A Belfast Child

by John Chambers

  As soon as the cheque was cashed I went out and bought the bike I’d coveted for ages. I went to the scooter shop on the Malone Road, which had cashed in on the Mod revival and had started selling Vespas and Lambrettas. My first bike was a wee brand-new red 100cc Vespa. I added lights and mirrors, a fox tail and Mod logos to it and called it Little Eva for some reason.

  I brought it back to Glencairn and decided to take it for an off-road trial around a large piece of open ground. Round and round I went, a good portion of the estate’s kids watching me, when the inevitable happened – I skidded and flew off the side of the bike as it crashed to the ground. I swear you could hear the laughter from Glencairn to the Ulster Hall . . .

  Then there was the time I was going to work very early one winter morning. Again, the bike skidded and I ended up in a ditch. Cold as it was, I decided to sleep there until I’d sobered up from whatever pills, potions and powders I’d been taking the night before. Another occasion, I’d been riding around town and on the way back home my scooter broke down at the top of the Falls Road. Not a place you really want to break down as a Loyalist, particularly on a scooter. I had to push the bloody thing from the Falls to the Shankill, all the while hoping that some gang or other didn’t crawl out of the shadows to ask me what I was doing, where I was going and what religion I was . . .

  All that said, these were the greatest days of my life and they were about to get a whole lot more interesting. At some party or other I met Jacqueline McFall, a wee Mod girl from the Shankill area. She was into photography and would take her little camera with her wherever she went. We became best of friends and she took many amazing pictures of the Mod scene around this time, including several of yours truly. By now, I’d gone down the ‘psychedelic Mod’ route and was rocking a look that wouldn’t have disgraced Steve Marriott in 1968 – beads, eyeliner, floral shirts, the lot. I took a lot of ribbing from the traditionalists, plus many others whose paths I crossed, but I didn’t care. I knew I looked the dog’s bollocks and that’s what counted. Also, I was beginning to branch out and away from Glencairn in ways I’d never previously imagined . . .

  CHAPTER 12

  O

  wning the scooter meant I no longer had to wait for buses or black taxis that never arrived, or risk walking through heavily Nationalist areas where my eyeliner and beads would attract very unwelcome attention. It was bad enough walking down the Shankill in all the clobber; skirting the Ardoyne or Unity flats as a Loyalist in a paisley-patterned shirt was sheer suicide.

  Of course, Mod as a movement wasn’t confined to us Prods. We knew that a sizeable number of Belfast Catholics were also into the clothes, the music and the drugs. I’m guessing that not many of them wore Union Jack T-shirts or had red, white and blue roundels painted on their parkas like we did, but aside from that they were just the same as us. Jacqueline’s photographs show gangs of boys and girls congregating in several spots around Belfast and no one has ‘Catholic’ or ‘Protestant’ tattooed on their forehead. All we see is a gang of young kids smiling, laughing and having fun together – just as it should be when you’re that age.

  Mod took no notice of religion. There was no place for hatred or division among the scooter boys and girls who gathered on a Saturday afternoon by the City Hall, or drank in the Abercorn bar in Castle Lane (which, ironically, was the scene of an infamous IRA bombing in 1972 that killed two young Catholic women and injured 130 other innocent people – a particularly disgraceful act in a terrifying year). Sectarian insults and deep-rooted suspicions were put aside when Mods from both sides of the fence danced at the Delta club in Donegall Street or drank strong tea and smoked fags in the Capri Cafe in Upper Garfield Street. When Mods gathered, there was no time for this kind of talk. Hanging out, being cool and looking sharp were the only things Mods were interested in. For those moments, all the violence and oppression and misery were put aside.

  I say ‘put aside’ because putting aside such ingrained beliefs was about as much as anyone could do in those deeply divided days. You couldn’t forgive or forget, not when there was so much senseless killing happening on both sides. In my view, every outrage committed against our community had to be avenged, and if I heard about IRA men killed by the Brits or the Loyalists I celebrated as happily as I’d always done.

  And yet . . . there was still the lurking knowledge that a part of my background was linked to the very community from which the IRA and its Republican offshoots came. Allied to that, I was now one of those Mods who were mixing freely with Catholic boys and girls in the city centre, dancing the night away with them and sharing cigarettes, weed, pills, whatever, in various bars and cafes. My heart was as Protestant and Loyalist as it always had been, but by now my head was telling me that under the skin, we poor sods who were stuck in the middle of a war zone were all the same. Being Belfast kids, we only needed a couple of seconds’ conversation to find out where someone was from and what religion they were but when the Mods came together this didn’t seem to matter. A person’s religion was becoming irrelevant to me, but I still hated the IRA all right.

  At first I was nervous. I’d encountered Catholics before, of course, but only when I was younger. Now I was hanging around with Catholic kids who, like me, were already associating with paramilitary groups. Involvement in the UDA, UVF, IRA, INLA (Irish National Liberation Army), etc was born of tradition. It was what you did if you came from Glencairn, Ardoyne, Shankill, Andersonstown. But when you pulled on your mohair suit – and, being newly minted I had a few of these handmade, so I claim to be the best-dressed Mod in Belfast at the time – and fired up your Vespa, your political associations were put aside. We just didn’t talk about any of that stuff, and it was better that way.

  The more I got to know Catholics, the less I hated them. I was no longer lumping them all into one big bunch of terrorists. The boys I was talking to as we sat astride our scooters by the City Hall, checking out each other’s suits, shirts, shoes and girlfriends, had had similar experiences to me. I knew that, and so did they. But on those precious Saturday afternoons, when we all felt young and vibrant and just happy to be alive, none of that mattered. We ignored the madness going on around us as best as we could and yet there was always the possibility of being caught up in a bomb or gun attack from Loyalist or Republican terrorists.

  I became friendly with lots of Catholic Mods, including Bobby from the Antrim Road, who became a firm friend. I also hung out with Keith from the Westland and we spent a lot of time together. And in particular Zulu and Tom, two Mods from Ardoyne. One night they invited me up to a club they regularly frequented in their neighbourhood. Like many Loyalist and Republican clubs and bars it had a wire cage around the perimeter and doormen always on guard in case of an attack, which could happen at any time.

  All my instincts told me not to go; it was in the middle of Ardoyne, the Catholic enclave bordered by Protestant West Belfast and one of the IRA’s most important heartlands. For a Prod, it couldn’t be any more dangerous. I imagined how ironic it would be if I was drinking in a Catholic area with Catholic friends and the UFF (Ulster Freedom Fighters) or UVF attacked the place and I was killed. My crazy side, however, ignored all that and, pilled-up and cockily confident, I fell in line behind Tom and Zulu and entered the club.

  The three of us stood by the bar in our gear, chatting away ten to the dozen. After I while, I realised that a group of older men on the other side of the bar were staring at me. All the while I knew I should be winding my neck in, keeping my head down and saying very little. By now, though, I was aware I’d already said too much.

  Zulu and Tom had already noticed. Tom nipped to the jakes for a pee and on the way back one of the men stopped him, looked over at me and whispered something in his ear. The smile on Tom’s face froze as he received the message.

  ‘See those wans over there,’ he said as he resumed his position at the bar. ‘They reckon they can tell you’re a Prod.’

  ‘Fuck, I knew it,’ I said. ‘They’ve been e
yeballin’ me since we walked in.’

  My stomach had turned to water. There was no knowing what these hard cases would do if they took a hold of me.

  ‘Here’s what’s gonna happen,’ said Tom. ‘You and me will slowly make our way to the back door. Zulu’ll keep these fellas talking, then go to the jakes. Then he’ll climb out the window. OK?’

  I wasn’t in a position to argue. The plan went smoothly and within minutes we were out of the door and away as fast as we could. We soon realised that mixing in the city centre on a Saturday was one thing; doing the same in our neighbourhoods was asking for big trouble, and I doubt we’d have got away so easily in Glencairn or Ballysillan.

  But as usual I was up for anything and many times I ignored the risks involved, putting myself in real danger. Once I was at a party up the Antrim Rd and a gang of wee Provies came in, asking everyone what religion they were. I lied through my teeth and said I was a Catholic from Manor Street, which was half true as I had been living there at the time. Another night I met a very cute and sexy Mod girl who made a beeline for me and made it clear that if I were to come back to her flat we would have a very good time indeed. I didn’t need a second invitation and soon we were in a taxi, speeding through Belfast with a nice handful of pills in my coat pocket.

  She wasn’t wrong, we had a lot of fun in her flat that night. By the time I’d dragged my head up from the pillow the following morning she’d gone off to work. I lurched into the kitchen, made myself a cup of good strong Nambarrie tea and helped myself to the rest of her loaf of bread. After an hour of mooching about I opened the curtains and looked out at the view. Immediately, a horrible realisation dawned. I was somewhere up in the Divis Tower, a grim but iconic high-rise building in the middle of the fiercely Republican Divis Flats. Many people had been killed, injured or kidnapped within the vicinity of this place, including Jean McConville, a Protestant woman who converted to Catholicism for the sake of her husband. She had ten kids, and her only crime was to help a wounded soldier. For that, she was taken away from her family and murdered by the IRA.

  Quietly, I left the flat, gently shutting the door behind me. I made my way down a series of piss-stained stairways, avoiding the strange glances of a few women going in the opposite direction. The bleakness of this place was indescribable; the houses up on Glencairn were bad enough but this was truly a horrible, dangerous and dirty dump. With as much calm as I could muster I left the estate, not looking left, right or behind me, and walked the half-mile or so towards the city centre, where I had a much-needed Ulster Fry to celebrate yet another escape from Republican West Belfast.

  Even so, my associations with Catholic boys and girls were becoming ever closer. A very young Catholic boy with a huge passion for music was DJing down the Abercorn and we all got to know and respect this kid, who was barely out of school. His name was David Holmes and he went on to become one of the world’s foremost DJs, producers and re-mixers. It’s amazing to think that these early experiences in the Mod clubs and cafes inspired him to become the success story he is today.

  Meanwhile, I’d gone from chatting to Catholics to actually dating them. I met a girl called Kathy who lived a couple of minutes from the Royal Victoria Hospital along the Falls Road. She was small and very pretty and from the moment we met we had great banter together. She was also a trained hairdresser and would cut my hair for nothing, which was also quite appealing. She could have been the one for me to settle down with, but I was young and had ants in my pants and didn’t want to be tied down at the time. Pills and parties were my thing, not tea and nights in front of the telly. Kathy understood this and we were both in it for the craic.

  I didn’t think about her being Catholic. Well, not much. The issue would only arise when we wanted to visit each other’s houses. From the off, Kathy was honest with her parents about the fact she was dating a Protestant and they seemed to be fine about it. We got on well and it was never spoken about, though no doubt that as parents they had their concerns. I liked them too, but I wasn’t entirely comfortable spending time in the Falls Road area. Although neither of us told anyone outside of the Mod scene that we were dating someone from the ‘other side’, these things could become common knowledge very quickly, as I’d previously discovered.

  I was always fearful when Kathy wanted to come up to Glencairn. I made sure nobody was in the flat whenever she came and I told no one she was a Catholic. Kathy had a car (probably another attraction for me) and I remember one night the two of us driving up the Shankill towards Glencairn when we came to a sudden stop. We’d run out of petrol but luckily I knew there was a garage a few hundred yards up the road. Without thinking, I grabbed a battered metal petrol can from her boot and made my way up the road. I filled the can, paid up and strolled back to the car. I arrived to be greeted by a very white-faced Kathy, huddled in her seat so that she was almost under the driver’s wheel.

  ‘S’matter wi’ you?’ I said. ‘I’ve only been a couple of minutes.’

  ‘You fuckin’ eejit!’ she snapped back. ‘Didn’t ye think? Wee Catholic girl on her own up the Shankill?’

  I hadn’t thought, but when I did I felt sick to the stomach. If, for some reason, her identity had been discovered, she’d have been in deep shit. Even young women were shown no mercy if they turned out to be Taigs in the wrong neighbourhood. When we finally returned to my flat, she was still shaking with fear.

  The proximity of Catholic kids sometimes brought me back to the dark place – the unspoken secret that rattled around my mind and, at low points, threatened to overwhelm me completely. These crashes would usually happen when I was coming down off whatever I’d been throwing down my neck the previous evening – booze, pills, powders. I’d sit in my flat alone and think about my family – the father I’d adored and lost so early, the mother I’d never known who was out there somewhere, but who wouldn’t or couldn’t get in touch with us. My sisters, bringing up families without the help of proud grandparents. And to top it all, the endless cycle of violence and misery that was part of the fabric of everyday life in Northern Ireland. ‘Today, an RUC man was killed by a car bomb at his home in Portadown . . . Two masked men broke into a house in North Belfast and shot dead a Sinn Fein councillor . . . A Protestant man on his way to work in Newry last night was the victim of a sectarian shooting . . . Two children were badly injured when a bomb went off in central Londonderry. No warning was given . . .’ On and on it went: murders, bombing, riots, robberies, protests, kneecappings, torture, imprisonment. The hedonism and escapism provided by the Mod movement in Belfast was grand while it lasted, but the relentless tide of horror and misery washed it away, day after day after day.

  In such low moments, I would feel so trapped that I’d consider suicide. One night, while stoned, I attempted to cut my wrists. At that time, I was down at my sister Jean’s in the Woodvale. She found me and helped to patch me up with plasters and a bandage. It wasn’t a serious attempt – more a cry for help than anything else – but it was enough to leave scars that can be seen to this day.

  There were times that I sat in my flat up in Glencairn, filled with misery. There seemed to be nothing in my life other than getting wasted. Sure, there was the Mod thing and that made me very happy, but I couldn’t be a Mod 24/7. The times I was on my own were filled with depression and anger with the world. I was angry with God too because I felt He’d let me down and handed me a very bad deal indeed.

  I began to realise that the thing that would make me most happy would be to find my mum. I loved my dad, but I couldn’t bring him back, no matter how much I hoped and prayed. I had no idea where to turn, and to whom. I could hardly ask anyone around Glencairn how to go about finding my Catholic mother. Neither could I confide in my Catholic Mod friends – I was aware that some of them were involved in Republican paramilitary groups and although we never talked about that stuff, you never really trusted anyone. If you did, you might end up paying for it with your life.

  In my desperation I picked
up my pen and wrote a letter to ‘Dear Deidre’, the agony aunt on the Sun newspaper. I gave her an outline of the story, anonymously of course, and asked her for advice. I posted it to an address in London and promptly forgot about it. A month or so later my brother David came rushing over to my place in Glencairn clutching a copy of the daily tabloid.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell, John, you seen this? Someone’s written in with our story, so they have . . .’

  I read it word for word. I can’t remember much about the advice she gave, but I think it was something around asking the Salvation Army or a missing persons’ office.

  David looked at me quizzically. ‘Did you write that, did you?’ he said.

  ‘Away with ye,’ I replied dismissively. ‘Why would I bother doin’ that? Who cares about her anyway? She abandoned us, remember?’

  That was the view of my sisters, and it was one I could understand. They had no wish to find our mum because they were bitter they’d been left in such difficult circumstances. They wished her no harm, but neither did they want to see her turn up on their doorsteps after all this time. David felt the same as me – that having our mum in our lives would make it complete – but I didn’t want him to feel that I was desperate. Plus, there was the ever-present threat of someone on Glencairn finding out about the Chambers family and its dirty little shameful secret. The sort of exposure that could’ve seen us all turfed off the estate, or worse. In the event I did try the Salvation Army but they wanted this, that and the other bits of information and I had no idea where or how to find these. So that came to a dead end.