God's Day

Hope you’re okay over there in Belfast. It looks terrible on the news.

My English pen pal was the daughter of my mother’s old best friend in New Whittington. I was reading this, her latest missive, up a tree in our back field. I’d scratched my knees on my way up. I was always scratching my knees. My knees wore permanent dark brown patches, as though they’d been mended badly. My English pen pal, who was two years older than me and about to go off the rails with drink and boys, sounded very concerned.

Petrol bombs and riots. Men starving themselves to death. It must be awful.

From up here, you could see our washing line, my mother’s dresses blowing beside the tea towels. You could see our patio and coal bunker and the expanse of the back field and the tennis courts hardly anyone played tennis on and Dalriada Hall. Lectures over for another year, the students had all gone home. Apart from the occasional security guard doing his rounds, dressed in black like an Enid Blyton policeman, I had the campus to myself.

It’s so hard for us here in England to understand – murdering each other over religion.

The sea winked at me through the tree’s foliage. Mostly Belfast Lough was grey to match the sky (the clouds so low they’re sittin on the ground, lamented my Great Aunt Donnell, my Irish granny’s sister, whose real name was Margaret, though nobody called her that). ...