All Growed Up by Tony Macaulay

Author:Tony Macaulay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstaff Press Ltd
Published: 2014-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

12

WAR AND PEACE

‘That wummin!’

Conor O’Neill was on his soapbox again in the Student Union café where I was having a cup of coffee and a Kit Kat.

‘Oooh, Thatchurr! Oooh!’

He was going very red in the face as usual. I marvelled at Margaret Thatcher’s ability to influence Conor’s blood pressure. The very mention of her name set him off on a rant that usually concluded with a close comparison between Mrs Thatcher and Adolf Hitler.

‘That wummin,’ he fumed. ‘They voted her in once, they voted her in again and they’ll keep on voting the witch in forever!’

At the next table there were nods of agreement over paper plates of limp ham sandwiches.

Encouraged, Conor drew breath and issued the prophecy, ‘We’ll never get rid of that bloody wummin.’

‘Well, is that not democracy?’ I ventured.

I was almost confident now, and I was prepared to question the unquestionable. Conor turned around slowly and surveyed with me as much suspicion as Doctor McCoy scanning an alien life form with impossibly blonde hair in Star Trek.

‘Oh, right, so you support her do you?’

This allegation was almost as bad as the accusation of being middle class. I didn’t like Margaret Thatcher because she seemed to care more about always being right than always doing the right thing.

‘I didn’t say I supported her, I just said that’s democracy. If most people vote for her then she gets elected as prime minister.’

Suddenly, Marty Mullen swivelled around on his plastic chair at a table across the room, scattering plastic cutlery and the remains of a rubbery sausage roll.

‘Well, with the Armalite in one hand and the ballot box in the other, Thatcher will be thrown out of Ireland and we will be a nation once again. In a Free. Socialist. Republic!’ Marty chimed triumphantly as he dipped a piece of Twix in his tea. Several of Marty’s clones nodded solemnly.

‘Violence achieves nothing,’ I said, aware that I sounded like John Hume. ‘It just hurts people and makes everything worse.’

Marty sighed aggressively. I was daring to contradict the most uncontradictable person I had ever met. I was surprised by how confident I had become.

‘That’s just your middle-class Protestant values,’ Marty retorted.

In my first year at university I had been accused of being middle class so many times that during the summer break I decided to double check with my father if it was possible that we were, in fact, lower middle class rather than working class.

‘There’s nathin’ middle class about us, son,’ he’d reassured me.

‘Are we not maybe upper working class?’ I’d asked.

‘If anything, we’re lower working class, and don’t you forget it.’

‘Well, do you think we might be upper lower working class?’

‘No son of mine is gonna think he’s middle class when he’s nat,’ he’d replied firmly.

So I was ready for this argument.

‘I’m not middle class. You’re actually talking arrant nonsense!’ I protested, instantly realising that what I had just said sounded very middle class indeed. ‘I’m a socialist, so I am.’

‘Belfast Royal Academy and not middle class,’ Marty barked with a derisory laugh.

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