Then she burst into tears and boozy, gargoyle-like gasps came from the depths of her throat. She threw her arms around Rory.
“I kyanny take it no more! I kyanny take it, I tell ye, Rory!”
“Sure, Dymphna!” Rory said into her shuddering head. “Why did ye not mention all this before? Riddell Enterprises has a crèche, so it does. All we need to do is say ye're gainfully employed, and we can drop the wanes off there.”
It took Dymphna's drunken brain a few moments to realize what he had said, then she wailed in relief and tried to stare into his eyes.
“C-can they take them at night and all?” she asked.
“I don't think that's possible. Probably only during office hours. But that's better than nothing, don't ye agree?”
Dymphna did agree. And when she had passed out in the bed upstairs, Rory set to cleaning up the children and the living room.
And now he was sitting at his computer, thinking back to Eamonn's reaction when Rory told him that morning he wanted to book the children into the crèche and were their any spaces available. Three spaces.
“Your wanes, hi?” Eamonn had asked, eyebrow raised.
“Er, aye. Whose else's, like?”
Eamonn's eyes had swiveled towards Rory's wedding band, then he had smirked, lowered his head, and waved Rory away.
“I'll see what I can do,” Eamonn called after him, perhaps remembering who his boss was. But he seemed to be stifling laughter. Rory wondered why this might be.
He pecked a few keys on his keyboard. Across the office (it was open plan), he spied Brigitta Bate at Susan McBrugger's desk, and the two had their heads together, Susan's blonde bob with the blue streaks and hair clip, and Brigitta's brunette pixie cut, and they were casting looks in his direction. When the girls noticed him looking, their heads whipped in the direction of the front door. As Rory turned to his computer again, he heard their muffled giggles. What was all that about?
He pounded a few more keys. Then, suddenly decided, he open the bottom drawer of his desk, rummaged around, and pulled out two of his emergency supply of Crunchie bars. Lasses, he thought, might turn their noses up at his buns, but they could never resist the lure of chocolate. Even chocolate offered to them by an over-privileged Orange Proddy bastard.
He sidled up to the desk. Brigetta and Susan seemed suddenly riveted by a spread sheet on Susan's computer screen.
“And as I've been telling ye,” Susan blathered on, eyes rolling in all directions, “when these clients come in next Tuesday, there's another two that's meant to be visiting at the same time...” She sounded as if she was reading from a script. And she was a horrible actress. As was Brigitta, who was 'ooh'ing and 'ahh'ing as if Susan were revealing the dance steps of an as-yet-unaired Justin Bieber video (Rory knew they both loved him).
“Right there, girls?” Rory asked, brandishing the chocolate bars and, eyebrows raised, smiling as best he could. “Would youse like a wee snack, hi?”
They hesitated over the keyboard, their eyes speaking to each other. The lure of forbidden fruit, the eyes seemed to be saying, a serpent offering them an apple from the tree of knowledge, though here a brightly wrapped Crunchie bar. Then, feck it, their eyes decided: the honeycomb sugar center was worth treason.
“Aye, surely!” they chorused. They were chomping down in seconds, and as they wiped chocolate flakes from their lips, Rory got down to business.
“So what's all them looks ye've been casting in me direction?”
“Och, nothing, sure,” said Susan with a shrug of the shoulders.
“Aye, nothing at all,” agreed Brigitta.
“I'm well aware that I'm persona non grata in this office,” Rory said.
“Eh?”
“That youse all hate me, like.”
“Catch yerself on!”
“Go on away a that!”
“I kyanny help who me mammy is. I try to do me work here as best I can, keep me head down, avoid conflict—”
“Aye, we're well aware ye kyanny help who yer mammy is,” Brigitta said. “Ye can, but, choose who ye decide to marry.”
Susan ogled her treacherous colleague. She clutched her Crunchie tightly and stared down at it as if wishing it were the control board of a transporter that would whisk her away to another, hidden, dimension.
Whatever Rory was expecting, it wasn't this.
“What are ye on about?”
“Yer Dymphna!”
Susan, unable to control herself any longer, nodded righteously.
“Aye, yer Dymphna,” she agreed. “Now that this daft cow here,” she nodded at Brigetta, “has decided to spread home truths, I might as well tell ye, and at the risk of being sacked, that yer mammy owning the company, and ye being brought in here, and youse being Protestant and us being Catholic has nothing to do with why we kyanny stomach the sight of ye.”
Brigitta's face stretched to make it uglier than it usually was as she leaned it towards Rory and hissed at him, hoop earrings swaying: “Have ye no self-respect? No dignity?”
“Pairing up with that slag?” put in Susan. “That slapper?”
“I'll have ye know,” Brigitta went on, pressing her half-eaten Crunchie into Rory's trendy tie, “I once had a fiancė, Ciaran, ye called him, and we had the wedding date all set, all the invites sent out—”
“Til she found out the whole town had seen him one night after the pubs had closed at the bus stop next to the pound shop, that one on Clarendon Street, with his running togs and his pants round his ankles, and that hateful, man-grabbing slag ye call yer wife with her head in his lap, pleasuring him with her filthy tongue.”
“Of course I broke up with him sharpish. The mortification it caused me, but! In therapy for months, so I was! Thankfully there's that free mental clinic near Magazine Gate. Trainees, it was, that's why it's free. I went there every Tuesday before choir practice.”
“And yer slapper wife had a quick shag in the men's loos of the Craiglooner with me Finn and all. Didn't even have the decency to zipper him up afterwards. Me Finn was that paladic, he hadn't a clue she had gotten her claws into him and what she had forced him to do, and so he spent the rest of the night—mind, Brigitta, we was out celebrating Fidelma passing her GCSEs?—with his todger half hanging out—”
“And streams of jism spattered all up the front of his jersey. There he was dancing at Starzz afterwards, a complete mess, the stench of sex spewing from all his pores, and he hadn't a clue, the poor sod. Ye know how them black lights pick up all the sperm stains and make them glow all eerie, like? He looked like one of them modern paintings. A laughing stock, yer Dymphna made outta Susan's Finn.”
“Of course I ended it with Finn after I found out.”
“And,” here Brigitta lowered her voice and nodded towards Brandan by the photocopier, “had ye no clue yer shameless tart of a wife had her wicked way with our poor wee Brandan and all? In a bus on the way back from a day trip to Giant's Causeway. Aye, it was a school trip, and we was all too young to have drink with us—”
“But yer Dymphna brought along two flagons of cider in her backpack.”
“That she had knicked from the Top-Yer-Trolley, she said.”
“And she forced all of one down Brandan's throat.”
“And the other down her own greedy bake.” Bake, beak , mouth.
“Didn't offer us even a sip, did she?”
“Naw, the tight-fisted cunt.”
Rory blinked.
“Had it off in the back seat of the coach, so they did. And we, the rest of the class, all had to stare out the windows, and stone cold flimmin sober, we all were, and thankful for the rave music the driver was blaring so's we couldn't hear their disgusting moans and grunts and slappy noises, and pretending the sheep and trees and whatever passing by was more interesting than what was going on behind us.”
“Which they was. I wouldn't have wanted to chance a glance back and have me eyes offended by the vulgarities they was up to back there. The state of them seats
after, I can only imagine! I pity the poor aul cleaning lady what had to deal with that, whoever it was. Had her work cut out for her.”
“C'mere, I heard tell only last month it was Magella Robinson's mother what used to clean up them buses. It musta been her.”
“Do ye not say? No wonder the poor critter had that attack and died a few years ago. Anyroad, yer Dymphna had taken away Brandan's virginity. Smitten, yer man was with her, though I haven't a clue why. He called and called her afterwards, wanting another date, or another go, I haven't a clue. For weeks, it went on apparently.”
“He was well rid of her, but didn't understand, poor lamb. She never replied to any of his calls. Not a single flippin one. Threatened suicide and all, if I recollect rightly.”
“Aye, he did. Them threats fell on deaf ears, but. Yer Dymphna's a right hard nosed cow in addition to being a slapper. And we've a suspicion she even had it off with,” now Brigitta lowered her voice even more than she had before, and both Susan and Rory leaned in to hear her, their cheeks pressing against the hoops, as she whispered, “Eamonn and all!”
Rory stared. Susan nodded, arms across her chest.
“Aye, at that Girls Aloud concert down in Belfast.”
“I've tried to find out if that's really true. Ye know how some rumors can spread. Yer man's keeping his cards close to his chest, but.”
Rory was at a loss. “So me Dymphna has had a few lovers. I still don't understand what this has to do with youse, much less me. I don't know if youse meant to offend me by reeling off a list of her aul conquests, but I knew she had met lads before me. We all do it. I'm sorry about her shagging yer ex-fellas, but if youse was talking about GCSEs and going on school trips and Girls Aloud, who haven't had a hit in ages and are no longer even together, I can only imagine this was all years ago.”
“Aye, it was...what, Susan?”
“Seven or eight years ago, to be sure.”
“Didn't youse, like me, engage in all them sorts of activities too, but? At that age? And with drink? And some E's and all, I imagine. So what? I didn't even know her then. What've I to do with all that?”
“You married the slag!” Spittle sprayed onto Susan's screen.
“That's worse than shagging her!” And across the keyboard. “Half the lads in Derry have made the trip down her hole, and as sickening as that is, there was only one, one, daft enough to take her on a trip down the aisle. That was you.”
“Rewarding bad behavior!” Susan sniffed.
“Still, but...!” Rory was flabbergasted. He didn't see why him working alongside them in the office would now dredge up all these ancient adolescent activities. What did it have to do with Susan and Brigitta today? “Why are youse casting me filthy looks across the office? And what's this to do with all the giggling?”
“Och, ye haven't a clue, have ye?” Brigitta said.
She and Susan exchanged another look. Susan took a final bite of her Crunchie and looked at him with something resembling sorrow mixed with pity. Brigitta followed suit.
“If ye must know,” Susan said, tossing her empty wrapper into the bin under her desk, “we fear for our wanes.”
“Aye, terrible afeared for them, so we are.”
“I've four.” Susan said it proudly.
“And I've five. All conceived with God's blessing under the confines of holy matrimony.”
“Aye, mines and all.”
“And from what we've heard, ye want to force Eamonn to admit them creatures from yer Dymphna's come-one-come-all womb into our crèche here at Riddell Enterprises.”
“Them products of God knows what sordid, seedy one-night stands.”
“The crèche is meant to be a safe haven for our defenseless, God-fearing wanes.”
“A place where wee lads and lasses, them what's not illegitimate ones, can play together and love and learn while their mammies and daddies is working hard for to put food on the table. A place of happiness.”
“And innocence!”
“And them poor wanes, our poor wanes, is now expected to share the same space as them vile products of lust from yer wife's skanky hole.”
“Keep them away from us! Keep them locked up in yer own house!”
“The Good Lord alone knows what transgressions might rub off on our vulnerable wanes.”
As if promiscuity were contagious!
“Shipped off to some foreign land, they need to be!”
“Naw, Brigitta, what's needed is for them Magdalene Laundries for to open up again! They can send that new Asian woman in the accounting department's two wanes there and all, actually. I'd sleep better at night.”
“What a grand idea!” Brigitta clapped her hands with joy. “Why the Magdalene Laundries was closed down all them years ago, I kyanny fathom. We've now more need of them today than we ever did back then. The videos on the telly the day. Is it any wonder the world's in the state it is?”
“Aye, that Miley Cyrus. A disgrace to all nations!”
“Ye mean...” Rory sputtered, “them homes for 'fallen women?' Run by the nuns?”
“Aye! That's the only place for yer Dymphna and her sinful offspring!”
“Our Keanu, Beeyonsay and Greenornge, but...” Rory was surprised. Susan and Brigitta were as old as he and Dymphna, mid-twenties, but their minds were like reactionary pensioners. “Me wanes is just as innocent as yers, regardless of what shenanigans Dymphna was foolish enough to engage in ages ago.”
“Ye think them wanes of hers is yers? Ha!”
“More fool you!”
While they roared their laughter, Rory reeled as if they had slapped him. His face burned. Prickles of unease ran up his spine.
“What are youse on about?” he asked.
“Sure, them wanes isn't yers!” Susan said it as if it were written on a stone tablet.
“That new one, that Greenornge—”
“Foolish name.”
“That Greenornge's father is some Italian gigolo Dymphna met on that cruise she went on last year.”
“And Keanu be's Henry O'Toole's!”
Brigitta turned to Susan.
“I kyanny recall now whose that Beeyonsay is meant to be. Can ye, love?”
Susan's face blossomed with sudden shock.
“C'mere, do ye not think Eamonn might be the father?”
Brigitta considered for a moment. “Now that ye mention it, the time does seem to fit, just about...”
“O'Toole?!” Rory gasped. “The manager of the Top-Yer-Trolley, are youse talking about? Is he not a nancy boy, but?”
“I know he seems it, aye. But have ye any clue how many lasses, how many of them shop girls of his, he's had in that stock room? Legendary, so his sexual conquests is. Or used to be anyroad. Now he's married and settled down. Has a wife and wanes of his own. Real wanes.”
“Ye're from the Waterside, love,” Brigitta said it with genuine sympathy, “and you Proddies over there maybe don't get the gossip we does over here.”
“Everybody knows Keanu doesn't be yers. The Italian not many knows about. But yer Keanu? Definitely not yers.”
“I'd bet the lives of all me wanes on it. That's how sure I am.”
“Now ye understand, don't ye, why we couldn't help but giggle at ye?”
“Ye seem a nice lad. Cute arse and all. Clueless, but.”
“Aye. Dymphna Flood's made a right mug of ye.”
“And living it up in that flash, swanky home as she does with ye...”
“It rankles, so it does.”
“While good Catholic girls like us has to drag our weary bodies home to our hovels on the Moorside after endless days of hard graft.”
“If ye could find yer way to reconsider about them disreputable wanes of yers joining the crèche...”
“We'd be ever so grateful, wouldn't we, Susan?”
“Och, surely, aye. We can live without our wanes being infected by the depraved element.”
“Which radiates from yer wanes like an aura. I have to hide me eyes wh
en yer Dymphna passes on the pavement with them bargain bin wanes of hers, I won't insult ye by calling them yers, screaming in their pram. The sinfulness of them shoots out like beams from a lighthouse, so it does.”
Their Crunchies had been devoured, and now they had work to do.
As Rory managed to make his way to his desk on legs that could barely do as they were told, he decided it was time for his dinner break.
He would go to the Top-Yer-Trolley, and not for one of their flavorless packaged tomato and cheese sandwiches. He would go to have it out with Henry O'Toole. To clear up these rumors about Keanu. His supposed heir.
* * *
CHAPTER THREE
“Phones on the floor!” Trowel roared.
Fionnuala's already was. Pitchfork stomped on it. A stomp would've reduced an iPhone to useless bits, but since Fionnuala's was cheap, it was hearty. His heel bounced off it. He kicked it derisively back at Fionnuala. Sometimes cheaper is better. Zoë, never without her iPhone in her hand, flung it on the floor with a wail of sorrow. Coal Tongs scooped it up. Siofra had no phone.
Nurse Scadden, trapped on the floor between Fionnuala's and Pitchfork's knees, scrabbled with sideways crab-like motions across the linoleum. She emerged around the counter, panting and sobbing, and shoved her phone, like shuffleboard, across the floor. It skittered through Siofra's legs as the girl scooted away from Coal Tongs. He snatched it up. Siofra scrunched her body behind Bridie's orange chair. Fionnuala could no longer see her daughter, but heard the whimpers from beyond the chair. A whistley snore erupted from Bridie. Drool trickled from her lower lip.
“Open that there till!” Pitchfork yelled at Fionnuala.
She eyed Zoë through the prongs. Am I gonny get the sack if I do? she wondered. Fecking bastards!
“Open that till just and hand over the takings. Or youse is dead!” Pitchfork and his cohorts seemed unaffected by the stench rising from the bag. Maybe it was their masks, Fionnuala thought, or perhaps their homes smelled worse.
“Dead, all of youse!” Coal Tongs echoed, though it seemed to Fionnuala he would inflict the least harm of the three. Then she remembered a copper program where a pensioner had been murdered with a pair of tongs, and tongs were also in that board game as a weapon, weren't they? Or was that a wrench? Suddenly all three yobs became equally dangerous in her mind. She gulped. She looked again at Zoë.
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