He was sitting in his uniform in the kitchen. He looked at Maisie and then at Catherine, and then he went up to his room and prayed. He called on God to give him peace. They were calling him a bigot, but he was a patriot. He was not by nature a violent man. The camera could not tell the history that led to that moment when he had become one of those statistics he despised.

The camera did not hear orders. The camera did not hear the chants of hate. It did not remember that wherever the Mass was said soon men were burning upon the stake. It selected its own branch of history. But why had he retaliated like that? And why had the young policemen held back? Had they seen the camera? Had the Fenians known the whole time that this would appear on TV and so deliberately driven the police to it? It was the old fogies like himself who had struck out, not knowing that they were being filmed. The young fellows had known.

It was them that went up under cover of darkness to the Bogside.

In the light of day he had become the author of his own misfortune. Jonathan Adams cursed the cameraman. He cursed the police that had used him and his stupidity. He remembered going up together with other policemen in the minibus from Fermanagh on the fatal day. They had stopped off at a seaside town for dinner at a hotel. All the talk that day was of how they would put a stop to Rome. We’ll show them! Hey! Now he felt that the same policemen had thrown him to the lions. After he turned on Saunderson for mentioning that escapade, his appearance on the TV was never mentioned. But sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he caught them smiling. There was no escape.

The whole of the world had seen him.

Because someone had knocked off his hat, Jonathan Adams had started a war.

12. The Summer Home

12

The Summer Home

After this, and because of the accelerating war in the years that followed, Jonathan Adams became estranged from his daughters. He no longer collected them from school. He did not walk the roads with them. He did not go shopping in town with them. He no longer went to public occasions. Each time they came home with him in the car he approached the house from a different direction, through tree-lined back roads, along laneways. All the ground-floor windows of the house were barred, new safety glass was installed, the doors bolted. The girls could invite few friends home.