This Man's Wee Boy

by Doherty, Tony;

  * * *

  Paddy Stewart took me, Patrick and Paul up the town to see Lundy. We walked up Bishop Street in our coats and wearing hats with floppy ears as it was freezing cold. We climbed up the narrow steps onto the city walls and, linking hands with each other in case we got lost, waded into a throng of men to find ourselves among a sea of grey, dull-green and black overcoats. The men were wearing flat caps and nearly everyone was smoking.

  ‘Lundy is the tall man up there on the wall,’ explained Paddy Stewart.

  We couldn’t see, so he lifted Patrick up first.

  ‘D’ye see him, Patrick – the big, tall man up there?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, I can see him. There he is up there!’ replied Patrick, happy at the discovery.

  ‘Right, Tony, up ye git!’ Paddy Stewart said as he heaved me up in front of him over the standing crowd. ‘D’ye see him?’

  My eyes scanned the top of the crowd for the tallest man. A few stood out a foot or two taller than the rest.

  ‘Aye, I see him over there,’ I said, pointing in the wrong direction.

  ‘Naw, not that way, Tony. Over there!’ he said, turning me in the right direction.

  ‘Oh aye, I see him now!’ I said, pretending, not wanting to be left out, and he put me back on my feet.

  ‘Right, wee Paul. C’mon, you now!’

  He lifted Paul up to see and sure enough Paul said, ‘Aye, Paddy. There’s Lundy over there,’ and he pointed in the right direction.

  ‘Good boy yerself!’ said Paddy Stewart, lowering him to our level.

  ‘What’s going to happen now, Paddy?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, they’re going to set Lundy on fire. They do it every year.’

  God, I thought, they’re goin’ to burn the tall man I saw in the crowd a minute ago!

  It wasn’t until they set fire to a brightly painted twenty-foot dummy dressed like a pirate and attached to a scaffold, which I couldn’t see, that I realised what he was talking about. Paddy held us up again one by one to get a good view of the burning of Lundy. Whoever Lundy was.1

  * * *

  Our Patrick was different from me and Paul. He didn’t play football, his voice was different from ours, and he played with girls too much. I was out in the hall doing nothing and heard me ma and da talking in the scullery.

  ‘Why do ye think our Patrick talks like that, d’ye know …?’ me da asked her.

  ‘Ach, it’s just that he is always pallin’ about wi’ our Karen all the time,’ me ma said.

  Me da didn’t say anything back – nothing that I could hear anyway. I wondered. I already knew that our Patrick was different.

  * * *

  Barry and Paddy McCool lived at the top end of our street on our side. Me ma said that Barry had been a jockey in England when he was younger. They had a stable at the side of the house where the huge white horse called Peggy lived.

  One day me and our Paul were out in the street playing races. Barry was cleaning out the stable, saw us and called us in. Peggy the horse was in the stable and she was enormous.

  ‘Do you want up on her back, Tony?’ asked Barry.

  ‘Aye, I’ll go up,’ I replied.

  Paul said nothing but kept back. Barry stood me up on a stool; he got on a stool as well.

  ‘Up you get,’ he said as he lifted me under the arms and set me down on the horse’s back.

  The horse snorted and turned its head to see who was on her back. Seeing it was me, she turned away again. Barry lifted me down again.

  ‘Paul, do you want up on Peggy?’ Barry asked.

  ‘Naw, I don’t want to,’ said Paul.

  We raced back to the house to tell our ma and da.

  ‘Mammy, our Tony was up on Peggy the horse’s back there now,’ said Paul with excitement in his voice. You would think it had been him who got up on the horse.

  ‘God, isn’t that great! Our Tony on the back of a big horse,’ said me ma.

  ‘McCools was an IRA house,’ said Paddy Stewart to me ma one day in the scullery. ‘The B-men were never out of it, raiding it. Years ago. They held an informer – a stooley – there one day in the stable. The whole street knew.’ He giggled. ‘God, they gave him a wild hard time. You could hear the roars of them at the bottom of the street. Aye, boys-a-boys.’

  All new words to me. B-men. IRA. Informer. I knew nothing of what they were.

  * * *

  There was a cliff-edge to the quarry with a wire fence at the top to stop people falling over. As it came around towards our street it was very steep, but you could walk up it. We slid down it on car bonnets recovered from the quarry, like sleighs on the snow. We never had snow sleighs. Car bonnets were very heavy so the bigger boys – Davy McKinney and Davy and Tommy Barbour – would work together to carry the bonnet up the slope to the top. At the top we all jumped on. If there were too many it couldn’t be pushed to get going, so a few of the smaller boys were rolled off. With a good push the bonnet would take off down the slope and come to a stop where the slope levelled at the bottom. One time Jacqueline McKinney jammed her leg underneath as it was moving down the slope. Her leg was cut, and away she went home, crying her eyes out. A few minutes later she came back for more. The bonnet went like mad down the slope when the grass was wet.

  We fought with the Bishies over who owned the bankin’. We had stoning wars with them. The Bishies were from Bishop Street. Sean and Seamus Donnelly were fearless Bishie warriors with a deadly aim. They were better than us and had the height of the bankin’ in their favour. Moore Street and Hamilton Street were at the bottom. This was no good. We played football with the Bishies, too, on the bankin’. At the end there was always a stoning war. Boys got split with stones. The Bishies chased us down the bankin’.

  One day I was trapped at the bottom of the quarry and Seamus Donnelly was at the top. He was in the same year as me at school. I had nowhere to hide. I was good at throwing stones and threw some at him, but he had the height of the quarry for protection. I ducked down behind an old car for cover as the stones sparked off the rusty metal.

  A stone whacked me on the top of my head. The car was useless. My head felt sore and I could feel blood with my fingers. I didn’t cry. I ran to the bottom of the cliff and hid in tight to the face. He was pelting away – just me and him. Another stone hit me on the forehead. The blood ran down into my eyes. I was crying now, but he didn’t stop – it made him worse and he laughed as he threw. I made a bolt for it, zigzagging across the open ground the way the US Marines did, until I reached the safety of the rear of Moore Street where the McCools lived. I looked back through the blood and the tears to the top of the quarry, and Seamus Donnelly was gone.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Saint Joseph,’ me ma shouted as I came through the back door.

  ‘What were you doing, ye stupid eejit ye?’ said me da as he yanked me by the arm, a bottle of Doby washing-up liquid in his other hand, towards the door to the yard.

  He bent me down under the tap, turned the water on over my head and washed the cuts with the Doby. The cold water stung the open wounds, but I kept still as he did his work. Me ma stood at the back door giving off about the savages up the bankin’ and saying that I wasn’t to play up there any more.

  ‘Them cuts’ll need a stitch,’ said me da, inspecting the damage.

  ‘I think you’re right, Paddy,’ said me ma.

  As on the day I cut my hand, me ma wrapped strips of cut-up pillowcase around my gashed head and we got the usual two buses to the hospital at Altnagelvin. The nurse gave me an injection in the arm. I didn’t cry or pull back. The doctor started sewing my head back together with stitches, warning me that it would be sore. It was. I got eleven stitches, I told the boys that evening in the street: five in the back and six on the front.

  ‘Me ma said the Bishies are savages and I’m not allowed up the bankin’ any more,’ I added.

  ‘That’s just stupid,’ said Michael McKinney. ‘Sure we own the bankin’.’

  ‘What happened you, Tony D
oherty? What the hell were you up to up that bankin’?’

  The voice belonged to Nan McGowan who lived in No. 8. She was standing at her door. Nan had a normal leg and another that was twice as broad at the calf and had a huge brown mark on it that looked like a misshaped pancake. Her dark skirt came to just below the knee. She lived with her sister, Mary Jane, who was shorter and had two normal legs.

  ‘He got split by the Bishies,’ said Dooter McKinney.

  ‘Aye, I got split twice, so I did,’ I told her. ‘Me ma said the Bishies are savages.’

  ‘And so they are. They’re nothing but animals,’ said Nan and she reached into her apron and brought out her purse. ‘Go and get yourself some swiddies in the shop.’ She gave me a shilling.

  Paddy McKinney came out of his house, shouting. He lived across the street from us. He had a pot on his head and was carrying a yard brush with a bread knife tied to the end. He was shouting and roaring – not words, just shouting and roaring. Me ma said he was suffering from shell-shock from the war. He had a suit on and wore shiny black shoes. He ran from the bottom of the street to the top, turned at McCools’ and ran back down again. He roared at the top of his voice. He always did this. This is what he did in the street. The street was full of children.

  ‘Poor critter,’ said Nan at her door as Paddy shot past with his knife and brush. ‘What a waste of a good man.’

  Me ma said one day that Nan and Mary Jane were two old maids in the garret. I didn’t know what she meant.

  We went to the shop.

  Once during a war with the Bishies, I threw a stone and it collided mid-air with a stone fired in our direction. You could hear the sharp crack, like a shot, of stone on stone. Both stones dropped to the ground with a clump. Dooter McKinney saw it and told everyone. I was some shot, a force to be reckoned with.

  * * *

  The Americans were sending a rocket to the moon. Me and Dooter and our Paul went up the bankin’ to get a better look. We lay flat on the grass looking up at the blue, cloudless sky. Dooter was in the middle.

  ‘You have to look really hard. The rocket’ll be tiny,’ I said.

  That’s what the boys were saying at school. They knew. We stayed on our backs and looked. It was a very warm day. The grass was dry and warm.

  ‘There it is!’ shouted our Paul.

  ‘Where? Where?’ shouted me and Dooter.

  ‘There! Look!’ He pointed up into the blue sky.

  I jumped over Dooter and Paul to get to the other side to see better. We followed the general direction of his finger and, sure enough, there it was. A tiny silver pin in the cloudless blue sky. It was hardly moving but it was there. We could see it!

  * * *

  Chalk The Water lived in Hamilton Street, near Paddy Melaugh’s shop. He had a donkey and cart. Children in the street called out ‘Chalk The Water!’ as he rode past on his donkey and cart. He would shout something back and wave his stick.

  ‘Me da said Chalk The Water’s not the full shilling,’ Terry McKinney once told us. Terry knew everything. He knew all the rules of football. When I won the ball off him, one day when we were playing out at the Daisyfield, he said, ‘You robbed me, so you did. It’s a free kick to us.’ Robbing sounded like a foul so he got his free kick. I knew I won the ball fairly, but he knew everything.

  Me and Dooter were in Chalk The Water’s back yard. We just knocked and his ma let us in through the house.

  ‘Can we go out wi’ ye the day?’ we asked. We never called him Chalk The Water, but he didn’t have any other name.

  He mumbled something back in agreement from under his flat cap, which was too big for his head. His eyes were deep-set in his thin face under the shadow of his cap, which he always fidgeted with, turning it this way and that. We understood. We helped him attach the cart to the donkey. The cart was painted red. We patted the donkey as he attached the bridle through its yellowy teeth. Up we got, sitting one on each side. Chalk The Water’s ma came out to open the gates to the lane and gave him an old, worn canvas bag. Inside there’d be a packet of Custard Creams and a bottle of milk. He mumbled something back to her. Thanks, Mammy, we understood.

  We were moving. We were going to the dump out at Prehen – at least we thought it was a dump. That’s where Chalk The Water always went. As we rode down Hamilton Street, some children and adults shouted up at him, ‘Chalk The Water!’ and he shouted something back and waved his stick. He held the reins with his other hand. We waved down at them as we clattered noisily past. At the end of the street we turned left onto the Foyle Road towards the lower deck of Craigavon Bridge. The noise of the donkey’s clip-clopping hooves echoed loudly between the two decks as we crossed over to the Waterside and went straight out the road towards Prehen. No one shouted on the Waterside.

  When we reached Prehen, Chalk The Water turned off the road into the dump. He got off the cart and so did we. He mumbled something. I’m going away and will be back in a minute, we understood. He went away. We patted the donkey’s nose and ears.

  ‘Chalk The Water’s real name is Benedict,’ said Dooter.

  ‘How d’ye know?’ I asked.

  ‘Our Terry told me,’ he said.

  It must be true then, I thought. Chalk The Water came back after a few minutes.

  ‘Are we getting the Custard Creams now, Benedict?’ asked Dooter.

  Chalk The Water looked at him, an expression of doubt in his deep-set eyes, and he mumbled something. You don’t call me Benedict, we understood. Chalk The Water lifted the canvas bag from the cart, opened the Custard Creams and gave us three each. He opened the bottle of milk, took a mouthful and handed it to me. I drank some milk and handed it to Dooter. He drank and gave it back to Chalk The Water.

  Chalk The Water mumbled something about the Custard Creams. I love Custard Creams, we understood.

  ‘We love Custard Creams as well, so we do,’ we said.

  Chalk The Water looked across the river and mumbled something we didn’t understand. He mumbled again and pointed over towards our street across the river. We understood.

  ‘Is that our street there?’ I asked, pointing across the river.

  ‘Aye,’ said Chalk The Water. We understood.

  It was a nice day but it started to mizzle. We got down and sat underneath the cart until it passed. Chalk The Water got up, mumbled something and made a gesture towards the gate of the compound. Time to go home, we understood.

  * * *

  A few days later Chalk The Water was coming down Hamilton Street on the donkey and cart. We were playing tig beside the cottages up the lane.

  ‘Chalk The Water!’ we all shouted as he went past. ‘Chalk The Water!’

  Chalk The Water shouted something back and waved his stick at us. He clip-clopped on down the street towards Foyle Road and turned left towards the bridge. We went back to our tig.

  * * *

  One warm, sunny day, me da took us out to the yard and me ma came out after us with our Patrick. She was wearing a green and yellow dress with shapes on it that looked like wonky eyes. She looked nice. Her dark hair was down to her waist and was parted in the middle. We were lined up against the wall – Karen, me and our Paul.

  ‘Patrick got a new camera and wants to take a photo of yis,’ said me ma.

  Me da stood in the line as well.

  ‘Right, yous are looking great,’ said me ma. ‘Now everyone, smile and say “cheeeeese”.’

  We smiled and said ‘cheeeeese’. Patrick held the camera up to his eye and pressed on the button. Instead of a click Karen got a squirt in the face. Before we caught on, both me and Paul got squirted in the face as well. He was a good shot. We all laughed. We couldn’t believe that they could make a water-pistol out of a camera. We all got turns squirting at the line-up. It was only fair.

  * * *

  Me da sang ‘The Black Velvet Band’ to me ma when he had beer in him. He sang it in me granny’s house at Christmas when everyone came, drank beer and had a party. We were allowed to stay
at the top of the stairs and only came down to the sitting-room door when someone started singing. The bottled beer and lemonade were stacked in wooden crates beside the front door where they were delivered a few days before Christmas on an Iriscot’s lorry. Me aunt Lorraine was allowed to bring in bottles of Carling Black Label to the sitting room where everyone was, but was chased out again. After the song was over we were chased back up to the top of the stairs. ‘The Black Velvet Band’ was about me ma because her eyes shone like diamonds and she tied her hair up with her black velvet band. She sat on me da’s knee and looked into his face as he sang. She had long hair like Cher, parted in the middle but with a fringe at the front. So did our Karen. But the song was about me ma.

  2

  Patsy, Eileen and Family

  My da and ma, Patsy Doherty and Eileen Quigley, first made direct eye contact across the high-backed booths of Macari’s Italian Ice-Cream Parlour on William Street, where my uncle Eugene worked part-time. It turned out that Patsy already had an eye for her: she had passed him and his mucker Johnny McFadden in the Guildhall Square one day and he had said to Johnny, ‘D’ye see that girl Quigley over there with the ponytail and the tanned feet? I’m goin’ to marry her!’ Johnny told me da later that he thought he was nuts.

  As Eileen was leaving Macari’s with her friend, Iris Quigley (no relation), Patsy and Johnny, both Teddy boys in full battle dress, including the blue suede shoes and coiffed and lacquered hair, blocked the door while Patsy asked could he walk her home. She agreed and they headed up Rossville Street, with friends in tow, towards the Brandywell, where they both lived.

  When they had reached the end of Moore Street, Patsy asked her for a date and she agreed. Several nights later they met for the date. Patsy showed up at the front door of No. 6 Moore Street with a box of Milk Tray and a twenty-pack of Sweet Afton cigarettes for Eileen, as was the custom at the time. However it happened, they ended up having a row on their first date and Patsy concluded the encounter by throwing the box of chocolates into Meenan’s Field beside the Gasyard. Eileen kept the fancy fags secure in her handbag.