Eoghan Harris: Seeing clearly despite the hecklers and watery eyes
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Early last Sunday morning, myself and Gwen set out from Dublin for Kilcrumper cemetery near Fermoy. I was to give the oration at the annual commemoration of General Liam Lynch, chief of staff of the anti-Treaty IRA, who died after battle with Free State troops on the Knockmealdown Mountains in September 1923. This is how the day went.
It was a squally drive down. The blown mist was often too much for the wipers. So I stayed silent, watching the road, and wondering how to tell Gwen to get ready for rough reactions from some republicans who would come to challenge a well-known revisionist.
Adding to my apprehension was my feeling that Frank O'Flynn, the chief organiser, had not fully taken that revisionism on board. Although he claimed to read my Sunday Independent columns, when I reminded him I was a revisionist not a republican he fobbed it off far too lightly.
My policy is to speak with good authority. If invited to speak at Beal na Blath, I would pay tribute to the Michael Collins who signed the Treaty -- but I would challenge the cult of Michael Collins the glamourised gunman, who had the elderly civil servant Alan Bell taken from a tram in Monkstown and shot in the groin to die in agony.
So I planned to briefly praise Liam Lynch the gallant guerrilla commander of the War of Independence, who released captured enemies (I would be the first Kilcrumper
speaker ever to praise him for that!), and briefly criticise Liam Lynch the fanatical civil war leader who threatened to shoot Dail deputies. But the bulk of my speech was a review of the bloody republican butcher's bill since 1916.
Finally, as we approached Fermoy, and the Blackwater rolled beneath us, I shared my forebodings with Gwen. I advised her to ignore any kind of incident. She grinned: "Well if someone steps out of the crowd and shoots you, don't expect me to go around in a bloodstained skirt like Jackie Kennedy." That's my girl.
We stopped for breakfast at the Amber petrol station and Dilis cafe complex outside Fermoy. A smiling staff at half-eight on a Sunday morning and a full freshly cooked Irish breakfast for €5. Gwen dined fully while I brooded a bit.
The memorial mass was in St Peter's Church, Fermoy. As neither of us are churchgoers we went for a walk around the town. Still digesting her breakfast, Gwen allowed me to continue her Sentimental Education. So I recalled long lost days in Fermoy where I had been frequently stationed as a member of the FCA.
I spoke about the square with its spacious second-floor apartments where British officers would entertain their women. I pointed out the pubs where 40 years later we FCA boys would try to pull Fermoy fine things. I recalled the nights on the riverbank singing The Holy Ground. Gwen said kindly: "Your eyes look elderly when they water."
We finished the tour at St Colman's School which featured in Fergus Tighe's film The Clash of the Ash. Set in the Eighties recession, it remains as topical as today's headlines, featuring a young man's long summer farewell to Fermoy before he leaves for London.
Recalling the sequence where the boy's mother plays the piano while his father digs the garden, I became quite moist-eyed. Gwen never carries tissues so I just had to snuffle. We went back up to the church and met Frank O'Flynn and Terry Shannon, the lord mayor of Cork.
Terry would later tell the Evening Echo that my speech was akin to "bawling out Michael Collins at Beal na Blath". But I bawled out republicanism, not Lynch, and besides I would criticise Collins at Beal na Blath if called to speak. But I forgive Terry because he shares my passion for Cork Harbour.
So I spoke about happy summers on Spike Island with the FCA until my eyes got prickly. Gwen knew it was all displacement stuff because I was nervous about the speech and gave me a supportive squeeze. We moved off to Fitzgerald Park.
The sun shone as the small crowd assembled at the GAA grounds. As I have Tallow connections and Gwen mother's family, the McGraths, are from East Cork, we met lots of local people who knew people we both knew. A peaceful and happy Sunday morning scene in one of Ireland's great provincial towns.
We formed up behind a colour party from the General Liam Lynch band. The Tricolour was carried to the front of the parade, the Thomas Kent Pipe Band struck up and we swung under the stone arch and out on to the public road to march the two miles to Kilcrumper.
My memories on that march were too deep for tears. The faded Tricolour, the faithful crowd marching in memory of a local hero, the scream of pipes, the steady drumbeat to keep the step, this was the Ireland of childhood, an Eden with a murderous nationalist serpent, but still an Eden; and one from which I was now forever exiled.
Afraid of the moist eye, I concentrated on marching in step. We turned down a leafy road to the lonely cemetery where the Celtic Cross of General Liam Lynch stood proud against the sky. A small crowd was already waiting, including a group of grim faces getting ready to protect their picture of a perfect and heroic Old IRA.
But I stiffened my spine, thought of my IRA grandfather who never gave an inch, got the nod from Gwen, and got on with it. Two minutes into my speech, the muttering started, the handful who came to heckle did so, some left shouting abuse and one feverish young man came up and spat at me, but his spittle was blown away by the wind.
The majority of the crowd, however, put their heads down in disapproval, but otherwise treated me with the good manners still common in provincial Ireland.
When I was finished a few brave souls came up to show solidarity. One grizzled old man gave me a grim smile and said: "The truth is bitter."
I had a few words with Barry Roche of The Irish Times and Paul O'Brien of the Examiner, two professional reporters who compressed my 3,000-word speech into a few paragraphs without losing anything. Naturally nobody from RTE was there -- although it later called me from Morning Ireland to ask about David Norris.
Suddenly, Liz McInerney, a comet from my days in college, was standing in front of me, smiling from blazing blue eyes. Surely she was wearing cosmetic contact lenses? But no, 40 years had left the light in Liz's eyes, but my own orbs were brimming.
On the drive home Gwen digested the day in silence. I wondered what she had made of it all: the tricolours, the bands, the wreaths, the speech, the heckling, the mannerly majority, the whole thing. At last she spoke.
"Who's Liz?"
"Who?"
"The one with the eyes."
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