“Me satchel!” Fionnuala squealed. She was shocked at herself. She never squealed. Roared, barked, shouted abuse and spewed filthy venom, yes. Squealed, never. Her heart fell as she watched her beloved bag being...soiled by that hateful Protestant cunt of a dog. “Oh, the humanity!” she moaned. It was becoming quite a useful phrase.
The bastard in charge, the one pressing her against the wall, narrowed his eyes to slits. “I thought it wasn't your satchel?”
And then, just to torment her further, roars of laughter rang out as the dog, whining excitedly, began to hump her satchel. Each thrust of its body, electrified with rapture, was like the stab of a rusty screwdriver into Fionnuala's heart. And after it finished its business, it scampered happily away, looking up at its owner and demanding a treat. But it still hadn't barked. No sign of any explosives.
Now she saw a man approaching her bag with caution even as the laughter trickled to a stop. He was wearing a helmet and holding a pole with a mirror. She rolled her eyes. It was one of those yokes they used to detect bombs under cars. He twiddled it around inside the bag and inspected the interior.
“All clear!” he called.
The leader's hand finally left Fionnuala's chest as the uniformed masses deflated with relief, or was it disappointment? She would've smoothed down her blouse and arranged her breasts, but she couldn't.
“I'll have ye for sexual harassment!” Fionnuala barked.
“I've a laundry list of things I could have you for, dear.”
Five of the more bulkily dressed lumbered over to the bag.
“Shall we open it? See what's inside?”
“Naw! Naw!” Fionnuala wailed, begged. She made to lunge forward, but found suddenly she was being tightly gripped and pressed against the wall again, this time by five pairs of hands,
Fionnuala had had many bad moments in her life: Her first shag against the cannon on the city walls that were now above her, the night she had walked home from the New Year's Eve party Buncrana in a snowstorm when she had roared drunken abuse at everyone there and nobody would give her a lift back to Derry, Siofra walking in on her and Paddy's ill-conceived conjugal romp atop the washer after one bottle of cheap wine too many (the washer had never worked properly after that, and the dent was still there, eyed pointedly by Siofra when Fionnuala told her she couldn't have any sweeties and they happened to be standing in the scullery), the Christmas, also after a Liebfraumilch too many, when she had kissed Ursula Barnett under the mistletoe—with her tongue!—all sprang easily to mind. But this was the worst.
One of them, tense, unscrewed the lid of the jug. Fionnuala grit her teeth at the sound of plastic against plastic which rang out in the alleyway. The five men bent over and peered in.
“Eeuugh!” the Proddies chorused like the hateful bastards they were.
“What's that mad thing doing, carting that...filth...around with her in her bag?”
“Perv!”
Fionnuala wanted the Lord to strike her down dead with a bolt of lightning that very moment. But He didn't, and He was a right hateful Bastard and all, she thought. Even the leader and his squad were moving towards the jug now for a look, and Fionnuala grabbed the moment. With her hands still captive behind her back, she inched down the alleyway and surely, she thought, this was a pose she had seen in How To Be A Lady, the stance a wallflower was supposed to make as she waited on the sidelines at the cotillion for an eligible bachelor to ask her to dance. She tiptoed in that correct manner further and further down the alley until she was free.
CHAPTER 24
Sorcha was running a bath. She had to freshen up, she'd said. This was true, Lorcan knew. He also knew how slowly a bath filled, and that he'd be there on the bed, sheets alternately damp and crusty, for the long haul. He cringed as he heard Sorcha start singing Fern Kinney's romantic “Together We Are Beautiful” from the bathroom down the hallway, “I am the rain, he is the sun,” and with any other girl he would've grabbed his gear and fled for the hills, “And now we've made a rainbow,” but he still hadn't gotten what he had come for.
He spied Sorcha's cell phone on the nightstand next to the mug she had thrown up in. His eyes lit up. She was sure to have international on her phone, flying for the airlines as she did. He rummaged around the many things on the floor until he found his track suit bottoms. First he checked to see if Sorcha had lifted the cash from his pocket when he had passed out, post-coital. Lorcan admitted to himself it was unlikely, but you couldn't be too sure. The leftovers of his mammy's twenty pound note, all three pounds fifty pee of it, was still there. He had a bit of respect for Sorcha. Then he found his own useless phone and looked up Eoin's new Yank number in Florida. He didn't know what time it might be over there; he had heard the States had their own strange hours (it was 6 AM). But he pressed in the number and heard the phone ringing across the Atlantic. Lorcan was excited. He had never made an international call before.
“Aye?”
“Eoin? Lorcan.”
“Och, what about ye, mucker!”
“Are ye right?”
“Aye, ye and all?”
Eoin's slurred voice was barely recognizable, more suited to the wretched ones outside the city walls, the voice of a youth prematurely aged, setting himself up for a life of OTB betting shops and sleeping on park benches with an empty bottle of generic booze at his side. And he had once been an altar boy! Beyond Eoin's croak through the phone, in Florida it sounded like a Friday night at the Craiglooner during a soccer match, young male Derry voices yelling and slurring, and Lorcan was surprised to hear that they were playing “Timber” there in Florida as well, but then he wasn't surprised, as he figured Pitbull and Ke$ha were probably Yanks and so it was a Yank song and they would play it in the States.
“Aye, so what's the craic?” Lorcan asked. “What've ye been up to over there in Yank land?”
“Och, ye'd never believe it! I was meant to be staying with Eric O'Toole, as a stop gap until I found me own place and a job. Who did I run into at the baggage carousel at the airport, but, but Tommy Flint. Ye know he served mass with me at St. Moluag's. And he was with Nigel O'Malley. They already had jobs lined up, and a house and all, that they was sharing with some lads from Creggan Heights. I think ye know most of them, Mickey Tennet and Jaz O'Rourke and Jerry Feeney.”
“Merciful Jesus! Does all Derry be there, like?”
“Near as dammit.”
“No wonder the streets round here seems empty. What job've ye got, then?”
“It's an Irish pub. Me and Tommy and Nigel be's working behind the bar there. Bartenders, as the Yanks says. Pots O' Gold & Leprechauns, the pub be's called.”
“Jesus, them daft Yanks!”
“Aye, but the money's magic! Ye wouldn't believe it! That much money be's thrown at me nightly, I'm on the verge of begging the punters to stop! Bulging, me pockets be's at the end of a night. And ye should see the digs we're living in, massive, so the house is, and the size of the telly in it! Like at the pictures! And in the back garden, I couldn't believe me eyes, they've a pool! And they've even a machine that dries clothes! And there be's a party every night, like an endless New Year's Eve. Ye know what it's like, waking up every afternoon with lads passed out in the front room I've no idea who they were. But it's a wile craic.”
“Have ye been to the beach? Doesn't there be one out there, it being Florida, like?”
“Aye, but the one time we all went, with crates of beer, like, me flesh was near scorched from me bones. Worse than a lobster, I was, and up came the blisters and bedridden for three days, so I was. Ye know what me skin's like, hi.” Lorcan did. And his orange hair. “Never again. And ye might think, this being Florida, the sweat be's lashing down me all hours God sends. But these Yanks have air conditioning everywhere, AC, themmuns call it. We spend the day jumping from one air conditioned unit to another. I'm freezing me bollocks off over here, though every day the sun be's blazing down from the heavens. Wrapped up like deepest winter, we've got to be.”
There was a startled silence, as if Eoin had never considered this, as if Lorcan had asked him if he had chanced upon a nine-eyed extraterrestrial who had materialized from behind a palm tree to extend the hand of friendship.
“Naw, I only know em to see, the lasses, anyroad, and to get me leg over. I've ridden more than me fair share. Which, I'm proud to tell ye, be's more than what yer fair share would be, if ye catch me drift. I open me mouth, they hear me accent, and they fling themselves at me.”
“At you?!”
“I get me kecks off so often me bollocks is pure aching. Sure, there's no need to be mates with em, as I kyanny understand what they be's blathering on about half the time, what with the accent and them slurring from being legless. Ye'd never believe what them Yanks has here: Happy Hour, they call it. Two for one drinks. And hours it goes on for. And not just in wer pub, but in all the pubs and bars, as they're called here. Ye might think we get bladdered in Derry; that's nothing, but, to what we can afford to get up to over here.”
Lorcan was shocked. There was never a discount on drink in Derry pubs. The Rocking Seamaid had once had a Smithwicks promotion and offered 50 pee off a pint, back before Lorcan was incarcerated, and folks were still talking about it nostalgically.
“And there's that many drugs to be smoked and snorted and swallowed, I kyanny keep track of what it is I'm taking, nor what time of day it's meant to be, nor the date. To tell ye the truth, I've no clue how long I've been over here now. How long have I been here, hi, Lorcan?”
“A few months, I think. With all them drugs, but, doesn't the streets be crawling with coppers?” Lorcan had seen all the shows, CSI, NCIS, 24, Law and Order, America's Most Wanted, Criminal Minds, Hawaii Five-O, The Mentalist, White Collar, even Rizzoli and Isles and Starsky and Hutch, and America seemed to be a land of nothing but people committing crimes, being chased by the police and being caught. “Are ye not afeared of being hauled in and spending the rest of yer days banged up again?”
“I understand how ye think I might be scared, just being let out of Magilligan as we was, and, aye, I was afeared at first, but that's another thing that's brilliant about Florida! Sure, the coppers all has names like O'Malley and O'Leary and O'Connelly, all Irish-American, and, indeed, I was caught with a wee bit of hash on me the other week, and for a few E's the week before that, X, they call it here...daft!...but when the Yank Filth hear me accent, they're more interested in knowing if I knew their second great grandmammy once removed who used to live in a thatched cottage with a flock of sheep in Limerick than the drugs they've caught me with! Free reign, we lads here is given, and on the forces there doesn't seem to be a Proddy bastard in sight. The Yanks have told me that a town of only Irish coppers be's somewhat out of style, nowadays they're paired mostly with a Mexican or a lass, but I've been lucky so far. The Luck of the Oirish! The life of Riley!” he said it with a fake Yank accent. “And thank feck for that, as they've the strangest laws in this country. I kyanny comprehend em. Normal activities what people does all the time be's considered crimes here. Having a fag in public or taking a slash in public, public urination, they call it, being legless on the streets, public intoxication, they call it, brawling in the streets, disorderly conduct, they call it. All outlawed. Daft. Enough of that, but. Do ye know, Lorcan, och, I can barely believe it, but I'm saving up to buy meself an auto.”
“A...car?!” The shocks kept coming. So Eoin would be the first of the Floods to own, let alone drive one of those most sacred of indicators of wealth that were so difficult to come by. Being the first in the family to drive a car was like the first to attend university. And here the urgency to leave Derry welled in Lorcan for real. “Can ye drive, but?”
“Sure, ye just stick a key in a wee slot and press on a yoke on the floor with yer foot. And steer like a PlayStation.”
“C'mere, why I'm ringing ye for is for to tell ye I'm on me way out there to join ye. I kyanny stick it here no more. I should be there, well...I thought in a few weeks. Might be sooner, but. Tomorrow, like.” Lorcan knew he didn't have to ask if he could stay with his brother. If there was someone from the family abroad, it was a free room and board for life, no questions asked.
“Effin brilliant! There be's ten Derry lads jammed into the one house, but it be's massive, as I've said. One more, five more, bring along some of yer former cell mates, the more the merrier. And we watch the footie all the time, take over the pubs when a match be's on, as no Yanks are interested in footie.”
Then they chatted for a minute or so about Dymphna's wedding and the price of iPhones and iPads and Calvin Klein boxers over there, and then Eoin had to go as someone had fallen into the pool and seemed to be drowning.
Lorcan had loads to think about as he hung up. He picked at the scabs on his knuckles as he lay there on the crumpled sheets, damp, cold, waiting for Sorcha's perhaps diseased limbs to crawl back beside him, mattress lumpy and springs popping out. He was shocked at Eoin getting his leg over so often, not that casual sex was shocking, but from Eoin it was, with his orange hair and mild, former altar boy manner. Florida, the Yank sunshine, easy money, cheap beer and copious drugs were all turning his younger brother into an amoral party animal. Eoin wasn't living some peculiar foreign life in the States, but the same life he had lived in Derry, though louder, faster, stronger, bigger, better. With more fanny. And more mates; Eoin hadn't had many, on account of his hair and the altar boy thing, and him being suspected of being a police informer, but in that alien land, Lorcan supposed, all Irish expats had to band together against the indigenous population. And a car! And money!
The Lord, and Lorcan, knew a glance around at the boarded up shop windows of the Moorside, at the TO LET signs defaced with anti-Brit graffiti, the misery of the Jobs Office, the drunks and druggies and hooded youths on every street corner with nothing but time and the occasional stray dog to kill that there was none of that in Derry. Or there was, there had to be, but for Lorcan and his non-skilled ilk, it was impossible to come by.
Lorcan moved to the scabs on his other hand. He knew he had to leave. Immediately. With a Mammy diseased or not diseased, Dymphna wed or not wed. Staying for the wedding made no sense to him. It was just an extra day in Derry. He loved his sister, but the suit he'd be wearing reminded him of prison, he had no gift to give her, nor the means to get one, and weddings were for lasses, anyroad. Except for the groom and the best man, and he was neither of them. After three years of the delayed gratification of prison, he wanted what he wanted now! And that was to escape Derry.
Sorcha appeared in the doorway, towel on her head and lust in her eyes. Her tatty bathrobe clunked to the floor. “Are ye up for another round?” she asked. She peered at the sheets and gave a filthy, delighted bark of laughter. “Aye, I see ye are!”
“Aye, am are.” Sorcha hopped in beside him and wrapped herself around his neck. She smelled like lemons. He stank of sweat. “Before we go at it, but, mind ye were telling me earlier about them free flight yokes yer airline gives ye?”
She couldn't remember it at all and, thinking it was the drink and not Lorcan's lie, the blood seeped into her cheeks.
“Did I?”
“Aye, ye did. And while ye was in the bath, I've just had me brother in Florida ring me. He's laid up in hospital with some strange Yank disease. All on his lonesome, he is, and afeared he's gonny meet his maker without a friendly face at his bedside. I wonder if ye might...?”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Sorcha nibbled on her lower lip, the lip that had been unmentionable places an hour earlier.
“I only get the one, but. One a year. A Free Flight For A Friend, it be's called. They can call it that all they like, but there be's taxes. Though I suppose they're only a few pounds. I'd love to help ye out, Lorcan. Really, I would.” She ran her finger down his bicep. “I know how wile dear a flight to the States be's. There's me granny, but. She's always wanted to visit Lourdes, ye know, the Marian shrine over
in France, and after that angina attack of hers last week, I think she be's on her last legs. I was thinking of giving it to her, like. She's always been wile kind to me. Bought me one of them heads you can practice all sorts of hairdos on for me eighteenth birthday. I wanted to be a hair stylist, ye see.”
“Och, sure, to get to France, but, can she not take the bus to Belfast, the ferry to Liverpool, the train to Dover and then the ferry over to France? Or even that Chunnel. I don't know how ye cross that, in a train or bus or if ye have to walk. Florida, but...”
“Aye, but an aul woman like that, taking all them different forms of transport...”
She seemed uncertain.
“Never mind that now,” Lorcan said, running his fingers through her sopping strings of hair. “Ye can have a wee think about it and let me know later. Now, but, let's get wer oats.”
And they did. While they were at it, Sorcha squealing in rapture, Lorcan was thinking he would give her what she craved over and over, shag her until she saw sense and forgot her granny and relented and handed the pass over to him. He wouldn't leave that dank bedroom until it was in his hand. He was sure it would happen. He thrust his hips forward. That's how he had gotten the Internet password from Sally Murphy, next door but one. And when he had satisfied Sorcha, he would use her Free Flight For A Friend to Florida and turn his back on Derry, on his hometown, for good.
“Ayyyeee! Ayyeee!” Sorcha gleefully wailed.
CHAPTER 25
Something clicked in Jed's brain.
“She looks like my mom,” he heard Mean say. Jed had been trained to fight, to attack the enemy, though it was many years ago, “I can't help it,” Deep inside he realized that, compared to the threat of Communist aggressors and the food and latrines of the mess hall in DaNang, “Entertaining,” he had nothing to fear from bright lights sizzling above him and millionaires sitting in chairs before him, “Delicious.” He remembered his gung-ho spirit, the have-a-go hero of his youth, “Buut, yeah.” What kind of man was he, letting his wife, a woman, do the fighting for him?!! “Ge—”
Best Served Frozen (The Irish Lottery Series Book 4) Page 22