This Man's Wee Boy Read online

  Hamilton Street was much longer than Moore Street. It curved away towards Lecky Road and the Bogside at one end and met Foyle Road at the other end near the river. It was a terraced street too, with houses built at odd levels. Across the street from our house was a row of four smaller houses that were more like cottages. The McKinneys had moved to Hamilton Street before us. There were now two McKinney families in the same street, and three Brown families. The Barbours – Davy, Tommy, Johnny and Hughie – lived a few doors to our right beside Gutsy McGonagle and then the Starrs. Further up and across the street to the left were the O’Donnells, the Kellys and the two McKinney families. There was a huge swarm of wains.

  A few days after we moved in we came home from school to find the house had been painted from top to bottom. We had another green door, and green windowsills, and green in a band at the bottom where the house met the street. The walls were cream-coloured. Our cream walls met a brown house on the right and a lilac house on the left, the paint touching in straight lines from the top of the house to the bottom. Our drainpipe was green too. It stood out from the other houses in the street, even when you stood away down the street and looked up. It was great to live in a house that stood out from the rest, I thought.

  * * *

  Me and Paul went up the town with Paddy Stewart. In the Diamond a statue of a soldier was killing someone on the ground with his rifle and bayonet. We stood in the crowd surrounded by men in their long, dull overcoats. There were women there too. Someone was shouting about houses and jobs but we couldn’t see a thing. Everyone clapped the speaker. We were bored but well-behaved.

  On our way home Paddy took us into Neilly Doherty’s, the barber’s at the top of Anne Street, for a haircut.

  ‘Hello, Paddy, how’s the form?’ asked Neilly.

  ‘Hello, Neilly. Grand. I brought the two boys in for a chop.’

  ‘Sit yous down there,’ Neilly said to us. ‘There’s a few comic-cuts there on the table.’

  An old man of about Paddy Stewart’s age was getting his white hair cut and was looking at us in the large mirror. Neilly stood behind him. All his haircutting tools were sitting on a silver tray attached to the back of the big red chair. I picked up the Beano, but Paul just sat looking around him, watching the old man getting his hair cut.

  Neilly finished with him and brushed the hair from his neck.

  ‘Right, who’s first then?’ he asked as the old man left the shop.

  ‘Away you go, Tony. Show Paul how easy it is,’ Paddy said.

  I got up on the big red chair and Neilly pumped it higher with his foot. He placed a large grey cape around my neck and tied it at the back. I could see the street in the mirror, and Paddy and Paul as well. Paddy was reading the paper for the racing and Paul was just watching me. Neilly switched on the electric razor that went with a hum and he started humming to himself as well as he ploughed through my thick fair hair. The cuttings tumbled onto my shoulders and fell to the floor. He used scissors at the front and turned the chair around so that I was facing him. In no time at all I was cut down to size and Neilly was brushing the hair from my neck and face.

  ‘D’ye want lacquer on it, son?’ he asked, with the bottle in his hand about to shoot. I hated the lacquer but I said, ‘Aye, all right then’, and he sprayed it all over my newly cut hair and patted it down with his hand at the front.

  ‘There you go. Is the wee man next, then?’ asked Neilly.

  ‘Aye. Away up you go now, wee Paul,’ said Paddy.

  ‘Naw, I don’t wanny.’

  ‘C’mon, wee Paul. Sure didn’t Tony get his cut?’

  Paddy took him gently by the hand and led him to the chair. Neilly put the grey cape over him and tied it behind his neck. But Paul had his head bent down to his chest and his eyes were closed. Neilly lifted his chin up, but down his head fell again when Neilly took his hand away. Neilly placed his hand under Paul’s chin and lifted it up again, looking over at Paddy and me. Down it fell again. Neilly laughed and so did Paddy.

  ‘Oh, boys-a-boys! If you don’t lift your head,’ said Paddy, ‘he’ll have to cut a baldy spot on the top of it like a monk.’

  Paul opened one eye and looked over at me in the mirror, smiled and lifted his head up for Neilly. But as soon as Neilly started with the electric razor on his neck the tears came. He didn’t cry out – just silent tears that kept coming until Neilly sprayed him with the lacquer bottle and patted his hair down at the front.

  ‘What about you, Paddy? Are you havin’ a chop the day?’

  ‘Naw, Neilly,’ said Paddy, handing him money. ‘I’ll be in next week.’

  Away we went out the door.

  ‘I’m headin’ over here to the bookies,’ Paddy said. ‘D’yous want to go on home yourselves?’

  Me and Paul headed over towards Hamilton Street. There were wains out playing everywhere. The two of us were spied from afar. We knew what was going to happen next and just had to accept it; we walked in silence down the street with our heads bowed.

  The playing stopped.

  ‘The Dohertys got their hair cut! The Dohertys got their hair cut!’ they all chanted, girls and boys. It was terrible.

  ‘Baldy balls, baldy balls!’ they called out.

  We just kept walking. Paul was crying with the shame of it. I didn’t cry, but I wanted to.

  ‘Baldy balls, baldy balls!’ echoed down the street until we reached the house.

  When we came back out to play football later on there was no mention of the haircut.

  * * *

  John lived across the street with his da. Our Patrick said he was a spastic. Patrick called everyone a spa but John definitely was one. He was tall and lanky with dirty fair hair and blue eyes. He was called Fuck-a-dee because that’s all he said; some people called him Eff-a-dee because they didn’t curse. Our Patrick didn’t care about cursing – he called him Fuck-a-dee, but not in front of me ma or da, or Eff-a-dee’s own da.

  Eff-a-dee said ‘Fuck-a-dee’ with the heel of his hand stuck in his mouth. He slabbered a lot over his jumper. When he came out of his house, one of the cottages opposite our house, his da came out with him. He said ‘Oh Jesus, Da’ as well. Sort of. It sounded like ‘Oh Jeedit, Da’, but we knew what he meant. He didn’t play with us, but he would sometimes come over near us, the heel of his hand in his mouth, saying ‘Fuck-a-dee’ and smiling at us.

  Eff-a-dee came out of his house as we played football in the street. He was wearing baseball boots. His da followed to keep an eye on him and tell him to stop cursing. But Eff-a-dee just said ‘Fuck-a-dee’ back to him and gave him a breathy, grinning laugh through the heel of his hand. Eff-a-dee circled some of us and we stopped playing. It was hard to play when he was on the pitch along with his da, so we just stopped to let him walk around us. When his da got fed up he called him to come back in, saying that they had to get ready to go out. Eff-a-dee’s da didn’t look at us. He just looked at Eff-a-dee and only spoke to him.

  ‘Oh Jeedit, Da,’ said Eff-a-dee.

  ‘Right, son. C’mon now, till we go,’ said his da.

  ‘Oh Jeedit, Da,’ said Eff-a-dee, louder, walking around us.

  By this time some of us were sitting on the edge of the footpath, watching. He didn’t want to go in.

  ‘Come on now, son,’ said his da, walking towards him.

  ‘Fuck-a-dee,’ said Eff-a-dee excitedly, the heel of his hand in his mouth.

  ‘Now, John, no cursing. That’s not nice now,’ said his da.

  ‘Oh Jeedit, Da,’ said Eff-a-dee, walking ahead of him towards their house.

  ‘Good boy, John,’ said his da.

  ‘Fuck-a-dee,’ said Eff-a-dee. He was standing on the road, near his front door.

  His da took his hand to lead him in. ‘Good boy, John.’

  ‘Oh Jeedit, Da! Oh Jeedit, Da!’ squealed Eff-a-dee, agitated and refusing to move.

  ‘That’s a boy. C’mon in now, John. Be a good boy,’ said his da.

  ‘Fuck-a-dee! Fuck-a-dee!
Fuck-a-dee!’ Eff-a-dee squealed again.

  His da gently pulled him in through the front door and closed it behind them.

  We returned to our football.

  * * *

  Me ma got a box of apples from Eddie McKevitt, the Fruit Man who brought fruit and nuts to our door every Hallowe’en. The box of apples smelled nice and appley and the smell filled the whole downstairs. She also bought a pallet of sugar somewhere and it was brought to our house as well. She came in a day or two later with a bundle of green-dyed sticks tied together with cord. Toffee apples! The smell of sugar melting in a big pot on the gas cooker filled the house. She cut a green stick in three, stuck a piece of green stick into an apple and rolled it around the inside edge of the pot filled with melted sugar. She let it drip for a moment into the pot and then she set it down on a tray covered with baking paper, which would eventually hold twelve, sixteen, twenty, upturned toffee-coated apples, depending on the size of the tray. Some trays were round – Carling Black Label trays from the Silver Dog bar. They only held six apples or so. The scullery windows were open and the trays were left on the table to let the toffee cool down and harden. The toffee formed a flat base on the tray as it hardened. Three shops sold them for her: Melaugh’s shop, a shop in Bishop Street and a shop on the corner of Quarry Street. When we were sent to Melaugh’s for a message, me ma’s toffee apples were sitting on the counter beside the buns.

  Karen and Patrick were allowed to go round the doors the whole way up Bishop Street to sell them from Colleen’s pram. Me and Paul weren’t allowed to sell them in case big boys took the money off us, but we followed at a distance from the pram until they got too far up Bishop Street. Big boys once took the pram off them, scooped out a handful of toffee apples for themselves and let the pram free-wheel down Stanley’s Walk over in the Bog until it hit a car at the bottom. This was why the Bog was out of bounds for us, me ma said.

  Gutsy McGonagle lived a few doors down the street with his ma and da. He had a cousin with red hair called Tony, who stayed with him all the time. Tony never talked and always looked like he wanted to cry or hit you. Gutsy’s ma started making toffee apples as well. They were darker than ours.

  ‘Me ma makes them with better sugar than yous,’ said Gutsy.

  Me ma was raging and gave off to me da. Me da didn’t do anything. Gutsy and Tony went round the doors with a pram. Colleen’s pram was better and newer-looking; shinier too.

  ‘I looked into Gutsy’s ma’s kitchen window,’ said our Patrick. ‘She was rolling the toffee apples in the po on the cooker. That’s why they’re dark brown.’

  A po! That people pish in! Word got round the street. Gutsy’s ma stopped making her toffee apples. No one would buy them off her.

  * * *

  Me ma was ironing in the sitting room. There was a smell of hot shirts. The clothes were hanging on hangers attached to the scullery door or folded neatly on the chair. The iron didn’t look hot. It was pure shiny and upright on the ironing board. Me ma was in the scullery doing something else. I couldn’t resist: I rested my right hand flat on the iron. The shock of the heat kicked me back. Too late! I couldn’t shout or cry. I held my hand under my armpit to hide the pain. Me ma came back from the scullery.

  ‘What’s wrong wi’ you?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘Nothin’, Mammy. I’m going out.’

  It was my own fault for being stupid. The iron put a sheen on my hand for weeks. And it was painful to make a fist.

  * * *

  The Barbours lived four doors down from us. The da was called Davey. He was a huge, strong-looking man. The ma was small and round and didn’t speak much – at least, not in the street.

  ‘Mr Barbour enjoys his pint,’ me ma observed when he staggered past our house on his way home.

  Johnny Barbour was the same age as me, Tommy Barbour was the same age as Patrick, Davey Barbour was the same age as Karen, and Hughey Barbour was the same age as our Paul. There were no girls. Johnny was my mucker, but so were Tommy and Davey. Davey was big and strong; him and Terry McKinney were our leaders.

  * * *

  Me da made a wooden frame covered in chicken wire and was fixing it over the outside of the front window. He was up on a chair.

  ‘What’s that for, Daddy?’ I asked.

  ‘Just in case there’s any bother,’ he said.

  ‘What kind of bother?’

  ‘Ach, you never know,’ he said, hammering nails through the chicken-wire frame onto the wooden window frame.

  I went inside to the front room. You could still see out. We’d be able to see the bother when it came. We didn’t know what kind of bother he was talking about.

  * * *

  ‘Tony and Paul, yous are wanted quick,’ said Karen to us as we played up near Moore Street. Moore Street was quieter now that us and the McKinneys had moved to Hamilton Street.

  ‘Yous are wanted too. Your mammy’s out calling yous in,’ she said to Dooter and Jacqueline McKinney.

  We all ran home. There was a smell of boiling cabbage in the house. There were a few bags full of clothes in the hall.

  ‘The B-men are coming. They’re going to invade,’ said me ma, bustling about the sitting room.

  ‘Is the B-men the police?’ asked Paul.

  Fear was in the air.

  ‘Aye, the B-men. We have to go to your granny’s,’ she said.

  ‘In Creggan?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye. Shut up the lot of yous till I get ready,’ she snapped. ‘Karen, make sure the lids are down right on them pots. Bring them out to the hall. I had to send for a taxi.’

  This was the first of several flits from the Brandywell to me granny Sally’s in Creggan.

  Getting a taxi was exciting. It was a shiny, black, square-looking taxi. The driver wore a white shirt and dark tie. It was hot. We all got in the back seat. Me ma got in the front. She had Colleen in her arms. I was holding a frying pan with bacon in it. It sat on a newspaper on my lap. I could feel the heat coming through to my bare legs. There were pots on the floor of the car – we were having cabbage, bacon and mashed spuds for dinner – and bags of clothes. We passed McKinneys’ house and their door was closed. Me da wasn’t with us.

  Me granny Sally’s house had a long back garden with a single rose bush in it and hedges to divide it from the Edgars next door and from the gardens in Dunree Gardens below. My uncle Joe had asthma. He was only two years older than me so he wasn’t really my uncle. He puffed on his inhalers when he was out of breath. ‘Oh, me asthma. Oh, my ma,’ he chanted when he wasn’t really suffering from it, or when he was taking his inhalers. He went to bed when he suffered badly from it. Me granny said he ‘had asthma all over his hands and arms’ and it had to get wrapped in bandages and cream. My aunt Lorraine was younger than me so she wasn’t really my aunt either; she was younger than our Paul.

  We were show-jumpers out in the back garden. We set up jumps with brushes, mops and lengths of wood placed between buckets as fences. The hedges were jumps as well. Or we were boxers. We boxed with tea towels wrapped around our hands for mitts. I boxed our Paul until he cried out. Joe boxed me until I cried. Patrick boxed as well but he was too rough.

  ‘There’s the Yanks bombing in Vietnam,’ said Granny Sally from her chair in front of the TV as pictures of jet fighters and huge explosions on wooded hillsides appeared on the screen. She drifted off to sleep and when she awoke again Top of the Pops was on the TV. ‘Is that the Rolling Spuds?’ she asked, pushing her brown-rimmed glasses up to her eyes. Everyone started to laugh. ‘It’s the Rolling Stones, Ma!’ said Lorraine, and me granny’s false teeth shot out of her mouth onto her chest as she let a loud laugh out of her as well.

  We boxed on – Cassius Clay against Sonny Liston. Joe was the ref, shouting ‘Box!’ at the start and ‘Break!’ in the middle, or when we were in a tangle of tea towels.

  * * *

  Aunt Siobhán was in the kitchen with me granny and granda. She was older than Joe by a few years. They were arguing.
I was sitting on a chair beside the cooker eating a piece and jam – mixed fruit jam. Siobhán was going to go down the town to the riots. She called them riots, but Sally and Connor called them ‘royets’. She was wearing a multi-coloured overcoat and had a scarf wrapped loosely around her neck.

  ‘You’re not goin’ down there and that’s it!’ said Granda Connor.

  ‘Aye, I am! They said everybody’s needed. Every woman and every man!’ She was being defiant, standing up for herself. ‘Anne Stewart’s goin’ down and so am I,’ she said. She was raising her voice, but not shouting.

  ‘You’re goin’ to git arrested. You’ll be too slow to run from the B-men,’ Granny Sally said. Siobhán was a heavy girl. ‘Please Siobhán, don’t go down.’

  ‘They’re firing CS gas by the square yard,’ said Connor. He was half shouting, half pleading. Siobhán was winning. ‘It’ll choke the life out of ye!’

  ‘I don’t care what yous say,’ said Siobhán, moving towards the kitchen door. ‘I’m goin’ down and that’s it.’

  And away she went.

  Granny and Granda sat on at the table after she left. They made no attempt to follow her. They sat in silence. Me granny took a fag from the Embassy Red twenty-pack sitting on the table and lit it, sucking the smoke in deeply and letting it out with a long, deep sigh. The smoke came out down her nose and through her mouth. The early afternoon sun caught the white plume in its rays.

  ‘That’s nothin’ but a cheeky bitch, that wan,’ said Granda to no one in particular, the resignation obvious in his voice.

  Granny Sally smoked her fag. There was no more to be said.

  Granny Sally had huge silver pots. They were a lot bigger than our pots in Hamilton Street and they were used for chicken soup, stew, mushy peas and spuds (not all in the same pot!). Her teapot was far bigger too. In silence, befitting the occasion, I got up from my chair and went out to the street. My jam piece was done.