Richard Solly - Bright Wings a Light-Hearted Tale of Disappointment, Destruction, Desperation and Death

8/20/2019 Richard Solly - Bright Wings a Light-Hearted Tale of Disappointment, Destruction, Desperation and Death

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About the Author

Richard Solly grew up in South East England but has spent manyyears working in support of Indigenous and farming communities

affected by destructive mining operations. He has been deeplyinfluenced by the Theology of Liberation. He is unmarried, but

open to offers. He lives in London.


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Dedication

A.M.D.G. and in grateful memory of

Antony MahonyBert White

Joe Fox, SrJohn Medcalf

Lorraine SinclairRandy Lawrence

Teddy Woodenthighand Thelma Two


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R i chard Sol l y

B

R I G H T

W

I N G S

:

A L I G H T - H E A R T E D T A L E

O F D I S A P P O I N T M E N T

D E S T R U C T I O N

D E S P E R A T I O N A N D D E A T H


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Copyright © Richard Solly (2015)

The right of Richard Solly to be identified as author of this workhas been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the

publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims

for damages.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Anyresemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely

coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the BritishLibrary.

ISBN 978 1 78455 795 9 (Paperback)ISBN 978 1 78455 796 6 (Hardback)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2015)Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

25 Canada SquareCanary Wharf

LondonE14 5LQ

Printed and bound in Great Britain


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Acknowledgments

With many thanks for advice, encouragement and hospitality to

Carolyn Pogue PhippsCarrie Small

David KingDavid Raby

Desiree HellegersDiana Mills

DiarmuidO’Murchu

Dominic Mahony

Henrietta LeyserJeannette Sinclair

Luisa RabyMaggie Scrimgeour

Mike RebeiroRaglan Hay-Will

Rick Reesand Rob Esdaile


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PROLOGUE

n the beginning was the theory

The moon was full when the residents of Noname, on the plains of western Canada, emerged from their newly-built

community hall one warm summer night in 1898, and headedhome, the beer kegs and whisky bottles drained, the new pine

floor marked with its first signs of dancing.The bright moonlight cast sharp shadows around the

scattered houses, built of logs and sod, that lay some hundreds

of yards in every direction from the timber-framed hall, andmade the tall prairie grasses shine like silver.

The small community of English anarchists who occupied

this patch of rolling plains, lying southeastwards of the sandhills and several dozen miles north of the US border, refusedin principle to lay out their new settlement according to the

regimental grid plan dictated by the Dominion Land Survey.

They decided, at the first community meeting held in theircollectively built hall, to construct their street plan accordingto the erratic routes, still fairly clearly visible in thesurrounding grass, which they had each taken home from their

inauguration dance, the worse for weariness, aching feet andalcohol.

They also decided that ‘ Noname’ was no name for a

settlement. They chose a new name, out of affection for therevolutionary Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, who had

inspired all of them and whom many of them had met at hishome in exile in Bromley, Kent, where he was experimentingwith improvements in horticulture. Kropotkin was to be the


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name of their new settlement, their experiment in hope,sharing and liberty – Kropotkin, Great West Territory – andafter the Territory was divided in 1905, and its two halves

attained the status of Provinces, it became Kropotkin,Assiniboia.

They rejected out of hand the dreary logic of western NewWorld street names, and chose instead – once the crooked

paths were marked out and paved with packed dirt – names

inspired by Kropotkin’s own address in Bromley, 6 CrescentRoad. These were names that combined the basic elements ofstreet names in their native land and would render any attempt

to navigate the settlement by reason and prediction futile: notonly Crescent Road but Street Road, Road Street, Crescent

Avenue, Street Lane, Road Road, Avenue Road, AvenueStreet, Avenue Lane and Avenue Crescent. When they hadfinally exhausted all such combinations, they used Not

Crescent Road, Not Street Road, Not Road Street, and soforth.

At the second community meeting held in the new hall,

the residents, including men, women and all those children oldenough to help till the soil and tend the livestock, confirmed

the decision they had made before leaving England. They haddecided that each family would have its own plot of land aswell as working what the community held in common,

because this would provide the necessary balance betweencollective production, individual liberty and the natural bonds

of blood.They also decided to seek close and friendly relations with

the Native people who had remained in the vicinity since thecolonial wars and since forced settlement had been imposed

on them by their European invaders. No one in the communitywanted to impose further suffering on unjustly treated people,

when they themselves had fled the injustices of a class-riddenand unequal homeland.

Finally, they decided to welcome among them anyonewho came seeking liberty and was prepared to work hard, playa full part in the shared life of the community and respect theways and views of residents already there. This meant that


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they could not accept anyone practicing a religion. As far asresidents of this community could see, those who followed areligion thought they were somehow better than other people

and duty-bound to convert them to whatever faith theyfollowed for fear that, otherwise, they would burn in hell.

Furthermore, such people, obsessed with some illusoryafterlife, had no practical interest in changing the oppressiveconditions with which so many in the world were burdened.

Residents felt no need to reconsider this decision for thenext one hundred years and when they did so, it was becauseof the unexpected arrival, under the most trying of

circumstances, of several natives of the island from which thecommunity’s founders had come.


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EAST the di rection of new beginnings

One: Kerry receives the call

One afternoon, just over a hundred years later, in south-west

London (the one in England, not Ontario), Kerry sat half-asleep in the launderette, made drowsy by the warmth and by

the drone of the tumble dryers. He watched his jeans and

acrylic sweater churning back and forth in the washingmachine in front of him, blue legs tangling with green arms in

a confusion of foam and underwear. He looked out at the grey,drizzly spring day, stretched out his legs, leaned back againstthe dryer behind him and closed his eyes.

“Excuse me, love.” The woman who worked in the launderette had returned.

Kerry opened his eyes and drew his feet up under the bench so

she could pass. “Sorry to disturb you, love,” she said, “ butI’ve got to get to the office.”

“Sorry to be in your way,” said Kerry.“That’s alright,” she said. “You look tired.” She went into the small office at the back of the

launderette and put down her shopping bag. “I just nipped tothe shops for a few things, while it was quiet,” she said,

emerging from the back room with a service wash, which she began loading into one of the machines. “ Not working today,then?” she asked.


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“ No, I rarely work on Mondays,” replied Kerry. “Thelibrary’s shut on a Monday and my other work is a bitunpredictable.”

“Do you work in the library, then? I rarely go in there. Not much of a reader.”

“Oh, you can get CDs and DVDs in there, too,” saidKerry. “All sorts of stuff.”

“Perhaps I should have a look,” she said. “Have you got

any country music? I like country music. It’s relaxing. A bitsad, usually, but quite relaxing.”

“I think so,” said Kerry. “There’s all sorts of music in

there. It’s much cheaper renting than buying stuff. Do have alook.”

“Yes, I’ll do that, then,” she said, and after a pause,“What’s your other work, then?”

“I’m a translator. Mostly Spanish documents that need

translating into English. Sometimes I do French or Portugueseas well. I work freelance. I thought there’d be more work but Ihaven’t had that much since I finished university. That’s why

I took a part-time job in the library.” “You haven’t lived round here long, have you? I’ve not

seen you before.” “ No, I’ve not been here long. I grew up round here, but

my dad died when I was eleven and we moved down to

Wessex to be close to my mum’s sister. My mum died while Iwas at university, so I came back to London when I got my

degree.” “Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “Awful thing to have lost

both your parents when you’re still so young.” “Yes,” said Kerry. “I do miss them.”

They were silent for a few moments.Then she asked, “Do you have to go to college to get a job

at a library?” “It depends what job you want to do there. You do to be a

translator.” “Did you always want to do that?” “ No, I never had a clue what I wanted to do. I thought

going to college would help me decide, but I still didn’t have a


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clue at the end of it. Being a translator sort of avoids having toknow my own mind. I just have to make one person’sthoughts clear to another person. I don’t have to have any of

my own. But not much work has come my way. I knew Icould deal with books, though, so when I saw the library job

advertised, I applied for it.” “My son Kevin loved books,” she said. “He was always

reading. All sorts of stuff. It used to annoy my husband. He

told him he ought to get out more, get himself a girlfriend, geta life. I couldn’t see what harm there was in reading, though,if that’s what he wanted to do.”

“What’s he doing now?” “Singing with the angels, perhaps. He died six and a half

years ago.” “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Kerry. “What did he die of?” “In a road accident. He was away in his thoughts, as

usual, on his way home from school, and stepped into the roadwithout looking. The driver tried to stop, but he hit my boyand he was thrown sideways and cracked his skull against the

kerb. There was nothing they could do, in the end. He wasonly fourteen.”

Tears sprang to Kerry’s eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he said.“Was he your only child?”

“He was,” she said. She was silent for a while. “It’s very

hard sometimes, very hard. I loved him so much. He was sucha gentle boy. Not a moment passes without me thinking about

him, even if I’m thinking about something else, if you seewhat I mean. I’m sure you do, with your parents passedaway.”

“But it’s different to lose a child,” said Kerry. “You

expect to lose your parents, but to lose a child…I’m so sorry.It must be so painful for you. How has your husband coped

with it?” “Oh, he didn’t cope well at all. He was gentle too, inside –

just tried not to show it too much in case people thought hewas soft. He blamed himself for not making Kevin more

practical, and then again, he blamed himself for nagging him,and especially for always telling him to get a life, and then he


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dies, like that. And my husband didn’t have faith to keep himgoing, like I do. I talk to Our Lady a lot, because she knowswhat I’m going through. It does help.”

“Are you a Catholic, then?” “Yes – not a fanatic, but it means a lot to me.”

“Me, too.” “Oh, really? Well, you’ll know what I mean, then. My

poor husband didn’t. He pined away, you know.” “He’s no longer with you?” “ No, he died two years after my son.” “Oh, I’m so sorry. Sorry to make you talk about sad

things.” “You didn’t. I started it. I don’t usually talk about it now.

You learn to live with these things. You go mental if youdon’t. Sometimes, I meet someone who just seems easy to talkto, and I talk to them.”

“Oh, well, then,” said Kerry, “I’m glad you can talk tome.”

They were silent for a while. She looked lost in thought.

Kerry’s wash cycle came to an end and the machine fell silenttoo.

“I’m Dawn, by the way,” she said.“I’m Kerry,” he said.“Lovely Irish name,” said Dawn.

“I think one of my great grandfathers came from Kerry,” he said. “My mother loved the name.”

“I’ve worked with the public all my life,” said Dawn.“Before I worked here, I worked in a travel agent’s for years.I’ve met so many people, I can usually guess what they do fora living. If you hadn’t told me you worked in the library, I’d

have guessed you were the local Church of England curate.You’ve got a kind, sort of concerned look about you.”

“Oh! Thank you!” “Have you ever thought of being a priest? You’re a good

listener. Anyone can see you’ve got a kind heart.” “Me, a priest? Oh, goodness, I’m not sure about that.

Some of the things the Church comes out with are, well, a bitdifficult to understand.”


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“Ah, but you’d go to college to study for the priesthoodand they’d explain it all to you, wouldn’t they?”

“Well…”

“Mind you, I expect you’d break a lot of hearts in a parish, with that lovely fine blond hair and clear skin, and so

slim with it.” “Oh,” Kerry blushed. He very rarely gave any thought to

his appearance. “Thank you!”

Dawn looked at him. “Lovely hazel eyes, too,” she said.“Like my son.”

“Oh…” Kerry did not know what else to say.

“I bet you had all the girls chasing after you at school,” said Dawn.

“I went to an all-boys school,” said Kerry“Oh, I see,” said Dawn.Kerry wondered whether she did see.“St. Thomas More Catholic School in Westhampton,” he

added.“That’s nice,” she said.

It had not been all that nice to start with, he thought.There were a couple of boys there who said he looked like a

girl, and pushed him around. He never retaliated. He had noidea how to handle it. But the school had an enlightened anti-

bullying policy, and the trouble did not last long. One of the

boys was expelled. Kerry often wondered what had become ofhim.

Then, there was the boy two years above him who, whenKerry reached the age of thirteen, always seemed to want tospend time with him during the lunch hour, and to walk homewith him, even though his house was in the opposite direction.

Kerry never asked him why. Then, one day, on the way home,the boy became terribly agitated and told Kerry he loved him.

Kerry did not know how to deal with that, either. He did notwant to upset the boy. In a way he felt flattered, but he never

did understand what it was to be in love with anyone, whethergirl or boy, so he thanked his admirer but said he did not feelthe same way. The boy left the school all of a sudden, in the


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middle of the year, and Kerry never heard what had happenedto him, either. He could not even remember his name, now.

“I think you should think about it, you know,” said Dawn.

“Ask your parish priest about it. You go to Mass, don’t you?” “Yes, but…”

“You go and talk to your parish priest. He’ll help you.” Kerry did think about it, off and on, for several weeks.

Then, one early summer day, he went to see the parish priest.


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Two: Kerry learns to pray

“Well,” said Father Patrick Murphy in his soft Meath accent.

“What do you think yourself?” “I don’t know,” said Kerry. “I’d never thought of it

before.”

They sat in the elderly priest’s high-ceilinged, brightly painted kitchen, its two tall, thin windows looking out into a

small garden full of flowers and birdsong.“You’re a sensitive and kind-hearted young man,” said

Father Patrick. “You always were. I remember when I first

came here fifteen years ago and you were in the youth club,you were always looking out for the others. If anybody wasnew or looked lonely, it would be you who befriended them.

That’s a good start. That’s the most important thing. You haveto care about people or you might as well not bother. You’ve

been visiting some of the old people in the parish since yougot back to London, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” said Kerry. “I got chatting with old Mrs Smith oneday after Mass, and she was so upset about her husband’sdeath, so I started dropping in on her once in a while to checkshe was okay and give her a bit of company. She asked me to

visit some of her neighbours because she said they werelonely.”

“They’ve spoken about you,” said Father Patrick. “They

really appreciate you going to see them, you know.”

“Oh, good,” said Kerry, not knowing what else to say.“What about God?” asked Father Patrick. “Is God real to

you?”


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“Yes,” replied Kerry. “Plenty of people have told me it’sall a load of old rubbish, but God always seemed real to me,even if he’s rather hazy and ill-defined.”

“Who do you think God is?” “Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t really got a picture of him in

my head. He just feels like a great mass of kindness and loveto me. Maybe he’s a projection of my late father.”

Father Patrick laughed, and scratched his grey beard.“Who knows?” he said. “If God’s beyond our capacity tounderstand or imagine – as he must be if he’s infinite – then,any idea we have of him is bound to be a projection of

something, isn’t it? Better have a projection that’s pleasantrather than one that’s horrible. As long as you realise it’s not

the whole story.” “Yes, I suppose so,” said Kerry.“You must like going to Mass well enough, because I’ve

seen you every Sunday since you moved back. Do you praywhen you’re not at church?”

“Yes. But I’d like to learn more about that.” “Well, we can sort that out in due course.” Father Patrick

paused. “You’re twenty-four now, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” “And you haven’t got a girlfriend or anything?” “ No.”

“Do you think you could cope with never gettingmarried?”

“I think so. I mean, that side of life has never been thatimportant to me, I suppose.”

“And do you have a strong desire to be a translator orwork in a library?”

“ No.” “Or anything else?”

“ Not really.” “Well, I suggest you carry on with your visiting. If you

want to do anything official on behalf of the parish, we’ll haveto get a criminal record check on you, I’m afraid.”

“Okay. And what about the praying?”


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“Well, if you like, I’ll teach you the way I pray myself,and you can see if that works for you. And you could join the

parish prayer group. It’s a joint effort with the Anglicans.

There’s some champion prayers there, I can tell you. Lovely people.”

So, in the weeks that followed, Father Patrick taught himhow to meditate on passages from the Bible; how to deepen

his sense of gratitude for life and the beauty of the Earth; howand why to pray for other people and for the state of theworld. “You see,” said Father Patrick, “ part of the purpose of

praying is changing ourselves, making ourselves more lovingand kind and gentle, and then the world starts changing

because we’ve changed ourselves. Maybe you pray that so-and-so recovers from an illness and instead she dies, but

perhaps in the process you’ve become more loving and caring

and so-and-so has felt that, felt more surrounded by love andkindness, and it’s made her final weeks more bearable. The

purpose of prayer is to deepen your compassion. Any form of

prayer that doesn’t is a waste of time.”

The prayer group met in different people’s houses atseven o’clock in the evening on the first Friday of the month.The next meeting was at Stella Coelho’s house. Stella Coelho

was a retired schoolteacher in her early seventies. She hadtaught religious studies, English and drama in the local girls’

secondary school. She had never married. All her caring andnurturing had gone into her work. She was sad to leave her

job, and filled the void with acts of kindness towards herneighbours and with work for the church, the friends of the

local hospital, and various community organisations.She smiled when she opened the door to Kerry, shortly

before seven the following Friday evening. “Ah, you’re Kerry,aren’t you? Father Patrick told me to expect you. I think you’ll

probably halve the average age of this evening’s gathering!” She ushered him into the sitting room, a large room, well

appointed with soft chairs, in which half a dozen women, allelderly, were already sitting. They greeted him warmly.


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Others arrived, including two elderly men, and finally, a littlelate, the vicar. Stella served tea and biscuits, then sat downand asked, “Shall we introduce ourselves?” A dozen short

introductions followed. Seven of those present were fromHoly Redeemer Church of England parish and the rest from

Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic church.“I’ve been thinking about several news stories this week,”

said Stella. “There’s climate change and the damage it’s

causing in East Africa, the expected loss of species; thoseterrible floods in the Midlands; that poor boy who wasstabbed just outside the station here by a teenage gang, one of

whom is Molly Doorley’s oldest son, and she’s beside herselfwith grief and guilt, as though it was all her fault for not

bringing him up properly. Oh, now, I should say, Kerry,matters are often raised in this group which need to stay here,so please treat what you hear here as confidential, won’t

you?” “Yes, of course,” said Kerry.“Well,” said Stella, perhaps we can bear these things in

mind during the first part of our prayer this evening.” She picked up a Bible from the small table beside her chair,

opened it, and read, “Psalm 24, verse 1: ‘The Lord’s is theEarth and its fullness, the world and all its peoples.’” Sheclosed the Bible, replaced it on the small table, and closed her

eyes. There was a general shifting of bodies in chairs andexhalations of breath. Kerry looked up. As far as he could see,

everyone’s eyes were closed. He closed his own. He couldhear the ticking of the clock in the next room, the occasionalvehicle passing in the road outside, the odd sigh or rumblingof the stomach, the slightly wheezy breathing of Charlie, the

asthmatic former miner, sitting opposite him. He caught waftsof the vicar ’s aftershave, Mrs Lloyd’s perfume and the slightly

acrid smell of stale sweat from the rather plump Mr Edwards,sitting next to him.

He did not know what he was expected to do. He thoughtabout the boy who had been stabbed, about the boys who hadstabbed him, about Molly Doorley, whoever she was, in hersadness and shame. He thought about the people who had lost


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their homes to flooding in the Midlands, the people starving inEast Africa, their animals who were dying for lack of grass,the grass which had died, and the soil dried out by the sun. He

felt a great sadness come over him, and a great feeling ofsympathy for all these people and animals and plants that were

suffering. Tears began to stream silently from his eyes, whichhe had to keep mopping discreetly with his unpleasantly filthyhandkerchief.

He thought about the words which Stella had quoted,trying to turn them over in his mind as he was learning to dowith stories about Jesus in his daily morning prayer. How

should he think about ‘the Lord’? The only images in his mindwere childish pictures. As a child, he had always thought of

‘God’ as looking rather like his father and wearing his father ’sgreen checked dressing gown, because his father had beensuch a kind and gentle man, and he imagined that was how‘God’ was. But if ‘God’ was the creator and sustainer of theseemingly limitless universe, it did not seem appropriate toimagine him wearing a green dressing gown, or looking like a

human being. And why ‘he’ rather than ‘she’? And how didthis figure relate to the figure of Jesus, whom Kerry had, as it

were, encountered in his imagination during his meditationthat very morning? And in what sense did the world andeverything in it belong to this ‘Lord’? And if it did, why had

‘God’ allowed these terrible things to happen?He thought, if I were ‘the Lord’ and everything in the

world were somehow ‘mine’, how would I feel about it? Hefelt a stab of compassion in his chest that almost physicallyhurt him, and he began to weep silently again as he consideredthe sufferings of created beings and what he took to be the

grief-stricken love of the creator watching those sufferingsand willing relief. Just as he knew he was going to have to

blow his nose and disturb everyone, he thought, well, we wholive in the world have to be the ones who make that love

visible, because whatever ‘the Lord’ is, the only way he or sheor it can make it visible is through physical beings like us; andthen the clock in the next room struck eight o’clock, and Stellacleared her throat and said, “Perhaps we can share any

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Richard Solly - Bright Wings a Light-Hearted Tale of Disappointment, Destruction, Desperation and Death