“I didn't know if ye were still mad into the Titanic. After wer trip and all. I've seen ye wearing that necklace, but, and drinking from them mugs, so I thought, maybe ye still love it. And I know how much ye loved that satchel.”
Celine's face on one side, frozen singing into her microphone, was hidden behind muck, and on the other side, the ship was hidden, only the smoke stacks poking out of the waves. Fionnuala shook the bag up and down furiously, but the Titanic was permanently sunk. She pressed the mesh to her face and cried into it.
“I meant to tell ye, aye. The wee mechanism that allows the ship to sink when ye place items in it be's broken, like. And it be's wile minging, I had to clench me nose shut, but I'm sure ye can get it cleaned. Maybe at the dry cleaners. I know it's terrible dear, but to get clothes dry-cleaned, but Zoë swears by—”
Fionnuala's face reappeared.
“Och, must be water from the sink,” Fionnuala said, wiping at her eyes and staring down at her treasure, inspecting every tired seam, every hanging thread. The cells of her brain trundled as they figured out how to put it back like new with the aid of the sewing machine. “Months, I scoured that market trying to find this. I knew in me heart of hearts it'd eventually find its way there. All nicked goods does, sooner or later. Och, Dymphna...” The kindness on Fionnuala's face, though she still couldn't look in her daughter's eyes, turned to sudden horror. Her eyes narrowed as they zoomed in on the mesh.“Wait a wee moment there...!”
Dymphna flinched as her mother shrieked and tossed the bag the length of the kitchen. It smacked against the broken ice cream machine and fluttered to the top of the garbage pail piled with rotting potato peels. Dymphna feared her mother had taken leave of her senses. Again. She took a step towards the door.
“Ye hateful slag, ye!” Fionnuala roared. “Lice-ridden, so it be's! Crawling with the filthy wee creatures! So help me God, Dymphna, if ye somehow infested that bag yerself and this be's some type of joke, Lord help ye when ye feel the force of me hand on yer—”
Fionnuala silenced herself. Dymphna had long since fled the house, taking the shrieking bastard wanes with her. Fionnuala glared around the misery of her scullery, and again she blinked back tears. But these were not tears of joy. She bit her wrinkled fist with its bland, unadorned fingernails. She glanced at the garbage can. She took a little step towards it. She peeled her Titanic treasure from the filth on which it sat and, however infested it might be, held it tight to her sagging bosom. Tighter than she had ever held any of her children. Reunited, and it felt grand. So grand.
CHAPTER 43—TWO YEARS LATER
ANTHEA PLANCK ROLLED her cart from the frozen foods, where she had stocked up on a wide array of meals for one, to the fresh fruits and vegetables. She hummed along to the Black Eyed Peas from the speakers. She was feeling marvelous, though her head still ached a bit. The night before, she had gone out with the girls from the office to celebrate her first year there. Anthea had quit EconoLux, signed up for a six-month training course, and was now a medical biller. She loved her job.
She paused before the celery. All the bundles looked a bit grim, their stalks brownish, their fronds wilted. Except for that bunch in the back. She reached out—
—and jumped as a manly hand shot in and snatched it from the pile. Her fingers clawed at air. Anthea looked up, annoyed. What rude arsehole would—Oh! Her lips disappeared.
It was Richard the Dick. Looking disheveled, Anthea was happy to see, an unironed shirt ill-fitting, the buttons straining from a newly-forming beer gut, his face in need of a shave and his body even maybe a bath.
“Richard!” She eyed the celery clutched triumphantly in his fist.
“Oh! Did you want this?” He attempted a sheepish look down at the vegetable, but he was crap at it. Anthea could tell he was annoyed she was claiming the celery as her own. Which it was; she had seen it first, reached for it first. He pushed it reluctantly towards her, the corners of his lips tight with anger. ”Go ahead and take it then.”
He seemed surprised she did, and a bit alarmed at the speed with which she snatched it to her breasts. She held it like a Miss Universe trophy.
“So how have you been?”Anthea asked. “How's the, what did you call her? Snarling beast?”
Richard fiddled with the leaf of a cabbage.
“Silly woman filed for divorce.”
It was all Anthea could do to hide her glee behind the fronds of the celery.
“Oh, I'm so sorry for you.”
Richard inspected her with his eyes.
“You look...refreshed,” he said. “Happy.”
“I am. Very.”
“I wonder...” He ran his fingernail over the top of a turnip. “Would you like to meet for a drink? Maybe rekindle—”
He shrunk at the laughter that spilled from her throat, and looked around the aisles, annoyed.
“Please, Anthea,” he hissed. “Show some basic human civility!”
“And why should I?” she retorted, forcing the celery into her cart. “You never showed me any!”
She calmed down quickly. He was looking shocked at what she had said. Poor, doltish, ignorant Richard with his puny little...career going nowhere. He shouldn't anger her. She should pity him. She placed a hand on his shoulder. She felt the tufts of back hair under his shirt.
“I'm sorry, Richard. I shouldn't have behaved like that. I'm over it. Especially with the new man in my life.”
Richard looked at her askew.
“Who—?”
“Anyway! Let's not dwell on the past. Unless...”
“Yes?” He was eager, gagging for it.
“Unless you want to tell me something I've wondered for years now.”
“Yes?”
“I read all about it in the papers, of course, and on the Internet,” she said. “But I had left EconoLux by that time, of course. If you recall, right when I broke up with you,” she quenched the little smile that begged to be set free on her lips, “I just rang in ill the next day and never returned. So I never got the inside scoop. But what on earth happened on the Queen of Crabs? The rioting staff? The looting? The MI-6 scam artists? Bloody typical, I work for that company for a decade and each day was a misery of boredom. The moment I quit,” she snapped her fingers, “fireworks!”
Richard shrugged. “It's not our policy to discuss the details with those who aren't EconoLux employees. Any more.”
“But surely you can tell me, Richard?” She moved a bit closer to the kiwis where he had now taken root. “For old times' sake? Oh, I did read that quite a few of the staff were hauled into court for the looting and that EconoLux got most of the goods back. And, of course, there were a few heavy sentences for the leaders of the riot, I believe they were the engineers? But what I'm really interested in is the mother and son scam artist team. What happened to them? How many innocent passengers did they manage to scam?”
Richard pried a cherry from its stem as he considered. He shrugged nonchalantly. “Not many,” he said. “The guy, he started in the Faith Center. We realized afterwards that the minister who was supposed to be there had been fired, and a replacement was never found. So, there were a few lonely women he cheated out of a few hundred pounds. But the biggest loser was this Yank. He believed they were agents from MI-6! They tried to take him for $25,000 at some poker scam or another. God knows how he ever fell for it. Anyway, they were caught by Interpol. They picked them up in some Puerto Rican hospital. They were in for gastro-intestinal disorders brought on by extremely hot hot sauce. Apparently, the niece of the man...” He shuddered suddenly with anger. “I don't want to talk about it any more. Take your celery and go. Leave me be.”
Anthea smiled.
“With pleasure,” she said. “Have a nice life, won't you, Richard?”
And off down the aisle she rolled the cart, towards the selection of international wines. It was time, yet again, to celebrate.
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AND THE STORY DOESN't end there! Why not read the next in the series? Here's an exclusive excerpt from Static Cling, just for you.
PROLOGUE—1980
WORD HAD SPREAD, AS it usually did, throughout town and up to the most deprived corner of Creggan Heights. Into the ramshackle cul-de-sac of Pewter Gardens, including the pebble-dashed semi-detached house at the end, number six. This was where the Heggarty clan lived and thieved.
The IRA had detonated a 900 kg car bomb just as a British mobile unit, two armored cars, had been passing a row of shops in the even worse neighborhood of the Moorside, which was fifteen minutes, if you ran, from Creggan Heights. A British solider had died outright, and as the remaining soldiers, shell-shocked and injured, had tried to retaliate with gunfire, kids and teens had poured out of their homes and started throwing rocks and whatever came to hand at the soldiers. Ulster Defense Regiment (UDR) reinforcements had just been called in, and now the row of shops was bathed in clouds of tear gas, rubber bullets flying in one direction, rocks in the other.
But all this mayhem was of no consequence to Maureen Heggarty as she said “Cheerio” and returned the handset to the receiver. What interested her were the five shops which had been damaged, windows blown out, signs singed. She knew that row of shops well. A newsagents, a butchers, an electronics store, a pharmacy and a record shop. All now vulnerable. Her best mate Tricia Malony had given her the bars, the news. In their youth, Maureen and Tricia had always danced around their handbags together. That happened rarely nowadays, since Maureen's husband had been killed by a British bullet three years earlier, and she had a brood of children to raise by herself on a pittance from the government. The British government. Blood money. But Maureen took the money. And she and Tricia still met at the hair salon every Wednesday for a wash and set—some habits die hard—and sat beside each other every Sunday in the third pew on the left hand side at St. Moulag's, if nobody had taken it up before they arrived, and they attended the christenings and first holy communions as the younger ones of their ever-extending families grew older.
As Maureen hurried past the peeling wallpaper of the stairs to the four bedrooms, she thought of the goods she and her six sons, aged 13 to 19, could loot during the mayhem. Fence here in the house. And then sell. She rushed by the door that concealed the toilet, the door that hid the bath, and the cupboard for the immersion heater. She banged and battered on three of the bedroom doors. The fourth she shared with her only daughter, Fionnuala, now eight. She'd be of no use to Maureen's plan.
It was only seven in the morning, and all her children were still sleeping. She herself had already lit the fire in the sitting room, and had been in the scullery, the kitchen, making their breakfast. A huge pot of porridge. Then Tricia had rung and told her the exciting news.
“Up and at em, boys! Rise and shine! NOW! NOW, ye lazy articles!”
Maureen ripped open the door of bedroom number one and, eyes tearing, gulping down the sick that threatened to shoot up her throat, she drew back at the adolescent funk that shot like a full quiver of arrows from the room.
“Throw some gear on and get yerselves downstairs! Sharpish!” she roared.
She did much the same at doors two and three.
She didn't know where the idea had come from. She was shocked at herself. Perhaps it wasn't the first time Maureen had gotten it into her head the usefulness of her six layabout sons combined, but it seemed like it. She now understood their power. The town menace they could become. Petty crime had always run rampant in her family; things on shelves were never safe from her sons' hands. But this was to be the premiere of the grander, more elaborate, criminal activities the soon-to-be notorious Heggartys would engage in. The drug dealing and armed bank robberies and hired beatings and much, much more would all come later. Some only a few weeks later, some months, some years. The Heggarty boys and “Ma” Heggarty would rule Creggan Heights much like the Corleone's, though they were Irish, not Italian. (Then they would all emigrate to Florida and continue their criminal empire there.)
“Get a move on!” Maureen barked as her sons staggered out of their rooms and stood gathered and grumbling in the hallway, stretching and yawning, bleached mohawks matted, spiky black hair flat, a few shaved skulls, clothes flung haphazardly onto their limbs. “There's five shops down in the Moorside we're gonny plunder! Youse is always blathering on about no meat for tea. No meat, not enough hot water, not enough drink, enough fags.” Fags, cigarettes “Them days is soon to be gone. Our salad days is coming, lads! Salad days, I tell youse! Get them wheelbarrows from the back garden and haul them to the front...” She ran to the immersion heater cupboard and threw it open, reached inside and grabbed some sheets and blankets that had been hung there to dry. She threw them at their startled, sleep-deprived faces. The stench of last night's lager arose from them all. “Take them along with youse. To hide the booty from prying eyes, ye understand. Come on, come on, lads! It's the first day of the rest of our lives!”
As the wheelbarrows were rolled through the front hall and bargain bin trainers were slipped into and jackets flung on, Maureen stood before her bedroom and wondered what to do about little Fionnuala. Her young daughter. Her only daughter. The plundering shouldn't take long, but on the off-chance they were caught and all hauled down by the Filth to the cop shop, she couldn't leave a girl not yet ten in the house alone. Fionnuala hadn't set fire to anything yet, or anything of the like, but a mother never knew when it might start. Maureen barged in and had no need to wake Fionnuala, as the little girl was already awake on the left side of the bed they shared, lips trembling atop an unfortunate overbite, four threadbare blankets pulled up to her neck. She still had her hair in ponytails, the same ponytails she would, decades later, bleach and still wear.
“What's happening, Mammy?”
“The beginning of an era!” Ignoring the look of confused fear on her daughter's face, Maureen hauled Fionnuala out of the bed and threw the girl's pink dress with the green bow at her. It had been on a heap on the floor from when the girl had taken it off the night before. She tossed some white tights at the girl as well.
“Get them on ye, wee girl. Ye're going next door. Mrs. Ming'll look after ye while yer mammy...changes yer life.”
When Fionnuala was dressed, Maureen pretended she didn't see the tears that welled in the girl's eyes. She shoved a doll in her hand. It was Biddy. Fionnuala didn't like Biddy much. She was one of the old-fashioned dolls that didn't cry, didn't wet herself, didn't speak, while the dolls of her school mates did all those things. Biddy's eyes didn't even open and close, and were always staring at her. Accusingly, as if saying, why haven't you thrown me out yet? But Fionnuala had no time to search for a different doll, as her mother almost wrenched her arm from its socket and forced her down the stairs and out the front door. As Fionnuala tripped along the weeds of the front garden and through the gate, she caught a glimpse of her brothers lined up out front with three wheelbarrows, but didn't have the chance to say anything to them, as she suddenly found herself stood beside her agitated mother in front of the door next door, Mrs. Ming's. Her mother banged at the letter slot as if it were a matter of life and death.
Mrs. Ming pulled open the door with a look of surprise on her face, and there was some hurried whispering over Fionnuala's head between the two grown ups, which ended up with Mrs. Ming saying, and this Fionnuala could hear, “Don't tell me any more! Aiding and abetting, they'll haul me int
o the cop shop for, otherwise!”
“It's to keep the wane safe, just.” Wane, child
“Safe from a harm of yer own making, ye mean!” The neighbor gave a labored sigh. “Aye, give us her here for a few hours. I'll watch over her. Poor wee critter.”
Perhaps the last time Fionnuala Heggarty had been called a 'poor wee critter.'
“And would ye mind feeding her and all?”
Fionnuala was shoved into a strange hallway, the door was shut behind her, and she clutched Biddy tightly to her chest.
And there began a childhood event, which one might expect to be etched in the memory of little Fionnuala Heggarty forever, but had long been forgotten by Fionnuala Flood today.
Little Fionnuala saw the layout of the house was like their own, but opposite, if that made sense. The wallpaper had different flowers but was also peeling. The woman towering over her seemed in her hundreds, like her mother, though Mrs. Ming was only 42 at the time. Younger than Fionnuala was now. This being 1980, the woman had brown feathered hair with blonde highlights, pointy trapezoid earrings with black, white and red stripes, and blue eyeshadow. She was wearing a chunky light blue sweater with a cat embroidered on it, and over that a dark blue-and-white checkered housekeeping smock, but this must have been only for show, thought Fionnuala, considering the state of the sitting room she was being led into. Not that their house was spotless by any means. But even her mother would never had left the dust to multiply as it had here.
“Me wanes is all out, so we've the house to ourselves,” Mrs. Ming said as she opened the door to the sitting room and led Fionnuala inside, and Mrs. Ming seemed to be happy about this. Fionnuala certainly was. It was rare she was in a house with fewer than six people.
Mrs. Ming had three children, Fionnuala knew. But Bill was two years older, and a boy. So she didn't have anything to do with him. And Sorcha and Una were girls, but they were younger than her and therefore silly kids. Fionnuala didn't have anything to do with them either. At least, not this first visit.
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