Geordie Mayne lived in Urney Street, one of a network of narrow streets which stretched from Cupar Street, in the shadow of Clonard Monastery, to the Shankill Road. I don’t know where Geordie is now or even if he’s living or dead, but I think of him often. Though I knew him only for a short time many years ago, Geordie is one of those characters who might come into your life briefly but never really leave you afterwards.

Urney Street is probably gone now. I haven’t been there in twenty years, and all that side of the Shankill has disappeared since then as part of the redevelopment of the area. Part of the infamous Peace Line follows the route that Cupar Street used to take. Before the Peace Line was erected, Lawnbrook Avenue joined Cupar Street to the Shankill Road. Cupar Street used to run from the Falls Road up until it met Lawnbrook Avenue, then it swung left and ran on to the Springfield Road. Only as I try to place the old streets do I realise how much the place has changed this last twenty years, and how little distance there really is between the Falls and the Shankill. For all that closeness there might as well be a thousand miles between them.

When we were kids we used to take short cuts up Cupar Street from the Falls to the Springfield Road. Catholics lived in the bottom end of Cupar Street nearest the Falls; there were one or two in the middle of Cupar Street, too, but the rest were mainly Protestants till you got up past Lawnbrook Avenue; and from there to the Springfield Road was all Catholic again. The streets going up the Springfield Road on the righthand side were Protestant and the ones on the lefthand side up as far as the Flush were Catholic. After that both sides were nearly all Protestant until you got to Ballymurphy.

When we were kids we paid no heed to these territorial niceties, though once or twice during the Orange marching season we’d get chased. Around about the Twelfth of July and at other appropriate dates, the Orangemen marched through many of those streets, Catholic and Protestant alike. The Catholic ones got special attention, as did individual Catholic houses, with the marching bands and their followers, sometimes the worse for drink, exciting themselves with enthusiastic renderings of Orange tunes as they passed by. The Mackie’s workers also passed that way twice daily, an especially large contingent making its way from the Shankill along Cupar Street to Mackie’s Foundry. The largest engineering works in the city was surrounded by Catholic streets, but it employed very few Catholics.

Often bemused by expressions such as Catholic street and Protestant area, I find myself nonetheless using the very same expressions. How could a house be Catholic or Protestant? Yet when it comes to writing about the reality it’s hard to find other words. Though loath to do so, I use the terms Catholic and Protestant here to encompass the various elements who make up the Unionist and non-Unionist citizens of this state.

It wasn’t my intention to tell you all this. I could write a book about the craic I had as a child making my way in and out of all those wee streets on the way back and forth to school or the Boys’ Confraternity in Clonard or even down at the Springfield Road dam fishing for spricks, but that’s not what I set out to tell you about. I set out to tell you about Geordie Mayne of Urney Street. Geordie was an Orangeman, nominally at least. He never talked about it to me except on the occasion when he told me that he was one. His lodge was The Pride of the Shankill Loyal Orange Lodge, I think, though it’s hard to be sure after all this time.

I only knew Geordie for a couple of weeks, but even though that may seem too short a time to make a judgement I could never imagine him as a zealot or a bigot. You get so that you can tell, and by my reckoning Geordie wasn’t the worst. He was a driver for a big drinks firm: that’s how I met him. I was on the run at the time. It was almost Christmas 1969, and I had been running about like a blue-arsed fly since early summer. I hadn’t worked since July, we weren’t getting any money except a few bob every so often for smokes, so things were pretty rough. But it was an exciting time: I was only twenty-one and I was one of a dozen young men and women who were up to their necks in trying to sort things out.

To say that I was on the run is to exaggerate a little. I wasn’t wanted for anything, but I wasn’t taking any chances either. I hadn’t slept at home since the end of May when the RUC had invaded Hooker Street in Ardoyne and there had been a night or two of sporadic rioting. Most of us who were politically active started to take precautions at that time. We were expecting internment or worse as the civil rights agitation and the reaction against it continued to escalate. Everything came to a head in August, including internment, and in Belfast the conflict had been particularly sharp around Cupar Street. This abated a little, but we thought it was only a temporary respite: with the British army on the streets it couldn’t be long till things hotted up again. In the meantime we were not making ourselves too available.

Conway Street, Cupar Street at the Falls Road end and all of Norfolk Street had been completely burned out on the first night of the August pogrom; further up, near the monastery, Bombay Street was gutted on the following night. These were all Catholic streets. Urney Street was just a stone’s throw from Bombay Street; that is, if you were a stone thrower.

The drinks company Geordie worked for was taking on extra help to cope with the Christmas rush, and a few of us went up to the head office on the Glen Road on spec one morning; as luck would have it I got a start, together with big Eamonn and two others. I was told to report to the store down in Cullingtree Road the next morning and it was there that I met Geordie.

He saw me before I saw him. I was standing in the big yard among all the vans and lorries and I heard this voice shouting: “Joe…Joe Moody.”

I paid no attention.

“Hi, boy! Is your name Joe Moody?” the voice repeated.

With a start I realised that that was indeed my name, or at least it was the bum name I’d given when I’d applied for the job.

“Sorry,” I stammered.

“I thought you were corned beef. C’mon over here.”

I did as instructed and found myself beside a well-built, red-haired man in his late thirties. He was standing at the back of a large empty van.

“Let’s go, our kid. My name’s Geordie Mayne. We’ll be working together. We’re late. Have you clocked in? Do it over there and then let’s get this thing loaded up.”

He handed me a sheaf of dockets.

“Pack them in that order. Start from the back. I’ll only be a minute.”

He disappeared into the back of the store. I had hardly started to load the van when he arrived back. Between the two of us we weren’t long packing in the cartons and crates of wines and spirits and then we were off, Geordie cheerfully saluting the men on barricade duty at the end of the street as they waved us out of the Falls area and into the rest of the world.

Geordie and I spent most of our first day together delivering our load to off-licences and public houses in the city centre. I was nervous of being recognised because I had worked in a bar there, but luckily it got its deliveries from a different firm. It was the first day I had been in the city centre since August; except for the one trip to Dublin and one up to Derry, I had spent all my time behind the barricades. It was disconcerting to find that, apart from the unusual sight of British soldiers with their cheerful, arrogant voices, life in the centre of Belfast, or at least its licenced premises, appeared unaffected by the upheavals of the past few months. It was also strange as we made our deliveries to catch glimpses on television of news coverage about the very areas and issues I was so involved in and familiar with. Looked at from outside through the television screen, the familiar scenes might as well have been in another country.

Geordie and I said nothing of any of this to one another. That was a strange experience for me, too. My life had been so full of the cut-and-thrust of analysis, argument and counter-argument about everything that affected the political situation that I found it difficult to restrain myself from commenting on events to this stranger. Indeed, emerging from the close camaraderie of my closed world, as I had done only that morning, I found it unusual even to be with a stranger. Over a lunch of soup and bread rolls in the Harp Bar in High Street, I listened to the midday news on the BBC’s Radio Ulster while all the time pretending indifference. The lead item was a story about an IRA convention and media speculation about a republican split. It would be nightfall before I would be able to check this out for myself, though a few times during the day I almost left Geordie in his world of cheerful pubs and publicans for the security of the ghettos.

The next few days followed a similar pattern. Each morning started with Geordie absenting himself for a few minutes to the back of the store while I started loading up the van. Then we were off from within the no-go areas and into the city centre. By the end of the first week the two of us were like old friends. Our avoidance of political topics, even of the most pressing nature, that unspoken and much-used form of political protection and survival developed through expediency, had in its own way been a political indicator, a signal, that we came from “different sides”.

In the middle of the second week Geordie broke our mutual and instinctive silence on this issue when with a laugh he handed me that morning’s dockets. “Well, our kid, this is your lucky day. You’re going to see how the other half lives. We’re for the Shankill.”

My obvious alarm fueled his amusement.

“Oh, aye,” he guffawed. “It’s all right for me to traipse up and down the Falls every day, but my wee Fenian friend doesn’t want to return the favour.”

I was going to tell him that nobody from the Falls went up the Shankill burning down houses but I didn’t. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I didn’t want to go up the Shankill either. I was in a quandary and set about loading up our deliveries with a heavy heart. After I had only two of the cartons loaded I went to the back of the store to tell Geordie that I was jacking it in. He was in the wee office with oul’ Harry the storeman. Each of them had a glass of spirits in his hand. Geordie saw me coming and offered his to me.

“Here, our kid, it’s best Jamaicay rum. A bit of Dutch courage never did anyone any harm.”

“Nawh, thanks, Geordie, I don’t drink spirits. I need to talk to you for a minute…”

“If it’s about today’s deliveries, you’ve nothing to worry about. We’ve only one delivery up the Shankill, and don’t be thinking of not going ’cos you’ll end up out on your arse. It’s company policy that mixed crews deliver all over the town. Isn’t that right, Harry?”

Harry nodded in agreement.

“C’mon, our kid. I’ll do the delivery for you. Okay? You can sit in the van. How’s that grab you? Can’t be fairer than that, can I, Harry?”

“Nope,” Harry grunted. They drained their glasses.

“I’ll take a few beers for the child, Harry,” Geordie said over his shoulder as he and I walked back to the van.

“You know where they are,” said Harry.

“Let’s go,” said Geordie to me. “It’s not every day a wee Fenian like you gets on to the best road in Belfast…” he grabbed me around the neck “… and off it again in one piece. Hahaha.”

That’s how I ended up on the Shankill. It wasn’t so bad, but before I tell you about that, in case I forget, from then on, each morning when Geordie returned from the back of the store after getting his “wee drop of starting fuel”, he always had a few bottles of beer for me.

Anyway, back to the job in hand. As Geordie said, we only had the one order on the Shankill. It was to the Long Bar. We drove up by Unity Flats and on to Peter’s Hill. There were no signs of barricades like the ones on the Falls, and apart from a patrolling RUC Land-Rover and two British army jeeps, the road was the same as it had always seemed to me. Busy and prosperous and coming awake in the early winter morning sunshine.

A few months earlier, in October, the place had erupted in protest at the news that the B-Specials were to be disbanded. The protesters had killed one RUC man and wounded three others; thirteen British soldiers had been injured. In a night of heavy gun-fighting along the Shankill Road, the British had killed two civilians and wounded twenty others. Since then there had been frequent protests here against the existence of no-go areas in Catholic parts of Belfast and Derry.

Mindful of all this, I perched uneasily in the front of the van, ready at a second’s notice to spring into Geordie’s seat and drive like the blazes back whence I came. I needn’t have worried. Geordie was back in moments. As he climbed into the driver’s seat he threw me a packet of cigarettes.

“There’s your Christmas box, our kid. I told them I had a wee Fenian out here and that you were dying for a smoke.”

Then he took me completely by surprise.

“Do y’ fancy a fish supper? It’s all right! We eat fish on Friday as well. Hold on!”

And before I could say anything he had left me again as he sprinted from the van into the Eagle Supper Saloon.

“I never got any breakfast,” he explained on his return. “We’ll go ’round to my house. There’s nobody in.”

I said nothing as we turned into Westmoreland Street and in through a myriad of backstreets till we arrived in Urney Street. Here the tension was palpable, for me at least. Geordie’s house was no different from ours. A two-bedroomed house with a toilet in the backyard and a modernised scullery. Only for the picture of the British queen, I could have been in my own street. I buttered rounds of plain white bread and we wolfed down our fish suppers with lashings of Geordie’s tea.

Afterwards, my confidence restored slightly, while Geordie was turning the van in the narrow street I walked down to the corner and gazed along the desolation of Cupar Street up towards what remained of Bombay Street. A British soldier in a sandbagged emplacement greeted me in a John Lennon accent.

“’Lo, moite. How’s about you?”

I ignored him and stood momentarily immersed in the bleak pitifulness of it all, from the charred remains of the small houses to where the world-weary slopes of Divis Mountain gazed benignly in their winter greenness down on us where we slunk, blighted, below the wise steeples of Clonard. It was Geordie’s impatient honking of the horn that shook me out of my reverie. I nodded to the British soldier as I departed. This time he ignored me.

“Not a pretty sight,” Geordie said as I climbed into the van beside him.

I said nothing. We made our way back through the side streets on to the Shankill again in silence. As we turned into Royal Avenue at the corner of North Street he turned to me.

“By the way,” he said, “I wasn’t there that night.”

There was just a hint of an edge in his voice.

“I’m sorry! I’m not blaming you,” I replied. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know,” he told me firmly.

That weekend, subsidised by my week’s wages, I was immersed once more in subversion. That at least was how the Unionist government viewed the flurry of political activity in the ghettos; and indeed a similar view was taken by those representatives of the Catholic middle class who had belatedly attached themselves to the various committees in which some of us had long been active. On Monday I was back delivering drink.

We spent the week before Christmas in County Down, seemingly a million miles from the troubles and the tension of Belfast town. For the first time in years I did no political work. It was late by the time we got back each night and I was too tired, so that by Wednesday I realised that I hadn’t even seen, read or heard any news all that week. I smiled to myself at the thought that both I and the struggle appeared to be surviving without each other; in those days that was a big admission for me to make, even to myself.

In its place Geordie and I spent the week up and down country roads, driving through beautiful landscapes, over and around hilltops and along rugged seashores and loughsides as we ferried our liquid wares from village to town, from town to port and back to village again; from market town to fishing village, from remote hamlet to busy crossroads. Even yet the names have a magical sound for me, and at each one Geordie and I took the time for a stroll or a quick look at some local antiquity.

One memorable day we journeyed out to Comber and from there to Killyleagh and Downpatrick, to Crossgar and back again and along the Ballyhornan road and on out to Strangford where we ate our cooked ham baps and drank bottles of stout, hunkering down from the wind below the square tower of Strangford Castle, half-frozen with the cold as we looked over towards Portaferry on the opposite side, at the edge of the Ards Peninsula. We spent a day there as well, and by this time I had a guide book with me written by Richard Hayward, and I kept up a commentary as we toured the peninsula, from Millisle the whole way around the coastline and back to Newtownards. By the end of the week we had both seen where the Norsemen had settled and the spot where Thomas Russell, “the man from God knows where”, was hanged, where St Patrick had lived and Cromwell and Betsy Grey and Shane O’Neill. We visited monastic settlements and stone circles, round towers, dolmens and holy wells. Up and down the basket-of-eggs county we walked old battle sites like those of the faction fights at Dolly’s Brae or Scarva, “wee buns” we learned compared to Saintfield where Munroe and 7,000 United Irishmen routed the English forces, or the unsuccessful three-year siege by the Great O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, of Jordan’s Castle at Ardglass. And in between all this we delivered our cargoes of spirits and fine wines.

This was a new world to me, and to Geordie, too. It was a marked contrast to the smoke and smell and claustrophobic closeness of our Belfast ghettos and the conflicting moods which gripped them in that winter of 1969. Here was the excitement of greenery and wildlife, of rushing water, of a lightness and heady clearness in the atmosphere and of strange magic around ancient pagan holy places. We planned our last few days’ runs as tours and loaded the van accordingly so that whereas in the city we took the shortest route, now we steered according to Richard Hayward’s guide book.

On Christmas Eve we went first to Newry where we unloaded over half our supplies in a series of drops at that town’s licenced premises. By lunchtime we were ready for the run along the coast road to Newcastle, skirting the Mournes, and from there back home. At our last call on the way out to the Warrenpoint Road, the publican set us up two pints as a Christmas box. The pub was empty, and as we sat there enjoying the sup, a white-haired man in his late sixties came in. He was out of breath, weighed down with a box full of groceries.

“A bully, John,” he greeted the publican. “Have I missed the bus?”

“Indeed and you have, Paddy, and he waited for you for as long as he could.”

Paddy put his box down on the floor. His face was flushed.

“Well, God’s curse on it anyway. I met Peadar Hartley and big MacCaughley up the town and the pair of them on the tear and nothing would do them boys but we’d have a Christmas drink and then another till they put me off my whole way of going with their ceili-ing and oul’ palavering. And now I’ve missed the bloody bus. God’s curse on them two rogues. It’ll be dark before there’s another one.”

He sighed resignedly and pulled a stool over to the bar, saluting the two of us as he did so.

“John, I might as well have a drink when I’m this far and give these two men one as well.”

He overruled our protests.

“For the season that’s in it. One more’ll do youse no harm. It’s Christmas. Isn’t that right, John? And one for yourself and I’ll have a wee Black Bush meself.”

“Will you have anything in the Bush, Paddy?”

“Indeed and I’ll not. Now, John, if it was Scotch now I’d have to have water or ginger ale or something, but that’s only with Scotch. I take nothing in my whiskey!”

We all joined him in his delighted laughter.

“What way are youse going, boys? Did you say youse were going out towards Newcastle?” the publican asked us.

Geordie nodded.

“Could you ever drop oul’ Paddy out that road? He has to go as far as Kilkeel, and by the looks of him if he doesn’t go soon he’ll be here till the New Year.”

“No problem,” Geordie grinned. I could see he was enjoying the old man who was now lilting merrily away to himself.

“De euw did eh euw, did eh euw did del de.”

“Paddy, these two men’ll give you a wee lift home.”

Paddy was delighted.

“Surely to God, boys, but youse is great men so youse are. Here, we’ll have another wee one before we go. A wee deoch don dorais.* All right, John?”

“Indeed and it isn’t,” John told him. “Kate’ll be worrying about you and these two lads can’t wait. Isn’t that right, boys?”

“Well, let it never be said that I kept men from their work,” Paddy compromised.

“A happy New Year to you, John.” The three of us saluted our host and retreated into the crisp afternoon air.

“It’ll snow the night,” our newfound friend and passenger announced, sniffing the air. I was carrying his box.

He did a jig, to Geordie’s great amusement, when he saw that we were travelling in a drinks van.

“It’ll be the talk of the place!” he laughed as we settled him into the passenger seat while I wedged myself against the door. Geordie gave him a bottle of stout as we pulled away.

“Do you want a glass?” I asked. “There’s some here.”

“A glass? Sure youse are well organised. Youse must be from Belfast! No, son, I don’t need a glass, thanks all the same. This is grand by the neck. By the way, my name’s Paddy O’Brien.”

We introduced ourselves.

“You’ll never get a job in the shipyard with a name like that,” Geordie slagged him.

“And I wouldn’t want it. ’Tis an Orange hole, begging your pardon, lads, and no offence, but them that’s there neither works nor wants.”

To my relief Geordie guffawed loudly, winking at me as he did. For the rest of the journey Paddy regaled us with stories of his mishaps in black holes and other places.

“I wouldn’t like to live in Belfast. I’ll tell youse that for sure. I worked there often enough, in both quarters, mind you, and I always found the people as decent as people anywhere else. I was at the building and I went often enough to Casement Park, surely to God I did, for the football and some grand games I saw, but I wouldn’t live there. Thon’s a tough town!”

“It’s not so bad,” I said loyally, while all the time looking beyond Paddy and past Geordie to where Narrow Water flashed past us and the hills of County Louth dipped their toes in Carlingford Bay.

“No, give me the Mournes,” Paddy persisted. “Were youse ever in the Mournes?” He emphasised “in”.

“Nawh,” we told him. Geordie began to enthuse about our week journeying around the county.

“Sure youse have a great time of it,” Paddy agreed. “I’ll come with youse the next time. Work? Youse wouldn’t know what work was. But boys, I’m telling youse this. Don’t be leaving this day without going into the Mournes. There’s a road youse could take, wouldn’t be out of your way, so it wouldn’t. After youse drop me off, go on towards Annalong on this road, and a wee bit outside the village on the Newcastle side there’s a side road at Glassdrummond that’ll take you up to Silent Valley. It’s a straight road from here right through to Glassdrummond, boys. Youse can’t miss it.”

“That sounds good to me,” Geordie agreed.

“Well, that’s the best I can do for youse, boys. Come back some day and I’ll take youse on better roads right into the heart of the mountains, but it’ll be dark soon and snowing as well and my Kate’ll kill me, so the Silent Valley’ll have t’ do youse. You’ll be able to see where youse Belfast ones gets your good County Down water from to water your whiskey with and to wash your necks.”

“Is Slieve Donard the highest of the Mournes?” I asked, trying to find my faithful guide book below Paddy’s seat.

“Donard? The highest? It’ll only take you a couple of hours to climb up there; but, boys, you could see the whole world from Slieve Donard. That’s where St Donard had his cell, up on the summit. You’ll see the Isle of Man out to the east and up along our own coast all of Strangford Lough and up to the hills of Belfast and the smoke rising above them, and beyond that on a clear day Lough Neagh and as far as Slieve Gallion on the Derry and Tyrone border. And southwards beyond Newry you’ll see Slieve Gullion, where Cúchulainn rambled, and Slieve Foy east of there, behind Carlingford town, and farther south again you’ll see the Hill of Howth and beyond that again, if the day is good, the Sugar Loaf and the Wicklow Mountains’ll just be on the horizon.”

“That’s some view,” Geordie said in disbelief.

Paddy hardly heard as he looked pensively ahead at the open road.

“There’s only one thing you can’t see from Donard, and many people can’t see it anyway although it’s the talk of the whole place, and even if it jumped up and bit you it’s not to be seen from up there among all the sights. Do youse know what I’m getting at, boys? It’s the cause of all our cursed troubles, and if you were twice as high as Donard you couldn’t see it. Do youse know what it is?”

We both waited expectantly, I with a little trepidation, for him to enlighten us.

“The bloody border,” he announced eventually. “You can’t see that awful bloody imaginary line that they pretend can divide the air and the mountain ranges and the rivers, and all it really divides is the people. You can see everything from Donard, but isn’t it funny you can’t see that bloody border?”

I could see Geordie’s hands tighten slightly on the steering wheel. He continued smiling all the same.

“And there’s something else,” Paddy continued. “Listen to all the names: Slieve Donard, or Bearnagh or Meelbeg or Meelmore—all in our own language. For all their efforts they’ve never killed that either. Even most of the wee Orange holes: what are they called? Irish names. From Ballymena to Ahoghill to the Shankill, Aughrim, Derry and the Boyne. The next time youse boys get talking to some of them Belfast Orangemen you should tell them that.”

“I’m a Belfast Orangeman,” Geordie told him before I could say a word. I nearly died, but Paddy laughed uproariously. I said nothing. I could see that Geordie was starting to take the needle. We passed through Kilkeel with only Paddy’s chortling breaking the silence.

“You’re the quare craic,” he laughed. “I’ve really enjoyed this wee trip. Youse are two decent men. Tá mise go han buíoch daoibh, a cháirde. I’m very grateful to you indeed.”

“Tá fáilte romhat,” I said, glad in a way that we were near his journey’s end.

“Oh, maith an fear,” he replied. “Tabhair dom do lámh.”

We shook hands.

“What d’fuck’s youse two on about?” Geordie interrupted angrily.

“He’s only thanking us and I’m telling him he’s welcome,” I explained quickly. “Shake hands with him!”

Geordie did so grudgingly as the old man directed him to stop by the side of the road.

“Happy Christmas,” he proclaimed as he lifted his box.

“Happy Christmas,” we told him. He stretched across me and shook hands with Geordie again.

“Go n’éirigh an bóthar libh,” he said. “May the road rise before you.”

“And you,” I shouted, pulling closed the van door as Geordie drove off quickly and Paddy and his box vanished into the shadows.

“Why don’t youse talk bloody English,” Geordie snarled savagely at me as he slammed through the gears and catapulted the van forward.

“He just wished you a safe journey,” I said lamely. “He had too much to drink and he was only an old man. It is Christmas after all.”

“That’s right, you stick up for him. He wasn’t slow about getting his wee digs in, Christmas or no Christmas. I need a real drink after all that oul’ balls.”

He pulled the van roughly into the verge again. I got out, too, as he clambered outside and climbed into the back. Angrily he selected a carton of whiskey from among its fellows and handed me a yellow bucket which was wedged in among the boxes.

“Here, hold this,” he ordered gruffly. As I did so he held the whiskey box at arm’s length above his head and then, to my surprise, dropped it on the road. We heard glass smashing and splintering as the carton crumpled at one corner. Geordie pulled the bucket from me and sat the corner of the whiskey box into it.

“Breakages,” he grinned at my uneasiness. “You can’t avoid them. By the time we get to Paddy’s Silent bloody Valley there’ll be a nice wee drink for us to toast him and the border and that bloody foreign language of yours. Take that in the front with you.”

I did as he directed. Already the whiskey was beginning to drip into the bucket.

“That’s an old trick,” Geordie explained as we continued our journey. He was still in bad humour and maybe even a little embarrassed about the whiskey, which continued to dribble into the bucket between my feet on the floor. “The cardboard acts as a filter and stops any glass from getting through. Anyway, it’s Christmas and Paddy isn’t the only one who can enjoy himself,” he concluded as we took the side road at Glassdrummond and commenced the climb up to the Silent Valley.

The view that awaited us was indeed breathtaking, as we came suddenly upon the deep mountain valley with its massive dam and huge expanse of water surrounded by rugged mountains and skirted by a picturesque stretch of road.

“Well, Paddy was right about this bit anyway,” Geordie conceded as he parked the van and we got out for a better view. “It’s a pity we didn’t take a camera with us,” he said. “It’s gorgeous here. Give’s the bucket and two of them glasses.”

He filled the two glasses and handed me one.

“Don’t mind me, our kid. I’m not at myself. Here’s to a good Christmas.”

That was the first time I drank whiskey. I didn’t want to offend Geordie again by refusing, but I might as well have for I put my foot in it anyway the next minute. He was gazing reflectively up the valley, quaffing his drink with relish while I sipped timorously on mine.

“Do you not think you’re drinking too much to be driving?” I asked.

He exploded.

“Look, son, I’ve stuck you for a few weeks now, and I never told you once how to conduct your affairs; not once. You’ve gabbled on at me all week about every bloody thing under the sun and today to make matters worse you and that oul’ degenerate that I was stupid enough to give a lift to, you and him tried to coerce me and talked about me in your stupid language, and now you’re complaining about my drinking. When you started as my helper I didn’t think I’d have to take the pledge and join the fuckin’ rebels as well. Give my head peace, would you, wee lad; for the love and honour of God, give’s a bloody break!”

His angry voice skimmed across the water and bounced back at us off the side of the mountains. I could feel the blood rushing to my own head as the whiskey and Geordie’s words registered in my brain.

“Who the hell do you think you are, eh?” I shouted at him, and my voice clashed with the echo of his as they collided across the still waters.

“Who do I think I am? Who do you think you are is more like it,” he snapped back, “with all your bright ideas about history and language and all that crap. You and that oul’ eejit Paddy are pups from the same Fenian litter, but you remember one thing, young fella-me-lad, youse may have the music and songs and history and even the bloody mountains, but we’ve got everything else; you remember that!”

His outburst caught me by surprise.

“All that is yours as well, Geordie. We don’t keep it from you. It’s you that rejects it all. It doesn’t reject you. It’s not ours to give or take. You were born here same as me.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what’s mine. I know what’s mine. I know where I was born. You can keep all your emotional crap. Like I said, we’ve got all the rest.”

“Who’s we, Geordie? Eh? Who’s we? The bloody English queen or Lord bloody Terence O’Neill, or Chi Chi, the dodo that’s in charge now? Is that who we is? You’ve got all the rest! Is that right, Geordie? That’s shit and you know it.”

I grabbed him by the arm and spun him round to face me. For a minute I thought he was going to hit me. I was ready for him. But he said nothing as we stood glaring at each other.

“You’ve got fuck all, Geordie,” I told him. “Fuck all except a two-bedroomed house in Urney Street and an identity crisis.”

He turned away from me and hurled his glass into the darkening distance.

“This’ll nivver be Silent Valley again, not after we’re finished with it,” he laughed heavily. “I’m an Orangeman, Joe. That’s what I am. It’s what my da was. I don’t agree with everything here. My da wouldn’t even talk to a Papist, nivver mind drink or work with one. When I was listening to Paddy I could see why. That’s what all this civil rights rubbish is about as well. Well, I don’t mind people having their civil rights. That’s fair enough. But you know and I know if it wasn’t that it would be something else. I’m easy come, easy go. There’d be no trouble if everybody else was the same.”

I had quietened down also by now.

“But people need their rights,” I said.

“Amn’t I only after saying that!” he challenged me.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” I retorted.

“Me?” he laughed. “Now I know your head’s cut! I’m going to do exactly nothing about it! There are a few things that make me different from you. We’ve a lot in common, I grant you that, but we’re different also, and one of the differences is that after Christmas I’ll have a job and you won’t, and I intend to keep it. And more importantly, I intend to stay alive to do it.”

“Well, that’s straight enough and there’s no answer to that,” I mused, sipping the last of my whiskey.

Geordie laughed at me.

“Typical Fenian,” he commented. “I notice you didn’t throw away your drink.”

“What we have we hold.” I took another wee sip and gave him the last of it.

“By the way, seeing we’re talking to each other instead of at each other, there’s no way that our ones, and that includes me, will ever let Dublin rule us.”

The sun was setting and there were a few wee flurries of snow in the air.

“Why not?” I asked.

“’Cos that’s the way it is.”

“What we have we hold?” I repeated. “Only for real.”

“If you like.”

“But you’ve nothing in common with the English. We don’t need them here to rule us. We can do a better job ourselves. They don’t care about the Unionists. You go there and they treat you like a Paddy just like me. What do you do with all your loyalty then? You’re Irish. Why not claim that and we’ll all govern Dublin.”

“I’m British!”

“So am I,” I exclaimed. “Under duress ’cos I was born in this state. We’re both British subjects but we’re Irishmen. Who do you support in the rugby? Ireland, I bet! Or international soccer? The same! All your instincts and roots and…” I waved my arms around at the dusky mountains in frustration “… surroundings are Irish. This is fucking Ireland. It’s County Down, not Sussex or Suffolk or Yorkshire. It’s us and we’re it!” I shouted.

“Now you’re getting excited again. You shouldn’t drink whiskey,” Geordie teased me. “It’s time we were going. C’mon; I surrender.”

On the way down to Newcastle I drank the whiskey that was left in the bucket. We had only one call to make, so when I asked him to, Geordie dropped me at the beach. I stood watching as the van drove off and thought that perhaps he wouldn’t return for me. It was dark by now. As I walked along the strand the snow started in earnest. Slieve Donard was but a hulking shadow behind me. I couldn’t see it. Here I was in Newcastle, on the beach. On my own, in the dark. Drunk. On Christmas Eve. Waiting for a bloody Orangeman to come back for me so that I could go home.

The snow was lying momentarily on the sand, and the water rushing in to meet it looked strange in the moonlight as it and the sand and the snow merged. I was suddenly exhilarated by my involvement with all these elements, and as I crunched the sand and snow beneath my feet and the flakes swirled around me, my earlier frustrations disappeared. Then I chuckled aloud at the irony of it all.

The headlights of the van caught me in their glare. My Orangeman had returned.

“You’re soaked, you bloody eejit,” he complained when I climbed into the van again.

He, too, was in better form. As we drove home it was as if we had never had a row. We had a sing-song—mostly carols with some Beatles numbers—and the both of us stayed well clear of any contentious verses. On the way through the Belfast suburbs Geordie sang what we called “our song”.

We went in for a last drink after we’d clocked out at the store, but by this time my head was thumping and I just wanted to go home.

As we walked back to the van Geordie shook my hand warmly.

“Thanks, kid. I’ve learned a lot this last week or so, and not just about County Down. You’re dead on, son,” he smiled, “for a Fenian. Good luck to you anyway, oul’ hand, in all that you do, but just remember, our kid, I love this place as much as you do.”

“I know,” I said. “I learned that much at least.”

He dropped me off at Divis Street and drove off waving, on across the Falls towards the Shankill. I walked up to the Falls. That was the last I saw of Geordie Mayne. I hope he has survived the last twenty years and that he’ll survive the next twenty as well.

I hope we’ll meet again in better times. He wasn’t such a bad fella, for an Orangeman.

* One for the road