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First Edition Design Publishing - James McKeon

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92 pages

English

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Honour the Holy Ground is the story of Steven Kennedy's struggle to survive the poverty of post-war Ireland. He is one of seven children yet he is determined to reach for the stars and succeed against all the odds. He is sent to live with his Aunt Agnes who has a hotel in Dublin. Agnes is a butch woman living with her partner, Peg. She has an adopted daughter, Molly. Steven falls in love with the mysterious Molly. Steven returns to Cork for his father's funeral and discovers that Molly is really his sister. On discovering this she commits suicide. His life changes when a US couple invite him to LA because he looks like a twin of their dead son. He loses his sexual innocence in a sauna and is seduced by an older woman. He marries the boss' daughter, Mary, and becomes a huge corporate success in the family advertising business. Mary is a film writer and Steven appears in one of her films. His young sister, a model, is kidnapped and raped in New York. While handing over the ransom he shoots both kidnappers dead with a gun borrowed from an IRA pub. He frequents the notorious West Manhattan and South Boston areas and gets involved with the Mafia and IRA gun-running. Steven gets caught up in two murders and a shoot-out in an IRA pub and begins to wonder what lies ahead.

Sujets

Thriller

Adventure

Adventure (Guyana)

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Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	10 juin 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781622876280
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0420€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Honour the Holy Ground
James McKeon

First Edition Design Publishing
Honour the Holy Ground

still I live in hope to see
the holy ground once more

First Edition Design Publishing
Honour the Holy Ground
Copyright ©2014 James McKeon

ISBN 978-1622-876-27-3 PRINT
ISBN 978-1622-876-28-0 EBOOK

LCCN 2014940838

May 2014

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
To
EOGHAN HARRIS
for his help and encouragement
Honour the Holy Ground

still I live in hope to see
the holy ground once more

James McKeon
Chapter One

Some of the congregation in the packed cathedral spilled out the back door and down the steps on to the gravelled yard. He stood at the back of the church alone. The window frame behind him rattled from the wind. He was tall, grey-haired and well-dressed; a conspicuous figure on the edge of the crowd. Memories flooded back; all the times he had served mass here as a nervous altar boy a lifetime ago; the weather-beaten bust of some old bishop still stood outside rusting in the corner of the yard; the marble pillars on either side of the iron gate where he’d once stood, freezing in his short pants, while his mother took his First Communion photograph.
The coffin shuffled up the aisle followed by mourners with their heads bowed. A veil of sadness hung over the congregation. They quietly blessed themselves murmuring hushed prayers. Slow bells tolled. The coffin was placed on the steps at the foot of the altar as the priest’s voice echoed across the silence:
‘Let us pray for the soul of our dearly beloved Steven Kennedy.’
The tall, grey-haired man shivered. Steven Kennedy, that was his name, too. He shared it with his nephew, the man in the coffin.

Steven Kennedy was born at home on 6 May 1940. It was a wet Monday. While war raged in Europe life in Ireland freewheeled along in blissful neutrality. The Kennedy family lived then at Railway Cottages, Kilbarry, Cork, in the south of the country. Their home overlooked the nearby train tracks. The baby was called Steven after his father. The parents were delighted but disappointed. The child was the fifth boy. They’d hoped for a girl. The cottage went with the father’s job of linesman in the nearby train station. It was a miserable job. Cork city lay snug, tucked away, in a valley between two rivers. Often flooded, locals called it the Venice of Ireland. It was surrounded by hills; saucer-shaped, wet, loquacious and as intimate as any village.
Steven was a chubby little boy with a mop of curls and a face-full of freckles. Women constantly admired his curls. He hated them. Every time he sneaked into his mother’s room and borrowed a scissors and cut one off, two seemed to grow. He was always on his own reading anything he could get his hands on; books on travel, space ships or brave explorers on a mission to the North Pole. His early life was filled with mythical heroes. These books fanned the flames of his imagination. By the time he could walk he’d developed an adventurous streak and often went rambling off on his own expedition with his mother worried about the danger of passing trains. She usually found him climbing anything, the higher the better, especially the ten-foot wall in front of the cottages. Hardly a day went by when she wouldn’t be seen pleading with her little-boy-blue to come down for his dinner.
Looking back Steven vividly remembered standing by the kitchen door listening to the puff-puffing of the old steam trains farting and belching smoke like giant dragons as they clitter-clattered out of sight. The stale smell of the smoke still lingered in his nostrils. In his mind’s eye he could still see his father, sucking a Woodbine, as he struggled over the wooden fence and waving goodbye before sliding down the earthen bank onto the edge of the railway tracks which ran behind their cottage. He watched him wait until a goods train, coughing and spluttering, laboured by and, with a noticeable limp, he hobbled across the tracks. Rheumatism, from years of wettings, had left its mark. This was his short cut to work every morning.

When Steven was three, he watched through the curtains of his bedroom window as a horse pulling a long cart drew up outside. The family were moving home. He had one last look at his wall. He knew even then he was going to miss it. Finally, the cart, laden down with tables, chairs, beds, rolls of lino, and packed tea-chests, and Steven perched on top, trundled down the hill, wound its way through the streets of Blackpool to the bottom of Fair Hill and up the bockety Well Lane until they arrived at Shamrock House, a farm house surrounded by an acre of nettles and sheds. The house was over a hundred years old, and looked it. Downstairs was one draughty room covered in red floor-tiles. There was an open fire always heaped high with logs. Nearby was a black hob. There was one other room downstairs. Although seriously damp there was a hint of grandeur about this room. It had a rickety table with a ping-pong net attached to it, and a small chandelier looking down on a worn carpet. A piano, which had seen better days, stood apologetically in the corner. Dozens of sheet music of old Irish melodies were stacked behind it covered in cobwebs; a spider’s playground gathering dust. Outside, at the back of the house, stood a dilapidated toilet covered by sheets of corrugated tin. The inside toilet was a bucket on the upstairs landing.
Steven’s grandfather lived in Shamrock House but since his wife died the family was uncomfortable with the idea of him living by himself. He was an old pro-British army veteran who had survived several battles from the Boer War to Khartoum and the First World War. He proudly drank his tea from a large chipped mug with a picture of the King of England embossed on it, and there were yellow photographs all over the house of him with army men in khaki shorts, posing under palm trees, with cricket bats and helmets, and jolly old fiddle sticks, and monkeys on their shoulders. During the burning of Cork City in the 1920 Troubles his allegiance to the Crown lessened a little. He tried to out the fire but British soldiers blew bullets up his arse and sent him scampering for his life.
Shamrock House and the surrounding area was an idyllic setting for a three-year-old boy; a jungle filled with mystery, oceans of muck, an apple tree, two pigs, an old mare named Napoleon and an Aladdin’s cave of sheds. The Kennedys had the best of both worlds; the city was within walking distance yet the beauty of the countryside was at their doorstep; the undergrowth was teeming with rabbits, an occasional fox, and a lurking hawk could be seen circling the skies ready to swoop. When Steven’s parents were out he sometimes struggled onto Napoleon’s back and in his fantasy world saved damsels in distress and shot imaginary Indians with an imaginary gun. One day this old nag threw him into a forest of nettles. Not alone was he badly stung but he also broke his left leg. A twisting stream, the Glasheen, meandered along the edge of the quarry and sneaked behind the lane until it disappeared underground.
A cruel savagery lurked in the background which was deemed to be the norm: a captured cat would be thrown to a pack of dogs and onlookers cheered while it was torn to shreds; old dogs would be hung from nearby trees; and it wasn’t confined to animals; a handicapped boy, convulsed in a fit, would continually bash his head against a wall until the frenzy subsided or he knocked himself unconscious. It frightened Steven to see the boy lying on the ground, froth on his mouth, his face covered in blood, at peace with the world, until the next fit. It also showed the cruelty of that time when it was accepted to see a horse being whipped unmercifully or a sealed bag of unwanted pups dumped in the stream. Yet, all through the summer, this innocuous stream was their Mecca. In their ignorance these boys knew nothing else. The stream was banked up with sods, and this was where everyone learned to swim. They didn’t care about dead dogs, water rats or broken bottles.

This playground of Steven’s youth conjured up a deluge of paradoxical memories: happiness, innocence, fleas, DDT and poverty. Well Lane was a dead-end; at the top was an old well covered with mud. Everyone was equal as they struggled to stay above the breadline. Steven’s strongest memory growing up was utter poverty. He sometimes made a few pence by tackling up Napoleon to a cart and delivering bags of turf to some neighbours. The bags were bigger than himself and they were hosed down by the shady turf dealer to make them heavier. Yet, the lane was alive with colourful characters like Agoo Murphy who got his name from his pigeons. If one of them was reluctant to return to his loft he would imitate the pigeon’s mating call by repeating ‘agoo, agoo.’ It worked every time but the name stuck.
Steven was the envy of his classmates as he rode to school on Napoleon. A nearby blacksmith looked after the old horse for him. He was a sturdy man with a club foot. He wore a leather apron; it glistened in the half-light, and Steven loved to watch him, drenched in sweat, lost in his work; the hiss of the sizzling steam when the steel shoe was placed in the water; the rhythmic beat of the hammer striking the anvil as he shaped the shoe to fit the hoof; the wheezing of the o