The Old House on the Corner (34 page)

‘Haven’t I got more to do than keep me eye on whatever youse girls are wearing?’ Mam shouted from the kitchen.

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God.’ Dad came to the bottom of the stairs and said wearily, ‘Is it not possible for the women in this house to speak to each other like ordinary civilized human beings? You’re like flamin’ foghorns, the lot of you. You’d think we lived in different parts of the village, not under the same flamin’ roof. Gerry, will you turn that flamin’ music down,’ he
went on. ‘I can’t hear the telly and me nose is only six inches away from the flamin’ thing.’

‘I’m sorry, Daddy,’ Theresa and Marie said together, but the noise in the next room – a marching band in full throttle – continued at the same level. Gerry hadn’t heard. The two girls glared at each other over the crumpled bed that Mam refused to make unless the room was tidied first. As none of the four girls whose room it was were prepared to do it, the beds stayed unmade.

‘I didn’t touch your black frock, Theresa, honest,’ Marie said sincerely, though she had – she crossed her fingers behind her back to excuse the lie. The stains had come from Tommy Costello’s coke tin – he’d been hurling it into the air and when it was opened the liquid had spurted out, like a firework spraying sparks, all over Theresa’s frock. At least the stains weren’t quite as noticeable on black as they’d have been on blue – she’d have worn the blue if the armpits hadn’t stunk to high heaven from when Theresa had ‘borrowed’ it the week before. It meant she’d have to wash it herself: no one trusted Mam with anything even faintly delicate as she just bundled everything into the machine, regardless of colour, never thinking to alter the temperature from the very hottest, so the whole wash was boiled and the clothes that emerged were unrecognizable: colours faded or a different colour altogether and only half the size they’d been when they went in.

‘Where are you going tonight?’ Theresa asked.

‘Round Rita Kelly’s house,’ Marie replied. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m going to Donegal with Calum to see
Raging Bull
with Robert de Niro.’

‘Is it getting serious with Calum, Tess?’ The girls were
the best of friends again. The rows they had meant nothing.

Theresa went slightly pink. ‘Pretty serious.’ She sat at the dressing table and began to make up her face. The top was a jumble of bottles and jars, lipsticks, blushers, eye shadows and holy statues – three rosaries were draped over the mirror. More fights were fought over the contents of the dressing table than over clothes.

‘Can I be your bridesmaid when you and Calum get married?’

‘Aw, I dunno, Marie. If I say yes, I’d have to say it to everyone and Calum has three sisters. I’d feel daft having eleven bridesmaids. I mean we’re not exactly royalty, are we? Anyroad, no way could we afford to pay for the frocks, you’d all have to buy your own, except our Sheila only earns a pittance at the art centre, and Orla and Kitty are still at school and Colette hasn’t even started, so it seems bit much to expect Mam and Dad to shell out for them – it’s less than a year since our Caitlin got wed—’

‘And six months since she had their Darren,’ Marie interrupted with a knowing laugh.

‘Well, the less said about that the better,’ Theresa said with a grin. ‘There’s a Brennan got married every year for the last four and Mam and Dad must be sick to the teeth of buying bridesmaid’s frocks. First Clodagh, and then Siobhan, followed by Jimmy, and of course, Caitlin with the bulging belly that she tried to hide under a great bow. Did you ever know a bride before who had such a bow on the front of her dress and not the back?’

‘Never!’ Marie giggled. She lay on the bed in the chaotic room, as she had done thousands of times in the past, watching her elder sisters get made up and chatter about their boyfriends, and longing for the time to come when she’d have make-up and boyfriends of her own,
one of whom she would eventually fall in love with and marry. Now the house was gradually emptying and, once Theresa married Calum, Marie, eighteen, would be the oldest Brennan girl left and have the double bed to herself. There were bunk beds at the far end of the room where Sheila and Orla slept, and Kitty and Colette were in the poky room that Dad had built in the loft. She hoped neither of them would want to sleep with her. She was looking forward to sleeping in the big bed alone.

‘Anyroad, Tess,’ she said, ‘as regards the bridesmaid’s frock, I’m willing to pay for me own as long it’s something I can go dancing in afterwards and not some shiny taffeta creation I’ll never wear again. By the way, that’s
my
lippy you’re about to put on. It’s only Rimmel, but I’d prefer you didn’t use it.’

Theresa scowled at the lipstick. ‘Are you sure? I thought it was mine.’

‘Since when have you worn russet brown?’

‘You’re right, mine’s coral.’ Theresa searched through the debris for the coral lipstick. ‘Ah, here it is without the top. It’s got hairs stuck to it. They’re red.’ She looked at her sister accusingly.

‘I’m not the only one in this house with red hair, and I’d look a desperate freak in coral. It must have been our Orla using it, or it might have been Colette.’

‘Colette’s not even five yet.’

‘Yes, but she’s a forward little madam.’

Theresa sighed as she picked the hairs off the lipstick, a look of distaste on her face. ‘I need to keep all me personal possessions under lock and key.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ said Marie, thinking of her blue frock. She said casually, ‘You’ll never guess who was at the dance last night.’ She paused for effect, ‘Father Murphy!’

‘He never was!’ Theresa gasped.

‘He was an’ all. And he wasn’t in priest’s gear, either. He wore a polo-necked jumper and jeans.’

Theresa took in a long, ecstatic breath. ‘What colour was the jumper?’

‘White.’

‘I bet he looked dead gorgeous.’

‘He looked like Robert Redford in
Three Days of the Condor
. Remember we went to Donegal to see it last year?’

‘I remember. Did he ask anyone up to dance?’

‘Only Mrs Shaugnessy who does the flowers in church. She’s about a hundred and two. They did an old-fashioned waltz. All the girls’ tongues were hanging out a foot and a half, praying he’d ask
them
.’

‘Fancy dancing with a
priest
! It makes me go all funny, just thinking about it.’ Theresa stood and smoothed down her grey tweed skirt, adjusted the collar of her blouse, and patted her brown hair. ‘Do I look all right?’

‘You look fantastic, sis.’

‘Honest?’

‘Honest. Calum will be wanting to rip your clothes off the minute he sets eyes on you.’ Half the Brennans had their dad’s red hair, the other half their mother’s rich brown. Looks had been doled out in similar proportions: the brown-haired Brennans were pretty – or handsome in the case of Francis who was fifteen – and the freckle-faced, ginger-headed half wouldn’t exactly set the world alight with their looks: only their flaming hair and dark green eyes made them stand out in a crowd.

Theresa left and Marie lay staring at the poster of Mick Jagger that Clodagh had pasted on the ceiling when she was fourteen. Mam had done her nut, but when she’d tried to pull the poster down, the ceiling had started to
come with it and she’d had to paste it back again. She was wondering if Mam would notice if she covered Mick Jagger with Sting, when her sister, Orla, came barging in.

‘Jaysus! It stinks in here,’ she gasped.

‘That’s our Theresa’s perfume. It cost a packet.’

‘Well, she wasted her money. What is it, Canal Number Five?’

‘I bet you’ve been waiting years for the opportunity to use that joke.’

‘It was in an old film I saw on telly last Sunday afternoon. Will you be off out shortly, Marie? I was intending to do me homework on that bed. Our Francis has bagged the table in the kitchen and Dad’s watching telly in the front room.’

‘I’ll go now.’ Marie rolled off the bed. She was only going round Rita Kelly’s, so didn’t bother to put on more lippy or comb her hair or change out of the clothes she’d worn for work at Monaghan’s bakers in the High Street, something she would deeply regret before the evening was over.

Rita Kelly, Ursula Adams and Marguerite Kelly – no relation to Rita – had all been in the same class at school as Marie. When she arrived, they were sitting on the floor in Rita’s bedroom listening to a Police record.

‘Hi, Marie,’ Rita hollered. ‘Fancy a coke?’

‘Sure thing.’ Rita threw her the tin and Marie opened it cautiously, just in case it squirted out like the night before. ‘Ta, Rita.’

Ursula produced a bottle from behind her back. ‘Fancy some rum in it?’ she asked. ‘I pinched it from our Clifford’s room. I’m going to fill it with cold tea afterwards, see if he notices.’

‘I reckon he will,’ said Marguerite, tossing her long hair. She was the prettiest, most glamorous there – and knew it. Marie was already wishing she’d changed into something more respectable when she saw Marguerite was wearing a black T-shirt with lace inserts, jeans, and long, dangly diamante´ earrings. Her father was a solicitor and she was never short of a few bob.

‘It depends on how pissed he is when he goes to drink it,’ Ursula said. ‘He’s got a drink problem, our Clifford.’

‘It shouldn’t be a problem for long if all he drinks is cold tea.’

At this, the girls shrieked with laughter. Their laughter gauge was set at its very highest whenever they visited each other’s houses although they never went to Marie’s as there wasn’t an empty room.

‘Did’ya see Father Murphy at the dance last night?’ Marguerite breathed.

‘He reminded me of Harrison Ford in them clothes.’

‘No, Robert Redford,’ Marie argued.

‘He looked more like Richard Gere in
Yanks
,’ said Rita. She was a big-boned, healthy-looking girl with white-blonde, dead straight hair that positively refused to curl, no matter what was done to it. One of the nuns at school, Sister St Mary, used to insist she was Swedish. ‘Robert Redford’s too old, at least forty.’

‘Richard Gere didn’t wear jeans in
Yanks
,’ Ursula informed them. ‘It was set during the war and he wore a uniform the whole way through. I don’t know why you’re all slobbering yourselves to death over a priest, anyroad. He’s only a
priest
. He still goes to the lavvy and wipes his bottom like everyone else.’

The other three gasped. Marie shook her head, as if she was trying to get rid of the picture of Father Murphy wiping his bottom that had come into her mind. ‘That’s
a sacrilegious thing to say, Urse. You should be ashamed of yourself,’ she said primly.

‘It’s not sacrilegious because I’m not a religious person any more. I’m an atheist, I only decided the other day. I don’t believe in anything, not even God.’ Ursula folded her arms and looked at them challengingly, but nobody could be bothered arguing. Wasn’t she always saying things like that and hoping to create a stir? And hadn’t they stopped taking the bait whenever the delicate, waiflike Ursula, who only looked about fourteen, claimed to have thought something or done something that was completely at odds with what they thought and did themselves?

‘Rita, your brother’s home,’ a voice called. It was Brigid, Rita’s sister, who was going on for forty and had become a substitute mother since Mrs Kelly had died giving birth to Rita, her tenth child. Brigid had been courting Edward O’Connor for twenty-one whole years and the wedding was taking place in a fortnight’s time, a week after Rita’s eighteenth birthday, when Brigid felt her duty to her family had been done.

‘Which brother?’ Rita shouted.

‘It’s our Enda.’

‘Send him up. Tell him the girls are here.’

Footsteps thundered up the stairs, the door was flung open, and Enda Kelly hurtled into the room. He was twenty-one and, like his sister, was tall and big-boned, his blond hair as flat as a pancake – quite literally, as it looked as if a pancake had been slapped on to his head and moulded to shape.

‘Hiya, kids.’ He beamed at them. ‘I’ve brought someone to see you. This is Mickey Harrison, me best mate at Harland & Wolff.’ Enda worked at the shipyards in Belfast and often came home for weekends.

A man came into the room, about the same age as Enda. He was tall and slim, with jet-black wavy hair, jet-black eyes, and a wide mouth curled in the wickedest, most enticing of smiles that Marie had ever seen. He looked the girls over critically and his eyes settled on Marguerite, who, noticing the look, stretched voluptuously, finishing with her hands folded behind her head so that her small breasts, encased in a sexy black bra, were pointing at the newcomer through the lace inserts of her T-shirt, as if to say, ‘I dare you to touch them.’

Mickey Harrison appeared quite ready to take the dare. His wicked smile grew wider as he stared at Marguerite. When Rita said, ‘Come in and join us, youse two. We’ve got coke and rum,’ he bounded across the room and plonked himself beside the breasts, completely ignoring Marie on his other side. She felt like the most unattractive person in the entire world. Either that or she’d disappeared, become invisible, and Mickey Harrison couldn’t see her with his black, mischievous eyes.

It was a good half-hour before he turned and noticed her. ‘Sorry, luv. I’m being rude, aren’t I? What’s your name? I know Rita told us, but I’ve forgotten.’

‘Marie Brennan,’ she said coldly. ‘And yes, you
are
rude, sitting with your back to me all this time.’

He looked taken aback, probably expecting her to fawn all over him, as Marguerite had been doing ever since he came in, or thrust her breasts in his face – they were bigger than Marguerite’s by a mile. ‘I said I was sorry,’ he stammered.

She shrugged carelessly. ‘OK, apology accepted – what’s
your
name? I’ve forgotten too.’

‘Mickey Harrison.’ His eyes held a gleam of interest.
Marie could tell that she intrigued him. ‘Have you got a boyfriend, Marie?’

She wasn’t sure what to answer. If she said yes, he might run a mile and, although she never went short of dates, she’d never had a proper boyfriend, but didn’t want Mickey to know that. She shrugged again and said,

‘A sort of boyfriend. He’s in England, at university,’ she added, inspired. ‘He keeps on at me to get married, but I’m not sure if I want to.’ The others were busy talking and didn’t hear the brazen lie.