It was getting on in July 1971 and the bonfire season was approaching. Axes, hatchets and bow saws were sharpened in preparation for cutting the thick branches of the trees out the Line.
I was wearing a new mint-green wool jumper. I tore into the work with the rest of them, about a dozen boys in all, and the jumper eventually came off to reveal my white vest underneath. After we’d finished cutting and chopping I picked my new jumper up, but it caught on barbed wire. I gave it a sharp yank and, once it was free, I tied it around my waist. I positioned myself in the fork of a thick trunk of new-cut timber and began to pull it up the road towards home. The dragging leaves on the cut branches rattled noisily behind us as we hauled our bonfire fuel along Foyle Road; drivers to and from Killea had to slow down and go around us.
When we got back to Hamilton Street, I put my jumper on over my dirty vest and noticed a strand of wool sticking out from its side. I gave it a tug and made a wee hole; I pulled at it again and the gap became larger. By the time I’d reached our front door there was a sizeable gash in the jumper right across my belly. I stopped dead in my tracks and considered the consequences. Would I get thumped or would I be kept in for a week? I needed more time to think so I turned up the street towards Dooter’s house.
When I reached Dooter’s, Maisie, his ma, was at the door talking to another neighbour. There was a grim look of shock on her face as she dragged on an Embassy Red.
‘… and killed him stone dead,’ she said.
‘Oh, Jesus, Mary and St Joseph, they didn’t, did they?’ said the other woman.
‘Aye, ran right over him and left him on the road over in Westland Street. There’s murder over there. All the men are out,’ said Maisie.
‘Oh, Jesus preserve us this day!’ said the woman.
‘Aye, I know,’ said Maisie. ‘God look to the wee boy’s mother and father. We’ll all be ready for Gransha if this keeps up.’
‘Aye, the poor critter. We’ll be ready for Gransha, surely. Our nerves will never hold out to it.’
Gransha was the local mental hospital.
Maisie looked towards me with my arm resting awkwardly across my jumper hiding the gaping hole. ‘What are you hiding there, look see, young Doherty? Let me see what’s up. C’mere over.’ I had no choice but to drop my arm. ‘Oh Jesus, Tony Doherty, your mammy’s goin’ to kill you!’ she said, still with the fag in her mouth, and confirming for me what the likely punishment would be for destroying the new mint-green knitted jumper. ‘Your mother had them knitted for yous three. You’d better get home and tell her anyway,’ she said turning back towards her neighbour.
‘Aye, the poor critter. Run over on the street by the army. We’ll be ready for Gransha surely. Our nerves will never houl out to it.’
I headed back down the street with a heavy heart. Who would be at home – me ma or me da? What should I say? Should I cry first in the hope that I don’t get thumped? Should I run away? By the time I reached the dark green door of 15 Hamilton Street I had it worked out. The front door would be open and I’d just run upstairs, take the jumper off and hide it in the press. Dead simple.
The dark green door was locked. Oh Jesus, what will I do? I thought. I rapped the door with the brass knocker. After a few seconds, the door opened and me ma stood waiting for me to come in.
‘I’ve a wile sore stomach, Mammy,’ I said, holding my arm across my belly as I brushed passed her and went upstairs.
‘Ach son, I’ll get you some Milk of Magnesia from the kitchen,’ she said, appearing not to notice anything untoward.
As soon as I reached the landing the jumper came off and I stashed it at the back of the press under a pile of bedclothes. I went to our bedroom, put on a t-shirt and ran downstairs.
‘I thought you said you had a sore stomach, Tony?’ said me ma. ‘Did you change your clothes?’
‘Aye, I have, Mammy,’ I said, holding my arm across my belly again. ‘It started getting sore out the Line.’
‘C’mon over here, son, and take some of this,’ she said, clutching the big blue bottle in her hand.
* * *
The next morning me da woke me up.
‘Tony, get up out of bed and come downstairs,’ he said and went downstairs himself.
I realised he hadn’t woken anyone else; the rest of them were still asleep in their beds.
Before I went down I noticed that the press door on the landing had been opened, but I hadn’t the nerve to look in. I’m caught here, so I am, I thought to myself as I slowly descended. The fire was lit, despite it being summer, and had been going for a few hours. Me da was in the scullery and I eyed him through the crack in the door to see if he was in an angry mood. There was no sign of the jumper.
‘How many boiled eggs do you want, Tony – one or two?’ He didn’t turn round from the cooker.
What’s he at? I thought to myself. If I’m caught, I’m caught. G’won, just get on with it, will ye!
‘I’ll take two, Daddy,’ I said and sat down at the table already set with a cup, a plate and a spoon. We had only recently got two chairs for the kitchen table, so it was a novelty sitting down to eat.
‘I hear yous were out the Line chopping for the bonfire last night,’ he said.
‘Aye, we were all out. We chopped a wile pile of wood and dragged it all back in the road. It was class, so it was.’
‘Your mammy tells me you had a wile sore stomach when you came back in. Is that right?’ he asked.
‘Aye, it was wile sore, so it was, but me mammy gave me medicine and it went away. I’m good at taking medicine, aren’t I, Daddy?’
‘You are surely, Tony. You’re good at taking your medicine and your oil.’
‘Aye, I am, Daddy, so I am,’ I replied, slightly worried about the ‘taking your oil’ bit.
When the boiled eggs were done he brought them over in their egg cups along with two rounds of warm toast.
‘There you go, son. Eat up!’ he said as he placed the breakfast in front of me, the egg cups held between the gold-brown fingers of his smoking hand. His fingernails were black from his work as a plumber’s mate at Du Ponts. This was the first time I’d seen his face since I came downstairs and he was annoyed. Had he discovered the jumper? I wondered as I dipped my egg soldier into the perfectly cooked and salted egg. And why was everyone else still in bed and me the only one at the breakfast table?
The teapot was steaming from its long spout on the cooker. Daddy lifted it and poured tea into my cup, then his. There was a glass sugar bowl on the table. He lifted the spoon to sugar the tea.
‘I don’t take sugar in my tea any more, Daddy,’ I said, looking up at his face. ‘I gave it up for Lent this year and now I cannae stand tea wi’ sugar.’
‘Oh, I remember now. You’ll be giving up milk in your tea next Lent, will you?’ He looked at me for the first time. He didn’t take sugar or milk in his tea either.
‘I don’t know, Daddy. I think I like the milk more than the sugar,’ I replied.
With a cup of black tea in one hand and a Park Drive in the other he sat down across the table. His pale blue eyes were both searching and shifty. Something was bothering him. I said nothing more, afraid that if we talked he would eventually mention the jumper. The coals in the fire crackled and hissed, and the radio was on in the sitting room, which eased the silence.
After a while he got up and went into the sitting room. I heard the rustle of paper behind me.
‘Are you finished, Tony?’ he said.
‘Aye, Daddy, that was great,’ I replied. I knew something was up.
‘C’mon in here a wee minute. I have to show you something,’ he said.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, I’m caught! I screamed in my head.
I got up from the table and went through to the sitting room, keeping a close eye on his face. His lit Park Drive was in one hand and a newspaper, folded down to one column, in the other. Is he goin’ to whack me over the head with it? All for an oul jumper? For Jesus’ sake! I should’ve owned up and spared myself all this carry-on!
‘I have to show you something, Tony,’ he said, turning the newspaper towards me.
What’s this got to do with the jumper? I wondered. I found myself staring at a boy’s face, black and white, bespectacled and pious-looking. It was a picture of my classmate, Damien Harkin, from the Bog. This was his First Communion photo from a few weeks earlier.
‘Do you know this wee boy, Tony?’
‘Aye, Daddy, I do. That’s Damien Harkin from our class. What did he do to get in the paper?’ I asked, not having read the headline.
‘He’s dead, Tony. He was killed by a three-tonner army lorry last night in Westland Street, near his house. Did you play with him at school?’
‘Aye, I hang around with him, Micky Griffiths and wee Damien Healy.’
He searched my face for a few seconds.
‘We’ll have to go to Mass and say a special prayer for him and his mammy, daddy, sisters and brothers. Go’n get your face washed. You’ve a black ring round your neck. And put on something decent – maybe your new jumper.’
I suddenly looked up at me da, but he just turned away, sat down on the sofa and began reading the newspaper. I went into the bathroom, washed my face and looked in the mirror. There were still dirt marks from the night before so I used the soap. I couldn’t stretch up far enough to see the ring round my neck in the mirror. What does dead mean? Is he in heaven already? I thought to myself. The only deaths I knew were the fluke we caught out the Line or the rats that Dandy McKinney caught. Damien Harkin dead! And the British Army did it!
I mulled over this solemn departure while I got ready for Mass. We children had no one to fight with, I thought. The soldiers are all big and the odds against us would be impossible. Maybe if there was a British Army made up of children! They wouldn’t stand a chance against the likes of Louis McKinney or Davy Barbour; they’d flatten the wee Limeys! I went back to the bedroom where everyone was still asleep. I quietly hunted for my Sunday clothes, slipped them on and tiptoed out of the room and went back downstairs.
‘Put the fireguard on the fire, Tony,’ me da called in a low pitch from upstairs.
I did as I was bid, met me da as he came downstairs and we left the house together.
We walked along Hamilton Street. There were soldiers at the foot of the street but they kept their distance. It was around nine o’clock on a hot summer morning and the streets were barely alive. Everyone’s front doors were closed. The bleach-scrubbed arcs at each doorstep were lilac-white and pretty-looking in the bright sunlight.
Melaugh’s shop was closed. Paddy Melaugh was the Brock Man. He collected the brock from every house in the Brandywell so that he could feed his pigs which he kept in a pen out in his back yard. Me ma kept the tin brock bucket underneath the sink in the scullery and brought the brock out to Paddy when he came round each week for it in his wee van wearing his huge blue overalls.
Paddy Melaugh was at his door and me da said hello to him, nodding his head sideways and winking at the same time. Mr Melaugh said, ‘Hello, Patsy’, and nodded sideways and winked back. We kept walking towards Quarry Street and past the Lourdes Hall. I practised nodding my head sideways and winking my eye at the same time as we walked. It wasn’t an easy thing to do.
The Grotto next to the Lourdes Hall was resplendent in the summer sun, its whitewashed walls gleaming and its cheerful array of flowers saluting the morning. Me da glanced up at Our Lady and blessed himself without breaking his stride. I did the same. We passed the Brandywell Bar on the corner and headed towards the steep, terraced street of Hogg’s Folly and the Long Tower Chapel.
When we reached Charlotte Street the smell of gas, burnt diesel and rubber from the previous evening’s riot drifted up from the Bog through the early morning heat. We crossed the road to dodge the broken glass, the bits of broken brick and the plastic tops from CS gas canisters.
The chapel was cool inside; the priest had allowed the side and back doors to remain open to create a cooling draught. We sat down in the main body of the chapel behind the front pews, with me on the inside. Me da’s two muckers, Eddie Millar and Tony Callaghan, whom we’d met at the door, sat beside him. I was hoping not to be on the inside because the oak panels that ran along the walls at the end of the pews had perforated panels through which, if you looked hard and long enough, you could see the dead people.
Why did they keep the dead in dark places where people have to come and pray? Was there enough room in there for everybody? Was that where Damien Harkin was going to end up, in the dark for ever? Was that where I’d end up? How could he be dead when we were in class together only a few weeks ago? What were his ma and da goin’ to do without him?
‘Hi boy, stand up!’ me da’s quiet voice in my ear shook me out of my dark questioning. ‘I didn’t bring you here to sleep!’
People were looking at me. The whole chapel had been standing except for me and there was a right crowd in attendance. I stood up, red-faced.
The Mass continued and I went through the motions. But the questions wouldn’t leave my head. I prayed for Damien Harkin, for his mammy, daddy, sisters and brothers. I didn’t know if he had any sisters and brothers, but the order of the day was to pray for them.
‘Were you at confession this week?’ me da asked as he got up.
‘No, we didn’t go yet. Me ma said we’d go the next night,’ I replied.
‘Okay, kneel you there,’ he said.
Up he got with Eddie and Tony and joined the queue for Holy Communion. He walked towards the altar with his hands joined in front of him and his head down. The queue wasn’t that long and after a few minutes he was at the altar. He raised his head only when the priest placed the unleavened bread on his outstretched tongue. The priest proclaimed ‘Body of Christ’ and me da blessed himself. As he came back to our pew, he kept his hands joined together and his eyes fixed on the floor before him, awkwardly stepping sideways to get past other communicants on their way up to the altar. He was about to sit down when he suddenly glanced at me and, with a playful wink, said, ‘I’m cleansed now,’ before turning back to his devotions.
When the priest finished Mass everyone stood up while he left the chapel and then began to shuffle towards the doors. Me da didn’t move and neither did Eddie or Tony. When most people had left, me da put his hand in his pocket and brought out an assortment of coins.
‘Take a shilling out of that,’ he said, offering me his money-filled hand. ‘You’ll have to buy a blessed candle for your wee mucker Damien to help him on his way up to heaven. Away you go. We’ll wait here for you.’
I plucked a shilling out of his hand and moved across the pew past him, Eddie and Tony.
‘Daddy, I’ve never bought a blessed candle before,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Go’n you away up with him, Patsy. The critter has to learn,’ said Eddie.
Me da made his way across the pew and grabbed my hand. We walked up the central aisle of the chapel towards the altar where he opened the ornate brass gate and silently led me from the off-white marble steps to the lit-candle display to the left.
‘What’s the shilling for, Daddy?’ I asked.
‘You pay for your candles, son. Put your money in the box there in front of you,’ he said, pointing to the slot in the brass plate. The shilling jangled against other coins as it fell through the slot.
‘The candles are there in the wee hatch,’ he said, pointing to them.
I slipped my hand into the hatch and lifted out a white candle, held it over a lit candle until it caught and pushed it into an empty slot. Following me da’s lead, I blessed myself and knelt down beside him before the bright candle display. After a minute, we made our way back from the altar to the front row, where Eddie and Tony were sitting.
We came back out again into the sunshine and made our way back down the Folly. ‘Them English Bs flattened that wee boy last night,’ said Eddie, dropping the rest of the curse word for my benefit.
‘Aye, ah know,’ replied me da. ‘That’s Eddie Harkin’s young fella. I work with him at Du Ponts. He’s in wee Tony’s class in school,’ he added, pointing towards the Long Tower Boys School, to where I was due to return in September to begin Primary 5.
‘They’re saying that the brakes were faulty but they took the three tonner off them and drove it up and down the street before they torched it. There was not a thing wrong with the brakes at all. The soldiers all jumped out and ran up the hill to the camp,’ said Eddie.
‘It’s a bad time when not even the wains are safe in the streets,’ said me da as the conversation stopped at the bottom of the Folly. Eddie and Tony said ‘Churrio!’ at the bottom of the street and on we went, past the long wall surrounding the grounds of the Christian Brothers’ School on Lecky Road. As we walked, me da had to dodge branches and brambles overhanging the wall over the footpath. ‘Daddy, I heard that a big rat fell from one of them branches and landed on a wee boy’s head. Is that true?’
‘Dunno, son. Could be.’
The serene whiteness of the Grotto stood in stark contrast with the cement grey of the school wall. As we passed the gate, me da suddenly stopped and, looking up at the statue, said, ‘If you were to go to confession, Tony, what would you tell the priest?’
‘I don’t know, Daddy, ahmmmm …’ Usually by the time you reached the confessional door, you’d have your list of sins ready to rhyme off: I stole sweets from my sister; I busted Dooter McKinney’s ball for badness; I thumped Gutsy McGonagle for calling me names …
Me da was looking down at me. I looked up into me da’s moustachioed face and with no time to think of a list said, ‘I took God’s name in vain last night, but only into meself, and this morning I had hatred in my heart for the soldiers who killed Damien Harkin. That’s wrong isn’t it, Daddy?’
‘It is, son. Hatred eats at your heart. Wee Damien’s death is a terrible thing, but hatred isn’t goin’ to bring him back. You have to pray for him just. That’s all you do.’ He paused for a second, thinking what to say next and said, ‘So what’s this about taking God’s name in vain last night? What happened – did you hurt yourself out the Line or what?’ He had a twinkle in his eyes and a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
‘I tore me new jumper. I didn’t mean to, Daddy. I took God’s name in vain when I thought I was goin’ to get caught.’ It all came out in a rush. ‘Am I goin’ to get kept in, Daddy?’
‘We know about the new jumper, Tony,’ he said, taking my hands in his and getting down on his hunkers to my level. ‘Your mammy found it last night stashed in the press upstairs. But you’ve enough going on in your head at the minute. Forget about the oul jumper.’
And with that we walked on in the mid-morning sun, small hand in huge hand, back past Quarry Street and along Hamilton Street towards our green door, No. 15.