A Belfast Child

by John Chambers

  He was wrong. There was something to look at, lying just a couple of yards from where he stood. Behind the soldier’s back, down the grassy bank at the back of the community centre – UDA-controlled, of course, and a social gathering point for those in the estate – we saw a pair of shoe-clad feet sticking out at angles from beneath a brown woollen blanket. This covered the undisputable shape of a body, and surrounding it was thick, red, jellified blood. Pints of the stuff that had spread across the grass on which the body lay, creating a semi-frozen scene of complete horror.

  ‘Jesus!’ I said, stepping back a couple of paces from the soldier. ‘What the fuck happened here?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ he said. ‘Kids your age shouldn’t be seeing things like this. And watch your language, lad.’

  I ignored him and looked again. By now, a typical Belfast morning drizzle had begun to fall, covering the blanket in a fine mist. I craned my neck, and could just about see a tuft of dark, bloodstained hair sticking out of the top. Even at this age I knew that a single bullet, or even a couple of them, couldn’t have created such a mess. Rooted to the spot, I hadn’t noticed that Wee Sam was no longer by my side. I turned to see him talking animatedly to a boy of about our age standing beside his mum and went over. Wee Sam grabbed my sleeve, pulling me into the conversation.

  ‘Jimmy’s ma says it’s the Butchers who’s done him,’ he whispered, pointing to the body. ‘They carved him up wi’ knives and all that. Just cos he’s a Catholic.’

  I couldn’t believe it. I knew Provies killed Loyalists, and we killed them. That’s how it was. In my mind that was all fair. We were under siege, and at war. But to have murdered this man just because he was a Catholic? And to have used knives on him, literally carving him up like a piece of meat? I knew something about this was terribly, terribly wrong and I wondered why God in all his wisdom would let such things happen. Was this the point when I started to lose faith in a Saviour who seemed to ignore the suffering of mortal men?

  For weeks previously we’d heard whispers across Glencairn about a gang called the ‘Butchers’, or the ‘Shankill Butchers’. We knew they were Loyalist UVF paramilitaries, but seemingly nothing like the uncles, cousins and friends who aligned themselves to the UDA or UVF, collecting for prisoners and running shebeens, illegal drinking clubs that brought in funds. Those we knew to be UDA members, hardened as they were to whatever was going on across Belfast, seemed to be talking about this particular set of murders with a mixture of awe and horror.

  As time went on, it became clear that the ‘Butchers’ killings had little connection with everyday Loyalism and more to do with the psychopathic condition of the gang’s members. It appeared they were using a black taxi to pick up their victims – innocent people on their way home – before kidnapping and murdering them. But they were also killing Protestants too; people who’d fallen foul of their notorious leader, Lenny Murphy. In short, they enjoyed killing for killing’s sake, and in mid-1970s Northern Ireland the opportunity to destroy lives at random, for any scrap of a reason, was unprecedented and easy. Life was cheap and victims would be forgotten about by the next day as another victim took their place.

  The politics of Loyalist feuding was way over my head back then, but like everyone else I came to regard the Butchers as nothing short of bogeymen. They invaded my dreams and seemed to be pursuing me during my waking hours. On late summer nights and into the dark nights of autumn, a group of us would gather at the bottom of the estate, playing around the woods and streams that gave this area a kind of weird beauty in the midst of all the mayhem. When darkness fell and it was time to go home, I would walk alone back up the estate, listening out in mortal fear for the distinctive sound of a wailing diesel engine climbing the hill behind me that could only be a Belfast black taxi. I was only just ten by then, but I had no reason to believe the Butchers wouldn’t grab me and rip me apart with their specially sharpened knives, just for the fun of it.

  These guys meant business. The body Wee Sam and I saw was the first of four that were dumped on Glencairn by the Butchers, along with others murdered in Loyalist feuds. Some months after we came upon the scene in Forthriver Road, we were playing in and around a building site in ‘the Link’, a new part of Glencairn still under construction. Several houses were being created and while we shouldn’t have been there, nobody was stopping us from running wild around the estate and doing what we liked. We’d poked about one particular half-built house and were about to leave when I spotted what appeared to be words written on an unplastered wall.

  ‘Gi’e us a match, Sam,’ I said, ‘I wanna see what’s written up there.’

  Sam produced a box of matches from his jeans pocket and I struck one, holding it close to the wall. The colour drained from my face as I read the words ‘Help me’. They had been written in blood. Dropping the match we legged it out of there and ran all the way home.

  I told Dad, but if I expected him to be shocked I was just as surprised when his reaction was indifference. ‘Just leave well alone, John,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You’re better off out of it.’

  CHAPTER 6

  D

  ad was beginning to look thin and weary. We’d all noticed that he’d lost quite a bit of weight recently, and that his smoker’s cough had become something deeper and serious-sounding. There’d been hospital appointments and a lot of babysitting from Granny. Muttered adult conversations and strange silences when we entered the room. And Dad, in the middle of it all, trying to earn a living doing whatever came along (gardener and impromptu tuck-shop owner, which ran from our house and attracted every kid on the estate) and finding it more and more difficult to get himself off the settee of an evening to attend band practice.

  Inevitably, the secret came out. Our Margaret, now thirteen, overheard Granny tearfully telling a neighbour that her boy was dying. Not only that, but Dad himself was very worried about ‘what’ll happen to the wee ones’ when he’d gone. Margaret repeated the news to us and we spent the whole of that night and the following day clinging to each other and crying our eyes out. He was our rock, our harbour and our protection. He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t go anywhere without us. But Margaret was a teenager and wouldn’t make this stuff up. How we found out officially I cannot remember – perhaps Margaret spoke to Granny or Granny heard us whispering and crying. Either way, we discovered that the terrible rumour was true and within days Dad was hospitalised. He would never leave.

  Always a heavy smoker, Dad had contracted lung cancer, which spread throughout his body. There was no chance of recovery and I winced when I saw him in hospital because his emaciated state reminded me of a film I’d seen about Auschwitz on the TV. I cried in fear: fear of his appearance, and fear of what would happen after his death. Granny brought us to the hospital one by one to visit him and although I didn’t know it, this was the last time I would see my dad alive. I remember being in the room and he lay on the bed and was so skinny that his watch had slid all the way up his arm, almost to his shoulder. I cried my heart out. Eventually, that watch found its way to me and although I still have it, I’ve never been able to wear it as it brings back painful memories that I have no desire to revisit.

  The news came through that he’d died, and that he’d asked his family to look after us. The whole estate seemed to be in tears. Wherever we siblings went we would stop adults in their tracks, who would then look at us pityingly or start to cry. Dad was popular across Glencairn and had touched many lives, which was reflected in the numbers who attended his funeral, conducted by Reverend Lewis at St Andrew’s Church. My dad’s beloved Alsatian, Shep, who was my best friend, had sat underneath Dad’s coffin for the three nights leading up to the funeral, whining and crying, and making the weirdest wolf-like sounds. One night I crept downstairs while everyone else was sleeping and stroked a crying Shep. Standing over my dad in his coffin I broke down and sobbed my little heart out, cursing God for letting my dad die and making my young life a misery.

  On a beau
tiful May morning in 1976 we four kids trooped out of Granny’s house dressed to the nines. I was wearing black trousers, a white shirt and my best Sunday jacket. As we walked towards the church we looked in awe at the number of people standing on the roadside. Shep followed us and stood outside the church while the service was on and followed the coffin down the road, which was heartbreaking. There must have been hundreds gathered to pay their respects, including the Glencairn Girls’ Accordion Band, who formed a guard of honour before playing a couple of Dad’s favourite tunes, including ‘Amazing Grace’. Hearing that almost sent me over the edge. To this day, it still does and I turn the radio or TV off if it comes on. The band was renamed the John Chambers memorial band after his death and my uncles Rab and Jim took over the running of it for a few years.

  As the pallbearers prepared to lower Dad’s coffin into the grave, Granny ran forward and grasped the handles of the wooden casket with all her strength.

  ‘My baby! My baby!’ she wailed. ‘My baby’s died!’

  It was horrifying and heartbreaking to see such raw, animal emotion and we all sobbed even harder.

  I had shattered into pieces. There were fragments of me everywhere.

  I had no real idea how close he was to death but still, seeing his body disappear underground, never to be seen again, was gut-wrenchingly shocking. As I stood by the graveside, heartbroken and beyond comforting, a voice sounded in my head. ‘Where’s my mammy?’ it said. ‘Where’s my mammy, where’s my mammy, where’s my mammy?’

  I’d not heard this voice for a good few years. Now here it was, whispering, shouting, screaming – anything to get my attention. ‘She’s dead!’ I shouted back silently. ‘Dead, dead, dead!’ But something was telling me, loud and clear, that this wasn’t the case. I had no idea where she was, but I felt she was somewhere out there. Perhaps I was scratching at sand; digging frantically to find a rock to grab on to as grief swirled all around me. Or maybe I was picking up something amid this fog of tears; a whispered aside and a nod in our direction. Phrases like ‘their mammy is’, as opposed to ‘their mammy was’ were overheard and passed between us. ‘I never believed it anyway,’ said our Margaret. ‘I always thought they were lying.’ After Dad’s death I began to think of Mum more and realised that I was missing her.

  There was another tragedy too. Shep, Dad’s beloved dog, was never the same after his master’s death. He went off his food and lay moaning in the corner all day long. Three weeks after the funeral, we woke one morning to find the poor dog had passed away in the night. This broke my heart all over again: not only had I lost my dad, the most important person in our universe, but now my best friend Shep, who had been on so many different adventures with me and always been at my side, was gone. The vet said he’d died of a broken heart, but at least he was back at his master’s side.

  Margaret, Jean, David and I clung together, physically and metaphorically, after the funeral. Granny was wrung-out with grief. She visited Dad’s grave every single Sunday, winter, autumn, spring and summer come rain, hail or sunshine and would spend hours tending it, just being with a son she never got over losing. And she did not forget his dying words. She moved in with us for a while, during which time our future was discussed and our fate sealed. We would very much liked to have lived with each other but Margaret was only thirteen. It was unfair to make her a mother at such a young age. The perimeter of Dad’s wish that we must be kept together would have to be stretched a little further than he might’ve liked.

  Then we were told. No, we wouldn’t be living together but we would be staying with relatives across Glencairn. And given that all of these people were within a few hundred yards of our family home, it wasn’t like we were emigrating to Australia.

  My new billet would be with my Uncle Rab and Aunty Jacky – but not yet. Uncle Rab had been playing the rascal once too often and was currently spending a short time at Her Majesty’s pleasure. With four of her own, Aunty Jacky really didn’t need the burden of raising another kid single-handedly, so after a family conference it was decided that I would go to a couple on the estate who I’ll not name in full. Let’s call them Alistair and Betty.

  Alistair had a rigid, upright manner that went hand-in-hand with his background in the military. Betty, his wife, was nice enough but completely subservient to her husband. They did not have kids and their home was as neat as a pin. Not really a place for a snotty, ten-year-old kid drowning in grief who needed loving, not an endless list of jobs.

  I’m not sure how long I lasted at Alistair and Betty’s. A couple of weeks? Maybe longer? It certainly felt that way and I was relieved when Uncle Rab returned and I was able to take up my place in their family. They embraced me in ways I needed them to – physically and emotionally and showed me love and kindness. Aunty Jacky was a strikingly beautiful woman, a blonde with a lovely open face and a kind and generous nature. I recall my first night there, and just before bed all us kids lining up to give her a goodnight kiss. I’d never known anything like that before and I was embarrassed, but Aunty Jacky beckoned me over. I took my place in the line and her goodnight kiss filled me with hope that I may be happy again, soothing my soul a little and for every night thereafter.

  Uncle Rab was looking for work, and always coming up with mad and often illegal money-making schemes. He declared himself available for painting and decorating at a reasonable rate. His popularity soon earned him work and Wee Sam and I would go with him at weekends, cleaning up any mess and making endless cups of tea. If he was feeling generous, Uncle Rab would sit back for twenty minutes and chain-smoke while he watched us paint a skirting board or a small bit of wall. For some reason our efforts amused him hugely and we were always pleased with the odd 50p or quid he’d give us after the job was done.

  But this was the mid-seventies and there wasn’t a lot of money to be had, especially on estates like ours. It was barely ten years old but already it felt rough and run-down. There was a shabbiness around it that reflected the times. Like the country itself, the estate’s beauty appeared to fade into the background, while a new face full of hate, anger and horror took its place.

  Once we loved playing among the trees but now we were chopping them down like crazy on the orders of Uncle Rab, who had diversified into the supply of firewood. He went into Glencairn Park with his chainsaw and wheelbarrow, Wee Sam and I in tow. Uncle Rab let rip on the first tree he considered was out of sight of the road. When it crashed to the ground, Wee Sam and I shouted ‘Timber!’ Then Uncle Rab chopped it up into logs and got us to wheel them back to his house. We made trip after trip until all the wood was safely stashed. Then we bagged it up and the following day began to sell it around the estate, doing a roaring trade.

  Our success meant we needed more wood and, oblivious to the laws we were breaking, we simply chopped it down. Business was good enough that I could save up for a coveted Raleigh Chopper bike, which was the talk of Glencairn when it arrived. Sadly, somehow the local forestry authority got wind of what we were doing and one day they ambushed us in the woods. The head forestry fella read the riot act to Rab and told him how seriously they took our offence. Now, Uncle Rab could more than handle himself and in any other situation these eejits from the council wouldn’t have lasted five seconds. This time, however, he meekly accepted everything they were saying while apologising for all of us.

  He finished by promising not to do it again, which annoyed us because from that second we were unemployed.

  ‘Why did you say that, Da?’ asked Wee Sam, aggrieved. ‘Now we’ve no money again.’

  ‘Shut your hole,’ replied Rab. ‘D’you think I wanna bring the peelers up here for the sake of a few bits o’wood?’

  Uncle Rab explained that if he attracted the attention of the law his licence would be revoked and he’d be returned to prison. Neither of us wanted that to happen, so reluctantly we put up with the situation and hoped we’d be earning again soon.

  Uncle Rab’s resourcefulness meant we didn’t have long to wait.
Like my dad, Uncle Rab was a UDA member and it was required of him that he help to raise money for Loyalist prisoners and their families. This was common among paramilitary organisations of all shades and different groups had their own ways of doing it. The UDA did it through sweepstake cards, asking their members to sell them to family and friends. Rab felt obliged to say ‘yes’ to the possession of the cards but had no intention of selling them himself. That’s where Wee Sam and I came in. He gave us twenty-five pounds’ worth of cards and told us that if we sold them we’d get two pounds each. It was a deal, so we split up and headed to separate ends of Glencairn.

  At the first door I knocked, a woman answered in her nightdress and with a fag hanging from her mouth. With barely a ‘Hello there’, I went straight into my pitch, which I’d been rehearsing mentally for a few days. Without pausing for breath I told her that if she picked two winning numbers between one and fifty, she’d be twenty-five pounds better off. It was just twenty pence a ticket and most people bought a strip of five

  ‘Who’s it for?’ snapped the woman, not unreasonably.

  I smiled my most angelic smile. ‘For the poor prisoners, missus,’ I said. ‘To help their poor, hungry children and lonely families.’

  The woman’s harsh, smoke-ravaged expression softened. ‘Ach, you shoulda said sooner,’ she smiled. ‘God love you, out on a cold day for the prisoners. Sure, give us two strips.’

  I couldn’t believe how easy it had been. Maybe I’d had a lucky first experience but maybe I was a natural because within the hour I’d sold the lot. Meanwhile, Wee Sam was still to get off the mark. After this we went out a couple more times but Wee Sam showed ever-decreasing enthusiasm and finally I took over the whole operation. It wasn’t always easy – I’d get the door banged in my face or told to fuck off. I didn’t care. I apologised for disturbing them and went on my way towards the next sale. It wasn’t quite as lucrative as the firewood game, but my pounds were mounting up and I looked forward to the time I could buy a digital watch or an Action Man.