A Belfast Child

by John Chambers

  ‘G’wan,’ said a voice, ‘give her the full fuckin’ works.’

  Without further ado the man poured the white feathers all over the woman, head to toe. They clung to the paint, giving the impression of a slaughtered goose hanging off the telegraph pole.

  ‘That will teach ye not to go with filthy Taigs,’ said the enforcer. ‘Any more of this and youse’ll get a beating then a bullet, so you will. Understand?’

  Through the paint and the feathers came a small nod of the head.

  ‘Good,’ said the man. ‘And just so ye don’t forget, here’s a wee something we made for you earlier.’

  To laughter and jeers, the man produced a cardboard sign which he placed around the woman’s neck. In the same red paint used to humiliate her, someone had written ‘Fenian Lover’ across the middle of the cardboard.

  ‘Leave her there for half an hour,’ commanded the man to a subordinate, ‘then cut her down.’ The crowd dispersed, a few women spitting on the victim as they left.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Wee Sam, wide-eyed. ‘Did you see that? Looked like she’d been shot in the head and the feathers were her brain running down her face. Fuckin’ amazing.’

  ‘Course I saw it,’ I said. ‘I was right at the front, wasn’t I? The bitch deserved it. Imagine going with Taigs, the dirty hoor.’

  ‘Let’s wait round the shops till they chop her down,’ said Sam. ‘See where she goes.’

  We’d been playing one of our eternal games of Cowboys and Indians recently and we’d got into the idea of tracking people down stealthily. So we waited until another paramilitary cut the woman’s rope and watched as she slumped to the ground.

  ‘I think she’s pissed herself,’ said Sam.

  ‘Ssh,’ I replied, ‘she’ll hear us. Wait while she gets up.’

  We watched the woman slowly pick herself up from the pavement. She wiped her eyes and looked around. The area outside the shops was now completely deserted as though nothing had happened. An angry mob had been replaced by an eerie silence.

  As she stumbled off, we nudged each other. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Look what’s happening. She’s leaving a trail!’

  She was too, a trail of blood-red boot prints. We gave her twenty or so yards’ start, then in single file began to follow her, sidling up against walls and lamp-posts like the gang of Cherokees we imagined we were. We must have gone a good quarter-mile when she turned into a pathway leading up to a small, shabby flat. We saw her fumbling in her pocket for a key, noticing the relief on her face as she found it still there. The lock turned and she went inside without a backwards glance.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Sam, ‘fun’s over. Let’s go home.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. I watched as the woman put on a light, looked in a mirror then drew the curtains tightly. Some part of me, the part that wasn’t screaming ‘Fenian bitch!’ with all the others, suddenly felt hugely sorry for her. She only looked about seventeen or eighteen – not much older than my sister Margaret. What had she done wrong, other than meet a nice boy she liked? Did she deserve such brutal treatment? After this I never saw her around the estate again. She’d probably fled for her life, never to return. And who could blame her?

  Something inside of me knew I’d witnessed a terrible thing, yet I knew I couldn’t even begin to think like this. It was against the rules; the same unwritten rules and code of conduct that this young woman had disobeyed. Fear of the paramilitaries created a culture of silence and where we lived this was a survival strategy we all lived by. We were all products of this violent environment and we had been desensitised to events that no child should ever have to witness.

  I shuddered, pulled my thin jacket close around me and with the others, headed for the safety of home.

  Even now, more than forty years later, whenever I smell the sweet aroma of cut grass I am transported back to that dusky spring evening in the early seventies and the woman’s brutal punishment, and I can hardly believe the madness of my childhood in Glencairn.

  CHAPTER 1

  T

  here are ghosts of the past all over Belfast. Spectres that slip unseen past gable-ended houses painted with murals and linger in the so-called ‘interface’ zones, where Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods collide, often violently. They lurk in the damp, overgrown back alleys of terraced streets where the bodies of both the innocent and the guilty were dumped, and flit and flicker in and around the huge bonfires lit across the city on 11 July ahead of Orangeman’s Day – the holiest of holy days for Loyalists.

  Such shadows are to be seen in those parts of Belfast that witnessed the first stirrings of the Troubles in the late 1960s. Catholics and Protestants alike fled these narrow streets of little houses for safer territory as their homes blazed, the result of sectarian arson. At the time it was the biggest population displacement since the Second World War. Slum clearances and the subsequent building of new houses have altered these areas almost beyond recognition, yet when I’m ever in the neighbourhood around Grosvenor Road I feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck and the ghosts of the past whisper in my ear.

  In my mind’s eye I see John and Sally – married with four kids, but barely out of their teens themselves – sick with fear about the increasing sectarian violence developing all around them. I imagine listening in as they discuss their situation. She’s Catholic and he’s Protestant. Neither of their respective families has been keen on this marriage, to say the least. The stigma of marrying someone from the ‘other side’ has tarnished the reputation of both families, and neighbours are whispering and sniggering behind closed doors. The houses in Little Distillery Street, where they live, are being attacked nightly. Riots are breaking out on every street corner. Belfast is burning, and in the darkness, the heat, the smoke, the noise, in the chaos and confusion, no one seems to know who friend or foe is. Lifelong neighbours are being driven from homes they’ve lived their whole lives in, while friendships that have lasted for decades and generations are shattered and forgotten as Belfast descends into a sectarian hell that will last three decades and cost countless lives on all sides.

  I watch as John and Sally huddle in their tiny kitchen, their kids crying with fear upstairs. What will they do? Where will they go? And will any neighbourhood accept them for who they are?

  The shadows are long, but indistinct. For reasons that will become clear, I have little knowledge of how or why my parents got together. All of us siblings – myself, Margaret, Jean and David – have heard stories, rumours and snatches of gossip. But up to now, no one knows the true story. So here’s what we do know: Sally McBride came from a strongly nationalist/Republican family originating from the Falls Road, the heart of Catholic West Belfast. When my parents met, Mum was living with her father in McDonnell Street, which was near where my dad and my grandparents’ family lived at the time. John Chambers shared his name with both his father and grandfather (I’m the fourth John Chambers) and came from a strongly unionist/Loyalist family originating in Sandy Row and Shankill, both Loyalist enclaves of Belfast. In the late 1950s and early 1960s Protestants and Catholics could just about live cheek by jowl, but this wasn’t to last.

  From an early age, my dad was in the Orange Order. This wasn’t unusual – in fact, the Order provided a clear focus point for Protestants of all descriptions to celebrate their traditions and feel a sense of ‘togetherness’. It’s arguable that the Order acted as a kind of employment agency, ensuring that only Protestants worked in Belfast’s big industries, particularly shipbuilding, causing resentment among Catholics who felt shut out. Perhaps the Order helped to find my dad a job in one of the local factories, because we think he was working in such a place when he first clapped eyes on the pretty, dark-haired girl who’d always walk the same way to her place of work.

  Dad was a good-looking guy, with a big dimple and an Elvis quiff that paid tribute to the singer he loved. He had personality, charisma, and I dare say enough cheek to smile at Sally McBride as she passed by. She was slim, with a stylish h
airdo and a twinkle in her eye. If she smiled back, maybe he asked her name and where she lived. Now, in Belfast, obtaining these two pieces of information is crucial because it will determine whether that person is Catholic or Protestant. At the height of the Troubles the answer you gave could be the difference between life or death but for the moment – here, in the late 1950s – it simply determines the background of the person you’re talking to, and whether you wish to proceed on that basis.

  So John asks Sally what her name is and where she lives, and she answers that it’s ‘Sally McBride’ and that she lives in McDonnell Street. It’s just around the corner from Little Distillery Street, where John’s family live, but already he knows it’s predominantly Catholic. Belfast people have a keen sense of geography – again, such knowledge has often been a matter of life and death.

  Sally asks John who he is and where he’s from, and he tells her. Now she knows he’s a Protestant and immediately she wonders what her family will say. John is also thinking about this. People go about their daily business as peacefully as possible, but introducing a member of the opposing religion into the home is not done, not in these working-class areas of Belfast.

  Still, he engages her in conversation as they walk along the street and when she turns towards home John asks Sally if he can walk her to her door. Warily, she agrees, looking round to see if any of her friends and neighbours have caught her in the act of talking to this young guy. This is a city that thrives on gossip, and in the tight-knit streets around the Falls word will quickly spread that ‘wee Sally’s courtin’ a young fella’.

  At the door of her house he asks if he can see her again. She thinks about it for a moment, then agrees. So what if he’s a Protestant? Maybe if she gets to know him better, her daddy will like him too. John is thinking the same thing, but is pleased that he can walk out with her again soon.

  And they do. The relationship goes from strength to strength and John and Sally fall in love. Their respective families find out and neither side is happy, so John and Sally marry in February 1961 without any fuss and decide to move to England. They arrive in London, where John gets a job working for London Underground as a ticket inspector and Sally gives birth to her first child, Margaret, in 1962. They remain in London for a while, but perhaps the pressure of dealing with a baby gets to Sally and she realises she needs close family around her. So they move back to Belfast, where Jean is born (1964) followed by me (1966) and David (1968). We are baptised in the Roman Catholic faith and two of us are initially given Catholic first names. In time these will be changed to more Protestant ones.

  We are all now living in Little Distillery Street, close to the Falls Road, and by the time of my birth the area is beginning to feel the sectarian tension that will eventually lead to riots, the burning of houses, death, displacement and the arrival of the British Army for ‘Operation Banner’. This was meant to calm the immediate tension; tragically it became the longest campaign in British military history. In 1966, Catholics are demanding their rights as citizens and the newly formed Civil Rights Movement (CRM) is demanding to be heard. Protestants feel angry and scared that their way of life may be destroyed forever by the resurgent Catholics. Added to this is the fear that Republican gunmen are becoming strong again, and infiltrating the CRM. This makes the Protestants nervous and suspicious of the CRM.

  This uneasy situation holds for a while but by the time David is born the spark has been ignited. In August 1969, Belfast is in flames and my parents are moving from house to house, trying to find shelter and safety. The army arrives to break up the fighting, and local kids (including my sister Margaret) befriend the young, nervous soldiers who seem shocked at the levels of viciousness and hatred to be seen on British streets.

  Today, I stand where Little Distillery Street used to be and hear the echoes of rioting, the whup-whup-whup of helicopters overhead and remember the acrid smell of the burning houses. I recall being three years old, and cowering under the sheets in the bedroom at night, trying not to cry as I listen to the roars of the mob, the flashes of petrol bombs crashing on to the cobblestones and the thud of rubber bullets being fired into an angry crowd. The four of us share a bed and we huddle together like frightened rabbits against the terror and mayhem going on in the street below. Even today, when I hear a car backfire I jump ten feet in the air, a relic of the trauma of hearing gunfire and not knowing where it was coming from, or when it would end.

  And then, for reasons we can only speculate about, Mum leaves Belfast for London, taking Margaret and me with her. This would be around 1969. We think she rented a flat in Stockwell, perhaps through contacts she’d made. I don’t remember any of this, just a vague shadow of a memory of a dark-haired woman giving me something to eat. It’s sad to say, but I cannot picture the woman’s face, though I assume it is my mother. Did she leave because she was terrified of what might happen to us? It’s a possibility, because we know that she came back to Belfast soon after arriving in London and then took Jean and David, leaving Margaret and me with our father. Had she met someone else and was scared that her life might be in danger in Belfast for reasons other than her religion and the nature of her marriage? There are some in the family who feel this may be the case but again, we do not know for sure.

  My feeling is that for whatever reason she had some kind of nervous breakdown that led her to flee Belfast in a panic. She came back for Jean and David, certainly, but why she left Margaret and me with our dad is a mystery. It seems that on her next scheduled return to Belfast Margaret and I were taken by our dad to Belfast Docks, where her boat from Liverpool was due to arrive. He waited and waited, but she didn’t walk down the gangplank. Eventually, the ship’s staff took pity on him and allowed him to search the vessel for his wife and two of his children. They weren’t there.

  I guess that by this stage my dad had had enough of Sally’s to-ing and fro-ing. He was a real family man, always putting the needs of his children first, and wouldn’t have been able to stand the thought of us being split up. He was one of several brothers and he must have known that he might need their support for what he had planned. Obviously, Sally wasn’t coming back to Belfast, but by hook or by crook he would have all his children together in one place. There was only one thing for it and at some stage, probably in the early part of 1970, my father and a couple of his brothers made the journey to London, where they visited Sally McBride and returned home with two frightened, bewildered children, leaving their mother behind. Whether they gave Sally the option to come with them is, yet again, speculation. If they did, she must’ve refused because she stayed in England for the rest of her life. Whatever it was that drove her away and led her to abandon four young children must have been very powerful indeed. Mum simply disappeared from this point onwards and we just got on with being the wholly Protestant Chambers family.

  It’s the case that much of what I’ve written above is based on speculation, rumour, guesswork and fact. It’s hard to know exactly where the precise truth lies in all of this, but as we know truth can very often be subjective, depending on whose version you’re hearing. What we can all agree on, if nothing else, is that extreme pressure (external, internal or both) caused the breakdown of a mixed marriage in the sectarian cauldron of 1960s Belfast and that all of us – Mum, Dad and four children – were its casualties.

  As I’ve mentioned, neither John or Sally’s respective families were very happy about their marriage and to add to their troubles there was the little difficulty about my leg. When I was eighteen months old it was discovered that I had osteomyelitis in my right leg. This is an infection of the bone and if it’s caught quickly it can be treated with antibiotics. Unfortunately, it wasn’t spotted in time and the infection caused permanent damage, leading to long spells in hospital and multiple operations to try to contain the damage. My leg was saved, but to this day I walk with a limp and use a stick.

  As a result, I spent more time in the Royal Victoria and Musgrave Park hospitals than I did at home.
I was in and out all the time, and it must have been during one of my ‘out’ periods that we were taken to London. In hindsight, spending time in hospital was probably to my advantage because at least those stays kept me away from the trouble spots around our neighbourhood and shielded me from the breakdown of my parents’ marriage. At the time, though, these places were big, impersonal and frightening places to be. The hospitals I was in tended to be located in Catholic areas, and so the majority of their patients were Catholic – I was very much outnumbered. The hospital wards seemed dark and foreboding, and the appearance of the matron at night, hearing her footsteps echo down the corridors as she walked towards the children’s ward, plus nuns gliding about the place like grey ghosts, really spooked me. I missed home and my family terribly and would cry myself to sleep after the nurses had visited the children’s ward to tuck us in and tell us to be quiet now it was bedtime.

  To make matters worse, I was confined to bed, unable to walk due to the large plaster casts on both my legs. The days seemed endless and I looked forward to the brief appearances of my family who were only allowed to come during strict visiting hours. Although money was always tight, Dad brought little gifts and magazines up to the hospital and sometimes he would take me to the tuck shop and buy sweets and Lucozade in the old-style bottles with the yellow film around them. I always had a bottle or two beside my bed. Once my family was gone, that was it – I was alone again, with no idea when I might leave hospital to be reunited with my nearest and dearest.

  At first, this was very hard for me to cope with but as time went on, I adapted to the situation. Although I had extreme difficulty walking, at some stage I was given a small four-wheeled cart in which I could push myself around the ward, causing as much mayhem and mischief as I could muster as I whizzed around the place.