The
Last Crossing, by Brian McGilloway.
Brian McGilloway divides the action of his superb story into chapters
alternating between the present day, and terrible events of thirty years
before, when The Troubles dominated the whole of Ireland. No-one could ever be neutral in those
times; you were either a staunch
Republican and ready to die for the cause and/or kill for it, or Northern
Irish, who felt the same.
Now, a Peace Agreement has been signed, and fanatical
enemies of thirty years ago have supposedly jettisoned their innate hatreds and
are jockeying for positions in the new government. It’s the dawn of a new peaceful era!
Oh, really?
Thirty years ago, lovers Karen and Tony are inveigled
into supporting and facilitating clandestine acts of sabotage controlled by
Duggan, an acquaintance who appeals to their sad history of having family
members murdered by the Military and Derry Police: ‘It’s the least yez can do to avenge their
memory!’ And that’s alright, as far as
it goes, until they are party to a cold-blooded assassination performed by
Duggan on his best friend, who has been unmasked as a tout, a snitch, a
betrayer. This was not what they signed
up for, especially as Tony, a teacher, finds that one of his pupils, a child he
knows and cares about, will become collateral damage: he can’t let that happen.
Thirty years later, he, Duggan and Karen are summoned by
political hopeful Sean Mullan; he’s
running for office and wants to exhume the Snitch’s body from its secret
hiding-place, returning the remains to the family so that they will have
‘closure’, and Mullan will be seen to be magnanimous in letting Bygones be
Bygones. The cynicism of his reasoning
is breathtaking, but is so outrageous that it will be successful, as the tout’s
family have been searching for him fruitlessly for many years: they truly do want ‘closure’, and as Tony,
Duggan and Karen are the only ones who know where they buried him, they are the
ones who must find him again. Except
that their world has changed; life has
gotten in the way and nothing - and nobody – is the same: Duggan is still full of hatred – ‘the war is never over’; Tony is a solitary, childless widower, and
Karen has a family but has been marked forever by the events of their youth.
And the revelations keep coming, in Mr McGilloway’s
spare, beautiful prose. Each sentence
does the work of ten and his protagonists speak to us eloquently of the dreams
we all have but are seldom realised.
Superlative. SIX STARS.
