I have written three novels that deal directly with issues of class, nationality and identity, check the link at the bottom for more information. Look out for an update on the publication of my new novel ‘Shanghai’d’ the second in the Red Detective Trilogy. ‘Shanghai’d’ is a story that spans generations and continents as we follow families who to this day, search for loved ones and the truth following the expulsion of Chinese Seamen from Liverpool after WW2.
My writing is very much in the spirit of the famous Stephen King quote, ‘Fiction is truth wrapped up in a lie.’
For me, this means narratives can reveal emotional truth without recounting actual facts. We can replay experiences and remember incidents as they happened but change names, dates, and characters. In this way, reality appears alongside or wrapped up in the fiction.
In the following pages, things will be a little different. This is part memoir, recounting actual conversations with my dad, excerpts from my blog, and snippets of fiction from my books or new passages imagining my father’s experience.
Reality, fiction, a memoir, a blog, together they represent the totality. My writing, like our lives, exists in politics. All our lives are influenced by what governments do and how people respond determines our place in history. I am stirring the pot of ancestry to see what bubbles up to the surface: my dad’s prison sentence, and my brother’s military records. Will these be the first steps on a long road? Or a short stroll into a historical cul de sac? What I can promise is a bit of murder, mayhem and madness, some real, and some fictional, can you tell the difference?
Of chains and pains.
“Come on, get yourself out here.”
The bangs that followed the shout, rattled the door.
Jack rolled over, his bruised body complaining. Jeez.
The drumming was coming from inside and out. Memories of flying fists and boots of the night before came back as he was dragged out of bed.
~
I used to think people who searched for ancestry were missing something in their lives, looking for meaning or importance in what had gone before to substitute for the lack of satisfaction or substance in what existed in the present. There are of course many other motivations, but one element of most of them is;
Have I become that person? In order to know ourselves better we seek to know where we came from, to better know who we are.
I imagined my dad leaving Wicklow. He told me he was marched through the town in chains before spending a year in Mountjoy jail in Dublin.
~
The chains chafed his skin; his wrists and his ankles stung with pain while his face burned with defiance, not shame. He dragged the chains along the street, the scraping and clanking competing with the laughs and curses of his neighbors. Market day and the busy streets had another attraction besides the sheep and produce for sale: the man in chains.
They started in Strand Street down on the Murrough, in among the workshops and working riverside, over the bridge and up the incline into town. They passed Halpin’s monument and followed the road left toward the square dominated by the statue of a 1798 rebel in granite, Billy Byrne, beyond him the Goal.
~
There has been a creeping connection with my dad since his death. I know what you’re thinking: regrets that I should and could have asked more while he was alive, and although understandable, it wouldn’t be true. I did ask, and my dad didn’t want to answer. There were things in his past that he didn’t want to, or couldn’t face.
So, am I betraying his wishes? Maybe; it depends on what I find, but this is not only his story. His disconnect with Ireland was passed down to me and my siblings. Four grandparents from, and aunts and uncles, with loads of cousins in Wicklow, but no faces, names or memories; no emotional connection. Even though the family links were as deep as they go, they meant nothing. All form and no content. Later, I had a political connection to Ireland, reading its history and following its many struggles, but this was the opposite side of the coin, all politics, no family, and again no emotion. This bi polar approach was cover for hiding the most traumatic tragedy that involved Ireland, politics and my immediate family.
I have to lay the groundwork before diving into what I do know. My starting point, if you like. My dad, marched by Garda through Wicklow town on his way to trial in Dublin and his incarceration in the ‘Joy.’ Or the ‘Jangle’ as Brendan Behan referred to it in his song, ‘The Auld Triangle,’ the name repeated by a young character from my second book, Across The Water.
Dublin was busy, and the streets were full. Women and workers, everyone had a purpose. He looked up at the unusually blue sky.
‘Av ye got any change, mister?’
Paddy looked down at the boy, about ten; his big eyes darted around, ready to move on to the next mark if this one went nowhere. ‘Do ye know The Shelbourne Hotel?’
‘I do, mister, av ye got change?’
‘Here, you can have a shilling if you get me there.’ Paddy dug around and produced the coin.
The boy snatched at it.
‘Not so quick, when we get there.’
‘Right, ye are, follow me. A shilling now, you promised.’
‘I know, yeah, a shilling.’
The boy’s hair was curly and uncontained. He wore jeans and a blue anorak underneath. Paddy could see a thick woolly jumper.
‘Come on then, what are yeh waiting for?’
‘Alright, take it easy.’
‘What are you doing out here asking for money? Shouldn’t you be at home?’
‘Nothing there, mister, me mam’ll be out at her mates, have you got fag?’
‘No, I haven’t. What about ye da?’
‘He’s in the jangle.’
They walked side by side, the little fella’s chest out, arms swinging, commanding his space on the street.
‘What’s the jangle then?’
‘The old jingle jangle my da calls it.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home.’
‘Mountjoy, he’s doin’ a year.’
‘What for?’
‘I dunno, summat or other, that he got caught for, that’s why yeh usually go.’
‘True enough,’ Paddy agreed.
Like the unnamed boy, I don’t know what sent my dad into the ‘jangle’. I only know the story he told.
The history of my mum’s side of the family is uncovered a lttle later. Both families come from the same time and place. The only difference is on my mum’s side there is a Scottish connection, somewhere in the dim and distant past.
Anyway, my dad’s family appeals, partly because they came from nothing, and all I know at this starting point is that my dad’s dad came from further West than Wicklow. Which isn’t difficult because Wicklow town is as East as Ireland goes.
My dad had brothers and sisters, Muriel and at least one other. I can’t remember her name, in the best tradition of Ireland where family secrets are known by everyone, but spoken by no one. The younger sister was the daughter of the older sister, and the grandparents brought their grandchild up as thier own late baby.
I met both on a visit to Wicklow with my dad in the late 90s. I organised that trip for my dad. Not remembering the names is indicative of my lack of attention at that time, to the whole question of ancestry. We were not connected.
My dad had cut his connection to Ireland. My mum’s connection was broken by her birth in Liverpool and her distance from her mother. There would be other reasons for the break, but I don’t want to get ahead of the story.
I organised the trip to Wicklow for my dad and his four surviving sons in the 90s because he was due to undergo heart surgery, and there was a risk he might not survive. So, a trip home after decades away seemed like something he might enjoy. Although he was nervous and anxious about his reception, which goes back to how he left, in the end he enjoyed it and was well received. He left Ireland that weekend in much more comfort than I did on my last visit.
~
It was a symphony of pain or a discordant melody; I’m not sure which is closer. As the bus bounced and jolted through the Irish countryside, pain played its tune.
Bass notes were constant and rumbled and vibrated while the higher ones danced and darted here and there; my left arm was immobile. The hand trembled, and fingers moved, but the arm was surrounded by an electric field that sent shocks if I tried to move it in any direction.
My right hand busily mopped the blood from my brow. The flow had stopped but drops built before breaking free to run down my face, only to be dabbed away by my right hand again.
The ghostly reflection in the darkness of the coach window showed a red arc spread from above my left eye and across my forehead. The white of the wet wipes and tissues, kindly given to me by an Asian lady at the bus stop, had disappeared, so it was hard to tell if the cuts were still bleeding or if my bloodstained tissue could absorb no more.
I had set out fifty minutes earlier to walk into town for the airport bus. It was an early flight, so it made sense to catch an overnight coach and get some sleep on the way. But sleep was now impossible as I willed on the digital clock above the driver. It was not that minutes seemed like hours, just that pain had a time of its own and the journey was measured in its language, the ebb and flow of shocks and stabs.
I was just a hundred meters from the bus stop when disaster struck, light rain, an uneven surface, and darkness combined to send me falling arse over tit, and my forehead and shoulder connected with concrete like an old friend after a long absence… whack.
Two and a half hours later, I was delivered to Dublin airport, the last to get off the bus, and with the help of a trolley for my bag, I made it into the terminal.
After the bus ride, I knew I would never make it through the airport and onto my flight, so I asked the only airport employee around at that time, a cleaner, for help. A cleaning supervisor, a policeman, and two ambulance men later, I was unequivocally told that hospital was the only option.
The Gard asked where I fell. When I explained it was two and half hours and one hundred and forty kilometers away, he said I must have ‘some set of stones’- or, in hindsight, an excess of stupidity.
After the fall, I was dazed and bleeding, unable to get to my feet. It was 1.15 am on a quiet street. Whether through pride or embarrassment, I turned down the first offer of help, thinking I would be ok in a minute. Five minutes later, unable to stand, a passing car stopped, and this time, I accepted the help to get me to my feet, but brushed aside the need for stitches, and offer of a lift to hospital, saying I had a bus to catch.
It’s hard to bring the reality of the Palestinian people into the routine of our lives. In relating my pain, I am conscious of those who are suffering so much more and for whom help, even when asked for, is unavailable. If solidarity and humanity mean anything– it is providing that help.
Over 24 hours later, battered and bruised with a fractured shoulder and full of painkillers, I eventually made it to Liverpool.
It is hard to relay the intensity of pain, but can you think back to the most painful experience in your lives as you read this quote from the BBC:
Doctors across Gaza have described operating on patients without anaesthetic, turning people with chronic conditions away, and treating rotting wounds with limited medical supplies.
“Because of the shortage of painkillers, we leave patients to scream for hours and hours,” one told the BBC.
Let’s make sure one day, we can silence the cries of pain and celebrate with the Palestinian people as they reach their destination.
End the occupation. Fee Palestine.
To be continued…. make sure you don’t miss the next installment by leaving your email below;
Jack Byrne 
Leave a comment