Watching the Door by Kevin Myers

Author:Kevin Myers [Kevin Myers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843512424
Publisher: The Lilliput Press
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

One afternoon I was in a pub on the Glen Road meeting a very clever, thoughtful IRA intelligence officer called Paddy. I went to the men’s toilets and there lying on the floor was a man, a pool of blood, a wig and, sitting by itself in a Daliesque declaration of what is really possible in this life, a human eye.

I swivelled on my heel and strode with panicky nonchalance back to where I’d been sitting. Paddy was gone but our drinks were still there. I sat down and waited, my desire to bolt matched only by my desire to discover the truth. Finally, Paddy returned and cut across me as I opened my mouth; in the way of the IRA, he already knew what had happened. Three men were using urinals, one of them wearing a wig. A fourth man had come up behind him and plucked the hairpiece from his head. The man had stopped pissing, turned, smashed the wig-thief several times in the face, stuck a finger into an eye socket and scooped the contents out, in full view of the other two, who were still urinating, but by this time, I imagine, rather less accurately than hitherto.

The IRA, incredibly yet almost naturally, had almost twigged what was going on and had instantly taken over control of the situation. Paddy told me to stay where I was. I watched Gerry Adams walk into the bar; he listened attentively, his head cocked, as events were explained to him by a couple of men.

‘Leave,’ said Paddy, ‘now,’ and I obeyed; as I walked past Adams, I heard him say, ‘Shoot him.’ I got into my car and waited. Paddy joined me after a few minutes. ‘They’re going to shoot the fucking bloke who took the eye out. Not a word about this now. Not a fucking word.’

However, since no one was reported killed in Belfast that afternoon, I presume that the culprit was merely kneecapped. This was an IRA area. No police existed here. Order was IRA order, law was as laid down by the local IRA chieftain. Shortly afterwards – unrelated to this incident, needless to say – Adams was arrested and interned.

My encounters with the UDA leader Tommy ‘Tucker’ Lyttle were rather less dramatic. I’d spoken to him a few times on the phone and we seemed to get on. He invited me up for a chat and a few drinks. I met him face to face for the first time in the Salisbury Bar on the Shankill Road. He was sitting at the bar, his hair in the 1950s cow-lick that Protestants still regarded as fashionable, and introduced me to the barman, Alex, as if he were a personal servant.

He directed me to a table, led by his regulation-issue pot belly, so we could talk in peace, and he conjured Alex to serve the next round with a mere nod of the head. In the course of the ice-breaking I told him about my encounter with Rab Brown.

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