Young Mary O’Donnell stopped pedalling her bicycle as she approached the bridge. She dismounted and wheeled the bicycle down over the boggy soil to the edge of the river. She plonked down on a flat rock on the river bank, discarded sneakers and socks and rolled up her jeans so she could dangle her feet in the cool quick-flowing water.
Gazing up at the old three-arch bridge she mused to herself as to why it was called New Bridge. This was a mystery to her as it must be at least 200 years old. She giggled to herself, ‘I suppose it was new once!’ Mary was itching to cross that bridge on her bicycle, but it was more than her life was worth if her mother found out. She had crossed it occasionally on the bus with her mother to buy meat at O’Neill’s Butchers or to visit Auntie May. On these occasions she was invariably told to ‘go play in the garden, Mary, while we grown-ups have a chat’. They spoke in low voices, almost whispers, even when she was out of earshot. As soon as they heard her coming in the back door, they would raise their voices and start talking about ‘the dreadful weather’. Did they think she was stupid?
So many mysteries and so little understanding. As she swished her feet gently in the river, Mary took stock of what were mysteries and what were facts. She knew for a fact that the O’Neills and Auntie May lived in Knockmore across the bridge, and that Knockmore was in the ‘Republic’ while her home town of Newtown was in ‘Northern Ireland’. The mystery was – what was the difference? The people in both towns spoke the same way, didn’t look much different and wore the same sort of clothes. She knew from snippets of news on television that there was a ‘war’ going on in Northern Ireland, and she had seen soldiers with guns on the street sometimes, but they usually smiled at her. She knew that all the girls at her convent Primary School were Catholics, because you had to be a Catholic to go to that school. But some of the girls and boys on her street went to a ‘Proddie’ school, and she wasn’t allowed to play with them. Sometimes they called her names, but she didn’t care. It was fun to shout back at them using phrases she’d picked up from the older girls in her school, like ‘Proddie bastard’. Just as well her Mam never heard her!
On certain days in July every year, she wasn’t allowed outdoors at all, even though it might be a beautiful summer’s day. She wasn’t even supposed to peep through the curtains when a band of men dressed in funny clothes came marching down their street playing bagpipes, flutes and drums. She thought it was great fun, and sulked when told she could not go out. She wanted to skip along beside them and clap her hands to the music. Her mother had said they were evil men. Now, she knew absolutely that the devil was evil . . . but these men looked so funny they couldn’t possibly be evil. Oh! ’twas a mystery!
She broke off her day-dreaming when she saw Mr. O’Neill the Butcher crossing the bridge towards Newtown in his small delivery van. She knew it was his, because the paint on the right front door was badly scratched. That was strange, because she knew for a fact that he never visited Newtown. Something must be wrong. She grabbed her small bicycle, slipped wet feet into her sneakers forgetting her socks, clambered up to the road, and tried to follow the van. Mr. O’Neill’s van did not turn left into her street, but continued further before turning right. A dilemma! If Mary’s mother were to find out that she had cycled to Spencer Street (a Protestant area), her bicycle would be locked away for weeks. On the other hand, if she didn’t cycle to Spencer Street, she’d never find out why Mr. O’Neill was going there in such a hurry. She would have to find out what was going on! She pedalled as furiously as her small legs allowed and swung into Spencer Street. She saw Mr. O’Neill leaning out of the van window and throwing a parcel of meat into a garden. It landed right on the doorstep. Then an extraordinary thing happened – it exploded with an enormous BANG. Mary fell off her bicycle with the fright. Mr. O’Neill did not seem to notice anything unusual, because he continued driving, very fast, up the street and around the next corner. The front door of the house had blown in, and people were rushing out of houses screaming. Mary picked up her bicycle ignoring her grazed knees and hands, and pedalled back home.
Through sobs and mounting hysteria, she tried to tell her mother what she had seen. Her mother hugged Mary and kissed her forehead telling her she was all right, not to worry. When the sobs subsided and her wounds were bathed and dressed, her mother made two cups of cocoa and they sat on the couch together, her mother’s arm around her shoulder.
‘Darlin’ – you’ve had an accident and got a bad fright. Now you know perfectly well that Mr. O’Neill never crosses the bridge to Newtown, so it couldn’t possibly have been him. Lots of people have vans like his – yes, yes . . . but lots of other people have scratches on their vans too.’
She cupped Mary’s face in her hands gently and looked into her eyes. ‘Mary, love, you must never talk about this to anyone – no, not even your little friend Fiona, and especially not Daddy. It will be our little secret – just the two of us. Promise?’
Mary felt as if a dark shadow was enveloping them. She felt a bit frightened, and very sad. The cone of silence.
‘Promise’ she nodded.
irishetch 