on the pier in Brighton.’
As we nod in agreement, Padre Pio loses patience with the battle to survive the Asteroid fields and storms back off to the toilet with the QC bottle sticking out of his coat pocket. Bruce Lee is bound to have spotted it by now.
We are about to say our goodbyes to Lanky Balls, when the tramp, tramp, tramp of a line of younger Reds supporters coming up the stairs of the Yankee Doodle distracts us. They are singing in unison, ‘Oh Airey’s here, Airey’s there, Airey’s every-fucking-where, na, na, nanna, na, na.’
Their progress is halted by Bruce Lee, who still keeps one sly eye on us over by the jukebox. ‘Keep it fucking quiet in here, children. No messing, right? And no fucking party tunes either,’ he says, before stepping aside.
This is our cue to scoot before Padre Pio gets any more game-boy notions. He has already left the toilet with the QC bottle miraculously filled half way up again. As we edge towards the top of the stairs, Bruce Lee blocks our route.
‘Hey cunty!’ He points at Padre Pio and already I imagine I can see the sheen of a PP blade. ‘What’s that in your pocket, chum?’
‘It’s a bottle of QC. What’s it to you?’ PP says.
I can feel my blood starting to freeze.
‘Out to fuck. No drinking in here, son. I’m taking that bottle off you.’
I expect it to come smashing into Bruce Lee’s face but suddenly it’s all peace in our time when Padre Pio puts on his softest altar-boy voice. ‘No bother, boss. I was only going to give it to you anyway. You have a wee drink of it later when the Reds win the cup, just to celebrate.’
We break our bollocks laughing going down the stairs when I look back and see the bouncer taking his first sneaky sip of Padre Pio’s undiluted piss.
2
BLACK CAB BLASPHEMIES
28 April 1979
There’s a steamer swelling in my pants that won’t go soft. It’s all the fault of the oul doll sitting opposite on the flip-down seat in the back of a Falls black taxi. I keep hearing Lou Reed in my head every time I look across at her shiny black-leather boots and the pencil skirt exposing a slash of her naked thigh. She’s in her late forties or early fifties, has big bouncy tits and is a bit on the beefy side. Her heavy-handed, aquamarine eyeshadow clashes with the deep red lipstick, which leaves a lurid line around the edge of the unfiltered Park Drive she is smoking.
At first she smiles, almost knowingly, as if she has spotted what’s going on inside my army trousers. But then her face suddenly shrivels to a scowl when she pans up to my old school blazer and the upside-down mini crucifix pinned on the pocket where the St Malachy’s College badge was once attached, to where Gloria Ab Intus is no more. She must think she’s stumbled upon a satanic coven when my cousin leaps on board and reveals the back of his biker jacket with the head of a horned goat inside the stencilled pentagram, and the words ‘Rex Mundi’ below in silver sprayed-on script.
Our progress up the road is held back by Padre Pio chatting to the driver, who seems to know his runaway father. Judging by the way our taxi man rolls his own fegs out of a home-made tobacco tin adorned with Gaelic script and a crude tricolour, he must have done some time for the cause – probably just a few months on remand in Crumlin Road jail by the looks of him. He is way too fat to have been smearing shite all over the walls up in the H-Block.
‘Is your da still in Dundalk, son?’ he asks PP.
‘Nah, New Jersey. The last I heard of him anyway, but you’re not supposed to know that.’
The oul babe in boots is slithering along the rough leather seating, inching her arse away from us to the relative safety of the other window. She blows smoke out in short nervous jets into the street, which is filling up with Reds fans, several of whom are horsing back carry-outs before the long walk up the Falls and down to Windsor Park.
‘If you’re ever in touch with your daddy, tell him Big G was asking after him. Tell him he still owes me a tenner.’ The driver laughs.
‘Oh aye. Will do, mate,’ Padre Pio answers, as he backs away from the front of the cab and into the back with us, dismissing the driver with a couple of sneaky hand jerks behind the glass while mouthing, ‘wanker’.
Seated next to me, Padre Pio suddenly points to our fellow passenger and says as loud as possible, ‘Hey, what’s wrong with that oul bat? What’s she staring at?’
Rex Mundi steps in chivalrously. ‘Leave the oul bird alone, dickhead!’
The woman has her head out of the window now. She is shaking slightly, and the feg between her forefinger and middle finger is vibrating.
‘She probably doesn’t like our dress sense, gentlemen,’ I say, as the taxi finally begins to move towards Divis Street. We’re following a long line of beetle-shaped vehicles stuffed with Reds supporters making the same journey as us, all of them chanting, ‘Windsor, Windsor here we come! Windsor here we come!’
Rex Mundi is busy rolling a joint that he informs us we’ll only light up at half-time on the Kop, just to soothe the nerves. My cousin has only one metal badge dug deep into the lapel of his leather biker jacket. The only badge he would ever wear was the emblem of his adopted hometown’s team: the club crest of Brighton and Hove Albion. Two years ago, he warned me that punk badges were only for posers. We were walking along Hove seafront after Top of the Pops, and I was still reeling with shock and awe after having watched Johnny Rotten sing ‘Pretty Vacant’.
Our crew don’t wear badges or scarves. We were banned from doing that shortly after Padre Pio read an article in The Sunday Mirror (or rather that I read out to the ignorant semi-illiterate twat one morning) about the English footie hooligans who never donned their club colours. This meant they could go anywhere, even into the opposition’s end, totally unidentified. This, he keeps reminding us all, is exactly what he has done. I suppose that is why, deep down, behind the hostility, PP actually likes Rex Mundi. My cousin has seen some real action on the terraces across the water, especially the aggro between Brighton and their hated rivals Crystal Palace down at the Goldstone Ground, where their serious rucking made those old warring mods and rockers out to be a bunch of fairies. Padre Pio’s eyes would widen as Rex relayed the derby day damage; how his older brother Mick nearly blinded a Palace fan with diluted ammonia squirted from a water pistol.
Cliftonville FC are to play in the final today in yellow tops and blue shirts, and this is already seriously pissing off Padre Pio. When he clocks a group of fans wearing home-made, paper mache, stove-pipe hats, painted with yellow and blue hoops, he explodes.
‘Yiz look like a bunch of fucking Southampton fans in 1976, ya wankers,’ he roars out the window as our taxi passes Divis Tower. ‘Fucking clowns. Total fucking clowns. I didn’t recognise one of them, Ruin. Did you? Not a single one of them. Dressed up like bastard Southampton fans from 1976, and I bet not one of them has had their legs splashed with somebody else’s piss inside the Cage at Solitude!’
‘Too fucking right, mate,’ I fire back as quickly as possible to placate him.
But on he goes, ranting and raving against a newly found bunch of enemies to berate. ‘I bet ya not one of them wankers ever went down to Glenavon or Portadown or had darts thrown at them on the Shore Road when we played Crusaders.’
‘Too fucking right, mate,’ I repeat, while suddenly remembering the afternoon, not too long ago, we went down to Castlereagh Park to watch Cliftonville play Ards.
We had been too late for the official club coaches and opted instead to jump on a commuter bus full of coffin-dodging pensioners decked out in their greys and creams. When we met at our rendezvous point not far from the spot where I saw firemen shovelling bits of bodies into sacks seven years earlier on Bloody Friday, our group decided to hide our colours. Anybody carrying Cliftonville scarves shoved them into their parkas or tied them under their jerseys. The Ulsterbus was heading into the hun heartland of East Belfast, so we had to keep our heads down. Our safety pact lasted