He thought twenty-three years in the fish packing plant was hard graft, but that was before the Queen of Crabs. Overstaffed and underspaced, the galley had him exhausted. His calves ached from anchoring himself on the swaying floor, his fingers were scalded from grabbing pots that teetered from their burners, his backbone and shins were elbowed and kicked by the staff who jabbered away in tongues he couldn't understand and with whom he had to use an array of gestures to explain his most basic needs, the sweat was lashing down his face from the industrial blaze in which his limbs were expected to labor, his hair clung in sopping clumps to his sweaty scalp, prisoner in his hairnet. Grease clung to his flesh, even though he wasn't allowed near the excitement of the many grills and deep fryers.
And they had been laboring ten hours daily. Potatoes Paddy knew and ate and understood, but he had spent the past few days slicing and dicing mostly bizarre produce with peculiar kitchen tools, both of which he would be hard-pressed to describe afterwards. Being a meat, spuds and two veg man, he couldn't understand the majority of the pansified foreign food they were preparing for the minted cunts in the dining room. But thankfully, Yootha steered clear from the galley, which meant the staff felt free to break the regulations and chain smoke, smoldering butt ends clinging to their lips as they hovered over the bubbling pots. They had arranged industrial-sized fans to keep the smoke from billowing into the dining room. And thanks to strange recopies Paddy had read on the recipe bulletin board called 'beouf bouguignon' and 'coq au vin,' the name of which made him giggle, there was alcohol aplenty, though it was wine, which he had always thought of as women's drink. But he understood now it did the job as well as whiskey and a few pints of lager.
Paddy took a drag of a cigarette and a gulp from the bottle he kept by his right boot as he gouged the peeler into another potato. He wasn't doing a good job; those he tossed into the water of the 'peeled' vat were misshapen and dingy, and for this he blamed not only his general incompetence in any kitchen —surely the domain of wives, and why they had men doing women's work on this ship, he didn't know—but also the Band-aids wrapped around fingers that had been sliced by the peeler and a variety of knives; Band-aids that were now sopping from the stint debearding mussels he had just taken a break from. He would have to get back to the mussels eventually that shift, but shuddered at the thought, bushing off the barnacles, prying the shells open with his grimy fingers, the creatures inside the shells wriggling like living tongues, pulling out the little bellies and squeezing out their shit into the slop bucket.
Another half-peeled spud fell into the vat, and Paddy reached into the sack for yet another. He raised his head, and flinched at Fionnuala's ponytails inches from his nose.
“Fionnuala! What in the name of all that's sacred brings ye here?”
“It's like me stomach be's wriggling with tapeworms begging for sustenance.”
She shoved past him to get at the sack of oats to his left, plopped herself down on a case of canned tomato sauce and delved into the sack. He watched in horror as she shoveled handfuls of oats between her gaping lips. She gulped, shuddered for a second, then leaped up.
“How are ye?” she asked.
“Grand.”
His eyes flickered to the space under her left elbow where he expected Siofra to be. All he saw were the crotches and buttocks of the staff in their yellowed aprons as they hurried past them in the mist of cigarette smoke.
“Where's wer Siofra?”
“Ach,” Fionnuala spat through flakes of oats, “run off, so the wee bitch has. Left me to scour all them minging cabins by meself.”
Paddy gripped the peeler in panic.
“Gone missing?”
“Can ye imagine? I can fairly see the bones of me fingers through the flesh, all the work I've had to do on me lonesome.”
She grabbed a mango off a counter—“What the bloody feck be's this?”—and chomped her teeth into it. Paddy struggled to get his head around what she had said. Unease made its way up his spine.
“Should we not contact the security on the ship? What if a pedo perv has grabbed her? Be's interfering with the poor wee wane even as we speak?”
“Ach,” Fionnuala snorted, “catch yerself on. Them things only happen on the telly, like. Tasteless shite.”
She spat out the mango peel and scooped some chili into her maw.
“Anyroad, the only pervs I've caught wind of on this boat be's nancy boys, and arse bandits doesn't be interested in interfering with the private parts of wee girls.”
She wiped a bean from her chin and popped it into her mouth.
“She might be injured, but, lying somewheres with the blood pouring outta her wee limbs, like. Ye've seen the state of the machines and whatnot in the engine room, haven't ye woman, spiky things poking out and all sorts. Should we not at least make wer way to the crèche and ask Dymphna if she's clamped eyes on her?”
Fionnuala had been scanning the surroundings for more nourishment, but Paddy now withered against the potato sack as daggers shot from her eyes, ablaze with sudden fury.
“Have ye not a clue what a crafty wee bitch wer Siofra be's? Have the years spent living with her not taught ye anything of the depths the lazy chancer won't stoop to to get herself outta hard graft? Naw, ye've not a clue, as ye be's at home only to pass out in a drunken stupor after yer shifts at that packing plant. Legless, ye be's more nights than not when ye stagger into wer family sitting room, the stench of aul fish and stale drink and accidental wee rising offa ye, overpowering, it be's, so we've to choke back the urge to spew when we make wer way round yer splayed legs to change the channels on the telly. Why do ye think ye know wer wanes better than the likes of me, the mother who bore em? Ye've not had a hand in the upbringing of any of the wee cunts. That's all been down to me, so it has. Who was it that cleaned their shite-filled nappies? Shoved the pureed carrots down their gaping throats? Dragged them outta bed for school every morning? Not that learning did any of em any good, the miserable lives they all lead now. I've difficulty figuring out which of em be's the biggest loser, so I do. Even the youngest, wer Seamus, I've a suspicion he be's a mindless simpleton. Afeared we're gonny get his first test results and have to shove him into a madhouse, so I'm are. Drool on himself to his heart's content he can do there. Aye, I see by the look on yer face now ye hadn't a clue. And I'm sure ye've no idea when their birthdays be's. Tell me one birthday. Tell me!”
After a few seconds of silence, she whooped triumphantly.
“Ye see? I told ye ye've not a clue what be's going on with wer wanes. I'm their mammy, and I know em through and through. I know all their birthdays and all.”
As the length of her rant increased so did the volume of her voice; it was now shrill and threatening to overpower the blare from the blenders. The eyes of his co-workers inspected them, and there was some sniggering and pointing of fingers. Paddy simmered with quiet anger back at her. He leaped up.
“Are ye a mad woman yerself?” he whispered into her face. “Showing me up in front of me workmates like this?”
He knew Fionnuala was aware of the shame of airing dirty laundry in public, the importance of putting on the front of a happy married life for their Moorside neighbors. She was always harping on about what 'themmuns next door must think.'
“Mates? Ha! Anyroad, none of themmuns speaks a word of English, if I trust the babbling nonsense I be's hearing, so themmuns hasn't a clue what we be's saying. And ye think I give a shite what them foreign bastards thinks anyroad? Barely real people, they be's. I'm telling ye, but, no harm's come to wer Siofra. The lazy wee cunt will be back when she's hungry enough. Enough of this silly shite! I've filled me stomach to the bursting point, and now I want to bag meself a wee juke at the dining room.” Irritation crossed her brow. “Where I thought I was to be dining most nights. More fool me.”
“We kyanny go into the dining room. It's against the rules.”
Fionnuala snorted and glared her husband down.
“Are ye a man or a mous
e?”
Paddy was a man, he knew that, but he also knew he had to tread carefully where Fionnuala was concerned. After his dalliance with a Polish fish packing plant scab the year before, and suspecting his son Padraig, now 11 and thankfully at home in Derry, had told his wife what he had seen, he had to defer to her every whim. Perhaps this explained why he hadn't rattled out the home truths to her that night in Derry on the canons as he had been dying to. Frustration jangled him, but once again fear of Fionnuala made him relent.
He guided her over the buckets of mussels and cartons of canned goods, and she gripped his arm, dug her claws right into his flesh, and dragged him towards the doors that warned NO STAFF BEYOND THIS POINT.
The door creaked open, and his hairnet and her ponytails poked through. They crouched, one on either side of the crack, and peered into the dining room.
“Ach, Paddy...” Paddy feared his wife had contracted a sudden eye infection, but was shocked to realize it was her eyes filling with tears. “All them walls glittering with gold, and them red sashes hanging from them huge windows looking out onto the sea, velvet or suede they must be. And would ye look at them plates they be's dining off of, pure bone china. And all them knives and forks and spoons they've to choose from.”
Sadness wracked her.
“When wer Dymphna won this trip, I thought for once in me life I'd be sitting in splendor like themmuns there, but instead we've been shoved off in the hull of the ship as if we was the victims of leprosy, saddled with views of gray pipes and peeling paint. Ye know I've always loved the glamor of the Titanic, ye know I made ye take me to up to Belfast for that Celine Dion concert for her My Heart Will Go On tour in '97. It was the only thing I wanted for wer fifteenth anniversary.”
Her right hand felt around the top of her shoulder, then made like it was grasping for something hanging to the right of her breast, reaching for something that wasn't there.
“Ach, Paddy, ye mind me Titanic satchel?”
How could he forget? It had been Fionnuala's second prized possession (after her Kenny Rogers' The Gambler teaset). He had bought it after the concert in Belfast from a souvenir stand. He was still shocked at the cost of it. On one side, Celine Dion sang into a microphone, and on the other, there was a replica of the Titanic, and a special mechanism made the ship tilt when something was placed in the bag. When the bag was full, the ship 'sank.' The hours Fionnuala had spent on journeys on the mini-bus to and from town, the sinking Titanic displayed proudly on her sweaty lap.
“...and it was terrible handy for shoplifting and all,” Fionnuala was reminiscing. “And then it was snatched off me shoulder by them drunken stokes last year. Just like me basket of eggs and toothpaste right before we left Derry, mind? How many packs of thugs, outta their minds on drink and drugs, be's trolling the streets of Derry, thieving anything they can get their hands on, roaring abuse at anyone they pass, fists at the ready? Och, Paddy, I kyanny get me head around the state of wer beloved town. Twenty years we spent with the bombs exploding around us, the paratroopers tramping with machine guns through wer front gardens, the pram searches at the doors of the Top-Yer-Trolly, dodging rubber bullets on wer way to the shops and the pubs, gagging from the tear gas on wer way back home. Pure misery, wer lives were, and though we had the love of wer families, we had a black and white telly, a larder instead of a fridge, the milk always going sour, no phone—ye mind we had to go round the corner to use Mrs. O'Grady's? Ten pence a call we had to place in the little box on her phone stand? Stingy bitch, and how she had a phone I'll never know. I think there was a Protestant in her family. Gray, it all seems in me mind when I think back to them times. The rain always seemed to be pelting down. Does them days seems like that in yer mind as well? Finally, but, when them Brit soldier bastards pulled out a few years ago, it was as if we'd won the lotto as a town together. I was of the mind we'd be able to make a better life for werselves and wer wanes. Now we've a color telly, a fridge, the wanes has their mobile phones, we've a VCR, though I hear they've all moved on to them DVDs nowadays, and we've even that tanning machine and the karaoke, though them be's both broken now, but we've got em anyroad. But wer lives is still as gray as the telly screens back in the days of the Troubles. And, speaking of the lottery, why wasn't it us that won, Paddy? Why for the love of God was it Ursula? She already had her swank Yank husband with a bulging bank account. It should've been us, God-fearing churchgoers as we be, never a foot put wrong in wer lives. Why, Paddy?” She whispered her despair into his hairnet. “Why wasn't it us?”
The ship shifted. Mangos rolled off the counter and splat on the floor. The Floods still crouched and peered in silence at the opulence before them. The jabbering of the foreigners, the blare of the blenders, the spitting of the grease continued behind them. Paddy softly touched her shoulder blades with his sopping Band-aids
“Och, well—”
“God bless us and save us! Would ye look at the bloody size of yer man over there!” She pointed into the dining room.
“Where?”
“Next to yer man in the flimmin daft useless article of a cowboy hat.”
“Where?”
“Och! As big as a house, he be's! How could ye miss him? Ye see the spastic in the cowboy hat? In the checked shirt? Him with his back to us? Beside him.”
Paddy finally saw and felt the same revulsion as his wife.
“Must be a Yank.”
He closed the door. They got to their feet and turned away from the dining room, thankful they were European.
“Two men dining together,” Fionnuala sniffed knowingly. “Arse bandits, themmuns must be and all.”
She wiped her eyes, and then there appeared a creature Paddy laid eyes on only on the rarest of occasions: a smiling Fionnuala.
CHAPTER 14—THE SAVAGE ISLANDS
THE CAPTAIN OF THE Queen of Crabs anchored the ship at 29° 35' N, 16° 50' W. The day was glum, Industrial-Revolution-type clouds pressing down. The ship would idle until those few passengers who had signed up for the three-hour excursion to the Savage Islands returned. Then it would cruise south-west at an angle of 12 degrees until it reached the port city of Sidit Ifnin in Morocco the morning after next. It didn't take that long, but there was nowhere else to go. EconoLux had planned for the ship to dock in Casablanca, but those routes were full. There was nothing much to delight an inquisitive tourist in Sidit Ifnin, but it was better than more sea.
Captain Hoe was interrupted from his lunchtime nap by a call from the radio room. When he got there, the chief radio officer pointed to a blip on the radar.
“It’s been following us since Cherbourg,” he explained. “Always keeping its distance, quite a few miles behind, which would make it just barely visible to us on the horizon.”
“How big is it?”
“From what I can tell, rather big.”
Captain Hoe’s lips disappeared as if pulled by a string.
“And you’ve tried to make contact?”
“Certainly. But no reply.”
“The military?”
“They would never let us know.”
“Pirates?”
“...Off Northern Africa? Not since the 19th Century, the Barbary Coast and all that. Nowadays, they seem to always be off the coast of Somalia. There’s always the possibility to time travel, I suppose...?”
Captain Hoe glared.
“Just a joke, sir,” the radio officer said with a cringing expression on his face.
Deep in thought, Captain Hoe left the radio room. Outside on the bridge, over miles of slate gray waves, his naked eye detected a speck. He trained his binoculars on it. There were no visible markings on the ship to let him know who it might belong to, if it were a friendly fishing trawler or a foe of some sort. The ship was equipped with a helipad, helicopter at the ready. He lowered the binoculars. He chewed on his lower lip. And he wondered. He’d have to make a few phone calls to see if he couldn’t put his mind to rest.
The glass-bottom boat flung through the waves
. They clutched the rails for dear life, heads snapping on necks, tongues in danger of being bitten off. The fury of the ocean churned inches under their buttocks, sphincters clenched in fear atop the orange benches. Untamed sea spray drenched them, Hawaiian shirts clinging to their flesh, hair like the seaweed the boat stank of. Some clung in fear at their sunglasses, but these accessories were affectations as the day was grim. Ursula lifted her jerking head to the one beam of sunlight and prayed for Providence. She tugged the cords of the plastic rain cap so it clung to her scalp and longingly eyed the single orange life ring flapping from the canopy.
Their bobble-heads seemed to be nodding in manic approval as the tour guide yelled over the engine in an indiscriminate accent she could only classify as ‘foreign’ what they would find on Selvagem Grande, but what he said didn't instill confidence of a pleasurable day out. It sounded atrocious.
“Calcareous faults! Basaltic rock! Volcanic ash!”
He unfolded a pamphlet that whipped in the wind and poked his finger at photos of the indigenous creatures they would encounter on the largest of the Savage Islands archipelago. There seemed to be a gecko, some snails, a brown rat and a small array of beetles. The only wildlife Ursula showed interest in now, even as the fear of accidental death coursed through her, was the British cougar who seemed to be making Jed her prey, though he was at least forty years beyond boy toy status.
The boat could only hold 20 passengers, and there had been initial confusion as to whether Slim was considered one or two. It didn't matter in the end, as only seven others had signed up, including this British harridan. She must have been rerouted from the opera cruise. Her French-manicured hands—which, Ursula had noticed while boarding, always seemed to reach for Jed's elbow or arm when going up a ramp or tripping on a rope—poked out of an expensively tailored pantsuit that screamed Harvey Nichols, the upmarket British emporium for the rich and the doors of which Ursula wouldn't have trusted herself to venture through, even after those heady days after the lotto win, even if Derry had a branch, which it didn't. The type of clothes the Floods assumed she wore, but which Ursula had never been able to afford.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 74
