There isn’t a breeze; not a petal or a leaf is moving and the dead heat is overwhelming. On this particular too-hot-to-breathe July afternoon, we’re in Italy. And, looking out across the typically Tuscan, cypress-tree-dotted landscape, I can actually discern a quivering in the air for as far as my eye can see, something akin, I imagine at the time, to a heat mirage.
“Let’s get out of here for a while, away from this suffocating heat,” I suggest to the husband and my then nine-year-old son.
And so it is that we drive to a small town nearby, purely to avail of its outdoor thermal waters. Thermal or not, surely even ‘hot’ springs have to offer some respite on a day like this. As indeed they do.
Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.
Log In
New to Independent.ie? Create an account
And so it is that, now dried off and refreshed, we wander down the street in search of ice-cream and cold drinks. Into a small café we go, a bit of a huckster of a place, and while the husband and the boy head to the counter to see what ‘gelati’ delights are on offer, I take a seat at a little table by the window.
There’s an Italian newspaper lying on a chair and what catches my eye are the photographs on the front page. Three little boys, side by side. I remember thinking how alike they look. And not at all Italian. And then I see the names. And where they died. And I feel my heart sink.
For the deathtown is Ballymoney, 13km from where I grew up. Ballymoney, where my Auntie Winnie still lived.
Ballymoney, home to motorcycle supremo Joey Dunlop, and a town that, exactly two years later, would be in mourning once again following his death in Estonia.
But for now it is three little boys being mourned.
Three little boys whose tragic story has made it on to the front page of an Italian newspaper. Three brothers burned to death in their own home in a sectarian attack.
Petrol-bombed by savages on the ‘Glorious’ Twelfth of July – and left to die.
Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn – at just 10, nine and eight years of age.
And as I sit in that café in Tuscany on that afternoon of July 13, 1998, I feel an overwhelming sense of loss that I can’t fully understand.
Is it the home-territory connection? Is it the fact that Mark is the same age as my own boy, now walking back across the café towards me, his face alight with joy and holding an ice-cream so big that he needs both hands to support the cone?
Or is it simply the juxtaposition of this Tuscan idyll of ours with the unspeakable horror of the young boys’ deaths?
I still don’t really know.
But what I do know is that when I recently got hold of a copy of Joe Duffy’s and Freya McClements’ new book, ‘Children Of The Troubles’, I turned straight to the index and looked up ‘Quinn’. The boys’ name has never left me.
But the wonderful thing about this book is that it actually doesn’t pick and choose. Rather, it honours each child in equal measure and stands as a fitting testament to every single one of the 186 children who perished during the Troubles.
Including all those whose parents weren’t campaigners, and all those dead children who never made far-away, front-page news.
This is a book that gives a voice to every family that lost a child.
And surely that, in the end, is all that any grieving family wants – to have their child remembered. To be able to say, they were here.
And they mattered.
Source: Read Full Article
Home » Analysis & Comment » Roslyn Dee: 'Brutal murder of three little boys during the Troubles never left me'
Roslyn Dee: 'Brutal murder of three little boys during the Troubles never left me'
There isn’t a breeze; not a petal or a leaf is moving and the dead heat is overwhelming. On this particular too-hot-to-breathe July afternoon, we’re in Italy. And, looking out across the typically Tuscan, cypress-tree-dotted landscape, I can actually discern a quivering in the air for as far as my eye can see, something akin, I imagine at the time, to a heat mirage.
“Let’s get out of here for a while, away from this suffocating heat,” I suggest to the husband and my then nine-year-old son.
And so it is that we drive to a small town nearby, purely to avail of its outdoor thermal waters. Thermal or not, surely even ‘hot’ springs have to offer some respite on a day like this. As indeed they do.
Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.
Log In
New to Independent.ie? Create an account
And so it is that, now dried off and refreshed, we wander down the street in search of ice-cream and cold drinks. Into a small café we go, a bit of a huckster of a place, and while the husband and the boy head to the counter to see what ‘gelati’ delights are on offer, I take a seat at a little table by the window.
There’s an Italian newspaper lying on a chair and what catches my eye are the photographs on the front page. Three little boys, side by side. I remember thinking how alike they look. And not at all Italian. And then I see the names. And where they died. And I feel my heart sink.
For the deathtown is Ballymoney, 13km from where I grew up. Ballymoney, where my Auntie Winnie still lived.
Ballymoney, home to motorcycle supremo Joey Dunlop, and a town that, exactly two years later, would be in mourning once again following his death in Estonia.
But for now it is three little boys being mourned.
Three little boys whose tragic story has made it on to the front page of an Italian newspaper. Three brothers burned to death in their own home in a sectarian attack.
Petrol-bombed by savages on the ‘Glorious’ Twelfth of July – and left to die.
Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn – at just 10, nine and eight years of age.
And as I sit in that café in Tuscany on that afternoon of July 13, 1998, I feel an overwhelming sense of loss that I can’t fully understand.
Is it the home-territory connection? Is it the fact that Mark is the same age as my own boy, now walking back across the café towards me, his face alight with joy and holding an ice-cream so big that he needs both hands to support the cone?
Or is it simply the juxtaposition of this Tuscan idyll of ours with the unspeakable horror of the young boys’ deaths?
I still don’t really know.
But what I do know is that when I recently got hold of a copy of Joe Duffy’s and Freya McClements’ new book, ‘Children Of The Troubles’, I turned straight to the index and looked up ‘Quinn’. The boys’ name has never left me.
But the wonderful thing about this book is that it actually doesn’t pick and choose. Rather, it honours each child in equal measure and stands as a fitting testament to every single one of the 186 children who perished during the Troubles.
Including all those whose parents weren’t campaigners, and all those dead children who never made far-away, front-page news.
This is a book that gives a voice to every family that lost a child.
And surely that, in the end, is all that any grieving family wants – to have their child remembered. To be able to say, they were here.
And they mattered.
Source: Read Full Article