All Growed Up Page 6
5
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
‘Why are you goin’ up there, wee lad?’ asked Irene Maxwell after a particularly vigorous boogie to ‘Fame’ by her fellow Irene (Cara) at the Westy Disco.
I often watched costume dramas on BBC1 on a Sunday night, and I had noticed that, when posh English people went to university in Oxford or Cambridge, they called it ‘going up’. I was certain this use of academic language would impress everybody. However, when I told Irene Maxwell I was ‘going up’ to Coleraine she did not fully understand the significance of my words.
‘So what? My aunties always go up to Coleraine on the train for shoes in the January sales,’ she replied.
It seemed that Irene’s passionate desire for me was passing when she added, ‘Sure what do I care, wee lad? You can go up to wherever the hell you like. “I’m gonna live forever, I’m gonna learn how to fly”,’ she sang right into my face with a devil-may-care look in her eyes and a strong smell of shandy on her breath.
The Human League started playing and Irene flipped her large, floppy New Romantic fringe and returned to the dance floor to do the Robot. She continued to glance over at me and wink suggestively every time it came to the chorus of ‘Don’t You Want Me Baby’. It was getting late and all I really wanted was a fish supper from the chippy on the West Circular Road.
When my ‘going up’ day finally arrived it was very cold and windy on the North Coast, and this turned out to be excellent preparation for the next three years. In fact, when I got off the train to walk up the field from the university halt to the skyscraper, I was sure I was going to die of exposure like Captain Scott of the Antarctic. I was wearing my brand-new, tight-fitting Wrangler jeans from John Frazer’s (which, as fashion demanded, were uncomfortably snug round the jimmy joe region), my favourite blue bomber jacket and a pair of new gutties from the Great Universal Club Book. But this casual student attire could not protect me from the icy winds, and I wondered if I would have to borrow an old-fashioned vest and long johns from my granda to survive in this hostile climate. By the time I reached the one million steps up to the front door of the main university building my hands were numb and my feet were freezing. I hadn’t shivered so much since I was a paperboy, and for the first time I truly appreciated how cold Luke Skywalker must have felt on the Planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. I ran up the concrete steps two at a time, partly to warm myself up and partly as a symbolic leap into academia. I felt like I was about to begin advanced Jedi training with Master Yoda.
When I stepped inside the New University of Ulster there were students in blue jeans everywhere, but not one person I recognised anywhere. Aaron Ward had arranged to meet me beside the model of the university in the reception area but there was no sign of him.
‘Good morning,’ I said cheerfully to a ginger student with a beard standing on his own at the model.
‘Is it?’ he replied, spitting his chewing gum on the floor.
‘Hiya, I’m a fresher in Media Studies,’ I said to a spiky-haired undergraduate in a leather jacket.
‘Bully for you!’ he said sarcastically in an English accent, and walked off, sneering.
This unfriendliness was a quare gunk, and my excitement dissipated faster than a shopper in a bomb scare at the Co-op Superstore. Everyone around me seemed happy and confident, and they were all chatting and laughing with their friends about what they had been doing all summer. I felt like Norman No-Mates. This was terrible! At last I was a proper student at university – a real live fresher, boldly going where no one from my family had gone before – but I felt lost and alone and out of place. What was a wee lad from up the Shankill doing in a place like this anyway? A slap around the back of my head brought me back to my senses.
‘Where were you, wee lad?’ said Aaron.
I never thought I would be so happy to be slapped around the head by a rugger boy.
‘The Fresher’s Fair is this way,’ he said pointing to a fluorescent poster, and we began the first of many thousands of treks across the longest bus shelter in the world towards the Students’ Union.
The Fresher’s Fair sounded brilliant. It was where you found out about how university worked and all the different clubs and societies you could join. As we approached the SU, I noticed a vaguely familiar spotty face. It was yer man from Derry from the day of my interview. He was wearing Wrangler jeans and a Wrangler jacket and was accompanied by two other fellas wearing the exact same outfit. They looked more like a gang of wee hard men from down the Shankill than a cohort of undergraduates.
‘Bout ye?’ I said. ‘Marty Mullen, right? You got in then?’
‘Oh aye, the interview. You’re from Belfast aren’t ye?’ Marty said.
Thankfully he seemed to have forgotten the ‘Royal Academy’ part.
‘Yes and you’re from Londond– … You’re from Derry,’ I replied, catching myself on just in time to avoid a sectarian incident.
‘Aye, and so are these two wans here,’ said Marty Mullen introducing his clones.
‘Right, dead on. Bout ye?’ I said to Marty’s mates in a masculine but friendly tone.
‘What about ye?’ they answered in unison.
‘He’s from Belfast too,’ I said, in an attempt to draw Aaron into the conversation.
‘What about ye?’ said Marty.
‘Bout ye,’ said Aaron.
‘What about ye?’ said Marty’s clones.
‘Bout ye,’ said Aaron
‘We’re going over to the Fresher’s Fair,’ I said excitedly, interrupting the flow of the conversation.
‘It’s pure shite!’ said Marty.
‘Oh, right. See ya.’ I replied cheerfully, wondering if I was ever going to make any new friends in this place.
The Fresher’s Fair reinforced just how little I had in common with Marty Mullen; it was anything but shite. There were stands for banks and insurance and travel cards and other boring stuff, but there were also lots of stands where people the same age as me invited me to join their clubs. When Aaron announced at the rugby club stand that he had played for the Glorious First XV rugby team at BRA he was practically mobbed, so I continued to explore the hall on my own. I avoided most of the sports clubs but picked up a leaflet for the canoe club because I had enjoyed canoeing with the Greenhill YMCA in the Mourne Mountains and had only capsized once. The political clubs fascinated me. I picked up a membership form for Greenpeace because they saved whales and accepted a CND pen to help get rid of nuclear weapons. Amnesty International offered me a goody bag full of leaflets explaining how they helped people who were put in prison for no good reason. My father said Amnesty International supported the IRA, so I decided not to join up until I had read their literature and decided for myself whether they were pacifists or Provos.
The Students’ Union had leaflets about getting involved in Rag Week, when you put on fancy dress, put dirty jokes in a magazine and threw flour over everyone for charity. The Students’ Union also had a bar to spend your grant in and an office where you could get advice on money and housing if you spent all your money in the bar too quickly. As I walked passed the Student’s Union stand I recognised Conor O’Neill, who had given us such helpful housing advice, explaining to several wide-eyed freshers that in Thatcher’s Britain student grants would be cut so that working-class people couldn’t go to university. This came as no surprise to me as Maggie had already cut free school milk, but poor Conor was getting very red in the face over it.
‘Oooh Thatchurr!’ I heard him say as I made my way towards the sanctuary of the religious societies. Maybe if I joined one of the religious clubs I would meet other good livin’ people like me who might want to make friends but might not want to have sex or drink. As I made my way in the direction of the sanctified corner a crowd of freshers in front of me made a sharp about-turn when one of them gave the warning cry, ‘Watch out! God Squad ahead!’
Even though the Christians were all located in one corner, I got the distinct impression that they
didn’t sit comfortably together. I detected more of a sense of competition and resentment than spiritual unity between the chaplaincies, the Student Christian Movement and the Christian Union. The Student Christian Movement stand caught my eye first because it had posters about peace and justice and helping poor people in the Third World. This sounded good to me, and I wondered if I might finally meet another Christian who was a pacifist. There were only a couple of people sitting at this stand, though, and they didn’t look very happy. The Christian Union stand was much bigger and had lots of attractive girls giggling and handing out brightly coloured leaflets with sunsets, crosses and kittens. When I made the mistake of asking the Student Christian Movement guy what the difference between his club and the Christian Union was he got very cross indeed and started ranting about ‘right-wing conservative evangelical fundamentalists’, pronouncing each syllable as spitefully as possible. He seemed to really hate the Christian Union, which didn’t sound very Christian to me. A portulent vicar with a red face and a double chin hanging over his dog collar was walking around all the chaplaincy stands as if he was in charge of all things God-related, and I was surprised to see that he was also scowling at the friendly girls at the Christian Union stand. I worried that a peace wall might have to be erected there and then to prevent hostilities from breaking out. Meanwhile, the lovely girls from the Christian Union were asking me what my name was and what course I was doing and where I was living and which church I went to and if I was saved or going to hell. One of the loveliest girls explained, with a sparkling smile, that the chaplaincies and Student Christian Movement weren’t proper born-again Christians and that’s why they were so cross. Having weighed up the differences in theological emphasis I decided to join the Christian Union, with all the lovely girls. The first meeting was on Thursday night, and I made a note of this with my new CND pen in my new Amnesty International diary.
Once I had my religion and politics sorted out I searched for something else to join just for fun. The Film Club looked good but I was studying this on my course anyway, so it was the Drama Club that captured my attention with posters showing scenes from various famous Shakespeare plays. I had enjoyed studying Hamlet at school and, according to Mr Dyson, it was one of Shakespeare’s greatest hits. I began to dream of being cast in an iconic role in one of the greatest plays of all time; however, just as I was getting dead excited and trying to remember the lines of a few soliloquies, Aaron slapped me on the back of the head.
‘Musies!’ he said.
Sure enough, at the back of the Students’ Union hall, behind the Socialist Workers’ stand, stood two arcade machines. Aaron and I raced towards them, upsetting a pile of Socialist Worker magazines on the way. The two men on the Socialist Workers’ stand looked genuinely disappointed, having obviously thought that two freshers were running toward the ranks of socialism with greater enthusiasm than they had seen for years. Aaron begsied Asteroids first and of course he was brilliant at blowing up all the meteorites in space, like Han Solo. However, I decked him at the Frogger machine because I was highly skilled in jumping onto logs without falling into the swamp or getting eaten by crocodiles. After spending £5 each, we went into the uni bar for a Coke and disapproved of all our fellow freshers who were wasting their student grants on drink when they had rent to pay and food to buy. We then spent another £5 on the arcade machines before catching the bus back to Portstewart for a delicious mince and mash dinner prepared by Mrs Flood.
During our first week of living together it became clear that, although Aaron and I were very different, we might be able to cope with sharing a room. I had only ever shared a room with my big brother and he was good at rugby too, so I expected that Aaron might also want to beat me up for fun a few times a week. Aaron obviously got enough practice in scrums on the rugby pitch, though, as he didn’t feel the need to assault me at all. In fact, he didn’t get too excited about anything, really. Yes, he did laugh at my ABBA cassette collection and my Cliff Richard gospel album, and he did threaten to throw me out if I ever started dressing like ‘one of them fruits’ on the cover of my Spandau Ballet cassette, but apart from these musical conflicts we got on okay most of the time. Aaron preferred to listen to edgier music, such as Chris De Burgh, Christopher Cross and Chris Rea. It seemed there was no singer-songwriter called Chris that he did not adore. Once we had agreed that headphones were the best compromise, everyone was happy, including Mrs Flood, who did not appreciate the echoes of either ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ or ‘Patricia the Stripper’ at full volume while she was baking scones for the Gospel Hall. Mrs Flood’s daughter Gwen proved to be a helpful ally in such circumstances, even though it was clear from the day we moved in that she did not fancy either of us. If me and Aaron were bickering brothers, Gwen was our peace-making big sister.
When Thursday evening arrived, Aaron and I headed down to Lecture Theatre 17 for our first Christian Union meeting. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I hoped it wasn’t going to be like church. We arrived slightly late because we had been arguing in the library about whose course was the best. Aaron said Computer Studies was the future and Media Studies was a Mickey Mouse course taken by weirdoes with pink hair. I put up a strong defence, because in my first lecture I had learned that all the roads were going to be dug up soon to put in cable television so everyone would be connected and have twenty TV channels, and computers could never do anything like that.
When we stepped inside LT17, I was amazed to find that the room was full. In my experience, religion was a minority sport – church was always half empty and no matter how old I got I always seemed to be the youngest person attending any religious meeting, apart from christenings. There must have been at least a hundred students there and they were all chatting and laughing and very few of them looked like squares. None of the people I had met on my course were there because it was happy hour in the uni bar. As soon as we entered the room, Aaron and I were enveloped by a group of lovely girls, as if we were Wham! arriving in the Top of the Pops studio. Most of the girls were from Portadown and called Heather, but we made lots of other new friends as well. One of the Heathers introduced us to a big, friendly country girl called Lesley.
‘My old boss was called Leslie, too! It’s a boy’s name,’ I joked, referring to my former employer in the Ormo Mini Shop.
‘Sure, Tony’s a girl’s name,’ she replied.
Aaron laughed.
Lesley smiled with very attractive teeth and continued, ‘I’ll have to boss youse Belfast boys about a wee bit now youse are up here, so I will!’
Lesley had a remarkably strong country accent, lilting somewhere between Ballymena and the Scottish Highlands.
‘Love your accent, so I do,’ I said.
‘You’ve no idea! You’re the one with the accent,’ she retorted. ‘Do you always go up at the end of your sentences in Belfast?’ she said in a mock Belfast accent, still smiling.
It had never occurred to me that country people might make fun of the Belfast accent the same way we made fun of theirs. Aaron laughed. We decided we liked this girl.
‘You’d never get bored with her around,’ I whispered.
‘She wouldn’t give you a chance,’ replied Aaron.
At this point Aaron could not resist the urge to tell one of the Heathers that he had played rugby in the Glorious First XV rugby team at Belfast Royal Academy, and he was once again mobbed by adoring sports fans. It still felt like we were Wham!, but now Aaron was George Michael and I was the other one. This did, however, give me the opportunity to make some friends of my own. I met a gang of other good livin’ fellas from Ballymena, who were very interested in cars and the Heathers from Portadown. They referred to each other as ‘boys’ but most of them were called Bill, Billy, Willy or William, apart from the boys who had surnames as first names. After a friendly chat about the wonders of the new Ford XR3 with Billy Barton and Hamilton Johnston, the boys were distracted by the arrival of an old mate from the Young Farmers’ Club in Ballymoney.
Nobody ignored me or was rude to my face in here. Next, I got chatting to a small group of English students and was introduced to Clive Ross, who said God had told to him to come to Coleraine for a religious revival. On hearing this, one of the lovely English girls said, ‘Praise Jesus! That’s really just kinda beautiful.’ She was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Jesus Rocks’ which was not a phrase Rev. Lowe had ever uttered in the pulpit of Ballygomartin Presbyterian Church.
‘I’m Tara,’ she said with a charismatic smile.
As I shook hands and introduced myself to the group, I started to feel at home at university for the first time. I had a sense that I belonged here, even though these young people were all so different from me. In fact, I had never been part of such a diverse group of people in my life. There were Presbyterians and Baptists and Brethren and Church of Ireland and Pentecostals all in the same room. There were students from Birmingham and Sussex and China and Bushmills. I was aware that I myself contributed to this rich diversity, because there was no one else here from up the Shankill. We were such a multi-denominational, multicultural gathering that I even met two black people and a Catholic.
I was wondering if this was what heaven would be like when Aaron slapped me around the head and reminded me that we had to hitch a lift home soon or Mrs Flood would give our chicken pie and mash to the dogs.
That night, as I lay in the dark on my pink bed sheets, I contemplated my first impressions of university life. For years I had taken for granted the friends I had known since I was a wee boy, who thought I was dead-on just because I was Tony. Here, though, almost every friendship was brand new, and I had to try hard to impress people if they were even going to be bothered with me. I had made some new friends, of course, but some students simply didn’t want to know me. Across the room Aaron was snoring with the all the ferocity of the tiger in Bellevue Zoo. I lay awake and listened to the waves roaring in the distance. I wondered if I would enjoy my new life up here. I feared I might hate it. I was insecure, so I was.