“Don’t ye think, Mammy, we ought to alert the security that wer Siofra’s missing? It’s been three days, sure. It could be some filthy perv what’s taken her and be’s doing all sorts to her poor wee body even as we speak.”
“Speaking of doing all sorts with bodies, what was ye up to til all hours of the morning?” Fionnuala demanded accusingly instead. “I had to tend to them wailing wanes of yers all night. Only two hours ago did I hear the door open. Ye came in, spewed up, passed out.”
“Ye told me to nab meself a man, didn’t ye? To replace Rory?”
Dymphna got up, maneuvered past her mother’s knees, and went back to the stroller corner. She countered her mother’s lack of maternal instincts by making a show of her own, though under normal circumstances, these were lacking, sorely. But other than adjusting the angles of the pacifiers in the infants’ mouths, she wasn’t sure what else she should do. She licked her thumb and smoothed down the thread-like hairs of Beeyonsay’s fringe. She was relieved when her father came back in with the goods.
“Christ, I was in need of a slash!” he said. “Ye shoulda seen the size of the queue for the urinals! And the showers be’s closed for repair.”
They shrugged at that.
“Now that ye mention it, but, I’m bursting for a wee and all,” Dymphna said. She scuttled out and down the long corridor.
When she came back, Fionnuala had been industrious for once, sitting on the bunk, black coffee at one side, tomato Cup-O-Noodles at the other, hacking away at their sweaters and jeans.
“Right!” Fionnuala said, wiping a noodle from her chin. “Yer holiday gear be’s ready!”
She held them up as high as she could in the bunk bed for their approval. Their eyes goggled at the masses of frayed cotton and wool.
“Dear God, what’ve ye gone and done to me good jeans, woman?” Paddy seethed. “Men that doesn’t be Yanks doesn’t wear shorts! Themmuns is only fit for school boys, so they are. A laughing stock, I’ll be out there onshore, a grown man in kit like that.”
“Ye’ll thank me when ye’re out baking in that heat.”
Fionnuala set them aside and, knife glinting in her hand, started to fashion a bikini top out of two mittens and some shoelaces.
“This be’s for you, Dymphna. It be’s yer special treat for winning us this cruise. I got these mittens at the Mountains of Mourne market before we left, pure Icelandic wool, they be’s. Ye see, yer mammy thinks of ye,” she babbled on, while Dymphna wondered what they fed the sheep in Iceland to make them grow acrylic wool. “And I’m going to make sure ye wear it when Yootha allows us to use the pool on the ship. I think we’re to be getting half an hour next Thursday, after the lifeboat reenactment.”
Dymphna was horrified. She had formerly been a young woman who loved showing off her body, perhaps too much so, her beer-fueled memories of bared breasts in the pub at closing time taken into account, but after two surprise births, the thought of struggling into a bathing suit, and especially one like that, filled her now with dread.
“Did I not tell ye, Dymphna,” Fionnuala wittered on as she fiddled with the shoelaces, “yer Auntie Ursula be’s on the boat with us? Och, the mortification of cleaning her cabin! Priceless, it’s gonny be, but, when Her Ladyship be’s sat at the captain’s table, feeling all lah-di-dah, and all the while weighed down with the bits and bobs I’ve stolen from the cabins and duped her into wearing! Especially as Yootha’s sure to be informed of each theft, and she eats at the captain’s table most nights!” She threw back her head, roared with horsey laughter, then clutched at her gut. “Och, me stomach be’s aching with the hilarity of it all!”
Dymphna was immune to her mother’s transports of delight at the expense of her kindhearted Auntie Ursula.
“Aye, Mammy, we’re hearing nothing but. Again.”
Dymphna hovered once more over her babies and attempted to be seen to be doing maternal-looking things with their squawking little bodies, doing her best to hide the edge in her voice. The year before, Ursula Barnett had come to Derry to visit, had saved the Top-Yer-Trolley from being blown up by a terrorist bomb, and even that hadn’t softened her mother’s heart towards her long-suffering aunt. Indeed, Ursula’s bravery had Paddy and Dymphna on the verge of calling a truce to the family feud that had begun when the Barnetts won the lotto years earlier, when they had wised up, realizing Ursula would soon leave for the US and they would be stuck with Fionnuala fuming at them daily. But Paddy had manned up and, at least, demanded Fionnuala thank Ursula for the check she had given to Dymphna for Keanu’s upbringing. Fionnuala had done so. Reluctantly.
The alarm rang to tell them they could leave the ship. They had all struggled into the sad emergency summer clothing. Fionnuala had her peacock feather hat on.
“C’mon, let’s get this over with, hi,” Dymphna said.
Her mother gaped as she reached for the arms of the stroller.
“Ye’re not seriously considering taking them shrieking wanes with us and all?”
It is true that if Siofra had been safely with the family there, Dymphna would’ve suggested just locking Keanu and Beeyonsay in the cabin; they couldn’t come to any harm locked in the cabin, could they, and they wouldn’t remember anything of Morocco they saw, would they? But now that she was trying to out-mammy her mammy, she had to look affronted at the presumption she might leave them behind.
“Of course!” she snapped. “C’mere you, da, and help me get this pram up them steps. Och, natural daylight we’re finally to be seeing for the first time in a week!”
They gulped down the carcinogens as they stepped onto the blaring sunshine of the deck, a group of gray-skinned people, shocked eyes like they just arisen from their coffins. The sunbeams bored into their sensitive flesh and seared their eyeballs. Fionnuala collided with a pole.
Dymphna noticed the real passengers were laughing and trilling their glee as they made toward the gangway, and they were all wearing that most American of accessories, sunglasses. It was what they needed more than short sleeves and pant legs, but they didn’t have the funds for them, and what use would they be when they got back to Derry, anyway?
“C’mon, mammy, daddy.”
Dymphna didn’t know why, but it seemed as if her mother was afraid to leave the ship, to explore the world beyond Derry. She was inspecting the lifeboat next to them, having lifted up the canvas that covered it and was staring inside, doing something on her fingers, delaying the inevitable.
“What are ye up to, Mammy?”
“Counting the lifeboats and how much they seat.”
“Why would ye do that?”
“Have ye not a clue that the original Titanic only had enough for the first class passengers?” She said it as if everyone knew. “Naw, ye’ve not a clue, have ye?”
She tossed her daughter a look that implied she didn’t have a clue about anything at all.
“Hold on a wee moment while I count to make sure they’ve enough seats for the staff and all.”
Fionnuala hurried off down the promenade. Father and daughter stared at her retreating back in disbelief.
“C’mere,” Paddy said, surprised, “the stench of shite out here on the deck be’s right overpowering. I’m finding it difficult to fight back the urge to boke, so I’m are. Ye’d think that Yootha would tell off the cleaning staff for—”
“Och, that be’s Keanu and Beeyonsay, sure,” Dymphna said; with a sniff she could tell her own infants’ distinctive bathroom odor. In the back of her mind, she wondered if that’s why her mother had decided to count the lifeboat seats. “Go on a give us a hand changing their nappies, would ye?”
She registered the shock on her father’s face and took a step back in alarm as he grabbed the handrail and dry-heaved into the front of his sweater for a moment, tears welling.
“Aye, I know it be’s woman’s work, help me, just.”
She hauled the struggling babies onto the lifeboat cover, stripped them and threw their soiled diapers overboard. The st
reams of passengers stared at her curiously as they passed. She had long since run out of disposable diapers, and was afraid to steal any from the nursery in case Yootha found out. She had lifted some hand towels from the linen closet instead. She passed her father one now, and a roll of tape.
“Ye work on Keanu, and I’ll take Beeyonsay.” They set to work, Paddy’s face green. “Daddy, ye’re to have a word with Mammy. All that about Auntie Ursula. I was right with her at the beginning, after them Barnetts won the lotto and wouldn’t share the loot. But after all the years that has passed, and Auntie Ursula saving wer lives and all, and now Mammy not caring about—what the flimmin feck are ye looking at?,” she yelled at a particularly inquisitive passerby. “Fecking nosy parker! Daddy, when I moved to the Waterside with the Riddells, I realized the wee pink suitcase I packed me smalls in was a gift from Auntie Ursula. One of many she’s given us over the years. Sure, every morning ye perch yer arse on that padded toilet seat with the daffodils on it she give ye!”
“Whose this boyo Fabrizio I heard ye on about? Och, for the love of—Bejesus!” Paddy scraped his palm down the side of the boat to remove Keanu’s mess from his fingers.
“Don’t try to change the subject. If ye’re not up for it, I’ll be the one to start getting wer family back into Auntie Ursula’s good books. All the wanes, wer Lorcan and Eoin and Padraig, and even wer wee Seamus who be’s but five and can barely speak or think, they all be’s up for it, even wer granny Heggarty. Quit struggling, would ye, Beeyonsay? Och, that’s a good girl. And wer Moira wrote that book about the lotto win, so we know she jumped ship long ago. I don’t give a cold shite in Hell about how mammy will react. She couldn’t hate me any more than she already flimmin does.”
“Och, go on away a that! Yer mammy loves ye, so she does.”
Dymphna wondered if all the booze her father threw back had attacked his powers of perception. She taped up Beeyonsay’s fresh clean ‘diaper’ and propped her upright against a pole.
“She didn’t even want me along on this cruise, and I won it for her! She wanted to take wer Lorcan and wer Eoin. Give you me Keanu. I’ll finish him off.”
Paddy gratefully handed over the chaotic jumble of towel to Dymphna, and the half-attached baby. He lit another cigarette and puffed hungrily.
“Ye kyanny fault yer mammy for that. Yer brothers had just been released from the nick and she wanted to give em a special wee treat, is all.”
Disappointment and betrayal crossed Dymphna’s face as she held down Keanu’s kicking legs with one hand and wiped down the yellowish-brown juices spattered across the canvas with the other.
“Not you and all!”
“Naw! I understand yer mammy’s way of thinking, but. Yonks, I’ve been married to the woman. And,” he looked around furtively, “it’s not been all wine and roses, mind. Wine, aye, and loads of it. Roses, but...” He held his hands up in a gesture of defeat.
“I kyanny comprehend why ye kyanny...why ye kyanny...What’s with yer gaping jaw? What are ye waiting for? A bloody communion wafer?”
The curious passenger’s head shot down, and she scurried off down the gangway. Keanu was finally snug in his diaper.
“Out with it, wee girl,” Paddy demanded.
Dymphna deposited Keanu in the stroller and screwed a pacifier into his mouth. She didn’t want to point out any aberration in Paddy’s character. She was her father’s daughter, after all. But perhaps it was time she finally did.
“I kyanny comprehend why ye kyanny put yer foot down.” “Down mammy’s gaping bake,” she longed to add, but she turned for Beeyonsay instead. The infant had toppled over and was gnawing at one of the lifeboat ropes. Dymphna pried her head off the rope and squeezed her into the stroller next to her brother. “Now that I’m living at the Riddells, away from wer family, like, I see Mammy differently, and it doesn’t be because I’m like a jumped up Proddy bitch what’s used to more than four channels on the telly now. Zoë Riddell be’s a right sarky cunt, I’m well aware, so I know they have them over there on the Waterside and all. The way she calls them two dots over her name an umlaut, and uses the real German pronunciation when she says it makes me wanny spew. Mammy, but, she be’s deranged, like a wane herself.”
“Ye’re a stronger man than I if ye think ye can take a stance against yer mammy, love.”
“Is she not done counting them lifeboat seats yet? She be’s demented with all this Titanic palaver. Unnatural, so it be’s. The mind of a wane, I’ve telt ye. Och, here she comes now. Quick, give me yer answer, you. Are ye with me or not, Daddy?”
Fionnuala scurried up to them, face scrunched with the effort of counting. They could see the total of lifeboat seats must have been a surprise to her.
“Looks like ship companies thinks we be’s worth saving nowadays,” she said.
“Afeared of compensation lawsuits nowadays, more like.” Paddy put in.
“Let’s get wersevles onshore.” Dymphna grabbed the stroller and trundled it over the deck towards the gangway. Her parents followed.
Fionnuala shielded her eyes with her hand and peered across at the shore dotted with palm trees and cranes, the construction ones, not the birds.
“What I wanny know is...Where be’s all them swank casinos? And do youse think we might be lucky enough to get a wee juke at Princess Grace and all?”
“She be’s long dead. And we doesn’t be in Monaco, Mammy. We be’s in Morocco.”
“Where the bloody hell...?”
“Africa.”
“Och, catch yerself on, ye mindless gobshite. Themmuns there on the shore doesn’t be coo—darkies, so they're not.”
“It be’s North Africa, Mammy, and themmuns be’s Muslims.”
Fionnuala looked around fearfully.
“Ye mean...Arabs?...like 9/11?!”
They nodded, and it was as if it were the two of them on one side and Fionnuala on another.
“Ye’re joking!”
“Anyroad,” Paddy said, massaging the frayed wool clinging to Fionnuala’s shoulder, “we’ve no fear of the Arabs. We be’s Irish, mind. With wer history of the IRA and exploding bombs right, left and center, I’m sure they sees us as brothers in arms, if ye get me drift.”
“Why did the eejit at the market have no Irish passports left? We be’s saddled with bastard UK ones now, and them Brits be’s oppressors of the world just like the Yanks. Kidnapped and tortured, we’re to be, if they get a glance at them passports. I'm not stepping foot on that godforsaken soil.” Fionnuala’s breasts disappeared under her suddenly folded arms.
“Aye, ye are,” Paddy said. “I haven’t been slaving away in that scullery for nothing. I want to see the world. Off ye go, love.”
He gave her a little push off the deck and onto the gangway, turned to Dymphna and gave a halting nod. “I’m with ye,” he mouthed.
Dymphna slipped her arm through his, and they shared a secret little father-daughter smile as Fionnuala grappled the handrail and clattered clumsily down the gangway, peacock feather lurching. It was almost unheard of for Derry families, and they felt the collective guilt of the generations before them warning against it, but Dymphna and Paddy were circling the wagons within the nuclear family itself, leaving matriarch Fionnuala out with the rolling tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes with fangs bared to fend for herself. A bit of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, indeed.
CHAPTER 18
JED WAS IN THE CASINO on the hunt for a hot penny slot machine.
The ship was docked in Sidit Ifnin, but he had had no desire to go ashore. Morocco was an Arab country after all, and although George Bush had added it to the list of Non-NATO Major Allies in 2004, the thought of doing touristy things there made ex-Navy Jed uncomfortable. It would be like having an affair behind Ursula’s back, and that was something he would never do (at least, he didn’t think so). She herself was in the cabin with an icepack on her head and Xanax in her veins. Slim and Louella were in Morocco. They said when they got back they would show them pictures of the m
osque which broadcasted the prayers that had made them all lurch from their beds at 5:30. Jed wouldn’t bother looking at them.
He grabbed a passing cocktail waitress.
“Another Bailey’s, please.”
She smiled and nodded and scurried off through the groups of children shrieking and chasing each other through the rows of blinking, chiming machines. Jed got the two dollar bills for her tip ready—he didn’t know if she could spend them where she came from, but he felt sure US dollars were still desired all around the world. He jumped to the next slot machine. He felt the seat. It was cold. He nodded and sat down.
Jed had a system for winning on the penny slots, and it required a lot of moving from machine to machine, which was a form of exercise, he justified to himself, so he was keeping fit as he won money. And he was actually winning; he figured he was about $10 up. His system hadn’t failed him yet, except for that visit to Vegas the year before that Ursula still spoke about, and the riverboat cruise on the Mississippi last February, and those two dreadful years after the big lotto win in Derry when he went gambling mad, tens of thousands of pounds slipping from his fingers at the bookies and dog track and bringing them dangerously close to bankruptcy, from rags to riches and back to a second mortgage again.
His winning system was based on two simple Jed-truths: Only a ‘hot’ machine would pay out, and a big win would come within the first three spins. For a machine to be hot, he had to be the first one to play it in a while; if someone had been on it for hours, it was exhausted paying out and therefore cold. That’s why he felt the seats before he sat down. A hot seat meant a cold machine. And a machine could be cold for minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months; you never knew how long, so even if a seat was cold, you still had to find out if the machine was hot. To discover this, he bet three times on it. If he didn’t win big, he would move on to the next. And if he won big, he withdrew his money and moved on, in search of the next hot machine.
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