I was born the day the Troubles started.
“Wasn’t I, Ma?” says me.
“It was you that started them son,” says she…
And so begins The Good Son.
Mickey Donnelly, the “me” of the novel, is 10 years old, leaving primary school and after the summer he will go to big school. It’s a coming-of-age tale played out in the arena of the Troubles, which puts tremendous outside pressure on this character, forcing him to make decisions that will change him and those he loves the most. Setting the novel during the summer holidays, in the days when kids were reared on the streets, puts Mickey in the heart of the action, in Catholic Ardoyne, north Belfast, at the height of the Troubles.
Like Mickey, I was born in Ardoyne, October 1968, the month attributed to the start of the Troubles. Ardoyne was at the centre of a lot of unrest but that’s not all it had to contend with. Dubbed “the biggest slum in Europe”, there were streets of derelict, half-knocked-down houses. The air smelled of gas from open pipes, and burning from fires set in the old houses or on street corners. We played in waste ground littered with broken bottles from rioting. Helicopters flew overhead, the British Army and police, both armed, patrolled the streets by day, and raided houses by night. The nearest park bordered on Protestant Oldpark Road and had a British Army lookout post stationed in the centre. It wasn’t long before the rocking horse, swings and roundabout were taken away and all that was left were metal stumps sticking up from the tarmac.
To Mickey, no one seems to question this way of life, or, at least, no one seems driven to get out of there. The daily violence, riots, intimidation from the Army, police and paramilitaries, the fear, all seems accepted, normalised. I wanted to write about a child, a generation of children, who have known nothing else.
Poverty kept people in the area but also we were physically hemmed in. At either end of my street were barricades, to stop the communities rioting. Another effect of this was that people lived under a microscope. There was no privacy. Everyone knew who you were, watched what you did and any wrongdoing eventually got back to your parents, I guess, like any small community in Ireland. The difference in Ardoyne was we could also be reported to the IRA. There was an incident centre where you could lodge complaints of “antisocial” behaviour. The results: a talking-to, a community beating or, if a serious or repeated offence, kneecapping or being put out of the area. If you returned you were killed.
Mickey Donnelly observes the other children in Ardoyne and they are merciless with each other. Petty street disagreements could lead to serious consequences. What starts with “My Da’s a boxer and he’ll knock your Da out” type childishness could quickly became “My Da’s in the IRA and he’ll shoot your Da!” Saying the wrong thing gets Mickey into trouble because, as the posters around Ardoyne warned, Loose Talk Costs Lives.
In this environment, you could not be different. To want to be elsewhere was a betrayal somehow. Mickey is different and he has only one desire, to escape to a better life. Having never left the few streets of his local area, his concept of another world comes from his love of TV and films. As a boy, I wondered what it would have been like if I’d have been born somewhere else. Somewhere beautiful. Without fear. Mickey is obsessed with escaping, as I was. He thinks if only he can get to America, everything will be ok.
Writing a novel about that time was a risky venture. Introduce the Troubles in conversation and you get a mixture of responses. For some, it’s like a story from a faraway place, a long time ago, distant and doesn’t hit them emotionally. For others, it’s a story they think they already know and they switch off after a sentence or two. There is often an awkwardness around the topic -– like that annoying party guest who keeps bringing up politics or poverty, when everyone’s just trying to have a nice evening and enjoy their lovely lives.
I find it difficult to talk about the Troubles and even those who know me quite well are often shocked when little pieces of my childhood come into conversation when we share stories. It’s not something I chose to talk about often. It’s a little like grief. You can only really talk about it and feel understood when you are with people who have gone through it too. For the most part, it’s something you live with silently.
I remember when I first went abroad, in my twenties, and meeting other travellers from the South of Ireland. We’d all be chatting, having a few drinks and then a local in their pigeon-English would say “You’re from Ireland? IRA! Bang! Bang!” miming shooting us. I used to find it quite funny. In my experience it was the Southern Irish who would get upset. Not in defence of me, or the reputation of Northern Ireland, but in the lumping of them in with the Troubles up North. Time and again I got this – “you guys are giving us a bad name” thing. And a “That’s not us. Not Ireland.”
Sometimes I think of the Troubles as a Gothic family melodrama. Northern Ireland is this damaged child, beating itself over the head to get attention from the South, the over-sensitive, guilt-ridden, mother that left them behind for a better life, and Britain, the distant, uncaring father who would rather not be left bringing up this problem child, but does so out of obligation.
In the end, though, The Good Son isn’t about the Troubles, rather, it’s about a little boy who loves his ma, his little sister and his dog. He is going to take on anyone that threatens or hurts those he loves, no matter how big or scary, because love makes you fearless. He takes on his older brother, his Dad, other kids, the IRA. He fights the despair, the bleakness, and the violence. He fights the Troubles. And Mickey Donnelly is just about the boy for the job.
Sarah Gilmartin reviews The Good Son by Paul McVeigh (Salt Publishing, £8.99) in The Irish Times on April 25th.
