“I was pregnant six weeks ago, sure,” Dymphna insisted.
“Naw, ye wasn’t.”
“Aye, I was.”
Nurse Ratchett placed a hand on her hip and glared down as if she wanted to clatter the shameless beast one around the head.
“Are ye trying to tell me how to do me job?”
Dymphna kneaded the tissue in her hand.
“D-did ye maybe find two wanes in there?” Dymphna asked in desperation.
“Ye mean, are ye having twins? We kyanny tell so early, sure!”
“Naw, not twins. What I meant is, I think...I think...” Her brain cells struggled. “It must be that I have two wanes inside of me, then, one two weeks aul and the other six weeks. Could ye go on and have another wee look inside?”
“That’s a biological impossibility!” Nurse Bryant barked with a crabbit short fuse. “Once ye conceive, ye kyanny have another wane until the first one comes outta ye, and thank the almighty Lord for that.”
Dymphna couldn’t shake a vision of Rory Riddell’s Orange wane and Mr. O’Toole’s Green wane growing side by side within her.
“Where’s me other wane gone, but?” Dymphna implored tearily. “C-could the aulder wane have died and a new wane be growing next to its wee cold body?”
“Are ye mental? Ye’ve only one wane inside ye, and that wane’s two weeks aul. Surely one wane’s disgrace enough?”
A sense of loss shuddered through Dymphna’s sobbing body, Rory Riddell’s Orange baby now mysteriously erased from her womb. The affront of a Proddy bastard wane had given her no end of grief, but it was a wane she had already resigned herself to loving. She briefly imagined a horrid scene of sectarian violence unfolding deep within her chasm, of O’Toole’s ersatz wane suffocating the life out of the original wane, the final triumph of the Provos over the Nationalists.
“I'm dead certain I was terrible pregnant six weeks ago,” she insisted with a sniffle.
“Fer Jesus’ sake!” Nurse Bryant spat. “Naw, ye wasn’t! Did ye have the morning sickness? Spewing the moment ye rose from bed?”
Dymphna looked at her blankly.
“Was yer breasts tingly, was they tender and all swollen like a football?”
“Naw,” Dymphna admitted. Her voice grew shrill. “I took the pregnancy test, but! It told me I was up the scoot!”
Nurse Bryant inspected her over her spectacles, then nodded her head with sudden understanding.
“And ye got yer pregnancy test from that Top-Yer-Trolly down the town, did ye?”
“Aye, aisle 7A.”
“Them bloody manufacturers!” she roared. “All them tests was pulled from the shelves weeks ago for being defective. The clinic’s had streams of right wee slappers pouring through wer doors, tears bucketing down their faces, begging to know the way to Liverpool. A bit less drink and a bit more common Christian restraint would’ve saved the whole sorry lot of youse from blighting wer clinic!”
“Ye mean—”
“God bless us and save us, ye’re bleedin thick! If ye thought ye were pregnant outta wedlock six weeks ago, what possessed ye to spread yer legs again four weeks after?”
If only the nurse knew. Nurse Bryant droned on about pre-natal care, appointments for this and that, but Dymphna couldn’t hear.
“—And ye’re to lay off the fags and the drink and the Ecstasy!” Nurse Bryant finished. “And the lads, if that’s within yer realm of possibility.”
“Aye, right ye are,” Dymphna murmured with a nod as though she would.
She tenderly removed herself from the examination table, grieving for her Orange wane who had never been and clueless as to who the father of this new wane should be.
£ £ £ £
Eoin approached the McDaid house, tape player heavy in the pocket of his hooded jumper. Now that his benefits had been cut off, the only way he could pay back the McDaid brothers was if he kept his ears peeled for the casual mention of gunrunning, the trafficking of falsified documents and the like, run back to the Special Branch with the intelligence, collect their blood money and hand it over to the Ecstasy-dealing thugs. He would be a traitor to his country and his religion, of course, and if the McDaids ever found out, there was sure to be some quick headbutting and a slashing in a darkened archway of the city walls, but what else could he do? A spot of male prostitution was out of the question, as the only poofter in the city was Mr. O’Toole, and his sister had apparently already had him, which put into question his availability as a client.
Mrs. McDaid cracked the door an inch to him. Her eyes glinted with suspicion, and the door creaked less-than-graciously open.
“Right ye are,” she said flatly.
She led him into the front room, where Eoin was confronted with a horseshoe of three scalped heads and football jerseys around the telly, tablets and polythene bags strewn across the coffee table.
“Yer man’s here,” Mrs. McDaid said. As if they had all been waiting for him. She closed the door. Eamonn, Caoilte and Fergal turned from the telly as Eoin slipped in and stood in indecision before the Bleeding Heart of Jesus portrait, finger playing atop the On button in his pocket. Pleased to see him they were not. Their hands curled into fists in unison.
“What’s all this palaver about yer fecking cunt of a sister passing out wer wingers at discount prices round the town?” Eamonn roared. “I'm fecking sickened, so I'm are!”
Eoin felt faint. Did each of the 83,699 inhabitants of that city know each other’s business?
“Aye,” Caoilte seethed. “And her getting the bleedin Filth involved and all!”
Their wiry hooligan frames were ready to pounce, daggers fulgurating from their eyes. Eoin briefly considered making a run for it, but Derry was a city with only so many hiding places.
“Out with it, man!” Fergal snarled. “What the feck have ye been playing at with wer gear?”
“Where’s wer money?” Caoilte boomed, ricocheting from the settee and dwarfing Eoin inches from his face.
At one with the peeling wallpaper, Eoin took in the eyes that pined bloodshed, breath thick with drink. He begged the dear Lord for mercy as Caoilte dug his fingers into the polyester blend of his top and twisted.
“Where’s wer money, ye thieving cunt?” he whispered with crisp fury.
“I-I...” Eoin stammered, the neck of his top digging into his tendons, his breath deep pants.
Caoilte’s nostrils fluctuated wildly, his grim mouth twitched at the ends. Then he threw back his scalped head and roared with furious laughter. Eoin shuddered, his life in the hands of a mad dog. Eamonn and Fergal roared along with their brother. Is themmuns off their minds with drink and drugs? Eoin wondered fearfully
“The look on yer man’s face!” Fergal said.
“He was shiten his fecking pants, so he was!” Eamonn said.
Caoilte’s fingers unraveled from Eoin’s neck and slapped him on the back. Eoin deflated against the wallpaper, sweat lashing.
“Fecking brilliant!” Caoilte chortled. “Ye had me pissing meself with laughter! I couldn’t keep up with the hard man act no longer!”
“We had ye going there, lad,” Fergal said.
“Yer wee sister selling wer gear had the lot of us in stitches, so it did,” Eamonn said. “Even me mother was wetting her knickers at the thought of it.”
“We’ll still be looking for wer money, mind,” Fergal put in.
“Ye’ve a few weeks to pay it off, but,” Caoilte said, resettling himself on the settee and taking a sip of his cuppa.
“Th-that’s wile civil of ye,” Eoin managed.
“Ye’re a good wee earner, so ye are,” Eamonn said. “We’d hate to take yer knees out, so we would. C’mere you over here.”
Eoin clutched the wall as he walked so as not to wither to the floor. Fergal tossed a bag of tablets at him.
“There’s yer stash,” he said. “Get yerself on them streets and fill wer pockets.”
“Ta, youse lot.”
Eoin was giddy from h
is near brush with death, uncannily invincible, courageous with relief. He was finally part of the pack, in with the hardest cunts in the city. He could do no wrong in their eyes, so Eoin threw caution the way of his altar boy cassock. He slipped the gear into his pocket beside the tape player and clicked it on before slipping his hand out.
“I-I'm so grateful,” Eoin said, “that I was wondering how I can repay ye. C-could I maybe give youse a hand with yer other activities?”
This they greeted with confused sniggers that paled to their earlier hilarity.
“With wer messages?” Caoilte asked, an affected smile forced on his face. “Shopping at the Top-Yer-Trolly for wer bog roll, like?”
The brothers exchanged a look that excluded the employee they had just raved about seconds earlier. Still high, Eoin was clueless to this subtle change.
“Naw, with yer activities to do with the Cause, like.”
The tape player waited gamely in his pocket. Each McDaid brother shifted an inch on the seats, their eyes alive with hard suspicion, as if Eoin had just revealed he was a first class arse-bandit.
“What are ye on about, ye headbin?”
“Are ye outta yer bleedin fecking head?”
“I thought—” Eoin stammered.
“There’s to be no talk of the Cause in wer house,” Caoilte warned. “We’ve nothing to do with the likes of that.”
As three sets of eyes glared at him, Eoin stood there with the fixed grin of a silly gack. The clock on the wall ticked the time. Their McDaid eyes twitched with suspicion and kneecapping as their brain cells trundled, managing thought. Eoin inched towards the door with tiny sideways steps more befitting a crab than a drug dealer. Caoilte leaped from the settee again, suddenly seething, and this time for real.
“One wee moment there, hard man,” he said, spittle spraying into Eoin’s face. “Forget you what we’re after laughing at. We want wer money sharpish or there’ll be hell to pay. And two shattered kneecaps, no doubt!”
They roared with laughter at the thought of it, and Eoin slipped out of the house. He reached into his pocket and turned off the tape player.
At the doorway, Mrs. McDaid stared after him. She closed the door firmly behind her.
£ £ £ £
When two Wednesday afternoons had come and gone, and Jed still hadn’t received a phone call from Paddy, he seized his darts case and aluminum chalk holder and headed alone to the Moorside Inn to see if he couldn’t get in a few throws at the board himself.
All around him flights and tips pierced the air, lager slopped onto the linoleum, and cheers and jeers broke out from teams of workmates. Jed stood alone on a team of one in the corner, doubles and singles slim on the board as he squinted through the fag smoke to get his aim. The strangers in the pub had been friendly enough, raising their pints in greeting and inviting him to join their team, but they were just that: strangers. Jed had only one friend in Derry.
The dart barrel flew from his fingers, the tip precariously clinging to the thin metal edge of the bull’s-eye. Jed froze. If the dart held on for six seconds, the bull’s-eye was his! He looked around, amazement on his face, and stopped dead at the sight of Paddy, clutching a pint of stout and swaggering towards the rows of dartboards with three of his mates from the factory.
Jed lifted his cowboy hat and waved through the smoke. He fashioned his lips into a smile and made to saunter over, arms outstretched, bygones be bygones, their problem not ours—
“Eff off, you!” Paddy spat across the room, two brazen fingers flipped in Jed’s direction.
Jed quickly looked away. Stunned. Three little words, three letters each, was all it had taken to switch him from liaison officer between the warring factions to a sudden lone henchman for Ursula in that city. He knew better than to approach his brother-in-law and attempt to talk sense. As full of hatred and drink as Paddy probably was, Jed could only imagine scenarios where darts rained down again and again upon his protesting body.
He glanced at his board. The dart had clattered to the linoleum, one second shy of a bull’s-eye. Jed gathered his case and chalk, removed his glove and headed out the door to the pub next door for a much-needed pint.
£ £ £ £
Many were the times Ursula’s fingers reached for the phone, only to shrivel back away from the receiver. Finally, however, she figured fourteen days of fasting were enough to have tempered the rage of the Floods. She wanted to visit her mother.
Ursula pulled her Lexus up to 5 Murphy and scampered up the steps, mortified at the state of the narrow strip of vegetation that was the front garden.
With their lottery winnings having dwindled to almost nothing, the future sale of the house was quickly transforming from a luxury to a necessity. Ursula didn’t begrudge her mother a tenacious hold on life, but her daddy Patrick had succumbed to heart failure more than a decade earlier.
Surely a woman of 85, Ursula thought, who still sucked down thirty fags a day wasn’t long for the grave?
Keys in hand, she made to force her way into the house. She cursed as the key slipped from the keyhole. Ursula tried the key again, then she noticed the shiny silver of the lock. Her heart clenched with shock. Surely that wasn’t a new lock? Who in the name of God...?
Ursula glanced at her watch. Ten to three on a Tuesday. Before Eda had disowned her, Ursula had taken her to Xpressions for a shampoo and set every Tuesday at three. God alone knew what her mother’s hair must looked like now, as Eda hadn’t seen the inside of the hair salon since her release from the hospital three weeks earlier.
Ursula stood on the welcome mat, heart racing, a river of denial forcing her to try the key again. The lock most certainly was no longer a match for her key.
Ursula snatched the knocker and pounded with short, sharp strokes. The house of her childhood, normally so welcoming and sweet (if damp), seemed to mock her with every moment of silence that passed.
Ursula stepped gingerly around a tree of nettles and peered through the net curtains at the darkened front room. A teacup sat atop a doily on the coffee table. Her eyes widened as they took in the halter tops and hooded jumpers flung over the settee, the glossy celebrity magazines strewn on the carpeting, the rolling papers and empty lager tins scattered across the end tables. Their presence screamed Dymphna and Eoin. Ursula winced as a throbbing in her temples threatened to overwhelm.
She heaved her body over, grasping the flap of the letterbox, and peered into the hallway.
“Mammy!” Ursula called through the letterbox. “Mammy! Mammy!”
She hauled out her mobile and punched in Eda’s number.
“The British Telecom customer you are trying to call has had their number switched to ex-directory...”
Unlisted! Ursula staggered down the steps towards her Lexus and sat in furious silence on the Coach leather, staring with dismay at her twisted features in the rear view mirror. Not a pretty sight, but a sight better than that face with which she was about to greet Eda in Xpressions. She revved up, and the car roared through the city walls.
£ £ £ £
It was as if his auntie Ursula had tiptoed into their front room, bent over the settee and snatched a fistful of notes from his mother’s open handbag!
Padraig, still shuddering at the indignity of it all as only the very young can, banged on the McDaid letterbox and stood back, nervous on the front step. He hid the carrier bag demurely behind his back, the bottles banging against his calves. Mrs. McDaid pried the door open a crack, and her eyes hardened.
“What the feck are ye blackening wer doorstep for?” she barked, wiping away a stray hair.
“Is Declan in, hi? Can he come out?”
“Naw, he kyanny. He’s after being picked up by the peelers and hauled off to the station for setting light to that post office on the Lecky Road. I don’t suppose ye had a hand with that?” She glared at him with suspicion.
“N-naw,” Padraig said. Mrs. McDaid seemed to believe him; even a Moorside wane couldn’t lie that well.
<
br /> “Yer brother Eoin,” she said, “he’s not with the Filth, is he? A bit of a Proddy lover?”
“N-naw,” Padraig said, confused.
She seemed unconvinced, then sighed.
“Clear on off outta here, then, ye manky rowdie! Ye’re making me late for me shift at the packing plant!”
Mrs. McDaid slammed the door in his startled face. Padraig stood alone amongst the overgrown front garden with his bag of petrol bombs.
Whereas once he had been reluctant to cause harm to others, to go against the teachings of the Church, he now thanked Declan for giving him the method and means of retribution. The fact that his mate was at that moment helping the police with their enquiries didn’t deter him from his plans at hand. His hatred for Ursula welled. Padraig turned, Top-Yer- Trolly bag swinging, and headed off alone to the Barnetts.
£ £ £ £
Ursula burst into Xpressions, catching sight of Dymphna on the bench at the window. The slapper was flicking through a Woman’s Weekly with not a care in the world, Siofra chomping on a biscuit at her side. They smirked into their cups of tea as their aunt entered.
“Ursula!” Molly said with a turn, curling tongs in hand, slight annoyance in her smile.
“Where’s me mammy?” Ursula demanded over the blare of Radio One and a lone blow-dryer.
The junior stylists all stiffened in their poses around the clientele. Pensioners in smocks and highlight caps and tinfoil wraps turned their heads. Dymphna leaped up and took a defiant step towards her aunt.
“Who’s doing me mother’s hair?” Ursula demanded.
The dryer was silenced. A junior stylist slunk guiltily against the relaxers.
“None of yer effin business!” Dymphna jumped in, pulling herself up to her full height and glowering over Ursula.
Molly scurried over, uttering a vaguely worried “Ursula...”
“Tell me where she is!” Ursula roared into Dymphna’s sneering face. “Or by God I’ll clatter the—”
“She’s in the loo,” Molly hissed with a quick nod to the back of the salon. “Ursula, we don’t want any bother—”
“Yer mammy put ye up to this!” Ursula tore into Dymphna. “Changing the locks on 5 Murphy, refusing me access to me own house, changing the phone number, confusing an aul pensioner 85 years of age who hasn’t a clue what’s going on in the world!”
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 18
