A Belfast Child

by John Chambers

  They were both older when Mum disappeared and therefore have more memories of her. Like me, they have a very strong sense of family and that unbreakable connection through love and shared history. And, like me, they would move heaven and earth for their children.

  I understand this too. However, having her in my life was the only thing that would make my restless soul content and I was able to put feelings of anger and resentment aside for ever and enjoy having her around me.

  After our first meeting, Mum held out hope that Mags and Jean would come round, but as the years ticked on she let go of this dream and we barely spoke about it until the last few months of her life, when she was full of regrets and guilt over what she’d done. I could never judge her over this, and I comforted her with stories about Mags and Jean’s life back in Belfast. I think she was ashamed of herself in many ways.

  Eventually, Margaret did feel the need to reach out and she wrote Mum two letters. She treasured them and slept with them under her pillow every night, which made me sad for the lost opportunities over the years. The joy these letters brought her was a ray of sunshine in a sea of misery and it soothed my soul and hers a little. I wish Mum had taken the opportunity to write write both Mags and Jean letters to apologise and try and explain why she had thought the best course of action was to leave us with our father’s family in Belfast. Near the end, I know that Mum was considering writing to them. But by the time she was ready to write, she was too weak and drugged-up and although we made several attempts she was unable to concentrate for very long. I wish she had done so, to give them both a bit of closure on events that had shaped our whole lives, but I think she was afraid of being rejected by them both.

  That said, she came to my brother’s wedding in the Republic of Ireland and got to meet some of her grandchildren from my sister’s side. Although they spoke to her, they didn’t make a long-term connection and played no further part in her life. The sadness of this situation weighed heavily on me and in the beginning I tried to build bridges, but the foundations weren’t strong and this all came to nothing.

  As Mum grew weaker, I spent more and more time with her in the house. Watching her fade away in front of me was so sad. I would sit with her and, holding her hand, would chat about the few happy years we had been lucky enough to spend together. I spent many a night sleeping over and helping to look after her and near the end helping her to the bathroom, which she found hard as she had always wanted to keep her dignity until the last.

  Maureen, my mum’s only surviving sister, and Jeanette, her daughter, came over for a long weekend in August 2018 and it was a joy to meet and spend time with them and find out that we had so much in common. Maureen remembered every little detail about us all when we were babies, and like Mum she had never thought the day would come when we’d meet. They both gave me and Mum much support and I will be forever grateful for this. She is a wonderful lady and I only wish I’d got to know her sooner and had spent more of my childhood with her.

  My cousin Jeanette and I hit it off immediately and within a few hours we were laughing and joking as if we’d known each other all our lives. Once again, I was sad at the missed times we should have spent together. She was a Nationalist through and through, and my eyebrows nearly shot through the ceiling when she whipped out her phone and showed me a picture of her and Gerry Adams. You could have knocked me down with a feather and I was momentarily unsure how to react. I have strong feelings about Republicanism and the IRA, yet I couldn’t let this come between us. We’d all suffered enough due to the Troubles ripping our families apart and I was old and wise enough to accept her for what she was – just my cousin. I know we will never agree politically but I respect her views and we never even speak about politics, which is probably the best course of action.

  Also, Jeanette has a wicked sense of humour. The two of us got rolling drunk when she was over visiting and I had a great time with her and her mum. My mum was delighted that we were all getting along so well and it lifted her spirits to see Jeanette and me getting on like a house on fire. I was on the gin, and needless to say I got very emotional about everything and before I knew what was happening I was sobbing my heart out to a shocked-looking Jeanette in the garden. To her credit, she dealt with it well, comforting me and making me feel better. Mum just rolled her eyes; she knew how emotional I could get and had seen it a thousand times before. In her inimitable way she told me to pull myself together, which I did.

  For the first few weeks I could hardly tell that Mum was ill, but it crept up on her gradually and one day I looked at her and could see that she was tired. She wanted nothing more than the pain and struggle to be over. She became very ill on a few occasions and once they took her to the hospital after a terrible night of pain. However, the next day she refused to stay and against the wishes of the doctors and threats from the nursing staff to call the police, she went straight home and into her favourite chair, proclaiming that she wouldn’t move again until it was all over.

  One night, she was so poorly that when the Macmillan nurses and doctors came they told me they had to get her to hospital or the event could be terminal. But Mum point-blank refused to budge from her chair and after filling her with medication the doctor left. I could tell he wasn’t happy with the situation. We got Mum into bed and I held her hand as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Once she woke up and looking me straight in the eyes asked, ‘Am I in heaven?’ My heart broke for her. At that point, and for the first time, I accepted that she was really dying, and would pass away very soon.

  At one point we offered to get a priest in for the last rites. Her reaction made me think she’d have a heart attack. ‘No way!’ she shouted. ‘I’ll deal with Him upstairs and no one else.’

  At the end she was confined to her bed and with Margaret’s letters underneath her pillow she looked ready to make the journey from life to death. I knew it was near and I was trying to be strong for her.

  But there was a bit of life in the old dog yet and as I held her hand, she drew it up to her mouth and after a gentle kiss suddenly started sucking on my finger as though it were a fag. She wanted a fag to see her on her way. It looked so comical that it brought a smile to my face and I’m glad this is one of the last memories I have of her.

  After the Macmillan nurses had cleaned and medicated her I held her hand and looking out the window I saw a little robin redbreast sitting on a branch. This touched me beyond words, because after Denis died she had often said that when a robin visited her that it was Denis coming to say hello. This time he was coming to take her hand and lead her home to him, and everlasting companionship.

  Suddenly, she gently squeezed my hand and we stared into each other’s eyes. At that moment, a light seemed to go out and I knew she was gone. At that moment, a little light in my soul also went out, and I knew my life would never be the same now that the woman who had in one way or other dominated my existence had left me forever.

  Our joint journeys through the trials of life had finally come to an end. The mother I had lost, found and now lost again. I pressed my forehead to her hand, still warm, and wept. I wanted to drag her back into this world, right back to the beginning of my life, and make everything all right again. I wanted a re-run of our relationship so that she was at the centre of my childhood. I wanted to rewrite history and wipe away all the pain, loss and suffering that we’d experienced as orphaned children growing up in one of the world’s most violent cities.

  Of course, I could do none of these things. Her loss was as raw as it was when she’d left us all those years ago, and I would have to go through the grieving process all over again. This time, however, the sadness was tempered with relief; relief that she was no longer suffering from cancer, and that she no longer would suffer the psychological torment that had haunted her ever since she made her momentous decision to leave the city of her birth and the children she loved dearly.

  Mum’s family came over from Belfast for her Roman Catholic funeral. Margaret s
ent over a beautiful bouquet of flowers, which had pride of place on her coffin. David and I got to spend some time alone with her just before she left the house and we slipped Margaret’s letters under her pillow in the coffin. The local priest, Father Jonathan, give a beautiful sermon. There was a big turnout for her and when they played ‘The Fields of Athenry’ I surrendered to the emotion that I had been trying to suppress and the tears blinded me at the finality of it all. But she had a good send-off and back at the wake we all got stinking drunk (Belfast style) and remembered the life and times of Sally McBride, my mum.

  A couple of weeks later we retrieved Mum’s ashes and buried them in the churchyard, beside Denis. Just being there gave me a sense of peace and, although her death had hit me very hard, I was grateful to have spent the years that I did with her. It never quite made up for losing her when I was a child, but at least we could come to some sense of reconciliation. And that, as all Northern Irish people know only too well, is often the best we can hope for. I like to think she’s up there somewhere, keeping an eye on me and telling me to pull myself together when life gets on top of me. Despite everything, I know my life was much richer with her in it, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.

  So goodbye and goodnight my mum, until we meet again. And I hope you aren’t giving ‘Him upstairs’ a hard time. Love you beyond words and Rest in Eternal Peace until we are together again.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘The past is a foreign country;

  they do things differently there.’

  LP HARTLEY, THE GO-BETWEEN

  EAST BELFAST

  Early July 2019

  I

  ’m standing in a side street just off the Albertsbridge Road in the heart of Protestant East Belfast. I’ve enjoyed a pint or two of Harp in the nearby Harland and Wolff social club, a stone’s throw away from the iconic cranes Samsung and Goliath who watch over the good folk of Belfast, and I’m waiting for a riot to begin.

  I often visit this part of Belfast when I want a change from my normal drinking dens around the city centre and on the Shankill. I’m over for a few short days, doing research for and working on the book you are now reading. I’m also taking time out to visit family and friends in West Belfast and enjoying all the glitzy attractions the now-peaceful city has to offer. It’s also close to the Glorious Twelfth and I’m looking forward to watching the big Loyalist parades that converge on the city and fill my heart with pride in my culture and traditions. Try not to judge me too harshly on that; it’s part of my DNA and today I love and respect all mankind, regardless of religion or political background. And it’s good to be able to stroll around the old place without constantly having to look over my shoulder.

  Yet, despite a peace process that has lasted twenty years, some things never change and when I get a whisper of trouble brewing in East Belfast, something deep within me stirs, compelling me to take a closer look and revisit memories of a childhood that traumatised me, leaving scars that can never heal completely. Like so many others.

  It’s all to do with one of the huge bonfires being built across the city to celebrate the Twelfth. Although this one is in a heavily Loyalist part of town, it’s been constructed close to a sports centre. The Sinn Fein-dominated Belfast City Council believes this is intimidatory, because Catholics might use the sports centre, and have ordered it to be torn down. The local Loyalist population are furious: they suspect Sinn Fein’s motive is purely sectarian as few Catholics, if any, are likely to use the sports centre. Nonetheless, contractors have been appointed to bulldoze the bonfire and a tense stand-off is about to begin.

  I persuade Billy to drive us over to see what’s going on. I can’t help it. I live a very quiet existence in England now. The mad drug days and chaos of my late twenties and early thirties are long behind me and now I prefer the occasional gin and tonic and a good movie night in with Simone and the kids. Yet while I’m a peace-loving fella, I have a primal response to the mere mention of a riot. I don’t want to take part in any violence, of course, but also I don’t want to miss seeing something that was an everyday part of my existence thirty-odd years ago. It’s like watching history repeating itself, and I’m a big history buff.

  After the pints we walk across Newtownards Road and head to where the trouble is brewing. There’s an odd atmosphere in the air; the crowds milling around the streets and close to the semi-built bonfire sense something is about to happen. The feeling is almost carnival-like, yet it’s stoked by years of anger and resentment.

  Billy is uneasy. He still lives in the city and knows that beneath the shiny surface of post-Troubles Belfast there are still many bitter memories lurking; memories that can easily translate into flashes of violence. He keeps himself to himself, and away from all this. Me, I’m now a tourist in my own past. I don’t want trouble – and yet I’m drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

  From nowhere, a gang of intimidating masked men appear on the scene. There is cheering as they move in loose file, placing their hands over any cameras or phones recording their presence. Beneath the masks they appear to be young guys. No doubt, somewhere in the shadows, there are older men directing this, just as there always were. I’ve been there myself and I know how this works.

  One of the lads pulls a can of spray paint from his jacket and starts writing words along a nearby wall. It’s a warning to the contractors: if they try to pull down the bonfire there will be trouble. If I was the appointed contractor, I’d be turning around now. Even so, there are rumours they will turn up, flanked by police Land Rovers, and attempt to carry out the job. If this happens, there really will be trouble.

  ‘C’mon, John,’ Billy says, ‘I think we’ve seen enough now, don’t you?’

  ‘Ach, give us a minute, will you?’ I reply. ‘This might get interesting . . . ’

  ‘It won’t,’ says Billy firmly. ‘The peelers won’t turn up till after midnight, if they show up at all. We’re wasting time standing about here.’

  I’m still reluctant to leave. When you grow up in a place like Glencairn or the Shankill, or the Falls Road, your whole life is dominated by conflict. Because you are in that tribal environment, the community think and act as one. You have to grow up in that kind of environment to really understand the normality of the madness. And though I’ve left that madness behind – just as I hope most of my fellow countrymen and countrywomen who lived through that period have too – I’m still drawn to the echoes of it.

  Kids are kicking bottles and stones around and there’s a notion that the bonfire might be set alight early, just to piss the council and police off. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, from the sky above comes the familiar whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades. It isn’t the army these days, but the police, yet the effect on me is electrifying. For a moment I could be a teenage tearaway back on the border with Ardoyne, battling the local Catholics before being shouted at to go home for my tea.

  When I look back at my early and teenage life growing up in the brutal war zones of Loyalist West Belfast, the past seems more like a different planet, let alone a different country, and back then in the playgrounds of my childhood they certainly did do things differently.

  The legacy of those times is more than 3,500 lives lost and around 50,000 injured, plus countless families and close ones left with a lifetime of never-ending grief and sorrow. Was it all worth it? I don’t think so. As a pacifist, my heart bleeds for all innocent victims of the Troubles regardless of political or religious background, and I pray for everlasting peace in Northern Ireland and a better future for the generations born after the Troubles and those yet to come.

  Life’s hard enough to get through without worrying that you will be abused, ridiculed or worse because of your religion, creed or nationality. And in Northern Ireland during the worst years of the sectarian slaughter it seemed that the killings would go on forever, and everyone suffered in their own personal way due to the horrors that ruled and ruined our daily lives for so very long. We were all pawns trapped
in a nightmare that lasted thirty long, savage years. Thank God those dark days are behind us now, and I hope that anyone contemplating a return to war will get the message – loud and clear – We Want Peace.

  Billy gives my walking stick a gentle tap. ‘That leg o’ yours must be feelin’ it, standing around all this time. You know, if trouble starts, you’ll not be able to run so quickly . . . and I won’t be stopping to carry you back.’

  I contemplate this for a moment. I have a wife and two kids at home, none of whom have grown up in this kind of environment. And thank God, too: riots and violence and murder were why I left it in the first place, to start a new life somewhere peaceful. I lived through a nightmare I’d never want to inflict on my nearest and dearest, especially my family. When I made the monumental decision to leave Belfast and the Troubles behind, I left part of my heart and soul in the streets of my childhood. Despite the madness and pain, Belfast will always have a special place in my heart. It made me who I am. Now England is my home and I’m happy and grateful for everything I have. Had I remained in Belfast I’m sure my story would have had a very different ending and it’s possible I would not be here to share it.

  When all is said and done, I know I made the right decision to escape the Troubles and I have no regrets about leaving the place. I just wish it was a choice I never had to make in the first place.

  The scene playing out before me now has lost its appeal and I’m silently grateful I’m no longer part of it.

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to another pint,’ I tell Billy.

  ‘There’s a good pub around the corner,’ he replies. ‘You can buy me a Harp. Will we go?’

  I nod and we turn away, leaving whatever troubles – with a small ‘t’ – may or may not be brewing to themselves.

  ‘Billy, can we stop off on the way home and grab a pastie supper? I’m bloody starving after all this craic.’