Siofra heaved a sigh.
“I'm gonny go no lower than five quid,” she recited. “No pence pieces. And I kyanny let on to the Father I'm selling in the church. I'm aren’t an eejit, Eoin! Now I'm away off to ask me mammy!”
She raced down the stairs, beams pulsating from her skull.
“Mammy! Mammy!”
Fionnuala was in the front hall, clutching the phone, a look of horror in her eyes. She waved the wane away, but some corner of her subconscious mind brightened at the sight of the girl in the gown; Siofra would have to fast before her first communion; that would be one less mouth to feed. Siofra skipped into the sitting room to wake her daddy.
“What do ye mean,” Fionnuala hissed down the line, “ye’ve not a clue where them hooligans live?”
“Somewhere in Creggan Estate, just,” Lorcan said from the pay phone at Magilligan.
“Yer auntie’s banged up in the cell now. She made a wile eejit of herself in the court and was ordered to pay us 3000 quid. Them Proddy bastards of the court won’t give it to us for another seven years, but I kyanny blame yer auntie for that. Ye’ll never credit it, son; me heart goes out to her.”
“I never thought I’d live to see the day,” Lorcan smirked.
“Ye’re dead certain ye kyanny call them hooligans off?”
“Liam and Finbar was released two days ago. I gave em Ursula’s name and address, and that was me done with it. If ye’re up for it, ye could go banging from door to door up Creggan asking for em. Them is both called Doherty, but.”
“God bless us and save us! Fully three quarters of the people living in Creggan is called Doherty! I’ve not enough get-go in me feet to go ferreting em out. Ach, well.”
She gave a gentle shrug. Perhaps it served aul bitch Ursula right, anyroad, she thought.
“I kyanny visit ye this Sunday. Ye know it’s yer sister’s First Holy Communion. I wish ye could be sitting with us in the church.”
“Ach, I’ll be out in time for Seamus’ first, so.”
“I don’t half miss ye.”
“Aye, and me you. Cheerio, mam.”
“Keep yer arse to the wall, son.”
Fionnuala hung up just as Eoin was slinking down the stairs.
“C’mere a wee moment, you,” she said. “Could ye not loan us another hundred quid there? We’ve credit card bills spewing outta wer ears.”
“There’s a problem with me money at the moment,” Eoin admitted. “Next week, but.”
“Ach, ye’re useless, you! Get yerself round to yer granny’s and don’t ye come back!”
The door slammed and she was glad to see the back of him. If she could only figure out a way to keep the credit card companies at bay for seven years. Fionnuala sat down with a pencil and began to calculate just how many days there were until Padraig’s eighteenth birthday.
£ £ £ £
Even arsified, Jed realized something was wrong with the front garden the moment he pulled into the driveway. After wringing Ursula’s hands through the bars of her cell for an hour or so, he had headed for the nearest pub to melt the fear which had frozen him since the verdict had been called. The fear was for himself, not Ursula. He had guzzled four pints and wondered which financial acrobatics he might perform to conjure up the £3500 they now owed the court.
Jed swiveled out of his Lexus, barely succeeded in closing the door and lurched to the front gate of their dream house, liquor bottles clinking in an off-license carrier bag. Almost tripping over the garden hose, he peered through the approaching dusk at the shabby lawn; they had let the landscaper go months before.
“What the...?!”
Someone had gone crazy with the weed killer, scrawling out the epitaph FUCKIN MINTED CUNTS! Into the decaying grass, fully three feet wide. It would take weeks to grow out. They were destined to be known in the neighborhood as the Fuckin Minted Cunts now. How ironic, Jed snorted, thinking of their bank balance. The garden gnomes, he noticed, had been spared.
He tried three times to place his key in the front door, then squinted at the window. CUNTS! CUNTS! CUNTS! Was scratched into the glass.
Jed peered at the lettering in fascination, trying to deduce how it had been executed. If it had been made with a box cutter, which he finally decided it had, it could only be removed with fire polishing, which they hadn’t the funds to afford. Well, he thought, as long as the perpetrators kept the blades to their windows.
He heard a rustling in the hedges, and turned with a shiver, hoping the thugs weren’t still lying in wait.
Once upon a time, fresh from the battlefields of DaNang, Jed might’ve played the have-a-go hero, grappling a golf iron and lurking amongst the gnomes, ready to launch a counter-offensive. But lately he had given up hope of wanting his life to continue.
After a quick glance at the hedges revealed no sign of track suits or hooded tops, Jed scuttled into the house and reached for the phone; he needed the cops there. Fast. He punched 999 with unsteady fingers. Then a vision of Ursula’s twisted face shrieking abuse at him rose in his mind.
He could only imagine the roars out of her if she heard he had contacted the hated Protestant oppressors. Deferring to the higher authority of Ursula, he let the receiver slip back onto the cradle.
He double-bolted the doors with a look over his shoulder.
£ £ £ £
Charlie and Seamus slouched against a car parked on Shipquay Street outside the thatched cottages of the Craft Village, the only place in the city reminiscent of flaxen mills and pan pipes and open turf fires, and therefore likely to attract a tourist. They were lying in wait for the handbag of a just such a victim to nick at screwdriver point. The travelers checks would have them in wingers for weeks.
One nudged the other at the sight of Dymphna impelling her body up the slope past them in her ChipKebab smock, ten minutes late for her shift. It wasn’t so much the glow from her that betrayed her unwanted pregnancy, more the glower.
“Filthy Orange-loving slapper!” Seamus hothered.
Dymphna cast him daggers, the disdain turning to alarm as he fired a rock at her stomach. She was stunned to see her hands shoot out to protect the beast within. The rock cracked against her knuckles, and Dymphna seethed, all but concussed with rage.
“I’ll claw the eyes offa yer fecking gacky faces if ye fling another rock at me wane!” she roared, knuckles biting. “Fecking Orange beast, ye mean!”
“Me wee nadger’s a living being, Orange or no! I’ll have youse up for attempted murder!”
They guffawed as her spiked heels galumphed over the cobbles, her aching hands flapping, the curses muttering out of her, for once in her life her step uncertain.
“Aye, run to the peelers!” Charlie yelled. “Just like yer pansy brother Eoin! We’ve seen him consorting with the coppers, licking them sweaty Brit arses! Yer family’s a disgrace to the good Catholics of Derry!”
“Ach, go and feck yerselves,” she spat over her shoulder, but the abuse was halfhearted. Somewhere in her muddled brain she knew they had every right to slag her off as she was, after all, a slapper.
Dymphna arrived, heaving for breath, at the ChipKebab door and paused to examine the damage to her knuckles. They were red but unfortunately not mangled enough to qualify for sick leave. She tousled her curls and appraised her appearance in the side view mirror of a parked florist van. A gash of lipstick, and she’d be fine. But what was that look in her eyes? She hauled open the door and stropped towards her time card She was serving her fifth ChipButtyKebab when she realized the look was, another first for her, shame.
£ £ £ £
Ursula, slouching on her slab of a cot, had just circled ‘R-E-J-O-I-C-E’ in the word search puzzle when the wee hole in the door snapped back.
“Ye’ve a visitor here to see ye,” the guard said beyond the eye hole
Ursula cast the puzzle book aside as her heart leaped. Jed? Francine? Ms. Murphy to finally deliver her from that hellhole? The door was unlocked, and she wilted at the sight
of Father Hogan, looking as if he were there to perform her Last Rites before she approached the gallows. She wrapped her arms around herself and flashed the traitor the look he deserved. They faced off in the cell.
“Missing me packet for the church collection, are ye?” she asked. “More fool you, as themmuns’ve locked me handbag away with me shoelaces.”
“Ursula,” he said, deeply sorrowed. “I'm here to support ye in yer time of need.”
He attempted a step toward her and she shrank, a touch of the shoulder out of the question.
“Christian compassion doled out for a price, more like,” she sniffed. “I'm only too well aware of it. Now.”
Father Hogan reached into his pocket and revealed a bouquet of roses he had just bought at the corner shop.
“I smuggled these in past the security for ye. The girls of the choir had a whip-round for ye, ye see. They heard about yer plight and their hearts went out to ye. Maybe ye can hide em under yer wee cot there so the guards kyanny lay eyes on em?”
“Does the girls want me back singing in the choir?” Ursula asked.
The naked hope on her face, the persistent innocence at odds with her years, gnawed at Father Hogan’s heart.
“A-aye,” he lied, heaven help him. “Wer church, but, is in the posh section of town, and the bishop kyanny allow themmuns what’ve been banged up to participate in church organizations. I pleaded with the bishop and all, like, to no avail. Father Kilpatrick, mind, over at St. Moluag’s, he’s certain to welcome ye with open arms. Fully two thirds of the congregation there has been in and out of Magilligan and various other prisons dotting the countryside, as ye well know.”
“Hardened stokes,” Ursula muttered. “Gangs of sinners.”
“Ye’re to be released in time for their First Holy Communion mass, but. And did ye not tell me yer wee goddaughter’s to be Receiving for the first time there?”
Ursula seemed to be struggling with some inner torment. She finally said in a voice that was barely a whisper, “Father, I kyanny go back to the Moorside! I kyanny step foot inside St. Moluag’s! All me life I tried to rid meself of the likes of them wee-minded gacks. Me mammy forced me to leave school at the age of fifteen to work in the shirt factory. That was me sorted for the rest of me life, I thought. When I married me husband, but, and spent all them years traveling round the world with me wanes in tow, I set eyes on things the likes of which no Moorside wane would’ve ever credited. Still, me heart was aching something terrible, hungering for the green pastures of the Foyle, the loving arms of me mammy and daddy and me brothers and sisters. Me husband was sent away to Vietnam, and I wasn’t slow in trailing me wanes here to Derry to live in 1973.”
Ursula leaned towards the slightly mortified priest and raised a conspiratorial eyebrow.
“Being banged up in this cell now,” she said, “it puts me in mind of what mighta happened if...”
She took a deep breath.
“Do ye not mind me revealing all in the confessional to ye a while back? The disgrace I engaged in 1973? The shame I brought upon wer family name?”
Father Hogan’s eyes widened at the sudden memory. He stared at her as if she had just announced she was a post-op transsexual.
“Ye kyanny be saying,” he gasped. “Ye mean that was you?”
“Aye, Father, it was,” Ursula said. She leaned back and moved her eyes over his body. “Now ye understand me problem. When me husband retired, I forced him to come back to the hometown I loved, desperate to make amends for me sins of 1973. Me family wasn’t having none of it, no matter how much I begged and cajoled. When we won the lotto, I fairly threw the pound notes at em, but I was persecuted and tortured for that, and now here I'm are, banged up in this cell with no loo roll, and me family is to blame. I’ve made me own peace with the Lord, but, and that’s all that matters.”
Father Hogan was silent for quite a while. He finally trusted himself to speak.
“If me memory serves, yer husband’s a Yank. Have ye never given thought to moving away from Derry? Living with his relations over in America? There ye might find someone to welcome ye with open arms.”
“Aye, surely,” Ursula said with a shrug, “when hell freezes over.”
Father Hogan had nothing else to say to this woman.
“Shall we not sit down,” he finally acquiesced, “and say a wee rosary together for yer speedy release?”
“More practical might be for ye to use yer influence to locate me some bog roll instead.”
He perched beside her next to the seatless loo and began to pray.
1973 (PART III)
URSULA PLODDED DOWN the hill to Murphy Crescent, arches aching in her platforms, shag wig swinging at her side. She had been walking for hours. Mascara cascaded down her face from the agony of it all.
As she passed the barricade of burnt-out cars, the shame of what she and Francine had done finally overwhelmed her. Down the pavement swaggered paratroopers. Considering what she had just been through, the sight of them made her even more sick to her stomach than usual. She avoided the creepy little eyes peering out at her from the boot polish on their faces. She hurried past the barricade, almost tripping on a charred gas pedal.
Through the drizzle, she could see the lights blazing in the front room of 5 Murphy, the shadows of a gyrating crowd in the bay window. She cringed as she made out boozy voices raised in a song of rebellion:
“Armored cars and tanks and guns, came to take away wer sons!”
She paused at the front door, head hanging. There was a flickering of the net curtain, a hissed “She’s back! She’s here!” and the door flew open.
They were all there, their faces ablaze with anticipation, their skulls adorned with little paper hats from last Christmas that someone had crawled up to the loft to unearth. She made out bits of her mammy and daddy Patrick and Eda, her brothers and sisters Roisin and her man Eric, Paddy and his fiancé Fionnuala, Stewart and his wife Frannie, Cait and her husband Steve, the neighbors from the right the Hughes and from the left the Sheeneys, even her wanes Gretchen, Egbert and Vaughn in their jimjams, the last people she wanted to lay eyes on, all struggling to be the proud one to drag her over the threshold.
“Ursula, love!”
“Welcome home!”
Ursula’s head swiveled, but she couldn’t locate a smidgen of sobriety in any of their eyes (except the wanes). Fingers clamped onto her limbs and maneuvered her into the sitting room. Over the Bleeding Heart of Jesus had been strung a hastily-scrawled banner Ursula Go Bragh! Eire’s Savior! Ursula forever! Ireland’s savior!
“Another martyr for aul Ireland, another martyr for the crown!” blared from the transistor atop the china cabinet.
“At long last, ye’ve finally done something to make us proud of ye!” her daddy Patrick said.
Roisin grabbed her and tugged her to the best seat in the house —the chair closest to the fireplace. Paddy shoved a lager in her hand, Stewart a fag in the other. Had they been able to afford them, Ursula was sure there would’ve been cigars.
“Tell us all about it, hi!” Fionnuala breathed, curling herself at Ursula’s feet and staring up awe-struck at her heroine in the flesh.
“I never liked ye much, I must admit. Now, but...!” Her eyes glistened with pride. “When Paddy and me gets married, I’ll be wile proud to have ye as me sister-in-law! Please, Ursula, be me maid of honor!”
“Get them wanes into bed now!” Ursula hissed.
The children scuttled upstairs, and Ursula stared in rising horror as Cait grabbed Stewart’s hips, who grabbed Eda’s hips and so on, and an impromptu Conga line broke out before her disbelieving eyes. Ursula’s head was splitting. They can-canned around her in the cramped sitting room, lager spilling from their tins, the floorboards creaking, the fringes of the overhead lamp jumping, the few precious items in the china cabinet lurching from side to side. As they burst into song,
“Olé, olé, olé, hey!” Kick!
Ursula burst into tears.
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br /> “Olé, olé, olé, hey!” Kick!
“Stop it! Stop all this flimmin foolish carry-on now!” Ursula begged. “I'm not worthy, so I'm aren’t!”
They collapsed on any available horizontal surface, the fireguard banging into the smoldering embers, the poker knocked to the side, as their lager-fueled laughter and love for their savior poured down the wallpaper.
“Ye’ve not a clue what me and Francine’s after doing!” Ursula sobbed.
“Aye, we know right enough!” Paddy said.
“Ye’ve snuffed the life outta two Brit bastards!” Eda rejoiced, smothering her favorite daughter in kisses and hugs.
“Naw! Naw! Youse’ve got it all wrong!”
It all came back to her as she struggled to remove Eda’s arms from her neck: just outside Muff, the taxi stalled for ages while they waited for a flock of sheep to cross the road, the hedgerows high on either side, rain clattering down on the roof of the car, the doubt suddenly rising within her, the live human warmth of Simms’s hateful face nuzzled against her neck, his hand weak on her thigh, and across the vinyl Francine struggling to remove Platt’s hand clamped around her elbow. The look of greedy vengeance on Tommy’s face, the hatred she saw in his eyes through the rear view mirror, the composite sketch of herself and Francine in their shag wigs plastered over the daily newspapers, the inevitable knock on the family home door, and the coppers flinging on the handcuffs, the vision of herself banged up in Magilligan, her wanes being raised by her mammy and daddy, Jed rushing to Derry from Saigon.
She flashed Tommy’s eyes in the rear view mirror a look of apology as her fingers inched across Simms’s legs towards the door knob. She roused the Brit bastard out of his wooziness and shoved open the door.
“Out! Outta this car!” Ursula had wailed.
“You mad cow!” Simms slurred, life flickering in his droopy eyes as he struggled to comprehend.
“What the feck?!” Tommy roared. “Ursula! Are ye off yer bleedin head?!”
“I kyanny do it! I just kyanny!”
The flash of relief on Francine’s face as she followed suit, her hand clicking open the door and heaving Platt onto the rain, the sheep scattering as his body rolled under their hooves.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 27