Through my clean, clean windscreen the city looked dirty suddenly. After a day of calorific politics and no-show romancing, Roche had been enough to make Belfast seem like a washed-out mouth. I couldn't spit the taste of my day away. I hated the way that could happen. Driving around, liking the streets and the people, was one of the few pleasures I had left. I hated it when my life took that away from me.
It was near ten o'clock when I got home. The cat was pissed off and hungry. I was pleased. He was close to missing me. My expectations were low. I'd settled for pissed off and hungry. I fed the fucker and played my messages.
Chuckie told me he'd sorted out my Crab and Hally problem.
Septic asked me to double-date with him on Friday.
The Amnesty guy was back on my case.
The coppers who'd called yesterday said they were dropping it.
Aoirghe told me to go fuck myself.
I kicked the cat. He looked at me like it wasn't his fault. I couldn't argue. I switched on the radio. It was a foolish move. I should have realized so close to the hour that the news would be on. This time, I didn't switch it off.
`Police said that the incident was not serious.Three arrests were made. A Just Us spokesman alleged that one of their members had been viciously assaulted by a so-called peace campaigner and required hospital treatment. The spokesman said that this showed the insincerity of such so-called peace rallies. The poet Shague Ghinthoss, who was at the incident, refused to comment. Sometimes, he said, things were better left unsaid!
I laughed and started making some coffee. Good old Shague. I even poured the cat some guilt-milk.
'There has been a report tonight that the mysterious group calling itself the OTG has threatened two young Protestant men from North Belfast. The RUC refused to comment but sources have suggested that the men were threatened because they were involved in debt-collecting activities in the area.'
I switched off the radio and picked up the phone. I called Max's house. Aoirghe answered.
'Is Chuckie there?F
'Is that Jackson?'
'Yeah:
There was a pause.
`I'll get him.'
Jesus, no abuse. What a polite exchange!
Chuckie came on the line. `Hey, Jake, I'm sorry we didn't make it to the train thing.You know how it is. Sounds like you and old Aoirghe had a good time there.'
I cut him short. 'Chuckie, what exactly did you do about Crab and Hally?'
Chuckie sounded scared. `Well ... Deasely and I talked about it and we thought since they were hassling you, the best thing we could do would be to give them some of their own.'
'Did you ring them up and pretend to be the fucking OTG?'
`Well, yes, we did.!
'Brilliant.'
'It worked. Donal called Crab and told him that we'd kill his family, his friends, people he'd only passed by in the street and then we'd kill him if he didn't lay off you. Donal said he was pissing himself.'
'Fucking wonderful!'
`What's wrong?' Now Chuckie sounded wounded.
'It's just been on the radio. If Crab tells anybody my name was mentioned, people will think I'm in a terrorist organization that doesn't even exist.'
'Oh, yeah,' replied Chuckie lamely.
`And what if those two fuckers are in the UVF or something?'
'Relax! You said yourself they were mostly too stupid to be dangerous.'
'What?' l screamed. `Do Loyalist paramilitaries have entrance exams now? All they have to do is tell someone and I'm dead under a housing estate or doing a hundred and seventy-five years in Long Kesh.'
`Take it easy.'
'I'm going to kill you, Chuckle!
`Jake, Jake.'
My doorbell rang. I froze.
`What's wrong?' asked Chuckie.
'There's somebody at my door,' I whispered.
`Well, go and see who it is.'
'What if it's the guys with the hoods and the 9-mms?'
'Go to the window and look out.'
I put the receiver on the table.The window was open and there were a few lights on so it felt safe enough. I craned out into the musky dark air. It failed to cool my face. I could see a man at my door. A cop. My heart sank but it might have sunk further. The RUC were better than the UVE I hoped.
I went back to the telephone. 'Chuckle. The cops are at the door. I'll call you when I can.You're in big trouble, fatso.'
I hung up and answered the door with an upstanding expression on my face. `Yes?' I enquired squeakily.
The cop turned to face me and I saw that it was Paul, Mary's fisty boyfriend. I ducked.
He laughed. Relax,' he said.
I straightened up. `Are you going to hit me again?'
'No'
'Good'
There was a silence. He seemed uncomfortable. I wondered what he wanted. He looked at his shoes.
`Lovely evening,' I said.
He laughed again. There was a glitter in his eyes that made hint look young and pretty. I was resolutely heterosexual but I couldn't help nearly liking him for that.
'Look, I haven't got long,' he said.'I just wanted to say thanks.'
'What for?'
'For not splitting on me to CID yesterday.'
CID? What was that? Oh, yeah, the cops. I was getting very, very tired of three-letter initials.
`Oh, yeah, right. Forget it,' I said mildly.
`I shouldn't have hit you like that.'
`Maybe not.'
He looked at the scratched graffito on my door.'Who did this?' he asked, shining his torch at it.
`Just some guys I used to work with. No big deal.'
He looked at me with his tough but friendly expression. `You get any trouble, you give me a call.'
My hero! Jesus, he'd been doing well up to then but I thought this was taking it a bit far. What was I supposed to do? Swoon into his embrace and run my hands up his manly chest?
`Right,' I said.
He smiled uncertainly again. He hadn't planned his exit line. I looked blankly at him.
`Well, anyway. Sorry about hitting you and thanks again for keeping it quiet. I owe you.'
"Bye now,' I hinted.
I watched him walk away. I shook my head. I suppose I should have been glad that it was an amiable end to a fractious day. Then I remembered Chuckie.
`What happened with the cops?' he said, when I called him.
`Nothing. It was a mistake. Something else entirely.!
`Good. There's no problem.'
'Bollocks, Chuckie. I'm still in trouble. I'm still going to kill you.
`Jake, you've got to calm down. You take things too hard. You've got to sort your life out.You're a mess.'
`You've got a lot of cheek.'
`I'm your friend, Jake. That's why I say these things.'
I looked at my watch. I was too tired for this. `Hey, Chuckie.'
`What?'
`Does your dick reach your arse?'
`Hold on, I'll check.'
I heard him setting the receiver down, I could even hear the faint whizz of a zipper being unfastened.
I hung up before Chuckle could tell me any stuff I didn't want to hear.
That night, on Poetry Street, Jake slept like Chuckie and Max, like Slat, Deasely and Septic, like little Roche and big Ronnie Clay, like all the city's the nocturnals, the insomniacs, the dark-workers and the general nightwalkers. With so many of its people asleep, Belfast lay like an unlit room.
The city rises and falls like music, like breathing. The sleeping streets feel free. The southside shopfronts and the streetlit sidewalks echo empty. Near Hope Street, a stray drinker walks late and wavy. In a small house in Moyard, a thin man lies sleepless and old. On Carmel Street, a dark young woman stalks fearfully in slippers, looking for her cat. There are small events everywhere. On Cedar Avenue, on Arizona Street, Sixth Street and Electric Street, the Royal Ulster Constabulary stand around in damp little groups, keeping an eye on nothing, stopping infrequent cars, check
ing licences, radioing control. Hello, Control?
Under street-lamps by all the city's walls, writing gleams: IRA, INLA, UVF, UFF, OTG. The city keeps its walls like a diary. In this staccato shorthand, the walls tell of histories and hatreds, shrivelled and bleached with age. Qui a terre a guerre, the walls say.
Posters and billboards flap in a hundred little winds. They proclaim concerts, religious meetings, theatres, religious meetings, consumer goods and religious meetings. On Brunswick Street a ragged orange poster flaps. `The Reverend Ramsden's Travelling Cathedral & Disco, Formal Dress, No Catholics', it says.
On some poles, flags perch. From some windows they hang, upon the tops of certain tower blocks they flutter, these flags. There are a thousand flags, but five mere colours and only two designs. Green, white, gold, red and blue. The two three-coloured emblems of difference.
Throughout the city, bunches of flowers lie. They are grouped on pavements, in doorways or they are wedged between railings. The city is dotted with these false little gardens. The flowers bright and new in their wrapping paper, or weary and wilting with age. Any long walk through the city takes you past one or more of these sites. The citizens have placed these flowers on the spots where other citizens have been murdered. If the flowers are old, you pass and wonder who died there.You always fail to remember.
It is only late at night, if you stand up high, that you can see the city as one thing, as a single phenomenon. While all sleep, the daytime jumble is unified and, geographically at any rate, the city seems a single thing.You can see it ringed by its circles of black basalt, mountains, cliffs and can see the dark sea in the wide bay lapping right up to the foot of the metropolis, wetting its very heart.
You can see that Belfast is, quite literally, a dump. Its core is built on level land that simply wasn't there two hundred years before. Earth was dumped into the sea and Belfast was built there. Slob land, reclamation. The city is a raised beach, an abutment. The townsfolk say it rose from the water like some god but the truth is that it was dumped in the sea but didn't sink.
Belfast is Rome with more hills; it is Atlantis raised from the sea. And from anywhere you stand, from anywhere you look, the streets glitter like jewels, like small strings of stars.
Some say it is a city of 179,000 people, 130,000 men and 149,000 women, and that these people are squashed into 11,489 hectares. Some say that there are half a million souls Belfast is Belfast too. Two cathedrals, some docks, a harbour, many hills and mountains. A sea-level town on the lip of the land.
However many, whatever size, it is magical. This night, the streets smell stale and tired, the air is full of regret and desire. Time seems passing and passed. The city feels how it feels to grow old.
However magical or glittering, you can read the signs.You have seen the flags, the writing on the walls and the pavement flowers. This is a city where people are prepared to kill and die for a few pieces of coloured cloth. These are the standards of two peoples with a four- or eight-hundred-year-old difference, national and religious. It is an illogic, a conundrum that corrupts the blood here. There is no revolution, only deadly convolution.
But deep at night Belfast whispers in cool breaths that hatred is something like God.You can't see what you can't see, but if you fight and follow it blindly enough, it will keep you warm at nights.
As your eye roams the city (as your eyes must, as our eyes, those democratic unideological things, always will, giving witness, testimony), you see that there is indeed a division in the people here. Some call it religion, some call it politics. But the most reliable, the most ubiquitous division is money. Money is the division you can always put your money on.
You see leafy streets and you see leafless streets.You can imagine leafy lives and leafless ones. In the plump suburbs and the concrete districts your eyes see some truths, some real difference. The scars and marks of violence reside in only one type of place. Many of the populace seem to live well. Many prosper while many suffer.
Belfast is a city that has lost its heart. A shipbuilding, ropemaking, linen-weaving town. It builds no ships, makes no rope and weaves no linen. Those trades died. A city can't survive without something to do with itself.
But at night, in so many ways, complex and simple, the city is proof of a God. This place often feels like the belly of the universe. It is a place much filmed but little seen. Each street, Hope, Chapel, Chichester and Chief, is busy with the moving marks of the dead thousands who have stepped their lengths. They leave their vivid smell on the pavements, bricks, doorways and in the gardens. In this city, the natives live in a broken world - broken but beautiful.
You should stand some night on Cable Street, letting the little wind pluck your flesh and listen, rigid and ecstatic, while the unfamous past talks to you. If you do that, the city will stick to your fingers like Sellotape.
Whether in the centre itself or the places in which people put their houses, the city's streets, like lights in neighbours' houses, are stories of the done, the desired, the suffered and unforgotten.
The city's surface is thick with its living citizens. Its earth is richly sown with its many dead. The city is a repository of narratives, of stories. Present tense, past tense or future. The city is a novel.
Cities are simple things. They are conglomerations of people. Cities are complex things. They are the geographical and emotional distillations of whole nations. What makes a place a city has little to do with size. It has to do with the speed at which its citizens walk, the cut of their clothes, the sound of their shouts.
But most of all, cities are the meeting places of stories. The men and women there are narratives, endlessly complex and intriguing. The most humdrum of them constitutes a narrative that would defeat Tolstoy at his best and most voluminous.
The merest hour of the merest day of the merest of Belfast's citizens would be impossible to render in all its grandeur and all its beauty. In cities the stories are jumbled and jangled. The narratives meet. They clash, they converge or convert. They are a Babel of prose.
And in the end, after generations and generations of the thousands and hundreds of thousands, the city itself begins to absorb narrative like a sponge, like paper absorbs ink. The past and the present is written there. The citizenry cannot fail to write there. Their testimony is involuntary and complete.
And sometimes, late at night, when most sleep, as now, the city seems to pause and sigh. It seems to exhale that narrative, to give it off like the stored ground-heat of a summer day. On such nights, you cross a city street and for a few golden minutes there are no cars and the very hum of distant traffic fades and you look at the material around you, the pavements and street-lamps and windows, and if you listen gently, you might hear the ghosts of stories whispered.
And there is magic in this, an impalpable magic, quickly gone. It is at these times that you feel you are in the presence of something greater than yourself. And you are. For as you look around the perimeter of your illuminated vision, you can see the buildings and streets in which a dark hundred thousand, a million, ten million stories as vivid and complex as your own reside. It doesn't get more divine than that.
And the sleepy murmurings of half a million people combine to make an influential form of noise, a consensual music. Hear it and weep. There is little more to learn on the earth than that which a deserted city at four in the morning can show and tell. Those nights, those cities are the centre, the fulcrum, the very wheel upon which you turn.
Sleeping cities and sleeping citizens alike wait upon events, they attend upon narrative. They are stopped in station. They soon move on, they soon start again.
And as the darkness begins to curl around its edges, the city shifts and stumbles in its slumber. Soon it will wake. In this city, as in all cities, the morning is an assault. The people wake and dress themselves as though arming themselves for their day. From all the small windows of all the small houses on the small streets of this little city, men and women have looked out on first-light B
elfast and readied themselves to do battle with this place.
But for now they are still abed. Like Jake they lie, their stories only temporarily suspended. They are marvellous in their beds. They are epic, these citizens, they are tender, murderable.
In Belfast, in all cities, it is always present tense and all the streets are Poetry Streets.
Rosemary Daye popped her third tobacco gum of the day. It had been three weeks and she'd smoked only two cigarettes. Both when she'd had a drink with Sean. She had felt that there was an excuse with a new boyfriend. On that second date, she'd been so nervous that accepting a cigarette had helped to establish the cloud of sophistication with which she was trying to blind him. She knew now that it was an effort she did not need to make. Now she knew how gloriously blinded he'd been already. She'd worn her print dress and he had actually whimpered even before she had slowly peeled it off.
The light sunshine almost warmed her skin at the thought. She crossed Royal Avenue and went into her favourite shop. Fashionable girls lounged. She browsed absent-mindedly. It was too expensive and she wasn't sure she liked it but she tried on a green-linen knee-length skirt. The things he had said about her sincerity underlined by the visual made her skin flush. As she modelled the skirt in a half-length mirror, she noticed that it was already creasing beneath her pelvis. A week ago she might have thought it made her pearshaped. Now she gladly wrote the hefty cheque before she had even changed back into her own clothes. This skirt, those creases, she knew, would make him weep.
The shop assistant smiled at her as she paid and Rosemary wondered if the girl knew her thoughts. Her happiness seemed intuitive, conspiratorial. She wondered if the girl, who was pretty, had someone who worshipped her like Sean worshipped Rosemary. Pointlessly but generously, she hoped so.