time I saw you. I walked into the lecture theatre on an October Tuesday in 1969 and there was a woman in a frilly, fussy smock bending down from her seat. Your red hair foamed around your dipped head, tendrils spreading across the floor as you retrieved the pen you’d dropped. I had been paralysed with nerves since arriving in Belfast the previous week. My only image of Ireland was the one I’d seen on a flickering TV screen. News bulletins delivered pictures of a savage, reckless place where blood flowed and neighbours freely murdered each other because of complex and, to the English, baffling ancient divisions. I was convinced that I could be shot or blown up at any time, especially if I opened my mouth revealing a home counties accent. I’d hardly spoken because of my fears; it seemed to me that my tongue was becoming swollen and dry, pressing against my teeth. I’d heard somewhere that a shock to the nervous system could cause muteness and I was genuinely fearful that next time I tried to speak, no sound would issue. I had sat alone in my room, looking at the bags I couldn’t bring myself to unpack and listening to the thud of feet in the corridors outside. From my window I saw students hurrying to join societies and heard them calling to each other. Even their accents, harsh and unfamiliar, unnerved me. The sounds they made were like snarls. I’d had difficulty understanding people in the few words of conversation I had been forced to exchange. I would have turned and fled, heading for home but there was little to go back to. I knew that my mother would already have stripped my bed and aired my room, shutting the door firmly, relieved that I would only return for brief holidays.
‘I had steeled myself to attend that first lecture in Italian. I held my books against my chest for security and to conceal my trembling arms. My legs were weak from lack of food. You swept up the pen and threw your hair back as you settled in your seat. I was aware of bows at your shoulders and down the front of your smock. I thought you looked like a sturdy countrywoman in an eighteenth-century painting, fresh from milking or hay-stacking.
‘You watched me hovering and pointed at the empty chair next to you. “D’you want this?” you asked. “You look as if you’re going to faint.”
‘I sank down next to you, overwhelmed with gratitude because I had been able to understand you. Your speech was slower and more measured than the other accents I had struggled with. You introduced yourself as Majella O’Hare and I told you my name.
‘“Nina,” you said, “that’s attractive, musical. I hate my name. I think it sounds like a sweet preserve: ‘a full-fruit Majella confiture flavoured with cognac’.”
‘I thought of marmellata, the Italian for jam. “I’ve never heard it before,” I confessed. It sounded exotic to me.
‘“That’s because you’re a Brit and your unfamiliarity with it is refreshing. My name doesn’t tell you what it would shout at someone from Ulster; that I’m a Taig, a papist, a left-footer, a Fenian and a feckless member of an underclass.” You gave me a friendly smile as you offered me my first lesson in the intricacies of Irish identity.
‘You asked me if I’d read the set text and I said that I had. In the original or in translation? you enquired. The original, I said, replying in Italian. Then you asked in Italian where I was from and I told you Maidstone, becoming articulate in the shared language and accent that provided us with a mutual territory. You hailed from a place called Pettigoe, which you added sounded like a skin disease.
‘“I’ve not seen you around,” you said. “Did you arrive late?” There was something about you that made me feel less fearful. Your voice was rich and amused, your eyes sparked with interest.
‘“I’ve been in hiding,” I admitted, “starving in my room because I was frightened at being in Belfast. I’ve been living on a scant supply of chocolate bars and canned drinks. I feel sick but starving.”
‘“God almighty,” you laughed, “no wonder you look like a wraith.”
‘After the lecture you took me to the canteen and we ate huge plates of spaghetti. Why, you asked, had I come to Belfast if the place was so terrifying? I’d not got the exam grades I needed, I said; this course had been offered through clearing, they were being kind because it was a new degree.
‘“Why did you do so badly in your exams? You don’t strike me as thick.”
‘“My father died last spring. I lost my concentration.”
‘“That’s tough all right,” you said. “It’s not so awful here, you know, we get a bad press.”
‘Strange that you should have used that phrase during our first meeting, “a bad press”. That type of press, the one we considered prejudiced, was our motivation and justification for what we did on that other October day when the rain fell and kept falling until dawn. But on that afternoon in the canteen, with the autumn sun still warm, the comforting clatter of dishes and my famished stomach contented, I was reassured by your presence. I was like a lost child bonding with the first person to offer affection. In saying that, I am not trying to diminish our friendship. I simply wish to record it honestly. I was always a moth to your candle, Majella. You didn’t set out to have me fluttering around you, but that is what happened.
‘I was fascinated by you as I sped through my spaghetti. Your clothes were crumpled and none too clean; under the blue smock you wore several bright vests in mustards and purples, teamed with one of those layered and fringed Indian cotton skirts that had glass beads sewn into the seams. You ate carelessly, gesturing as you talked, unaware of tomato sauce spattering your chest. On your feet you wore clumpy ankle boots. I never saw you in any other footwear, not even in high summer. You were big boned without seeming heavy and you had a clarity that I was attracted to. A strong tobacco aroma clung to you, especially noticeable when you shook your hair and I was puzzled because you didn’t seem to be a smoker. When I met Finn I realised that it was the odour of his French cigarettes that adhered to you like an invisible gauze. I was entranced by your easy laugh and the way you accepted me. As weeks went by I flourished in the affection you offered, an easy friendship that was new and wonderful. And your family romanced me with their noise and boisterousness. They eased the memory of the formality and chill silences I had been used to in my home. I envied you the wholesome, happy childhood I heard tales of when I visited Pettigoe, the kind I had only read about. In my imagination I made it mine, too; the lambings, the shared labours of potato harvesting, the battles to protect the hens from marauding foxes. I pictured lush, bucolic scenes, placing myself in them, filching glimpses of your past contentment for myself.
‘When I met you I emerged from a long, bleak hibernation. In your glow I uncurled, stretched, and stepped into a new life. I grew to see you and the straightforward, honest people you came from as my bedrock. Lacking strong ties and beliefs of my own, I believed in you. When your glow dimmed and I was deprived of your affection I suffered terribly. For some years I hated Finn more for sundering our friendship than for the path down which he led us. Of course, in my blinkered enthusiasm for our cause I didn’t see that our transgression would inevitably mean our losing each other. I was too naive and inexperienced to understand that there are no pure actions in life, that everything has consequences and pay-offs. I don’t think I saw or understood anything. When we set out in the car that night to carry out our mission as comrades we might as well have been wearing blindfolds, so completely oblivious were we to humanity.’
‘Cara Majella,
‘Before I go any further, sifting through memories and years, I must tell you about the letter cards. The first one arrived a fortnight ago, the second this morning. I have them in front of me now.
