So Callaghan’s got this dossier on his lap, and he opens it and says, Miranda Bowyer. Born London, 11th June, 1951, parents Arie Bouwer, Dutch national, and Eleanor Bowyer, née Birtwhistle, and so on, the dossier’s got where I went to school, my university career, what I subsequently did, they’ve got everything, they’ve got things about me that I’d forgotten, maybe things about me I didn’t even know. And every so often he looks up at me and says, Correct? And I nod, and Bentley says, Yes. Correct. Well, that’s good, says Callaghan, we like to know who we’re dealing with, and he laughs again. And this time Bentley doesn’t echo his words, but he says, Well, Miranda, if I might call you Miranda, we’ve looked very carefully at your outline, it’s excellent, design consultancy, it’s a good niche market thing, we’ll go into all that later in more detail, but for now, it seems to me that the best way to advance this little session is for you perhaps to give us a broader understanding of your role in the organisation, well, not so much that, but we’d like you to be clear about what we do. I mean, what do you think we do? says Bentley, and Callaghan says, Yes, what do you think we do?
So I’m a bit put out by this. And oh, do take your time, they both say together then, and they look at each other like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and I’m beginning to feel like Alice in Wonderland, so I start talking off the top of my head, and I says, Well, I’m looking at the art on the wall here, and it seems to me it must be representative in some way of what you do. You’ve been very careful in researching my background, and I’m sure the organisation is equally meticulous in its design choices. Take the Maurice Wilks, now. And Callaghan and Bentley crane their necks to look at it, as if they’d never seen it before, it’s one of those Bridge at Cushendun pieces, but a good cut above the normal, nice scumbling to the clouds, Wilks, born when, 1911, 1912, year of the UVF gun-running operation, Protestant background, son of a linen designer, why, his father might have worked in these very premises, I said, and Callaghan and Bentley nod sagely at this, and Maurice goes to the local College of Art, he’s a star pupil, exhibits at the RHA when he’s only nineteen. Starts to specialise in landscapes, spends a lot of time in the Glens of Antrim, Connemara, Donegal, those kinds of Irish landscapes, mountains and skies. It’s ostensibly very conventional, the kind of thing the art-conscious Ulster middle classes like to hang on their walls, but there’s a nice touch of French Impressionism there too, and it’s very well painted. Young artists these days, they could learn a lot from Wilks. And Wilks sees himself more as an Irishman than an Ulsterman, I’d say, though I’ve never met him. Isn’t he living in Dublin now? So the Wilks sends out a message that art can transcend political allegiances, that there are things that are important beyond this fiddle.
The Paul Henry, much the same kind of thing, but the Middleton, it’s a bit more challenging, and I go on about the cultural traffic between Belfast and Paris, I throw in a mention of Sir John Lavery, and they like that. Isn’t that the Lavery that painted the Royal Family? says Bentley. Yes, says Callaghan, and those rather dashing paintings of the Orange parades, great colour sense, don’t you think, those vibrant oranges and purples. Then I talk about the furniture a little. Drinks cabinet by Anderson & McAuley, when they were the big department store in Belfast, top of the range piece, made for linen merchants, shipbuilders. Same kind of design that went into the Titanic. Ditto the suite and the rugs, and I gabble on a bit more about the décor, you said, and I can see Callaghan and Bentley exchanging approving glances, so I see I’m on the right track, and I end up making a great speech about how communities can only be reconciled by pursuing common interests, that living with beautiful things must necessarily work against narrow sectarian interests, you know, kind of William Morris philosophy, and that MO2 is the kind of organisation that seeks harmoniously to integrate its objectives with the aspirations of the majority of the citizens of Ireland both North and South, it’s all a bit of tautology really, or codology, but it seems to go down well with Callaghan and Bentley. So they say, Well, Miranda, consider yourself differentiated, and I say, Is that it? and they smile and nod. And the budget I gave them in advance, it’s approved in a matter of days, and I begin setting myself up. And here I am, Fawcett & Jones, at your service, Angel.
I didn’t know you knew so much about Irish art, Nina, I said. You gave me one of your looks. That’s because I usually listen to you talk about it, Angel, you said, you do it very well. And anyway, when I started off, I didn’t know that much, but then I made it my business to know. That’s the challenge of the job, there’s always something new to learn, you said, and I didn’t know whether you spoke tongue in cheek, or not.
As I write, Nina, it is Thursday 28th July 2005, precisely three weeks after the bombing of London by radical Islamic terrorists, and the IRA has just made a statement calling upon all its units to ‘dump arms’ by four o’clock this afternoon, and instructing its volunteers to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. In other words, the IRA has said that its war is over, without using those precise words. And I wonder if the helicopter last night had anything to do with that announcement. For helicopters are about being seen and heard, as much as they are about seeing and hearing. They’re a signal that something’s happening, or about to happen. Part of the choreography, an audio-visual aid, if you like. The IRA statement was delivered on a DVD in a quiet Belfast accent by a former IRA prisoner, Seanna Walsh, a name which was pronounced variously by the political commentators, and to tell you the truth, I was not familiar with this supposedly Irish name myself. But that a real person should be assigned such a role was in itself significant, for previously all IRA statements had been issued by the pseudonymous P. O’Neill. Walsh was standing against a backdrop of green ivy in what I took to be his back garden, and I could hear a child crying and a blackbird singing behind him as he spoke the momentous words. So it seemed appropriate for me to write this letter with a Blackbird Self-Filling Pen, made by Mabie Todd & Co. Ltd of London in 1938, who also made Swan, Jackdaw and Swallow pens. It’s a green Blackbird, done in various hues of marbled green, with black inclusions, the logo of a stylised blackbird in flight stamped on the body and the head of the clip. The gold nib glitters as I write. Any time I have a Blackbird in my hand I cannot help but think of the Early Irish poem my father taught me. You remember, Nina? I used to recite it to you:
int én becro léc feitdo rinn guipglanbuidi
fo-ceird faídós Loch Laíg,lon do chraíbcharnbuidi.
It was, I explained, a piece of marginalia, inscribed by a monk in the margin of his ecclesiastical text as he was distracted by the beauty of the moment. Or a piece of graffiti, you said, someone who wanted to say, I was here. Perhaps, I said, except that the someone is anonymous. And yet maybe we feel that we do know him, for all that he’s nameless. It sounds beautiful, you said, what does it mean? Oh, it’s untranslatable, of course, I said, and I’ve tried it different ways, all with their own failings. But it might go something like this: