A Belfast Child

by John Chambers

  As I entered my secondary school years, I was happy in Uncle Rab and Aunty Jacky’s house. Despite the occasional flare-up, Wee Sam and I got along well enough. I remember us lying in our beds at night, singing all the songs from the movie Grease at the top of our voices and being yelled at by Uncle Rab and Aunty Jacky. Sadly, though, there were problems in Rab and Jacky’s marriage. As I’ve mentioned, Uncle Rab was popular all over Glencairn and beyond, and his good looks got him noticed. His charm and wit landed him in various buckets of hot water and at night I’d hear him and Aunty Jacky arguing fiercely downstairs. There were late-night drinking sessions starring Uncle Rab and his buddies, and the sounds of drunken adults getting seriously out of hand. One night, the roars of a particularly heavy drinking bout so disturbed the family budgie that it started shrieking in its cage. Its cries of protest were quickly silenced by one of the drinkers, who lifted the bird from its cage, took it upstairs and pulled off its head at our bedroom door. There was blood all over the place and the guy who killed the bird got a hiding from Uncle Rab and Uncle Jim that he’d never forget. There was violence everywhere – even the local bird population wasn’t safe. The next day was a Sunday and when Aunty Jacky served the roast chicken dinner we all thought it was the budgie and refused to eat the meat.

  One thing led to another and it was decided I needed to move out. Despite all the arguments and general instability, I was reluctant to go – I was very happy with them and being at their house took my mind off Dad’s death – particularly when I found out where I was headed – back to Alistair and Betty’s. Alistair was uptight, harsh, strict and nasty. Betty was nice enough, but in no position to argue with Alistair. He was the master, and was determined that I would be his servant.

  Alistair was militaristic in his approach. When I arrived at their home, it was as if I’d joined the army as a raw recruit. The list of rules was back with a vengeance.

  ‘You will wipe your feet when you come in, each and every time,’ said Alistair, ten minutes after I’d arrived with my meagre bag of clothes. ‘Then you will remove your shoes at the door, and you will keep them clean and polished. I will show you how this is done. You’ll keep your feet off the sofa and you will eat your dinner at the table. You will do your homework promptly, by five o’clock, and you will be in by seven o’clock. No later. You will show respect at all times to Betty and me, and you will . . .’

  On and on he droned. There were rules and regulations for everything, it seemed. I tried to tune him out but Alistair could talk the leg off a chair and after the book of rules he moved on to the list of chores.

  ‘Chores?’ I said, suddenly waking up. ‘What kind o’ chores?’

  He looked at me in astonishment, as if I’d slapped him in the face. As far as I was concerned, chores were done by grannies, aunties and sisters. Fellas like me didn’t get involved in what we saw as ‘woman’s work’; this was Belfast in the seventies. after all. But Alistair obviously had other ideas. He wasn’t working, but he liked the idea of getting the credit for keeping the house as neat as a pin for when Betty came in from her job in the town.

  ‘You will hoover and wash the dishes daily. Three times a week you will mop the kitchen floor and once a week you will clean my car. You will leave no mess or clutter of any kind lying on the floor. Your bedroom will remain tidy at all times . . .’

  And so on. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Why had I been put with these people? Alistair’s standards were through the roof and he expected everyone else to have the same approach to life, even grubby twelve-year-old heartbroken orphans like me. Perhaps he thought that a serious dose of discipline at this stage in my life would ‘cure’ me of any temptation to go down the wrong path later on. If so, I could understand his reasoning. It was easy – all too easy – for kids like me to be tempted down the paramilitary route as a distraction from poverty and despair. On the other hand, he might just have been a complete feckin’ control freak nutcase who also had the nerve to suggest that I call him ‘Dad’. This disgusted me beyond words and my look of contempt told him exactly what I thought of this idea. Needless to say, I never did.

  Alistair’s bullying nature would soon be put to the test. Maybe I didn’t take him seriously enough because a couple of days after I’d moved in, I finished my dinner and put the plate in the sink before rushing out to play with my mates in the square close by Alistair and Betty’s house. I’d hardly got out the door when a hand grabbed me by the shirt collar and dragged me back inside.

  ‘What’s goin’ on?’ I yelled. ‘What the feck are you doin’? That hurts, so it does!’

  Alistair yanked me round to face him. His expression was one of contempt. He shoved me against the wall and loomed over me, spitting in my face as he yelled. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Out to play,’ I said. ‘I done my homework and all.’

  ‘What didn’t you do?’ he said menacingly.

  I had to think. Kids like me just ran out to play, looking forward to the game and not reflecting on what we had or had not just done.

  ‘Dunno,’ I said finally.

  ‘Then let me show you,’ he said with disgust, and he dragged me into the kitchen, shoving my head towards the sink.

  ‘You never, ever, go out without washing up your dishes,’ he shouted. ‘Do you hear me? And you never, ever, go out without asking my permission. Understood?’

  I nodded. He loosened his grip on me and told me to stand where I was. Then he removed his belt. ‘You need a hard lesson, boy,’ he snarled. ‘You’ll thank me for this one day.’

  He shoved me over and began thrashing me on the arse with the thick belt. I was so shocked that for a few seconds I didn’t make a sound. Then I started squealing and roaring, which seemed to make him hit me even harder.

  ‘Stop your crying!’ he shouted, ‘and take it like a man.’ After a dozen or so blows he stopped and, panting, pushed me against the sink. He had a weird expression on his face, like he’d really enjoyed what he’d just done.

  ‘Any more from you, you little shit, and you’ll get double that. Now get upstairs and out of my sight. And don’t come down again until breakfast tomorrow. Seven o’clock sharp!’

  I crawled off upstairs to my tiny bedroom, snivelling and sniffing. I’d had a few clips from Dad when he was alive, and the odd backhander from Uncle Rab. That was normal in our world and it never really bothered me because it was nothing on the scale that had just been dished out to me. I lay on the bed, sobbing my heart out, and thought about Dad, and how he wouldn’t have stood for any of this. On a few occasions that I’d pissed off some neighbour or other and they’d come to our house to complain, Dad had told them to ‘get ta feck’ and they’d quickly moved away. I knew if my dad was alive he’d have killed the bastard for the way he was treating me.

  And I thought about Mum, allowing all the grief and shame that surrounded her disappearance to pull me down into an ocean of misery. I couldn’t understand why Betty would stand by and watch this monster abuse me when all I needed was love and affection. At that moment I wished Alistair was dead, and I swore that when I was older I would join the paramilitaries, get an Armalite of my own and finish the fucker off. Even at this age, I knew that such a course of action was not at all beyond the realms of possibility in West Belfast.

  CHAPTER 8

  M

  aybe the intense pain had sent me into a state of shock, because I seemed to be looking down on myself as I lay on the wooden floor of the school gym, sprawled out and completely unable to move. A gang of swearing, shouting schoolboys had gathered around me, staring at the bone sticking out of my right leg. The PE teacher, Mr McCrosson, shoved a path through them then knelt down beside me. His reaction didn’t fill me with much comfort, to be fair.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ he muttered, prompting a few adolescent whoops and sniggers, ‘that’s a wild terrible injury. Stay there, Chambers, while I call for an ambulance.’

  I didn’t bother to say that I
wasn’t going anywhere. I wouldn’t be getting up and carrying on as though nothing had happened any minute soon. What I wanted to say was that I shouldn’t have been playing basketball, or doing bloody PE of any sort. The school had been warned about my bad leg but every week, almost without fail, I’d been ordered into my school sports kit and forced to take part. Up to this point I hadn’t minded so much. In fact, I always thought a bit of PE might help strengthen my leg. But some games I couldn’t take part in and if I refused the PE teacher would make me sit in the changing room and write lines. So I played when I shouldn’t have been to avoid doing lines.

  This was about as bad a fracture as it could be and the pain was indescribable. We’d been playing basketball in the gym and I’d not done much – just a sudden turn to my right as I jumped for the ball, a guy called Pip beside me – when one of the bones in my right femur decided the time was right to snap and tear right through my skin. Due to my childhood bone disease, my leg was weak and I could never bend it fully. My wailing coincided with that of the ambulance as it made its way to the Royal Victoria Hospital, just off the Falls Road – the epicentre of nationalist Catholic Belfast. Even as I screamed and cried, the thought that Catholic doctors and nurses might soon be poking and prodding me crept into my mind, adding insult to injury. The inbuilt sectarian bitterness that came from growing up on an estate like Glencairn, plus the knowledge that I was ‘tainted’ with Catholic blood, was never far from the surface, even in extreme moments like this. I knew no differently.

  The Royal Victoria Hospital has a well-earned international reputation for specialist treatment of bomb and bullet-related injuries, and while mine wasn’t caused by either of these, it was serious enough to warrant a full-on treatment plan. This would require a whole six months in hospital, in traction and with little else to do other than read comics and watch TV. Personally, I was over the moon. I couldn’t go to school (and missed out large chunks of my education) and I’d be away from Alistair and Betty’s house for what seemed like a lifetime. I was delighted by that, because things had grown a whole lot worse in the few months I’d been there. The only good thing about this time was Betty’s cooking – I have to say, she did make unbelievably tasty meals.

  Alistair treated me like a slave and although I complained about his brutality to my family, there was very little anyone could do. We’d been farmed out all over the place and there was no room to squeeze me in anywhere else. It was either Alistair and Betty’s house or a children’s home. After a couple of particularly nasty hidings, Uncle Rab went down to Alistair’s and physically threatened him. He may even have punched him, but whatever the threat level it only ever seemed to be temporary and within a week or two he was back to his old barrack-room behaviour, criticising everything I did or didn’t do and taking off his belt when he felt it necessary. I remember one Boxing Day. It was snowing heavy and Glencairn was like the Antarctic; we’d run out of milk and he ordered me to go to the shop to get another couple of pints. Because Glencairn was up on a hillside we’d usually get a good, deep covering of snow; great for us kids to mess about on in the holidays, but not so good if you wanted to travel any distance.

  ‘Ach, come on,’ I said, when he demanded that I leave the house, ‘the Spar is shut. It’s Boxing Day. Where’m I gonna get milk from now?’

  Alistair gave me a nasty smile. ‘Go down the Shankill,’ he said. ‘You’ll find a shop open there. Move it.’

  Being Boxing Day, there were no taxis and Glencairn to the Shankill and back was a round trip of about four miles. Alistair had a car sitting on the driveway but he wasn’t for giving me a lift. I would have to walk through the dark, the snow and the cold, and on the day after Christmas Day. Aged twelve. We both stood for a while in silence, me wondering whether to defy him and take the hit (literally) or just get on with it and keep the peace. Then he grabbed my snorkel jacket from its place in the hallway and held it out to me, the way you’d show a lead to a dog reluctant to take a walk.

  ‘The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back,’ he said. So I set off, and every step of the way I cursed Alistair and Betty, prayed to my dad in heaven to ask God to put an end to the life of misery I was leading, and silently shouted at my mum for a) deserting us and b) being a Catholic, which had obviously cursed me. And then I cursed God for putting me through this hell.

  ‘You’ve been ages,’ sneered Alistair when I finally arrived home, wet, bedraggled, freezing and scared shitless after a walk through a darkened and eerily quiet Belfast. All sorts of stuff happened to people on these streets – we heard about it every day, and it was commonplace to hear about Prods killing random Taigs, and Taigs blowing up innocent Prods. Being just twelve years old didn’t necessarily protect you from any of that.

  ‘Can I have a cup of tea, please?’ I said. ‘I’m freezing.’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ he said. ‘We’ll need this milk for a few days . . . unless you fancy another walk down the road tomorrow?’ And with that, the bastard sent me to bed. No wonder that I saw six long months in hospital as a strange kind of holiday and wished I could stay there until Margaret was married and took me to live with her.

  That elation quickly wore off as reality sank in. There would be no playing out for me, no messing with Billy and friends at school, no hanging out around Glencairn with Wee Sam, Pickle or David. In hospital, I was a prisoner of my own weakness and at Royal Victoria I was aware of being surrounded by Catholics, kids as well as staff.

  To be honest, I see now that I had something of a nervous breakdown in there. Night after night I cried myself to sleep. My leg didn’t appear to be healing, despite several operations, and I was always in pain. I missed my family desperately, especially my dad and Shep. The whole domestic situation with Alistair and Betty, and Alistair’s brutality, was sinking in and I felt depressed and helpless. And then, of course, there was the issue of my mother – who she was and where she was. At the age of twelve or thirteen, you often don’t realise how difficult your life is, or can be, and I’d tried my very best to keep up appearances. But in hospital, away from family and friends, and in what I considered to be ‘hostile’ territory I couldn’t keep up the pretence any longer. I recall howling like a wounded animal for a whole day as the doctors and nurses tried everything to calm me down. I wished that I were dead, and could be with Dad and Shep in heaven.

  Quite soon I was moved to Musgrave Park Hospital, where I had spent much time as a young child enjoying the company of Nurse Brown. In a way, it was a home away from home. The other kids on the children’s ward gradually began to acknowledge and speak to me. At first I was wary of them until I realised they were just kids, and that it didn’t matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant. In fact, the longer I remained there the more I became intrigued by the Catholic kids. I was surprised and a wee bit disappointed to find that they didn’t have horns or run around shouting praises to the Pope or were smelly. In fact, they were a lot more like me than I’d ever expected, or been told.

  I became close to a Catholic girl called Fiona. She was suffering from leukaemia and had had a leg amputated. She’d lost all her hair and had to wear a comical-looking wig, which she hated and sometimes threw under the bed to howls of laughter from me and others. Despite all this, she was a cheery soul, always laughing, joking and teasing. We would talk for hours; sometimes it was about the differences between Protestants and Catholics, but more often than not it was about music, TV shows, films – the usual kids’ stuff. She loved ABBA, and if they came on the radio she’d sing her head off, encouraging us all to join in. Despite my Jam fixation, I added my wonderful vocals to the likes of ‘Waterloo’ and ‘Dancing Queen’. We played board games, did jigsaws and crossword puzzles together; anything to relieve the boredom of a long stay in hospital. Gradually, I realised that Fiona was becoming a friend. It didn’t matter that she was a Catholic and I just ignored this fact. She was a lovely girl enduring a serious illness with good humour and courage. As the weeks passed, I could
see that she was becoming more unwell; despite this, she still took the time to talk to me and always cheered me up.

  After undergoing yet another operation on my leg, I returned to the ward in a state of semi-consciousness. I was in traction apparatus that was built around my bed. The pulley system held my leg up in the air and was very uncomfortable. As the mists cleared and I became aware of my surroundings I noticed that Fiona’s bed was empty. When the ward sister came by to check on me, I asked her where my friend was.

  ‘John, I’ve got something really upsetting and sad to tell you,’ she said, taking my hand. ‘I’m afraid that Fiona has been taken to intensive care. She’s very, very poorly. I don’t know if you say your prayers, John, but if you do, please say a wee one for her.’

  Of course I said my prayers and although I couldn’t get down on my knees like I would do at home, I screwed my eyes up tight and added Fiona’s name to the list of people I regularly prayed for. Sadly, this time God wasn’t listening and when I was told, a few days later, that Fiona wouldn’t be coming back I cried myself to sleep. Again.

  ‘God works in mysterious ways,’ said Reverend Lewis when I told him the bad news. He always said this, and I was beginning not to believe him. Our friendly neighbourhood vicar came to visit me regularly and although I appreciated his visits I felt mortified when he would insist on kneeling at the foot of my bed as we prayed together. I could see the other kids sniggering and smirking at the other end of the ward and I wished the ground would swallow me up.

  Six months went by and the leg that I thought would never get better finally healed. Eventually I was free to go, but while I was pleased to get out of hospital I dreaded what awaited me back on Glencairn. There was still no space for me anywhere other than Alistair and Betty’s, and if I thought Alistair may have mellowed while I was in hospital, I’d be wrong. By now, Betty was expecting a baby and as the nest was being prepared I was made to feel like the cuckoo who had very much overstayed his welcome. There was no let-up in Alistair’s treatment of me, and within hours of my return I was back to cleaning, vacuuming, polishing, scrubbing floors, fetching the ‘messages’ (the word we use in Northern Ireland for groceries – don’t ask me why) and being the general dogsbody. And I was still using crutches.