The Ballad of Mo and G

by Billy Keane

  Mikey looked over to his Mam for support.

  ‘For a while. He was quiet for a while, Mikey,’ added Maureen.

  Then Maureen took over.

  ‘We have a good friend. He’s Sergeant Matt and he will come here to fix things. Dermo respects Sergeant Matt. Doesn’t he, Mikey?’

  Mikey nodded.

  Maureen put her arms on Mo’s shoulders and looked at her in the eyes as she spoke.

  ‘The Law of the Wish could kill Dermo and maybe you too. There’s nottin in the book that says no one can’t kill you, love.’

  Maureen convinced Mo that Dermo was definitely away in France and he wasn’t coming back. She spent the night in the Compound.

  Mo asked, over the phone, if I would help her to escape.

  I hesitated for a few seconds. To figure out what I was going to do. Well maybe it was a bit longer than that. It was my move but I didn’t move. If we were to live together, I would have had to have time to figure it all out. Pick the apartment. Pay the deposit. Sign up for the electricity. Alarms. CCTV. Random stuff. Check if we could afford Sky TV and make sure the bins were collected weekly. And I hadn’t even asked her. I was just assuming. Crisis management wasn’t my strong point.

  Mo was a quick person. She waited for me to respond and must have figured the delay was a no, or a can’t-make-up-his-mind. She was instinctive, and I tossed ideas around in the mixing bowl in my head forever.

  Mo made the decision for me.

  ‘No, wait a couple of days. I’m in terrible pain. Just can’t move. Complications, from losing the baby and climbing out the window and the shock.’ Or so she said. But so often Mo told me she was fine physically.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. Too easily.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, before I could put my thoughts on a list, ‘the police are coming in the morning to take a statement.’

  Mo was out of ammo now. Her short-lived scaring of the beast was over and forever. She had to leave. Staying was impossible. Leaving gave her a chance. For a while anyway. A head start.

  ‘But where will I go?’ She sounded like a kid lost in the woods. Scared of the Big Bad Wolf.

  Mo was just a little older than a little girl.

  ‘Don’t worry. We will find somewhere safe. Another hostel or something. I might be able to organise someplace safe. Soon enough. Or I’m sure the police have safe houses.’

  Safe. Yeah, through a witness protection scheme, organised by me, who wasn’t cut out for conflict. And the victims of family violence aren’t exactly likely to be given new lives and a permanent pension in Tahiti.

  Fuck but Tahiti wasn’t even safe. All those places with palm trees and golden beaches eventually get overrun by tsunamis, dictators, homicidal jellyfish and sex tourists.

  And ‘soon enough’ was something like the plumber would say and you both knew he had no notion of calling for ages, if at all, and only then if the chimney was the only part of the house that wasn’t covered in water.

  All the while, there was the constant and real dread of Dermo. Fear was really keeping me away from her.

  What if the Olsens threw a petrol bomb in the window of our house?

  Or stuck a firelighter at the end of a knitting needle through the letter box that didn’t have a stiff moustache for protection?

  It was on the net. About a bomb attached to a toy chopper that was piloted in through the chimney pot by a mobster who must have been an expert in cybernetics and he blew the whole fucking gaff to smithereens and the people in it too.

  The fact the police were coming gave me some comfort. Surely Dermo would be charged with manslaughter of the baby, the savage attacks on Mo and maybe even cruelty to the dogs. If Mo’s evidence alone would be enough to convict him on that one.

  That would be the end of the danger for a good few years, or so I persuaded myself at the time. If some day in years to come he did get out, the odds were prison would have emasculated him and his rage and the madness would be either decreased or gone. That was how I saw it, or wanted to see it back then.

  The police called to the Compound, as promised.

  The main man went by the name of Sergeant Matt and the omission of his surname gave him that kind of trusted friend of the family handle like Father Tim, who was probably grooming the kids, or Doctor Harry, who was pumping antidepressants into the mother because he couldn’t be arsed listening to her and there was a queue in the waiting room. I didn’t trust any of them, any of the same old guys who ran the show into the ground. Any of the guys who used words like ‘decremental’ when the country was in freefall and jobs were getting cut by the day. They were all such a bunch of fucking conmen and liars.

  Good old Sergeant Matt made a big speech about respecting women. He happened to be the very same Matt who played Dermo, his pet stool pigeon. By an amazing coincidence. My arse.

  ‘First we will get you a Protection Order, pet,’ announced the Sergeant, who was probably surprised Mo didn’t puppy lick his fingers in thanks.

  Mo wasn’t a bit impressed.

  ‘My name is Mo.’

  Sergeant Matt was that fond of himself, he wasn’t even listening. He slid his wide, cow’s tongue around his swimming ring lips and into the far-off corners of his mouth, to get a taste of his own wonderfulness.

  ‘Then in a few weeks,’ he continued, ‘we can get a Barring Order. Which means, per se, Dermo cannot, under no circumstances whatsoever, enter into the house or the cartilage thereof. If he so much as looks at you, looks at you,’ and he peered out at her over the tops of his glasses, ‘we can bang him up in a cell. Forthwith. So to speak.’

  There was shine off Big Matt. He was red. The light reflected off his florid face. He wasn’t as big as the name suggested and Mo suspected the ‘Big’ bit in Big Matt was put in by himself.

  He spoke in a formal voice, as if he was taking an oath.

  ‘Sorry, Maureen, my dear, we are aware of your admirable maternal instincts but the law is the law and Big Matt tells it straight, straight as a pencil. Big Matt will keep the peace. So help me God. That’s what we are there for. Garda Síochána means custodians of the peace and Big Matt, who was once a rookie, believe it or not, many years ago, and when he was in that humble state and still a young man, he swore an oath. A sacred oath, in the presence of the Commissioner of an Garda Síochána and the Minister for Justice to uphold that sacred duty, without fear or favour, from that day forward, all the days of his life, until death do him part. Big Matt would not forsake his oath from that day on. Thus, most definitely, he would not. Big Matt would take a bullet for those under his protection. Oh most certainly he would.’

  Big Matt looked at Maureen with eyes as round and bulging as pool balls attached to tooth picks as he thanked her for the little drop of whiskey she handed him at the end of his speech.

  Maureen swore her Dermo was still out of the country. ‘It wasn’t just pretend,’ she said. He left France for the Isle of Man motorbike races.

  The first thing that came into Mo’s head was the high number of deaths among the bike tourists who attended the TT races. Stupid gits who got their kicks from scaring the shit out of blue tits and farmers on country roads and ended up killing themselves and whoever happened to be unlucky enough to get in their way.

  ‘You were right to go to the Guards,’ Big Matt opined assuredly, as he sipped the little drop which went up to the rim of the tall Slim Jim.

  ‘No woman deserves that, whatever the provocation.’

  ‘Provocation?’ asked Mo. She stood up now. Mo was livid.

  ‘It wasn’t me who was the violent one. Hello.’

  The officer straightened himself. Back went his shoulders and out went his big belly.

  ‘Hello to you too,’ greeted Matt and he continued. ‘In the course of my preliminary enquiries, Dermo steadfastly maintains you did threaten him. With death my dear. With death. The ultimate sanction. It is his word against yours. If we follow through with criminal charges, then a file will, in the normal cou
rse of events, have to be sent, after due diligence, and proper forensic dissection, to the Director of Public Prosecutions himself, or to one of his lawyers properly invested with his authority. It won’t be up to us by jingo and I often wish it was. It all comes down to what’s in the file. The file never lies unless there’s lies in it and Big Matt don’t tell no lies nor write them either.’

  ‘How can I be brought up?’ asked Mo, who was overwhelmed by the fact she couldn’t even trust the police. ‘For threatening his life, my dear girl. A serious offence indeedy my deary and punishable by a long term of incarceration in the ’otel with no carpets.’

  Maureen had been nibbling away at her red-tipped, bitten-down finger nails, as she always did when she was nervous. Playing for both sides was placing a terrible strain on her nerves

  ‘Listen to Sergeant Matt. You will be safe now,’ comforted Maureen.

  ‘Mikey is very fond of you,’ she continued, ‘and sure he’s well able for Dermo. If Dermo ever touches you, he’ll never darken my door again. I told him as much. On my life. Mikey isn’t that right? Mikey.’

  Mikey looked at his mammy and nodded earnestly, several times.

  Mo could barely talk with the shock of being accountable for wishing death on a wife beater and a child killer.

  ‘I didn’t threaten to kill him. I just wished he was dead. And that was after he killed my little baby. He’s the one who should be up for murder.’

  Big Matt took off his Garda hat and rubbed his shaven head with both hands in a downward motion as if he was parting what was once growing there. Then he moved his left hand down to his left ear, part of which had been removed either by a bite or a passing bullet.

  Having massaged his ugly bits, the great man of the law went back to conducting police business.

  ‘That’s another day’s work, my dear and I can assure you no stone will be left unturned if indeed there are stones to be turned,’ pontificated Sergeant Matt, loudly mounting every word to stand on its own.

  ‘I will send one of my cars for you at about ten, exactly. You have nothing to fear, my dear. You are now under Sergeant Matt’s protection. Safe as houses you are,’ according to Matt, very much unaware houses were halving in price by the day and falling down from pyrite, and bad boom-time workmanship.

  ‘Now my dear the first hearing will only take five minutes. It is a formality. And all in private. I had a word. In the right ears. Dermo does not even have to be present before his worship.’

  The word present must have reminded Maureen.

  ‘For your wife,’ as she handed the sergeant a large bottle of vintage French brandy.

  ‘Ah there, there, there. Now stop. There’s no need of that, Maureen. I couldn’t possibly.’ Big Matt had his pneumatic eyes fixed on the gold label on the bottle and his hands extended to accept the gift.

  The notes in his notebook read well. Job done. Source protected. Wife shut up. Missus gets a bottle of brandy round as a potbellied buddha. Matt was in line to be Superintendent Matt and Dermo was his point of personal distinction. His very own exclusive source.

  The ould fella always told me you’ll never beat the Sergeant Matts of Ireland.

  ‘It’s like this, my old friend. After their big win at the Battle of the Little Big Run, old Sitting Bull told the celebrating braves to take it handy. Keep the head like. Not to be jumping about sporting the scalps on their chests like some young one who won thirty-four medals at the Irish dancing.

  ‘You might lick a couple of hundred troops, advised wise old Sitting Bull, and use Custer’s blond hair to stuff a cushion, or line a hot water bottle, but there will be more to take their place and then more again if you beat them until eventually they will get you. They will never run out, but we will. There will always be someone to take their place but not ours.’

  Mo got her Protection Order. The lady judge was very nice to Mo and pronounced she had only to call the police and Dermo would be arrested.

  Maureen forced Matt to take a voucher for his wife’s birthday.

  ‘Ah sure weren’t ye great to remember.’ This was Mrs Matt’s third birthday this year alone.

  Maureen said, ‘If you counted up all Mrs Matt’s birthdays she would be 224 years of age.’

  That night, I was back home and Mo was back in the Compound.

  She was going to leave soon and maybe go to the hostel for a while. I definitely would call to collect her at the hostel and get her to a place where she would be well away from Dermo, who moved from the Isle of Man to Russia, to do some deal over there like maybe assassinate the President and the Prime Minster or train in dogs for the reopening of the gulags.

  ‘Cool,’ and that was it between us for a few more days.

  I couldn’t afford my flat in the city. I did have €13,707 in the bank, but the city was no place to be without regular money. Mo was only twenty minutes away from my place, but so were the Olsens. If I moved back home, where the living was easier and cheaper, Mo would be three hours up the motorway. But so too would the Olsens.

  There has to be a difference between judgement and conscience. Judgement comes into play when you’re looking at a job and are trying to figure out the price of stuff, like building materials. Your first opinion changes so much. You reckon a job might cost say a hundred K, and then when you get into the pros and cons the building project might come to another twenty K, over and above your original estimate. You make a judgement call. It’s facts and figures, blacks and whites, mostly. You do the maths and measure the dimensions. Analyse and decide. Keep up the margins.

  So in judgement your third or fourth opinion is always best. Not so in conscience. In conscience your first call is always right.

  I knew from the very beginning it was up to me to get Mo out of the Compound but I didn’t push it. If I really loved her, that is. I should have stood by Mo but Dermo wasn’t going to be charged with anything. Maureen was clever. She pre-empted any move by Mo to go to the decent police by getting the Olsens’ private cop to take care of the situation.

  I broke the news to Mo over the phone.

  ‘Mo I moved back home to save money.’

  ‘When I get fixed up, I can sort you for the laptop and all the stuff. Get a loan from the credit union. It might take a little time.’

  ‘Forget that. It’s only money.’

  She was crying. Or at least I think she was.

  ‘I can still call up to see you every now and then.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You will be okay. Now you have the Court Order.’

  ‘I might try to get work somewhere. I would do anything and then I will be able get you some money towards the cash you gave me for the tooth and the laptop and the iPhone.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to forget all that stuff?’

  Mo’s voice was a little angry now.

  ‘I can’t take it. It’s too much. We’re not talking about a box of chocolates here, G, you know. Just because I’m from the poorest part of town doesn’t mean I haven’t any pride or that I don’t pay back my debts.’

  It was only after the call ended that I realised why she was going on so much about the money. Could it be she saw us as being together and when I told her I was moving away, the tooth and the technology ceased to be community property?

  I fixed up Skype for the mother, who was useless at anything tech or electrical.

  Except for the time when Mam had six women review six makes of vibrators on The Woman’s Hour.

  Cringe. The shame of it. I wanted a Mam who was stupid and did stupid things like knit socks and iron jocks. And then again I didn’t. Mam was brave and fiercely independent. I needed her to back me up when life became too tough.

  The twins were starring on my tablet. Mam was so delighted to see their smiling faces. It was a great comfort to her. Seeing the boys made me wish they were here with us. They badly needed a talking to and I’d love a pillow fight.

  I wondered if they were putting up a show or were they really buzzing.
The two of them were pushing left and right, trying to get more of their heads on screen. Telling me and Mam about the good life in Australia.

  ‘Two weeks in the bush, G and back to Perth for five days in the bush. Wo.’

  Mam didn’t get that one.

  Or if she did, she said nothing.

  The twins were almost fully qualified welders. Then they would be on huge money. Like maybe as much as two grand Australian a week. When I heard what welders were being paid, I knew for sure Oz was next to be fucked.

  Home was fine. Nice dinners and my own bed. Mam and me, and she had no one else to spoil. No hassle, no driving for hours to travel short journeys as in the city. But there was nobody my age around. It wasn’t just the lack of work that sent us away; there was no one to hang with. All gone to Oz or England. Or to the States. The village was an old folks’ home.

  The Bourke brothers shuffled up the street to the post office to collect their social welfare on their flat feet. One was called Five To One because his toes turned inward and to the right, at an angle corresponding to 12.55 on the clock. The other brother was known as Ten Past Two, as his toes were turned out to ten past two.

  Later they will get drunk and the Gardaí will tell them to go home and stop acting the bollix.

  That used to be the highlight of the week in law and order. Because they were on the dole, the local sergeant called it state-sponsored terrorism. Then out of nowhere the young lads started to do dope. You can get any drug you want within five minutes. It’s even quicker than the city because the traffic isn’t that bad.

  But I was safer here. The bad lads knew me. I was at school with the mad boys, used to play football on the same teams. They wouldn’t bother me unless I was really unlucky. Like as if I was standing outside the chipper in town and was picked on because they were doped up, or got caught in the crossfire when they started to kick the shit out of someone, or maybe hit on a friend of yours who owed them for grass or shagged some girl they were into. You had to be unlucky though and if you kept your mouth shut, that should keep you out of harm’s way.