spastic: idiot
stoke: scumbag (originally gypsy/traveller)
stroppy: brattish
T
terrible: very
themmuns: those people over there
tip: filthy place
toerag: annoying person
trainers: tennis shoes
W
wane: child
weemin: women
wer: our
wile: wild = very
wingers: Ecstasy
Y
yer man/woman: that person over there
youse: y’all
“...Flopsy Dun’s the one to catch,” the announcer blared, “with In the Wind rallying on the inside as they continue their journey towards the end line...”
Fists strangling the steering wheel, Jed willed the stupid beast’s snout to clear the finish line.
“Flopsy Dun, Holiday Man and In the Wind will go for the line together, flying home now and...”
Jed could feel the ticket in his hand...smell the kielbasa...
“—Oh! What an upset! Flopsy Dun is down, colliding into the gate and—Oh! Taking In The Wind and Holiday Man down with him! What a palaver just five lengths from the finish line!”
Jed deflated against the steering wheel, and a sob rose.
“Jubilee Years rallies strongly form the outside, past the pileup, and...takes it for England!”
A hord of hooded rowdies erupted from the pub next to the bookies and glowered over at the shiny Lexus.
“With Sunshine Sam coming in second, and it looks like Half Hodds will be third!” the announcer said.
A hubcap clattered from the force of a well-aimed kick.
“Mingin aul git!” snarled one of the rowdies into the window. Filthy old fool!
Jed wept.
£ £ £ £
“..Infinite thy vast domain, everlasting is thy reign...!”
The saints smiled down at them from the stained glass installed after the cathedral had been bombed in 1979. Ursula gamely tackled the key change near the end of the first verse of “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name” and peered over the top of her songbook. Choir practice in the pomp and granite of St. Eugene’s was the only solace she had in her empty coal bin of a life.
In the nave sat Ursula’s mother Eda, the Flood matriarch’s fluffy head beaming and her foot tapping along to a hymn of her own making. At eighty-five, she had a mind that wandered and ears that needed frequent syringing.
“Hark! The loud celestial hymn, angel choirs above are raising...!”
Ursula was at one with the choir members, good Catholic women in their twilight years, untrained voices raising as one, throats straining in a great effort at harmony for the sake of the Lord. The other week Ursula had taken them all to her new dream house over in Gleneagles, the swanky section of town, and they had marveled at Ursula’s Neo-Gothic lounge with its row of gargoyles, the Gaggenau fridge with the filtered water tap in the scullery with heated tiles, and the ensuite in the master bedroom with the two headed shower so strong the water fairly took the flesh off of you. Wile grand, wile lovely, they had cooed, pressing her hands and praising her good fortune as Ursula poured the tea.
“Cherubim and seraphim, in unceasing chorus praising...!”
Ursula smiled over at them now, but there was a question in her smile. Her choir sisters all seemed to be wedged against the far side of the choir stall, their hymnals bunched together. Ursula wondered if she had forgotten her deodorant that morning. She warbled along as she mulled this latest confusion and tried to sniff her armpit.
“...Fill the heavens with sweet accord, holy holy holy Lord...!”
Earlier that morning, she had visited the ATM and taken a long, hard look at the screen which revealed the state of her account. The interest of the lotto money account was meant to be transferred monthly into her housekeeping account, but lately her balance had been shrinking at an alarming speed that even Ursula’s tenuous grasp on finances found unbelievable.
The ladies of the choir struggled through “Glory Be To God On High,” and “Palms Of Glory,” and finally the chapel was still.
“Brilliant, girls!” cooed Mr. Ming in his sagging black cardigan. “I think that’s it for the night.”
They chatted and laughed quietly as they placed their hymnals in their handbags and reached for their cardigans. Nobody was uttering a word to Ursula, nor even passing her a glance. Ursula tapped Mrs. Gee on the shoulder.
“Are ye up for a cappuccino at that new café down Shipquay Street?” Ursula asked.
Mrs. Gee’s head trundled around on its neck, and her look excluded Ursula.
“Them coffees is wile dear,” she sniffed.
“Ach, am paying, sure,” Ursula said. She made to peer into the old woman’s eyes, certain she had seen guilt glinting there, but she found herself already staring at Mrs. Gee’s scraggy shoulder blades.
Mr. Ming patted his palms together with sudden excitement.
“Girls! Girls! Silence, now, girls!” he squealed in tones of glee.
They looked over at him expectantly, their arms half in their sleeves. He took a deep breath.
“I’ve a wile important announcement to make,” he said with a dramatic flourish. “It saddens me heart to say we’re gonny be losing one of wer best singers, transferring to St. Moluag’s Chapel down in the Moorside, so she is. A terrible wile loss.”
Ursula looked at the group in surprised sorrow, feeling a pang at losing any one of them; they were a team singing together, just like the Von Trapps. She wondered which one was leaving. She didn’t envy whoever it was, banished to that hardened church which squat in the squalid Catholic ghetto, where Fionnuala and her brood tramped in weekly, snorting at the sermons, their trainers up on the pews and why in God’s name were the choir ladies aligning themselves into a primitive horseshoe a meter around her?
“We’d like to thank ye for all the help ye’ve given us over the years,” the choirmaster said. “We’ll all miss ye terribly.”
They were beaming strangely. At her. Ursula felt a flicker of alarm as they shuffled closer, the horseshoe shrinking, a thank-you card materializing from a pocket and a scone with a candle appearing from behind a back.
“Sorry to see ye go, like,” Mrs. Murphy said.
“A terrible wile loss, sure.”
“Aye, ye’re dead sound, Ursula.”
They grinned up at her until she finally found her voice.
“Me?” Ursula gasped wildly, staring down at the envelope and flickering flame inching closer and closer. “Off to St. Moluag’s?”
She turned to Mrs. Gee to share a snort, but the pew beside her was empty.
“There’s some mistake, surely!” Ursula cried.
She looked to her mammy for understanding. Eda had slipped out to the street for a fag. The choirmaster’s smile faltered.
“Father Hogan told me ye were to leave!” he gasped, wringing his hands.
When hell froze over!
“Am piggin sure!” Ursula snorted, smacking the gifts to the transept floor.
They all inspected her in curious shock, and Ursula’s anger quickly veered to anguish.
“Where’s the Father?” she demanded.
“He’s hearing confessions,” Mr. Ming said with a nod at the end of the nave. “Ye kyanny barge into the confessional, but!”
“Father Hogan hadn’t a hand in it!” Mrs. Gee announced with a soupçon of glee.
Ursula stared, struggling to make sense of it all.
“But...But youse is me...”
She thought she had seen the faces of friends, but she gazed down now upon sharp lips and glinty eyes, necks stretched with hatred, cheeks scorched with scorn.
“Ach, we're sick to wer stomachs of singing songs of praise to the almighty Ursula!” Mrs. Gee called out.
“If I hear one more word about them flimmin Jamie Oliver roasting pans of hers, am gonny spew, so am are!”
“Them airs and graces!”
Mrs. McCracken turned to Mrs. O’Hara.
“Her husband, mind...”
“Ach, sure, Jed’s a decent spud, him.”
“Aye, Lord love him. The stench of drink off of him would fairly turn yer stomach, but!”
“It is any wonder he’s blootered every hour God sends, the persecution yer woman there’s putting him through?”
With a tortured wail, Ursula turned and fled through the rows of pews, the waterworks spewing down her face.
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Fresh from three hours of slopping bleach down pub loos, Fionnuala slammed shut the hot press door, balanced the empty laundry basket on her hip, and headed downstairs for another load. Her face hung in its perpetual state of exhaustion. The tired stairs moaned and creaked under her heavy steps. How she hated the poky little rooms of their attached hovel in the Moorside, the cramped depths of which were dank, damp and slightly rank from the stench of crusty socks.
In the front hall, she glared at the post which had just slipped through the letterbox. Another round of effin bills, as sure as Mary was a virgin, and a final notice for the gas and electric, if she wasn’t mistaken. Which reminded her... She punched Dymphna’s mobile number into the phone.
“Mammy? I kyanny speak—” her 18-year-old daughter said over the whirr of the meat slicer.
“Mind ye steal enough saugingers for the tea the night,” Fionnuala instructed. “Skinless pork, like. A dozen’ll do grand.”
“Mammy, but—”
“Youse’ll be feeding on leftover rhubarb cake again if ye don’t lift some food. See if ye kyanny shove a black pudding into that handbag of yours and all.”
Fionnuala slammed down the phone. Glancing warily at the clock in the scullery—if she was late for her double shift at the Sav-U-Mor, they’d dock her wages £10—she dug into the pocket of Siofra’s pink hip huggers and pulled out two mini Pokemon action figures...Pikachu and Wurmple, if she wasn’t mistaken. Her face was black with sudden anger.
“Siofra!” she bellowed up the landing, over the dancey Europop of S Club 7 pulsating from the girls’ bedroom.
Siofra skulked into the scullery, her porcelain skin and pale blue eyes deceptive; jet black hair revealing the tone of her eight-year-old heart. She started, defensive, at the sight of the toys in her mother’s hand.
“Where,” Fionnuala asked, “did ye get themmuns from? Ye’ve not been battering the shite out of that wee girl from yer class again? Pinching her toys in the playground?”
Siofra flinched under her mother’s outstretched hand.
“Naw, Mammy! I never!”
“Don’t come the innocent with me, wane! Themmuns cost more than ye can afford. If ye’ve been thieving pound coins from me handbag again, I swear by almighty God, I’ll clatter the living—”
“Me auntie Ursula gave em to me,” Siofra blurted.
“Yer auntie!” Fionnuala’s eyes flashed. “I might’ve known! When did ye see her?”
“She gave me another of them First Holy Communion lessons, and we went shopping down the town after.”
Fionnuala flung the grimy jeans into the basket.
“She’s meant to be teaching ye about the body and blood of Christ, not how to be a grabby wee bitch!”
Siofra’s hand shot out for the toys, but Fionnuala’s was quicker.
“Me life’s a bleeding misery!” Siofra wailed. “You and me da never have any money in this house for nothing. What am I meant to play with? Me shoelaces?!”
“Ach, catch yerself on, wane! Ye’ve a bleedin room up there bursting at the seams with toys ye never lay a finger on!”
“Aye, a black and white Gameboy and a Bob the Builder with no head!”
“When I was yer age, ye know what wer playthings was?”
“The rusty mufflers and hubcaps from the barricade of burnt-out cars at the end of yer street,” Siofra recited.
“Yer auntie’s stuffing sweeties down yer bake, filling yer head with poison! She’s only trying to buy yer affection, that wan!”
Siofra stamped a tiny foot.
“And am bored stiff every week with them piggin communion lessons, but she can buy me affection all she wants if it gets me Pokemons!”
“Ye’re not to go near that woman again, ye hear me, wane? Now get you up them stairs and play with that Bob the Builder before I shove it up yer arse, ye jumped-up wee cunt, ye!”
Siofra turned and fled out of the scullery and up the stairs, her tearful wails echoing through the house.
Fionnuala went to the sitting room and attacked a cigarette with trembling, nail-bitten fingers. She simmered once again with resentment against Ursula and Jed’s windfall. If those Barnett’s hadn’t won the lotto six months earlier, Fionnuala and Paddy would’ve never gone on such an outlandish shopping spree. The bills in the front hall were the legacy of those weeks of madness, and the interest and fees and late charges were piling up quicker than their fingers could toil. If she didn’t get her claws on some cash soon, the electricity and gas would be disconnected.
She suddenly saw it all clearly in her mind’s eye: the washer groaning to a halt, the picture disappearing from the telly screen into a tiny pinpoint of light, and the house plunging into darkness and silence for a second before the wanes started roaring out of them.
There was only one person in Derry who had plenty of cash to throw around. Fionnuala squirmed on the settee and set her lips, suddenly decided.
“Siofra?” she called out.
After a while, the rheumy-eyed child shuffled into the sitting room. She inspected the two Pokemon figures her mother had placed on the coffee table.
“A-aye?” she asked.
“Forget you what am after saying,” Fionnuala said with a nod at the figures. “Take you them toys back up to yer room and play with em to yer heart’s content. And yer auntie Ursula has me blessing to teach ye about yer communion and all.”
Siofra eyed first the toys then her mother with suspicion. Was her mammy stark raving mad?
“But—”
“She can read ye the flimmin Bible from cover to cover for all I care!”
Siofra snatched the toys and scuttled off.
Fionnuala stubbed out her cigarette, reached for her handbag and headed for the door. A smile played on her lips as she screwed her heel into the mound of bills. If Ursula was so desperate for companionship she had to steal an eight-year-old away from the family home, the bitch would have to pay for the pleasure. And if it made Siofra’s life a misery, even better. Fionnuala would approach Ursula for the lend of £400. And if the tight-fisted cunt refused, there would be hell to pay.
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There had been great fanfare in Derry when a branch of the multinational chain superstore Top-Yer-Trolly finally opened in the city center, even though there did seem to be something less than right about their 4-for the- price-of-5 weekly specials. While her co-worker Fidelma was stocking the Utterly Butterly beside the cheese triangles, Dymphna slipped twelve Doherty’s special sausages into the pocket of her work smock. The meat and cheese counter was low on black pudding that day, so her mother would just have to do without. Dymphna ran her fingers over her smock, adjusted the badge on her lapel which demanded Ask me now about our less than right prices! And sighed. She had to get the sausages into her staff locker before they congealed.
She should be helping stock but couldn’t be bothered. Plus, she was three weeks late with her period and had to avoid the strain. She hadn’t a notion who the father of her unborn wane was likely to be. Tall and shapely, with a bosom that could breastfeed an entire maternity ward, and a reckless throng of ginger corkscrew curls framing her bonny face, Dymphna was never without a fit young lad at the end of a night of boozing, her eggs, seemingly, poised. Three weeks earlier had been February, so it was maybe the fella from the bookies, your man from the fish and chip shop down the Strand, or perhaps her ex-boyfriend Liam.
&nb
sp; “I'm gasping for a fag,” she said to Fidelma. “I'm away off to the break room. Ye’ll cover for us if that aul poof O’Toole minces by, sure?”
Fidelma’s eyes flickered with disapproval, surveying the break schedule on the clipboard next to the meat slicer.
“What am I meant to tell him?” she wondered. “I don’t want any bother with him, Dymphna. Not after last time. Sure, ye know what yer man’s like, like.”
Dymphna knew only too well what your man was like. Nancy boy Henry O’Toole: the bane of her youthful existence. His lapels were too wide and his trousers too tight for a man his—or any?—age. With his blow-dried hair and eyes piercing hungrily at the arses of every male employee of the Derry branch of Top-Yer-Trolly, Dymphna could well understand why the Church forbade homosexuality.
“Ach, wise up, you,” Dymphna said. “He’s over in Belfast the day for a meeting, sure.”
“Hi, you, Dymphna Flood!”
She whipped around as Rory Riddell rounded the display of Spaghetti Hoops and swaggered up to the counter. Three of his mates stood by the stacked tins, nudging and smirking.
“What about ye, Dymphna?” Rory said.
“Rory,” Dymphna acknowledged coolly, hating his upmarket Proddy gear that nobody from Moorside could afford, shooting a foul look at his mates and—realizing with terrifying clarity there was fourth candidate who might be the father of her unborn wane. How could she have forgotten that night in her granny’s spare bedroom?
A fat disgrace of a woman with piggish eyes pushed past Rory to the counter with her tartan shopping cart. Rory gave the woman a curt nod; there were no strangers in Derry, so she was either a relative or an acquaintance. Dymphna knew her as a right hard bitch from the Health Clinic but greeted her with an unfamiliar speed and smile.
“Right there, Missus Bryant?”
Rory had seemed like such a god of sexual prowess after six pints of lager when Dymphna had been gagging for a shag. How she had squealed for more as her granny snored away in the room next door. Under the fluorescent lights of the Top-Yer-Trolly, however, he was a walking disappointment: skinny, spotty, even slightly smelly.
“I'm here for something for wer tea the night,” Nurse Bryant said.
Even worse, Dymphna realized with a plunging heart, Rory was from the Waterside, and everybody knew what that meant! One of those who called the city Londonderry instead of Derry City. A rich, smug Orange Protestant bastard! From the green, white and orange of the tricolor of the Irish flag, the Protestant minority of the country had appropriated orange as their color, and the Catholic majority green. Neither side seemed interested in claiming the white as their own.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 3