“Ach, ye’ve not a clue how I’ve longed for this moment,” Ursula sighed, her head assuming a position of safety as she clicked her seat belt open. It whipped toward the ceiling with the precision of a guillotine. “Be it ever so humble.”
The wind had knocked over the gnomes which had anchored the hastily-scrawled Welcome Home Ursula! Banner Jed had hoped would hide the ravaged front garden. The banner was probably halfway to Muff by now, and they were instead greeted with Fuckin Minted Cunts! Jed got out of the car and clamped a hand down on his shuddering cowboy hat. Ursula slammed shut her door and rounded the car, her feet unsteady on real ground. Jed clutched her elbow. She was set to sprint up the path with him when she stopped short at the gate. She threw off his hand.
“What’s that on wer front garden?”
Then she cast her eyes towards the house, the rain splattering on her sopping bob. She let out a yelp. The tinfoil cape slipped from her shoulders, and she almost fell to the pavement after it, one hand clutching her chest. Signs of Jed’s hurried scrubbing from the evening before couldn’t hide the great swaths of red, white and blue splattered across the eaves, trickling down the pebble dash, blackening the windows.
“Wer lovely wee house! Someone’s gone and covered it with paint, with—” She choked on the words “—the piggin colors of the Union Jack! What will themmuns next door think of us? Sympathizers to wer hateful Brit oppressors! Themmuns’ll think we’re Proddy bastards!”
“Wait until you see the foyer,” Jed mumbled, urging her down the path.
“Ach, I'm pure affronted!” Ursula wailed, “I kyanny hold me head up in wer front garden.”
He placed the key in the lock and revealed the devastation.
He remembered the night before, freezing at the clank of the letterbox, feverish it would be more final notices for bills he would have to hide from Ursula. He had thudded with a heavy heart to the Queen Anne foyer and stared in confusion at a metal-tipped rubber tube snaking its way through the open letterbox. He recalled the realization as the water started flowing that it was the garden hose, the shock of the gloved hand slipping through the letterbox at its side and shaking orange dye into the flow, the bubbling, flowing orange mess, the hours of mopping and scrubbing and bucketsful of orange water dumped down the scullery sink, the sink now orange as well.
“And what’s up with wer carpeting?” Ursula wondered.
Her shoes squelched down the foyer as she made her way to the scullery.
“Wer self-heating tiles!” she wailed, angry tears flowing down her already haggard face. “And the legs of all wer chairs! And the bottoms of the dishwasher and me Gaggenau fridge! Dyed Proddy orange! Did ye not try to stop em?”
Jed was ashamed of the sight of himself in his memory now, frozen half-way up the stairs, watching the orange water rise, wondering how many of them were out there, how many drug-addled hooligans with shaved heads and black hearts, a third his age and three times as strong, the phone useless in his hand, unable to dial that final 9.
His shoulders slumped in defeat.
“When did all this caper start?” Ursula asked.
“The day you were locked up.”
She placed a hand on her hip as the tears disappeared and pure rage took over.
“Did ye not think of ringing the coppers?”
“I thought Catholics never wanted to get the police involved?” Jed said, his voice cracking.
“Ye wile daft—!”
Ursula caught herself. Her stay in the nick had been like an entire anger management course shoved into five days. She reeled in her fury and squelched back down the carpeting. Her eyes flickered with sudden understanding.
“Would ye mind telling me what state yer auto’s in?” she suddenly asked.
“Uh...well...”
“Keyed?”
“Yeah. They wrote ‘hateful bitch’ on it.”
“Locks glued?”
“That too.”
“Tires slashed?”
“Twice.”
“Right!” Ursula said, and although fresh from the hell of being accused unjustly, her mind was made up as to where to point her finger with the conviction of a born again Christian. “That Fionnuala’s to blame, with that hooligan Heggarty blood flowing through her veins. Car keying, lock gluing, carving insults into windows, garden hose through the letterbox, them is all textbook malicious crimes them wanes down the Moorside get up to when they’ve run outta post offices and phone booths to torch, ambulances and fire engines to fling rocks at. She’s rounded up her wile hard Heggarty nephews—and some nieces and all, I’ve no doubt —to put the fear of the Lord into us. The politics of envy, so it is! Themmuns kyanny abide the likes of us with two pound coins to rub together—not that we’ve many left, mind—all in the hopes we’re gonny be heart-scared to walk outta wer home. Shall I let ye in on a wee secret there, Jed?”
He was too terrified to nod.
“I was mortified at the thought of attending wer Siofra’s first holy communion the tomorrow, afeared of making a show of meself as I sang along in the choir. After all this palaver, if they think they can keep me out, they’ve another thing coming, especially after all them lessons and them hours I spent shoving Jelly Babies into wer Siofra’s wee skull. I'm gonny be right up there, warbling proudly away to me heart’s content!”
Jed had long ago given up trying to understand the inner workings of the female mind. He gawked at his wife, and jerked as she suddenly reached out and grappled his wrists with the determination of the Hillside Strangler. She bored into him, a woman renewed, with eyes so frightening he didn’t know where to look.
“I kyanny do it on me own, but,” she hissed. “If ye do one thing for me, one thing for all the torture, persecution and heartache me family’s put me through...”
Jed stood frozen, fearful of what ominous task he would be obliged to perform.
“Will ye for the love of God accompany me to St. Moluag’s the tomorrow?”
Jed’s heart welled for his battered wife. Something so small could bring her so much joy. This is what her family had reduced her to. He struggled to contain the lump inching up his windpipe.
“I’ll do it for the love of you,” he said, his hand on hers.
As Ursula lingered in the shower, humming “We Shall Overcome” while lathering up, she began to feel guilty about her defiant outburst, no matter how well-deserved. Aye, her family had dragged her through the seven circles of hell and beyond, she thought, but they were ignorant and didn’t know any better. That wouldn’t stop her from making a grand entrance at St. Moluag’s, though. She scrubbed her armpits with conviction.
Downstairs, Jed guzzled down the rest of the Absolut from the fridge. He squelched his way into the sitting room, plucked the flask of Jim Beam from behind the third gargoyle to the left, and soon saw the bottom of that. He didn’t know how much more of life in Derry he could take. He thought of his ticket to Wisconsin. His one way ticket. He sat at the empty dining table for eight and pulled out his battered checkbook.
Struggling with written English in his drink-fueled stupor, he wrote out a check for £3000 and another for £500, knowing fully well they would bounce even after this navy pension was added to the account.
Unless...
There was always that huge life insurance policy he had taken out, the one whose monthly payments he could now barely afford to make.
His bleary eyes flickered with understanding, his head nodded with the certainty of it: he was worth more dead than alive. He placed the checks in their envelopes and scribbled out the addresses. They had return address stickers with a shamrock on the left hand side. He cast the shamrock a look of disdain, then peeled off two stickers and affixed them to the envelopes. He stuck a second class stamp on each, not only to save a few pence, but also to buy him the extra time he needed to put his plan into action before the checks arrived. As he sealed the envelopes, he realized he was also sealing his fate.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Inches behind her stepped Fionnuala in a grand shipwreck of a hat festooned with exotic bird feathers, which she had draped creatively around her face to hide her shame. As her wee brothers groped at the font for free holy water, Dymphna blessed herself, then froze at the sniggers from the usual hooligans slouched against the back wall next to the bulletin boards. Nothing save an E trip gone bad or a stint in Magilligan could make them miss this most holy of family celebrations.
Under their shaved heads, glares of menace met Rory. Dymphna clawed the arm of his suit, and Rory cleared his throat and tried to hide his Protestantness by offering an awkward curtsy towards the likeness of the Virgin Mary which glowered over him.
“Sarky Orange fecker!” a rowdy called out.
Fionnuala’s eyes glowered behind the finery, and the plumes flared from the force of her bark. “Youse’uns!” she threatened, a finger still dripping the blessed water. “Away from the father of me grandchild or ye’re to have the tip of me stiletto up the cracks of yer arses!”
The hard men’s roars of laughter echoed through the nave. Brylcreemed heads turned, including that of PC McLaughlin in the last pew. His wife, fiddling with her disposable camera, dealt him a swift kick in the shin.
“Can ye not be off duty for one second of yer life?” she snarled. “Let them stokes be. Wer wee Catherine’s what’s important the day. Whip yer head round to the altar and give her a wave.”
He could look now at the gang of hooligans only if he were demonically possessed. He located his daughter in the front pew, but instead of a fatherly beam, his brow furrowed.
“That wee girl beside wer Catherine...”
“The one with the flashing tiara?”
“Aye. I know the wee stoke. I kyanny mind from where, but.”
Fionnuala elbowed Paddy in the stomach of his ill-fitting suit, shoved her disgrace of a daughter a pew further down the aisles, clutched the heads of as many of her wanes as she could and forced them down the nave.
“Shove you yer granny into that pew there,” she instructed Eoin the third pew in. “And sit you beside her. I'm not heaving that doddery aul one up the length of the church just to haul her right back down at the end of the ceremony!”
Eoin stopped, frigid at the sight of Caoilte, Fergal and Eamonn McDaid. Fresh from craning their necks and appraising Siofra’s choice of trimmings, they greeted Eoin with eyebrows that demanded to know the where and when of their £300. Eoin ran his tongue across the lips of a suddenly parched mouth.
“Don’t you worry yerself, mam. I’ll guide me granny down the aisle meself. We’ll catch youse up in a wee while.”
Fionnuala flashed him a look fit for a simpleton and pressed further on down the aisle after Dymphna.
Next to the confessionals, Mr. O’Toole, sitting sheepishly with Fidelma’s family, looked away from the car crash that was Dymphna and her Proddy fancy man plodding past. Fidelma tapped one of the three hunched backs in front of her.
“Would ye have a look at that?” she marveled with a smirk and a nod at the shameless pair. “Up the scoot by a Proddy!”
Mrs. Feeney, Mrs. Gee and Mrs. O’Hara thrust their heads up from their rosaries.
“Disgraceful, so it is!”
“Aye, shocking!”
“Effin Orange-loving bitch!”
—then returned to their Hail Mary’s with renewed vigilance.
Fidelma slipped her twigish arm around Mr. O’Toole’s bicep and hugged it tight. She grinned. Mr. O’Toole grimaced and jerked as an elbow cracked him in the back of his head.
“Sorry,” muttered Jed, drunkenly clutching the back of their pew for support.
“Ach, no problem a tall,” Mr. O’Toole said, wincing as he rubbed his head.
“Hiya, ladies,” Jed said, lurching past Molly and a selection of her offspring. The hairdresser’s smile deflated at the stench of cheap drink from him as he dissolved into the seat beside them, hymnals clattering to the kneeler. Molly reached out and moved her youngest away, far away.
“Ursula’s singing in the choir, you know,” Jed said in a close approximation of English, his face beaming with what might have been pride.
Molly’s eyes stung as she forced a nod and an upward curl of the lips.
“I gave up on the church years ago,” Jed droned on. “I’m only here to support my wife.”
Molly nodded wildly and her eyes couldn’t meet his, whether from pity or the smell, she didn’t know.
Fionnuala faced the Lord suffering on the cross and completed a theatrical genuflection, and the Floods thronged into the second pew from the altar.
“Shove yer Orange fancy man in the corner there, outta view!” Fionnuala instructed Dymphna.
Fionnuala plopped herself directly behind Siofra, then whipped around to inspect the heads in the pews, making sure that bitch Ursula hadn’t seen fit to skulk her way into her daughter’s most holy of days. She tapped Siofra on a frilly shoulder. The wee girl turned around, and Fionnuala squinted through the staccato beams discharging from her daughter’s head.
“No sign of yer auntie?” she asked.
“No, Mammy,” Siofra said, affronted her mammy was right behind her. She kicked a sniggering Grainne in the shin and twirled her parasol menacingly at her.
Fionnuala gasped at the sight of Siofra’s mate’s face, then flipped open her prayer book with a smug nod. Ursula hadn’t dared poke her nose inside St. Moluag’s; Fionnuala hadn’t expected anything less.
Then the sacristy door flew open and the choir members filed in, resplendent in their robes, Ursula Barnett in the lead.
Ursula stared down at the congregation spread out before her like a road map, the wanes’ heads the wee villages and towns, their elders’ the cities. She wondered briefly if this is what it felt to be like the Lord himself, staring down at his creations and, she thought as she caught sight of the Floods splayed across the second pew, his miscreants.
The choirmaster nodded to the organist, and the congregation jumped as the air jangled with discordance.
She shouldn’t judge them too harshly, Ursula thought, there in the house of the Lord. Compassion and forgiveness welled as she parted her lips and began to sing along:
“Holy God, We Praise Thy Name,”
Fionnuala’s annoyance subsided slightly at the disheveled sight of Ursula, haggard and frail, deep circles under the eyes, trying her best to smile.
“Lord of All, We Bow Before Thee,”
Ursula’s hair was a fright, the gray roots showing under the Aubergine Exotica hair coloring, but Fionnuala couldn’t fault Ursula for not having her hair done, considering what Molly had said about her in court.
“All On Earth Thy Scepter Claim,”
Fionnuala hoped Lorcan’s mates hadn’t been too hard on the Barnett’s house,
“All In Heaven Above Adore Thee,”
then chastised herself for being a soft touch.
“Infinite Thy Vast Domain,”
She mouthed along to the hymn, snapped to the next page, and firmly resolved to never entertain such thoughts again.
“Everlasting is thy name!”
Father Kilpatrick and the Eucharistic minister and the altar boys swiftly overtook Eoin and Eda—still making their way up the aisle—then took their places on the altar. As the organ was silenced and the choir members settled themselves, Eoin finally guided Eda into the overstuffed pew. He took a seat behind her.
All except Rory followed the priest in making the sign of the cross, and the Act of Penitence had barely exited Father Kilpatrick’s mouth before Eda turned to Dymphna and hissed, “I expect that wee girl’s here for her exorcism, aye?”
The foundation Grainne’s mother had splattered across her face had been a vain attempt at concealing the sun blisters and weeping sores.
“I'
m bored outta me skull,” Eda said. “I'm away off for a fag.”
She extracted herself from her seat.
“I'm coming with ye, granny,” Dymphna said, not to assist the aul one down the aisle but to chat to Bridie on her mobile. She patted Rory on the arm. “You’ll be alright there, aye?” Rory gave a grudging nod.
Clutching her hymnal, Ursula saw Siofra whisper into her mate’s ear. Grainne’s ravaged face lit up with delighted surprise, and she quickly nodded. Siofra whispered again and Grainne nudged the wee girl next to her and hissed something, heads bent. Ursula took a deep breath and flipped a page. She watched the babble, whatever it was, rippling down the first pew, and over to where the boys were sitting.
Ursula warbled along with the choir, tens of untrained voices raised in song, Ursula’s especially defiant:
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow—”
As Father Kilpatrick held aloft the gleaming paten laden with the most holy Lord’s body and the deacon the chalice brimming with His blood, Ursula watched sweeties appear from Siofra’s handbag and pass through a succession of sticky hands, passing the aisle to the wee boys with parts in their hair. Ursula started in shocked pride. The wee stoke, she thought, had taken heed of her lessons about the Christian virtue of sharing after all! Ursula smiled into her hymnal and concentrated on transforming the flats and sharps on the pages before her into some semblance of song, so she didn’t see—
“Praise Him, all creatures here below—”
—the crumpled fivers and the odd tenner making their way back down the pew—
“Praise him above, ye Heavenly Host—”
—and into Siofra’s sparkly white handbag.
“Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”
The paten and chalice were lowered and the congregation trudged through a Lord’s Prayer peppered with hacking coughs, while in the front pew wee hands slipped before mouths and Ecstasy pills disappeared down throats, gobbled down as if they were indeed sweeties.
Ursula frowned. Sharing was praiseworthy, but surely the wanes knew they had to receive the Body of Christ on an empty stomach? Hadn’t they all fasted? She briefly wondered if she should tap the priest on his shoulder, but...hadn’t she caused enough grief? She settled back to listen to the liturgy instead.
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