The Gift of Women

by George McWhirter

  I nod through the window wall at where Terry sits.

  “Comfy seat?” I ask her.

  “Good for sitting down on. Hauling off the clodhoppers, if it’s pelting out.”

  “Smart answer, ten points for that,” I congratulate her.

  “But it never rains in Nevada.” I see Elizita’s frown at Terry. “You got the weather wrong, luv.”

  “I’d get a wiggin’ from Ms. Mathers over wrong friggin’ weather, right?”

  “Too friggin’ right.” They both double over. “And seat’s at wrong end. Way ’way frum door, where John cum in.”

  “Is that John collective or singular?” I ask, to break this girls’-school swearing in the lav carry-on.

  The railcar heaves, not with their silly belly laughs, but as cars lurch into motion, their coupling complete. Still bent-over, bum-up, it bumps Elizita against me on the seat.

  John I see sits, perched beside Terry, pretending to whistle. Elizita straightens up, purses her lips, pretending to answer his pretend call.

  “Now, ’bout that client of yours, John. You forgot to check her bona fides. But you’ll still bet salary on’t she be clean, right?”

  “That client of yours” rings out of Elizita’s mouth, like an old-time cash register.

  “Now, this client of mine… Will you vouch for his bona fides, Ter?” Elizita’s arm is around me to ask. “If you do, is it a done deal?”

  Terry takes hold of John’s hand. “As we smart grammar school girls well know.” She smirks at me through the glass, then round at John. “Like dotting the i’s, like circling the number of the right answer on an intelligence test at school. We’re sure to score 100%.”

  Articulate tart is Terry.

  “All’s left now is to spit on our hands and shake.”

  “Spit on whatever you like, I’ll shake,” says I.

  “Cross El’s heart,” John tells me, “and hope to die.”

  An Ulster Glossary of Utterances

  any road means the same as any way, as in high road and highway, used interchangeably.

  Barter Book is a ledger in which any items up for barter are listed beside any items offered in exchange.

  Brummie is the word derived from Birmingham to describe its inhabitants or used as an adjective to describe anything originating in Birmingham, the accent, for example.

  cleat is a metal fastener with a male and female connection used instead of a button and button hole on a shirt, jacket or similar garment

  diddies are synonymous with breasts in Ireland, and used to convey the plumpness and mobility of breasts. The word can also be used to emphasise the opposite, for example: “as small as a mouse’s diddy. ”

  dirty git could have the spelling gait for git and both would be the Ulster word for goat with different pronunciations in different counties and within different parts of the county (North and South Down, for example) and in different parts of Belfast.

  drumlin is a standard geographical term for a round, mound like hill of rich soil left behind by the glaciers in the ice age. Parts of North Down in Ireland are composed of drumlins, graphically described by geography teachers as “basket of eggs topography.”

  geek, meaning look, can be used as a verb or a noun, as in “take a geek.” The look one takes when one geeks is not dainty like in “peek,” but short, sharp, more insistent and intrusive.

  gub refers to the face, particularly the lower part around the mouth. “Shut your gub!” tells you in no uncertain terms to shut your mouth.

  do the ton is a term for reaching the speed of one hundred miles per hour.

  guard’s van is the compartment reserved for the guard and the goods carried on the train, usually coupled to the end of the train.

  halfin’ is a half glass of whisky.

  lurgy is always dreaded and is a nameless virus that lays one low. Sometimes referred to as the flu, but more often something indefinably debilitating.

  peeler – Sir Robert Peel founded the first police force in England, and as a consequence the first policemen were called peelers thereafter in dubious honour of the founder.

  RAG week let students raise a ruckus and money for char-igy. On RAG Day, they dressed up and hit the streets with a parade and tin cans for collecting the money.

  training-slip is a light women’s swimsuit, worn by competitive swimmers in the fifties, when regular swimsuits were too often made of heavier fabric. The term, swimming cos-tume, was still in use by the older generation in the fifties, and traces of that were still evident in regular swim suit designs.

  wiggin’ when used here means to grab by the hair and shake. In the old days it was the actual wig that was grabbed and pulled from the head to shame the wearer. In parliament or the courts, the action could be carried out to officially disgrace a person in high position. Nowadays, it is used metaphorically, if at all. Although in the fifties, a student could still find themselves grabbed by the hair and shaken for some grievous error in class.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  “Arrivederci” first appeared in Ambit; “Sittings in a Green Room” in the Fiddlehead; a micro version of “The Dark Barber” was published in the Antigonish Review; “Tennis” in the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Anthology Series, Book Three, and ELQ/Exile Quarterly 37.1; “Sisters in Spades” in the Carter V Cooper Short Fiction Anthology Series, Book Four, and ELQ/Exile Quarterly 38.2; “El” (original version as “Quid Pro Quo”) was a runner-up in the 1998 Malahat Review novella competition.