Rafferty’s
laughter and a few moments were enough to rein in Sean’s reaction.
There’s a time and place for this kind of talk, he mused, but
this isn’t the time and it’s certainly not the place.
Most of the men I’m with stay away from this stuff, and I don’t
need it stirred up by one of my own. Besides, maybe he’s telling
me the truth and isn’t trying to stir it up.
After gulping down the last of his second pint, McGuire, true to his
word, left the pub to make his way to town. A short boat ride ferried
him across the harbor to Portsmouth, also a navy town but much larger
and with more to do. The warm sunshine dissuaded him from going to
a movie and prompted him to spend the afternoon quietly strolling
through a park and visiting a few pubs along the seaside. He used
his time away from colleagues and other distractions to think about
the coming week. The boat would be going to sea on another training
voyage.
Most
of the training voyages were short and almost always to the same destination,
the River Foyle and Londonderry, Northern Ireland. To Sean, it was
a city with two names and those depended on where you came from. The
British named and called it Londonderry, but to the Irish it was known
simply as Derry.
When
first assigned to the Ares, Sean wondered if he was victim of a perverse
joke played on him by some anonymous clerk who’d been sentenced
to a life of boredom for an undisclosed minor infraction of naval
discipline. The political unrest regarding Britain’s presence
in Ireland’s northern counties was again resurfacing, and Sean
had assumed his background—being the son of Irish-Catholic immigrants—would
preclude such an assignment. It’s either a joke, he thought,
or some misguided ass thinks going back to Ireland might be what I’d
like to do—go back, as he’d later hear, to protect people
and promote peace.
The sight of barbed wire lining the perimeter of the pier where the
vessel docked in Derry bothered him. More bothersome was discovering
the vessel was occasionally required to provide a small contingent
of men to alleviate the army’s burden of armed security patrols
in the waterfront area. No matter the reason we give for being here,
he thought, it would seem the people aren’t keen about it.
Mixed feelings regarding the vessel’s presence in Northern Ireland
aside, Sean continued to enjoy his time as part of the Ares’s
crew. The camaraderie he experienced, the expectations regarding his
job, and the friendships he was developing far outweighed his concerns
regarding the role they played in Derry.