The Bungalow-11

Continued from Chapter 10: The Bungalow-9 & 10 | ABCtales

“I’m not being racist. I’m merely pointing out some of the more glaring deficiencies in your national character, in the hope that you’ll improve.” The young guy opposite Hawke gave out something between a snort and a splutter. “Just old fashioned racism, dressed up. He was a big, chunky bloke, broad but round shoulders, deep blue eyes staring at him from across the small table. More surprised and curious than actually hostile. Student. Cocky, like they all were at that age, knew it all before they’d even started out on life’s journey. Why bother wasting all that money trying to educate them? Hawke hadn’t deliberately set out to mouth off about the Irish, but it was just too convenient a handle with which to wind the lad up.

“If you weren’t such an old guy, it’s calling you outside I’d be…” Hawke looked at the drooping shoulders; wouldn’t be so sure about that, young feller, still got a few self-defence moves in the armoury that’d surprise you. He said: “You see. Predisposition to violence, like all your kind.”

The student harrumphed and turned away.

The walls of Kelly’s Cellars were covered with Irish roadsigns, Guinness adverts and similar blarney, Cead Mile Failte painted over the archway. Just so as you’d be on no doubt as to where their sympathies lay, and not to go mouthing off about King Billy or whoever. Maybe engaging in a verbal spat with a young Irish nationalist in here wasn’t the wisest move, but Hawke had been getting restless.

Two days it had been now. How long did it take to dig a hole in a field, especially with a mini-digger. He and a couple of other squaddies had dug the original one in a couple of hours, with picks and shovels. Mind you, they’d had that evil Sergeant Lomax screaming blue murder at them the whole while, threatening to put them on a charge if they didn’t get a move on, so they’d had an incentive.

Hawke had tramped the city’s streets, trying to get his bearings, up and down the Shankill Road, even up the Falls. Nobody would recognise an old soldier now, not after all this time. He’d been careful to keep his mouth shut when he was up the Falls, though.

Just in case he’d needed it, he’d his cover story ready. He’d be an assessor for a firm of insurance underwriters, and the Belfast of the 1980s had kept him very busy, shuttling across the Irish Sea almost every week. He wasn’t sure he’d really be believed, but then people would believe that they wanted to believe. They weren’t out looking for trouble, most of them. They’d had enough of that during the Troubles.

Belfast had been swept clean, sanitised. The gleaming waterfront could have been anywhere in Europe – Rotterdam, Hamburg, Bordeaux. The dark, damp city of little terraced hovels and bombed-out shops had been erased, wiped off the face of the earth. The pubs and restaurants along the Golden Mile, the main drage leading to Queens University was buzzing, day and night.

And it wasn’t even raining. Did it ever stop pissing down in the Belfast of the 1980s? And where had all this LIGHT come from? It was like being on a different planet, never mind a different city.

Still, things were beginning to drag. There’d be a note in an envelope left for him at the Travelodge reception. It would say either ‘Tiswas’ or ‘Blue Peter’, the two children’s TV programmes. God, they were sick bastards, this Ulster lot.

Tiswas would mean that they’d found what they’d been looking for, Blue Peter that they hadn’t, and to await further instructions.

Hawke stopped opposite a small alley: Pottinger’s Entry, like a hobbit-hole. He didn’t remember it from his tour of duty, and it was the sort of name he and the other lads would have had a laugh about, if they’d seen it. Maybe they hadn’t bothered picking out the name in gold back in those days. Making the city appealing to visitors hadn’t been the priority.

A pink double-decker bus whined past. Hadn’t been too many of those about back in his time; buses were the material of choice for barricade-building. If you saw one, there was a good chance it’d be blazing from end to end, parked across a street.

You could quibble about some of the architecture, but you had to hand it the city planners – the old city had  been brought back from the brink of  death. What would have happened to the place if the troubles had gone on for, say, another decade? Would it have been left to the kerbstone-painters and petrol-bomb chuckers, all decent people fleeing to the countryside?

He had a couple of pints of draught Bass in the Crown. The place was a similar set up to McConville’s - rows of little compartment-snugs – but it was if a Victorian bling merchant had then been let loose on the decorations, a riot of gold leaf, embossed lincrusta, stained glass and ceramic tiles. The place had somehow avoided being to pieces during Belfast’s dark days, it was almost opposite the Europa, the world’s most bombed hotel, they’d said. Other businesses nearby hadn’t been so fortunate. Maybe the Provisional IRA men had a soft spot for Victorian gin palaces.

Hawke didn’t sit in any of the snugs but up at the bar, perched up on a high stool. He kept one eye on the door.

He want back to the Travelodge. There was an envelope in the cubby hole. He ripped it open. ‘Tiswas’.

He took his phone out and opened the Easyjet app, then ran up the stairs two at a time to his third-floor room. He emerged a couple of minutes later with his bag and headed for the airport bus stand at Grand Central station.

To be continued in Chapter 12