All Growed Up Page 5

  ‘C’mere til I tell ye, son,’ he said, smiling with every tooth he could still muster. ‘Them Vedas’ll go like hot cakes the day and the police has stepped up security in the estate because of intelligence.’

  I was loath to spoil his good humour by announcing my imminent departure so soon. I was certain he would be devastated and struggle to find a sufficiently trustworthy successor, so I decided to hold off with my resignation until our mid-morning break. Leslie had parked the van behind the boarded-up shops across from the UDA community centre and, as we sat down for our customary can of Lilt and a Florence cake that was past its sell-by date, I finally plucked up the courage to share the bad news. Leslie and I had been colleagues for years now. Together, we had dutifully delivered bread to the customers of the Upper Shankill through riots, bomb scares and snowstorms. His customers referred to me as ‘The Wee Lad’ – not just any old wee lad, The Wee Lad. In the quiet moments between customers on Saturday mornings, Leslie and I had stood between the shelves of plain loaves and potato farls discussing religion and politics and the perfect wheaten bannock.

  ‘You know the way I got into university with my A levels and all?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, you did well, young lad. Your father’s as proud as punch, so he is.’

  ‘Well, er, when I move up to university I won’t be home every weekend … and there’s nothin’ wrong with bein’ a bread boy or nothin’, so there’s not, er … but I’m going to have to give it up. But I’ll stay on until you find someone else …’

  ‘Aye, young Mark’s startin’ next week,’ Leslie interrupted.

  This was not the response I had expected.

  ‘Sure he did a grand job with the extra pan loaf orders for sandwiches for the Field when you were away with the youth club for the Twelfth fortnight.’

  I was relieved that the news of my departure was not as devastating as expected but my obvious dispensability came as something of a shock. Leslie had obviously been planning for this eventuality for some time, which proved that my mother’s assessment of his business acumen was correct. ‘His nibs is no dozer, so he’s not,’ she often said.

  Leslie was about to launch into a fulsome tribute to my career when Billy Cooper’s granny climbed up the steps of the Mini Shop.

  ‘A pan, a plain, two soda and two pataita,’ she said.

  With this interruption we were on our way again. Leslie generously informed all subsequent customers that ‘The Wee Lad’ was leaving and this produced a few extra tips from my best customers such as Miss Adams, who was not related to Gerry.

  ‘Only always do your best, young man,’ said Miss Adams. ‘Your best is only always what you can do.’

  Mrs McAlister, who lived beside the peace line and had cages on her front windows, gave me a kiss on the cheek, and her daughter Naomi gave me a big hug from her wheelchair.

  Only Big Duff, as was fitting of a paramilitary commander, held back on fulsome praise.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ he said. ‘Another one leavin’ his community.’

  It was the first time I had heard Big Duff refer to it as my community. Usually he called it his community. Why was it only my community when I was leaving?

  When my final bread round was complete, Leslie left me home to my front door. I shook his hand like a man and thanked him for everything. I said I would still see him at church sometimes and would still help out on the Sunday School excursion, especially if he needed someone to make sure the McLarnon twins didn’t shoplift sticks of rock from the amusement arcade in Newcastle. As I was leaving, he patted me on the back and handed me a whole box of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes, which were normally kept for Christmas celebrations and funerals. As he drove off he pressed the big red button on his dashboard and gave me a parting ‘diddle-dee-ding, diddle-dee-ding, diddle-dee-ding’. The familiar sound of the Ormo Mini Shop echoed around the red brick walls in our street. I couldn’t have asked for a better send off. I was on my way now, so I was.

  4

  MOVING ON

  ‘Hello?’ said Mammy, picking up the telephone. ‘Och yes, dear,’ she continued in her best Gloria Hunniford voice, ‘I’ll just fetch him for you now. Toneeee!’

  My mother was being so polite it seemed that either Mrs Thatcher or the Queen had called. As I approached the hall she put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered, ‘It’s Aaron Ward from school. His daddy’s a dentist, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I said, rolling my eyes. Every time I mentioned Aaron Ward’s name my mother said, ‘His father’s a dentist, you know.’ I bet if Aaron mentioned my name in his house, no one in his family ever said, ‘His father’s a foreman in the foundry, you know’.

  ‘Bout ye, Aaron?’

  ‘Bout ye.’

  ‘Well, did you get in?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Class!’

  ‘Are you sharin’?’

  ‘Digs?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Aye!’

  This was good news. Aaron had got a place on a new course about computers in the New University of Ulster and we had just agreed that we were going to share something called ‘student digs’ at Coleraine, which basically meant neither of us would have to live alone. I was relieved that at least one of my mates from school wasn’t going to Queen’s or England because now I would have one existing friend to start my first year of university with. I always got on well with Aaron even though he was brilliant at sport and he thought my head was cut.

  ‘Here, if we get a flat in Portstewart we can play Pac-Man in the Musies every day and eat Knickerbocker Glories in Morellis.’ I said excitedly.

  ‘What are you like, wee lad?’ replied Aaron.

  When I informed my mother that I was going to be sharing a flat with Aaron Ward she was on the phone to my Auntie Doris almost immediately.

  ‘Our Tony’s going to share a house with Aaron Ward. His father’s a dentist, you know.’

  ‘So what?’ Dad shouted from the living room, where he was watching a film about Jacques Cousteau finding fascinating fish on BBC2. ‘All yer man does is look down people’s gobs all day.’

  Our search for accommodation proved to be more difficult than Aaron and I had expected. I couldn’t afford the Halls of Residence and Aaron had secured his place on the course too late to get a room there. So one day, Aaron borrowed his father’s Rover and we travelled up the motorway to Coleraine to explore our options. My disappointment at not being able to afford Halls was considerably reduced when we arrived at the university; the Halls of Residence reminded me of the Weetabix Flats on the Shankill Road, and they were being demolished because they were deemed unfit for human habitation. We visited the Students’ Union to get housing advice and met Conor O’Neill who was wearing a Tyrone Gaelic football tracksuit. Conor explained that he lived in a flat near the train station in Portrush because the bedrooms in Halls were smaller than the minimum size of a prison cell under the Geneva Convention, and this was typical of Thatcher’s Britain.

  ‘Oooh, Thatchurr! That wummin,’ he said as his rosy cheeks went an even deeper shade of red. ‘Oooh, Thatchurr!’

  We thanked him for his advice and took away a list of rental properties to explore in Coleraine, Portstewart and the nearby seaside resort of Portrush. This North Coast region was known locally as the Triangle because the three towns were located on the points of a geographical triangle. This use of geometric shapes to describe a neighbourhood appealed to me, and I wondered if the Falls and the Shankill with the peace wall dividing the two parallel roads could become known as the Parallelogram. Aaron and I stopped at a rusty red telephone box and made a few viewing appointments for lettings that were within my price range. I knew that Aaron could probably afford to pay more than me, because his father was a dentist, you know, but he seemed happy enough to try to find something habitable and affordable enough for both of us. Our first stop was an eight bedroom terraced house in Portrush which was a few miles along the coast from Portstewart. Portrush was where you wen
t on Easter Monday on the train and hoped there were no fights between drunks in your carriage on the way home. It had never occurred to me that people lived in Portrush all year round, and not just in caravan sites in July. Before entering the first property the landlord explained through bad breath that we would be sharing with six other lads and that if any one of us broke anything all eight of our deposits would be withheld. He then told us that he hoped we were not on drugs and showed us several damp bedrooms with stained mattresses on old-fashioned beds and wardrobes with woodworm. Finally he told us it would cost us £30 per week (more than twice what I could afford on my student grant) and that we would be evicted if we paid late and he hoped we would come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as our own and personal Saviour. I didn’t bother to explain to him that I was already saved because he probably would have demanded proof of my spiritual credentials, and having seen his piggin’ property I just wanted him to leave us alone.

  ‘Thanks very much, we’ll think about it,’ Aaron said politely, presumably referring to both the accommodation and the Lord.

  ‘I feel sick,’ I said to Aaron once the landlord left us with three pages of house rules. ‘I’m not sleepin’ on no pissy mattress in a dirty hole like that. I’d rather sleep in a tent. I’m serious!’

  ‘I think a tent might just blow away up here, Hiawatha!’ replied Aaron.

  After several more visits to similarly stinking properties with equally obnoxious landlords I began to lose heart. Nobody had warned me about this. I thought the main strain in going to university would be of an intellectual nature. No one told me you had to live in a dump. In Belfast, if you didn’t go to university and got a good job in the bank and still lived at home with your parents you were expected to put some money into the house for your keep, but your mammy still did the shopping and the washing and cooked your dinner. I was realising that student life was going to be much harder than I had expected. After an exhausting day of disappointment I suggested that Aaron take his father’s car onto the beach for a laugh, but he declined as he had heard that stupid eejits got their cars stuck in the sand there all the time.

  ‘They do not!’ I exclaimed with as much incredulity as I could muster. ‘Some people are as thick as champ, aren’t they?’

  As Aaron and I travelled home we discussed whether we would ever find somewhere decent to live in the Triangle.

  ‘If we had a TARDIS,’ I posited, ‘we would have plenty of room because it’s bigger on the inside than the outside, and we could travel in time and space and arrive in Coleraine before we left Belfast and we could go back in time to hear all our lectures all over again if we missed one or didn’t understand everything the first time.’

  ‘What are you like, wee lad?’ said Aaron.

  A few days later Aaron’s father came to the rescue, as if our accommodation problem was a rotten tooth requiring a root canal. Mr Ward must have put out the word on the dentist grapevine that his son needed accommodation in the Triangle and that a reduced price would help accommodate his son’s wee friend who didn’t have an awful lot. The reward for such a deal would be the use of the Ward’s holiday apartment in the Algarve. It was unfortunate that my father had previously sold our caravan in Millisle, as I was certain access to our holiday home in County Down would have made the offer even more enticing. This time I borrowed the green Simca and Aaron didn’t laugh at it too much when I collected him from his big house up the Antrim Road. Naturally, he had a flowering cherry tree in his front garden. I had never been to the toilet in Aaron’s house but I was convinced his bathroom had an avocado bidet. This time when Aaron and I arrived in Portstewart, several friendly homeowners gave us a cuppa tea and a digestive biscuit before showing us around nice summer holiday homes with radiators in the bedrooms. During one such tour, the landlord had a moment of enlightenment.

  ‘I know the place for two boys like you,’ he said. ‘Mrs Flood takes a couple of good livin’ students every year and her house is lovely. She’ll even make your dinner for you.’

  I liked the sound of this immediately, although Aaron seemed a little perturbed to be placed in the same good livin’ category as me. The man called Mrs Flood to arrange an appointment, and within the hour Aaron and I were ringing the doorbell of the Strand Beach Guest House and admiring the view of the Atlantic Ocean from the front step. A well-dressed older lady with big glasses, kind eyes and a friendly smile answered the door and looked us up and down quickly before inviting us inside for a cuppa tea and a slice of Battenberg cake. Mrs Flood’s living room was bigger than the whole downstairs of my house, with huge windows overlooking the sea and a giant potted plant in the corner. The walls of every room were covered with expensive-looking wallpaper and the entire house was bereft of woodchip. Aaron and I had a lovely chat with Mrs Flood and learned that she was a widow with two dogs and one grown-up daughter who still lived at home, but all three were presently out for a walk on the beach. I wondered exactly how grown-up her daughter might be and knew Aaron was thinking the same thing. Mrs Flood explained to us that she enjoyed the company of students as long as they were no bother. We assured her that we would be no bother at all. Aaron explained that he played rugby and cricket and was from the Antrim Road where his father was a dentist. I added that my father worked in industry and I was a Sunday School teacher from quite close to the Antrim Road and I enjoyed the theatre. We had ‘no bother’ written all over us. Mrs Flood told us that being away from home for the first time wasn’t easy and we would probably need a bit of looking-after. I couldn’t believe it – we had found a mammy in Portstewart! Then Mrs Flood showed us into what would be our shared bedroom. It had a double bed for Aaron, a single bed for me, a desk for Aaron to study at and a wee table for me. Our room had an ensuite bathroom that was bigger than our bathroom at home, even after Daddy had knocked down the wall between the toilet and the bath with the sledgehammer he had borrowed from the foundry. The bathroom suite and wallpaper were all a bit too pink for our taste, and the toilet had a doily ballerina toilet roll holder on top of the cistern, but I was certain we could cope with this minor discomfort when Mrs Flood explained that the cost was only £10 per week including our breakfast and dinner. We were landed!

  A few short weeks later I had to pack my bags and move out of home. I was permitted the use of the Simca for a Saturday to transport all of my worldly goods from my Belfast bedroom to my new room in Portstewart. I packed two suitcases of clothes and a box of books and filled several Stewarts supermarket bags with various other essentials such as my new Sony Walkman, my music cassette collection, digital clock radio and a half-full bottle of Hai Karate aftershave. While I was packing the car, I heard the familiar ‘diddle-dee-ding’ of the Ormo Mini Shop and gave Leslie a wave when he stopped outside Mr Black’s house.

  ‘Two soda and a packet of flies’ graveyards and hurry up, in the name of blazes!’ shouted Mr Black from his front step.

  That was one part of customer service that I didn’t miss.

  ‘C’mere ‘til I tell ye, there’s a situation down the Road,’ called Leslie from the van. ‘Take it easy nigh, we’re not doin’ too bad, so we’re not. I’ll send The Wee Lad over in a minute.’

  Young Mark leapt down the steps of the van with great enthusiasm. I was shocked at how quickly my mantel of The Wee Lad had been appropriated.

  Once the boot and back seat of the Simca were full I returned to my bedroom for a final check in case I had forgotten anything essential, like my passport or my Clearasil spot lotion or my well-thumbed Good News Bible. The room was not completely bare because I knew I would be coming home every other weekend to have my clothes washed and to stock up on tins of Yellow Pack baked beans; however, as I stood at the door and looked inside, it seemed as if my personality had already departed. The sellotape which had held up my Agnetha poster for years had torn off some of the woodchip wallpaper. I sighed as I remembered all the nights I had gone to bed feeling warm and safe in this wee room, even those nights when I could hear
shooting outside and the sound of bombs exploding down the Road. As I reflected on my happy childhood I realised my mother was standing behind me, observing me observing my room. She was crying, so I gave her a big hug. After all those years of her comforting me when I skinned my knees or my big brother decked me it felt as if I was comforting her for the first time

  ‘Sure I’ll be back at the weekends with my washing,’ I reassured her.

  ‘But it’ll never be the same,’ she said drying her eyes as she always did when she realised there was nothing she could do about something sad – like when they axed Meg Richardson from Crossroads.

  ‘You be careful up there now, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure I’m always careful, Mammy.’

  ‘Aye, but your head’s in cloud cuckoo land half the time, love.’

  ‘Well, as Granny would say, I’m all growed up now, so I am.’

  I felt like Bobby Ewing reassuring Miss Ellie after Jock had died in a mysterious plane crash in South America. I gave wee Betty another big hug and kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Don’t you worry about me, Mammy’, I said, knowing fine rightly she would worry about me anyway.

  When I left the house that day, my whole family came out to the front step to wave goodbye. My father put his arm around my mother as they waved, my wee brother looked on solemnly from his skateboard, and my big brother spat out his chewing gum, rolled it into a missile and fired it at the green Simca as I drove off. This only emphasised the magnitude of the change that was taking place in my life. I was leaving home, so I was.