You E-Book

Nuala Ní Chonchúir

• Herausgeber: New Island
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 305

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Dublin, summer 1980; Kate Bush is on the radio, Nadia Comăneci is cleaning up at the Olympics and in one house by the Liffey, a spiky but sensitive ten-year-old girl is minding her troubled ma and her two brothers. But when a tragedy splits the family apart, the girl realizes that the only person she can depend on is herself.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

About the author

Praise for Nuala Ní Chonchúir

BOOK ONE

1 – Anything Strange Or Startling?

2 – A Different Daddy

3 – Friends

4 – A Party

5 – Kit

6 – Gwen’s gone

7 – The Green Merc

8 – A Fight

9 – The New Baby

10 – A Letter

11 – Feet

12 – Doll Face

13 – A Holiday For Your Ma

14 – Picnic

BOOK TWO

1 – Dog

2 – Funeral

3 – Back to the River

4 – Another Letter

5 – A Plan and A Boat

6 – A Visit

7 – Bella Larkin

8 – In Wales

9 – Unhappy Da

10 – Seeing your Ma

11 – A Homecoming

YOU

First published 2010

by New Island

2 Brookside

Dundrum Road

Dublin 14

www.newisland.ie

ISBN epub edition: 978-1-84840-132-7

Copyright © Nuala Ní Chonchúir

The author has asserted her moral rights.

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Book design by Inka Hagen

New Island received financial assistance from The Arts Council (An

Comhairle Ealaíon), Dublin, Ireland

About the author

NUALA NÍ CHONCHÚIR

lives in County Galway. She was chosen by The Irish Times as a writer to watch in 2009 and was recently shortlisted for the European Prize for Literature. Nuala was one of four winners of the Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection competition. Her poetry pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car was published by Templar in November 2009. Her third short fiction collection Nude was published by Salt Publishing in September 2009. Nuala was awarded Arts Council Bursaries in 2004 and 2009. She has poems and an essay in The Watchful Heart – A New Generation of Irish Poets, edited by Joan McBreen (Salmon, 2009). A new collection of poetry, The Juno Charm, will be published by Templar in November 2010.

Also by

NUALA NÍ CHONCHÚIR

Short Fiction

Nude

To The World of Men, Welcome

The Wind Across the Grass

Poetry

Portrait of the Artist With a Red Car

Tattoo: Tatú

Molly’s Daughter

Plays: Co-author

Departures

www.nualanichonchuir.com

Praise for Nuala Ní Chonchúir

‘Nuala Ní Chonchúir epitomises the poet/writer who uses the in- tensity of her poetry skills in prose to produce, in The Wind Across the Grass, sensualist microcosms of love, life and love gone astray. Here is a sharp but compassionate eye that can make us believe that these strange and wonderful characters breathe, hope and suffer....

A good writer, like any good artist, should perturb and make us think. So, with this criteria, she fully deserves all accolades accorded to her’Julia Bohanna, The Short Review

~

‘…a gifted and ambitious artist, with a delicate feel for the accuracies and narrow tolerances of the short story’

Mike McCormack

~

‘There is bright assessment here as Nuala Ní Chonchúir deftly sketches in her surroundings. Then emotions sweep in, deeper, unsettling. But confidence and intelligence are central in all of her writing, creating a safety net. She searches like

a lighthouse, picking out the unusual’Pat Jourdan, Women’s Studies Review

~

‘[She has] a modern irreverent sensibility’ Nessa O’Mahony, Poetry Ireland Review

~

‘Ní Chonchúir’s work is both sensual and provocative…she bares her soul and examines the world around her in visceral and challenging ways’ Marc Schuster, Small Press Reviews

~

‘She is a real writer’ Jeremy Addis, Books Ireland

PRAISE FOR NUDE

‘A wonderful collection from a wonderful writer’ Small Press Reviews

~

‘A gorgeous collection. It’s sexy, intelligent, sensual, challenging ... Highly recommended.’ Jennifer Matthews, Southword

BOOK ONE

1 – Anything Strange Or Startling?

Your ma used up all the juice again. Last week you asked could she get two cartons of orange from now on, instead of only one, because there was never any for you and your brother Liam. She went mad, shouting at you so much that you could see frothy bits at the sides of her mouth, like the scurf that Liam calls Guinness water that floats on the top of the river,.

‘Do you think I’m made of money? Do you think I’m Rockefeller?’ she roared. She lost the cool with you for ten minutes.

‘OK, OK, I was only saying.’

She called you a cheeky pup and said to get out of her sight.

There’s no juice left because your ma knocked it back with her drink again. That means you have to get Liam ready for school and he’ll keep saying ‘I want mammy’. You like a drop of orange in the morning. Even though it makes your throat creamy, it’s refreshing. It goes well with toast and marmalade. You don’t drink tea any more. You gave it up two years ago when you were eight. First you stopped having sugar in your tea and then you decided not to drink it ever again. You think you feel better for it. Your ma loves a nice cup of tea. She likes it strong; strong enough to dry her mouth. Weak tea is piss-water, she says, but she doesn’t say it in front of visitors, only to you and her friend Cora.

Cora is huge and has hands that are knotted like a bird’s claws. Your ma doesn’t mind; she thinks Cora is a marvel. She calls her a girl, but really she must be about fifty. Cora’s husband, Noel, is a lousy eejit. He has a preggy belly and sideburns like sweeping brushes. The state of him, your ma says, and Cora laughs, but then sometimes she doesn’t laugh. Sometimes she’s in love with Noel.

You and Liam play ‘Cora’: you pick up your cups of milk with claw hands and say ‘Indeed and it is’ and ‘Indeed and it does’ and ‘Anything strange or startling?’ That’s the way Cora goes on. Your ma caught you at it before. ‘Stop that, you brats,’ she said, but she laughed.

You make a cup of tea for your ma and bring it up to her bedroom. It smells like dirty tights and talc in there in the mornings and the air is always warm. Your ma’s head is sticking out of the sheets and her cheeks are rosy. The baby lies beside her with dribbles falling from his mouth. Your ma’s pink cheeks are called grog blossoms – her and Cora say that – and she only gets them when she’s after having a drink. She covers them with foundation if she has to go anywhere. She is so pale the rest of the time that you like her grog blossoms because they make her look happy. She was crying again last night.

‘A cup of tea for you,’ you whisper and she pulls herself up, groaning.

The baby is asleep beside her in the bed; he’s one and a bit but he still won’t sleep in a cot.

‘Leave it there, like a good girl,’ she says, pointing to the bedside table. She squeezes your hand and tries to give you a kiss, but you turn your head to one side because of the sour smell of her mouth. She drops your hand and pushes you away.

‘Go on so, Little Miss Prim,’ she says.

On the landing you stop to look out at the river rushing below the window. Your house is special: it’s built right on top of the river. The river wall is your wall. You’ve had two floods, but your ma doesn’t want to move. She won’t live in one of those matchboxes up in the town, she says, not for love or money.

You get Liam’s breakfast ready and then pull him out of bed. His hair is all over the place, so you brush it down while he’s eating. You do your own hair then and leave the hairbrush back on the counter for Ma. The brush has three types of hair stuck in it: yours, your ma’s and Liam’s. The baby’s hair is so short it doesn’t need brushing yet, and anyway, it’s sort of knobbly and curly, so it wouldn’t brush properly. Having to clean out Liam’s lunchbox before you can put the lunch in delays you. That means you’re late for meeting Gwen and it’s the last day of school before the summer holidays and she’ll walk on without you. Gwen is your best friend on earth. She’s Welsh and some day, she always says, she’ll be leaving Dublin to go back there. Gwen says that Wales is much better than Ireland and that she’s pure British because her mother is Scottish and her dad is English, but she was born in Wales. You say you are pure Irish, but she says that doesn’t cut any ice with her because so are most people in Ireland. You hope she never goes back to Wales.

Sure enough, Gwen is gone on ahead by the time you get down past the row of houses and the bridge over the river where you always meet her. You just hope she hasn’t walked to school with Anne. That Anne is always trying to steal Gwen away. You’d love to give Anne a good bite on the cheek or something like that. She has fat lips and blonde hair and her family is rich. She wears a red kilt with a big curly pin in it and you’d like a kilt like that. She has a room full of medals and trophies for Irish dancing. You wish bad things would happen to her, but sometimes you feel guilty because your granny used to say that, in the eyes of God, thinking a bad thing is as bad as doing it. You’re not sure you believe that. Since your granny died, you don’t have to go to Mass any more. Your ma says that the priests have too much old blether. Mass is boring and, anyway, everyone just sits there with their minds wandering, pretending to be holy.

Your granny was ancient. She died in 'the home and the nurses wouldn’t let her have her fags, which were her one pleasure. She used to say that the nurses were stealing her money.

‘I’d a half-crown under my pillow this morning and now it’s gone,’ she’d say.

‘Half-crowns went out with the Ark, Granny,’ you’d say, but she’d just nod and clack her false teeth against her gums and tell you to keep saying your prayers.

At school, before the teacher comes in, they’re all going on about the volcano that erupted in America. It’s Mount St. Helens this and Mount St. Helens that, as if any of them had ever been there. Still, you get swept away with all the talk about the volcano and next thing you know you’re saying that your uncle lives in Washington in a big wooden house. They’re all looking at you.

‘Yes,’ you say, ‘he saw the whole thing. He heard it going off and in the morning the smoke had blotted out the sun. And then molten lava flowed right past his door, killing dogs and people and everything.’

‘How do you know?’ asks Anne.

‘Because he rang us up right when it was happening.’

‘I didn’t know youse had a telephone,’ she says, real sly.

‘They just got one in,’ says Gwen, saving your neck.

That Anne is a greasy cow; you hate her flabby mouth. On the way home, Gwen asks if you really have an uncle in Washington and you say that you have, keeping up the lie even though she’s your best friend. Your face is going red, so you tell her that your ma went out with a fella called Eugene on Saturday night.

‘They went to the pictures to see The Elephant Man. ma said it was morbid and she nearly fell asleep. She said, “What kind of a gobshite brings a woman to see a film like that?”’

Gwen laughs. ‘A big gobshite,’ she says. Then she says that she has something to tell you. She’s going away with her mam and dad. ‘Back to Wales – out of this place at last,’ she says.

You can’t believe it – she seems so happy! You shuffle along beside her.

‘We’re going away too,’ you say after a minute. She asks where. ‘We’re going to Washington, if you must know,’ you say, very loud. She looks at you sideways. Then you run off home because you think you’re going to cry.

The front door is locked and it’s Cora who opens it. ‘There you are,’ she says, her hook hands curved into her chest. ‘Anything strange or startling?’ Her voice is funny and she’s looking over your head instead of at your face.

You go into the kitchen; Noel is there and you ask where your ma is. He doesn’t lift his head from his dinner.

‘Ah, now,’ says Cora, still not looking at you, ‘she’s had to take a trip for herself. Noel and me are going to mind the three of you until she’s able to get back.’

‘What kind of a trip? Where to?’

Cora looks over at Noel. ‘Well, she’s gone into the hospital, to Saint Angela’s; she just had to go in for a little rest.’

‘Saint Angela’s is for old people.’

‘Yes … well, it was the nearest.’

Cora picks up a cloth and starts wiping at nothing. Liam is at the table. The baby’s in his high-chair; there’s stuff stuck all over his face. Noel is sitting in your ma’s chair, scoffing chips.

‘Come on, love,’ he grunts, ‘sit down there now and have your dinner.’

You can see all the mashed-up chips through his teeth.

‘I’m not your love,’ you say and you go up to your room.

Your ma looks as pale as buttermilk when you visit her in the hospital, even paler than usual. She’s wearing a paper nightdress and it rustles when she shifts in the bed. There’s a smell in the ward like clean on top of dirty, and the old women in the beds stare at you when Cora brings you and Liam and the baby in. One of them calls you over, but she’s talking gibberish and you can’t understand a word she says. She tries to pet the baby’s cheek, but he wriggles away and puts his face into your shoulder. Liam giggles. Your ma’s eyes are all puffy and red. Her arms are flopped in front of her. They are in bits, covered in trails of brown scabs that have high pink sides. Liam puts his finger on the cuts. She touches his cheek and he starts to cry.

‘There now, Little Pudding,’ she says, but she is nearly crying too. She takes the flowers you’ve brought and sniffs them, except they are chrysanthemums and they have no real smell. ‘They’re gorgeous, kids, thanks,’ she says very quietly.

‘Indeed and they are, Joan,’ says Cora and she pats Liam on the head with her crabby hand. He pulls his head away, tossing his hair. Joan is what your ma’s called, like Joan of Arc, but she was French – your ma is only Irish.

Your ma has nothing to say for herself and it’s hard to know what to talk about. She cuddles the baby and he paws at her nightie, trying to get at her boobs. The baby drinks milk from your ma’s boobs; it’s called breastfeeding. He still gets suckies, even though he is more than a year old, has teeth, can eat biscuits and is walking by himself. Your ma always says that breast is best and you’ll all be brainboxes thanks to her. Cora tells her the death toll from the volcano in America has reached fifty-eight and that Noel is gone in to have his corns pared. Your ma doesn’t say anything; she just stares at you all and hugs the baby. It’s like as if she’s asleep but awake at the same time. You tell her that Gwen and her mam and dad are going back to Wales. She nods. You want her to say something about the school holidays and Gwen leaving, but you can tell she’s miles away.

‘This place is stinky,’ says Liam; ‘it smells like bums.’

You give him a puck to shut him up, but your ma laughs.

‘You’re right, Liam,’ she says and you all laugh, but Cora laughs a bit too hard.

‘It’s not that funny,’ you say and she stops.

‘I’ll just go and ask the nurse for a vase for the flowers,’ she says.

‘Well?’ whispers your ma when she’s gone.

‘Well,’ Liam says, ‘what happened to your arms?’

‘I had an accident. I was attacked by a lawnmower.’ She smiles.

Liam stares at her all gawpy-eyed. ‘Noel won’t let us watch what we want to on the telly.’

‘When are you getting out?’ you ask.

‘I’ll be out next week and we’ll go to the zoo, just the four of us.’

The last time you all went to the zoo, she met a fella and you ended up in a pub on Parkgate Street for the rest of the day, with her doing false laughs and him grabbing at her. Afterwards she called him a mean little scut because he didn’t give you all a lift home.

‘Not the zoo,’ you say.

She moves in the bed, cradling the baby across her lap, and reaches over to her locker. ‘I’ve a few sweets in here.’

She can’t pull the door open. Her hospital nightdress has no back to it and her grey bra strap is on view. You rush round the bed to help her open the door, so she’ll sit back and not be making a show of you all. She’s still stretching.

‘Oh feck!’ she yelps, holding on to her arm. One of her cuts has opened and big globs of blood are sliding down her wrist onto the bedspread. The baby claps his hands. Cora comes down the ward and then runs off screaming ‘Nurse! Nurse!’ as if someone is choking to death. The nurse comes and says it would be best if your ma rested, cutting the visit short. Cora pushes you out of the place, hardly giving you a chance to say goodbye. All the old ladies start waving, thinking you’ve been in to visit them.

‘The poor creatures,’ says Cora, too loud.

After a week, your ma comes home and says she just wants to be left in peace for a while. You feel like being on your own too, so you go out for a walk along the river, taking the baby with you. The river is your favourite place, but you can’t seem to get in the mood for it, so you turn around and push the pram up by the shops. You take your time – that’s what Cora calls dawdling – and the baby is happy in his pram. There’s nothing much to see and after a while you head back home.

When you get to the house, Liam is lashing a football at the front wall. He doesn’t look at you when you say ‘Hello, smelly’. You let yourself in the side gate that leads into the yard and then through to the kitchen. Your ma is buckled again, sitting at the table with a bottle of vodka, spilling some of it when she pours in more. The baby sees your ma and gurgles. You take him out of the pram and let him down on the floor.

‘I thought you weren’t supposed to drink because you’re on those tablets,’ you say.

‘You,’ she slurs, ‘you’re the cause of it all.’

You hate when she’s like this. ‘Go to bed, Ma, and give me that bottle.’

She jumps up and lunges at you. ‘Get off my lip!’ she screams into your face, grabbing at your clothes. ‘I wish none of youse had ever been born.’

You run into the sitting-room, then up to your own room and shut the door. You lie on the bed thinking about the volcano in Washington, thinking that it might be easier to live over there than here, until you fall asleep. When you wake up, it’s dark and the house is quiet. All you can hear is the shush-hush of the weir as the river water topples over it on its way to the sea.

2 – A Different Daddy

The baby has a different daddy to you and Liam. You don’t know who he is because your ma won’t say. Her and Cora were talking about him one day and you asked what his name was and your ma said ‘His name is Santy Claus.’ Then the pair of them burst out laughing. The baby is your half-brother, but you don’t say that out loud because it sounds a bit mean. Anyway, he feels like a full brother to you – just like Liam. You love the baby; he has a mad, happy laugh and lovely brown skin.

But you wish your ma wouldn’t give him suckies when your friend is in the house. Even though Gwen doesn’t seem to mind, you feel mortified when your ma displays herself. Her boobs have blue veins but her nipples and all around them are brown. Gwen likes to watch the baby having his milk and she asks your ma does it hurt and when will she stop breastfeeding. Gwen has no brothers or sisters and she’d like one. One day she said that her dad told her that hedgehogs can suck milk from a cow’s boobs, which are called udders. You would love to see that for yourself and you wonder if the hedgehog would have to jump up to get its little mouth around the cow’s nipple. Your ma said that she thought that might be only an old wives’ tale, but you’d never know.

You don’t see your da a lot. He left when you were only seven, so for three years you have been without him. He has a girlfriend called Geraldine and a child now, a half-sister for you, but you don’t know her very well. She doesn’t feel like a real sister because you don’t even remember her name, except sometimes. They all live a long way away on the Northside and you would have to get a bus or maybe even a train to their house. And anyway they live in a flat and your ma says it’s a Corporation flat and she wouldn’t be caught dead in it, thank you very much. Then she says ‘Hasn’t he done well for himself?’ and she does her angry laugh, but she only goes on like that when she’s had a drink. Really you know that your half-sister is called Clare, like the county; you just pretend to yourself that you don’t.

You don’t even miss your da much because he used to work in foreign countries fixing electricity or something, so you don’t remember him being around the house anyway. Once every couple of months he asks to meet you and Liam but not the baby, and your ma brings you into town on the bus and leaves you outside Eason’s. Then he comes and brings you to Fusciardi’s or wherever for chips and you have to answer all his dopey questions. Your da’s name is Willy, but if anyone asks, you say his name is William. Liam is called Liam after him but he isn’t called Willy, thank God.

‘So,’ he says, ‘has your ma nabbed herself a new fella yet?’

‘No.’

‘How’s school?’

‘Grand.’

‘Are you good at your lessons? Are you good for the teacher?’

‘Yeah.’

He asks the exact same things every time. Then he gives you a pound note each and says not to spend it all in the one shop and he gives you an envelope for your Ma. He buys sweets from the pick ’n’ mix, a bag each. Liam is always quiet until it’s time to go and then he starts bawling as if he’s crazy about your da. By the time you meet your ma again, Liam is sobbing and hiccupping like a loony. You tell your ma the way he carries on and the things your da says, and you can see that she’s pleased because she’s nice to Liam on the bus on the way home.

Your ma loves to go to the pictures and before the baby came you all used to go, and Cora too sometimes. But since the time the man kicked you all out there’s no point bringing the baby any more. You wouldn’t mind only the baby wasn’t making any noise; your man must’ve been hearing things. When you all got out into the foyer, Cora, who was with you that day, asked him if he’d had his affliction long. And when he said ‘What affliction would that be, Madam?’ she said ‘Pain-in-the-hole-itis!’ You went scarlet, but you thought fair play to her, because there was no need to throw you all out when the baby was having his suckies in the cinema and was as quiet as the grave. Your ma said the cinema fella had had it in for her for ages because he’d asked her out once and she’d said no.

‘Imagine that scrawny effort thinking he’d get the likes of you!’ said Cora, and your ma linked Cora’s bent-up arm in her own while you carried the baby on your hip, and you all headed off for the bus. ‘And,’ said Cora, ‘he can shove his poxy popcorn up his you-know-where!’ and you all laughed. That made the baby laugh, although he didn’t really understand.

Your ma likes films and television and the newspaper. Cora brings the paper around when Noel has gone through it from cover to cover. Noel is a coalman and he has a phlegmy cough. That’s a word you hate, phlegmy, because it sounds like what it is: thick, green and snotty. Noel has black dirt under his fingernails that makes you sick and, like you, he’s always reading, but he only likes the paper and detective novels; you will read anything. Your ma reads the newspaper from back to front because she is a citeog, which means she does everything with her left hand, including reading.

Your ma says, ‘What’s black and white and red all over?’

‘A penguin who’s been run over,’ you say.

‘A nun who’s been run over,’ says Liam.

‘No, a newspaper!’ says your Ma. It took you ages to get that one.

Noel doesn’t like The Irish Times. He says it’s a Proddy newspaper and then he says ‘Up the Republic!’ and Cora says ‘Will you stop that codology.’ Cora says things like that because she’s a culchie. But she hates being called that. ‘I’m from inside the Pale,’ she says, as if that matters. You say that Kildare is not the centre of the universe and she says it is for some people.

Cora and Noel are in your house drinking with your ma and eating all the food, as usual. They sit yacking on about Dallas and who shot J.R. and the price of this, that and the other. Then they all light up fags and you can hardly see in front of you with the smoke coming off them. Cora says she’d be like a demon without her Major and she looks weird dragging on the cigarette with her claw hands, not cool like the women in the films. You and Liam cough and cough.

‘Get out if you don’t like it and bring the baby with you,’ your ma says.

Then you are stuck minding the baby and can’t go out to hang around with Gwen, who’ll be leaving any day now. The baby doesn’t want to do anything you want to do and he cries until his whole face is full of snots and he’s all sweaty and hot. Sometimes you feel sorry for him, but other times you just think he’s a pain.

‘If you put him in the pram and go for a walk, he might fall asleep,’ your ma says, meaning get out and leave us in peace.

You put on the baby’s coat. His arms get caught in the sleeves and he starts to roar, but you stuff his soother in his mouth and he’s OK again. Liam wants to come with you but you’re calling to Gwen’s house, so you say no; he has no friends and he’s always following you around, mortifying you in front of Gwen. His hair is a disaster, sticking up all over the place, and he picks his nose and the scabs on his knees. You only pick your nose when no one is looking, like in your room at night, and it can be very satisfying.

Your ma says you have to bring Liam with you and that really annoys you.

‘What did your last slave die of?’ you ask her. ‘Exhaustion?’

Your ma doesn’t take kindly to that and she throws her shoe across the room at you, but she misses, accidentally on purpose.

‘Get out, you pup!’ she roars but she’s not really cross, you can tell.

So you drag Liam and the baby with you down past the bridge to Gwen’s house. You notice that the river is very high and is flowing fast, even though it hasn’t been raining. When you get to Gwen’s house, her Mam opens the door and says ‘Oh look – the whole gang,’ real smart. Gwen is in her room listening to Kate Bush on her transistor.

Your ma looks like Kate Bush only older. Everyone says it. She has wavy hair. You wish you had hair like that, but you’ve obviously got your da’s hair: mousy, straight and in rats’ tails. That’s what your ma says, that your hair is like rats’ tails. She says it in a way that makes you know there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not very nice. Cora looks a little bit like Nana Mouskouri, who is Greek and wears big glasses. Cora wears them kind of glasses when she reads the paper and Noel calls her ‘Nana’ as a joke. That drives Cora mental.

Kate Bush sings ‘Babooshka’ and she does waily bits like yaaah-yaaah. Liam sits on the floor looking at Gwen’s books, the baby stays asleep in the pram and you and Gwen sing along to the radio. You have a nice voice. Your ma can’t sing a note, but that doesn’t stop her, especially when she’s had a few jars. She sings Simon and Garfunkel songs and they’re always a bit sad. Noel sings Elvis and he pretends to have a microphone even when everyone is looking at him. He fancies himself as Elvis with his too-small-for-him leather jacket and manky sideburns. He wishes he was him, even though Elvis is dead. When Noel sings, you think it’s lucky your house is not stuck onto any other houses.

Your cousin Rory is in a band called Neighbourhood Disturbance, but you don’t know if they’re any good. Your auntie Bridget gave them that name. She’s older than your ma and very lah-di-dah. Your ma used to call her Miss Prim and now she calls you Little Miss Prim, but you hope you’re not like your auntie because she’s always in a bad mood. Your ma says that she has a face like a well-slapped arse.

Your cousin Rory is fifteen. He told you once that he loved you. He only said it because he had you as a prisoner in his room and he tried to stick his tongue into your mouth. He held down your arms but you got away. Now you avoid him because he makes you feel weird. He laughs every time he sees you and he calls you a sap. Rory’s big thing is music. You like music too and you listen to Radio Dublin on your transistor in bed at night. All the people write in and you wish you could do that too, but you never do.

You and Gwen love the Eurovision. She supported Ireland this time – even though she’s pure British – because Johnny Logan was in it and he’s gorgeous. Prima Donna were in it for Britain but they didn’t stand a chance because Johnny is the business. And he won!

‘I might marry Johnny when I grow up,’ says Gwen.

‘Oh, he’ll want to marry an Irish person,’ you say and she gets real sulky.

‘I might be back in Ireland by then.’

‘I thought you couldn’t wait to get out of Ireland!’ you say.

‘Well, I can’t,’ she shouts in your face, ‘and you can go home now and bring your stinky brothers with you!’

You pull Liam off the floor and drag the pram out the door, banging it behind you to make a point.

It’s getting dark as you walk home. Liam dawdles along picking dandelions for your Ma. She calls them piss-the-beds, but Liam doesn’t know that and he thinks they’re lovely, so you just let him collect bunches of them to give to your Ma. Liam always wets the bed after you’ve been to see your da. Your ma has to put a black plastic bag under the sheet because the mattress is destroyed. You used to wet the bed too and it feels nice and warm when you do it, but then it gets cold and there’s a wissy smell and you can’t get back to sleep. That’s when you have to tell your ma what’s after happening.

Sometimes Liam tries to get into your bed with you when he’s wet his own, but you don’t want his piddly pyjamas in your bed, so you bring him in to your Ma. The odd time she gets really angry, but other times she just tells him to strip off and hop in beside her and the baby. The baby sleeps in with your Ma, all cuddly and warm. It would be nice to be in there too, you think.

3 – Friends

Your house is full of creepy-crawlies and some of them have horrible wiggling legs, but you like the look of them anyway, just not to touch. The only ones you’ll touch are ladybirds, butterflies and hairy mollies. A butterfly lives on your windowsill. Ladybirds are your favourite; they crawl around on your hand until you tell them to fly away home because their house is on fire and their children are gone. Cora taught you how to say that and you like it, even though it was her that taught you. Sometimes a ladybird will do a little yellow poo on your hand and it smells sour, but they only do that when they’re afraid. You don’t mind daddy-long-legs’, even though they make scuttly noises when they run across the wall, but you hate woodlice. One of them is called a louse; loads are called lice. They fall onto their backs and wiggle their millions of grey legs, and they can run very fast. They crunch when you squash them and that makes you feel sick. Sometimes there’s a louse in the bath and you have to call your ma to get rid of it and rinse the bath out before you’ll get in.

Once, at school, you got the other kind of lice in your hair. Even though they only latch on to clean hair, it makes you feel dirty because your head gets real itchy. Your ma doesn’t like when you bring them home on your head because then she has to use the fine comb and the stinky shampoo and it takes ages to kill the little bastards. That’s what your ma says, but she does a good job of it and she shows you all their corpses lying on the newspaper when she’s done.