'Jesus Fucking Christ!'
'That's the complaint, and that's why they're on strike.'
'I said nothing of the sort!'
'You're denying you made a joke about Mother Teresa?'
'Yes – no. For fuck sake, I was only raking around!'
'Well, that raking around could mean that we have to close you down.'
'What? What do you mean, close us down? You can't close us down! Christ All Mighty, you're the Equality Commission, not the fucking SS!'
She remained cool, and calm, and collected. And of course, superior. I was none of these things.
'I would suggest, Mr Starkey, that you choose your words rather more carefully.'
'You can suggest whatever the fuck you want! Close us down? You gotta be fucking kidding.'
'Do I look like I'm kidding?'
She did not. It suddenly struck me how serious this was, or could become. I rubbed at my brow. I glanced at my watch. It was a little after two. I'd made the joke about three hours before. It had meant nothing. Everyone understood that, surely. I stood up and went to the window. There was a pub across there, somewhere, and I hadn't even sniffed it out, but my loyal staff were in there right now, plotting against me while this half-pint harridan gave me a hard time over my taste in jokes. It was harmless fun! Whatever happened to harmless fun? When did it become harmful fun? Whatever happened to ironic detachment?
'Mr Starkey?'
I turned from the window and said, 'Look, I'm sorry, this is crazy. I don't even understand what you're doing here. I mean, aren't there procedures – paperwork, reports – should you even be here before I have a chance to talk to anyone about this? What about my rights? The company solicitor'll sort you out. I mean, what are you, some kind of rapid reaction force?'
'We like to nip these situations in the bud, Mr Starkey. We confront, we expose, you show remorse, we negotiate and we resolve. Five steps and we have a solution. Isn't it better to get it sorted out right now, instead of dragging it out? Think of the publicity. You bring in the solicitors, that's what's going to happen. It's your choice. Make the call if you want. Or we sort it out now.'
'But for fuck sake, it's like a kangaroo court!' I took my seat again. 'What if I just throw you out of my office, tell you to bugger off?'
'Mr Starkey, the days of you just being able to ignore us are long gone. We take affirmative action. For example, in this case we would contact every single one of your advertisers and explain the working conditions here, and they will most probably withdraw their support. Retailers will refuse to stock you. Very shortly the company will go belly up. In the longer term we will of course pursue you personally through the legal system, and to all intents and purposes make it impossible for you ever to work in this town again. Do I make myself clear?' I nodded. 'This is Northern Ireland, Mr Starkey, image is everything and we intend to protect that image with everything we have.'
She had a tough, uncompromising kind of a face. I could feel the colour in my cheeks and the beginning of heart palpitations. I shook my head and even managed a short, derisive laugh. 'This is so bloody ridiculous. It was only a little joke.'
'Do you call black people niggers?'
'What?! No, of course not.'
'I rest my case.'
'Christ. It's not like that.'
'I'm afraid it is, Mr Starkey. You're an anachronism, a throwback. Your time has gone, sir. You either adapt or you die out.'
'Would it have made any difference if I'd made the joke about Protestants?'
She set her jaw a little harder.
'Okay – all right. You win. Christ. I have a magazine to produce, otherwise I would fucking take you on. So what do I have to do to sort this out?'
'You apologise to the complainant, and you make an offer of compensation.'
'How much?'
'Five grand ought to cover it.'
'Five grand for calling Mother Teresa a Fenian?'
'I'm sorry, did I say five? I meant seven.'
I cleared my throat and said, 'Seven.'
'Plus no punitive action to be taken against the claimant.'
'Okay, all right. Whatever.'
'And you undertake to observe your employees' rights and promote harmony?'
'Okay. Done.'
'All right then.' Becky Winstanley nodded. 'We have a deal.' She nodded again. I nodded back. She didn't move.
'What now?' I asked.
'The cheque.'
'You want it now?'
'It's standard procedure, Mr Starkey. It's called a short, sharp shock. And it prevents any backtracking.'
'You mean just so as I don't get to think about how I've been bushwhacked. You know we should write about this, it's a fucking scandal.'
'Eight thousand.'
'All right! Christ.' I took out the company cheque-book. I filled in everything but the name, pausing over it. 'Who to?'
'Leave it blank. We have a stamp.'
I ripped out the cheque and held it out to Becky Winstanley. She took hold of it, but I didn't let go. 'Are you on a commission?' I asked.
She gave me a sarcastic smile, and snapped it out of my grip. She tucked it into her handbag and stood. 'Nice doing business with you,' she said. 'Just watch your big mouth in future.'
As she walked down the stairs I called after her: 'You know, one word from me and Alec could break your neck in five places.'
She didn't look back. Alec, stepping out of the cloakroom at the bottom, looked quizzically up at me. I shook my head and he relaxed. As she pulled the door open I shouted, 'Is there an Equality Officer checking out the Equality Commission?' She stepped out onto the pavement. 'Are all Equality Officers created equal, or are some more equal than others?' The door closed after her. 'Fenian!' I shouted, but only when she had walked away. Alec blinked up at me. 'No offence meant,' I said.
'None taken,' said he.
Twenty minutes later, they all arrived back from the pub. I stood erect, with my shoulders pulled back, just inside the front door, greeting them one by one with nothing more than an icy stare. They needed to know that although I might be bloody, I was unbowed.
They didn't pay me a blind bit of notice.
Even Mary. She kept her head down, though not so far that I couldn't see the small silver cross now hanging around her neck. Or perhaps it had always been there. Stephen and Pat were the last through the door. They were arguing about whether Shane McGowan qualified as Irish, and what was more important, his music or the fact that he'd turned a generation off alcohol.
I couldn't hold back any longer. 'I thought we were a team,' I growled at them.
'We are,' they said together.
'Yeah, right,' I said.
They exchanged looks.
'We're not gay,' said Stephen.
'We're just very close,' added Patrick.
'I mean, the strike.'
'What strike?' asked Patrick.
'The one you were plotting over there. In the pub.'
Stephen looked where I was pointing. 'That's not a pub. That's a coffee-house.'
'And what're you on about, a strike? Jesus, man, you're paranoid – it's our monthly staff meeting. We're non-union, but we still need to get together to talk things through away from management's prying eyes. That's you.'
'And if it means anything,' said Stephen, 'we gave you a vote of confidence.'
'Unanimous,' said Patrick.
I looked from one to the other. 'But . . . what about the joke?'
'What joke?' asked Patrick.
'The Mother Teresa joke.' They didn't look any the wiser. 'The one about her, you know, looking like, you know . . . ?'
'There's hundreds of Mother Teresa jokes, Boss,' laughed Stephen. 'You're going to have to be more specific.'
'I can't. Jesus, I don't want to open a whole other can of worms. But you know the one . . .'
'Is it like the ET one?' Patrick asked. 'You know: How do you know ET's a Catholic? He looks like one.'
'Christ,' I
said, 'keep it down. Jesus. How can you tell that, and you're a . . . well, I presume you're a . . . you know.'
'Catholic? Fenian? Left-footer? Taig?'
'Yes.'
'Well, of course I can! Jesus, man, it's only a bit of fun.'
'Tell her that!' I pointed along the corridor to where Mary was already busy with the backlog of calls.
'Mary? Sure, why would it worry her?'
'Don't you get it!?' I exploded. 'I told her the joke! She reported me to the fucking Equality Commission! I just had to pay eight grand because I cracked a fucking joke about fucking Mother Teresa!' Mary was looking up now. So was half the office. I took a deep breath. My chest was going thumpa-thumpa-thumpa; I tried to remember what the doctor had said about panic attacks, but I couldn't, and that got me more stressed. I gulped for air. I staggered a little.
Stephen put a hand on my arm. 'Easy, Boss – easy.'
Patrick pulled a chair out of the cloakroom, then guided me into it. 'Get him some water,' he said, and Stephen darted away Mary was standing now, peering down the corridor. Patrick held up a placatory hand. 'It's all right,' he said, 'it's okay.' Mary sat down again and lifted the phone to answer another call, but still looked extremely worried. All around the office little eyes appeared over desk dividers, wondering what was wrong with the boss.
Stephen arrived back with the water. I took a sip. Then another. I tried to regulate my breathing. 'Sorry,' I managed to say. 'I just get . . . fucking pissed off with . . . these fucking little Hitlers.' I took another sip. 'And how she has the fucking nerve to show her face back in here . . .' I glared down the corridor.
Patrick said, 'Dan, this joke – when did you tell it to Mary?'
'This morning.'
'And the Equality Commission contacted you when?'
'Half an hour ago. They're just away!'
Patrick nodded. 'That's about an hour after we heard it in the coffee-house. She's a fast mover.'
'What are you talking about? Who told it in the coffee-house?'
'Mary did. She thought it was class, although you embarrassed the fuck out of her. But it was a woman who came to see you, wasn't it? Small, very severe-looking, grey suit.'
'Yes! That bitch sent her! No . . . wait a minute, how do you know she was wearing a grey suit?'
'Because she's Mad Hattie.'
'Mad . . . ?'
'Mad Hattie's wired to the moon, Dan. She's always trying to pull moves on us. She hangs out across the road; she probably heard Mary tell it and decided to pounce. What was it with Mouse – the passive smoking? And then she got a cheque out of Alan Wells for crèche facilities.'
'Oh God, aye – remember that?' Stephen laughed. 'Alan was mortified for months after that.'
'You mean she's . . . she's not . . . ?'
'Dan, for fuck sake, when have you ever heard of a Government body moving with that kind of speed? Did you even ask for any ID?'
'Yes, of course I did! She had a – well, a laminated badge. Oh Christ.' I rested my head in my hands. I'd been done. I'd always prided myself on being so street smart, and now I'd been done over by fucking Mad Hattie. 'What am I going to tell May Li about the eight grand?'
Patrick shook his head. 'Relax, Dan. She got twenty out of Mouse, five out of Alan, and she hasn't cashed one of them yet. I don't know if she even can. I don't think it's about the money, anyway it's about winding us up. And the fact that she's mental. Anyway, you okay now? We should get back to work.'
'I'm fine.' I stood up. I moved the chair back into the cloakroom. I ushered them back to work. I watched them all beavering away for a while and they paid me the compliment of not staring at their sweaty chastened boss. Alec Large appeared at my elbow and asked me if everything was all right now and I glared at him.
'You were supposed to protect me! She could have been anyone. I thought you were highly trained?'
'I am, sir.'
'Well, how come you can't identify a lunatic when you see one?'
'I searched her bag, sir. I didn't perceive her to be a threat.'
'You didn't perceive? She fleeced me out of eight grand.'
'So I understand. And I agree, I shouldn't have allowed her into the building without first checking her bona fides. It was a miscalculation on my part. It won't happen again.'
I sighed. Told him to go guard a door or something. I stood where I was for another little while, willing myself to settle. And after a while I did. Perhaps it was the soothing powers of Concrete Corcoran's landscape with a zebra. After a while I felt up to walking past Mary, but not brave enough to speak. She broke the ice by asking if I was okay.
'Fine,' I said, 'just fine.'
Then I hurried on upstairs to seek comfort from my wife. I picked up the phone and dialled her work number.
She was a civil servant. Naturally, she was out. On a 'wee message', they said, and no, they weren't sure when she'd be back. Sometimes I truly believe that Belfast's crowded streets are made up of civil servants running wee messages. It is the nature of the beast.
32
As a kid I'd walked down the hill towards Windsor Park hundreds of times. If you believed the news, then civil war must have been raging all around us, but all I remember about those Saturday afternoons was the sheer joy and excitement of local football, my dad lifting me over the turnstiles to get me in for nothing, standing on the Spion Kop and screaming for my team, whether it was Linfield or Northern Ireland. The only difference between them was that Linfield always seemed to win, and the national team never did. I saw George Best play, once. He got sent off. Sometimes, if my dad was feeling particularly keen, we travelled on buses to other grounds, and we always outnumbered the home support by ten to one. The songs we sang were exclusively Loyalist, and even though I knew they were about the Battle of the Boyne, and King Billy and No Surrender, they always felt like they were really about football, about the good guys conquering the bad. We even went once to Londonderry, which felt like we were going behind enemy lines. I remember that one because the song we all sang that day seemed so innocuous and yet produced such rage amongst the home supporters.
'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep.'
It had recently been number one in the charts for Middle of the Road and we laughed as we sang it, pointing all the time at the crowd on the other side of the Brandywell. I asked my dad what it was about and why it made the home fans so angry, but he answered with, 'Never mind, son,' which was a bit of a pisser even then.
A thousand travelling Blue men singing: 'Where's your mama gone? Where's your mama gone?'
Then: 'Where's your papa gone? Where's your papa gone?'
And on through an entire family, and all sung with such glee.
It was only thirty years later that I worked out that internment had only just been introduced and that the opposition fans had probably all had innocent family members and relatives lifted by the Army only days before.
It was a different world, and now Windsor Park was a different place. Nice new stands, a perfect pitch, and instead of a mass of supporters standing yelling sectarian abuse on the Spion Kop, it was all seated, and there was a family enclosure. Linfield were two nil up at half-time against their Israeli visitors, Maccabi Tel Aviv. There were only about a hundred travelling fans. A goal from two of Terry Breene's imports: Mark McNulty, late of Arsenal and Southampton, and one Paul Marinelli, last heard of playing in the Italian Second Division, but in his day a mean finisher for Chelsea. When Linfield attacked, everyone jumped to their feet, and when they scored, the entire stadium seemed to rock. The cheering went on for ever, high-pitched because although the days of lifting your son over the turnstiles were long gone, one of Terry Breene's first decisions was to drastically cut the admission price for children.
Half-time entertainment was a penalty shoot-out for charity. First Minister Frank Galvin and representatives of each of the main political parties took part. Galvin scored, and punched the air. There was scattered booing from the Spion Kop end, but that was to be ex
pected. If he'd tried it fifteen years before, the half-time entertainment would have consisted of his being strung up from the goalposts. When Frank Galvin sank his penalty it was the kids who cheered loudest. He was from the TV. And most of these kids had been born after the ceasefire. They were lucky. They weren't weighed down by the past, by hatred, by revenge. Not yet, at any rate.
The second half saw Linfield score another, and Maccabi pull one back. The game ended 3–1 to the home side, and by the time I made my way into the newly remodelled corporate lounge (lots of nice pastels and non-smoking), the party was already in full swing. It was Linfield's best result ever in Europe and Terry Breene was on top form. There was a band playing music in the corner, and Terry quickly took the microphone to thank everyone from the players to the programme sellers for their support, not forgetting the sponsors. And then he started singing. Sinatra standards, mostly. Beautiful girls in Linfield jerseys emblazoned with the name of the new sponsors, Ryan Auto, and Like Jets, passed out food and drinks, but they also looked kind of familiar, and then I saw Patrick O'Brien behind the bar and understood that Past Masters was doing the catering.
When I went for a refill O'Brien pumped my hand enthusiastically. 'Good to see you, but where's your minder?'
I glanced behind me. 'Oh shit!' Then I smiled. 'He's at home, looking after the wife.'
'Is that wise?'
'Probably not, but it's a pain in the hole having him trailing around everywhere. Can't even go to the bog without him casing the joint, and that's in my own house. So he's making silhouette shapes in the front window in case anyone's watching, and I nipped out over the back fence.'
'Well, I hope you've done the right thing. Class game, eh?'
'Yup,' I said. 'You're doing the nibbles, then?'
'Please, if you say "nibbles" my chef will have a hissy fit.'
'I thought he was from these parts.'
'He is. But he's on a mission to transform football catering. Did you not see the stalls on your way in? Out with the pie-sellers, in with the mushroom vol-au-vents.'
I had seen them, and resisted the temptation. I did though note a lot of people spitting them out and saying, 'What the fuck is this, where's me pie?' The fact that they were free, the cost apparently underwritten by Ryan Auto, whose logo was on the pastry, was neither here nor there.
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