Paddy and Fionnuala burst through the doors, Maureen in their wake.
“Help me, Mammy!” Dymphna implored. “The wane needs his nappy changed, and I kyanny reach him.”
Fionnuala recoiled in disgust.
“Are ye outta yer bleedin fecking mind?”
“I’ll help ye,” Maureen said.
“Naw, Mammy,” Fionnuala ordered. “Don’t help that one. The Orange bastard’s her wane, after all. And, just to let ye know, wee girl, what this trip is gonny be like for ye, I’m not putting me back outta whack, wheeling ye around the transportation hubs of the EU! And straining me eyesight scouring the countryside for ramps to push ye up and down.”
Paddy would’ve protested—it was an outrage, after all—but the lager and the guilt of Aggie and knowing he had to keep on Fionnuala’s good side kept his lips shut. The three children came into the lounge and laid the toilet paper stash and loot from the mini-mart before their mother.
“Let’s see what ye’ve got for wer sustenance,” Fionnuala mused. She grabbed at the items with increasing confusion and repulsion, while behind her Maureen nudged Keanu’s stroller closer and closer to Dymphna’s wheelchair.
“What the bloody feck be’s soy milk?” Fionnuala roared. “I wouldn’t drink anything that didn’t come from a cow, sure! And flushable wipes with aloe vera? Are youse wanes outta yer minds? And ye’ve brought me bottled water? While it pours from the taps worldwide for free? What sort of deranged shop for useless gacks with more money than sense did ye dredge these up from? Where’s wer food, sure?”
“We couldn’t reach the shelves with food,” Padraig explained with a scowl.
“We did manage to get these, but,” Siofra put in, slipping out of her jacket a can of Vienna sausages, three apricots and a pack of gum, teeth-whitening, “when I had Seamus on me shoulders.”
“For the love of Christ almighty, what are we meant to eat? Paddy, can ye not have a word with these wanes? Och—!”
Fionnuala stared in horror as Dymphna snatched Keanu out of his stroller, brown streams rolling down his struggling legs.
“I’m warning ye, wee girl, so help ye God, if that wane has shite on me video, there’ll be pure hell to pay!”
Fionnuala staggered to the stroller, wrenched out the video and inspected it. It was clean. She clamped it to her chest.
“How can a flimmin video mean more to ye than yer grandson?” Dymphna wondered as she dry retched and cried into Keanu’s bared bottom.
“Shall I tell ye how? I’ll tell youse all, shall I?”
“That would be a plan, aye,” Paddy conceded.
Fionnuala cleared her throat and announced to the family around her in a teetering, wavering semi-circle what was on the video. She wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been legless. Those older than eleven were stunned, yet stared at her as if she had announced she was converting to the Church of England. Those eleven or under simply stared.
“I know it’s shocking. It’s true, but. Pity I kyanny see a VCR in this lounge, or youse could all have a look and see for yerselves. Now youse can understand why the Filth be’s after us with such force. And I’m warning youse all now, when themmuns from the telly comes to interview, ye’re to tell them it was me that found it! Now! Back to you!”
She turned to her favorite punching bag, Dymphna, who was still crying into the screaming and squirming mess she tried to balance on her legs and change.
“And, sin of sins, now ye’ve another half-Orange freak on the way. Ye’re a disgrace, wee girl, popping them half-Protestant monsters outta yer manky womb..!”
“I’m half-Proddy meself, ye heartless bitch, and ye’re to blame!” Dymphna yelled, then gasped in horror at her revelation.
Maureen dropped the anal wipes.
“The claptrap spewing from yer mouth!” Fionnuala snorted. “Must be them hormones of yers. What ye’re saying doesn’t even make no sense. And if ye ever call me a bitch again, I’ll clatter the life outta ye, ye ungrateful cunt! I gave birth to ye, don’t ye forget! Back me up, Paddy,”
“Do as yer mother says,” Paddy hastened to comply, “or ye’re no longer me daughter.”
“I’m not yer daughter, but!” Dymphna blurt. “That be’s the problem!”
The children gawped, and Maureen knew she should be horrified, but was distracted by the sound of a helicopter hovering over the roof that kept out the rain.
“Hi, youse’uns—!” she warned.
“Daddy, I’m mortified to let ye know, I’ve found out I’m the product of that bitch there—” Dymphna singled out Fionnuala with a brownish-yellow finger, “getting her leg over with a filthy, Proddy bastard Brit soldier!”
“Och, catch yerself on, ye simpleton,” Fionnuala sneered as Paddy goggled her. “As if I would ever lay a finger on a Brit bastard paratrooper!”
“I hear a chopper—” Maureen attempted.
“I’ve the proof, but!” Dymphna contorted her seated form so she could reach the tattered newsprint in her back pocket. Keanu squealed on her left knee.
“Paddy, ye believe me, don’t ye?” Fionnuala demanded.
Paddy’s mouth was like a goldfish’s on a floor again.
“The Filth be’s hovering over us!” Maureen squealed, searching the lounge for exits.
Fionnuala tore the newsprint from her daughter’s fingers, and Paddy peered over her shoulder, his quickly-sobering eyes drinking in the image.
“Och, that’s me cousin Una, sure!” Fionnuala spat. She whipped her head to Dymphna. “Ye traitorous cunt!”
Fionnuala pushed a squealing Dymphna the length of the deck. The shit-filled diaper sailed through the air and spattered on a table. The wheelchair crashed into the picture window. The plexiglass pane popped out and clattered onto the deck. Dymphna screamed as torrents of rain poured through the window atop her. Siofra vomited on the apricots.
Eying Dymphna and the damage, a wave of guilt swept over Fionnuala; she had just realized it was a Holy Day and they weren’t at mass. Wondering if there were a chapel on board, she turned to Paddy, but—
“The Filth! The Filth!” Maureen screamed, her cane pointing at human figures dangling from ropes that materialized behind Dymphna’s drenched, screaming body.
Five officers rappelling from the helicopter overhead threw themselves through the window frame and landed on the carpet, machine guns aloft.
“Secure the perimeter!” one of them roared.
The Floods tried to scatter and escape, but it was useless: Fionnuala and Paddy were too drunk, Maureen too old, Seamus too young, Siofra too sick, Dymphna wheelchair-bound and Keanu not even clothed. They captured Padraig halfway down the corridor to the video arcade and dragged him, kicking and squealing, to the rest of the family, handcuffed around their garbage bag baggage. Fionnuala had spat on the officers as they cuffed her.
The one in charge barked into his walkie-talkie: “We’ve got her, Inspector, but we’ve a few more suspects here than we expected. It’s not gonny be possible to haul them all into the helicopter. They wouldn’t fit, and I don’t know how we’d propel the girl in the wheelchair up there in any event.”
He listened, nodding.
“Right ye are, sir.”
He turned to the Floods.
“We’re locking youse up in the drunk tank here aboard, then transporting youse all back to Belfast on the next departing ferry. And from there to the precinct in Derry for questioning.”
Maureen was surprised, as she hadn’t seen a drunk tank in the brochure listing on-board amenities.
“When’s the next ferry leaving for Derry?” the malnourished-looking little girl asked.
He was surprised at the question.
“Half-four. We’ll be in Derry just after midnight.”
“Yay! We’ll be back in time for the talent show, sure!”
Siofra couldn’t clap with glee as she was handcuffed.
They sat, hands bound, in the drunk tank, their rage long having subsided, and the intoxi
cation of the adults as well. At least the coppers had fed them. Most were dozing. Maureen whispered to Fionnuala:
“I happened to have a wee watch of the video back home. Now that ye’ve explained it, I’m still trying to get me head around it. Didn’t it happen in Paris, but?”
“Everybody knows that, sure, Mammy.”
“What was themmuns in the video doing speaking with posh English accents, then?”
“Och, ye think I know everything, you!”
“I can assure ye I don’t.”
They fell silent, Fionnuala hoping Paddy never found out the coal delivery man was Dymphna’s father, Maureen remembering the time she had taken a very young Dymphna down to the Top-Yer-Trolley back in 1997. Not that Maureen would reveal it to a living soul nowadays, but after doing the rest of the shopping, she had, like everyone else then, placed ten copies of “Candle In The Wind,” 5 on CD single and 5 on vinyl, into her shopping cart and rolled it towards the checkout.
The ferry chugged towards Belfast.
CHAPTER 67
“TAKE OFF YER COWBOY hat, Jed,” Ursula hissed. “It be’s poking out, sure. Themmuns is gonny spot us!”
Ursula and Jed crouched behind the Coyle’s ratty hedges, gawping at the police cars parked willy-nilly outside the Flood house.
“Some things never change.” Ursula murmured.
She had wanted to have tea with Fionnuala, and then she wanted to go around the corner and visit 5 Murphy Crescent. Tea with Fionnuala wouldn’t be forthcoming.
Police officers kept coming out with boxes they loaded in their cars, uncomfortable looks on their faces. Ursula was sure the looks had less to do with what they were hauling down to the precinct as evidence and more to do with the filth inside Fionnuala’s house.
“What on God’s green Earth has that family been up to now?” Ursula wondered.
Jed couldn’t hazard a guess.
Ursula had replayed her triumphant return to Derry many times in her mind. The reality was proving very different. Their plane had flown through an electrical storm, and it had to make an emergency landing at Saint Angelo Airport in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. It was a one hour drive to Derry, and the rental car broke down. Ursula sat fretting in the car while Jed puttered about outside with an umbrella attached to the hood and wobbling uncertainly in the downpour (the umbrella, not Jed). Once he got it started up, they were stopped for half an hour by a herd of sheep crossing the road. But they finally made it to Derry.
After checking into the hotel in shame, they had wandered around the familiar city center within the ancient walls and the cannons that poked out of them. Ursula had only been gone a year, but marveled at how clean and fresh the city now seemed. But they had yet to venture to the Moorside. All around her, Ursula relaxed at the accent and the Derry words that were to her so familiar, but to the rest of the world so strange...wane, flimmin, skegrat... They were the accent and the words that spelled Home. None of these words, however, were being directed towards her. She had become a stranger.
The comings and goings of the police soon bored her, and Ursula stared up at the gray clouds that always seemed to press down upon the town, shrouding the citizens in a perpetual feeling of being trapped, as she thought perhaps many here in the Moorside were. After a year in the health-obsessed US, however, Ursula now wondered if those clouds were less a phenomenon of nature and something to do with all the smoking going on in the town below.
“Right, let’s be on wer way,” Ursula and Jed strained to hear one officer say. “We’ve enough here, I think.”
“What exactly do we have, but?”
“A few knock-off DVDs and some bottles of absinthe that was illegal years ago. That be’s it, but.”
“No sign of all them weapons the inspector was insisting was here?”
One of the officers quickly boarded up the door they had broken down, and the police cars zoomed down the road. Ursula made to leap across the street, but Jed dragged her into the bushes.
“I’ll go first, honey,” he said.
He crept across the street, looked around the Flood’s ‘garden’ to ensure there were no police left, then motioned for Ursula to come across. She did, eagerly.
“What do ye see?” she asked.
“Nothing much.”
They peered through the grime on the windows into the living room. Drawers hung out, tables and chairs were overturned, but ashtrays were still piled high with ash and butts. They didn’t know if it was the state of a crime scene, the mess left over from the police search, or Fionnuala’s lack of housekeeping.
Jed tried the door, but the officer had hammered the nails into the board across it tightly.
“I don’t think there’s much more we can do here, dear,” he said.
Ursula agreed. “Let’s just be on wer way around the corner to see the house, then,” she said.
They walked around the corner. Ursula stuck her hand through Jed’s arm and shivered with anticipation. Home. She would finally be there. Ursula could smell it in the ozone that threatened rain, see it in the forty shades of green, the familiar broken lager bottles, the menace in the eyes of the teenagers lounging on the corner.
“Och, Jed, it’s wile exciting to see 5 Murphy again. Like meeting an aul friend, so it is.”
Jed smiled. Ursula screamed. They both stared at the charred debris of what had once been the family home. She reached out a frail hand for support. Jed took it, and briefly debated removing his cowboy hat in reverence, but then realized it was only a house. Such a thought never entered Ursula’s mind. Her sorrow turned to rage.
“That Fionnuala’s had her hand in this, mark me words,” she ranted. “Compensation for fire damage comes to mind. This be’s the crime scene! When I see that Fionnuala...!”
“It appears she might be locked up,” Jed said. “I don’t think you can barge into the police station.”
“They won’t be keeping her there for long, Ye heard what the coppers said. There wasn’t much evidence of a crime. I know, but, where I’ll find yer woman sure as the day be’s long.”
Jed looked at her in surprise.
“Really? Where?”
“Ye mind that wee girl gave us the leaflet down the town? About the Top-Yer-Trolley annual sale the day after the morrow? Fionnuala would never miss it. Even if she has to break outta the cell she be’s locked in, she’ll be there, first in line. And I’m gonny be second.”
Jed led a fuming Ursula back towards the city center and the empty hotel room that awaited them.
“Should we pop in here for a pint of Guinness?” he asked, motioning to the Rocking Seamaid pub.
“Naw,” Ursula said. “I want to take a shower and cry in it. Then we can go out and ye can fill yer gullet with drink with me blessing. I’ll be right at yer side knocking em back and all for once.”
They walked on.
Inside the Rocking Seamaid, MacAfee and Scudder sat in the nook, eyes shining. MacAfee hissed down the pay-as-you-go cellphone:
“The day after the morrow, there’ll be a huge bomb in a big shop in the city center.”
He hung up, tossed the cellphone in the garbage and took a gulp of beer.
“Do ye think I gave the Filth enough clues as to the location?” MacAfee asked Scudder.
“Och, I always thought it wile daft, planting a bomb and then ruining the surprise by placing a warning call. What’s the bloody point of planting the bomb in the first place, hi?”
MacAfee nodded in agreement. Scudder rubbed his filthy hands.
“The bomb’s all set,” he said. “Thank feck for that new shipment. And what I kyanny wait, for, be’s the outrage that’s gonny be unleashed when ye phone back after the deed be’s done, the Top-Yer-Trolley in smithereens, like, and lie to the Filth by telling em we be’s a Proddy terrorist group what done it. That’s sure to make the Yanks come running with their dollars to help fund us, hi! I wonder, but, what that Flood woman ever did with the first shipment of explosives. Do ye think she b
e’s starting her own freedom fighting group, like?”
CHAPTER 68
DYMPHNA BURIED HER hands in despair as her unborn child kicked away at the walls of her womb. It was like poor Beeonsay was trying to escape from the family even before she entered it. Dymphna knew how Beeonsay felt. Since she could remember, she had blindly followed her family, treating the twisted venom that spit from her mother’s mouth as the wisdom of the world. Sitting in the cell now, terrified the coppers might somehow question her about the cache of arms she found in the lockup, she was realizing how wrong Fionnuala was about many things.
Dymphna turned her attention to her three younger siblings passed out around her wheelchair. It was propped back against the wall as the coppers had taken the case of vegetables from the bottom tray, though why Dymphna couldn’t fathom. Perhaps they were hungry. Dymphna wanted to yell at Padraig, Siofra and Seamus, “Run, youse! Run as fast as yer legs can take youse!” If they had still been on the ferry, she would’ve added: “Jump overboard, youse, and swim to shore sharpish, and never be seen from again!”
It had taken her brain long enough, but Dymphna was now catching a glimpse at what Bridie had meant, understanding why Bridie might be sick of her, and Zoë and Rory as well. All her nineteen years, Dymphna had been trusting the one who had given birth to her, blindly following the Flood party line, resenting and hating those outside the family, and where was she now? Friendless and man-less, with a six-month old bastard and another on the way, two broken ankles plopped on a wonky wheelchair, and locked up in the slammer with the threat of being an accomplice to a terrorist group she knew nothing about. Well, the coppers could add treason to the list. If Moira ever came to Derry for a book signing, and Ursula somehow stopped by to get a signed copy, Dymphna would be the first of the family to commit that crime and offer both Moira and Auntie Ursula the hand of peace. Just to spite her mother.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 62