Paperboy (15 page)

This bizarre change – from hostility to Patricia Thompson's part, to attraction to her parts – was noted onstage during the dress rehearsal by wee Thomas, and during the fence-painting scene, he whispered in my ear,‘Will you stop staring at Huck's diddies, ya pervert!'

I stopped looking immediately, as I was certain that if Tom Sawyer had noticed that I was staring at Huckleberry Finn's breasts, someone in the audience would be sure to accuse me of some sort of sin.

As I left the said dress rehearsal, it was wet and dark as usual. My thoughts were wandering from having homework and doing my papers to how great it would be to have my own TARDIS to travel home through time and space, maybe with Patricia Thompson as my companion. And so I was unaware that a British soldier had been closely observing my departure from the school. The side gate of the school premises was always closed at this time of the day, and so I had jumped over the wall for a shortcut. This was no problem for a paperboy well experienced in the art of wall-jumping, but as I landed on the pavement, the soldier apprehended me immediately.

‘What you doin'?' he asked, aggressively.

‘I've just been at the final dress rehearsal for
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
in my school in there,' I replied honestly.

‘Uhhh?' my interlocutor grunted, a puzzled look on his face.

It was then I realised how this must look. I wasn't wearing my school uniform, and I had just jumped over the wall. ‘This poor soldier thinks I'm a terrorist,' I thought, ‘although I am wearing a blue duffle coat and grammar-school scarf.'

I looked more like Paddington Bear than a Provo.

‘Name?' the soldier demanded.

‘My name's Tony Macaulay,' I answered honestly.

‘Where do you live?' he asked next.

‘At the top of the Shankill,' I replied honestly. No sooner had I said it than I realised this was not the wisest answer.

‘Up against the wall!' my interrogator ordered. I began to wonder if this was what Patrick Walsh called ‘harassment by the British war machine'. I obliged, however, and turned around, putting my hands against the wall as the soldier began to search me from duffle-coat hood to toe. He was quite rough, going through my pockets and shouting at me to keep my legs apart and ‘not to f**kin' move'. When he had finished, I was permitted to turn around again, to watch him go through the various suspicious objects he had found on my person.

First he inspected my latest packet of melted white sweetie mice. I prayed he wouldn't think it was Semtex. Next, he examined my
Captain Scarlet
badge.
Captain Scarlet
was an indestructible puppet, like in
Thunderbirds
, except he worked for Spectrum and fought the Mysterons. On his cap, he would wear a badge with the Spectrum symbol, and I had got a similar badge free in my Sugar Puffs.

‘What's this?' asked the soldier suspiciously.

I was surprised. Maybe they didn't get
Captain Scarlet
in England.

‘It's a Spectrum badge from
Captain Scarlet
who fights the Mysterons from Mars,' I answered honestly.

‘Uhhh?' he grunted again, with that puzzled look on his face.

The soldier reminded me of the wee hood my father had decked with the pickaxe handle: even though he was in control of me, he looked scared. I could not take my eyes off his rifle. He was holding it near the trigger. ‘Danger, Will Robinson! Danger, Will Robinson!'

‘Don't lie – it's paramilitary!' he hissed. The badge was red, white and blue. He threw it on the pavement and stamped on it angrily with his substantial boots. Now I was really getting worried. According to Patrick Walsh, the Brits would stop you, harass you, put you up against a wall, then search you, beat you up and shoot you in the face with a plastic bullet. I was already halfway through the process, and the getting-beaten-up part was coming next.

‘I'm not a paramilitary, I'm a paperboy,' I said politely but nervously.

‘Uhhh?' he grunted again. I seemed to bemuse the soldier. He was looking at me the way Mr Spock would look at strange new life forms in
Star Trek
.

‘I was just acting a boy painting the fence in school with Tom and Huck, and I need to get home soon for the papers or Oul' Mac'll sack me!' I explained.

Before he had the chance to utter yet another ‘Uhhh?', his superior officer arrived on the scene.

‘It's okay, soldjah,' the officer said in a posh voice, ‘that's an Orange school – no problems here. Let the little chap go!' He looked and talked liked the sort of army officer they made fun of in
Monty Python
. I had to suppress a smile as I imagined him breaking out into a silly walk.

I had never thought of BRA as an ‘Orange' school before. Nearly everyone there was Protestant, but they tended to look down on Orangemen: most people at BRA were more interested in rugger and golf than marching and band parades. Nevertheless, although this description of my school by the posh soldier was an inaccurate one, I appreciated the fact that his upper-class intervention would save me from getting a beating for my affiliation with Spectrum. At least, I hoped so anyway. I wondered what the officer would have said about Patrick Walsh's school and what would have happened to Patrick in similar circumstances.

‘Run along now, young chap!' he said.

‘And don't f**kin' do it again!' my young oppressor shouted after me. I had no idea what he didn't want me to do again, because I didn't know what I had done wrong in the first place, apart from having a
Captain Scarlet
badge in my pocket from my Sugar Puffs.

I was becoming aware of the injustices of life. First, a wee hood had stolen my
Thunderbirds
badge, and now the British Army had destroyed my
Captain Scarlet
insignia. Could a boy not live a life free from badge mistreatment?

As I ran for the bus, so as to ensure I got home in time to do my papers, I was angry with the soldiers again. I knew they were on our side and they were here to stop the IRA from killing me, but now I was really starting to dislike them. As a pacifist paperboy, I had always been against men in balaclavas and dark glasses with guns but the army were the official ones with guns, and I was starting to mistrust them too.

‘Maybe men should be the same as children,' I thought, ‘and none of them should be allowed to have guns. Apart from ray guns, of course.'

Chapter 14
Save the Children

I
was shocked, so I was. I was really shocked. No one had ever told me.

I was standing in the telephone box with my paperbag half full, in a vain attempt to shelter from the merciless hailstones that were suddenly raining from the sky. They had already penetrated my Harrington jacket and made the tartan run, so that the red dye had come off on my Bay City Rollers T-shirt and all over Les McKeown's face. This gave the impression that Les was wearing lipstick, like the lead singer from Sweet. Though at least the ash from Titch McCracken's cremated newspapers was by now almost completely eradicated from the stone floor beneath me. I opened the pages of that night's
Belly Telly
to pass the time until the worst of the hail was over and I could resume my professional responsibilities.

The hailstones were, however, still spitting at me ferociously through a few broken windowpanes that had suffered the consequences of Philip Ferris's catapult practice, as I began to read a report in the newspaper about starving babies in Biafra. All at once, I came across words I had never seen or heard before: they said that there was enough food in the world to feed everyone! I was shocked. If there was enough food to go around everyone in the whole world, then why were the Biafran babies still starving? I couldn't quite grasp it. It wasn't fair!

The report said there was enough food to feed us all, but that the rich countries didn't share it properly with the poor countries. I couldn't believe it – why not? I was certain that if anyone in Belfast heard that wee babies were starving to death anywhere in our city, we would share our Smash and fish fingers with them right away, even if they ‘kicked with the wrong foot'. At BRA, if someone forgot their dinner money or their lunchbox, everyone would help out with a few crisps and a Dairylea triangle. In our street, if my mother ran out of sugar, she was always able to borrow some from Auntie Emma, and if any of the other paperboys was ever a
Telly
short, one of us would always donate him a spare one.

Maybe it was because Africa was too far away to share with. Maybe planes didn't go to Africa. But I was sure I remembered Princess Anne going to Africa on a plane to go on safari with
Blue Peter
. I really couldn't understand what the problem could possibly be. America was even further away than Africa in my geography atlas, and people got on planes all the time to go over there and give their money to Disneyland. So why could we not bring enough money or even enough food on a plane to stop the Biafran babies from starving to death? It wasn't fair, I thought, and it didn't make sense. Something had to be done. This injustice required action!

As soon as the hailstones stopped, I emerged determinedly from the telephone box, like Superman with a paperbag, resolving that I, for one, would share my riches with Africa. I knew I was just a wee lad from up the Shankill, but I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Cliff Richard and Mother Teresa (even though he was old-fashioned and she was a Catholic): I was going to help the poorest people in the world!

So, where did I first go to look for an opportunity to save humanity? The back pages of
Look-in
, of course. By this stage, I had already answered most of the ads that appeared there every week, including one for the ABBA Fan Club and one for a silver pen with a personalised rubber stamp with your name on, hidden in a secret compartment inside. (When I read in the ABBA fan-club newsletter how much Björn said he adored Agnetha, I vengefully stamped my name all over his face.)

It was only a few weeks after I had resolved to help the babies in Africa that I saw a fresh notice squeezed in between the ads selling sea monkeys that died and those relating to my former hero, Charles Atlas. This was an advertisement from the Save the Children Fund, asking me to join their ‘Roundabout Club', to raise money for the poor wee children. I responded earnestly and immediately by sending a 50p postal order. A few weeks later, I received my very own fund-raising pack.

My Roundabout Club folder included a letter signed by a real Sir in England, who was the boss of saving the children. No one in our house had ever received a letter from a Sir before, so I had to show it to everyone. My wee brother wanted to know if the Sir was related to Sir Lancelot in the King Arthur cartoons. And my granny was most impressed. ‘I always thought you were the swankiest wee grandson, love,' she said tearfully.

My father was the least enthusiastic. ‘No son of mine will ever be tugging his forelock to no English Sir!' he proclaimed. I hadn't a clue what he was talking about.

The Roundabout Club pack also included a badge, stickers and a membership book, where you earned points for all the money you raised to save the children. The more money you sent to save children, the more points you would get: you could win a bronze, a silver and a gold badge – like in the Olympics. I quickly got the hang of it, and every few months, I sent a 50p postal order from my surplus tips. It wasn't long before I earned a bronze badge.

However, every time I received a Roundabout Club newsletter, I noticed there were lots of photos of very clean children in England, getting their picture taken with the Sir and being presented with their gold badges, because they had raised fifty pounds doing sponsored pony rides. I could never have dreamed of raising that much money, because we didn't have ponies in Belfast – although you could have a ride on a wooden horse on Mickey Marley's roundabout in Corn Market on a Saturday afternoon for only 10p. I decided, however, that I could come up with an exciting plan for a major fundraising event, which might at least earn me a silver badge. It might even result in me getting my picture taken with the real Sir, and could possibly save lots more children in the process.

As I delivered my papers each night in the shadows, I mulled over various ideas – even though I knew that too much thinking while delivering the papers could be hazardous. There was always the danger of standing in Petra's poop, or not spotting a wee hood lurking in an entry.

I was already an experienced fund-raiser, in fact. During the annual Bob-a-Job Week for the Scouts, I would wash cars and pull out weeds from nasturtium borders for a whole six days (not on the Sunday though, because that would have been a sin). I also raised a pound every year by collecting one hundred pennies from all my aunties and putting a hundred pinpricks in a Presbyterian Orphan Society card. As I contemplated all my fundraising options, I considered a sponsored
Opportunity Knocks,
like on TV, with me as a young Hughie Green – but then I knew nobody would enter, except Irene Maxwell singing David Cassidy out of tune. I also came up with the idea of a sponsored football ‘keepy-uppy' competition, but then I knew my big brother would only win and everyone would say it was fixed. I even thought about ringing Gloria Hunniford at UTV to ask her to do a bingo session in the church hall, but I knew I wouldn't be allowed: bingo was bad because it was gambling.

Eventually, after a careful evaluation of all the possibilities, I settled on a marvellous plan for my first fund-raising project for the babies in Africa. It would be the best fund-raiser our street had ever seen: a jumble sale. Not just any ordinary jumble sale, however, but a wonderful innovation which would feature musical speakers and hot dogs. Not only would I be selling high-quality second-hand merchandise, I would also be offering musical treats and tasty refreshments! This was taking the concept of the humble jumble sale to a whole new level. I would give all those wee girls and their ponies in England a good run for their money!

My harmonious sale, complete with culinary delights, would take a lot of serious planning and preparation. First of all, I had to climb up into the darkness of the roof space, in order to select appropriate stock from boxes of old stuff. I loved it up there in the attic. It felt safe and was packed with faded boxes full of old black-and-white photographs of my father with hair, and my mother and her wee sister, Auntie Doris, looking all young and glamorous like film stars in old movies on Saturday afternoons on TV. As I rummaged through my family's relics from the 1950s and 1960s, I felt as if I had travelled back in time in the TARDIS. I discovered ancient 78s by Jim Reeves, and dusty hardback books about birds and fish and flowers. I found old granny china ornaments of hedgehogs and fox terriers wrapped up in ancient
Belfast Telegraph
pages, delivered no doubt by some long-grown-up paperboy. To my delight, I uncovered real treasure in the form of an old
Doctor Who
annual from years ago, when the Doctor was an old man with white hair and he didn't even have a scarf. From all of this, I retrieved the most saleable items and priced them sensibly.

Next I would set my wares out on the kitchen table at our front gate to attract passing customers, all the while imagining that I was a window dresser for the Christmas display in Anderson and McAuley on Royal Avenue. To add to the whole attraction, my masterstroke would be to borrow the speakers from the Westy Disco, plug them into our stereogram and blast out the Hit Parade through the sitting-room windows and into the street. The Upper Shankill had never seen a jumble sale like this before. You would be able to buy a slightly chipped ornament, an Elvis 78 and an old book about flowers, while singing along to ‘Mamma Mia'. If you didn't like ABBA, you would be able to pay 5p to request a different song. It would be a bit like a jukebox, except I would have to run into the sitting room to change the record on the stereogram. The biggest innovation of all, however, would be the ingenious addition of hot dogs to the traditional jumble-sale format. No one in our street had ever attempted this before. I calculated that if I bought a dozen sausages and an Ormo pan loaf and borrowed the tomato ketchup from my Auntie Hettie, and sold twelve hot dogs at 20p each, then I could more than double my money and get my silver badge – I mean, save lots of children.

On the day itself, however, it was the hot dogs that turned out to be the biggest practical challenge. I found myself having to grill the sausages in the kitchen while at the same time serving customers at the kitchen table at the gate, in between running in and out of the sitting room to change the records on the stereogram. This proved to be much more demanding than delivering forty-eight
Belfast Telegraphs
in the rain.

I had realised prior to the big day that I would require additional manpower for my enterprise, and accordingly had initiated a staff-recruitment process within my family. It seemed that my parents would not be available. My father would be doing overtime at the foundry for a new hall- and-stairs carpet, and my mother had a silk kimono dress to finish on the sewing machine for a swanky woman up the Malone Road for some big dinner dance she was going to at the Chimney Corner hotel. My big brother declined my offer of gainful employment with the words, ‘Wise a bap, wee lad!', though he kindly donated a pair of old red clackers for the jumble sale. (Clackers were basically two snooker balls on two strings that you banged together and up and down very fast until they made a loud, clacking noise and bruised your wrists. They had been the latest thing but they had gone out of fashion very quickly, like hula-hoops and the Peace People.)

Thankfully, my wee brother had been an enthusiastic recruit to my team. I quickly delegated to him some of the duties of running in and out of the house, which he happily did at great speed on his bright-orange space hopper. Of course, he was too young to go near the sausages grilling in the oven in the kitchen, but he was good at fetching knives. He knew how to change records on the stereogram, although, as it turned out, he did put on ‘Two Little Boys' by Rolf Harris far too many times.

I had to cook the sausages myself. I decided to grill instead of fry, because in my experience the grill was less likely to go on fire than the frying pan. I knew you were supposed to fry most foods, but I decided to make an exception for the hot-dog sausages on this occasion, because I would need to be able to cook them while at the same time selling goods and taking musical requests. I had purchased two packets of Cookstown sausages because Geordie Best ate them on commercials on UTV. Geordie Best was the only real superstar from Belfast, and the only one with a Northern Ireland accent on TV who didn't talk about fighting. He was the best footballer on earth, and he liked parties and Miss Worlds. I wasn't very good at football, and my big brother said I ‘couldn't kick back doors', but Geordie was still a hero to me. So I figured that if my hot dogs had Geordie Best sausages in them, they would sell like hot cakes.

On the day of the great jumble sale, my first customer was oul' Mr Butler who was bad with his nerves. He bought an ancient Elvis 78 called ‘Heartbreak Hotel'. It didn't sound to me like it would cheer him up much, but he seemed very satisfied anyway. Mr Butler then ordered a hot dog with red sauce. When I put the sausage into this first hot dog, it had looked a little too pink, but even though it wasn't fully cooked, I served it up anyway – because I wanted all of my potential customers to hear that I served fast food like McDonald's in America. I smothered the sausage with extra ketchup, so that Mr Butler wouldn't notice the pink meat. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.

My next customer was Titch McCracken. When he arrived at the kitchen table sitting out in the street, Titch's eyes immediately fixed on the red clackers.

‘Much for the clackers?' he enquired brusquely.

‘Fifty nupes,' I replied, with an air of assurance.

Titch opened his plastic wallet. It was the same wallet he always had with him on bus trips and at the tuck shop at the Westy Disco. There were never any pound notes in it, but it always contained a small picture of Olivia Newton-John and a wee square wrapper that said ‘Durex' on it. I could understand why you would want to have Olivia in your wallet, but I couldn't fathom why you would keep the same wee square wrapper in your wallet for years and never even take it out. Of course, on this occasion too, the wallet was bereft of cash. Ever since being sacked by Oul' Mac over the incendiary incident in the phone box, wee Titch had struggled to make ends meet, and he had been barred from the local Mace shop for stealing sweetie mice. ‘Wise-ick!' was his response to my perfectly reasonable price for the pair of clackers.