All Growed Up Read online

  I leapt across the peace line like a determined rioter hurdling a petrol bomb and scurried up Twaddell Avenue, past the prim Protestant hedges of customers I delivered bread to every Saturday morning from the Ormo Mini Shop. It was a cold February day but I was sweating like a pig, though the merciful Belfast drizzle on my face helped to cool me down. I swept past The Eagle newsagent shop on the Ballygomartin Road where Oul Mac was busy loading hundreds of Belfast Telegraphs into his new red Ford Transit van to distribute to his latest crew of paperboys, including my wee brother who was dutifully following in my professional bootsteps.

  ‘Bout ye, Mac?’ I shouted to my former employer as I flitted by.

  Oul Mac turned around and stared at the strange figure in a duffle coat sprinting past with pink envelopes falling out of his school bag. A look of vague recognition crossed his wrinkled face as he took a drag of a cigarette and pulled up his trousers, which were now held up by string that had once bound together batches of newspapers. As I turned the corner towards the Glencairn estate I could hear Oul Mac in the distance shouting, ‘What in the name of Jaysus was that?’

  Finally I had to zip up the Ballygomartin Road, past the Westy Disco hut, the site of my greatest snogs, past our church and then up the tortuously steep hill to our estate. When I arrived at our rickety front gate I checked the time. According to my new digital watch it was 10.59, which is digital for ‘nearly 11 o’clock’. I retrieved the front door key from underneath the doormat, dropped my Valentine-laden school bag in the hall and climbed the stairs three shag-piled steps at a time. I changed as swiftly as Superman in a telephone box, and within seconds I was out of my school uniform and in my leather brogues and good blue suit, which was 20 weeks at 99p from the Great Universal Club Book. To complete this breakneck transformation I splashed on some of my father’s Old Spice to make me smell older and less sweaty and put on a skinny red leather tie like the one Michael Jackson wore, although Michael’s tie probably wasn’t reduced to half price in the bomb-damage sale in John Frazer’s.

  I was going to make it! My sprint home had saved time. It was 11.15 a.m. when I left the house in my good suit, clutching my interview letter and a piece and jam I had hurriedly made in the kitchen. I could catch a black taxi down the road in five minutes and make it to the train station before noon. I was elated knowing that, in spite of the awful risk I had taken earlier that day, I could have it all after all! I could receive the most Valentine cards for any boy in the long history of BRA and be en route to my place at university within an hour. As I waited at the bus stop, I thanked God for looking after me and keeping me from being late or shot.

  As the minutes beeped away on my digital watch, though, I began to fret. What was keeping the black taxi? I hadn’t seen any vehicles on the main road for a while. Was the road being blocked to save Ulster? Had the Provos blown up more shops in the town to free Ireland? Friday was always the most popular day of the week for bombs in Belfast.

  ‘Listen, love, there’s trouble down the road and all the buses and taxis is off!’ shouted Billy Cooper’s granny from across the street. She was one of my best bread customers in the estate, especially on a Saturday morning.

  ‘And don’t forget my pan and my plain and my two soda and two pataita the marra mornin’!’ she added.

  This was typical of Belfast! Just when I was about to do something important the Troubles got in the way. I had to start running again. This time I jogged down the Ballygomartin Road, taking a shortcut through Woodvale Park and past a tree with a faded carving of ‘Tony Loves Sharon’ in the bark. Then I scooted down the road, past the Shankill graveyard where lots of children had died much too young many years ago, passing ‘His and Hers’ hairdressers where they permed my mother and all the local pensioners. I flew past the falling-down Stadium Cinema opposite ‘Spin a Disc’ where I bought all my 45s, and the Shankill Library where I had borrowed all the Narnia books and The Hobbit. I ran on and on, past all the churches and pubs and King Billy murals, passing all the great wee shops and the smell of salt and vinegar from Beattie’s Fish and Chip Shop. By the time I reached the city centre I was out of breath and had an awful stitch in my side, so the queue at the security gate where you got searched for bombs provided a welcome opportunity for a rest. Once I had been thoroughly frisked by a fat man with hairs up his nose I checked my digital watch again. It was 11.49, which was digital for ‘nearly too late for the twelve o’clock train to Coleraine’! I zoomed towards the train station as fast as I could but my shins were very sore now from sprinting in my good brogues from the bargain bucket in MacManus’s Shoes. I tried to convince myself that I might just make it. By the time I got to the train station it was 11.55. In the queue, a granny with a shopping trolley dropped her purse, and I helped her retrieve it with a level of urgency that seemed to disturb her. After she had completed the longest purchase of a return ticket to Lisburn in the history of Northern Ireland Railways, I bought my ticket and tore towards the platform as my watch beeped noon. Arriving on the platform, I could not believe my eyes – the last carriage of the Coleraine train was just disappearing out of the station! My heart sank like a poor swimmer in the Ormeau Baths. I imagined I was in one of those black and white movies on BBC2 on a Saturday afternoon that made my mother cry. My sweetheart had been waiting for me on the train so we could run off together and live happily ever after in Paris, but I was late and she had departed alone, heartbroken in the mistaken belief that I no longer wanted to be her lover. A friendly railway man with one buck tooth interrupted my Hollywood reverie.

  ‘If you run quick, son, you might still catch the bus to Coleraine!’ he advised, pointing me towards the bus station across the bridge. Off I loped again. What if I missed the bus too? How could I get a degree if I couldn’t even use public transport? I was annoyed at myself and there was no one else to blame, not even my big brother or the Provos. All of my father’s overtime at the foundry would come to nothing because I had been so proud and big-headed over getting more Valentine cards than anyone else in my class. I recalled the words of Rev. Lowe in church, ‘Pride cometh before a fall.’ My fall was cometh-ing, so it was.

  I reached the bus station, exhausted and perspiring heavily through my good suit. The bus to Coleraine was driving off dispassionately. It was within spitting distance, but I was too late and too tired and upset to spit. This was worse than turning up at City Hall to watch the Twelfth parades after all the bands had already marched to the Field. My career prospects were devastated. As I stood alone in the bus station I had to try hard not to cry in public. This would only have completed my humiliation – boys weren’t allowed to cry because it meant you were a homosexual. It was pathetic – I was seventeen years old now and shaving twice a week but all I wanted to do was cry and tell my mammy.

  I found one of the least vandalised telephone boxes, which as usual smelt of pee, and I looked up the telephone number for Mackie’s in the dirty Yellow Pages. My mother was working in the wages office of the foundry now, because the pay was better than sewing dresses and she no longer had to stay at home all the time to look after us.

  ‘Can I speak to Mrs Macaulay in wages, please?’ I asked. ‘I’m her son.’

  ‘Yes, love, just hang on a wee minute,’ said the operator.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ shrieked Mammy. A phone call at work usually meant someone was ill or dead, so I reassured her that I was neither. I confessed that I had missed the train and said I didn’t know what to do and whined that I was never going to get into university and would end up signing on the dole in Snugville Street for the rest of my life.

  ‘Oh my God, wee fella. That head of yours is full of sweetie mice!’ was her initial response, but then she came up with a solution.

  ‘Come on you up to the foundry and get the car keys from your daddy and drive up to Coleraine yourself in the new car. I’ll phone the university and tell them you’re going to be late.’

  This was the perfect solution. Wee Betty was a brilliant proble
m solver. Of course, her family did give her lots of opportunities to practise.

  ‘I don’t know what we’re goin’ to do with you, son,’ were the final words on the phone before the pips went and my 10p ran out. Within seconds I was off and running again. This was worse than being chased by wee hoods when I was collecting the money on a Friday night paper round. It was more physically demanding than a month of Saturday morning bread delivery with the Ormo Mini Shop. The strain on my legs was greater than when I was forced to do a three-mile cross-country run up the Cavehill by a spiteful PE teacher as punishment for being crap at rugby.

  The most direct route to the foundry was up the Grosvenor Road on the Catholic side of the peace wall, past lampposts flying Irish tricolours instead of Union Jacks, so I knew the journey would be treacherous. As I galloped past murals of Bobby Sands, my granny’s words were ringing in my ears, ‘Them Hunger Strike muriels are a blinkin’ disgrace!’ At any moment I could be stopped by an IRA man and exposed as a wee Prod and a legitimate target. This possibility accelerated my pace considerably up the Grosvenor Road and alongside the Royal Victoria Hospital. I feared I would be inside the hospital soon on an operating table having bullets removed without anaesthetic like a good cowboy shot by a gang of outlaws in the Wild West. This terror spurred me on as I crossed the Falls Road at hijack corner, keeping my head down and at the same time trying to look nonchalant at speed in good brogues, a suit and tie. What would happen if the people of the Falls Road mistook me for a tick man or a Mormon being chased from door-to-door duties?

  Mercifully, I arrived unscathed at the front door of the Mackie’s offices where my mother was waiting in her good beige anorak from the British Home Stores January sale. She was biting her nails and she looked relieved to see me.

  ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with you, wee lad. Your head’s in cloud bloody cuckoo land!’

  ‘It’s not my fault, Mammy, the buses were off and I’m sweltered and my legs are killin’ me and I’ve got a desperate stitch in my side!’

  ‘You’ll have to run down to the Albert Foundry and get the car keys from your Daddy!’ she said urgently. ‘Now away you go and don’t be worrying, it’ll be all right, love, so it will.’

  I scooted down the side street off the main Springfield Road where millions of men in overalls went to work every morning and headed towards the huge metal gate at the entrance to the foundry.

  ‘I’m Eric Macaulay’s son, he’s the foreman from Engineering 2 and I need to see him for an emergency!’ I explained to the security man on the gate.

  He looked me up and down and decided that I was not a terrorist disguised in a cheap suit and Michael Jackson tie attempting to blow up the factory for Ireland.

  ‘Go on ahead, son, yer da’s a right fella, so he is!’ he said gruffly.

  I had never set foot in the foundry before, and when I reached the factory floor I stopped, struggling to take it all in. There was nothing light or comforting or soft here. It was huge and hot and sweaty and noisy and I was surrounded by serious-looking men wearing protective goggles. There was molten metal, sparks flying in every direction and a cacophony of metallic clanks and bangs that made me jump. I had galloped straight into hell! It was like a scene from a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie, but this was real life on the Springfield Road. Mackie’s was like Mad Max! It dawned on me that my father was a hero like Mel Gibson, struggling to survive every day in a hostile environment for the sake of his family. I had heard many stories about the foundry – the hard work, the good men, the poor pay and the bad bosses – but I had never experienced the reality of it before. This was where my father had worked for thirty years so that I would never have to.

  ‘No son of mine is gonna spend his life breakin’ his back for buttons!’ he would say.

  I was suddenly very conscious of my formal attire. The men working around me wore overalls stained with oil and I stood out like an Orangeman at a Novena. The grease and sweat on the men’s faces made me feel clean and privileged and lazy. I noticed all the men had chunky dirty hands that made mine look white and soft, like a lady’s hands in a Fairy Liquid commercial. I stuck my hands in my pockets, certain these hard working men were thinking to themselves ‘What the hell’s a wee soft snob like that doin’ in a place like this?’

  I had started moving back towards the door when an older man with kind eyes and blue overalls tapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘You’re not supposed to be in here, son,’ he said, sensing my discomfort.

  ‘I’m Eric Macaulay’s son and I need to see him for an emergency!’ I shouted over the clamour of industry, trying not to sound too grammar school.

  ‘Aye, yer da’s a right fella, so he is. He’s very proud of you theee wee boys!’ he said kindly as if he’d known me all my life.

  He patted me on the back just for being my father’s son, and pointed to a sort of office with dirty plastic windows in the corner of the foundry.

  ‘Yer da’s over there!’ he said.

  I was never so glad to see the back of my father’s baldy head. As I approached the office, ducking flying sparks en route, I could see that Dad was standing in the office surrounded by a group of tough-looking men in overalls who hung on his every word. They were looking at a huge piece of machinery on a big metal table. When I reached the door Dad was explaining how to fix this monstrous clump of cogs in the same way he once tried to explain to me how to fix my remote control Dalek when my big brother kicked off its sucker just for badness. Suddenly he noticed his very clean son in a suit at the door of his foundry office. He stopped immediately and strode towards me in a manner that suggested both concern and anger.

  ‘Here’s the car keys, ya stupid wee glipe!’ he said, throwing them at me. ‘Are you gonna throw away your chances of not endin’ up in a place like this because your head’s in the bloody clouds?’

  ‘It’s not my fault! The buses were off and I’m sweltered and I’ve got a desperate stitch,’ I replied, catching the car keys by the key ring with one hand, and cupping the pain in my side dramatically with the other.

  But as soon as I had uttered those words I felt guilty. The men in this place knew what it was like to be sweltered and have a stitch in their side every day. Until that moment I had been truly ignorant of the daily life of a working man. My bread round was a Sunday School picnic compared to this.

  ‘Are you gonna stand there like a wee prig, or are you gonna get your arse outta here?’ my father demanded.

  I turned to make my way towards the car park and he added, ‘Now away you go and don’t be worrying, it’ll be all right son, so it will.’

  Within two minutes I was in the foundry car park and there it was before me — our brand new car. The humiliating days of the Ford Escort respray were behind us now. This was the first time we had ever been able to afford a brand new car on hire purchase, and now that I had finally passed my driving test I could drive it with pride. It was a brand new green Simca. A Skoda was deemed less reliable and a Lada was slightly outside of our price range. I called it ‘The Green Dream Machine’ but Timothy Longsley called it a ‘Simp Car’. I jumped into the gleaming green vehicle, settled into the faux suede driver’s seat, turned the ignition key and began my epic journey to university.

  As I left West Belfast I turned on our very first car radio and The Jam were singing ‘A Town Called Malice’. As I rocketed up the motorway, leaving behind all that was familiar, that odd-lookin’ wee man from Soft Cell was coincidently singing ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’. When I reached the edge of the city I felt like an Apollo astronaut about to break free from the earth’s gravitational pull for the first time. I was all alone driving north of Glengormley for the first time in my life. For a moment I forgot that I was late for my university interview. When the Radio 1 DJ, Peter Powell with the perm, introduced Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s new single it seemed like the perfect theme tune for my hopeful new beginnings. I turned up the radio to full volume and, with the
grand synthesized sounds of ‘Maid of Orleans’ filling the interior of the Simca, imagined I had just stolen my grandaddy’s red Cadillac convertible from Southfork Ranch in Dallas and was speeding along Route 66 in sunglasses and a Stetson hat on my way to become the richest and most famous man in America. I was dead excited, so I was!

  2

  SEA, SAND AND STUDENTS

  I was lost, so I was. I had driven up the motorway alone for the first time ever. This was against the law for a newly-qualified R driver, so I was very aware that at any moment an undercover RUC patrol might apprehend me and I would end up being interrogated in a cell in Castlereagh rather than the university in Coleraine. After several secret failures I had finally passed my driving test. The driving examiner had congratulated me with the encouraging words, ‘And for God’s sake will you stop driving like a bloody granny!’ So far, my driving had caused an unexpected mix of conflict and confusion in my life. On one occasion, my mother nearly had a canary because I breathed in tight whilst squeezing the car through the tiny gap between a bin lorry and a Chrysler Sunbeam on the Shankill Road.