Best Served Frozen (The Irish Lottery Series Book 4)

by Gerald Hansen

  When, out of desperation, she had chosen Maire, Ailish and Maeve to be her bridesmaids, she had had to call them out of the blue. Each had seemed startled at the invitation—Dymphna hadn't laid eyes on them since her move to the Waterside months before—but all had accepted.

  Dymphna scanned the masses, slipped on a bottle on the floor, and elbowed through the heaving male chests in soccer jerseys and the barely-concealed female breasts. Drunken roars and acne greeted her from every angle. She spied her former friends in a nook in the corner. Maire, Ailish and Maeve had already been at the drink for some time, if their eyes under the alarming hues of eyeshadow and the empties on the table were anything to go by. They jumped up at the sight of her, and squealed and hugged and laughed as if they had last seen her the previous night.

  “Yer round, ye jammy cunt!” one brayed. The other two stared eagerly at her handbag.

  Not offered the chance to sit down, Dymphna fought her way to the bar, bought the round, four pints of lager and four shots of tequila, scuttled over with the drink sloshing on a little round tray she had asked for, then settled down betwixt them in the nook. The table was sticky and peppered with ancient cigarette burns. They snatched the glasses from the tray and poured the liquor down their throats.

  “'Right, Dymphna!” one said.

  “So ye're still alive after all!” another said.

  “We hadn't a clue whether to show up or not.”

  “C'mere, do ye know it's all over town ye've kicked the bucket? What are ye doing alive?”

  Dymphna took a little sip of lager and scrunched her face in embarrassment.

  “Aye, that was me mammy. A misunderstanding, so it was. Sure, ye see me sitting here before youse and youse is not in Hell yet, are youse?”

  “Dymphna, now that I see ye're indeed alive and kicking, I don't mind telling ye that when I'd heard ye'd died, I thought the wedding might be canceled, and pure spitting I was. Have ye any clue how dear them bridesmaids frocks is?”

  “Aye, here was me wondering how to return mines, as the smarmy prick in the shop said there was to be no refunds.”

  “Scrimped and saved for weeks for to be able to afford mines, so I had to! Me mammy had to pitch in forty quid, and ye didn't even invite her, like.”

  Then it cost ye but 70 pee. The bold-faced cheek! Dymphna thought, but continued to smile as she drank; she well understood the financial strain she had subjected her former schoolmates to.

  The gowns had each cost £80.70, which verged on a week's wages for Marie at the bookies down the Strand, and a week and half's for Ailish at the Sav-U-Mor (she had been let go from Pricecutters for 'discrepancies of stock'), and Maeve from the swanky café on Shipquay Street that had once been new but was now no longer, so Dymphna had given them each £40 out of her paycheck to offset the cost of the gowns, even though Zoë didn't pay Dymphna herself much for her hours in the fish and chip van. Dymphna knew if she told them how much it had hurt her financially to subsidize their dresses they wouldn't believe her. She saw the meaningful looks in people's eyes when they heard she was marrying somebody from the Waterside, saw how they folded their arm around their chests and took a little step back. Dymphna herself barely believed how little she earned, and her own eyes saw the paycheck every second Friday of the month. Marrying into a Protestant family hadn't made her rich herself. Maybe the money would come later. Maybe there were things that were obvious to others that weren't obvious to her. Maybe it was a well-documented fact that Catholics who married Protestants never got to see any of the money. She just didn't know. All she knew about marrying Rory Riddell was that she wanted a father for her three children. One father.

  “C'mere, what's up with yer arm, hi?” Dymphna asked Maeve, to change the subject.

  Maeve rolled her eyes as she nodded down at the cast on her right wrist.

  “Och, I fractured me wrist, so I did.”

  “Blootered, was ye?”

  “Aye, I was, so ye know I haven't a clue how the bloody feck it happened. I woke up to me shock under one of them cannons on the city walls Wednesday last after the karaoke, and there was terrible pains shooting from me bones, like, and swollen like a beaten backside, me wrist was, all purple and all, and me hand sticking out at the end of it like a useless thing. Ye shoulda seen me trying to hail a mini-cab. A right gack, I musta looked. Pure red, I was and all. And then when we pulled up to the A & E at Altnagelvin, I was searching through me handbag for the money for to pay yer man with, and it be's wile difficult to scrabble in yer handbag with only one hand, when I saw hadn't a hi'penny to rub together. I had to crawl into the front seat and pleasure yer man with me good hand then and there in the parking lot for to pay for the journey, and that with the pains shooting up and down me wrist and the stench from yer man's sweaty bollocks making me wanny gag. Have youse ever wanked a lad off with yer left hand? Unnatural, it be's, just like ye kyanny write correctly with that hand either. Thank Christ, but, yer man in the mini-cab wasn't one of them poofs, for he was well up for it. An arse bandit woulda knocked me back. Didn't take yer man long to reach satisfaction as he was a sad fat bastard and probably couldn't believe his good luck in nabbing a looker like meself. He made a wee noise and it was all over, and for that I'm grateful. I did have to ask him to wipe me fingers off after as I couldn't do it meself, like. And it was only after they did the x-rays and I was getting this God-awful cast wound round me wrist that I remembered I had me emergency twenty next to me tampon in me secret compartment all along, and so there was no need for me to have compromised meself in that manner. The twenty got me back home, but, so...”

  “Was yer Morris raging?” Dymphna asked. That was Maeve's husband.

  “Aye, pure spitting with anger, he was, near beat the shite outta me, as now he has to change the wanes' nappies, me being an invalid with the one functioning hand for the next six weeks.”

  “Naw, I meant about ye being on yer knees flinging yer fingers over yer man the mini-cab driver's kno—”

  “Sure, how would Morris know about that, hi?”

  It was a shot of whiskey later and halfway into another conversation that Dymphna realized how stupid her question had been.

  Struggling to hear under the pounding of the British drum and bass and American rap, between pouring more beer down her gullet, she asked them what they thought about her fiancé, about Rory. Their eager answers reminded her they had been all for it when she revealed many moons ago he had proposed.

  “Och, Rory's lovely, so he is.”

  “Fit.”

  “Fine arse, hi. Ye kyanny see it in them baggy track suit bottoms he wears. I reached out and grabbed it once, but, when he was before me in the queue of the Kebabalicious one night. Before youse was together, like.”

  “And that lovely black hair of his!”

  “Them dark eyes! Gorgeous!”

  “Rory's eyes is a wee bit squinty, but.”

  “Like a young Colin Farrell, so he is.”

  “Aye, a dead ringer for him, so Rory is, if yer man Colin were playing a role in a film about a hunger striker, ye know what I mean, like at the end of the film where he hasn't had anything to eat for weeks and weeks or even months. And if at the end of the film he got caught in a rainstorm, like, or maybe the sprinklers went off in the prison I guess, and the hair was plastered to his skull.”

  “I've noticed his lack of beauty products and all.”

  “And maybe if he had that nose of his seen to. And them teeth whitened a bit. Not that I'm for teeth whitening, dead Yank, so it is, but I don't think the shade of a banana be's normal, like.”

  “And not a bad word to say against anyone, Catholic or Protestant. Since he stopped hanging around them hard-cased hooligan thug mates of his, anyroad.”

  “That's all grand and lovely to be saying. If youse don't mind me saying, but, though it turns me stomach, it's well overdue, this wedding.”

  They all turned to look at Ailish. There was a sanctimonious air in her voice. She was staring
at Dymphna as if down from on high. Maire and Maeve shifted uncomfortably. Dymphna's eyes shot from side to side, seeking an escape. Ailish was the most traditional of them; she even went to church on holy days. It was the dangerous time of the drink, when tongues geared up to spill home truths, threatening to turn any celebration black.

  “Youse know what I mean. Having them wanes outta wedlock and all... And I'm not quite sure this mixing of the religions is the way to the future. More down the road to eternal damnation.”

  As they stared at her, Ailish's face turned bright red, but then she forced her head up, a flicker in her boozy eyes, her bright pink lips taut.

  “Well. It does be a sin, don't youse agree in yer heart of hearts?” she slurred. “It's unnatural, like.”

  “Och, catch yerself on,” Maire said. “It's the new century, so it is. Sure, even popes be's changing like songs at the top of the hit parade, a new one every week, it seems.”

  “Aye, but the Catholic church looks down on them what...what...” Either it was the liquor or the complexity of what she wanted to say that was flustering Ailish. Finally, she forged ahead, voice ringing with righteousness: “Me mammy wasn't best pleased at me taking part. Blasphemy, she called it. Part of me mind agreed. It be's like chips. Ye want em with vinegar or ye want em with tomato sauce. They tastes grand with one or grand with the other, but like shite if ye put both together. And the way ye rang me up outta the blue like that for to ask me to be yer bridesmaid. Sure, none of us knows what ye've been up to since ye moved to the Waterside. We don't know what's been going on in yer mind. Me only consolation was yer mammy, Dymphna. A staunch churchgoer, so she be's. So I trust her. And if she's given this unseemly, sinful pairing her blessing, who am I to disagree? And also, me gown had already been bought, and we've all since discovered there be's no returns. Something to do with the alternations. I'll be proud to stand by yer side, but, as ye're a good laugh, Dymphna, and ye was one of me first mates in primary school. I only wish ye had chosen a lad what was more appropriate. Not an Orange bastard. Have ye not seen the graffiti what's been sprayed over the awning or whatever ye call it of the chip van where ye work that ye pull down when it be's closed? I must say I quite agree. A life of misery, I think ye're setting yerself up for. If ye want to know what I think.” She burped. She wiped the drool from her chin.

  The other girls' eyes stared at beermats, jukebox buttons, the arses of the barmen. Anywhere but at Dymphna. She was noticing that all three girls sported bruises in a wide array of sizes, colors and locations, from small to large, purple to yellow, on elbows and forearms and cheeks. She didn't know if they were from their wanes—they all had as many as she did, if not more, though legal ones—from their wanes slapping them too hard accidentally or their husbands slapping them too hard deliberately.

  Maeve cleared her throat and wondered where the diamond engagement ring that used to dangle from her finger was. Dymphna explained that, a while back, Zoë had forced it off her finger and locked it up in her jewelry box so that Dymphna wouldn't be able to pawn it if she decided to. This was met with an awkward silence. Dymphna handed over another twenty. The girls jumped up, shoved through the press of bodies at the bar, and Dymphna could hear their roars for tequila over Daft Punk.

  She sat in the nook alone and fiddled with an empty crisp packet. Tomato and sausage.

  “We're up all night to get lucky...!”

  CHAPTER 13

  “In the hospital room, they was ready to read me me Last Rites, so they was,” Fionnuala croaked in a voice of well-rehearsed agony. “All staring down at me in the bed, their eyes peering over them creepy wee masks, and gearing up to drag me body to the knacker's yard. I sent the priest away, but, and not because it was that aul Father Grogan whose sermons always bored me senseless, but because I was ready to live. I've to see me daughter wed, after all. If I make it to the end of the week.” She gave a little moan.

  Fionnuala had claimed she was too frail to climb the stairs. Swaddled in a frayed bathrobe, wreathed in hot water bottles, her face glowing orange from the space heater propped on the floor before her, her time-ravaged body languished on the lumpy settee in the front room, as if, it seemed to Maureen, she were the model for Jesus in Michaelangelo's Pietà. Padraig, Siofra and Seamus knelt before their ailing mother on the threadbare carpeting and fed her leftover cold pizza they had torn into little bits to fit into her barely-parting lips. The pizza had arrived hours before Fionnuala, Padraig and Siofra, so first Maureen and Dymphna had dug in, then Paddy and Lorcan when they arrived from the pub. All the exciting flavors had been devoured, so Fionnuala was left with cheese.

  Straddling the arm of the settee, Paddy pressed a cold rag to her forehead and muttered consoling noises. Lorcan was perched at her feet like a loyal dog, his puppy eyes taking her in with concern, his hands touching a leg here and knee there, trying for a show of comfort.

  Maureen sat in a chair beyond the china cabinet, far removed from the display. She gripped her cane, knuckles white as she fought to restrain herself. She wasn't about to be taken in; her role was definitely not going to be Mary to Fionnuala's Jesus. Maureen inspected the body on the settee. Fionnuala did look sick. Older. The whites of her eyes were grays, her crow's feet claws, her wrinkles now crevices. And her hands, especially, seem to have been affected by the health being siphoned from her body; the fingers dangled like wrinkled sausages left too long in the microwave. Maureen thought Fionnuala looked more like one of the people in Picasso's Guernica, her face all twisted and contorted.

  Still... Her daughter had passed out, certainly, and had something wrong with her, but now she was milking it for all it was worth, that's what Maureen thought. If Fionnuala demanded one of the children massage her feet, Maureen'd have her up for child abuse.

  Fionnuala reached up and caressed Paddy's hand with five of her wrinkled sausages.

  “Light me a fag, would ye Paddy, love, and place it in me mouth.”

  Leaving the rag resting on her forehead, Paddy hastened to comply.

  “Right man ye are. And, youse, wanes, could youse do yer mammy a favor and pick out all them wee little green grassy bits outta the pizza before ye feed it to me? Yer fingernails be's small enough. I'm afeared they be's interfering with me medication, like. Good wee dotes.”

  Seamus' little face crinkled with concentration as he set about doing just that, but Padraig and Siofra were having none of it. And the little girl was lucky her mother's head, fluttering her eyes dramatically and moaning with satisfaction as the nicotine filled her lungs, was lost behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Fionnuala missed the rolling of her daughter's eyes.

  Paddy sneaked looks a the telly, but it was broken. There was nothing else to look at. And Lorcan kept glancing at his mobile every time his mother closed her eyes and burrowed her head in the cushions with a moan. He was the only one in the family that had a phone hooked up to the internet always so that he could see Facebook and Twitter and who knew what else.

  After the initial fuss and concern of Fionnuala's arrival from the hospital, the rest of the family was starting to get antsy. It seemed any immediate danger had passed, and they didn't much relish the thought of hours checking to see if she was still breathing in and out.

  “And just where is me soon-to-be wed daughter? Wer Dymphna? Has she no interest in her mammy's well-being?” There was accusation in Fionnuala's voice.

  “She's out with her bridesmaids,” Maureen explained. “Making sure the wedding plans is all in order. Once she heard ye didn't get the funds from that McDaid article and that there was no need for her to stay holed up in the house for three days, presumed dead by the entire town, like, out the door she raced, and good on her, I say. She was all up for making the tea, but I—”

  “Selfish cunt!” Fionnuala croaked. “I should've realized that one would be more interested in herself than her poor aul mammy. Bleedin fecking typical. As I lay there in the hospital, I half-expected the slag, wer Dymphna, to wheel them half-Orange ba
stards of hers into the ward for me to look after.” She moaned and passed her cigarette to Paddy so he could flick the ash for her; the ashtray was perched behind her head and she couldn't reach it.

  Maureen could hold her tongue no longer.

  “Did they really call for the priest?” she asked. “And just what ailment did them doctors and the team of specialists they had called in say ye was suffering from?”

  Fionnuala detected the tone in her mother's voice, and her head whipped from the cushions at a speed remarkable given the supposed state of her weakness.

  “Do ye doubt I'm knocking at death's door? I was poked and prodded with that many tools and hooked up to gadgets like things they seemed to have wheeled in from a time machine. And they drained that much flimmin blood from me arms that I almost passed out again. Tube after wee tube yer woman kept attaching to the needle jammed in me arm. Torturing me body for to give up its secrets, so they were.”

  Maureen greeted her daughter's whines with flinty eyes.

  “What's yer illness?”

  “If ye must know the specifics, I've none for ye. And that's what sets the fear racing through me veins. Me disease-riddled veins. They be's still waiting for the test results, like, and there are more tests left for them to do. I've to go back next Monday. And tomorrow I've to, I've to...” She pressed her lips shut, then carried on. Maureen wondered what she wasn't revealing. “From what I could make out from their medical blabber, and yer man the doctor's bloody Paki accent, c'mere, why kyanny they speak like normal?, they seem to think there be's more than one thing wrong with me body, that I've a variety of illnesses that be's working at odds against one another and giving em results they think maybe they've never seen before. They said they've to check some medical journals. Could ye imagine if I get written up in one of em as some sort of medical oddity? Mortified, I'd be!”