“Och, ye’re talking out yer arse! Ye’re mad, you!”
“Years of abuse they’ve inflicted on his privates in the secrecy of their home! Deranged with confusion and guilt, he be’s, defending them pedo violators and the filthy acts themmuns forced him into at a young age! I mind from that psychology class I took when I was going to the community college that ones who be’s abused—”
One part of Dymphna’s brain froze. There was no greater betrayal than braying about higher education. To her, being a student was unsettling and Protestant.
“Preparing for a PhD, are ye, ye hateful cunt?!”
Dymphna hung up, but could only fume for a second as her grandmother barged into the room in the wake of her cane.
“Not now, Granny!” Dymphna implored, choking back the tears, though she knew it must be something very important for her granny to travel all the way up the stairs.
“Have ye moved on to dating men what be’s aul enough to be yer father now?” Maureen asked, eyes flashing with interest.
“What are ye on about?”
“I’ve just come from the bingo, and there was two highly suspect men lurking round the front garden. From the coal company, themmuns said they was after I asked em what the hell they was up to. I saw no uniforms or van, but, nor any evidence of soot on em. Peering up at the windows, they was, with a strange gleam in their eyes. I thought themmuns might be after yer delights. I told em to clear off as ye’ve already one wane too many, and a Proddy fiancé to boot. That put the fear of the Lord into em, sent them running down the street, so it did. I hope ye don’t mind, but I’ve only yer best interests at heart. Ye’re too lovely a wee girl, you, to waste yer youth on aul chancers like that.”
“I haven’t a clue who ye might be on about,” Dymphna said. “What did themmuns look like, like?”
“Degenerates! One in filthy denim from head to toe, the other a leather perv, and orange leather at that, if ye please!”
“I’m clueless, Granny, as to who themmuns might be. Ta, but, for getting rid. And now that ye’re here, would ye give me a lend of twenty quid? I’ve a date with Rory to see if I can’t get back in his house. Twenty extra quid, but, might be enough to buy the drinks what will tip the scales in me favor. I know me being here is causing all sorts of grief.”
“Perhaps to yer mammy, but I’m happy enough to have ye here, wee dote. And grateful yer mammy spends most of her time round the corner. Aye, I’ve twenty quid stashed away for me wash and set next week, but for yer future it be’s better spent. And that wane needs a nappy change, love.”
Maureen struggled out, and Dymphna checked herself out in the mirror. As a crowning glory, she gingerly applied the fake tan. Abused or not, Rory would be hers.
CHAPTER 36
“MAMMY! I GOTTA GO NUMBERS!” Seamus complained.
Two floors below them, raspy snores from a Fionnuala-induced slumber vied with the canned laughter from the TV. Mrs. Gee had been easier to dupe than Mrs. Ming, as she was at least a decade older and didn’t realize the Floods were strangers, let alone that she had osteoporosis and a Carer.
“I told ye to go before we left the optician’s,” Fionnuala fumed. Her flashlight beamed under the eaves and revealed an old crate next to some pigeon droppings. “Relieve yerself in there.”
Seamus toddled over a crossbeam in the gloom. Fionnuala turned the light on the older children. Siofra, using her skirt as a wheelbarrow, dumped a load of tarnished cutlery, a soccer trophy and some old coins at her mother’s feet, then hurried back across the beam. Fionnuala scooped the loot into her bag. Padraig struggled up with a record player in his hands and a life-sized cardboard cutout of Donnie and Marie Osmond under his arm. Fionnuala squealed with delight; the latter was something she’d buy herself if she chanced upon it at the market.
“At least them nancy boy specs has given ye the power of locating things in the dark,” she conceded. “Right lad ye are. It’s all CDs the day, but I’m sure we can find some DJ that needs a turntable. What I’m wondering is how we’re meant to transport them large items across town without some nosy parker—”
“Mammy!” Seamus’ cry cut across the darkness. “Mammy!”
“Can ye not shite in silence, wane? Leave me head peace—”
“Mammy, but! I’m afeared to go in the crate. It be’s full of bottles, and they be’s cold!”
Fionnuala was set to roar abuse at the toddler, but a memory she had long sought to repress flooded back to her: sitting on the mini-bus weighed down with Top-Yer-Trolley shopping bags while behind her two filthy poofters lisped on and on about vintage wine and the incredible prices it fetched. They must have been tourists, as Derry had no homosexuals.
Arms waving for balance, Fionnuala raced the length of the crossbeam like a bargain basement trapeze artist. She hauled Seamus, mid-squat, off the cobweb-draped crate and tugged out a bottle, brushed away clumps of dust, and scrutinized it with the beam of the flashlight. Her lips curled with distaste.
“Would ye look at the color of that? Shite brown! It’s mingin aul wine that’s gone off, so it is. Unfit for human use!”
She was about to fling it back in the crate and tell the boy to finish his business inside it when she scratched her fingernail at the label and unearthed the design from decades of crud: bronze and silver coins, brown ribbons and red, white and blue stripes. They hadn’t even had the decency to write the label in English, Fionnuala thought.
Premier Fils, she struggled to read, and then Absinthe Superieur—1945, and then, barely able to control her excitement, 180 Proof.
Fionnuala shook her head with wonder. Mrs. Gee be’s a right secret pervy alkie bitch, she thought, hoarding away a stash of illegal, hallucinogenic filth, and French filth at that! That wouldn’t stop Fionnuala flogging it around the town to the highest bidder.
“Come youse here now!” she barked.
By the time Padraig and Siofra reached her, Fionnuala already had a third of the crate in her Celine Dion satchel, the trembling in her fingers growing with each bottle shoved inside. After seven bottles, there was no more room. She snatched Siofra’s PowerPuff Girls bag from the girl’s elbow and forced the eighth inside.
“Mind me lip gloss!” Siofra wailed.
Fionnuala was already screwing the ninth and the tenth deep into handbag, the stitching straining.
“Fling that over yer shoulder and let yer mammy have a look,” she instructed Siofra.
The girl did as told. The bottles poked out, a third exposed to the eyes of any alcoholic they were likely to run into on the way home. Fionnuala’s eyes shot around the murky depths of the attic.
“Grab me them old newspapers,” she told Seamus.
Fionnuala unloaded the bottles from Siofra’s handbag, wrapped them in the yellowing newspaper, and shoved them back in. She disguised six more bottles and pushed one into each of her children’s six hands. The final bottle she wrapped and clamped under her left arm.
“Let’s be on wer way, wanes,” she instructed, hauling the Donnie and Marie cutout under the arm with the absinthe and the record player under the other. “And if youse drop one of them bottles, youse’ll be resting in the grave next to yer granny Flood.”
The children had difficulty climbing down the stairs with their little fists full, but finally they all stood on the upstairs landing, wincing up at their mother’s backside lumbering towards them, the bulging, clanking satchel straddling her shoulder, Celine Dion’s toothy grin beaming out. Siofra could take the sight no longer and scampered downstairs. Then she screamed.
“Mammy! The aul one’s shuddering something terrible!”
Fionnuala jumped down the ladder, and she and the boys galloped down the stairs. In the sitting room, Mrs. Gee’s body convulsed on the settee, her lips blue. Padraig eyed her with interest, Seamus with fear, the tears lashing down his face.
“What’s wrong with the granny, Mammy?” he screamed.
Even though the victim was Edna’s mother, the frail w
oman convulsing in pain had the power to wipe the scorn off Fionnuala’s face. Her brain cells trundled to figure out what action should be taken.
“Let’s hoof it, wanes,” she decided.
They were half-way through the front garden, fearfully scanning the houses in the dusk for the twitching curtains of witnesses, when Fionnuala stopped in dread.
“Och, I’ve left me fags on the mantelpiece! Evidence, they be’s, and £5 a pack at that. Get youse around the corner and play with a fence or some such and look natural.”
She sprinted inside, and the children rounded the corner, their limbs straining.
“I don’t care what Mammy says,” Siofra told Padraig as they converged at a lamppost and pretended to play with it. The swag fell to the pavement. “I like them specs of yers. Dead posh, ye look.”
That was the problem. Padraig fumed.
“Mammy be’s away in the head if she thinks she can shift this shite down the market,” he said.
“I’ve been wondering,” Siofra continued. “Could ye get me an iPod with that special credit card of yers? I’ve asked this daft gack in me class to nick me her daddy’s, but I can only get a lend of it. And ye know me CD player was broken the other week.”
“About me credit card, the other day I tried to buy—”
He yelped as a rock cracked against his shoulder.
“Fanta-pubes with the specs!”
“Specky-four-eyes! Specky-four-eyes!”
A horde of well-heeled children appeared from behind a mural of victims of the Troubles and closed in on them, hooting with laughter. The Flood children scattered, diving behind a row of garbage cans as stones cascaded around their heels.
“Mammy’s gear!” Siofra gasped. Everything lay unattended on the sidewalk, save the three bottles swinging from Siofra’s elbow.
“Blind Fanta-pubed Fenian geebag!” sang the ringleader, tossing a rock with the flick of a wrist accessorized with a Hannah Montana watch. Rocks ricocheted off the cans, and the Catholic children hunkered down, Seamus whimpering and shuddering. The mob disappeared down the street as quickly as it had come.
“Who the bleeding feck—?” Padraig demanded, twitching in anger.
Siofra poked her head over the garbage can, simmering with fury. Pink Petals again! Siofra could hate her brother and his glasses all she wanted, but heaven help anyone else who did. At least they hadn’t come with balloons.
“Shh,” Siofra said as they hurried up to the pile of loot around the lamppost. “Here comes Mammy.”
“Mammy! Mammy! I’m heart-scared!” sobbed Seamus, wrapping his arms around as much of her legs as he could.
“Och, ye daft toerag,” Fionnuala snorted, kneeing him off. “Five minutes, I was gone just.”
“Did the pensioner die?” Padraig asked a bit too gleefully.
“Thank feck, naw. I had to wipe wer fingerprints off everything we touched in the event she does, but,” Fionnuala explained. “Och, miserable, it was, just like dusting.”
Halfway home, Fionnuala’s Catholic guilt got the best of her. Making a mental note to never crush three of Maureen’s tablets into the tea for the next OsteoCare visit, she stopped at a pay phone, surprised to see it functioning and, after wiping gooey residue from the receiver, dialed 999. “Send youse an ambulance to 89 Lockview Crescent. There’s an aul one having a fit.”
While their mother was in the phone booth, Siofra turned to Padraig.
“I’ve a plan to get that hateful Proddy bitch Pink Petals back,” she said. “I’ll be needing yer help, but.”
Massaging the lump forming on his back, Padraig nodded eagerly; and considering the length of his youthful offender’s record, the more violent the revenge, the better.
CHAPTER 37
RORY WAS INDEED WEARING the black track suit with the white stripes and sat hidden in a nook. Dymphna was glad as it would give them the privacy she needed. At first, he complained of a headache that might cause him to end the night early, but then the trips through the cleavage and elbows to the bar began. Pints of lager were downed. And Maureen’s twenty quid paid for the shots of whiskey. Dymphna finally explained the mix-up at the lockups, Rory apologized for doubting her and for his mother’s behavior, Rory asked how his son was faring, Dymphna asked how his courses were going. Then they discussed the latest housemate evicted from Big Brother and Derry FC’s chances for the League of Ireland finals. As speech grew slurred and movements clumsy and trips to the loo more frequent, Dymphna told him how lonely she felt in bed, and asked if he felt the same. It seemed he did.
Dymphna couldn’t bring herself to ask about his special relationship with his father, his mother and his granny. She didn’t want to show herself up or ruin the mood, and she was sure Bridie had made it up as she was a jealous cow.
It was interesting, then, that four hours later, Bridie was the one shoving two drunken idiots clutching aluminum containers of Kebabalicious curry chips into a mini-cab. Perhaps it was the power of the drink.
“Get yerselves home,” Bridie roared with drunken glee. “And don’t forget youse’ve made that dinner date for the morrow! Och, it gladdens me heart to see the two of youse at it like dogs on the street!”
Dymphna slobbered all over his neck, her fingers scrabbling around in the darkness, the radio blaring the Spice Girls, the driver’s eyes glaring at them from the rear view mirror.
“Lemme at it!” Dymphna begged, tugging at his belt, his zipper, her fingers desperate for his manhood.
He needed Bridie’s octopus arms to fend her off.
“Come back to mine!” she begged. “I want to ravage the arse offa ye the night!”
“There be’s loads of people cooped up in that house of yers, but!”
“Och, ye can have me in the back garden, sure. We’ve a shed there.”
“I kyanny,” he slurred. “We’ve wer dinner date for the morrow anyroad. Make sure, you, we’ve the house to werselves.”
The mini-cab pulled up to 5 Murphy, and Dymphna spilled out onto the pavement, her tights a mess of ladders, eyeliner blackening the lower half of her face, booze glowing in her startled eyes, one bra strap hanging. She couldn’t locate her keys in her curry-spattered handbag She pounded on the letter box.
“Lemme in!” she begged, then turned, wanting to smile seductively and wave and perhaps flash a breast or two at Rory in the mini-cab. But it had already sped down the street and was on its way to the Protestant side of town. As she clutched the house for support, Dymphna was too drunk to wonder What in the name of feck was Bridie doing at the Craiglooner?
CHAPTER 38
“EFFIN BRILLIANT!” GRAINNE gasped, while Catherine squirmed with worry. It was morning, and the girls were sitting in a circle on the gym floor, surrounding pots of glue, safety scissors, crayons and fingerpaint, and fashioning pipe cleaners into seahorses and cardboard into smiling jellyfish. Siofra had just laid out her plan to wipe the smirk off Pink Petals’ face. And win the competition as well.
“But—”
“None of yer narky shite,” Siofra said to Catherine. “Ye of all people should be delighted that vile Protestant cow’s gonny get what she deserves, after the nightmares ye’ve had since the attack in the schoolyard. And the mortification of getting yer daddy involved and all. Hand me that glue, would ye Grainne? There’ll be no need for yer daddy to visit Mrs. Pilkey again once we’ve put wer plan into action. Pink Petals is gonny steer clear of wer side of town for the rest of her life, her.”
“She might suffer from nightmares after it just like me, but, and—”
“Where’s me and Grainne’s iPod, by the by?” Siofra asked.
Catherine lowered her head.
“Anyroad, we’ve wer plan and we’re sticking to it. I’m changing the subject now. Me oldest sister be’s one of them lesbians,” Siofra proudly revealed.
“What does that be?” Grainne asked.
“Have ye not heard of them? They be’s on shows on the telly all the time, so me daddy says. Wile t
rendy, so they be’s. Dead brainy and all.”
Grainne looked doubtful as her blue fingers painted what she hoped resembled waves on a refrigerator box.
“Me sister Moira wrote a book about wer family, did ye not know?” Siofra confided. “It’s to be in the shops next month. We’re gonny travel to Malta for to visit her, so we are. Me and me brothers has been doing special secret work with me mammy to get the funds together, like. Ye’d not believe the fun we’ve been having. Like a Harry Potter movie, so it is.”
“Does Malta be further than Belfast?” Catherine asked. That was the furthest place in the world she had heard of.
“Aye, miles further. Would ye believe to get there we’ve to travel on a bus and a ferry and a train?”
Catherine stared in wonder as she hacked away on the cardboard with the safety scissors. Grainne looked up.
“I’ve been on a plane,” she announced. “Me mammy took me to Spain for to get me a suntan for me First Holy Communion.”
“Aye, and mind how that turned out. Ye fell asleep on the beach and came back with yer face all blisters. Planes is for eejits with more money than sense,” Siofra quoted her mother. “Ferries and buses and trains be’s effin magic!”
Grainne’s fingers curled around a pipe cleaner in frustration. When she thought something was great, Siofra was always the one to cut it down. When she had loved pickled onion crisps, Siofra insisted prawn cocktail ones were better; when she loved Hello Kitty, Siofra had switched to the PowerPuff Girls. And all this babbling about Hannah Montana and Lady Gaga, Grainne couldn’t reveal she secretly enjoyed Justin Bieber more. How was the poor girl to realize that Siofra was, in some respects, her mother’s daught—
“Girls!” boomed Miss McClurkin, and the children jumped. “You’ve certainly been busy! Just what have we here?”
She looked their creations up and down, a look of wonder on her face.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 50
