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It’s amazing how much war has been in the air recently. I haven’t experienced anything like it since I lived in Fermanagh during the Troubles. There’s something contagious about war. It’s like a virus; it can pick up anything and turn it into a weapon. I was thinking of this during the warm weather, as I sat on the lawn with the General, listening to bees buzzing.
My binoculars were on the garden table next to him.
Personally I associate binoculars with big houses, walled gardens, old tartan rugs and armchairs on the lawn.
I remember seeing the writer Leland Bardwell sit up in a clump of tall gladioli one August evening in 1984 with a pair of binoculars as if she were a 19th-century botanist searching for exotic petals.
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“What can you see?” I asked Leland.
“Nothing,” she replied. “I’m as blind as a bat.”
I often regret that I didn’t pay more attention to Leland when she was alive; she was a very witty person.
“A penny for your thoughts,” the General said.
“I was just daydreaming,” I replied. “Don’t you ever regret anything?”
“Nothing,” he replied, raising his chin adamantly in the air.
I heard of one soldier who was shot because of his binoculars. He was peering out from a tower and the glass of his lenses reflected the sun, giving a sniper just one tiny moment to fire at him
I regret lots of stuff. Small things such as failing to read enough classical literature when I was young. Failing to travel across the globe when I had the chance. Failing to take exercise and keep the heart in good condition.
But such is life. We can’t avoid regrets. And living with remorse can be comforting. It allows us to feel human.
It’s as if there were a special chamber in my heart, a depth of stillness where Beethoven’s late quartets still play endlessly.
I feel sorry for all that I have done badly, and all that I have failed to do. And the funny thing is that such regret is comforting. It releases me from the burden of being perfect, or even right about anything.
The General came to visit because I had Covid. I was feverish for about four days.
“You must have got an enormous load,” he declared.
“You talk like it was manure,” I replied.
[ Michael Harding: I stroll around car boot sales admiring the people making up a new kind of Ireland ]
I gave him a bottle of sparkling water with a vitamin C tablet and had the same myself as we sat in the sunshine at a good distance from each other.
“Is this all you’ve got?” he wondered, looking at the sparkling water. He probably hoped I’d offer him Gunpowder gin.
“I can’t drink alcohol at the moment,” I said. “I’m on antibiotics.”
He stretched his hand towards the binoculars that lay on the garden table. Binoculars I have possessed since the day I brought my uncle Oliver to Enniskillen in 1983.
My uncle wanted Carl Zeiss lenses and the only place to get them was Enniskillen. Before leaving the shop I bought a pair for myself as well.
But living in south Fermanagh at that time, and having a pair of binoculars on the back seat of a car wasn’t wise. People were arrested for less. Binoculars would have been a necessary item in the tool kit of any “freedom fighter” who wanted to monitor the movements of any vehicle along the lonely laneways. And no soldier in a high tower or lookout post could be without their own pair.
I heard of one soldier who was shot because of his binoculars. He was peering out from a tower and the glass of his lenses reflected the sun, giving a sniper just one tiny moment to fire at him.
Maybe I am naive but for me binoculars were never more than a beautiful remnant of Victorian tranquillity, grandeur and scientific curiosity.
I remember a pair resting on the dusty window ledge in the porch of an old house just beyond our own when I was a child. One day I lifted them with some curiosity, and the elderly widow said, “Those belonged to my father.”
I sensed a note of sorrow in her voice and left them down instantly. She was old enough to be talking about the first World War; the first “great war” of the 20th century, the war to end all wars.
But I’m happy to say that I’ve only ever used binoculars to watch birds, dolphins and flowering weeds on the mountain paths. I’ve never thought of them as an aid for killing.
“Aren’t these binoculars wonderful,” the General declared, as he tracked a bumble bee crawling up a blade of grass in the distance.
“They are,” I agreed. “Although it depends what you use them for.”
[ Michael Harding: The Camino only makes sense when it’s over ]