“Little and not so little brats from Hell, brilliantly staged, a surreal feat, gloriously dark and comically tragic. It’s compulsive reading,” Ashen Venema, Course of Mirrors
“Consummate black humor, skillfully crafted characters, inventive descriptions and a smart plot,” Iva Polansky, Fame and Infamy
“Humor, the greatest weapon known to man when it comes to tackling institutional bigotry or social inequality. And Hansen takes that weapon and uses it like a pallet knife on this excellent canvas,” James McPherson, Lucifer and Auld Lang Syne
“Bitingly, bitterly humorous. A strong voice and flowing prose, with a good pace and an idiosyncratic take on a bleak world,” J.S. Watts, A Darker Moon
“The dialogue simply sparkles. Brilliantly funny even while a tad disturbing,” John O’Brien, Other Face
“An absolute pleasure to read. The dialogue is spot-on, and the imagery stark and vivid. Shifts gears from the tragic to the hilarious with ease,” R.A. Baker, Rayna of Nightwind
“Hansen has mastered the art of believable colloquial dialogue and his descriptive narrative puts you right there in the scene. The characters jump off the page and the read entertains. Yet another example of his excellent work,” Delcan Conner, Russian Brides
“A black comedy indeed. A gift for dialogue and the ability to weave an intriguing tale,” Katy Christie, No Man No Cry
“Puts you right there in that world with a masterly confidence, and the characters and setting are sketched with deft economy,” NSL Lee, Chosen
“A masterful piece of work that deserves as much praise as can be piled upon it. A supreme writer with talent in buckets, buckets of talent and a gift that can never be achieved, only owned,” Andrew Skaife, God, the Son and the Holy Dwarf
HAND IN THE TILL
GERALD HANSEN
HAND IN THE TILL
Gerald Hansen
Copyright © Gerald Hansen 2011
Published by Mint Books
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the Internet and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is accidental.
TO MOM AND DAD AGAIN
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”—George Bernard Shaw
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM EXTREMELY GRATEFUL to all who gave me such support for the first book, and to those who urged me on to whip this book into shape. I have been truly blessed. As usual, thanks so much for the editing and commentary to Erin Lynch and Gosia Kurek. And to the truly marvelous Colin Quinn and Lorna Matcham (my dear ExPatMaddie), who gave me the confidence and drive to continue, I thank you both from the bottom of my heart. Also very, very supportive were many brilliant authors on Authonomy.com, and first in line is Kate Rigby (you are a star for all you’ve done for me, and an excellent author!), followed very closely by Cait Coogan (I really am so thankful you sent that email), Lisa Candelaria Bartlett and Frank Robert Anderson. Thanks for gems of innovation, information and/or wisdom to Steven McEnrue (it all started with you), Ross Erin ‘Louboutin’ Martineau, Laurence ‘O’Clock’ Martinetian, Jeferson Medeiros, Anthony Darden, Niketta ‘Fingernails’ Scott, Leslie Ross, Estee Adoram, Miguel Tabone and James Zimmit (I guess Malta will be in the next book), Matt Kaminiecki, Maciej Rumprecht for the Polish tips, and Tony ‘Rapel’ Ramsey for listening to me babble on and on. Thank you excellent illustrators and great friends Swan Park and HyeJeong Park, and photographer supreme Marcin Kaliski. And of course, thanks so much to all my students and the marvelous people at both Manhattan Language and the Olive Tree/Comedy Cellar, NYC.
HOW TO PRONOUNCE THE NAMES (by popular demand):
Fionnuala: Fin-noo-lah
Ursula: Uhr-suh-la
Dymphna: Dimf-nah
Padraig: Paw-drig
Siofra: Shee-frah
Seamus: Shay-mus
Grainne: Grohn-yah
CHAPTER ONE
NO THUGS LOITERED IN the damp beyond the windshield, but a syringe and soiled condoms littered the pavement. William Skivvins tutted his distaste as he parked his BMW on the cobblestones next to a burnt-out phone booth. It was covered with misspelled graffiti of kinky sex and hatred for Queen Elizabeth II.
He maneuvered his body to shield the vulgarity from his pride and joy, nine-year-old Victoria, sitting in the passenger seat with a face on her most would slap with glee. She was nodding that head and tapping her foot to some pop tune of the day blaring from her iPod headphones. William tapped her on the shoulder. Victoria heaved an inward sigh and turned down the volume.
“I’d feel better if you came into the shop with me, petal,” her father said. He had to collect the previous day's takings.
“It’s no bother, daddy. I’ll stay here.”
Victoria flashed him a smirk he mistook for a smile, then cranked the volume again. William ran a hand over his cropped hair and the blue tie which complemented his brown suit. For once, he had something to worry about more than the presence of germs: leaving his daughter defenseless in that hardened neighborhood of broken beer bottles and torrid murals of political violence which favored British tanks barreling over mobs of fleeing Catholics.
The 35-year-old entrepreneur owned five Sav-U-Mors, grim corner shops scattered across Derry City which sold everything from overpriced turnips to generic tampons. This one in the Moorside was the most grim. As members of the privileged Protestant class, William and his daughter were in enemy territory.
“Keep the door locked, then,” he instructed in his precise voice which, together with his weekly manicures, ensured all male shelf-stackers and couriers kept their backs firmly to a wall when in his presence. “And don’t utter a word to anyone. You know what they’re like around here.”
“Okay, daddy,” Victoria said ‘sweetly,’ her blonde asymmetrical designer hairdo bobbing. “Oh, it’s so hot here in the car.”
She wriggled out of her school blazer, even more confident now that her pressed white shirt made her anonymous.
“Cheerio, then.”
William exited the car. The moment he rounded the corner, keys flicking in his hand, Victoria was out the door. Her pert nose sniffed the rank air for action, Lady Gaga the soundtrack to her mission of violence. She was a marauder in a dangerous land, seeking casual violence against the indigenous people on that side of the River Foyle, those who were less cultured, less intelligent, less human than Victoria; her schoolmates, her uncles and cousins, her grandparents had taught her all about them, those who made up three quarters of the city and insisted the Pope was Christ on Earth.
Derry, Northern Ireland was a divided city, where the Catholic majority and the Protestant minority had spent decades waging war against each other. Although the Peace Process had begun years earlier, and the British paratroopers patrolling the streets with semi-automatic weapons and land-rovers were but a memory of the “Troubles” of the ‘70s and ‘80s, it was taking perceptibly longer for the two communities to harmonize.
They drank in separate pubs, shopped in separate supermarkets, got their perms in separate salons. But sometimes a step down the wrong street in the area found one facing a member of the opposing religion. And though Derry had been transformed into a most handsome showcase of European history, culture and technological progress, and both sides of the community were experiencing an unprecedented growth in financial luxury and sophistication, the Moorside seemed mired in a desperate past, the Euros pouring in from the EU having passed it by. This was where Victoria now hunted.
Her father had parked aside a row of ramshackle shops that Victoria presumed these particularly disadvantaged people visited for thei
r paltry provisions. Her eyes eagerly scanned the doorways of the butcher’s, the news-agent's, the chemist’s, but there were no signs of life anywhere except an old drunk passed out against the wall of the off-license. Victoria supposed on this side of town few people had money to actually shop. She skipped over the tattered pant legs and considered the tramp. She had heard that in America teens set them alight and laughed at their flapping, burning bodies, but she had no matches.
She was heading to the car to get some when she heard a scrabbling from around the corner of the butcher’s. She peered down the alley. Under clotheslines riddled with forgotten fashion, a girl with lifeless black hair and a yellow hair clip clawed glumly through a garbage can. The girl, about the same age and vaguely malnourished, Victoria thought, had a frayed PowerPuff Girls handbag dangling from her left elbow and clutched a black plastic bag that looked half-full of the spoils of her scavenging. Victoria could barely control her delight: the perfect victim. She muted “Poker Face” and went in for the kill.
“Look at the shape of you!” she snorted. “Rummaging through the rubbish like a wild beast! You’re a disgrace to the human race! Coke or Pepsi?”
Siofra Flood froze with one hand in the garbage can, a look of mortification and dumb fear on her face. It was the question every Derry schoolgirl dreaded. The wrong answer could leave her with a clawed face, bruised lip, or tattered clothes covered with dog feces.
“I’m asking you a question, you vulgar creature,” Victoria barked, taking a step closer. “Did you get your ears from a rubbish bin as well?”
“I heard ye!” Siofra replied with a slight tremble; the girl was a full foot taller than her, and had an almost demonic gleam in her eyes. “And which one are ye, hi? Coke or Pepsi?”
“Answer me first, or you’ll feel my fist against your nose!”
They squared off amongst the broken beer bottles in the alley like two starved Rottweilers given a sniff at fresh meat. The question being asked had nothing to do with soda, but religion. Coke or Pepsi? meant Catholic or Protestant? Friend or foe?
Victoria was obviously Pepsi: not only did she have a West Brit accent and the How Great Thou Art school’s gray and purple striped skirt, the white headphones trailing from her ears screamed their extravagance; few girls from the Moorside could afford an iPod. Siofra slipped her bulky CD player on its strap behind her back in shame.
“Scrounging through the rubbish for food to eat?” Victoria sneered. “You must be Coke, then; a filthy Catholic bitch!”
"Me granny Heggarty made me two boiled eggs for me breakfast,” Siofra insisted, her cheeks burning. She had eaten one piece of butterless toast, burnt.
“What are you looking for, then, new clothes to wear? It looks like you need them to me, what with that bargain bin frock and those ratty tights hanging from your skeletal legs. Purple and blue don’t even match, you know.”
“Me...me mammy has me collect tins from the rubbish every time I'm out,” Siofra finally admitted. “She’s three months to live from the cancer that’s eating her brain.” Her guilt-trip comeback didn’t seem to work. “And ye’d better leave me be, as she be’s working off the last of her shifts at the Sav-U-Mor, right around the corner!”
She pointed feverishly out of the alley.
Victoria was surprised, but not shocked: in a city that small, everybody and everything seemed related to everyone and everything else, so such coincidences abounded. But she would never reveal that her father owned the Sav-U-Mor, let alone that he was probably speaking to Siofra’s mother even as Victoria attacked her. And Victoria was certainly going to attack Siofra.
“If your mammy works there, it’s odds-on you’re a filthy Fenian,” Victoria decided with a growl.
“And ye're a Proddy cow! With a face like a busted cabbage!”
“Your mammy can’t save you now.”
Victoria advanced quickly across the mucky path of weeds. Siofra pitched the garbage bag at her. Victoria jerked to the right, the bag plunged to the ground, and empty tin cans spilled out. Victoria lunged, grabbing a handful of Siofra’s black hair and giving it a vicious tug. Siofra squealed as the hair clip popped off her head and clattered to the ground. Her fingers scrabbled against Victoria’s face, but the nubs of gnawed fingernails had little effect. Siofra grabbed the headphones and tugged them from Victoria’s ears.
The PowerPuff Girls handbag flew through the air and cracked against Victoria’s head. Roaring for revenge, Victoria dealt Siofra swift kicks in the shin, then grappled her shoulders and threw her slight body against the garbage can. Siofra's head bounced off the plastic, and she stumbled to the mud. She struggled to prise herself from the filth and deal the girl a smack, but Victoria towered over her, and her pink-painted claws shoved Siofra back into the mud.
“Let’s see what you have in that handbag of yours before I clatter the living shite out of you!” Victoria sang, maneuvering the purse off Siofra’s jerking elbow.
Siofra whimpered in the dirt, and Victoria dug through the scant contents. It was British imperial history repeating: one who had so much pillaging from one who had so little. Victoria retrieved a mango lip gloss, a bobby pin and a fifty pence piece.
“Pure rubbish!” She tossed them to the ground, then delved into the handbag once again, tugging out a pack of 10 unfiltered Rothman cigarettes. Disgust registered on her face as if she held a handful of human teeth.
“Just as my daddy says.” Victoria’s voice rang with a righteousness at odds with her age. “All you Catholics smoke and drink yourselves into early graves.”
“Them fags is for me granny Heggarty!” Siofra cried. “She sent me to the news-agent's for to get em for her!”
“Likely story,” Victoria snorted, making to stomp on the pack with her sparkly Jellies.
“Naw! Me granny'll murder me!”
Siofra moaned in dismay as she watched the packet disappear under Victoria’s heel. Victoria tossed the handbag aside, then threw herself on Siofra, grabbing the girl's spindly arms and pinning them over her head against the dried curry which trailed down the side of the garbage can. Siofra struggled to break free, and out of the corner of her eye spied a stinging nettle sprouting from a crack in the wall and swaying inches from her tormentor’s twisted face. Siofra jerked her body to the left, and the leaves were two inches, one inch, from Victoria's pastel cheekbone.
Unaware, Victoria wiped the spittle from her lips and hissed, little fang-teeth bared: “Filthy, fag-smoking, Coke-slurping—”
Victoria started as she caught sight of something glinting on Siofra's flailing left arm. Confusion flickered in her eyes for a second—what she was seeing was impossible!—and they honed in on it, verifying its existence. It was happily wrapped around the little creature’s wrist, taunting her with its presence on one so undeserving. While Siofra clawed the air, trying to wrench Victoria’s head into the nettles, Victoria erupted into anger.
“Give me that now, you hateful toerag!”
“Naw! Naw! Not me Hannah Montana watch!”
Siofra’s wails for mercy echoed down the alley, and Victoria's fist sailed through the air to stave her head in.
CHAPTER TWO
THIRTY YARDS AWAY AND AS MANY MINUTES EARLIER
FIONNUALA FLOOD’S BLEACHED ponytails flew as she punched prices into the till, nerves and cheap bracelets jangling. The old aged pensioner hauled her purchases from the shopping basket onto the mini-conveyor belt and blabbered on into her face. Fionnuala’s eyes flickered in panic from the goods to the clock. Nineteen minutes after eight. Mr. Skivvins was to arrive at half past, and she still had so much to do.
“...A bloody disgrace, so them hooligans is,” Mrs. O’Mahoney whinged, “lounging around on me garden wall, outta their minds with drink and drugs, ringing me doorbell at all hours of the day and night, laughing at me infirmity and shoving dog shite through me letter box. Stepped on some the other week and ground it into me hallway carpeting, so I did, and nothing seems to be getting it out, not o
ld coffee grounds nor mayonnaise nor wet teabags mixed with fag ash. Pure desperate, so it is.”
“Och dearie me, aye, Mrs. O’Mahoney, a disgrace indeed,” Fionnuala rattled off with mechanical sympathy, nod after nod, shoving the Spaghetti Hoops, the corn pads, the light bulbs into a plastic bag. She grabbed for a can and her heart fell in sudden dread. It was labeled Brussels Sprouts. Fionnuala knew it contained anything but. What she had once called her Cash Cow Cans were now the bane of her existence. She grabbed the can off the counter and tossed it underneath.
“Ye kyanny eat them Brussels sprouts; them is past their sell-by date,” she explained.
Mrs. O’Mahoney was surprised. “I’ll get meself another tin,” she decided, making to stagger over to the shelf.
“The entire shipment’s gone off! I was just about to clear them from the shelves when ye came in.”
“How about them carrots, then?”
“All wer vegetables! Unfit for human consumption! That’s ten pounds seventy-three pence ye owe me.”
Mrs. O’Mahoney clicked open her coin purse to count out seventy-three pence. Fionnuala seethed inwardly and forced the bag at the woman.
“Never mind paying! Take the lot on me.”
“Och, sure, I kyanny allow ye to—”
“Aye, ye can!”
Mrs. O’Mahoney’s field of wrinkles broke into a smile.
“That’s wile civil of ye. Pop a pack of fags in the bag as well, then, would ye love? Rothman’s unfiltered. And I want a pack of twenty.”
“Och, for the love of...”
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