My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress (10 page)

None of us enjoyed this journey. Apart from having to contend with the desperate drone of an underworked gearbox, we'd have to suffer the smoke from father's Woodbines; he insisted on all windows remaining closed, no matter how warm the day. So we'd sit in silent mutiny in the heat and sweat and smoke, suffering slow asphyxiation, knowing that if we dared complain he was liable to turn back and snatch our dream away. This being our only outing in the whole year, we could never risk jeopardising it. Instead I'd alleviate my discomfort with healing fantasies. As the fields and cluttered towns revealed themselves and receded outside the car window, I'd imagine feeling the hot sand between my toes and the waves before me: the rewards to come.

Portstewart is a beautiful, timeless town with a row of dwellings, shops and cafés facing by turns the vigour and
calm of the Atlantic. A Dominican college to the west juts out onto a balcony of rock, overlooking with a lofty grace the sweep of sand and sea below. The generous strand is nearly three miles long; to us it seemed to stretch to the other end of the world. For the denizens of north Ulster back then this place represented a soothing release from the stresses of life; for us children it was pure paradise.

The climax of that tedious journey brought us release from the suffering of the car, and gave us the prize of that longed-for beach. Our little legs would have grown stiff and could barely take our weight as we tumbled out. Mother had kitted us out with swimming costumes; we young ladies each had a ruched one-piece in a fetching shade of blue or pink – and each one probably part of a ‘buy one, get one free' promotion. She herself had a rather overstated one but in a similar style. The boys had their trunks, and father – ever the party-pooper – had no swimming gear at all, since he refused to take part in such frivolity. To him the whole excursion was a blatant waste of time. While we all had fun he'd sit in the car reading the newspaper.

Changing at the beach always presented difficulties, not least because there were no facilities and we didn't have a windbreak. So we'd all scramble up behind the sand dunes to undress.

Mother, being more worldly-wise than the rest of us, would keep a weather eye open for the ubiquitous peeping toms. On spotting one she'd fire off a volley of choice expletives. We never actually saw anyone but were assured that the ‘dirty oul' frigger' had been out there none the less. I often wondered what he'd been looking for. I had the idea that every year it was the same man spying on us and was puzzled as to how he always managed to know the precise day and hour of our
arrival. Mother claimed that the ‘dirty oul' frigger' was everywhere and had eyes in the back of his head; so I'd struggle fearfully out of my dress and into my swimsuit knowing that no matter what I did, the brute could still see me. …

The sea beckoned. We'd dash into the breakers and spend ages wading and splashing with delight. I gloried in the dynamic otherness of that buoyant world, and wished to remain in it for ever. But sadly the time would come for my farewell and I'd be dragged, kicking and screaming, from its shores.

After all that excitement came the picnic. Father was depressingly tight-fisted and would rather have undergone rectal surgery without anaesthetic than pay for us in a restaurant. So mother would spread a bath-towel on the sand and decant the contents of a large shopping bag. The lighting of the Primus stove was left to father and we'd all stand well back for the ceremony. Over his lifetime he'd perfected the art of making the simplest task look like a murderous assignment. Mother often ended up doing things herself rather than ask him because with each performance there was the petulant aftermath. When it came to the wretched stove, however, she was lost. She didn't know how to assemble it, and had neither the time nor inclination to learn, having enough to be getting on with.

We all stood well back for the lighting of the stove, hoping it would succeed and not blow up in his face because then there'd be hell to pay. With each failed attempt and spent match, father's face would grow longer and our hopes shorter. But it usually worked out. With the task accomplished, the parents drank their tea and we had warm milk or a cup of orange squash that had been diluted with such an alarming proportion of water that there was no discernible orange to speak of.

My mother could stretch the life out of food and drink until it begged for mercy. A single, humble tomato could sliver its way around an entire loaf; the salad cream bottle, on nearing expiry, would be watered and shaken vigorously to dislodge the last drop. She could have given Speke and Burton some useful hints on food rationing before they braved the deprivations of Africa.

Tomato and egg sandwiches did not travel well, as I recall, especially not in the boiling-hot boot of a Ford Popular. They'd emerge from their plastic bag well past their die-by date, just yearning to be squeezed into soggy balls and fired into the ocean. We didn't dare do such a thing, of course, the consequences being unimaginable; besides we were so hungry we'd have eaten anything. Wordlessly, we consumed the fare – sometimes with ‘helpful' dustings of breeze-blown sand – because there was nothing else.

After the tea and sea it was off to Barry's, the amusement arcade in Portrush. We'd clamber into the car and trundle off on the two-mile journey to this second paradise. To us Portrush was synonymous with Barry's. We didn't see much more of the town itself; father claimed it was a ‘black hole anyway', by which he meant it was full of Protestants, and for him that was good enough reason to shun it.

Getting us into Barry's was no problem – we'd race inside like prize sprinters – but getting us out again was a nightmare of tears, tantrums and much dragging of feet. We couldn't get enough of those moronic merry-go-rounds, sitting astride plastic ponies with mother urging us to ‘hold on tight'.

Afterwards came the dodgems, the ghost train and big dipper. Sometimes on that stomach-lurching circuit those soggy sandwiches would take their revenge. We were denied nothing then. My mother reasoned, naively, that
we could get too much of a good thing, and that if we had a go on everything we'd get so fed up we'd leave without a fuss. It rarely happened though. She had to resort to cajoling us with sweets of every description and the promise of ice cream in Morelli's café back in Portstewart. The bribe of ice cream always worked.

We'd drift along the promenade, licking the dripping ice-cream cones. In those golden moments we really did feel we'd died and gone to Miss McKeague's heaven.

Father would need his treat too. Before departing we'd follow him into a dingy pub – always the same one: The Slippery Eel on the promenade – and there he'd reward himself with a whiskey and a pint of Guinness. ‘The Eel' seemed to be staffed by the same people and frequented by the same patrons year after year.

True to form, father would examine the bar counter with his seasoned carpenter's eye and give it a right good shake. Mother would note these disquieting indications, and shout out the order to distract him. ‘God,' she'd whisper between gritted teeth, ‘you could take that man nowhere. Let you down a bagful, so he would.' She was well used to his ways by then.

We were always served by the same barman: fat, tattooed forearms; face like a lump of Play-Doh pummelled by a child throwing a fit; purple parsnip nose. He wore a tight tee shirt which gave him a rather unflattering silhouette. He shuffled his feet, mumbled his words, and brought us our drinks on a dented tray which had no doubt doubled as an instrument of defence and combat during the occasional Saturday night brawl.

When we went to the toilet the floorboards shuddered. When a car whizzed past the window the drink in our glasses shivered. We got Fanta orange and mother had a Babycham, served in what looked like a glass saucer on a
stem. With each sip her cheeks would go pink and she'd smile more. She'd frequently end up having a chat with the same woman every year: a middle-aged lady with a recent perm and red ears. Father would become more voluble, engaging some cap-and-braces wearer at the bar, who'd swerve with delirious uncertainty through a range of topics he knew little about. Those wise words of Lord Halifax come to mind now: ‘Most men make little use of their speech than to give evidence against their own understanding.' And that surely went for father as well.

And we children, having finished the Fanta with lightning speed, with the adults occupied and our day at an end, would quest about for further amusement. Since we were forbidden to move from the table, its surface became the focus of our ennui: we'd lever off sections of Formica with bored fingers and stuff the evidence of our vandalism down the crack of the vinyl sofa seat. When the adults had finally finished and father was on his feet he'd look at the table and remark: ‘God that Formica doesn't stand the times atall, atall. Nothing but a load of oul' British rubbish.' And the barman would sigh heavily, shoot smoke from his purple nose and counter: ‘Aye, it's the bloody sun that does it, so it does … curls it up like … need tae get a lock of curtains, so I would.' With that we'd traipse out, experiencing the rare delight of having put one over on the adults.

We slept most of the way home, reliving in our dreams the pleasures of the day, our joy tempered by the thought that we'd have to wait a whole year before we could do it all again.

In childhood I climbed metaphorical mountains. Each year the terrain got harder and the ascent steeper. That one day by the seaside was the ledge on which I rested. Yet all the same it seemed that that one, red-letter, day repaid all the unnumbered days of sadness.

B
OMBS AND
M
OTORBIKES

I
n 1970 the monster of political violence that would slaughter and slash its way across Northern Ireland for the next three turbulent decades was beginning to rumble and stir itself to life.

The so-called ‘Troubles' began in 1967 with the formation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). The movement called for equality for the nationalist population, among other things campaigning for the right of every person to have a vote, an end to discrimination in employment, and the need for a fairer system by which houses were allocated. Catholics had been denied these basic rights for decades within the one-party Unionist state, under governments that represented only the interests of the majority, Protestant, population.

To the outside observer this might have seemed a gross injustice that needed to be addressed. The Unionist people, however, for whatever reason, chose to believe that the NICRA was merely a front for the Irish Republican Army, whose goal was a united Ireland. Never mind that the IRA was almost non-existent at the time.

The more militant among the Unionists therefore felt justified in attacking any civil rights marches that took place. The thugs were supported by the mainly Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who were supposed to be keeping law and order and protecting the demonstrators.

One such march in 1969 proved beyond doubt whose side the authorities were on. I watched the television footage of peaceful marchers – both men and women, Protestant and Catholic – being attacked by the RUC at Burntollet Bridge near Derry city. I did not know then that this event would mark the point at which the Troubles went from being primarily a civil rights issue to a return to a more savage time, one in which religion and national identity were paramount. I could not have understood as I innocently watched the batons and bricks rain down – as my father swore and my mother crossed herself – that this outrage would lead to more than 30 years of conflict and the deaths of over 3,000 people. Burntollet had picked open the scab of tribal hatred so that the blood of intolerance could gush forth again.

It was Belfast where the monster of sectarianism and bigotry thereafter chose to release most of its venom. Rarely having visited the city, my parents and country folk in general viewed Belfast as a war zone best avoided. The television brought the destruction close enough. Moreover each summer, usually on a Sunday, we received one of its citizens, a distant relative of my mother's: Mr Edward Bradley, affectionately known as Eddie.

In those phoneless days visitors could just appear out of the blue, which was rather distressing for mother, who could never keep a ready store of fancy food available for that unexpected guest, due to our skill at finding it. We'd discovered all the hiding places, so she'd simply given up trying.

Mother always prided herself on her acute sense of hearing. On certain Sundays, as we all sat sated round the dinner table, she'd announce that she could hear Eddie's bike in the distance. We'd all dash out to the yard
and, sure enough, a couple of minutes later there he'd be, thundering down the lane on his big BSA motorcycle, the clouds of scree and dust billowing up extravagantly behind him.

The bike was a bizarre spectacle to us: a precariously dangerous machine that only the most daring and courageous could handle. When we saw Eddie hurtling down the lane he might as well have been a Martian and the bike a skyrocket.

We'd wait in suspense as he brought all that throbbing metal to a halt by the gable of the house, and watch in fascination as he performed the elaborate ritual of extricating himself from his biker's gear. Off came the bat-winged leather gloves, then the little bald head was freed from the helmet. Finally he'd swing a short leg over the rear of the machine with a pained expression that could only mean ‘bloody sore arse' – and it's only now that I realise what BSA could have stood for.

Eddie was a crusty bachelor in his early fifties who could not relate to children. Yet I suspect that he secretly enjoyed all the attention he commanded in those moments when we stood around speechless, our eyes like saucers. He'd largely ignore us, not speaking until our parents appeared on the step. After handshakes and greetings he'd follow them into the house, creaking in his leathers, and we were left to inspect the bike. We smelt the petrol fumes and made faces in the reflecting belly of the tank, fighting for possession of the saddle as we took imaginary journeys with our very own
vroomvroom
sound effects.