mural depicting loyalist paramilitaries at

Mount Vernon in North Belfast 

writing

Postscript ~ Europa

The following is a modified excerpt from my piece, "Postscript ~ Europa," in The Harp and the Loon Anthology: Literary Bridges Between Ireland and Minnesota. 

 “ *** ” denotes omitted sections from original text 

Tracie Loeffler Donaghy

writer . speaker . editor

Sitting at the Europa, the most bombed hotel in the world, the boys exchange stories of growing up together during The Troubles. The fact that where we are was a target of the IRA for so many years, with thirty-three of their bomb attempts successful, holds no relevance. To them, up here in the second floor lounge, the bar service is quick and we’ll be able to carry on a conversation without too much noise. And tonight, it becomes the perfect backdrop for things they've never shared in my presence before. One doesn't talk about their dark times during The Troubles, especially not so openly to outsiders. But I have been married into Belfast for ten years now, and something I share seems to open the floodgates.

I mention the Grove Leisure Center, a newly built recreational facility in a rough part of Belfast, not too far from my husband’s family home. It has a gym, a library, a swimming pool and sauna, a café, and an area for kids’ birthday parties. I tell them about how John—my husband and their longtime friend—had recently taken our son there for an afternoon swim. He thought they’d lucked out because the two of them had the whole pool to themselves. Until that night, when he found out why. Someone had been stabbed in the lobby the day before. This frightens me, I tell them, my little boy going for a swim where someone was just stabbed. They say it’s a one-off. Just a one time, unusual occurrence. I say that everyone here always says these things are one-offs, but they keep happening. Yes, acts of violence happen back home in the States, but this kind of rooted sectarianism and deliberate violence has a way of infiltrating the ordinary, not letting you forget where you are. Still, they hold firm that these are isolated incidents. To underscore their point, they unexpectedly move the conversation to what life was like during The Troubles.   


The stories are shared with laughter, but it is a very black humor. Stories of repeatedly being chased by gangs—a common occurrence, so much so that they would often opt for getting to each other’s houses through back gardens instead of front sidewalks. It was because of Mount Vernon, they say, the notorious Protestant housing projects, antagonistically built on the edge of what was once a peaceful Catholic neighborhood. Sean remembers the axe head on a chain, and being saved, just barely, by the appearance of his father and the handle of a sledgehammer up the sleeve of John’s second-hand US Army jacket. Groups of twelve to thirteen boys, always from Mount Vernon, wandering the neighborhood, waiting for someone to jump. Ready to split off into groups to better attack the unwitting victims. Kieran says when you ran into them, you’d have to ignore them—walk straight ahead, look straight ahead. No matter how terrified you were, you had to act as if they didn’t exist. That would be your only chance, he adds somberly. 
 

With a wince of embarrassment, Kieran recounts going to department stores in the South, where at the entrances he’d automatically stop and hold up his arms and spread his legs, waiting to be frisked and searched before going in. It was what you were expected to do each time you would step foot into a shop in Belfast, he says, thinking out loud what a complete nutter he must have looked like to all the other shoppers. My thought is that he wasn’t the first Northerner to assume the position. 


For a spilt-second, my mind wanders, noticing the floor to ceiling windows lining the long expanse of wall behind Kieran’s head. Overlooking the elegant, 1800s-style architecture of Great Victoria Street, as well as the ornate façade of the renowned Crown Liquor Saloon, the nighttime view is striking. Yet for many years, bombings and civil unrest made this a “no go” area at night. I imagine the wall of windows shattering, being blown in by an explosion the way they once regularly did. Envisioning, in slow motion, shards of glass flying inwards past the club chairs and leather-accented couches, rattling the giant chandeliers. That doesn’t happen anymore, I reassure myself, quickly shutting down the disturbing image and returning my attention to the conversation.


Niall talks about how the others were lucky, because at least in their neighborhood, it was known what “side” they were on, although that was also bad, because that singled them out as a target. Niall, who lived further out in Glengormley, didn’t go to the local school, so he’d get it from both sides, Catholics and Protestants, the Catholics not knowing he was one of them. Then again, Niall was a bit of both—a child of a mixed marriage, which, in Northern Ireland, means the intermarrying of Catholics and Protestants. In some circles, you were killed for marrying someone from the other side. John and I were a mixed marriage. But I wasn’t from Northern Ireland. I was American. Both sides liked Americans, John said. So it was OK.


Even so, I say, I notice that he doesn’t call our American-born son by name when we are in Protestant areas, like the kiddie amusement park in Bangor. Throughout the seaside town, decorative banners of Union Jacks wave high in the air, resembling a festive Fourth of July celebration. But these flags are sectarian, marking territory. With my blonde hair and brown eyes, a mix of Nordic and German descent, it’s unlikely that I’ll be marked for either side. But my son, with dark hair like his dad’s and a distinctly Irish name, could. John then recalls going shoe shopping as a child with his mother and three siblings in a Protestant neighborhood.


The shoe store was on the Shankill Road—a loyalist paramilitary stronghold and home to the Shankill Butchers, a Protestant gang known for their late-night abductions, usually of random Catholic civilians, that they tortured and violently murdered. However, it was daytime when his mother took them out, and they could blend in with all the other shoppers, as long as they didn’t call their middle brother by name. All the brothers had been named after saints, but only one was unquestionably Catholic—Colm. But that store on the Shankill Road had the best prices on shoes and the family income was limited, he said, so they kept to themselves and called their brother “William.” Although it’s nowhere near the same, I admit to the others that I, too, now call my son “Sweetie” or “Sunshine” in public, avoiding his name and unnaturally emphasizing my American accent when I speak. They understand.

                                                                                 ***

They speak of how easy it would have been to be a Thomas Devlin, that his Mount Vernon attackers knew where he lived and his religion, just as others knew theirs. Thomas Devlin, the fifteen-year-old boy who was stabbed to death in a sectarian attack on the Somerton Road. He was on his way home from the local petrol station, buying sweets and crisps with a couple of his friends for an evening of computer games and a sleepover. The two Mount Vernon attackers, armed with a knife and wooden bat, were hiding in the dark behind the gates of “Barney”—the nickname for the local boys’ school—waiting for them to return. This was the school whose grounds I walked through, passing these same gates as I took my son to the local library in his stroller. This was the school where my father-in-law taught before becoming a lawyer. This was the school around the corner from my husband’s family home, where we were living that summer.  

 

Less than an hour before Thomas was brutally murdered, John and I walked down that same road with our toddler son, each holding one of his tiny hands, on our way home from a summer evening get-together. Police searched the area for the murder weapon the next day. I watched as they searched our yard. The day after that, a detective was in our home, searching for eyewitnesses and clues, questioning even me, the American in-law.
 

Another round of drinks arrives, allowing the boys to continue remembering a past they try to forget. They say that the Somerton Road is creepy, but then all agree that it looks like such a nice area. It does. Its stately red-brick homes and black iron gates—civilly separated by wooden fences, cement walls, and manicured hedges—attracted peaceful people of both religions. The residential enclave was home to notables such as the bishop and Lord Mayor as well as doctors and lawyers. But it was quiet, too quiet, they say, which is bad in Belfast. You want traffic, you need eyewitnesses. It was OK for a while when a judge lived on the road, Kieran said, since that meant 24-hour surveillance. Tall hedges lined both sides of the Somerton Road, where John’s street came to an end. Those hedges were dangerous, they said, since you’d never know what was around the corner. They hated that T-junction, but it was where you had to catch the bus.


Outwardly, I laugh along with them, closely following their cues to ensure appropriate reactions, but inwardly, I feel shaken, sickened by the trauma they’ve endured. These were John’s best mates, always friendly and gleefully eager to fill me in on their wilder days with my husband, including the punk band they were in together, complete with groupies. I’d met their wives, our son played with their kids. And yet, there was much I didn’t know. No matter how far they let me in, I would always be an outsider, and would never truly understand what it was like for them. Growing up with British Army tanks roaming the streets, manned by soldiers with machine guns, keeping the peace, or rather, keeping the Catholics in line. Overhead, a constant buzz of army helicopters monitoring suspicious activity. On the ground below, a constant maze of blockades and armed checkpoints, monitoring movement of weapons.      

                                                                             ***

In spite of repeated bombings and threats throughout The Troubles, the Europa carried on. Their motto was “We never close.” When the elevators were blown out, guests used the fire escapes to access their rooms. When the power was out, chefs cooked over portable gas burners. There was a time when the Europa gave out ties to businessmen staying at the hotel whenever it was bombed. They wore these ties with pride, showing what they survived—a novelty, a good story to share. It was not uncommon for Europa’s guests to ask reception if there would be a bomb during their stay, hoping for their own tale to tell others once they returned home. The people who live in Belfast have their own neckties, but they are ones they can’t take off. And the stories the boys shared with me that night, many of which happened over twenty years ago, are ones they’d gladly do without.