Ballycarson Blues Read online

  Whatever the possible criticisms of the manner in which business decisions were to be made, it remained the case that at this afternoon’s high-level meeting of the executive board on the first floor of the L.H.O. hall there would be real and substantial issues on the agenda. The main item was the final planning for the big event to demonstrate the Renaissance of Loyalist culture following upon dual disasters of the Nationalist election victory and the great flood. Since those combined calamities the pensioned-off political pundits in the shelter at the Spion Kop bus stop were of one mind – there had been nothing except two dry, barren years for the Loyalists of Ballycarson. Indeed, for many of that particular political persuasion it did appear that the centre of the town was now no mere political wilderness – it was a real complete desert with the symbols of their tradition being sandblasted from all public buildings.

  But the very fact that there was an executive board meeting clearly showed all was not lost. Without a doubt there were exciting plans for a re-plantation of Ulster culture. And how was this hoped-for re-flowering of Ulster traditions to be manifested in this oasis of Loyalism? The planned event in question was the grand re-opening of the flute band practice room on the first floor of the L.H.O. hall and the dedication of the new band uniforms. And this time no expense had been spared. It was no longer to be music on a shoe string. In addition to a generous insurance pay-out following the destructive deluge, Big David had managed to lay his hands on European Union money that had been ring-fenced for the fostering of freedom of expression and cold weather payments. Clearly it seemed that the providers of European funding did not want even hard-bitten Loyalists to become frostbitten.

  CHAPTER 6

  WASHED OUT

  The reason for the big splash of cash may just have been that the lesson of recent local history had been learned at the “Watery Wednesday Enquiry” ordered by the L.H.O. hall’s insurers after the much debated midweek inundation at the L.H.O. hall.

  Whatever the reasons were for the present liberality, it was largely the skinflint approach of the previous band leader, Larry Niven, that had caused the financial problems in the first place. Five years previously the last redecoration of the flute band practice room had clearly been done on the cheap. No expense had been spent. There was no heating whatsoever in the practice room. It had always been uninviting and cold. So frosty indeed was the atmosphere that each flute band member had kept his coat on whilst practising as the volunteer musicians collectively marched up and down the practice room. These were the cold warm-ups for the annual big day, 12th July.

  At that time of undoubted and unchallenged Loyalist ascendancy there were greater priorities than heating or decorating the L.H.O. hall. These greater priorities included the retouching of various gable wall murals, the painting of strategically located kerbstones and bus shelters, and the erection of the loyal archways at the entrances to the town. The L.H.O. hall redecoration had not even been contemplated at all until vociferous complaints were received from the genealogists on the ground floor about the marching noise from the practice sessions of the flute band on the floor immediately above. Important transatlantic telephone and email orders for great-granny’s sister’s second cousin’s birth certificate simply could not be processed as the melodies of party songs from the first floor and the accompanying drumming and marching not only raised the roof but also penetrated the ceiling below.

  Larry Niven assured the genealogists that the problem would be solved by laying three thick carpets on the floor above. Unfortunately, this deep pile led to deep trouble or, more precisely, deep water.

  Despite the fact that these three layers deliberately comprised a sandwich effect of white, red and blue, there was a major scandal when it was discovered that the carpets were seconds from Councillor Finvola O’Duffy’s carpet and linoleum factory on the far side of town, the west side of town – the Nationalist side of town. Someone had to be carpeted. Someone needed to be decked. But the resulting row over the “Republican Reject Rugs” could not be swept under any floor covering. At one stage it threatened to be almost as serious as the “Pat’s Pan” incident a decade previously when it was discovered that the bread for the sandwiches supplied to the flute band on the twelfth of July had come from south of the international border. However, even the most aggressive and implacable Loyalist critic in the row about the carpets was eventually silenced when it was suggested in an anonymous letter to the Provincial Observer that by walking all over Councillor O’Duffy’s products, the Loyalists could practise symbolically walking over all of her constituents. Those traditional walking patterns required to be preserved at all costs even if it required some temporary political sacrifices and some fancy footwork. And if the members of the flute band were encouraged to walk up and down the room whilst practising, it would generate so much heat that Larry would not have to spend any cash on heating the room. Yes, this was a case of savings all round. A political saving of face and a financial saving of cash.

  Compared to the flooring arrangements, the sound dampening of the walls in the flute band room was a greater technological challenge. No available wallpaper was thick enough to deaden the sound. Plasterboard was too expensive even if rescued from bombed-out buildings. However, the problem was solved by a newspaper collection. Volunteers were encouraged to turn up with boxes full of newspapers, preferably the thick Sunday editions. Those with a Sabbatarian conscience were content after it was made clear that they were all printed on Saturday and not a word had ever been read on the following day. These pristine works of literature would be placed into bundles six inches deep and then nailed onto the walls and the doors with rivet guns. Care was taken to ensure that the newspapers were placed with their backs to the wall and that the inside faces comprised news reports of previous Loyalist triumphs trumpeted by headlines such as “Not an Inch”, “No Concessions” and “Ulster Says No”. Clearly the lining of the walls with such dense and detailed historical records and positive propaganda resulted in the flute band practice room becoming slightly smaller. Nevertheless, with the memories of their former illustrious exploits and victories adorning the walls, the Loyalists were unworried about the marginal shrinkage of the borders of their empire.

  Newspapers could not be nailed to the windows for obvious reasons. It wasn’t that the occupants of the L.H.O. hall wanted to see what was going on in the outside world – that was usually irrelevant anyway. Rather it was that light was needed for them to read the surrounding headlines as well as the music scores of the flute band. Larry Niven originally intended to install second-hand Venetian blinds, but someone objected to the proximity of their city of inspiration, if not origin, to the city of Rome. With such a provenance they would certainly not suit traditional sash windows. The plan was scrapped and the Venetian blinds returned to the “What Everyone Doesn’t Want” shop via the town dump. So it was a case of curtains for the blinds and, as it happens, curtains instead of the blinds. Purple and orange velvet curtains would have burst the available budget, so, instead, white net curtains were painted onto the inside face of the glass of the windows.

  “They will never need to be washed or dry cleaned,” was the great advantage indicated by Larry Niven.

  And there was more than enough painting talent close at hand to complete the job of the ever-clean net curtains. William Henry and his colleagues were on call twenty-four hours a day seven days a week for that urgent Loyalist painting job.

  The real snag in this complex sound-dampening arrangement was that noone had thought of the ceiling in the flute band practice room. One Tuesday night a few weeks after the sound-dampening was complete there was a sharp frost. The water pipes in the attic burst leading to a deluge into the flute band practice room. The walls in the room were duly washed down with cascading water. It left a foot deep of paper and literary sludge on the newly carpeted floor and a remnant of nails in the walls that resembled the work of an insane circus knife thrower.

  “It wasn’t much of an improv
ement when that stuff was readable,” observed one of the L.H.O. hall cleaners the next day as she peered round the door on what became known as “Watery Wednesday”.

  Special squads of flute band volunteers were instructed in the use of buckets and shovels to remove the filth on the floor that had become almost as hard as concrete after it dried out. Unfortunately, imbedded in the mass on the floor were not only the various works of Loyalist literature, which had previously adorned the walls, but also the debris of all the band uniforms, the flags, the banners, the drums and, worse still, many of the black wooden flutes. The band had been stripped and silenced. Even the Republican terrorists had never achieved that in decades of violence and destruction. So whilst the flute band members wielded their shovels and buckets, Larry Niven carried the can. The flute band management committee awarded Larry Niven for his services to music the D.C.B., meaning “Don’t come back”.

  The grim-faced Mr. Niven was pictured in the Provincial Observer with the caption underneath: “Happy as Larry.”

  The eagle-eyed economists in the shelter at the Spion Kop bus stop noted that all this happiness did have a modest trickle-down effect, at least within the L.H.O. hall building. On the floor below, the dripping water had soaked all the paperwork of the genealogists. However, the oil of foreign currency was poured on their troubles with an overall settling effect. When they dried out, their records and charts looked more original, ancient and authentic than ever before and commanded five times the price from those seeking records of past personalities and long-forgotten unknowns. Now the Americans were supplied not only with ersatz ancient histories but also with genuine ante-deluvian records.

  Key to the documentary dry-out was the tanning salon next door to the L.H.O. hall. Business had been slow for the “Golden Pigments” tanning shop after their landlords – the Fifth Ballycarson Free Non-subscribing Associated Independent Congregationalist Church – had taken umbrage at newspaper reports of the riotous living of some young Ballycarson holidaymakers when they visited certain destinations in the Aegean. The elderly elders of the churlish Church did not subscribe to the philosophy that their premises should be used to pre-prepare such tourists for sun, sea, sangria and sex – particularly, sex. So the leasehold terms were altered to require the tenants, the operators of the tanning salon, to make sure that their make-believe sunbeams should not shine equally on the righteous and the unrighteous. Anyone taking a tanning session had to sign a form confirming they would not be visiting certain listed Mediterranean destinations. The Provincial Observer ran the headline “Blacklist Frowns on Sun-kissed Towns” and followed it up with the story “Tourist Hotspots Become Blackspots”. If that wasn’t enough to strangle trade, most of the painted letters on the “GOLDEN PIGMENTS” shop sign above the frontage had flaked off like old desiccated skin. It left the shop sign consisting only of the letters “…OLD… …MEN…”. There could hardly have been a more demonstrative advertisement of the adverse consequences of premature skin ageing. The absence of a daily queue of budding Adonises left the tanning salon ready to accept the task of drying the paperwork of the genealogists under the tanning lamps. Fortunately, overly rapid ageing and discolouration were exactly what the genealogists were after.

  On the upper floor of the L.H.O. hall there had to be some radical rethinking. Leadership of the flute band was entrusted to an enthusiastic German immigrant Eva Pfeiffer who had come to Ballycarson the previous June in response to an internet advert headed “Flute-players Urgently Required”. Despite her slightly dictatorial approach, leading to her nickname “Eva Brunette”, it was clear she was the right woman for the job. She clearly had musical talent and was the only woman in the town who could whistle party songs such as “The Sash” whilst smoking a cigar. It seemed that the several large gaps between her front teeth facilitated the feat. In addition, if any additional qualification was at all necessary, someone in the flute band community had heard that prior to arriving in Ulster Eva Pfeiffer had played in someone’s conservatory in Leipzig.

  “If she was good enough for that glass house, she could serenade us here in the bus shelter. She’ll do rightly for the big marquee in the demonstration field on the twelfth of July,” observed one of the music critics in the shelter at the Spion Kop bus stop.

  That remark was truer to the mark than could ever have been expected. When an outsider looked at the Ballycarson 1690 Young Defenders Flute Band what they often saw was a bunch of gullible fools playing in a “Kick the Pope” flute band. With her upbringing in the former D.D.R., Eva knew the pressures to toe the party line. She also knew that some compromises had to be made to have any life at all. When she looked at the band what she saw was a group of real musicians with real talent and real potential. She had the wit, however, not to tell anyone that. In England and elsewhere one might be damned with faint praise. In Ulster, as in the former D.D.R., one could be damned by any praise at all. It was best to keep your head down and get on with it. So much the better if the local politicians thought of her as no more than an eccentric who would never amount to much and be of little use to them.

  But it was the financial, organisational and administrative skills of Eva Pfeiffer that were equally, if not more, important than her low public profile. After the Watery Wednesday washout, she would have to attend to the total restructuring of the flute band, the obtaining of new instruments and uniforms, and the rebuilding of morale in a difficult political climate. For that her credentials were impeccable if slightly unusual. How could anyone better the individual who, in the space of a few months, had successfully implemented the long-delayed conversion of the main production line in the Ballycarson salami factory from black pudding to salami? So ruthless had she been in pushing through the sausage reforms at the factory she was promoted to financial and sales director. In that position she promptly earned the loving title “The Hun at the Till”.

  Over the next few months it became more than clear that the appointment had paid off. Eva arranged a temporary practice room for the flute band in a renovated nissen hut in the old WW2 prisoner of war camp. And emanating from that hut every Tuesday evening passers-by could hear the flute band’s rendition of her own arrangement of classics such as Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds”. Here indeed was an acceptable mix of novelty and continuity. New tunes, new melodies, new arrangements, a new sense of direction but with a sufficient hint of the same old political message. Eva had clearly hit the right note.

  Loyalty cannot be bought except when it is sold. But when it comes to genuine, rock-solid loyalty, it pays to make sure by compulsory purchase. Despite her attempts at public invisibility, Eva became publically audible and unavoidable as a result of her innovations with the flute band. So Eva was put on the Big David payroll, whether she liked it or not. An investigation on her background was launched and accompanied by some obvious surveillance. But even after the recommendation from the character analysts in the shelter at the Spion Kop bus stop, her political reliability remained a little uncertain. Big David sent someone else on his payroll to keep an eye, or rather an ear, on Eva and the flute band.

  For this musical nursery, I need a plant, thought Big David and smiled as he thought he’d come up with a new joke.

  William Henry was the man in question. He was deputised as a reluctant political commissar to beat the drum of political correctness at the band practices. Fortunately for Eva, both William Henry and Big David were tone deaf and had no idea of musical timing, rhythm or pitch. For William Henry a sheet of music was like a roll of Chinese script. Given Big David’s reputed oriental origins, it was clearly something else for him, but whatever it was, it remained unintelligible. So William Henry’s musical reports to Big David were a case of the deaf speaking to the deaf. What was the upshot of this misinformation? Big David may have paid the piper, but Eva called the tune.

  Fortunately for her and for musical progress, Eva spotted the plant immediately and had just the job for what she informed William Henry were his very
special talents. He could paint the sides of the new base drum. Originally Big David had insisted that his face be featured on both sides of the drum. But then, information having been received, he had backed down. Eva had told him she was delighted to have his face on the drum. It was an image of inspiration to all musicians. But she didn’t think it would do his image any good to have someone beating the lining out of it in public even if accompanied by music. Faced with his image receiving such a hammering, Big David agreed that the sides of the new base drum would bear the name of the flute band and nothing more.

  Big David, without realising it, had been outflanked by Eva yet again.

  CHAPTER 7

  STREETWISE AND HOUSE-TRAINED

  Names were always a difficult issue when it came to dealing with inward investment in Ulster. Names were loaded words used as weapons in the propaganda war waged between the local politicians on each side of the sectarian divide. In Ballycarson the names of public structures comprised a veritable Who’s Who of those who had encouraged others to take up arms in the centuries of civil unrest. The effect of this belated civic recognition was to give a cloak of respectability to those who had held the coats of the belligerents and inspired others to continue the struggle.

  Amongst the first acts of the new Nationalist administration was a search for a Ballycarson street that was suitable for their great hero De Valera, the leader of one island, one land and one people. The aim of these newly elected Nationalist politicians was to show solidarity with their fellow Irishmen and women in the south by honouring a man who claimed to personify the entire island.

  What the new Nationalist Ballycarson administration could not grasp was that their acts demonstrated exactly what they denied with their words. The Irish border had some substance after all. Their choice of hero demonstrated the great divide between the Nationalist politicians in the north and those in the south. The Northern Ireland experience had placed the Northern Nationalists into a political exile not of only a few miles but also a considerable number of decades. Perceptions of what Nationalism meant in the north and south had diverged irreconcilably. The Northern Nationalist politicians still revered a man who, according to some, had been a cracker short of a packet in or around the Jacob’s biscuit factory in 1916. But in the fast-moving economies of modern Dublin and Ballyporeen it no longer mattered quite as much where your grandfather was on a particular day all those years ago. In Northern Ireland the identity and actions of your grandfather still determined your destiny. The sins of grandfathers were still visited upon grandchildren.