They shuffled uncertainly; the children of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow could rarely understand a sentence that left the teacher’s lips, though Miss McClurkin seemingly spoke the same language they did.
“Off you go, girls,” Miss McClurkin said, a smile on her lips and a dance in her fingertips as she wrote down Pop Singing and Dancing on the entry form.
They scampered towards the door.
“Oh, and Catherine?”
Catherine turned.
“I’m happy you’re making mates.”
Catherine looked down shyly at her Jellies and murmured, “Ta, Miss.”
She joined her two partners in crime in the corridor. Siofra grappled her by the tie and shoved her against the water fountain (broken for years). Grainne clapped with glee.
“Now we’re best mates,” Siofra said to Catherine’s terrified nostrils, “and ye’re in wer group for the talent show and all. We’re gonny beat them Pepsi-slurping gacks from How Great Thou Art hands down, and then we’re off to Belfast to see Hannah Montana. I won’t be able to sleep, but, if I don’t have that press pass in me hands. I don’t wanna see her like a wee ant on the stage from miles away. I told ye to get it for me days ago.”
“I-I’ll get it for ye when we win,” Catherine whimpered.
“Naw! The morrow!” Siofra barked.
“Me daddy, but...the safe...the keys...me mammy...”
“Me fingers better be’s clutching it the morrow, or ye won’t be able to dance on that stage with yer new mates as ye’ll be laid up in Altnagelvin with yer legs in casts!”
“I’ll get it to ye! I’ll get it!”
“Swear on the Holy Father and the Virgin Mary!”
“I...I swear.”
“On the Holy Father and the Virgin Mary!”
Catherine swore on both the Holy Father and the Virgin Mary as instructed so her lungs could get some air, but as Siofra released the grip on her tie, she didn’t have a clue how to make that promise reality.
CHAPTER 27
“IT’S TIME TO BEGIN, now count it in! 5-6-7-8!”
The electro-fiddle-bass beat of the old Steps tune shook the speakers, and tens of cowboy-booted feet raced to the tattered linoleum of the Leisure Center dance floor around Rory. Bridie had excused herself to the restroom, and Rory was downing the free coffee at a table next to the bingo machine as if his body could store the caffeine for use later on. The sweat was lashing down his body, his arms and legs aching.
Rory had been skittish about his first line-dancing session and the force of Bridie’s fingers around his wrist, but she had thrust a spare cowboy hat on his head and hauled him onto the floor, and his limbs could do nothing but comply. He had mastered and then performed to “Cotton-Eyed-Joe,” “Mambo Number Five” and a Shania Twain b-side the running-a-hand-across-the-brim-of-your-cowboy-hat move, the lassoing-a-calf-for-slaughter move, the reaching-for-your-holsters move, the gun-shooting-a-moving-target move, the hiking-up-the-chaps move, the thumbs-locked-in-the-belt-loops-move (rather similar to the holster move), and, with his feet, the shuffle-right-four-steps-then-shuffle-left-four-steps, the cross-the-legs-then-kick-to-the-back, the cross-the-legs-then-kick-to-the-front.
“My rodeo romeo, a cowboy god from head to toe...”
Rory was under no illusion about why Bridie had insisted he join her at the Center, and it had little to do with steering him away from a life of alcoholism. She thought he would become her ‘rodeo romeo,’ her ‘cowboy god from head to toe,’ but if that hideous cow in her fringed corduroy skirt thought she would get her fat fingers anywhere near his tackle, she was sadly mistaken; he’d rather douse his eyes with bleach. And he had noticed she was chucking down the Guinness as if Prohibition were going into effect the next day while she demanded he remain alcohol-free. Rory stirred his coffee and glumly awaited her return before he could claim a headache and make his escape home.
Inside the lavatory, Bridie took stock of her face in the mirror as she carved her mouth with lipstick: the hair of no discernible color, the cold sore, the pimples from grease thanks to long shifts at Kebabalicious, the burns from smoking cigarettes in the wind. Bedding Rory Riddell seemed a long shot, but wasn’t it about time the Lord finally smiled her way?
Bridie McFee was a bitter old spinster at the age of twenty two. Even when younger, she knew she didn’t have the physical attributes Dymphna Flood had. She had realized as the nights in the Craiglooner pub piled up and the alcohol took its toll on her already disadvantaged body that it was becoming more and more difficult to catch the eye of a lad. When she had been about seventeen, the young fit ones had quit looking at her, then the young ugly ones at nineteen, and, now, at twenty-two, even the old alkies and social outcast junkies wouldn’t look her way.
She was mired in a dead-end job slinging Cowaliciouses-On-A-Bun across a counter to drunken young ones who flung insults at her and taunted her for doing the McJob she was doing even as they grabbed the bags from her, and who she recognized as being in primary school years earlier. Time had passed and they were now of legal drinking age (or almost, anyway) and Bridie’s life was becoming increasingly stuck in the forgettable. Was it any wonder she had grown to loathe Dymphna and her DD cups?
Dymphna was too dim-witted to realize what a find she had in Rory, Bridie thought, and the only ammunition Bridie had to make Rory see sense and shift that engagement ring from Dymphna’s finger to her own was her line-dancing skills and her intelligence; she had taken night classes at the Foyle Community College a year earlier. It was only when she had started learning knowledge that she realized what a simpleton not only Dymphna was, but also all their mates from school she had wasted her childhood and then youth getting drunk and dancing around their handbags at Starzzz nightclub with.
Bridie thought the evening was going well. Rory had rattled on between songs about how he had started drinking months earlier, when he had heard around town that Dymphna was claiming to all who would listen that her poofter boss Henry O’Toole was the father of her child when he knew it was him; how he had proposed to her out of a sense of duty; how she had moved in and the baby had been born; the embarrassment when she had insisted the child be called Keanu, the pressure from his mother Zoë to rid himself of her; the ribbing of his mates for settling down with a Catholic, and a slag at that. Bridie was enraptured. She wasn’t sure if it was what Rory was saying, or if it was the sight of his crotch before her as he shuffled back and forth. Her mind was excitedly trying to make out what could conceivably be the shape of his ass in those shapeless jeans, the thought of his spindly arms wrapping around her.
Me face might be a disappointment, but thank feck I’ve been on me small portions diet, Bridie thought, running her well-bitten fingernails over the embroidered cows grazing in a field of her shirt and exiting the lavatory. She plastered a leer on her face as she made her way through the syncopated arms and legs on the dancefloor towards Rory. Time to shift the chatter to sex and bag her man; lads were always up for getting their leg over.
“I kyanny understand why ye hit the bottle last week,” Bridie said. “Ye’re a star on the dancefloor, you. A regular John Travolta. And I’m sure ye’re a man of many more talents besides, like.”
She undressed him with her eyes. Rory looked down, all bashful.
“Ye mean...?” he asked.
Bridie raised a filthy eyebrow. “Aye,” she said, eying his crotch, though it was too dark in the corner for Rory to notice this. “Ye know what I’m on about.”
“I suppose Dymphna told ye all about it?” he asked.
In fact, Dymphna had always said sleeping with Rory was like rolling around in a sack of sick, but Bridie didn’t want Rory getting a complex; he was fragile after all.
“Aye,” she said, nodding eagerly and sidling closer to his limbs. “She never lets up about yer prowess, but I want to hear all about it from yer own lips.”
Her eyes searched his face eagerly, and it was all Bridie could do to force her hands to remain Chr
istian. Rory was surprised. He had only told Dymphna briefly about his expertise with the Rubik’s cube when he young, the trophy he had received for it from the Protestant Youth Center, and she had seemed bored to tears. But if she had told her best mate...
“The things women talk about!” he said.
“I’m all ears.”
“Well, if ye really wanny hear all about it...”
Bridie’s eyes said she really did; and her quim was atingle at the sneak peek Rory would allow her into the bedroom antics she, fingers crossed, would soon be sampling.
“Some says technique be’s important, but speed be’s what matters to me. It only takes me a minute and half and then I’m done. I’ve spent years practicing in me bedroom, as I think it’s madness to waste half an hour twisting and turning away when there be’s more important things I could be doing. There be’s a special website where ye put up yer video of ye doing it quickly for all the world to see, and I’m proud to say me video be’s ranked number two. Brilliant, aye?”
No wonder Dymphna was disappointed in the bedroom. Bridie’s ardor for Rory began to chill.
Rory went on, warming to the topic: “I started quite late, ye know. Fourteen, I musta been, would ye believe? The first time was with me da.”
Bridie gawped at him as both horror and compassion filled her. This certainly explained Rory’s lager-fueled meltdown, seeking comfort in drink. She reached out a comforting hand. “Yer da? At fourteen years of age? I’m wile sorry. Ye must’ve been terrible traumatized.”
To her surprise, Rory pushed her hand away and tsked defensively. “If that’s yer attitude, I’m not gonny continue. It annoys the feck outta me, this mortification young people the day feels for doing such things with their da, their reluctance to admit the fun they had together as a family. Disgraceful, so it is. I blame the Yanks. Ye wanny know the details or not?”
Bridie had done a course in sexual deviance at the Foyle Community College, and had learned all about defensiveness, the love children still felt for their incestuous abusers, and that the need to protect and remain loyal to their violators could continue through to adulthood if they didn’t get the correct therapy.
“Sorry for me insensitivity. Go ye on ahead,” she urged, though she was dreading what he might come out with next. Rory stirred his coffee a few times, his anger subsiding. Then he faced her, seemingly having forgiven her.
“Me and me da was staying over at me granny’s for the weekend, and it was raining and we was bored—me granny was up in the loo, I think—and me da suddenly reached into his bathrobe and pulled it out.”
Bridie gasped, and Rory flashed his eyes at her, so she struggled to control the revulsion she felt.
“It was strange to me at first, but I soon got the hang of it and realized what a craic it was. Then me granny came in and demanded a go. She found it difficult at first to get her hands around it—they be’s riddled with arthritis, ye understand, but she was soon twisting away, and I haveta admit I was glad she joined in as it seemed to take years offa her. After that first time, me and me da did it every chance we got. Weeks later, me mammy came in once unexpectedly when we was at it in the back garden, and she was gagging for a go and all. Ye wouldn’t believe all the places we’ve done it together as a family: at the bus stop, waiting for wer order at the fish and chips shop, once even in the snack bar of a ferry to Liverpool, with all the passengers around us in a circle clapping and urging us on.”
Bridie fiddled with a fringe. The poor soul was revealing such sordid secrets so casually, almost proudly, his sense of what was acceptable to most emotionally-functional families so skewed and bizarre. Her heart swelled with pity; the years of abuse had left him truly debased.
“I don’t suppose youse’ve all done it together in yer family and all?” Rory asked, to her horror.
“No, I can’t say as we’ve had,” Bridie replied stiffly.
“I don’t suppose there’s many that does nowadays; it goes back to what I was telling ye before. Why all families doesn’t do it together be’s a mystery to me. Most Christmases of me youth, we was less interested in the dinner and more looking forward to doing it together in the living room, right before the Christmas tree with the carols playing the background. I’ve one special memory of the Christmas of 2001. We had loads of aunts and uncles and cousins over for the day, and they all joined in during the Queen’s speech on the telly.”
Bridie thought in sudden horror that perhaps she was gaining an exclusive glimpse into the sex lives of the typical Protestant family, and silently thanked her strict Catholic upbringing which sought to put a lid on the sins of the flesh. This revolting scenario of the Riddell’s extended family was liberalism gone mad. She didn’t want to appear to be a prude, however, and forced herself to nod understandingly, though her stomach queased with repugnance.
“Is it still going on?” she chanced. “Or is you too old for them now?”
“Me da was killed by an IRA sniper’s bullet years ago, so that put an end to his involvement. But what I’d give for him to be alive and for us to share wer special time together one last time.”
“Och, I’m wile sorry for yer loss,” Bridie said, “but..but...”
“Out with it, hi.”
“But the fecking bastard deserved it! He deserved everything he got!”
Rory’s jaw dropped. A change overcame his face, like an iron curtain slamming down which had them on opposite sides of a very large divide.
“Ye’re one heartless mental bitch, you!” he seethed. “I was of the mind ye were different from wer parents, one of the new generation, one of the forward-looking, Peace Process wanes what be’s seeking to unite the community. I always thought it strange Dymphna would sleep with a Protestant like me. I was always of the mind, but, that legless as she was on the night, drink had played a part and she hadn’t a clue, or didn’t care I was from the Waterside. You, but, was well aware of me religion, and still ye kept urging me here to this minging tip with ye, you with yer hidden agenda.”
Bridie couldn’t comprehend his sudden switch from child abuse to politics, even with all those night classes she had taken. “Me..me hidden agenda?” she gasped. “Y-ye’re brain doesn’t be thinking right, Rory, and I understand from all the abu—”
“Ye’re a closet IRA sympathizer, a soldier for the cause, biding yer time all night long, ready to spring on me and hurl abuse at me the moment ye could contain yerself no longer. Secretly delighted, ye musta been, that me poor aul da was a victim of sectarian violence. Ye’re sick in the head, ye fecking mad cow, and ye better steer clear of me when ye see me down the town, or ye’re gonny find yer eye skewered on the end of a sharpened screwdriver!”
Coffee spilling over the ashtrays, Rory lurched from his chair and fled through the calf-lassoing crowd. Bridie looked in shock at his retreating back, and looked down at her handbag. She would have no use in the foreseeable future for the three packs of condoms she had purchased.
CHAPTER 28
IN THE SPITTING RAIN, Fionnuala clanked the letter box, adjusted her bleached ponytails, and concealed her scowl behind a welcoming smile. Three feet below her horsey head, Seamus and Siofra shuffled with impatience.
“Mammy,” Siofra whined. “I’m soaked to the bone.”
“Och, ye’re sickening the heart outta me, wane,” Fionnuala seethed through fixed lips. “Plaster a silly grin on that miserable face of yers, or ye’ll feel the force of me palm on yer boney wee arse. Ye wanny see the Mediterranean Sea or not?”
Siofra was more interested in having a good look at Moira’s fingers.
“Are ye ready for the treasure hunt, wee dote?” Fionnuala asked Seamus, smacking a finger away from his nostril.
“Aye, Mammy! Wile fun!” Seamus answered by rote.
Fionnuala noticed the chocolate all over his face, swiveled her thumb in her mouth and brought it, spittle dripping, towards Seamus’ face. She gouged into the tender flesh of his cheek as he squirmed with pain. Siofra stu
ck her tongue out at an old drunk staggering by clutching a dartboard he had no doubt nicked from a stall at the market.
Finally the door rattled open.
“Mrs. Ming! How lovely to see ye!” Fionnuala cooed.
Mrs. Ming regarded the woman at her door with alarm.
“Fionnuala Flood? What on God’s green Earth brings ye here to me home?” she asked, one hand snaking to the neck of her bathrobe in fear, the other reaching to slam shut the door. But Fionnuala had already barged into the foyer, trailing the children in with her and unraveling her bulky cardigan.
“I’m yer new OsteoCare provider,” Fionnuala recited, the words ringing false to her own ears.
Mrs. Ming, as well, seemed to be having difficulty comprehending the meaning of this sentence.
“Where’s Niamh?” she asked.
“Laid up in Altnagelvin. Don’t ye worry yerself about her. I’ve all the makings of a grand and lovely visit,” Fionnuala rattled on as she dragged the befuddled pensioner into her sitting room and planted her on the settee. She reached into her Celine Dion-Titanic satchel swinging from her shoulder. “I’ve rosaries if ye want to pray, a MahJong set if ye want to play, a video of On Golden Pond...”
Although she suffered from cataracts, even to Mrs. Ming’s eyes that satchel looked suspiciously light if it contained all the diversions this home invader said it did.
“I’ve brought me own tea and all,” Fionnuala continued, brandishing a thermos, a teacup and a saucer from some unknown depth of the satchel. “Sweet and milky.”
“Have ye not got a copy in that big bag of yers of the book yer eldest wane wrote? The degenerate?” Mrs. Ming said with a lightness that hid the spite as Fionnuala poured. “Lotto Balls of Shame, I believe it be’s called? The whole town’s been talking about it, but I hear it’s not gonny be released until next month, but I’m sure ye’ve an advance copy. I wouldn’t mind ye reading me out a few wee passages of that.”
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 47
