OK, so I had mentioned on my profile the other day that I was considering writing this. I got prodded along into it by a friend (NO NAMES.... ahem), so here it is. This is Mick and Annie’s story, and it’ll be waaaaay more understandable if you read A Cold Grey Dawn first. I’m not saying that as a plug but as simple truth. You probably can read this on its own, but it’ll be more entertaining with the other story added on. In any case, here you go.

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Heaven on Earth
We need it now
I’m sick of all of this
Hanging around
Sick of sorrow
Sick of pain
Sick of hearing again and again
That there’s gonna be
Peace on Earth
— U2, PEACE ON EARTH

My Sunshine

Prologue

Falls Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland
1994

“Annie, darling, would ye ever pass me the potatoes? There’s a lass now.” Connor MacLean beamed at his only child as he took the dish she handed him.

“Is there an IRA meeting tonight, Da?” asked the girl eagerly. At eighteen, Annie still had the same fascination with the Irish Republican Army that she had had since childhood. She resembled her mother, with her fair hair and hazel eyes. But she was thin as a waif, a slight little figure, and that was something she hadn’t inherited from either parent. She was petite and slender, with her hair falling almost to her waist. Her hazel eyes, though a tiny bit dreamy just at the moment, were habitually quick and canny, and a truer judge of character than Annie MacLean there had never been.

At the question, Connor glanced towards his wife. Sheila MacLean was eating with the slow, mechanically precise movements of someone giving none of their attention to their food despite her attention being unerringly fixed on her plate.

He knew his wife had hoped Annie would be able to get an education, to find herself a career she could be proud of. Sheila had larger dreams for her daughter than she had ever dared to have for herself, and now with so many people who had been to Long Kesh, that horrible prison where her own husband had spent time, she had lost her faith in the IRA and scrupulously ignored conversations about her husband’s ongoing activities with the movement.

“No, lass, that there isn’t,” he told his daughter. “And no, ye wouldn’t be going.”

Instantly the young woman’s expression became a pout, and had her hands not been busy with her utensils, she would have crossed them over her front. “An’ why not? I’m old enough, boys around here join the Army at fourteen!”

“Ye’re not a boy and that’s simple truth,” her father replied unswervingly. “Ye’re not joining the IRA, Annie-girl, an’ that’s that.”

“So I’m to sweep an’ clean all me life? Fat chance o’ that,” she said venomously.

“No one in their right mind would have ye sweep an’ clean,” her father chuckled. “Ye’d lose yer patience an’ off ye’d go.”

“True enough,” Annie grinned. “An’ to hell with any who try to keep me.”

Conversation lightened, laughter returned to the table though Sheila still sat silent. She was tired, bone-tired of worrying that her husband would leave one day and never return. Assaulted by Proddy thugs, killed with the IRA, what was the difference? He would die, and she and Annie would be left penniless and finish on the street. The girl did all the cooking as it was, Sheila sick enough that it was all she could do to sit with her family and poke at the food on her plate.

Pity, too, because Annie had a knack for cooking.

Annie was helping her mother into the other room after the meal when she heard what she’d always dreaded but had never thought to know. Pounding fists on the door, harsh, angry voices shouting through. Her father roaring back, outrage in his voice as he denounced accusations — some that she didn’t understand, some that made her sick.

Sheila moaned and slumped against her daughter. “Oh, sweet Jesus, they’ve come! I knew they would, I knew they would.”

“Shush, Mam!” Annie hissed it, then settled her mother quickly and slipped away, a slender shadow melting into the corners of the dark and dreary little house.

She stood in the doorway to what was jokingly called the parlour, listened to the furious sounds coming from within. Her heart pounding, cold sweat prickling uneasily on her skin, Annie eased forwards, tried to look — and heard the gunshot.

She jerked back from the doorway when the blood slashed across her face like a warm knife, the sob strangling in her throat as she clamped her hands over her mouth, hands that were soon soaked with her tears and her father’s blood. She couldn’t make a sound, she would be found, she would be caught, she would be killed.

Papa. No, no, not Papa, they didn’t, they couldn’t....

She shook her head to clear it, heard the sounds of footsteps clomping through the house — their house, damn it! — and, oh, God, no — heard her mother’s thin scream.

No! Not Mam, too! Dear God, NO!

When the second gunshot reverberated through the house, and all was eerily, deathly quiet but for the sound of booted feet stomping around, Annie found a dark corner and hid, a slim young woman with her father’s blood across her face.

—

She didn’t know how long it was before she was found. All she knew was she was taken from the house, cleaned and dressed. She went through it all robotically, performing the basic actions while the scene from her home stayed imprinted on her mind.

She knew they buried her parents, remembered wishing they could have had better than quickly dug graves and hastily built coffins and a funeral cloaked by night. Remembered crying, finally, in broken sobs that sounded more animal than human.

—

Three weeks later

“I wish ye’d stay, Annie.”

She stared straight ahead a moment longer, then turned to look at Pat O’Shaughnessy. Tall and lanky, he had long been a good and valuable friend, and had come to the MacLean home often.

Now even Annie didn’t set foot inside her home, and she didn’t want to. Bad enough she had buried her parents days before, her parents who’d been killed where they lived.

Her father, shot. Blood, so much blood everywhere. On him, on her, on the floor. Blank eyes staring sightlessly up at heaven. And her mother, beaten and raped and shot. The sound of her sobbing pleas still ringing in her daughter’s ears.

Annie knew everything, all the gruesome details of it. How her mother had been beaten first, then shot in the foot to keep her from moving. A feeble woman who’d been sick for years, but hadn’t the means for medicine. She knew that once her mother had been further hampered, the three men had taken turns raping her, beating her with fists or gun handles when she struggled.

She still remembered the final gunshot.

Because the little girl in her wanted to sob and cry and end it all, the young woman stood rigidly straight, clutching the pitiful money she had from the sale of the house — the house she’d forced herself back into, had scrubbed clean until it was as fit for sale as a house on the Falls Road could ever be — in her hand as she prepared to leave the North forever.

“I wish I could stay too, Pat. But there isn’t peace here, not for us. Not for Catholics. In the Republic it’s said they treat us well, with respect. Respect, Pat. When have we ever had that from the RUC, from the well-dressed Prods in the city? Never. I’ll have it all in the Republic, no mistake. I’ll make a life, I’ll marry an’ have a family. An’ I won’t have to worry about being beaten half to death because I wear a cross ‘round me neck.”

Pat’s eyes, the liquid brown of a favourite dog’s, watched her mournfully. “I’ll miss ye. I’ll use that reading ye taught me an’ read any letters ye’ll send me.”

“I’ll write, Pat, soon as I’m settled. But I won’t come back, so don’t be hoping for it. Goodbye.”

As he watched her walk away down the road that would lead her out of Belfast and towards the border, Pat thought that she was the bravest person he had ever known.

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OK, few things. The MacLean family (and Pat) speak the way they do because at that time (before the Good Friday Agreement that began to settle the situation in Northern Ireland) the situation for Northern Catholics was horrible. They lived in cramped, filthy areas of cities (such as the Falls Road in Belfast) and were forced to stay there. They had low-paying, dangerous jobs, if they had them, and houses were small and dark and dreary. For Catholics who suffered through crimes such as Annie did, the police often did nothing to help, covering for the Loyalists (people who wanted Northern Ireland to remain under British rule) who had most often committed the crime. Education beyond the most basic was rare, illiteracy common; all in all, a terrible thing to be living through.

As for what some of the words/slang terms mean, here goes:
Da — dialect; means “Dad” or father
IRA — Irish Republican Army, paramilitary group fighting for Irish independence and later a united Ireland
Long Kesh — officially known as Her Majesty’s Prizon Maze; infamous prison where several paramilitaries were interned in the latter part of the twentieth century. Location of the famous 1981 hunger strikes, the blanket and dirty protests.
Mam — dialect; “Mom” or mother
Proddy/Prods — derogatory term for Protestants
RUC — Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police force of Northern Ireland; almost entirely composed of Protestants (Catholics were kept from good jobs)
the Republic — refers to the Republic of Ireland, to the south

Also, the opening quote is meant to be above the story title. It’s the type of quote that would, in a book, be placed on a single page all on its own, referring to the story as a whole.

Aaaaaaaand... I think that’s it. Hope you enjoyed, and review..

— ML