Squad Weapons

I'm standing at a bus stop on the Lower Ormeau Road when a para brick comes up the street--four squaddies with SA-80s. They're on the other side of the street. One of the guys gets down on one knee and enfilades me with his weapon.

Two of the others stand back to back while the other scopes.

I wonder if the weapon's on safety but no one's ever been shot this way to my knowledge so I don't really care.

The squaddies do a Blackhawk Down run across the street and flatten against the wall of the gas works behind me. There's no gas in it any more. The IRA blew up the pipes so now we all use oil. I can just see Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness sittin' in one of those moldy kitchen houses in West Belfast, saying:

"Hey, if we want to drive this United Ireland agenda forward we should blow up the gas supply. Let them use oil. The price vagaries will drive them nuts,"

And McGuinness answering Adams' fine plan with:

"Catholics and protestants alike."

"Yep." says Adams.

"Republicans and loyalists without fear or favor?"

Adams says:

"Yep."

McGuinness has doubts but goes with the flow. Adams anticipates his demurral and adds:

"We're equal opportunity terrorists."

McGuinness says:

"Yep--kill ‘em all . . . what the feck."

Adams turns distractedly to look over his shoulder and says to no one in particular:

"Is there a wee woman here to make a cuppa tea or what?"

McGuinness looks doubtful. I can just see Adams sitting behind his desk on the terrorist train as it rolls through Lambeg and Lisburn, with the driver looking into the backs of the wee kitchen houses in case some wee woman is washing her milkwhite breasts at the sink. Worth a wank.

Anyway, what I mean to say is I can see Adams with his peaked hat with the red star on it saying:

"The personal life in Ireland is dead."

Meanwhile, the gasworks is due for gentrification. Give it a couple years and there'll be artists, artisans, craftspeople, boutiques all over the place.

Meanwhile the artists of death have suddenly dashed over to my bus shelter. One says to me:

"Alright boss?

"Alright corporal," I say and I say it pleasantly. I don't say "hope you guys get a trip to tap city today. I love it when players go down.” But I do.

The bus comes. I get on and it trundles through the lower middle class Catholic district toward the Ormeau Bridge. I could have bought houses here for credit card money in 1992--now they're out of sight. The Ormeau Bridge is the watershed. The Orangemen march down to the bridge and stop because the peelers have erected impenetrable shields on the bridge to keep them out of the Catholic Lower Ormeau.

This really pisses them off. They present a petition and then the Reverend so and so says a prayer asking for God's help in these Godless times. They're really religious so they are, but. Yet the Catholics are no better. They learned their PR at the Lenin School of Declamation.

Last time the IRA tapped a couple Loyalist players outside the house it sounded like Chinese firecrackers going off. I was up in my paneled attic room watching CNBC, reading the paper and writing a telecoms article--big multiplexing day.

I went over to the window and realized I was hearing AK's . . . tap, tap, tap. Cyclic rate of 600rpm. That's a lot of ammo to carry but the IRA was using burst fire . . . tap tap tap.

A guy comes down the Ormeau Road with his AK in a garbage bag--he's a kid. He wears jeans and a white tee shirt and white trainers. He gets languidly into the back of a red Ford and fucks off.

I go down to see the bodies. My side of the Ormeau Road, up here at South Parade is middle and upper middle but just across the street stretch streets of lower middle and lower. Now they're pouring out of their warrens like the night of the undead.

The guys are lying face down and I can't see the exit wounds. I wonder if those 7.92mms are nestling somewhere in their viscera. There's an anger in this crowd. They say:

"Where's the fuckin' ambulance but," and stare distractedly down the street to see if there's an ambulance coming up the road from the City or the Royal.

One wee woman says:

"We're gonna get some fuckin' taigs tonight."

But they're no better.

I watch the guys die and then go back upstairs to see what Mark Haines, Joe Kernen and David Faber are going to say about today's Dow Jones open. New York is five hours behind.

I wish I could carry a licensed short here. Some guy, August 1993, dumps a gym bag in the door of the Northern Bank next door to me and when it goes off I feel my three-story Victorian gentleman's townhouse lift on its foundation for less than a second and then thump down again. I'm in the attic which is why I'm not dead. The loose old windows in the attic just pop open without breaking.

But downstairs all the carpets are fine-frosted with powdered glass from the big six-foot sash windows. I've been sucking back a 40 of Powers Three Swallows Irish so I take all this in a neuron at a time.

Out on the street all the windows are blown out down to about number 30 on my side and number 31 across the street. Everybody's outside. It's party time. I hang with a peeler for awhile discussing the relative merits of autos versus revolvers--autos lots of shots but they can jam; revolvers not many shots but very reliable. Hey, they run this conundrum in Soldier of Fortune almost every month.

Eamonn the magical thinker is out (it's a mixed street). He mumbles inchoate things. Mrs. Glenny is out, hunchbacked and older than I can imagine. She used to be the almoner at the Royal. I'm not sure what an almoner does but I think it's something cool.

I was glad the bottle wasn't empty.

Days like this there's no tomorrow . . . only the daze.

Then come the bureaucrats to check the damage; cut a check.

It's like that. Belfast in a bowl of hills. An area of outstanding natural beauty. Even in the war zone people are nice. By day they're your cabbie, your butcher, the bus driver.

I remember fucking Eilish in 1973 or maybe 75. She'd finally given up her virginity when she was maybe 30 years old. She went to confession Saturday nights wearing a headscarf.

She didn't want any mortal sins going into the priest's ear for his later sweat-tossed delectation. So she stuck to venial.

Venial was fun. In 1963 she wore a Sunday white dress and I helped her up on the dresser to hang a picture. Then she came down in my arms, skirts riding up, garters and stockings, and we kissed deep and she took out my cock and I could see it in the wardrobe mirror and the bedroom door was open and I wondered about the wee girls upstairs--what they might see.

But Eilish pushed me out before I came on that 73 or 75 night. She thought better of it and I was never in her again. The bombs echoed round the bowl of the hills every 15 minutes or so. I went out with my camera and Canadian Press card and took pictures. A sergeant said:

"No faces boss."

Another time I'm in the Club Bar on University Road. There's a red-headed Queens sociology undergrad sitting nearby. There's a Press Association guy at my table--a boring fucking Brit--flat affect--they live in personality-free zones. But I talkee talkee to this guy giving off these 'I'm a shit hot foreign correspondent' vibes to see if I can pique the redhead into a fuck.

Around 11 she gets up and I say as she passes:

"Will I ever see you again." She rejoins:

"Ye might. ifya come round toDonegall Pass at midnight."

I can't believe it but now I have to kill time till midnight. Finally I can't take it any more. I buy a mickey of whiskey and trundle down Donegall Pass and knock her door. No one comes. I sort of lean against the door far as I remember and it falls down. I wander around the second floor calling her name.

I hear a flurry downstairs and up the stairs she comes with some wee Irish guy whom I figure maybe is the owner of the joint. He says 'you broke my fuckin' door' and smacks me in the mouth. I taste blood. I say:

"Sorry. It fell over, Have a drink."

This mollifies him sufficiently to desist from whacking me again. There's a moral authority problem in these situations. It's hard to whack the landlord back when you've just trashed his door.

But Rosanne or whatever her--I don't remember--name is says 'it's ok I know this guy,' so we go in her room and start fucking with no preliminaries. Then we drink some whiskey and fuck again and smoke cigarettes. She is good to be with but I have to go back to Montreal on Monday and this is Friday. I only came over to Belfast to pick up my laundry (don't ask--it's a long story but it's dead true; I had two tickets back to back).

She's good to be with. Saturday morning she asks me if I have any money. I give her two quid and she goes out and gets eggs, potato farls, bacon, tomatoes, cheese, bananas--good things to eat. We eat and we fuck and then we go drinking.

She is so good to be with. There's a laconic air about her as if she's seen more than a wee papist from Derry oughta. All weekend we eat, we drink, we fuck.

I have a car somewhere. Monday morning I find the car and go up to the Club Bar. There's this guy Aidan who's going to Paris in the evening but I say I'll give him a run up to the airport. So off we go. I feel good but I would have been sad had I known I'd never see Roseanne again. She was so good to be with.

On Sunday she said 'we can't fuck any more; I'm too sore'. So we cuddled and kissed and ate and drank and cuddled and kissed and I taught her to use the lips, the tongue but not the teeth.

We get to the airport and I have to take the car back. Aidan wants to jump out and go straight in. He insists. When I dump the car and go back he's taken the last seat to London. He doesn't even need it but he takes it. I have to connect for Montreal. I've got a job there, editing a tabloid and my boss, Joanie, has given me the ultimatum. After awhile the British Airways women get me on a flight to Glasgow.

When I get back to Montreal there's a blizzard. My cab inches inches inches from Dorval to Joanie's house. We drink and fuck and then drink again. One of her sons keeps knocking on the bedroom door to be let in.

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