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As Trespasses, the Channel 4 adaptation of the Louise Kennedy book about a secret love affair in Northern Ireland in the ‘70s, draws to a close, there’s a glimmer of hope in the end scene. This is your official spoiler warning for the following article…
It’s a flash forward from 1975 to 2025, and which sees an older version of Cushla, the Catholic school teacher who had an ill-fated romance with Michael, an older, married Protestant man. She is walking around a museum. But the past comes back to haunt her when she bumps into a familiar face – and an intriguing work of art. But is the white sculpture that looks awfully like her former lover made by a real-life artist?
Before she bumps into the grown-up Davy McGeown – whose family Cushla helped when she was a younger school teacher, and whose older brother caused insurmountable pain to her – she is looking closely at the works of art.
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One of the pieces is a sculpture, a half-figure of a man almost covered in a white cloth. Looking closer at the artwork, you can make out the face of Michael Agnew – played by Tom Cullen, who presumably had his face cast for the sculpture. The older Cushla almost puts her hand in the plaster version of his hand; it must have seemed intimately familiar, even from 50 years ago.
When she looks down, however, she sees that it’s by an artist called Penny Fielding. While there is no real life Irish artist called Penny Fielding, this is the fictional, bohemian Penny that Michael was friends with, and Michael and Cushla went to see her exhibition together. The fact that her work is being exhibited five decades on suggests that she went on to have a great career in the art world – and that perhaps her biggest success was a piece that was dedicated to her friend Michael, who was murdered in cold blood in his home.
The artwork is called “When I Move To The Sky“, and this is likely indebted to the song of the same name, first by Sister Rosetta Tharp in the 1930s, and later covered by Lonnie Donegan in the Fifties, who was born in Scotland, but whose mother came from Omagh, County Tyrone and whose music was often influenced by Irish folk songs:
But there’s also another link back to the storyline. The song is what is played at Michael’s funeral, as the pallbearers – including his son – carry the coffin up the aisle of the church to the strains of Donegan’s voice. The lyrics describing an ascent into the afterlife: “When I move to the sky up in Heaven on high / What a wonderful time that will be.” As of little comfort the words can be, at least the sentiment’s there for those left behind.
And so, in Trespasses, life imitates art, as the song, and likely the sad setting it was played in went on to inspire the fictional Penny Fielding to create a lasting memory of her friend, Michael Agnew; and ends up as a bittersweet blast from the past for Cushla.
‘Trespasses’ is available to watch on Channel 4 now
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