Robert Wilson - Eureka Street - A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

The conversation stuttered on uncertainly.

'It's pointless now that it's all over anyway,' said Septic.

'What precisely is all over?' I asked him.

'You know, the Troubles,' he glanced at Aoirghe,'the war.'

'Five dead and thirty seriously assaulted,' I mentioned. 'Doesn't sound very over for them.'

'Cut it out, Jake,' said Max kindly. Even Chuckle looked up when she spoke.

'Yeah, it's over, right enough,' said Donal diplomatically. He raised his beer.'Here's to all of us making it through unscathed.'

We raised our beers and toasted that notion. It was no surprise to me that we'd all made it through.We were all so middle class now. We'd never been in any danger.

Post-toast, the conversation lightened rather. I didn't look anywhere near Aoirghe and smiled only grimly at Septic Ted. We rumbled on, talking, eating, drinking. Even Chuckie began looking up from his plate. There was a difficult interlude when my revolutionary waitress, obviously just finishing her shift, leant over our table and murmured at me,'I worked it out, shithead. It wasn't my politics that bothered you. You just didn't like me because I'm working class'

She stomped off and everyone started chatting in a charitable attempt to conceal my humiliation. I noticed that Luke Findlater followed her to the door and stopped her there. Even at that distance, I could hear the excitement in his voice as he said: 'So, you're working class, then? Would you like to tell me about that?'

They left together, hand and glove, foot and shoe.

So, now everyone had scored. Everyone had got some love in their life. Earlier that evening, I'd even seen my girl from the supermarket walking down the street arm in arm with her spotty colleague with the hearing-aid. I wished them well but I was a little miffed that she had recovered so quickly from her pash for me.

I ate some strings of lettuce and watched mournfully as my friends talked around the table. Apart from Aoirghe and Septic, they were all guilty of sundry hand-brushings, thigh-meetings and face-touchings. Their limbs twined like some amorous undergrowth. I felt like a monk or a referee. Nobody was twining anything with me.

Yeah, Belfast felt like a city of love that night. A city of sex. It felt strange. It felt uncharacteristic. It felt slightly illegal and it felt like I hadn't been invited. I drank some beers.

A couple of nights before, I had found myself listening to a Muddy Waters record four times in a row. I'd been hearing the blues non-stop for a month or more. I'd always loved it when depressed old black men sat on bad wooden chairs in the middle of New Orleans and sang about some woman, yeah, who'd left them, yeah, 'cos they loved some other man, yeah, and it was all right, yeah. Except that it wasn't all right, yeah. It was awful, yeah. I was settling myself into this solitary, unloved predicament. I was beginning to enjoy it.

I blamed Chuckie. I had to blame someone. I looked up at my fat, silent friend.

`Hey, Chuckie,' I said aggressively. `Hey, Lurgan.'

There was silence. Chuckie wasn't looking at me: he was staring over my shoulder at the door with a mute and horrorstricken expression. I turned round and looked in the same direction.

`Shit,' I whispered, to no one in particular.

Peggy Lurgan and Caroline Causton had walked into the cafe uncertainly enough. It was new to them and they were surrounded by people twenty years younger, but when they saw our table, they approached with a confident step.

`Hello, everybody,' smiled Peggy. `This is Caroline.'

I kept Chuckie in sight right down Shaftesbury Square and Great Victoria Street. He pulled a sharp left down Glengall Street and I cursed myself for not having jumped in the car in the first place. I simply had no idea that Chuckie could run so fast. Sitting around like a fat cabbage, it was hard to imagine him getting much over six miles an hour. But here he was, a hundred yards in front of me, really travelling. My own lungs were bursting and I felt inches away from a heart-attack. I smoked too many cigarettes for this kind of lark. Nevertheless, I skidded round the corner on my metal-tipped heels and pelted up Glengall Street after the fat fuck.

He'd simply burst out of the cafe when his mother arrived with Caroline. Plates, bottles and waitresses were sent spinning in his chubby wake. I had told the others to stay where they were and had sprinted after him. What were friends for? Something else, probably.

By the time we were half-way past the traffic-only, doublelane Westlink, Chuckle's pace had slowed to a vivid jog. I could see bits of him wobble under the exertion. Unfortunately, I was so fucked by this point that it was all I could do to match his pace. Motorists braked and swerved wildly. Horns blared and drivers shouted. Chuckle ran on and I had to follow, guts churning, arteries bursting.

But when he turned up the foot of the Falls, I stopped and lay down. After a couple of minutes while my lungs started working and my heart-beats became distinguishable again, I lifted my head from the pavement to look for my friend. A bottle crashed and splintered on the spot where it had been.

I looked about me. The street was full of people running, shouting and throwing things at each other. An armoured police Land-Rover had pulled up close by and the bottle that had just missed me had been destined for them.

`Fuck ye.'

`Bastards'

'Up the Ra.'

Oh, good, I thought. A riot. Just what I needed.

At each end of the dark lamp-lit street, masses of people had started charging towards me. On one side, I had the helmeted and shielded Royal Ulster Constabulary, and on the other, the forces and supporters of national liberation. I sat like a prick in the middle, pebbles and bottles failing to bounce all round me.

The first few baton rounds of plastic bullets woke me up. I'd seen these things in action before. They might have been made of rubber but they really messed you up. I stood up and charged into the midst of the least they wouldn't arrest me.

Sure enough, the wave of people parted and I made my way to the rear of the charging throng. I could see that various types of desultory rioting were taking place all along the length of the Lower Falls. Bunches of kids were throwing stones and breaking windows with no apparent end in mind. I looked around for Chuckie.

My search was interrupted when the charging rioters, having clashed with the police, retreated again and charged back the way they had come, straight towards me. I ducked into Divis to avoid them. I watched as the rioters and police tore up the slight hill and then moved on. I had a peek round the foot of the flats to see if Chuckie was there. I didn't hang around too long. I could hear shouts and impacts from high up. I hadn't seen a riot in a few years but I was still too much of an old hand to get banged on the bap by a tower-block trash-can dropped from the fifteenth floor. Some people would do something like that just to see what it felt like.

I moved up the Falls, ducking the trouble, keeping close to the buildings, running in the shadows between street-lamps. The Army were out now and I didn't want to go making anyone anxious. The soldiers ran after the rioters and the rioters ran after the soldiers. Bottles were thrown and heads were kicked. A few cars were burning, up by the swimming baths, and some kids with scarves round their faces had stopped a bus and were hauling the passengers off. The riot was a halting thing (it had been a while, after all) but rioting was a bit like riding a bicycle: no matter how long it had been, you never really forgot how to do it.

There were only a couple of TV news crews so far, but wherever they went, the riot would surely follow. Gangs of kids chucked bricks to order. If they'd been asked for retakes, they'd have gladly obliged. The sinister figures of older men could be seen amongst these kids, obviously directing them where to go and what to do. I'd seen lots of that kind of stuff. I'd seen riots on this road where these guys had openly passed out cash to the stone-throwing youngsters. I'd seen riots where five kids chucked a few bricks surrounded by twenty or thirty photographers who had broadcast pictures of mayhem to the world. It was boring, frankly.