Tish Delaney: Love in a time of Troubles, Tyrone, and cultural upheavals

The author of Before My Actual Heart Breaks urges anyone with a story to write it down

Sat, 13 Mar, 2021 - 20:00

Carina McNally

TWO pages into this book you know you’ve unlocked something special. You abandon an effort to minimise reading in order to savour the experience by finally battling your way relentlessly to the end of Mary Rattigan’s story. Then, you pick it up, and start reading it again.

Advice often dished up at writers' courses (unless you’re writing a sci-fi novel set in some dystopian future) is ‘write about what you know.' For author Tish Delaney this came to roost, as, after attempting to write a novel set in her adopted home London, she finally gave in to writing about what she really understood, the world in which she grew up and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Asking herself 'Who wants to read about small farms in Northern Ireland?' in the end she conceded 'Well, it seems there’s an appetite for it after all.'

Tish says of 'Before My Actual Heart breaks' her first novel, ‘Every word has come out of my childhood and teenage years.’ Launch into the rip-roaring tale of 1980s Tyrone teenager Mary Rattigan and how her pregnancy rocked the core of her rigid Catholic family. Instead of being banished to a dreaded mother and baby home, she’s forced to leave school and marry a bachelor farmer, alternatives arranged by Mary's abusive mother who had taught to keep her mouth shut, that she was nothing, a T.R.A.M.P.

'Initial drafts focused on the Troubles. When I went to England at 18, I found people had notions that growing up in Northern Ireland meant you were constantly under siege and always running around under corrugated iron or something. They didn't understand that everybody is living the same life; trying to get to school, sneak about; meet boys. Things were difficult, but we managed. I wanted to write that children who don’t know anything other than soldiers, barricades and helicopters overhead find all this normal, with no idea it will ever end. It was ‘wallpaper’ to our lives; everybody really wanted to fall madly in love; go to dances; to bars.’

Incorporating the Troubles in a love story was no mean feat, the book’s word count spiraling as she tried to incorporate the whole Northern Irish story with that of Mary Rattigan's. 'I eventually pared it back while still trying to make sense of it all.' Writing about the Peace Process, Tish throws the reader into 1980s/90 Ireland; Ian Paisley, Johnny Logan, Bishop Casey and the loss of a mother and her unborn twins in the Omagh bombing.

'It was hard to pick and choose what to include. I wanted to write about Mary while at the same time squash in everything, political and otherwise, that happened in between. I felt all of it, sometimes horrific, was important. It wasn't easy but a worthwhile personal journey.'

Mary’s mother Sadie is a sadistic take on the Irish Mammy; Daddy in contrast, is kind, but useless. 'I wanted to show people being battered, with nobody stepping in' every character a memory of somebody along the way. 'My Mum remembers girls 'getting into trouble' and disappearing. Looking back, you see the lies everyone was telling.' The ;book is funny. Perhaps, to get her own back, Mary too lies in confession accusing a Fr. Dominic of fathering her child. (Tish has childhood memories of 'a girl getting knocked up by some young handsome priest.') Mary finds herself with husband John Johns on his farm. Although leaving a loveless family home, at least they had running water. The baby arrives, and ‘with a perfect pink mouth got on with burrowing deep into her heart.’

Before My Actual Heart Breaks by Tish Delaney

War rages outside, Mary and her baby at least safe in John's house, a ‘bullet proof bubble.’ ‘Tyrone is difficult to explain; it’s knocking up against Donegal with great swathes of rural openness. At the height of the Troubles when a bomb went off the phone lines were cut; there was no access to people the way we have now.’ Already badly abused, Mary feels hard done by. ‘I wanted to get across her powerlessness, how she got stuck in this situation, losing her friends and freedom.'

Powerlessness is a major theme; nobody questions. There are exceptions, including Mary's hilarious and irreverent aunties. Tish says 'We all have that one brilliant person that can crack a joke. I had aunties like that. They were exotic; they were nurses in America, they used to fly in with fags and bottles of whiskey. They wore perfume and lipstick and a burst of sunlight.' Luckily, the book is brightened up plenty by sunshine characters and the magnificence of Tyrone nature.

Tish knows what she's talking about, telling the Irish Examiner that Johns' farm is based on her grandparent's place. Tish's descriptions of Aldernay, her Channel Island home where she works for crime writer Rachel Abbot, and its bedrock of granite, its green green and huge skies, comes as no surprise. Connection with Tyrone landscape is woven intricately into her writing. Evocative and grounding, nature on Johns' farm dominates Mary's every waking moment; from the ‘velvety bats’ that gather in the sycamore to the Valley's five pudding bowl hills, who with their patchwork quilt of greens, browns, and purples, come across as living breathing things. Tish says 'I've lived on a small farm and every sod of it is in your life.'

Mary reads books to escape those early years, ‘soaking up the words from better brighter lives like a blood starved tick.’ The author states she strives to communicate those 'who live in ordinary circumstances but with extraordinary internal lives.' Bestowed with the most cautious of names, an example of one such extraordinary character is John Johns, whom, much to the reader's ire, Mary, continuously in a state of self-pity, refuses to love. This is quintessentially, a love story without romance. In the author’s words, 'John’s the man of your dreams - nice, quiet and randy' explaining 'I want the reader to love my characters; even the terrible Mammy.’ Sadie, who bans singing tramp Tammy Wynette from infiltrating her clean kitchen and backs out of rooms so as to never show her backside to a priest certainly has vitality to her. Perhaps the writing of the book was cathartic, Tish stating 'I never realised that my own relatives had an internal life; there was no hugging or crying or any of that nonsense. On the outside they were rock hard.'

Is the book geared more towards women?’ Tish states 'Men like it, especially the funny bits, the references of going 'south of the border' and all that. My main characters include a damaged older man and a misunderstood younger one. I’m hoping it will appeal to both sexes.'

Derry Girls actor, Saoirse-Monica Jackson narrates the audio book which oddly enough must resemble a soundtrack to current affairs. 'It’s strange how all these issues are back in the news. The Mother and Baby thing has blown again. Tuam was extreme. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. Now, with Brexit and talk of the border coming back, everyone’s getting a bit agitated. Having written about the Peace process, now there’s a slide, I find it a worrying time.' Simultaneous to Mary Rattigan’s son blowing out his birthday candles, the windows rattle as a bomb goes off in town. Raising a family in war, Mary specially worries over her sons, who would have 'to take sides.’

Tish urges anyone with a story to write it down. She recalls voicing her wish to be a writer years ago and being told ‘Don’t be drawing attention to yourself!’ ‘My people were chatty; the craic that goes with it all feeds your ability to weave a good story. I was in my forties thinking I’d be writing about London. I couldn’t and almost gave up. I thought in error I knew about London, but really my characters have been with me since childhood. The next book is based in Ireland as well; it flows.’ Soon to feature as debut author in the Aldernay Writers' festival, Tish states' 'I had no idea for the longest time that I could sit down and do it. Then I just did it; it’s like anything inside you, it comes out in the end.'