boots to the back of many young men are far in the distance. Safe is my soul although I have witnessed atrocities so feral my mind cannot absorb the memory in an attempt to preserve my sanity. Kiera has given me the love my mother never did for in her absence there was a void of sentiment, positive or negative. In this moment I do not wish to disclose why I have been asked to Derry or that a car bomb lies claimed and prostrate in my future.

     Her gray pristine, cloudless eyes plead innocently up at me and I maneuver the freshly retrieved nine mm pistol in my back leather boot with the heel of my ankle connecting with the cold metal of the barrel. I do not like lying to Kiera but this deception will be one of omission as I sigh aloud, “I’ll stay with ya in Belfast.’’  She cannot come to Derry for it is too dangerous in so many ways and I have no trust of the IRA leadership that would use her as a bargaining chip as Gerry Adams had previously alluded to.

   “How ‘bout Lanary Sloan then.‘’ Kiera’s smile is probing and slightly speculative.

     ‘’Ya mean to marry us?’’

     ‘’Aye! Perhaps we should be married as our great-great-great-grandparents were.”

   ‘’Go even further back in time then, sweetheart.’’

    ‘’Well let’s change our brethren’s chained pattern. Who’s to stop us?’’ I, for a brief moment, consider my father, who at this moment, I presume to be three sheets to the wind and if he were able to formulate conscious thoughts they would be of sorrow and of my abandonment. This is the first time I have addressed the weight of guilt I feel for simply loving Kiera as my romantic nature had been so tarnished by the women who sired me from exhaustion and who sought freedom beyond familial responsibility.

    ‘’Shall we ring him then?’’ Kiera rouses me from my self-pitying stupor and walks to her rotary telephone. Blush, pink fingernails absently stroke the dial as she awaits directions to the numbers to rotate.

    ’’Aye, perhaps he is home.’’ I take three elongated strides with my footfall landing me face prone to her classically fine boned structure. Her delicacy reminds me of fine china, so immaculate in its form, that I fear my grasp will ravage her. I take the phone and dial the number I have memorized, whispering to Kiera, “ya best find a dress for ya to wear.’’

      Gleaming, she responds with a jubilant nod of the chin, “I bet ya will fit one limb into Da’s suit.’’ She laughs, stretching her arm from my hip to the floor and while prostrated to me there is that coy smile. My desire surges quickly but is quelled by the gruff voice at the other end of the receiver. Formally, I announce myself and in the matter of a few minutes, have convinced Lanary to wed Kiera and I.

     “We shall do it by the Yew tree I’ve gone ta many a day ta contemplate.’’ I am omitting that the last time I had visited the sacred place I had been vacillating between unconsciousness and consciousness. With a complying grunt that is most definitely accompanied by a nod of the bearded man, our arrangements have been set.

      Kiera and I are dressed in our formal wear and are seated as close as physically possible in the back seat of Bobby’s 1949 robin blue Fiat with its rusting edges truly giving it the moniker of cracks in the eggshell. Kiera’s curls have been pulled into a French braid, which brushes the nape of her neck and ropes down to the small of her back. My hand strokes the softness trailing down her spinal column and I massage the knotted musculature of her shoulders.

    ‘’Hmmm that feels mighty.’’ She murmurs quietly as the engine is deafening Bobby’s eavesdropping capacity. Her humbly clad feet rest gingerly upon a wood bound, straw broom stick, which will be used at our feverishly executed ceremony for the gesture of jumping across it signifies the leaving our old life and the embracing of the new. Placed deep in the recesses of the mothball scented jacket are the silk ribbons, which will be bound and intertwined between my wife’s hand and my own; the literal origin of tying the knot.

       Lanary Sloan greets us standing like an Egyptian pharaoh garbed in a Celtic Druid linen robe eclipsed in shadow from the cloak of the great, green leafed yew tree. Balmy, teatime light filters through leaves to bask his silver hair with a faint glow, as his statuesque, lean body is framed perfectly in the center of nature’s masterpiece. The tableau is reminiscent of our human, titular role in the ecosystem beyond manmade walls.

      Linear cascades of raindrops spilling from the branches are the last remnants of the morning’s rain shower. Though the downpour hastened in veracity there still was no sun to behold in the sky. The slate grey of the afternoon was obfuscated by a bursting palate of varying shades of green, forged from the bellowing pastures that radiate with fertile splendor in this perpendicular amphitheater.

    ‘‘It’s a mighty fine sight.’’  A whistling Bobby scrambles quickly to stand on the lower ground a few feet below the undisturbed six foot h man whose eyes stare fixedly upon Kiera’s movements. Lanary’s lack of emotive expression makes me queasy and the unease only increases as Kiera walks light footed over moss and craggy rock to stand between a gracious and endearing Bobby Sands and our priest.

CHAPTER 40: Sliocht sleachta ar sliocht bhur sleachta (May you have children and your children have children)

     Kiera Flanagan…Soon to be Kiera Flanagan Taggart

    ’’To the fir on me left and the man on me right, may the day rise with ya and ya can be tethered and bound eternal.’’ Lanary Sloan’s brusque deployment into the commencement of our wedding ceremony leaves me trembling with adrenaline and as a surge of energy seeks a release in me, Alastar begins to unravel a brightly colored silk ribbon to commence the tradition of hand fastening. Lanary speaks clearly to the two of us as though we are his subjects assuring us that our hasty decision will not be ill fated. “Marry when the year is new, always loving, kind, and true. When February birds do mate, you may wed, nor dread your fate. Though ‘tis not a Saturday, the day tis of no importance.” His deep, indented blue eyes gesture to the length of silken ribbon that is draped over my fiancé’s palm. A foot before me, Alastar stands, and as his moss green eyes seem to caress mine, I am made aware, with the gusts of wind, the faintest intake of breath. I smile reassuringly at my future husband and as carefully as with a seamstress’s fluidity, he begins to weave the wine red ribbon from the base of his thumb to his prone index digit finger and with his free hand he places my right hand upon his now entangled fingers.  With palms intractable, nimbly, I bind my hand in a similar tantamount fashion until we are both entwined in a satiny, soft, woven padlock, signifying our wedlock. With a tender kiss to our conjoined fingertips, Alastar motions to Lanary. The cloaked man who has been a silent witness to our ritual presents a worn book from behind the concealment of his heavy garb, not unlike a magician’s gesture. Alastar’s loving gaze rests on a yellowing, thin page and as he preemptively reads the words before him, his eyes glow brilliantly and the premonition of a tear illuminates his eyes like ornamental bejeweled green jade.

     ‘’I, Alastar Taggart, in the name of the spirit of God who resides within all of us, by the life that courses within me blood and the love that resides within my heart, take thee, Kiera Flanagan, to me hand, me heart, and me spirit, to be me chosen one. To desire thee and be desired by thee, to possess thee, and be possessed by thee. I promise to love thee wholly and completely without restraint, in sickness, and in health, in plenty, and in poverty, in life and beyond, where we shall meet, remember, and love again. I shall not seek to change thee in any way. I shall respect thee, thy beliefs, thy people, and thy ways as I respect myself. I love ya Kiera as me wife.’’ As the customary marital affirmation of dictated words spilled into the stillness of the afternoon’s waning light, power and forcefulness seemed to filter into the four of us, standing in our semi-precious garb.  My mouth assumes its dryness and my face is slick with saturated as Alastar reaches with his free hand and wipes what is not a raindrop, but a deluge of tears.  “I… I’m sorry.’’   

     ‘’That’s all right Kiera. Take yer time. Ya’ll only get one chance to get this one right.’’ Lanary appeases my histrionics with a crinkled wink. “Here is the book of vows for ya to recite aloud.’’

     My lowered eyes elucidate over the antediluvian verses and without a moment’s hesitation, eloquently, the words flow from my lips to kiss the air between us with my namesake occupying where Alastar’s had but moments preceding.

     ’’Ya are now husband and wife. Kiss yer bride.’’

     Alastar’s generous smile of grateful adoration regards me as he has clearly received my vows with joy. He looks so blissfully fulfilled in the moment that I take it upon myself to gather my long skirt up and on pointed toe, lay both my hands upon the cool skin of his exposed neck and with a slight pressure, I pull his ruby lips to mine. The beckon is as loving and gentle as physically viable, as though my lips have the ability to translate the love and trust my heart and harmoniously, mind have in our conjoined union. Our kiss once again is prolonged and deep, though there are once again spectators. As my pronounced belly curves into Alastar’s pelvis, our embrace feels different and less lustful, being perhaps more familial. I halt only for breath when my stomach lurches and we both look at one another with a knowing smile. I imagine my little one will be interrupting us often in days to come.