Ursula paused, stunned. She looked swiftly over at her goddaughter, then inched out of the foyer into the scullery.
“What are ye on about?” she hissed in a sharp whisper down the receiver. “Ye think we’re all daft, do ye? Ye think we all don’t know what ye’re playing at, Ursula? Ye think now yer handbag is bulging with pounds, ye own the whole effin world. Ye’ve always been desperate to get one over on the rest of us yer entire miserable life. Now ye’re letting on yer helping the family, when all the while me poor aul mammy’s yer sitting tenant!”
“Nobody told me they wanted that flimmin house!”
“Ach, ye’re fairly turning me stomach, you!”
Siofra’s head peeped around the doorjamb and Ursula waved it back into the lounge with a glare.
“Ye ran screaming from Derry the second ye got yer mitts on a passport!” Ursula said. “You was itching to marry the first Yank fool enough to have you, leaving me mammy and daddy in the lurch with the bombs exploding around them, and no one to look after them in their twilight years!”
“There is things I’ve done that I'm terrible ashamed of,” Roisin said loftily. “Abandoning me mammy and daddy is one of em, aye. You’ve a bold faced nerve, but, Ursula, to be pointing a bloody finger at me! I wasn’t the one who— At least I never—”
Ursula gasped, her fingers strangling the receiver, praying into the wee holes that were meant for talking, silently urging Please dear Lord, naw, not 1973, not ‘73, not ‘73...
“Roisin, naw...!” Ursula begged, the pleading caught in her throat.
But even Roisin couldn’t bring herself to mention it.
“We’re gonny have a few words when I get meself to Derry,” Roisin finally said.
Ursula deflated with relief and hung up, grateful that her sister had dredged up somewhere within herself a heart. She walked into the lounge on unsteady feet, still reeling from the unspoken family shame that had almost reared its unsightly head. Siofra grinned innocently up at her.
“Who was that after ringing ye just now, Ursula?”
“I'm late for me wash and set,” Ursula decided, passing her goddaughter the catalog, gathering up her handbag and shoving the bag of Jelly Babies into Siofra’s hand. That was all the greedy wee bitch was interested in anyway.
1973
THE RUBBER BULLET HAD pierced the bay window, ricocheted against the bald-patched carpeting around a fireplace spitting sparks and now stood proudly on the mantelpiece, the Flood’s new knickknack. Five Murphy Crescent still reeked from the tear gas. Ursula stared at the boarded window. Why had she been dancing around her handbag at the Yank base nightclub when the street riot had broken out? Her wanes could’ve been killed.
They were now on their way home from school, rags and jars of vinegar tucked in their satchels in case the occupying British paratroopers let loose with more canisters of tear gas. That morning she had ripped into Vaughn and Egbert for pelting rocks at the armored cars, but secretly she had been proud. Now she was wracked with guilt. If Jed had to get a leave of duty from Vietnam because his wee sons had been gunned down in the street like common animals...
Ursula picked up her purple velour handbag and rummaged through the cough drops and bobby pins until she found the slip of paper. She read the five numbers scrawled on it, thinking carefully. If you disregarded the pram searches outside the shops, the rubber bullets, bombs and CS gas, life in Derry was deathly dull: marking off the days until Jed came back from Vietnam, attending mass every Sunday, confession every Wednesday, gossiping with her mate Francine and trying to poison her brother Paddy against his current fancy woman Fionnuala Heggarty. What did Ursula have to look forward to when her husband finally rescued her eleven months hence?
Endless years of dusting and darning socks in a whirlwind of godforsaken military outposts, uprooted every two or three years, terminating tenuous friendships, greeted by another selection of strange faces in a new base in a stranger land, over and over again, amen. The only constant would be Jed and the wanes, the dusting and the socks.
The letterbox clattered in the hallway.
“Mammy! Let me in!”
Gretchen, safely home from school. Ursula was slightly fearful of being in her daughter’s presence, but then remembered her daddy had doused the wanes’ heads with medicated shampoo the day before, so they were free of head lice for a week. She slipped the telephone number into the side pocket of her beige and brown maxi-skirt with a flash of irritation. Vaughn and Egbert would soon follow their younger sister, flooding the five tiny rooms with their shrieking and stomping and their bottomless pits of stomachs.
“Any bother with the soldiers on yer way home from school?” Ursula asked.
Gretchen shrugged her little shoulders.
“Naw,” she said, racing into the sitting room and flicking on the telly. “Them Brit bastards is crawling everywhere through the streets, but. Siobhan Healy told me her brother was picked up last night for flinging rocks at em, so he was. Fecking Proddy bastards!”
Ursula stared down in alarm at her child, now crawling onto the settee.
“If ye utter them words again, ye’re to get a bar of soap in yer mouth. Understand?”
“Aye, Mammy,” Gretchen said with a roll of her eyes.
As the telly blared out, Ursula walked into the scullery, deep in thought.
In Arizona two years earlier, her children had babbled on about Etch-A-Sketch, Kool-Aid and Barney and Betty Rubble. Ursula leaned against the larder door for a second and thought of what they talked about since they had arrived in Derry: confiscate, internment, hunger strike, armored car. And then, of course, there was bleedin, feckin, Proddy and bastard. Her children were changing, and she didn’t like the direction they were heading. When she and Jed had been deciding where she and the children might best stay during his tour of duty in Vietnam, Ursula had envisioned the gentle lush Derry of her own childhood, not this gritty everyday brutality.
If her beloved hometown hadn’t been invaded by British soldiers, there would be no need for “fecking bastards” in either their vocabulary or their life. Not just her wanes’ lives were in danger, their minds were as well. Ursula was suddenly decided. She raced into the hallway and flung her coat over her shoulders.
“I'm just away off to the O’Malleys to make a call,” she called into the sitting room.
The one telephone on the block belonged to the next door neighbors. With phones so rare, there was usually nobody to call, so Ursula was making quite an announcement, but Gretchen just shrugged again.
Ursula opened the door and passed the green picket fence, the gate clattering behind her. She turned and took a quick glance at the bottom of the street. Vaughn and Egbert were frolicking on the barricade of hijacked, burnt-out cars the IRA had erected a few months previously under the cloak of night to help make the Moorside a no-go zone for the Brit troops. She had beaten her boys senseless for playing amongst the singed shock absorbers and jagged windscreen sills the week before.
Ursula set her face in anger, then swiftly turned away. She could deal with them later. After her phone call, there would be no barricades left for any Moorside wane to risk their lives on. With every step of pavement, she realized she was making the right choice, for her beleaguered country, for the safety of her wanes, and, most of all, for herself. She knocked on the O’Malley’s front door.
Mrs. O’Malley, fag hanging, opened the door to the dreary depths which stank of soot. A filthy infant gnawing on a leaky pen straddled her hip. From upstairs came the shrieking of a baffling amount of children. The whole street wondered how the O’Malleys could afford the luxury of a phone. There were whispers of Proddy bastards in their family tree, or maybe a second cousin who was an informer for the IRA. Had they one of them swanky new refrigerators hidden away in their house as well? Ursula wondered.
“Right, Mrs. O’Malley,” Ursula said, tuppence in hand. “I'm here for the use of the phone.”
“Right ye are,” she said with a no
d and disappeared.
Ursula slipped the coin in the wooden box on the phone stand and dialed nervously, staring at the peeling primroses of the hallway wallpaper to avoid the disapproving glare from the framed portrait of the Bleeding Heart of Jesus towering above her on the wall.
“Aye?” came a voice through the crackles.
“Aye, Tommy? I'm...” Ursula glanced around to be sure nobody was in sight. “...Gracie. I'm the one ye gave yer number to the other week down the Moorside, after me taxi ride.”
“Ach, aye. The lovely-looking girl with the Yank husband in Vietnam, aye? Have ye given me offer some thought?”
“I have, aye.”
“And?”
Ursula took a deep breath, heart racing.
“I'm in.”
“Grand! Good on ye.”
“I’ve a girlfriend that’s willing to help and all. Ye mind yer woman with us ye dropped off at the Lecky Road?”
“Aye, I mind.”
Ursula searched her mind for a suitable name for her best mate Francine. “...Una.”
“That’s grand,” he said again. “We’re gonny meet in person and discuss this the three of us. Next Wednesday at five in front of what’s left of the Guildhall?”
“Right ye are,” Ursula agreed.
“Fair play to ye. Ye’re not gonny regret this, Gracie,” Tommy said.
“Cheerio, then.”
The receiver clattered as Ursula’s trembling hands sought the cradle.
She took a step to the threshold of the sitting room, clutched the door frame and poked her head inside. It was a fright, with dirty diapers and half-eaten sandwiches and toys scattered everywhere. But in the corner stood a telly twice the size of the one in 5 Murphy Crescent, and that one Ursula had only been able to afford with the money Jed sent from his immense Yank wages. Ursula would have bet on her granny’s grave that the O’Malleys’ telly was color too.
“Mrs. O’Malley?” she called into the filth.
The lucky bitch shuffled out of the darkness, a different wane clutching her hip, this one gnawing on a raw potato.
“I'm wile parched,” Ursula said. “Could ye give us a wee drink of water?”
“Right ye are,” Mrs. O’Malley said, giving Ursula an odd look and turning back towards the scullery.
Ursula quickly followed and spied a glistening new white fridge under a sink overflowing with grotty dishes.
“Ach, sure, no need now,” Ursula said. “I was just wile faint- headed there for a wee bit.”
Ursula raced back to the hallway.
“Thanks for the use of the phone, anyroad,” she called.
“Ach, sure, it’s no bother at all,” Mrs. O’Malley said with a frown.
But Ursula was already halfway down the street to clobber Vaughn and Egbert.
£ £ £ £
The rain spat down and the cannons towered overhead from the city walls. Fionnuala propelled herself down Shipquay Street towards an alarmed Ursula. Derry’s main shopping street was on an incline so steep it caught the unfamiliar unaware, reaching the summit gasping for breath. Fionnuala skidded to a stop.
“Right, Ursula!” Fionnuala panted, carrier bags heavy with tinned budget mushy peas, hollow eyes glistening with sudden opportunity.
Ursula managed a smile.
“Right, Fionnuala. I'm late for the hairdressers,” she said, giving a glance at her wristwatch and a cluck of disappointment.
“Ye know Roisin’s to be in town the day after the morrow?”
Ursula stiffened.
“She’s after ringing me, aye.”
“Is she to be staying with you and Jed up in Gleneagles? I know you’ve all them new guest rooms in that grand house of yers, like.”
Ursula’s ears were on the alert for a note of sarcasm, and were surprised to detect none. Desperate as she suddenly was for a kind word from the family, Ursula was grateful to Fionnuala for once. She clutched a nearby railing for support.
“Naw,” she said, eyes averted. “She wants to stay at me mother’s down the Moorside.”
“Ach, right around the corner from us, then? That’s grand, so it is! We’ll have to get together, the three of us, for a right wee knees-up.”
Ursula forced a leery nod and grin and turned to leave.
“And I hear ye’re after giving Siofra another of them lessons?” Fionnuala said.
Ursula stopped in mid-turn. Word certainly traveled fast in Derry. The Jelly Babies were still fresh in Siofra’s digestive system.
“A-aye,” Ursula said.
“Ach, she loves em so, highlight of her week, them.”
As Ursula stared at her blankly, Fionnuala clucked impatiently.
“C’mere a wee moment,” she finally said.
Ursula gave a helpless second nod to her watch. Fionnuala grabbed her elbow, for effect or to stop a headlong plunge down the street, Ursula didn’t know.
“Would ye give us a lend of 400 quid?” Fionnuala blurted out.
Ursula wasn’t sure what to reply, nor even where to look, her bank account and balance suddenly threatened. She gently shook Fionnuala’s claw from her slicker.
“Four hundred...?”
“We’ve the rates due, ye see, and Paddy won’t get his pay until next week, and me wages isn’t due for another fortnight. And, I'm affronted to say it, but I'm after getting an advance for them wages and all,” Fionnuala explained in a breathless rush, the color rising in her face. “We kyanny have wer electricity turned off, so we kyanny, not with wanes in the house.”
“Well, I really couldn’t say if—”
“Ye know we’re good for it, Ursula,” Fionnuala said, hoping her sister-in-law had the good grace not to mention they were anything but.
“Ach, sure, that I know,” Ursula said, the smile glued on her face as the rain lashed around them. “The only problem is, well, Jed takes care of the finances now, so I really kyanny say...”
She trailed off, seemingly uncertain yet hopeful. And I don’t mind one word of thanks when we paid off yer mortgage after wer lotto win, ye ungrateful cow, ye, Ursula might have said, but Roisin’s scornful tones down the line still lingered in her ear.
“Ye’ve been wile good to us over the years, Ursula,” Fionnuala barreled on, shameless in her quest for cold hard cash. “Too good. I mind that time ye baked them scones for wer Dymphna’s birthday, like. And you always give such grand gifts to the wanes every Christmas. We were happy enough to make ye Siofra’s godmother, so we were.”
Fionnuala stopped just short of wringing Ursula’s hands, and it was at that moment, wobbling there on the slope of Shipquay Street with the Saturday shoppers coming at them from odd angles and their two umbrellas weighing their balance, that Fionnuala realized how old Ursula was looking. It had been such a long time since she had looked at her and actually seen her. Fionnuala feared she was confronting her own future.
She had been feeling the passage of time on her own body as she grimly approached her fortieth birthday, a life of giving birth and sucking down sixty fags a day, dodging bombs, and grasping every minute of overtime she could. The helplessness, the sense of rotting away into a dottering old aged pensioner struggling on a fixed income, the destiny of them all.
She and Ursula had spent a lifetime together. A lifetime bickering, certainly, but a lifetime nevertheless. They were a team, growing old together.
This moment of sudden clarity didn’t make her loathe Ursula any less of course. In fact, she was even more disgusted that—at this late stage of her life—she was forced to rely on the generosity of a tight-fisted cunt like her sister-in-law. Ursula deserved each bold-faced lie that came from her lips.
“Even when you and Jed were having them money troubles of yer own,” Fionnuala continued, “when ye first moved back to Derry and the dollar was so weak against the pound, mind, ye always had something to spare when we were on wer last legs. That’s why I feel I can rely on ye, Ursula...love.”
Ursula managed to get out, “I'm g
onny have a wee word with Jed and see what we can do.”
“When?! We’re bleeding desperate, so we are!”
“I’ll let ye know the tomorrow.”
Then, attempting to throw back her helmet of an aubergine bob in bright-eyed buoyancy, she turned and made her escape, scurrying as quickly as she could manage down the slippery slope of Shipquay Street. Every hair remained stubbornly in place.
Under her umbrella, Fionnuala grappled a pole and deflated with relief, the £400 already a fait accompli. She started mentally subtracting all the payments she would be able to make. The milkman, the gas, the electric, thank feck!...perhaps she would even have enough left over from Ursula’s misguided generosity to purchase that new pair of tights.
£ £ £ £
Padraig Flood and his mate Declan McDaid teetered on the railing opposite the newsagent’s, an arsenal of rocks between them, on the lookout for old aged pensioners shuffling by. Their limbs were gangly from an eternal diet of spuds, fish sauce, and beans on toast, yet they were the picture of youthful menace with their cropped black scalps and the red and white stripes of their Derry Football Club jerseys.
In the 1970s, the Shops in Creggan Estate had been a row of frugal points of purchase in the wilderness of the front line of sectarian violence, the concrete of the newsagent and butchers and hair salon festooned with barbed wire and bullet holes. Today they were a streamlined gallery of brightly-lit chain stores. The only nod to the past was a drab convenience store called the Sav-U-Mor, which was tucked apologetically off to one side and was where Padraig’s mother worked long hours for little pay because no other place would have her.
“Here comes one now,” Declan giggled.
Mr. Murphy dragged himself towards the newsagent door, squinting through his lopsided spectacles at them.
“Ye blind aul git!” Declan yelled.
Padraig pelted a pebble at his foot. Declan fired a rock at his head. Mr. Murphy’s shoulders tensed, and he scuttled into the safety of the shop. The young rowdies doubled over with the force of their laughter.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 5
