The Personal vs. the Political Theme Analysis

The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died. He had been shot by one of the state hit squads and I did not care about the shooting of this man. Others did care though, and some were those who, in the parlance, ‘knew me to see but not to speak to’ and I was being talked about because there was a rumour started by them, or more likely by first brother-in-law, that I had been having an affair with this milkman and that I was eighteen and he was forty-one.

At this time, in this place, when it came to the political problems, which included bombs and guns and death and maiming, ordinary people said ‘their side did it’ or ‘our side did it’, or ‘their religion did it’ or ‘our religion did it’ or ‘they did it’ or ‘we did it’, when what was really meant was ‘defenders-of-the-state did it’ or ‘renouncers-of-the-state did it’ or ‘the state did it’. Now and then we might make an effort and say ‘defender’ or ‘renouncer’, though only when attempting to enlighten outsiders, for mostly we didn’t bother when it was only ourselves. ‘Us’ and ‘them’ was second nature: convenient, familiar, insider, and these words were off-the-cuff, without the strain of having to remember and grapple with massaged phrases or diplomatically correct niceties.

He’d homed in on that flag issue, the flags-and-emblems issue, instinctive and emotional because flags were invented to be instinctive and emotional – often pathologically, narcissistically emotional – and he meant that flag of the country from ‘over the water’ which was also the same flag of the community from ‘over the road’. It was not a flag greatly welcomed in our community. Not a flag at all welcomed in our community. There weren’t any, not any, this side of the road. What I was gathering therefore, for I was not up on cars but was up on flags and emblems, was that those vintage, classic Blower Bentleys made in that country ‘over the water’ came with the flag on from that country ‘over the water’.

Since my sixteenth birthday two years earlier ma had tormented herself and me because I was not married. My two older sisters were married. Three of my brothers, including the one who had died and the one on the run, had got married. Probably too, my oldest brother gone errant, dropped off the face of the earth, and even though she’d no proof, was married. My other older sister – the unmentionable second sister – also married. So why wasn’t I married? This non-wedlock was selfish, disturbing of the God-given order and unsettling for the younger girls, she said. ‘Look at them!’ she continued, and there they were, standing behind ma, bright- eyed, perky, grinning. From the look of them, not one of these sisters seemed unsettled to me. ‘Sets a bad example,’ said ma. ‘If you don’t get married, they’ll think it’s all right for them not to get married.’ None of these sisters – age seven, eight and nine – was anywhere near the marrying teens yet.

‘So, class,’ said teacher after this applause had died down, ‘is it that you think the sky can only be blue?’

‘The sky is blue,’ came us. ‘What colour else can it be?’

Of course we knew really that the sky could be more than blue, two more, but why should any of us admit to that? I myself have never admitted it. Not even the week before when I experienced my first sunset with maybe-boyfriend did I admit it. Even then, even though there were more colours than the acceptable three in the sky – blue (the day sky), black (the night sky) and white (clouds) – that evening still I kept my mouth shut. And now the others in this class – all older than me, some as old as thirty – also weren’t admitting it. It was the convention not to admit it, not to accept detail for this type of detail would mean choice and choice would mean responsibility and what if we failed in our responsibility? Failed too, in the interrogation of the consequence of seeing more than we could cope with?

‘Some locations are just stuck,’ said ma. ‘And deluded. Like some people. Like your da’ – which would be the point when I’d regret having opened my mouth. Anything – be it in any way dark, any way into the shadow, anything to do with what she called ‘the psychologicals’ – always it brought her back to the subject of, and especially to the denigration of, her husband, my da. ‘Back then,’ she’d say, meaning the olden days, meaning her days, their days, ‘even then,’ she said, ‘I never understood your father. When all was said and done, daughter, what had he got to be psychological about?’

In our district the renouncers-of-the-state were assumed the good guys, the heroes, the men of honour, the dauntless, legendary warriors, outnumbered, risking their lives, standing up for our rights, guerrilla- fashion, against all the odds. They were viewed in this way by most if not all in the district, at least initially, before the idealistic type ended up dead, with growing reservations setting in over the new type, those tending towards the gangster style of renouncer instead. Along with this sea change in personnel came the moral dilemma for the ‘our side of the road’ non-renouncer and not very politicised person. This dilemma consisted of, once again, those inner contraries, the moral ambiguities, the difficulty of entering fully into the truth.

In all the small time since he’d set his sights on me and had started in on destroying me, still only that first time in the car had he even looked at me, never either, said anything lewd or mocking or of outright provocation to me. Most especially he hadn’t laid a finger on me. Not one finger. Not once.

So I was heard, and it felt good and respectful to be heard, to be got, not to be interrupted or cut off by opinionated, poorly attuned people. For the longest while longest friend didn’t say anything and I didn’t mind her not saying anything. Indeed I welcomed it. It seemed a sign she was digesting the information, letting it speak to her timely, to authenticate also in its proper moment the right and just response. So she stayed quiet and stayed still and looked ahead and it was then for the first time it struck me that this staring into the middle distance, which often she’d do when we’d meet, was identical to that of Milkman. Apart from the first time in his car when he’d leaned over and looked out at me, never again had he turned towards me. Was this some ‘profile display stance’ then, that they all learn at their paramilitary finishing schools? As I was pondering this, longest friend then did speak. Without turning, she said, ‘I understand your not wanting to talk. That makes sense, and how could it not, now that you’re considered a community beyond-the-pale.’

‘God. I can’t believe this. Your head! Your memory! All those mental separations and splittings-off from consciousness. I mean me! Your association with me! Your brothers! Your second brother! Your fourth brother!’ And now she was shaking her head. ‘The things you notice yet don’t notice, friend. The disconnect you have going between your brain and what’s out there. This mental misfiring – it’s not normal. It’s abnormal – the recognising, the not recognising, the remembering, the not remembering, the refusing to admit to the obvious. But you encourage that, these brain-twitches, this memory disordering – also this latest police business – all perfect examples they are, of what I’m talking about here.’

After this our meeting in the lounge ended, and after that I had three further encounters with longest friend from primary school. One was at her wedding in the countryside four months on where I was the only one – bar the holy man officiating – not wearing dark glasses. Even the groom, and longest friend in her simple white gown, each had a pair on. Then I met her a year after her wedding, this time at the funeral of her husband. Three months on from that I went to her own funeral when they buried her with her husband. This was in the renouncers’ plot of the graveyard just up from the ten-minute area, also known as ‘the no-town cemetery’, ‘the no-time cemetery’, ‘the busy cemetery’ or just simply, the usual place.

‘You should be ashamed,’ she said, but she was not referring to my love affair with Milkman, which I assumed she was referring to because that was all anybody – whose business still it wasn’t – referred to. Instead she was talking about my colluding with Milkman to kill her in some other life. As well as her death, apparently I was responsible for the deaths of twenty- three other women – ‘some of whom were definitely doing herbs,’ she said, ‘just their innocent white medicine, and some of whom weren’t doing anything’ – and I did all these crimes during the time we – the whole twenty-six of us – were in this other life. She meant a past incarnation sometime during the seventeenth century and she gave dates and times and said he had been a doctor, but one of those quack doctors.

At the same time as saving me, of course she had a go at me. Along with her rapid physical examination and quick-fire questions to me – Was I cut? Was I knifed? What did I eat? What did I drink? Did someone out of the ordinary give me something out of the ordinary? Was I in a fight with someone? Had I been kicked in the head earlier by someone? Were all my trusted friends trustworthy? With what had I been poisoned? – came also her first judgemental remark. ‘Well, what do you expect, wee girl,’ she said, ‘if you go round stealing other people’s husbands?

‘Well, what is it then?’ she said and in the middle of pain, in the middle of poison, gloriously I felt a comfort go through me, a sense of solace descend on me, all because she’d paused in her admonition to consider I might be telling the truth. It could be easy to love her. Sometimes I could see how easy it could be to love her. Then it was gone and she broke off from hesitation, from prodding and hoisting and falsely accusing, to call to wee sisters.

As for my view of my condition, it would have been preposterous to consider that this tummy ache was down to poison when it was nerves – even if nerves in a worse state than ever they had been in since Milkman – and it was at this point ma did the unthinkable and mooted the hospital, stating she was not prepared to let her daughter die just because societal convention dictated she was not to call an ambulance. Her words were as a bombshell. The neighbours gasped. ‘Enough! Oh enough!’ and they begged her not to go on.

So I took them and I didn’t pay for them and this was partly out of an angry ‘Yes, Milkman. Go. Kill. Kill all of them. Go forth. Attend me. I command you’ and partly it was out of sensibility and anxiousness for their feelings. It was not wanting to get into trouble with my elders as an eighteen-year-old daring to disrespect and correct their behaviour. So I lost presence of mind and allowed myself to be pushed into obtaining chips with menaces. Most damning therefore, my own behaviour, this handling of the chip shop badly, no matter there’d been a compelling of me by everybody in it exactly to handle it badly. I knew now though, what they’d known for some time which was that no longer was I a teenager amidst a bunch of other teenagers, coming into and going out of and gallivanting about the area. Now I knew that that stamp – and not just by Milkman – had unreservedly, and against my will, been put on.

So, said my spontaneity, maybe-boyfriend was my maybe-boyfriend; Milkman was not my lover. At the time of affirming this conviction, the resurgence of truth felt lucid and uplifting. Somewhat unaware in my feverish excitement that instead of lucidity and upliftment, however, I might instead be swinging from one extreme of despondency and powerlessness over to the other extreme of sudden and incongruous jollity, I scribbled a note for wee sisters. It said, ‘Put on your nightclothes. I’ll be back later to read you Hardy as promised.’ With that, I threw on my jacket and rushed to the bus-stop up the road.

Three times in my life I’ve wanted to slap faces and once in my life I’ve wanted to hit someone in the face with a gun. I did do the gun but I have never slapped anybody. Of the three I’ve wanted to slap, one was eldest sister when she rushed in on the day in question to tell me the state forces had shot and killed Milkman. She looked gleeful, excited, that this man she thought was my lover, this man she thought had mattered to me, was dead.

Meanwhile, we two resumed our stretching then brother-in-law said, ‘Right? Are ye right?’ and I said, ‘Aye, come on, we’ll do it.’ As we jumped the tiny hedge because we couldn’t be bothered with the tiny gate to set off on our running, I inhaled the early evening light and realised this was softening, what others might term a little softening. Then, landing on the pavement in the direction of the parks & reservoirs, I exhaled this light and for a moment, just a moment, I almost nearly laughed.