Free Hateland by Bernard O'Mahoney Page B

shotgun.
        Religion, or rather the religious denomination of others, dominated Elizabeth's thoughts and those of all her friends. Yet few of them seemed to practise their religion. Few went to church or Bible meetings or anything like that. The words 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' were used simply to identify friends from enemies, people whose company you could embrace from those whose company you had to shun. I felt a lot of her friends, especially those from St Angelo who knew about my background, didn't accept me. My blood tainted me - and even my prospective UDR uniform couldn't redeem me.
        We used to go to a particular pub in the area popular with UDR and RUC people. I had a few good evenings there, but the pattern was always the same. I'd meet new people one evening, and we'd get on great, but the next time we met they'd be cold and distant, as if they'd been warned off me. Elizabeth would sometimes say I was imagining things, but I knew I wasn't.
        I could see from Elizabeth's own behaviour how whispers about someone's untrustworthiness could start. Sometimes, we'd go round to the house of one of her friends. This friend used to share the house with her sister who, so far as I could tell, seemed to spend her days sewing. Before we went there for the first time, Elizabeth told me I wasn't to say anything to the sister. I asked her why. She said, 'She's not to be trusted. She mixes with the wrong people.' When I asked her to explain further, all she could say was that this woman occasionally drank in Catholic pubs and had Catholic friends.
        I could understand the need for constant vigilance. I knew that careless cops and squaddies ended up dead, but at the same time I felt she was security-conscious to the point of obsession. Worse - she expected me to be the same. She started driving me mad
        with her list of things I could and couldn't do - you can't go here, you can't go there, you can't do this, you can't do that. I've never liked being told what to do - and nothing was more likely to make me do the opposite.
        One day, I had a few drinks in a 'Provo' pub near the flat that she'd expressly ordered me to avoid. I told her what I'd done. It caused a major row. Our relationship, I realised, was not going to last.
        This realisation made me less anxious about how her family viewed me and one peculiar development from that was that I started getting on really well with her mother. I suppose she'd never met anyone like me before. I used to make her laugh. She'd greet me with real warmth and affection. She genuinely liked me and I genuinely liked her, which began to sadden me.
        I felt like a lying Judas. Yet I knew that if I told her I'd been born a Catholic, her attitude towards me would have done an about-turn. She'd have treated me like a nasty disease, despite the fact that in flesh, blood, mind and spirit I'd have been no different from the person she'd grown fond of. I'd grown up with anti-black racism, but to me, this was more poisonous - and less understandable. It was a seething hatred for others born on the same small island, if not in the same small street in the same small town - others who shared the same language, accent and skin colour. I felt like a phoney hiding behind an assumed identity. I couldn't tell anyone, Protestant or Catholic, who I really was. It began to get me down.
        One evening when Elizabeth wasn't at home, I felt particularly down. I began feeling angry at being surrounded by the invisible enemy. As a joke, someone had given me a little blue-and-white shield-shaped badge on which was emblazoned the provocative symbol of militant Loyalism, the Red Hand of Ulster. I stuck it on my jacket and went for a drink in another so-called 'Provo' pub Elizabeth had warned me to avoid.
        The pub was about a quarter full. I stood at the bar waiting to be served, my badge of defiance unnoticed by the elderly regulars. I couldn't see what