by Billy Keane
He took out a bag of minced meat from the freezer and ordered Mo to put it up to her eye.
‘You’ll tell the Ma you fell?’
She nodded again, afraid to speak, and not trusting her squashed voice box. For Mo it was just a case of getting to the next minute without getting hurt and taking it from there. It was all about survival until he wore himself out. She stood in the centre of the room with her head lowered and her hands joined. Mo prayed silently. A long prayer to Holy Mary the nuns taught her.
‘You bruise easy,’ he said in a calmer voice.
Dermo lit up a cigarette even though she never saw him smoking up to that. But it was only an intermission. He put the cigarette out by stubbing it slowly in Mo’s arm. She screamed loudly and tried to free herself from the cowboy belt.
‘Shut–the-fuck-up.’
Dermo hit Mo across the face with a leather motorbike glove as if he was offering her out for a duel.
He rummaged through the drawers of a bashed-in filing cabinet. Mo could see the nostrils of a shotgun sticking out of the half-open bottom drawer. Dermo took a cordless drill from the top drawer. She bought it for him for his birthday. Black and Decker. Mo thought it might help to domesticate him. The drill buzzed before Mo like as if he was inscribing the airspace in front of her with threats.
‘Open wide. It won’t hurt a bit. It’s just like giving head.’ He slapped his thigh and laughed hysterically at his own joke.
Dermo took an egg timer from the credit card pocket in his motorbike jacket. He push-kicked Mo over to a purple chaise longue that might have been the property of a Madame or a broke property developer.
‘Admit it and I might go easy on you.’
‘Admit what?’
He straddled her. Placed the egg timer on her heaving and contracting chest. Dermo picked up the egg timer with his mouth and pressed it into to her forehead, leaving a perfect red circle.
Then he showed her the sands in the top chamber.
‘This is how long it will take me to rape you, bitch. That’s all of my valuable time I can spare. When the beach is down in the bottom half, we’ll flip her over, and then you’ll get what’s comin to you.
‘Now for the nineteenth time, tell me it was you what ratted on your husband who has been very, very good to you, givin’ you a good home and a new kitchen. And you as good as an orphan with nobody to look after you. Your husband what is a lovely man, what has a big heart, a heart as big as a turnip, dey all says.’
‘I haven’t a clue what you’re on about.’ And she didn’t.
‘I know you know. It was you what done the grassin’ on us bout the fightin’ dogs. But we weren’t caught, cunt.’
Dermo stopped, as if he was thinking, and scratched his head with his left hand as his right hand pinned Mo by the neck to the chaise longue
‘Howld, howld on now. Ah but I’m all wrong there. All wrong. Wait up. Whoa up. A cunt is a useful thing.
‘The cops was tolt everythin’ what happened. You sent it. You sent it. That fuckin’ email. You betrayed your husband you swore to love, honour and obey up in the altar before the priest and before God hisself.’ Dermo was crying as he spoke. He slapped her hard across the head.
‘Bitch!’ he shouted. ‘I used to love you. I fucking used to love you.’
Semi-concussed, she saw stars. Actual stars. Shooting around in all directions, like in the cartoons.
Mo didn’t move. Lay as quiet as could be. She knew he was out of control now. He was still sobbing, silently. And feeling very sorry for Saint Dermo The Victim.
She braced herself for another slap or kick. Her head started to clear a little.
The last grains of sand shifted to the bottom chamber.
The epileptic drill rat-a-tat-tatted a drum solo on the thin-assed antique George the something chair. The crying stopped.
Dermo turned off the drill and asked quietly, ‘If it wasn’t you, then who was it?’ He was blinking rapidly as if the single bulb hanging from the ceiling was hurting his eyes.
Dermo sat on the antique chair. It broke under his weight and he stayed on the floor with his head in his hands.
Mo was shaking but years of crisis management enabled her to put on the face again. Dermo was having one of his migraines. He twisted and turned from the pain. Dermo rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. He got up and sat down again on the floor. Experience and instinct told her now was the time to risk all.
‘You are a dead man if I wish you dead. Even if you kill me, my curse will get you. Just ask your Mammy. I killed more than Mrs D. Did you know that? I can kill whenever I like. All I have to do is wish. Just a wish and you’re dead. But I don’t like killing people unless I really have to. Unless I really have no choice.’
The fury squirted out of him. It could be he believed Mo didn’t know about the raid, which she didn’t. Possibly he saw the headache as Phase 1 in his death by wishing. Maybe he was afraid of his mother. Or was some little bit of human still left in him? And did he still love her? It could be random, down to the route the roulette balls took round his head before they stuck on a saner pocket.
Dermo stood up, slowly.
‘Get the fuck outta here. And don’t never threaten me again. You’re not worth doing time for, bitch.’
Mo released her hands by pulling open the belt with her mouth. She put on her top. It was one of Dermo’s and had ‘Route 66’ embroidered across the front.
She walked out slowly. Route 66 was hanging just above her knees which were scratched and bleeding from carpet and tile burn.
Dermo squeaked, ‘You know I was going to bring you to Route 66 on the honeymoon.’
She closed the already swollen eye and made her way slowly and silently towards the door. Mo counted every step, scared that if she ran, Dermo would sense her fear and might strike again. Mo’s wrists were so bruised and sore, she could barely open the door. She glanced back at him.
He was lying on the chaise longue, his head busting from the pain.
Mo wasn’t sure if she had won, or if this was a truce, or just a postponement of the inevitable.
Mo told me of her ordeal in the Den. In the way you might tell a scary ghost story on the night of a power failure by a flickering candle.
Butterflies with razor blades for wings flew round my stomach as she spoke.
If she broke down and told him I was there when the Papi was slaughtered, Dermo would have tracked me down.
We planned her escape and hiding. Maureen, unwittingly, set us up for a meeting.
Maureen, who was hoping Mo would never leave, organised it with Dermo that Mo’s college friend could call. Me that is.
‘They were only butties,’ Maureen told Dermo, and I was ‘only a small, little country lad who might talk a bit of sense into her. He’s a friend only and he might be a small bit gay.’
There could be no jealousy of someone as small as me. Or as gay as me, even though I wasn’t in any way gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, just for the record.
Eventually he gave in.
Dermo was at home in his mother’s house, where he was now living after a truce brokered by Maureen. He must have been watching out for me all day.
Grey ran up to the door of the car. He licked my shoes. I was afraid he would bite me.
Dermo was laughing.
‘Don’t worry, Runt, he won’t ate you. There’s not enough flesh on you. He must like polish. Why did you polish your tiny shoes anways? Sure they’ll only get dirty again. Are you tryin’ to ride the wife by any chance? Is that it? Dat why you’re all dressed up?’
Dermo went down on his knees and smelled my toes. ‘I’m on my way. That polish has me buzzin.’
He stood up. Sniffed me all over like a dog.
‘Oh you smell like a chemist shop. Fucking hate pillow biters. You wanna dem lads? Ha? Ya?’
He caught my head in a vice grip, as in the TV wrestling.
‘Smell that. That’s a real man.’ I was suffocati
ng. The sweat was sickening. Luckily I was so nervous I didn’t eat before the visit.
Dermo grabbed my hand and walked me to the door as if he was bringing a child to school. It was humiliating. He squeezed so tight the tips of my fingers turned white as a dead man’s.
White as my dad’s in the coffin.
I needed my Dad. What am I doing here, Dad? In the middle of all this shit. How did I ever get into this?
I prayed to my father.
‘What’s in the bag, Runt?’ Dermo asked.
We were on the porch by then. He was still squeezing my hand. I didn’t tell him stop. Mo came out.
‘Let go,’ ordered Mo.
Dermo squeezed even harder. I went on my knees with the pain. I have small hands. My mother wanted me to become a vet.
‘Let him go. And call off the dogs. Now.’
Whatever it was she did to him in the Den was still working in some part. Or maybe he was trying to get back in with Mo and beating me up definitely wouldn’t help.
Dermo went away somewhere in a big old Mercedes.
Mo showed me into the house.
She rubbed my sore hand gently. Already there was red bruising. The hot tea she made helped and the warm cup brought the colour back to my crushed fingers.
I brought Mo a laptop and an iPhone.
She cried and I was sort of glad there was no ‘ah you shouldn’t have’ or ‘I can’t possibly’.
‘Thank you so much, G. This is freedom.’
‘It brought down governments.’
When Mo moved in, the Olsen house smelled of dried-out wet dogs and syphilitic cats.
Mo scrubbed and cleaned until her hands went raw and numb.
There were fresh flowers in every room and eventually Maureen persuaded Dermo not to bring the dogs into the house.
Mo never had any money of her own to do it up. But it was very clean and had Mo touches everywhere. There were bookshelves with books on them and nice matching prints of happy kids shovelling sand on a sunny beach.
Mo spread out the drawings she’d made of her dream kitchen.
‘There will be an island in the middle and the paint will be warm like a kitchen should with a big table and eight chairs, so all the family could sit around and talk.’
‘Eight? Wow!’
She laughed.
‘Yeah, G, eight ‒ six children plus two parents. I was always on my own. A latchkey kid. Like in the song ‘Nobody’s Child’.’ I started to sing the first verse of the maudlin ballad. Dad used to sing it for laughs in the pub, just to get the oul wans bawling.
‘No, G don’t, it makes me too sad.’
Mo stapled pictures from magazines onto the kitchen design sheets. There were kids everywhere and rocking horses, baby chairs and toys scattered all over. Some of the mag pages were old and faded. One was dated ten years ago and I asked Mo if she thought six kids was enough.
Mo laughed. ‘Stop, G, I’m serious. Six children would be just right and we could spread them out so there would always be a baby in the house and all the older kids could look after the younger ones and learn parenting skills.’
Dermo bought a stolen to-order flat-pack kitchen for a grand and a mate of his, who learned carpentry in prison, installed it for two hundred euro, while Mo looked on helplessly at the botch job. Maureen had the taste of a whorehouse decorator. The sofas were mock leopard skin, matched with orange curtains and wall prints of motorbikes and The Last Supper in cheap plastic frames.
‘I want teak and granite,’ she said. ‘Something that will last forever. Like my marriage. The next one. Obviously.
‘I’d love an Aga. I would keep that stove so clean and shiny and bake my own soda bread. And I would leave the windows open so the kids could run in from the garden when they got the smell of a freshly baked loaf and I would give them a slice and the butter would melt on it making it extra delicious. Oh yeah and G, the garden would have trees and a swing. But the kitchen is the centre of the home. There would be an old style country dresser with blue and white delf in every press and we’d keep a special set for Sundays and visitors. And a comfy sofa with room for everyone to snuggle up under a blankie on cold winter nights. And teddies everywhere. For hugging and comforting and not just looking at. And a man who will love me even when I’m doing stuff I shouldn’t and forgive me after, without going on too much about it.’
I was going to say her dream home was close to mine, but I didn’t. And that I was that man who could make her happy, but I didn’t say that either.
Mo made a broccoli bake and garlic bread. After we had coffee and homemade apple crumble with whipped cream. I thought it was a really good dinner from a woman who never had a proper mother.
She told me the flat that I helped arrange for her was still there. Social services held it over but only for another week or so.
I had to get her out. Somewhere in the background was the thought that there was no escaping from him. But if it was dangerous to leave, it was even more dangerous to stay. The only long-term solution was to get Dermo locked up.
‘Have you ever thought about going to a solicitor? Dermo will have to pay alimony. The cops will send him away for years after what he did to you.’
Mo turned away as she walked back into the kitchen with the dishes.
‘I know, but I have stuff to do. And some day he will get out. If I did shake him down, he would just kill me or have me killed. He knows people who do hits for a few grand.’
I followed her in with the plates.
‘What stuff have you to do?’ I asked.
‘There’s Maureen. I like her. Love her.’
Maureen made the truce, but Dermo was only a door away. He promised never again to touch her but he hadn’t kept his promises up to this.
‘But you can’t stay just because of her. Dermo will go back to his old ways soon. The fear of being killed will wear off, the longer he stays alive. You don’t believe in that wishing by killing crap anyway? Do you, Mo?’
Dermo sent a new dishwasher by way of reparation. Mo filled the dishwasher as she spoke. She accepted the peace offering because the dishwasher was the only part of her life ‘where everything has its own place.’
‘The knives went into the knife section and the big plates slid into spaces like the ones they park bikes in at school. The cups and mugs were suspended on spikes. And at the end of it all, the cups and the knives and the plates were clean and ready to be put back in the drawer. So there.’
Dermo saw what had happened as just one of those little marital tiffs, like in his own home life as a kid, and he promised Mo a tumble drier as soon as one fell off the back of a lorry.
‘Come on, Mo, surely you know the wish-killing is just nuts.’
‘Not really. Well maybe just a bit. I don’t know. It’s the same as not believing in ghosts but being afraid to sleep in a haunted house. If you know what I mean?’
Then she showed me a torn-out newspaper piece. The Law of the Wish was at number 1.
We talked. Mo told of the night her mother came home drunk with a friend and the light bulb swayed in Mo’s bedroom. The force of the sex sent the headboard of her mother’s bed banging against the walls. I was honoured she told me such a personal thing. I could see Mo never had any grace in her life and she was trying to talk out the bad memories to make room for new ones. Happy ones. I never loved anyone as much ever. I wanted to make her dreams come true.
I told her about Dad’s singing fish, which beat the shit out of The Law of the Wish.
His name was Big Mouth Billy Bass. The fish was real looking, well to a kid anyway. Billy twisted in time with the music and his mouth opened wide into a perfect O as he sang slow and hoarse.
You could sum up all the self-help books in the world with the song Billy sang – ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’.
‘It’s as easy as that, isn’t it, G?’
I told her before she asked. Or it could be she trusted me to tell her in my own time.
‘It was m
e who tipped off the police about the dogs. I am so sorry, Mo. I should have known it would come back on you but I was just so upset about the cruelty. And you didn’t tell him it was me, even though you must have suspected.’
Mo was almost flippant.
‘I sort of guessed it was you.’
Mo walked me to the front door. It was dark by now. The moon was a cradle for a baby. Mo’s hanging flower baskets swayed gently in small arcs like a kiddies swing. Chinese bells tinkled a tune composed by the soft wind.
There was a pause. Not for long, because I was edgy there, out of doors, or half out of doors.
Dermo could be hiding out behind one of the old cars the Olsens used for spare parts. The dogs could be crouching, hidden anywhere. Waiting to pounce.
She sort of looked at me in that special way they look at you.
‘Hey, G. I’m nearly better. Everywhere. You know …’
Her eyes not looking to see my reaction. Shy almost.
Mo slipped out of her shoes, elegantly.
‘Look, G, look, we’re the same height. As good as.’
We were but I still had my shoes on.
I was shy. Didn’t know what to do or say.
‘Call to see me soon and don’t be scared.’
There was an awkwardness for a few seconds.
She kissed me on the lips.
As I left and was walking towards the car, delighted with the kiss goodbye, but ever wary of the wolf’s cousins, she called out:
‘Hey, G, forgot to ask, what’s schadenfreude?’
I kept on walking backwards or sideways on my toes, in a circus horse movement. All the while scanning.
‘Some German expression to do with revenge. Something like that. I think.’
I could have checked straight away on my iPhone but Alsatians can be sneaky, being related to wolves and all that.
‘You can Google it now,’ I advised, from the safety of the car, with the window down, but not all the way. Just open enough to hear and speak through, like the gap in the cashier’s counter in the bank.
She waved goodbye. In the wing mirror I could see her standing there in the porch.
I drove out the cattle-gridded exit and past the new sign that read ‘Bewear of Dermo’.