The candles now lined the dining room table; they not only set a romantic mood, they also hid the filth, and stealing was easier than cleaning.
“And I miss wee, er, Keanu,” Rory was saying through teeth surrounded by ground meat, nodding with some reluctance in the general direction he suspected the stroller lay.
Through the candlelight, Dymphna picked coyly at her pasta and took in what she was finding the increasingly sexy combination of his red soccer jersey, his white skin and his jet black hair. As she giggled and chewed, she found herself yearning for his piercing blue eyes, his lithe, athletic body, the three heads of his shower, and the pounds that bulged in his mother’s bank account. She was relieved the dimness hid his pimples. This dinner would seal the deal. She would get her claws into him, then wait a few days to tell him about his unborn daughter; she knew it was a girl, the way an expectant mother does.
Their glasses clinked, and Rory leaned his face toward hers through the flames. The letter box clanked.
“Who the bleeding feck could that be at this hour?” Dymphna snarled; nobody in the family had outstanding warrants that she was aware of.
“Leave it,” Rory said. “They’ll soon be on their way.”
Their lips met, and still the clanking continued, soon replaced by pounding on the door proper. Try as Dymphna might to concentrate on relishing the moist warmth of his lips, on the playful flickering of his tongue through the bits of ground beef, it was useless. She could stand the racket no longer, and her curiosity got the better of her. She unplugged her lips from his.
“I need to answer that flimmin door,” she said angrily, wiping tomato sauce from her mouth. “If it’s some aul gypsy woman begging for coins for her wane, she’ll get me fist in her begging gob.”
Rory checked out Dymphna’s shapely hips as she marched out of the kitchen, and as he chewed he felt himself stir at the sight of her flicking her hands through her curly red mane of luxurious hair, still felt the passion of the kiss on his lips. He had been giving his mother too much credit; Dymphna, her mind aside, was indeed a great catch. And he had been about to let her slip away. When Dymphna sat back down, he would demand she move back in, and to hell with Zoë and her over-protectiveness and old-fashioned prejudice. He dug his fork into a chunk of beef.
Dymphna tugged open the door and flinched at the middle-aged man stood there with his bald head, greasy ponytail and rockabilly sideburns.
“And who the bloody hell is ye?” she asked, moving swiftly to slam the door on his ugliness. He shoved his shoe inside.
“Sorry I’m late, love. Dymphna, isn’t it? Ye wouldn’t believe the traffic, but. There was a pileup on the Craigavon Bridge. The bloody Filth—ahh, I smell the lasagne already. Brilliant! I love pasta, so I do.”
He thrust a bouquet of daffodils at her and marched into the house.
“Hold on there a wee moment, mister!” Dymphna demanded, trying to shove him back out onto the street with the hand that wasn’t clutching the flowers. “What gives ye the right to march into me house like this? I’ve never set eyes on ye in me life!”
He made his way into the kitchen.
“Christ on a cross, it’s dark in here, but.”
He turned on the light bulb, and Rory looked up from a forkful of pasta in alarm. The stranger took in Rory with surprise, and then confusion.
“Er, bout ye, mucker,” he said uncertainly.
He faced Dymphna, who was clutching at his elbow and uttering strange grunts and squeals.
“Who be’s this?”
“Who the bleeding feck is you, more to the point!” Dymphna seethed.
She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and tried to pull him back into the hallway and thereafter onto the street.
“Paul McCreeney, sure! Ye asked me to yers for dinner last night in the back of the mini-cab. Do ye not recall?” He suddenly seemed furious with himself, stamping his foot, his hands curling into fists at his side. “I knew it was too good to be true. Out of yer mind with drink, so ye were. Begging me to abandon the mini-cab and take ye upstairs for a jolly good rogering, ye said, and up the arse and all, ye promised!”
Dymphna’s shock was topped only by Rory’s.
“What the bleeding feck?” he gasped, leaping from his chair.
“It was against me better judgment to take advantage of ye in the state ye were in, no matter how much ye insisted ye were gagging for it,” the stranger went on, as Dymphna's horror rose. “More fool me, hi! Ye haven’t a clue about wer date, have ye? Forgotten the moment ye put the key in the door and collapsed in a drunken, sleazy heap on yer STD-ridden bedclothes, I’ve no doubt!”
“Rory!” Dymphna wailed. “He be’s away in the head, sure! Stop him from babbling more deranged lies!”
But Rory only stood and glared. At her. He lunged for his jacket draped on the back of the chair.
“No, Dymphna,” he said, flush with rage. “I’m the foolish gack who’s been out of his head. Believing all this palaver of how ye’ve changed, when ye’re still the same sleazy, scabby slag me mammy has been warning me all about since the moment ye stepped foot in wer house.”
Out he raced. The stranger made himself at home at the table.
“Shame to let this lasagne go to waste,” he said, lifting up Rory’s fork. “Microwaved, was it?”
“Out!” Dymphna shrieked. “Outta me house now!”
Bursting into tears, she wondered what the bleeding feck just happened here?
CHAPTER 43
SIOFRA HAD LET THE waterworks flow, and Dymphna unlocked her handbag and graced her palm with £5. Siofra now had £9.04. Grainne might help her with another pound or two, but there was a long way to go before she conjured up the additional £184.95 to replace Catherine’s iPod. Options were slim: Padraig’s credit card had been stopped, and he had already sold the five iPods he bought on it (what that money had been spent on was a mystery to her); her granny never had any extra money from her pension; her daddy was always at the factory; and Seamus and Keanu were too young to own money. That left her mammy. Madness as it was, Siofra had to ask. Earlier that morning, she had had a terrible nightmare of belt buckles approaching her through a field of hands with grabbing lesbian fingers and woken up bathed in sweat. Siofra rounded the corner before school to the house that had previously been her home.
Her mother was at the table in the kitchen in her bathrobe with the torn pockets, head hovering over the maps to get to Moira with a look of puzzlement on her face and a tea mug in her hand. Siofra spied an éclair from the swanky new café on Shipquay Street on a little plate, and her breakfastless stomach growled with excitement.
“Mammy?”
Fionnuala’s head shot up.
“What are ye doing here? How did ye get in?”
Fionnuala’s elbow dug into a corner of a map, and the éclair disappeared under Bulgaria.
“Mammy...”
“I know who I am, sure! What are ye after, wane?”
“I...I broke me mate’s iPod, and...and I’m afreared her daddy’s gonny batter her senseless if I don’t get another for her.”
“Not that I believe a word of them lies spewing from yer bake, but for argument’s sake, what’s it to do with me? If it be’s a handout ye’re after...!”
Her mother’s eyes flashed menacingly.
“Mammy, but!” Siofra whined with an angry little stamp on a hole in the linoleum. “Ye mind last birthday ye sat me down and explained how ye and me daddy was skint and youse couldn’t afford to get me a present and youse’d owe me? And I’ve been helping ye up in them aul ones’ attics, nicking all that gear for ye to sell down the market, wasting me time when I should be practicing for the talent show. I need £184.95, and—”
Siofra was shocked at the speed of her mother jumping from the chair, rounding the table and clattering her across the face. Smack!
“Nicking?! Nicking?! I should take a bar of soap to yer filthy wee mouth for spewing such lies! Yer mammy be’s doing no such t
hing. Theft be’s one of the seven deathly sins. Breaking one of God’s ten commandments! Clearing that gear from the attics be’s helping the aul ones out, doing their spring cleaning for em, and payment for going out of wer way to visit em as nobody in their right minds would want to listen to em babbling on about their decades spent on earth. And if ye think I’ve 200 quid to throw away on iPods and such ye’re outta yer bleeding fecking mind, not when we’ve this trip to Malta to fund and all wer bills to pay and all. Give me head peace, wane! Clear outta here and get yerself to school where I hope themmuns teach ye how to not be a grabby wee cunt!”
“I hate ye! I hate ye!”
“And the feeling be’s mutual. Outta me sight, wane! I’ve still loads of strength in me wrist, sure!”
Siofra left, and Fionnuala took her seat, simmering at the bold faced cheek of the child. How could she have raised such a self-centered beast? She chomped into the éclair and revisited the maps.
The moment the slamming of the door told him his daughter had gone, Paddy padded fearfully down the stairs from his vantage point of the hall landing. He stepped into the fluorescent strip lighting of the kitchen, and for once the light seemed too bright. He was sure Fionnuala could read the guilt on his face. She barely registered his arrival, however. Perhaps Padraig hadn’t had the chance to blurt out what he had seen in the factory, or perhaps his love for his daddy had made him reconsider? Paddy was suddenly grateful for the time he had spent/wasted kicking around the soccer ball with his son when there were professional games on TV he would rather be watching.
Paddy went to the larder and opened it. His lunch, prepared by Fionnuala earlier, sat there. He grabbed at the aluminum foil.
“I’m away off to work,” he announced.
“Away off with ye, then. Cheerio. And don’t ye forget the drinks do at the school the night. Eight o’clock sharp, I want ye there. Don’t make me look like a gack by having to wait around for ye.”
Paddy stood in indecision before her. If he told her before Padraig had a chance to? If he owned up, told his wife he found the Polish migrant worker repellent, that he felt he owed Aggie as she had saved his hand, and without two hands, he wouldn’t be able to collect a paycheck and...
“Before I go, but...”
Fionnuala heaved the sigh of a martyr and dragged her neck up to face him. Paddy shuffled before her uncertainly, sure she could hear his heart pounding.
“There be’s this woman at the plant. One of them Poles ye see down the town all the time as of late. They’ve shipped all the workers over from Poland, ye understand. And—”
“What in the name of feck are ye blathering on about?”
“Well, last night, we was working late for that overtime, if ye recall. And something happened that I kyanny quite fathom at the moment how. Anyroad, before I go any further, I’ve to tell ye she saved me hand from being mangled in the machine a few days earlier. Ye mind I told ye about that?”
“Dementia, ye think I’m suffering from now?”
“And I’ve to tell ye that you be’s the only woman in me life that’s ever meant anything to me. Proud, I was, when ye gladly took me hand in marriage. And in all them years, in all them years—”
“Ye’re gonny be docked yer wages if ye show up late, so ye are. Can ye not wait for Valentine’s or til I’m on me deathbed to let loose with all the sentimental claptrap?”
“What I'm trying to tell ye is—”
Fionnuala's eyes narrowed, then ballooned as a gasp of shock exited her mouth. Her hand shot out, her fingernails digging into the flesh of his upper arm with such brute force Paddy was of no doubt she finally understood.
“Jesus Mary and Joseph!” she seethed.
“Aye?” Paddy asked timidly, unable to glance into the anger that exploded in her eyes, and steeling himself for the abuse, verbal and physical, that was sure to follow.
“I forgot to take the pork knuckle out of the freezer for the tea the night!” she wailed angrily, racing to the fridge. “Midnight, it’ll be before the wanes and me mammy can fill their stomachs!”
She waved him off distractedly as she hunted through the freezer.
“Mind ye close the door on yer way out.”
Paddy lingered at the threshold, his lunch of three butter sandwiches clutched in his hand. Decades of marriage had made him an expert at identifying the merest trace of sarcasm in her voice. At the moment that voice was curiously flat. Perhaps too flat? Wondering if he were second-guessing himself, or if the lager from the night before were still dulling his senses, he finally turned and walked down the front hall. He couldn’t believe somebody as conniving as his Padraig would let go an opportunity to cause friction in the family; the little bastard thrived on it. Paddy would check his sandwiches for bits of ground glass when he got to work. He walked out the door.
CHAPTER 44
FIONNUALA’S CLUMSY fingers dwarfed the stem of the martini glass.
“Bruschetta?” a woman with a tray offered.
Fionnuala inspected the caterer’s tie with suspicion, then dared to view what the bull-dyke was shoving under her nose. A fecking fancy foreign name for wee tomato sandwiches with no tops on em? Jumped-up intellectual cunts!
But she grabbed one with an awkward curtsey, and the caterer hurried off. Fionnuala picked off the leafy green bits before hoovering it down.
“The Proddies be’s out in force, hi,” Paddy said.
Fionnuala and Paddy were milling around the teachers’ mail-slots in the room full of Brooks Brothers suits and cufflinks, pearls and cocktail dresses. Indeed, it seemed the Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow teachers’ lounge was hosting the invasion of the Orangefolk: Protestants of all shapes and ages were clamoring around the chocolate fountain and the ice sculpture, while the smattering of Catholic mothers and the odd father or two seemed relegated to the corner where the photocopier stood and the caterers rarely ventured.
The neighborhood children clearly hadn’t embraced the new Grand Prize of Hannah Montana tickets as wholeheartedly as Fionnuala’s daughter; word shared across the hedges and through the washing lines of the Moorside must be that the Fingers Across the Foyle talent show was rubbing shoulders with the enemy. Fionnuala wondered with a spike of fear if she and her family would be branded Unionist sympathizers. But if they were to be tarred and feathered later for taking part in the reception, she may as well fill her belly with drink now. Her horse-head lowered itself to the rim and she slurped down. She swiped another martini from a passing tray.
“There’s yer man Skivvins from the Sav-U-Mor by that daft fountain,” Fionnuala seethed, wiping her chin. “He be’s to blame for all wer money woes, for the wanes looking gaunt as junkies due to the hunger gnawing at their stomachs. And that headmistress with him, that Mrs. Plinkie, or whatever the feck her name be’s, be’s one hard-faced miserable cunt. Ye mind I told ye she called me into her office and almost got wer Siofra excluded after that palaver with the fire extinguishers the other month? Look at her now, her hands all over yer man, and him an Orange Proddy bastard. Disgraceful, so it is!”
Across the expanse of the bobbing hairdos, the headmistress lowered her eyes and nodded in her direction. Fionnuala read her lips clearly: “I do believe that’s the woman from the protest.”
Fionnuala turned around slowly, both to hide her face and to shine her designer rhinestones at them. She should have brought her Celine Dion satchel; Celine was classically-trained, so she was high class. Trying to behave as someone in real designer gear would, Fionnuala scooped something with tentacles from a passing tray and placed it haltingly on her tongue. She blanched.
That wee girl better win this fecking competition, she thought as nausea surged up her throat. She wrapped the slop in a napkin useless in size and let it fall to the floor. Her toe nudged it under a chair, and she was suddenly irritated by Paddy at her side. It was the denim, the whiff of seaweed, the fingernails black with fish dinge, and the image of his stiffie plowing into a fetid Polish field at the fish
factory.
“Could ye not have put on a shirt with buttons?” Fionnuala chided, elbowing him in the ribs. “And mind yerself with the drink. I don’t want ye showing me up any more than ye already are. Sip, Paddy, sip.”
“Right ye are, love,” he replied, as if he would.
“I’m away off to mingle,” Fionnuala decided. “Ye’re on yer own.”
She distanced herself from him, though she was clueless as to who she might mingle with. The only person in the room she knew to speak to was Mrs. Donaldson, Grainne’s mother, but Fionnuala hadn’t had a civil word to say to her since two Sundays earlier, when the beast had cut her off at the holy water font to dip her fingers in first. Self-centered cunt!
Paddy inspected the ice sculpture, two hands reaching out in friendship and melting while they did it. He finished off his beer and grabbed another. A woman approached him from the Protestant contingent, and then another. And another.
Fionnuala lingered unaware behind a pillar, facial muscles aching from her fixed grin, and listening in on the filth a trio of self-important Protestant men were spreading.
“...those former terrorists...what new jobs...have now?”
“What...mean?”
“...former lives...no education...lounging around...out of bed at crack of noon...no time card to punch...spreading...hatred...detonating the occasional bomb...threats...kneecapping...instilling...brute force...no brains...life of Riley indeed...money from the Yanks...Libya...”
Fionnuala’s blood percolated. Every word might be the God’s honest truth, but they had a bold faced nerve stating it!
“Now...”
“...put their skill sets to good use, but what skill sets...possess?”
Fionnuala wanted to push their heads into the punch bowl and skewer their eyes with the toothpicks from the cheese bits, but couldn’t as an old man in an Armani suit materialized at her side.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 53
