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What is beautiful is unreal, and what is real is perilous. Yet even in the heart of the city, people work for diversions. The sparkling new Andersons-town Leisure Center won a prize as the best of its kind in the United Kingdom. Bernadette calls it "gorgeous," and 5,000 youngsters a week steam up its three swimming pools. Elizabeth plays "the badminton" there and discos on skates in the Rollerama. Children's carnivals offer another diversion. The Youth Council of Belfast sets up small amusement parks on the weekends. On a Friday evening in September the Beechmount children's carnival begins on a hill overlooking a playing field high above the city. A constable is shot in the back
that night at about the same time, but no one at the carnival has heard of it yet. This is a time for play—for joyriding in the bumper cars or knocking about in the People Mover. The cool air roars with the Beatles' You're Gonna Lose That Girl. Parents force smiles going down the three-story Superslide, while their kids take the thrill in stride. Down on the field, boys kick a soccer ball in what is left of the light.
"Do you come from New York?" asks Sinead Doherty, 15, who wants to be a beautician and sports a fancy hairdo for a start.
"I do."
"Oh, I wouldn't go there. Murders everywhere."
By 8 the sky is black, and the city pops on in a fluorescent amber. It has a noise, this city, like a train or a wail. Tonight the carnival's noise prevails. The place is packed, the faces glowing orange and red in the wild spinning lights. At the giant revolving swing, a man solemnly takes tickets and the children mount the seats in pairs. Slowly the machine turns; slowly the nickelodeon starts up; and the chains that hold the swings grow taut until they parallel the ground. Suddenly the children are on their sides in the air, whirling above Belfast, impelled from the center by centrifugal force.