Hateland (8 page)

    I felt deeply uncomfortable as I walked up the pathway to her parents' bungalow clutching a bottle of non-alcoholic drink. It wasn't the natural discomfort everyone feels before a first meeting with a partner's parents. It was more the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that, quite literally, I couldn't be myself.

    The mother greeted us at the door, the personification of good manners. Very softly spoken, she was slim, about 5 ft 8 in., with silver-white hair. She led us politely into the sitting room.

    I wish Elizabeth had prepared me for the appearance of it. I was faced with what I can only describe as a shrine to the Reverend Doctor Ian Paisley, scourge of Fenians and hater of popery The face of Orange Number One beamed out from numerous photos in which he was often standing alongside Elizabeth's mother.

    There was even a photo of the two of them together in that very room. Photos of the Queen and the Royal Family were also prominent, along with lots of little figurines and knick-knacks of historical figures such as King William of Orange.

    Elizabeth's dad sat in one of the armchairs. He was about 60, short, thick-set with large gnarled hands. His white hair was balding. He got up to shake my hand and I noticed he had a bad limp. I found out later that this resulted from a wound received when the IRA blew up his Land-Rover with a culvert bomb.

    Over Christmas dinner, his wife said he'd been taken to a hospital where, she claimed, he'd been refused treatment by the Fenians who worked there. He'd been airlifted to Belfast and had ended up being pensioned off. He was extremely quiet and hardly ever spoke. The conversation as a whole was polite and stilted. I was extremely edgy, worried I'd say something to identify me as a Fenian interloper. I sipped my ginger beer temperately, trying to anticipate the mother's questions in order to give myself time to prepare acceptable answers.

    I was probably being over-sensitive, but I had the feeling she was analysing every word we said for signs of Catholicism or blasphemy. For instance, I might have said, 'My friend Patrick has got one of those cars.' And she'd have said, 'Patrick? That's a Catholic name. Is Patrick a Catholic?'

    After dinner, we sat down again in the sitting room to watch the Queen's Speech. It was a first for me. Fortunately, they kept the television on after the speech, so at least I had a little respite from talking and the constant danger of betraying myself. But watching television held dangers too. Something happened on screen which made me say, 'Oh, God! I don't believe it.' Elizabeth's mother breathed in sharply, clutched her chest and walked out. Elizabeth whispered angrily, 'I told you not to swear!'

    I tried to settle down into my new life with Elizabeth, but an uneasiness had crept into our relationship which hadn't been apparent before. Perhaps it was my fault. I'd expected something different from my new life. I suppose I'd almost expected to have my old army life back, but with more perks, such as the freedom to live outside camp with a woman I was fond of. But life as a civilian was very different. None of my friends was around and even from those very first days, I began to feel extremely isolated. I tried to enjoy myself, but deep down I knew I'd made a mistake in going back.

    Shortly after my arrival, I went to the main RUC station in Enniskillen and enquired about obtaining a firearms licence. If the Provos did pay me a visit, I wanted at least to have the chance to defend myself. The policeman at the desk summoned a colleague who dealt with such applications. He asked me why I wanted one. I explained my background and what I was doing in Northern Ireland. He nodded sympathetically and said he didn't think that, as a former soldier, I'd have any problems. He asked me various questions from a prepared list. Was I on any medication? Had I ever received treatment for, or been diagnosed as having, a mental illness? I got through everything all right until he came to the question I'd been dreading. Had I ever been convicted of a criminal offence?

    I suppose I could have lied, but I knew that, as a matter of course, he'd run my name through the police computer and find my record. Then I'd have committed another offence by lying to obtain a firearm. So I told the truth. I said I'd faced a few minor charges. He asked what they were. I said, 'Eh, assault, robbery, theft, threatening behaviour, possessing an offensive weapon and criminal damage.'

    His manner became a little frosty. He told me I'd be wasting my time applying. There was no way someone with my record would be given a firearms licence. Not even if the Provos put up 'Wanted' posters of me. I was annoyed. I said I'd only recently spent four and a half months patrolling Fermanagh with a firearm. He shrugged his shoulders.

    I had better luck with the UDR. After a short interview with an officer at St Angelo, and the lengthy processing of my application, I was told I'd been accepted into the ranks, although I'd have to wait six months to join the new intake.

    I liked Elizabeth a lot. She was a lovely person, kind and gentle, and much of the time we got on fine. But we came from such different backgrounds that inevitably I began to feel how alien we were to each other. In the past at St Angelo, she'd laughed with me at the stupidity of some of the sectarian bigots at the base.

She'd often said, 'We're not all like that.' But living with her, and meeting her friends and family, I felt at times the evidence told me different. She certainly didn't hate Catholics, but the world she lived in had been formed by 'the Troubles'. Almost all her friends and family were involved with the Crown forces in one way or another. They saw themselves as frontierspeople barricading their homesteads against marauding natives. It was all hands to the pump-action shotgun.

    Religion, or rather the religious denomination of others, dominated Elizabeth's thoughts and those of all her friends. Yet few of them seemed to practise their religion. Few went to church or Bible meetings or anything like that. The words 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' were used simply to identify friends from enemies, people whose company you could embrace from those whose company you had to shun. I felt a lot of her friends, especially those from St Angelo who knew about my background, didn't accept me. My blood tainted me - and even my prospective UDR uniform couldn't redeem me.

    We used to go to a particular pub in the area popular with UDR and RUC people. I had a few good evenings there, but the pattern was always the same. I'd meet new people one evening, and we'd get on great, but the next time we met they'd be cold and distant, as if they'd been warned off me. Elizabeth would sometimes say I was imagining things, but I knew I wasn't.

    I could see from Elizabeth's own behaviour how whispers about someone's untrustworthiness could start. Sometimes, we'd go round to the house of one of her friends. This friend used to share the house with her sister who, so far as I could tell, seemed to spend her days sewing. Before we went there for the first time, Elizabeth told me I wasn't to say anything to the sister. I asked her why. She said, 'She's not to be trusted. She mixes with the wrong people.' When I asked her to explain further, all she could say was that this woman occasionally drank in Catholic pubs and had Catholic friends.

    I could understand the need for constant vigilance. I knew that careless cops and squaddies ended up dead, but at the same time I felt she was security-conscious to the point of obsession. Worse - she expected me to be the same. She started driving me mad

    with her list of things I could and couldn't do - you can't go here, you can't go there, you can't do this, you can't do that. I've never liked being told what to do - and nothing was more likely to make me do the opposite.

    One day, I had a few drinks in a 'Provo' pub near the flat that she'd expressly ordered me to avoid. I told her what I'd done. It caused a major row. Our relationship, I realised, was not going to last.

    This realisation made me less anxious about how her family viewed me and one peculiar development from that was that I started getting on really well with her mother. I suppose she'd never met anyone like me before. I used to make her laugh. She'd greet me with real warmth and affection. She genuinely liked me and I genuinely liked her, which began to sadden me.

    I felt like a lying Judas. Yet I knew that if I told her I'd been born a Catholic, her attitude towards me would have done an about-turn. She'd have treated me like a nasty disease, despite the fact that in flesh, blood, mind and spirit I'd have been no different from the person she'd grown fond of. I'd grown up with anti-black racism, but to me, this was more poisonous - and less understandable. It was a seething hatred for others born on the same small island, if not in the same small street in the same small town - others who shared the same language, accent and skin colour. I felt like a phoney hiding behind an assumed identity. I couldn't tell anyone, Protestant or Catholic, who I really was. It began to get me down.

    One evening when Elizabeth wasn't at home, I felt particularly down. I began feeling angry at being surrounded by the invisible enemy. As a joke, someone had given me a little blue-and-white shield-shaped badge on which was emblazoned the provocative symbol of militant Loyalism, the Red Hand of Ulster. I stuck it on my jacket and went for a drink in another so-called 'Provo' pub Elizabeth had warned me to avoid.

    The pub was about a quarter full. I stood at the bar waiting to be served, my badge of defiance unnoticed by the elderly regulars. I couldn't see what Elizabeth was fussing about. None of the customers in this supposed IRA den looked violent or capable of violence. The barman, a stocky Lenin lookalike, came and said

    politely, 'And what can I get for you, Sir?' His eyes fell on my badge. It was like a crucifix to the Antichrist. I saw his eyes widening, then he shouted at me, 'Get out of here with that thing on.'

    I told him I wasn't going anywhere: I wanted a drink. He continued shouting at me to get out, but I refused. The customers watched me with silent hostility, but no one intervened. The barman said he was calling the police, an unusual act for a republican, but I assumed the hated symbol of Loyalism on my jacket had unhinged him. Within a short while, two armed policemen came into the pub. I explained the situation, but they told me a landlord was under no obligation to serve anyone. They asked me to leave with them.

    Outside, one of them said, 'You shouldn't go in there, especially not wearing that badge.'

    I said, 'If I want to wear a badge, I'll wear a fucking badge and they won't stop me.'

    He said again that I shouldn't return to that pub. I said I was sick of being told where I could and couldn't go: 'I'll go where I want.'

    This time, I didn't tell Elizabeth what I'd done, but within a few days she knew anyway. Word had got back to her, even though I hadn't known those policemen. She couldn't believe I'd been so stupid. Elizabeth realised I wasn't happy. I could tell she was worried about the way I was drawing attention to myself. She'd try to remind me I wasn't in England where my loutish behaviour might only provoke a fist fight. She said, 'Over here, they'll learn who you are, what you are, wait for their moment and shoot you. You've got to take it easy. You've got to learn your boundaries.'

    Elizabeth suggested we move out of Enniskillen into the countryside. An ex-UDR man rented us a house in a remote area near Maguiresbridge. We found ourselves about half a mile from the nearest neighbours, a mile from the main road and five miles from the nearest village. Worst of all, we were practically on the border, making us easy targets for the IRA.

    There were still several months to go before I joined the UDR. I hadn't bothered looking for work, because I didn't want to be in a position where an employer would have to receive my P45 from the army. But boredom was really beginning to bite and I decided to see if the dole office offered any back-to-work retraining courses at the local college. I went to a dole office that Elizabeth had told me was 'safe' (that is, the one most likely to have Protestant staff and a Protestant clientele). They found me a place on an engineering course at a college in Enniskillen.

    Memories of my schooldays filled me with dread, but I thought the course would at least get me out of the house. I'd arranged that my P45 from the army would be sent to the Department of Employment, which would effectively be my employer during my time on the course.

    It turned out that most of my fellow students were Catholics, as was the instructor. On the first day, he went around the class asking people about themselves. Perhaps I was paranoid, but he seemed to pay special attention to me. I suppose I was an oddity, because there weren't to my knowledge any other people with English accents in the college. He asked me what I was doing in Northern Ireland. I said my parents were Irish. They'd moved back to Ireland and I'd decided to join them. I hoped that would be enough for him. But, no, he kept asking searching questions. Where were my parents from? What did my dad do? Where were they living?

    Perhaps he was just being pally, but he made me feel uncomfortable. The other students weren't particularly friendly, although that could have been my fault as I wasn't overly friendly myself. I wasn't looking for a new group of mates. I felt that, even though they knew I had Irish blood, for them the most important fact about me was my English accent.

    Later in the week, as we sat in the classroom before the start of the lesson, the instructor said clearly in front of the class, 'Bernard, could you come to the office later? Your P45 has arrived from the army.'

    I thought, 'I'm fucked.'

    I felt like punching the bastard in the face, but I just gave a little laugh and said, 'No problem.' I knew he'd done it on purpose. At the time, I thought he was trying to cause me problems - and I even considered giving him a bashing - but with hindsight, I think he might have been trying to do me a favour by letting me know that other people, apart from himself, could already have seen the P45.

    From then on, the instructor remained friendly - more proof that I had more to fear from 'nice' people - but almost all the other students made a point of ignoring me. The only people who'd ever speak to me were Protestants - and there weren't many of them around. Within days, someone had scrawled 'Brits Out' on the back of my overalls. I'd come in to find my bits of practical work smashed to pieces or missing. I felt vulnerable, but angry. I used to make sure I carried a sharp tool around with me at all times. I was waiting for someone to say or do something overtly hostile, so I could justifiably smash his face in.