Young Fegan Goes Camping

"What'd you tell your ma?" McKenna asked when he answered the door.

"I told her your ones were taking us to Newcastle," Fegan said. His mother had stared at him for long seconds when he told her.

"Since when did you run with the likes of Michael McKenna?" she asked.

"We're mates," he said.

"Mates?" Her sharp features folded with concern. He knew why. She didn't have to say it, but she did anyway. "I suppose it's good you have friends. You spend too much time on your own. It's good to belong. But you keep out of trouble, Gerry Fegan. I'm not struck on that McKenna lot. His older brother's in Long Kesh, you know. They said he had a gun. His mother swears blind he didn't have it, that the police put it on him. She's a good soul, so I'll take her word for it, but still. You be careful."

She embraced him as he left, her feelings written clear on her face; gladness at his having a friend; fear of who his friend was.

Michael McKenna was a stocky boy, several inches shorter than Fegan who was tall and wiry and showed no signs of gaining weight as he approached seventeen.

"Who else is going?" Fegan asked.

McKenna stepped out onto the street and dropped his bag on the pavement, his sleeping bag tied on top of it. "Patsy Toner and some other boy. Paul McGinty's driving."

"Paul McGinty?" Fegan dropped his bag beside McKenna's. "I thought it was just camping, like, a laugh."

"Fuck, no," McKenna said. "This is serious. No pissing about. He didn't want to take you, said you're too soft, but I told him I wouldn't go without you."

Fegan shuffled his feet. "Thanks," he said.

"Here they come." McKenna pointed to a Volkswagen Camper rounding the corner of Fallswater Street from the Falls Road. He leaned into his house. "Ma, I'm away," he called. He slammed the door shut before any reply came.

The Camper's brakes whined as it halted and the side door slid open. McKenna boarded first and Fegan followed. Patsy Toner and another boy said hello. A man Fegan didn't know sat in the passenger seat, steadily ignoring them. Paul McGinty looked back from the driver's seat. He wore a khaki parka and jeans. Not yet in his late twenties, everyone knew about Paul McGinty. He'd been interned in Long Kesh as a snot-nosed thug, and came out six months later quoting Karl Marx and Che Guevara.

"How's about ya, boys," he said.

McKenna and Fegan returned the greeting. McGinty stared hard at Fegan. "You ready for a hard slog, young fella?" he asked.

Fegan stowed his bag and sat down. "Yeah," he said, not dropping his eyes.

McGinty smiled and nodded. "Let's go, then."

They spent the journey singing rebel songs. Fegan didn't know the words as well as McKenna and Patsy Toner, or the other boy whose name he didn't know. He mumbled and smiled along with the rest anyway. Sometimes he let them sing on while he stared out the window, watching the bridges and banks of the motorway sweep past. He'd never been on it before. In fact, he'd only left the city twice in his life, once for his aunt's funeral in Larne, and once, when he was very small, when his father borrowed a car and took him and his mother to Portaferry on the shore of Strangford Lough. They went across the Lough and back three times just for the pleasure of riding the ferry. Then his father went to the pub while Fegan and his red-eyed mother got the bus back to Belfast. They didn't see him again for three days.

The Volkswagen Camper's engine roared as if it were trying to turn the Earth with its wheels. The boys grew quiet as the van left the motorway at Craigavon. This was Prod country, the boy Fegan didn't know said, full of orange bastards. They jeered as a convoy of army Land Rovers and Saracen personnel carriers passed them in the opposite direction. The soldiers sticking out of the roof hatches returned the hand gestures. One sighted his rifle at the boys. The man in the passenger seat, who Fegan had learned was called Gusty Devlin, formed a pistol with his fingers and aimed back. He turned in the seat, aiming all the time, until the convoy was out of sight.

They passed through Armagh and approached Keady, the last village before the border. The landscape had changed to rolling green hills, and the road narrowed to long, sweeping bends. Irish Tricolours fluttered on telegraph poles. A hand-painted sign said: You are now entering Bandit Country. Brits beware. The boys cheered it.

They rounded a bend onto a short straight, and McGinty and Devlin cursed in unison. The boys craned to see what lay ahead as the Camper slowed. A checkpoint manned by soldiers and cops blocked the road a hundred yards away. Armoured Land Rovers were pulled up on the grass verges at either side.

Devlin turned back to the boys. "They'll stop and search us. Don't give them any cheek, right? Don't argue with them. Don't give them an excuse to give you a kicking. Remember, we're just a youth club going camping. Nothing wrong with that, right?"

The boys nodded their agreement.

"Are they Brits or UDR?" Devlin asked.

"UDR," McGinty said as he slowed the van to a crawl.

"Fuck," Devlin said.

The Ulster Defence Regiment were part-time soldiers recruited from the local population, and like the cops, were almost entirely Protestant. Some of them were also Loyalist paramilitaries, exploiting the job to target Catholics. It was always better to be stopped by the Brits. At least they didn't hate you just for being a Catholic. The Brits hated you for being Irish, but they were usually polite about it.

The van came to a stop and McGinty wound his window down. A cop approached with the swagger of a man in charge and said, "Driving license."

McGinty handed it over. Another cop peered in through the side window at the boys. He walked around the van, taking his time, examining the interior. When he reached the sliding door he pulled it open.

The cop at the driver's door barked, "Everyone out."

They lined up on the grass verge as the cops and soldiers emptied the van's contents onto the road. The uniformed men opened bags and spilled underwear and socks in the muddy trenches dug by the Land Rovers' tyres.

Then they searched McGinty, Devlin and the boys. Fegan had been searched almost daily since he hit adolescence. Being pulled by Brits or cops came with shaving and he was well used to it. But this was different. Out here on a country lane there was no pretence at civility. Fegan stood with his hands locked behind his head as a cop pulled at his clothes, probed his pockets, felt between his legs. McGinty explained once more they were a church youth club going camping for the weekend. The head cop told him to shut up.

Patsy Toner started to cry. His arm had only been out of the cast for a few weeks. The cops conferred with the UDR men while one of them relayed messages from his radio. The head cop came back to McGinty.

"I know who you are and what you're doing here," he said, jabbing McGinty's chest with his finger. "You're not carrying what I was told you'd be carrying, otherwise I'd have all of you locked up right now. Count yourself lucky, son."

The cop turned to the boys. "So, you're going camping, playing toy soldiers, eh? You're going to be big men and fight for the cause, right?" He paced the line, eyeing each of them in turn. "And you know what's going to happen? You're either going to wind up in prison, or you're going to wind up dead. One or the other."

He pointed at McGinty. "You listen to a cunt like him, let him use you, here's what'll happen. You'll blow yourself up when the bomb goes off early. Or you'll try to shoot someone with the wit to shoot back. Or you'll find yourself in the dock facing a life sentence, and then you'll sit there in jail with nothing but the guilt for company while your pal Paul McGinty walks the streets."

The cop strode back to the head of the line, his face burning with anger. He went to say something, but changed his mind. Instead he drove his fist into McGinty's gut. As McGinty dropped to his knees, the cop said, "Now get the fuck out of my sight, you bunch of Fenian bastards."

They gathered their scattered belongings as the Land Rovers pulled away. They were moving again, locked in silence, when Michael McKenna said, "Maybe you should have pissed on them, Patsy."

The roar of laughter drowned out Toner's protest.*