by Gerry Adams
“He got remanded for a week,” Mrs Sharpe told her.
“What? A week? What about his bail?” She looked helplessly towards Mr McLowry, but already he was engrossed in the affairs of another client.
“C’mon,” Mrs Sharpe comforted Margaret, “let’s get out of here.” She allowed herself to be led from the courtroom.
“We should go home now. The children will be home from school and you’re worn out. We can phone Mr McLowry’s office from my house later on,” Mrs Sharpe advised.
“I’m seeing our Tommy, Mrs Sharpe, so I am, before I go anywhere.” They were standing in the foyer. “Mr McLowry said I could see our Tommy after he was up, so that’s what I’m going to do. You go on home and I’ll call in on you when I get back. There’s no point the two of us waiting here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure, so I am. Your children’ll be in. Just do one more wee thing for me. Nip in and tell our Teresa to put on the potatoes if I’m not back in time. And tell her there’s money behind the clock if she needs it; tell her to go easy on it, too,” she added. “And thank you, Mrs Sharpe. You’re one in a million.”
“No problem,” Mrs Sharpe replied. “Tell your Tommy I was asking after him. Tell him I’ll bake him an apple cake with a file in it. Cheerio, Margaret. I’m sorry I have to rush off and leave you here.”
“Catch yourself on. G’wan out of this with you. I’m going to ask your man the score about seeing our Tommy,” Margaret nodded towards a big RUC man standing near by.
“Good luck,” said Mrs Sharpe. “And don’t forget to tell Tommy I was asking for him.”
“That door down there, missus,” the RUC man told Margaret. “The sergeant in there’ll have information about prisoners.”
Margaret thanked him and made her way to the door marked Enquiries at the end of the foyer. She knocked on it a few times and when there was no reply she pushed it nervously to find herself in front of a counter in a small room. A bald-headed RUC man looked at her with indifference.
“I want to see my son, Tommy Hatley,” Margaret informed him. “I was told to come here to see the sergeant.”
“Well, I’m the sergeant, but whoever told you that doesn’t know what he’s talking about, missus,” he replied coldly.
“My son’s a prisoner here. He was just up in Court Three. He’s on remand. Mr McLowry’s his solicitor.”
Margaret fought down the panic rising in her stomach. The sergeant turned away from her.
“There’s no visits with prisoners here, missus.”
“I want to see my son, mister.” Margaret’s voice rose and to her own surprise and the sergeant’s annoyance she rapped the counter indignantly with her clenched fist.
“Missus, dear, I’ve told you: there’s no visits for prisoners here.”
“I have a right to see my son.” Margaret’s eyes welled up with tears.
“Missus,” the sergeant smiled at her, “you have no fucking rights. Now,” the smile switched off, “get out of my office before I arrest you as well.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Margaret replied.
“Is that right?” The sergeant’s smile returned again.
The sound of the door opening behind Margaret interrupted their verbal duel. It was the RUC man who had sent her to the office. He looked from Margaret to the sergeant.
“All right, Sarge?” he asked. “Your son’s up in the Crum’, missus,” he told Margaret. “C’mon.” He shepherded her out of the office.
“Don’t mind him,” he told her kindly, looking at his watch. “You’ll be too late for a visit today, but you should get one first thing in the morning.”
“He said I’ve no rights,” Margaret told him.
“Well, be that as it may, there’s no use us arguing about it,” he smiled at her.
“Thanks,” Margaret replied. “Thanks for your help.”
“No problem, missus.”
“By the way,” she asked as she walked away from him, “what’s the right time?”
“Just after half-two, missus.”
That’s how Margaret was able to remember more or less exactly when she became a rebel. Or maybe, as she would have put it herself, that was when she started to become a rebel. She doesn’t remember a lot about the rest of that day. The house was in bedlam when she got home, and although Teresa had done her best the younger ones were complaining and playing up. It was only after her husband got in from work and had his dinner and she told him all her news that she remembered she hadn’t had dinner herself. She didn’t tell him about the tea and sandwiches in the International Hotel. She was still feeling guilty about that when she went down to Mrs Sharpe’s after the children were safely in bed.
“Margaret, you’re wired up,” Mrs Sharpe chided her. “What men don’t know’ll do them no harm.”
The thought was a new one for Margaret. It was also an enjoyable one; it was like when she was a child playing a trick on grownups. She chuckled at Mrs Sharpe’s wisdom.
“Maybe you’re right, Mrs Sharpe.”
She went to Belfast Prison at Crumlin Road to see Tommy the following morning. He never got bail. Instead, a month later he received the mandatory six-months sentence for riotous behaviour. Margaret’s routine changed with this new development; now she had to make time for prison visits. She also missed Tommy’s wages. She didn’t tell her husband that, but he must have known because he gave her a little extra each week.
“For Tommy’s parcel,” he said, “and maybe he’ll want the odd book.”
He wanted lots of books. Margaret took to going to Smithfield market each week after her visit to pick through the secondhand bookshops for the novels and political tomes on Tommy’s list. She got into the habit also of having tea and a scone in the ITL café before heading for home again. That was a new luxury for her as well. She got friendly with one of the booksellers, a woman of her own age called Mary. When Margaret eventually confided to her that the books were for her son in prison, Mary insisted she would send him some as well. She took payment for Margaret’s selection only when Margaret threatened not to return if she didn’t.
“Here,” she laughed, “take this one for yourself.”
“Ach, I never get time to read,” Margaret protested.
“Make time. Be kind to yourself,” Mary said in mock sternness. “You’ll get no thanks otherwise.”
That’s how Margaret started reading, in the ITL café over her weekly cup of tea and scone.
That night Teresa and her sisters heard their father’s voice raised in exasperation in the bedroom next to them.
“Woman, dear, are you never going to let me get to sleep? I don’t know what’s come over you!”
They listened intently for a reply. It didn’t come for a full minute.
“I just want you to promise not to call me ‘Mother’ again. I’m not your mother. I’m your wife.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Promise.”
“I promise, Margaret, I promise. Anything for peace and quiet.”
Teresa smiled to herself. She knew her mother was smiling also. “Good for you, ma,” she whispered.
“What’s wrong?” her younger sister asked.
“Nothing,” said Teresa proudly. “Our ma’s just become a woman’s libber.”
Margaret didn’t think of herself like that. She had two grownup children married and living away from home; the rest, the youngest of whom was ten, were all living together in a tiny house, they and their father all making demands on her and her time. But she took Mary’s advice and Mrs Sharpe’s, and started to make time for herself.
Tommy got out of jail after his six months but was interned a year later in the big swoops. The British army took his father as well but he was released after a few days. Margaret was up to her neck looking after refugees, taking part in protests: she didn’t get to bed for three nights.
When she awoke after fourteen hours solid sleep, her husband brought her dinner
to her on a tray.
“You never did that before,” she smiled in pleased surprise. “Even when I was sick, even when I had our babies. The neighbours or our ones did it.”
“I’m not the only one who’s doing things they never did before,” he replied awkwardly. “There’s been a queue of people here for you. There’s a list of messages. And there’s a meeting in St Paul’s, Mrs Sharpe says.”
“What was on the news?” Margaret propped herself up on the pillows and settled the tray on her lap.
“The whole place has gone mad,” he replied morosely. “More shooting last night: two killed, more arrests, bombs in the town, people hurt. Will I go on?”
She looked at him quietly. “No, you’re okay.”
“Where did you get the food?” he asked her, watching as she devoured the sausages and potatoes he’d prepared.
“That’s for me to know,” she teased him, “and for you to find out. You oul’ fellas are all the same; youse need to know everything. Well, for nearly thirty years you’ve been feeding us and for the last three days I’ve been feeding us, and I feel good about it.”
He looked at her in amazement.
“Ach, love, I’m only joking,” she laughed. “You never could take a slagging. I got the food down in St Paul’s. We set up a coordinating committee in the school to look after the refugees and to distribute food, especially baby food and the like. That’s what happens when you get arrested, you see. I go mad for the want of you.”
She put down her tray and lunged towards him in mock attack. He retreated to the door in embarrassment.
“The whole place has gone mad,” he said again. “It’s time you were up, woman.”
She chuckled at his discomfiture. “I wonder how he gave me all those children,” she thought cheerfully.
“My oul’ fella never worked,” Mrs Sharpe said to Margaret. “You’re lucky. Yours is never idle. I used to say my man put on his working clothes when he was going to bed.”
They were sitting together after the meeting.
“It’s funny about men,” Margaret said; “they are all bound up in wee images of themselves. You know: they’re the providers, they take the decisions. They decide everything.”
“Or they think they do,” Mrs Sharpe said.
“I know, I know,”Margaret agreed, “and as long as we let them think that it’s fine and dandy. But as soon as we start to let them see that we can take decisions, too, and, make choices, then their worlds become shaky and their images get tarnished. They, even the best of them, like to keep us in our places.”
“Blame their mothers.”
“Nawh, that’s too simple.”
“But it’s true.”
“I don’t know. Young ones nowadays have a better notion of things. I’m no different from my mother, but our ones are different from me.”
“You’re no different from your mother?”Mrs Sharpe looked at her. “Who’re you kidding? Could you see your mother round here doin’ what we’re doing?”
“No,” Margaret replied. “But then she never got the chance: a year ago I couldn’t even see myself doing what we’re doing.”
She got slowly to her feet. “And now I suppose we better get back to our oul’ lads. Mine’s only started to get used to being married to me. And,” she looked at Mrs Sharpe with a smile in her eyes, “he ain’t seen nothing yet.”
They laughed together as they locked up the school for the night. Outside, people were gathered at barricades and street corners. They all greeted Margaret and Mrs Sharpe as they passed. At Mrs Sharpe’s the two women parted and Margaret walked slowly up the street. She was tired, middle-aged and cheerful as she made her way home to liberate her husband.
The Mountains of Mourne
Geordie Mayne lived in Urney Street, one of a network of narrow streets which stretched from Cupar Street, in the shadow of Clonard Monastery, to the Shankill Road. I don’t know where Geordie is now or even if he’s living or dead, but I think of him often. Though I knew him only for a short time many years ago, Geordie is one of those characters who might come into your life briefly but never really leave you afterwards.
Urney Street is probably gone now. I haven’t been there in twenty years, and all that side of the Shankill has disappeared since then as part of the redevelopment of the area. Part of the infamous Peace Line follows the route that Cupar Street used to take. Before the Peace Line was erected, Lawnbrook Avenue joined Cupar Street to the Shankill Road. Cupar Street used to run from the Falls Road up until it met Lawnbrook Avenue, then it swung left and ran on to the Springfield Road. Only as I try to place the old streets do I realise how much the place has changed this last twenty years, and how little distance there really is between the Falls and the Shankill. For all that closeness there might as well be a thousand miles between them.
When we were kids we used to take short cuts up Cupar Street from the Falls to the Springfield Road. Catholics lived in the bottom end of Cupar Street nearest the Falls; there were one or two in the middle of Cupar Street, too, but the rest were mainly Protestants till you got up past Lawnbrook Avenue; and from there to the Springfield Road was all Catholic again. The streets going up the Springfield Road on the righthand side were Protestant and the ones on the lefthand side up as far as the Flush were Catholic. After that both sides were nearly all Protestant until you got to Ballymurphy.
When we were kids we paid no heed to these territorial niceties, though once or twice during the Orange marching season we’d get chased. Around about the Twelfth of July and at other appropriate dates, the Orangemen marched through many of those streets, Catholic and Protestant alike. The Catholic ones got special attention, as did individual Catholic houses, with the marching bands and their followers, sometimes the worse for drink, exciting themselves with enthusiastic renderings of Orange tunes as they passed by. The Mackie’s workers also passed that way twice daily, an especially large contingent making its way from the Shankill along Cupar Street to Mackie’s Foundry. The largest engineering works in the city was surrounded by Catholic streets, but it employed very few Catholics.
Often bemused by expressions such as Catholic street and Protestant area, I find myself nonetheless using the very same expressions. How could a house be Catholic or Protestant? Yet when it comes to writing about the reality it’s hard to find other words. Though loath to do so, I use the terms Catholic and Protestant here to encompass the various elements who make up the Unionist and non-Unionist citizens of this state.
It wasn’t my intention to tell you all this. I could write a book about the craic I had as a child making my way in and out of all those wee streets on the way back and forth to school or the Boys’ Confraternity in Clonard or even down at the Springfield Road dam fishing for spricks, but that’s not what I set out to tell you about. I set out to tell you about Geordie Mayne of Urney Street. Geordie was an Orangeman, nominally at least. He never talked about it to me except on the occasion when he told me that he was one. His lodge was The Pride of the Shankill Loyal Orange Lodge, I think, though it’s hard to be sure after all this time.
I only knew Geordie for a couple of weeks, but even though that may seem too short a time to make a judgement I could never imagine him as a zealot or a bigot. You get so that you can tell, and by my reckoning Geordie wasn’t the worst. He was a driver for a big drinks firm: that’s how I met him. I was on the run at the time. It was almost Christmas 1969, and I had been running about like a blue-arsed fly since early summer. I hadn’t worked since July, we weren’t getting any money except a few bob every so often for smokes, so things were pretty rough. But it was an exciting time: I was only twenty-one and I was one of a dozen young men and women who were up to their necks in trying to sort things out.
To say that I was on the run is to exaggerate a little. I wasn’t wanted for anything, but I wasn’t taking any chances either. I hadn’t slept at home since the end of May when the RUC had invaded Hooker Street in Ardoyne and there had been a night or t
wo of sporadic rioting. Most of us who were politically active started to take precautions at that time. We were expecting internment or worse as the civil rights agitation and the reaction against it continued to escalate. Everything came to a head in August, including internment, and in Belfast the conflict had been particularly sharp around Cupar Street. This abated a little, but we thought it was only a temporary respite: with the British army on the streets it couldn’t be long till things hotted up again. In the meantime we were not making ourselves too available.
Conway Street, Cupar Street at the Falls Road end and all of Norfolk Street had been completely burned out on the first night of the August pogrom; further up, near the monastery, Bombay Street was gutted on the following night. These were all Catholic streets. Urney Street was just a stone’s throw from Bombay Street; that is, if you were a stone thrower.
The drinks company Geordie worked for was taking on extra help to cope with the Christmas rush, and a few of us went up to the head office on the Glen Road on spec one morning; as luck would have it I got a start, together with big Eamonn and two others. I was told to report to the store down in Cullingtree Road the next morning and it was there that I met Geordie.
He saw me before I saw him. I was standing in the big yard among all the vans and lorries and I heard this voice shouting: “Joe…Joe Moody.”
I paid no attention.
“Hi, boy! Is your name Joe Moody?” the voice repeated.
With a start I realised that that was indeed my name, or at least it was the bum name I’d given when I’d applied for the job.
“Sorry,” I stammered.
“I thought you were corned beef. C’mon over here.”
I did as instructed and found myself beside a well-built, red-haired man in his late thirties. He was standing at the back of a large empty van.
“Let’s go, our kid. My name’s Geordie Mayne. We’ll be working together. We’re late. Have you clocked in? Do it over there and then let’s get this thing loaded up.”
He handed me a sheaf of dockets.
“Pack them in that order. Start from the back. I’ll only be a minute.”