So long ago now, and yet, up in the attic, I find the newspapers my mother kept. “Two Cities on the Boil”, reads the headline in the Belfast Newsletter, in August 1971, the day internment was introduced in Northern Ireland, the day paramilitaries on both sides were rounded up in mass morning raids, on a damp Ulster morning, summer in Ireland passing in its usual drizzle.
Our part of town had always been safe, no barricades on our leafy avenues. There was the occasional shooting of a judge, or a lawyer who crossed a line, or the rattle of picture windows when a bomb went off across town. You watched where you went, tried to avoid trouble spots, put up with army checkpoints and shopping bag searches. You tried to get on with life, but the uneasiness remained; Belfast might not be Kiev or Khartoum, but there was still that feeling that circumstances were moving beyond your control.
My father had taken early retirement, eager to return home to Scotland. As manager of a branch of a large insurance company with the word “Royal” in its name, he had received death threats, and was used to staff checking his office if a car back-fired outside.
I had already “crossed the water”, leaving my very Protestant girls school behind, to pursue a degree in a country where no-one asked what church you went to. Now I had come back, to help with the removal back to Scotland.
It should have been straightforward. We sold the house, at a time when people were hardly anxious to move to Belfast. A new doctor took it on. I often wondered how the road accepted an Indian family of a different religion, who could not be tied down by their church attendance. Did they stay, or, like us, move on, as the outsiders we were?
All had been well for us that summer, until the threat of interment loomed. Rumours flew around the city – would the arrests cause riots, or worse? No-one knew. The day of our removal drew nearer; tensions in the city worsened. There was fighting in East Belfast. “23 Dead So Far This Week”, the Newsletter said, keeping its running total.
Many of the double decker buses had been targeted by rioters, so a new problem arose for us. Because of transport shortages, removal vans were to be used to pick up detainees. Would they need our van? Or even worse, would vans be hijacked?
The day before we moved, my father went into the city, to tie up loose ends of paperwork. The streets in the central area were unusually quiet, with the air of something waiting to happen. There were occasional explosions, perhaps shots, in the distance.
Next morning, our van arrived. Unfortunately it was a very noticeable bright yellow. The removal men started loading the furniture, as it came over on the news that the arrests had started, men being lifted in all areas of the city and beyond. We carried on packing.
In the afternoon, we stood at the gate as the van drove away, and we wondered if we would ever see our possessions again. My one worry, at the age of nearly 21, was that I should have kept my teddy bear with me to travel in the car. It was too late now.
We spent the night at a friend’s house. The evening meal was subdued, everyone straining to hear any news coming over the radio. We had to travel across Belfast and on to Larne in the morning. Would we even be able to reach the ferry?
Next day we set out, across a town which was still eerily empty, driving through the usual checkpoints with our car overloaded with all the items we had tried to keep with us. Luckily none of the soldiers wanted to search us.
At Larne, the ferries were running as usual. We watched the queue, in the hope of seeing our van, which we had expected would be kept at the removal depot overnight for safety reasons. There was no sign of it.
We stood on deck and watched Ireland fade away behind us for the final time. It had been a strange goodbye, but one which made us all the more certain it was time to leave.
We made our way across Dumfriesshire to the eastern Borders. We were to spend the night in a local pub, with our furniture due to arrive at our new house the following day. By now my mother, always a pessimist, had given up hope of seeing it again. It was cold and wet when we arrived in the local village, depressed and ready for an early night after a long day.
And there, on the other side of village green, was a large yellow van. The removal men, anxious to get out of Belfast, had worked on through the evening, driving to Larne to catch the late night ferry. We sat, slightly stunned at our good fortune.
As adventures go, it had perhaps ended merely in a damp squib, but we were all the more grateful for that. Edward Bear, deprived of his confrontation with the IRA, was perhaps the only one who was disappointed.