The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3)

by Gerald Hansen

  “Er, for me wife,” Paddy said, motioning to the dartboard case he was having trouble hiding in his overalls.

  “Wife,” she said with an arch smile, as if there were no less of an obstacle and no more of a pleasant challenge. “I tie, yes?”

  She snatched the overalls from him and fashioned the left leg and right arm into a bow of sorts.

  “Now easy to be carrying, yes?” she said.

  “Er, ta. I must be on me way home now, but,” Paddy muttered. “Ta for yer help, like.”

  “Do zobaczenia,” she said, not ‘goodbye,’ but ‘until we meet again,’ as, in a town that small, this was obvious.

  As Paddy shoved through the stench of old ale and thumping Eurodisco, he was thinking less of Fionnuala’s birthday and more of the ‘youngster’s’ cracked but exotic lips. He wondered what path had just been carved out for him, where it might lead, and if the Polish had heard of breath mints.

  Awkwardly gripping the dartboard, Paddy opened the door, looked back to see if he could bag a glimpse of the woman’s bony arse, but the acid-washed denim was lost in the bodies and the music. He turned from the turbulence inside to the turbulence of drunken hordes of teens outside.

  “What’re ye doing in that pub for pervs? Fecking arse-bandit!”

  A skull in a hoodie cracked against Paddy’s head, and he crumpled to the cobblestones. Headbutting, the uppercut of the underclass. As the thug wrenched the dartboard from Paddy’s hand, his mate kicked him in the head for good measure and finished off the abuse with half a can of lager splashed over Paddy’s head.

  “Nancy-boy poofter!” They flipped him off and lurched drunkenly around the corner, roars of laughter from the depths of their hoods. “Pedo scum!”

  Paddy whimpered from the pain and the stench of old urine as he picked fist off his tongue and struggled to tug himself from the street, knowing at once the attack was the Lord’s wrathful retribution for his future sins of the flesh. Paddy staggered home to the Moorside, where he was certain more wrath awaited him.

  CHAPTER 11

  ON THE LOOKOUT FOR rocks hurled at them, a beloved sport of the local youngsters, Maureen urged her daughter around the corner from 5 Murphy Crescent to the Flood’s house. It was slow going. Maureen warned Fionnuala to put on a brave face for the sake of the children. Seamus, Padraig and Siofra had prepared long and hard to mark their mother’s birthday, at least that was the story, and Fionnuala’s waterworks over her sacking would undermine the festivities.

  “Give me some of them tablets of yers for to calm me nerves,” Fionnuala demanded. Maureen scrabbled through the handbag that seemed to sway permanently from her elbow. “Thank feck we’ve Paddy’s paycheck coming in, and yer pension and all.”

  Maureen handed over a few pills that Fionnuala wolfed down there on the pavement. “I told ye them Cash Cow cans was a bloody foolish idea,” Maureen said. “Ye wouldn’t hear anything of it, but. What possessed ye to unload another pile of them rejects from the Sav-U-Mor in wer scullery just now? Not a fit place to eat, that scullery, a tinning factory floor that would be closed down by the Health Department, it looks, with them old tins, the new tins, the flimmin glue, the pigging labels. The hours me and the wanes frittered away in that scullery to put yer gacky get-rich-quick scheme into place the past few months—”

  “For the love of God almighty, would ye quit harping on about it, Mammy!” Fionnuala barked as they passed the dead weeds that were the front garden. “It’s me special day, like. And I paid good money for them tins. I wouldn’t let yer man Skivvins near em.”

  Across the door, a hastily-erected banner exclaimed in magic marker: HAPPY BRITHDAY MAMMY!! On the dust of the hall stand next to Fionnuala’s mass book and rosary stood two large envelopes with the Magilligan Prison postmark: sons Lorcan and Eoin had remembered. As Fionnuala ripped open the envelopes, she wondered briefly, as a mother would, what shape their arses might be in. Her heart ached as she looked down upon the scrawled X’s and O’s. Her shining stars were prison bait, and she had to make do with the detritus of her offspring. Fionnuala turned to her mother and moaned, ever the martyr: “Och, how I pine for me two strong handsome sons. What sins of the past am I suffering for now, Mammy?”

  “There’s another card for ye there,” Maureen said with a nudge. “From yer sister-in-law Ursula, so it is.”

  Fionnuala was incensed as her lips mouthed out what she saw on the front of the card: Reaching Out Across the Miles To Wish You A Happy Birthday!

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that jumped-up bitch has a bold-faced cheek, mocking me with a card. I’ll reach out across the miles for to claw her eyes out!” She tossed the card aside, unopened, then murmured, “Mind you, her lotto millions would come in terrible handy for paying the bills right now.”

  “Chasing them Barnetts from Derry probably is one of them sins of the past ye were just on about,” Maureen said. “The torture ye put Ursula through, even after she paid off yer mortgage for youse, would make a marvelous book, but.” She smiled. “Calm yerself down. The wanes is all waiting for ye in the scullery,”

  Maureen guided a glowering Fionnuala through the tired wallpaper of the corridor towards the kitchen, where the noise inside—the blare of pop music (Rihanna with that one about the umbrella, if Fionnuala wasn’t mistaken) and kiddie squeals—made even that world-weary birthday girl tingle in anticipation.

  “Surprise, Mammy!” chorused Padraig, Siofra and Seamus from around the filthy kitchen table, forks aloft before guilty faces pillaging gristle and bone. Their bobbing heads were half-hidden under crown-shaped crepe-paper birthday hats with shiny bits they had unearthed from the attic, and there was more fear than joy in their eyes as they peered up at her. The table groaned under half-scoured platters of ham hocks, hairy, and raw on one end, burnt on the other, a smattering of fish sticks, blackened cheese on toast, singed turnips, lumpy mashed spuds, and what looked like baked beans.

  “What a lovely surprise indeed,” Fionnuala cooed with little claps of glee, though it was not lovely, and the only surprise was the sight of Dymphna grinning like a simpleton with her half-Orange bastard in its stroller at her side, a tray of food on her lap. The surprise turned to rage as Fionnuala spied Dymphna’s suitcase by the washing machine.

  “We was weak with hunger, Mammy,” Padraig chanced.

  “Where the bloody feck’s yer father?” Fionnuala said through a fixed grin, pulling up a chair and stabbing out her fag on a plate. She had only pushed the insult to the back of her mind; there was time aplenty in the lives of the greedy wee bastards to unleash the appropriate punishment on them when they least expected it.

  “I texted him, Mammy. No reply, but,” Dymphna piped up through the grinding molars and blank stares.

  Fionnuala forced down a forkful of watery and cold turnips. Why was Paddy not there to celebrate her special day? He was her rock. A teetering, drunken rock that always stank vaguely of fish and that was frequently denied entrance to her garden of delights to be sure, but a rock nevertheless. For Fionnuala, her forty-fifth birthday was always meant to be the magic one. The Heggartys had a habit of dying while ninety years of age, and the extended family never let a chance slip by to pound this point home. Her father, two of her aunts and one uncle had all died uncannily at that age. So although most people would celebrate their sixteenth, their twentieth, even their fiftieth with aplomb, for Fionnuala, forty-five marked the smack-dab middle of her life.

  When Fionnuala imagined this day throughout the years, she had envisioned an array of talented children—a fashion model, a soccer player, perhaps a third one of Pan’s People, a dancer on the TV show Top Of The Pops—gathered around her in a circle of gratitude, one of those fancy cakes with many tiers she had seen on an ad on the side of a bus, perhaps a chocolate fountain gurgling in the background, children whose exciting and lucrative careers were splashed across the pages of glossy magazines, a source of pride, and whose income helped maintain the restaurant she owned, something exotic and u
pmarket, like a pizzeria. In fact, the life she suspected Ursula Barnett was now living. Fionnuala looked around the table in despair. Her appetite had fled. She placed the fork down and glowered at her shameless slapper of a daughter, Dymphna.

  “Kicked ye out on yer backside, has yer Proddy fancy man?”

  “It wasn’t me fault—” Dymphna said through a mouthful of spuds.

  “Aye, and I’m the Queen of Sheeba. Let’s get to me gifts, shall we?” she decided out of maternal duty rather than zeal.

  Fionnuala got to work. The presents, such as they were, were wrapped in some of Maureen’s old true crimes magazines and done up with duct tape, photos of crime scenes and serial killers looking up at her. For her mother, Siofra had freed the faded palm leaves of the previous year’s Palm Sunday from behind the Bleeding Heart of Jesus portrait in the sitting room and fashioned them into a flower or an animal of sorts. Fionnuala tossed it on the table and demanded:

  “What’s up with yer face, wee girl?”

  “An Orange bitch clattered seven shades of shite out of her,” Padraig eagerly piped up.

  Fionnuala was about to unleash a torrent of verbal abuse on Siofra, shrugged and said: “Serves ye right, ye witless spastic.”

  Siofra kept grinding down the food like an automaton.

  “Open the one from me, love,” Maureen urged with a nudge in Fionnuala’s ribs. “Ye should be gasping for what’s inside right about now, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Fionnuala was grateful for the bottle of gin, though it was generic, and as she unscrewed the top and guzzled down, her relief was tempered by the feel of Dymphna’s thirsty eyes on the bottle. Seamus wobbled over from the table.

  “I’ve a gift for ye and all, Mammy,” he said. “Ye kyanny unwrap it, but. It’s me bedtime prayers, all in me head. Just like ye wanted me to do em.”

  Fionnuala wiped the gin from her chin, shuddered with ecstasy as the warmth filled her, and faced her youngest with a row of teeth awkwardly fashioned into the smile of a caring mother.

  “Let’s hear em, son.”

  Seamus took a deep breath and with the measured concentration that would try the patience of a saint said: “God bless me and make me a good boy, to loven serve God, God bless Mammy and Daddy and Granny Heggarty and me brothers and sisters, specially them what be’s locked up in prison, not me sister Moira, but, as she be’s in the clutchees of Satan, and God bless all me uncles and aunties, except me Auntie Ursula. Amen.”

  Fionnuala’s smile was now genuine as she removed a baked bean from his forehead.

  “That’s me wee dote,” she said, turning to her mother. “Mammy, Seamus does indeed be a wee dote, aye?”

  Maureen, one hand clutching a fish stick, the other a teacup filled with Paddy’s stash of whiskey, nodded. Fionnuala reached for Dymphna’s gift and unwrapped it glumly, but screams suddenly spewed from Keanu as Fionnuala knocked the stroller aside and heaved the multitude of plugs from the lone electrical socket to power up the foot spa.

  “Mary Mother of God! Just what me aching feet needs!”

  Dymphna teleported to her side with a pitcher of water.

  “Ye’re to fill—”

  “Ye must think I’m simple-minded, you,” Fionnuala snorted, peeling off her socks. “I know what to do with a foot spa, sure!” She had watched enough infomercials on them.

  The wanes tore themselves from their plates and gawked in a semi-circle as the horror of their mother’s middle-aged toes disappeared into the bubbling water. Fionnuala moaned in rapture, and Paddy walked into the scullery.

  “Daddy!” squealed the younger children.

  “Happy birthday, love!”

  He was, Fionnuala noticed as he planted a kiss on her forehead, empty-handed. Her face fell, and she unleashed her belt of a tongue.

  “Where the bloody hell have you been up to now? Och, don’t bother yerself the mental strain of spewing out a pack of lies. The stench of drink offa ye be’s overpowering.” She took another swig of gin and wriggled her toes deeper into the frothing water. Paddy sidled up to the table, grabbed a ham hock and dug his tarnished teeth into the flesh.

  Sparks crackled from around Fionnuala’s heels and shot through the air. The children shrieked as Fionnuala leaped from the machine that suddenly shuddered and convulsed. With a few more sparks and some smoke, the foot spa died. Fionnuala heaved a labored breath and glared accusingly at Dymphna.

  “I thought ye was giving me a present, not putting me in a coffin. Did ye purchase that murder contraption from the Mountains of Mourne Gate market stalls?”

  Dymphna forced a nod.

  “Just as I suspected, pound wise and penny foolish. Ye couldn’t spend the extra three quid to buy the real McCoy at the Top-Yer-Trolley for yer mother’s birthday instead? Useless, so ye are.”

  She faced Paddy.

  “Where’s me gifts?”

  “I’ve something special for ye, I left it in me locker at the factory, but. I’ll give it to ye after the weekend.”

  “Och, wise up you. Now’s not the time for joking.” Her voice was laced with menace.

  Padraig sidled uncertainly up to his mother.

  “Daddy went in on them gifts what says on em they be from me,” he said.

  Paddy’s secret look of gratitude at his son from behind the cheese toast was tempered with worry; he had no clue what might be revealed under the face of Jeffrey Dahmer. Fionnuala’s wet feet tramped through the unwrapped newsprint that littered the floor, and she approached the final gifts with rising excitement. Her fingernails sliced through the paper, and even Jay-Z rapping from the radio couldn’t drown out her squeals.

  “Bath salts! From the Dead Sea!”

  While Padraig beamed strangely at his mother’s side, Paddy spat out gristle and eyed the gift with surprise—

  “And Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion perfume! And ye’ve got me her White Diamonds scent and all!”

  —unease—

  “And...Merciful Jesus, me eyes kyanny believe it! A Burberry scarf!”

  —and alarm. The kitchen was enveloped in a mist of Elizabeth Taylor’s most costly, and Fionnuala was oblivious to the daggers of the upstaged that Dymphna, Siofra, Maureen and even Seamus tossed at Paddy and Padraig. She made a quick check of the label and thread count to ensure the scarf was genuine, then wrapped the magnum opus around her neck with a giddy giggle much younger than her years and posed right, left and center, hand on her hip, tears of delight welling in her beaming face.

  “Lemme at a mirror!” But the closest one was in the upstairs bathroom, so she cast an approving look in the toaster instead.

  “I knew ye wouldn’t forget,” she bubbled to Paddy, asphyxiating his neck and detonating kisses on his chewing face. “Och, ye’re a wile and lovely man, so ye are, and Lorcan and Eoin can rot in their cells, so they can, with a son like you.”

  Padraig wriggled under her hugs, and Maureen wanted to spew. A lopsided rhubarb pie, Fionnuala’s favorite, materialized from the fridge courtesy of Siofra. Fionnuala saw to her annoyance they had seen fit to splash out on candles, the number of them taunting and blinding her.

  After the candles had been blown out and the pie served, Maureen cleared her throat and said with the air of one christening a luxury liner: “One last gift.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out the book. “Came by post the day. Addressed to Dymphna, it was. I opened it by pure mistake.”

  Fionnuala looked down in her hands in confusion; she knew the last place to find a Heggarty was browsing through a Barnes and Noble, and it was a most inappropriate gift for her. “What in the name of God possessed ye to...?”

  Then she noticed the words A Novel of Family and Greed by Moira Flood. The forks flew from their fingers at the rage in her voice.

  “Cunt-slurping bitch! Novel, me hole!”

  Lotto Balls of Shame screamed the letters of the title up at her. The bright yellow cover showed a gravity-pick lottery machine, with little heads of the main characters emblazoned on the w
inning balls in the chute. At a glance, Fionnuala could tell who was who: Ursula with her eggplant-colored bob, her husband Jed with his cowboy hat and goatee, Paddy with his slicked-back black hair, Dymphna with her bright orange curls, and Fionnuala herself with her bleached ponytails. Ursula and Jed were beaming with glee, whereas Paddy and Dymphna were scowling across the balls at them. Fionnuala’s image was tilted to the side, and her face was stretched with rage, a smoking cigarette hanging from her lower lip. The cover was insult enough. Why had the illustrator made her look so much older than she was?

  “What is it, Mammy?” Siofra asked.

  “It’s called a book,” Maureen cut in. “Apparently written by yer disgrace of a sister Moira. All about how yer mammy, with a wee bit of help from all youse, chased yer auntie Ursula and uncle Jed to the States by causing them grief of all sorts. I’m on chapter seven.”

  “Does she have me in it?” Padraig asked.

  “Aye.”

  “Me and all?” Paddy asked.

  “The whole lot of youse. Names cleverly disguised, but.”

  As they clambered around in amazement, it never occurred to Fionnuala to crack open the book’s spine. She flung it the length of the scullery. It hit the window and shattered the glass, shards landing in the filthy cookware piled high. The book toppled sadly into the baked beans pot.

  “A rip-roaring read so it is,” Maureen continued. “There be’s a wee note in there from Moira and all, about how there’s to be a swanky do held in Malta to mark the book coming out. Free drink and finger foods. Two months hence.”

  Fionnuala tore the scarf from her neck and glared in accusation all around her.

  “Wipe them foolish, goofy smiles offa yer faces. Are youse not concerned with the filth she must’ve written about youse?”

  But they were shame-free, even Paddy, knowing they had been bit players in everything that happened the year before; Fionnuala had orchestrated the grand schemes and pulled their puppet strings. Fionnuala singled out Dymphna.