Kate Rice ✍ I have been to the north of Ireland many times in my life, mostly when I was too young to remember anything other than souvenir shops and shamrock green trinkets packed into my bag.
Every time I have visited, it has been with a guiding hand on my shoulder to remind me which areas are “ours”, and which areas are “theirs.”
At the age of 25 (now 26), I decided to make the big and terrifying leap into the North on my own, into the fray of those yellow taped areas. When making my bookings, I felt something of a brave explorer hurtling inevitably towards an unsatisfying ending - Alexander Supertramp excitedly spotting that abandoned bus on the Sushana River. The city centre ignited little sense of adventure within me on arrival. High street shops and people rushing to and from work to lunch and back again is ten a penny in England. Was this the great big bad my dad had warned me about? Teenagers mooching around outside McDonalds, blocking the doors? I could find that anywhere. Ten years ago, I would have been that.
I confess, I got cocky. I had peaked Everest, I had looked into the belly of my father’s imagined great beast and seen only metropolitan life and a Glider system my own city would envy. We crossed the Westlink, and a man speaking loudly into his phone stopped my partner (in his Norway shirt) and asked if they were playing England. On confirmation, the man shook his hand and told him he hoped they’d win. Friendly, but the first hint I’d had since arriving that there had ever been a time of historical significance here at all.
The memorials came quickly then. Walls and electrical boxes painted and trussed up and faded and painted again - faces that had been gone from this world since before I was born. Signs written as Gaeilge, tricolours in windows. Surely this must be the beast, then? The refusal to let their dead fade out of memory, rampant and rainbow splattered support for political struggles all across the world? But still, no. The big bad shadow of West Belfast had been made clear to me from childhood, and yet I hadn’t seen it.
We stopped for a moment outside Divis Tower. If you’ve read my previous works, you might know that I have a historical interest and fascination with Brendan Hughes - when I first started looking into Irish history for myself without parental blinkers on, each “side” was an amalgamation of clay and belief and gun. Brendan Hughes was the first person to take shape, my first real awakening that it had been a conflict of people and not just ideals. It was sobering to see the Tower he spent his final years in, which feels silly to say, but I have charged myself to be truthful with my travel diary.
We then briefly slipped into the D Company memorial, which was beautifully kept. There were flower arrangements on the stone plinth, and a tricolour flying overhead beside a Palestine flag. There is an unexplainable peace that comes over most people when they enter a memorial space, and I am no exception. However, I’ve never experienced such a peace-less peace. Constantly asking myself if I should feel guilty for it, if I should be holding up a sign that says “please be patient, still learning.” That feeling still hasn’t quite gone away.
I’m an emotional person by nature, and the countless amounts of mural art in West Belfast took my breath away at each and every turn. The Peace Wall, the famous mural of Bobby Sands MP. Such a famous face, painted with great care on the side of a building in a thoroughly working class community felt almost comical in a way. I think I had expected fanfare, or to find these murals on the sides of palaces and great big museums. Thinking on it, the people depicted in this art may prefer it the way it is.
One day I got the notion to walk to Felons by myself. In my studies, it had been mentioned a couple of times for the pieces of history inside and the pictures on the walls. My attempt to visit on an earlier day with a local friend had ended in a swift rejection at the door - apparently, he was barred. We’d ended up in PD on that day. As I walked, navigating the physical boundaries of the road, a voice called out from a bus stop. It was an old man named Charlie, remarking on the brilliance of the weather. When I asked him for directions to the Felons, he didn't just give me a route; he gave me an itinerary. He told me to stop at the Rock Bar first, assuring me of the friendliness inside, all while making sure to mention - several times - that he wasn't much of a drinker himself. He was a tea man. He gave me a piece of survival advice for the local pubs, wrapped in dry wit: "Don't buy anyone a drink, or you'll find yourself the friend of every man in the bar."
He laughed about how he couldn't spell or pronounce the name of the street he lived on. Then, with the same casual cadence, he pointed across the road. He spoke of the 1970s. He described the gunmen who used to crouch in the upper levels of the buildings opposite us, and the ambient, suffocating fear of knowing you could be shot at any moment just for existing on the pavement. He recounted the slurs flung at him by British soldiers and Loyalist faithfuls. The casual nature of his delivery was gutting, in a way. This was just the backdrop of his youth.
Hearing him mention the army, a lump formed in my throat. I decided to take another terrifying leap into the truth. I told Charlie that my dad had been one of those British soldiers. I told him I was here to learn on my own, bracing myself for the shift in his eyes, waiting for him to shrink away or tell me, rightfully, to fuck off.
Yet, the legacy of that conflict hadn't hardened him to the stranger standing in front of him. He looked at me, the child of a regiment that had policed and belittled him, and he chose to be kind. He looked at the door my dad had always held closed, and he opened it wider for me. He assured me that everyone would be kind, and friendly. They’d respect my presence as long as I respected theirs.
Before we parted, this man, who had survived the worst of the city's history looked at me, an English outsider, and made a promise. He told me he would sit at that bus stop until midnight if he had to, just to wait and see me walk back down the street safe and happy before he went home. I had spent my life being warned about the dangers hidden in these streets, inheriting a fear of a beast that didn't exist. But standing there, I realized the only thing waiting for me in the shadow of the Westlink was an old man offering to guard the safety of a soldier’s child over an imaginary cup of tea.
⏩Kate Rice is a peace baby.
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