“I kyanny take it no more, Mammy,” Padraig said. “All sorts of grief, I’ve been getting, in the playground, on the way home from school, because of these flimmin specs. I want ye to get me that laser surgery!”
Fionnuala roared with laughter.
“Contacts, then.”
“Och, stop yer sobbing, ye daft cunt. We kyanny afford contact lenses for an eleven year old. Yer granny is decades older than ye, and she’s still got specs. And nobody gives her grief because of em. Mind, there was that time she was attacked coming outta the butcher’s last year...”
“Could ye not at least get me ones that doesn’t be wile-looking pig-ugly? Ones that doesn’t be from the National Health Scheme? I look like a right spastic! I kyanny blame me mates for beating the shite outta me. I wanna beat the shite outta me meself, sure!”
“Are ye away in the head, wane? Why in the name of all that be’s sacred would we waste hard-earned dosh on specs when themmuns gives em out for free? And what the feck does the color of them specs of yers be anyroad? Piss yellow?”
“Feck you!” Padraig roared.
Fionnuala pounced from her chair. Her hand pounded against his ugly, enraged face with a satisfying smack!
“I’m leaving home,” Padraig sobbed. “And youse better beware. I’ve tossed petrol bombs in the past, if ye recall.”
“Go ye right ahead! C’mere til I tell ye, I’ve had it up to here with yer insolence. Get the feck outta wer home and never come back! And I want ye outta 5 Murphy and all!”
Padraig blinked, wondering what ‘insolence’ might be.
“R-right then,” he said, making uncertain moves towards the door.
“Before ye go, but,” Fionnuala said, waving him back into the kitchen.
Padraig took a crablike step, trying to hide the hope behind his lenses.
“Strip them clothes off yer ungrateful bones before ye go. We bought em ye! Starkers, ye’re gonny leave the home!”
Fionnuala grabbed at his hoodie. Padraig screamed and kicked.
“Get offa me! Offa me now, you!”
Fionnuala knew she could sell the clothes half price down the market, and his strange new sneakers looked like they would fetch a bundle. The cotton slipped through her fingers, and Padraig escaped out the kitchen door.
“I’m telling me da!” he roared. “I’m going down to the factory now to tell him all about yer abuse!”
“Aye, good luck with that, boyo. Like ye can wriggle through the picket line. I’ll be waiting for ye to strip the clothing from ye when ye—”
The windowpanes shook as the door slammed shut. Fionnuala lit a cigarette, picked up her new jacket and inspected it from a different angle. A smile of pride wound around the butt.
CHAPTER 40
HER GRANNY WAS AT THE bingo, Dymphna and Keanu at the Top-Yer-Trolley late night shopping, and Seamus in a room playing with his shapeless thing. She didn’t know where Padraig was.
Siofra had counted the money she owned and kept in a special yellow coin purse in her PowerPuff Girls handbag, proud it now totaled £4.07. Then she shimmied a few times before the mirror, singing Hannah’s “The Best of Both Worlds” into the community hairbrush, but soon tired of that. She made her way downstairs and into the kitchen to inspect the newest case of cans her mammy had brought home from the Sav-U-Mor a few weeks before. She was surprised to see it missing. But the case from months back was still in the corner next to the sink. Siofra smiled. Perfect. She was about to delve inside when the letter box clanked. Then someone hollered through it: “Siiiiofra!”
It was Catherine. Siofra ran to the door and opened it.
“Bout ye, Siofra.”
“Aye, bout ye. Come on in, you.”
Catherine inspected the hallway, her brow furrowed. There didn’t seem to be anything in it except the carpet. She reached into her Hello Kitty handbag and passed over the iPod.
“Here’s the iPod.”
Siofra squealed and clutched the treasure to her chest in glee. She turned it round and round in her fingers, marveling at the white sheen and cute white headphones.
“Och, it’s wile civil of ye, Catherine!”
Siofra plugged the headphones in her ears and luxuriated in the feel of them. She mimicked walking down the street with it in her right hand. She felt very posh. She felt American.
“Ye’ve only got a lend of it,” Catherine reminded her. “Me daddy’ll go mental if he finds out it be’s missing, and he always uses it on a Sunday for to help him with the gardening.”
“All I need be’s to let it be known round town I’ve one. Ye’ll get it back after I wear it a few times on the mini-bus.”
Catherine bit her lip in concern.
“Ye sure?”
“Aye, I promise.”
“On Hannah Montana?”
“Aye, I promise on Hannah Montana.”
Catherine’s face brightened.
“And I get to do extra dance moves, aye?”
“Aye. Not as many as me and Grainne, but.”
Catherine clapped her hands and jumped up and down.
“And when we win and get to Belfast and get backstage, we can ask Hannah her favorite color!” she bubbled. “And her favorite food!”
“I heard it be’s spaghetti tacos.”
“I wanny eat spaghetti tacos!”
“Them Yank taco shells be’s terrible dear, but. I’ve seen em on the shelves of the Top-Yer-Trolley with me mammy. She wouldn’t buy em for us.”
Catherine nodded in understanding: everybody in school knew everything from the States was excellent but expensive.
“How does this thing make music so’s I can hear it, but?”
“It be’s easy. Lemme show ye how.”
She showed her, and Siofra squawked with joy as Abba flooded her ears.
“It’s all me daddy’s music, mind,” Catherine said. “Ancient music. Good, but.”
She showed Siofra how to shuffle, how to repeat, and how to turn it off.
“I’ve to be on me way home now, Siofra. It be’s wile late. Me daddy’ll be fearing for me safety on the streets.”
“Och, it takes but five minutes to get to yers. I want to show ye what’s to help us win the talent show.”
“But—” Catherine looked in fear at her Dora the Explorer watch.
Siofra wondered for an angry second if Catherine was making a show of looking at her watch so that Siofra knew she had one, but just as quickly decided that wasn’t the case. She calmed down.
“A minute it’ll take, just.”
She grabbed Catherine’s wrist and led her into the bare-bones kitchen. Catherine’s eyes followed a trail of crusty tomato sauce across the warped linoleum to a sink heaving with dishes and up a crack in the filthy window that led to a spiderweb in the ceiling and down a frayed wire below which dangled the bare light bulb over her head. She followed in silence to the case of canned vegetables that seemed to give Siofra much delight.
“Me mammy brought a new case in to us the other week,” Siofra explained. “It be’s gone now, but. Never mind, as I opened a tin and it was boring yellow wax-stuff inside, just. What be’s in these cans be’s loads better! Effin deadly, so it is, and in each one something different!”
Catherine peered inside the case. She saw a selection of cans, some dented, some rusted, all with shabby labels haphazardly affixed, some curling at the point where the paper met. Catherine read a few of the labels, and she couldn’t mask her disappointment.
“Siofra, but. They be’s baked beans, mushy peas, carrots and like, just.” Was Siofra having her on?
“So ye might think!”
Siofra brandished a can opener proudly; using it made her feel adult. She ostentatiously hacked open a can of ‘carrots.’
“Go on and have a look inside, then, you.”
Catherine did, then recoiled, eyes spitting tears, nose affronted.
“Ewww! What does it be?”
“Pure mingin!”
Long bef
ore Mrs. Feeney and Mrs. O’Mahoney had demanded a refund on the cans of waxy stuff, a smattering of customers had come into the Sav-U-Mor clutching tins from a case of assorted vegetables Fionnuala had bought the week before. Fionnuala had quickly cleared the shelves and brought them home. Around the kitchen table, the Floods opened a few and all peered inside, wondering what they were looking at. They dug through the potato skins and empty microwave packets of the garbage and located all the original labels they had peeled off and replaced as a family. Paddy sent Padraig to the Internet at the library, and the boy’s search in the Google translator revealed that Disznóbőr Vér-Val Tojásrántotta meant the ‘carrots’ were pigs blood in scrambled eggs from Hungary.
They also learned that the Шоҝолал Охватьіваемьіе Сало ‘baked beans’ were Ukrainian chocolate covered pigs fat, and the ‘mushrooms’ were Chinese fried popsicle bonbons with pea-milk flavoring. Even Fionnuala blanched when Padraig revealed that she had sold five cans of ‘cauliflower’ that were Qayigyar Qamiqur—seal brain fritters. And many more horrors besides.
With these props for their performance, Catherine knew the Happiness Boat would be anything but. Except for Siofra, perhaps. Still, if her involvement made her popular and got her backstage...
“Ye wanna see inside another?”
“Walk me to the corner, would ye?” Catherine asked. Her daddy told her Siofra’s street was one of the most dangerous in town. “We can each take a headphone and listen to music while we walk.”
“Scaredy-cat!” But Siofra relented, and they were out the door, skipping through the gate of the front ‘garden.’
“You can dance, you can jive...having the time of your life...!”
Siofra was about to tell Catherine that Miss McClurkin was right; these hoary old chestnuts from Abba were indeed great, when the iPod was smacked out of her hand from behind. The headphones popped from their ears, and the iPod flew through the rain, clattered onto the street. and disappeared under the wheels of a passing car.
Tommy Coyle, the ten-year-old hoodie thug from across the street, cackled with cruel glee as he slipped around the corner. Catherine stood agog, almost wringing her eyes with her fists as they couldn’t believe what they had just seen.
“Siofra! Naw!”
“Aye, Tommy, ye’re a hard man, so ye are!” Siofra called out angrily.
The girls ran into the street and knelt before the remains of the iPod, little black and steel mechanical-looking things sprinkled across the cobblestones. Siofra plucked the squashed case and inspected the tire track on it with worry.
“I don’t suppose we can fix it?”
The tears burst from Catherine’s eyes.
“Me mammy already be’s going further outta her noggin with her mental disease since she discovered that press pass be’s missing the other day. I woke up last night and caught her taking a wee on me bedroom floor, so I did. I’m gonny let ye in on something I’ve never told a soul.” Here she clutched Siofra’s shoulder for comfort. “Me daddy batters the shite outta me something terrible. He set to me with the belt when the press pass went missing, thinking I had something to do with it. A huge buckle, the belt has, and, och, I kyanny go on with the details, too painful to reveal, they be’s. Siofra, help me! Help me! I kyanny let on to me daddy I nicked his iPod as well. He’s sure to put me in intensive care in Altnagelvin, and who knows what me mammy will leave on me bedroom floor the night!”
Siofra trembled at the anguish on the girl’s face.
“Can ye not contact the Filth about yer daddy?”
Catherine stared.
“Me daddy be’s the Filth! Ye know that, sure!”
Siofra led the shattered Catherine to the sidewalk because another car was barreling towards them. A steely resolve descended on her young face.
“I’ll get ye another,” she said. “Don’t ye worry.”
“How, but, Siofra? How?”
“I don’t know how now. I promise, but, on Hannah Montana, I’ll think of something.”
Catherine slowly dried her tears and they parted, Siofra hugging her next to the Coyle’s threadbare hedge. Siofra waved and Catherine waved back. As Siofra entered 5 Murphy, she reflected that, as miserable as her life seemed, some had it worse.
CHAPTER 41
“JESTES SEXY!” Aggie growled, the excitement making her unable to conjure up any of the little English she had learned. She flung off a scale-encrusted glove and ran her forefinger up the length of Paddy’s sagging upper arm. She pursed her chapped maw.
The rest of the crew had clocked off hours earlier. Desperate for overtime, Paddy and Aggie had volunteered to scrub out the fish feed vats and man the machines that could be run throughout the night. They were alone in the factory (except for O’Leary doing the accounts in the office miles away). The Polish woman was about as seductive as an old alkie pleasuring himself on a park bench, but Paddy felt his manhood stir.
“Pocałuj mnie teraz!”
The puckered shape of her lips and their movement towards his through the plumes of hot breath let him know she was insisting he kiss her.
Paddy was torn, but what could he do? Without her, he would have a stump for a hand. And he had spent a soccer season of nights staring at Fionnuala’s spine in her tatty nightdress directed firmly at from him across the sagging mattress, and a man had needs a hot water bottle couldn’t satisfy. Before this, getting his leg over behind Fionnuala’s back had never been an option, and it was equal measures his love for her and the gossip he knew went on in the aisles of the Top-Yer-Trolley that kept him loyal; many a Derry marriage had been annulled—divorce was out of the question—due to information shared next to the frozen fish sticks. Paddy pressed Aggie against the pulsating cold steel of the grinding machine and felt the warmth of her lips. The churning of the machines drowned out Padraig’s young gasp, hidden as he was behind one of them.
Aggie flicked her hair and let escape a guttural giggle Paddy assumed was more arousing in her mother tongue. He concentrated instead on the shape of her bosom waxing and waning under the fetid overalls.
“Zerznij mnie!” Aggie gasped, pointing at her nether-regions. Paddy was of no doubt what ‘zerznij’ might mean, as she circled the forefinger and thumb of her right hand, and poked her left forefinger in the circle a few times, her eyes staring into his and her eyebrows raising conspiratorially to ensure he understood what she was demanding.
“Och, sure, we kyanny,” Paddy said weakly.
She pointed excitedly to the rumbling mass of steel that was the wall of the grinding machine.
“Zerznij mnie na tej maszynie!” Fuck me against that machine!
Paddy feared his heart might give way, the excitement of sex compounded with the rumbling of the machine.
He shook his head at the machine. “Not there!”
She pointed eagerly into the corner.
“Albo moze w tym kacie!” Or maybe in that corner!
Aggie fell against him, her fingers flying towards the straps of his overalls as she covered his grimy face with kisses. Paddy shivered as the overalls slipped to his knees, then to his gray sagging socks that had once had elasticated support and been white. She squealed like a sow at a trough of new slop as his powerful working class hands ripped through her polyester.
Aggie pulled away and shrieked in surprise, pointing into the darkness.
“Ktoś nas podglada!” Someone is here! “Kim jest to dziwne stworzenie?” Who is that strange creature?
Paddy saw what was indeed a strange creature that had materialized with little fists bared beside a conveyor belt. Paddy burned for a moment with fury as to why Aggie had not informed him she had a son. He stifled a guffaw at how nancy-boy-poofter the child was; they certainly bred them effeminate across the Iron Curtain, he thought, then did a double take as he realized it was Padraig with his new glasses. He was torn between shame, confusion and shock that Fionnuala would let him out on the streets looking like that.
“Jesus C
hrist almighty!” Paddy said.
Padraig glowered with hatred and betrayal, glaring up at one, then the other, then the first again through his greasy fingerprinted lenses as his lips struggled to make words.
“Daddy! What is youse playing at? How could ye do it, da?”
“How in God’s name did ye slip through the picket line, wee boy?”
“That’s the least of yer worries,” Padraig promised. “I’m off to tell Mammy ye’ve nabbed a fancy woman for yerself, and a flimmin wile-looking busted-cabbage faced gee-eyed skegrat fancy woman at that!”
“C’mere you now!” Paddy thundered, lumbering towards him as best he could, but Padraig had disappeared into the maze of grinding machines and the man of the Flood house was left standing with his overalls around his ankles and a noose around his neck.
“Gee-eyed skeg...?” Aggie wondered.
“That be’s English for ‘Polish,’” Paddy lied.
“You in trouble, yes?”
“Aye.”
She pulled up her bra strap.
CHAPTER 42
“FOOD FIRST, FILTH LATER,” Dymphna promised Rory.
He peered eagerly across the microwaved lasagne through the flickering flames, barely able to locate Dymphna’s face in the gloom. It was the Day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Holy Day of Obligation, and Dymphna had paid a visit to St. Molaug’s. While the congregation muttered through the Liturgy of the Eucharist and hacked coughs into their prayer books, Dymphna crept over to the Prayers for the Dead candles stand, slipped a fifty-pence piece into the box and lit a candle. Kneeling, she muttered up a quick prayer to the Blessed Virgin for her Granny and Grandda Flood and her Grandda Heggarty; the three hadn’t exactly been civil to one another in life, but Dymphna figured they could all share one candle in death. Then, with a quick genuflection, she made out the door with a box of votive candles under her coat.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 52
