Lorcan Calder makes his mark
by Mosca
3 May 2024 354 readers Score 6.3 (8 votes) PDF Mobi ePub Txt
Chapter 1
What follows are a few jottings from the life of Lorcan Calder, who makes a brief appearance in “Ben Halpern.” In 2022, his 72nd year, he became the acting Prime Minister of Triesenbourg, a small land in the southern Balkans.
Lorcan Calder was bright and he knew it. The term, ‘gifted child’ was new to him and a slight embarrassment as well. But it was certainly earned.- Passing five O-Level exams with an average mark of 85%, was proof enough of that. Only just turned 13 years old, he and his parents were well liked in the small borough of Harperstown. Even Father Jack J. Flanaghan and his flock at Saint Euphimia’s Chapel rejoiced after Sunday Mass, on learning of Lorcan’s attainments. Hearing this and being decently raised by decent parents, he sought out Father Flanaghan’s young curate,-whom he secretly rated, (to use a word he had recently discovered,) as ‘a stud,’ and thanked him for the kindness of his Roman Catholic neighbours.
But March 1963 was not a time of unalloyed joy for Lorcan Calder. On reaching his 13th birthday, a month earlier, he had been refused membership of the Ulster Young Unionists; this on the perfectly reasonable grounds that he was too young to qualify for that membership. Full of indignation, he wrote to the Prime Minister, flourishing his youthful O-Levels and reminded Lord Brookeborough of the wide publicity “across our wee province,” as he calculatedly put it, that his results had attracted.
Lorcan’s calculation failed,- as really, he had the good sense to know that it would. But the reply, dated a day before the old man resigned, in the Prime Minister’s own hand and on headed Prime Minister of Northern Ireland note paper was full of praise and good wishes for the future.
‘Perhaps one day, It will be you in Stormont, guiding Northern Ireland,’ the departing Brookeborough wrote.
Whatever might be of so distant a future, Lorcan Calder was aware that in his hand he held something he would treasure forever.
For his part, the ailing Viscount Brookeborough had succeeded in making more immediate determinations for the future. He had fought valiantly in the first world war and lost his religious belief. He lost two sons in their early 20s, in the second. His third son had been wounded in that war and would ultimately prove to be a disappointment to his father. Brookeborough was not, certainly not, going to give place to a shirt manufacturer who had not served in the armed forces during world war II.
Lorcan was pleased with who did become the next Prime Minister. He was even more pleased that his parents, a little less liberal than himself he had long perceived, shared his cautious enthusiasm for Captain O’Neill.
From there, Calder family equilibrium faltered a little. It was built upon the foundations of the marriage between Daniel and Erma, Presbyterians both, to be sure. But there was also their only child. Their only child Lorcan, whose mind, intellect and spirit was advanced well beyond his tender years and growing body. Though he had done for the moment extolling the virtues of the new Prime Minister,( and the letter from the old,) to his grandparents, cousins and others, he now sat and listened in close attention to his parents. Perhaps unusually for the cultural milieu in which the family lived, they wanted to explain that there would, after all, be no sibling for Lorcan. His parents could produce no more children.
At first Lorcan feared that this embarrassing revelation might be the precursor to an announcement that they planned to adopt a child. That it was not, only added to the relief and fervour with which he now expressed his compassion for his parents.
Many years later Lorcan would recall this family conversation, but it was what now followed that made the day so memorable to him.
“We are moving to England,” began Daniel Calder flatly. “I am transferring from the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the Eastamptonshire Constabulary.”
Erma and he had decided not to reveal to their son that his duties as an Eastamptonshire police officer would include being a firearms instructor. Lorcan gazed in disbelief; first at one parent, then the other.
“We are Unionist people. All of our family is here, or across the province at least.” He had never shouted at his parents before, nor they at him. In his shock, anger became tears. “We can’t leave. The only reason we have a Unionist majority beyond Harperstown itself,- in this constituency, is because enough Nationalists stay at home or split their vote.”
With that off his chest, the teenager became calmer and regretted his outburst. He drew a breath, preparing to say sorry to parents he really quite liked most of the time. But drawing that breath, a thought struck Lorcan with almost physical force.
“Its firearms isn’t it?” He turned to his father as he spoke. “This Eastamptonshire, wherever in England it is, their police force want you to be some kind gun trainer don’t they?”
With that, he turned, left his parents to their state of perplexity at his prescient outburst and took care to slam every door on rout to his bedroom. The political point was well understood by Erma and Daniel. For the last ten years they had marvelled at,- and gently encouraged,- his intelligence and pursuit of knowledge. But it was only the following morning, at breakfast that that Lorcan’s new found fear became clearer to them.
“I understand da carrying a gun here,” he began. “But if we are going to live in England, where the polis are unarmed, it seems so stupid to be one of a tiny number of firearms officers and thereby run the risk of being shot.”
Three month later, the Calder family were settled in Skelthorpe. Their new neighbours were as kind as they were curious. The Calders responded with no less kindness and curiosity. Of the three of them, it was Lorcan who went out of his way to insist on the prefix, ‘Northern’ whenever anyone was remiss enough to refer to him or his parents as being Irish. From time to time over the next few years this led to friction with his age contemporaries, often Irish, or of that heritage, who did not share his Unionist convictions. For their spiritual nourishment the Calders attended the small congregation at the Jessop Street Presbyterian Church. This, they found, was nothing like the Harperstown First Presbyterian Church, where Calders had worshiped for almost eight generations and where both of Lorcan’s grandfathers were currently Elders. But it would do.- Not least for Lorcan, who increasingly, though silently, was no longer troubled by the problems of predestination; and to himself would admit that he was only a Presbyterian because of his parents and the generation upon generation before them.
To be continued