excerpt
‘Easter Tuesday,’ Michael put in unnecessarily.
‘Yes, I heard,’ said Joe. ‘I gather it was pretty bad.’
‘The bombs fell all night, Joe. Stuart Hibberd said on the wireless that half of the houses in Belfast were destroyed. And there may be as many as a thousand dead. Liam’s sister, Morna, and her two grown-up children were killed and their house demolished. One of those crowded terrace houses in the docks area. Her husband was on the night-shift in the shipyard. The shipyard was bombed too, but the husband—I think his name is David—wasn’t hurt. David’s a Protestant, and the family weren’t too happy when Morna ran off to Belfast and married him once she turned twenty-one. Must be twenty years ago now. I’m sure you’ve heard that story many times. Anyway, you can imagine what the family are saying now. Liam was more forgiving than the others. He has gone to the city to see what he can do to help David. So many bodies haven’t been identified yet. Maybe never will be.’
‘Oh God, that’s awful,’ Joe said sympathetically. ‘What a terrible thing to happen to Liam. To lose a sister, a niece and a nephew. The niece wasn’t married, was she?’
‘I heard she was engaged to be married,’ Caitlin replied, ‘but her husband- to-be has joined the Air Force.’
‘Who would have thought that Belfast would be bombed?’ Joe said.
‘The shipyard, Joe,’ said Michael. ‘The aircraft factory. The Sirocco Works. Mackie’s is on to munitions now instead of textile machinery. All the flax mills and so on. Sitting targets. Just asking for it.’
‘The sad thing is that rumours are spreading that the IRA and Sinn Fein were in on it,’ Caitlin said. ‘They want the Germans to win the war and reunite Ireland.’
‘That’s a scandalous thing to say,’ Joe declared.
‘Nevertheless it’s being said, Joe,’ Michael responded. ‘You can imagine the trouble that will start if it’s shown to be true.’
‘And the horror of it, Joe,’ Caitlin said. ‘Nora and Liam have a telephone now for school use, but the exchange in Belfast was destroyed, so Liam can’t phone. Nora got one letter from him, and it made for awful reading. He and his brother- in-law hadn’t found his sister’s body yet. Nor the children’s. There are so many bodies at the Falls Road Public Baths that they had to empty the swimming pool to accommodate the corpses. But Morna and the children wouldn’t be there. That’s too far from the Docks area where they live. They might be among the two-hundred-and-fifty bodies laid out …
Libros Libertad 