Chapter 2

tom durkin/bmf2

 

 

Chapter 2

 

 

 

Monday, August 4, 1969

 

The lumbering Aer Lingus 707 departed New York’s Kennedy Airport at 6:45pm, an unexpected two hours late, and headed east by northeast into a gradually darkening Sunday evening sky.

Mr. and Mrs. Brian Dineen – they became that yesterday through the solemn vows of matrimony – were on their way to a long anticipated honeymoon in Ireland. For Caitlin, it meant going home once more, this time with her husband of scarcely one day. It was a familiar trip for her, one she made three times since she first came to the United States in 1956 as a college student at Marymount in Tarrytown. For Brian, though, it was a trip he had dreamed about from as long ago as memory would serve. He wanted to see the towns and villages of the West and visit the places he knew only from the songs and stories of his growing up years.

Brian’s father, Martin, who died in 1958, was “forced to` leave Ireland in 1922 with a price on his head” according to family lore. Martin never spoke about the time of the “troubles”—the Black and Tans, the Anglo-Irish War and the Irish Civil War- in front of his family. And out of respect for Martin, no one in the family ever spoke to him directly about that time. Brian, who grew up during World War II, and remembered the returning veterans, always assumed it was too painful for his father to speak of his war experiences. All Brian had to go on were story fragments he gleaned from things his mother or his great-aunt Kitty said, or from stories told at family wakes, weddings and baptisms. As they planned their honeymoon, Brian and Caitlin decided that while they were in the West of Ireland, they would try to learn more about Martin and his family.

Brian’s parents were born in County Mayo, in towns about forty miles apart, Martin near Ballina and Grace, from xxxxxxxxxxxxx . They never met until they were introduced by Grace’s Aunt Kitty at a party in her home in New York. As Brian grew up in the heavily Irish settlement nestled in the valley between Morningside Heights and Vinegar Hill, he became a willing audience for the tales of “life in the old country” as they were retold at the many family get-togethers which happened throughout his youth seemingly without provocation.

Brian, also, met his wife, Caitlin, because of Aunt Kitty, but instead of being introduced at her home, as his parents had, their meeting took place at her wake. Brian had been sitting quietly at the back of O’Connell’s Funeral` Home on 207th Street and Broadway in Inwood when his reverie was interrupted by his sister Marie.

“I’d like you to meet my brother, Brian,” Marie said as she introduced the attractive young woman at her side.

“And Brian, I’d like you to meet Caitlin McLoughlin.”

“Caitlin got here from Ireland a month ago,” Marie said, “and will be starting college at Marymount in the fall.

“She’s the granddaughter of Rita Scanlon, one of Kitty’s oldest friends from Mayo, and she came in from Long Island when they learned of Kitty’s passing. I know you’ve heard Kitty speak of Rita many times.”

Brian nodded and reached for the young lady’s hand.

Caitlin was slightly taller than Marie, about five feet seven inches, though she was just as slender and shapely. Her rich, dark chestnut hair reached almost to her shoulders and then curled under just above the collar of her light tan summer blazer, giving her hair a gentle fullness. It appeared to Brian like the hair on the models who swing their heads in slow motion in television commercials. Her dark friendly eyes and delicate lips, which seemed to glow on their own with no need of makeup, made the soft, healthy Irish whiteness of her skin appear even more intense to Brian, though dampened ever so slightly by the pallored light of the funeral home.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Caitlin,” Brian said awkwardly, as he took Caitlin’s outstretched hand. Before he could think of something more intelligent to add to his stumbling comment, Marie excused Caitlin and herself saying there were others in the family Caitlin wanted to meet before the funeral parlor closed.

Brian smiled and removed his hand from Caitlin’s. While the two young women worked their way toward the front of the funeral parlor, clever lines began to take form in Brian’s mind. “Too late now,” he thought. “Too late.”

After the grave-side service the next day, Caitlin returned with Marie and the many other relatives and friends to the Dineen house. She sat throughout the afternoon with a group of younger women in the dining room, and to Brian she seemed even more shy and withdrawn than she did the day before. Both times Brian asked if she would like something to drink, Caitlin answered no, but did so very politely. Then, as the after-burial reception began to wind down and friends and neighbors said their last good-byes, Marie asked Brian if he would mind driving Caitlin to her aunt’s home in Garden City.

“Caitlin doesn’t know the subways and trains yet, and no one else is going out to Long Island. Besides, you’re the only person left here who has a car.”

Caitlin seemed quiet and was almost reluctant to speak as they drove south along the Harlem River Drive, then across the Triboro Bridge. Brian attempt to start a conversation by pointing out several landmarks he thought might be of interest to her and after a while, Caitlin became more responsive to his prompts. By the time they were nearing Garden City, the two were engaged in a full-blown conversation, finding out in the process, they shared many interests and tastes in common.

Brian got out of the car when they arrived at her aunt’s home, and came around to the passenger side to open the door for Caitlin.

“Thanks for driving me home, Brian,” Caitlin said as she got out. “I could never have found the way by myself on the trains, at least not yet. And I appreciate your taking the time to do this when you must have other things you’d rather be doing.”

“It was a pleasure driving you home,” Brian said, far more relaxed now than he was when speaking to Caitlin the previous evening.

“I was curious about where you lived and now that I know, do you mind if I ask if you to go out with me next week?”

Caitlin’s face smiled and blushed at the same time.

“I was hoping you would ask,” Caitlin replied, “and I would really like you get to know you. Marie thinks the world of you– and I think you’re cute.”

The airplane leveled off at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean and the seat belt sign was turned off. A velvety darkness outside the airplane window had already seduced Brian into a premature, though unneeded sleep. Caitlin smiled as she looked to her left and saw her husband nodding. She took a paperback novel she had been reading the past week from her small carryon bag beneath her seat and lowered the tray table from the rear of the seat in front of her. She pressed the button on the armrest to turn on the overhead light, thumbed halfheartedly through the remaining pages of the book then set the book, unread, on the tray. The light, she decided, was too harsh for her to read comfortably, so she pressed the button once more and returned to the muted dimness of the airplane cabin. Caitlin eased her seat back a couple of notches in the hope of joining her husband, but sleep managed to avoid her. She sat back and tried to make herself more comfortable in the seat in the hope of napping eventually.

Caitlin, too, was looking forward to this trip, looking forward to seeing her family again. Her parents, unlike Brian’s, never wanted to leave their island nation. Caitlin’s father, like Brian’s, is dead. Caitlin’s mother, a native of Carracastle, County Mayo, remained in Dublin after her husband’s death, since the capitol city had been home to her for most of her life.

Caitlin’s mind would not let go of thoughts of how different this trip was going to be from her last three visits. In many ways, the slumbering homeland she had left more than a decade ago was becoming a changed Ireland. The nation had awakened somehow from its accustomed lethargy to a frightening alarm sounded by a new breed of revolutionaries, the civil rights activists in Northern Ireland. The numbers of activists, at first seemed small, at least from the reports Caitlin read in the New York newspapers. But then, she thought, it was a mere handful of men, poets, teachers and the like, and some irrepressible and idealistic women who triggered the Easter Week Rebellion in 1916 and launched the five year fight for Irish independence. Just last fall, she recalled, the demonstrations by Catholics in Derry were broken up by Protestant extremists and the police. That led to two days of rioting in Derry by the protesters on both sides followed by student rioting in Belfast. From the letters Caitlin received from family in Dublin, other relatives in Mayo and a cousin, a doctor, in Letterkenny, it was clear the impetus was different this time. The Catholic group, the North Ireland Civil Rights Association, was not questioning the right of Northern Ireland to exist, they said. What they were trying to achieve was an end to the civil rights inequalities in housing and employment opportunities, and in the way the laws were enforced. These inequities, felt mainly by the Catholic minority, had been the way of life in the six northern counties since partition of the nation was agreed to in the Anglo-Irish treaty in 1921 they insisted. Last New Year’s too, Caitlin recalled, there was another incident when civil rights activists marching from Belfast to Derry were ambushed by militant Protestants at Burntollet Bridge in Derry. Then there were the explosions at the electric substation in Castlereach near Belfast in March, and in April the explosion at the Belfast City reservoir, both the work of Protestant extremists, and more rioting in Derry.

How long, she wondered, would it be before the new troubles spilled over into the Republic?

Civil rights, Caitlin thought, now there is a phrase I never heard until I emigrated to America. Now civil rights is very much a part of the everyday American vocabulary and woven into its social fabric. And in the past few years, civil rights had brought about a whole different way of looking at things in Ireland. Though the reports from the BBC were fragmented, at best, the outbreaks in the north were portrayed as copy cat episodes mimicking similar activities in America.

To Caitlin, whose knowledge of her country’s history won her a four year college scholarship, it seemed more like the start of another civil war.

The pilot made a course correction and the 707 pointed into a compass heading that would keep it over the North Atlantic for the next four hours. The flight attendants were already working the aisles of the coach section offering alcoholic relief from the monotonous hours that lay ahead.

Caitlin asked for a cup of coffee with cream when the attendant arrived at her row. She decided it would be better to let Brian continue to sleep, and if he wanted something to drink when he woke up he could ask for it then.

She sipped the coffee slowly and when it was finished handled the cup back to the flight attendant as she came along the aisle. Sitting back in the seat, Caitlin closed her eyes, more to rest them than for sleep. She awoke to the staticy blare of the intercom announcing that it was time for all passengers to fasten their seatbelts and refrain from smoking as the airplane began its descent for the eventual landing at Shannon International Airport in County Limerick.

“I thought you were going to sleep the entire trip,” Brian said as his wife turned her still sleepy eyes to her left.”

“Well Mr. Van Winkle, when did you decide to rejoin the living? When I sat back to rest my eyes, you were still deep in the arms of Orpheus, showing no promise of ever letting go. How long have you been awake or more importantly, how long have I been asleep?” Caitlin asked. “It looks like the sun is up already.”

“I woke up about an hour and a half ago and though I wasn’t tired to begin with, I feel wide awake and ready to take on my first day in Ireland.”

The airplane banked to the left and as it turned Brian caught his first glimpse of the Emerald Isle. With the early morning sun reflecting off the gentle hills and flatlands, he turned to Caitlin and said “It’s true. There are forty shaded of green in this country.”

“It’s more like four hundred if you take the time to count.” Caitlin replied with a smile. “But I don’t think we’ll be here long enough for you to do that.”

The airplane continued its approach and lurched palpably as the large landing gear assemblies were lowered into position for landing, and were locked.

The senior flight attendant came back on the intercom to advise the passengers to return their trays to the back of the seat in front of them and bring their seats back to a full upright position. As she spoke, a disturbance could be heard in the front cabin. After a minute or two – no more- of shuffling and unintelligible loud shouting, the senior attendant returned to the intercom and again asked the passengers in the coach section to remain in their seats and not to approach the front of the airplane. The landing gear was retracted suddenly and the pilot brought his airplane out of descent and began to climb with increased trottle. The noise in the front cabin subsided and quiet returned to both cabins, except for the low murmured questions between passengers. The pilot announced that he had to abort his first attempt at landing because of a conflicting order from the control tower. He assured the passengers that they were about to resume their descent and would be docking at the gate in ten minutes or less. Nothing was said about the disturbance and it seemed unlikely the flight attendant would have much information to impart.

The airplane banked once more, lurched again as the landing gear was again lowered and locked and the airplane completed its approach. From the small fuselage window, Brian and Caitlin could see the countryside begin to pass by more rapidly now. They could feel the large jet slow down, slip into what felt like a glide and then screech as the assembly of landing wheels touched the tarmac. The brakes screeched some more and the jet taxied to a place on the field a considerable distance from the arrival gate.

The flight attendant returned to the intercom once more to assure the passengers that the pilot was waiting for his assigned gate to be cleared and readied for this flight. They were waiting not more than a minute when Caitlin spotted a guarda transport van, a patrol car and a terminal service truck with a boarding ladder attached to its rear, race across the lateral landing strip, the police vehicles with their lights flashing. The attendant stood before the closed curtains between the first class and coach compartments and faced the coach passengers as though guarding the portal. In minutes the passengers could hear the first class door being undogged and opened, then the service truck could be seen approaching the aircraft. The guarda vehicles stopped next to the ladder and two guarda raced at double time up the ladder. Several minutes later, the guarda returned back down the boarding ladder, with a young man, in handcuffs, between then. The door was closed and redogged and the police vehicles raced back toward the terminal, lights still flashing. The service truck drove off to the lateral landing strip and returned to the main terminal at a much slower speed than the law enforcement vehicles. The mighty engines came back to life and the airplane resumed its forward motion as the pilot headed the behemouth toward the arrival gate. Again the flight attendant came back on the intercom to announce that the gate had been cleared for their arrival and the airplane would dock “momentarily”.

“Please remain seated with your seat belts fastened until the captain has secured the airplane at the dock. And thank you once again for flying Aer Lingus and welcome to the Emerald Isle.

Maybe it was the fios, Caitlin thought, but coming home was going to be different this time.