Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Patrick Radden Keefe
- ISBN: 0385521316
- Language: English
- Genre: European Politics, Nationalism, Terrorism,
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2.4 MB
- Page: 464
- Price: Free
AN ABDUCTION
Jean McConville was thirty-eight when she disappeared, and
she had spent nearly half her life either pregnant or recovering
from childbirth. She brought fourteen children to term and lost
four of them, leaving her with ten kids who ranged in age from
Anne, who was twenty, to Billy and Jim, the sweet-eyed twins,
who were six. To bear ten children, much less care for them,
would seem like an impossible feat of endurance. But this was
Belfast in 1972, where immense, unruly families were the
norm, so Jean McConville wasn’t looking for any prizes, and
she didn’t get any.
Instead, life dealt her an additional test when her husband,
Arthur, died. After a gruelling illness, he was suddenly gone
and she was left alone, a widow with a meagre pension but no
paying job of her own and all those children to look after.
Demoralised by the magnitude of her predicament, she
struggled to maintain an even emotional keel. She stayed at
home mostly, leaning on the older kids to wrangle the younger
ones, steadying herself, as if from vertigo, with one cigarette
after another. Jean reckoned with her misfortune and
endeavoured to make plans for the future. But the real tragedy
of the McConville clan had just begun.
The family had recently moved out of the flat where Arthur
spent his final days and into a slightly larger dwelling in Divis
Flats, a dank and hulking public housing complex in West
Belfast. It was a cold December and the city was engulfed in
darkness by the end of the afternoon. The cooker in the new
flat was not hooked up yet, so Jean sent her daughter Helen,
who was fifteen, to a local takeaway for a bag of fish and
chips. While the rest of the family waited for Helen, Jean drew
a hot bath.
When you have young children, sometimes the
only place you can find a moment of privacy is behind a
locked bathroom door. Jean was small and pale, with delicate
features and dark hair that she wore pulled back from her face.
She slipped into the water and stayed there. She had just got
out of the bath, her skin flushed, when somebody knocked on
the front door. It was about 7:00. The children assumed it must
be Helen with their dinner.
But when they opened the door, a gang of people burst
inside. It happened so abruptly that none of the McConville
children could say precisely how many there were – it was
roughly eight people, but it could have been ten or twelve.
There were men and women. Some had balaclavas pulled
across their faces; others wore nylon stockings over their
heads, which twisted their features into ghoulish masks. At
least one of them was carrying a gun.
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