Jed felt his anger veer from his wife and barrel towards her family. He had been counting down the days until his departure, but he now realized circumstances had intervened, and he would never take that flight of fantasy to the creature comforts of Wisconsin. That evening he had arrived at a different world, a place where flight was no longer an option.
“Now,” Jed said in a moment of sacrifice, his triumphant homecoming to Wisconsin fading into a pipe dream, “I am.”
COMPENSATION
CHAPTER EIGHT
MOIRA, THE ELDEST FLOOD daughter, gawked at her father over the dinner table as if he had just demanded she prance stone bollocks naked before the Bleeding Heart of Jesus above the fireplace.
“Ye kyanny be serious!” she gawped. “Ye had me rushed over from Malta to help ye out, like, and haven’t I been help enough? Filling out them compensation papers, getting ye Legal Aid for a case that surely would’ve been thrown out of court without me help? Ye’ve already a protective steps order in place, barring wer Ursula from entering a house she owns.”
“Ach, what’s the sense in having a sister win the lotto if we kyanny squeeze her for all she’s worth?” Paddy roared through a mouth stuffed with cabbage. “She’s minted, the bitch! Minted!”
The Floods were never in the habit of ringing Moira as it was a long-distance call and she was a filthy perv. But as Roisin was back in Hawaii, the man of the house had been at his wit’s end as to how to proceed. As the first-born daughter, Moira was the only one blessed with an education, and although she had struggled to pass her finals and had barely qualified for her job as a health and safety inspector, she was the family intellectual, the only one of the lot who wouldn’t spend their life ringing up steak and kidney pies or drawing the brew. So Paddy had demanded she race home.
Flanked in a leather peacoat and austere jumper, a pair of dour spectacles jammed on the bridge of her nose, Moira had been terrible handy, but now her daddy wanted more.
She had helped them batter Padraig around a bit to make his injuries worse than they were, and that had been bad enough—Moira hadn’t been able to look the doctors at Altnagelvin in the eye—but now they were expecting her to cross the line even further. With Lily McCracken, of all people!
“Get you up to that hospital again and do as you’re told!” Paddy growled.
“The tears of joy should be fairly lashing down yer face,” Fionnuala warned, “for the chance to help the family out. Ye should be grateful we can look ye in the eye, even, the disgrace ye’ve brought upon wer good name!”
“But—”
“Yer sins of the flesh have barred ye eternally from the pearly gates, but ye can still use em to help feed yer family!”
“What youse are asking me to do, but...” Moira pleaded. “Haven’t youse evidence enough? If the peelers were to find out, it’ll be me that gets sent down! Have ye any clue what them in the nick do to health and safety inspectors?”
“As if the goings on in a weemin’s prison cell block wouldn’t be heaven on earth for the likes of you!” Fionnuala snarled.
Moira wilted.
“I'm only stating the bleedin obvious here!” Fionnuala snapped, daring her daughter to contradict.
Moira helplessly inspected her plate of ham hocks.
“But me and Lily...We’ve not been together since—”
All eyes looked up from their plates, including those of the youngest wanes gobbling down on the sitting room carpet before the telly.
“What’s Moira on about, Mammy?” Seamus asked.
A throbbing lacerated Fionnuala’s heaving brain. She brought a trembling hand to her forehead.
“Turn that flippin telly up now!” Fionnuala barked at her two youngest. “See if I haveta tell youse again, ye’re gonny be eating that cabbage through bleedin arseholes!”
Seamus and Siofra stared up in alarm, Siofra struggling to recall when her mother had become riveted by Bob the Builder. But she did as instructed until the cartoon character’s voice shuddered from the speakers. Fionnuala pointed accusingly at Siofra.
“And you, wee girl, learn that effin Act of Contrition by heart, or yer teeth are to be gnawing on yer small intestine! We’re gonny be at the church in half an hour!”
Siofra turned to her My First Missal, the spine of which had yet to be cracked.
“Listen to me, wee girl” Paddy said finally to Moira. “If you don’t get yer pervy arse up to Altnagelvin, I'm gonny be telling all me mates on the dart team what filthy deeds that Lily McCracken gets up to, and heaven help her any time one of them chances upon her when they’re wheeled into the A and E!”
He glared threateningly. Moira’s mind, schooled for logic, spun at the madness of it all, but she finally gave a grudging nod.
“I’ll do it, aye,” she sighed.
Paddy and Fionnuala deflated with relief.
“Right girl ye are,” Paddy said, stopping just short of touching her hand.
“I'm clearing away the table,” Fionnuala said as happily as she could, scraping her chair across the floor and marching in the scullery with a handful of plates.
There by the clotheshorse full of dripping athletic gear she attacked a fag and gobbled down some ibuprofen. Her wanes were all disgraces, she thought. Thank merciful Christ Moira had somehow persuaded the court to rush their case through the system; it was due before the magistrate in a mere three days. Then the family perv could feck off back to Malta and slurp twats to her heart’s content.
Fionnuala glanced down at her pack of unfiltered Rothman’s, where the government health warning screamed out at her: Smoking Can Damage The Sperm And Decreases Fertility. She thought of Dymphna and curled her lip. Such a pity a daughter who sucked down thirty a day hadn’t been affected, nor the father, whoever in the Waterside that may be.
Fionnuala flipped over the pack and read: Smoking When Pregnant Harms Your Baby. She raised an eyebrow. How to convince Dymphna to suck down forty a day...? she wondered. Well, at least that shameless tart was engaging in heterosexual activities.
Tiring of the fearful eyes inspecting her, Moira sighed and got up from the table.
“I’d best make me way up to Altnagelvin, then,” she said.
“And no sins of the flesh in the labs, mind,” Paddy said.
In the front hall, Moira fastened the buttons of her leather peacoat, dreading the thought of confronting Lily at the hospital and begging her former bed partner to do the madness her family demanded.
Moira dearly loved her hometown on the Foyle, but couldn’t help feeling a quiet dread walking down its unenlightened streets, the same dread she felt when she thought of following her family into obscurity or notoriety. As a schoolgirl, once her lesbian tendencies had dawned on her, she knew that if she stayed in Derry, she’d be fecked, and certainly not literally. There were no gay men, let alone liberals or lesbians, in that hardened town, where every male purchase of a Kylie Minogue CD was greeted with a raised eyebrow by the shop assistant at the Top-Yer-Trolly.
Moira finally realized one day she would be a shriveled old pensioner spinster before she might chance upon another lone bull dyke shuffling along to an unknown Melissa Etheridge b-side in the depths of the Craglooner. Moira had announced her plans to emigrate to university in Malta the next week. And here she was, back, dodging suspicion over plates of ham hocks and cabbage.
Moira flinched at the sudden sight of Siofra staring up at her, a startling gleam in her eyes. Siofra held up the spotless My First Missal.
“Mammy’s taking me to that flash new church in Gleneagles to say me first confession. I need to cleanse me soul before I can take the body of Christ into me mouth.”
“St Brigid’s, ye mean? Why’s she hauling ye all the way over to Gleneagles? St. Moluag’s is only down the road, sure!”
“I haven’t a clue. Anyroad...” Siofra tossed aside the missal and shoved a well-worn catalog under Moira’s nose. “I need this Maria Theresa gown from Italy, and this Andromeda veil on page forty-
one. Me communion’s in two weeks, and ye’re raking in loads over there in Malta. Mammy and Daddy are always going on about it. Ye kyanny expect me to mortify myself in that boggin frock ye had on ye years ago, sure! Ye can surely afford to get me a new outfit with all them quids ye have from been gainfully employed in a profession, like.”
Moira gazed down in sudden alarm. What was her family like? Her parents had already raided her handbag the moment she had stepped off the plane.
“Moira? Four hundred quid only!” Siofra demanded.
Her weekly pay packet could be stretched only so far.
“Eoin’s raking in loads from them drug deals of his,” Moira said. “His pockets is bulging! Ask him, sure!”
“Aye, but...”
Siofra felt silent. Nobody had thought to tell Moira she had handed over her big brother’s stash to the coppers.
Moira buttoned her coat with finality. Siofra watched her final hope for upmarket communion gear plodding out the door with an unfurled umbrella. She threw the catalog on the floor and stomped atop it in a fit, bitter tablets being forced down her young throat at every turn where the gown was concerned. Padraig sauntered down the stairs.
“What’s up with you, hi?” he asked.
“Where’s yer mate Declan live?” Siofra suddenly wanted to know.
“Declan McDaid? Ye mean—?”
“Aye, the stoke who almost killed me mammy.”
“Ye fancy him, do ye?”
Siofra shrugged; she’d admit to anything, no matter how grotesque. “Aye.”
“It don’t matter where he lives. He was hauled off to that Youthful Offenders Center in Belfast last week for torching a Post Office, sure.”
“Just give us his address or I'm telling me mammy about them filthy websites ye visit when ye think we’s all outta the house!”
Padraig dutifully recited the address. Siofra thanked him and skipped upstairs, pausing to scoop the catalog from the floor and glance lovingly at page forty one.
£ £ £ £
Was it the morning sickness or the six pints of Smithwicks she had guzzled with Bridie the night before?
Dymphna wrenched open the bog door and spewed down the toilet bowl. Her head hanging into the porcelain, Dymphna caught sight of the Rothman’s still lodged in her fingers. She coughed and gulped and wiped tears from her eyes. The fag shot to her lips. She inhaled greedily.
Outside on the landing, Eda, swaddled in a pink bathrobe, floated regally down to the front hall in the luxury of her electronic chairlift. Initially she had been terrified of those journeys, but now they were the highlight of her day.
The Flood matriarch teetered under the strip lighting of the scullery for a cuppa, shuffling through the ChipKebab wrappers and staring around in dismay. Empty milk bottles littered the scullery table. Rusty tins of beans and peas, crusty socks, Boyzone fan magazines, moldy rolls and Rizla tobacco rolling papers darkened the table and its surrounding chairs. Eoin had recently begun rolling his own fags. Them new fags of his smell wile odd, Eda thought.
Atop the cooker splattered with chip grease and hardened cheese lumps sat pots piled up to the grill. Before the Hotpoint sat a damp pile of Eda’s laundry, which Dymphna had unceremoniously tugged from the washer the night before. That had been before Eoin had burst in with tins of lager and a gang of his rowdy hooligan mates. All hours, they had been up to.
Eda lifted the counter top kettle to check the water level. Empty, of course. She hauled it over to the sink to fill it. Every piece of delft she possessed permanently resided there now, rank and fermenting and apparently awaiting the touch of her own hand to be washed. Eda maneuvered the edges of the plates to fill the tap.
The Flood matriarch sat—once again—alone in the scullery with only a cup of sweet tea and her slightly jumbled memories as company. Her lifelong home had been transformed into an after-hours honky-tonk for the stokes and the junkies of Derry City. She took a sip and shrank into herself. Fat droplets of rain shook the window.
The ceiling above her suddenly throbbed into life. The fringes of the scullery light jumped in time to the pounding bass. Eda sat in fear, a withered hand clasped to her brittle collarbone.
“Coz you’re ride on time, ri-ri-ride on time! C-coz you’re ride on time, ri-ri-ride on time!” screamed some colored woman from the boombox in Dymphna’s bedroom.
The letterbox clanked, and Eda braced herself. She tottered uncertainly towards the door and squinted at the frosty pane. Shadowy figures lurked outside. Eda struggled to undo the locks and open the door.
“I’m a firestarter! Twisted firestarter!” roared a sudden devilish voice from the depths of Dymphna’s room.
Five hardened youths clutching lager tins smirked in at her from the lashing rain. Their football jerseys and scalped heads and scarred faces revealed their profession: brew-drawing junkies. Eda set her lips. They showed up at the house at all hours of the day and night now, pushing past her and demanding their drugs. Eoin always left a stash in the calico cat on the china cabinet, and Eda had to dole them out and collect the money when her grandson wasn’t home. She had already exhausted the supply Eoin had given her for the day. Eda wrapped her furry pink bathrobe around her exposed neck and peered out at them.
“Are ye right there, missus?” slurred one.
A trainer slipped into the jamb of the door. One of the lads cocked his head, mock shock on his face.
“Are ye listening to the Prodigy, woman?”
A reference, she supposed, to the harrowing noise that continued to blare from Dymphna’s bedroom.
“At yer age?”
“Aye, in her early hundreds!”
“Dirty aul cunt!”
They erupted in laughter.
“Is Eoin in, hi?” asked another, teeth chattering in the driving rain.
“Youse can clear on off outta here; there’s none of them filthy drugs left the day!”
“Let us in, woman!”
She was frozen in terror at her own front door, at a loss as to what to do.
“Naw! I’m not letting the likes of youse into me house!” she said, struggling to add an uncharacteristic edge to her voice.
“Sure, it’s pelting down, woman!” cried one. “Ye’re to let us in before we catch wer deaths!”
Eda knew the type: those who wouldn’t take no for an answer. They would sully her doorstep until she filled their pockets with Ecstasy. Although she was hard pressed to recall what her name was, it came to her that there was an emergency stash hidden under the mountain of soiled undies in Eoin’s bedroom.
“I’ll go fetch youse some,” Eda relented. “Youse’re not to step one foot in, or I'm gonny be calling 999!”
“Crabbit aul bitch!”
Filthy mingin rowdies.
Eda mounted her beloved chairlift with as much dignity as she could muster and located the Up button.
“Merciful Christ! The aul slapper has a bleedin fecking funfair in her house, so she does!” came from the crack of the door.
Eda fought back the tears as roars of laughter echoed up the stairs.
“Ye got a roller coaster in there as well, missus?”
As she inched full of fraught towards the landing, a hand slipped through the door and smacked the rosary beads hanging on the hallway stand.
“Leave me rosary be, youse!” she implored.
Guffaws erupted anew.
“Dymphna! Dymphna!” she wailed, but the radio drowned her cries.
Captive halfway up the staircase, Eda pushed frantically at button after button to get some speed. Both the chairlift and her body shuddered, wheezed, then ground to a halt.
“Feck this for a game of soldiers. I'm ravenous. Let’s see what the aul cunt’s got in the fridge.”
The door flew open and in they trailed, dripping, through the front hall and into the scullery to rampage.
“Out! Outta me house, youse!” Eda squealed.
The old woman attacked the gadgety buttons with her claw, scraping an
d pounding at their confusing technology. A fuzzy slipper shot from her foot and pirouetted down the stairs. The chair lurched to life, mechanical malfunction spinning out of control, swiveling sharply to the right, pounding her into the wall again and again, Eda’s heart rattling against her breastbone.
“Tins of Smithwick!” came from the kitchen. “Fecking dead on!”
“Mary Mother of God! Help me, youse!” Eda screamed through clacking dentures, grappling the armrests and careening forward as she plowed into the wall in a jerking, ever increasing frenzy. Half her joints locked, the other half jittered. Clanking and crashing roared from the scullery.
“Help me, dear Lord! Help me!”
But the Lord was busy elsewhere.
£ £ £ £
“Don’t get riled when you’re up there in that dock, whatever you do,” Ms. Murphy said in the offices of McMurphy & Hennessey. The solicitor flashed Ursula a look of warning.
Ursula was taken aback. This jumped-up wee start, fresh out of McGee University with a diploma under her arm and the attitude to match, telling her elders how to behave! As if she knew all about the world, and her with the spots still cluttering her face!
“That wee hooligan Padraig Flood tried to set me house ablaze, and I'm expected to keep calm?” Ursula snorted. “Can ye tell me how?”
“I don’t know how, but just make sure you do. Roaring about the plaintiffs to the magistrates won’t do you any favors.”
“A fine lot of help you are,” Ursula snorted. “For all the pounds we’ve thrown at ye, ye could at least give us some advice.”
“I just have, Mrs...” she quickly consulted a paper in her hand.
“Barnett.”
“I was wanting someone with a bit more experience,” Ursula announced with a harrumph. “Not some wane barely outta diapers. No offense, mind.”
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 20
