Hey Readers:

I've moved my blog to Wordpress. If you'd like to keep following my once-early updates (!) you can do so at irishvatican.com.

I'll be keeping this blogger-based blog open for another few weeks only. Then I'll shut it permanently. That's how I like to do things, don't you know?

Till then, be well.

ERJ McKay

Diamonds and Golf

Later that night my girlfriend joined us. Lisa was a patient woman. She wanted more than I ever wanted to give, and she waited years to be with me forever. But that forever wasn’t coming any day soon. I bought the engagement ring from a cheap jewellers in Connswater Shopping Centre and was paying it off over twelve months. I kept it in my bedroom junk drawer – to me it signified only sparkly debt – letting her wear it only when we were alone. If she was sleeping over she could wear it the entire night: she had reluctantly agreed to take it off before venturing to the bathroom the following morning. I had little intention of marriage for years yet, many years, if ever, so going as far as to buy a ring was not something that sat easily with me, if at all. She showed the patience of a saint, that woman, for putting up with the shit I put her through. But fifty-three weeks beyond this night and she would decide that she had had enough, that her fortune-teller’s predictions that I would be successful someday were never going to come true, and she needed to move on to better prospects. I heard them speak on the tape the sooth-sayer supplied her clients, and they were talking of some bright future I was destined for, somewhere, at sometime, somehow. She knew not where or when or how, but she knew it, she could see it in Lisa’s palm, or her own tea-leaves or her crystal ball, or in the tarot cards, or whatever vehicle she used to cruise the dark corners of the netherworlds. But it would never come soon enough for Lisa, and off she went, leaving me with a copy of the tape and a video recording of her dancing as sexily as any woman could wearing a thick checked shirt in a sweaty bar in Dublin’s Temple Bar to remember her by.

For a week or maybe eight or nine days I watched the tape, and dreamed of what may have been: as Lisa dances to a rock band called The Daisy Plague the movement slows, and my thoughts and memories of her and our time together come to me again. I can see our engagement; our wedding, like Linda and Andy’s in Belfast Castle, all warm hor d’oeuvres and cold, ancient stone; vignetted pictures in the grounds; the incessant ching-chinging of champagne flutes; the first pregnancy and the cooing of family and colleagues; holding hands in a maternity ward in the City Hospital; the kids she wanted so desperately; the beautiful house somewhere in south Belfast, close to her parents, in a safe, respectable and affluent neighbourhood, where the cars cost as much as The Vatican and the kids can wear bright-coloured clothes, the type she bought from that godawful store in Castle Court; golf with her brothers; “If you insist on having a beer then drink it from a glass. Drinking from the bottle is just uncivilised”; my unremitting consciousness of what was deemed civility and how I just wasn’t fitting in, even with these mostly wonderful, accepting people; the wakening to a nightmare; “Jesus! I play fucking golf!” the endless arguments, many about me now being a fucking golfer and where did I, me, Eamonn, myself get lost in all this shit?; the divorce; the acrimony; “I want my life back!” that’s all mine, that’s all yours, and we’re halving that; that’s not paid for yet, so half the debt is yours, bitch!; “You’re a selfish bastard!”; sign this, not that; meetings with bank managers; here’s my solicitor’s card; I’ll take the kids every Monday, Wednesday and weekend mornings because I sure as hell won’t be going fucking golfing any more, now will I?; leave your fucking keys when you …  Slam. I never gave her keys to the flat, and that was always the intention. She wasn’t for coming back anyway. Four fun years, but, romantically, wasted time. I didn’t want romance. I didn’t want children. I couldn’t tell one end of a golf bat from the other. I wanted more. Much more.

We weren’t suited. I knew it, but I was too egocentric and too concerned with my own pleasures to let her go. Life was tough and I wanted fun, that I knew. I left Carrick to have that fun. I wanted the fucking and the drinking and the searching for, keeping, or suppressing of memories the morning after.  I pretended for four years to be happy in that relationship, but it came too early and at exactly the wrong time.

Jaques Le Shack

By the end of 1992 my brother and I had left The Vatican: we knew that Carrick was becoming too dangerous for men of our ages. We moved first to an ancient and dingy cottage on the Shore Road, where Carrick meets Greenisland. We christened it Jacques Le Shack. It was heated by a single fire in the front room, which, in order to dry laundry, burned year round, come snow or sun. It was too small and too hot in winter, and too small and way too hot in summer, but it was close to Paddy and JD, and we wished for little more in life at that time. And it was a step away from Carrick.

“Aye, you’re right there lads, you know,” said my Dad, when hearing we were leaving. “This place's just too small now for all of us.”

“And it’s time for us to leave, Dad,” said my brother, injecting his usual healthy dose of reality, “And you know it.”

“We know it,” I added. 

“I love you, I alwayth have and I alwayth will,” whispered Ma softly. She said it clearly: she wanted us to know she meant it. “Be thafe, won’t youths?

Ma begged us to keep our heads down and ourselves to ourselves. She begged us to stay, told us we had always been safe, trying to reassure us by telling us that we were all still alive and that there was nothing we could possibly endure that we had not already.

“We’ve outstayed our welcome, Ma,” I told her, “No sense in tempting fate, now is there?” She continued to ask that we stay in our known hometown, where every street mirrored another and sure wouldn’t that bring its own comforts if you were ever chased by the hungry Loyalist dogs? Remember, she said, that goodness and kindness would follow us all the days of our lives, because He is there with His rod and His staff, and we had to believe.

“Only fucking idiots believe that, Ma, I retorted. Life is not about expecting kindness and love just because you live a life giving and hoping for kindness and love. Expecting that in return is crap here, in this place. We’re targets, and the older we get the worse it is for us. These fuckers wouldn’t give a second thought about killing any one of us.” The Child of The Hollies had, by then, graduated into the ranks of the ex-WAF thugs, with all its gold-covered pure green; wispy attempts at moustaches, all pimple-addled; and the ubiquitous tracksuit garb.

In one of our most searing conversations, I told my Ma that all life came down to was that you should expect violence, no matter how Christian or how loving you were, no matter how many times you turned the other cheek, no matter what religion. I told her that violence was inevitable, that it was a part of life, something that needed no acceptance because accepting the inevitable is going one step too far. 

“The inevitable is the inevitable, Ma” I argued, “There’s no accepting about it. If you’re born, expect it, expect violence. Don’t bother thinking you have a choice here, Ma, not here, not in this fucking province. You’ve no choice but to. Don’t accept. Expect.” 

The night before we left Ma begged again, holding out some hope that her insistence and clumsy religion-littered guilt trips would persuade us to change our minds. But we went to our beds that last time insisting that nothing in Carrick brought us comfort, insisting the clock was ticking down.

In Jacques Le Shack I had an asthma attack one night, my first in a decade and half, after drinking whiskey with Allison Gray and Lisa. Looking back, I don’t know which was the more unusual, having my first asthma event in years, or me drinking whiskey, a drink I found, and continue to find, repulsive. I remember that smoky sharpness on my father’s breath, and the discrete half- and quarter-bottles strewn around the home. Freud would have little trouble diagnosing my distaste for the water of life. And I remember Ma, the bastion of sobriety, telling me one night of the sleep aid she used, showing me a small bottle of whiskey secreted in the bottom of a large metal bucket we kept in the kitchen utility cupboard, her stash hidden beneath the head of a mop. She reassured me she used it only when she really needed to do so. I went immediately to that night when my father was kneeling beside her, telling her everything would be alright, sure didn’t he have the gun for which he was reaching and all the bravado in the world to protect us, didn’t he?

“Just you come on down the stairs, love. Sure don’t I have this to keep us all safe?” is what he said, brandishing clumsily the loaded weapon. Looking back, and peeking again through the banisters from the ninth step, seeking my mother’s face, maybe, just maybe, she had her own way of numbing the extremes of my father’s provokes of the Proud and rabid Protestants on our doorstep. And I look back at this self-medication revelation in shock, in disbelief at her need for this substance, this powerful distancer, and – I will admit with some pride – in admiration of her ingenuity, for Arthur was never going to lift a broom come hell or high water. Her bottled courage was as hidden as the cobwebs hiding between the bulb and the shade in the hallway. In fact, she could have hidden it beneath a dirty pot; or a scrubbing brush; under a dirty fork; or in an envelope containing the TV license renewal demand.

It was when living in Jacques Le Shack that I nearly collapsed after opening a pot of stew, only to discover it had gone off in the fridge, so unreliable as it was. I still remember that reel, the choking. Smell memories last the longest in our recall, but I still have yet to smell or resmell anything quite like that malodorous malodour.

But it was here also that Plum and Gil and JD and Frank and Pat and Dr. Bob The Love Physician, Tester of Armaments and Other Projectiles; and Frauke; and Lisa; and Karen; and Alison would congregate to drink ourselves stupid and wallow in the great craic, pointing fingers at the masses out there who knew not how to party with the other side. It was here that we first fucked with abandon. It was here we learned to survive on our own, which entailed getting some grasp on cooking, cleaning, paying bills, doing something akin to laundry. It was here also that Brendan first developed a tendency to dry his underwear a tad too long by the fire, burning many lightly. Here he earned the nickname Crispy Knickers. And the name stuck, for no matter where we lived, he always burned his underwear when drying them. Freud, I dare say, would have puzzled over this one. Or maybe not.

Jacques was our first taste of true freedom, and we relished it. When we were evicted a year later to make way for a garage and store development, we only moved further south, continuing our slow exodus out of Carrick, to a dingy flat on Belfast’s University Street. We relished the increased freedom that move brought us, but our Ma worried every day for the rest of her life. She worried that she would never again see us, alive or dead. She worried something would happen to us in the city, the same city where Proud Protestants sought any innocent Taig, guilty or innocent, the same place where Proud Fenians paramilitary armies beat our Proud Fenian Dad into shredded nerves as he worked the Markets area for National Car Parks. We weren’t a stone’s throw from that very carpark he worked, the same one where, after watching a production of Young Frankenstein at Saint Malachy's College, he abandoned his boys in a cold car, in the dark, him in search of a pint in that darkness, leaving us at the mercy of young men armed with guns and British accents and a dearth of years on the journey to maturity.

Och

When she needed to speak of anything but the comings and goings of any ordinary day it was a different matter altogether. For our Ma, drawing an envelope-sized rectangle on her lap with her one good hand had as many meanings as the drying tealeaves on the bottom of her Mum’s cup. If she drew just that and nothing more, it meant often a task we could perform without leaving The Vatican. But if she drew the rectangle and pointed out the window it meant that she needed something done in Carrickfergus, or something from Carrickfergus; it meant, possibly, that she wanted something from or done in Belfast, or something from or done at the church, or something from or done in New Ringgold, Pennsylvania, or something from or done in the bloody Land of Oz. Of an occasion it meant that she wanted something from the shops, a treat, a chocolate bar, stamps. Or it might be that there was a new bishop appointed in some suburb of some backwoods Brazilian town and she wanted to hear of him and his good works, because the TV had made a fuss of this particular gentleman and maybe she’d like a magazine to have read to her describing his good works. That rectangle meant that the Pope himself had signed some declaration about something, and that it affected something in her life somehow. It was important this rectangle, for frig’s sake, and she needed the news, the insight, the gossip there and then. If she drew the rectangle and pointed to the TV it meant that she had heard of good works by Bishop Desmond Tutu, and sure isn’t he a great humanitarian, at least that's what someone had read to her from the magazine she now wanted. Of an occasion it meant that she had learned of bad works attributed to Bishop Len Brennan, and she was laughing out loud but not without some hint of guilt, but sure she'd make up for it by putting an extra shilling in the weekly envelope. The rectangle and the pointing of the finger meant everything. It meant anything. She called me from the kitchen. She drew the rectangle. She pointed out the leaky window.

 “Okay, what is it, Ma? You want something sent? Card? Letter? A bill paid?”

“No,” she replied, blunt and emphatic, leaving me with little doubt that I need not ask those questions again, for frig’s sake, y’eejit.

“Is it a cheque? Do you need to pay something?”

“No.”

“Okay. I need something else, Ma, a bit more here. Is it to do with anyone in here?”

“No.”

“Is it to do with the church?”

“No.”

Every few questions I clarified, just to be sure. “Okay, it’s nothing to do with us, the church, the bank, or money? Yes? That right?”

“No.”

“Right... So… No as in it’s not something to do with them, or no it is something to do with them?”

“Yesths.”

“Right. Okay. Is it a letter?”

“No,” she replied, getting frustrated at my frustration.

“Okay Ma, I have no idea what the hell it is you want.” When at the very edge of giving up on her fruitless task she would swipe her hand in the air and exclaim “Och”. Och was another of the Irishisms I had removed from my vocabulary years previously. That short guttural utterance indicated disappointment, or frustration, and was as cast away an exclamation as those blessed and depressing and pervasive remnants such as “aye”. The modern Irish garnish liberally their language – foreign or domestic – with these ancient tics. Och, in this sense, denoted my mother’s mild anger and her frustration. Swiping her hand and uttering “och” was her way of getting rid of the previous conversation, the useless one that went nowhere, the failed chat that hung in the air between us, limply, benignly. The scrubbing of the air meant “Oh, let’s just forget it” or “Nope. You’re way off there, boyo.” Her good hand sent failed conversations crashing to the ground. 

“Is it the church? The bank? Someone in here? One of your sisters?”

“Yesths! Yesths!”

“Okay, was it the bank? No? Your sisters? The…”

“Yesths! Yesths!”

“Ah, your sisters. Okay, which sister Ma?” Our hearts would sink at the mention of our Ma’s beloved sisters: the guessing was to start again, but this time it would involve people we met only rarely; people whose birthdates were mysteries; women of whose pedigrees and predicaments we remained ignorant due to miles, years of seemingly happy absence, and more than a little indifference to their lives and deaths. Except Aunt Kathleen, whose influence remained. She did say “och” on an occasion or two that I can remember. I probably shuddered.

The stroke left Ma unable to remember the names of her sisters with the exception of Kathleen, so she called all of her sisters “Katleen.” She did the same with my sisters. And my brother. And me. And Aunt Phil. And Aunt Margaret. And Dad. “Katleen” was everyone she had ever known, and anyone she would ever know. Katleen was the name she gave to every face because she had no way of recollecting a name, or a duck, or a bus, or a cat, or of saying any of these with any clarity.

“Which sister, Ma?”

“Och!” Her hand rose, swiping away the notes she sang to the staff, dropping them to the floor like so many dead flies. “It’s Katleen.”

“I thought so. Which Kathleen do you mean? Do you actually mean Kathleen?”

“No.”

“Pauline then, that Kathleen?”

“No.”

“Bernie?”

“No.”

“Sally?”

“No. Oh god, it’th fantathtic.” She felled our benign chat with one swipe.

“Right, okay. So it must be Rosaline then?”

“No.”

“Oh for Jesus sake, Ma! I’ve said them all. Is it Kathleen? Pauline? Bernie? Sally? Or Rosaline for god’s sake?”

“Och, no! It’s Katleen! Och!” Her hand rose and erased again, and the pile of flies grew.

“You said it was to do with one of your sisters, Ma.”

“No. No. You’re thithterth!”

“My sisters? Anne-Marie and Martina? Those sisters?”

“Yesths! Your thithterth!”

“Ah, right. Gotcha. What is it?”

Composing herself, and savouring a minor triumph, Ma drew the rectangle on her lap once again, pointed out the intact but still leaky windows and then back to herself.

“O-kay. First off, is it Anne-Marie or Martina?”

“Yesths.”

“Which one, Ma?”

“Katleen.”

“Anne-Marie?”

“No. Oh god… Katleen! Katleen!”

“Right. Okay. What do you need Martina to do?”

“I need…” She had no way of telling me what she needed, so she drew the rectangle. 

“Oh, I don’t know how to thay it, you know? It'th all wight but it'th all wong at the thame time, you know?” As she said that she pointed to her throat and drew a dividing line up her body, from her nave to her chaps, cutting her good-bad body in half with her long index finger. This was her way of saying, “If this damned operation hadn’t given me a bloody stroke and sliced my vocal cords and taken away my ability to think I’d be able to tell you what I want to say, so I bloody well would!”

“I know, Ma, I know. We’ll get there. Is it money?”

“Yesths.”

“Do you need money from the bank?

“No.”

“Do you need to put money in the bank?

“No. Och!”

“Do you want to give someone money?”

“No.”

“Do you need some money now?”

“No. Oh yesths! Yesths! Mawtina… money. Och!” More notes trailed from the air.

“Okay… So you want Martina to do something with money, but you don’t want her to take money from the bank or put money in the bank? Is that right?”

“Yesths.”

“Money, money, money… Is it someone’s birthday? Do you need her to buy a gift?”

“No!” More dead flies.

“Okay Ma, let’s just keep trying here.”

“I can’t thay it, you know. Oh god, it’th fantathtic!” Her hand went to her cheek, and she lay on it heavily, pushing her elbow into the side of her belly. Her head she shook in confused desperation, and she regarded the fire in the hearth with a look of resignation.

“I know Ma, I know. But we’ll get there. Trust me. Do you have to pay for something?”

“Yesths! No. Oh God. Katleen hath to pay thomething!”

“Martina has to pay something? That Kathleen?”

“That'th it! That'th it! Katleen haths to pay thomething! Oh thank god, thank God.” She took my hand, looked me in the eye and said, “I love you, oh god, I love you, I alwayth have and I alwayth will, you know.”

“I know, Ma. Love you too. Right, now we’re cooking with gas, Ma! Let’s keep going. So, what does she have to pay?” She drew the rectangle on her lap once again.

“Do you have to give money to Martina for her to pay this?”

“No.”

“Right, okay. Is she buying you something?”

“No. Thee’th got the money.”

“She has the money, and she knows she has to pay someone the money, I take it?”

“That’th it shon. Sthee hath to pay money to me!”

“Oh, right. Martina has to give you money? Why?”

“For… I gave her…to… Oh god…” Near-dead flies and near-dead notes hung, mingled momentarily, then crashed.

“I can’t thay it, you know. It’th all wight but it’th all wong at the thame time, you know.” She carved from her nave to her chaps again, pointed to her head, spinning her hand at the wrist. I’m confused now, that is what she meant.

“I know Ma. Try to relax. We’re nearly there.”

“I gave her money, and…”

“And you need it back, I take it?”

“That’th it! That’th it. Oh thank god…”

“At last Ma! Told you we’d get there. How much did you lend her?” She drew another rectangle.

“Paper money?”

“Yesths.”

“A five?”

“No.”

“Ten?”

“No.”

“Twenty quid?”

“No.”

“Thirty?”

“No.”

“Okay. Was it more or less than thirty?”

“Lesth. Och!” Flies.

“Ten.”

“No!” Notes. Then flies. She turned her hand at her head.

“Twenty?”

“Lesth than that ath well.”

“Fifteen?”

“Yesths! Yesths!”

“See? We got there. Didn’t I tell you we would? Don’t worry, I’ll give her a nudge about it. She owes you fifteen quid then?” I laughed.

“Thank you, shon. Thank you.”

Friday Fenian Fish

Shortly after that night – a sad night for it saw Una’s last visit with me – I had my third sexual experience, and I knew when I realised what it was, that it had a name in the lavatories and on the sports field and in the quad, and that it was pleasurable and therefore Protestant and sinful and strictly un-Catholic, that it was as close to the habit Mum was hinting at that I had ever been. I remember feeling no guilt about this act, and couldn’t have cared less if God above us was peeking through the sliver gap in the curtains, counting, tallying my sin as He watched. The elders told us He was.

Sex was not something The Elders of The Vatican discussed, nor were the obvious effects of adolescence, growing hairs, developing breasts, menstruation, whatever. It was easier for us boys than it was for our sisters. We joked with Dad about learning to shave, and Mum would coo admiringly with every obvious drop in the intonation of our voices, having us say over and over the words we dropped on, should we ever have visitors. 

If it had anything to do with maturity or growth or sex then there was to be little or no discussion of it in good Catholic households. The Pope had deemed such talk dirty, something that only Protestants dared address in dark corners; the expectation was that they speak of it only in whispers, and that they restricted this talk to such an extent that they could discuss these matters only with those who shared their faith. For many years a musty book on the teaching of sex in Catholic households lay hidden under two unfolded Irish News broadsheet pages in one of my bedroom drawers. I remember it as about eight pages thick, and dating from the forties or the fifties, perhaps earlier. One day it disappeared. When Martina came running into the crowded living room one winter’s evening, her eyes flooded with tears and her hands flooded with blood, Mum stood up from her Mum’s Chair and ordered her back out of the room. “Jesus, Mary, and Saint Joseph!” she exclaimed, “Get out! You’re a woman now. Now go and get yourself cleaned up.” That came from the chapter, “The Catholic Guide to the Menstrual Child,” obviously. It was a short chapter indeed, but not as short as “A Seat at The Table? - The Catholic Guide to Interdenominational Relationships,” or the chapter about homosexuality entitled, “Not on My Fucking Watch, Boyo!”

During the years of our puberty our parents developed an easy if clumsy method of getting round any un-Catholic situation that arose in our midst, particularly when those situations appeared before us on the TV. If there was a love scene, or a scene with anything remotely sexual, impure or un-Catholic about it, Dad would turn to Mum and ask, “Annie love, what are you thinking of making for the dinner tomorrow night, then?” Mum would answer, and try to take our attentions from the screen by getting us involved in the what’s-for-dinner distraction.

“I was thinking maybe I could do those nice new spuds with that bit of ham I got at McManus’s the other day, I was thinking. We haven’t had ham in a while, I was thinking, and I think it would be nice for a wee change. What do you think? Maybe with some nice cauliflower too, if they get anything decent into that bloody Crazy Prices down there. Wouldn’t that be nice for a change?” She never answered Dad, and he rarely listened to her answer – he was simply the catalyst for getting the discussion started, and he and he alone could continue to watch the frolicking Protestants in peace, which he did all too often. She addressed her response and her questions to us, her children, those of us staring silently and saucer-eyed at the lascivious scenes playing out on the screen. We waited patiently for the clit-O-rises, whatever they were, wherever they were located, and with such a fabulous name you would surely know one as soon as you saw one, I thought. Since that day in class I had pictured clit-O-rises as something aglow, something beautiful, a secret that was bright and luminescent, a secret that contradicted itself so obvious was this entity. A clit-O-ris, I thought, must be like light in the darkness, a secret, buzzing, scintillating city in a dark, dark desert. Clit-O-rises are like Las Vegas, I thought. Excitement and evil.

“Eamonn! Brendan!” she would shout, “What do you think? Some nice ham for tomorrow’s dinner then, and maybe a bit of cauliflower or something? Wouldn’t that be nice for a change?”

“Uh, yeah. Sounds good,” one of us might grunt, dismissive of the intrusion into our adventures on the sultry edges of Protestantism. Another love scene later and Dad would ask, “And what about the day after that then, love? That’ll be Friday. You could get some nice fish at the market down there on Thursday, couldn’t you?”

“I could too, you know, and I could make some nice chips to go with that, couldn’t I? Wouldn’t that be nice?” She waited for one of us to break our concentration, to turn from the action on the screen.

  “Eamonn! Brendan! For God’s …! Okay... So what do you think of some nice fish and chips with peas this Friday? I’ll buy your favourite smoked fish if they have any down there at the market tomorrow. What do you think boys?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” Protestantism in all its sultry excitement was really what we wanted served up that Friday, not another variation on the holy Catholic Friday Fenian Fish-dish.

Another scene, the same question, a different day’s dinner and Mum’s vain attempts at saving the souls of her two sons from the impurities of lingering screen kisses, or tousled hair and a bra strap, or a button opening. It was useless her employing her skilful diversions into the gastronomic schedule of a good Irish Catholic family, for her sons – even in those early days – were too far gone. But it stuck somewhere. Before the credits rolled on a movie portraying a plethora of love scenes, or those various other impurities The Elders felt worthy of posting on their extensive list of Protestant indulgences, we would be sure to know what we would be sitting down to for dinner a week from next Thursday. That following Friday it would be fish. Again. Damn you, God, what with your insistence on fish every Friday and your love of watching young boys and girls explore their nether regions.

Pipe and Drum

July. Every year. The Proud Protestants march in bands around Carrickfergus and beyond in their annual parades to celebrate everything that is Protestant, and, more importantly, everything that will remain Protestant come Hell or high water, you Fenian cunts. They celebrate the Battle of The Boyne – where all poor Ireland’s Catholics’ troubles started – to the great and glorious rule of Queen Elizabeth II, the radiant monarch of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Head of the Commonwealth, God save her and long may she continue to rule over us one and all. Or so it goes. The flags and bunting come out once again, and we watch from behind closed doors as the Proud Protestants display their allegiance to all things Protestant, from the Queen to the Red Hand of Ulster to the Ulster Volunteer Force and The UDA. They celebrate their domination of politics and power, of structure and scripture. 

Flying the flag was a thing of pride, even though many looked as if they had flown and fluttered continuously from the time they adorned the Cherry Walk trampoline and the necks and breasts and backs of the smiling ladies back then, in 1977. Many stayed out year round, and Dad told us that the Proud Protestants should really question their pride in their country and their allegiances if they allowed the flag to stay out like that, to get battered by the erratic weather in Northern Ireland, and shit on by good Fenian pigeons.

“In America and in the Free State they take their flags in every evening at sunset,” he said, “then they fold them like we did in the services and they keep them inside until dawn the following day. Then they get put back up again, clean, brilliant and proud.” He looked into the middle distance. I looked at him, envisioning brilliant shit-free flags in those foreign countries, those Fenian birds to our south holding in their shit until after dusk, or planning one serious evacuation before the alarm clocks clattered across the length and breadth of those honourable lands. Maybe, I thought, maybe those birds saved all their shit for an entire year, completed then a yearly migration to Northern Ireland in preparation for the July fortnight, and then, with undoubted relish and relief and abandon, let it all go over here? I could not help but think that it was not only the Proud Protestants who celebrated the Twelfth Fortnight. I only ever questioned my father inside my own head, but, by the look of some of the flags, this was a distinct possibility. 

The more proud a Proud Protestant you were the earlier you took your flag from under the stairs or out of the shed, and the earlier you adorned your property with its glory. Many were bleached by a year of rain and sun and bird shit, and no-one took a blind bit of notice of yours anyway because it was now nothing more than a part of the everyday red-ish, white-ish, and blue-ish flapping against the white-with-a-little-brown. If others did take notice it was only because the wind had flapped the flag against those jagged stones for so long that it had become little more than a few strands of frayed and filthy material fluttering in the breeze. Even more proud Proud Protestants put up two flags, and the most Proud of Proud Protestants festooned their concrete door shelters with three flags – the Union Jack, the Red Hand of Ulster, and a flag depicting the motto or insignia of the paramilitary army they chose to support, in the main the Ulster Defence Association or the Ulster Volunteer Force. In Carrickfergus the UDA garnered most of the support, as the town remained truly theirs. In a desperation to wear their colours on their sleeves – something that became almost comical – many families would place two flags in their living room windows, crossed like an X in the centre; three flags went on the concrete shelter; bunting festooned the fence and followed up the path to the front door. In many windows there were posters or a 1977 dinner plate depicting the gracious Queen, and, occasionally, under the flag-made X, a vase of orange lilies to complete the window dressing, those flowers wilting and crisping and browning under the searing July sun. The street was red, white, blue, and orange by day; it was red, white, blue and orangey-black by night. The same colours flew in Cherry Walk and Blackthorn Park and Maple Gardens and Oakwood Road and the Woodburn Road, on Ellis Street, up by Windmill, beyond. Way beyond. The plastic bunting and flags flapped in the breeze, making clickety-clacking noises. The older – and apparently more expensive – cloth bunting and flags soiled easily, in days not weeks, but the blessed cloth bunting stayed silent in the breeze, flapping a quiet and dignified celebration. As we grew boys to men the cloth bunting disappeared, replaced there by its twin, the cheap and noisy dirty oul tart of the family.

The more Proud Protestant you were the more flags you flew. The more flags you flew, the more proud a Proud Protestant you were to those you thought might give a flying fuck about such things. The more proud you were the more loyal you were. The more loyal you were the more a true Loyalist you were. The more a true Loyalist you were the more militant you tended to be. The more militant you were the more you hated Catholics. The more you hated Catholics the more Proud Protestant, Loyalist and militant you were, and the more flags you flew. And we grew to know those who would be first to fly their flags and emblems, those who would fly the most. It was those who made their feelings clear to us when we walked by them in the street, those who halted Halt!, and with that those who made us different. 

As Brendan and I varied our routes home through those streets we were invariably proven right, but ensuring we got home safe and that those we met knew little of us being the Proud Fenian Taigs of The Vatican of The Hollies meant that we often took little notice of who was the proudest, reddest, whitest and bluest; who was most loyal, Loyalist or militant. By night the street cracked and whipped and clickety-clacked as the breezes later traced our paths home through the streets and alleyways and passages and garages and back to where we started, all the while breathing life into the streets, fluttering glorious Protestantism.

By the first week of July all the flags were out, and they could be new and pristine or dirty and rain-sodden, because, in the end, it mattered not a jot. They were all of them precious and no-one could take that away, not even those damned full-to-bursting Fenian pigeons. 

Through our window with the heavy curtains with the sliver gaps, through the fireguard, we would watch the flags as the wind waltzed with them up the street and across the roofs and out to sea. The winds made the flags rise and fall, up and down, up and down, all along the street. Outside the window, the zigzagged bunting attached to the nearest streetlight always was plastic. Clickety-clack, clickety clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. We fell asleep to the staccato singing and dancing of flags and wind, the partners tap-dancing from west to east.

The Eleventh of July. Every year. In a twist of time and logic, the Eleventh Night sees the culmination of the glorious Twelfth of July celebrations, and the expectation is that all and sundry will join in the partying. The Hollies filled again with children, drunks, bikes, piss, skipping ropes, couples snogging, footballs. 

The Proud Protestant mothers and fathers still lucky enough to be working would just be starting their traditional two-week holiday, known as the July Fortnight or the Twelfth Fortnight. Many employers and businesses in Northern Ireland shutter their doors for two weeks in July so that the Proud Protestants can enjoy a feast of history and marching bands, choked down with party foods and cheap drink. The culmination of the celebrations is the infamous Eleventh Night. The Proud Fenians stay off the streets that night.

By the Eleventh Night the Proud Protestant mothers and fathers have had the flags out and up, back down, cleaned of Fenian shit, back out again. To fuel the celebrations they fill fridges with beers and ciders, or whatever cheap alcohol the dole cheque would allow a decent Proud Protestant man and his family to enjoy. And cheap beers for the ladies, once the ladies had downed their cheap wines. Drinking wine in The Hollies was like having French-polished furniture in The Vatican: it looked nice, and it provided an illusion of extended pinkie-fingered sophistication, but no visitor ever was to find out the country of origin, the store where you purchased your wine or how much it cost. Receipts were kept out of sight. There was some level of pride to maintain, a decorum to portray, thank you very much.

During the months of June and July, Proud Protestant sons and daughters relieved us of our old and broken furniture by dragging it away to pile it on the traditional Twelfth of July bonfires, known as boneys. 

“Hey mister, we’re collectin’ for the boney. J’wanna give us sumfin for it?”

“Why the hell not?” Dad would say, “It gets rid of junk, doesn’t it? Let ‘em have it.” And thus, to sweaty, dirty, prepubescent urchins we relieved ourselves of the things we needed no more, our junk, and we knew our junk would be added to that pile of junk that might have an effigy of the Pope or a Proud Fenian martyr or the Irish flag burning on top of it in a few hours’ time. It saved Dad from having to get Carrickfergus Council workmen off their arses and into The Hollies, and everyone was on holiday anyway, didn’t you know?, and there was no way you would get anyone doing anything like work during the glorious Twelfth Fortnight.

The Child of The Hollies only collected the junk for the boney. Older boys and young men built the boney. It was okay for us to speak with those collecting the wood, the dirty-faced, ignorant, innocent children, but we avoided those building the bonfires, those who had an inkling about politics, about Fenians, who lived here and there in the town, and what church they attended. Once upon a time we played Halt! with many of them. The older ones never came near number 43 because they knew we lived there, and there was nothing more galling than to be seen fraternising with a Fenian family, even if it was just to add their Catholic fuel to the fire. Talking to Taigs was off limits unless you collected milk money or insurance money. There were times when strangers came seeking donations in support of the Loyalist Prisoners Association: we never gave, but were polite about our refusal. “Sorry, no,” then we’d close the door. Or, “Can you come back later, perhaps? I don’t have any change on me,” was another we used. We smiled and we chatted. They never did come back – either they moved on to another area or they got wise to The Vatican.

There was one boney in the field we knew as the first field, just above The Hollies. They built one on the first field above Blackthorn Park, one further along Oakwood Road, a massive bonfire was built close to a play park down by Crazy Prices, and many dotted the Salt Hills. They were everywhere, and every one of them was a celebration of the burning of something Catholic. The only time a Tricolour – the Irish flag – or an effigy of the Pope lasted more than two minutes in Carrickfergus was when it adorned a boney. In that town, Tricolours were bought only when they were to be burned high above on the Eleventh Night. If you could find one or steal one, all the better.

The residents of Blackthorn Park built a boney in the garages. The paint on the wooden garage doors lay dry, thin, blistered and cracked, the result of the boneys of previous years. Some of the garage doors had burned accidentally, others simply broken apart by the same vulturous children who played in the burned out shells of cars, those whose time was now taken in the search for any wood that would make their boney the biggest, proudest Twelfth of July boney anywhere. Bigger, taller, wider, better, paper, wood, clothes, oil drums, palettes, plastic bags and any Catholic effigy, whether that was the Pope or just any old Taig draped in a Tricolour.

“I’m glad that apple tree is rooted to the spot!” quipped Dad.

By early evening on the eve of the glorious Twelfth of July the streets were clear of Fenians. If The Eleventh was on a Sunday Catholic masses went ahead, and those who promised to remain unbowed in the face of Proud Protestant celebration proudly made their ways to church and back again, leaving home at the usual time, dressed the same as always. Proud Protestants were to see that life went on as normal for Catholics. We did it, we went to church, and we kept our foxes ears on the priest and on the street outside, with the Lambeg marching drums getting louder and the swears getting clearer, and the mob getting nearer.

“Remember always to love your neighbour as yourself,” pleaded Father mCGarry, “Yes, even during times like these when our streets are filled with our neighbours and their beautiful music. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” A polite ripple of laughter.

The faces of the congregation eased into frowns, the anxiety muted but thick in the air. The faces of the congregation spoke a raw truth. What they said was, “What? Go now Father? Are you fucking kidding, Father, god forgive my language? With the mobs outside, their cheering and swearing filling the holy air, the bangs of Lambeg drums louder and louder in the street, filling our ears?” And as the faces spoke their truths the mouths maintained a pretence: “Will we be seeing you in the Parochial Hall for the bingo and the tea next week then, Mrs. McKay? Sure, won’t it be grand to see the parishioners having a nice supper together? Aye, sure it will.” We shuffled out, slowly. Mass could have lasted forever those nights, for all we cared, and the usual rush for the door was never to be seen as the parish mingled a while in hushed and unhurried talk, keeping Mrs. Armstrong busy in the repository longer than usual. Father O’Hagan could have cast us into Hell one hundred times those nights, and we would have come back for more, delaying our exits past the pillars of salt and out through the holy doors. Few souls left before the Lambegs faded into a safe distance, up by the farm on Ellis Street or down by Pete’s Place, our second favourite record store, owned and run by Blind Pete and staffed by him and his mother. Everyone waited until the reassuring green uniformed presence of the RUC was all we could see before Taylor’s shop up the road; or down the road, beyond the curve where Ellis Street blended with Minorca Place, Irish Quarter West and Davy’s Street. Everyone got home quickly. If you had a car you got it, you, and your family home.