Of course there were times when her actions didn’t cause her parents to applaud. On one memorable occasion she emptied the contents of Helen’s makeup purse into the toilet bowl, where they lay unnoticed for several hours. Another time she covered the bottom half of her white bedroom wall in pink crayon scribbles, and once she poured almost an entire jar of honey into
Cormac’s unattended, and much-loved, slippers.
He was always ready to forgive Alice –
She’s still a baby, she doesn’t know any better
– or at the most issue a gentle scolding, but Helen would look at her little daughter and feel nothing but a strong desire to smack. She’d watch Cormac speaking quietly and lovingly to Alice, and wonder if whoever had put her together had forgotten to include a fully-formed maternal gene.
Then again, maybe her lack of warmth towards her daughter wasn’t so surprising, given her own emotionally barren upbringing. With such little affection shown to her as a child, was it any wonder that she found it hard to be affectionate with her own child? Just as well Alice had a father who took care of all that.
But then Cormac had been diagnosed, shortly after Alice’s third birthday, and when he’d died less than a year later, and Helen had missed being there because of Alice, she’d struggled to overcome deeper feelings of resentment towards her daughter. It wasn’t Alice’s fault, she’d told herself repeatedly. You couldn’t hold a three-year-old responsible for anything. So she’d smothered her bitterness and battled on, and she’d somehow managed to keep their shaky relationship alive.
And now, three years on, things were better. Not hugely better, just not as abysmally sad as they’d been. Helen still ached for Cormac: the hole he’d left was still there, bloody and gaping inside her – till the day she died it would be there – but the sharp pain of his absence had dulled and softened, and she’d learnt to live with it. She and Alice were muddling along, because there was nothing else for them to do.
Her choice of profession was continuing to pay the bills. She was making enough as a journalist – a journalist! – to keep herself and Alice tolerably well fed and clothed. She wrote features on the events of the day, she reviewed books and films; she’d even profiled Tommy and Jimmy Swarbrigg last year, shortly before they’d made their second failed attempt to win the Eurovision for Ireland. While Breen remained her main employer,
she also sent occasional reviews to other publications.
And on the home front, relations were cordial, if as reserved as ever, with her parents. Things could be worse, that was for sure.
A small shuffling sound came just then from the hall. Helen went out and saw the scatter of envelopes on the floor, only one of which looked like it might contain a cheque. When she returned to the kitchen, Alice’s mouth was full, and an untouched Marietta biscuit sat on the plate before her.
‘Did you take two?’ Helen asked.
Alice shook her head, crunching rapidly.
‘So what are you eating?’
‘Orange,’ Alice replied, spraying crumbs.
Helen slit open the first envelope. ‘If you’re going to lie, learn to do it properly.’ She pulled out the final reminder from the phone company and wondered, not for the first time, if there was any point in calling it a working expense and passing it on to Breen.
Precious few perks in working for him – unless you counted the Christmas parties, which Helen had avoided since her first one. She’d never ended a phone conversation with him feeling anything less than irritated, and she regularly gave thanks that she didn’t have to be in his company all day. How Catherine managed to keep going as his PA was one of life’s little miracles. No, Helen would sort the phone bill on her own – no point in giving him another opportunity to make her want to throttle him.
The second envelope, thankfully, held
a cheque from her least favourite editor. He wore sandals and picked at his toes while he talked to her breasts, but a cheque was a cheque. She folded it and tucked it into her bra. Wouldn’t be there long, with nothing in the fridge apart from three more sour oranges, a can of grapefruit segments, half a jar of lemon curd and a third of a bottle of whiskey.
‘What’s for dinner?’ Alice asked.
‘Fish fingers.’
‘Yuk.’
Yuk was right. Bits of fish’s arse probably, covered with orange muck – but Helen was damned if she was going to waste time cooking for just two people, particularly when one was so unappreciative, and the other couldn’t care less what – or if – she ate. Helen was well aware of her strengths, and producing a home-cooked meal had never been one of them.
Cormac had cooked. Not very well, but better than Helen. Depending on their finances he’d fed her lamb chops and grilled fish and steak, among other things.
‘You’re a musician,’ she’d told him, ‘you shouldn’t know how to stuff a chicken.’
‘You can’t beat a decent bit of homemade grub,’ he’d replied. ‘I need to keep my strength up for the gigs.’ But all the homemade grub in the world couldn’t give him enough strength to beat cancer when it had picked him out of the crowd.
‘We’ve no milk,’ Alice announced, standing at the open fridge door.
‘I’ll get some later. Have water.’
‘Yuk.’
Thin Lizzy erupted on the radio. Helen nodded along, although Phil Lynott was no Rory Gallagher. The third envelope, addressed to
the resident
, was a printed invitation to a fundraiser for a local sports club. Spot prize’s! it told her.
Music provided by Two’s a Crowd! Finger Food! Dancing! A fun night guaranteed! Support you’re local club!
She screwed it up and threw it in the general direction of the bin. Even if she’d been gagging for a breaded chicken wing and a turn around the dance floor, she’d have had to pass on grounds of bad grammar and overuse of exclamation marks. Screamers, Breen called them, to be avoided at all costs. It was one of the few things they agreed on.
The fourth envelope had
Sarah Flannery
handwritten in purple ink in the top left-hand corner. There was an address underneath, a small town about forty or fifty miles away.
Sarah Flannery. The name meant
nothing.
The envelope had been sent to the newspaper office, and was addressed to Helen O’Dowd, c/o M. Breen. Care of M. Breen, as if Breen cared a jot about her. The O’Dowd had been crossed out and changed to Fitzpatrick in Catherine’s tidy, cramped writing – in safe blue ink – and Helen’s address was written off to the side.
Someone else she’d offended, no doubt. Lots of sensitive souls out there, went running for their Basildon Bond at the smallest little thing. A woman had written to Helen once to complain about her use of the word ‘laughable’ in describing the chart success of a song called ‘Money, Money, Money’, when Ireland was in such deep recession.
There’s nothing laughable about a recession
, her letter had read.
My husband lost his job eight months ago, and he’s certainly not laughing. I wonder if Abba would laugh if I asked them to pay our ESB bill.
Another time, when Helen had had the temerity to suggest that Ireland was being led by a man who was more at home in Croke Park than in Leinster House, an avalanche of outraged letters had arrived at the newspaper office, most of them with Cork postmarks, all of them insisting that Jack Lynch was the best Taoiseach the country had ever known, and more than a few of them demanding that Helen retract her statement.
Breen, when he’d told her, had sounded almost gleeful. Helen had assumed he was taking pleasure from her having landed in trouble.
‘Do I need to issue an apology?’ she’d asked.
He’d snorted. ‘An apology? You’ll do nothing of the sort. You stirred things up – that’s what sells papers.’
‘But what about all the—’
‘I wasn’t ringing about that. I want a thousand words on Steve Biko’s autopsy findings by noon tomorrow. Give us your take on how white security police could be let off when a black anti-apartheid leader died of a brain haemorrhage brought on by repeated blows to the head while in their custody. Lay it on thick: I want righteous outrage here.’
He was fearless, like Helen. That
much they had in common, that much she admired about him.
‘What time is it?’ Alice asked.
Helen glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘
Fuck
,’ she breathed, dropping the envelope and pushing back her chair. ‘Get your coat.’
‘I don’t need—’
‘Just get it.’ She threw the breakfast things into the sink and found the car keys on the worktop, under a red and pink striped sock.
‘I forgot to brush my teeth,’ Alice announced in the car. Waiting until she knew there wasn’t time to go back inside, clever little madam.
‘They’ll fall out,’ Helen told her, reversing out of the driveway. ‘You’ll have to get false ones and
they’ll
keep falling out into your dinner, and everyone will laugh at you.’
Alice turned her head to look out of the window, unconcerned. ‘No, they won’t. Patricia O’Neill brings Lemon Puffs for her lunch every single day and her teeth didn’t fall out.’
Helen drove past the house next door, giving a cheery wave to Malone, pottering around in his tiny, immaculate garden. He scowled at her like he usually did. One day he’d smile and she’d keel over with the shock.
The principal was standing by the school door, scanning the road. Lying in wait. As soon as Helen pulled up she came over, plump arm raised, moving as fast as her long black habit would allow. ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick, just a quick word, if I—’
‘Sorry, Sister,’ Helen told her, practically pushing Alice out. ‘I’m rushing for an appointment, can’t stop. Terribly sorry.’
Who cared if Alice was a couple of minutes late every now and again? What the hell was so important in First Class? Let Sister Aloysius write Helen a letter if it was so important.
Back home she rinsed the breakfast dishes and left them to drain. She made a fresh pot of coffee, forgetting that they were out of milk until she went to look for it. She swore loudly, slamming the fridge door.
Malone – he could hardly say no, even if it killed her to ask. And she needed coffee if she was to write
a thousand words on Joe Dolan, of all people, by the middle of the afternoon. ‘He’s planning a tour of Russia later in the year,’ Breen had told her. ‘First Western entertainer to go there. Give me a piece on that, from Mullingar to Moscow kind of thing.’
Helen had groaned. ‘Joe Dolan? Please.’
‘Just do it,’ Breen had replied, in a voice you didn’t argue with.
Joe Dolan sang the kind of songs Helen had always run a mile from. Some challenge, to make it sound like she had the slightest interest in a would-be Elvis from the back end of nowhere, strutting his stuff in the dancehalls of Russia. But she couldn’t afford to turn down the cheque, so she’d ordered a couple of magazines from his fan club, and she had the bones of her piece put together. She’d squeeze out a thousand words on anything, if someone was willing to pay for it.
Thankfully, she had a few far more interesting ideas waiting to be worked up. She wanted to write a feature on the Yorkshire Ripper, his latest victim, just eighteen years old, discovered six weeks ago. She was also planning to interview mothers of Irish soldiers headed for the Lebanon: Breen would definitely go for that.
And if she could swing it, she was hoping for an interview with Eamonn Coghlan before he headed to the European Athletics Championships in August. Plenty in the pipeline, along with her usual stock of book and film reviews.
She left the house through the front door, where she found Malone clipping the dividing hedge. Small as it was, his lawn was an immaculate perfect green, not a dandelion or daisy to be seen. Two shrubs that she didn’t recognise sat neatly inside his front wall. Probably loved the fact that he was showing up her gravel patch.
‘Milk?’ His scowl deepened, if that was possible. He lowered his shears slowly, probably dying to shove them between her ribs.
Helen resisted the impulse to say,
Yes, you know, the white stuff that comes from cows.
‘I’ve run out,’ she told him, in as civil a
tone as she could manage. ‘Just need a drop for my coffee, if you can spare it.’
He continued to scrutinise her suspiciously. At least he kept his eyes on her face. Probably wouldn’t know what to do with a pair of tits if they were handed to him on a plate.
‘Don’t know if I have any,’ he said eventually. ‘Don’t use it much.’
‘I just need a small drop,’ she told him.
Quick as you like, you old fart.
He turned and made his way up the short path to his front door. Last thing he wanted to do, help her out in any way. Banging on the wall between them anytime she turned her music up, even in the middle of the afternoon. Lately she’d taken to banging back, which must really get his blood pressure going. With any luck she’d finish him off one day, blast Black Sabbath out till she gave him a coronary.
She stood waiting on her side of the hedge. His house probably stank of that ratty old cat of his, no sign of a window open. Come to think of it, the milk might well smell of cat too. She should have gone to the shop, might still have to. What was keeping the old goat?
Eventually he reappeared and offered her a half-full blue and white striped cup. Broke his heart, barely enough for two refills.
‘Thanks, appreciate it.’
‘I’ll need the cup back,’ he said.
As if she’d want to hang on to anything that belonged to him. ‘You’ll get it,’ she said tightly. ‘I have plenty of my own.’
‘And keep that music down,’ he added, as she turned away.
She made no reply. Just her luck to end up living beside such a grump.
His bark’s worse than his bite
, Cormac had said,
just give him a chance
, but the less Helen saw of him, with his threadbare jumpers that smelt of Zam-Buk and his baggy grey vests strung across his washing line, the better.
Back in the kitchen she turned on the news. A British soldier and a woman civilian shot dead in Belfast by gunmen posing as Rag Week students in fancy dress. Charlie Chaplin’s body snatched by grave robbers in Switzerland.
The Spike
, RTÉ’s big new drama, shot down in flames after just five episodes because it had
dared to feature a nude actress playing the part of an art class model – now
there
was something to get her teeth into, once Joe Dolan was out of the way.