This is after the battle of Bogside, during the celebration fleadh (party). The British Army is now patrolling the city, keeping the Protestants out.
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Just past one on the second day of the fleadh, I was leaning against the Free Derry gable, feeling so real and good I closed my eyes to listen to a piper playing Dreams of Galway. People still milled about and what craic I heard was happy and quick. It was like a bright new world for us all. As if we were ourselves, alone, apart from the rest of Ireland, with prayers and dreams and hopes and promises aplenty, building our world anew, and I was thinking, This is how it should always be and...
“I know this hat!” jolted me as my cap was grabbed off my head.
I spun around...and it was Joanna, laughing with those friends of hers. She wore bellbottoms and a light jacket, and her hair danced in the breeze as she spun about and set the cap on her head and looked so much like an angel it hurt me.
“I’ve never seen it before,” said the girl closest to her, a round pale thing that looked like a marshmallow in her white dress, stockings and shoes.
“In Woolworth's,” she said. “Caught him looking at us. Shy and sweet.”
She pinched my cheek. I was still so shocked, I could think of nothing to say.
“You’re not much of one for words, are you?” she continued, smiling.
I glanced around. A couple people were eyeing her, frowns on their faces. She wasn’t known and would soon be asked to verify her right to be here.
I finally found enough voice to ask, “How’d you get here?”
“On the bus,” she said, then they dissolved into giggles.
I kept my words soft. “But the checkpoints...”
The marshmallow said, “I’ve a cousin lives in Ballymena so said we all lived there, and no one stopped us.”
“Helps to bat your eyes at the soldiers, it does,” said the other friend, who resembled the pop star, Lulu, made more-so by how her face was made up.
I realized Joanna wore only lip-gloss and a dash of powder, her skin was so clear and bright, and she had the air of mint about her...spearmint. Yes, spearmint.
Like I'd been chewing to hold the glass in our windows in our old home and I grinned, stupidly, at the thought...but then I saw Jackie, Aidan, and a couple other lads from Creggan moving toward us and knew they’d be very unhappy some Protestant girls had snuck into our fleadh.
So I waved to them and said as loud as I could, “Here, Jackie, some birds I met in Claudy!”
The Lulu said, “I’ve never been...“
I turned, smiling, and shot a quiet “Whist,” at her.
Joanna caught on and turned her smile on Jackie. “We heard there’s a fleadh and came to see. It’s lovely.”
Marshmallow had a bit of fear in her eyes as she nodded, unable to speak.
Jackie wasn’t ready to accept it, yet. “What’s your name?”
“McGillicuty,” shot out of me. “Jo, Mary and Lulu. They’re cousins...nieces of Mrs. McKenna on Little James.”
“How’d ya get in?” snarled one of Jackie’s mates, a big bruiser of a thick lad with a voice like a growling wolf.
Joanna stepped around me and went straight to him, her smile growing near wicked as she touched his chin and said, “The soldiers are boys, just like you, and how does any girl get around them?”
He blushed. The big bastard actually blushed.
I huffed and put some bite into my voice. “Jo...you said you’d not do that around me.”
She stepped back and put my cap back on my head, still smiling. “Now, don’t be such a child.”
Lulu laughed, despite herself.
Jackie took a look at her and his face softened. “So you’re enjoyin' yourself, then?”
Lulu took on an attitude I couldn’t quite make out as she said, “I’ve seen no reason not to, yet.”
Jackie reached over to her but I put myself between them, without a thought, and said, “Now Jackie, these girls aren’t of age, and I promised to keep watch over them.”
“You?” said Thick.
“Aye. It’s not like we have to worry about the peelers or lads from the Waterside trying to make trouble with our lasses, is it? I’m here as their...their...”
Joanna wrapped her arm around mine and sighed, “I told my aunt we didn’t need a chaperone, but she didn’t believe us.”
“You must be someone special," said Aidan, "for our Bren to let you wear his cap.”
“She is,” popped out of me before I could think to stop it.
She beamed at me and it was my turn to blush.
Jackie laughed. ”Keep a good watch on 'em, Bren. Show ‘em the kind of man you are.”
Then he and his mates wandered off.
I turned to Joanna and her friends and said, “He might well check with Mrs. McKenna and be sore pissed when he finds out we lied to him. C’mon, I’ll get you to home.”
"But we only just arrived."
"Yeah, right, we should wander around a bit, first. Not leave too quick."
“What about you?” Joanna asked. “Won’t he come for you?”
“I’ll worry about that when it happens.”
I didn't really think Jackie would care enough to do it, or even if he did he'd be hard with me. But it did make me feel quite the man about town by acting all concerned for their safety. What's best, I saw what I'm sure was a hint of respect in Joanna's eyes.
So we listened to more music. During one, all three danced their jig and many around us clapped at good they were. We had a bite to eat and orange crush, and Lulu was after having a toffee apple, but they were in the middle of preparing a new batch so it was forgotten. It was so calm and easy and lovely.
Just as it was starting to grow chill we headed on. I said little as the girls chattered about Jackie and his mates. Lulu was quite taken with him while Marshmallow thought they were all crude and in need of a shave. Joanna just cast me a knowing smile.
It’s funny, but me having on my NASA cap, wearing my finer clothes and escorting three girls out of the Bogside apparently gave us an aura of respectability, as Marshmallow, put it. We were asked a few short questions at the Waterloo checkpoint then allowed past. We caught a bus across from the Guildhall, grandly paid for by me, and headed back to the Waterside.
We hopped off at Edward Street and headed through an area of nice semi-detached homes with gardens and flowers and nearly new cars parked in front. Some lads the girls knew were milling out and about and called to them in ways I found unpleasant, but they got ignored. We turned down a lane with no outlet and went straight to the house at the head, where I recognized the estate car in front.
Lulu and Marshmallow scurried off to their own homes when Joanna’s mum and brother came out the door to watch us approach. She was worried; he was wary and had his eyes sharp on me.
“Where have you been?” she asked, her voice sounding far too much like wee Eammon’s mother’s. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Who’s this with you?”
Before Joanna could speak I said, “I’m Billie Corrie of the Fountain, ma’am. We met up in Woolworth’s, in the music. I thought it best to escort the ladies home.” And I made myself sound very grand as I said it.
Her mother smiled, indulgently, and nodded. “Thank you, Billie. It's growing late. Would you care to join us for tea?”
“That’d be...that’d be smashin',” I said, copying a saying from a program on the telly.
Joanna took me to the toilet, her eyes dancing with laughter. At the basin, she made a motion of washing her hands. I grinned, pleased beyond anything that she’d remembered when first I saw her.
Then I noticed her brother was watching us. That made me uncomfortable, but I did my best to ignore it.
They served a fine roast chicken, potatoes and string beans off real China, and just to show off a bit I accepted a leg and ate it using a knife and fork. They were quite impressed, and didn't seem to notice my soft cough as I prepared to make the first cut. What was even better? Her brother ate his with his fingers. And don't think Joanna and her bother didn't cast him a look or two.
Their last name was Martin, with her brother a Charles. Her father owned a menswear shop off Irish Street and her friends’ real names were Angela, for Marshmallow, and Louisa, for Lulu. They attended the same school and had been friends since forever.
I told them of how I fixed things. Charles didn't believe me and suggested Mrs. Martin bring me a fine toaster that didn’t work on one side. I graciously said I would look at it, and it took me but a minute to see a connector had broken free. Mr. Martin had a soldering stick in his shed, so I fixed it for them, right there and at no charge. They were well-impressed, and I’d never been so proud.
Charles continued to be worrisome, however. As I was taking the toaster apart, he mentioned, “I know a Ronald Corrie in the Fountain.”
I just grinned and said, “That’s me uncle, and a lazier man you’ll never meet. If he even sees a speck of work to be done, he’s off the other direction.”
Which brought a laugh from all and a near smile from himself. Still, he did not stop looking at me.
It had begun to grow dark when I left. Joanna's Da offered to run me home, but I insisted on taking the bus. I headed off with my hands in my pockets, strutting like I had not a care in the world, even as I kept a soft watch on the lads who were still milling about. They let me pass, their eyes wary on me, but I guess I seemed too sure of myself to be thought of as a Catholic in the Protestant area.
I was almost to the stop when I heard a car race up behind me. I spun to look and it was the estate car, with Charles driving fast at me. Some of the lads from the street were with him. He near hit me with the damned thing, trying to block me against a hedge, then they burst from the car and I was grabbed and slung around onto a fender. I hit it, hard but mainly against my hands, and a body pressed hard against me.
It was Charles’s voice that snarled, “The bus depot. I knew I’d seen you before. You’re a bloody taig.”
“You sure of this, Charlie?” came the other's voice.
“He’s awful neat to be a paddy,” came as I heard more feet running up.
“And the hat,” said the first. “Since when do papists have money enough to go to NASA?”
“He’s a dirty fuckin’ taig, I tell youse!" he howled as he punched me in the side, near knocking the breath from me. "Sniffin’ after my sister!”
I said nothing, just looked around and saw Charles’s mate was crowding in, so I kicked up and managed to connect with Charlie's nuts. That jolted him and startled them all, allowing me to slip out from under their grip and run.
Two of the lads chased me as Charlie howled in pain and anger.
I raced down Irish onto Spencer, saw a bus just about to pull away from the stop so ran faster and jumped aboard. It pulled away before they could catch me. It was going the wrong direction from home but I didn’t care. I rode it to Altnagelvin, then hid behind a column to see if they’d followed me. I think I saw them drive past but not pull in, so I caught another bus back to Guildhall. By then I was calm again.
My cap on my head, I went through the checkpoints, the Army’s and our own, with little trouble then went straight home. Everything was quiet and calm. I got the feeling everyone all still over at the Fleadh. So I went into the back and sat by the herbs behind the hutch and gazed up at the stars.
And let it all settle in on me.
I’d been lucky to get away unhurt except for jab to my side. I knew that. I also knew that not once had I coughed during any of it. Nor had I cried from fear or pain or begged to be left alone. I had worked my way out of a hideous situation, all on me own. I had strutted into the middle of Protestant territory. Into the middle of the Waterside. Surrounded by my enemies. And I'd come out in one piece. Of course, Charlie would tell everyone who and what I was, so I’d be a fool to consider going back to see Joanna ever again.
But bloody hell, wasn't she worth being a fool over?
