All Growed Up Read online

  ‘The car doesn’t get any smaller by you breathin’ in, ya eejit!’ she shrieked, hitting me across the back of the head with the Green Shield stamps book from the glove compartment while my big brother sniggered in the back seat. There is no truth whatsoever in his allegation that I then lost my temper, called my dear mother ‘a fuckin’ oul goat’, stormed out of the car and had to walk home in the rain. On another memorable evening I was stopped at a police checkpoint on the way home from a rock gospel concert in Glengormley Presbyterian. Hundreds of us had enjoyed Andy McCarroll & Moral Support playing Christian punk and a dozen girls had queued up at the end to seek Andy’s counsel on getting saved.

  ‘Your eyes are poppin’ outta your head, son’, observed an RUC man with a moustache before inviting me to blow into his Breathalyser.

  ‘But I’ve just got contact lenses for my birthday and they’re dead sore, so they are,’ was my honest explanation.

  Of course, my sober breath proved my innocence, but I was affronted that I had been accused of such evil on my way home from an evangelical event where only minutes before I had been praising Jesus with electric guitars. My only intoxication that night had been spiritual.

  ‘Why are youse picking on me instead of being out catching terrorists?’ I wondered.

  On the day of my interview though, the problems really began once I left the security of the motorway. I was certain I had followed all the signs to Coleraine. I had passed Ballymena, where they loved money and Paisley, and ended up in Ballymoney, where Titch McCracken said the Lost Tribe of Israel lived. This theory now seemed plausible to me, because I myself got lost very quickly in Ballymoney. I knew for a fact that there was a brilliant bike rider from Ballymoney called Joey Dunlop, so I imagined I was Joey in a big race driving around the one-way system in laps, and eventually I found my way back onto the main road to Coleraine. I was excited to be nearing my future. I knew very little about Coleraine apart from the fact it was near the Giant’s Causeway and the people up there made cheese in the same way that people in Cookstown made Geordie Best sausages. Once I arrived in Coleraine town centre, however, I was lost once more. I tried to find the route on my father’s AA map of Ireland but for some reason it didn’t include the streets of Coleraine, and when I couldn’t fold the map up again properly I ended up cursing and throwing the whole crumpled mess on to the back seat. The wee orange light came on in the Simca dashboard indicating that I was running out of petrol and I realised I had only the change from my train fare in my pocket. I started to panic and sweat yet again. I was aware I was driving too fast. I couldn’t find the road to the university anywhere. I was driving around in circles past pubs and churches for ages. Then at last, to my enormous relief, I recognised the tall building from the front cover of the university prospectus in the distance. The New University of Ulster was basically a cement skyscraper in a big field beside a lovely river. It was the only skyscraper in Coleraine, although it wasn’t anywhere near as tall as the Empire State Building or Divis Flats. As I finally approached this place of learning, Bucks Fizz were singing ‘The Land of Make Believe’ on the radio (Bucks Fizz were a sort of English ABBA who had their skirts dramatically shortened when they were making their minds up). I surveyed the imposing institution before me and concluded that the university was accurately named because it looked very ‘new’ indeed, even though the campus looked more like the DeLorean Motor factory than Queen’s University. The main building was connected to other smaller buildings by what appeared to be an exceptionally long bus shelter spanning the middle of a big field. Hordes of cold-looking students in jeans were walking up and down the bus shelter with books under their arms and, contrary to Titch McCracken’s assertions, not one of them was smoking marijuana. I instantly wanted to be one of them. I imagined myself in a new pair of jeans from John Frazer’s in Gresham Street, carrying books by poets and philosophers that were too complicated to read and going to lectures given by bearded men with English accents on every possible ‘-ology’.

  Mrs Grant in our street had a son at university in England, although he seemed to have been there for years and never came home. She was very proud of her genius son and managed to mention his university status in almost every conversation. My mother had recently dared to compete while queuing in the post office for her family allowance, informing Mrs Grant that her Tony had an interview at the New University of Ulster, so he did. Mrs Grant reportedly replied that her son was at a proper university with red bricks. I thought this was an odd boast to make because all the poorest houses in Belfast were built with red bricks. It had never occurred to me that red bricks were a symbol of academic prowess. In West Belfast, red bricks were for throwing at the Brits. When I parked the green Simca and bounded up the million steps to the front door I couldn’t spot a single red brick lurking in the architecture of the New University of Ulster.

  In the glass entrance doors to the main building my reflection showed a flustered-looking wee lad in a blue suit with a slightly askew Michael Jackson tie and a sweat-soaked fringe. I looked more like a very young member of Kraftwerk after an Olympic race against Sebastian Coe than a proper student, but I was already two hours late for the interview so there was no time to fix myself. I dashed past a scale model of the university campus up to the reception desk, and a grumpy security man directed me towards another building at the far end of the longest bus shelter in the world. Running along this passageway I appreciated how the plastic wall on one side protected me from the icy wind, but I felt very self-conscious being so well-dressed compared to the proper students with their punky hair and snarly mouths.

  Unbelievably, when I arrived on the far side of the campus I got lost once again. I had never been later or more lost in my life. This latest building was a maze of narrow corridors with confusing numbers on all the doors. I was more panicked than ever. It was nearly five o’clock and if I didn’t arrive soon I was certain the professors would have to forget about me and go home or their dinners would be burnt. At my lowest point I opened one promising-looking door and a mop and bucket smelling of boke fell out. I was close to tears. I didn’t deserve this! Today was supposed to be my big opportunity to come up in the world but everything was conspiring against me! Just as I was on the brink of giving up and returning to beg the surly security man for help, I turned the corner into a long corridor and found a row of chairs and a door marked ‘Interviews: Do Not Disturb’. A small, spotty teenager was on the seat nearest the door. He was wearing faded jeans and a red T-shirt with a picture of a longhaired man in a beret. I assumed he was a fellow potential student who was also here to begin his intellectual transformation. He looked sweaty and nervous and he was staring down at his Dr Marten’s, which reminded me of the boots I once hid money in to avoid hoods and robbers on my paper round when I was a wee kid.

  ‘Are you here for the Media Studies interview?’ I asked breathlessly.

  ‘Aye,’ he replied, looking up briefly.

  This teenager had even more spots than me and I could tell from personal experience that he picked them. I breathed a deep sigh of relief and sat down beside him. Once I had caught my breath, I decided to make friends with my future fellow academic.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Marty. What’s your name?’

  ‘Tony. Where you from?’

  ‘Derry.’

  Catholic, I thought.

  ‘Where you from?’

  ‘Belfast.’

  ‘You wanna do media?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Just as we were really starting to get along, I asked, ‘Do you think there are many people trying to get a place on this course?’

  ‘Aye,’ replied Marty seriously. ‘Let’s hope there aren’t too many fuckin’ snobs from the likes of Belfast Royal Academy!’

  I blushed and then replied very quickly, ‘Aye, right ‘nuff!’

  ‘What football team do ye support?’ he asked.

  ‘Leeds United,’ I replied.

  I did
n’t support any football team but I always answered Leeds in such circumstances in case the person posing the question thought I was a homosexual.

  ‘That’s soccer,’ he corrected me sternly. ‘What football team do ye support? I’m a Derry man.’

  I realised he was talking about the Catholic football they played in Irish in Crossmaglen so I desperately tried to think of the name of a team, but I didn’t know any. My father always changed channels when they were showing a GAA match on TV because he feared the BBC was using the sport to try to seduce us into a United Ireland. Mercifully the door opened then, and a bearded professor wearing brown corduroys appeared, just like on the Open University on BBC2. He ushered out a very attractive blonde girl wearing denim shorts like Daisy in The Dukes of Hazzard.

  ‘Thank you, Marina,’ he said in a deep voice.

  As our eyes followed Marina’s denim shorts down the long corridor, I noticed that Marty and I actually did have something in common, though I was surprised to see that the professor held his gaze on Marina’s Daisy Dukes for a much longer period than either Marty or myself did. For a minute he seemed deeply distracted, as if he was thinking about something most absorbing. I assumed this was what happened when you became an intellectual. Eventually, his thoughts returned to his next two interviewees and I put up my hand to ask a question.

  ‘You don’t have to put your hand up here,’ he said kindly. ‘This is not school. We are not instruments of control and conformity here.’

  I had no idea what he was talking about but I lowered my hand obediently.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said hoping he wouldn’t take marks off me for this mistake. ‘I’m Tony Macaulay and I was supposed to be here at three o’clock but there were lots of bombs scares and riots in Belfast, so there were, and I …’

  ‘It’s okay, your mother phoned to say you’d missed the train and you were in a bit of state. You’re the one from Belfast Royal Academy aren’t you?’

  I felt Marty wince beside me. My being at BRA seemed to offend him.

  ‘Yes,’ I confessed, blushing. Marty stood up.

  ‘I’m Marty Mullen from Derry and I was here on time and I have a right te be seen first!’ he said defiantly.

  I wished I could be this confident with a professor.

  ‘Come on ahead, Marty,’ said the professor and ushered my competition into his office. ‘Just two more after you,’ he added, looking somewhat weary.

  I was confused. When I went to primary school I was a snob because, unlike my classmates in the Council estate, I lived in a semi-detached house, and when I went to grammar school I was a pleb because I came from up the Shankill. I had assumed that my social inferiority would be even more acute at university, but it seemed from my limited interaction with Marty Mullen that here I might be a snob again. Was I going to have to hide who I was and where I was from for the rest of my life? Before this thought could gain any traction, a tall young man appeared at the end of the corridor. He was wearing a Columbo raincoat, army combat trousers, suede ankle boots and a tablecloth scarf around his neck like Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran. I had never seen any of these New Romantic-type clothes available over 20 weeks at any price in the Great Universal Club Book. This guy looked as if he’d just stepped off the stage of Top of the Pops. I noticed how relaxed he was, even though I guessed he was also attending an interview to decide on the rest of his life. He didn’t seem to notice me at all at first, such was the intensity of his concentration on the music from his Sony Walkman.

  ‘Hi,’ he said in an English accent.

  ‘Bout ye?’ I replied.

  He looked slightly confused by my greeting. He offered me his hand.

  ‘I’m Byron Drake from Romford, Essex,’ he said confidently.

  ‘I’m Tony Macaulay from Belfast, so I am.’

  There was that confused look again.

  He was friendly and confident and looked like a proper student even though he hadn’t even got on the course yet. I liked him straight away. It was a new experience for me to feel less confident than my peers. Following my triumph on the stage in West Side Story I was more confident than most boys at my school, but I had only met two possible peers here and they both seemed much more confident than me. I shook Byron’s hand and he looked me up and down with a sympathetic smile, the same way I looked at my wee brother when he forgot to brush his hair before going to church.

  ‘What are you listening to?’ I asked.

  ‘Joy Division,’ he said, as if these two words were truly sacred.

  ‘Ah yeah, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. That’s class, so it is.’ I said.

  This was true because it was a brilliant song and you could sing along to the chorus, like ‘Super Trouper’.

  ‘Too commercial,’ he stated with great authority. ‘The album tracks are far better. Which album do you like best, Tone?’ he enquired.

  I was amazed at how quickly I had become ‘Tone’. I didn’t know the name of any Joy Division albums.

  ‘Er … the early ones,’ I ventured. ‘Before they became too commercial.’

  I knew this was the right answer because Ian Forrester at school always said this about Adam and the Ants and he knew about such matters because he read the New Musical Express. When Adam and the Ants went to number one in the charts for the first time, the band’s name was Tippexed off half the school bags in middle sixth the next day.

  ‘Me too,’ replied Byron. ‘Their early stuff is really, really dark.’

  ‘Yeah’, I agreed.

  ‘Really, really deep’, said Byron.

  ‘Yeah,’ I nodded sagely.

  ‘Yeah, Tone. Really, really dark and really, really deep.’

  We nodded together knowledgeably for a few seconds. I was relieved that I had managed to disguise my ignorance of the more obscure compositions of Joy Division.

  ‘What’s your favourite band, Tone?’ he asked.

  ABBA, I thought.

  ‘Pink Floyd’ I said quickly.

  Now I was thinking on my feet. This conversation was proving to be good practice for coming up with the correct answers for my impending interview. My grown-up cousin Derek had hundreds of albums by all of the most critically acclaimed rock bands that you couldn’t sing-along with and I remembered him talking enthusiastically about ‘The Floyd’.

  ‘Ah, old school, Tone,’ he said. ‘And what’s your favourite Floyd album?’

  Pause.

  ‘Oh, all of them,’ I replied as if it was too difficult to choose from my entire Pink Floyd collection. Little did Byron know that the solitary Pink Floyd record I owned was the single of ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ even though I was still annoyed that it had kept ABBA’s ‘I Have a Dream’ off the Christmas number one spot in 1979.

  ‘Some Floyd is almost Nietzschean, you know,’ pronounced Byron.

  I had no idea what he was talking about but it sounded clever, and with his English accent Byron was immediately my superior. It dawned on me that I had a very long way to go if I were to become an authentic intellectual at university. I clearly had a great deal to learn, and Byron Drake was streets ahead of me. He was the same age as me but he looked like a student and sounded like an intellectual. Beside him I felt unworldly, ill-informed and immature. He listened to proper music that you couldn’t sing-along to, and I was just some wee good livin’ fella from up the Shankill. Beside Byron Drake I felt like I was Titch McCracken!

  ‘Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?’ he asked, more directly than was the norm among the natives. ‘And what the hell are you guys over here fighting over religion for anyway?’

  I was about to attempt an explanation on how it wasn’t as simple as that and I was going to explain that I was, in fact, a Protestant pacifist from the peace line, when the professor’s office door opened. Marty Mullen brushed rudely past me, the spots on his flushed face glowing from the pressure.

  ‘Good luck, Tone!’ said Byron.

  I quickly escaped into the interview room, where thankfully th
e questioning was much less demanding

  One hour later I was back in the green Simca driving out of the university, and after all the panic of the day, I could finally start to relax. I was certain that the professor had been impressed when I told him I wanted to be a great journalist like Woodward or Bernstein or Wogan. The theme from ‘Hill Street Blues’ was playing on the car radio and I imagined I was a tough, no-nonsense American cop on patrol in my police car on the look-out for drug dealers and pimps. I had just been for an interview with Captain Frank Furillo for promotion in the precinct, and now I was on an undercover mission to clean up the mean streets. However my daydream was interrupted when a sign with a picture of a bucket and spade and saying ‘Welcome to Portsewart’ appeared before me. I was so busy wondering whether the answers to all the questions had been intellectual enough that I had taken a wrong turn, and instead of taking the road back towards Belfast I was heading towards the sea.

  As I motored on down the hill, a vast expanse of dark blue ocean opened up in front of me. The sight of the sea took my breath away. As I approached the water, the crests of the choppy waves reminded me of the drawing on the cover of The Cruel Sea, which had cost me £1.50 in fines to the Shankill Library after I lost it down the back of the sofa. I turned the corner to avoid driving into the sea and saw the sea foam blowing across the road and a sign which said ‘Atlantic Circle.’ This was the Atlantic Ocean! I had driven to the very edge of Northern Ireland and the next stop was America! If I put a message in a bottle here it would float across the Atlantic Ocean and wash up at the feet of the Statue of Liberty.

  A few minutes later I turned a sharp corner to find a beautiful little harbour with old wooden boats and sea spray splashing over the walls. Then I was driving along a street with shops on one side and the sea on the other. It was as if all the shops on one side of the Shankill Road had been demolished and replaced with a beach. The wee orange light on the dashboard was still warning that I needed to buy petrol so I decided to stop the car and ask in one of the shops if they had a petrol station in Portstewart. I parked the car within a few feet of the waves and walked along the windy promenade. I found a small but irresistible amusement arcade and wasted 50p on several games of Pac-Man, but the ghosts kept getting me no matter how fast I tried to eat the wee dots. Next I discovered an old-fashioned ice cream café called Morelli’s. Inside it was like a 1950’s American diner, like the one in Happy Days, with lots of mirrors and big long glasses with straws. The café had huge old black-and-white pictures of the Giants’ Causeway and Dunluce Castle on the walls. It was cold and wet outside so there were very few customers purchasing pokes and 99s. I surveyed the menu of delights above the counter and ordered an indulgent knickerbocker glory with my train fare change. I had never seen an ice cream constructed on such a scale before. The knickerbocker glory in Morelli’s was like a poke for the Queen. I ate it alone but the ice cream made me shiver, so I had to return to the counter to order a hot drink to warm me up again. I was impressed at the variety of the food and beverages available outside of Belfast. I opted for another new taste from the menu called a Russian Tea, which I assumed was something communists drank in between vodkas. This exotic beverage was basically hot tea with a slice of lemon, served in a long glass instead of a wee cup and saucer and without milk or a Marie biscuit. The nice lady behind the counter gave me directions to the petrol station and I wrote them down on a napkin. By this stage I thought all the excitement was over but there was more drama to come, even though the day had already contained all the drama of an episode of Dallas, but without the oil or sex. On my way to the petrol station I noticed a sign for the beach. It seemed a shame to visit the seaside and not to go to the beach even if it was too cold and dark to build a sandcastle or go for a wee paddle on the shore. As I followed the signs I discovered, to my utter amazement, that you were actually allowed to drive your car on to the beach. This was irresistible, and so I steered the green Simca onto the sand and sped along Portstewart Strand, swerving past the larger clumps of seaweed. I imagined I was Lawrence of Arabia from my mother’s favourite film, riding a camel with sand dunes on my left and waves on my right. At the end of the beach I found an old concrete army sentry post from World War Two which I used as a public convenience, as the Russian Tea and icy winds had stimulated my kidneys considerably. When I returned to the car to drive back to the petrol station, though, yet another disaster had struck. The back wheels were stuck in the sand! The more I revved my engine, the deeper the wheels embedded in the soft wet sand. The poor green Simca reminded me of the the evil man in the pith helmet who had fallen into sinking sand after trying to shoot Tarzan on BBC2. I tried to dig the wheels out with my bare hands in my good blue suit but my efforts failed and my good brogues filled up with sand too. I tried to remember what I had learned in Scouts about survival but there were no ropes anywhere to tie knots in. Instead I grabbed a piece of driftwood and used it as an improvised spade. Lord Baden Powell would have been proud of me. In spite of this ingenious improvisation, my frantic efforts achieved nothing. I was stranded on the strand, cold, wet, exhausted and all alone. Then, as I stood up straight to rub my aching back, I realised to my horror that the tide was coming in! It was only a matter of time before the waves were lapping at the hubcaps of the green Simca. This was the first new car my father had ever been able to afford to buy on hire purchase and soon it was going to be submerged in the Atlantic Ocean like the Titanic and my da would kill me! Not even a DeLorean could survive this.