Click here to download this story as a PDF file

We got to know each other well, Wilson and myself, after so

long together, in the darkness of his resting place. I liked him

immediately, after I had rubbed his bones together, and he had

appeared, Genie-like, sitting cross-legged in front of me. He

was young - young as I was, about seventeen - and wearing his

army uniform of khaki brown. He had a fresh, innocent face,

slightly pale, with a slender mouth and delicate, pointed

features; he had smiling blue eyes in whose depths I saw

compassionate starlight, and bright blonde hair that hung in

lank strands over his forehead. Wilson was a handsome young

fellow; his body appeared lithe and graceful, no weight of

gravity appeared to pull him down. His voice had the most

beautiful English lilt to it as if it was always on the verge of

song; I heard soldier's marching songs humming at the back of

his throat. He told me all about the Boer campaign and his eyes

darkened as he spoke. Sometimes I thought I saw a tear. He was

glad, he said, to be at rest, far away from Africa. I apologised

for being the one who had torn open his tomb, pulling away the

crumbling stone to hide myself inside; but he said that it

didn't matter; it was a long time since he'd had someone to talk

to, and anyway he liked me. I could see that. With Wilson it was

like looking in a mirror; we were that close; we looked at each

other and we saw ourselves. We had an instant, intense sympathy

with one another. Wilson wanted to know what was going on "above

board". I told him and he said, "the world is a stranger place

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

now, than ever it was before", and let a low, dark, troubling

whistle escape him.

I told him. About the Bull. About the Minotaur. No, no, I

mustn't get confused; I don't want to go into that labyrinth

again... I've been doing too much reading here; the English

grammar classes are getting to me. The Bull was my father, that

was his nickname. My laughing uncle Jack loved to tell the

story. About the Protestant farmer with the savage bull and my

father ducking across the fields with the sledgehammer hidden

under his coat. "The English were gone, the English were gone,"

my uncle would laugh, "but some of the mongrel race were holding

on!" My father emerged at last into the field where the bull was

and revealed himself by slowly walking into the middle of the

field. The bull who was at the far end of the field turned and

snorted and pawed the ground. My father waited. The bull lowered

his head and ambled towards him. My father opened his coat and

held the sledgehammer ready. The bull began to trot, then to

run, his feet pounding the earth. My father lifted the

sledgehammer up. He was only sixteen. The bull charged; he

thundered towards my father, running faster all the time. My

father stood his ground. He was steadfast. The bull sprouted

wings and flew straight at him. My father resisted him like a

stone wall. The sledgehammer came down; crack! The bull's head

opened down the middle; its brains flew out and hit my father in

the face. Carelessly, he wiped the mess away. The bull was dead

at his feet. My father left a note, a signature on the side of

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

the animal: John Bull! It was a message for the farmer. My

father was a brave man. My father would destroy anything

English. "Get to hell out of here!" the note said. Weeks later

the farmer left for Lancashire; where Wilson came from. He was

better off there. The Bull had conquered him.

There were five of us: the Bull, my broken-hearted mother,

and the three children. I was the youngest. Pat was my older

younger than they were. I was born in nineteen-sixty two and so

was seven or thereabouts when all hell began to break loose and

the Bull found his mission in life. "Oh, if only I was in

Belfast or Derry now!" he would lament. "I'd break the bodies of

them fucking soldiers in two, so I would!" I knew all the

phrases of war before I knew what they meant: "the invading

army", "the savage foe", "the eternal enemy", "the bloody

brits", "those English bastards", and so on and so forth, until

those words were draining out of my infected ears like pus. Nor

was my geography perfect. Once my father, having pulled my ears

for some stupidity, demonstrated on a creased map where Belfast

and Derry, constant source of his sadness, lay; and where we

lay. We were as distant as North from South quite literally; the

North was up there, its eminence apparent in the high corner of

the map, and we were nowhere except in the dead centre of

things, where a pinprick had savaged the tiny lettering of a

townland, and left a tiny hole through which our lives had

fallen. "Those bastards! Those Northern bastards!" my father

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

moaned hopelessly. And I repeated, "those bastards, those

Northern bastards!", just to appease him. He put his arm around

my shoulder and squeezed. He could be a kind man when it suited

him.

My father, the Bull, was an example of living history; he

had it all at his fingertips as if it was part of his own

experience. In the evenings he pounded the table and spoke for

hours on end about the "English Treachery", about "Queen Lizzy",

about "that fucking bastard Cromwell", and "the Protestants who

had ruined us". He spoke about "the plantations of Ulster and

Leinster", "the Battle of the Boyne", "the seige of Limerick",

"the Wild Geese", and "the Flight of the Earls"; about "the

Invasion of the French", "the Penal Laws", "the Famine", "the

Evictions", "the Coffinships", "the Fenians", "the I.R.B" and

"the I.R.A."; also "Lord Leitrim, "the Black and Tans", "Home

Rule", "Partition", "Churchill and the War", "Red Hugh O'Neill

and Red Hugh O'Donnell", "King James and Sarsfield", "Wolfe Tone

and Robert Emmet"; together with "Roger Casement, Padraig

Pearse, Joseph Mary Plunkett", "Bunreacht na hEireann", "the War

of Independence", "the Civil War", and last but not least

"DeValera", whom he hated with a vengeance. The tears would come

to his eyes as he told how in the thirties, after he had

interned them in the desolation of the Curragh, DeValera, had

ordered his father and my grandfather to be shot, "for wanting

to free his own country, that was all, for wanting freedom; what

was wrong with that?"

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

And then, in his maudlin rage, we had the songs and the

poems: "Kevin Barry was a young man..."; "the sea, oh the sea!

Long may it flow between England and me!"; "Sean South from

Garryowen"; and on and on and on! I could recite dozens of them

for you. When my father was tired of singing he'd put on the

records: "The Wolfe Tones", "The Rifles of the I.R.A.", "The Men

behind the Wire." He had an old battered mono record player and

the only music that was allowed on it was rebel music and rebel

songs. Bursting with emotion my father would leave the house and

start sawing timber in the back yard, singing his songs and

shouting, "Up the Rebels" at the top of his voice. That was the

only entertainment we ever had. I only discovered the Beatles

when I came here, to prison. I always found it strange to

imagine a world which was not pointed like a compass needle to

the North. In our world, the Bull's world, we needed the North

to make sense of anything and everything. Without it life would

have had no meaning. No wonder that I too, before long, began to

think about the North, and to give it the place of honour in my

imagination. I had never seen it but little by little I began to

recreate it in my own mind, to piece it together bit by bit,

until it stood impressively whole and solid in front of me, as

impenetrable and unknowable as a tombstone; as strange and

mysterious as the lives of those English buried in the English

graveyard in Kilscreggan; lives forever shut away, and hidden

behind stone.

For some reason I was a disappointment to my father; he

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

called me a "slow, fucking eejit!" And, he used to say: "You'll

never be able to wipe your own fucking arse, that's for sure!".

I think it was because of my mother. I think I remember during

the first years of my childhood she was quite fond of me.

Cissie, poor Cissie, always said I was her favourite; but as I

grew older, and as if my father's wrath frightened her away, she

shrank more and more from me, until I noticed that she seemed

almost afraid to touch me or to address a single word that was

not a question or a command to me. In the end, I asked nothing

from her; I needed all my wits about me to keep the Bull at bay.

Strangely, my brother Pat, who shared a bedroom with me, got on

great with my father. They were drinking buddies and would come

rollicking home late at night, to sit by the fireside and curse

the English. "They took our Land!" my father would say. Pat

would nod. "Aye, Aye!" he'd answer. "They took all we had!" my

father would say then and Pat would nod again and answer, "Aye,

Aye!" "They left us with nothing at all!" my father would say

next and Pat would nod his head more vigorously and answer,

"Aye, Aye!" And my father would spit bitterly in the flames and

crush a fallen, smouldering ember with his foot. "I'd crush them

under my foot like that!" he'd say, pointing at the crushed

ember. Pat would nod, consider the ember a moment, then answer

pensively, "Aye, Aye!" The great, fucking fool! Later Pat,

unable to find his own bed, would fall into mine, and get sick

on top of me. If I complained, he'd warn me, "I'll kick the

fucking shite out of you, laddie! I'll kick the fucking shite

out of you!" And he had done once or twice; such kickings, till

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

my arse bled shite all down my legs. "I'll take the fucking

sledgehammer to you, one of these days!" he used to whisper in

my ear before I slept. "I'll get you first!" I used to promise

myself, and dug him as hard as I could with my elbows while he

slept.

When I was about ten, Pat left school and went to work and

live "someplace else". Up North I think it must have been, but

everytime I asked my mother said, "Sssh, don't ask!" and so I

stopped asking. My father was happy though. "I'm so proud of

Pat," he would say. Once he lifted me on the edge of the table

and said, "I want to be proud of you too, Sonny!" It was one of

his rare moments of gentleness. He pushed with his hands towards

me as if he was pushing some invisible, intangible object out of

the way. "We're going to push the fucking English out!" he said.

"We're going to push them fucking out!" And then with a single

blow of his hand he sent me reeling back over the table-top,

scattering all the delft arranged for tea, and almost sending me

into the fireplace. "Just like that!" he roared and laughed.

"Just like that!" I lay on the broken heap of delft waiting for

my mother or Cissie to lift me up but neither even looked to see

if I was alive or dead. At ten, I still had no idea how the

politics in my house worked. They didn't dare help me; they

didn't want to know. I was marginalised, excluded, shut out,

hated... To be in anyway associated with me was to invite the

wrath of the Bull. "I only want to teach him a lesson!" the Bull

explained. "I only want to make him strong!" I was not

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

convinced. I suspected the Bull's hatred of me had a much deeper

root. "How will he make his way in the world if he can't be

strong?" I was weak, terribly weak. I picked myself up off the

ground as I had done so many times before. I brushed the

fragments of broken delft out of my clothes, and then, quick as

lightning, my head down and my arms over my head in case

something was thrown at me, I shot out of the room and away from

him. I ran and ran and ran, until I felt safe. I'd climb a tree

somewhere and shelter in its branches and wait for nightfall. I

had to be back before nightfall. The Bull demanded it. If I came

back later than that, he would roar and bellow, and half-kill

me. "I was a dirty, little, disobedient bastard!" he would say

as he clattered me good and hard. That was what I was! "A dirty,

little, disobedient bastard!"

I was little, by any standards, but no one picked on me at

school, not my fellow pupils, not my teachers. In fact, I

inhabited a strange kind of isolation hemmed in by wry smiles

and cold silence. I was left to myself; I did not participate,

and was not invited to participate in any of the school

activities. The rest of the kids avoided me, I see that now.

"What do you expect?" Cissie used to say brutally. "Do you

expect them to like you? You!" She was unhappier than I was

because she couldn't get a boyfriend. Poor Cissie! I was not yet

old enough for sex to be a problem so I adapted more easily to

my permanent state of quarantine. I amused myself during class

and I was ignored totally. During the breaks I climbed over the

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

stone wall at the back of the school and examined the tombstones

in the English cemetery. They were nearly all soldiers, their

graves covered in moss, their tombstones tangled with thick,

winding creepers. The names were nearly always illegible. By

diligently scratching with a sharp stone I uncovered the names

of one or two. That's how I found Wilson's name; Private Wilson,

born in eighteen eighty one, died in nineteen hundred and seven;

a short life, a quick one, and no doubt a sad one. In the middle

of it he had fought a war and had seen death flower up bloodily

out of the scorched earth. He told me this afterwards and much,

much more. "So that was you scraping up above?" he asked me with

a sweet sarcasm. I nodded, but he didn't know it at the time, I

was only passing the time before the school bell called me back.

Clang! Clang! Clang! If I felt like it I ignored it. I never

understood why all the other kids rushed when they heard it as

if it was an alarm bell signalling a fire somewhere. No one ever

protested when I came into class late. I was ushered gently by

some concerned teacher to my desk, as if I was a sheep being

gently pushed into its pen. My book was opened, spread back, and

laid on the desk for me. I was not expected to read it; no, it

was simply there as a prop, a prop to my existence. School was

nothing more than theatre as far as I was concerned, a matter of

appearance only. The reality of it I don't think I ever grasped;

except once maybe, when the Inspector called; and then, all at

once, certain things became clear. The Bull of course, was at

the back of everything. For a little while, back then, I

suspected that the Bull was in charge in some way. He ruled the

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

world. He made the laws. He said what was right and what was

wrong. And dare you, just dare you, transgress! The Bull would

have none of it and no excuses. The Bull was intransigent and

implacable; and the Bull was totally, irredeemably, unforgiving.

The Bull would never, ever, ever, just let you walk away. Just

like that.

The Inspector's name was Mooney, and he had a face as big

and bright, and bald as the Moon's. His tragedy was an

overbearing officiousness he had got from God knows where. The

Bull soon set that right, in the only way the Bull knew how.

Some people just don't understand the way of the world; it takes

violence to open their eyes; and violence, the Bull had aplenty.

The Inspector acted as if he was Lord and Master of the school:

he insisted on being left alone with us and expelled our teacher

from the room; our kind, our knowing teacher. "I want to ask you

some questions," he said, facing the classroom; and then he

began, circling the room like a hawk, with a long, yellow cane

grasped tightly in his hands. I was soon singled out; the other

boys, their voices trembling, had answers to the questions put

to them, but I, I retained a resolute blankness and could only

blink my eyes haplessly at him. He pointed the cane at me. "What

is wrong with you, boy?" he snarled. I didn't know. None of his

questions meant anything to me. "I don't understand what you're

saying!" I protested. The cane came down with a vicious snapping

sound on the cover of the desk. "Sir!", he roared. "Whenever you

talk to me, address me as Sir!" One of the other boys tried to

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

warn him, tugging anxiously at the edge of his jacket. "Please,

Sir..." Mooney's face turned blood red. "Shut up! Shut up!" he

cried. Then turned to me again, his victim. "I want to benefit

from the immense knowledge this young man has gained from

attending this glorious institution funded, at no cost to

himself, by the Government of this Nation!" He smiled at his own

eloquence. None of the other teachers had ever treated me this

way; I had never, ever been asked a single question about

anything; anything! Who was this Mooney? Was he English? "Are

you English?" I asked him quietly. He stepped away from me in

astonishment; his cane raised high, vibrated in the air above my

head. "Do you think you can come in here and just take over?"

The cane dropped slowly to his side. I could see him puzzling

over that one, but I wasn't finished. "Do you think there's no

price to be paid?" I sounded just like the Bull in one of his

threatening moods, but the poor sod, Mooney, never knew. He

didn't see the warning signs. The cane was raised up again. "Out

with your hand!" he commanded. I held my hand out. Whack! The

cane came down. It stung like a nettle stings. I didn't care. I

was the Bull's son. The Bull had made me strong. Mooney could

kick the shite out of me and I still wouldn't care. "Again!"

Whack! Whack! "Again! Again!" Whack! Whack! Whack! I defied him;

I pushed him to greater extremes; I held my hands high under his

chin, inviting him to whack, whack, whack harder. He was an

absolute madman I had decided. He was a walking fucking mistake

and he was going to pay for it. I held my hands higher. Whack!

Whack! I invited him into my trap. He deserved no pity. I felt

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

no pity for him. None at all.

When he had finished, he slumped exhausted and out of

breath over my desk. His clothes were all dishevelled as if he'd

just come through a thorny bush and thick beads of sweat tumbled

down his big, white Mooney face. "All right, then! All right!"

he said breathlessly. "Sit down! You've learned your lesson!" I

sat down. All day I sat with my hands opened on the desk in

front of me. They were red and blistered. My teachers were

horrified. They wanted to bandage my hands but I wouldn't let

them. "Don't tell your father," one of them whispered. I said

nothing. In the corridor I passed Mooney in deep conversation

with the Principal. "I won't leave the school!" he was

insisting. "I'll apologise to the boy! But the Minister has

asked me to spend three days here and I won't leave for any

reason!" The Principal called me. "Mr. Mooney has something to

say to you." Mooney coughed awkwardly. "I am sorry!" he said.

"But you must realise you're here to learn! It's for your own

good! It shouldn't matter who your parants are! Do you

understand?" I nodded. "Good," he said. "Now, run along!" The

Principal caught me by the shoulder as I turned away. "You heard

Mr. Mooney say he was sorry, didn't you?" I nodded again. "Mr.

Mooney is very, very sorry!" he repeated. "And so am I!" I

nodded and turned away. Neither of them had looked at my hands.

They were swollen like footballs and were a fiery scarlet

colour. They hurt so much I couldn't hold the straps of my

schoolbag and had to carry it on my shoulder; it fell off on the

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

way home and I had to abandon it, books and all, to the rain and

mud-filled shore. I met Cissie. She cried when she saw my hands.

"Daddy will kill him!" she said over and over, and I could tell

that, not knowing Mooney, she was unreasonably sorry for him.

She bathed my hands in cold water when we got home. My mother

cried as well and then went to her bedroom; we didn't see her

after that for days. When the Bull came home I held my hands out

to show him. "Who did that?" he asked. "Mooney, the Inspector!"

I answered and he sat down to eat his tea. He never said a word

all evening, but sat by the fire looking at the flames. I think

he sat there all night. He was there first thing in the morning

for breakfast looking in the flames still, silent as a rock. I

let Cissie wrap my hands in some bandages. They felt much

better. "Is he going to school today?" she asked the Bull. He

nodded. "Take him!" he said. On the way we recovered my rainsodden

schoolbag. In school the teacher helped me lay the books

out on top of the heater to dry them, and opened his own books

in front of me on my school desk. Then we waited. Everyone was

waiting. The atmosphere was tense and frightened. No one made a

sound; everyone was listening. We heard Mooney's voice from the

classroom next door. "Why doesn't he be quiet?" one of the boys

said out loud. "Why doesn't he go away?" one of the other boys

asked. The teacher shuffled uneasily behind his desk. His eyes

watered nervously and he wiped the edges of them with a

handkerchief. "Sssh, boys!" he told us. "It's nearly time for

the Angelus!" He looked down the row of desks at me. "Would you

ring the bell for the Angelus?" he asked me. I had never been

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

asked before but I was glad to do it; bells, I've always loved

the sound of bells, big and small. I lifted the bell in both my

bandaged hands and carried it out into the school corridor. The

teacher nodded from his desk and put his watch back in his

pocket. It was twelve, exactly. I rang the bell. Clang! Clang!

And again. Clang! Clang! And as I rang I saw the large hall door

of the school open and an immense man, big as a mountain, step

inside: the Bull. Clang! Clang! I summoned him. Clang! Clang! I

called him forth. Inside the classroom the boys stood intoning

their prayers. I let the bell go silent. Their eyes swivelled

towards me and opened wide when they saw the Bull. They fell

silent. The teacher came to the door of the classroom. "Please!"

he pleaded with the Bull. "Is this Mooney?" my father asked me.

"No," I answered, and with a smile I could not prevent, I

pointed to the next classroom. "In there!" I said. "He has a

big, white, round face on him!" My father nodded and advanced to

the next classroom. He looked through the glass and then stepped

inside. There was no voice raised in terror or in pain. We heard

a thud and a crunch and then another crunch, and then a loud

crack and another crack. One by one the boys left the room their

faces deathly white. "Get your coats from the cloakroom and go

home!" the teacher ordered them. "Say nothing of this to your

parents!" Five minutes later the Bull emerged dragging a

senseless Mooney on the ground behind him. I had never seen

anything like it. Mooney was unrecognisable. He had been smashed

to bits. He was a bloody, featureless mess. My father hung him

on a coat hook just inside the hall door. "Leave him there!" he

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

ordered the assembled teachers. "Don't touch him! Leave him

there until I come back and take him down!" He put his arm

around my shoulder. "This is my child!" he said. "And nobody,

nobody is allowed to treat my child like an animal!" I was proud

of him then; the beauty, the power of his violence. I could see

the fear in all their eyes. I felt a strange and terrible sense

of triumph. They were all, all of them, afraid of him; and

because they were afraid of him, they were afraid of me. I was

suddenly conscious of my own power, a power that had been hidden

from me so long. Mooney, God bless him, had demonstrated to me

my own vulnerability; the Bull, may his soul rot in hell, had

shown me my own strength.

Cissie when I told her on the way home, sat down on the

footpath and cried. "Why can't he leave us alone?" she sobbed.

"He's ruining our lives!" I put my bandaged hand on her head.

"But Cissie!" I countered. "Don't you see? You'll never have to

be afraid of anyone! No one will ever dare touch you! Ever!" Her

eyes were swollen scarlet like my hands. She looked so pathetic.

"You're right," she said. "No one will ever touch me! Ever!" It

was many, many years, not until Cissie came to visit me in

prison, before I realised that she was terribly, hopelessly in

love that time; and that every smashing blow the Bull delivered

to the world was a blow also to her hopes and her dreams of

love. I like to think that what I did, I did for her sake as

much as my own. When we got home there was no Bull. "He's gone

drinking with his buddies," Cissie said. "He'll tell them all

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

about what he did! They'll have a good laugh about it!" She was

restless all evening, going into every room, pulling all the

drawers open as if she was looking for something. Then she went

outside to the shed in the backyard. She was gone for about

twenty minutes, then came back and called me out. "I know you

think your father's a great fellow at the moment," she said

quietly. "I want you to take a look at this." We went into the

darkness of the shed. There was a sack full of old rubbish just

inside the window. Cissie shoved her hand in and pulled

something out. She held it up in the light from the window.

Despite its thick coat of detritus it glimmered and glistened in

the light. "This is what he used!" Cissie said. She took a solid

piece of wood and put it in the angle of the window. "Stand

back!" she warned me and raised the hammer over her head. She

smashed the hammer down on the wood. The wood cracked in the

middle and tore apart full of jagged splinters. I don't know

why, but I began to cry. I think the noise of the wood breaking

must have frightened me. Cissie wiped the tears away with her

fingers. "Do you think Mooney deserved that?" she asked me

softly. "Do you think anyone deserves the likes of that?" She

pushed the hammer back down into the sack. "Now, go to bed!" she

said. And though it was still bright, I went to bed and curled

up under the blankets. I didn't sleep. Cissie had smashed that

hammer into my imagination and I could see now, over and over

and over, what had happened to Mooney. It was like a film shown

over and over in my head. It was inside me, the violence was

inside me, and I couldn't shut it out. No matter how hard I

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

tried. I could have torn my eyes out, and my brain, and my

heart, and it wouldn't have mattered. The violence was set on

slow motion action replay for the rest of my life and it was too

late ever, to do anything about it.

We lived in the country about five miles from the nearest

town. Where we lived was known locally as Kilderry. Our house, a

big old farmhouse with fields around it, had been inherited by

my father from his people. In my father's family there was only

himself and his brother Jack, who we never saw anymore, anymore

than we saw Pat. I never knew anyone belonging to my mother's

family. I always thought they must live far away. It was Cissie

who told me, when she came to visit me here in prison, that they

had always lived on the far side of the town, and that they

would have nothing to do with the Bull nor he with them. The

Bull, in any case, needed nobody; he resembled an island of

solid rock in a sea of chaos. Even his "friends" when they

called appeared distanced from him by what I thought was

respect, but now I know it was fear. The chaos around Bull was

the fear he inspired in every one who knew him; and you could

not know the Bull and remain unafraid of him. He demanded, by

his very presence, that you be afraid. I had been afraid of him

all my life, and so had my mother, and Cissie, and I bet Pat and

Uncle Jack were afraid of him too; I bet they were, deep down!

After about nineteen - seventy the Bulls friends came to

the house more and more frequently. They always came at night

fall, bringing the shadows with them. There was about six of

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

them, all chat and laughter, and shaking hands with "the

missus", and "how's the little girl?", and "how's the little

boy?" Fuck the lot of them from a height, that's what I say! We

were banished from the room and they stayed to have their

conversations. Sometimes I caught a word, - I was curious, you

see -, it might have been the name of a place or the name of a

man, but it usually meant nothing to me. Only later did some of

those names begin to click and appear significant. For example,

the name Herrema, when it came seeping through the floorboards,

like air escaping from a punctured tyre, definitely meant

something the first time I heard it; and meant a lot, a lot

more, before I ever heard it said again. And there were other

names which in the light of day, glimpsed in a newspaper, might

leap out at me with a gasp of recognition and sudden sorrow.

Those shadowy men plotting in the twilight of our farmhouse

kitchen were gradually becoming clearer and clearer to me. I

began to know them. I began to understand their nature, and to

understand the importance of steering clear. Of keeping out of

their way. Of having as little as possible to do with them. I

had to plot and conspire all on my own to live independently of

them; to live independently of everyone, because at twelve or

thirteen I was beginning to be afraid and suspicious of

everyone. Everyone except Cissie, that is. Cissie was different.

Cissie was the flower who had grown up out of the dungheap. God

bless you, Cissie, wherever you are! Without knowing it you gave

me something to live for!

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

I don't know what the Bull did or what he worked at. He was

a farmer but ours was a miserable farm with just a few cows and

a donkey and nothing more. There was money, not much money, but

enough; I never knew where it came from. Every Friday I saw my

mother sneaking it out of the tea caddy on the mantlepiece as if

she was afraid someone might be looking at her. On Fridays she

went into town and bought all she wanted; her eggs, her rashers

and sausages, her pudding, her potatoes, her bacon and cabbage,

her chops, her bread and butter, her milk. Then she put the

change from the money back in the caddy on the mantlepiece. I

never heard her mention money to the Bull and I never heard him

ask if she had enough. She did with what he gave her, that was

all; no one ever asked for more of anything from the Bull. The

Bull had money of his own; I don't know how much, but he had

enough to drink with. He went to the pub almost every evening,

on his own since Pat had left, but seldom came back in the

rousing good form he did with Pat. Usually he was in a sombre

mood, and tight-knit, as if he was thinking about something

intractable, something that would not yield its secrets. He used

to sit and read his paper, "An Phoblacht", pulling it out of his

jacket pocket and rifling its soft, flaccid pages. Sometimes

he'd look at me with undisguised contempt from over the edge of

the paper. "When are you going to get sense, son?" he'd ask.

"When are you going to grow up?" He waited for an answer. "I'm

sick and tired of waiting for you to become a man!" If I was

lucky he'd hand me the paper and say, "Here, read this! You

might learn something!" If I wasn't, it was Gaelic football

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

time! How high could he kick me in the air before I burst? Once,

my head hit the ceiling, and broke the lamp. He blamed me. He

pulled me by the hair. "You little bugger!" he said. "You don't

even know how to say you're sorry!" I always left the window in

my bedroom open in case I had to run in there and throw myself

out of it. I had to do it once or twice, flinging myself

lengthwise under the raised sash, the Bull grabbing for my

ankles. In some moods I was sure he was capable of killing me.

Sometimes I thought he wanted me dead. Now, I see he never

wanted to kill me; he only wanted to torture me, that was all.

that, I was suddenly much, much stronger than I had ever been

before.

The Bull had his interests. He liked his Irish, that

gibberish he sometimes spoke when he was drunk. He liked his

football, the loud, cheering, Sunday matches. He liked his

liked that tuneless diddley - da Ceili shite too. He liked his

bloody paper. He liked his fucking drink. He liked his shadowy,

bastard friends. And he liked his rotten greyhounds. There were

two of them: Paddy and Mick. He coursed them regularly. They

lived in a huge wire enclosure at the bottom of a field close to

the house. They were lean and vicious creatures and had no

respect for any living creature, only the Bull. I hated the

sight of them. The Bull used to threaten to throw me to them.

"You'd soon see what they'd do with a little piece of shite like

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

you!" he'd say. I already knew. Every month or so the Bull came

home with a cage full of live rabbits. Every time I had to help

him cart the cage into the field where the greyhounds were. The

Bull didn't need help but he demanded it all the same. I'd had

to help him ever since Pat had left. The wire lid of the cage

was lifted off and the rabbits would try to jump out. My father

would grab one of them by the ears and swing it in over the high

fence. The savagery that followed was indescribable. There was

nowhere out of that thing. It was hell for little rabbits: it

was absolute fucking hell! "Well, what are you waiting for?" my

father wanted to know. He pointed into the cage. I had to pick

one of the rabbits out, pulling it up by the scruff of the neck,

and hold it in my hands. I could feel its heart beating through

its fur. The poor thing was terrified. But what was worse, much

worse, was that I had to do it; because, I thought, maybe the

poor thing expected mercy from my hands, and I could give it

none. I held it, and felt its heartbeat, and maybe it hoped

against hope for release which would never come. What came next

was the cruellest moment in the world for any living thing. I

threw the poor beast high in the air and watched its little legs

struggling uselessly. I never made any mistake: for it to fall

back in my hands would have been crueller still. The rabbit

tumbled over the top of the fence and down. Down, down into

hell. I watched. "One of these fucking days, I'll throw you in

over that fence just like them fucking rabbits!" the Bull said.

In front of me the poor thing was torn to pieces. I saw its

entrails ripped out, its still beating heart throbbing on the

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

ground. "You can do it now, if you like, Bull," I said under my

breath, not caring whether he did or not. Once or twice he

grabbed me and threatened to throw me in but I just didn't care.

I was beginning to understand. The Bull was finally getting

through to me. I didn't count. I had never counted. I wasn't

worth shite: not worth shite! And the Bull had me under his boot

and could do what he liked with me. "You fucking little

traitor!" he used to say. "You dirty, little, disobedient

bastard! I'll show you!" And I knew that he would, show me, for

as long as I let him, just as he had shown me the greyhounds and

the rabbits. "The greyhounds aren't bad," he said on the way

back up to the house. "It's just their natures! What can you do

with nature?" Each time the rabbits came Cissie crawled into my

bed because it was the furthest away and filled her ears with

toilet tissue and bundled handkerchiefs. And then silently, oh

so silently, she cried, and cried and cried, and cried. And her

little heart beat in her little chest like a rabbit's heart in

the hands of its executioner.

Every six weeks or so Paddy and Mick were taken to the

meet. I had to go along to help the Bull. The Bull had a little

red Renault van and the dogs were bundled into the back of it.

The dogs were muzzled but even so there was a wire fence between

them and us. They were his dogs, but even the Bull didn't trust

them. At the meet they were kept muzzled until the last moment.

The Bull stood at the edge of the enclosure watching the dogs

being brought in. Paddy and Mick always won. Maybe that's where

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

the Bull made his money, I don't know, but I never saw him show

any emotion as they edged ahead of the other chasing greyhound

to snap their teeth first on the hare's helpless flight. The

Bull didn't seem to enjoy the chase or the kill in the way the

other men did, or maybe he enjoyed it in another way, a less

obvious, a more subtle way. His satisfaction at the same time

was tremendous. It seemed to increase his stature and make him

look larger than he already was. He would glance around and

accept the nods and winks of congratulation with a grimace of

contentment. The Bull's dogs had done it again and what else

could be expected? The Bull went to collect his dogs. I stayed

in the crowd; it was the only place to hide. Once, someone

offered to put me on his shoulders to see better, but I could

see as well as I wanted to from where I was. All around me faces

shone with strange happiness as the flight of the hare was

rounded and driven into the earth. The greyhounds had it all

their own way. It was easy for them. There was no way out as far

as the hare was concerned. No way out of the circle of raised,

cheering voices, or the thirst for the kill. All around me, the

faces shone with strange happiness, and I could follow every

moment of the chase in the oblivious, entranced eyes of the

lookers-on. I dreamed I even saw the flesh torn in their eyes

and the blood spurt in hot jets out of the bottomless darkness

of their pupils. Then the arms raised up, the raucous cheer, the

blinding gap-toothed smile, the fixed stare of complete

fulfillment. Who were these men gathered in a dreary field to

witness this brutal sacrifice? What priesthood did they belong

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

to in which the savagery of life was ritualised by dog and hare?

How was their genuflection to the Universe, the mangled,

bloodied hare, different from that of other men? Were they proud

of their own truths? Or was it all an act? Did they go home to

cry in their beds like I did, or like Cissie did? "Your mother's

made you too bloody soft!" my father used to say, before he

drove his boot through the cleft in my backside. Was that what

they were afraid of? That accusation? That retribution? I would

have liked to believe it. To have believed it would have

redeemed them all, not that they sought or wanted redemption.

Only for me... Only for me... I wanted to believe in some

goodness, somewhere. I could not see it in the Bull. I could not

see it in these men. I could only see it in Cissie and in the

soft-hearted tears she cried. Not one tear of remorse was ever

shed at the meet, where real men would surely have laid their

faces on each others shoulders and wept until all their hearts

were emptied.

But tears would be wasted on a couple of dead hares. On the

way home in the red Renault van, with Paddy and Mick sniffing

through the wire at our exposed necks, we listened to the News

on the radio. The soldiers had killed people at a march in

Derry. The Bull had to stop the car. At the side of the road he

knelt in the mud and covered his face with his hands. He roared.

He roared so loud, as if the greatest imaginable pain had swept

into his heart, and he could not contain it. I thought he was

dying. I hoped he was dying. I turned the radio up. The dogs

began to howl. I turned the radio up louder. There was the sound

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

of gunfire like crackling static. The Bull rolled on his back as

if he had been shot. But he wasn't dead or bleeding... On the

radio a voice said: "Good Christ! We're just being shot down and

slaughtered! They're killing us for no reason! What on earth is

going to happen to us at all? Where will it end? Where will it

end?" I thought if ever I was going to run away from the Bull,

this was my moment. The open road stretched before me. I saw a

signpost with the word "Dublin" on it. I knew I could walk the

distance. I wanted to go. I really wanted to go! But then I

thought of Cissie. Cissie was all I had in the world. I couldn't

go without her. "Come on, Da, come on!" I said. "Let's get

home!" It was beginning to rain. The Bull began to stir. "Don't

turn off the radio!" he warned me. All the way home we heard the

news. A lot of people had been killed, just shot down. I thought

the Bull was going to pull the steering wheel out of its socket.

"We'll get them back for this!" he said. "They're going to pay

such a fucking price as they never imagined! Just let them wait

and see!" When he got me home he dragged me into the house and

threw me on my knees by the fireplace. My mother jumped up off

her chair. She was terrified, I could see that. None of us had

ever seen the Bull in such a fury. Cissie pulled me away from

the Bull's kicking feet. My mother stood between us. "For Jesus'

sake, Bull, what's wrong?" I thought the Bull was going to

flatten her, but he didn't. He swirled around the kitchen table

his fists up in the air, roaring like an old cow calving. Then

his fists came crashing down, right in the middle of the table.

The table crashed to the floor under the impact of the blow;

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

fragments of shattered wood flew everywhere. I began to cry. I

began to cry, I couldn't help it, for the dead hares. The Bull

knelt in the middle of the broken table; he knelt in front of my

mother with his arms outstretched towards her as if he was

pleading with her for something. "The fucking Brits!" he

answered her quietly. "The fucking Brits, that's what's wrong!"

Cissie rushed me upstairs and into bed. I couldn't stop crying.

Outside, the dogs in the van were still howling. "Now, you just

shut up!" Cissie said, holding me. "Now you just shut up, do you

hear?" I didn't blame anything or anybody for my grief. I didn't

even blame the Bull. What was he to do with the rages he felt?

What was he to do with his anguish? I almost felt sorry for him.

It didn't last long, but I almost felt the only compassion I

ever did feel for the Bull. He was just the way he was, the way

he was made, and I guess there was nothing he could do about it.

All that anger, all that blinding rage, I guess he had to take

it out on someone. And, I guess, I was the best he had. He was

my father, and in a way, some way, I guess, he needed me.

The next night the shadowy men came at twilight and stayed

till morning. This time there was no restraint in their voices;

they could be heard loud and clear ringing through the rafters,

full of savage menace, overflowing with savage hate. They made

plans. I heard every detail; I knew exactly what they were going

to do; I became, though I did not want to be, their accomplice.

There was nothing I could do. Things were stepping up. We were

all about to be swept along by a tidal wave of history, of

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

force, of hatred, of death, and there was nothing any of us

could do about it. The next morning over breakfast nothing was

said by any of us; we hardly exchanged glances. On my way to

school I said to Cissie: "They're going to kill a man!" She

slapped me hard on the face. "You keep your mouth shut!" she

warned. "Or the Bull will cut your tongue out!" I cried but I

could see she was crying to. In the end she sat down on the side

of the road and held her hands over her face. The tears streamed

out, thick like jelly, from behind her hands. "I want to get

away from here!" she cried. "I want to get away from that mad,

fucking bastard! That fucking Bull!" She stamped her feet in the

ground. "Don't!" I attempted feebly. "Please, don't!" She stood

up. "You're useless," she said to me bitterly. "Just like the

Bull says, you're not able to wipe your own fucking arse!" She

shook her fist at me. "Leave me a-fucking-lone!" She screamed.

And I ran from her as fast as I could with her screams stabbing

in my back like knives.

School was almost like home for the next two weeks. They

ran up black flags. They took us to Mass, the church was packed

with people, the whole town was there, and we had to mourn the

dead, whether we liked to or not. Then, they said, all those

weak men who were afraid of the Bull, afraid of me, they said,

there was going to be a March, a big March through the town,

like a funeral. It was like the roof of the world was caving in

and despair was falling through on top of us. This had a strange

effect: suddenly I had friends at school; the other boys talked

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

to me. They said: "Those fucking Brits!" and looked at me

meaningfully, until I signalled my approval. One or two went

further: "The I.R.A. are going to kick them out of Ireland now,

aren't they?" To which I replied, suitably ambiguously, "We'll

wait and see!" None of their friendliness tempted me to any real

revelation, though I could have told them a lot of things to

make their hair stand on end if I had wanted. After all, the

shadowy men to these innocents were a complete mystery, but I

had heard them speak, and to me they were no mystery at all. But

I held my peace; times were rough; there was danger in the air.

One morning I saw the Bull packing the back of the van with

hurling sticks. He was leaving for the day. My mother had

prepared a bag of sandwiches and a flask of tea for him. He

threw them on the seat beside him. He never said, Goodbye, but

drove away with a look of intense determination on his face, the

same sort of look he had when he came to the school to punish

Mr. Mooney. Later in the day, we saw where he had gone to. It

was on the telly: the crowds around the British Embassy, the

Building in flames, the tattered, burning Union Jack, the Guards

under seige by men with hurleys. I thought I saw the Bull,

hacking his way through the Guards. They might as well have

given him the key to the Embassy; nothing could stop the Bull

when he got going. He did good work that day. The Embassy was

gutted. The next day one of the boys in school said to me: "Hey,

did you see your old man on telly last night? Beating the shite

out of the Guards he was!" I never even thought about it. I just

hit him square between the eyes and he went flying backwards his

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

arms and legs trailing in the air. It was the first time in my

life that I ever hit anybody and I liked it. It felt good. I

stood above him, ready to hit him again when he got up, and that

felt good too. "Shut fucking up!" I roared at him. "Or I'll cut

your fucking tongue out of your head!" And that felt good too.

He climbed up off the ground with an astonished, frightened look

on his face, and that felt good too; he was afraid of me, I

could see it, he was afraid to look at me, the way I sometimes

was with the Bull: he was scared shitless! He crawled shamefaced

back to his seat and huddled there crying. He was weak and

I had exposed him. He was weak and I had put him in his place.

The Bull didn't come back for over a week. We thought maybe

he'd been arrested. I hoped maybe he'd been shot, killed even;

but there was no hope of that. Dublin wasn't Derry or Belfast:

the Bull was safe, the soldiers didn't shoot people in the

streets there! Even my mother didn't know where he was, but none

of us had much worry for him. The Bull could take care of

himself, no one better. He'd come back; we all knew that. In the

meantime, despite a mood of anxious foreboding, and the

knowledge that our peace would soon be shattered by the Bull's

return, we enjoyed a week of strange and lovely tranquillity. We

blossomed! I could see it in all our faces, but especially

Cissie's, she became almost plump and there was a new freedom

and grace in her movements. She came and went as she pleased

also, flitting in and out of the house at all times, like a bird

let out of her cage. Once I followed her and discovered another

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

source for her inner happiness. Not far down the road a car had

pulled into a gateway hidden with low branches and dense leaves.

Cissie disappeared into this car and into the embraces of

someone waiting inside. I climbed into the tree above them and

edged out till I was positioned over the windscreen. I thrilled

at what I saw; the symphony of roving, roaming hands, indiscreet

and indelicate; the wild and innocent disarray of flesh, with

all its sticky consequences; the flowering wilderness of young,

half-mad, love, bursting with sadness and desire; the blunt,

simple beauty of palped skin and tearing mouths. The Bull would

kill her if he found out; there was no doubt about it. Kill her

and kill him, whoever he was. Later when Cissie got out of the

car she could hardly walk and she staggered home along the

roadway, her bundled nylons trailing desolately from the pocket

of her coat. When I arrived home five minutes later than her she

looked at me with dreadful suspicion. "Where were you?" she

said. "Out feeding the greyhounds!" I told her. "Where were

you?" I asked her. "Out walking!" she said, and went straight to

bed, to dream.

At the end of the week our peace was shattered, as we had

all known it would be, but not by the Bull. It was first thing

in the morning; we were still sleeping in our beds when they

kicked the door in. I heard my mother screaming and crying, and

then Cissie screaming and crying, and the sound of furniture

being overturned on the floor. I thought, maybe it was the Bull,

but there were too many voices and none was his. I wrapped the

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

sheets and blankets around my head and hoped they would not come

as far as me. But they did. I heard them tramping on the stairs

and the door of my room being kicked open. I pulled the blankets

tighter around my head but they were pulled away. I was dragged

by the arms out of bed and dropped heavily on the floor. I had

two ribs broken after. I saw my bed overturned, my drawers

ransacked, my furniture dismantled. One of them knelt over me

and leering menacingly at me, questioned me: "Now, you little

cunt, you tell me where everything is!" As he spoke I heard two

gunshots. I began to cry. "Don't kill, Cissie!" I cried.

"Please, don't kill, Cissie!" But the Guard only smiled and

rubbed my head. "Don't worry," he said. "We don't kill people,

only dogs and animals!" It was the first time the Guards had

come and they left the house looking like the tailend of a

jumble sale. Cissie said that they had always been afraid of the

Bull until now; something really terrible must have happened or

they wouldn't have come. Cissie said the Guards didn't want to

come, that they had been ordered to. "You could see in their

faces they were afraid!" she said. "If the Bull was here they

were in for it!" The Guards found nothing; they left emptyhanded.

One of them left a message for the Bull with me. "Tell

your father," he said, "the next time he brings them dogs

coursing I don't think he'll find much running in them!" Inside

the wire enclosure both dogs lay dead, shot through the neck. I

was delighted. The Bull had left a couple of live rabbits in a

cage in the shed in the backyard. I took them down now to the

dogs and put them inside the enclosure. I brought Cissie down to

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

see it. The rabbits sat beside the dead bodies nibbling at the

bloodied grass. We both laughed at the good of it. Cissie said,

"C'mon, I'll show you what the Guards were looking for. They

couldn't find their own shoes if they were asked to look for

them!" We walked across some fields and clambered through thorn

bushes. In a corner of a field, right in under the ditch, Cissie

stopped and pulled away some sods of grass-covered earth.

Underneath there was a shore grating which she pulled up. There

was just enough room for us to squeeze through. I don't know how

the Bull ever got down there. Below us there was a tunnel we

went through on our hands and knees. It was dark. I was

frightened. "Cissie, where are we?" I complained. Cissie stood

up in front of me. We had arrived in a larger chamber, a cave,

completely dark. Suddenly a caged bulb hanging over my head came

alight with yellow brightness. Cissie played with a switch in

the wall. "Can you believe it?" she said. "They even have

electric light down here!" All around us there were wooden

boxes. Cissie lifted the lid off one. "Look!" she said. I saw

bits and pieces of blackened metal. "What is it?" I asked.

"Rifles!" Cissie said. She opened another box. "For explosives!"

she said, showing me a small instrument like a clock. She

pointed at another box. "I won't open that box!" she said.

"There's gelignite in it! It can get on your hands! The Bull

would find us out and we'd have to be killed then!" She seemed

suddenly afraid. "Let's get out of here!" she said, and switched

the light off. We got down on our hands and knees again and

crawled along the tunnel. Cissie lifted me up to grasp the shore

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

grating and pull myself out, then scrambled out herself. "Quick!

Let's get back to the house!" she said. We ran across the

fields. My mother had tidied up the house; she had righted all

the furniture and swept up the broken delft. She was sitting at

the table listening to the radio when we got back. She had a

strange look on her face as she listened. She looked as if she

wanted to cry but as if she wasn't able to cry and I realised

that I had never, ever seen her cry. I wanted her to cry. Cissie

sat at the table and then I sat beside her. We all listened to

the radio. Someone had been killed and dumped on the side of the

road. It was some Politician; even now, his name won't come back

to me... I suppose his wife and children still remember him.

He'd been tortured and shot through the back of the head. They'd

carved a message in his arm: "Brits Out!" But he wasn't a Brit;

he was Irish. "They've gone too far!" Cissie said, shaking her

head. "They've gone too far, now!" On the radio they said he had

a wife and three children, just like the Bull. They said, he'd

been killed because he'd been too outspoken and had always stood

up to the men of violence. The men of violence do not like

people to stand up to them, I knew that; it's a question of

pride, they lose face if they don't do something. That poor man!

They'd taken him to the Border and shot him for having had too

much to say. Then they dumped his body on a roadside in the

North, on British soil. Everything they did, those shadowy men,

was full of symbolism. Somehow, they always managed to carve a

mystical poetry out of their own violence and murder. It was as

if they were sacrificing to unknown Gods who ruled them and

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

every body was a gutted, bloodied beast, and every roadside an

altar. Death, death, death, that was all they were able to churn

up out of their souls, death and more death, and they scrawled

their slogans across history like schoolboys writing obscene

graffiti on toilet walls. And this had gone on for how long,

without respite, without redemption? Hundreds and hundreds of

years! No wonder my mother was out of tears: can anyone cry more

than a lifetime's? I doubt it; I doubt it very much! I was

wasting my time waiting for my mother's tears to fall. She was

sitting like she was in a trance. There wasn't a stir out of

her. Cissie and myself left her to her own inner thoughts and

dreams, unknown to us. We went back to bed. It was only about

ten in the morning but we were both exhausted after all that had

happened. We slept all day. We missed school. How could anyone

expect us to go to school on a day like that?

In the evening I had to be taken to the Doctor with my

ribs. Cissie took me. We were lucky. While we were away the Bull

came back and found the door kicked down and his greyhounds

dead. When we came home the dogs' enclosure had been flattened

and the dogs buried. Bull was nowhere to be seen. My mother told

us to go to bed straight away. We went there and clung

desperately to the silence till morning. It was years later

before Cissie told me all that happened. The Bull had gone to

town with his van and his sledgehammer on the passenger seat

beside him. The Guards when they saw him coming had bolted and

barricaded the door of the barracks but the Bull smashed his way

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

through it. The dozen or so Guards who were inside jumped from

the windows to escape him. The Bull ran amok inside and broke

everything. In the end he set fire to the barracks and waited

for the flames to catch and build before he left it. He stood

outside and watched it burn. The Guards kept their distance.

"The Bull was afraid of no one!" Cissie told me. "But everyone

was afraid of the Bull! Even the Guards were afraid of him!" The

Bull turned to the watching crowd behind him and addressed the

Guards. "If I ever find who the bastard was who killed my dogs

I'll string him up by the intestines to the nearest lamppost!"

And the Bull meant it; I don't think the Bull ever said a word

he did not mean. He came back that night in a savage temper. He

pulled me out of bed and began to shake and hit me. "You let the

Guards in!" he said. "You let them kill my dogs!" Cissie saved

me. She threw herself between us. "No! No, he didn't!" she

screeched. "He fought them! He fought them all he could!" She

pulled up my pyjamas to show him. "Look at the bandages! They

broke his ribs! They beat him! He fought but there was too many

of them for him! He was on his own!" She screamed the last

sentence as if it was an insult she was hurling in the Bull's

face. Maybe that's why he hit her; I think he took it, what she

had said, for an insult. I think he thought she was accusing him

of leaving me alone to fight his battles. And that sort of thing

just wasn't acceptable to the Bull. So, he hit her. He hit her

hard in the face. She went flying. She was a light thing,

Cissie, and there was very little of her to anchor her to the

ground. She tumbled across the room like a thrown doll and fell

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

looking dazed and disjointed on the wooden floor. I had never

seen the Bull hit either Cissie or my mother before. I think, it

was part of his code of conduct never to hit a women; he could

make their lives a misery all right; he could tyrannise and

brutalise them, but he prided himself on never hitting them.

Until this time. I saw a look of pain on his face as if he

realised his pride was shattered now forever. He looked away

from me as if to hide his expression; he looked away from

Cissie. Cissie was struggling to sit up on the floor. Her face

looked funny, looked strangely twisted and distorted. She

touched her jaw and cheek and it obviously hurt because she

began to cry and whimper. I just thought it was funny; I began

to laugh. Her face looked as if it had had an extra dimension

smashed into it; looked like some warped piece of painting in

which the bones are broken and reassembled all wrong. I laughed

and laughed and laughed. The Bull rounded on me like one of his

dogs turning round a small, pathetic hare. But for the first

time in my life I was not afraid of him and for the first time

in my life I had the better of him, without having to fight him.

"Hey, Bull," I said, pointing at Cissie sprawled on the floor.

"Hey Bull, you hit a woman!" His hands fell emptily by his

sides. He looked as if he was going to cry. Then, without saying

a word, he turned and left the room. I helped Cissie up. "You

little fucker!" she said. "What are you laughing at?" But the

words came out all funny and I only laughed more. "You know," I

said to her, "the Bull isn't all he thinks he's cracked up to

be!" I'll never forget what I said then. "Someday I'm going to

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

make him pay for everything! Someday, he'll be sorry!" Cissie

was crying with the pain in her jaw, I don't think she heard

what I had said, but I had heard it! Heard it as if it was

coming from outside of me, heard it like it was a third person

in the room speaking those words. I could hardly believe it, my

own hubris, as if for the moment I was immune from the Bull. I

shouted downstairs. "You better get her a doctor! She needs a

doctor!" And the Bull did it. He went back out into his little

red van and came back a half-hour later with the only doctor he

could find. I recognised him immediately and saw his hands

tremble as they reached out to touch Cissie's face. I saw her

tears too tremble onto his fingers and roll down their slopes

into the palms of his hands. And I saw the way his hands closed

on her tears and squeezed them tight as if they were something

precious and he would never let them go. I was rapidly beginning

to discover more about what was hidden in our small house than

anyone else living there could have imagined; and I was

determined to keep it secret. Cissie's heart, I decided, would

not be safe in any hands, if not in mine.

The morning of the March in town the Bull produced a bundle

of black rags from the back of the van and flung them at me.

"Get into these!" he ordered. I pulled the black clothes on;

they were a couple of sizes too big for me, but with the trouser

belt drawn tight they didn't look too bad. The black beret the

Bull shot towards me like a floppy, cloth frisbee, was the

problem; it fell persistently over my eyes, and looked like a

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

burnt and blackened pancake on my head. I looked ridiculous.

Cissie laughed when she saw me but not when the Bull produced

some clothes for her too. "What do you expect me to do with

these?" she protested. Then she dressed herself slowly,

deliberately, trying to make the most of her impromptu uniform.

She looked o.k., but maybe the skirt was a little short; you

could see her knobbly knees. She pulled her thickest pair of

black tights on and it made her legs look better; then in front

of the Bull she began to march to and fro in the room swinging

her arms. The Bull was amazed. "What the fuck are you at?" he

roared. Cissie smiled at him indulgently. "This is what you

expect from me, isn't it?" she asked him sweetly. And continued

her march with more energy and vigour. "Istigh! Isteach!" she

barked, like some lunatic soldier in some lunatic army. The Bull

was red in the face, but I could see, he didn't know what to do;

everyday now we seemed to regain some of the territory he had

established over us. We were pushing the frontier back; and it

had all started that time the Bull had shown weakness in front

of us, that time he had hit Cissie. For the moment he could not

think what to do to quell our defiance; the Bull was at a loss;

he was terribly embarrassed. But still we knew our limits, and

in most things, we did what he wanted; the violence of the Bull

could never be discounted or taken lightly; it was as inevitable

as it was unpredictable. We sat in the red van beside him;

Cissie sat on my lap. She felt warm and under her black skirt

and blouse there was a smell of sweet perfume as if her skin was

wrapped in wildflowers. The Bull sniffed unpleasantly but I'm

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

sure he never noticed anything like that; anything like the

scent a woman might wear. As we approached the town we entered a

stream of traffic and there were more and more people walking

until we were part of an enormous crowd heading for the centre

of town. Once in the town the Bull shunted the van through the

crowd and down a narrow roadway and into the wide yard of what

looked like a disused garage. There was about two dozen other

black-shirted creatures waiting there, friends of my father's,

the shadowy men and their shadowy children, like sitting crows

waiting for a dustbin to be put out. The Bull formed us into a

tight group then marched up and down in front of us, reminding

me of Cissie earlier, to demonstrate the type of stance and

attitude he wanted from us. "Remember you're soldiers!" he

reminded us. "Be proud! Ireland's cause is our duty!" I wanted

to laugh but they all looked so stern and serious around me; I

couldn't believe they were taking it so seriously; the kids were

all behaving like well-regulated, good little soldiers. And off

we went! We marched back down the narrow roadway, twisted round

in the Main Street, and strode determinedly down into the town

Centre. The crowd fell asunder on either side of us. I could see

the mixture of awe and respect on their faces. I could see that

they did not admire us, but that they were afraid of us all the

same. They stood back; they moved to one side; they looked at us

and then they looked away. Nobody laughed, as I had feared, at

my ridiculous pancake beret. I began to think that if it wasn't

ridiculous then I couldn't be. I began to take myself seriously.

I began to be in awe of myself. I strode ahead forcefully. We

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

marched down the town. Our shoes made a loud stamping noise on

the road. Our unison, unpractised and unrehearsed, was

remarkable. I couldn't understand it, how before we even reached

the end of the narrow road leading from the garage, our arms and

legs were swinging perfectly together. We marched as one, we

felt as one. The pride of the others invaded me. It was a heady

feeling. I felt as if I was one of an elite, as if I was one of

a handful. I tightened my face to stop from smiling. I felt

strangely giddy. I felt as if I was floating on air; as if I had

become part of some tremendous, charismatic centipede whose

movements controlled mine. I was not myself; I was more than

myself; I was better than myself. I had become a soldier. And I

was gliding through history on hobnailed black leather shoes.

Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! We swung through town, stamp! stamp! stamp!

and joined the mainstream of the march. The immense crowd opened

out to let us into its heart. We propelled it along. Soon the

whole crowd was marching with military intensity and fervour.

The air and buildings around us vibrated to the noise we made.

Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! Ahead of us the Brass and Reed band began

to play. I recognised the music: "A Nation once Again!" One of

the Bull's favourites. That music infected us. We began to

stamp! stamp! stamp! with even greater energy and to swing our

arms and legs wider and further. I felt completely dislocated as

if my arms and legs were suddenly unattached from my body and

flying all over the place in impossible formations. I began to

sing... I began to sing! "And Ireland free, will one day be, a

Nation once Again!" The Bull looked back suspiciously at me from

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

the head of the group, but then I saw his mouth opening and

shutting on the same words as my own. And then the others began

to sing! It was a wonderful feeling of togetherness. We were

like some fateful Greek Chorus intoning the future: the entry

into the labyrinth; the unravelling of the clue; the battle with

the monster; the victory. We marched straight into the town

square and positioned ourselves in the middle of it, in front of

the memorial for the 1916 fallen. My father stepped forward and

pulled a long sheet of paper from his pocket. He began to

proclaim. My eyes were fixed on the sky above the square; a grey

sky full of floating cloud. I watched the seagulls whirling.

There was storms at sea when you saw the seagulls inland, I had

been told. There was storms at sea then as my fathers voice

raged inland. I heard his words only intermittently, I

recognised the slogans: "British Colonial Imperialism!",

"Occupied Territory!", "Surrender and Withdrawal!", "Peace with

Justice!", " Thirty-two county Republic!", "New Ireland!", "New

Future Together!" His voice rang loud and clear, and full of a

strange and bitter melancholy, like the voice of some aged poet

intoning the sad and ageless poetry of his people. When he

finished the silence around him, and around us, was palpable. On

a raised platform at the back of the square I saw the

politicians and priests of the area waiting for the Bull to

finish. The crowd too were waiting expectantly to see what we

would do next. The Bull delivered the coup-de-grace. "About

Turn!" he ordered with quiet authority and we wheeled round in

perfect harmony and strode away from the awestruck, timid

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

thousands who were gathered round us. Behind us the place where

we had stood remained empty as if the crowd was afraid to

infringe on territory we had marked out as our own. There was no

doubt about it; we were men and women apart; we were different;

we were alien and strange to them and they were alien and

strange to us; our lives were divided. We marched away from them

and they watched us go. We marched up through the deserted

streets of the town. It began to rain as it always does. Let

them stay and listen to their Priests and Politicians, I

thought, let them get wet! We would soon be safe and dry. We

turned down the narrow roadway again and marched into the

disused garage. We dispersed without a word. We shook hands

only, my father doing the rounds of the shadowy men. My hand was

warmly shook by all of the other youngsters; they sought me out.

My father looked with quiet pride on me. Cissie sneered

contemptuously. I began to feel contempt for myself. My earlier

euphoria was rapidly dissipated. My clothes looked depressingly

black. My beret looked like a pancake again. I felt ridiculous.

Cissie caught me by the hand and pulled me towards her. We sat

back in the red van, with Cissie on my lap again. My father was

silent. The roads all around were silent and deserted. Cissie

leaned with her arm around my shoulder and her hair against the

side of my face. I felt her lips against my ear. "My fucking

feet are all fucking blistered!" she whispered bitterly. "I'll

never be able to walk, ever again!" And inside my own shoes,

tight and hot, I felt my own blisters rise, and prepare to

burst.

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

That was the last time I ever felt pride; nothing that

happened afterwards brought me anything but pain and

humiliation. We were on, and had always been on, the slippery

slope to some imminent conclusion. It all must end somewhere, I

told myself. Things can't go on forever. But the Bull used to

say, "Things will get worse before they get better!" And if that

was true things would never get better; how could they? Things

would always get worse. Until the End. And no matter what the

Bull or anyone else could say I knew the End would eventually

come. It had to. It couldn't be avoided. It would take the form

of death, if nothing else, but it would come. And so I could

afford to be patient and I waited, certain that the Bull's

ranting and raving would one day stop, some way, some how... God

only knew! For the moment the Bull was intolerable. He was worse

than ever. We avoided him like the plague. We hated the sight of

him. There would never be enough distance between us; I'd have

run a mile to get away from him; I only wanted to hear that he

was "gone" and never that he was "here". We all felt the same

way. We hated the Bull. We'd have liked to have seen him dead.

Cissie particularly. She had no freedom. Once a month she

concocted some reason to go to the doctor, and I wondered what

other manoeuvres she employed to mislead the Bull and conduct

her secret love affair. Once, I found the doctor's car parked

down a side road but there was no sign of him or of Cissie. I

climbed up in the nearest tree to watch and wait but it got so

late I had to go home without discovering them. I couldn't

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

imagine where they were going on their lovers' trysts, and

couldn't imagine where in the area they could feel safe from the

Bull. How could they or anybody make love in such a state of

terror? How could they make love anymore than they could feel

free with someone, or something, like the Bull breathing down

the back of your neck? But Cissie was trying. She'd found some

corner of the Bull's maze where she felt safe, where she felt

free... When I found out where it was I couldn't believe it. I

couldn't believe that she had taken such a risk; but Cissie was

a desperate girl, and the doctor was a fool; and fools in love,

they hadn't a hope!

But Cissie was clever too, in her own way. Every time the

shadowy men called she was out of the house and they called more

and more frequently now. The Bull was away more and more often

too; sometimes for days on end. Cissie took every chance she

had. Once when the Bull went missing she called to the doctor

every day; I knew, because she always went on her way home from

school and I had to wait for her. "Play with the rainwater or

something!" she'd say. "I won't be long!" And she never was. Ten

minutes, fifteen minutes, never longer. I can imagine now the

hurried passion of those moments; at the time I wanted to

believe her when she said she was just, "leaving a note!" The

strangest thing is that it went on for so long undisturbed, that

hidden love, as if the Gods were conspiring with them, and would

protect them. Or maybe they liked the danger. I could believe it

of Cissie. I never got to know Doctor Curran, but there was some

spark in Cissie's eyes that showed she liked playing with fire.

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

I sometimes think it was just a game she was playing with the

Bull all that time. That that's all it was, a game, in which the

Bull was being made to look a fool. And then I think that maybe

as far as Cissie was concerned it was more than a game: it was

war. Cissie could have chosen to run away at any time but had

chosen to stay, to stay and fight. "I won't let the Bull get the

better of me!" I remember her saying, and that was her spirit.

No matter how strong or terrible that bastard was she would not

let him get the better of her. Everything the Bull did to hurt

her only made her more determined. She used to face him with a

glint of defiance in her eye which said, "You'll never win,

Bull! You'll never win, no matter how big or bad you are!" And I

loved her for it, because she stood up for me too. "Listen," she

said to me once, "we're in this together!" She fed me her spirit

of rebellion. "It doesn't matter how small you are, if you're

strong enough inside!" And I, the runt of the litter, loved to

repeat that over and over to myself. You can do anything as long

as you're strong enough inside! I was ready to do anything for

Cissie against the Common Enemy. Together we plotted his

downfall; together we prayed for his destruction. We rejoiced in

every misfortune that befell the Bull. When the news came that

Pat, our brother, had been arrested and interned we danced

together on the road to school. The Bull was apoplectic. His

veins stood out on his neck and forehead as if they were going

to burst. I could barely contain a cheer. Pat's picture was in

the paper. He'd been caught up North transporting a lorry load

of explosives. He'd been shot in the arm trying to escape. The

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

arm had been almost severed by a hail of army bullets. He was

lucky to be alive. We were sorry he was. The paper said he'd get

at least twenty years in jail. It wasn't long enough. It wasn't

long enough, unless the Bull was in there with him. And even

then it wasn't long enough.

The Bull took Pat's arrest badly. He never stopped,

morning, noon, or night, lamenting him. "My poor Pat!" he'd cry

out in anguish. "My poor son rotting in an English jail!" He'd

rattle the table with his fist and glaring into empty space

pronounce his own far-seeing judgement on things. "The English

have always stood with their muddy boots on the throat of the

Irish! And now it's Pat they have! God bless him and keep him

safe from all harm!" His benediction concluded he'd rise from

the table and walk out into the yard to contemplate the sunset.

God knows what devilment he was considering. When the shadowy

men came there were long, long discussions. That was when I

first heard the name of Herrema. It could have meant anything to

me at the time, it was foreign enough and strange enough to sit

snugly alongside Kalashnikov or Gelignite and not cause them any

discomposure. Herrema: it sounded like air escaping from a

punctured bicycle tyre, it hissed around the house, and around

my ears, for an entire evening; it reproduced itself in my

dreams and made my sleep uneasy, but in the morning when I woke,

it was gone. It had left with the shadowy men and would only

come back with them; that is, if they wanted it to. Sometimes

the names they used figured only once in their roll-call,

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

received a quick death sentence, and were never spoken again. I

could list a whole army of names that had passed through their

lips and then been annihilated. To be spoken on the lips of a

shadowy man was a hard thing for any name; better not to be a

name, not to have a name, or to have a false name; if any name

fell prey to a shadowy mouth it was finished. To be nameless, to

be perfectly anonymous, was the best possible destiny in the

world of the shadowy men. Herrema's misfortune was that he had a

name. Who can forget it? There is a name that will echo in

history and remain part of living history until the living are

all dead! Poor Herrema, once he was born with a name he could

not escape the shadowy men. They notice things like that. They

pay attention to people's names. Oh yes, they do! The point is,

if you can help it, be a nobody, don't have a name, cease to

exist, and then you'll be safe. And being safe is what everyone

wants isn't it? Leave us in peace, is what everyone demands,

isn't it? And so now you know. Take it from me. Be nothing on

earth! Then you'll be safe. And the shadowy men won't even know

you're there.

I don't know how long Herrema was in the underground bunker

before I discovered him. It was Cissie in fact who led me there.

The Bull was away at the time and she was flitting out of the

house in the evenings in her lightest summer frocks, despite the

cold, damp weather. I determined to catch her with the Doctor;

it was the only excitement I had back then; and so I followed

her. One evening I followed her so closely all she had to do was

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

turn around and she would have seen me trailing furtively behind

her but she never looked back. When I heard the Doctor's car

approaching on the road I ducked into the nearest ditch and

prayed he would not drive away with her. He didn't. He stopped

the car in off the road, where it was partially concealed by

hanging branches, and after five minutes of impatient fumbling

with each other, they left the car and squirmed through a gap in

the ditch into the nearest field. Cissie led him by the hand. I

crawled, snake-like, on the ground after them, my elbows

plunging again and again into hidden, disgusting cowpats. A hare

was disturbed by Cissie's feet and came bounding towards me. I

put out my hands to catch him but he leapt through them, his

feet touching my shoulders lightly, before he raced away. God,

I'd have loved to be able to move like that, the speed and

grace, the beautiful animal ease of it. Humans are clumsy by

comparison. Everything we do seems stupid and clumsy when you

think of how the hare is. My elbows stuck with clots of cowshite

I rowed faster and faster after Cissie and her Doctor. They

crossed two more fields and I still couldn't imagine where they

were heading for. Were they just going to lie down in the grass

somewhere and go at it? It looked as if they were, and then they

stopped. Cissie knelt on the ground and began to pull clumps of

grassy earth away. The heavy sods of earth came away easily in

her hands. I looked around to try to get my bearings and was

surprised to see the farmhouse just two or three fields below

me. This was crazy! Cissie was fucking mad to come here! Her

legs disappeared into the ground and then the rest of her body

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

slipped down. She was taking the Doctor in there -I couldn't

believe it!- with all the guns, all the explosives; that was her

love nest! And that was so like Cissie! I understand now... The

joy she must have had in fucking herself to happiness,

outrageously surrounded by the Bull's plastic wrapped and

impotent Arsenal! And the danger in every touch, in every

whisper, which might set off, with any carelessness, an alldestroying

explosion at any moment, and blow them both to

Kingdom Come. This was the still, cold, unbeating heart of the

Bull's domain; if he found them there, they were both dead, no

doubt about it, they were hung, drawn and quartered, finito; and

Cissie, for my money, had a nerve like nobody else ever born to

go down there, and take the only love and happiness she had in

the world with her! But not this time! She didn't go down this

time. She had just vanished into the hole in the ground when her

arms shot back up again and the Doctor pulled her up quickly.

Quickly she replaced the sods of earth, and pulled the Doctor

away. They ran back down the field as fast as they could. I

should have followed them. In the interests of furthering my sex

education, and of nurturing my limited imagination, not to

mention the terrific entertainment of that most stimulating of

human acts to behold, I should have followed them; but I didn't.

Was I mad or was I just thoughtless, I don't know. But I watched

and waited for a full half-hour and I thought if there was

someone down there they would have heard Cissie and would have

come out to investigate, but no one had appeared; therefore, I

concluded intelligently, there was no one in the bunker, and

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

Cissie must have been upset by a rat or a spider or something

like that. So, foolishly, I decided to go down in the bunker. I

hadn't been back there since Cissie had taken me down to see it.

Cissie had warned me: "Never go back! Never ever go back! The

Bull will kill you!" and I had believed her. I never had gone

back and that had suited her. Cissie had outmanoeuvred me at the

same time as she was outmanoeuvreing the Bull. I didn't like

that. It hurt. I needed to regain some of my loss of selfesteem.

And so I went down in the bunker. I lifted the sods of

earth away and placed them neatly and methodically in a pile

beside the shore grating, then I pulled the grating up. I

shuffled down into the hole and got down on my hands and knees

to negotiate the tunnel. It was larger than I remembered and was

easier to get through. Inside was complete darkness. I could see

nothing. I knew there was a switch somewhere. I tried to

remember where but I couldn't. I stood up in the larger chamber

and began to feel my way around the walls, leaning in over the

wooden boxes, spreading my fingers out in wide circles. Then I

heard behind me, a noise like a shoe scuffing the ground. I

stopped dead. I listened hard. I could hear something. I didn't

know what it was. It was like the breathing of a small animal.

There's a fox in here, I thought. I got ready to swing around

and kick with my feet. Then my fingers touched the light switch.

My heart began to pound. I was afraid to turn the light on. I

heard the scuffing sound again. It was bigger and heavier than a

fox. I wanted to get out, to get out of there at all costs, but

I couldn't move. I could hardly breath. And then a voice said, a

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

voice with a strange, gentle, foreign accent, "Please, please!

Why don't you say something?" I felt as if my chest was going to

burst. I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. I felt

cold tears trickling from my chin onto my neck. I was dying. I

was sure of it. I was ready to drop down dead. And then the

voice repeated, "Please! Say something? Why don't you say

something?" With shaking, awkward fingers, I pulled the light

switch down. "Please say something!" the voice said. "Please say

a word! Just a single word!" I turned to look at him. He was

tied up completely with ropes around his wrists and ankles. He

was blindfolded but he was looking straight at me as if he could

see me through the blindfold. "Say something!" he pleaded with

me. "Please say something!" His mouth was cracked and dry. There

was a bowl of water by his feet. I knelt beside him and pushed

the bowl of water closer to him. He sat up as if he was excited

by the fact that I was so near to him. "Say something!" he said

again, with more urgency this time, with desperation almost, as

if he craved this word, this something, more than anything else

in existence, and pitying him, what could I do but offer it to

him. "Hello!" I said. "Who are you?" He shook himself with

delight. He laughed like a man told sudden, undreamt of good

news. "I'm Herrema!" he said. "Have you heard of me?" I

remembered. "Yes," I told him. "Good, good, good!" he said,

barely able to contain his excitement. "Can you get me out of

here?" I was sorry to disappoint him. I said nothing and I could

see that he knew I could do nothing for him. "Is there anyone

who can help me?" he said, almost to himself. "No!" I said. I

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

had to be honest with him. I didn't want him to expect anything

from me. "There's no one at all, who can help you!"

I was out of touch at the time because we had no telly. The

Bull had wrecked our telly. All because of Big Ian, my hero! Big

Ian and the Bull were alike in some ways. Big Ian was a large

mountain of a man with a loud, booming voice and so was the

Bull. They both had history foaming at the mouth; and they both

had their slogans, one set countering the other exactly, that

justified them. They both had the threat of violence in the back

of the throat, like a schoolteacher letting you know the stick

was ready for use at any moment. And they were both, hopelessly,

irredeemably lost in that corner of the map called the North.

The two were like images facing each other in a mirror, turned

inside out and reversed, but essentially the same. Only, I liked

Big Ian. Every news time he did his appearing trick in our

kitchen with the sole intention, it seemed to me, of provoking

the Bull to uncontainable fury. Every evening Big Ian trotted it

out, his stolid, unbending line of resistance to the Bull's

hopes and dreams. "No Surrender!" echoed around us, and myself

and Cissie loved that. In our heart and soul it echoed, "No

Surrender!", as the Bull danced like a badly made puppet on a

string in front of the flashing, bright television screen. "We

shall maintain the Union at all costs!" became our battle hymn;

"Ulster says No!" our battle cry. The Bull nearly had a fit.

"Someone should shoot that fucking Protestant bastard!" he'd

roar, and shake the telly with his bare hands as if he could

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

discommode the wily Protestant Minister of the Church by doing

so. And Big Ian, implacably smug, smirked savagely as if he was

only too aware of the Bull's outrageous impotence faced with the

magic of modern technology. "I'll throw that fucking television

set out of the window one of these days!" the Bull used to say.

But then the Bull had no sense of humour. I don't ever remember

him cracking a single joke. He was the Minotaur, he knew nothing

of laughter, trapped in his eerie maze; he knew only the crack

and crunch of bone and flesh, and the sizzling heat of escaping

blood from torn veins and arteries; laughter was as alien to him

to him as kindness; if he laughed it would crack him up, he

wouldn't be able for it, it would destroy him utterly and

forever. On the other hand, Big Ian was the MC of laughter.

Secretly, inwardly, we laughed every time he opened his mouth,

as if somewhere in his own heart there was the tremendous power

of contained laughter, incredibly, subversively infectious. "No

Surrender!" and "Ulster says No!" became the punchlines to

terrific in-jokes that only the initiates understood. And Cissie

and I were initiates. We had been sworn in, had sworn ourselves

in, to Big Ian's loyal cause. We like him, were against the

Bull. We, like him, supported the Union. "Ulster says No!" Big

Ian never let us down. Each news time we waiting impatiently for

him to appear like some subversive magician of the airwaves and

he always did. We hunched forward to catch every word that fell

from his lips and we lapped them up. We waited for his pearls of

priceless humour: the time he compared the ship honking behind

him to the Pope blowing his nose, that was unforgettable. I had

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

to leave the house to roll sore with laughter on the grass of

the furthest field I could get to before my sanity deserted me.

The poor, stupid Bull, if only he could have learned to laugh

with Big Ian! It was left to me and Cissie to appreciate Big

Ian's greatness. If I'd had him for a father I think I could

have put up with anything. I would have joined the fight, I

would have upheld the cause, I would have walked on all the

Catholics around and trod them into the ground, without any

afterthought, any misgiving whatsoever. Big Ian inspired me

where the Bull only depressed me. In the mirror at night I

imitated his every move and gesture; I made myself large, I

opened my arms in the air, I swayed the adoring, spellbound

crowd with my fingertips. I intoned the fierce intransigence of

his slogans. "We shall not be ruled by Rome!" I told the bland,

indifferent mirror. I rose up high on my toes and offered the

supreme catchphrase. "Ulster says NO!" That was my favourite.

Repeating that, at the top of my silent voice, roaring it from

the voice of Ulster Protestantism. I was the opposite of what

the Bull was; and I was proud of my share in the greatness and

grandeur that was not Rome. And in my dreams I inhabited a free

Ulster, with the red hand emblazoned on every gable wall, and

the Union Jack floating over every Post Office and School and

strapped to every chimney. I consigned the Bull willingly to his

side of the Border. A Barbarian through and through he would

never belong on Ulster soil. Freedom? He would never understand

the meaning of the word! I knew what it meant. It meant: no

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

Bull! Unity? That was the sickest joke of all, born from the

cruellest depth of the Bull's eerie maze, his charnel house

labyrinth in which he skulked with his dreams of despair. How

could the Bull and I, made of the same horrid flesh and blood,

reared on the same poisoned land, nurtured inside the same

crumbling four walls, looking out at the same rotting light,

breathing in the same contaminated air, and speaking the same

foul language, ever be united? The absurdity of it! The stupid,

empty, moribund absurdity of it! No wonder I was driven half-mad

by it; because I was, by the end of it all, half-mad, and

completely desperate. Only Big Ian kept me sane. The great

greyhaired bear of a man with his large embracing, welcoming

arms, whose voice reached out to hold me from my Northern

homeland far away. Big Ian was my bulwark of sanity against the

drivelling madness of the Bull; he kept me going for as long as

he could, but one day the madness in me was sure to break out. I

had it from my father. The Bull was surely as mad as mad could

be. Every day his madness assailed him and vanquished him.

That's what happened with the telly. One day Big Ian was on and

the Bull couldn't take it any longer. He shook the telly as he

always did but that had no effect whatsoever on Big Ian's

enduring aplomb, his perfect imperturbability. But the Bull was

determined to get to him this time. With a gut-wrenching bellow

he wrapped his arms around the set and pulled it out from the

wall. The back of the set ripped away in a shower of sparks that

fizzled down the electrical cable and buzzed noisily into the

wall socket. Big Ian disappeared, his voice fell silent, and all

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

the lights in the house were abruptly extinguished. We sat in

the darkness with the mountainous shadow of the Bull whirling

past us to the open doorway, with the television set trailing

its innards, gripped like an accordion in his hands. He flung

the set away from him and drove his big boot through it. Valves

and tubes scattered in the twilight air like little birds. I

felt sad and empty and did not know what to do. Big Ian was

gone. Big Ian was gone from me forever. The Bull had driven him

out. The Bull had banished him. The Bull came back into the

house and began to sift through his rebel music. He pulled out

one of the Wolfe Tones stomach churning dirges and flapped the

disc down on the turntable of his old, sad-looking mono player.

He cursed the machine when it wouldn't work. He shook it the way

he had shaken the telly. I waited for him to carry it to the

door and kick it too into the next world. He snorted menacingly

at it. He knocked it against the wall and rapped it with his

fists. I would be next, I knew well. But this time, this time, I

wasn't going to take it. Just let him! He began to pull and drag

at the wires in the back of the record player. He was ready to

snap them too, I could tell. Then Cissie said something. "You're

wasting your time! There's no electricity! The fuse is blown!"

Not: "You're a big, fucking eejit, Bull, you've blown the fuse!"

No, not that! Nothing in our house was ever the Bull's fault,

and nothing ever could be; we granted him instead the passive

platitude of, "the fuse is blown!" That! It made me sick, the

way we all pretended with him. I'd had enough of it. I was done

with pretending. I was the one who said, "You've blown the fuse,

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

Bull, you big, fucking eejit!" And the silence that settled

suddenly between the four of us was like a bomb on the point of

going off. The Bull glowered at me, his eyes flaming through the

darkness. My mother said, "He didn't mean it, Bull! He doesn't

know what he's saying!" And Cissie said, "He didn't mean it,

Bull! He's gone soft in the head lately!" The futile voices of

women pleading, sentences dropped like stones into a dried-up

well, necessary precursors to inevitable violence. It had to

happen. I did not resent it. The Bull's dilemma was clear.

Violence was the method he took to everything. It was his be all

and end all. It was his right and his reason. It was all he had

to earn respect for himself, from himself. To do nothing was to

lose respect, deeply, inwardly. To do nothing in the face of

insult was to lose face, to sink one's pride in the despairing

rebuttal of violence. The Bull was no more capable of that than

he was capable of eating his soup without slurping it. The Bull!

The Bull was inexpressible. The Bull was beyond words. I was

black and blue, yellow and purple, and green, white and gold all

over for weeks afterwards. I could hardly talk for days.

Cissie's doctor friend had to come and wrap me up in bandages. I

had no school for a month. I was shattered. I was in bits. I

could barely stand. I thought I'd never be right again. Cissie

said that, I was lucky to be alive! It was my mother, she said,

who had saved me in the end. For the first time in my life that

hopeless woman had done something for me. "You were lucky!"

Cissie reminded me. I was lucky! Or was I? At the time I didn't

care whether I was living or dead. I would have been happy if

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

the Bull had murdered me. At least that way, I'd have had

nothing more to do with him, and he could never get at me again.

I wanted to see an end to him. As soon as I could walk I was

going to run away. As soon as I could walk I went back to

Herrema. He was gone from the bunker. Without a telly I lost

touch. I never saw him come out of that Monasterevin house where

the seige was. Years later I saw the film clips on the prison

telly. I wouldn't have known him. A man looks all different when

he's trussed up like a pig and blindfolded. He had a gentle face

and kind eyes, I thought. He looked beyond the camera with a

distracted air. I wondered what he was looking for. Maybe he was

looking for me. Maybe he wanted to see the boy who had told him,

"there's no one at all who can help you!" He cried after I told

him that. He believed me. Without knowing it I had infected him

with the bacillus of my own total despair. He thought his case

was hopeless. He thought he was going to die in the Bull's

bunker. I reached out and took him by the hand. He stopped

crying, stopped sniffling. "But all this will have to end

somewhere, sometime," I told him. "It can't go on forever!"

Offering him my own touchstone philosophy. He nodded. "Will you

wipe my face?" he asked. With a rag dipped in the bowl of water

at his feet I wiped the stains of his tears away. "It will end

somewhere, sometime!" he repeated. "Yes," I said. Though without

a telly I never knew where or when it had ended. When I went

back to the bunker and he wasn't there I forgot about him. I

even forgot his name. When I saw him in prison I was pleasantly

surprised. "So he's still alive then!" I said to one of the

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

other prisoners. "Oh yes!" he answered. "They should have

plugged him when they had the chance!" I had to laugh. The farce

is never-ending. Some people think killing a man is like eating

a sandwich, nothing more. I could have told him. I could have

told him all about it. But I didn't. Why, I asked myself, why

bother?

I thought I was never going to see Cissie again; I thought

she didn't care. When she came to the prison I felt so happy. I

wanted to tell her, but Cissie and myself were never able to say

things like that together. Instead I told her about following

her and her medicine man. She laughed at that. They had three

children in England, in a place called Endstone, a small nowhere

of a village, Cissie said, where there were no Irish. "My

children are going to be English!" Cissie said. "I tell them

nothing about where I come from..." She looked apologetically at

me. "They'll never know anything about you," she said. In a way

I was sorry. It's not nice being written out of someone's life

that way. "They'll want to know someday," I hinted. She shook

her head. "No!" she insisted. "I tell them I have no one! I tell

them I've been entirely alone all my life!" But still she came

back, at least a half-a-dozen times. It's not easy at all, you

see; it's not easy to pretend you have no one; it's almost

impossible. I've tried; here in prison I've tried. I wanted to

eliminate everything; to forget who and what I was; to clean the

slate and start from scratch; it couldn't work. I was too well

known for it to have worked. I was in all the papers and when I

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

arrived here everyone knew everything about me. There was no

need for lies, no need for pretence, no room for evasion; they

knew me inside out; the truth had preceded me. And then there

was Pat; there will always be Pat. Sometimes I don't know who's

on who's side anymore. The prisoners have always been kind to

me; it was one of the warders who taunted me first with, "Your

brother Pat says he's coming to get you!" I got so much of that

in the beginning and it still goes on. Who gave them their

licence to amuse themselves at my expense? To hone their blade

of wit on me as if I was some kind of barbers strop intended for

that purpose? They must have nothing better to do! "Hey, Ulster!

Your brother Pat says he's going to seal up your arse with

semtex and blow your backside to Hell and back!" Yeah, yeah,

yeah! So funny! "Well, you know what he's going to stick up your

arse," I tell them. "And I bet you like it when you get it!"

Fuck them! I say nothing! I never rise to the bait. As far as

I'm concerned all that is beneath me. I keep out of it. I keep

my nose buried in a book. Every morning I go to English Classes

and every afternoon I go to the Library to collect my books.

Sometimes the Warders stop me on my way back to the cell and

peruse the covers of my books. That's what they say. "I just

want to peruse the cover of your book!" They spend five or ten

minutes looking at the cover. "Aha, aha, aha..." they mutter

idiotically. "The Legend of Theseus and the Minotaur." They

scratch their heads under their peaked cap. "Now, what the fuck

is that?" Sometimes I really wonder who's on who's side anymore.

Am I really so alone? They hand me back my book. "You pathetic,

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

little, fucking I.R.A man's get!" is the usual insult. I never

know what they mean. They talk in riddles. Their speech is not

speech; it makes no sense; it twists and turns through a mire of

confusion and embarrassment. You would think language should be

simple; but language to them is like an uncontrollable twitch,

now mild, now extreme, they don't know where it comes from. It

goes in and out of their hearts and mouths and takes on whatever

shape it wants to. Protean! It just climbs up their throat,

squeezes through their vocal cords, trips across their tongue,

and falls out of them. It sprays like vomit to my feet. I walk

over it to get to my cell. I lock myself in, shutting the steel

gate; if the key were mine I'd throw it away and never come out

again. But in the mornings the gate must open, life must go on,

the sound of the warders voices rattle on the empty gangways,

the smell of porridge wafts up from the depths of the kitchens,

and I want to die; oh, how I want to die! If only the world

would let me die! Why am I living anyway? I've never been able

to figure that out! Why was I born, as they put it, a "pathetic,

little, fucking I.R.A. man's get!" It's not just language that

lacks meaning; it's not just words that have no sense! Life

itself is conceived and born out of emptiness and will one day

return there! Nothing is meaningful; everything is meaningless.

That's what I've learned in prison. That's what I believe in

now... I don't even believe in Cissie anymore!

Cissie. I keep coming back to Cissie. Once she was the

flower on the dungheap. Once she was my only hope. And then she

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

left me. She gave in to the Bull. She shouted, "Surrender!

Unconditional Surrender!" loud and clear, and skipped it with

her medicine man. They left for Endstone and I was alone with

the Bull. She had no excuse for deserting me; no worthwhile

excuse in the midst of the greatest battle of our lives, the

battle for our lives; but she left anyway, running to Endstone,

with Doctor Cure-all in her arms. What was the point in being in

love, if not to defy the Bull with it? "I'm sorry," she said

once, when I accused her. "If the Bull found out he would have

killed him! I couldn't take the risk any longer! I really did

love him! Not in the beginning, but afterwards! Yes, I loved

him!" The tears streamed down her face so tenderly, I was not

without pity. She loved him more than she loved me, that was

what hurt so terribly. She loved him enough to abandon me, to

abandon me to the Bull, our common enemy, to be eaten and

devoured by him. "You didn't care what happened to me!" I said.

She admitted as much. "How could I care?" she cried, and the

warder told her to "keep it down!" "How could I care," she

whispered, "living in that place?" It was three or four days

before we realised she was gone forever. I cried and cried and

cried. The Bull thought I was in on it. He took an old rusted

bicycle chain from the shed in the backyard and twisted it round

my throat. He dragged me across the fields on some bizarre

cross-country run, pulling me roughly through the briared

ditches until I bled from ever pore in my body. He kicked me in

the face and head until I was half-blind and half-stupid. He

kicked me until he had exhausted himself and then he knelt

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

beside and pulled my head back by the hair until I thought it

was going to snap off in his hands. Then he bit a corner of my

ear off. I told myself that this was it, I was going to die in

this corner of a field, south of the border, with my own blood

raining into my eyes, blotting out the sky. Then the Bull began

to snort and wheeze at me and blow hot air into my bleeding

earhole. "I'm ashamed of you, son!" he said. "I'm ashamed!" He

had hardly any breath after his exertions. Why did he bother

talking at all? I didn't want to know! "You're no bloody use,

are you?" How long did it last? A half-hour? An hour? All my

bleeding life? Stop it, Bull! "You'll never be any use!" He

pulled my head back even further, I felt my flesh tearing

asunder, my head pulling off my shoulders. "You're hardly able

to wipe your own arse!" Did he want me alive to tell me all

this? "What use is a son like that to any man! What use is it?

Tell me!" I was paralysed in his arms. There was blood pouring

into my mouth. I was choking on my own blood. I couldn't speak;

not a word, not a single word. He shook me away from him. I lay

on the ground with the bicycle chain twisted round my neck like

some savage, mutilating necklace. I tried to pull it away but it

was embedded in my skin. It hurt too much. The Bull stood over

me. I reached my hand out to him. I wanted him to help me. "Help

me, Bull!" my gaping hand screamed voicelessly. "Help me!" He

turned away. He wriggled back through the ditch behind him and

left me to die. The rain began to fall. A soft, cold rain. It

washed my skin clean. It washed the blood out of my eyes and

ears and nose and mouth. I began to breathe again, began to feel

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

alive again. The rain loosened the chain from around my neck. I

pulled it slowly away from my skin. On every link of the chain a

bloody fragment of skin was encrusted as if it were a necklace

made from torn and bleeding human flesh. I threw it away from

me. I don't know what animals fed on it! I don't care! I crawled

back through the rain, easing my way through the broken ditches,

peddling with my elbows over the fields strewn with cowshite. My

mother was alone in the house. I don't think she even noticed as

I dragged myself in the door, trailing blood and flesh on the

stone kitchen floor. I crawled to her feet and curled up there.

I wanted her to pick me up and put me on her knees. I wanted her

to hold me. But she didn't, wouldn't, couldn't... I don't know.

No love could be shown in the Minotaur's maze. No love! And she

had no love. I never saw such emptiness as lay in the bottomless

darkness of her abysmal eyes. I never felt such pain as I felt

then, curled and shivering in front of the small fire she had

lain and lit for herself in the kitchen hearth. I could not

speak my pain clearly but I tore the wretched pain-filled

syllables that clogged my throat like clotted blood up by their

roots and spat them out on the ash-strewn ground at my lips. "Oh

Cissie!" I cried out. "Oh Cissie! I hate you! I hate you!" My

mother kicked me in the small of the back. "Sshh!" she warned.

The Bull was coming. I heard his boots on the stone floor. He

sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace. There was

silence for a long, long time. Then he said, "We're going to see

your brother, Pat!" A small ray of hope glanced through my heart

like deflected light from a mirror. We were going to Ulster. We

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

were journeying to my homeland, up North, my own sweet corner of

the map. "Good!" I tried to say. "Good!" I might even see Big

Ian. I might even see my God-like hero, my "Ulster says No!"

giant. If I was lucky.

I didn't see Big Ian, not at all; I looked and looked on

both sides of every street we passed through, but the big man

never appeared. On television screens in the pubs we stopped at

I watched for him to appear but he never did. He was cautious of

the Bull now; he wasn't going to be responsible for any more

televisions kicked to oblivion. The Bull had conjured him out of

existence. Or so it seemed. We saw Pat all right! Bauld Pat!

There were tears of happiness in both their eyes. They were

allowed one quick embrace. I had never seen my father with his

arms around anyone before. Was this what he did with all his

love? Pat seemed even more stupid than I remembered. Prison had

brought out all the nonsense in him. He talked in idiot circles,

trotting round and round in well-rutted sentences like a horse

in a circus. "Becoming a man... Soon be ready for the fight!" he

said everytime he looked at me. "Bah!" the Bull countered. "That

little fucking runt couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag!"

And, "I brought him here to see a real man!" Pat never said

anything that followed on what was said before; he seemed to

pluck learned sentences from the air in front of his eyes,

sentences that appeared at random, with no connection to what

went before or what came after. "I'll tell them nothing!" he

said. "I'll do my time but I'll tell them nothing!" He wasn't

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

the same Pat. "Are they treating you well?" the Bull asked, with

a hint of suspicion in his voice. Pat nodded erratically, his

head rolling on his shoulders. "Has anyone touched you?" the

Bull asked. Pat shook his head vigorously. "No,no..." he said.

"Only..." The Bull glowered at him. I knew what was happening. I

knew all about this from the inside. Pat was afraid, he was

afraid to say what he wanted to say; he was afraid to show

weakness in front of the Bull. Prison wasn't agreeing with him,

that was for sure. He pulled himself together. "I won't tell

them anything!" he promised. "I won't tell them a fucking thing!

Fucking Imperialist, Colonialist state, and all that!" He looked

at me for succour. "Soon be ready to join the fight, won't you?"

The Bull took up the thread. "Bah, couldn't fight his way out of

a paper bag, that runt!" They laughed together. The Bull and his

calf. They should have been on stage together. They'd have made

anybody laugh. I laughed too. And behind Pat, on the other side

of the barrier, the prison warder, looked suspiciously at us, as

if our laughter were a coded plan for escape, or for murder.

"Time!" he barked. The Bull and Pat threw their arms around each

other again. "Come on now!" the warden said. Pat was led away.

He looked over his shoulder as he went. No matter how hard he

tried he had to show some weakness in the end. There was sadness

and tears there somewhere, I could see. The Bull could see too

if he wanted to, but I don't think he wanted to. There was no

room in the maze for weakness. Pat, the poor bastard! Exiled

from the Bull's maze he was just a baby; outside of the

labyrinth that long streel of venomous vomit was no more than an

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

infant. I bet he had a good cry when he got back to his cell,

hiding his tears from the hard men around him. I bet he cried

his eyes out. But I didn't care. He deserved to be chained to a

rock somewhere and have his liver eaten away by some devouring

bird, that's what I felt. Fuck him! He was my brother, but he

was the Bull's son too, so fuck him! He didn't frighten me any

longer. In fact, he didn't frighten me at all. He made me want

to get sick, that was all. I hoped I'd never see him again. I

had seen all I wanted to of, "a real man". "You know what

happens now?" the Bull asked me. I hadn't a clue. "They take him

into that room there and take all his clothes off him! Then they

turn him inside out! They search every bleeding hole in his

body! They stick their fingers up his arse until the skin tears

and bleeds! They humiliate him, to his very soul! They degrade

him!" He gripped my shoulder hard and stared in my eyes. "And do

you know why?" he asked sternly. "Do you know why?" I felt I

should know; I felt I should, but I didn't. The answer, of

course, was obvious. "They're Brits, that's why!" the Bull said.

It was all so simple. "The Brits have humiliated and degraded

the Irish for centuries; centuries! Do you understand that? Can

you grasp that? Not one lifetime, not two, but hundreds of

years, generations and generations, millions of lifetimes,

hundreds of millions of years and lifetimes!" Moved by his own

speech his voice wavered and softened, then hardened again.

"It's impossible not to hate them!" he said. "You might as well

try to stop breathing as try to stop hating the Brits! Good God,

I'd kill every last fucking one of them, if I had the means to

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

do it!" And the Bull said this in the heart of the confines of

Britain's strongest prison, with steel-plated watchtowers and

hundreds of armed and watchful, helmeted and visored soldiers,

surrounding him. They let him go! It's hard to believe but they

let him go, with only a glance at his papers, and a glance at

his back as he walked away. What way was that to fight a war? It

was not the Bull's way, that's for sure. The Bull's way was to

kill, to kill, to kill! That was real war! I couldn't understand

this other thing. I waited for someone to step out of the

shadows and pointing a gun at the Bull's heart and head wish him

a speedy return to Hell, but it never happened. They let him

walk away! With all the strength they had, all the force they

had, all the power they had, they let him walk away! And you

just can't do that, not in a real war! Someone, somewhere along

the line, has to show courage! Someone, somewhere along the

line, has to step out of the shadows and pull that trigger!

Without the moral strength to do that you may as well give up,

give in; because that's what you're up against: the moral

strength to do that! The moral strength or the moral blindness?

I don't know... I don't know... But to let the Bull just walk

away was a mistake I have never forgiven them.

On our way back the Bull drove slowly, terribly slowly. We

drove through town after town, and in each town the Bull looked

around him with supernatural attention as if he was committing

everything he saw to memory. Then, in one small town, no town in

particular, he stopped the van. "Like some chips, would you?" he

asked me. I was hungry. I nodded. I became his accomplice. He

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

bundled a paper bag under his jacket, got out of the car and

walked to a chip shop about a hundred yards up the road. Five

minutes later he came out with a steaming bag of chips in his

hand. As he came near the van he stopped beside a wastebin. I

saw he had two bags in his hands now. I thought maybe he had

bought two bags of chips. Then he threw one bag carelessly into

the metal bin. He walked slowly to the van and sat in beside me.

"Here's your chips," he said. "Did you get any for yourself?" I

asked him. "I ate them on the way back," he said. He started the

van. We drove up the street past the metal bin, past the chip

shop. I saw mothers with prams, I saw children playing in the

street. I could have jumped out of the van and run back to the

bin, but I didn't. I could have shouted some word of warning,

but I didn't do that either. I have no excuse. I'm not trying to

hide anything. I plead guilty. It was all my fault. I am

responsible for it all. For all the deaths. For everything. The

shadowy men were waiting when we got home. They were in rare

good form. They were laughing and they shook my father's hand

with barely-contained excitement. Mine was the hand that needed

shaking! I was the one who had made it all happen. We had heard

it all on the radio before we had reached home. There were three

deaths, a mother and child, and a soldier. There was a man who

lost his legs and another man who lost his arms and his face.

There was a girl of fifteen who was blinded. There were fifteen

people, men, women, and children, seriously wounded, lacerated

by flying metal and shattered panes of glass. There was nearly a

hundred brought to hospital with shock. There was a little town

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

left on its knees, in bits, its flesh hanging from its bones.

And I did all that... But it would never have happened if they

had not let the Bull walk away! And so I blame them as much as I

blame myself. And will never forgive them, anymore than I can

forgive myself. In spite of it all, I slept well that night,

with the voices of the shadowy men seeping through the rafters

to hover round my bed. "You'll soon be big enough to join the

fight!" one of them had said to me before I had gone up to bed.

"How's Pat?" one of them asked my father. "Pat's a tower of

strength!" the Bull answered proudly. "He says he'll do his time

and tell them nothing!" I had no time for any of that. I went up

to bed. The voices of the shadowy men hovered around me. I

buried my head in the pillow. I slept. It had been the longest

day of my life. Everything had happened so slowly. I wanted to

die. I wished I had never been born. I had blood on my hands.

And the chips felt like poison in my stomach.

In the end there is only one way of dealing with the

Minotaur; and only one way to survive his deadly maze. The

Minotaur knows that one way; he has practised it all his life;

it is part of his own being; in truth, he and it are the same.

The way is death, is murder. And say what you will, if you are

trapped in the maze, sought by the Minotaur, and do not have the

means or the will to do it, then you are done for. You have no

hope. You have given up the ghost even before it is ripped from

your entrails. And you will never be at peace. I had the means;

I had the will. The Bull himself had given them to me. "If

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

something oppresses you, you must rise up and strike it dead!"

he said to me. "If it is stronger than you are, then you must

use stealth, cunning, secrecy... And then strike when the moment

is right!" He struck his fist hard into the centre of the table.

I jumped away with sudden fright. "You weren't expecting that,

were you?" he asked me. "No, no, you weren't! You're asleep, you

see! You must never sleep! You must always be on your guard! If

you're not one hundred per cent alert, then you're as good as

dead!" The Bull was changed somehow, as if he had lost an edge

of hardness he had always relied on; he was mellowed in his old

age. For the first time I noticed the flecks of grey in his

hair, the shadowy paleness of ageing in his eyes and face. He

had had some news about Pat. Pat had tried to break out of the

prison but had been caught and brought back. The Bull went North

to see him. When he came back there was something different

about him. I asked Cissie what had happened but she didn't know.

"Pat was always a weakling," she said. "The Bull could never see

it! It was bound to come out sometime!" So the Bull seeing

weakness in Pat had felt weakness in himself perhaps; the great

wall of illusion had tumbled down. He wasn't such a hard man

after all. The Bull's sons weren't worth pissing on; and who

could respect a man with sons like that? I saw it sometimes when

the Bull looked at me: the shame! The same shame he had

whispered in my ear the time he was strangling me with the

bicycle chain. He couldn't hide from it anymore; and he couldn't

wipe it out of existence the way he did most things he hated.

Sometimes I knew he was sorry he hadn't finished me off; but it

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

was too late now; he was never going to get the chance again;

I'd see to that. The poor Bull, the poor, stupid, fucking Bull!

He never even saw it coming. His judgement let him down.

After his visit to Pat he needed reassurance. "You'll be

ready for the fight soon, won't you?" he used to say to me, but

I never answered him. One day he took me to the Bunker; I never

let on that I'd been down there. "I'm taking you into my

confidence, son!" he warned me. "But I'll tell you once and once

only, if you don't respect my confidence, it'll cost you your

life! This isn't a game!" We slid down into the Bunker and he

switched the light on. He opened one of the crates. "Do you see

this?" he said, pulling out a rifle and offering it to me. "This

can blow daylight all the way through a man!" I took the rifle

from him. "It's a high-velocity weapon," he explained. "The

bullets explode inside you!" I remember how cold it felt in my

hands. "Here," the Bull said, "I'll show you how to load it!" He

pulled out a carton of bullets and shot one into a slot in the

side of the rifle. "Simple, isn't it?" he asked. He smiled. He

could see that I was interested. "Some day I'll show you how the

whole thing goes together," he said. He stocked the rifle back

in the crate and pulled the lid over it. "The Brits would love

to get their hands on this haul," he said. "But they'll have to

do it over my dead body!" We climbed back out of the Bunker. As

we walked across the field towards the farmhouse the Bull

slipped his arm around my shoulder. I hated him for doing that.

"I promise you I'll make a man of you," he said. "I'll make a

real man of you!"

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

The shadowy men came to the house that evening and the Bull

did not order me upstairs straight away. He made me shake their

hands, one by one, and introduced them to me by their first

names. "This lad will be joining the fight soon!" he told them.

"It'll do Pat good to hear that!" one of them barked. They let

me sit with them for about twenty minutes. They sat around the

table and the Bull asked who had the "agenda". They conducted

their meeting like a business meeting. They referred to each

other by their military titles. A report was given on the

planning, execution and success of a recent mission. The conduct

of a young volunteer under pressure was highly commended. Then I

was sent to bed. I had been offered a tantalising taste of what

went on. I had been inducted into the solemnity of their

discussions. I had been allowed to sniff the glamour of it; and

then sent to bed while the real business was seen to.

The next day, after my mother had lit the fire and gone to

town, the Bull said he was going to bring me on a job with him,

that I was to dress in neutral clothes, ones I could afford to

throw away later. "What are we going to do?" I asked him. "No

need to know more than you need to!" he said. "What are we going

to do?" I persisted. The Bull glared at me, "Don't ask fucking

questions," he said. "You follow orders, that's all that's about

it!" This was it then. I looked him straight in the face. "No,"

I said quietly. The Bull couldn't take it in. I'd never said,

No, to him in my entire life before. This was a new experience

for him. "What the fuck?" he demanded uncertainly. I waited; it

was up to him where we went from here. The Bull took a short,

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

tentative step towards me. "You little cunt!" he said. "What are

you saying? What's the fucking idea? I asked you nicely to

change your clothes on and come with me... Now what's up with

you?" He was almost within reach of me; if he took one more

step... "No," I said again, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

For a moment, for just a moment, a look of immense hurt

flickered in his eyes. Then his face went red with anger. "No

one says, No, to me," he roared. His fingers, like lightningfast,

tearing claws, ripped the air in front of my face. I took

one step backwards. Then he came at me. I was caught in a swirl

of arms and legs. I was kicked from one end of the kitchen to

the other. I rolled under the table. The Bull danced around the

table, kicking its legs, smashing it with his big boots. The

legs of the table went flying and the table collapsed on me. I

crept round the room with the top of the table resting on my

back like a shell. I saw the Bull's feet running and jumping,

and disappearing in the air above me; he came down with the

weight and thunder of a brick wall on the table top and I was

crushed to the ground. He pulled the table-top away and knelt

beside me. He caught me by the hair and dragged me towards the

fire. He threw me down in front of the burning turf. He sat on

my back. He wheezed and snorted down the back of my neck. He

stretched his fingers round my throat and gripped tightly. He

squeezed harder and harder all the time. He pushed my face into

the hot ash of the fireplace. The turf burned my eyes. "I'm

going to burn your fucking face off!" he roared. No! I didn't

want to die like that. Not like that. I only did what I did to

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

save myself. I could not have done it otherwise. The Bull pushed

me further into the flames. I could smell my own flesh burning.

I could smell my own flesh roasting like a piece of meat in the

fire. I had to do something. I reached my hands out in front of

me and caught a fragment of the flaming turf. Jesus, don't ask

me how I did it! I just did it! I stretched my arm back as far

as I could and slipped the red-hot ember inside the open neck of

the Bull's shirt. With a searing cry of terror and hurt the Bull

vanished off my back. I curled away from the fire like a

scorched leaf. Then I screamed my pain as loud as I could and

washed my hand in my own tears. The Bull was standing in the

middle of the floor. He had ripped his shirt off. A scarlet

crescent left by the burning turf descended from his right

shoulder over his chest and ribs. I scuppered across the floor

on my hands and knees. I held my hand under the flowing cold

water of the kitchen tap. I did not care any longer about the

Bull. There was a sharp kitchen knife hanging on the wall in

front of me. If he came near me I was going to rip his guts out.

"Are you going to come with me?" he asked. You'd think we were

back where we'd started from and nothing at all had happened. I

turned towards the Bull. "No!" I screamed. "No! No! No!" I held

my red and swollen hand up to his face. "Never!" My lungs almost

burst with the effort of it. The Bull flinched. He moved back as

if I'd hurled a stone in his face. "No, never!" I repeated. He

spat on the ground. "You're no son of mine then," he said. I

laughed. "What would your brother Pat think of you?" he said.

"Fuck Pat!" I told him. "And fuck you!" I took the shining knife

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

down off the wall. "Now, get out of the fucking way," I told

him. The Bull laughed. "Oh, you're the big man now, aren't you?"

he snorted. "Bigger than you'll ever fucking be anyway," I said.

He was highly amused. "The big little man!" he said and

repeated. "The big little man! The fucking runt of the litter!

The Bull calf!" I had to do it. I had to walk by him. He let me

go. He made that mistake too! He had me in his power, and he let

me go! Why? Is a mortal enemy, in some way, untouchable? "Don't

think I'll forget this," he warned. I walked out the door into

the chilly sunlight. I started across the fields. I began to

cry. I couldn't stop crying. I cried all the way to the Bunker.

I cried for everything, for everything that had ever happened in

my life. I cried for Cissie, I cried for Pat, I cried for my

mother, I cried for myself; I even cried for the Bull. My tears

were infinite and left nobody out. They burned me more than the

turf had burned; they left scorching trails all down my face. I

will never forget the devouring fire of those tears. I do not

know whether they were tears of hate or tears of love; all I

know is that they burned through my heart and left an emptiness

inside me forever.

In the Bunker I found the rifle still intact. I cradled it

in my arms and carried it back down across the fields. The Bull

was still standing in the middle of the kitchen. "Oh, here's the

big little man back!" he said. He laughed out loud when he saw

the rifle in my arms. "Look what the big man has found!" I

tilted the gun towards him. He was still laughing when I pulled

the trigger. I saw the trajectory of the bullet as it blazed

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

into his laughing mouth and exploded inside his head. The Bull's

laughter disintegrated in immense sadness; headless, his body

crashed to the floor; his blood poured out of him like liquid

out of a bottle turned over. I stepped over him and with the

tip of the rifle wrote three words in the blood that pooled

under his gaping neck. Those words were, "Ulster says No!"

That's how I got my nickname. That's why everyone in the prison

calls me, "Ulster". When my mother came back from the town, she

collapsed on the floor and lay beside the Bull and held him in

her arms. She cried, I heard her sobbing. "I didn't think you'd

miss him!" I said to her. "You'll never be the man he was!" she

said. "You'll never be anything like him!" "I wouldn't want to

be!" I told her, and I ran from the house. It was late, it was

getting dark. I didn't know where to go. I ran towards the

school. The school was in darkness. There was nobody there. At

the back of the school there was the English graveyard. I

climbed over the wall and crept in amongst the graves. I came to

Wilson's grave, and it seemed to welcome me, it seemed to say,

"you can rest here". There was just a faint trace of sunset left

but it was getting cold. I wanted to shelter somewhere, to hide

away from everything. I saw a chink in the stone surround of

Wilson's tomb and using a rusted metal bar I found, I widened

it, scrambling the loose stonework away until I had made a hole

big enough to climb into. It was warm inside. I curled up and

went to sleep. I wanted to sleep so badly. I didn't dream. When

I woke Wilson was sitting beside me. He had made a moist

dressing of decayed leaf for my hand. "It will heal," he said,

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

"in a day or two!" He was so kind and his accent so sweet. "The

same thing happened to me when I was in the war," he said

softly. I sat up, and my tears starting to flow again, told him,

"I was in a war too!" He blinked incredulously as if I had

brought him the strangest, the most unexpected news. "Do they

still fight wars up there then?" he asked me. He was interested,

and I was eager to satisfy his interest. "Oh, yes!" I said. "You

wouldn't believe it..." He leaned towards me all ears. "Let me

tell you," I offered, and he nodded assent. "Let me tell you all

about the war I fought with the Bull!"

I couldn't stay underground forever. Wilson knew this. "You

have a life," he said. "You have to live it!" But I liked it

where I was, in Wilson's dark tomb, with only the creeping of

little animals or the rustling of the leaves on the trees to

disturb us. Life seemed idyllic to me there. "But it's not

life!" Wilson reminded me. "It's death!" Gradually he talked me

out into the open. In the evenings, when the orange glow of

sunset had faded from the air, we slipped out of the grave into

the bark-scented night of the graveyard. We walked amongst the

tombstones. Wilson explained away the dead. "When we went to

war," he said, "we were invulnerable! When we came back we were

mortal!" The dead seemed to have so much to say; so much seemed

hidden in their silence. I wondered what story the Bull would

tell to the Ghosts he encountered. "I don't want to leave you,

Wilson!" I said. "But you must go!" he told me. I resisted him.

He did not like that. "But why?" I persisted. "Because you don't

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

belong here!" he said finally. "And if you don't go, I'll have

to throw you out!" I almost cried. "For the first time in my

life I've found somewhere where I do belong!" I told him. He

shook his head. He pointed up through the roof of the tomb at

the world outside. "You have to go back!" he said. "You can't

stay!" In the end I accepted this, though going back into the

world did not please me. When the time came to say our goodbyes,

Wilson was as sad as I was. "I'll go some of the way with you,"

he said then. "I don't understand!" I told him. "How can you go

with me?" He knelt on the ground and rattled his bones together.

"These things," he said. I laughed. "Won't you miss them?" I

asked. Wilson laughed. "They have some sentimental value," he

said, "that's all! And anyway, someone will bring them back!

Tell them they belong to young Wilson who fought in the Boer

War!" He bundled his bones together like sticks for the fire and

handed them to me. "Now go on!" he said. "And don't lose any of

them!"

The night air was cool. I scaled the wall by the school and

ran through the school yard. I climbed the school railings and

ran towards the town. I ran on the road; I ran straight down the

middle of the road. I ran through the pools of yellow light cast

down by the streetlamps. My feet splashed through the sickly

yellow pools. Wilson's bones rattled under my arms as I ran,

like a weird sound of castanets accompanying my run. On either

side of the road people stood to look at me. Some of them

pointed and shouted after me: "Look it's the Bull's son! It's

Ulster Says No © Tom Quinn 2001, 2002

the Bull's son!" I ran and ran and ran. The streets and roads of

the town opened out like a huge, interminable labyrinth through

which I ran; an infinitely intricate, infinitely insidious

labyrinth which wove around and through itself; which, when it

reached its limits turned back into its own centre and made

itself inescapable. I ran in ever-increasing, ever-decreasing

circles, until they caught me and carried me screaming to my

cell. And they gathered around me, and pulled Wilson's bones out

of my hands, and pointed at me and shouted that I, "was the

Bull's son! The Bull's son!" But I said, "I'm not! I'm not! I'm

not!" And when they pulled and dragged me I said, "I'm not the

Bull's son!" I said, "The Bull is dead! He's dead!" I said, "I

slew the Bull! I slew him!" And if it drove me mad, I said, it

was worth it, if that's what life cost me in the end. But

nothing I ever said meant anything to them. They only looked at

me with blank eyes and vacant faces, and stared at Wilson's

bones as if waiting for them to speak.