Jed’s face was twisted with concern and fear. His fingernails dug into his palms. He felt British breath on his neck. The attention that had excited him so before now was beginning to rankle.
“I hope she makes it,” she whispered into his ear.
Jed glared.
“She will. She’s my wife.”
Ten feet above them, Ursula’s shrieks pierced the air as her toes slipped and pebbles and dust rained down on them. They gasped as a unit as her body pirouetted on the spinning rope. Her girth bounced against the rock. Her fingernails scrabbled up the rope and fought for control. Louella pointed her pink Vivitar Clipshot upwards. She gleefully snapped a few pics as around her the others clutched whoever was beside them. Jed had the floppy/sunglasses woman. Ursula’s helmet toppled to his feet. Then a flip flop.
Ursula’s fingernails finally clawed the clumps of muck at the edge of the cliff. She hauled herself over the horizon with as much dignity as she could muster, sweat lashing down the panting, heaving mass of her aching torso.
The guide slapped her back. The applause from below warmed her heart. She crossed herself, thanked the Lord, then looked down, a hand rummaging through the mess of her bob.
“I made it, youse!” Her voice was weak. “Come on up!”
Louella grimaced up as, around her, everyone eyed her expectantly.
“Seeing you in action, you’ve gone and given me the jitters,” she called to Ursula. The photos she had taken weren’t funny anymore, as she realized anyone in the boat could now do the same to her. Brit K-2 Champ took a step towards the rope.
“Ach, catch yerself on, Louella!” Ursula called down. “Wile fun, a great craic, so it is!” She’d have to go to confession again for sinning.
Louella grabbed the rope from the Brit and heaved her body upwards. More dang Irish slang, she thought. She wouldn't know how to configure her arms to ‘catch herself on’ if she tried. From what she gathered, it meant something like ‘don't be a dork.’
Even as she feared for her life, feared her twig-arms might snap, as she mounted the cliff and glared at every passing sprig, she wondered what it must be like living inside Ursula's head—all that strange vocabulary floating around, looking at common household objects and having a different name for them, all around her people speaking in a different tongue while she pushed her minority language into the living space of others and expected them to understand her.
Louella felt her glasses slide down the sweaty slope of her nose. They perched precariously on the tip. She didn’t trust herself to unwrap her fingers from the rope to— She yelped as the top rope suddenly wilted before her. Gravity attacked her, and her bones jerked down the slate, her knees clacking.
“Dang blammit! Keep the rope straight, Slim! If I die, I’ll kill you!”
“Sorry, hon!” she heard way below.
The rope straightened, and Louella clawed her way back up, adrenaline shooting through her veins, quaking in her battered knees and elbows, and on her thoughts raced as she glared up at Ursula’s happy face beaming down upon her. Ursula was one of those exotic foreign people. But, because she was Irish, when you looked at her, she could pass for a real person like Louella and Slim. If you overlooked the peculiar color of her hair. It was only when Ursula opened her mouth that people in Wisconsin took a step back, and the woman before them was magically transformed into something exciting and unfamiliar, like a siren, a mermaid or a Klingon...and Slim was a big Star Trek fan.
“Ach, ye’re almost there, Louella!” Ursula squealed, clapping her hands in glee.
Louella’s molars ground as if they were tearing into some of Slim and Jed’s beef jerky. Yes, Ursula had paid for the cruise, and yes, she was grateful for the sacrifice Ursula had made—for her sake—five years, eleven months and twenty-four days ago, and, yes, she understood the danger she had put Ursula in, and, yes, foreigners were always welcome in Louella's life and in her home (as long as they didn't use her toilet). But she didn't like that she couldn't understand what Ursula was saying half the time, and that Ursula always caught her cheating at cribbage—she had tallied up that Ursula had caused her to lose over $300 with her eagle-eye—and, most importantly, Louella couldn't erase from her mind the photo she had come across in Slim's wallet when he was in the shower the day before they left Wisconsin—she had been going through it for a 30% off coupon she knew he had from Wal-Mart.
She hadn't found the coupon, but she had found a photo of Ursula, staring longingly—seductively?—into the camera. Louella could tell the picture was from the 1980s, what with Ursula's Bonnie Tyler hairdo—feathered blonde highlights captive in an air tunnel—the majestic shoulder pads, and the scene from Dallas frozen on the tv in the background. The TV that used to be in her and Slim's living room. How long had it gone on for? Was it still going on? Who had made the first move? And what had Slim bought with the 30% off coupon? These were her questions. Confined to the cruise ship, the two suspects sitting ducks for the next ten days, she was determined to find out. With each pull of her body up the rope, resolve grew on her wrinkles. If she plummeted now to her death, she would be standing at the pearly gates being handed her wings and harp by St. Peter, none the wiser. She made her mind up. She would confront Ursula as soon as she could.
There was more applause as Louella heaved herself onto the island. Ursula wrapped her arms around her as Louella shook the dirt away. Louella accepted the hug, but her eyes crackled with anger. And when the hug was over, she pointed a shuddering twig-finger into the guide’s chest. “I’ll sue the foreign pants off of you if we have to climb back down!”
Fifteen minutes later, they had all heaved themselves onto the island, except Slim. He was rooting through all their bags, looking for something to eat. Being a belayer built up an appetite. Gasping for air and armpits dripping sweat, they followed the guide.
Cooped up together on the ship as they all were, and even more cooped up on the glass bottom boat as they had been, they felt like rushing off in individual directions of the island, but there wasn’t enough room on it to do that. If the entire 2200 on this ship had decided to go, they wouldn’t have fit.
They scaled the mud and clawed at the rubble. The tour guide skipped nimbly before them across the lunar landscape like a mountain goat. He pointed out the local animal species scrabbling around the sullen lunar landscape. They snapped photos of the brown rat, the three species of beetle, the gecko and the snail.
The guide babbled on, shouting to make himself heard above the crashing of the waves below, about the local fauna (a few creeping plants and bushes), and they all began to fidget. Ursula and Louella wondered if prison might be preferable to this excursion. They felt a whipping of the wind around them. Their hems and cuffs flapped furiously. Floppy Sunhat and Jed grabbed their hats in tandem.
“Excuse me, where’s that sudden breeze coming from and what’s that noi—?!”
Thwak-thwak-thwak!
They started, alarmed, as the chuntering blades of a helicopter materialized over the cliff.
“Is this another of your surprises?” Louella demanded of the tour guide. But he, too, was backing away in fear.
The blades gave way to the helicopter itself, big and black and scarily official, rising like a mechanical beast and bearing down on them. They screamed and scattered like an elderly herd of gazelle on the Serengeti. Fearing machine guns or chemical sprays or they didn’t know what, they lunged for bushes and boulders for protection. What little a few branches or a few inches of mineral might give.
“Dear Lord,” Ursula hissed to Louella through a fern, “what’s it doing all the way out here in the...”
“Butthole of nowhere?”
“Louella...do ye be thinking the same as me?” Ursula could barely get the words out through the frond, so terrified was she.
“Do you mean...?”
“Aye! That copter be’s sent by Detective Scarrey! I feel it in me bones! Don’t ye? Don’t ye feel it in yer bones and all? Don’t ye?”<
br />
She clamped her hand on Louella’s fist. Louella’s fist struggled through the dirt to free itself.
The chopper whooped over the prone bodies of all trapped on the island. They clamped shut their eyes from the dust and dirt it churned up and spat into their faces. They tensed their bodies against rocks and twigs for whatever harm might attack them. And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the helicopter flew over the cliff and was gone.
As the unfortunate excursion goers struggled to raise themselves on already-exhausted limbs, their questions rang out:
“Who was that?”
“What was the point?”
“I’m gonna sue EconoLux!”
Locked together in a crevice, Jed and the Brit faced each other with shaking heads. Jed was about to rush off to Ursula to make sure she was okay. The woman grabbed his elbow and pulled him back.
“Pardon me, but are you ex-military by any chance?”
Jed puffed up his chest.
“Thirty years of service," he said. “Master chief petty officer.”
He thought he saw a flicker of surprise pass her face, but if he did it had been repressed in a second. She leaned toward him with a smile and a pout of the lips, “I thought as much.” but the question asked itself in a corner of his mind: if she hadn't thought he was ex-military, why did she ask the question?
“I see you're living your retirement to the fullest, dressed down as you could never be during your years in uniform. But I detected somewhere a steely military interior under that fetching cowboy hat of yours.”
Jed had been trained in hand-to-hand combat, but the only thing he had ever tackled was a pile of requisition forms in war zones throughout the world.
“I see you are here in a party of four. You’ve told me one is your wife. And the others...?”
“My brother and sister-in-law. But what—?”
She shook her head and motioned to the others, in a circle perhaps inspecting each other for signs of chemical poisoning.
“Not here, not now. But that helicopter...I think it might have something to do with me. Let’s just say...” She lowered her voice, though there really was no need with all the yelling and babbling going on, “I’m not who I might appear. I’m currently on an assignment. I’ve got a partner with me, but we need more help. I wonder if I might engage your assistance? Ex-military is excellent. Very, very excellent. Will you help us?”
Jed was still eying her with a bemused smile and confused eyes.
“Just a little nod yes. And I will be in touch. No need for you to contact me.”
Jed gave a halting little nod.
“Perfect.” She whispered it. She squeezed his flaccid bicep and was gone, staggering over the rocks and pebbles to the others. Jed followed behind.
Louella was feigning a sudden bout of nausea and begging the guide if he could just take them back to the ship. Please.
Back on board, the others stood around Louella in a circle and praised her ingenuity, including the British tourist who, it didn't escape Ursula's eye or rage, pressed her hand against Jed's back as she reached through the circle to pat Louella on the shoulder. Ursula's fist strangled the creeping plant she had picked from the island as a souvenir She shifted her foot and found the toe of her shoe against the woman's calf. The woman turned to face her.
“Terribly sorry,” she apologized, as if her calf had been in the wrong place.
“Aye, so ye will be if ye lay another finger on me man,” Ursula longed to say. She gave a less-than-convincing smile at the tart instead and, marking her territory, wrapped her arm around Jed's flaccid bicep.
But it was half-hearted attempt at possessiveness. She squinted as a lone sunbeam found her face through the damp clouds and singled her out. Her brain was in a frenzy over the helicopter and what appeared to be the longer-than-she-thought arms of the law snaking across the Atlantic to snatch her and Louella. As she stood there on the deck, a smile on her lips for the outer world, Jed at her side, she feverishly counted off how many days they would have to endure until she could breathe the crystal air of freedom. Eight...? No, nine. Nine long days stretching endlessly before her...
All at once, she was consumed with a lethargy of the body and mind greater than any she had ever felt before. She felt old.
“I’m away off to wer cabin,” she muttered to Jed. She turned and headed down the deck, clutching the handrail for support. She was surprised that, all at once, she cared little about what advances the British woman might make on her man. The only bright spot she could think of as she made her halting way past the happy vacationers was what new treasure she might find on her pillow when she got to cabin 342 on this voyage of the damned.
CHAPTER 17—SIDIT IFNIN, MOROCCO
“ALLAHU AKBAR ALLAHU Akbar Allaaaaah-aaah-aaah-aaah-aaah-aaah-aaaah-aaaah-aaaaaaahu Akbar Ash Hadu an lAaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ilAha illaallAaahhh-aaaah-aaah-aahhh-aaaaah!”
Fionnuala lurched from her bunk bed with a shriek of alarm, then one of pain as her head cracked against the bed springs above. The Arab man roared at her though the porthole. Her hand shot to her chest, and she was on the verge of crying rape. Her worst nightmare was coming true, and at the hands of a filthy pagan beast at that!
Keanu and Beeyonsay shrieked from the stroller corner. The light flicked on. Paddy and Dymphna’s heads poked out in a similar state of shock. The Arab voice continued to scream at nightclub levels, but through the infants’ wails, Fionnuala realized it was less screaming and more chanting, praying even.
“Ach, I read about this,” Paddy grumbled opposite her, wiping sleep from his eyes. “We must’ve pulled into port in Morocco That caterwauling be’s the call to prayer, so it does. It be’s broadcast every morning at five thirty.”
“God bless us and save us!” Dymphna moaned from above, her voice thick with hangover. “Does he be calling everyone the length and breadth of the entire country to mass? The noise of it!”
The roaring prayer seemed to end. The babies gurgled. The grown-up Floods lay tensed between the sheets, hopeful. Seconds ticked by. Sweat trickled down their spent limbs. The silence continued. Dymphna snuggled her sweaty, scraggly red ringlets into the hardness of her pillow.
“I guess he's called them all to their heathen churches now and we can bag some sleep,” Paddy muttered.
His head disappeared, and as Fionnuala wrapped the thin sheet around her, she wondered what Paddy had been doing reading. It was an alien activity in their household, newspapers bought only for the horse racing results and a glance at the little suns or the clouds spitting rain which indicated the weather.
The alien prayer rang out again, and a collective moan arose from the Floods. This different man was in need of a good dose of cough syrup, his hacking coughs interrupting the flow of the ‘aaaaahhhh’s.
“Could yer man there not have called in sick for the day?” Dymphna wondered.
Apparently not; the urge to call all his countryfolk in to hear the word of Allah was too strong. On and on he went, so they had no choice but rouse themselves out of their bunks and sit, hunched and haggard-eyed, in the furnace of their cabin. They delved into their cigarette packs as a unit, lit up, and puffed away. The smoke detector had been disconnected the moment they first stepped through the door, and Fionnuala had swiped a can of lavender air freshener from the staff mini-mart that she put to use as often as necessary, which was often.
The cosmetic makeover the Queen of Crabs hadn’t extended to the staff living quarters. Where the Floods were held captive had a ‘porthole,’ true, but it was cracked and caked with grime of the ages, rusty wire bars to keep others out or to lock them in, they weren’t sure. Four dour bunk beds stretched up toward a bare light bulb hanging from a ceiling that dripped brownish condensation on their already sweaty bodies. The constant rumbling of the engines, the thrust of the nearby pistons, the shuddering walls of peeling gray paint and the exposed industrial-sized bolts that poked from the walls and grazed their flesh, this was their reali
ty when they weren’t working their fingers to the bone. The community showers and lavatories were down a very long hall, together with the lockers which held their uniforms and what little toiletries they had and were subject to rigorous searches by Yootha and her henchmen.
They were thankful their clothing was elsewhere, as they were only left in the cabin with two feet by seven feet of empty space in which to perform their daily actions. Their elbows were constantly by their sides when at ‘home,’ and one square foot was taken up with the stroller corner.
Dymphna climbed down and headed there now to spoon some pureed apricots down their throats.
“And this torture,” Paddy moaned, “them screaming their prayers outta them at levels that cause permanent hearing loss, is to be repeated five times a day.”
“Dear God, and this is the land Yootha be’s allowing us to visit?” Dymphna asked.
Fionnuala snorted and sneered knowingly. “I knew there was some catch. She be’s a sleekit bitch, that Yootha! We should nab some earplugs from the staff mini-mart before we step foot off the ship. And you there!” Paddy jumped. “Aye, you clever clogs! Zip it!” Fionnuala was fuming, Paddy showing off his knowledge unbidden like that.
As penance, she sent him off to the staff kitchen in his wife-beater and shorts to bag boiling water for their instant coffee and Cup-O-Noodles, some sugar and a knife. She also told him to go to their lockers and grab a handful of clothes. They had packed for Northern Atlantic weather (actually, 98% of their clothes were suited to this weather, considering their natural habitat of Derry), but the further they traveled, the hotter it was becoming. And now that Yootha had shocked the staff with the announcement they had earned two hours of shore leave at the first port of call, Fionnuala wanted to make sure they at least had short-sleeved sweaters. Hence the knife. He staggered out. He seemed to be nursing his own hangover also.
The call to prayer ended. Dymphna twisted shut the jars of baby food, feeding time over, and tried to find a way to fill the silence she and her mother now sat in. In some distant corner of her brain, the girl knew she should be excited about going ashore—she was actually going to set foot on soil that wasn’t Irish for the first time in her life!—but was more concerned about the whiskey sledgehammer that seemed to have attacked her cerebrum, and the unmade bed where Siofra should have been.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 77
