talking in the Belfast code called ‘Braille’ about ‘jobs’, ‘gear’, ‘napperings’, ‘smokey joes’ and ‘up and unders’. The last one provokes Trout to cry out, ‘Oh Airey’s here, Airey’s there, Airey’s every-fucking-where, na, na, nan, nan-nan, na, na!’
The Brits patrolling close to the rundown redundant football stadium glare at us when they hear this particular chant, and one of them from the back of a jeep sweeps his SLR rifle with a black rubber gunsight across our line as if he is going to take us out; as if we really think he is going to open fire.
‘Who’s that lying on the dashboard? Who’s that splattered on the screen? Who’s that all over the wheel?’ Trout howls, as two-finger salutes are offered to the Brit patrol. He then pokes me in the shoulder and points up to the side of the decaying old touchline stand with the letters ‘Celtic Park’ still painted over the giant green background.
‘Look at that crowd, son, and ask yourself why! That is what this is about today, Robbie Ruin. They literally kicked and booted Belfast Celtic out of the league all them years ago to put the uppity Taig team in their place, which was off the pitch and out of the league for good. They made sure that that place over there was only good enough for ta run greyhounds around the track beyond the grass. But now we’re back and we’re on our way to Windsor to fuck them all over,’ Trout says.
At that, the beefy-boy brigade on either side of us raise clenched fists in unison into the air and instantly I can see an image of my father back at home, all alone by his radio at the sink, carefully shaving, readying himself for the Saturday ahead with his handful of comrades in the bar. I picture him throwing up at the thought of his son being carried forward by this force pulsating all around me. In my eyes, my da looks more lost than I am now in this moment: isolated, irrelevant, voiceless and being left further behind by the new tide that is propelling me on.
I am bricking it because I have lost sight of Padre Pio amid the thickening numbers that are now bunched up at the security line on the M1. The last thing I want or need is to be stuck with Trout throughout the entire final, listening to his sermons from on high about the sacrifices of his big brother, Mullet, and the struggle in general. Besides, it’s Rex Mundi and Padre Pio who have all the drugs we need to get through this day. My bangers are away with it already and we’re not even close to kick-off, and those two fuckwits have disappeared into the throng. Trout clocks that I am scouting about for them as the police and army lines eventually open and the traffic is halted on the motorway.
‘Don’t worry about those two, Ruin,’ Trout says slyly, ‘PP give me the match tickets to mind in case he got scooped by the peelers on the way down. The two of them dicks can’t get into the final without finding me first.’
Suddenly, wheels screech and I leap up above the crowd to see the side window of an ambulance smashed in and PP jumping into the air as if to claim it. A snatch squad of peelers start swinging batons and use Perspex shields to gouge out a route through the crowd to arrest him. We ebb and flow as the riot cops batter their way towards him. But Padre Pio has already bolted, slipping back to the main mass of supporters who are roaring, ‘SS RUC, SS RUC’.
Trout and I wriggle our way back to the edge of the crowd and break off towards one of the entries in search of Padre Pio. We finally spot him with his hands around the throat of a kid who looks about fourteen and is wearing a red-and-white stove-pipe hat and a yellow Cliftonville away jersey. The hat comes off first and then the kid collapses to the ground and curls up into a ball to protect himself from the kicks raining down on him.
‘Not just the hat, not just the hat. Give me your fuckin’ jersey as well. Give me your fucking jersey and you can have my army jacket. Give me the cunting jersey,’ Padre Pio screams at the boy on the ground. PP intends to get through that barrier in disguise and not be recognised as the one who hurled the stone at the ambulance passing by.
The kid is now crooked over like a foetus, shaking with fear and pain. At that moment, I really want to lift up the nearest sliver of glass on the ground and slice my friend’s throat.
‘Give him your hat at least, kid, and he’ll let ya go. The peelers are after him and he needs to hide from them.’ Trout barks out the order like he was a regimental sergeant major on the parade ground.
Padre Pio is buzzing. He is bouncing on the balls of his feet, ducking and diving, and weaving about like a prize fighter in the ring. ‘Aye, you tell him, Trout. If he knows what’s good for him he’ll give me the Cliftonville shirt too. And you, Ruin, can hold my coat cos this wee fucker isn’t getting it,’ PP says.
The boy stumbles to his feet. He is reeling from the blows. He rips off his football jersey, throws it into a mucky puddle and stamps on it repeatedly. This makes Padre Pio burst into a fit of giggles. Trout reaches into his army jacket, pulls out a naggin of High Commissioner whiskey and hands it to the boy.
‘Keep that, son. You really are game to stand up to that mongoloid there,’ Trout says, pointing at the sniggering Padre Pio.
But a thank you doesn’t come. Instead, the boy hurls the whiskey bottle against a wall graffitied with ‘Victory To The Provos’. ‘Shove yer whiskey up your arse, chief,’ the kid yells, which now leaves Trout in fits of manic laughter too.
Padre Pio picks up the stove-pipe hat, tips it like a Victorian gentleman towards the boy, pops it on his head and says, ‘That wee fucker has game, I’ll give him that.’
7
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN
28 April 1979
We are on the Spion Kop, crushed up against the barriers, watching the stone throwing to and fro from the North Stand, where the hardest of the huns are gathered. The missiles are gliding across a no-man’s-land of riot cops, barbwire and empty broken-up terraces. The peelers use their see-through shields to bat and swat some of the bricks and bottles out of the way, but from time to time our ammo and theirs breach the lines and someone takes a hit. This is not like the riots on the streets when debris pelts down on the army Saracens, the screeching police tenders, the military snatch squads and the rubber-bullet-firing police phalanxes. Here, in-between the two floodlights, behind the goal at the Kop end, there are short breaks between the salvoes as the Red Army Factions scan the ground for anything to throw. Every time a stone or bottle sails over into the North Stand and the mass ranks of the assorted Prods swell backwards in temporary retreat, a cheer goes up from the Kop. But then you look around and some pissed-up spide from our side is being led away out of the throng, looking stunned, with blood pissing from his forehead and a red-and-white scarf wrapped around his wound for a bandage.
Trout is scouting about all over the place, whispering into the ears of his comrades, planning something very shortly it seems, while Padre Pio stands beside me drawing deeply from another joint. He’s glass-eyed and when he sniggers, jets of smoke shoot out of his nostrils. Weirdly, he looks like he’s back on the altar serving at a funeral Mass, swinging the incense that curls over some stiff in a coffin.
‘This is some fuckin’ gear Rex Mundi provided,’ PP announces when he comes back to earth. ‘This is the fuckin’ business. He’s a sound man, a sound man. Our Trout doesn’t know what he is missing, the stupid cunt.’
I take a blast myself and suddenly there is white noise, bright light and feedback in an echo chamber as the surrounding chants reverberate in beats of four across the Kop: ‘Red Army, Red Army, Red Army, Red Army’. The North Stand responds with hymns of praise for the Shankill Butchers. The mass choirs of snouts over there run their forefingers across their throats while they sing, ‘One Basher Bates, there’s only one Basher Bates, one Basher Bates, there’s only one Basher Bates.’
Suddenly, the whole of the Kop surges towards the fence at the goal line and then, instantaneously, the wave retreats, leaving only the hardcore detritus wedged up against the pitch-side barrier. They form into little huddles and start to fireman’s lift each other over the wire before the lines of riot cops break off to stop even more fans vaulting over the fence. As the Lebanese gear wears off a bit, I spot Lanky Balls in his RAF coat and DM boots being one of the first to make it over onto the Windsor turf, followed