This Man's Wee Boy Page 9

  ‘What’s wrong, Daddy?’ asked Karen.

  ‘Just stay in and keep the door closed. That Gutsy McGonagle was mouthing to Patrick. The fucker’s as full as a po.’

  Someone knocked loudly on the door. We ran to the front window to see who it was. It was Gutsy’s da. You called him Gutsy too. He was on a crutch. He knocked again on the door, using the brass knocker this time.

  ‘Cripple bastard!’ said me da in the hall.

  Gutsy’s da knocked hard on the door once more. Me da went out to the hall and opened the door. We heard a thump and saw Gutsy’s da landing on his back out in the middle of the road. The front door closed again. Gutsy’s da didn’t move on the road; he still had his crutch in his hand. After a minute or two, he started shouting for his wife and tried to get up on his feet. Gutsy’s wife came out of her house to help him. Me da told us to get away from the window and into the back room. Me ma wasn’t in. Me da was breathing heavily and stayed in the hall waiting to see if Gutsy’s da would knock again. He didn’t, but we were kept in for a good while just in case.

  * * *

  ‘Paddy Brown said that I have to sing something to you,’ said our Paul to Karen.

  ‘Sing what?’ she asked.

  He started singing in an English accent, ‘Did you ever, did you ever, see your sister in the raw?’

  Karen laughed. ‘That Paddy Brown’s a dirty wee brute. Don’t you let me da hear you sing that to me.’

  ‘Why, what’s it about?’ he asked her.

  ‘Never mind. Just don’t sing that again or you’ll be in bother,’ she said.

  * * *

  The Military Police, or MPs as we called them, patrolled our street, a man and a woman wearing peaked caps with a red band and white belts. They had armbands with the letters ‘MP’ written on them and they carried a pistol in a holster attached to the white belt. They walked up our street from Foyle Road, went towards the Lecky Road and then, about fifteen minutes later, they came back down the other side of the street. They didn’t speak to us. Gutsy said they didn’t like us going to the shops for the soldiers. They were brought in to put an end to it. He also said there was a new regiment in the Mex.

  ‘Your da was fighting wi’ a soldier the other day. He battered him,’ said Gutsy.

  ‘Who battered who?’ I asked.

  ‘Your da battered the soldier – outside the Silver Dog. The soldier was mouthing and pointing his gun at him. Your da said to him to put his gun down to see how much of a big man he was.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘He put the gun down and your da beat the shite out of him. The other soldiers lifted him up and took him down the street. His nose was busted. You wanny see the blood, hi!’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘Nothin’. They all just went back into the bar.’

  No one took tea and cakes any more to the soldiers at the Mex. It was probably too far away to carry them. Older boys threw stones at the Pigs, Sixers and Ferrets as they drove along Foyle Road. The stones made loud, tinny noises when they struck. Some of the vehicles were splattered with different colours of paint from paint-bombs made with milk bottles and beer bottles. The Foyle Road was covered in splashes of paint where the boys had missed their targets or were too far away to hit them.

  But no one said anything to us about running to the shop for the soldiers so we just kept on going up to the gate with our trolleys and waiting to see if anyone needed anything. We didn’t know their names any more and they didn’t know ours. They still bought plenty of sweets, lemonade and chocolate in the shop, though.

  Marlie season came. They appeared in the shop in wee net bags. We used the money we got from the soldiers to buy them. Only older people called them marbles; it was marlies or boodlies to us. There were two marlie games. One was like pitch-and-toss, where the boy who threw the marlie that landed closest to the kerb was the winner. We played on the road as there weren’t many cars in our street. Winner took all on the pitch. The other marlie game began with a circle drawn in the dust or dry muck below the kerb. You had to try and knock a marlie out of the circle with your own marlie. Some flicked their marlie out with their thumb; others simply tossed it with their finger and thumb. Gutsy was a great flicker – an expert. He rolled the marlie on his tongue, dried it with his fingers and shot it out with a flick of his thumb into the circle. If it connected with an opposing marlie, it sent it flying out of the circle. If you pushed a marlie out of the circle it was yours, and you got a free go. If you hit a marlie and yours bounced out of the circle you lost it to whoever owned the first marlie. We made a bigger circle of players around the small circle drawn in the dirt by the kerb and took turns, going clockwise.

  As we played outside our house me da came out of the front door. He carried a wooden frame with a rusty brown metal sheet attached to it. He went back in and came out with a chair and a hammer. He put the chair beneath the front window and got up on it and proceeded to hammer nails through the wooden frame into the window frame.

  ‘What’s that for, Daddy?’ I asked him as he worked.

  ‘Just in case there’s bother,’ he answered, not looking around.

  I went into the front room to see the effect of this and, when the door was closed, it was completely dark, like night time. His hammering was fierce loud in the room.

  When I went back out, Chesty Crossan was standing outside his cottage across the street looking over.

  ‘Can you do one for me, Patsy?’ he called over. He was in his white vest and you could see his white, hairy shoulders.

  ‘Aye, surely,’ said me da. ‘I have timber and metal sheet left over out in the yard. I’ll bang it together and come over later to put it up.’

  ‘That’s dead on, Patsy. I’ll sort you out with a few bob when I get me money,’ said Chesty.

  ‘Indeed you will not, Chesty. I’ll be over later. Looks like more bother is on its way.’

  ‘It does, Patsy. More bother surely,’ said Chesty, looking down the street towards Foyle Road.

  5

  Tracers

  ‘Paul, are you wakened?’ I whispered, nudging him.

  I was seven and Paul was six. It was 1970.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘There’s a riot out in the street.’

  ‘I know. I can hear it.’

  Me ma had warned us not to go near the curtains if there was bother out in the street. We just lay on the beds and listened. Patrick and Karen were wakened too. You could hear the tin bin-lids clashing off the concrete footpaths around the Brandywell. This was the warning signal that the army was coming in.

  ‘Limey bastards!’ someone roared below our window.

  There was the sound of running feet and glass smashing on the road. Dogs were barking in the yards of nearly every house – not ours; we didn’t have a dog. Then there was a loud bang. From a gun? Within a short while my eyes started to itch. I rubbed them with my hands and they started to sting even worse. Patrick’s and Karen’s and Paul’s eyes were burning too. My nose and throat were burning as well. We all started to cough. Paul began to cry.

  Me ma came in. ‘C’mon downstairs quick,’ she said. She was holding wee Colleen on her hip. The baby was squealing and had a cloth over her face.

  We all ran downstairs and into the sitting room. Me da was stuffing coats under the front door.

  ‘What’s that, Mammy? What’s going on?’ asked Karen, whose eyes were roaring red and streaming with tears.

  ‘That’s tear gas the army is firing. Here, put that over your face for a minute,’ said me ma, handing her a white cloth from a basin in the kitchen sink. We all got one too. ‘Not over your eyes – just your nose and mouth.’

  We all stood under the light in the kitchen breathing, coughing and spluttering through the white cloths covering our mouths and noses. The cloths smelled of vinegar. The burning wasn’t as bad now. The noise from the riot in the street wasn’t as loud in the kitchen but you could still hear it.


  Me da came in. His eyes were roaring red as well and he was coughing sorely into his hands. He went to the sink and ran the water into his cupped hands, which he then rubbed into his eyes.

  ‘Limey bastards,’ he said, still bent over the kitchen sink in his white vest. He stood up and lifted a cloth from the basin and held it over his nose and mouth and breathed deeply through it. ‘I think they’re moving up towards the Lecky,’ he said to me ma. ‘Imagine them Limey bastards shooting that stuff into the street. They’re fuckin’ worse than the B-men!’

  There was no sound now except Colleen snivelling. Me da was listening at the front door to see what was going on out in the street.

  ‘Right,’ he said after a minute. ‘C’mon and get your faces washed under the tap.’

  We took turns splashing the water over our faces and around our eyes. Every one of us had purple-red eyes as if we all had the flu.

  The next morning we were all sent to school. The street was littered with stones and broken glass, and there was a smell of burning in the air. As the four of us walked along Hamilton Street towards Foyle Road and Bishop Street, picking our way through the rubble and mess, our Paul lifted a coloured cardboard cylinder and sniffed it. Then we all took a sniff. It smelled of tear gas.

  As we came out of Hamilton Street, there were six or seven assorted British Army vehicles on Foyle Road – Pigs, Sixers and Ferrets. The soldiers were standing in the road with helmets on and carrying rifles and shorter black guns with wooden butts.

  ‘Limey bastards,’ hissed our Patrick as we passed.

  Some of the soldiers sneered back but didn’t say anything. Some of them we knew from the Mex and they smiled at us, but we didn’t smile back. As we got further up Bishop Street towards the Long Tower, Patrick turned around and called ‘Limey bastards!’ down towards the soldiers. A few of them laughed and gave us the fingers. Our Patrick was a wild curser.

  When I got into the classroom, someone had given a black rubber bullet to the teacher, Mr McLaughlin. The boy had found it on his way to school. It stood up on Mr McLaughlin’s desk pointing to the ceiling.

  Joe Mooney said it was a rubber dickie. At break time we all gathered round it to touch it and bounce it on the wooden floor. It bounced all over the place and shot away at curious angles.

  ‘The BA fire them at the rioters. There was boys hit wi’ them in our street. Ye wanny see the bruises, hi,’ said Joe. Joe lived in Creggan. The BA was the new name for the soldiers.

  ‘They were firing CS gas in our street all night,’ I said to impress. ‘Everyone in our house was chokin’ wi’ it.’

  ‘It was the same wi’ us too,’ said Waybo, whose real name was Barry Wade. Waybo lived in the Bog. ‘One landed right at our front door and me ma went out and threw a bucket of water over it and kicked it away. We were all as sick as dogs.’

  After the break, Mr McLaughlin was standing by the blackboard talking when he became distracted by something going on behind us in the yard. The whole class turned round to see a group of soldiers in the yard through the windows behind us.

  ‘The BA’s in the yard!’ someone shouted.

  Mr McLaughlin walked towards the window. ‘Stay where you are and don’t leave your desks,’ he said and hurried out of the classroom door. We could hear other teachers in the corridor talking.

  We all gathered around the three tall, panelled windows to look out at the BA walking through the yard. There were about twelve of them.

  Satch Kelly, who was the headmaster, and a few other teachers including Mr McLaughlin, approached the soldiers in the yard. The soldiers all carried SLRs and some had the shorter rubber bullet guns slung across their backs. Satch had his arms out, pleading to the soldier in charge. They were the same height – both of them were tall and lanky. The rest of the soldiers and teachers were small. We could hear them speaking, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  The tall soldier wore black leather gloves and was sneering back at Mr Kelly. Mr Kelly was pointing towards the school gate on Bishop Street as if showing him the way out. The tall soldier turned away from him and went over to another soldier who had a map in his hands. Both examined the map while Mr Kelly looked on in silence.

  The tall soldier approached Mr Kelly again, pointed to the front door of the school and gestured with his gloved hand to get back into the school. He held his rifle with the other hand. Mr Kelly was red-faced with anger.

  Mr Kelly’s son, Owen, was in our class. He had carrotty red hair and his face was a mass of freckles.

  ‘Your da’s goin’ to get himself shot,’ someone said to him as we watched the argument in the yard.

  Mr Kelly had taken his glasses off and put them in his top jacket pocket. The tall soldier had turned away again and a group of them stood near the rain shelter talking among themselves. Several of the teachers approached Mr Kelly, and then they all walked back towards the school. We all gave the soldiers the fingers through the window and they waved back at us, laughing.

  A few minutes later Mr McLaughlin came back into the classroom. ‘Right boys, come on away from the window and get back to your desks. We have work to do.’

  We all sat down. The soldiers were still in the yard. Some of them had sat down in front of the shelter and were smoking and laughing, their SLRs lying on the ground beside them.

  ‘What did Mr Kelly say to the big BA officer?’ asked Joe Mooney.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Mr McLaughlin. ‘That’s not important. We have maths to do.’

  * * *

  A crowd, mostly young men, had gathered at the corner of Hamilton Street and were throwing stones at soldiers on Foyle Road outside the Mex. Teenage girls stood at the corner of Moore Street looking at the young men rioting. It was still daylight and me ma and da were still at work so we ventured down to the corner to see.

  The soldiers were in the middle of the road, sheltering behind short, green, metal shields, which they held over themselves at an upward angle to protect their heads. They were banging the shields with long, wooden riot batons. The noise was fierce: wood on metal; brick on metal; bottles smashing on the road; cursing and shouting in angry tones.

  ‘GET BACK TO ENGLAND YOUS TOMMY BASTARDS!’

  ‘ENGLISH BASTARDS!’

  The rioters shouted all sorts as they whizzed and lobbed their stones, and the stones rattled off the riot shields. A soldier jumped out and fired a rubber bullet into the crowd. At the sound, the rioters seemed to bend backwards as one, with their heads down and hands covering their heads, like flowers blown by a sudden wind. The ‘rubber’ went through the crowd and bounced off the wall of the second house on Hamilton Street, then bounced back across the street towards us. Me, Johnny Barbour, Gutsy and our Paul made a scramble for it even before it had stopped bouncing. Paul was first to snatch it in his hands, and he ran up the street with it held high like a football trophy. We ran after him, exalted, until we reached the house.

  Paul held the rubber into his side, cradling it.

  ‘Let us see it, hi!’ said Johnny.

  ‘Okay, but it’s mine, okay? I grabbed it first,’ said Paul, handing it over.

  Johnny took it in his hands. It smelled strongly, like the smoke from fireworks or sparklers we got at Hallowe’en. Johnny threw it hard on the ground and it bounced away at a sharp angle for about fifteen yards. Paul ran after it and took it indoors to show me ma and da when they got in from work.

  We went back down to the corner. The riot had got worse. There were more teenagers on the road throwing stones and, about seventy yards away, there was a pile of stones heaped on the road below the soldiers’ shields. The lead rioters would sometimes run up close to the soldiers hunkering behind the riot shields and throw a stone before running back into the crowd. One rioter, wearing jeans, a denim jacket and black boots, was hit in the back with a rubber as he returned to the crowd. The bang was followed by a slap as the rubber hit him and forced him to the ground, rolling and writhing in pain. The soldiers, seeing their opp
ortunity, ran out from behind the shields with their batons in their hands, screaming at the top of their voices. We, the spectators section at the back of the riot, all ran in a panic up Hamilton Street, but those at the front, the main rioters, didn’t. Instead they kept throwing their stones at the oncoming soldiers, while two others lifted the wounded rioter, one arm each around their shoulders, and dragged him into Hamilton Street, his black boots trailing on the ground, and sat him up against the wall of a house.

  The sound of rubber bullets firing continued around the corner on Foyle Road as those who had run away drifted back down Hamilton Street again towards the battle. A woman brought the injured teenager a glass of water, which he drank, white-faced and in obvious pain. A Pig had squealed into position across Foyle Road at the junction with Hamilton Street. Rubbers were being fired from its side hatches into the street. The woman and another man helped the teenager to his feet, led him into a house and closed the door behind them. The rubber bullets were flying up our street, and people jammed themselves into doorways and behind lamp posts to avoid them. A group of rioters brought several large rusted sheets of corrugated tin from the sheds behind our house and began manoeuvring towards the junction. They were beckoning others to follow when the soldiers inside the Pig and behind it fired a loud salvo of rubbers at the tin sheets. The sound of rubber on tin echoed up and down our street for what seemed like forever. Others missed and flew on up Hamilton Street, which drew a scramble for the rubbers as they bounced precariously off walls and onto

  the road.

  A crowd of rioters had run up the lane towards Moore Street and a few minutes later you could hear the clang of stones on metal as they bombarded the Pig from a new angle. The soldiers firing from the front of the Pig were being pelted and ran around to the back for cover. The boys behind the tin sheets pelted them with stones and, in a panic, the soldiers tried to open the back doors of the Pig to get inside for cover. But the Pig took off up Foyle Road under the fusillade of stones, leaving the soldiers at the rear on their own. The rioters, seeing their opportunity, dropped the tin sheets and pursued them, firing stones and bottles at the fleeing soldiers. We decided it was safe enough for us to follow and, as we reached the street corner, we saw several dozen soldiers run to their new retreat position at the gates of the Mex barracks, where they regrouped.