Wade's World

Wednesday night Wade awoke around half three. Looking around his dark room, he struggled to remember where he was. A dream had roused him from his sleep. He recalled it vaguely. He was speaking amorously to a woman, then he was standing in a petrol station, pumping kerosene into a petrol-powered automobile. What an odd dream.

Later in the story:

Friday afternoon around teatime Wade and his cousin went out on a pub crawl. They hit every pub in town, playing pool and having a hot whiskey in each. On the way back to the Trout, he stopped at a booth and phoned Sinead. She said she had booked a flight to Dublin and was arriving on Sunday. She had also booked a seat on Wade's flight home the following Friday. Would he care to collect her or shall she go her own way?

Wade had no car, so he decided to hire one. But his uncle said not to worry, you can borrow my new Peugeot. After supper Saturday night, Wade drove the Peugeot to the petrol station to fuel for the trip down to Swords. He filled it to the brim with petrol, and then a thought crossed his mind: Is this a diesel?

It was and the station was about to close as well. In a panic, he hurried inside. The attendant made a call and before long young men arrived with a small truck and a fat rope. They towed the Peugeot down the narrow street, into an alley, where the fuel was drained. An hour and 110 quid later, the Peugeot was refueled and ready to go.

When Wade returned from the garage and entered the pub, a pint of equal parts lager & cider with blackcurrant was served up and set before him. "What's this?"

"It's a diesel."

The day after the cease fire ended, Wade walked to the park. He followed the cobblestone path along narrow Church Street, turning in to the wooded path near the crest of the hill, beside the old church. From there the worn path wound for about a tenth of an Irish Mile, a stone wall to his right and the wood to the other side. A weather-worn green batten door broke the continuity, upon it graffiti--"Tiocfiadh ar la" and "Chaucer was a tosser." Before long he heard the laughter of children at play and felt the cool breeze blowing of the lough. He sat down on a bench near edge of the green. Smoking his pipe, he watched the children play.

A short while passed and then he felt the ground rumble and suddenly the children stopped their play and looked at one another, but for only a moment. Then in unison they ran toward the wall from whence the rumble was approaching and began yelling obscenities befitting a sailor over the wall.

After Wade is rescued from the icy Lagan, into which he leapt in a drunken stupor, off the Ormeau Road Bridge, caught in the midst of a riot and not caring to belong to either side, he wakes in the hospital and his wife to be is there. The story ends as they stand on the threshold of Lisbane Chruch, staring out at the world. The church is in Ardkeen, beside Saltwater Brig, where the key to the church is kept behind the bar. Lisbane Church only opens once a year, on All Soul's Day, and it is on that day that they wed. Is that their cottage before them near the foot of the drumlin? Looking out over the stream and down to the lough with the Mourne Mountains far off in the distance? The ancestral one he dreamt of in the states?

Not sure about that yet, but it ties nicely to the opening of the story and also brings it around in a circle to where it began.

Photos of the grounds of Saltwater Brig:

The Narrows are wide turns the tide;

Safe home to your side,

I quite alone on mine. 

These Narrows are deep as the North Sea;

So too runs this love-- Savagely free.

This Hole in the Wall seems so small;

Sail o’er in my sloop, braving An Cuan

where, long, long ago,

Mac Niall met the foe;

I battle my own here all alone.

Saltwater streams from an ancient divide,

Drowned drumlin dreams see me safe to your side.

Stone keeps shield the shores,

Mine

and yours;

Warders of a time no distance can blind;

My bow turned toward the East

a salmon leaps

bound to An Caol swims on-- into her arms.

The Narrows are wide turns the tide;

Safe home to your side,

I quite alone on mine.

I'm still wrestling with the geographics of the story. I feel Wade should be on one side of the lough and Bridgette on the other. It makes sense that the Protestant town should be on the Ards Penisula, so that is where it shall be. I am going back to the name Coweyabbey for that town. It is a tiny village on the south peninsula road between Portaferry and Cowey's Wells.

Two perpetual stool occupants in the Tickled Trout are the cousins Pat Savage and Niall Nugent. They are a symbol of the demise and debauchery of the former Norman rulers of the region.

Dunshane Cross is a small village on the road from Downpatrick to Strangford. It is situated beside Saul, where St Patrick first set up shop. Bridgette summers there, staying with her uncle, the parish priest.

The day after the Docklands bombing the pastor of Wade's church reads some rubbish from the Old Testament that left Wade with an empty feeling in his soul. He decides to get on the ferry and go to Dunshane Cross and there wanders into the RC Church. The father reads from the Old Testament as well. The story of Cain and Abel. He talks about being your brother's keeper and says he's watched most of the congregation grow up in violence, and then raise their children in the same and did they really want to watch their grandchildren live the same sin.

In

Each of the other missionaries has an Achilles Heel, some character trait that leads to their death in Belfast.

1. When Wade first walks into The Tickled Trout he sees a sign which reads, "There are no strangers here, only friends we have not yet met."

2. One of the characters is a stone worker who maintains the prison walls that surround the political prisoners.

3. Although he appears calm, Wade is an angry man, upset about never knowing his father, about not having a real family.

Wade wants to go to seminary and become a minister. In particular, he wants to help to bring peace in Ireland, where his own father died while trying to do the same as a soldier. He only vaguely remembers his father, but he wants to follow in his footsteps, in a way, but armed with a bible, not a gun.

When Wade last sees his mother before departing-- when she begs him once more not to go-- he notices that she is pale and asks her to see a doctor. She never sees doctors. Shs is slowly losing blood and after he is gone she eventually is five pints low, causing the heart attack that kills her.