A Belfast Child

by John Chambers

  ‘’Scuse me,’ he said, in a soft Cork accent, ‘d’youse mind if I collect for the prisoners?’

  I didn’t need to ask what kind of prisoners he was talking about, and which side of the divide they were from. ‘You can get to fuck,’ I replied, ‘and get outta here. How dare you people do that in England, when you’re trying to blow the place to smithereens?’

  In recent years there’d be a number of high-profile IRA attacks on the mainland, not least the Brighton bomb that aimed to kill as many members of Margaret Thatcher’s government as possible, including the lady herself. I wasn’t having any of the Provie shite in any place I worked, no matter what the clientele might’ve thought. For a moment the Cork man stared at me in astonishment and I thought I’d need to use my fists. But he’d obviously clocked my Belfast accent and decided the issue wasn’t worth pursuing. No doubt he understood that whatever side I was from, I’d seen a whole lot more trouble in Belfast than he’d ever experienced down in the soft South.

  After a few months’ temping, I picked up a full-time job in the Montague Hotel in Bloomsbury. The job came with a room of my own, so I said goodbye to the ‘Young Ones’ in Walthamstow and moved smack into the middle of London. I couldn’t have asked for a better location. Not only was the area full of great bars and clubs, but the hotel itself was right opposite the British Museum. Despite my lack of schooling, I’d always loved history and I spent much of my free time wandering around the museum, gazing in wonder at all the collections from so many different cultures.

  My work colleagues at the Montague included two guys from the Irish Republic, Tony and Padraig. At first they were wary of me and my accent, especially when I told them I was from Glencairn. But after a few weeks we all settled down together and bantered regularly on the themes of ‘sick Orange bastard’ and ‘Fenian scum’. Such insults hurled in Belfast would’ve led to a gun battle; here in London, words were just words.

  That said, even an upmarket hotel like this wasn’t safe from trouble. One of my fellow chefs was a guy called Phil from somewhere up in the north of England. At the best of times he was one messed-up individual and when his girlfriend (one of the receptionists) dumped him he took it very, very hard. One night they were having an argument in the staff quarters when suddenly he told her that he couldn’t live without her. Then he pulled out a huge knife and started slashing violently at his wrists. Blood shot up the walls and sprayed the carpet, causing pandemonium. Needless to say, he was sectioned and taken to a secure hospital, where he remained for a number of weeks. Eventually he returned to work in the kitchen and although I’d previously got on well with him, I was always on edge when working with him, especially with so many sharp knives around.

  There were many other staff living in the hotel and I was surrounded by beautiful women from the four corners of the earth. To pull no punches, I was like a dog on heat. Thankfully, the ladies found me acceptable and I must have worked my way round most of the reception staff and other female staff who seemed to like my Belfast charm and accent.

  One of these was an Irish girl from Cavan whom I’ll name Finola. We hit it off and started seeing each other regularly, despite me knowing that her father was a staunch Republican who would’ve hit the roof had he known his daughter was dating a Prod. Her family home was in Islington, which we visited in great secrecy while her parents were on holiday.

  Sadly, the inevitable happened and Finola became pregnant. I was in no position to become a father, even if I’d wanted to. But I was prepared to make a go of things for the sake of the baby. Finola’s Catholic upbringing taught her that abortion was a terrible sin but even so, she knew she couldn’t go home and announce to her father that she was having a baby with a Loyalist from Belfast. So the abortion went ahead and after that our relationship fizzled out. We were too full of guilt and remorse for what had happened to continue seeing each other.

  I met two people at the Montague who would go on to become good friends, John and Theresa. In time, John would become my clubbing partner and we’d have many adventures on the rave scene. Theresa was another Irish girl, a wild character full of spirit and fun. She always carried a little plastic bottle shaped like the Virgin Mary, full of holy water from Lourdes, and often threw it over us before we hit the town or were being particularly naughty We became very close but often her hyperactivity scared me, I backed away from having a relationship with her and we always kept everything strictly platonic. As the years went by, we went our separate ways but much later I heard that she’d returned to Ireland in the hope of finding someone to settle down with. That hadn’t happened, and in despair she stood on the edge of a cliff, drunk a bottle of whiskey, smoked a full packet of cigarettes, then threw herself off. It was a tragic end to a life lived at full speed.

  With Theresa’s help I took another job at the Imperial Hotel, also in Bloomsbury, and now I had some more money I could afford to move out and rent a place in Paddington with a few mates I’d made. By now, at the very end of the 1980s, the rave scene in and around the capital was booming and I was desperate to be part of it. I danced my head off in various clubs and would pile into cars full of E’d-up ravers, driving at breakneck speed around the M25 to find an acid house party in the middle of some obscure field. It was like my Mod days all over again, except with different drugs and music that was cutting-edge and bang up to date. Those nights out partying were wild, and I knew I’d have to get a job with more regular hours so that I wouldn’t miss out on all the fun.

  I’d always been a good talker and I was aware my Northern Irish accent, when not being mistaken for the voice of a terrorist, had enough lilt and charm to take me all sorts of places. I had the banter, so I headed in the direction of insurance sales. After all, I’d honed my skills at an early age selling UDA raffle tickets and firewood around Glencairn! I was a natural and when I started work for Royal Life Insurance I began to make more money than I’d ever seen in my life. I could easily afford to fund my lifestyle as a weekend raver and, having an addictive personality, soon got bang into as many pills as I could swallow and as much coke as I could snort.

  I needed what was called a ‘Lautro’, or a licence, to give or sell financial advice so I was sent up to Liverpool for a week’s training. Everyone who took the course was accommodated in the famous Adelphi Hotel and we were treated like royalty. I visited the Cavern Club and, as an old Mod, enjoyed the buzz of being in the club that made the Beatles world famous.

  I really felt that the world was now my oyster. In a matter of months, I’d come a very long way from Glencairn and the rainy grey city of my birth. Now I seemed to be in this Technicolor world full of beautiful, amazing young people who loved each other and danced like dervishes after dark. And yet, deep down, the old nagging feeling of ‘something missing’ continued to haunt me. No matter how much booze I drank, pills I necked or coke I snorted, I could never seem to rid myself of this shadow. There were connections to be had in the rave scene all right, but they were facilitated by drugs, and with drugs there is always a terrible price to pay for the high via a terrible comedown. In short, such connections didn’t feel genuine. I wanted something deeper, more meaningful, more real. And so the search went on . . .

  CHAPTER 16

  A

  room in North London, night-time. The smell of incense is overpowering and I notice that the cushion I’m sitting on is full of dog hairs. Fleetingly, I worry about the effect this is having on my new trousers, but I need to concentrate on what’s going on, because this is about to get pretty weird indeed . . .

  I’d always been a seeker. From gods to Mods and anything in between, if it interested me I wanted to know more. It was a restlessness born out of my personal circumstances and the life I’d led to believe was ‘normal’ in Belfast. All around me I could see hatred, bitterness and narrow-minded attitudes. I wanted to experience it all. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience all of this . . .

  Having walked past it several times I’d become interest
ed in a New Age shop in Covent Garden called Mysteries. Once I’d plucked up the courage to go in, I discovered it was packed full of tarot cards, candles, cauldrons, occult books and strange statues of horned gods. I knew I was very much drawn to the darker side of spirituality; there wasn’t a lot of it around in Belfast, at least not on the surface, but in London the devil and all his works seemed to be everywhere.

  On one visit I’d spotted a handwritten sign in the shop window that asked ‘Are you interested in witchcraft? Would you like to learn more?’ A London telephone number was scrawled underneath.

  ‘Me,’ I thought, ‘I’m interested in witchcraft.’

  I could see myself casting spells and hanging out with black-cloaked witchy ladies. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d dabbled in the world of the strange and the occult. When I was about fifteen, I’d bought a book on astral projection and, highly excited, I locked the front door, closed the curtains in our front room when everyone was out and attempted to float across the ceiling. I sat there for ten minutes, stopping to check if I was doing it right in the book, until a state of extreme disappointment came upon me and I flung the book across the room (at least something was flying), never to look at it again. I considered demanding a refund as it hadn’t worked. I even went through a phase of thinking I was a devil worshipper, becoming obsessed with Aleister Crowley and reading everything I could find about him. Also, because my birth date included 666 – 16 July 1966 – I thought I had the mark of the devil. I was a truth-seeker but equally, I was always into instant gratification.

  Cautiously, I phoned the number I’d jotted down on the back of my hand. A seductive female voice answered and, after answering a few questions about my interest in witchcraft, I suggested that we meet up. ‘King’s Cross Station,’ said the voice, ‘Platform Nine.’ Fitting, really, considering the later success of the Harry Potter books.

  ‘How will I know you?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the voice, ‘we’ll know you.’

  Excited but somewhat apprehensive, I turned up early for the meeting and looked around. The platform was deserted except for a few commuter types rushing for late trains. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, two hippies appeared next to me. A male and a female. We sat on a nearby bench and talked about witchcraft, magic and something called the Kabbalah. That was a new one on me, but it seemed the way they worked as witches was based on this. After about fifteen minutes they stood up as if to go.

  ‘Come to one of our meetings,’ said the woman, beaming. ‘You can see then what we do – see if it’s for you.’

  They gave me an address in north London and left. The following week I knocked shyly at a door in Kentish Town and was brought into the incense-filled room. Other people were already there – people with posh accents and expensive clothes. Some of them looked like doctors, lawyers and police officers, and probably were. A smell of marijuana hung in the air, mixing with the incense to form a heady brew. There were two, three, maybe four people all fondling and kissing each other.

  After a while the guy who’d interviewed me gave a talk on the Kabbalah and we were required to carry out a few exercises. One was visualising a white globe floating in the air and although I tried I was distracted with what was going on around me. Other people seemed to be getting something out of it, but try as I might I couldn’t connect with the thing at all. Here I was, a lad from West Belfast and an ex-Mod, trying to get along with a bunch of New Age freaks. I respected their views but there was definitely something odd going on, something cultish, and I didn’t want to delve any further.

  I never went back, but the itch that my search for ‘something’ always produced could never be fully scratched, no matter where I looked. I was doing well in my job – far better than I could ever have imagined – and life in London was great. I’d left ‘the Troubles’ behind, but my own personal troubles seemed never far from the surface and there were times I’d sink into a deep depression. I’d no idea why this was, or what the causes were other than the rollercoaster of my childhood in Northern Ireland and the crazy, dangerous city where I’d been born and raised. Sometimes there were horrifying reminders of what was going on only a few hundred miles from the bright lights and liberty of London. The lynching of the two British Army corporals who accidentally drove into an IRA funeral party in March 1988 was particularly dreadful. They were slaughtered like animals, and on camera, yet it was nothing short of animals who did the slaughtering. I remember feeling profoundly angry at what had happened, and the old feelings of wanting revenge for such atrocities bubbled up to the surface once more.

  And yet there were whisperings from across the Irish Sea of terrible deeds being done by people I knew, good Loyalist friends of mine that I’d grown up with and met through the Mod movement. Some of these were guys who’d joined the UDA at the same time as me, and at the start had been in it for the craic. But they’d taken it far, far further than I could’ve ever imagined, becoming involved with some very dangerous individuals in and around Loyalist West Belfast and taking part in the killing of innocent Catholics, and fellow Protestants too. I could hardly believe it was the same boys I’d known in my youth; kids like me who’d befriended Catholic Mods and dated Catholic girls. I could understand their desire for revenge on the IRA, sure. But killing random guys in pubs having a quiet drink? To my mind that was deeply wrong and unjustified, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t over there and caught up in all the horror.

  The eighties became the nineties and we moved into the final decade of the millennium. There seemed no end to the violence in Northern Ireland. If anything, those few years before the peace process started appeared to be some of the deadliest in the whole of the thirty-year conflict. The tit-for-tat shootings and bombings on both sides were deeply disturbing, highlighting a whole new level of savagery. Enniskillen. Greysteel. Warrington. Deal Barracks, Kingsmill, Teebane. Loughinisland. And many others. I didn’t know it then, and nor did most people in Northern Ireland, but it seemed as if both Loyalist and Republican terrorists were trying to kill as many of the ‘enemy’ as possible before they accepted the inevitable and would finally sit down to talk peace.

  By now I was living in a shared house near Holloway Road with Peter, a Scottish friend and his mate Alan. Alan was also a Scot, and was a Republican supporter who hated Loyalists and Loyalism. He and I were never quite going to see eye to eye about certain things and although we’d banter about our differences he could get very nasty, which pissed me right off. He was another who had a lot of opinions about Northern Ireland without having had to suffer the difficulties of actually living there. He knew nothing apart from what he’d watched on the telly or read in books, safe in a Glasgow library.

  Peter and I were very close; so much so that people often mistook us for brothers when we were out and about. We both had a love of the rave scene, dropping Es and clubbing. I was also spending lots of time with Theresa and John. I was still working in sales jobs, with a bit of bar/hotel work here and there, and I was making good money. However, I was always spending it faster than I made it and was always chasing the next job and dollars to pay for my never-ending party lifestyle.

  As I mentioned, the events in Northern Ireland during this period disturbed me, but none more so than the bombing of Frizzell’s fish shop on the Shankill in October 1993. That Saturday afternoon I’d been around the pubs and clubs of Holloway Road with David, my brother. He’d also had enough of the Troubles and somewhere around the turn of the decade had decided to join me in London. Although he was the youngest of us, he was always independent-minded and quickly made his own life in the city. However, we saw each other regularly.

  David was living in a shared house near Kilburn and was working in the building trade. We often got together for a piss-up and blowout and I was forever leading him astray. Never have two brothers been so different in every aspect and yet we have always been very close.

  Anyway, I went home to shower and get ready for the eve
ning session. I turned on the news to hear reports of a bombing right in the heart of the Shankill. My whole world seemed to stop at that moment, and as the story unfolded I felt a panic rising in my heart and soul. I had sisters, cousins and friends living and working on the Shankill. In addition, everyone would have been down the road shopping and getting ready for the weekend.

  I tried phoning Mags and Jean and couldn’t get through. I tried Linda and Wee Sam (who, by this time, was known as Sexy Sam – don’t ask) and I just couldn’t get through to anyone, no matter who I called. As the evening wore on, I was thinking the very worst, especially when news of the fatalities started coming through. I sat in stunned silence, realising I had known many of the victims and their families and I felt an overwhelming need to get back to Belfast and be there for my people and family.

  Having grown up in the Troubles, there are certain events that have stayed with me forever and among the many I had lived through, the Shankill bomb was almost the most personal for me. It was a direct attack on my community, and I hated the IRA more than ever that day.

  Eventually, I got through to Mags and she assured me that everyone was fine and I had nothing to worry about. Apparently, Pickle and some of my other cousins were down near the bomb when it went off and helped with the rescue effort.

  Michael ‘Minnie’ Morrison, his girlfriend and young child were three of the victims. I had been through secondary school with Minnie and knew him and his girlfriend well. Coincidentally, I also knew the bomber’s brother, having been through the YTS scheme with him, as I’ve mentioned. The Shankill and everyone in Belfast and beyond connected with this part of the city united in grief for this atrocity. Although I remained in England, I was in daily contact with the family, sharing the grief and sorrow as the dead were buried and the community I loved and missed tried to pick itself up again.