‘I will, Mrs McBride.’ Mary Ann’s face was agleam. She was the benevolent lady bestowing chickens and eggs right and left. At this moment she would have loved to have a lorry piled high with chickens and eggs, the former, of course, inert, to distribute among the entire population of Burton Street—with one exception, naturally; the Flannagans.
‘Goodbye, hinny.’
‘Goodbye, Mrs McBride.’
As Tony started the car and was edging it forward, Mary Ann made a plain statement. ‘You can’t get out at the top, you’ll have to turn here,’ she said.
With an intake of breath, he slowly turned the nose and backed, under shouted directions from Mary Ann inside the car and from Mrs McBride outside, and he was openly sighing his relief and about to take the car swiftly forward when Mary Ann’s grip on his hand almost turned the wheels into the kerb.
‘What are you doing! Be careful!’ He braked, looking and sounding angry as he did so.
‘Stop a minute…oh, just a minute. Just a tick, Tony.’
‘Look here, Mary Ann!’ He was talking to her back, for she was now hanging out of the window addressing a grim-faced, tallish girl.
There was no lad now with Sarah Flannagan and no mother; she stood unprotected, her face not now tranquilly lost in the throes of first love, nor yet grinning under the protection of her mother…she was alone—Mary Ann did not count the other children gathered on the pavement. And as once before she had addressed her enemy from out of the window of this very same car, she now repeated the process. Her tongue going twenty-five to the dozen in an effort to get it all in before he started up, she cried, ‘You thought I was coming back to your school, didn’t you, you and your ma! Well, I’m not, you see—I’m going to another posh school, a bigger one. And me da’s taking me, see! Sending me on his own, see!’
This news made no impression whatever on Sarah’s countenance. Her mouth remained tight, her eyes narrow, her face overall very grim. Mary Ann was naturally, therefore, forced to do something to break this indifference. So quickly she resorted to a subject that had been very much in her mind of late—lads.
‘And you’re not the only one who can have a lad, see!’ This was accompanied by a deep bounce of her head. ‘I’ve got one, and a better one than you’ll ever have, see!’ Covertly, she thumbed in the direction of Tony, and not only did she indicate him with her thumb, but with her eyes, too.
Sarah’s widening gaze as she took in the young man was like a draught of heady wine to Mary Ann, and stimulated by it nothing could prevent her from going the whole hog.
‘And me ma says I can go out when I’m fifteen and be married when I’m nineteen, so there!’
From its expression of amazement Sarah’s face now turned to one of open scorn and disbelief, and this had a sudden dampening effect on Mary Ann. She knew she had gone beyond the bounds even of fantasy, and nothing could prove her right but a declaration from the horse’s mouth itself. So quickly she turned her face to Tony. He was looking at her with very much the same expression that Sarah had been wearing, which filled her with irritation, and if she’d had time to think about it she would have thought along the lines of Mike and would have said, ‘He’s not quick off the mark about some things.’ And when a person isn’t quick off the mark, he has to be prompted.
‘Aren’t I going to be married when I’m nineteen?’
That her advanced thinking had definitely stunned Tony for the moment was plain to be seen, for he made no response, until a jab of her blocked and, therefore, quite hard toecap in his ankle brought him to his senses, and he explained over-loudly, ‘Yes, yes that’s so—’
The rest of his mumbled words was lost on her for she was now halfway out of the window. It seemed that she couldn’t get near enough to Sarah as she spurted the remainder of the fantasy at her. ‘So you see. And he buys me—’ she was going to say bullets, but her mind quickly rejected this as common and changed it to sweets. But even this word in a split second was discarded for something more glamorous, and she ended, ‘Chocolates. Big ’uns, in a box, like you have at Christmas. So there…you see!’
There was a sharp burr as Tony’s foot struck the pedal, and her words were whipped away on a gasp as she was pulled inside the car, plumped onto the seat, and for a second held within the circle of his arm as he pressed her to his side. He was laughing now, laughing so much that she could not hear the sound of her own voice as she cried, ‘Give over. Aw, give over, man! What you laughing at?’
When they reached the main road Tony was still laughing, he was laughing so much that the tears were running down his face, and she was becoming a little irritated. Perhaps it had been funny, but why was he keeping on? And she said again, ‘Aw, give over!’ She didn’t like being laughed at so much. She liked to make people laugh but not them to laugh at her and keep on. Now he was looking down at her, his face more bright and alive than she had ever seen it, even after the morning he had come from Mr Lord’s, and in an imitation of her own voice, he demanded, ‘Can’t a lad laugh at his lass?’
Her head drooped from his gaze, and she moved primly on the seat, trying to suppress a smile. He had said she was his lass. Suddenly, she had visions of herself being escorted back down Burton Street by him, but on their feet—cars, for the purpose she had in mind, moved too quickly—and they would be walking, of course, under the wilting gaze of Sarah Flannagan. And still with the eyes of her enemy upon her and bulging with envy, she saw herself walking up the aisle of the crowded church in her best clothes followed by her escort…and, finally, going to the pictures. But on this thought her reason leapt at her and said flatly, ‘Don’t be daft. You won’t be able to do that for ages and ages.’
She slanted her eyes and glanced at Tony. He was still smiling, but he had returned to normal and was driving with his whole attention on the wheel. A feeling of ownership took hold of her, as strong as any feeling she’d had for Mr Lord.
She was only nine and she had a lad!
The End
The Devil and Mary Ann Page 25