Say Nothing

We send each other links to travel articles, looking forward to a time which is not too distant in the future, when we are free to indulge in the wanderlust we share.  Still with the proverbial oyster that is our world, I suspect that while I don’t particularly look forward to the cuisine, we will undoubtedly return to Ireland.  I’ve lost track of the number of visits that we’ve made to old sod.  While there are places of interest we’ve yet to explore, it is friends that draw us back to the Ireland again and again.

Perhaps this should be preceded by a drumroll, but this week I go for nearly 24 hours without CNN, and listen to an audiobook with a quick library expiration date. The books is Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe.  I live for two days in headphones, juggling Himself’s Kindle device while navigating my regular chores.  I discover, when I finish the audio that the printed book is 524 pages long, yet I am sorry when it ends.

Say Nothing makes phenomenally efficient use of its 524 pages.  First and likely foremost, the book is an amazingly complete and objective chronicle of The Troubles.  An aside here, is that after multiple trips to Ireland, as soon as anyone detects a tourist accent, we are immediately admonished not to discuss The Troubles.  And this inevitably segues into a comprehensive discussion about The Troubles from our cautioner’s point of view.

Himself, who is far more knowledgeable about the subject than I, daresay, almost everyone, is impressed by the efficiency with which Radden Keefe chronicles the struggle for a united Ireland, but his opus is also a taut murder mystery, fascinating character student, and a Transatlantic test case for press and academic freedom. which reads like a novel that I couldn’t put down.

The book is particularly compelling because two of the supporting characters are dear friends. As Radden Keefe has portrayed Anthony and Carrie so truly, it is easy to accept the meticulous credibility of the books as a whole.  Born in Orange County and drawn to social justice and her heritage, Carrie met Anthony in Belfast.  Anthony was a member of the IRA and was incarcerated for eighteen years.  An autodidact, Anthony used the period of his imprisonment to read and study.  Upon his release, he completed a PhD in history at Queens University.  An oral history of the Troubles was commissioned by Boston College.  Anthony, still respected and trusted by his former comrades, and possessing academic bona fides, was chosen to interview Republicans, while another former Loyalist/Academic was chosen to interview members of the opposition.  Participants were given an ironclad promise that the interviews and/or transcripts would not be released until after their death.

A number of suspected traitors were disappeared by the IRA.  The most notorious of these murders was that of Jean McConville, the widowed mother of ten who was snatched in 1972 Belfast by masked Provos, while her children clung to her legs and wailed.  She never returned. Her children were split up and bounced from orphanage to lousy care homes and back.  I don’t believe that it has ever been determined conclusively if McConville had been spying for the Loyalists.  Her remains were not located until 2003.

For the sake of expediency, I will simplify here.  Some of the high leadership of the IRA are now movers and shakers in the Sinn Fein party which acceded to the 1998 Good Friday Accord, leaving Northern Ireland to the British and abandoning the notion of a United Ireland.  Former IRA commander, Gerry Adams, until his recent retirement has been the face of Sinn Fein and many credit him, for at least, ushering in an era of peace, while failing to unite the island.  Adams, since the onset of his transition from revolutionary leader to the political mainstream, has renounced his involvement in the IRA, despite it being common knowledge that he stood at the highest echelon. 

Anthony McIntyre is among former Republicans who, after years of prison and personal sacrifice, find the Good Friday compromise a slap in the face.  Among his extensive interviews on the Boston College project, were lengthy sessions with Dolours Price and Brendon Hughes.

Ms. Price and her sister Marian, in their teens, were loyal Republican soldiers and were implicated in the London Old Bailey Bombing.  Marian and Dolours, known as the cute mini-skirted “girl bombers,” protested their incarceration, as political prisoners, in England.  They commenced a hunger strike and were ultimately, and cruelly, force fed.  Eventually, they were transferred to an Irish prison, and ultimately released when the trauma of the force-feeding left both the sisters severely anorexic.  Both were released for medical/humanitarian reasons.

Dolours is remembered for her eccentric, boho personality.  She seemed to many, better characterized as a “theater person” and not a political radical.  She married Irish actor Stephen Rea and had two sons.  Intimates of Dolours Price and materials from McIntyre’s interviews make it clear that Dolours never recovered from her days as a loyal soldier.  She drove a number of friends, perceived to have betrayed the Republicans, across the border, knowing full well that their fate was execution.   Price’s marriage ended and she struggled with alcohol and narcotics until her death in 2013.

Another disaffected, ex IRA higher up was Brendan Hughes.  Dolours Price was a Godmother to Carrie and Anthony’s children and Brendan Hughes was a close friend.  Hughes, like Price, was dogged by PTSD and embittered by what was perceived as the “Good Friday sellout.” Hughes’s Boston College interview, jibes with Price's, and implicates Gerry Adams as the shot-caller who ordered a number of murders, although Adams continues to vehemently deny any connection with the IRA whatsoever.  After Hughes’s death, his Boston College interviews were compiled into the book Voices from the Grave by Ed Moloney and this, as well as Dolours Price’s interview renews interest in the McConville murder. 

While McIntyre has assured interviewees that the interviews would be sealed until death, a legal battle to subpoena all of the interviews ensues and puts McIntyre, given his guarantee to participants, in great jeopardy.  Another consequence of the parsing of these interviews, is the arrest of Gerry Adams but the arrest is spun as pure political retribution and Adams is released.  Radden Keefe paints nuanced portraits of all of the players, and ultimately, in addition to concluding that Gerry Adams ordered the murder, is able also to solve the mystery of the actual trigger-puller who felled McConnville, the widowed mother of ten.

The first time we visit Carrie and Anthony is in Belfast.  As driving on the left is already challenging enough, we are in the habit of renting a car with automatic transmission when we visit.  Now automatic transmission is a bit more readily available and we can rent a cheap, piece of crap car, but decades ago, most of the automatic shifting cars on the Island, are Mercedes.  I still remember the frisson of excitement I feel when Anthony navigates a circuitous route through Belfast, as it is asking for trouble to drive a Mercedes down the Falls Road.

Carrie and Anthony have left the North now and reside outside of Dublin in the suburb of Drogheda.  Their home is warm with touches of Southwestern flourish, a nod to Carrie’s So Cal roots.  Anthony does a load of laundry for us and carefully folds our t-shirts and underwear. Unfortunately, this is the final load their washer can crank out and we take him to purchase a replacement.  Say Nothing notes Anthony’s burliness and predilection for self-effacement and Carrie’s doggedness and clear outsider/insider perceptions.  Radden Keefe writes clearly and accurately about people I’ve known for a long time, perhaps only giving a bit of short shrift to Anthony’s gentleness and Carrie’s quick and acid wit.

This week Gavin Newsome closes the death chamber at San Quentin.  The Times publishes an infographic of all of the formerly condemned who habituate Death Row.  Their ages, crimes and lengths of incarceration are noted.  With some exceptions, most of the crimes deemed deserving of capital punishment were committed by those in their teens and early twenties.  Another recent news item I read with interest is the improbable parole of former Manson protégée, Leslie Van Houten.  I visited Van Houten several times many years ago.  Manson died on death row, despite having never even being suspected of committing a murder.   His crime was ostensibly “brainwashing.”  Leslie, who did indeed commit a heinous act, killed no one, yet it is likely that she will die behind bars.

Some of the rash decisions and impulses I indulged in while in my teens and twenties, still are consequential in my life today but none have jeopardized my physical or emotional freedom.  But looking back I see how vulnerable I was.  Could I have been suckered into the LSD fueled unconditional love that Manson proffered?  Would I have taken up arms or even committed murder for a cause that I perceived as greater than myself?  Few of us are completely unscathed the consequences of youthful impulse and it is self-serving, as well as a gift to generations of impetuous youth, to nurture compassion and forgiveness.