MAUREEN BOYLE ON HER DESPAIR AT COMING BACK TO NI TO TEACH IN WEEK OF SHANKILL BOMB AND GREYSTEEL
The award-winning poet recalls the terrible events of that week 25 years ago which left her sick and terrified and wondering why she had returned to the province
The Falls Road with its graffiti, noise and bustle seemed a world away from Hampstead
I felt ashamed to have brought my friend over here and wondered what I had done in coming home
Ireturned to live in Northern Ireland in the autumn of 1993. I had left to go to Trinity College, Dublin in 1980; then Norwich, then London. I was teaching in a Sixth Form College in Ladbroke Grove, but as a teacher I’d never be able to buy a house in the city and my father had been ill and I wanted to be nearer family.
This, plus a broken heart, decided me on returning. One of the teachers at the college sent me off saying, ‘Trust to life’ and I did.
I got a job in St Dominic’s grammar school on the Falls Road in Belfast — a city I’d very little knowledge of beyond childhood memories of operations in the Royal and my father’s tales of college days in St Joseph’s and the mulligatawny soup made by his landlady in a house in Arizona Street.
I came over for an interview at Easter — having applied to St Dominic’s but not to the other two big Belfast schools advertising at the time, one of which asked that you be part of the Territorial Army at school and the other that you be part of God’s army and fight for the children’s souls!
On the day of the interview I took a black taxi from my friend’s house on the Glen Road, not knowing that these were different from London taxis and when it stopped, despite seeming full to me, I got in and knelt on the floor, only for the people to show me the little fold-down seats in the back and for one woman to tell me, ‘There’s no need to say your prayers love’!
I looked at the Falls Road and wondered what I was doing since I was living in Hampstead and this seemed a world away with its graffiti, its noise and bustle.
But I got the job and found myself in September having to negotiate the strange sectarian geography of the city.
Everyone said, look for a place near Queen’s — you’ll be safe there. I went to see some flats and thought the landlords were joking when they brought me in — to filth and broken-down rooms.
Eventually, through a friend, I found a place in Galwally off the top of the Ormeau Road.
In the first week, used to a frenetic schedule in London, I kept waiting for meetings and things to do, but in those golden days the highlight of the first week back was the English Department picnic which took place on trestle tables in the school garden and involved everyone bringing in beautiful food and the head of department regaling us with stories of walking up French rivers in the summer in her Zephr runners.
I came to love Belfast. I loved how close it was to the sea. I loved the little bakeries on the Falls with their ‘wee batch’ loaves and a myriad of cakes; I loved how un-PC the town was when I asked where the ‘No Smoking’ area was in a city centre cafe the woman said, ‘Och don’t worry love, you can smoke anywhere’!
And I loved our students — though sometimes I couldn’t understand what they were saying and they couldn’t understand me. And sometimes little ones would start to cry for no reason only to tell me that it was the anniversary of someone who had died in the Troubles and who they had been told all about but had never known.
A child’s desk in those days might be festooned in memorial cards.
And, of course, I missed London and my friends so that when it came to half-term I invited my friend Alison, who I’d done my PGCE with at the Institute of Education in London, if she would like to come over.
I assured her that everything was peaceful, that the Troubles seemed to be ending and that we would have a lovely time.
With a little reassurance she agreed. She’d never been to Ireland before. Her family were Welsh, but she grew up in England.
So she was booked to arrive on October 28, my mother’s birthday and towards the end of our Halloween break.
The plan was that we would head to Strabane for the weekend, after I’d shown her around Belfast.
On the previous Saturday, the Shankill bomb killed nine people in Frizzell’s fish shop and in the week that followed the reprisal attacks killed people all over the city.
Suddenly this was the city as I had heard about it for years on the news growing up. The morning death toll a ritual of the day, the fear of where death would strike next, the sense of chaos and madness in hearing of people killed while living an ordi-
nary day — like Martin Moran who was only 22 and was shot while delivering a Chinese takeaway close to Donegall Pass on the day after the bombing. Or Sean Fox who was shot dead in his own home in Glengormley on October 25.
Alison came anyway and on the day after she arrived, two brothers were shot while watching TV in their home in Armagh.
I have an awful memory of us taking the bus to Strabane on Saturday, October 30 and soldiers boarding the bus to search it in Glengall Street — moving up and down the narrow aisles so that their guns were very close and lending weight to a terrible sense of dread in the city which hummed with helicopters and screamed with sirens on the ground as the bus pulled out.
And then that night — her welcome to Halloween in Strabane — the news of the deaths in Greysteel.
Eight people dead aged between 19 and 78; 24 people dead in the one week.
I felt sick and terrified. I felt ashamed to have brought her here. She was glad to leave. And I wondered again what I had done in coming home.
And I find myself now wondering if, in the wake of Brexit, I will stay if it all starts to happen again.