Locked Out of Heaven

by Shirley Benton

  But first, I had to face my mother.

  She was going to kill me. Terry was everything she ever wanted for me – a man who she thought was going places. But that was the thing – he was the person she wanted. As I walked home, I was annoyed with myself for letting things go this far. I knew Susie and Willie, but particularly Susie, had always heavily influenced my decisions and even controlled them to a certain extent. Now, here I was engaged to a man who – although lovely, kind and caring and a decent person – was doing the same thing. It was time I started living my own life instead of letting the rest of the world do it for me.

  I wasn’t even up the path before Susie had spotted me.

  “Sweet Jehovah, what time do you call this to drag your sorry hole home?”

  I looked at my watch. “Looks like it’s nearly eleven.”

  “Don’t you get smart with me, young lady! Not that there’s anything even remotely ladylike about you, or smart, for that matter – in any sense of the word.”

  She looked me up and down in distaste. Yes, my mother, the woman who’d worn a skirt so tight last night that her ovaries were sticking out.

  “What sort of a twit stays out drinking the night before her wedding?”

  “What sort of a twit organises a hen night the night before the wedding and then asks the hen that question?”

  Sheila came out to join the commotion, closely followed by bloody Hawaii, of all people. Great. Now we had a human microphone to broadcast the rest of our conversation to the entire estate.

  Susie looked like she was about to combust.

  “It’s just pre-wedding jitters,” Sheila said to her.

  “And probably a raging hangover after all the booze she put away last night,” Hawaii nodded knowledgably. “I bet you a fiver she won’t be able to walk a straight line up the aisle.”

  “Get. Inside. And. Have. A. Shower. Now!” Susie’s face was beetroot. “Do I need to remind you that you’re getting married in three hours?”

  There was never going to be a good time to break the bad news while she was in this kind of mood, so there was no point in ignoring the segue.

  “No, I’m not,” I muttered.

  “Oh my God.” Susie’s head wobbled furiously as she turned to Sheila. “She doesn’t even know what time she’s getting married! Do you see what I have to put up with? Do you?”

  “I’m not getting married at two o’clock, or any other o’clock, for that matter,” I said. “Susie, let’s go inside . . . we need to speak in private.”

  “What? What kind of nonsense did I just hear coming out of your mouth?”

  “I can’t do it,” I said. “He’s not the man for me.”

  “Oh, here we go! I knew she’d do something like this. Didn’t I say to you, Sheila, that we’d have to expect some sort of antics this morning? It’s always drama, drama, drama with you, Holly.”

  I wondered briefly if Susie was getting me confused with some other daughter that she’d hidden away for decades. I’d rarely given her a minute’s drama in my life. But this was typical Susie. She’d say whatever came into her head just to be talking and not be listening to something she didn’t want to hear.

  Hawaii, meanwhile, looked like the cat that got the cream as she watched how things were unfolding. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had a deck chair in her front garden for these kinds of moments to give her a comfortable view.

  “If you’d come home at a reasonable hour – what am I saying, if you’d bloody well come home at all last night – we might have had time to indulge your little attention-seeking fit this morning, but we’ve far too much work to do now for this craziness. You need to be scrubbed and your hair will take hours to sort. Why you couldn’t have got my genes instead of your father’s is beyond me. And get in, for heaven’s sake, will you? The whole street is looking at you.”

  They were too, but only because Susie’s voice was so loud that you could practically hear it echo off the Dublin mountains and everyone was wondering what the commotion was about. She was even giving Hawaii a run for her money on the loud front. Was this a good time to mention that? Probably not.

  “Come upstairs with me,” I hissed at her. “We need to talk.”

  She followed me up the stairs, shooing me all the way up and slapping my arse to make me go faster.

  “Hurry up, you two!” she yelled at Sheila and Hawaii. “It’s all hands on deck now!”

  “No, Susie – Mum – I need to talk to you on my own . . .”

  “Sheila, bring up the iron and you can sort out Holly’s going-away outfit – it’s linen and no doubt she has it in a state. She should have done it herself this morning, of course, but we all know how this morning turned out. Hawaii, I hope you brought plenty of mousse to work through this one’s hair. Bring the sweeping brush, too, as your brushes might not make it through her mop.”

  She pushed me into my room.

  “Mum, seriously! I have to talk.”

  “Strip!” She left the room and returned with towels from the airing cupboard. “Get yourself into that bathroom and look lively!”

  I sat down on the bed. Some of the veins in Susie’s cheeks popped.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you listen to me.”

  Sheila bounded up the stairs and into my room.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Holly, pet? Or a brandy to calm you down?”

  “She can drink some shower water if she’s thirsty,” Susie said. “Get a move on!”

  Hawaii’s clunky footsteps on the stairs shook the entire house. She trundled into the room, carrying a large bag of hair tricks.

  “Sheila, Hawaii, I need you to leave Mum and me alone,” I said.

  “Don’t move an inch, either of you,” Susie commanded.

  “I’m not marrying Terry, Mum, and we need to talk about it alone!”

  “My name is Susie. Hawaii, you set up at the end of the bed there. Pull that table out from the corner to put your things on.”

  Hawaii moved towards the table.

  “Hawaii, beat it!” I screamed. “Aunty Sheila, I need you to leave, too. This is important.”

  “Holly, shut up.”

  I’d never seen such a set to Susie’s face.

  “You’re marrying Terry at two o’clock. I don’t care what’s going on in your head right now, but I am your mother and I’m not letting you mess this up. And if we have to do this the hard way, so be it.” She walked over to me and grabbed me under the arms. “Sheila, you take her legs. You, missy, are getting into the shower this minute if I have to throw you in fully clothed. Now, is there any part of what I’ve said that you don’t understand?”

  “You’re the one who doesn’t understand!” I shouted as Sheila approached with an apologetic look on her face.

  “Hawaii, we may need you, too,” Susie said.

  “Jesus Christ! I slept with Damo last night!” I screamed at Susie. “And I’m not bloody marrying Terry. Do you get it now? And let bloody go of me.”

  “Ho-ho!” Hawaii rubbed her hands together.

  Even by Blackbeg standards, this was gold gossip material, Diary.

  Susie’s face went white, then red, then a ghastly shade of greeny-blue. For a few seconds, everything was so quiet that I could hear the sound of the DART trains making their way to and from town, even though the station was a few miles away. Sheila had a hand up to her mouth and looked genuinely worried about how things were going to pan out now, while Hawaii just leaned forwards to make sure she didn’t miss whatever was said next.

  “Get out,” Susie said to Sheila and Hawaii without looking at them.

  They both looked at me as if they thought Susie had addressed her words to me, but I knew there was no way Susie would just kick me out of my own home like that. Oh no. She’d have to put me through a series of mental punishments that would scar me for life first – then she’d give me the boot.

  I thought Hawaii might have to be airlifted from the room – possibly with broken bo
nes by the time Susie was finished with her – if we were to get rid of her. But she eventually shuffled outside, aided and abetted by a few dirty looks from Susie. I waited until I heard two sets of footsteps plod down the stairs before I said anything, while Susie glared at me.

  “I shouldn’t have let things get this far, Mu . . . Susie. I didn’t even want to accept Terry’s proposal in Salou, but he’d made such a huge deal and I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of so many people. He set it up so that it was impossible for me to say no. Then he broadcasted it to everyone at home straight away and the whole thing got out of control before I even had a chance to think about how to get out of it.

  “Then I thought to myself that we probably wouldn’t get married for years anyway when we’re so young, so why break his heart by ending the engagement when chances were that the whole thing would probably peter out naturally. But then he went off and planned this entire wedding behind my back and I felt totally backed into a corner.”

  “So you decided to get out of the situation by sleeping with someone else.”

  “No! You don’t understand. I’m in love with Damo. I have been for a long time, only I was too stubborn and too stupid to admit it. And he loves me, too. Just ask Cliff if you don’t believe me.”

  “Love.” Susie grunted. “You think a guy wanting to get into your knickers is love?”

  “It’s not like that! We have a connection, one that Terry and myself never had and never will.”

  “And what about Terry? You think you can drop him just like that, on his bloody wedding day?”

  “Oh, Susie, I don’t mean to sound callous. I know I’ve messed up big time, but I’m doing the best thing by Terry by not marrying him today. He deserves better than someone whose heart lies with someone else. Damo’s the one I love and always will.”

  Susie laughed – a horrible, mocking cackle.

  “Listen to yourself. You’ve watched one soppy teen drama too many, young lady, but now it’s time to get real.” She threw her bony bum on the bed beside me and caught me by the shoulders. “Holly, I don’t mean to hurt you by what I’m about to say, but you need to know this. Life is cruel. Love comes and it goes.

  “Once your little country boy gets out of his novelty phase of sleeping with an inner-city girl, he’ll drop you as surely as if you had the clap. Do you actually think that someone with his type of background is going to make a future with someone from ours?”

  “Susie! Damo doesn’t think like that.”

  “Damo’s thinking with his prick, like all young fellas his age do. You’re beautiful and he fancies you. He doesn’t bloody well love you. You and Terry have been together for months now and you have something that must be special if he wants to marry you. For all you know, you and Damo might only last a week. If that’s the case, look at what you’ve given up. Damo might not even want to see you again now that he’s got what he wanted.”

  “You’re so wrong. He wants me to come down again to his house and tell his family that we’re going out. He’s serious about me.”

  “Oh, sure. It’s all very well you going down to his parents’ big farm in Offaly as a friend of his, but if you became a girlfriend his parents would disown him. People like that want their sons to marry girls from the same type of background, not a girl from the most crime-ridden area of Dublin.”

  “But, Susie, we’re not like other people around here. You and Willie brought us up differently.”

  “Oh yeah? And where is Ricky today, then?”

  “Mum, don’t . . .”

  “Listen, love, you and Cliff have prospects. I know neither of you will ever end up rearing your families in a dump like this, but one thing you have to understand is that you’ll never fully shake this place off, either. You can have brains to burn – which you do, although they seem to be in hiding at the moment – but people will still always judge you on where you came from, your accent, your family and what they do. All of that matters. That’s how life works, I’m afraid.

  “A girl who comes from a background of nothing will never be good enough for the son of a wealthy farmer from Offaly. Even if it does last between you and him, which I’m sure won’t happen, you’ll always be the outsider in that family. Always just tolerated but never respected and never really wanted. And as soon as you and Damo have a row, he’ll start to wonder if his family were right all along. Maybe he could have done better.”

  “I don’t believe you’re saying this to me!”

  “I’m only saying this to save you from messing up your future. When the love or the lust or whatever it is that brings two people together fucks off out the window, all that’s left is the common ground binding them. When the shit hits the fan in a relationship, you’ll find that different backgrounds can finish something off completely.

  “I’ve met Damo, remember, and I can tell you now as sure as I can tell you the time you were born that he’s someone who’ll never settle in Dublin city. He’ll get his few years of work experience and piss off back down the country as soon as he can get a transfer. Then he’ll build his big house on his parents’ land and live there for the rest of his life with a nice wife and his children frolicking around in a huge back garden the size of a football pitch.

  “As for you, if you moved down there, you either wouldn’t get a job or you’d spend hours and hours every day commuting up and down to a job in Dublin, which of course would wear you down and you’d eventually give it up. Then you’d have about fifty kids and end up resenting Damo for ruining all of your great career plans.

  “And you’d end up in Dublin again before you’re thirty, in a council house with your fifty kids and no career because you and Damo will hate each other so much that you won’t be able to stand being near each other.”

  “Ah, Susie, this is ridiculous.”

  “But think about your future with Terry. He’s one of us. He’s come from nothing too, but just like you, it’s made him determined to get somewhere in life. You and Terry are on a level playing field. The two of you together can achieve anything you want from life.

  “If you stick with Damo you’ll always be the underdog. Is that what you want after all the work you, your dad and I have put into you having a decent life? Is that really how little you think of yourself, that you deserve nothing more than being inferior to someone else?”

  “But that’s not how—”

  “Yes, it is. Face facts, Holly. And if you won’t face them, then know this much. If you don’t get yourself into that church today and marry Terry, then I never want to see you again. I’m telling you all this because I’m your mother and I know what’s good for you. If you turn your back on my advice, then you obviously have no regard for me whatsoever. After everything your dad and I have done for you, surely you have enough respect for me to listen to what I’m telling you to do?”

  “But . . . it’s my life! This isn’t fair.”

  “Life isn’t fair. I’m doing this for you. You’re pressing a self-destruct button here and I won’t let you do it. But if you do, don’t think for one second that I’ll be here to pick up the pieces. I’ve dedicated my entire life to giving you the opportunity of a better future. The least you can do now is have enough faith in me to do as I say. Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done it for you and your brothers. If you doubt me now, then there’s no way back for us.”

  I burst out bawling. “Mum, don’t do this to me! This is emotional blackmail.”

  “This is called being a mother. I’m saving you from yourself. But believe me, Holly, there will be no welcome for you in this house from this day forwards if you don’t do exactly what I say within the next thirty seconds. Pick up the towels on the bed, walk to the bathroom and have a shower as fast as you can. Do you understand me?”

  I stared at her for a long, long time then nodded slowly. I was too afraid to do anything that, Diary. You understand, don’t you? Then I walked to the bathroom just as she’d ordered, feeling more dead inside than I’d ever
felt before in my entire life.

  When I came out of the shower, Susie was waiting for me in my room with my wedding dress laid out on the bed. She threw underwear and a dressing gown at me and ordered me to put them on while she rummaged through her make-up bag for miracles to repair my face.

  “This is pointless. Hawaii will tell Terry, you know,” I said as I got dressed.

  Susie shook her head. “Not after what she got up to last night. She’s been seeing a man called Paddy, but she isn’t behaving herself behind his back. One word from me and that’s over.”

  “Even if she keeps her gob shut, other people know. Sammy will tell Cliff. He hates Terry.”

  “You leave Cliff to me. One breath out of his mouth about this and I’ll make mincemeat of him.”

  She had an answer for everything, of course, Diary. Every objection I’d thought of in the shower that I’d hoped would make her see sense was shot to shit in seconds. My whole body trembled as I sat back down on the bed. Damo was going to think I was the scum of the earth. Susie thought he’d eventually think that anyway, but in my heart, I didn’t believe that. But now, he really would have a reason to believe I was the lowest of the low.

  But I knew Susie and I knew her threats weren’t empty ones. When it came to Ricky she’d given him every chance, but she’d learned her lesson. She’d always been hard, but what had happened to Ricky had turned her to stone inside, and Cliff and I were the ones who paid for Ricky’s mistakes. If I didn’t go through with the wedding, she’d turn my entire family against me. She’d even find a way to get to Cliff, I knew that. It was how Susie worked. You crossed her and you paid for it.

  The phone rang downstairs. Willie had come in from somewhere a few minutes earlier and I heard him go to answer it. From the little Susie had said, Willie was none the wiser about the drama upstairs. He didn’t know how lucky he was.

  “Holly! It’s Sammy!” he shouted.

  I could feel my face blanching. Sammy thought I’d spent the past hour breaking it off with Terry. What could I possibly say to her?