Live from Belfast

Background: One of Daffy's friends reveals a shocking truth. This excerpt comes from the chapter 'Alan's Story' in the book DLC1.

My real name - & I reckon it’s safe enough to say, although I’ve not allowed myself to give it breath for more than ten years - is Alan Aloysius Docherty. I was born in a Catholic suburb in the south of Belfast. I’m thirty-three years old. You just thought I’d had a hard life, but I reckon I’m pretty bloody well-preserved under the circumstances.

At the end of the street where I grew up, there was a fence, & it was Protestant from there north. I went to a Catholic school with my Catholic friends, & we all went to the same Catholic church & threw the occasional rock at the fence when we saw the Prot kids on the other side. That was life. I must have been about five when I started hating Prots - & I didn’t even know any. It’s in the genes, you see - or at least in the air.

I was as active & vicious as any other kid in the street, but by the time I was thirteen, I was running messages for the army (by “army”, he meant IRA) & proud of it - my parents turned a blind eye, so it must have been okay - or maybe they were just happy to see me out of the house all day. I had no idea what was written on the little slips of paper, but I ran faster than anyone doing it. Messages became packages. The weight varied. I didn’t ask. That kind of discretion got me a real job as soon as I wanted to leave school, working as a clerk for a sizable engineering firm with sympathies for the cause. I was pretty much set for life. I had very flexible hours - I’d be sitting there doing the books for the company, or supervising deliveries, & then I’d get a little message from some snotty-nosed kid who mirrored what I used to be. I’d just wave at my boss in a particular way, he’d nod, & I’d go down the street to some boarded-up shop & go through their back door, or meet up with someone in an alleyway who was unloading a truck into an anonymous warehouse. I’d take note of what was going on, writing it down in special ledgers I kept for the army. Once or twice a week, I’d take my books down to the local brigade & compare notes with my lead there, just to make sure that things tallied up - that everything we needed - guns, ammo, chemicals - was getting to where it was meant to.

That was my job. After a while, it became all about money as well. I started doing the proper accounting at the company by day, & I got into the books with the army at night. You would not believe the turn-over! I mean, with donations, extortion, hush-money, all coming in, & payments to arms dealers & smugglers, informants, & such going out, it was amazing stuff. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing at the time, because it was easy to think of it as just simple accounting & logistics, but looking back!

I’d always been a bit of a loner, so they could easily trust me. I was still living with my parents & took nothing home with me. I guess everyone knew that - I had things under lock & key in the offices, & everyone knew they could rely on my discretion. It was no doing of mine, it was just the way I was - I enjoyed having  something to do, some way to be useful. It was some way to still throw rocks at the fence. They were just Prots on the other side, faceless, soulless.

That all changed when I met Mary. She gave me a bit of a  purpose, & started me thinking about what exactly I was doing - mostly because she wanted to spend some time with me, & I had to choose between her & the books. She won. It took her a week. She was my little secret, when I didn’t even realise that I needed to keep secrets. I was just guilty that I wasn’t putting as much time into my work - the official or unofficial kind. It came to a head, though, when she told me that she knew I was Catholic, but that she wasn’t. A Prot! I’d fallen in love with a Prot! She was prepared for my reaction, but I wasn’t. I guess that’s women for you. Well, it was Mary. She knew what to do before I knew that something needed to be done.

As the weeks went by, I spent more time with my beloved Mary - little snippets - & she eventually made me understand that it was much worse - her father was a rozzer. Gardai. Policeman. The enemy. Only one step below the TA in terms of fear & loathing - except that he lived amongst us. I’ve got to admit that my only exposure to the constabulary at this point had been pretty bloody negative. I’d been patted down (& had learnt early how to hide a note), frisked, & cavity-searched - just for good measure, because there’s never been drugs where I was. I’d been mostly lucky, although I’d spent a few odd nights in detention because the buggers knew I had something but simply couldn’t find it. In a way, I’d been playing a little game with the locals, & always winning. Now who’s laughing? My girl was the daughter of a man in blue.

Mary & I were in love, but there was no way we could get married - she didn’t want to become Catholic any more than I’d enjoy becoming a Prot. You just can’t do it. We compromised. We started living together part-time. I felt as guilty as hell, but it was better than any alternative either of us could come up. I started avoiding church. A lot of the lads weren’t big on confession, so that didn’t stand out so much.

I was barely nineteen! I had no idea what I was doing. I was naive & stupid & in love. I lived my life on a knife edge, always thinking that my parents would find out, or the army, or the police, or the priest, or God, or … who knows? Then Mary got pregnant. Of course she did. I wasn’t using contraception. No way. The price of following the Church is more stress, apparently. Now things got really interesting.

We had to find a way out - away from that life. We had to disappear, start somewhere else. Of course, I had no idea how to do such a thing, because I was just a bundle of nerves living one life, let alone thinking about starting up another one. 

The only way to disappear when you’re in deep with the army is to die - or at least put up enough of a show that everyone thinks you’re dead, because if you ain’t, you will be, if you know what I mean. Mary came up with the plan, as always - she turned to her father, & he discreetly made some inquiries. He knew someone who knew someone who would happily help us make a fresh start - anywhere we liked - but it would cost. He wasn’t talking money, because everyone knew we didn’t have any. I was looked after, but I wasn’t exactly being paid well for my work.

I remember that night, holding Mary in our little secret room, talking over how we could take our little baby & just be somewhere a long way away from all of this - you know, like the other side of the border, because neither of us had been far from Belfast & we didn’t have much imagination. She told me to be strong, & that she had absolute faith that I would be able to help this guy out & he’d help us in return. I said I’d do it - for her & for our unborn child.

Of course, the guy was English.

I nearly cacked myself when I met him in a dark room in the wee hours in the middle of nowhere. I’d never met anyone actually English before. He moved & spoke like an officer, so I figured he had to have been army at some point. He was probably better described as a “spy” now. He said he wanted to know everything about all that I did - where I worked, who I talked to, where I went, what I saw, what I knew, who I knew, & any evidence I could provide.

It was far too late to back out, because he now knew me. I was reticent, but I knew deep down that this was the only way out. I started by telling him little things, & I figured out quickly that it wasn’t news to him & he didn’t need the confirmation. It seems that once he knew who I was, & I was connected enough to everything going on in that part of Belfast, he had a real interest in me - almost as if he knew about it all before-hand. I think he just had hoped that there was someone with the knowledge I had, & was greedy to know everything he could. He wasn’t gentle about it, either. He knew when I was holding stuff back or feigned ignorance. He just knew. Sometimes, he’d ask me specific questions about shipments, so I knew that he was well into knowing what was going on at the ground level. Maybe I wasn’t his only source. That got me worried. Now it could be a game of spilling the beans faster than someone else, just to prove that I was worth getting out of there.

After a week of these little debriefs, I worked out that if I could prove myself to be both in danger & in possession of a valuable piece of information, then they’d have to get me out before I got found out.

 It wasn’t like I had changed my habits & was asking questions where I shouldn’t, I was just being a bit more attentive to what I was being asked to do. I was even doing a bit more volunteering - & not seeing Mary at all. That, plus happenstance, got me my chance.

I got something totally unexpected - the name of someone I didn’t recognise, but heard was a big noise; & he was going to visit my brigade. My man - Nigel - was delighted. He grinned from ear to ear & wanted me to get close to the guy; but I couldn’t, because I was supposed to be taking a regular package across to Cardiff about then - like I did every two months. He asked me to get out of the delivery run so that I could find out when this guy would appear. Without compromising myself, I did manage to get precise details of how & when he would arrive - which was to be the day after I was to leave on my trip. I begged to get out if they were going to pick this guy up, just in case anyone knew that I knew about him & shouldn’t have done. Simple paranoia. I wasn’t faking how shit-scared I was becoming.

Nigel agreed - he didn’t even need to confer with his superiors. I went on my trip, as expected, as Mary & her family coincidentally left their house - with her father transferred. My package never arrived, & I disappeared into one of the English safe-houses. We spent a tense week there - cut off from the news. Mary was seriously encumbered by now, but the babe wasn’t quite due, which made me the more anxious every time she got up to waddle across the small room we spent our days in. 

I thought that they’d drained me of information when they started teaching us about our new lives - how they’d created this young married couple - a bookkeeper & a shop assistant - who would move into a simple village to start their family properly. It sounded - well, it sounded impossibly simple.

Then the news broke, & I discovered that I had basically handed over an MP to the spooks. That couldn’t be good. The consequences didn’t dawn on me in full until Nigel turned up again. He took me out in dark cars to another dark place & started asking more pointed questions - as if he’d been pumping that other source & was confirming some things or digging up more to work with. He seemed to be piecing together things I had no idea about. All I could say was “Oh - that was the package on such-&-such date” or “I remember a large sum of money coming in …” Not helpful, but Nigel nodded wisely. This went on for weeks. Him taking me away, disappearing for a few days, turning up again.

One day, we came back to find a police car outside the safe house. We kept driving. I didn’t want to. I knew something was wrong. It was about as wrong as it could have been. We’d been found. They got Mary. I never got to see her - the body, the safe-house, even my clothes left behind. They just kept me moving for another few weeks - Nigel handed me off to someone who became my constant companion - someone easily as paranoid as me & about as well-informed about what would happen next.

They settled me in a little village - not the one I was meant to go to - & made me blend in a bit, with my “cousin”. They built up a new story - apparently a better one - & started talking about sending me overseas. I’m not sure if I had an option. I was still a bit dazed about it all. Somewhere between the loss of Mary & the child, & the potential loss of my own life.

Then one day my “cousin” took me to the airport - two hours drive from the village - & I was on my way to Australia! Another Irish convict. Another political refugee. They put me in the outskirts of Melbourne to do my accounting degree part-time, always running two lives. I became the CPA you’ve come to know & love, & then some bright spark - who I’d swear had nothing to do with my past - suggested I come up here to Sydney & do a Masters. I’ve no idea where the money came from, but my bank account sure looked healthy for a short while.

So, here I am. I have a moustache - which is so spindly it actually makes me look young. I have a guitar because I always wanted to learn, & I write poetry because they said I didn’t have a soul.

Belfast

They took the streets like many rebel men without a cause
And searched along from house to house to find their cow’ring prey -
Tough, hardened men, they bore the scars of many long-fought wars
And held a grimness on each face, with not a word to say.

But then the shout went up - they’d found the very man they sought
In some dark alleyway, behind the half-decayed debris
Of human waste and damage, and the man who at first fought,
Was dragged unconscious to the street and held where all could see.

Then each man held his breath awhile, each woman turned away
As he was kicked and punched and hit with ever-growing force
‘Til they pronounced him dead, and in a pool of blood he lay;
The soldiers climbed into their truck - again, without a cause.

Much later, when I happened to pass by that way again,
I saw the body’d gone, and someone cleaning up the stain.