“Hello, having a good time? Have you any hobbies?” he asked with one of those blindingly white smiles.
“Aye,” Fionnuala barked, her lips sliding over her bank of teeth to hide their color. “Paying bills!”
She shoved through the crowd of overdressed twats, suddenly panicked. Her head hurt from all the West Brit accents, the violins screeching from the sound system, the hatred and misunderstanding she had overheard. From all sides of the room it was coming at her: an alternate reality existed across the River Foyle to which she was barred access by reason of birth and finance. Her life to that point had been useless; her body would rot then turn to bones then dust in its coffin, forgotten and upstaged by the shakers and movers of history. Her only legacy would be her grandchildren and their children and their children’s children, she would live on only in the collective memory of the world in Lotto Balls of Shame, the hardened Nelly Frood, the obese layabout who had given birth to nine children in a row and whose labor stopped there, who went after poor Una Bartlett’s lottery winnings and—
She spied Paddy at the ice sculpture, surrounded by cooing, preening women. Her fingernails gouged into the palms of her hands. Fionnuala could deny her man her maidenly pleasures for months on end, but in a crowd of a thousand pairs of female eyes stretched before her, she could hone in on the one pair focused on his behind. And here were many pairs. She felt her claws extend.
“...so I told the union rep, give me one of them bacon sandwiches of yers, and he did, foolish git!”
They tinkled with laughter, all tits and teeth, and Fionnuala felt faint. Then, to her horror, she spied Dymphna’s fiance’s mother, Zoë, tinkling along, a hand pressing into Paddy’s arm. Fionnuala searched frantically for a door that looked like it might contain toilets and scuttled inside.
She locked herself in a stall, plopped on the seat, and sobbed into the toilet roll at the sorry state of her life. The night before, she was certain Padraig wanted her to erupt into shrieks of rage when he told her the news. He must have been disappointed at her reaction: resignation. Her husband of twenty-odd years was getting it off against the mixing and grinding machines with a buck-toothed common laborer scab, and a Commie-bastard foreigner at that, and she just wasn’t bothered. The ranting in her mind was directed elsewhere: at Moira, at the distance of Malta, at the Lord Almighty, at the sight of Mrs. Pilkey’s Catholic hands on the thigh of Mr. Skivvins, at Beethoven and his fecking violins.
She had paid Padraig a tenner to keep his mouth shut. She knew damn well she would get revenge on her cheating husband, but she had sampled many times in her life the deliciousness of revenge served cold; Paddy’s would be served to him from the freezer.
The door creaked open, and two giggling women entered.
“...what are you doing here, anyway, Zoë? You’ve no children this age, have you?”
“I’ve two nieces in the competition. One’s doing fencing, the other demonstrating how to cook croissants, in French.”
“Anyway, back to what we were saying. What lovely huge hands he has. Big worker’s fingers. And he absolutely reeks of sweat—you know the way they exude a more feral odor than we? What I wouldn’t give to...oh, goodness! I do fear those apple-tinis have gone to my head!”
There was a bray of unladylike laughter.
“You’ve always had a thing for rough trade. If your husband ever found out! Pass me one of those tissues, dear.”
“It would be like pairing up with a member of a lesser species! Marvelous! Oh, Zoë! Do be a dear and help me with my bra strap, it seems to have come undone in the back. And when he went on in that guttural minion accent about lifting all those crates of fish, heaven help me, all I could think of was he must be an absolute animal in the sack, all bestial grunting and raw, brute force.”
“Ha! Under the sheets with the lights off, more like. That’s the Catholic way, don’t you know? He was almost family, would you believe? Do keep still, dear, I’ll never get it fixed at this rate, and quit gawping at me like that. Yes, his daughter almost married my son. I soon put a stop to that. I must touch up my lipstick as well. On a more tragic note, did you see the hard-faced creature that passes as his wife? It’s no wonder, I suppose, those working class women all look decades older than their years.”
“A trip to the health club wouldn’t go amiss, either, especially with that fat harridan. You see droves of them waddling through those Catholic housing estates, women barely out of their forties rolling prams stuffed with their screaming great-grandchildren, and you can’t tell if they’re ready to drop another any moment, ready to add to the litter.”
“I blame it on genes, the lack of proper nutrition, and ignorance of the beauty products of the day. Or, more likely, the inability to afford them.”
“It’s quite a giggle. Sometimes I suspect the lower classes were put on this earth only for our amusement, don’t you agree?”
“Oh, of course. If they didn’t exist, somebody would have to invent them.”
They shared a chuckle, and Fionnuala looked down at the shreds of toilet paper still clutched in her fingernails.
“The hours the poor dear must have spent on the sewing machine, putting together that God-awful outfit. DYNK indeed! And clumsily paired with that Burberry scarf, no fashion sense whatsoever, and that scarf is sure to be a knockoff.”
“Or shoplifted. And she needs to run, and I do mean run, to the hair salon. My eyes are still stinging from the sight of her bleached ponytails. Why do they all seem to cling to their youth? How that brawny hunk of manhood sleeps soundly at night with such a revolting creature at his side, I simply cannot fathom.”
Fionnuala threw open the toilet door in a rage. The women flipped from the mirror in shock, lipsticks aloft.
“You want rough trade, ye minging slapper? I’ll rough trade ye in yer Botoxed face, so the Sephora mascara be’s running down yer cheeks! And me Burberry scarf be’s genuine!”
They watched her go, mortified for her. Zoë shook her head sadly: “And why are the heels of their shoes always magnets for loo roll?”
“Ye Orange bastards! Looking down yer noses at us! Thinking ye’re better than the likes of us!” Fionnuala roared into the masses.
She grabbed a vodka bottle and flung it through the screams and scattering bodies at the ice sculpture. Shards of ice and shattered glass flew through the air. A finger speared Mrs. Pilkey’s forehead and she collapsed into a bookcase. It toppled over and pinned shrieking, wailing bodies under its weight. Legs and arms shuddered under thick volumes. Fionnuala raced for a whimpering Skivvins, grappled him around the neck and wrenched his head into the chocolate spewing from the cherubs’ mouths.
“Take that! Take that, ye nancy-boy Proddy stoke, ye! That’s for sacking me!” Fionnuala growled as he sputtered and struggled and chocolate splattered all over the—
But then Fionnuala realized she was only clutching the lapel of Paddy’s denim jacket in a quiet corner, the others chuckling and nattering around them, clinking martini glasses and enjoying the classical music.
“Let’s clear the feck outta this tip,” she said, “and leave them Proddies to their own miserable lives.”
CHAPTER 45
“ONE COWALICIOUS-ON-A-Bun, two Lambkebaahbs, three curry chips, extra large.”
“Please?” Bridie demanded of the customer, but the hooded teen was knocked to the side by Dymphna.
“Yer woman’s till be’s wonky,” Dymphna explained, patting a Keanu slung over her shoulder. “Go ye to that wee girl over there. More pleasant on the eyes, she be’s and all.”
“Dymphna!” Bridie said, eyes searching frantically for the manager. “What—?”
“Aye, what indeed! What in the name of feck happened at the Craiglooner last night?”
“What are ye asking me for? I wasn’t there, sure.”
Keanu turned to inspect the noise of Bridie’s voice.
“Has that wane of yers got an eye infection?” Bridie asked.
“Och,
I hope it’ll disappear, magic-like. Anyroad, don’t change the subject. Aye, ye was there. Don’t ye try to deny it. I’ve a vague recollection of ye shoving me and Rory into the back of a mini-cab.”
“Rory? He had left hours before, but. Ye told me so. A headache, or some such, he was suffering from. Ye said youse had made a dinner date for last night. Lasagne, ye said ye would cook for him. Och, ye were in one paladic state, I can tell ye, singing aul Britney Spears songs, especially that ‘did it again’ one, and throwing yerself at every lad that came into the pub. I tried to stop ye, tried to remind ye about yer date with Rory and how ye had to make up with him as ye’ve got that other wane of his inside ye begging for release. Ye paid me no mind, but. And then yer man Paul McCreeney showed up and yer legs shot apart so quickly ye knocked a pint onto the floor. Ye fairly did the splits on yer man with his crotch as the floor! I thought yer second wane was coming months premature, sure!”
“No need to go on about it. Who the bloody feck be’s this Paul McCreeney?”
“Ye met him last night. I know him from the line-dancing”
“Are ye sure?”
Bridie, bristling, placed a hand on her hip and stared Dymphna down.
“If ye’ve forgotten, ye made up with me and all,” Bridie said. “Ye said ye were me best mate again, and ye were sorry for all the insults ye flung me way.”
“Are ye sure?”
Bridie’s face gave the answer. Dymphna’s brain struggled to make sense of what had happened. She toyed with a ketchup packet.
“Why are ye asking, but?” Bridie wanted to know.
“Och, me and Rory was sitting down to dinner, dead romantic it was, candles lit and all, and then yer man Paul barged in and claimed he was me dinner date.”
Bridie made a show of picking at her cold sore, but she was really hiding the mirth begging to be set free.
“Ye mean, ye mean ye made a dinner date with Rory, then one with yer man, and forgot about the second? And both lads showed up?”
“Och—!” Dymphna shook her head, anger vying with sorrow. “That Paul McCreeney stopped being a ‘lad’ about twenty years ago. Blootered, I was, outta me mind with drink. I hadn’t a clue.”
“I’m wile sorry,” Bridie said, trusting herself finally to remove her fingers from her mouth. She placed them on Dymphna’s arm and gave it a rub of compassion.
“I’ve to see to this queue.” She nodded at the line forming behind Dymphna.
“Aye, sorry to bother ye at work, like. I just had to know. Before I go, but...”
Dymphna missed the flash of irritation in Bridie’s eyes.
“Me mammy swiped a crate of genuine absinthe from the 1920’s, and I’ve a few bottles stashed away at me granny’s. How about ye come over after yer shift here and we get legless together, hi? I need it, and I’ve paid me mammy a tenner to look after this mingin wane, so we’ll have the house to werselves. What time do ye clock off here?”
“Seven, like.”
“See if ye kyanny nick some of them sandwiches from the reject bin before ye go. Nothing with curry.”
“Right ye are, see ye at seven. Cheerio.”
As Bridie’s fingers clacked the next order in the till, she was at a loss as to exactly how she felt. The prospect of wasting time alone with Dymphna Flood in 5 Murphy Crescent’s sitting room, the carpeting of which hadn’t been hoovered in months and the net curtains which stank of the granny’s wee, filled her with less than excitement, but she was desperate to try genuine absinthe, rather than the legal, watered-down crap they had been passing off as the real thing in the pubs the past few years.
She decided drink was more important than discomfort, even though she had just had a lucky escape. Dymphna was so dim-witted, and had indeed been so deranged with alcohol, she hadn’t a clue what ‘best mate’ Bridie had done that night.
“Ten pounds fifty-two pee, love.”
And Dymphna would never find out, so long as Bridie could keep her mouth shut while tripping on absinthe.
CHAPTER 46
MACAFEE (NEW WAVE) and Scudder (Thin Lizzie) were parked once again across the street from the house with the saggy fence and the brown weeds for a front garden. They sat in a fog of fags, a cloud of vinegar, scoffing down fish and chips, the newsprint further blackening their already filthy fingers, the bottles of lager further disturbing their already disturbed minds. The door to 5 Murphy Crescent opened. MacAfee nudged Scudder and turned down A Flock of Seagulls.
“Themmuns is on the move, boyo,” he said.
They leaned forward and peered through the mud spatters of the windshield. Down the path went the pensioner with the cane and the lipstick, then the ugly poofter with the ginger hair, then the hunger-stricken girl with the pink handbag. The gate clanked shut, and the two rogue terrorists looked at each other.
“By my reckoning, that leaves only the wee girl from the Pence-A-Day lockups and her infant in the house,” MacAfee said. “Once she clears out, we can rush in and get them explosives.”
“Weeks, we’ve been trying to collect em!” Scudder complained, gnawing on an undercooked chip. “It be’s two against one. Can we not just push through the door now and menace that daft bitch with a gun while we search for the case? I wouldn’t mind getting me leg over her and all into the bargain.”
“Don’t be daft! She knows us, sure. She rented us the lockups. Even with balaclavas over wer faces, she’s sure to recognize us.”
“How, but? X-ray eyes, do ye think she has now?”
“We be’s wearing the same gear, sure.”
“Pwoah! Would ye look at the backside on that?” Scudder suddenly rejoiced, eyes agog. “That be’s a whole lotta woman! Wane-bearing hips, if I’ve ever seen em!”
A girl in a Kebabalicious outfit had rounded the corner and was clumping down the pavement.
“What I wouldn’t give to get me fill of that! Like going at it with an elephant, it would be!” Scudder continued, eyes crazed with sex.
Kebabalicious pushed through the gate, marched up the path and clanked on the letter box.
“Jesus H. Christ!” MacAfee moaned. “The comings and goings through that door!”
“Let’s take em both,” Scudder insisted. “I want the big one, ye can take the ginger one.”
“Never gonna happen.”
“Och, this be’s wile daft,” Scudder said, frustration rising. “The Top-Yer-Trolley annual sale be’s next week, so it does. We’ve still to construct the bomb once we’ve collected the Semtex, and them instructions from the Internet be’s dead complicated.”
“Aye, translated from Arabic, they must be, and not very professionally, I admit.”
“Why did we not collect them cans before we left for that training course in Libya?”
“We hadn’t the time. Don’t get yer knickers in a twist. Them wee girls is sure to be preparing for a night on the town. The Pence-A-Day one dropped her infant off somewhere, so that must be the plan. Then we can enter, so we can.”
Scudder looked at his watch.
“One hour, I’m giving themmuns. Then, feck ye’re touchy-feely shite. I’m barging in there and taking the tins, and giving themmuns pure tight with me meat weapon and all. One hour, just!”
CHAPTER 47
HALF AN HOUR EARLIER
Around the corner, a Fionnuala fresh from Xpressions hair salon approached the mirror and inspected her new—age-appropriate—hairdo. A bland creature stared glumly back at her, the frivolity of youth now stripped from her skull, replaced with a mousy brown flip. She was saddened that “age-appropriate” for her meant “middle-aged.” The words of the women in the toilets still stung, and the bleached pony tails had been the second thing to go; she had already snipped the DYNK rhinestones from the back of her black jacket. Perhaps, Fionnuala considered by way of making herself feel better, a change of appearance had been on the cards for a while, if only for the event the coppers came calling to haul her in for a line up courtesy of Mrs. Ming and the older Mrs. Gee.
Keanu gurgled in his stroller in the corner, and Fionnuala turned her attention to the TV to make herself feel better. The Iceberg That Sank The Titanic was on in a few minutes; she had circled it in the newspaper earlier that morning and had been looking forward to it for hours. She wasn’t one for documentaries, but for her this was must-see TV, considering her all-time fave film.
The amount of times she had curled up on the sofa with the sitting room drapes drawn, a hand stuck inside a jumbo bag of prawn cocktail crisps, the other clutching a flagon of cider, the vacuum cleaner leaning unused against the wall and the filth of the house forgotten, the VCR tape of Titanic whirring before her misted eyes, and the sobs dribbling from her lips while the twisted shards of iron sank to the freezing ocean depths and Celine Dion’s beautiful voice swaddled her ears. She turned the TV on, tingling with excitement.
“Next on BBC Three, there’s a change to the billed programming. We take great pleasure in presenting our heartbreaking investigative feature Can’t Stop Eating: Supersized Teens.”
Dear God give me strength! Fionnuala seethed inwardly, flinging the remote at the screen.
It bounced onto the floor, the back popping off and the batteries scattering. Fionnuala heaved herself off the sofa, slipped on a battery and cracked her skull against the coffee table.
“For the love of God!” she moaned.
How would she spend the next hour instead? She spied the Ab Fab Abs and Boulder Buns video under an ashtray stuffed with spent cigarettes. Zoë and her hateful friend had also talked about the size of her. Fionnuala looked down at her body. Was it any wonder Paddy had sought comfort elsewhere?
She decided it was time she heave her exhausted form onto the floor and demand her limbs mimic the movements of the trainer on the screen. A brief trip upstairs, and she had stretched herself in a pair of pink leotards and matching legwarmers that had lain unused in a drawer for ten years, brown flip tied back with a dirty pair of tights. Looking around the sitting room to ensure there were no voyeurs, she closed the net curtains, then the larger curtains. She was bathed in darkness.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 54
