Paddy recalled reading in a newspaper at the time, as he had been flipping through for the soccer results, that the song had spent 16 weeks at number one on the UK charts. (In Northern Ireland, they listened to the UK charts more than the Irish ones.) And then, a few years later, Wet Wet Wet's “Love Is All Around” spent 15 weeks at the summit. Paddy had wanted to plunge screwdrivers into his ear canals on both occasions.
Back to Fionnuala's lists. Moira used to regularly feature at number one, but when she shamed the family by revealing she was a sinful lesbian, she never got higher than number five, and that was only because Dymphna was always taking up one of the bottom two positions. The only time Dymphna had come close to the top was six years earlier, when she saved up her pocket money and bought Fionnuala a hand-held electronic massager sent specially from Sweden for her 40th birthday, and even then she could only manage number two. By the time the next charts were compiled, Dymphna had plummeted. But Lorcan was Fionnuala's Bryan Adams, her Wet Wet Wet. Always at number one.
“Can ye imagine yer mammy's grief if ye was to leave? Ye know she looked forward to them prison visits when ye were first banged up. Counted down the days to see ye, so she did. Until they barred her from the visits when she smuggled ye in that Vicodin. ”
Lorcan inspected his father with his eyes. He leaned closer.
“I kyanny live me life to please me mammy, hi. Ye know I love her. Surely ye can understand me way of thinking, but. It's the same way of thinking as wer Moira and Eoin and Dymphna.”
They had left left the family, abandoning the home one by one. Paddy felt a lump in his throat, a welling of tears in his ducts, due to Lorcan's impending departure or the smell of him or the ensuing abuse Fionnuala would unleash upon him and the remaining family members once Lorcan told her the news of his departure Paddy didn't know.
The only thing that might save them would be if his wife had gotten the money she wanted from the drug dealers' mother. Fionnuala had told him in detail about her plan to visit Mrs. McDaid. With a handbag freshly bulging from someone else's money, she would be tolerable before she heard the news; she might even be smiling. They downed their pints, smacked the glasses down and set off first to the church to get their ashes, and then home. While Father Hogan ground them into his forehead with his fat thumb, Paddy hoped Mrs. McDaid had been generous...
CHAPTER 10
Maureen heaved huge breaths over the dirty dishes. That was wile speedy, she had the presence of mind to think. The holy spirit of wer Dymphna descending from Heaven like that even before she be's laid in the earth... or is it up from Hell she's crawled? What she thought was a heart attack passed. The weight seem to lift from her sopping, heaving bosom. She twittered in fear still, but the cold sweat was evaporating, her heartbeat decelerating.
Although Dymphna had been shacked up across the river in the posh Proddy Waterside, her spirit had chosen to come back across the Craigavon Bridge to haunt them in the family home on the Moorside. The old woman struggled to comprehend what mixture of supernatural being Dymphna had come back as. The creature leaping in the back garden seemed a mixture of myth and scripture, a being half-Biblical, half-pagan. What sort of ritual dance was it doing? It seemed familiar. Had she seen a documentary on it?
Then Maureen realized: it reminded her of that old Kate Bush video, what was the song called? Some famous book she'd never read...? Yes, that “Wuthering Heights” one. Maureen wasn't one for pop songs, or for reading classics for that matter, but she remembered a young Fionnuala in the late 70's, sitting before Top Of The Pops on the telly, enraptured, forcing her mother to watch the video of the new number one, where a singer—who, now that Maureen thought about it, didn't look miles off from Dymphna—sang in a high-pitched voice Maureen thought strange about being the ghost of someone called Cathy come back to haunt some fella called Heathcliff.
The video had impressed Maureen, voice notwithstanding, and she remembered it still all these years later, not least because Fionnuala had forced her to watch it for the next three weeks on the show when it was at the top spot on the charts, her daughter warbling along like nails down a blackboard. The singer had been wearing the same type of white gown as the ghost of Dymphna now was, but instead of reaching toward the screen as if she wanted to snatch the souls of the viewers with her long ghost-nails, this version had directed her talons towards the sky and was clawing...was that a pair of knickers?
Maureen wondered when the being in the back garden might, like in the video, break into an impromptu cartwheel or two. With a sense of wonder, she pressed her face closer to the grimy glass of the window.
The spirit dropped its jaw and, even through the window, Maureen heard the burp. A rude, manly one that the physical, living Dymphna was apt to let rip.
Maureen was taken aback. Did ghosts have the vocal chords to...? She wondered. Then, Do you even burp with vocal chords...?
On closer inspection, the heavenly robe was a dressing gown, a tattered dressing gown at that, she now saw, more gray with age than white, and speckled with little primroses and the sick of an infant sick up one lapel and down one shoulder, the 'wings' the ends of a towel that had been twisted up (now falling off her head) over what Maureen supposed was wet hair. And the leaping dance was a mad attack to tug the washing off the line. Fionnuala had hiked up the washing line a few months ago when one of the homeless dogs or a fox had tugged the sheets off; she had a step ladder she had to stand on to get the washing, but it was hidden behind the rhubarb patch to stop thieving neighborhood children from getting their mitts on it, but Dymphna wouldn't know about that. Dymphna was clutching a clothing basket in her right hand and shoving the clothing in. How had Maureen not spotted that before? The clothing line was now just pegs, and Dymphna picked up the towel, which had fallen in the muck, and hurried towards the back door.
Maureen muttered curses under her breath, hobbled on her cane to the door and poked her head into the pelting rain, thinking she'd have to get her eyeglass prescription seen to. And quit reading those horror stories before she put the light out on her bedside table at night. Still, she was frail from the shock her heart and brain had been put through.
“Is that you, love?” Maureen asked, her voice reedy.
What she had thought was a spirit blinked as it approached, basket overflowing with knickers and bras. The girl seemed confused at the look on Maureen's face, the wrinkled hand that shuddered as it reached out to confirm her elbow was actually bones and flesh.
“Who else would it be, Grannie?” Dymphna dropped the basket on the linoleum and shook her head like a Saint Bernard. “I was just after coming outta the bath, fiddling around in the bathroom, like, when I heard the rain beating down on the roof. and knew I had just put me washing out on the line. Soaked even more, me smalls now are. Never fails to happen. C'mere, what's wrong with the telly here? I kyanny get any programs on it!”
“Kyanny pay the bill. Wh-what are ye doing here, but, and with yer clothes with ye?” Maureen ran her hands over the rim of the basket and a bra strap to confirm they, too, were real. “Put the fear of the Lord into me, so ye did. On the brink of heart failure, so I was.”
“Och, did Mammy not fill ye in? I'm to be holed up here with youse for the next three days or so. Hiding out, more like, I should say.”
“Naw, I mean, are ye not meant to be dead?”
....“Ye look wile pale, so ye do. Let me sit ye down, hi, and let's get some whiskey down yer throat.”
She guided Maureen to a chair at the kitchen table and shoved aside the paints and rocks and little plastic boxes.
“I need some of me tablets and all. Where's me handbag?”
It was hanging from her elbow. As Maureen scrabbled into the depths for her heart pills, Dymphna grabbed the generic whiskey from the shelf and filled a One Direction tea mug (Siofra's) to the brim. She wrapped Maureen's fingers around it and guided it to her lips. Lips pinched with anger. Dymphna sat beside her grandmother. Wet drops fell from her curls.
“Get that down yer neck, Grannie.”
Maureen had the teacup emptied before the sentence was finished. The old woman wiped her lips, then gulped down two tablets. She inspected the rain-streaked gloop oozing down Dymphna's face, which gave her the ghostly sheen. “And what's that shite plastered all over yer bake?”
“Och, this do ye mean?” Dymphna touched her face with a bit of embarrassment. “It's me home made face pack of milk, carrots and egg whites. I saw on the telly it's grand to clear up the spots. Ye've seen the state of me face since I started working at the chip van, like.”
“Them black eyes in the middle of yer white face...!”
“Me mascara from last night.”
“Such a fright ye've given me. And speaking of the chip van, I'm after seeing yer fancy man working there, the tears streaming down his face. I was of the mind he was crying cause of yer death.”
“Rory? Chopping onions, probably. There's loads of onions to chop every day.”
“And them women at Xpressions had nothing on their lips but some foolish, goofy story about how ye'd gone and kicked the bucket. About how the McDaid brothers had sold ye some dodgy E's or smack or I don't know what, and were fleeing the jurisdiction, and their mammy and all, the whole family clearing out to Florida as their drugs give ye an overdose. I heard tell, yer mammy went to visit the McDaid's after visiting yer dead body at Tommy Murphy's wee brother's undertaker, the one down Shipquay Street. Can ye imagine me shock? Here ye be, but, living and breathing before me.”
“I haven't a clue what ye're on about, Grannie. A drugs overdose? Me?” Dymphna said, but she could never lie convincingly. Her eyes looked everywhere but at Maureen's. Maureen grew angry.
“I wasn't always this age, ye know! I'm still not in me dotage, not yet, and I won't be patronized. I know flippin well ye're lying through yer teeth at me, wee girl. Don't take me for a simpleton! Ye kyanny look me in the eyes, sure. Ye know flimmin well what all these rumors about yer death be's about! I'll clatter the shite outta ye with me cane, though it would pain me to do so, as I love ye, love, but I won't be make a fool of. What's all this palaver about the drugs overdose? Out with it, wee girl!”
“If ye must know...” She took a deep breath. “I didn't want to let ye in on it, as it be's a wee bit embarrassing to me. But if ye insist...Och, does that be the time? I've to get the tea ready. I promised Mammy. And ye know what she's like when the hunger be's gnawing a hole in her stomach.” Dymphna hauled the potatoes out of the bag in the cabinet next to the garbage pail under the sink. “Me mammy said I've to make the tea for the entire family tonight. Fadge, spuds and white sauce, we're to be having.”
Dymphna seemed proud of her domestic chore, cooking for the family, but Maureen set her lips. The way Dymphna said the menu, it sounded like three different things, but fadge was butter-fried potato bread, a staple in Northern Ireland, spuds were spuds, and white sauce was butter and flour and milk, though the Floods generally used water as it was cheaper than milk. It didn't escape Maureen, even with the drink and the medication dulling her brain, they were to dine that night on buttered potatoes with potatoes and butter. She'd be reaching frantically across the table for the pepper and HP sauce to add some flavor. Again. She poured more whiskey and gulped down. The bottle was almost empty.
Dymphna peeled fast and furious, back arched.
“What are ye doing here?” Maureen demanded to know. “Is it some newfangled thing to do with the wedding, the bride must be separated from the groom for a week beforehand?”
“If only it were something nice like that,” Dymphna said, peeler flying. She sighed. “Naw. Mammy knew the McDaid lads had broke outta prison, and they was all planning on fleeing the city, would be leaving Derry, like, and never coming back. If she told their mammy I was dead, killed by an overdose of their sons' drugs, Mrs. McDaid wouldn't be in the city ever again to see me walking around town, and wouldn't know it was a lie. Ye, see, granny, she knew they was bulging with dosh, and wanted to make yer woman feel guilty and hand some over.”
“Why, but? To what end?”
“For to afford to buy me wedding cake, she said. Ye know that Zoë Riddell's to be paying for everything but that. The wedding be's days away, and Mammy still hasn't got the funds together for the cake. Me mammy insisted on paying for it. Why, but, I haven't a clue.”
“Och, of all the foolish, goofy...!” Maureen guzzled down more whiskey. “Some misguided sense of pride, I suppose. I kyanny comprehend why it's surfaced this time, but. Yer mammy's never backwards in coming forwards when it be's a question of snatching the funds outta other people's hands. Why would ye agree for such a daft plan, but? For yer mammy to do that to ye? It's all over town ye've gone and snuffed it. With a drugs overdose, of all shameful things! Mortified, so I was, at the salon, me face pure red. What must they think of wer family, a druggie in the ranks. I kyanny step foot in Xpressions again, and ye know I've had a standing appointment Wednesday at four since I don't know when! Another salon I'm gonny haveta find, and yer mammy's to blame! All the other salons be's terrible dear, so yer mammy's shenanigans is to be causing trauma to me handbag...again! Have ye no sense of self-respect yerself, but, hi? It's yer good name ye're allowing her to sully. And with all them wanes popping outta ye, and an Orangeman as yer future husband, that reputation already be's in tatters. All that ye're willing to let yer mammy ruin, and in the name of a flimmin wedding cake.”
Maureen stopped, realizing her anger should be directed at Fionnuala, not at Dymphna.
Peeler aloft, Dymphna faced her with a look of surprise. “Am I not meant to listen to me elders and betters?”
Maybe it was the tea mugs of whiskey on her empty stomach that did it, but Maureen forged ahead, her voice tinged with anger.
“Yer mammy's certainly yer elder. That don't automatically make her yer better, but. Ye're trying to please a woman what kyanny be pleased. Shall we sit down and the two of us compile a list of all the terrible things yer mammy's done? Just like the lists she compiles of which of her wanes she loves the most? Ye've not a clue? Aye, I've seen em. And you, Dymphna, have never been at the top. Never. And this is the woman ye're prepared to allow to spread all around town that ye've died of a drugs overdose? Disgraceful!”
Tears welled in Dymphna eyes. Her peeling faltered.
“Och,” Maureen said, “ye're a lovely lass, you, with all them red curls and all. So young, yer fresh face. Ye've so much to live for, them two wanes, and the new one on the way, the wedding coming up... Don't let yer mammy bully ye.”
“Ta, Grannie,” Dymphna sniffled into the potato peels. “Them be's some of the nicest words anyone's ever said to me. Och, I kyanny see the spuds to peel em correctly.” Then she looked around the kitchen as if she suddenly remembered something. “Shite! I used the last of the milk for me face pack. I'll have to use water for the white sauce.”
Maureen was growing less hungry the more teatime approached.
“We've not nearly enough spuds for the throngs that's to be eating, anyroad. Put you that peeler down, love. Have ye seen that takeout menu for Pasta-U-Like? I won a voucher for them at bingo Wednesday last. Fifty percent off. I'll ring for a pizza for us all. Two pizzas, it's gonny haveta be. Ye can give me me handbag in a moment. Sit you here beside me a wee moment, now, but.”
Dymphna sat. Maureen gripped her hand.
“I love yer mammy as one of me own. Och, she is one of me own, much as it pains me to say it, but ye know what I mean. She's been the cause of all manner of drama the past few years, but. It's gotten worse ever since that Ursula won the lotto, she's unhinged. She's deranged. She's due some comeuppance. It might be the whiskey letting ye in on all this. It has to be said, but. She's long due some retribution. How she enters that confessional at St. Moluag's every Wednesday and can hold her head high as she does it be's a mystery to me. Och, that drink's gone straight to me head, so it has. Drink on an empty stomach's never been me thing.”
Dymphna stared at he
r granny with a sense of betrayal. Maureen knew the girl was probably too dim to realize what she was talking about.
“This wedding will be the making of ye, dear. Living there across the river will do ye good. It's all yer dreams coming true that about to happen to ye now.”
“Ye know what I want most in the world, Granny?”
“To finally get that ring round yer finger and make them bastards of yers legal?”
“For Auntie Ursula and Uncle Jed to make it here for me wedding.”
“Well, make that happen if that's what ye want. Don't let yer mammy's hatred for em stop ye from making it happen.”
“Och! I clear forgot!”
Dymphna jumped from the table, went the oven and took a peek inside. Maureen jumped at her shriek.
“Blessed Virgin! Just as I suspected. When did Mammy last scrub out the oven? It looks like a cave in there, what with them things hanging from the top and them other things rising up from the bottom.”
“Stalagmites and stalactites. To think of all the roasts I've had down me throat that've come outta that...place.” Maureen's face had taken on a greenish tinge. “Have ye a chisel handy? Or some other tool?”
“I've something better!” She went to her handbag and pulled out a can. “I brought Mammy along some stuff that Zoë's housekeeper uses on her stove, though, of course, Zoë's is self-cleaning, but she says ye can never be too careful where cleanliness is concerned. That I don't understand that, but. But this be's one of them tins of oven cleaners. I've seen Zoë's housekeeper spray it in, let it sit for a few wee moments—ye can put yer feet up and do I don't know what, whatever ye feel like, and it'll do the work itself for ye while ye've them feet up, and then all the filth wipes off with a damp rag. Like magic, so it is.”
Best Served Frozen (The Irish Lottery Series Book 4) Page 9
