Anthea hung up. She dumped the half-cooked beef wellington in the garbage can, envisioning it was his severed head. It was misshapen and smelled rank anyway (the beef, not his head). She kicked the garbage can and went to her computer, typing DatezAplenty.com in a frenzy. She'd change her phone number too.
CHAPTER 24
WHEN URSULA WAS GROWING up in Derry, she and the rest of her family—all seven of them!—shoehorned themselves in the tiny sitting room three times a week to watch an evening soap called Coronation Street.
It was a British production, so perhaps the Floods shouldn't have indulged, shouldn't have been watching the entertainment output of the oppressors and, worse, enjoying it. Maybe it was the lure of forbidden fruit, or because they found the show more exciting than its Irish counterparts, The Riordans and Glenroe. Although they would have vehemently denied it, the Floods in Northern Ireland were increasingly more socialized to the British way of life than that of their Southern cousins. The Riordans and Glenroe, Irish-made, -acted and -produced, were broadcast on Telefis Éireann from Dublin, miles away across the border, and the reception was always bad in the North. Plus, all the Floods' neighbors watched Coronation Street, and the parish priest as well—he sometimes discussed the moral implications of various storylines during his Sunday sermons—so the Floods rested easy in their Catholic minds that it wasn't a sin.
Ursula and her brothers and sisters grew from childhood to spotty teen to young adult, their boyfriends and girlfriends came and went, pop stars rose and fell, their parents got older and more infirm, life got more violent and the barbed wire was replaced by the newly invented razor wire, but the after-dinner ('tea') viewing of Corrie, as they called it, was the constant in their lives. Indeed, many of the characters and actors stayed the same and storylines were repeated with alarming regularity as the decades passed, so it was a constant that was very, very constant.
They would sprawl before a blazing fire in the hearth, all the family together, brothers Eric, Stewart and Paddy pulling Ursula's hair, she sniping with sisters Roisin and Cait, the grimy net curtains drawn to hide the pelting rain and patrolling paratroopers outside and the barricade of burnt out cars on the street outside their patch of front garden at 5 Murphy Crescent, their daddy Patrick lifting his head from his newspaper and whiskey to spit in disgust at every kiss on the screen, their mammy Eda on the edge of the settee enjoying a fag, clutched like it was her scepter, the kiddies in their bell bottoms on the threadbare carpet, clustered around cups of milky tea and bags that spilled sweets, Jelly Babies and Wine Gums, and packets of tomato- and sausage-flavored potato 'crisps,' dodging the embers the fire shot at them as they watched the comedy-tinged drama on the screen; the fireguard needed replacing for years, but food was always a more urgent priority.
It was a time that, when Ursula visited it in her mind, and she did so often, the memories were all monochrome, as black and white as the tv that, well into the eighties, they watched characters Ken and Deirdre Barlow breaking up and making up on, memories obscured by a cloud of tear gas and framed with rusty barbed wire, punctuated with the screams of children shot with rubber bullets. But the steely edge of those hard times was softened by the feeling of belonging to a large, loving family. The Troubles were just that, but Ursula had had the love of her family. After the lotto win, her brothers and sisters had withdrawn from her life just as the British troops had from Derry after the Peace Process. Her brothers and sisters were friends no longer, there was a divide between them. Ursula Barnett was living a comfortable life, but she felt alone in the world.
Corrie was still wildly popular now decades later (there had been a big to-do when it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary), and Ursula had squealed with delight when Jed found a way a few years back to illegally download it—on the same day the episodes were broadcast in the UK! There were now five episodes a week, and they watched them together, hunched before his computer. The World Wide Web was bringing the global village into their bedroom (that's where Jed's computer was), and it made Ursula feel as if a bit of her was still in Derry. But Stewart and Cait and Roisin and Paddy, especially Paddy, weren't at her side, and she couldn't find Jelly Babies in Wisconsin, let alone tomato and sausage flavored potato chips. So she watched the show while glumly chomping on beef jerky with Jed at her side and, occasionally, Muffins.
In its 50-plus years on screen, there were quite a few times on Corrie when a child was sent upstairs to their bedroom (usually at the boring age of seven or eight, where after the storyline of shoplifting sweets from the corner store there was not much else to do with them). They would come down eight or nine years later, ready for the drugs/alcohol storyline...played by a different actor!
It made the Floods uncomfortable. They knew exactly who these new charlatans were meant to be—they were supposed to have the same personalities—but the new actors, usually more attractive and fit, made formerly beloved characters alien to them. It took a few episodes to get their minds around it and grudgingly accept them for who they were supposed to be.
On this cruise ship heaving over the waves to, seemingly, nowhere in her mad attempt to escape the law, that's how Ursula felt now, but in reverse. She looked the same, but she was now different inside. She had gone into her cabin days earlier, did nothing but fret and sleep, and now she had resurfaced, she thought...a new person.
It was time to come clean. Jed deserved to know why she and Louella had forced him and Slim on this trip. She wanted to come clean. Confessing to Frank the Faith Man hadn't been enough, and it wasn't just because he wasn't a real man of the cloth. Jed was her rock, he always stood by her. He didn't always tell things straight, especially when it came to his reckless gambling and drinking. But she loved his little lies, loved seeing through them all. She enjoyed the sense of shared purpose as they traveled through life together. But now she wasn't being a good wife, a good soulmate, a good lifetime partner. And this wasn't a little lie. It was a whopper.
But where was Jed? That afternoon, she had searched various entertainment venues and areas of the ship. She had tried the casino as a matter of course, and while there had even come across a glass with the remnants of Bailey's and an overflowing ashtray by the Amber Fields of Gold slot machine, knowing these were clues he had been sat there. But the waitressing on the ship left much to be desired, so they could have been there oxidizing for who knew how long. There was no Jed.
When she had come back from scouring the ship, empty-handed, she saw the cabin had been cleaned, though in a rather slap-dash manner; the mirror and portholes were streaky, the wastebasket hadn't been emptied, and she had screamed at a glance down the toilet bowl. But on her pillow was her new complimentary gift from EconoLux: a charm bracelet with little gold-plated animals dangling from it. A giraffe, a frog, a goose and two rodents of some sort. She was delighted, but in the back of her mind, she hoped housekeeping would eventually leave the second pearl earring so she would have a matching pair to wear to the captain's table on the night.
Ursula peered through the streaks of the porthole. There was nothing but ocean out there. Furious, violent ocean. She sighed and, for lack of anything better to do, approached her handbag. When compared to the shambles of her mind, Ursula’s handbag was an orderly affair, especially when placed beside Louella's rather disreputable-looking bag.
Ursula had separate compartments for money items, first aid remedies—seasickness pills, band-aids, and gnat bite salve—makeup and sundries. She had a new compartment especially reserved for all the jewelry she had been steadily accruing thanks to EconoLux. She delved into it now and gathered them all together.
She went into the bathroom—clutching anything she could to balance herself—for a dress rehearsal for the captain's dinner. She slipped the necklace on, forced the pearl earring into her pierced left lobe, snapped the charm bracelet around her left wrist, the Egyptian-themed necklace with golden King Tut heads around the neckline and dangling scarab-type rubies down her décolletage, then the b
lack velvet choker with the amethyst hanging bit around her neck. She pinned the strange pelican brooch onto her lapel. The gems clashed with the oversized palm leaves of the outfit, but she'd be wearing something different on the night.
She arrived at the mirror and peered at it almost fearfully. The jewels were a peculiar mish-mash of styles and looked bizarre together on one body. She looked like she had gone wild in a pawn shop, grabbing at anything in sight, then marching in madness to the cashier. But if EconoLux wanted her to wear them while basking in the privilege of dining with the captain...
She inspected her face in the unforgiving lights like those in a surgery that circled the mirror. Am I not entitled to some dignity? she asked herself, adding grudgingly, at me age.
Unable to look at herself any longer, her eyes shot down to the perfume bottles she had lined up on the edge of the sink. Her eyes rounded. Someone had been at her Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds!
Louella had insisted on marking the levels of Ursula's perfumes with a magic marker before they boarded, as she said all the housekeeping staff on these cruises were 'robbing jerks,' and as Ursula peered at the liquid under the line, it now appeared that that was true. A shiver crept up her spine. The only other person in the world she knew who also loved White Diamonds was Fionnuala Flood, but the idea of her nemesis having been in the cabin was so ludicrous she dismissed it from her mind. She snorted at her thought. It was ridiculous; she was seeing Fionnuala Flood everywhere.
Louella had told her once that, for all the grief Ursula claimed her family gave her, for how much they hated her, the Floods were the only people Ursula ever showed Louella photos of, “and there are damn plenty of them,” she had said, though Ursula didn't know if she meant too many photos or too many Floods. Ursula thought back to all the presents she had showered on that particular cell of her family after the lotto win, the karaoke machine, the tanning bed, the padded toilet seat with the embroidered daffodils, the mortgage for the Flood's house they had paid off for them, and, in a last desperate attempt to win back their affection the year before, even bestowing on them 5 Murphy Crescent, the family home. Which had promptly burned down.
Fat lot of good it all did me she thought, forcing herself to complete the arduous task of inspecting her face, and stabbing at her lips with Revlon's Bed of Roses. And here was me thinking it would bring me family closer. More fool me.
Move on. Move on, her mind kept whispering as her lips transformed into a bed of roses, but it was difficult: the wounds of familial pariahness still lingered. But hadn't she woken a different person? Wasn't she full of resolve and action? Didn't she now no longer care about the past? She had people around her. Didn't she?
She wasn't physically alone, she knew that. But in Wisconsin, Slim's mass always seemed to be invading her private space, a roll of stomach here, a pudgy finger there. And he gave off an unpleasant smell, as if his clothes had been left overnight in the washer. And Louella...!
Oh, Louella, Louella, Louella... Ursula thought, snapping mascara onto her eyelashes, her feelings confused and ambivalent. It had taken every ounce of Christian compassion Ursula possessed to forgive her sister-in-law for getting her involved in the defrauding the Church, and for sending all those innocents to the emergency room, and now Louella, her only female friend in this life of solitude, was treating her like an adversary rather than a partner in crime while they were on the run. She couldn't comprehend why Louella was being so mean to her.
Louella was one of those strange Americans, and after almost two years of living among them, their mental processes still confounded Ursula. She had watched as many episodes of Dr. Phil as her eyes would allow in an attempt to understand Americans in general and Louella in specific. She still couldn't understand Louella's hobbies, needlepoint and extreme couponing, nor her excitement when confronted with a jumbo carton of Dunkin Donuts, especially her squeals of delight at the Munchins. And she still didn't understand Louella's string bean salad with crunchy onion bits or her chicken casseroles, her soufflés made with Velveeta, her Clamato Bloody Marys or her Spam and mustard sandwiches. Louella had told her once she couldn't blame her: Ursula was one of those Irish people, after all, and couldn't be expected to understand real food and tv shows.
Ursula thought back to the sausage- and tomato-flavored crisps of her youth, and then the roast chicken ones, and the cheese and onion and, her favorite, prawn cocktail. She was stranded in a world where KFC was the real food, where American Idol was the real tv. Thanks to the Internet, she didn't miss Corrie, but she missed her own real food. It had been two years of no boiled spuds with a hefty dollop of salt for taste, no fish sauce, no shepherd's pie, no stew with loads of carrots and the special secret Bisto gravy sauce. When she had been in Derry last, she knew the wanes of the day were all mad for the 'new food,' KFC and its ilk, and vindaloo and kebabs in strange half-moon breads, but the classics of the Irish scullery were just that: classics.
But, no. She snapped her mascara back into its case and attempted a grin at her image in the mirror. She was an American now. Her passport said so. She knew the Pledge of Allegiance by heart, and all the presidents. And she had arisen from her bed a different person. She would tell Jed everything. And while she was at it, she thought with steely resolve, she must confront Louella as well. She couldn't find Jed, so she would now seek out Louella.
She marched out of the bathroom and strode purposefully across the badly-vacuumed carpet of the cabin. She flung open the door and peered down the hallway, though why she didn't know. Louella and Slim were at the karaoke, as far as she knew. They wouldn't be at their cabin now, and Louella certainly wouldn't be loitering in the hallway outside her door. There were screams of what Ursula hoped was joy coming from the cabin opposite, and the thunder of rap music. There was a housekeeping cart down the hall.
The lights flickered, and Ursula gripped the door jamb as the ship shuddered. That was the second time now. She wondered fearfully if the ship would make it to the end of its journey to their final port, if they were escaping arrest only to succumb to death on the ocean floor. She hoped the generator had an emergency generator. It seemed it did. After a mechanical rumbling enveloped her and everything around her, the ship seemed to right itself.
Ursula looked the other way down the hallway. A black woman in the white EconoLux housekeeping outfit was lumbering across the carpet in the opposite direction, thirty feet away. Ursula peered at her back with suspicion. She sniffed the air, trying to detect the scent of White Diamonds.
She almost called out to her. Then her eyes clamped down upon the woman's hands, swinging at her sides. Unease prickled on the nape of Ursula's neck. There was something familiar about the woman's fingernails. Ursula's eyesight wasn't spectacular, but she forced her optical nerves to zoom in on the nails. Long, menacing things, garishly painted, with Gothic lettering stenciled into them. A tiny ring dangling from the right forefinger. Ursula bit her knuckles and screamed silently into them as she backed into the hinges of the door in pure terror.
It was the woman from the Indian reservation casino! The woman who, Ursula thought, had threatened her in the ladies restroom when she didn't give her spare change, who Ursula mistakenly suspected had stolen her wallet and tried to break into their house to steal everything the lotto win had bought, and do even worse things to Ursula herself! It had all been a mistake, but Ursula had almost suffered a breakdown. And she had taken down the woman from Mali from her collection of ceramic heads and hidden it at the bottom of the dirty laundry basket in the laundry room.
How can this heartless creature be here? her mind, contorted with fear, wondered. How is it flimmin possible? Why have ye sent her after me, Lord? What have I done to ye to deserve this?
But she knew why. The Lord had 100,000 reasons why. She whimpered as her fingers fluttered again and again around the vicinity of the door handle, unable to perform the simple task of pressing it down. Finally, they succeeded.
Ursula slammed the door shut a
nd heaved huge, shuddering breaths of disbelief and fear. She was a prisoner in her cabin of memories.
CHAPTER 25—TWENTY SEVEN MINUTES LATER
DRIPPING SWEAT, FIONNUALA and Aquanetta forced their carts over the undulating floor past the cabin doors of the more-rich-and-famous-than-them towards the storage area. Wet mops poked out of their carts, the masses of blackened yarn smacking against the handles and spattering droplets of dingy water on their already sodden faces. Fionnuala rattled on and on, spitting with rage; Aquanetta seemed reflective.
“Would ye credit it? Kicked me outta their filthy foreign land, so they did, like a minder does to the alkies and druggies outside the doors of Starzzz. That's wer disco in Derry. Deported! Me! Of all people! Och, aye, surely it was me what damaged all them salesmen's wares, all them vases and clocks and whatnot themmuns was carting around, and them teapots of the grotty café and all. Them salesmen was shoving em under me nose, but, demanding I buy em. Not asking, like, demanding! They was worse than them from the Mountains of Mourne market. When they've a new load of nicked bits and bobs they need to offload sharpish, before the patrolling Filth catch a whiff, ye understand, they shove em under yer nose and doesn't take no for an answer. Well, they does with me, but with most people, naw. And me husband and daughter had fled, leaving me to fend for meself. Them minging aul pagans started shouting the odds, wanting me to pay for em all. The brass-necked cheek! And ye shoulda smelled the stench rising from the lot of em. But I had none of them filthy foreign coins on me anyroad, even if I wanted to pay, which I didn't, so themmuns alerted the authorities, called their foreign Filth on me, and off I was hauled into their cop shop. A mingin tip, it was, the stench of God alone knows what rising from all the desks and, oh, the mortification! They hauled me in to a dingy wee cell. Kicking and screaming, as ye can well imagine. Desperate for a wee, I was and all, and a shite, I don't mind admitting, while rodents and all sorts scurried around me feet and me arms. But wile horses wouldn'ta been able to drag me to perch me arse atop that filthy foreign loo of theirs, no matter how the load in me was begging to be set free. Couldn't clock no loo roll neither. Kept me and me passport captive for hours, so they did, then they stamped some papers and...”
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