She was thinking about Bridie barging into the sitting room that afternoon and what she had told them all. Mrs. Mulholland's instincts told her, no, her faith told her there was no way the Blessed Virgin would have appeared to her niece and told her to embark on such a...campaign, such a crusade of intolerance and hatred as the girl claimed. The Virgin Mary stood for compassion and kindness. Really, Bridie must be unhinged, it must be the result of too much drink, too many hours breathing in the toxic grease of the Kebabalicious, too much time on her hands and too much resentment in her heart.
But there was something about the way that smarmy git had given her less than her fair share of chips a few days before, the way he seemed to think her money was worth snatching and shoving into his mother's bank account...at her expense!...that had her nodding her head, taking up the gauntlet, agreeing with Bridie while all her elderly bingo partners and choir mates around her cheered and roared and made plans for the big event. She could see his glinty eyes still, his ferret-like teeth, and they made her stomach churn with disgust.
What they were going to do was necessary, it was important, it was what needed to be done. To stop society on the slippery slope to Hell and she knew not what. But in her heart of hearts she knew Mary hadn't decreed it. The Blessed Virgin wouldn't be that cruel. But Bridie could be.
Mrs. Mulholland felt bad sinning, lying to Bridie, telling her the Bishop had rung and told her the supermarket reception was taking longer than anticipated, and they'd have to reschedule. But the truth was Mrs. Mulholland now had no intention of ushering Bridie before the movers and shakers of Derry's Catholic world. She wasn't daft! She had her reputation to think of!
She groaned as she forced her body through the fields of blankets and was finally able to contort herself to do something that resembled a semi-roll on the mattress. She finally drifted off. The countdown continued. Two days to D-Day.
CHAPTER 31
Fionnuala knocked on Lorcan's door. She didn't know how his beer-tainted sweat could permeate the chipped wood, but the landing stank of his secretions. It didn't disturb her too much; she had smelled worse in her life. She looked across at the tray she had prepared for his breakfast, feeling quite sophisticated at how she was carrying it, just like a waitress of some posh Michelin starred-restaurant (she had seen a reality show filmed in London about just such waitresses in just such a restaurant; one got fired every week, and a girl from Limerick—Limerick!—had won. Fionnuala had been dead proud). Lorcan's breakfast was raisin porridge, but with generous helpings of cinnamon she had found to her surprise under the sink in a spice rack she had been given for Christmas years ago by a former employer from a job she longed to forget, and, from a bottle behind some tins in the larder, the dregs of some blackcurrant syrup she never remembered purchasing. Not to improve the taste, of course, but to mask the 'secret ingredient.' She had even arranged the raisins in a swirl so that it looked like a tornado being viewed from above. Fionnuala marveled a how Making Lorcan Stay (she would never consider it Poisoning Her Son) was making her not only a happier person but also a better cook. She had even folded a serviette and put it on the right side of the plate. Gordon Ramsay had better watch his back, she thought with a wry smile. She knocked again.
“Aye...?” It was a barely perceptible groan. Fionnuala barged in as quickly as she could with the tray. She was shocked at the sight of him, and her heart went out to him and his body, but it was his own fault. Much better he languish here in his own bedroom than sleep off a hangover on some sitting room floor in godless Florida. His head lolled on the pillow in the dankness of the room, ghastly pale. His hair resembled a wet black mop, and that made her think of the all the mopping she had had to do of the scullery floor at tea the night before. She shuddered at the memory, but approached the bed as he struggled to sit himself upright.
“I've yer breakfast for ye, love,” she said, one hand clearing off the detritus on the nightstand, the other placing the tray on the stains and grime there. She perched herself on the sopping bedclothes beside his trembling torso and placed a hand on his forehead. Hot sweat prickled on the clammy flesh. “Wile shame ye're not eating it in exciting Florida, but. It grieves me heart that ye had to postpone yer flight outta here.”
“B-breakfast?” Lorcan moaned, “I don't think I can stomach it, Mam. Terrible cramps, I'm tortured with. The amount of times I had to race to the loo last night.”
“Aye, so I heard. All. Night. Long.” She didn't sound best pleased, and realized she'd have to keep her voice softer, more one of motherly concern, but for her that was a struggle. “That flushing kept me awake till all hours. Why did ye think I set up this bucket for ye here beside yer bed? Nightmares of falling over Niagara Falls, I kept having.” She kicked the bucket, and said accusingly: “Empty, I see.”
“Sorry, Mam, but it was streaming outta both ends of me in force and amount like them Niagara Falls ye was on about. With the bucket I wouldn't have known which way to turn. Thank Christ we've that wee sink next to the toilet, like. Me throat still aches, but me arse got the worst of it. Sure, I haven't a mirror, nor would I want to see particularly, but it must surely resemble the Japanese flag by now, or a blood orange what's been peeled. Or a...”
Fionnuala winced. “Alright, son.”
“...a fresh bullet wound, or maybe even a—”
“That's enough. I get yer point.” Though each word seemed a struggle, he certainly had plenty to say! “Here. Have a wee sip of tea. And here's some paracetamol for ye and all.”
She placed the pills on the withered tongue he managed to wriggle out, then raised the cup to his chapped lips like a chalice. His hands shook as he cupped them around hers and gulped down gratefully.
“And get some porridge down ye, son,” she said softly, kindly. She wiped his forehead. “Ye need to keep yer strength up. Here's a beer to wash it down with and all. Perhaps ye'd like a few wee sips of the lager before ye taste yer porridge?”
She popped open the can, put one hand around his neck and guided his lips to the beer. His hair was sopping. He took grateful sips. She gave him more. And more. And then she reached for the spoon, scooped up some porridge, and began to feed him. “Just like when ye was a wane,” she sighed, voice wistful.
As they had clattered into the chairs around the table the night before, nobody seemed to want to make eye contact with Fionnuala, and at first she wondered if they somehow suspected her plan. But as Lorcan pierced his vindaloo-drenched ham hock and brought the fork to his lips, nobody made to smack the poisonous gristle away to. So she thought that maybe it was some wedding surprise, a special treat for the mother of the bride, that they had been planning in the sitting room while she was changing the nappies and spraying the toxins on Lorcan's food, that was why they didn't want to look at her. Siofra picked up her ham hock and licked at the vindaloo like it was a lollipop, and the little girl babbled on and on about the wedding cake they'd be making the next day, the girl could certainly talk, and Padraig scowled with each new innovation she thought of. He scooped beans and toast down his throat, anger shining in his eyes.
“I'm not gonny help with that effin cake,” he said. “That's not for lads, so it isn't.”
“Aye, ye are,” Fionnuala warned.
“Naw, I'm not!” he insisted.
Fionnuala was too busy shooting glances at Lorcan and how he was eating, and counting how many mouthfuls of ham hock he was chewing, how his Adam's apple reacted with each swallow, the color of his face, the expression on it, to be bothered with Padraig's insubordination. She waved the boy away, “Och, do what ye want, ye selfish bastard. Ye always do anyroad. I don't give a cold shite in Hell. Sure, Siofra's got Seamus and yer granny to help her. And Siofra, ye can ring round some mates to help ye if ye want. Youse've a lot of cake to make. A lot,” and their eyes looked a bit surprised over the mouths that moved as they shoveled toast, beans, fat and gristle into them, and Paddy drank more beer and Maureen drank the wine she always did, and Fionnuala was still
knocking back the whiskey and the chewing and gulping and screaming of the infants in the stroller by the cooker continued and Lorcan kept shoveling down mouthful after mouthful of the deadly ham.
“Och, Mam,” he said, the vindaloo trickling down his chin, “Ye've outdone yerself tonight, so ye have! A special meal for me going-away, and a better tea I've never eaten in me life! I guess ye do believe me now when I say I'm sorry I'm going and that I'll send ye loads upon loads of Yank dollars. Ye can get that new washer ye've always been banging on about. And that swanky shower hose and all.”
“Ye really are lovely, Mammy,” Dymphna twittered. “All the work ye did on me marvelous frock.”
“Aye, and today she give us Wine Gums and all,” Siofra smiled.
“Two each,” Padraig sniped.
“I love Mammy!” Seamus gurgled, his face hidden behind a mask of beans and vindaloo sauce.
And Fionnuala saw Paddy and Maureen smiling fondly at her across the plates and forks speared with dripping pork, maybe it was the drink, she didn't know, but she saw the looks, and here she was seeing the love of at least three of her four other children, regardless of which rank they held on that week's chart of her current favorites, and just as she was starting to feel guilty, just as she was wondering if she were being too hasty and starting to feel dread tightening her chest, and just as she was thanking the Lord that Lorcan seemed to have a stomach of steel, and a steel inner mouth and esophagus as well, or maybe it was lead she meant, like those lead lungs they once used to have, and just as she was wondering if she had been temporarily unhinged and if she should abandon her insidious plan, Dymphna, who had been teetering on the verge of nausea since she had stepped into the scullery, suddenly pardoned herself, thrust her head over her plate, and bean-spattered ham chunks erupted from her lips. There were squeals all around the table, forks clattering from fingers.
“I-I'm sorry,” Dymphna cried hoarsely, wiping tears from her face and looking down at the mess on her plate, “It's the smell of the curry. Youse all know I kyanny abide it. I've been trying me best, but, but...” Her face turned green and her cheeks ballooned.
“Away from the table!” Paddy roared.
“Here's the bin,” Lorcan said, grabbing it and shoving it towards his sister, and maybe it was the stench of the carrot detritus and the festering potato peels rising up from it and attacking her nose, or maybe still the curry, but Dymphna spewed up again, and it set off a chain reaction and Fionnuala looked on in horror, Maureen in disgust, and Paddy in surprise as Siofra, then Seamus, then Padraig ejected streams through the air which splattered on their plates, their shirts, the table, on the glasses and the floor. Lorcan roared with laughter as they jumped up from the table, chairs clattering over, and said, “Christ! I'm gonny miss youse all! What a craic wer family is!” He gulped more beer and kept wolfing down, imperious to the chaos around him.
Fionnuala effed and blinded as she tugged out the mop and the bleach, tossed rags all around, and the cleanup began. Paddy and Maureen were unable to take another forkful, but still Lorcan continued to devour down.
“I'd help youse,” he said, “but ye know the size of them portions on the plane. I've to shove as much into me stomach while I can.”
It was only after Fionnuala had mopped the floor for the third time and her son got up from the table to finish packing that, on the stairs, he suddenly gripped his stomach, a wail of pain roared from his throat, and the attack began.
Lorcan now pushed the spoon away. He had half-hardheartedly allowed his mother to fit three spoonfuls between his lips.
“I kyanny take no more, Mammy. I think there must be something wrong with me tongue. That porridge be's like the ham hocks last night. It tastes...all chemically-like. I didn't want to bring it up last night, as the vindaloo was magic. But...”
Fionnuala reluctantly placed the spoon in the bowl. She removed a raisin from his chin.
“Perhaps that's enough for this morning.”
“Sorry, Mam.”
“Och, not at all. I think, son, with the wedding being tomorrow, ye surely can wait until after that for to make yer escape from yer mammy and the town that loves ye. Aye? From what I gather about that Free Flight For A Friend ye told me about, ye can leave any time ye want, like. That be's correct, aye?”
“Aye. Sure, how can I be expected to make it to the airport if I can barely make it to the loo? Me legs be's wobbling like they was made of rubber. I can leave anytime. Mortified, I'd be, if I was locked in that wee toilet themmuns have on the plane, with all them noises rising outta me. I can wait, now, as long as it takes.”
Fionnuala nodded, satisfied. She tried her best to contain her smile.
“I've to meet Zoë Riddell at some swank restaurant in a few moments. La-di-dah! Apparently she's some last minute wedding details to discuss. And if ye've not recovered properly by the time I come back, I'll take the wanes, and me mammy and all, up to St. Moluag's for to light a wee candle for ye, and to say a prayer as well, to help ye mend and ensure ye're on yer way to Florida as soon as. Oh, and by the by, the wanes'll be in the scullery making yer sister's wedding cake all afternoon. Ye've yer phone here, and if themmuns makes too much noise, just give me a ring and I'll take care of em. I know ye're probably too weak to go down all them stairs to tell em to keep it down, or too weak to even call out to em, so I can do it for ye. I can do whatever ye want for ye.”
Except let ye leave. She picked up the tray.
“I'll be back in time for yer dinner. Do ye want fish and chips? Another of yer faves.” Dinner: Derry for lunch.
“Let's wait and see, shall we?” he said weakly. He gave a moan, and his eyelids fluttered.
She kissed him on the forehead. She was happy it was still clammy.
“There's a good boy,” she said.
Then she went into her bedroom to change out of her tattered robe for something suitable to see the Proddy bitch in.
CHAPTER 32
Lorcan loved a good horror film, especially slashers: the bloodier, the gorier, the scarier, the better. The hours he had sat on the settee, usually with a rapt Padraig at his side, rewinding the most horrific scenes of all the Saws, Hostel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the sadistic products of questionable Hollywood minds. And he been locked up in Magilligan Prison for three years. But nothing Hollywood had devised, nothing he had chanced upon in prison during his long stay there, was as scary as that Saturday morning and afternoon he endured on that mattress in that cupboard of a bedroom, with the crunchy sheets, drenched with old, cold sweat, clinging to his trembling body, and the shocking pains like living animals gnawing through his innards, his temperature pitching from arctic to hellish, drifting in and out of sleep or was it consciousness?
During the few brief periods of lucidity, where he knew without struggling the English words for all the objects he saw going in and out of focus in the room around him, there was always some important bit of information missing from his brain, either where he was, or what time of day, what year, or who he was. And all the while there were excited, girlish squeals and laughter, banging crashing and thumping noises coming from the kitchen. He whimpered and moaned and cried out at sudden jabbing pains in an intestine here, a bowel there, and wondered...was he back in prison? Was he in God's waiting room? No, he wasn't, he was in his bedroom. Ah, but yes he was in prison. There was just a new prison guard jangling the keys, an old one, but a new one anyway.
He ran a reptilian tongue over lips like papyrus. He was gasping with thirst. He had long since finished the beer his mother had brought, and couldn't stomach the look of the porridge, now congealed in the bowl. He needed more alcohol, to lose himself in its charms. But...how many girls were down in that scullery? It sounded like a school-full. He waited, waited until finally he heard scampering like a herd of antelopes through the front hall downstairs, yells of “Cheerio!” and the front door slam.
He winced as he tugged off the sopping sheets and staggered out of the bed. His knees buck
led and he grabbed the nightstand for support. The room swam. But then he felt better, stronger. He made his way to the door, then took the stairs slowly, feeling some strength seep back, and his own personality seeping back into his brain. He took a breath.
He heard his granny: “Could we not...cut down them towers, love?” then Siofra wail, “Naw, granny! Naw! Naw!!”
“Or reshape em a bit, love? Cut em with a knife to make em more like squares?”
“Towers in a princess castle be's round, but!”
“Maybe we can at least take off the...I don't know what ye'd call them. Them roofs ye've added to the tops of the towers.”
“Naw! Naw!” Siofra wailed. “Mammy said I was in charge of the cake. It be's my wedding cake!”
As Lorcan opened the door to the scullery, Siofra was stamping her tiny feet. Tears were flowing down her face, an alarming pink. She roared huge sobs, bubbles of mucous escaping from her nostrils and then being sucked in again. Maureen stood over her, at a loss for what do to. Seamus was sitting on a chair, his head hidden behind a bowl he was apparently licking. There was no sign of Padraig.
Lorcan pushed the door wider, looked to the side and jerked in shock. Was he hallucinating again? Atop the table, surrounded by egg shells, fields of flour, pans crusted with burnt something and cans that had once held vegetables something monstrous skulked: Dymphna's wedding cake. His eyes begged him to look away, but it was like one of those scenes from any of the Saws: he just had to look. Three shocking layers of lumpy, misshapen cake were plopped atop each other, and it seemed as if the cake were melting before his startled eyes, like someone had left it out in the rain, bright icing flowing down. Also an alarming pink, like flesh that never saw the sun. His eyes took in further horrors: Two figures teetered on the slope of the highest layer. They had taken one of Seamus's action men, the paratrooper, and screwed its filthy plastic boots into the top, and next to it, left hand posed as if it were clutching one of the action man's, was Siofra's old Barbie, which had lost its head when she was six and been charred when 5 Murphy Crescent had burned down. Something that looked like a ping pong ball had been attached to its neck, and a smiling face scrawled in green crayon. Some fuzz had been taped atop it, which Lorcan took to signify hair. At least it was red.
Best Served Frozen (The Irish Lottery Series Book 4) Page 31
