Caulfield - Irish Blood, English Heart, Ulster Fry: Return Journeys to Ireland

PENGUIN BOOKS

IRISH BLOOD, ENGLISH HEART, ULSTER FRY

As a stage and radio dramatist Annie Caulfield has won several awards, including a Race in the Media prize from the Commission for Racial Equality. Television work includes Grim Tales, This Life, New Soul Nation, Comic Relief, Bosom Pals and Voodoo Spice. She worked for many years as a scriptwriter for comedian Lenny Henry. She is also the author of Show Me the Magic: Travels Round Benin by Taxi. Annie Caulfield has written and broadcast about Australia, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Italy, Zanzibar She thought it was time she went home.

Return Journeys to Ireland

ANNIE CAULFIELD

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Viking 2005
Published in Penguin Books 2006
1

Copyright Annie Caulfield, 2005
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN:978-0-14-193591-1

For Martin McNamara thank you

With all my thanks to the following, in alphabetical but no other order: all of my family right down to the under-cousins; Kevin Anderson; Juliet Burton; William Conacher; Sarah Daniels; Derry City Tours; Ann and Tom Garry; Eleo Gordon; Peter Kavanagh; Eamon Kelly; Jean Kitson; Martin McCrossan; Mary McNamara; Jerry Mallet and family; Paddy Murphy; Jan Nugent; Woodrow Phoenix; Jon Rovira; Micheline Stienberg; Jenny Sykes; Diana Tyler; Mike Walker; Molly and Jasmine Warwick; and the Westway team for their tolerance.

The people we were related to seemed to be George Best, Sergeant Lynch in Z Cars and Cassius Clay. When these men appeared on television, my mother gave such a knowledgeable running commentary on their state of health and well being, they couldnt possibly be strangers.

My mother also knew them well enough to chide them if they were on television doing something she disapproved of: George! Youre half asleep! Thats enough chat, Cassius, thump him. Bert Lynch, did you not see the poor man wasnt wise?

Sergeant Bert Lynch, although making occasional errors of judgement, never provoked the hurt, rage and berating of the screen that erupted when George and Cassius finally went too far and she was done with them. George had been silly about girls and drink. Cassius had changed his name and turned Too full of himself, like a maniac.

Such high-level emotional involvement led me to conclude that not only did my mother know these men, they must be cousins or uncles. We had dozens of cousins and uncles, seldom seen in the flesh, but much talked about. There was a professional footballer, some of them were policemen none of them had done anything as interesting as turn into maniacs, but I had high hopes of them.

We didnt see our relatives because wed left them behind in another country. Northern Ireland. George Best and Sergeant Lynch talked like the relatives. They talked like us. Not many people in England did. Cassius Clay was the first black person Id ever seen. He was something other, like us, so probably belonged to us.

I was four when we moved from Northern Ireland. I was too young to think anything much about leaving, but England was a disappointment. For one thing, talk of England had all been a trick, because we seemed to be in Wales.

Geography was one of many weak areas in my head when I was four years old, but I could tell the words werent the same: England, Wales. So they neednt think I was fooled.

Id been hopeful of England because I had worked out that England was where cartoons happened. I knew cartoons didnt happen in Northern Ireland, I could see that looking out the window, so I was sure that they must happen in that other place, the only other place Id heard of, England. England would be bright coloured, teeming with talking bears, rabbits and exploding cats. Looking out the window in England would be as good as watching television.

But North Wales looked like Northern Ireland. And cartoons, my father informed me as I wept on our new kitchen floor, happened in a place that was not real. Whatever that meant. Not only had we pitched up in a profoundly disappointing place, I had to start school among unintelligible children and learn songs in a whole new language. Songs about birds sitting on the roof of a house. Maybe it was just the one song that took a very long time to learn, or theres a whole sub-section of traditional Welsh music devoted to the bird-on-house-plague that afflicted the place in some traditional-music-composing era. Whatever the reason, to this day I know the Welsh for the bird is on the roof of the house. I cant say its stood me in good stead.

We lived on an RAF base full of stranded English officers and their families no real consolation for the sudden onset of school and the lack of cartoon animals outside the windows. My interest in the place rallied when new neighbours moved in. Black Americans. I immediately started stalking them.

Despite me, the new neighbours became very friendly with my mother. Something about my mothers rapid bonding with this family fuelled my suspicion that Cassius Clay was one of us.

My mother and I started using American words for things candies, the movies, the trunk of the car The Americans gleefully copied my mothers reverse-angle English: Would you not have a cup of tea? We were always calling in and out of each others houses, swapping dishes of food and not behaving like the other officers politely boxed-in families.

Too soon, the Americans moved away. This was worse than the whole trick about cartoons. Something of a drama queen of a child, I was again disappointed to learn that lying on the kitchen floor and weeping loudly didnt change the harsh realities of life.

I persisted with the floor tantrums anyway, just to have something to do, now the Americans were gone. Close to the moment when I was going to drive her to have her own floor tantrums, my mother had a reprieve. We had replacement neighbours. New Americans. We were heading round with home-baked soda bread and welcomes right away

I balked at the sight of them and howled with rage. My mother had lied. These werent real Americans. They were putting on the accent but I could do that. Did they think I wouldnt notice they were the wrong colour?