Free The Street and other stories by Gerry Adams

me what’s mine. I know what’s mine. I know where I was born. You can keep all your emotional crap. Like I said, we’ve got all the rest.”
    “Who’s we, Geordie? Eh? Who’s we? The bloody English queen or Lord bloody Terence O’Neill, or Chi Chi, the dodo that’s in charge now? Is that who we is? You’ve got all the rest! Is that right, Geordie? That’s shit and you know it.”
    I grabbed him by the arm and spun him round to face me. For a minute I thought he was going to hit me. I was ready for him.But he said nothing as we stood glaring at each other.
    “You’ve got fuck all, Geordie,” I told him. “Fuck all except a two-bedroomed house in Urney Street and an identity crisis.”
    He turned away from me and hurled his glass into the darkening distance.
    “This’ll nivver be Silent Valley again, not after we’re finished with it,” he laughed heavily. “I’m an Orangeman, Joe. That’s what I am. It’s what my da was. I don’t agree with everything here. My da wouldn’t even talk to a Papist, nivver mind drink or work with one. When I was listening to Paddy I could see why. That’s what all this civil rights rubbish is about as well. Well, I don’t mind people having their civil rights. That’s fair enough. But you know and I know if it wasn’t that it would be something else. I’m easy come, easy go. There’d be no trouble if everybody else was the same.”
    I had quietened down also by now.
    “But people need their rights,” I said.
    “Amn’t I only after saying that!” he challenged me.
    “Well, what are you going to do about it?” I retorted.
    “Me?” he laughed. “Now I know your head’s cut! I’m going to do exactly nothing about it! There are a few things that make me different from you. We’ve a lot in common, I grant you that, but we’re different also, and one of the differences is that after Christmas I’ll have a job and you won’t, and I intend to keep it. And more importantly, I intend to stay alive to do it.”
    “Well, that’s straight enough and there’s no answer to that,” I mused, sipping the last of my whiskey.
    Geordie laughed at me.
    “Typical Fenian,” he commented. “I notice you didn’t throw away your drink.”
    “What we have we hold.” I took another wee sip and gave him the last of it.
    “By the way, seeing we’re talking to each other instead of at each other, there’s no way that our ones, and that includes me, will ever let Dublin rule us.”
    The sun was setting and there were a few wee flurries of snow in the air.
    “Why not?” I asked.
    “’Cos that’s the way it is.”
    “What we have we hold?” I repeated. “Only for real.”
    “If you like.”
    “But you’ve nothing in common with the English. We don’t need them here to rule us. We can do a better job ourselves. They don’t care about the Unionists. You go there and they treat you like a Paddy just like me. What do you do with all your loyalty then? You’re Irish. Why not claim that and we’ll all govern Dublin.”
    “I’m British!”
    “So am I,” I exclaimed. “Under duress ’cos I was born in this state. We’re both British subjects but we’re Irishmen. Who do you support in the rugby? Ireland, I bet! Or international soccer? The same! All your instincts and roots and…” I waved my arms around at the dusky mountains in frustration “… surroundings are Irish. This is fucking Ireland. It’s County Down, not Sussex or Suffolk or Yorkshire. It’s us and we’re it!” I shouted.
    “Now you’re getting excited again. You shouldn’t drink whiskey,” Geordie teased me. “It’s time we were going. C’mon; I surrender.”
    On the way down to Newcastle I drank the whiskey that was left in the bucket. We had only one call to make, so when I asked him to, Geordie dropped me at the beach. I stood watching as the van drove off and thought that perhaps he wouldn’t return for me. It was dark by now. As I walked along the strand the snow started in