The Ponderosa is a pub at the top of the Glenshane Pass about a thousand feet up. There’s a plaque on the wall inside it saying it’s the highest pub in Ireland and this massive boy with a broad Belfast accent that was drinking with Eamonn McCann was arguing away really loud saying he was in one down in Cork that was higher. Or maybe it was Kerry, can’t remember. They’ve a lot to argue about I said to Aisling and Frances and Frances squeaked People need a break but her tone of voice meant Give me a break.
We slept in a hall in a place called Gulladuff that night and I still didn’t get near Aisling because Frances got two fierce looking feminists to come over and sit with us and they stayed of course and then when we finally got bedding down the way everybody lay made anything impossible.
In the middle of the night I struggled between all these sleeping bodies to go outside for a pee and when I was shivering doing it this man appeared out of the dark and scared the life out of me and when he was at it he had a good look to see what I was up to, suspiciously good I thought, and then walked on past saying You’re all right there, carry on. I could nearly have sworn he had some sort of a rifle half over his shoulder but maybe it was a stick. Anyway he put the wind up me that much I was nearly doing a shit as well.
When I went back in I could see a bit better with being out in the dark and I found my way to our place no bother. I looked to see if I could squeeze in beside Aisling but her and your woman Frances were that close together you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other started, so I kicked Frances sort of accidentally twice, one of the times I got her on the head but she didn’t budge. I couldn’t think of what else to do to express myself and then when I found my place it took me ages of course to get back to sleep.
I was kind of groggy the next day and the only thing kept me going was that we were getting closer to Derry and Aisling’s flat and I managed to put the thought that Frances would be there too out of my mind. We all went to the upstairs part of a pub in Claudy that night and I was slurring my words even before I got half way through the third pint. The whole lot of us had to leave together in case anybody got lost and somebody led us across the street and down this long alleyway to a big hall. I remember saying to myself holding Aisling’s hand that if I got to Derry alive I was never going to lie on a wooden floor again. Back, feet, neck, the whole lot of me was feeling it and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. I didn’t think I’d even be fit to make love in the unlikely event Frances would allow it.
But I wasn’t getting sleeping for a while yet. There was a big stage at the back of the hall and before you knew it some self-appointed leaders were up on it, not Michael Farrell because he really was the leader, but these self-appointed ones that started spouting all this stuff about what they were going to do the next day when we got to Derry. I couldn’t make much sense of half of it but they weren’t going to let John Hume or anybody else from the Citizens’ Action Committee steal their thunder, that was for sure.
This guy Mickey Mulcahy that I know, fully paid-up leftwing loophead he is, seemed to be the main spokesman for these ones and it was obvious he fancied himself as some kind of orator. I have a dream that this country of ours will rise up. Christ. Martin Luther Mulcahy. It’s the firewater, I was thinking, that and probably joints half the day as well. He was calling John Hume and them traitors and collaborators looking for their place in the sun and what was the other thing he said they were doing, yes, that they were out to line their pockets with the queen’s shilling when it was our blood was going to be spilt.
Bloody ridiculous, I thought, people with drink in them shouldn’t be allowed to just stand up there and influence people like that. I got to my feet really mad and was going to let Mickey know a thing or two but before I could open my mouth somebody else started. “I speak for the silent majority,” he shouted, “and I’m telling you now, it doesn’t matter who gets the credit. This is about ordinary people’s civil rights, not about Mickey Mulcahy feeling miffed.” I felt somebody pulling at my elbow then and Aisling all urgent whispered, “Leave it Jeremiah. Here, sit down,” and I lost my balance and fell half on top of her. “You spoke well,” she said sort of smiling and she had her hand on my leg, “but you were talking shite.” I didn’t mind what I’d been talking. I was beside her and she was handling me. She’d squeezed me in between her and Frances and your woman was sitting there with a face on her but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
The speeches stopped a wee while after that and somebody put the lights out and then, heaven. Last day of the march coming up and it didn’t matter if the world ended sometime in the middle of it, nothing mattered except the night and the girl beside me. We didn’t speak, we didn’t need to, everything she did showed she was mine.