All Growed Up Read online

  As I walked along the longest bus shelter in the world the now-familiar gusts of wind blew icy rain into my face. I had walked along this passageway hundreds of times in the past year.

  ‘Hey, boy, what’s the craic, hey?’ said Billy Barton as he passed me en route to the library.

  There was very little craic so I replied curtly with my customary greeting, ‘Right?’, and then felt wick because Billy looked offended and he was a right fella.

  Now that I was in second year I knew my way around the university and I knew lots of people, but on days like this I still didn’t feel as if I truly belonged there.

  To prove our maturity now that we were second year students, Aaron and I had decided to move out of Mrs Flood’s bed and breakfast and into a rented house at the harbour with three other lads and no heating. My tiny bedroom was in the attic, but on stormy nights the salt-water spray from the waves crashing over the harbour wall still reached my Dorma window at the very top of the house. I sometimes opened the window during a storm and stuck my tongue out just to taste the saltwater. It was very grown-up to have our own place with other students who didn’t want to do the dishes either, but after a few months I longed for a return to the warmth of Mrs Flood’s house with her cute dogs and her friendly daughter and a chicken dinner in the evening.

  When I reached the central buildings, there was a poster on the noticeboard advertising auditions for a new student production of Hamlet. This momentarily lifted my spirits – maybe if I joined the drama society and got the part of Hamlet I would feel more like a part of this place. I bumped into Tara Grace on the stairs and she asked me to pray for a girl on her course to be healed from her migraines, as this would be ‘really just kinda beautiful’. When I agreed to add my supplications to her prayers she shrieked ‘Praise Jesus!’ just a little too loudly for comfort outside the confines of LT17.

  When I arrived at the model there was no sign of Lesley yet, but Byron Drake and Aaron Ward were sitting under the stairs with their eyes closed and their headphones on, listening to their Sony Walkmans. I knew not to disturb Aaron because he had just bought the new Dire Straits album and got very grumpy if you interrupted him during ‘Private Investigations’, and this particular song went on forever. So I lifted Byron’s Guardian and confidently slapped him across the back of the head.

  ‘Hey Tone, leave it out,’ he said.

  ‘What are you listenin’ to now?’ I enquired.

  ‘The greatest band of all time,’ Byron answered.

  ‘ABBA? Really?’

  ‘Very droll, Tone, very droll.’

  ‘It’s yer man with the gladiola in his back pocket, isn’t it?’

  I was correct, of course.

  ‘Listen, Tone. This man Morrissey is pure genius. His music is really, really dark, and really, really deep. It’s almost Nietzschean.’

  ‘But it’s dead depressin’ and you can’t sing along to it!’ I dared to disagree.

  ‘Listen, Tone, The Smiths are not like all that pretentious New Romantic crap you listen to. There’s nothing pretentious about Morrissey.’

  Byron had spoken on a matter of art and culture and I dared not dispute any further.

  ‘What are you reading these days, Tone?’

  I was reading a Doctor Who novel called the The Tomb of the Cybermen and Basic Christianity by John Stott.

  ‘Oh I’m still reading War and Peace, so I am,’ I replied. ‘It’s really, really … long.’

  I had given up trying to finish the book and it was costing me a fortune in fines at the Shankill Library.

  ‘Until you’ve read The Catcher in the Rye you haven’t read anything,’ said Byron.

  Some days Byron carried this slim book alongside his Guardian so I decided perhaps I should give it a wee read at some stage.

  ‘I’m going to audition for Hamlet with the drama society,’ I announced.

  ‘Good for you, Tone. Nothing like a good bit of Billy Shakey.’

  ‘Aye, dead on!’

  ‘But you do know you have to be able to act to perform the Bard?’

  At this point I felt compelled to explain to Byron that I was an accomplished actor in the mould of Roger Moore, having studied Roger’s onscreen techniques in Octopussy at the Coleraine Palladium. I informed Byron that I had triumphed on the stage in Belfast Royal Academy’s ground-breaking production of West Side Story and that I would take the transition from West Side Story to Hamlet in my stride. Byron opened up his Guardian and turned up the volume on The Smiths.

  ‘Anyway, I’m meeting my new girlfriend here and we’re going for lunch in the canteen,’ I explained.

  ‘Are you going for a virgin tea party, then?’ asked Byron, throwing one end of his Yasser Arafat scarf over his shoulder.

  ‘Very funny. When I was in Torremolinos all the Swedish girls were throwin’ themselves at me, ya know. When was the last time you had a girlfriend?’

  ‘Listen, Tone. I know how to pleasure a woman. I can bring a woman to pure ecstasy within minutes.’

  ‘Oh, do you take her shoppin’ to Anderson & McAuley’s in Royal Avenue?’ interrupted Lesley in her familiar Bellaghy whoop.

  If Byron was expecting my girlfriend to be a wee mousey good livin’ girl, he was in for surprise.

  ‘Well, are we going for lunch or not?’ asked Lesley, who was resplendent in her bright blue Dash tracksuit from Anderson & McAuley’s itself.

  ‘Are you Tony’s girlfriend?’ asked Byron.

  ‘He’s Lesley’s boyfriend,’ Lesley answered. ‘You’ve no idea!’

  ‘Good luck with that, Tone!’ said Byron.

  We left Byron and Aaron (still entranced by an endless Mark Knopfler guitar solo) to their music and made our way past the model of the university, along the corridor with the shop and the oversized pot plants and past the bank. As we walked hand in hand towards the canteen, I noticed that Lesley and I were wearing matching legwarmers like a couple from The Kids From Fame.

  ‘I was in the port on Sunday night drivin’ up and down the prom in my car and you’ve no idea! I saw these boys with a brand new XR3 and alloys, and I was ragin’ because I’ve wanted one of them cars for years, and when they drove past me and tooted the horn it just made me even more worse!’ Lesley effused.

  ‘Cars are for capitalists, you know,’ I interjected.

  ‘I know, but the XR3 is lovely. It’s gorgeous! When you drive a good car it becomes a part of your body.’

  I had never thought of a car in this way before and I wasn’t sure if I wanted my father’s green Simca to become a part of my body.

  ‘So, when are you taking me down to Belfast?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘Soon, I just have to arrange it with my mammy because my granny hasn’t been too well with her pains and her nerves and all.’

  ‘Will you show me all the wee red brick houses where youse all live?’

  ‘We don’t all live in those wee streets you know. Sometimes you can be so middle class!’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘Well, you know I’m a socialist don’t you?’

  ‘What does that mean anyway?’

  Lesley knew very well what socialists were because her degree was in Social Administration. I had a feeling that my girlfriend was secretly trying to test me.

  ‘It means … well, it means that I believe in the redistribution of wealth so that resources are shared equally and not kept by the richest people like the bourgeoisie in Thatcher’s Britain.’

  Lesley yawned.

  ‘You see. You’re not even interested!’ I said.

  ‘Oh my nerves! While I’m in the library writing essays on prison reform you’re saving the world by watching movies.’

  Lesley was good at irony.

  ‘If you really believe in socialism why don’t you redistribute your own wealth?’ she challenged.

  ‘Well … I have fifty pounds in my Abbey National savings account, but I was saving that to buy a bike for uni.’

&nb
sp; ‘So you’re not going to redistribute your wealth to anybody then?’ asked Lesley. ‘Some socialist you are.’

  ‘You just don’t like socialism because of your pony and your middle class values.’ I said, drawing upon my recent exchanges with Conor and Marty. ‘What about the people west of the Bann?’

  Lesley stopped walking and looked at me in disbelief.

  ‘I’ve lived west of the Bann all my life! You’ve no idea,’ said Lesley.

  ‘Wha’?’

  ‘Bellaghy is west of the Bann, you know,’ she explained.

  ‘But you don’t complain all the time,’ I said.

  Lesley rolled her eyes and moved us on to more important matters. ‘Do you like my new red lipstick?’ she asked.

  The next weekend when I was at home in Belfast I withdrew the £50 from my Abbey National Savings account and bought a second-hand bike in Smithfield market. I had never owned a brand new bike in my life. Even Santa Claus had brought me a second-hand bicycle down the chimney when I was a wee boy, and there was nothing middle class about that! The bike itself cost £45, and with the remaining £5 I bought a puncture repair kit and a brand-new innovation called a bicycle radio. This was basically a battery-operated transistor radio that you attached to your handlebars. The gadget worked very well in the shop, but when I switched on Radio 1 while cycling the sound of the wind and the traffic drowned out ‘Karma Chameleon’. This made it frustratingly difficult to sing-along to Culture Club, which you would never do on the Ballygomartin Road anyway in case any wee hoods spotted you and beat you up for being gay. Then, one day in heavy rain, the radio short-circuited half way through ‘Kajagoogoo’ and that was the end of it.

  One Sunday night I put the bike on board the train at Central Station to convey my new mode of transport to Coleraine. Now that I was in second year I would be a fully independent traveller with my own set of wheels. I no longer depended on Aaron for lifts to and from the university so he could no longer complain about me not giving him petrol money because I was as tight as a duck’s arse. When the train arrived in Coleraine that night, though, I realised that I would have to cycle home in the dark and I had not made provision for the unrelenting Atlantic wind and rain. I thought the three-mile journey would be easy on my new wheels, but when I set out I discovered that there were more hills to climb than I had previously realised. The bike had three gears, but this didn’t help, and I had a sports bag full of tinned, baked beans on my back to feed me for the week. I was no athlete but I was shocked that I had neither the endurance nor the leg power to sustain me on this short journey. I had forgotten to buy a pair of bicycle clips and when I noticed the oil from the chain was rubbing onto my legwarmers I had to stop to take them off and tuck my combat trousers down my socks. Sheets of icy rain were blowing into my face as if the universe was giving me another good slap, and I couldn’t help but wonder why I couldn’t have my own wee car like Lesley and Aaron did. I would have been quite happy to be called middle class if it meant I could drive my own wee Mini Metro to and from university and play ABBA’s Greatest Hits Volume 2 on the cassette machine on my very own dashboard. As I made my way up the steepest hill of the journey I began to shed unexpected tears of frustration. I was trying to do my best with the resources I had, so how come my best was never enough? Why did everything have to be such a struggle? When I finally arrived at my freezing house, soaked to the skin and upset, I collapsed straight into my sleeping bag and pulled the blankets over my head to keep out the cold and the world. I wanted to escape from reality, and within minutes I was in a deep sleep and dreaming that I was Luke Skywalker rescuing Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt.

  A few weeks later, Lesley came to visit me in Belfast for the first time. I provided her with a detailed set of directions to guide her from the motorway to the Upper Shankill via the streets with the fewest bricked-up properties. Lesley arrived exactly on time and parked her Ford Escort estate outside our house, dwarfing the green Simca in the process. As it was a Saturday morning my brothers were both out playing sports and overachieving with balls, so only my parents were at chez Macaulay to greet Lesley from up the country. I was very nervous. What if Lesley thought our house wasn’t swanky enough? What if Lesley didn’t like my parents? What if Betty and Eric didn’t like Lesley? What if Lesley told my father about winning trophies at gymkhanas? What if my father told Lesley that Christianity was just a load of oul fairy stories? What if Lesley realised that I was just a wee fella from up the Shankill and decided to chuck me?

  My father decided to welcome our guest from up the country with his signature Ulster fry, complete with extra potato bread from the Ormo Mini Shop. My mother put a tablecloth and placemats on the formica table in the living room for this special occasion. Mammy welcomed Lesley in her Gloria Hunniford telephone voice, but when she heard that Lesley had a pronounced country accent she relaxed and spoke normally. Lesley was wearing a teal designer tracksuit from Anderson & McAuley’s that my mother said was lovely on her. My father told Lesley that he used to go fishing for eels near Bellaghy. Lesley explained that her mother was a primary school headmistress, which impressed my mother, and her father was a building contractor, which impressed my father. When it emerged that Lesley was a good Presbyterian even though she was from Bellaghy there was a sense of relief all round. The meal proceeded without incident, even though Lesley declined the offer of an extra sausage and a Paris bun. I was relieved that everyone got on so well together in spite of the dangerous class divide between us.

  After our Ulster fry, I took Lesley out in the green Simca for a grand tour of Belfast. I showed her the Nissan hut where the Westy Disco took place on a Saturday night.

  ‘That there’s the Westy Disco,’ I said excitedly, as if I was a London tour guide pointing out Buckingham Palace.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked.

  Then I took her to Woodvale Park and the Shankill graveyard and, as promised, showed her a proper Belfast entry behind the red brick terrace houses with the bins out. I took her to Tommy and Peggy Lusty’s fish and chip shop for an authentic Shankill Road pastie supper, though she declined the offer of a pickled egg. Outside the chippy we bumped into Irene Maxwell and her mammy who had been shopping in the very few shops still left on the nearby Crumlin Road.

  ‘Hiya, Irene!’ I said.

  Irene was a ska girl now and was wearing a Madness T-shirt and too much eyeliner.

  ‘Hiya, wee lad,’ she replied, chewing her Wrigley’s gum.

  Irene looked Lesley up and down as if she was a judge inspecting a poodle in the Crufts final on BBC2.

  ‘Oh, you must be …Thingy?’ she said to Lesley.

  ‘This is Lesley, from up the country. She’s my girlfriend,’ I said indignantly.

  ‘God love ya, Lesley,’ Irene replied, still looking at me.

  ‘You’ve no idea!’ said Lesley.

  Following this encounter I led Lesley over to the peace wall between the Falls and the Shankill and she could hardly believe that people could live like this. We drove up the Falls Road to Andersonstown where the IRA lived, and I showed her the massive fortified army barracks overlooking the city and the huge housing estates that could swallow all of Bellaghy. I was certain Lesley was impressed by my lack of fear of being on the other side, but she seemed to take it in her stride as if this was quite normal. On the way back we had to casually drive around a burning car because there had been trouble the night before, and once we had checked that the Simca’s doors were locked she barely even flinched.

  Then I brought her up the steep incline of the Glencairn Road for a panoramic view of the city. We passed the Glen where I used to catch tadpoles and where the paramilitaries dumped bodies. From this vantage point you could see the dome of the City Hall; Samson and Goliath, the big yellow cranes of the shipyard; the Belfast-Liverpool ferry, Belfast Lough, and some shops that were still smouldering from the latest firebomb in the city centre. I was very proud of Belfast and I could tell that Lesley was impressed by the city and
my big city ways. As we toured the streets of Belfast, Billy Joel came on the car radio singing ‘Uptown Girl’. This was very appropriate because Lesley was like my ‘uptown girl’ except she was from up the country, which meant she was my ‘up the country girl’, but I was definitely her ‘downtown man’.

  Finally, we went to visit my granny off the Donegall Road and I was mightily relieved when the matriarch and my new girl got on famously.

  ‘God love him, we never knew what our Tony would end up bringin’ home with him,’ Granny said.

  I was slightly offended by this.

  ‘Och, look at you, son,’ she said. ‘You’re all growed up now with a lovely big girl from up the country and all.’

  I could tell from the size of Lesley’s eyes that she had never been inside such a small house in her life. Granny’s terraced house was what Belfast people called a ‘wee kitchen house’, with just one main room downstairs with a working kitchen.

  ‘Look at the two of youse together,’ said Granny, looking us up and down. ‘You’re a quare couple of smashers, just like our Charles and Diana.’

  I looked at the various plates and mugs featuring Charles and Diana on the mantelpiece, and although I was convinced we looked nothing like the Royal couple I appreciated the sentiment and decided it would not be an appropriate moment to engage in a socialist argument against the monarchy. I was praying that Lesley would refrain from asking Granny if she liked her Gloria Vanderbilt.

  Granny allowed Lesley to help me clean out the hearth and light the fire and sent us round to the shop to get her some messages, including a ham shank for her dinner and a prescription from the chemist for ointment.

  ‘Och, you’re a lovely big girl, so you are!’ Big Isobel told Lesley.

  When we said our farewells to Granny, I knew it was time to broach a sensitive issue with Lesley.