Williams.
He looked at me for a moment and then added:
—Lieutenant Thomas Joseph Williams, C Company, 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade in the Irish Republican Army.
He laughed at my wide eyes.
—I’m nineteen. Just call me Tom.
I joined the IRA on 10 January 1942, four days after we arrived in Dholpur Lane. Actually, not the IRA, not exactly. I was too young. Nobody in the area knew us. Being driven away by Loyalists was not enough to establish confidence. Like Tom before me and numerous IRA volunteers, I first joined Na Fianna Éireann, the Republic’s boy scouts. Since 1939 the Fianna were very diminished. They were forbidden in the Republic and in Northern Ireland, hounded and imprisoned on both sides of the border. Those who had tasted life in British prisons said that men in Irish jails had no reason to be envious.
Every Republican neighbourhood had its own youth unit. The IRA was divided into brigades and battalions. We were gathered into cumainn .
Our local meeting place on Kane Street was tiny and dark. It contained a table, a few chairs and a boxing ring. It looked like a sports hall, not a Republican headquarters. I spent my time between the ropes, fists raised in front of my eyes. We learned to punch without hesitating and to be punched without reacting. The lad in charge of us was called Daniel ‘Danny’ Finley, who showed no feelings or warmth and didn’t utter one word more than was strictly necessary. He was my age. His family had fled the Short Strand area after his twin brother, Declan, was lynched.
Declan was on his way back from secondary school in his Catholic uniform, with its green tie striped with ochre and the St Comgall coat of arms. The pavement was covered in rubble. He hesitated, then crossed the road, stepping over the invisible line that separated the two communities, and walked along the other pavement, on the Protestant side. He wasn’t trying to provoke anyone or start anything. He was making a detour to avoid a crumbling building.
A truck transporting timber drove past. Sitting on top of the stacked planks were a dozen Protestant schoolboys in blue blazers. One of them shouted, ‘Hey! A fucking Taig!’
Taig. Fucking Fenian. Filthy papist. The favourite insult of Loyalists in short pants. Declan raced back across the street and hit the kerb. He fell over, shouting. The blues pounced on him. He tried to protect himself by lying on his side, eyes closed, head between his fists and knees pressed against his chest. A child in his mother’s belly. They hit him with their knees, their fists. One boy jumped with both feet together on his head. Another threw a concrete block on his chest. And then they ran off, catching up with the truck at the crossroads and jumping back on, singing:
—At home! At home! This is our home!
A man cautiously opened his door, others moved towards the victim. A woman came out with a glass of water. All Catholic, all living along this street. Some adults looked on from the other side of the street.
Declan Finley died, his face crushed and his fists clenched. When the emergency services arrived, the boy’s spilled blood was brown, thick, mingled with the dust. With the aid of his walking stick, an old man crouched down. He dipped his right hand in the puddle and crossed the street, palm raised. On the opposite footpath stood a hundred silent figures. They parted. The nationalist carefully smeared the blood on their footpath. A man moved forward, two others held him back. The old man returned, turning his back to them.
The paramedics lifted Declan into an ambulance. On the other side, some kids were rubbing away the martyr’s blood by scraping their shoes on the ground.
That was just before the war. The Finley family left the ghetto to take refuge in west Belfast. Like so many others. Again, and again, and again. Coming from the north and the east of the city, Catholics were arriving in their hundreds and piling up in the brick catacombs.
I