The Wake - Table of contents

The Wake - episode 42

Bill shook his head reprovingly. “Tell me this now,” he said. “Just tell me this. How would you feel if you were a Protestant being handed over to the Republic of Ireland and wanting to marry a Catholic? Eh? You’d have to promise to change your religion and bring up any children you might have in the Catholic faith. Would you not think your religion was being forced into extinction?”

“And what’s wrong with that?” said Jim. “Weren’t the Planters brought in here by the English to keep the Catholics down? And aren’t these Prods living here now all from Planters? And didn’t their religion start in the first place from that oul’ goat Henry not getting a divorce from the pope?”

“The Protestants that are against the marchers didn’t come in with the Planters you know,” said Bill in a voice normally reserved for the backward row. “The Plantation of Ulster happened over three hundred years ago. What Protestants see now is their birthright being threatened. They know that a lot of the people out there marching are the children or grandchildren of migrants from over the border. There’s nothing black and white here. And if I may say so, a little bit of empathy wouldn’t go amiss.”

The looks on the faces opposite were thunder dark. Whatever empathy is it can go to hell, they said.

And suddenly the air seemed to have got thinner. Whether this was to do with my state of mind and body or the heightened feelings in the room or the fact that the kitchen window couldn’t be opened because it had been painted so many times or maybe even all three of the aforementioned I’m not sure. I could always have gone and opened the back door I suppose but then cold air might have knocked me out and anyway the two wandering black cats from Majella Doherty’s would have taken the open door as an invitation and I couldn’t have that. This was nothing to do with superstition because I’m not superstitious or it being in bad taste, there being a wake in progress, but because Milly and Molly, for those were their names, always had a sweet smell about them that brought decomposing rats to mind. Options being limited to sitting doing nothing therefore I sat doing nothing if you can call listening doing nothing.