A Belfast Child

by John Chambers

  My work commitments were very patchy around this time. As part of the YTS scheme we were offered placements across Belfast and for some reason I ended up at the Mater Hospital along the Crumlin Road. At first, I worked in the medical records department, then in the labs. In the latter, I got to wear a doctor’s white coat and I always got a sneaky buzz when I had to travel to another part of the hospital and saw people I knew from school or the Shankill and Glencairn. I always hoped they’d look at me and think, ‘Jesus, how did Chambers end up qualifying as a doctor?’

  Eventually I was assigned to the hospital’s mortuary. It wasn’t the greatest career move for me, given that I was (and still am) squeamish about blood, body fluids and all the rest. I worked alongside a guy who was a raging alcoholic, and after two weeks in that particular department I understood why. He needed regular hits of booze just to cope with all the dead bodies in various stages of dissection. On my first day, the stench in there hit me like a brick in a sock. My colleague quickly slapped some Vicks extra-strong vapour rub on to my top lip and that kind of helped – but not much.

  I watched in horror as he wheeled a dead person on a trolley towards me and told me to get scrubbed up. In a daze I complied and, hiding behind him, I saw him pull the sheet back. Lying there was someone’s dear old granddad, very bloated and very dead. I wanted to faint but before I could move my colleague produced a scalpel, cut through the body and started pulling out various organs. He handed them to me, telling me to put them in various bowls on the table next to the trolley. Within a few minutes he got out an electric saw, cut the top of the dead man’s skull open and removed the brain. Needless to say, by this time I was in deep shock.

  Looking back, it seems mad that someone of my age was even allowed in the mortuary, let alone assisting an alcoholic who barely knew what day it was. I only worked in there a few weeks, taking part in about five or six autopsies, but I hated it and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The worst aspect was the smell – it lingered for hours and hours on the clothes and at lunchtimes I couldn’t face eating. I’d sit on a wall outside the hospital, almost smoking myself to death in an attempt to smell of something other than death.

  Finally, I got back my old job in the medical records department. This suited me much better, though spending time in any department in this spooky old Victorian building could be very weird. In the corridors I would regularly pass Catholic priests and nuns who were visiting the sick of their parishes and think nothing of it. One day, as I was heading towards the canteen, I passed a small room and noticed an old nun sitting on the bed, absorbed in her knitting. A day or so later I passed the same room and glanced in – but there was nothing there, no bed, no furniture and no nun. I mentioned this to Muriel, a colleague of mine, and asked her why the room had been totally cleared out.

  ‘Ach, that room’s not been used for years,’ she said. ‘We’ve had no bed in it for as long as I can remember.’

  ‘But I saw a nun in it yesterday,’ I said, ‘just sitting there on the bed. An old nun, doing her knitting . . .’

  Muriel smiled. ‘I don’t know what you saw, John,’ she said, ‘but I can tell you that no one’s used that room for many, many years. Maybe you saw a ghost, hey?’

  Who knows what I saw, but after that I started to chat to Muriel more regularly. She was a nice woman and seemed to take a genuine interest in who I was and the life I was living. She seemed to understand that I was in a bit of a bad place and would buy me food to take home, including curry pies, which I loved.

  There were about six or seven other YTS kids working around the hospital, mostly Catholic, and I started to chat with them and make some friends. They were different from the Ardoyne boys I’d worked with previously and they all seemed better off than me, which wasn’t hard. There was Maggie, a deaf girl I got on with like a house on fire who taught me the basics of sign language. There was another guy, Eamonn, who wanted to be a priest. I found that amazing and fascinating. There was Catherine, who had severe epilepsy and had up to a dozen fits a day. I often looked after her while she was fitting, making sure she wasn’t banging her head or swallowing her tongue.

  And then there was Dessie, a six foot three skinny drip of a Catholic Mod with whom I clicked immediately. If anything, he was even better dressed than I was and I looked up to him. At that height, I hadn’t much choice.

  Muriel was also a Catholic, but that didn’t bother me by now. Something about her manner allowed me to let my guard down and one afternoon, when the department was empty and quiet, I told her the story of my background.

  ‘My God,’ she said when I’d finished my sorry tale, ‘that’s terrible. Poor wee kids, no mammy and daddy to look after ye. C’mon – let me buy you dinner and we’ll talk about it some more.’

  This kind woman took me under her wing and seemed to feel very sorry for me, and for us all. She agreed to speak to a Catholic priest that she knew, in confidence, and tell him what I’d told her. If he was willing, she said, she could arrange a meeting between the two of us to discuss the situation and what I might be able to do to find my mum.

  In the event, I did meet the priest. He wasn’t the disciple of the Antichrist that I believed all Catholic priests to be; instead, he was an older, good-natured man and a decent person who genuinely wanted to help. I felt humbled by him, and a bit guilty that I’d just believed everything I’d ever been told about Catholics and their religious men and women. But again, I hit a brick wall. I had no idea of Mum’s maiden name, or what her surname might be now, and I didn’t have a clue where any of her family might be – if she had any at all. And in a city with more than a hundred thousand Catholics in it, the chances of one priest somehow knowing of a woman called Sally who married a Protestant was very slim.

  So for the moment, that was that. I continued my old habit of walking round Belfast city centre, looking at various women some twenty years older than me and wondering if any of them could be her. I scanned faces for some spark of familiarity or recognition, but there was nothing. I didn’t want to annoy my own family by asking any questions about our mum. As far as they were concerned, we assumed she was dead. And in a way, she was. Dead to us, certainly.

  CHAPTER 13

  I

  t was inevitable that for Belfast’s Mods, the city centre get-together on a Saturday afternoon would quickly lose its novelty if we didn’t find a bit of variety now and then. Sometimes we’d rally out in convoy to the seaside towns of Bangor or Portrush on a bank holiday, or get to gigs or all-dayers in other parts of the province. We also mimicked the sixties Mods by having running battles with the skinheads and punks along promenades and seafronts across Northern Ireland. One year I was arrested for fighting and was fined fifty pounds. It was just like a scene from Quadrophenia; all the Mods and skinheads in the courtroom together. I didn’t half get a buzz from being a rebel.

  Hundreds of us would meet up at the City Hall and drive down the coast on our scooters. When mine was out of action I took the train and it was jam-packed with Mods of all shapes and sizes. Once again, I felt like an extra in Quadrophenia.

  The mecca, though, was London. I’d never set foot on the mainland, never mind the capital city, and I was desperately keen to cross the water, head down south and see the bright lights for myself. I couldn’t wait to set foot in Carnaby Street, home to all the cool clothing labels we coveted, or hang out in an espresso bar in Soho, waiting for Paul Weller (the singer, not the dog) or Steve Marriott to walk by. As ever, I was romanticising and I had a sneaking suspicion that I might just be twenty years too late, but none of that would stop me.

  Finally, the opportunity arrived to attend a Mod all-dayer at the Ilford Palais. Not the most glamorous location, I must admit, it being stuck in the arse end of east London but it was good enough for our first trip away and we knew there would be hundreds of other Mods from all over Britain going too, so we were in good company.

  About thirty of us travelled from Belfast to Liverpool by boat. Th
en we caught the train down to London and headed straight for Carnaby Street. It felt like a religious pilgrimage and I was hypnotised by the sheer joy of just being there and drinking in the Mod culture it had given birth to. But my excitement was to be short-lived. As we walked around the legendary area and drank in the super-cool atmosphere, suddenly we heard a massive roar and what sounded like a football stampede, then three terrified young Mods ran past us as if the devil was on their tails.

  Time stood still as we waited to see what had scared them and made them take such desperate flight. Then, from a side street, about fifty skinheads appeared from nowhere, many of them wearing Chelsea and Rangers football scarves and covered in Loyalist and swastika tattoos. These psychos were obviously baying for blood – Mod blood, to be exact.

  The moment they spotted us they stopped dead and some even grinned at the Mod bounty fate had delivered them. We were in some deep shit and I searched my mind frantically for a way out.

  There was only a few of us together at this stage and my heart leaped into my throat as I anticipated the beating I was about to receive. But if nothing else, I was used to brutal violence and two things came to my mind at once.

  The first was that I’d experienced many gang battles between Mods and skinheads in the backstreets of the Shankill and Ballysillan, and survived largely intact. But here we were vastly outnumbered, on foreign soil (so to speak), and these guys wanted to rip us apart, limb by limb, while savouring every moment of our agony and humiliation.

  My second thought was about the Rangers scarves and the Loyalist/English Pride-style tattoos a good number of them were sporting. An idea started to take shape in my terrified brain. Rangers was the team of choice for much of the Protestant population of Northern Ireland and, along with Chelsea and Linfield, were inextricably woven into the core of our Loyalist culture. I hoped these baying skinheads, or some of them at least, would hold the same pride and love for Queen and country as me and I thought this might just save us.

  I glanced over at the leaders in the front row as they hurled insults and threats. My heart sunk when I noticed some of them had already pulled out weapons, including blades, and were preparing to attack us. This was our last chance. My survival instinct kicked in. I took a deep breath and played my hand.

  ‘Stay back,’ I said, as calmly as I could to the boys behind me. I was aware that some of our lot were Catholics and, if anything, were probably in far more danger than I was. I stepped forward and, looking for their ‘top boy’, I suggested they all slow down and tell me what the problem was.

  You could have heard a pin drop as the fella in question looked me up and down as though I’d just insulted his mother. I could tell he was moments away from lunging at me and all hell kicking off.

  Then I heard a familiar accent calling out from the skinhead crowd.

  ‘Are youse from Belfast?’ said the voice.

  There was what seemed like a lifetime’s pause before I answered.

  ‘Feckin’ right,’ I said, ‘from the glorious Shankill Road!’

  Now I was praying I’d made a good call.

  ‘That right?’ he replied. ‘So who d’you know?’

  I wheeled off a few names of skinheads and assorted bad boys I knew and had grown up with on the Shankill and Glencairn and this satisfied them. We were safe, for now at least. It turned out the guy who spoke, Biff, had grown up in Glencairn, now lived and worked in London and was involved with other Loyalists living in the capital. His crew were a nasty bunch and I pitied those who had the misfortune to come across them, especially if you weren’t a WASP. If they had known some of the Mods present were Catholics, nothing would have stopped them kicking the shit out of me and the others and I silently thanked the gods for delivering us from evil.

  With the situation defused, I told the others to look around a bit and I’d catch up with them later. I didn’t want the skins chatting with them, finding out some of them were Catholic and undoing all my capital work. They insisted I joined them for a pint or two in the Shakespeare’s Head pub nearby and it must have looked a bit weird: a sixties-style Mod, wearing eyeliner and a Beatles suit, drinking and laughing with a gang of psycho Nazi skinheads.

  But I had spent my life growing up among Loyalist killers and paramilitaries and nothing really fazed me any more. I didn’t particularly like Biff and his crew, but chatting with him over a few pints I realised there was much more to him than the stereotypical skinhead. His English girlfriend had just given birth to their first child and he was ‘trying to get on the straight and narrow’, whatever that meant.

  After a few hours of drinking and snorting speed with Biff and the others I left them in the pub and return to the sanity of my Mod mates. I was to come across Biff and his crew later that weekend, when they and dozens of other skinheads and punks ambushed and attacked Mods coming into or out of the all-dayer in the Ilford Palais. Luckily, I was safely inside, stoned out of my mind and living the Mod dream and I didn’t concern myself with the antics of those fools, though I did have a chat with Biff while grabbing some fresh air and a fag outside.

  Safely back in Belfast, we started to plan other trips abroad, specifically to ‘the South’. Enemy territory. Taig country. The Badlands. In spite of my new-found friendships with Catholics, the thought of crossing the border filled me with suspicion. Going down the Falls was bad enough, but into the thick of the Republican Promised Land? I was wary all right, but it didn’t stop me and Billy planning a trip to an all-dayer in Dublin with a couple of girlfriends.

  The first time we went down by car and when we hit the Irish capital city we ran out of both money and petrol, right in the middle of O’Connell Street. We were sitting there, wondering what to do next, when a huge Irish fella came up to the car and started grabbing at the door handle. We were half-laughing, half-scared of what was going on. Billy wound the window down and stared at the guy.

  ‘Fuck off, willya,’ he said in his best Belfast snarl.

  It seemed to be enough. The message was that you didn’t mess with the boys from the North, no matter which side they were on. Muttering something, he mooched off and we were safe again. Except we still had no money and no petrol. There was only one thing for it: begging. We stood outside McDonald’s, giving it the ‘old soldier’ and hoping a few people at least would feel sorry for these four poor kids. It worked, and soon we had just enough to get us back to Belfast.

  I didn’t think much of Dublin. Belfast was hardly Las Vegas, but Dublin had a real downbeat, dirty, shabby feel to it back then. I wasn’t keen on the Dublin accent, probably because I was conscious of my own accent standing out like a sore thumb. We went down a couple more times and on the way back would stop at Dundalk, just close to the border with Northern Ireland. This was a real Provie hole and my paranoia level was off the scale there. I was always glad to get back to the safety of Glencairn and the Shankill.

  And then there was Noddy. I’d met him and his girlfriend Maria in one of the Mod clubs in Belfast, most likely the Delta or the Abercorn. We quickly became friends and I enjoyed having a chat with them when our paths crossed. Noddy (real name Gerard Clarke) was a beautiful, gentle and wise soul. He was one of those rare people who seemed to have time for everyone and seemed genuinely interested in what you had to say. He was a top bloke and I had a lot of time for him. Maria was also a beautiful person and friendly to all.

  The fact they were Catholic never entered my mind and this was testament to how far I had moved on from the entrenched prejudices of my childhood. Noddy and Maria were among a group of about thirty hardcore Mods, including Billy and me, who went anywhere for an all-dayer, party, gig or a rave-up by the seaside. Our love of the Mod culture transcended hundreds of years of sectarian conflict and suspicion and give me a hint of a better future.

  In October 1986, a group of about fifty Belfast Mods, including myself, Noddy and Maria, signed up for an all-dayer in Dublin’s CIE hall. We were all anticipating a great day out and couldn’t wait to mee
t and mix with the Dublin Mods who had organised the event. We had clubbed together for an Ulster Bus to take us to the event, drop off and pick us up when it was over. Being nice kind people, we had a whip round for the bus driver and collected enough for him to have some lunch. What we didn’t know at that stage was that his lunch would be a liquid one.

  The all-dayer was a great success and I spent ages chatting to Noddy and Maria by the huge staircase in the lobby. When the event was over, we all made our way to the bus pick-up point and began the long, slow and boring journey home. It was a miserable autumn night and rain pelted down the windows of the bus as we left Dublin and headed for the motorway, back to sunny Belfast. After a while we’d all settled down and I remember chatting to those around me, including Noddy and Maria about the day gone and upcoming events we were looking forward to in the near future. As we came into Drogheda I noticed the rain was really bucketing down and visibility was very poor. Somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice whispered that the bus was going too fast and the driver was driving a bit erratically.

  A girl called me up to the middle of the bus and I went and sat in the seat behind her by the window and chilled with her for a while. I’d had a few drinks and some pills and I was halfway between sleep and a drug-infused haze when suddenly I became aware that the bus was out of control. In horror, I watched out of the window as it drifted in and out of lane, narrowly missing fast-moving traffic coming from both ways, before skidding to the right and crashing with a huge bang into the side of something very solid, a bridge or a brick wall, that brought it to a violent, shuddering stop.

  The impact of the crash threw me forward. I smashed my head on the seat in front of me and was almost knocked out by the force of it. I waited for the pain to tear through my body and in the background I could hear the sound of breaking glass, car horns and alarms going off, cars skidding and crashing. As the bus’s internal lights blinked out, screaming filled the air all around me and for a moment I thought I must be dreaming or on a very bad trip.