This Man's Wee Boy Read online

  ‘Oh dear, nurse, I’m really mortified,’ said me ma, who was still wiping the black make-up from her eyes with a hankie.

  ‘That’s okay, Mrs Doherty. He’s a wile man, that ’un!’ said the nurse, smiling back at us.

  ‘Och, I know. He’d get ye hung!’ laughed me ma as we went out through the large wooden doors.

  ‘I’m not deef, Ma. Aren’t I not?’ I asked her again as we climbed the stone steps up to Abercorn Park.

  ‘Naw, you’re not at all, son. You’re just in a world of your own sometimes.’

  I wondered what she meant as we passed the swings and slides towards home.

  I’m not deef and that’s the main thing! I thought to myself and couldn’t wait to get home to tell our Patrick.

  * * *

  Paul started Primary One in September 1968. The four of us walked home together down Bishop Street. There were Daz washing powder promotion coupons posted in the doors the whole way down the street. We pulled them out of the flaps. They were currency in the shop. We cut in from Bishop Street, dandered around the base of the bankin’ and went in through the back gate to the whitewashed yard with the toilet. It always smelled of a mixture of farts and old damp newspaper.

  Paddy Stewart – Uncle Paddy – stood proudly in our kitchen as we filed in the door. ‘Your dinner’s ready,’ he said.

  The dinner was in bowls keeping warm on top of the range. There was a light skin on the beans, which made them even nicer. Beans, sausages and mashed spuds with butter. Paddy wasn’t really our uncle but he came with the house. He lifted the bowls with a towel over to the drop-leaf table in the scullery and salted the food for us. We tore into it with spoons.

  ‘Was school good the day, Paul?’ he asked. Paul was his favourite, you could tell.

  ‘We got all the Daz coupons coming down Bishop Street,’ announced Paul.

  ‘That’s great son, that ye got the coupons.’

  Paddy was sitting drinking a cup of tea on the chaise longue while we ate. He was a lovable man with his round belly and red nose.

  ‘Paddy, me da said that ye played for Derry. Did ye?’ I asked from the table.

  ‘Oh aye, I did surely. Me and me brother Gerry. Played in the Brandywell, and up and down the country. That was years ago. I wouldn’t be fit now to kick football, boys-a-boys,’ Paddy laughed.

  When we were playing out the back lane we used to pee ourselves laughing when Paddy went to the toilet in the yard. ‘Wait d’ye hear the blatters of this. Paddy’s in the shite house,’ we’d whisper to each other. And sure enough, Paddy would oblige, as loud and proud a blatter of farts that you ever heard.

  * * *

  Me ma worked in a shirt factory. One morning I saw her from our doorstep getting on a bus on the Foyle Road at the bottom of Moore Street. I never knew she got a bus to work and was excited by this. I called out to her but she didn’t hear me. I ran down Moore Street, waving, until I reached the bottom. All the women in the bus were laughing and waving back. I saw me ma walking up the bus and stooping down to look at the waving boy. She waved back and laughed. I didn’t know why they were laughing.

  Our house was really dootsy and old-fashioned. The only new things were the black plastic settee and matching chairs in the front room. The cushions were a fiery orange. We had square-patterned oilcloth all over the downstairs floor and on the stairs themselves. It was very worn in the hall. You could see the black stuff coming through where the pattern had worn away. There were two blue-and-white dogs that sat high up on the wooden mantelpiece, one on either side of an old brown clock with a yellowed face. We were No. 6 Moore Street, the house with the dull-green door and the heavy brass knocker. Other knockers on the doors in Moore Street were shiny. Ours wasn’t.

  The McKinneys lived across the street. They had a van because their da, Cecil, had greyhounds. He was a doggyman. Cecil and the McKinneys’ Uncle Davy kept the dogs in sheds up the bankin’ up near the College. We were allowed to walk the dogs out the Line with Terry, who was older by two or three years and knew everything. The Line was a disused railway track which ran the full length of our side of the River Foyle. Sometimes we were allowed to go to the dog races at Lifford Stadium. We’d travel in the back of the van with the dogs. We got chips and coke and learned how to gamble. You got a coloured ticket when you bet. My favourite dog was DC Wonder. DC stood for Derry City. She was a big, fawn dog. Nearly all Cecil’s dogs were called something or other Wonder, such as Joan’s Wonder, The Third Wonder and The Eleventh Wonder, although one was called Teresa’s Pride after Dooter’s wee sister and Cecil and Maisie’s youngest daughter.

  Dooter was called Dooter because, when he was a toddler, he couldn’t say his name right. His real name was Christopher but he could only say something like Dooter and it stuck, though his ma and da still called him Christopher.

  The McKinneys were the same ages as us. Our Karen was the same age as Terry McKinney; our Patrick, named after me da, was the same age as Michael McKinney; I was the same age as Jacqueline McKinney who, it was rumoured, was my girlfriend; and our Paul was the same age as Dooter. After Paul the Dohertys stopped for a while, but the McKinneys kept on coming – there were Teresa and Don. They weren’t the same age as anyone so didn’t really count. They had Dandy the dog, though. She did count. We had no dog. We used to sing:

  Doherty’s sausages bad for your heart, the more you eat the more you fart!

  Doherty’s sausages bad for your heart, the more you eat the more you fart!

  McKinney’s tea, makes your granny pee!

  McKinney’s tea, makes your granny pee!

  There was no McKinney’s tea. But there were Doherty’s sausages.

  * * *

  It was my fifth birthday. My birthday was exactly a week after Christmas Day – on 1 January. (I was born just after midnight, me ma said, in the front bedroom of me granny Quigley’s house in Central Drive during a terrible storm.) There was no money to do anything special for my birthday; they had spent it all at Christmas. But Karen was sent to the shop for a Swiss Roll and a bottle of Cloudy Lime. The Cloudy Lime was poured into cups and me ma stuck five candles in the Swiss Roll and lit them.

  ‘Blow them out and make a wish,’ she said as we sat around the coffee table in the front room on New Year’s Day.

  I did. I wished for something for my birthday.

  ‘We’ll get you something when we get paid,’ said me ma, looking at me da. ‘Isn’t that right, Paddy?’

  ‘It is surely, Eileen,’ he said with a smile.

  Me da usually got paid on a Friday. I think me ma did as well. On payday we got our own pay from me da when he got home from work. Me ma didn’t pay us. We’d wait for him coming across the waste ground at the top of Moore Street and run to meet him to be lifted up and get our pay when we reached the house. Sometimes he’d be late so we just played at the corner and watched out for him. If he was late you could smell the beer off him when he lifted you. He’d rub his stubbly face roughly into our necks when he had the drink in him. Once he scratched Karen on the face, he rubbed that hard. Sometimes he’d pull bars of chocolate from his work-coat pockets as we walked back towards the house – usually Marathons and Bar Sixes. Marathons made you run faster; it said so on TV. Our pay was handed over at the table – sixpence for Karen and Patrick, and fourpence for me and Paul.

  We used to go and make secrets in the bankin’. Secrets could be holy medals or coloured milk bottle tops or something cut from a magazine. It didn’t matter so long as it was shiny when placed against the soil. Then it was covered over with coloured glass, usually the bottom of a green bottle. The glass changed the colour of the secret. This was the secret. We went back the next day to see if the secrets were still there. They were. They looked peaceful under the green glass. We covered them and left them there for another day. You could see other people’s secrets. No one kept them secret.

  I had my own secret. I saved my pay in a hole in the bankin’ for a number of weeks. I didn’t save
for any particular reason; I just saved. I didn’t tell anyone. I’d just sneak off after we got our pay at the table and go round to the base of the bankin’, remove the sod and stash the four big copper pennies. I covered the dull pennies over with the bottom of a Mundies wine bottle with a hollow in it. I did it for about three weeks. I had twelve large pennies to my name, blew it all on sweets and chocolate in Melaugh’s shop on Hamilton Street and bought everyone in the marching band Dainties, Bubblys and Chocolate Logs. We shared a big glass bottle of Black Cat Cola between eight of us. Black Cat Cola had a cartoon picture of a smiling black cat on the label. Black Cat Cola was the real deal.

  The paydays came and went. Each school day I’d get up to see if my birthday wish had come true. Each day as I came downstairs there’d be nothing in the hall or the scullery or front room. But I kept true to my wish. One day, as we awoke for school and came downstairs, there was a big red toy bus with yellow seats parked in the hall. I ran down the stairs in delight that at last my wish had come true.

  ‘That’s not yours, Tony,’ said me da, not realising. ‘It’s Paul’s birthday the day, so it’s his.’

  I was devastated. This was my first big let down with my parents.

  Paul came running downstairs.

  ‘Thanks, Mammy and Daddy. This is class, hi!’ he said, as he got on the bus and pushed himself up and down the hall.

  I started to cry in my arms against the wall in the scullery and me ma shouted at me to stop being so selfish. ‘It’s your brother’s birthday, not yours.’

  A few nights later the red toy bus was parked outside our house.

  ‘Dooter, jump you on and I’ll push ye,’ I said and Dooter jumped on.

  I pushed him around the back of Moore Street below the bankin’ where we came to a stop in the muck.

  ‘Hi, Dooter,’ I said, ‘I’ll give you half my pay this week if you do me a favour.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lift that boulder there and hit the bus wi’ it,’ I said.

  Without any further persuasion from me he lifted the heavy round boulder and brought it down with a crash on top of the bus. Its red roof split in two and a wee yellow seat scooted out onto the grass.

  ‘Do it again, Dooter,’ I said, and he did it again.

  More yellow seats shot out of the bus. Then I lifted the boulder and smashed it down hard. The bus broke in two, with yellow and red pieces of plastic scattering on the green grass. It didn’t look like a bus when we left.

  Away we ran back round to our street. Me da and Paul were out at the front door.

  ‘Did ye see our Paul’s bus?’ me da asked.

  Paul was crying. Dooter took off in his red waterboots and ran into his house and closed the door without looking back. I was on my own.

  ‘What’s wrong wi’ him?’ he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘What are yous boys up to?’

  I said nothing.

  But he knew. ‘Did you take his bus, boy?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Take me around the corner!’ he demanded angrily.

  I was hammered and I knew it.

  When we got round the corner past Barry McCool’s stables to the bankin’ it was all still there. It hadn’t disappeared. Paul started howling the way Dandy McKinney howls at the music from the Poke Van.

  ‘It was Dooter, Daddy. It wasn’t me. I tried to stop him but he lifted that boulder there and just smashed it,’ I said.

  He didn’t believe me. Paul was sent howling round to the house to get a box. He was still howling when he came back with the box. The tears and snotters were blinding his eyes, which looked at me and at the scene before him in disbelief at what I’d done.

  ‘It’s all right, Paul. We’ll get you another bus,’ said me da to get him to stop.

  It didn’t work. He howled on.

  ‘You.’ Me da looked straight at me. ‘Put all the pieces into the box.’

  I got down on my hunkers and started collecting all the broken bits of red and yellow plastic from the mucky ground.

  ‘Right, carry it back to the house. Now.’

  As I turned with the box in my arms he gave me a right steever with his boot up the backside, shoving me on a few extra yards with the force. I started to cry. The box wasn’t heavy.

  ‘You’re in bother, boy,’ was all he said from behind me as we walked. I knew he meant it.

  When we got back to the house I put the box down on the scullery floor and then I was sent upstairs to put on my Sunday clothes. My Sunday coat was waiting for me over the chaise longue when I came down. It was brown check with chocolate brown buttons. They looked too much like chocolate to be buttons. There was a small, dull-brown attaché case with a brown leather and metal handle sitting in the hall, exactly where the bus was parked on its first day. Everyone was gathered in the scullery – Ma, Da, Paddy Stewart, Karen, Patrick and Paul. The howling had stopped and Paul was wiping his snotters into me ma. The box of broken plastic was still on the floor where I’d left it. Everyone stood around it.

  ‘You’re coming wi’ me, boy,’ me da said, picking up the case as we went out the door.

  We walked side by side down to the bottom of Moore Street. I looked around before turning the corner and saw that they were all standing outside the house, watching. The leaving party. Our Paul was smirking at me.

  ‘You’re goin’ to Termonbacca, boy,’ said me da as we walked down the street. ‘That was a terrible thing you done on your brother.’

  Termonbacca was where Gerry Goodman lived. Gerry Goodman was in our class in school. He had no parents so he lived in Termonbacca with the nuns. He was very happy; he smiled a lot. He always wore grey long shorts and brown boots with grey socks and a navy blue blazer. All the home boys at the Long Tower wore grey trousers that went down to the knee. Gerry Goodman was going to be my best friend. I wondered what wearing long short trousers felt like.

  We turned the corner onto Foyle Road and could see the lights on the hill where Termonbacca sits. Me da walked without a word and at a fast pace, but I kept up with him. I didn’t know what to say so I stayed silent. Anyway he’d made his mind up, by the looks of him. He carried the attaché case. I held his hand. It was freezing. I was feeling the cold. When we reached the corner of Lone Moor Road he stopped suddenly.

  ‘Do you want to go and live up the Coach Road with the Home Boys, Tony?’ he asked.

  The Coach Road! The Coach Road was so named because the Headless Coachman rode his black, horse-driven coach up and down that road in the dead of night and kidnapped children and took them away for ever.

  ‘No, Daddy,’ I said truthfully. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I added; that wasn’t so truthful. ‘I don’t want to go to up the Coach Road to the Home.’ I started crying. I had visions of lying in bed in the Home hearing the Headless Coachman on the road outside cracking his whip and screaming at the kidnapped wains in the coach to be quiet.

  ‘Sorry for what?’ me da asked.

  ‘Sorry for smashing Paul’s bus,’ I said, lying through tears this time. ‘I’ll make up for it. I’ll give him my pay for four weeks.’

  ‘Right, I’ll give you one more chance. Another stunt like that and you’re for up the Coach Road. Okay?’

  ‘All right, Daddy. I won’t do it again. I’m really sorry.’

  I wasn’t.

  We turned around and headed back towards Moore Street. Dooter was out playing in the street and ran in again when he saw us coming round the corner. When we reached the house everyone was in the scullery around the heat from the range. I was sent to bed after saying sorry to Paul and promising to pay him four weeks in a row.

  That night I pictured myself being lowered into a grave and looking up to see me ma and da crying their eyes out as they looked down at me disappearing. It’d serve them right, I thought as I drifted off to sleep on my own.

  * * *

  One day I followed our Patrick, and Michael and Terry McKinney, round to the quarry. The u-shaped
quarry was a piece of flat land below the bankin’ and was full of bits of junk and car parts, and bones of dead farm animals, mostly sheep with their horns still on. The older boys wanted rid of me and kept chasing me away. Patrick swung his boot at me but missed. I tripped and stumbled and fell on the palm of my hand. Something sliced into it and when I brought it up to my face the blood was gushing from an open wound on the fleshy part near the wrist. I needed help. I started to cry and called to the boys ahead but they told me to fuck off and go back home; then they ran away. Our Patrick was a wild curser. So was Michael McKinney.

  Dripping blood over my t-shirt, shorts, bare legs and socks, I made my way back to the house emitting a series of low and medium-pitched moans. It was sore but it looked worse. The open wound scared me as I could see flesh inside. Me ma and da were in the scullery.

  ‘Jesus, what happened you, son?’ me ma said, as I moaned my way in through the door.

  ‘The big boys were chasing me away and I fell. And our Patrick was cursing at me,’ I said, holding out my bloodied hand for inspection.

  Me da took me to the water tap in the yard. The water stung and me ma said, ‘Go easy on him, Paddy – it looks really sore.’

  My cut hand was wrapped in a cut-up pillowcase and me da took me over to Altnagelvin on the bus. We got the bus on Foyle Road to Foyle Street and then got the Altnagelvin bus to the hospital. I got five stitches of black thread. The nurse said it was going to be sore, but it wasn’t.

  That night I dreamt that I was round in the quarry and I was floating like God over the horns, bones and old cars. I wasn’t wearing robes or anything – just shorts and a t-shirt. I was floating along and everyone was walking beside me. I was happy and so were they, especially our Patrick and Michael and Terry. They didn’t chase me away. They loved me. I also had another dream that I was standing in a queue at the top of the class. Mrs Radcliffe was there and she was being strict as usual. I wore nothing but a vest, which was all yellow from pee. I had no underpants on. All the other boys had their clothes on. They didn’t seem to notice. That was the dream.