Ballycarson Blues Read online

  This particular bus-load was nothing special in itself, but it formed part of something much larger and particularly remarkable. This bus-load was just one of many similar bus-loads comprising the third wave of substantial German immigration to Ballycarson in as many centuries. Together the three waves had given rise to the largest single German community in the British Isles outside London. Nervous and anxious though they were, these most recent incomers represented the future for a town stuck in the past.

  A combination of good fortune and detailed planning ensured that accommodation in Ballycarson had not been a problem for the new German incomers. A specially produced Council brochure in English (with an interlined Ulster-Scots and Irish translation) welcomed them to the town and advertised the facilities. Nobody bothered to produce it in German. The German incomers were informed that the Ballycarson Council had policies “aimed” at the German immigrants and special schemes “targeted” for their welcome. The Council would “leave no stone unturned” to make them feel at home. In addition, it confirmed that they would have easy access to amenities in Ballycarson given that everywhere was “a stone’s throw” from everywhere else. Initial problems in extempore translation led many of the Germans to fear that Ballycarson was a scene of continual riots. For the more poetic amongst them, the words of Friedrich Schiller came to mind. Here was a place where the pace of time was threefold. The future arrived nervously, the past stood still eternally and the present moved at the speed of a projectile.

  However, advance planning by the Ballycarson Council had served to curtail the potential of projectile diplomacy. To dampen the enthusiasm of possible rioters, a fifteen-foot-high Peace Wall had been built separating housing estates in the east of the town from similar locations in the west.

  Of course, compromises had to be made even in relation to such a strategic frontier structure. A small, awkward salient of Loyalist- and Unionist-occupied Council houses in a sea of Nationalists and Republicans was walled off just within the west. The Council indicated it would have been too expensive to extend the wall and bend its line of construction to incorporate these minority occupants into the east. The local authority was not going to organise an airlift to keep them fed if they remained where they were. A short-lived experiment with a reconstructed medieval trebuchet to lob food parcels over the wall had merely confirmed the worst fears about fast food. Intimidation in its various forms gradually convinced the small body of Loyalists and Unionists to move out and the entire enclave was slowly abandoned. The process was complete just as the first bus-loads of the most recent Germans arrived. They all entered the town in bright orange buses bearing on their side the large blue logo “Transports of Delight”. This was a reflection of the political affiliations of the bus fleet’s owner: “Big David” as he sometimes liked to be known. They would find out much more about this man during their stay. In addition, they would discover that the locals had endowed him with another, more accurate, name: “Camp David”. This latter appellation indicated that he had once lived in a refugee camp but also reflected his ostensibly effeminate manner. There were only very few indeed who were aware that Camp David was not gay at all. He had affected the mannerisms of effeminacy as he had realised that there were not a few in the local political establishment who had difficulties in handling the notion of a gay politician in rural Ulster. And if they had difficulties with the concept, reasoned Camp David, they would have difficulties in handling him. So much the better: it gave him an angle and left them without a handle. In due course of time this version of Camp David’s name had inevitably been shortened to CD and his gang of associates, “David’s Volunteer Defenders”, was known as the DVDs. It would not be long before the Germans realised the people who called the tune in the east side of town were CD and the DVDs. However, David himself did not like the idea of being associated with anything compact or with technology that had already become out of date. For him, to match his ambitions, the only appropriate name was “Big David”.

  All this, however, was still to be the subject of a soft introduction for the Germans as they braced themselves for a soaking in the traditional Ulster steady drizzle and walked across the vast car park to a row of Council minibuses parked outside the barrier. This was indeed an accurate indicator of a disintegrated transport system full of petty hold-ups and minor obstacles. Why did they not park the minibuses just beside the big bus to make life easier for those arriving? Experience had taught the Council that the 100-yard walk dragging possessions in the cold and wet was just enough to make the incomers grateful for any seat, any transport, any shelter from the rain. Why should the Council stint on Nature’s bounty and the outdoor experience especially when they were free? The Council minibuses were hardly luxurious. Getting into their new means of transport, the Germans were welcomed by the comforting sounds of piped potted speeches of welcome from local politicians. This was the last leg of their epic journey from the centre to the fringe of Europe. It would last only a few minutes, but the tired speeches were intended to make the last lap feel like hours so the exhausted European incomers would gain the impression that the elevated fee for the minibus trip was worth it.

  The minibuses set off to their final destination where vacant houses awaited the passengers. On their seats the passengers had found literature to assist them. The Germans were informed by the Council brochure that some of the locals had given up their houses just for them. You cannot get much more self-sacrificing than that. However, the truth was that these houses were the abandoned properties located in the former Unionist and Loyalist enclave. Some of the more insensitive of the political hacks in Ballycarson had regarded the potential availability of such newly vacated houses as a dividend of the great divide. A few of the Nationalist councillors considered that this was an ideal opportunity for democracy to flourish. They could select new electors more to their liking after the old ones had moved out. That would be democracy in action at its very best. Nevertheless, it became politically inexpedient for the Ballycarson Council to re-let the vacant houses in this area to local Nationalists and Republicans as that would be seen to have condoned the dubious but effective methods of persuasion that had led to the exodus. But no other Loyalists or Unionists wanted to move in. They had been entirely persuaded to stay out. The councillors hit on the solution of resettling the East German incomers in this abandoned area right beside the Peace Wall, complete with a new watchtower and large, powerful searchlights. For the former East Germans it was the perfect physical surroundings to bring forth a warm glow of remembrance about the place of their origin. True to their German tendency to analyse and define, they even had a German word to describe their collective feeling: “Ostalgie”. Nostalgia about the east.

  “You’ll feel at home here,” was the uplifting comment of the chairperson of the Council to the first of the families to move in. “And you can paint the big wall any colour you like – as long as it is not white, red and blue – we have already given it a good coat of green primer.”

  Of course there were several among the more conservative elements in Ballycarson society who took the view that all change was just an illusion. Even if it did exist, it was a reality that was best ignored. “When it’s not necessary to change, it’s necessary not to change” was a long-standing principle that had become a cliché and then a stale political dogma that they had committed to memory and practice. These conservative elements of society attempted to continue the traditional pigeonholing of everyone in Ballycarson regardless of their extrinsic origin. Some of this was relatively light-hearted banter, although liberal academics denounced it as “sound-bite sectarianism” or “sectarianism with a smile”. As almost all of the newly arrived Germans found work in the salami factory located well within the Protestant east of the town, a few Loyalists labelled them “the part-time Proddies”. A select few were named after the electrically charged implements by which they persuaded the doomed cows to enter the salami factory: “the Cattle Prods”. Still, this was always
better than the name applied by the extreme Republicans to the native Loyalist workers at the factory: “the Protestant Pigs”.

  However, most of the attempts to continue the parochial political pigeonholing were claptrap pumped out by a single extreme Republican newspaper printed in the building it shared with the cheese factory. Both occupants of the stone-built structure dominating Irish Street produced a diet unaltered for centuries. In a land with too much history, the newspaper represented a constituency with a memory supremely well matched with its inability to learn. It had forgotten nothing and learned nothing – or even less, if that were possible. The leaders of that constituency could never admit to having made a mistake at any time in the past as their followers might just begin to wonder if their leaders were making a mistake in the present. In a special Christmas issue, this narrow-minded broadsheet dredged up what it described as “disgusting pictures” of British and German soldiers fraternising on the western front on Christmas Day 1914 and warned its readers “Saxon and Anglo Saxon are natural allies.”

  Fortunately, even in Ballycarson, this was not the universal approach and the vested political ideologies had not wholly rooted out and destroyed the last vestiges of humanity. What the extremists of the political classes feared most was something, or more importantly someone, they could not classify within the frame of fossilised philosophies and platitudes of the Peace Process. Many ordinary people in Ballycarson, on both sides of the sectarian divide, recognised that the Germans had brought something new: the possibility of change and hope for the future. In particular there was the prospect that one of the Germans would open a decent cake shop in the town to supplement the already slightly cosmopolitan diet of Viennese biscuits, Danish pastries, Paris buns and Swiss rolls.

  CHAPTER 2

  UNDERCURRENTS OF ANGST

  The East German incomers, now living in the tiny enclave in the west, had to pass through a manned gate in the wall every day to reach their place of work in the salami factory on the other side. There was a border control system and a set of traffic lights to manage the flow of people. Only when the little green sandman appeared on the lights could the procession of workers move from one side to the other. As might have been expected, this gateway between east and west quickly became known by the populace as “Checkpoint Charlie”, leading to energetic denunciations from Councillor Eugene Gerald Fitzmaurice to the effect that this was a tasteless throwback to a rejected political system. It would cause extensive local offence, he asserted, as the name “Charles” was too closely associated with the British royal family. Still, the name stuck, causing Councillor Fitzmaurice to up the tempo of his campaign.

  “All street names, signs, symbols and banners of British rule should be removed forthwith,” thundered Councillor Fitzmaurice through a large green megaphone in his weekly tirade from the back of a green pickup parked on the fringe of the town green. The fringe of the green was, in fact, the only part of the green where grass grew and all that this amounted to was a narrow margin of untended weeds. A few months previously, in a money-saving exercise to cut uncontrollable mowing costs, the Council had covered virtually the entire area with concrete paving stones coloured green. It had all been a direct result of the notorious supergrass trials. These bold experiments under the prior Unionist administration had failed utterly, despite the promises of ultimate reward for society as a whole. Some Unionist boffin had come up with the idea of a new strain of supergrass that would be stunted by genetic design. It would grow only to a certain minimal height and thereafter it would never need mowing. The parsimonious prospect of cutting the costs of cutting grass appealed to the accountants and those with hay fever in the Unionist administration. The smell of new-mown hay and perfumed paper handkerchiefs would never again blight the town of Ballycarson. In a massive community effort to spend the Council budget before the end of the financial year, every patch of traditional, genetically unmodified grass within the town boundary was dug up and the new improved seeds sown.

  The seeds of hope produced a harvest of despair. The experiment went badly wrong. Almost immediately after its planting, the carefully blended and selected grass seemed to mutate and, proving remarkably invasive, it grew wildly and beyond control. The green belt rapidly expanded into a green blanket covering every open surface in what seemed to be an omnipresent bed of weeds. Ballycarson was turning into an urban jungle. There were protests on the streets of Ballycarson and at least one outraged letter in block capitals and green ink sent to the local newspaper (gardening section). But little could be done as the Unionists had also sold off the Council mowers to reap a double dividend of cost savings. In despair, but inexorably attracted by the name of the product, the Unionist Council decided on the use of the horticultural weapon of last resort. They applied to the American consulate to purchase an undisclosed number of barrels of the notorious defoliant known as “Agent Orange”, which they had come to understand had been left over from the Vietnam War. The containers were lying rusting in what was suspected to be a CIA warehouse in Belfast. There were even several Huey helicopters in the same warehouse that could assist in the spraying. The whole batch of the evil herbicide in liquid form and the small fleet of vintage helicopters were acquired as part of a deal negotiated in a shady spot beside a service station near the motorway to Belfast. However, the hand of political fate intervened before the project could be implemented. The Unionists lost the Council elections and a new political broom swept in.

  It fell to the new Nationalist administration to deal with the aftermath of the supergrass crisis. Agent Orange was off the agenda for obvious reasons. But the Nationalist-led Council found a suitable dumping ground for the offensive material by emptying the now unwanted barrels into what had been the Union Canal. The Huey helicopters, in contrast, might prove useful for crowd control or even as a municipal fleet for fast transport of the new councillors to essential Council events. In any event, their existing green colour reflected the loyalties of those holding power in the new political dispensation. So, the superannuated helicopters were spruced up and stored away for a rainy day.

  Attention was then turned to the supergrass infestation. A green, foul-smelling weedkiller derived from a distillation of the extract of Donegal seaweed was sourced from a reputable dealer somewhere on the internet. It was applied by the tanker-load and fire engines were employed to spray it lavishly on the spreading plague. There was almost instant die back.

  But it is not all easy in local politics. Some sentimentalists in the new administration longed for some link, however tenuous, to their romanticised, rural origins. A political compromise was reached. All of the areas in the centre of town where the over-energetic, genetically modified grass had been exterminated by liquid poison were ploughed, harrowed and then slabbed over with green-painted concrete. Continuity with the past was retained by the maintenance of signs at strategic points around the perimeter of the area in the centre of Ballycarson indicating that visitors should “Keep off the Grass”. Admittedly, this was more a fond memory or lovingly retained myth than a statement of fact or recognition of reality – but what did that matter? In that regard the spurious message of the signs was utterly consistent with many other of the new Council’s policies. The mowers were not repurchased and the money notionally saved in the whole exercise was reinvested in recruiting a number of new Council employees to translate the new signs into various minority languages. The Council appreciated that for the people speaking such equally esteemed but easily overlooked languages life could be a struggle at the fringe and it was determined to make life in Ballycarson equally attractive for all. So the permanently green plaza in the centre of town became a barren space where everyone stayed at the fringe.

  The very centre of the green plaza contained a large empty green plinth. It was a vacant memorial set up by the new Nationalist administration to the “As Yet Unborn Future Republicans” who would, in the words of the dedication plaque in the new civic interpretive centre, “Take the l
ead in the Republican struggle in the decades and centuries to come”. In their enthusiasm for the brilliance of their own imagination, the members of the Nationalist administration had failed to see that the public inscription suggested that the Nationalist campaign was not going to succeed for a long time yet. The fact of the matter was that the Nationalist administration had actually run out of existing heroes to honour as they had already set up a multiplicity of statues to the past achievers in the Republican and Nationalist causes at the end of every street, lane and alley in the west of Ballycarson. There were plenty of streets and plenty of heroes, but some of these commemorations were less successful than others. It was perhaps surprising that the statues of various hunger strikers had proved the greatest embarrassment. The Nationalist administration now needed to divert public attention away from the inscription below each hunger striker’s statue, which set out their individual names and dates of death, and then proceeded to hail each of them as “A Living Legend”. “So where is he living now?” was the unanswered question of a small child in the minute’s silence at one of the many Republican services of dedication. To silence the critique of the representative of the next generation, the interrupted minute’s silence was immediately followed by another minute’s silence. However, what was written in stone was not chiselled off just in case it might amount to the admission even of a small mistake. A stroke of self-certified political brilliance served to move on public attention and to save the day. “Let us look forward and not back” became the Republican slogan and the plinth for the “As Yet Unborn Future Republicans” then materialised like a work of avant-garde art in the centre of the town plaza.

  This vacant if not vacuous structure was not the only manifestation of a political wish for cultural emptiness at the centre of civic life. At the edge of the permanently sterile green plaza Councillor Fitzmaurice proceeded to invite the new German arrivals to join his new movement to pull down and replace all public reminders of British rule – “the Street Traffic and Signs Initiative”, or “STASI” for short.