“Ach, sure, don’t get yer knickers in a twist, Ursula,” Dymphna smirked. “Ye—”
“Me knickers?! I wear em at least, ye shameless slapper! Yers is around yer ankles in the car park of the Top-Yer-Trolly more times than not!”
“Eff off, ye boggin aul geebag, ye!”
Ursula rose her hand to clatter Dymphna, handbag swinging from her elbow.
“Calm you down now, Ursula,” Molly said firmly, grabbing Ursula’s arm and pulling her towards the manicure table.
Ursula shook Molly off and barreled into her niece.
“Moving ye into wer house—my house! Flimmin squatters! And the nerve of ye, kidnapping yer granny and dragging the poor aul one here, to me very own hairdressers!”
Eda shuffled out of the loo, the roar of the toilet in her wake, hand clutching the wall for support. In her blue smock, heating cap still on her head, lips parting at the sight of Ursula scuffling with Molly, Eda bent her head in guilt. Ursula cast a withering look at the perm rods sticking out of her mother’s skull and whipped around to Dymphna.
“Perming yer poor granny’s head!” she gasped.
It had been increasingly difficult for a woman on the wrong side of middle age to maintain a sense of dignity simply struggling through the streets of Derry, overflowing as they were with pale faces screaming their youth out at her every waking hour. To put on a spectacle, however, in front of the young staff of Xpressions, and the bother she was giving Molly who was always so supportive of her, shamed Ursula to no end. But there stood Eda, not a loyal bone in her body, and she had to be confronted, had to be shown up for the traitor she was.
“Why didn’t ye wait for me to take ye to get yer wash and set?” Ursula demanded of her mother. “Why did ye change the locks on wer house on me? Why did ye change yer phone number? How could ye move the likes of themmuns into wer house?”
Eda gaped at her blankly. Ursula wanted to grab hold of those shoulders and shake Eda until she saw sense rise in those milky blue eyes.
“I'm ringing 999!” wailed Dymphna, reaching for her mobile, but her battery was dead.
“Leave me granny be!” sobbed Siofra, scampering over and grabbing Ursula’s leg.
“Get offa me, wane!” Ursula warned, kicking herself free. Siofra tumbled to the black and white tiles and burst into tears, her cassette Walkman skirting across the floor.
Mouths gaped above smocks. Molly reached for the phone to finish off the job Dymphna had started. Ursula gasped.
They were all against her, the old ones in their blue rinses, the junior stylists with their crimpers, her rowdy nieces, her friend Molly, and even her mother. Especially her mother. That betrayal grieved her heart most of all.
Ursula sensed she had done enough damage for a lifetime. She was never to receive the answers to the many questions she had for her mother behaving as she was. She had to make her exit, and swiftly.
“Put you the phone down, Molly,” Ursula sighed. “I'm leaving.”
Molly’s index finger hesitated before the final “9,” and just seeing that hesitation in her mate brought Ursula at last to her senses. She didn’t even know what she had been planning on doing with Eda once she got her home anyway, her hair half permed. To have it out with her, she supposed, but what if Eda wouldn’t even allow her into the house?
“I'm leaving, I’ve said,” Ursula insisted.
Molly placed the phone back into its cradle with obvious relief, and disappointed clucks rang out the length of the salon.
As the door slammed behind her and she breathed in the blustery Derry air, Ursula imagined she could hear the howls of cruel laughter directed at her back, the young ones with the hand held blow dryers sticking the boot in her gut when she was down. She stumbled on the pavement and gazed around wildly, unable to remember for the life of her where she had parked her car.
£ £ £ £
“Mingin aul wrinklie!”
Eoin’s best mates Charlie and Sean had just terrorized a pensioner at the ATM next to the Top-Yer-Trolly, threatening his eyeballs with a sharpened screwdriver and snatching the twenty pound notes out of his hand. Charlie had given the pensioner a kick for good measure, then they were off, sniggering down the cobblestones with the cash for another round of chemical love.
“Ye think Eoin’s at the Craglooner?” Sean asked, slipping the screwdriver in the pocket of his Umbro windbreaker.
“He’s never out of it, sure,” Charlie replied.
“Naw!” Sean said, gripping Charlie’s arm and pointing up to the city walls. “There’s yer man now!”
A tin of lager in his hand, Eoin slouched against a cannon with a man in a purple track suit and loads of gold chains around his neck. Charlie’s eyes narrowed. What was their drug dealer doing nattering away with the most obvious undercover copper in the city?
Playing back the tape he had made in the McDaid’s sitting room, that’s what. Eoin clicked off the cassette player.
“That’s worth a couple of tenners, hi?” Eoin asked, hope in his eyes.
“Fifty pee, more like!” the man in purple and gold said. “You’ve nothing on that tape but them denying any involvement in the Cause, sure!”
“At least ye know I’ve been doing the work I'm meant to do,” Eoin said.
“It’s specific information we’re after, stockpiling locations, references to involvement in past bombings, assorted offenses against the Kingdom and the like. I thought the Special Branch made this clear to you when they picked you up and hauled you off the other week?” He peered more closely at Eoin’s ruddy eyes. “Or are you too arsified on them drugs to comprehend? Or too bloody thick?”
“Ehm, urgh,” Eoin replied, his mind racing.
“You’ve two weeks to supply us with some tidbits of intelligence, or you’re to be hauled into the cop shop and sent down to Magilligan for drug dealing! You can get a cell next to your brother.”
Eoin took a deep breath as a sudden idea entered in skull.
“Are youse interested in aul information as well?” he asked.
“What are you on about?”
“Would youse be satisfied with information on unsolved crimes from years back?”
“Aye!”
“Me auntie...”
Eoin had loved Ursula dearly as a wane, but she was now a changed woman, the scorn of all Derry. He couldn’t pry anything out of the McDaids, but he could string up his auntie Ursula for her past sins, her involvement in the Cause. Maybe then his daddy would let him back into the family home.
“Back in ’73, ye mind them two weemin who...”
“Aye? Aye?!”
Eoin shook his head. It was too early to betray Ursula; she was still family, after all. He hadn’t quite reached that level of desperation. Not quite.
“Naw, nothing,” he said.
The undercover copper was staring at him as if he were off his head. Which maybe he was.
Off in the corner, Charlie and Sean’s stomachs turned as they watched Eoin shake hands with Lucifer. They would be taking their business elsewhere, the fecking Orange-arse licking traitor!
£ £ £ £
Ursula flung her shaken self into the house, all set to unload on Jed a day’s worth of betrayal and heartache, but his flushed and angry face immediately put her on guard. In his hand was a document, the formality of which filled her with dread.
“You’ll never believe what those idiot Floods have gone and done!” he said, waving the paper.
Ursula settled her handbag and reached out. She scanned the print.
“What’s this?” she asked, struggling to comprehend the legalese. “Prohibitive Steps Order?”
“A temporary injunction barring us—you!—from 5 Murphy Crescent.”
“Five Murphy? That’s me own house, but!”
Her eyes fluttered to the bottom of the page. Sworn to me this day by Eda Flood it stated quite clearly.
“Them squiggles at the bottom doesn’t be me mammy’s signature!”
She read on from the top nevertheless.
“Since her lotto win...daughter...lunatic...forced me to sell house to her...roaring abuse...my own house...prisoner...angina...weak heart...forces herself through front door...all hours of day and night... osteoporosis...frail bones...terrible afeared at the sound of the key in the front door...husband Jed Barnett barges in at whim...in my dressing gown....the stench of drink off him...touching me in an improper manner...”
She put down the document, bewildered.
“Me mammy would never say such things!” she said.
“They couldn’t even spell our last name correctly.”
Ursula’s eyes flashed with understanding.
“That Fionnuala and Paddy put her up to this! I'm after coming from 5 Murphy now, and do ye know the flimmin lock’s already changed, and me mammy’s got a new phone number and all. Why are we only getting word of this now?”
“It’s dated three weeks ago,” Jed said. He nodded to the envelope. “They sent it to the wrong address.”
Jed had braced himself for her roars of outrage. Ursula implored up at him instead with shattered eyes and defeated shoulders.
“What am I meant to do now?” she asked dimly.
“Maybe we should phone a solicitor? I know you have joint ownership of the house with Eda, but that was only a technicality because she’s lived there for so long. I’m sure they can’t forbid you from going into your own house. And I’m not even going to begin discussing a defamation of character suit! Touching her in an improper manner, my ass!”
Ursula sank to the refectory crate and cradled her head, the sobs rising through her fingers.
“Why did I fork out all them pound notes?” she cried.
“Yes, dear—”
“Why did I remodel the house?
“Honey—”
“I didn’t do it for any recognition. I piggin well did it because I love her.”
“Let me see if I can get a lawyer on the phone,” Jed said, scuttling uncomfortably off to the phone.
She heard him babbling down the line in the foyer, then lifted her head. She got up to straighten out the Venetian blinds, and through the window she caught a glint of red fluttering across their driveway beside the wheelie bins Jed had left out for the next morning’s rubbish collection.
Ursula hurried outside to investigate, and goggled down at Padraig, calm as you like, with three petrol bombs lined up on the pavement, flicking a match against the box.
“Mary Mother of God!” Ursula gasped.
Flames poured from a dishrag, and Padraig threw his arm back to pelt the flaming bottle at their bay window.
“We hate ye, we hate ye, ye bitch!” he squealed.
“Clear on off outta here, ye bad wee brute, ye!”
“Get offa me Ursula!”
—there was a flash of speeding orange metal, the squeal of brakes, the shriek of rubber, the crunch of wee bones as Padraig’s body flipped over the car hood and disappeared from view.
The car door flew open, and out clambered none other than Mrs. Feeney, safety belt snapping from her body, face ashen. She took an anxious step onto the gravel and a tentative peek over the hood of her Saab.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” she whispered, finger kneading the crucifix that hung across a display of spidery veins.
“Mrs. Feeney! I'm terrible sorry!”
Ursula rushed to her side. The fear in Mrs. Feeney dissolved. She set her jowls, eyes like sharpened blades.
“Ursula Barnett!” Mrs. Feeney harrumphed, wrapping her cardigan around her. “I mighta known you would’ve had a hand in this!”
“It’s me nephew,” Ursula explained. “He just ran out into the road.”
“That bloody wee effin hooligan brute!” Mrs. Feeney roared. “For the love of God, how am I meant to drive responsibly with piggin stokes crawling up from hell and flinging themselves across the street? Darting in and outta the traffic like manky dogs without a home! Answer me that, will ye?”
Both were lingering on the passenger side of the car, putting off the inevitable: the sight of the carnage on the blacktop beyond.
“Padraig!” Ursula called fearfully over the hood, her legs unable to make the trip around the fender. “Are ye right there, love?”
Two little hands, blood-free, crept onto the hood. Then Padraig’s scowling, hate-filled head popped into sight, spitting, “Feck you, Ursula!”
The two adversaries, relieved, rounded the car, Mrs. Feeney inspecting her car for damage. But Padraig was already away, not a bruise on him, the picture of health, roaring abuse and flipping them off.
“Are ye right, love, are ye right?” Ursula kept yelling tears welling, lower lip trembling, as the child raced off.
“It would appear so,” Mrs. Feeney snorted. “The hood of me motor might not be so lucky, but.”
“Ach, maybe it’s right as rain,” Ursula said, hopeful.
More would be the pity, Mrs. Feeney’s face said.
£ £ £ £
Dymphna dismounted the mini-bus and crept through the city streets, mortified in her purple and brown uniform festooned with camels and wee pyramids. She was just passing the Top-Yer-Trolly with something approaching wistfulness when she collided with Mr. O’Toole. He stared her strange outfit up and down and couldn’t control his glee.
“I see ye’ve found another employer fool enough to take ye on,” Mr. O’Toole greeted her. “It beggars belief!”
“Piss off, ye narky toerag!”
Mr. O’Toole kept his ready smirk.
“Any bars, hi?” he asked brightly.
“Aye, stacks of bars. I'm up the scoot, if ye must know!” Dymphna hissed. “And ye’re the father.”
“Catch yerself on,” he snorted, not missing a beat.
“It’s the God’s honest truth!”
“Ach, ye’ve spread yer legs for every shelf stacker of the Top-Yer- Trolly, and for three-quarters of the men under fifty in wer city and all. Ye must think I'm terrible daft. Ye kyanny saddle me with this. Them sausingers ye were nicking, mind, that’s an offense worthy of getting the coppers involved. One flick of me mobile phone, and ye could be hauled away. You’d be hard-pressed to find a fella in this town willing to take ye down the aisle with a criminal record to yer name.”
Dymphna snorted. What wee girl in that town didn’t have a criminal record? Mr. O’Toole inspected his manicured nails.
“Denying yer responsibilities, then?” she asked. “And threatening me and all?”
Mr. O’Toole tutted sadly, then shooed her with his hand.
“On yer way, ye mingin slapper, ye!”
He skipped into the store. Dymphna resisted the urge to spit on the back of his suit. She turned and flounced down the cobblestones, thoughts of revenge crowding her raging mind.
£ £ £ £
“What’s that smell?” Jed asked once Ursula entered the lounge. “Did you have a problem putting gas in the car again? I told you to let the attendants do it for you!”
“That Padraig was here, trying to petrol bomb the house!”
Jed went to the window and peered through the big bands of vertical blinds. A plume of smoke still rolled from the wheelie bin. The bottles had clattered to the grating, the petrol having disappeared into Derry’s sewage system.
Jed’s shock slipped into quiet rage.
“Where’s the little bastard now?” he demanded.
“I clattered him across the head and he ran off into the road and into Mrs. Feeney’s front fender.”
“What? We’re calling the police,” he decided.
“Naw, naw!” Ursula gasped, grabbing his hand that was already reaching for the phone. “We kyanny get the peelers involved!”
“Why not?” he asked, staring down at the receiver as if it were his only refuge from lunacy.
“Ye know bloody well why not! I'm a Catholic from the Moorside. And Padraig’s me nephew, family. I’ll never hear the end of it if we involve the coppers, never be able to hold me hea
d up. Fully nine-tenths of the coppers is Proddy bastards. It’ll be the end of me life here in Derry.”
“You’ve got to be joking,” Jed replied. He suspected her life in that city had already ended the moment the lucky numbers had fallen. How could Ursula not see it herself?
“I'm dead serious,” Ursula said, glaring at him to both contradict and complete his phone call.
“This is ridiculous.” And this from a man who thought little in the world was ridiculous. But he placed the phone back in its cradle.
He hadn’t married lower in life; he had grown up in poverty. Ursula came from the same of the damaged poor, but the Floods were proving a different breed, the politics of poverty quickly degenerating into the politics of envy (and now it seemed the politics of envy were turning into the hooliganism of envy). In Jed’s eye, almost anybody he came into contact with in Derry, from the barmaid down the pub to the lowlifes in the bookies were stuck in a society where every pence piece was duly accounted for, every pound coin envied.
“...and now she kyanny bear to look at me,” Ursula was saying softly, sitting on the sofa and staring into space.
Jed came over to her.
“Ye’re on me side, aren’t ye?” Ursula asked, but this time there was an upward inflection to her question tag.
For once in her life, Ursula truly didn’t know an answer to one of her own questions. Her eyes stared up at him, searching, beseeching support. She reached out to him with her hands, those same hands that had changed the diapers of his children, clutched his own proudly during his promotion ceremonies. The nails were now bitten to the quick, fingers worn with the passage of the years. Her slight frame might now be straining under the weight gained, yet those fingers still maintained their familiar gracefulness. The wedding band was now tarnished, the frail bones of the hand straining against flesh once so smooth.
Condescending, over-opinionated, headstrong, infuriatingly self- righteous, even: Ursula had been all those things and more since he had carried her over the threshold. He had learned how to put up with her nagging throughout the decades of marriage, but now those goddamned Floods were changing his wife. The feisty Ursula that had always been was now in danger of being obscured by a simpering mess unsure of her every move. Much to his own surprise, Jed realized he didn’t want a kinder, gentler Ursula. He wanted the infuriating shrew he had married.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 19
