A tranquil Portadown waits in the eye of a storm

Downtown Portadown, American Independence Day, 2000. It is a scene of breathtaking normality

Downtown Portadown, American Independence Day, 2000. It is a scene of breathtaking normality. Shoppers stroll about in warm sunshine. Old men loll on benches opposite St Mark's Church.

Builders are working on a new public library and glorious flowers bloom in tidy plots along the centre of Market Street. Could this be Portadown, July 4th, 2000? Mid-afternoon, it was a tranquil centre at the eye of a storm.

But there are also indicators of gathering tumult. Helicopter blades whirr above. Notices about "Protestant solidarity" adorn every pole. Union Jacks and Union bunting hang across the streets. New poppy wreaths lie at the memorials to local men who died in two World Wars and to UDR men killed in the "Troubles".

A notice outside St Mark's quotes from the Book of Micah . . . "and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God".

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For those wishing to walk less humbly there is the "Pride of the Hill" shop not far away. Its window carries the notice "Countdown to Drumcree - 5 days to go", underlining a description of last Sunday's parade as "Drumcree Five and a Half".

Items for sale include framed pictures of Billy Wright at £15 each; bibs for babies with the legend "Born to s--t on the Garvaghy Road", £1.50 each; large Orange feet lollipops for £1; and "Reservoir Prods" tee-shirts.

These have men in black on the front, including Mr Boyne, Mr Union, Mr Flute, Mr Protestant, and Mr Orangeman. On the back is an Aussie type, titled "Crocodile Drumcree".

Stephen Miller, who runs the shop with his wife Stella, said business was slow enough at the moment but would probably improve at the weekend.

A sign behind the counter read "ATTENTION to all RUC personnel. All application forms for the new police force can only be obtained from Sinn Fein headquarters: 51 Falls Road, Belfast . . ."

A short distance up the street two women and three children were in animated conversation about Monday night. The older woman was in form. "You're from the South!" and she was off. She had been spat on for wearing a poppy at a motor-cycle meet in Skerries two years ago. They wouldn't take her sterling for a cup of tea.

A man wore an "Up the IRA" tee-shirt. Eight carloads of them had stopped for something to eat in Dublin and had bottles thrown at them because of their Northern registrations.

She had lived in Garvaghy Park, which was then mostly Protestant, and all of them had been driven out.

When her father died they spat on his coffin, which had been draped in the Union Jack. Her son had worked in the public park near the Garvaghy Road and had to quit his job eight months ago because of attacks by Catholics.

Now when he visits her in the Killicomaine estate, where she lives alone, he has to take the long route to avoid running into Catholics. A Protestant man she knew, who had taken the same route home for 35 years, three weeks ago was beaten until he lay still, as though dead, by Catholic youths.

She had good Catholic friends she couldn't go to see. And all because of the [Garvaghy Road] Residents' Coalition and Brendan McKenna. Everything was fine before him and them.

"They're just like the darkies, they are being so hard done by. If they don't like a place, why stay?" she asked.

Her younger friend was concerned about buses carrying her children being stoned every time they passed through Catholic areas and about young boys being beaten up by Catholics for wearing school uniforms or [Rangers] football jerseys.

She dismissed stories about who could walk freely in Portadown. "Every night you will find them [Catholics] in the Planet Bingo hall on Mandeville street," she said, right in the centre of the town.

At Planet Bingo the sign said things began at "8 p.m. sharp".

It was quiet. Rows and rows of brightly-lit empty seats relaxed to the music of Neil Diamond's Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show. A young oriental man approached the desk looking for change. He was playing a one-armed bandit.

Staff were courteous but did not want to talk. "The people who come here are cross-community" one man explained. It seems bingo can do for Portadown what politics and religion cannot.

At the High Street shopping mall the Catholic woman from Dungannon (women in Portadown have no name!) said she wouldn't have been there if she had known about the previous night's violence.

She was from Cookstown originally and there the AOH never marched where it was not wanted. That should be the case with the Orange Order too, she said. And she had no truck with the argument that the Order had been marching on some Catholic routes "for hundreds of years".

The only reason they had got away with that was because they were let away with that, she said. Both sides should accept each others' flag and traditions and former paramilitaries should be accepted as representatives on both sides. "That's the only way you'll get the gun out," she said.

She missed Mo Mowlam. The only Northern Secretary who had been fair to both sides, she said. As for Peter Mandelson . . . he was "too wishy washy".

And outside the sun continued to shine on warm Portadown.