Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

Book Cover

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy was published in 2022 and it was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2023. The book begins in 2015 but swiftly moves back in time to Belfast of the 1970s.

Cushla is 24 and a Catholic primary school teacher, but she also helps out as a barmaid in the family pub. That’s where she meets Michael, he’s a 60 year old barrister who is happy to take on any legal cases, be they for Catholics or Protestants, including IRA members. Cushla is immediately attracted to him despite the age difference, religious difference and the fact that he is married.

Cushla is still living at home with her alcoholic mother, her brother Eamonn doesn’t realise how out of control their mother is. He runs the pub and is married with young daughters and he is totally unaware of his sister’s relationship with Michael.

As often happens with teachers of young children Cushla becomes involved with the family of young Davy, one of her pupils. He’s looked down on by the whole class because his mother is a Protestant, and as they live in a Catholic area she can’t hang washing out on the line as the charming neighbours pelt the clean clothes with shit. It means that her children’s clothes have absorbed all the smells of her cooking and mustiness as they take so long to dry indoors. Davy is a poor wee soul, looked down on by his classmates, and particular the nasty school priest, but Cushla befriends the family which only leads to more problems for them.

There’s only going to be one sort of ending to this tale, a sad one, but a very common situation back in those days.

I was a bit trepidacious about reading this book as I’m of an age to remember the beginnings of ‘The Troubles’  in Northern Ireland, and then the common bomb scares which disrupted simple shopping trips for years. Then there were the genuine bombs when we moved close to London in the late 1970s, but this was a good read.

I was puzzled by one thing though. Cushla’s lover’s name is Michael, a Protestant lawyer. As I grew up in the west of Scotland which at that time had a very similar Catholic/Protestant ‘tradition’, names were descriptive things and anyone called Michael would definitely have been a Catholic, so it seemed a strange choice for a Protestant by the author.

Thankfully there have been so many ‘mixed marriages’ over the last few decades that have gone a long way to the demise of that toxic sectarianism, in Scotland anyway.

The Twelfth Day of July by Joan Lingard

The Twelfth Day of July by Joan Lingard was first published in 1970, so it was probably written just as ‘The Troubles’ of Northern Ireland started to become really serious.

The book begins on the 7th of July, just five more days to go until the Glorious 12th,  in the Jackson’s Belfast  home they’re all counting the days until the members of the Orange Lodge bands will be marching wearing their smart purple and orange uniforms and playing their instruments, it’s the highlight of their year, commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. This year Sadie is taking part for the first time.

But the night before the big day the huge mural of King Billy on his white horse which is painted on the gable end of the Jackson’s house is daubed with green paint by some  Catholic youngsters who live in a nearby neighbourhood.  Sadie and her brother Tommy are incensed, and so begins a tit for tat battle between them and the boys they know to be the culprits. The youngsters are able to move quite easily between the two areas, something which was stopped by building a massive wall between them, to keep the two factions apart. It was still there when I visited Belfast in the mid 1990s, I suspect it might still be there.

Sadie Jackson is a great character and Kevin is obviously an admirer. This is the beginning of a series featuring them as a couple who are caught up in the religious sectarianism of the divided and violent Northern Ireland. I’m looking forward to reading the others.