The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3)

by Gerald Hansen

  Paddy was as ravenous as he was hungover and still reeling from the abuse done to his locker that morning (Hang the Snob at our Job and Flush Cunt) to care about this emergency union meeting. And the irony wasn’t lost on him that everybody else had handed over five quid to the chip van that pulled up to the plant parking lot every day at twelve, while he was saddled with noodles Fionnuala had bought at the Top-Yer-Trolley in a jumbo budget packet of twenty-four.

  “Right, quiet youse down,” said the union representative, Callum Sheeney, and he too was looking at Paddy as if he had some bold-faced cheek to be sat there with genuine members of the working class. “We’ve not much time, so let’s get started, shall we?”

  Callum turned down the transistor radio blaring out tinny renditions of pop tunes six years old.

  “Death and dismemberment be’s plaguing wer plant!” Callum roared. Paddy slurped a noodle. “Them new machines be’s putting both wer jobs and wer lives at risk. We’ve had the forklift what grappled Liam McGillicutty’s foot and hauled him twelve feet into the air before releasing him to the shop floor and his deathbed. And mind Gertie Feeney, her right hand mangled in the grinding machine. Three hours, it took, to find that finger of hers in the jumbo shrimp. And poor aul Gallagher, yer man who couldn’t make head nor tail of the new automatic freezer locks. Hours, it took, before they could free him from his icy coffin, and then a further week to defrost fully.”

  Arms and legs shifted uncomfortably, Paddy’s more than most. The duties were meant to change weekly according to some mysterious roster: unloading fish from boats, sorting them by species, putting them in brine and storing them in ice, manning the conveyor belts of the packing machines, and dumping fish meal and bran into the mixing and grinding machines for fish feed. Danger seemed to lurk in every corner of the plant, but the last task was the most dangerous, because of the relentless pull of conveyor belts that led to mysterious lead caverns which sliced and diced through bone, grizzle and offal. For the past year, the roster had Paddy on the mixing and grinding machines. Or cleanup.

  “We know all this, aye, what are ye on about?” someone spoke up.

  “Would ye believe the plant received yet another of them flimmin grinding and mixing machines the day? And there’s two more packing machines on the way. It won’t be long before they’ve replaced us on the floor, or, even worse, sent us all to intensive care. We kyanny go on like this, waking up every morning thankful we’ve all ten fingers and toes, grateful for the chance to breathe God’s air another day.”

  Paddy thought back to the many times at the conveyor belt he had felt a pang of pain and stared down the length of his arm in horror, wondering where the hell his hand was. He always found it there at the end of his wrist, but Paddy knew well enough why he was willing to take the risks the plant presented, and what a greater danger might be: the blades of an industrial grinder were no match for Fionnuala’s tongue.

  “It’s time for industrial action!” Callum roared.

  “Ye mean...?”

  “Aye, a strike!”

  A roar erupted as if Ireland had scored a final goal against England, and fists banged on tables in unison.

  “Strike, strike, strike!” their bleacher-chant rang out.

  Cod jumped on melmac, tea spilled from styrofoam, but amidst all the excitement, Paddy’s brain felt a slight unease as he followed the plan of a strike in his mind from A to B to C, and, his already bloodless face turning more ashen, slowly computed the thing missing from this socialist wet dream: a voice of reason.

  He raised a timid hand. Eyes rolled the length of the room, and arms sprang around chests. Callum fought to affect a friendly smile as he nodded for the pariah of the packing plant to speak.

  “Am I correct in thinking,” Paddy said, “that while we’re striking we’re to receive no pay?”

  “Of course not, naw.”

  “God bless us and save us! I kyanny feed me wanes if we’re to spend wer days traipsing around in a flimmin circle outside the plant instead of collecting wer weekly paychecks!”

  He appealed to his former friends.

  “Have youse not given that one moment of thought?”

  “Och, go on away with that!” someone spat.

  “Ye’re taking the piss, surely?” spat someone else.

  “The bold-face cheek of the jammy bastard!”

  “Youse Floods is minted!”

  Persecuted and crucified, more like, Paddy thought grimly to himself.

  “The community will rally around us,” Callum put in. “At least, around those of us what needs help. There are sure to be food drives at the churches, raffles arranged to assist us in paying wer rents. Some of us, of course,” he raised an eyebrow, “have no rent needing to be paid.”

  “If Paddy Flood’s against it,” roared somebody. “I’m all for it!”

  “Aye, me and all!”

  “And me!”

  “Put it to the vote now, shall we?” Callum called out. “All for?”

  Hands shot up in the air around Paddy in such unison and with such force it was as if he had stepped into a BNP demo.

  “Against?”

  Paddy inspected his empty Cup-O-Noodles, his arm unable to move, as silence reigned in the staffroom. Callum glared triumphantly at him.

  “That’s settled, aye? Monday we strike!”

  The roars of the lumpen masses rang out, and Paddy deflated, while all around him the hoarse manly chants broke out anew, visions of a socialist victory, a finger to the capitalist death machine dancing in his co-workers’ minds, and all the while the only thing Paddy saw was his miniscule bank balance disappearing and rage spewing from Fionnuala’s lipstick. Chairs scraped, the workers lugged the gloves onto their hands, slapped one other’s shoulders and asses, and all walked out to finish their shifts before clocking out and then downing a few pints in the pub and then going home to eat. Fish.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “AND THEN, AND THEN,” Rory sniffed, “I saw them three filthy aul men circling her half-naked body, and the worst of it, Mammy, was the look of thanks on her face as they moved in to have their way with her.”

  Zoë lifted a well-moisturized hand to his face.

  “You’re giving my mind images it’ll never erase,” she said stiffly. “Please stop.”

  “How could she do it, but, ma? How?”

  “It was always a ludicrous pairing. I told you from the beginning I would have happily paid for a termination to stop this charade of happy families.”

  “I know she be’s a C—”

  “Her religion has not a jot to do with it. I’ve always found the girl particularly repellent. Slovenly, ill-mannered, and worst of all, dim-witted. The name she insisted on for the child is evidence enough of that. She could be a Gnostic monk for all I care. The good Lord alone knows what your offspring will grow up to be with a gene pool like that.”

  Zoë’s face softened, and she coddled Rory’s sobbing head in her scant bosom.

  “If anything,” she sighed, “I blame myself for raising you so well, too well. I always taught you to take responsibility for your actions, even those brought about by the stupidity of downing vast amounts of alcohol.”

  Truth be told, Rory could remember only snippets of the lager-fueled encounter that had brought him and Dymphna together: a styrofoam container of curry chips, the meter of a taxi cab, fingers ripping at buttons, a traffic cone standing in the corner of the shabby sitting room, a glimpse of the Bleeding Heart of Jesus staring down at them from above an unknown settee with springs poking out, the torn elasticated band of his crusty briefs.

  “I do understand,” Zoë cooed on, fingers caressing the grease of his black hair, “the pride and excitement you must have felt when this girl told you she was carrying your child. Any other lad your age would have run a mile, but thanks to the virtues I’ve instilled in you, you stepped up to the plate and took responsibility for your moment of weakness.”

  The inevitability of it all was staring R
ory squarely in his acne-cluttered face as it sidled uncomfortably against his mother’s breastplate: he and Dymphna were a joke as a couple. And now that home truths were being revealed, he chanced with a snivel:

  “She kept insisting I wasn’t the father, ma. The mortification of it! There she is, with me wane inside her, and she be’s blathering on to anybody in town who would listen that the father be’s Mr. O’Toole, her boss at the Top-Yer-Trolley. Ages, it took me, to make her see sense, force the engagement ring on her finger at the ChipKebab. Why was she so ashamed of me being the father? Am I such a toerag? Why, Mammy, why? And adding insult to injury by claiming O’Toole, of all men in Derry, was the father. Him with the mincing steps and limp wrists!”

  The silence lasted so long, Rory feared his mother had gone mute. He chanced a look up and was greeted by two horror-stricken eyes behind the Burberry frames. Zoë’s fingers shackled themselves into his scalp, and she pried him from her breast.

  “What’s this about Henry O’Toole?” she demanded. “What are you telling me?”

  “She, she, I, I...”

  “I knew it,” Zoë seethed, “I knew it the way a mother does. That red hair, those blue eyes, that chin. The child bears no resemblance to you or me or any of the Riddells. It’s a Flood and an O’Toole, through and through.”

  “Mammy, but, but... O’Toole be’s an arse-bandit, a nancy-boy poofter.”

  “He’s a prancing, leering goat! Couldn’t keep his hands off my tights at last year’s Derry Entrepreneurs Christmas do at the Gleneagles Hotel after a few shots of whiskey down his throat. I felt soiled until New Year’s. Where is the repellent creature now?”

  “O’Toole?”

  “Dymphna!”

  “In our room, packing.”

  While folding her smalls, Dymphna flinched through her tears as the door to the bedroom flew open and Zoë came barreling towards her.

  “Out! Out of my house now!”

  “I’m trying, sure,” Dymphna said. “I’m after clearing out—”

  “My bank account? My money’s the only thing you’re after! Let me have a look in there.”

  Zoë pushed Dymphna to the side and scrabbled through the clothing in the suitcase on the bed.

  “My 7 For All Mankind jeans?” Zoë said. She shook her head as she removed them and dug in for more. “Thousands, I’ve spent, on designer gear for you to tart yourself up in since you forced your way into our home. And this is how you thank me?”

  Rory eyed Dymphna with a mixture of disappointment and suspicion and moved to the bed to help his mother. Flush with mortification, Dymphna bit her lip and watched as fingers clawed through her bras and tights and private belongings. She longed to explain she was doing Zoë a favor by taking the jeans as they made her arse look saggy, but didn’t trust herself to talk back to a woman who could afford such a fancy toothbrush.

  “Rogues on parade,” Zoë muttered, inspecting with disgust, then tossing to the side, the portrait of the Flood family posed before the washing machine in their kitchen. It was taken with a disposable camera months before Lorcan and Eoin had been sent to prison, Fionnuala smiling proudly from a tattered chair in the middle. Zoë dug further in the suitcase but reached the bottom, to her disappointment and Rory’s relief, without incident.

  “The ring,” Zoë demanded.

  Dymphna looked down at her engagement ring.

  “Rory give it me, but!” she pleaded. “It be’s the symbol of wer love!”

  “Love. That's a laugh, indeed. It was bought on my debit card. I know only too well the likes of you, Dymphna Flood. The moment you step out that door, you’d be over to the pawn shop to flog it for drinking money or worse. The ring, please.”

  “Rory!” Dymphna pleaded.

  Rory just stood there, stone-faced, slightly behind his mother. Dymphna sobbed as she tugged the ring off and reluctantly handed it over.

  “The key to the office if you please,” Zoë continued. “I don’t want you rummaging around the lockups, stealing all the belongings our clients are entrusting us to keep under lock and key.”

  “What about me job?” Dymphna asked. She hated it, but she was at least paid a wage and could come out of the engagement with a steady source of income for diapers.

  Zoë raised a waxed eyebrow. “You can forget that as well. It’s clear to me the one thing you’re not going to die of is a work-related illness. And certainly not while you’re in the habit of using the office as a personal...pleasure dome.”

  Dymphna threw the key in her hand. She forced the top on the straining suitcase and sat on it to clasp it shut.

  “And I do believe you have forgotten something,” Zoë said, with a nod in the corner.

  Dymphna thought for a moment she meant the foot spa sitting on the nightstand, but disappointment flickered as she realized Zoë was indicating Keanu. Dymphna placed him over her shoulder, hauled the suitcase up with one hand, the foot spa with the other and made her way through the door.

  “If you so much as glance at my son again, I’ll throttle the life out of your bones with my bare hands,” Zoë said as they descended the stairs, “then dance with glee on the Y-shaped coffin they’re going to have to bury you in.”

  Dymphna couldn’t help but feel their careful eyes on her back, as if the Riddells expected her to snatch one of the Lladró figurines that lined the landing wall and make her way out the door with it. How that might be possible, as full as her suitcase and hands were, she couldn’t imagine. While Keanu spit up down her back and she struggled to locate the front door knob through teary eyes, Dymphna appealed to Rory with the look of the last urchin in an orphanage.

  “Rory?”

  Her feminine charms had deserted her in his mind. He was having none of it.

  “Go,” he said.

  Dymphna threw the now shrieking child into its stroller, tossed the foot spa on top of him and stormed out the door. Four steps on, she was wondering how quickly she could get Child Protective Services involved, what financial services they might offer and where to stop to clean the sick off her back.

  When the door slammed (it did slam), Rory burst into tears, and Zoë cradled her love in her arms.

  “There, there, my sweet child,” she soothed. “You’re well rid of that filthy Fenian beast. Mammy knows best for you, yes she does, Mammy knows best...”

  But behind the Burberry frames, Zoë’s eyes flickered with guilt.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IN THE COMPUTER ROOM of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow Girls’ School, Miss McClurkin, dried egg on her blouse, was flipping through the newspaper. Her droopy eyes resisted a glance at the Positions Available section. The girls were supposed to be researching forest animals, but most were on pop star websites, whispering amongst themselves.

  Siofra Flood was searching for cardboard coffins. According to the Internet, they only had them in China. Siofra was perplexed. Did the girl who had stolen her Hannah Montana fan club exclusives think she was Chinese?

  As her little fingers clacked on the sticky keyboard, Siofra was well aware of the bareness of her left wrist, the lightness of her earlobes, as she thought back to what else the horrible girl had said: ‘people who work for a living can afford things;’ Siofra’s mammy and daddy did nothing but work, and still they could afford very little; that ‘Catholics smoke and drink themselves into an early grave;’ sure, her granny Heggarty was never without a fag hanging from her mouth, and she was ancient and Catholic!

  Siofra’s best mate Grainne Donaldson suddenly clutched her arm with excitement.

  “Would ye look at that, Siofra?” she marveled in a whisper, flipping her computer screen so Siofra could see it. “Hannah Montana’s traveling all the way to Ireland for to throw a concert next month!”

  Although Hannah Montana was now calling herself Miley Cyrus, she would always be Hannah Montana to the little girls. That the teenaged American TV and singing sensation would be in their part of the world was like Christmas morning, an Easter Egg hunt an
d the final of American Idol all rolled into one.

  “Effin magic!” Siofra gasped.

  Grainne stared at her ears.

  “Siofra? Where’s them Hannah Montana earrings of yers? And the matching wristwatch?”

  “I lost em,” Siofra spat.

  Grainne pondered this for a second, then got back to the matter at hand, her face sparkling.

  “Och, Siofra, it’s gonny be brilliant! We can sneak past security, so we can, and get into her dressing room, and she’s gonny invite us for a Coke and maybe one of them Yank hotdogs, and then autograph wer arms and maybe even give us one of her scarves or maybe even an old guitar she don’t play no more! And she can teach us how to put makeup on! Och, I’m gonny wet meself with excitement!”

  Siofra’s head nodded and nodded and nodded. “Aye, me and all!” she squealed.

  “Girls!” Miss McClurkin warned.

  They scowled but made a performance of turning to their screens. Siofra stole glances over at Grainne’s computer, and as her eyes drank in the information of the concert details, she pouted. “She doesn’t be coming to Derry, but,” she hissed to Grainne. “She be’s coming to flimmin Belfast, and it’s miles away, sure. How could we...?”

  Grainne chewed on her fingernails in sudden worry, her eyes searching Siofra’s for guidance.

  “Och, we’ll catch a bus somehow,” Siofra decided. Grainne’s face lit up with relief. “What I’m more concerned with, but...”

  Grainne’s face fell again.

  “Is that we’ll travel all the way over there and won’t get the chance to meet her.”

  Grainne’s lower lip trembled.

  “We’re her biggest fans in Ireland, but,” she said. “How could she not invite us into her dressing room?”

  Siofra chewed on the eraser of her pencil as her brain cells trundled. Her eyes skimmed the room of classmates, wondering which of their resources could be of help to her. Her eyes alighted on the hated Catherine McLaughlin, dutifully scribbling down notes about the wildebeest that was on her screen. Siofra’s eyes shined with sudden connivance.