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CHAPTER ONE

On the street where you live …

(My Fair Lady)

There’s all these people outside my house. People of all ages – adults, children, neighbours, friends and others from streets nearby. They don’t seem to be doing anything. Just standing there. They’re talking, but in hushed tones. It doesn’t look right.

Just a few minutes ago I was playing football with some boys from another street. There’s been an accident on the Falls. It’s your wee sister, Paddy. Gertie? What would Gertie be doing up on the Falls? She’s only two years old. It doesn’t sound right.

So I kept playing. I was goalie, as usual. They needed me. But then a few minutes later I heard some other boys talking about an accident on the Falls. A wee girl from Milton Street. Oh, Gertie, for God’s sake. I have to go. Think my sister’s fallen or something.

And now I’m walking towards the house and everyone’s gone quiet. Why are they looking at me? What are they whispering? That wee lad – that’s the brother. He’s her only boy. A few of them are smiling in a funny way. Smiling without smiling. One woman reaches out to pat me on the shoulder as I go past.

My early life is marked by women. I’m surrounded by them. There’s Mammy, my two grannies and then there’s my sisters, Harriet, Eileen, Gertie and, later on, Josephine. And my daddy and me. The only two men in an alpha-female household.

A typical Catholic family, we arrive in quick succession. Harriet’s born in 1949, me in 1950 and then Eileen (named after Mammy) in 1951. There’s a break then as my parents catch their breath and then wee Gertie comes along when I’m four. Josephine, my eternal baby sister, arrives when I’m almost nine and she completes our family. There are five Armstrong children, four of whom will survive one millennium and grow old in the next.

Mammy, Daddy, Harriet, myself and Eileen spend our first few years living with Granny and Grandad Maxwell in their house down on the Short Strand, beside the Belfast docks. When Gertie comes along that makes six of us living with them, all crammed into a tiny house. It’s too much, so we move a mile or two down the road, to live with Granny Mullins. She’s Mammy’s mammy – the Omagh Woman. So now the six of us are living with her in a two-bedroom terraced house on Milton Street, just off the Falls Road, in West Belfast.

The buses and cars roar up and down the Falls, coming and going to and from the town. There’s more traffic every year as motor cars become popular. My first memory is the roar of bus engines, the acrid taste of fumes and the trembling of the pavement as they chug past.

Behind the Falls is a confusing labyrinth of narrow streets and lanes, for those who don’t know the area, but we know every bend in every alley. Me and my friends have to know every inch of every laneway as we flee the local grocer, our pockets filled with apples or oranges. We know which neighbours will come and shout at us if we kick a ball against their wall. And I’m quite familiar with the bigger boys who’ll push and chase me for the only shilling in my pocket. Those boys are the only bad thing I have to deal with, though, because the Falls in the 1950s is a peaceful community. Those streets and lanes of my childhood are one big playground where we spend our weekends, the short afternoons in winter and the warm, endless summer evenings, chasing, hiding, and then later on getting up to mischief with drink and girls.

When I’m a boy on the Falls the biggest social problem is poverty. Large families, many far bigger than ours, live in these wee poky houses. Getting by, just about. Getting nothing from the government. Passed over for good jobs and bigger houses in favour of Protestant families. The invisible majority.

So the people of the Falls have to just do their best. We help one another. Passing a bit of dinner over the fence when there’s some left over. Sending outgrown clothes in to the neighbours when they’re almost threadbare but not quite. There’s a few more months in that there skirt, Maisie. Do your Margaret rightly. We’re wearing shoes with holes in them and saying nothing in case we get a clip around the ear or the wallop of a wooden spoon until there’s enough money for a new pair. We’re cutting up newspaper and threading string through it, to hang up in the outside toilet in the garden. Toilet paper is a luxury none of us can afford.

And even though most of us have very little, this is a community in the truest sense. Doors are left unlocked and people walk in and out of each other’s houses. I might be in a house eating some boy’s dinner and he might be in my house eating mine – nothing strange about that. Women talking to each other on the doorsteps, washing the doorstep, sweeping their wee patch of space so it almost shines. In the evenings, as the sun glows before it drops down behind the Divis Mountains, young men are playing cards, smoking and trying to get the attention of the local girls lucky enough to have a job in the mills.

The landscape of my early childhood isn’t burnt-out buildings. It’s chippies and bookies, pubs and pet shops, drapery shops and tiny corner shops. It’s the pounding of small feet through the lanes and the drumming sound of a ball against a wall or a kerb. It’s children squealing, shouting and the smoke rising from the factory chimneys in the near distance. And it’s the women and men pouring out of the linen mills and factories at the end of the day. Once a country lane leading from the city centre, the Falls is now a hub of industry. Walking along Milton Street, Lemon Street, Mary Street, Peel Street, you can smell flour and chocolate and bus fumes – the smells of a busy manufacturing area. Catholics and Protestants work together in the mills, all getting along, all making a few bob, all glad when the bell rings and the work day ends and they stream out together, heading home.

That wee lad – that’s the brother. He’s her only boy.

I walk past the whispering crowd. Another woman pats me, this time on the arm. I walk by her and through the front door and find everyone inside. My whole family standing around, all in the kitchen, Mammy, Daddy, Granny, Harriet and Eileen. Everyone except Gertie. All quiet-looking. Mammy sitting down, holding a cup of tea in her hand. Not drinking it. Daddy looking out the window. Biting his lip. Eileen and Josephine just standing there. Pale and silent.

I’m looking at them, from one to another, but nobody’s speaking. I don’t want to ask. I’m only six, but I already know that I don’t want to know the answer. I can hear my voice, but it sounds like it’s coming from someone far away, speaking from the other end of a tunnel.

What’s wrong?

Silence.

Finally, someone speaks.

It’s Gertie, Paddy. She was hit.

Silence.

Gertie’s dead, Paddy. She’s was killed. On the Falls.

Dead?

I don’t really understand dead. I know what it means. They talk about it in school all the time. Hell and Purgatory if you’re bad. Heaven if you’re good. It’s to do with your soul and God and that kind of thing. There’s a boy in my class and his mammy died, but she was old. Our Gertie’s not even three yet. And besides, I only saw her half an hour ago, asking Mammy for money for a penny poke (ice cream).

She’s probably out playing somewhere, I say. Gertie’s fine, I assure them. But they’re shaking their heads. She’s not. She was hit, Paddy. Wasn’t she, Mammy?

Yes.

I’m shaking my head. She can’t be dead. If she was, they’d have her here now.

Where is she? I ask.

She’s gone to the hospital in the ambulance. That’s where we’re going now, your daddy and me. You stay here with your granny.

You’re wrong. I know you are. There’s nothing wrong with Gertie. She’s probably upstairs. You’ll see. That’s what I want to shout, but you don’t say that to adults.

Our house, like every other on our street, is full of noise. Clanging pots and banging doors and children running in and out. Somewhere in the background is the sound of my mammy’s voice, humming or singing some song. You never have to look for her, just follow the sound of her voice. She loves the songs from the old films, like My Fair Lady. The soundtrack of my childhood.

These girls will be the death of me. For now I sleep downstairs, in the living room, but when my granny gets too old to go upstairs I’ll have to share a room with the girls. It’s just as well I have always been able to pack my life into a tiny bag, because there’ll be precious little space for any personal belongings when I’m sharing a room with three girls. But even though we’re all crammed in, we manage very well with what we have. A happy house.

The worst part is not having a bathroom. We have a toilet in an outhouse in the back garden. The ceramic toilet bowl and the wooden seat are built into the outhouse, so it’s all one solid piece. And that’s it. In the early hours of a winter’s morning, before the sun has risen, we stumble barefoot through the house, half asleep, in search of the back door. With the gas streetlight barely illuminating the wet ground of the concrete back yard, we feel our way along the wall, no torch to guide us, groping our way towards the creaky, broken door of the toilet, praying there’s some newspaper squares left.

We’re scrubbed to within an inch of our lives once a week in a big basin, one by one. As the only boy I always go first and then the girls are washed, Gertie last. Once we are old enough we’ll be given sixpence every week to go down to the local swimming pool on the Falls. No shower – just a chlorine-filled pool that we jump into, have a swim and come out clean. Ready for a night out.

Sometimes I think the girls believe I’m a wee doll for them to play with. They want to dress me up and tell me what to do. I’m a softie. They know how to boss me around and make me play their games. Skipping. Dolls. I don’t let on, but I’m very happy. I like it when someone ties a rope to a lamp-post and we swing around it. Your turn, Paddy. I get a few spins about the post and then they’re poking me again. Off now, Harriet’s turn.

Even when I’ve reached my late teens and I’m off out to a local dance, nothing has changed. I’m inspected, and at least one of them checks my neck and invariably sends me back inside to wash it. Even Eileen, who’s a year younger than me, loves to boss me around. This sister of mine, the one who’ll visit me in prison like a surrogate mother when Mammy can’t afford to travel over, really knows how to wind me up. She teases me, calls me a big girl, once again sending me running to Mammy, who, we all know very well, has a soft spot for her only boy.

Amidst all these women, I’m very grateful for my daddy’s company. We share a love of football and the races. His brother is a greyhound trainer so he prefers the dogs, while I like the horses, but we can talk about anything. Even after he’s gone I can hear his voice for many years. See his gentle smile. When he’s gone it gets a bit claustrophobic, all these women. But I get on so well with my mammy and granny and sisters, and everything they do is out of love, so I never get too annoyed. There’s no point, I always say. They tell me I’m so laid-back I could be dead, and I laugh.

My earliest and clearest memory of my father is tied up with my first experience of music. I’m about five years old and Daddy and I have taken the bus into town. Just the two of us. The boys. It’s a wee surprise, something very special – I’ve no idea what to expect. Nothing in my short life could have prepared me for the operatic tones of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, but even more memorable is my father. Watching him watch the opera: his eyes wide, his mouth slackened in awe and, when he eventually turns to me, his smile. This is the moment. I know from then on that music has a special quality; it can take you out of yourself, to somewhere magical. I will need it one day, though my five-year-old self doesn’t know it yet.

Granny shoos us out of the house when my parents leave for the hospital. What do we do now? Can you play when your sister is dead, or do you stand with your hands in your pockets? Go back and save a few more goals? It doesn’t seem like the right thing to do, but there’s nobody to ask. The adults don’t seem to know and I certainly don’t.

I still don’t know how Gertie died. I’m trying to listen to a few people talking, see if I can work it out. But all I can hear is that she was knocked down on the Falls.

Later, Eileen tells me exactly what happened. She and her friends from the street wanted to go to the local pet shop. It’s on the other side of the Falls, in a little row of shops, just where the road curves around. There’s a real, live monkey in the window and it draws small groups of children every day. They tap on the glass, wave, want to hold and feed it. We’ve all done it. Wishing you could bring it home.

As she’s leaving the house, Eileen tells Mammy she’s away to the pet shop to see the monkey in the window. Now she’s waving goodbye to Gertie, who’s sitting on the front step eating a penny poke. Eileen and her group of wee girls, all around five years old, are walking down to the Falls. They’re talking about the monkey. Dying to see it. And now they’re crossing over the busy road. Buses and cars pass by regularly, but the girls are careful. They’ve reached the other side and are getting closer to the pet shop when one of Eileen’s friends calls her. Eileen. Your Gertie’s followed us – look, she’s behind us.

Gertie is running across the road. Eileen is sighing. Gertie follows her everywhere. She’ll have to wait a moment while Gertie crosses. Then she’ll take her to the window before bringing her home. How did the wee one get away without anyone seeing her? Mammy will be so angry.

Gertie’s almost made it across the road when one of her shoes slips off. It’s lying on the road, and when she realises she turns back. She’s bending down to get it and Eileen’s shouting now. Leave it. Gertie doesn’t see the bus coming around the bend on the Falls. Eileen sees it. It’s getting closer. Leave the shoe, Gertie, leave it – come on! Gertie is standing up and looking. Eileen doesn’t know if she’s heard her voice or the sound of the driver slamming on the brakes, but either way it’s too late.

As a young boy in the mid-1950s, one of my favourite smells when I walk in the door of our house is my father’s mince stew. Everyone hates Mammy’s stew so Daddy has to make it, and it’s the best of a weekly menu that rarely changes: stew on Monday, cabbage and potatoes on Tuesday, fish on Friday, soup on Sunday with boiled potatoes and a brisket of cheap meat.

Apart from the stew, most of the cooking is done by our mammy or Granny Mullins. She’s a formidable woman, our granny, very kind and generous, but she’s a plain-speaking country woman from Omagh who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She’s not educated. No-one is in our house. But she’s a hard worker. Every morning she leaves early and walks the couple of miles up to the Ormeau Road where she cleans big fancy houses. She often brings our Eileen with her and lets her play with the toys in the house while she works. A very good-looking child, Eileen is her favourite.

Our one ongoing battle is over my name. I just want to be called Paddy. My friends call me Paddy, my sisters do and even my parents are fine with it, but Granny Mullins insists on calling me Patrick. She shrieks my name in her Omagh accent. Paaaaaaaatrick!

In my teenage years I find out there’s another lad called Patrick Armstrong living locally. Apparently a bit of a hell-raiser, this other fella gets into a lot of trouble, so on the fairly regular occasions when I’m stopped on the street or in a pub for random questioning, the police will pounce on me when they hear my name. Patrick Armstrong, we’ve been looking for you. Into the van! Each time they drag me out before I have the chance to tell them they have the wrong one, that I’m called Paddy. Sometimes they’ll only listen when we get to the barracks.

My mammy is a softer version of my granny. They’re both hard working, but Mammy is very affectionate. She bears her burdens silently, and she never asks for anything in return.

I’m very like my father, Johnny, everyone says. A quiet person who likes a quiet life. Everybody likes my dad. When I was young he worked hard, as a scaffolder. Then he had a bad fall and hurt his leg and his head. That fall saw him plagued with pain and health problems for the rest of his life.

My daddy is a man of routine, just as I will be when I’m grown. The highlight of his week is his Friday-evening trip to the pub along with all the other men who work in the local mills, factories and building sites. He only ever drinks pints of Guinness, just as I’ll do when I’m old enough. He might take an hour over a pint and savour it. Other times he’ll suck it down like a starving child, in one hungry gulp.

As kids, sometimes we try to sneak into the pub and hope that someone will buy us a drink or a packet of crisps. More often than not, though, they chase us out. As a young boy, I want to be one of those men sitting on a bar stool beside my dad, having a pint of Guinness with him. Chatting and laughing with the other men; having a laugh, as we say. I’ll only get to do it a few times before he’s taken from us.

Fridays are my favourite day, too. Like all good Catholics, we only eat fish on a Friday. When he’s feeling generous or had one too many, Daddy sends me down to Sylvia’s, the local chippie, for two fish suppers between the seven of us. Wrapped in a newspaper is the biggest piece of greasy, battered fish and a huge portion of thick, home-cut chips – real potatoes that they soak in salt and vinegar. You might wait an hour in a queue snaking down the road, but there’s always a bit of banter among all the hungry people waiting to get in the door and order.

Sometimes we go down to another chippie. It’s a bit further away, but it’s worth it just to see the man with one arm who works there. We joke that he’s like the one-armed character in the TV series The Fugitive. Anyone who’s off to get the fish suppers there says, Right, I’m off to see the Fugitive. It’s the funniest thing we’ve ever heard.

Every Friday evening, after dinner, Granny makes a big pot of soup from lentils and vegetables for Saturday’s dinner. She leaves it to simmer gently in the pot and it sits there overnight, cooling down, before she serves it for dinner the next day. Lying in bed upstairs I can smell the starchy potatoes and sweet carrots as I fall asleep.

Some Fridays, Daddy stays in the pub all evening and eventually slinks home in the early hours with a few friends in tow. The next morning, when she comes down to make the breakfast, Granny Mullins will find a kitchen filled with beer bottles, dirty plates and an empty pot of soup – and then the war will start!

As money is always very tight there’s never a holiday, but sometimes Mammy packs us onto the bus to Omagh to see her family for a weekend or maybe longer. More often, though, we take the bus to Bangor or other beaches for a day trip. We spend a few hours in Bangor, running along the sand, and if we’re lucky we get a penny poke too. At the end of a day out we take the bus back to Belfast. Our family never owned a car, so none of us can drive. It’s not until later in life that Harriet will learn, and then me even later again. When I’m growing up there’s no money for cars so we get around on buses. It suits me fine – you can’t miss what you’ve never had.

Eileen sees the bus striking Gertie’s tiny body. Thud. Sending her sailing into the air. The two-year-old body is moving slowly through empty space. Travelling forwards and upwards. Surrounded by silence.

Eileen is standing there. Looking at this unbelievable scene in front of her. The bus has stopped. Everything has stopped. Gertie’s tiny body went up into the air and so it must have come back down, but Eileen can’t see her. Where is she? Eileen’s dumbstruck. Like any other witness who suddenly comes face to face with horror. What should she do? Run over there? Shout?

The Falls traffic has come to a standstill. No roar from car or bus engines now. Just the gentle chugging of engines idling. And a low hum of shocked voices. People standing on the road. Pointing. Shaking their heads. Blessing themselves. Offering up a prayer.

The traffic is gradually building up, snaking back along the Falls. Buses. Cars. Taxis. All stopped. Filled with people wondering what’s happened. My daddy’s on one of those buses. He’s wondering too.

And now Eileen’s running home to our mammy. Not sure what she’ll say, but home is the best option. Mammy will know what to do. Back across the Falls. Through the streets. Fast as her little legs will take her. Up Milton Street to our house. In the open door. To Mammy.

Gertie’s been hit, Mammy.

What!

She’s been hit. She followed me to the pet shop and then she lost her shoe and then a bus hit her. On the Falls.

But she was on the doorstep a minute ago. Mammy is shaking her head. Don’t be silly. Gertie’s fine. She’ll be back in a wee minute. She’s probably playing on the street.

Eileen doesn’t know what to do, so she listens to Mammy. And now she’s outside, still not knowing what to do.

Daddy’s bus has finally let the passengers off and he’s walking home. He can see there’s been an accident. People talking. A wee child was hit. She’s not moving. He’s coming down the road now, thinking of the poor family whose child has been knocked down. Into the house. Telling Mammy. A child was just hit on the Falls. God love that family.

Mammy’s looking at him. The realisation. She tells Daddy what Eileen said. The colour drains from both their faces as they take it in.

But she’ll be okay, surely. She might have broken a leg, or an arm, maybe. We’ll have to see if she’s gone to the hospital.

When a policeman knocks on the door, Mammy knows.

Sorry for your troubles, Missus. She died on the way to hospital.

They have to catch her as her legs give way beneath her.

School, for me, has good days and bad days. My primary school, St Comgall’s, is a large mixed school. I keep my head down and rarely come to the attention of teachers but I do attract the notice of a few bigger lads, both at school and in our street. I never say anything at home when they give me a hard time.

I’m an easy target. I know this. Something gets broken, a window maybe. It was Paddy Armstrong, Missus. From Milton Street. They know I won’t stand up to them or fight back. I don’t like confrontation.

It’s a funny thing when people single you out for no reason at all and pick on you. When I write it down it looks funny, but I always seem to immediately assume a position of guilt. When that group of lads decides that I will be their target for a few years in school and on the streets of Belfast, I don’t run to my sisters. I could tell Eileen and Harriet. They’d stand up for me. But I feel weak and embarrassed. In my head I wonder, Have I done something to provoke this? Do I deserve it? Can they see something in me that makes them want to hurt me, that makes them confident they can go ahead and do that without it backfiring on them? What is it they see? It’s painful, but as I get older, stockier and a little braver, it will come to an end. One day I’ll suddenly retaliate and, blinded by rage, push one of them to the ground and pound him until he begs for mercy. It’s too big a reaction, but then, after holding it all in for so long, it’s inevitable. That’s part of the pattern that’s set down now, too: a submissive, fearful and acquiescent person who gives in quickly, but who can also eventually explode when pushed too far over the line. Not often, mind you. But these early traits will colour the rest of my life.

When Gertie’s laid out in the casket, she’s only visible from the waist up. They’ve cleaned her little face. No ice-cream, no jam. A clean, pale child. No marks on her face. You’d never know.

She’s dressed in a blue silk dress adorned with a picture of the Sacred Heart, just above her heart. They tell us it’s called a shroud. She looks like she’s asleep. We have a wake for her in our house. She’s laid out in our living room for a night. We sit beside her and pray, looking down on her tiny body in her blue shroud.

Years later, Eileen tells me something about that night and I wish I’d never known. Eileen is standing there, looking at our little sister laid out in the living room, and she finds herself wondering, What happened to the bottom part of her body? The part that was hit by the bus? When there’s nobody else around, Eileen decides to take a wee look. Under the blanket. To see for herself. Never imagining for a moment what she’ll see.

When she lifts up the soft blanket covering my sister, she finds herself gazing at empty space where Gertie’s lower body should be. It takes a moment for the full force of this to hit her, and she drops the blanket. Shocked. Her baby sister, my baby sister, was hit with such force that her entire lower body was separated from her. Now there’s just nothing. Nothing at all. It’s an image that will haunt Eileen for the rest of her life – and then me.

I don’t know the last time I saw Gertie. That afternoon before running off to play with my friends? Or maybe at breakfast time? I don’t know what I said to her, whether I smiled at her or made fun of her, or if she was annoying me. I’ll never know now. It shouldn’t really matter, but it does.

After spending a night in our house Gertie is taken to the local church for a night and then buried the next day. I don’t remember the burial and nobody can remember who she’s buried with. Many years later my sisters try to find her grave, but they can’t. It’s a mystery. She isn’t buried with my parents and she doesn’t appear in any records. It’s like she disappeared into thin air.

Despite my shyness and even though I play with girls, I’m just a Belfast boy. Love the company of other boys. Love my football. Playing football with a ball made from an old woolen jumper stuffed with wet newspaper. Using the busy Falls Road as our pitch, we spend entire afternoons and evenings playing fierce and long matches against boys from other streets, stopping only to eat. We go home only when the man comes around with his ladder to light the gas lamps that glow around Belfast.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s I cross paths with another local boy. Gerry Conlon. Sometimes we end up on opposing teams. Our street against his. He’s younger than me and goes to a different primary school. And although we’re not good friends, our paths will continue to cross on the streets of Belfast through football and hanging around on corners.

In our teens and early twenties I still see Gerry occasionally. Although we both love music, football, a few pints, touching for a girl and going to the bookies, we’re also very different. I keep my head down; Gerry is a wild child. He’s known around the Falls for always being in trouble, an answer for everything. Later he’ll describe me as a meek and mild kid, afraid of his own shadow. When I think back on it, I suppose I was like that with people I didn’t know. We end up in the same workshop for a few brief months in Mackie’s, one of the biggest factories in Northern Ireland, but apart from that we move in different circles, just bumping into each other every now and then.

That’s how my life was back then. I was a typical boy in hard-working, poor and peaceful 1950s Belfast. I never strayed more than a mile or so from my home in Milton Street, mostly content in a world of family, friends and narrow streets and laneways. A timid, fair-haired boy, tearing through the streets behind my sisters Eileen and Harriet, often with wee Gertie trailing behind, crying. Wait for me. We’ve been waiting for our poor wee Gertie ever since.