Paul Theroux - The Kingdom by the Sea - A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain

Over dinner, Jack Mehaffy said, "It's because the football clubs are one religion or another, and if you wear a certain color scarf you're a Catholic or you're a Protestant. It causes friction. They don't want trouble on this boat."

We met by chance: we were each dining alone and so were asked to sit at the same table. The conversation got off to a slow start. Later, Mehaffy said, "You don't talk too much unless you know who you're talking to. No one in Northern Ireland expresses opinions of any kind to strangers until he's very sure his listeners will be sumpathetic. If not, they'll puck a fight."

Perhaps our conversation was typical. It took us forty-five minutes to get to religion and another hour before Mehaffy volunteered that he was a Protestant. By then it would have been too late to quarrel about Irish politics. We were friends.

He had not stated his religion. He had said in a challenging way, "I'm British." But that meant the same thing as Protestant. He was in the tailoring business and he told me how, very soon, most tailoring would be done automatically by sewing machines operated by microchips. This was bad news for Ulster, where shirt factories employed large numbers of people. Mehaffy said many were being closed down — he had shut a number of them himself.

He had grown up in a neighborhood in County Down with Protestants and Catholics. "We didn't have much money, and when we were short it was the Catholics who helped us out, not the Loyalists, who were always running the Union Jack up the flagpole. We're still friendly with those Catholic families."

He told me about his being a scoutmaster and how he always had Catholic boys in his troop. He asked the local priest's permission to include those boys, and the priest said, "Yes, me only regret is that you're doing something I wish I were doing meself."

"I liked him for saying that," Mehaffy said.

We talked about tailoring, about unemployment, about strife, and that was when he said, "I'm British. But I'm also Irish. I mean, culturally I'm British, but I was born in Ireland, so I'm Irish too."

"Do you feel an affinity with the Republic?"

"No, no. The south is different. They have a different tradition there. Funnily enough, at one time I could actually see union with the Republic — a united Ireland. But now it's less and less a possibility."

He was reluctant to explain why, but then said, "The influence of the church is too strong there. Do you think any Ulsterman would accept the infallibility of the Pope?"

I said, "But they accept the infallibility of the Queen."

He laughed. He said, "And contraceptives on prescription! We'd never accept it."

Whenever the issue of union was raised, Ulstermen mentioned contraceptives.

"And there's the tribalism," Mehaffy said. "The tribalism starts in July, with the Orange parades. The Catholic parades are in August. And then, people who are the best of friends all year won't speak to each other. There's a lot of suspicion in the summer — a lot of tribal feeling — between Catholic and Protestant."

I said, "Is it possible to tell them apart?"

"There are people who say it is," Mehaffy said, and pointing to his eyes he went on, "For one thing, a Catholic's eyes are closer together."

We went out on deck and watched the cluster of lights at Larne drawing near. The mist liquefied the lights and made the harbor entrance dramatic. Mehaffy said that Ulstermen worked hard and had pride in their country. They hated people who tried to make jokes out of bombings and killings. This was while the ferry was making its way into Larne Harbour, and the lights were piercing the mist and illuminating the dark brown waterfront, the gleaming slates on the roofs, the oily lough to port. The wind groaned among the dockside cranes. Mehaffy said it never stopped raining here. The returning Ulster people who had been on the boat train stood silently at the rail, gazing upon Larne like mourners. Mehaffy said the trouble was, there was only one bloody topic of conversation, and who was really interested in that? The ferry horn echoed all over the harbor and lough, as if from a thousand empty holes in the night.

"I'm thinking of moving to England," Mehaffy finally said.

His tone was confessional, his voice a whisper. I was still staring at Larne and did not know what to say.

"I've got two kids," he said. "They're still young. They'll have a better chance there."

***

I expected formalities — customs and immigration — Larne was so foreign-seeming, so dark and dripping, but there was not even a security check; just a gangway and the wet town beyond it. I wandered the streets for an hour, feeling like Billy Bones, and then rang the bell at a heavy-looking house displaying a window card saying vacancies. I had counted ten others, but this one I could tell had big rooms and big armchairs.

"Just off the ferry?" It was Mrs. Fraser Wheeney, plucking at her dress, hair in a bun, face like a seal pup — pouty mouth, soulful eyes, sixty-five years old; she had been sitting under her own pokerwork, Rejoice in the Lord Alway, waiting for the doorbell to ring. "Twenty-one-fifteen it came in — been looking around town?"

Mrs. Wheeney knew everything, and her guest house was of the in-law sort — oppression and comfort blended, like being smothered with a pillow. But business was terrible: only one other room was taken. Why, she could remember when, just after the ferry came in, she would have been turning people away! That was before the recent troubles, and what a lot of harm they'd done! But Mrs. Wheeney was dead tired and had things on her mind — the wild storm last night.

"Thonder!" she thundered. "It opened up me hud!"

We were walking upstairs under a large motto— For God So Loved the World, and so forth.

"It gave me huddicks!"

The house was full of furniture, and how many floors? Four or five anyway, and pianos on some of them, and there was an ottoman, and a wing chair, and pokerwork scenes from the Old Testament, Noah possibly, and was that Abraham and Isaac? The whole house was dark and varnished and gleaming — the smell of varnish still powerful, with the sizzle of a coal fire. It was June in Northern Ireland, so only one room had a fire trembling in the grate.

"And it went through me neighbor's roof," she said, still talking about the storm, the thunder and lightning.

Another flight of stairs, heavy carpet, more Bible mottos, an armchair on the landing.

"Just one more," Mrs. Wheeney said. "This is how I get me exercise. Oh, it was turrible. One of me people was crying—"

Mirrors and antlers and more mottos and wood paneling, and now I noticed that Mrs. Wheeney had a mustache. She was talking about the reeyun — how hard it was; about breakfast at eeyut— but she would be up at sux; and what a dangerous suttee Belfast was.

Christ Jesus Came Into the World to Save Sinners was the motto over my bedstead, in this enormous drafty room, and the bed was a great slumping trampoline. Mrs. Wheeney was saying that she had not slept a wink all the previous night. It was the thunder and the poor soul in number eight, who was scared to death.

"It's funny how tired you get when you miss a night's sleep," she said. "Now me, I'm looking forward to going to bed. Don't worry about the money. You can give me the five pounds tomorrow."

The rain had started again and was hitting the window with a swishlike sleet. It was like being among the Jumblies, on a dark and rainy coast. They were glad to see aliens here, and I was happy among these strangers.

***

That first morning in Larne I discovered everything there was to know about Ulster rain — how it bucketed down from a sky no higher than a two-story house; how it was never the quicksilver of the Channel rain but always dark, striking at such a merciless slant that it penetrated everything; how it was cold and noisy and how it could be sharp enough to sting; how it never cleansed but rather blackened everything it struck. And no matter how often it rained, it was always so surprisingly cruel that everyone mentioned it. It was impossible to ignore. In this solemn rain-darkened place people regarded the rain as unfair.