Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
Set in a town near Belfast during the troubles, Trespasses portrays the tragic impossibility of living an individual life in a divided society.
Born as a member of the Catholic “community,” Cushla is a young primary schoolteacher in a Catholic school run by incompetents or worse. The author hints darkly at one priest’s undue interest in Davy, the seven-year-old boy whose family Cushla tries to help.
Aware that Davy’s dad is often unemployed because nobody will hire someone who married in defiance of the social divide, she is horrified when Davy tells her his Da’s in hospital after being beaten and left for dead. Her effort to assist the “mixed” family backfires when the school principal interferes, turning Davy’s mother against her.
Cushla rues her given name, which marks her out as Catholic. Every aspect of her life is an open secret, and each move she makes finds its audience. Her widowed alcoholic mother, the neighbours, her employers, and eventually, the state devastate her with their constant snooping. Fortunately, she has one friend she trusts: a colleague at school. When trouble strikes, his willingness to help almost persuades her to confide in him.
Much as she tries to resist falling for him, Cushla finds herself in a passionate love affair with a married barrister twice her age. He is also from the other “community — a Protestant.” In vain she tries to keep her impossible love secret from friends, neighbours, and her mother. But this effort is doomed from the start. Michael Agnew takes her to meet his liberal friends, and under the guise of teaching them Irish, she spends time with him — and them — never dreaming of the trouble that lies in store for these people, as well as her own family, when her lover’s stubborn pursuit of justice attracts the attention of the wrong people.
In today’s world of increasing political, social and religious division, it is doubly heartbreaking to read the lyrical unfolding of a tragedy the reader cannot fail to foresee. Thankfully, the writer leave us with a modicum of hope.