‘Catholics living in protestant housing estates are all stuck in the same bog,’ my Da said as he gazed out through the net curtains in our front room. ‘There’s an order to things around here son, and the majority of people in this town want you to know your place in that order.’
‘That fool across the road might think that he’s better than us too, but these people won’t ever let him get above his station, no more than they will let the rest of us.’
Old man Leonard lived across the street from us and was the only other Catholic on our road. He owned the barber shop on Longstone street and was known to be a stubborn man, just like my father. Leonard had polio as child, meaning he walked with a pronounced limp. It also meant he couldn’t cut a straight fringe. Everyone called him Limpy and despite mocking him, me and my Da always got our hair cut in Limpy’s shop.
‘We have to look after our own, son,’ he would say. ‘No point giving money to a protestant barber and them not even willing to let us breathe the same air as them around this town. Limpy might be a shitty barber, but he’s our shitty barber.’
My Da hated Limpy, he hated a lot of people, especially people he felt were getting on in life. It must have taken a lot of energy to be as bitter as my Da, but my Da had loads of energy.
‘He only lives opposite us to wind me up son. Why doesn’t he just clear off and buy a house in Harmony Hill like the rest of the town’s snobs.’ he’d say every time he saw Limpy leaving for work.
It wasn’t that Limpy was rich or indeed a snob, he was the cheapest barber in the town, but everyone with a job had become the focus of my Da’s ire. My Da hadn’t worked in years as a result of an accident he had on a building site in Belfast. After that he just stood looking out our front window with a mug of tea in his hand, and talked shite about Limpy Leonard or anyone else for that matter. Then he’d head down to the bookies to spend his dole.
With my father’s job gone, my mother became the breadwinner. She made a few bob cleaning the chapel every day after mass. The public nature of my mother’s job hurt what was left of my Da’s pride, and he was too embarrassed to go to Sunday mass after that. He wasn’t to darken the chapel doors again until years later, when we carried him through them, in a brass handled box.
‘Whist son whist, would you look at that’ my Da said one morning nearly dropping his tea. ‘That’s a mistake, that’s a big mistake.’
Across the road a blue coloured Vauxhall van was being unloaded outside Limpy’s house.
‘Blinds is it? The eejit’s only gone and bought himself blinds. The natives will be restless in the town tonight, son. They won’t have this.’
As usual, there was an element of truth in what my Da had said. We lived under the watchful eye of God’s chosen few- the protestant sons of Ulster, and our masters weren’t able to pretend you were even close to being equal to them.
‘Dear me, doesn’t he know the bloody rules by now for fucks sake? Prods have blinds, we have net curtains, that’s how it is,’ my Da said with his hands on his head.
Everyone knew that blinds and papists didn’t mix and Limpy was about to learn what happened when you disturbed the unnatural order of things around Lisburn.
‘It’s one thing being permitted to cut their hair son, but no amount of protection money will get him out of this one. He’s not wise in the head so he’s not.’
Unfortunately for Limpy, the simple act of hanging blinds from his council house windows was to be seen by some, as a declaration of war. We didn’t have long to wait until that war began.
First the postman stopped delivering his mail. Then his bins weren’t collected by the council and our neighbours started dumping their rubbish over his wall.
After this, the late night phone-calls commenced.
‘Who do you think you are, you dirty Fenian bastard?’ a menacing voice would enquire, followed by ‘Take down them fucking blinds before we take them down for you’.
But the blinds stayed up.
‘A bloke in the bookies told me that someone stuck shite on the door handle of Limpy’s shop the other day’ my Da said casually as he buttered a slice of toast. ‘And it wasn’t dog shite either, it was human shite.’
‘You got to hand it to them, that’s what you call commitment son. That’s the work ethic that built the Titanic, that’s the work ethic that has the whole country falling down around us.’
When the marching season arrived the kerbstones in front of Limpy’s house where painted red, white and blue and an Ulster flag was hung from his lamp-post. Each night Limpy was serenaded by the sound of a Lambeg drum being banged repeatedly at the front of his house. One afternoon Fuck the pope was written in red paint across his front door. Then his windows were smashed in with hammers and the council had to board them up with chipboard. The police advised Limpy to take down the blinds or move house, but still the blinds stayed up.
‘I lit a wee candle and said a prayer to Saint Jude for him’ my mother told my Da one Sunday.
‘Who’s he, the patron saint of dopey bastards?’ he asked looking over the rim of his glasses. ‘It’s going to take more than a few hail Mary’s to sort out this mess. God only knows how it’s all going to end.’
The week before it did end, a bomb exploded under a mini-bus full of British soldiers in the middle of the town. They were travelling back to the barracks following the completion of a fun-run for charity. Six of them died.
Everyone knew what would be coming next.
‘When the ‘Ra kill anyone in this town , do you know what happens son? my Da asked. ‘One of us gets it. Some poor bastard is going to pay for this big time.’ he predicted before heading out to stick on a few bets.
The following Monday, it was Limpy Leonard who paid, shot in the back of the head as he unlocked the door to his shop. That evening my father stayed away from the window. That evening my father knew that it could have been any one of us who paid for that bombing. He also knew, it could have been him.
‘Those bloody blinds’ he said. ‘Last week some soldiers die raising money for charity and then a man is killed for being a Fenian, a Fenian who dared to put up venetian blinds in his own house. It’s a joke, this town is one sick joke.’
My Da was right, the town was a joke and now that joke was turning into a farce.
Rumours began to spread around the town that Limpy was shot for being an IRA intelligence officer. The talk was that he gathered information on any off-duty member of the security forces who happened to wander into his shop looking for a haircut. We knew that this was a lie. We knew it was the blinds that got him killed.
On the day Limpy was to be buried, our neighbours blinds were all pulled shut. My father insisted on keeping our curtains open. He had spent all morning looking out across the road at the comings and goings at Limpy’s house. With Limpy gone we were now the only Catholic family left on the street.
‘The neighbours’ blinds aren’t closed as a mark respect son, just you remember that. I’m surprised these people even bother to hide their shame, but believe me they all share some guilt. This week an elderly man died because of a set of blinds, next week it might be someone who shopped in Marks and Spencer’s rather than Crazy Prices, and the week after that it could be because someone else had the nerve to wear a green t-shirt on the main street of this town. They’re making it up as they go along, the twisted bastards are making it all up.’
My father took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with a white handkerchief. I had never before seen that man cry.
‘Limpy saw what the ones who killed him can’t see. They don’t realise what’s coming. They don’t see that the writing is on the wall for them. It’s always been there, but they just don’t want to believe it. Its equality for slow learners son. The day is coming, mark my words, the day is coming when they will no longer be our masters. If there’s one thing that frightens them more than anything, it’s the certainty of that.’
He replaced his glasses and stared again across the road.
‘And when that day comes, maybe then we will all be free to have fancy blinds on our windows just like Limpy. The man was a visionary and we didn’t even realise it. A visionary who declared war on bigotry with a set of venetian fucking blinds.’
[Image Credit : Photo by Simon Watkinson on Unsplash]
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Eamonn Furey
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