“I can assure you I am fully qualified to present yer case,” Ms. Murphy said with prickly insistence.
“Honey,” Jed said, gently touching Ursula’s elbow.
Ursula shook it off and barreled into him: “It’s not you that’s to be mortified in the dock, strung up and made an example of for all the world to see! I wouldn’t mind all this palaver, but I kyanny even reap the benefits of the money no more coz ye’ve guzzled it all down yer throat and rammed it into slot machines!”
“Ursula!” Jed protested, shooting Ms. Murphy a mortified look.
Ms. Murphy was realizing well enough why the whole world seemed to have ganged up against her client. Ursula Barnett didn’t do herself any favors, she thought. Prickly and defensive, a minefield of exposed nerves waiting for the unsuspecting to trod upon. She decided to let Ursula stew in her bitterness, and turned brightly to Jed.
“Now, then, Mr. Barnett, shall we not review the facts of the case?”
As they huddled over some documents, Ursula felt a buzzing against her thigh that made her shriek. It was her mobile, set to vibrate, and nagging out at her was Roisin’s number.
Her heart jumped with hope eternal. Perhaps her sister was calling to apologize, to show support, to tell Ursula everything would work out for the best. She flipped open the phone. Jed cast a glance at his watch and motioned with his hands to wrap it up quickly. Ursula shot him a filthy look, then turned her attention to the phone, pipedreams dancing.
“Roisin?” Ursula whispered uncertainly.
“Ye hateful boggin clarty effin cunt ye!” Roisin roared. “What the feck do ye think ye’re playing at? I'm just after hearing ye tried to murder wer Padraig! Ye never learn, do ye? I’ve half a mind to take the next flight back to Derry and rip the bloody limbs from ye—”
Ursula snapped her phone shut with shuddering fingers. Ms. Murphy studied Ursula anew. She had heard every word of the abuse; it would have been difficult not to.
“Ye see the persecution I'm expected to endure on a daily basis?” Ursula pleaded.
“Have you been receiving many such calls?” Ms. Murphy asked.
“Ach, their fingers is bloody from punching me number into their mobiles, sure. All hours of the day and night they call, me brother Stephen from New Zealand, me sister Cait from Gibraltar, I’ve even me nephew Lorcan phoning me from the nick, roaring abuse down the line at me!”
“Have they been threatening you in any way?”
“Ach, aye, crucified to no end, I’ve been,” Ursula said. “C’mere till I tell ye the clever ways themmuns have told me I'm meant to meet me end.” She counted them out on her fingers. “Me head’s to be shoved into a bubbling chip fryer, me body’s to be drawn and quartered by four separate lorries on the Strand, tarred and feathered in the city square and me body tugged up on a pulley to the top of the Guildhall for all to see... shall I go on?”
There was silence, and even Ms. Murphy seemed to blanch. Finally, Ms. Murphy spoke.
“Your extended family seems to have embarked on a well- orchestrated campaign of harassment. Might I suggest we lay a complaint? File a counter suit?”
Ursula’s shoulders showed her resignation.
“I’d never drag them through the courts they way they’re doing me. We kyanny extradite me sister Roisin from Hawaii anyroad. Even when I found out me sister-in-law had been claiming me caretaker’s allowance for ages, I kept a wide berth from the courts. Maybe they hate me; they’re me family but. All I'm wanting is that damn injunction lifted so’s I can visit me mother and be sure the aul wan’s fine.”
Her voice trembled, and her eyes welled with tears. Ms. Murphy felt her heart turning as she handed the poor woman a tissue.
“How did I know it would come to this,” Ursula sobbed into the tissue. “With us at opposite ends of a courtroom, like?”
Jed looked down anxiously at his watch and tried to will Ursula’s tears away. He knew the situation was difficult, but if only his wife could cry about it when they were out on the street; every extra minute in the solicitor’s office was depleting their already ravaged bank account.
Ursula’s mobile rang again, and they all jumped. Ursula regarded it with trepidation, thinking Roisin had speed-dialed for more abuse. It was an unknown number, however.
“I’ll answer it if you want, dear,” Jed said.
Ursula shook her head as she dried her eyes. “Ye never know, it might be Francine or Molly or Mrs. Gee or maybe even Father Hogan calling to say they’re to be character witnesses after all,” she said. They had all declined, claiming a wide array of sudden illnesses.
She flipped open the phone and whispered into it:
“Aye?”
“Ursula?”
It was her niece Moira’s voice. Ursula tensed, but she was now prepared. She wouldn’t be made an idiot of again.
“And what do you want?” she growled.
“I'm on me way to Altnagelvin now. I'm only ringing to let ye know what me mother—”
“Have they shipped ye over from Malta to torture me heart?” Ursula roared down the line. “I caught ye outta the corner of me eye down the Richmond Center days ago!”
“Naw, Ursula!” Moira tried to interject, hurt. “I'm on yer—”
“Ye mingin filthy perv, ye!”
“I just wanted to—”
“You and yer kind is a disgrace to the human race!” Ursula barreled on like a bulldog. “Get yerself back to Malta and give me head’s peace!”
“Ye’ve got it wrong—”
“Ach, go and lap up some twats, you!”
Ms. Murphy reeled in her empathy with crisp professionalism and snapped a glance at her watch. Ursula slammed the mobile on the table with a high-pitched squeal. Jed massaged her shoulder helplessly. She knocked his hand away.
“I'm a right aul eejit sure enough,” Ursula sniffed. “Thinking it might be Francine or Molly. Themmuns have been steering clear of me ever since all this here foolish carry-on began.”
Her circle of friends now numbered one, and that one was herself.
“We’d best be on our way,” Ms. Murphy said briskly.
Jed was only too happy to vacate the premises.
“You’re not gonna charge us for the full hour, are you?” he asked hopefully.
£ £ £ £
Fionnuala high-stepped through the nave door of St. Brigid’s Church with a Jackie O-type wee veiled hat on her head, Siofra festooned in rosary beads trailing behind her. Fionnuala felt it her God-given right to sneak her wane into a neighboring parish to celebrate her First Penance. Going to Father Hogan at St. Moluag’s was out of the question. Sure, she thought grimly, he knew all their voices, and those latticed screens were no help at all in hiding her face, and what with her great- uncle being a bishop and all...
As Fionnuala stepped further into St. Brigid’s luxurious depths, she felt a twitch of irritation. This flash new church was wild modern, designed by some postmodern architect twats for those who could afford to live in the area, while her desperate lot in the Moorside were saddled with the threadbare pews and leaking holy water fonts of St. Moluag’s Chapel.
“Sit you there,” she hissed at Siofra, pushing her into one of the many empty pews. “While yer mammy goes and cleanses her soul first.”
Fionnuala adjusted the veil to shield her features, then disappeared into the darkness of the confessional.
Siofra sat alone in the hush, twisting at the strings of rosaries she had flung around her neck. Just like, she thought, that teetery old hag Madonna in some ancient video her mammy had forced her to watch on the telly. The rosaries, however, made her feel glamorous amongst the saints.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” Fionnuala hissed into the darkness and the vague face beyond. “It’s been...some time...since me last confession. I’ve been busy with the wanes, like.”
“Good on ye for coming back after all this time,” the priest said in a soothing tone.
“C’mere till I tell ye, F
ather,” she began. “I’ve such terrible sins to reveal, I'm in a right state, pure shattered.”
His eyes flickered with interest beyond the latticework. Fionnuala thought it better to start out with a few inconsequential sins and work her way up.
“I’ve clattered the wanes, and I’ve taken the Lord’s name in vain. And when me sister-in-law was over from Hawaii, I nicked fifty quid from her handbag. And I'm having impure thoughts about me other sister-in- law’s exotic Yank fella when me own husband’s snoring away in a drunken stupor on the pillow next to me. It’s been going on ever since yer man won the lotto. When we were going out celebrating all them nights, I found me fingers sneaking many times towards his thigh.”
The priest’s eyes widened with interest...
“And I force me pregnant daughter to lift the family dinner from her place of work, and I’ve a lad dealing drugs in all the pubs of Derry— he’s an informer for the peelers and all—and we’ve gone and banished themmuns to me mother-in-law’s house. I only agreed to it as I'm certain me lad’s the father of me daughter’s wane, and so I kyanny abide the sight of em, and I'm hoping the strain of living with the two useless pervs puts me mother-in-law in an early grave.”
...and with shock.
“For months now I’ve been doing me best to kill me mother-in-law off, ye see, Father. At first it was so’se we could buy her house off the city council for a bomb, like. Then me sister-in-law went and bought the house for herself, the bitch. So now I'm trying to send me mother-in-law to a long overdue grave now purely as she does me head in, the blathering aul eejit. I'm meant to make the tea for her every now and again; more times than not, I visit me sister Maire instead and leave the pensioner to fend for herself, gnawing away at her fingernails for sustenance and all the while I'm hoping against all hopes she’ll perish from the starvation. When the guilt gets the better of me, I do rouse meself out of a notion of Christian kindness to stick two bread slices together for her with a slab of ham in between; I fairly pile on the salt, but, huge heaping mounds of it, for I'm hoping it’ll clog her arteries and send her into anabolic shock.”
Fionnuala stopped to catch her breath as she heard the priest wriggling on the other side, his lips puckered tightly to avoid an unchristian outburst. Fionnuala fiddled with her veil.
“I can see ye peering through them wee holes at me, Father, trying to make out the details of me face. Confessions is meant to be anonymous, ye know.”
The eyes snapped away into the darkness. There was a pause as pregnant as Fionnuala’s daughter.
“Have ye more sins to reveal, me child?” the priest asked almost fearfully.
Fionnuala searched her mind.
“Now that ye mention it, Father, aye I have. We’re hauling me sister-in-law before the magistrates for a crime she didn’t commit. And we’re doing it just to reap the compensation money from her, tight-fisted cunt that she is. She won that lotto and gave us nothing but three Game Boys for seven wanes to share, a tanning booth, a padded loo seat and a bloody useless karaoke machine. And that’s it Father, the extent of me sins.”
She waited tersely for a response.
“And are ye sorry for these...many sins?”
“Aye, I'm are!” Fionnuala barked out mechanically.
“Then ye’re absolved of all of em,” he said.
Fionnuala deflated with relief.
“Considering the grievous nature of yer sins, but,” he continued, “for yer penance, ye’re to pray the Rosary.”
“Steady on there, Father,” Fionnuala protested. “Ye kyanny mean twenty times the ten Hail Marys and twenty Our Fathers and twenty Glory Bes?”
“I can mean just that,” he said. “And more than that, I want ye to pray the Rosary at each of the fourteen Stations of the Cross in wer chapel.”
“At each of the...??!” Her mind struggled to compute just how many prayers that would be, but soon gave up. “I’ll be at it for piggin hours! Surely ye kyanny expect me to...?”
Silence reigned. He did, seemingly, expect her to do just that.
Fionnuala took a deep breath and rattled off with resignation: “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for all me sins because they offend thee. Thou art so good and with Thy help I will not sin again. Amen.”
“Go in peace and...sin no more,” he said, like telling an alkie to lay off the drink.
“Right ye are, Father,” Fionnuala snapped. “The next in’s to be me wee girl who’s making her first confession. Ye’re not to be making that one heart-scared, ye hear me?”
Fionnuala stomped from the confessional and shoved Siofra into the depths.
“Good luck to ye in there with that wan, wane,” she said, and stomped off towards the First Station of the Cross, Jesus Is Condemned to Die, knowing exactly how He felt. She unearthed a string of rosaries from some unknown depth of her handbag, muttering expletives to herself.
“Good evening, me child,” Father Bryant said to the wee girl, relieved to have an innocent soul after the hardened transgressor that was her mother.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” Siofra began tentatively. “It’s me first confession.”
“Aye?” Father Bryant said gently.
“I peeled away the wallpaper in the front room and...”
Siofra felt his eyes inspecting her in the darkness. She gripped the bottom of the cross dangling from her rosary and hacked into the polished veneer of the confessional: S
“...and I call me mammy a hateful bitch in me mind when she won’t let me eat sweeties...”
“That’s more like it, wane,” urged the priest. “Go on and tell me everything.”
C
“And I was picked up by the Filth for selling me brother’s disco sweeties to all the junkies and stokes in the city. I was only selling em cause I hate me bloody communion gown and wanny look nice for the Lord, but!”
Father Bryant grunted. Siofra couldn’t tell if this meant he understood that the ends justified the means, and that he would therefore subtract a few Hail Marys from her penance. She hacked away, more out of attention deficit disorder than nerves.
L-U
“And I stole me sister’s camera mobile phone one day and took it up to the playground, where I clattered the shite outta Kate O’Riordan for telling me mammy I nicked her Pokemons, then I took photos of the narky bitch sobbing away all bloody on the roundabout and posted em on the Internet for all the world to see...”
B
“...and then I did a poo into a bin liner and shoved the manky mess through the O’Riordan’s letterbox...”
7
“...and one day me and me mates rang 999 and told them aul Mrs. Feeney was after having a heart attack, and we hid in the hedges round her front garden, and when the paramedics came we pelted rocks at the eejits, and I hit one in the head,” she said proudly.
R
There was no sound beyond the latticework. Siofra wondered impatiently if the old idiot had fallen asleep. She strained her ears and heard him mutter something that sounded suspiciously like “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Finally, Father Bryant spoke aloud:
“That was yer mother I'm after having in the confessional before ye?”
U
Although her mammy had told her never to reveal family secrets to the priest, Siofra replied “Aye.”
“May the good Lord have mercy on yer souls.”
L
“I'm finished with me sins,” Siofra announced, reaching for her My First Missal. “Can I recite me Art of Condition now?”
Father Bryant had heard worse sins revealed in the confessional from Provos, especially during the ‘70s and ‘80s, a litany of lurid tales of tar and featherings, kneecappings, midnight searches of innocent Protestant families, terrorizing them in the name of the Cause. But none of the defenders of Eire had been eight years old.
“Am I absolved of me sins?” Siofra demanded.
“Are ye sorry for em?”
Now it was indeed nervousness that made her
hack away.
E-Z! She finished off with a flourish.
“What’s that noise I'm hearing?” Father Bryant asked in sudden alarm. “What are ye playing at in the sanctity of the confessional, wee girl?”
“Nothing, Father,” Siofra said, butter wouldn’t melt.
He peered through the latticework. She watched his eyes gape with disbelief.
“Ye’re not after hacking away at the confessional with the sacred cross of yer rosary?!”
Fionnuala, her fingertips raw from rubbing the beads, jumped as the confessional door flew open. Father Bryant clutched Siofra’s arm and hauled her from the darkness. She screamed as the confessional door smacked against her head.
“Compensation!” Siofra wailed, and down the aisle Fionnuala was thinking just the same.
“A bold faced lie told to a man of the cloth!” Father Bryant bellowed. “Making a mockery outta the blessed sacrament of confession! What are ye like, wane? Are ye trying to merit eternal damnation? For yer penance ye’re to say one hundred Hail Mary’s and fifty Our Fathers for vandalizing church property! Clear on off outta this confessional now, and may the good Lord steer ye away from the road to Hell!”
Father Bryant scuttled off down the hallway to the safety of the rectory office.
Much later, last Glory Be finally growled, absolved of her sins, Fionnuala pocketed her rosary and sprang away from Jesus Is Laid In The Tomb. The usual sneer twisted her face as she collected Siofra from her pew, clattered her across the skull and headed out to cast more judgment on the world.
£ £ £ £
Moira scurried past the Free Derry wall towards the family home in the Moorside. Before heading to the hospital, she had tried to warn Ursula of her family’s duplicity, but Ursula had done herself no favors, roaring abuse at her on the phone and propelling Moira towards Altnagelvin with a new spring in her step. Lily had been alarmed at the request, but had come through, as evidenced by the X-rays which Moira now clutched tight to her chest. And there had been no sins of the flesh in the lab.
Moira noticed with some alarm the front door of 5 Murphy slapping unattended against the jamb in the rain. She hurried through the ten inches of front garden and paused at the clattering door, hearing slurred male voices whooping with malicious triumph from the depths.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 21