Her face softened as she caressed the tattered envelopes with the Derry postmark. She had had no idea he had been so protective of them all this time. Out of one of the envelopes spilled saucy Polaroids of her younger self in various stages of undress, orchestrated for Jed’s private entertainment while away on duty. As she inspected the photos, the years rolled back, and a wry smile sprung up as she recalled that Fionnuala’s hands—of all hands!—had held that camera.
Ach, I was wile lovely looking back then! Ursula thought.
Although she was the object of the photographs, sneaking a look at them made her feel guilty. She had to find those savings bonds, and quickly. She stuffed the photos back into the envelope and dug deeper into the box. She came across an envelope from the Foyle Travel Agency. Her brow furrowed. It was the only shred of paper in the box not yellowed with age.
What on earth—
The doorknob rattled.
“Ursula? Are you in there?”
A flash of irritation crossed her brow. She knew he was paralytic with drink, but was he simple in the head and all? Who else would be in their bathroom, for the love of God?
“Aye, I'm in here,” Ursula called out. “Use you the loo in the Blue Room, sure!”
She sat frigid, envelope clutched in her hand, until she was sure he had wandered away from the door. She tossed back the envelope and scrabbled through the curling, cracked photos, their marriage certificate, and finally her fingernails scratched the bottom of the box.
Ursula was perplexed. She leaned back on the tank of the loo, considering. Perhaps Jed had moved the savings bonds to a safe deposit box she wasn’t aware of? Perhaps he had, but her new post-lotto luxury mind wouldn’t allow her to consider the obvious: that he had cashed them in. She plucked up his high school ring and wondered if she might pawn it and—
But, no.
Ursula slowly returned the ring and closed the tackle box of memories, slipped the lock back through the latch and clicked it shut. Then she settled to allow some time for Jed to come back from the loo and fall asleep again. All the while, she was mortified of having to break the bad news to Fionnuala.
CHAPTER THREE
THE SPUDS HAD BEEN peeled, and Fionnuala now stood before the cooker over the boiling pot, fag hanging from her lower lip, a row of Band-Aids across her forehead to hide the wounds from the poker. Tea that evening would be poundies: mashed spuds, egg and scallions. Fionnuala’s wanes never went hungry; stuffed with cheap starch and carbohydrates, certainly, but never hungry. Fionnuala couldn’t care less that her wanes loathed poundies. They’ll just have to piggin well shovel them down their bloody cake-holes and savor every last fecking bite, she thought.
The letterbox clanked. The sight of the aubergine bob shimmering though the misty glass of the front door caused her all manner of anticipation. Fionnuala tenderly touched the Band-Aids, turned down the latest Alice Deejay hit and called out: “Come you on in, Ursula. The door’s open, sure.”
Ursula entered the house with the usual strained attempt at friendliness.
“Right, Fionnuala.”
Fionnuala’s fox-like eyes darted towards the plastic Trendsetter’s bag in Ursula’s hand, then returned to the cooker. Ursula pressed the shopping bag with some embarrassment to her side.
“What’s up with yer face?” Ursula asked in alarm.
“Walked into a door,” Fionnuala shrugged off. “And what brings ye to the Moorside?”
Ursula thought grimly that her sister-in-law knew damn well what had brought her into her scullery. Fionnuala would grab the pounds from her, right enough, yet begrudged Ursula having a life which allowed her to move unhindered through the streets of Derry.
“I’ve brought some tights to give me mammy,” Ursula explained with slight annoyance, unable to pull her eyes away from the Band-Aids.
“And I'm gonny take her to the clinic to get her ears syringed in a wee while.”
Fionnuala nodded silently as she stabbed her cigarette butt into an empty teacup. She thought that bag much too large to hold a solitary pair of tights.
Ursula remained a figure hovering on the threshold, not quite in the scullery or the front hallway. She looked over at the sink. Fionnuala followed her eyes. And started in shock at the plate still sitting on the counter.
“Dear God almighty! That’s Eda’s dinner, so it is. With all this palaver about me...walking into the door, like, it slipped me mind to take it round to her.”
“Her dinner?” Ursula took a glance at her watch.
“Aye,” Fionnuala grimaced, not a chance in hell of revealing it had been Eda’s dinner from the day before. “I hope the poor aul soul’s not perishing with hunger.”
“Ye want me to take it round?”
“If ye could, aye.”
Foam bubbled from the pot of spuds. Finally, Ursula spoke.
“Making the wanes’ tea?”
“Aye.”
“Poundies?”
“Aye.”
Fionnuala was mortified. She couldn’t let Ursula know she was subjecting her wanes to a meager tea of poundies.
“Aye, and...”
She reached into the fridge and revealed with a flourish a fillet of cod she had been freezing for Paddy’s birthday in two weeks, tugged out a frying pan from the cupboard and threw the fillet on the pan. The scullery was soon ablaze with the pungent aroma of frying fish.
“I’ve come about that 400 quid,” Ursula said.
Fionnuala’s head shot up from the cooker, the spatula in her hand.
Ursula appreciated the desperate hope she saw in those haggard eyes, but she wouldn’t be the family’s savior this time around.
“I'm wile sorry, Jed says we can’t afford it right now, but.”
Fionnuala said much too quickly and brightly, “Ach, it’s no odds, sure.” She lit another fag. “There’ll be some overtime going at the Sav-U- Mor.”
She studied the boiling potatoes as though nothing had happened. Ursula’s heart went out to her as much as it could.
“Fionnuala, love, ye’ve no idea how dear it is to keep up a house the likes of wer own. We’ve bills and all, ye know.”
According to the look Fionnuala struggled to keep from her face, she didn’t know at all.
“I really tried,” Ursula continued. “I even suggested Jed cash in one of his savings bonds to help ye out.”
She reached out a weak hand, but Fionnuala recoiled from even the thought of her touch.
“I'm after telling ye, it’s no odds,” she said through her teeth.
Ursula picked up Eda’s dinner, uncertainly gathered together her shopping bag, purse, and car keys and prepared to take her leave.
“I’ve to get these tights to me mammy,” she finally sighed.
“Aye, you do that, Ursula,” Fionnuala snapped.
Dismissively? Ursula wondered as she hurried past the hall stand and clicked the latch on the door. She paused for a second at the threshold, plate in hand, the hiss from the frying pan in her ears.
Should she tell her? Should she let Fionnuala know she had spent the better part of half an hour perched on a toilet seat, rummaging through her husband’s personal belongings, searching for a savings bonds she was prepared to lose money on just to loan her the money? Would Fionnuala even believe her?
She turned and just caught the tail end of Fionnuala’s filthy look. It would have withered the less brazen. Ursula shook her head with a silent chuckle, then left the house.
As the latch clicked behind her, she wondered about Fionnuala walking into that door. When families were desperate for cash, the fists started flying. Could Paddy have possibly belted her one? But if they had enough money to afford a fancy fish fillet for their tea, they couldn’t be that strapped for the money, sure.
Ursula headed around the corner to 5 Murphy, while in the scullery, Fionnuala quickly removed the thawing cod from the frying pan, swaddled it in plastic wrap and shoved it back in the freezer for another fortnight.
&nbs
p; Their last hope, swanning out the door. Fionnuala stifled a hysterical cry of nervous exhaustion and felt the tears well. Where were they to get the money for the rates now? Her tears may have been directed towards the boiling pot of spuds but her anger, as usual, was aimed clearly at Ursula, and her finger was now on the trigger.
£ £ £ £
The young one chattered away on her mobile to her boyfriend, not paying her a blind bit of notice. Ursula pressed herself against the customer service counter at the Bank of Ireland, clacking her nails impatiently and thinking grimly what a difference a few hundred thousand pounds made.
Four months earlier, right after the win, the manager of this very bank had greeted her and Jed’s every entrance into his domain with a race from the inner sanctum and a smile and embrace. As they had gnawed steadily through the money, however, Mr. Bewley’s delight had waned in stages, through cheery caution to slight disapproval to frank disbelief, until he couldn’t even look them in the eye anymore. This distantiation hadn’t begun until a few weeks ago, Ursula had noticed, and she calculated that their balance had been whittled away to a meager £100,000 by then. With the discovery of the missing savings bonds, however, she now wondered if Mr. Bewley had become a stranger when their balance had actually been even...much...less...?
She stared out the window, ready to rip the mobile out of the girl’s hand as she nattered on.
“Can I get some attention here?” Ursula finally boomed.
The girl eyed her indignantly as she whispered into her mobile, “Text ye later,” then snapped the phone shut with a glimmer of irritation behind her pearly smile.
“Can I help ye there missus?” she asked.
“I’ve been stood before ye here for twenty flippin minutes without a glance of yers in me direction,” Ursula said.
The girl appeared not to have heard.
“Can I help ye?”
“I'm here for Mr. Bewley,” Ursula said with a hope that never died.
“And yer name is?”
“Ursula Barnett.”
They were even telling the interns the story of their fall from lotto grace, judging by the way the girl’s face turned scarlet at the sound of her name, the way her eyes fell and her movements became less assured.
“M-Mr. Bewley...he’s...is on holiday, him,” she stammered. It was a good job she was studying finance as she made a terrible actress.
Ursula had seen the fat Protestant in his Armani suit moments earlier hovering around in the background next to the Motor Loans desk, but she didn’t want to press the issue. She had resigned herself some time ago that nowadays she would have to take a number and wait in the queue like everybody else in the bank.
And what long waits they were. Was it any wonder that, years into the peace process, you still couldn’t trust Proddy bastards? Ursula thought. They were all smiles and your best mates when you were rolling in it, but once you hit the bottom, they didn’t know you from feck.
Unlike the Catholics, who...well...
Ursula snapped a sigh.
“Ye don’t say. I'm here to see someone about me account, then. Can ye get me someone who’ll help me?”
“One moment there, missus,” the girl said before gratefully disappearing into the maze of desk panels.
After she figured out if and when and where and how Jed had abandoned them financially, Ursula would attempt some damage control on their bank accounts, if that were within the realm of possibility.
She heard harried whispering, saw heads pop up over panels, and finally a young bank clerk who looked like he was straight out of diapers approached her with a watery handshake and urged her to a desk festooned with little furry animals.
“How can I help ye the day, Mrs. Barnett?” he asked.
“I need some information on me husband’s account. He’s called Jed Barnett. I’ve the account number here,” Ursula said, pulling out the hymnal and opening it to ‘Nearer My God To Thee.’ She had scribbled the account number on page 36 after secreting it from Jed’s wallet the night before. “We won the lotto a few months back and—”
“So I’ve heard, aye.”
“And he set up one account for me, and another account for him, the main lotto account.”
“Two separate accounts, non-joint?”
“Aye, and the interest from the lotto account is put directly into me own account, for the housekeeping, like. I don’t know much about finances, ye see.”
“That I can see, aye,” he replied with a nervous tic, staring at the sorry state of affairs on his computer screen.
Ursula longed to grab the console and flip it in her direction.
“Me problem is, the past few months the amount going into me account has been getting smaller and smaller. I understand that every month the amount in the main account is smaller, but now I'm counting flimmin pence pieces every month. Could there be some mistake?”
“I kyanny give out that information,” he said. “It’s personal, like. The lotto account’s in yer husband’s name.”
“And I'm his wife.”
“Aye, and? A joint account I could help ye with.”
“What about them savings bonds, then?” she asked. “Five thousand quids’ worth he bought. Can ye tell me if they were cashed in?”
“Were ye listed as a beneficiary?”
“Naw.”
“Then I kyanny, naw.”
Ursula was getting nowhere. Although fighting the urge to clatter this jumped-up wee bastard across the face, she forced a smile and peered at his name tag: Ciaran O’Malley. She lit her face up.
“Are ye one of them O’Malley’s from the Moorside?” Ursula asked sweetly. “I'm yer grandmother’s OsteoCare caretaker. Lovely aul wan, yer granny. She used to have the only phone in the neighborhood, so she did.”
“Naw, I'm from Strabane. And personal information’s personal information even if you be’s changing me auntie’s diapers.”
“Ach, things is done a different way here in Derry,” Ursula said. Or they used to be at least she thought with a slight fond ache.
Ciaran just shrugged and kept a firm hand on the computer screen, eyes telling her nothing. Ursula squirmed with frustration.
“I wanny speak to Mr. Bewley!” she finally seethed, fist pounding on the desk. “And don’t ye be letting on to me he’s on his holidays. I just seen him twenty minutes since back by the motor loans desk with a cuppa in his hand!”
“He’s in a meeting,” Ciaran said with a poker face.
“Just tell me if that bloody eejit of a husband of mines has put a second mortgage on wer home, for the love of Christ almighty!”
Eyes peered from around panels. Ciaran sat stone faced and still, a mild panic in his eyes.
“In other words, ye kyanny tell me a flimmin thing,” she snapped.
“Right ye are,” he said with a nod.
“Bleeding flimmin useless wanes working at jobs they’re not fit for!” Ursula snarled. She snatched up her hymnal and handbag and stormed out of the bank.
The girl at customer service whispered into her mobile, “That miserable aul skegrat that lost all her lotto money’s just leaving now, thank feck! I was about to ring security!”
£ £ £ £
Fionnuala was up to her elbows in dirty dishwater when the front door opened and Paddy lurched home from the night shift and the Moorside Inn, blotto with drink. His overalls were fetid, the sickly stench of dead sea creatures rose from him, and his black hair was slicked back. He planted a sloppy kiss on his wife’s cheek, then attempted to focus on the row of Band-Aids on her forehead.
“Did ye walk into a door, hi?” he asked.
“What a carry-on there was yesterday!” Fionnuala snarled, Brillo pad in hand. “That flimmin Declan McDaid came at me with an aul poker! The bad wee brute roped Padraig into making petrol bombs in the back garden, for the love of God!”
Her husband gave a shrug and a chuckle, eyebrows raised with mirth.
“Ach, wanes’ll be wanes, s
ure,” he said.
“I’ve half a mind to report the incident to the peelers.”
Paddy threw back his head and guffawed. There was no way in hell a Moorside Catholic would ever grass up one of their own to the police of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, staunchly Protestant as the RUC was.
“Ye want me to knock Padraig around a bit?” he asked.
“I already clattered him. If ye’re up for dishing out a few more whacks, go you right ahead.”
Paddy nodded absentmindedly, then got down to business. “Did Ursula call round?”
“She did indeed, aye,” Fionnuala said, wiping her hands on a slimy dishrag. “Swanned into the scullery here yesterday, struggling under the weight of twenty shopping bags and fancy parcels, like.”
“And?” Paddy asked, eyes flashing. “How did ye get on?”
Fionnuala shook her head.
“No joy?” Paddy asked warily.
“Naw. She had the bold-faced nerve to tell me they kyanny afford it! As if I'm flippin daft!”
Paddy stared open-mouthed.
“The hateful bitch!” he exploded. “Five hundred fecking thousand pounds they won! Five hundred thousand! She’s always been quare and mangy with the purse strings, that wan. The effin cunt!”
“Ye don’t think Jed put her up to it?” Fionnuala asked halfheartedly.
“Me hole!” Paddy seethed boozily. “She only did it outta pure badness! Jed’s dead sound.”
“Aye, a lovely man.”
“That Ursula, but. Sleekit, narky...” He had always thought his sister crafty and irritable, especially after 1973. “I’ve half a mind to ring her now and have it out with her over the phone!”
“If ye had’ve thought, ye could’ve asked Jed for the money,” Fionnuala said.
As Jed had only been part of their clan for thirty years, he was still an outsider, what with his American accent and cowboy hats.
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