1974

By Brendan Kavanagh

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It was the night of the Millennium and Michael O’Keefe had just had another of his persistent dreams about war. He often dreamed about war and its devastation and inevitably woke up bathed in sweat.  In his mind, a recurring image from his childhood.  Belfast 1974. His parents’ grocery shop and newsagency in the Falls Rd severely damaged by an explosion. He saw himself clinging onto his mother and father as they ran from the burning building and made their way to the safety of St Paul’s Catholic Church across the street.

He had had this dream many times over the years. His wife, Margaret, had long suffered his sudden awakening and had become accustomed to calming him down and getting him back to sleep again. She had also seen Michael withdraw from many aspects of his social life and become obsessively involved in his work. He took less interest in what was happening around him and as far as she was concerned drank too much. His moodiness distressed her and it occasionally crossed her mind that she might even have to leave him if his temperament did not improve. She loved him very much and was hoping that something could be done to help him.

“These bloody nightmares are driving me mad,” Michael exploded, his head cupped in his hands. Margaret put her arms around him and held him close. She knew that his nightmares were more frequent now and that he was becoming more and more upset at the slightest incident. There were many times when she needed to make love with him but lately he seemed to be less inclined to be intimate. He was a good lover but now she feared that his lack of interest was beginning to have an effect on her own wellbeing and their relationship.

In his work as a journalist for Global Review, Michael knew only too well about the dangers and traumas of living in an angry and divided land.  He knew that religious affiliations become readymade tags for continuing ancient animosities. Not being on the right side of God, he thought, apparently makes you an easier target. 

Today’s news that serious negotiations had begun in Northern Ireland brought the Global Review’s editor, Stephen McGregor, into his office. He had known Michael and his uncle for many years and had headhunted Michael from the Daily Mail when his magazine decided to give more prominence to the Irish question. He knew Michael to be a serious and intelligent journalist, with an abiding interest in the events that had tortured his homeland. McGregor broke into a broad smile as though he had just discovered the answer to some obscure question.

“Remember that proposal we wrote for our Chairman about how we should do a strong piece on the causes of the troubles in Northern Ireland in the early seventies?” Michael nodded.

“Well, he has given the OK to go ahead. So I’m sending you to Belfast for four weeks so you can do some background research for the piece.”

Michael had not visited Belfast since he left to live with his Uncle Thomas in Dublin weeks after the explosion which wrecked his family’s home and business that night back in 1974.  There had been rumours that his father was a member of the IRA and often stored guns and propaganda material for the local group. He apparently also had serious differences of opinion with one of its leaders which had resulted in much acrimony and had led to alternative speculations about the cause of the explosion.

In any event his father had taken to drinking heavily and his mother had died from a depressive illness within the year.

He had lost all contact with his father and had not seen him now for over 20 years. There was some suggestion that he had gone to Argentina or perhaps Australia. There had been just one letter sent by his father to his uncle and a couple of phone calls when he was about fifteen. It may well be that he was now dead.

Michael had no real recollection of his father although he had at one stage held deep feelings of animosity towards him and at some level blamed him for his mother’s death.  If his father were to appear in his life again he would just be a stranger. Michael wouldn’t recognise him. The only photo he had of him was one taken when his father was in his early twenties, his features distinguished by his eyebrows which made one unbroken line across his forehead.

Michael had no feeling for his father. Even the anger he originally felt had long since dissipated. When he had consulted a psychologist about his dreams it had been suggested that the sense of abandonment by his father and the anger he must have felt, had been repressed, and combined with memories of the explosion, may be the cause of his problems. The psychologist suggested that Michael should try to find his father or at least establish whether he was still alive.

Michael did not see this as an answer to a problem which he had long learned to live with to some degree, though admittedly, lately, his moodiness was a constant.   Given that he could barely remember what his father looked like Michael decided to ignore the psychologist’s advice.

Uncle Thomas, on his mother’s side, had become the boy’s guardian and ensured that he got a good education. Michael often wondered what his life would have been like if the explosion had not destroyed his family. Perhaps, he thought with some amusement, he would have taken up his father’s business and turned it into a supermarket chain.  A far cry from journalism!

Uncle Thomas was a kindly and generous man, but nonetheless a fairly strict disciplinarian when it came to Michael’s schooling. On reflection, Michael decided his uncle had done the right thing enabling him to graduate with honours, which in turn had given him a cadetship that eventually led to his present position as Assistant Editor. Michael was sure that his mother would have been proud of him.         

Michael did not have to think too much about accepting McGregor’s assignment.  He knew Margaret would be happy to take the opportunity and stay with relatives in County Galway whom she had not seen for years. He and Margaret could then meet up on weekends and the change would be good for both of them.

When he arrived in Belfast he went straight to the local office to meet the staff and do some preliminary research on the Global Review’s Northern Ireland archives.  Over the following weeks he spoke with people from those early years and interviewed various officials at local police stations, businesses and government offices. Many of the people he interviewed had been directly involved in the events of that period and he was made aware of the many tragedies that had befallen people on both sides of the conflict.

1974 was a year that saw the troubles escalate dramatically with a series of explosions throughout Belfast, particularly in the Falls Road Area. He was well aware that the explosion that had destroyed his family had also occurred in 1974. He had always assumed that the explosion was somehow related to terrorism, especially after learning of his father’s acrimonious IRA connections.

Towards the end of the last week of his mission he received a letter from a woman responding to their advertisement in local papers calling for people with knowledge of the time to contact them. 

The woman who ran a boarding house in an area not far from Falls Road wrote that one of her boarders had asked her to get in touch with the Global Review.  The man had been a boarder for some years having spent a lot of his life overseas, but was now very ill. In fact, he was dying of cancer and his doctor had told him that he had only weeks to live. He had apparently lived in the area back then and had some knowledge of the events of 1974. Michael decided he would go and see what her boarder had to offer.

The landlady greeted Michael at the door and led him upstairs to a room at the end of a corridor. 

“The Doctor’s just left”, she told Michael. “He says the old man will be lucky to see the week out. I’ll leave you to it. Give me a shout if you need anything. Oh, I nearly forgot. Here are some documents the old man gave me to give you. I think they are his birth and marriage certificates and some other stuff. Some correspondence about an insurance fraud. Apparently, he was on the run, for a number of years. He wanted you to know a bit about him before you saw him.”

Michael removed the creased papers from the envelope and glanced at the contents. As he read a chill ran down his spine. Putting the papers back in the envelope he entered the room. The old man was in bed, perched on some pillows and sitting upright.  As Michael moved closer he could make out that the man’s bushy eyebrows seemed joined as one and he remembered the photo his uncle had shown him of his father. They looked at each other and Michael, knowing now that he had been reunited with a ghost from his past, wondered whether he detected a hint of recognition in the old man’s eyes. 

“Hello, Dad”, he said.