Storytime with Houdi – Raintown…

It’s 1987. I’m working in war torn Northern Ireland.

Worse, I’m in west Belfast.

In a big shopping centre, the first major retail development in that area for decades. The good news is that it’s my week off. I’m listening to Raintown the debut album from Deacon Blue.  The album is mainly about Glasgow.

It’s dreary.

Glasgow, not the album.

Belfast too is dreary, but unlike Glasgow, the tribes here are slaughtering each other.

Literally.

Only half a mile from where I work.

 

There is hope in the music. The first single Dignity describes a street sweeper who just wants a peaceful retirement amid all the chaos and commercialism.  In Belfast, despite the slaughter, there is also hope.

Hope for me.

In the band there is a girl Lorraine McIntosh. She is very pretty.  A great singer too. In our head office above the supermarket floor that I’m managing, there is another pretty girl. I’m not sure if she can sing, but she can tout: checking the authenticity of our prices on the shop floor reporting back to my boss.

She has a sort of presidential demeanour.

People warm to her, seeking her advice.

Like you would with an older aunt.

This is unusual for a young girl. Her brown panda like eyes are alluring, enchanting perhaps. Possessing the physiognomy of Jo Durie the tennis player, she communicated an athletic feel. Most of the lads think this girl is class looking, definitely the best in the building. I don’t entirely agree. She was pretty, but not THAT pretty. I’m advised by a colleague who was an interested party.

She’s out of your league

She cultured, she’s one of themmuns.

I raise an eyebrow appealing further clarification.

            Promisints, not the mad ones that shoot ye, but the holy ones that pray for ye.

Presbyterians, sure that’s why she’s the hair tied in a bun.

            She wouldn’t be within your bailiwick, as you’re a catlick.

I am surprised.

Not that she was an aforementioned promisint,

Presbyterian or indeed holy, but that my colleague has the noun bailiwick within his bailiwick. At the canteen table he gives the impression he’s still into Ladybird Books.

Of the two hundred employees in the store she is the only non catholic. Not through discriminative recruitment but purely by geography, fear and mistrust. It’s hard for some to understand this but I do, having being reared in Co. Monaghan. Growing up on the border familiarised me with the tribal hatred, especially as I attended a mixed religion secondary school. I was well acquainted with the world view of the ‘other side’. We had good fun at school but come the weekend the Protestant pupils never really socialised with us and we would seldom see them at a local dance. Like Cavan people when it’s their round in a bar, they disappeared into the ether.

My interest in her is whetted though.

I start to make a move.

Upstairs she’s a permanent fixture in the back office which houses a photocopier the size of a Sherman tank producing bounded reports the size of encyclopaedias. I feign that I am fascinated at how it works by seeking a demonstration. Binding files like an automaton, she looks at me like I’m a Ragman saying

 You’re from Ireland aren’t you?

I thought everybody here was.

Not everyone! Are you a traveller?

I think she means a sales rep as that’s what many northerners call travelling salesmen.

No I’m the shopfloor manager downstairs.

I know you are, you eejit but are you a traveller?

What do you mean?

Are you a gypsy? Because you talk like one.

Carole, the correct term is itinerant.

 I’m not a member of that nomadic southern Irish ethnic grouping.

Later that day I have a chance encounter with an executive of a supplying company who was on a store visit.

That’s a lovely girl from Portrush you have upstairs.

You need to look after her.

Her father owns a bus company, does tours all around the province.

This attracts my attention like a bat.

How many buses does he have?

Oh well over a dozen

When I hear this she starts getting prettier by the minute. The next day at tea break I tell her that I’m going to take driving lessons.

Don’t bother wasting your money I can teach you. 

Where do you live?

I will pick you up tonight?’

The die was cast. She picks me up in my digs in The Holylands in south Belfast ending up in a deserted car park on the Ormeau Road. Coincidentally, she has Raintown playing on her car stereo. She is surprisingly for a Presbyterian, great craic, with Ricky Ross telling me she is The Very Thing. As we practise three point turns, parallel parking and emergency stops, I think to myself,  I have her now and she’s Loaded. She drops me off. I’m too embarrassed to ask her in for tea as the house is an absolute tip. Presbyterians are very tidy and organised. If she sees the state of the house she will think I am an itinerant.

We shake hands at the door.

Her panda eyes stare at me disappointed.

As if I asked her to recite a decade of the Rosary.

 

After a few more of her driving lessons I eventually pass my test. A few weeks later I am given a pair of guest tickets for the UTV Gerry Kelly live TV show in Havelock house. I drive up to the Lisburn road to collect her then we watch the burly chat show host introduce Deacon Blue. Ricky Ross sings about a Chocolate Girl. I look to my left. She’s right here beside me thinking He looks like Spencer Tracy now.

Two years later….

…we walked down another aisle…

…in her hometown…

…in her church.