Our Ladies, page 1
Alan Warner
* * *
Our Ladies
Previously published as The Sopranos
Contents
Chapter 1: Our Lady of Perpetual Succour School for Girls
Chapter 2: Lord Bolivia
Chapter 3: No Snogging Through Tennis Fence
Chapter 4: Hymn to Orla Johnstone
Chapter 5: Hymn to Single Parents
Chapter 6: ‘The sense of gigantic transition, of going Southward, downward’ MALCOLM LOWRY
Chapter 7: Rest, and Be Thankful
Chapter 8: Post-Seventh-Hooch-Syndrome
Chapter 9: ‘Leave the Capitol Exit this Roman Shell.’
Chapter 10: The Anchored Submarine
Chapter 11: Citadel
Chapter 12: A Bloody Mary Theory in Tequila Heaven
Chapter 13: It’s a Marsupial Thing
Chapter 14: You Are Now Entering a Drug Friendly Zone
Chapter 15: That Taken Glow
Chapter 16: Night Comes On
Chapter 17: New Face on the Mental Scene
Chapter 18: Ice and the Pearl
Chapter 19: The Sopranos
Acknowledgements
About the Author
‘Alan Warner is the author of nine novels: Morvern Callar, which was filmed in 2002, These Demented Lands, The Sopranos/Our Ladies, which was adapted for the cinema as Our Ladies, The Man Who Walks, The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven, The Stars in the Bright Sky, which was long listed for the Man Booker Prize 2010, The Deadman’s Pedal won the 2012 James Tait Black Prize. Their Lips Talk of Mischief and Kitchenly 434.’
ALSO BY ALAN WARNER
Fiction
Morvern Callar
These Demented Lands
The Man Who Walks
The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven
The Stars in the Bright Sky
The Deadman’s Pedal
Their Lips Talk of Mischief
Kitchenly 434
Non-fiction
Tago Mago: Permission to Dream
To Hollie
Lie Down.
Cold Hand.
Slow Heart.
Breathe Deep.
Close Eyes Now
Please. Close Eyes Now
‘Every Second Hurts’, Superstar
‘They do live more in earnest, more in themselves and less in surface change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible …’
Wuthering Heights
Our Lady of Perpetual Succour School for Girls
No sweat, we’ll never win; other choirs sing about Love, all our songs are about cattle or death!
Fionnula (the Cooler) spoke that way, last words pitched a little bit lower with a sexyish sideyways look at none of the others. The fifth-year choir all laughed.
Orla, still so thin she had her legs crossed to cover up her skinniness, keeked along the line and says, When they from the Fort, Hoors of the Sacred Heart, won the competition last year, they got kept down the whole night and put up-in a big posh hotel and … everything, no that I want that! Sooner be snogged in the Mantrap.
Know what the Hoor’s school motto is? Fionnula spoke again, from the longest-legs-position on the wall. She spoke louder this time, in that blurred, smoked voice, It’s ‘Noses up … knickers DOWN’!
The Sopranos all chorted and hootsied; the Seconds and Thirds mostly smiled in per-usual admiration. Quietly, so’s only the Sopranos-half of the wall could hear, Fionnula goes, Look girls, the Hoors’re no even IN it this year. Shows how chronic the standard is; we stick thegether on this and there’s no ways we’ll win, won’t even get in the second round! We’ll be plonked on the bus an back here in plenty time for the Mantrap slow dances and all manner of sailors’ jigs.
That’s IF submarin-ers are in the Mantrap. And that’s IF we get past that new bouncer, he hasn’t got off wi a single one of us! (Ra)Chell was calling out, just from along, where some taller Seconds and Thirds separated her.
(A)Manda Tassy recrossed her legs, looking a little uncomfortable, cleared her throat and announced, I’ve got in the Mantrap three Saturdays running! Manda who could never afford cigarettes an was aye bumming them, placed one of her big sister’s duty free Camels into her lips without even offering round, an from a pack of twenty!
Kylah squinted severely, though Manda was next her, Kylah went, That’s cause you’re the dying image of your big sister.
Are you JOKING Kylah? Manda blew smoke, Have you SEEN Catriona’s suntan!
I’ll no see a thing the day, Kylah muttered.
Orla giggled and smiled, her braces showed, Yon medallion man, the bouncer, he’s only there cause he couldn’t get a chef’s job anywhere. He’s from the Island. He’d get on well with Chell cause he has a love of animals; he can only tell the ages of sheep!
Aye, goes Chell, From behind.
Those within earshot laughed. Manda coughed.
Kylah chortled, frowning up and down the line as if watching a fast tennis rally and says, The Island, where no horse is safe as long as there’s a table or chair left!
Fionnula shrugged shoulders laughing, lit another cigarette an goes, As long as we ALL stick thegether. It was spoken as what it was: a warning to any Seconds or Thirds who might be taking the competition too seriously and who didn’t have the priority of a night on the town later; it was a threat to anyone with delusions of grandeur.
The Sopranos leaned forward an looked at Kay Clarke from Seconds who, virtue of her limb-length, sat trapped, sombre and silent amongst them, then they glared down the length-of-legs school wall towards the short-arse end and Ana-Bessie.
Snobby Kay Clarke and Ana-Bessie Baberton fee-paying (their Old Men, one Port Solicitor, one Consultant up the Chest Infirmary) stared stubborn cross-square to the statue of JL McAdam, surveyor, advocate of tarmacadam and national hero. Kay and Ana-Bessie were aye willing to admit bursary girls like Fionnula had ‘colourful character’. Inwardly, the two middle-class girls consoled themselves: Fionnula’s legs were ‘actually’ too thin and there was always the fact Fionnula’s parents only had a bought council house up the Complex.
The school wall afront the square, with its iron railings, curved round to the slope by the side entrance (the polishy-smooth stubs were the old iron bars, sawed off for the war effort in the forties); the upward slope of pavement delineated the precise order the choir aye sat in, ’ccording to the length of each girl’s legs from arse on the old polished stubs down to the chewing-gum-blotched macadam.
CHOIR ORDER ON LENGTH-OF-LEGS SCHOOL WALL
GIRL VOICE INSIDE LEG
Fionnula (the Cooler) Sopranos 35”
Kylah Sopranos 35”
(n.b. Fionnula (the Cooler) and Kylah an agreed First Equal but Fionnula always sits on outside.)
(A)Manda Tassy Sopranos 34¾”
Kay Clarke Seconds 34½”
Yolanda McCormack Thirds 34¼”
Assumpta Thirds 33½”
(Ra)Chell Sopranos 32¾”
Orla Sopranos 32½”
Aisling Seconds 32”
Iona Seconds 31½”
Shuna Thirds 30”
Fionnula (ordinary) Seconds 30¼”
English Katie Seconds 29½”
Ana-Bessie Seconds 29¼”
Fat Clodagh Thirds 28¼”
Wee Maria Thirds 27¾”
On the flat, leaden school roof above the fifth-year choir and close to the speeding dawn clouds, Our Lady stood. Her sculpted shawl surmounted by an alert, perched seagull with a hooked, yellow beak – the cheeriest colour around. A scrawk from Lord Bolivia down in the New Chapel below, made the gull lean and fly forward off the BVM.
Our Lady of Perpetual Succour’s dead, stone eyes were cast way over the teenagers below. The gaze looked above the slates of McAdam Square and the railway station clock, to the bay, beyond. She stared constant at some theoretical point, dependent on the angle of the reinforced concrete block Kirkham & Sons Construction had power-bolted her onto, year she descended down from heaven, under a Westland helicopter.
Her left arm was held out with a daft and neverending finality, offertory fingers appealing, though only ever receiving a tiny curlicue of sparrow’s dropping; only ever delivering a slow sequence of rain drips to the sheered height way down onto the concrete playground below, where, every September, girls on their first day would bawl up to her: Don’t jump, things can’t be that bad! Don’t do it! Suicide’s a sin.
That morning, the statue’s rampant gaze drove across the surface of the port’s baywaters as perusual but, it seemingly settled for once on the long black vessel now anchored there, even the communications aerials on the nuclear submarine’s conning tower, no reaching above the cloud-looped summits of the distant island mountains.
Orla yawned, moved her hand over her still-short hair, looked at her palm as if still surprised. She yawned, poked a finger in to the back of her mouth, took it out again and proclaimed, Chell’s right enough, wi these navies from all countries, yous never can be sure if they’ve shore leave. Those greeny uniform ones did, but yon last destroyer didn’t and you never know if you can count on them going to the Mantrap; who’s to no say they’ll go get taxis out the Barn or somewhere we can’t get to?
They always go to the Mantrap for a drink even if they do go on, some aye stay. And funny though if those last didnie come ashore how come Michelle McLaughlin still managed to get pregnant offof it!
A few cassandras of laugh tremelled along the wall.
From top the wall Fionnula burr
Everyone laughed. Even the girls who wernie doing Higher History.
Spotty Fat Clodagh from right along yelled out, cross square, By the way Manda, Michelle did not get pregnant by yon destroyer, it was one the Pakistani lads come up for Saturday market in their van.
There was dubious silence. Cross square, two gulls crawed an tugged at a fat binliner on the pavement by the amusement arcade, boarded for offseason.
Rural depopulation? NO chance with Our Ladys about, Kay Clarke sighed.
Manda leaned forward and met eyes with Fionnula across Kylah’s thighs, the look meaning: No that you’ll ever contribute, you lightweight, university-bound virgin.
There is an old county-council Ceud Mille Failte road sign just outside port, before you swing steering wheels round the high hairpin above the roofs below. When Fionnula and Manda were Second Years they nicked a little pot of Airfix paint offof Kylah’s big brother Calum.
It was the time that First Year herself, a thirteen-year-old from Our Lady’s got pregnant in the van, her bare back below the lifted blouse, sticking to the uncomfy cellophane-wrapped cartons. He was twenty-nine, refiller of cigarette machines, responsible for the entire West Coast!
Fionnula can still mind wearing their tight jeans and very white and pink trainers, being crouched up, faces close, gigglestifling in the dry ditch next the main road, then leaping out the gain when each last vehicle headlights passed and carrying on the handiwork with a make-up brush.
Then leaping back into the ditch as a great shift of headlight oozed round in the dark and them both cooried up, part of the tremulous, excited-feeling cause the vandalism, but also reaching for their own little, convexy belly-buttons snipped into shape by the National Health, knowing one day they would give in to some lad.
I read somewhere that submarine-ers …
Submariners, Fionnula grunted.
Submar-in-ers; that if they get a cut or something, cause they’ve been away under the waters for so long, it’s done something to their … (Wee Maria McGill, who’d once used Vanish soap stain-remover to try get a bad henna out, had kinda stumbled into this, but she just looked along to Orla and bravely soldiered on) … Done something to their, blood.
Aye. Haemophilia. It’s in Biology. Orla, who’d had chemotherapy, let Wee Maria go on.
Aye. Well if they get cut or that it won’t stop bleeding for ages cause the air stuff they’ve been breathing down there.
There was contemplative silence then Orla spoke out their collective image, Aye! And when they submariners spunk with all their wanks down there, it just keeps coming out and coming out …
Everybody laughed cause it was Orla’s crack.
… Inside their submarine – it would all just fill up with spunk and they’d all drown in it!
Yeauch!
Ah, dinnae scum us out! goes Chell.
Here in their spunky grave lie the hundred brave sailors, Fionnula’s voice came from top the wall.
We’ll test it out the night girls! Manda’s filthy laugh came.
AYE!
Yolanda dropped her cigarette and yawned, Condom.
Fuck!
Nine or ten limbs of the smokers, all in flesh-coloured tights, with socks pulled up above the knee to make the legs appear longer, pulverised half-smoked cigarettes into the tarmac pavement. Each black, flat-bottom shoe that did the grinding, sported completely different, luminous, day-glo, interwoven, painted or rainbowy laces: the only means of self-expression remaining.
Various novelty lighters that played tunes (ironic wedding marches and Lambadas) B&H, Regal, Embassy, Marlboro reds and Light, Silk Cut and Yolanda’s Lambert & Butler! All packs of ten, part from Manda, were returned to suspiciously full backpacks. Some cigarettes were rapidly nibbed then slipped into the secret, folded hems of the specially shortened tartan skirts.
Orla grit her teeth, bared her retainer braces in a fake smile, says, Look at her walk, its like she’s got the most gi-normous sanitary towel jammed between her legs.
Carrying her famous blue bucket, today full of parental consent forms and her own choral arrangements, held wind-safe under a hefty nineteenth-century bible, Sister Condron approached cross McAdam Square, beneath the collapsing and hanging dramatics of dawn clouds.
Aisling was mumbling, I’d a dream like that.
What? Shuna goes, but smiling straight ahead.
You know? A guy got handjobbed offof me and it not stopping, it just gushing an gushing out, goggles, whole goggles of it just gushing an gushing out filling ma bedroom an just knowing mum would find out!
Kay Clarke goes, I’ll look that up in my Freud Dream Dictionary. Don’t know what I’ll look under.
Try Wanker, Manda coughed.
Fionnula spat out a laugh.
Shush.
Good morning girls.
MORNING SISTER CONDOM. Perfectly synchronised, each of the sixteen girls slithered off the wall to lengthen the look of their specially-shortened skirts.
Sister Condron breached the kerb, canted, swayed, straightened, spoke: All together, Forth Let The Cattle Roam! She dropped the bucket, lifted one arm pointing at heaven.
Sister, it’s half eight in the morn, Fionnula snapped.
So Fionnula McConnel. Is your voice still in your bed?
Ana-Bessie and Kay Clarke alone giggled.
In a bland, soft whisper, Manda says, Good King Wenceslas.
Fionnula let out a spirtle of crack-up, waggled her tongue, looked left and right, eyes away wi it then says, One, two, three. The Sopranos sung in the tight dawn air, an immediate beauty, like flags cracking in the wind. The sound moved cross square:
Good King Wenceslas
Last looked out
On the Feast of Stephen
The snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
NO. GIRLS! FORTH LET THE CATTLE ROAM.
But recalling December humiliations on Port streets with stupid hats on, the Seconds joined the Sopranos in a two-parter, cuddled in the neath, the Thirds waited and bassed the thing, even splitting the carol, messing about with a four-parter, looking each other in the eye to keep silent times.
A window canted out cross square, a night shifter fro the Alginate just a-bed leaned out roaring, Christmas so soon? Fuckin shut it ya wicked wee Catholic heathens.
Lord Bolivia
As each girl moved through, touching holy water to forehead, the ones with chewing gum ceased then began chewing again after they passed Sister Fagan the Pagan in the vestibule and entered New Chapel. An odd whistle of the Christmas carol brought a seething back glance from Sister Condron down the front.
Girls passed on inwards to the glooms, genuflected in coloured shapes of light then scattered among the pine benches.
The Sopranos took their usual back row. Kylah closed one eye to begin her counting of the mosaic tiles beyond the altar.
Orla nudged, What’s wrong with your eye?
Kylah’s mouth trembled to the soundless, hermetic rosary of her tile-counting.
There was a doldrum wait for Father Ardlui who must’ve been polishing off 7 a.m. Mass at the cathedral.
Kylah was whispering, alternatively to Orla’s side and to Fionnula’s, Here’s a cracker, she was smiling, Saturday there, ma brother invites this sixth year from the high school out for a date. Never guess where?
Where?
I know.
Where then?
Plough Queen Contest.
Got it in one.
The Sopranos began to wheeze thegether.
Kylah kept on, She’s a townie, no long moved up here, Laura Graham, her old man works on the newspaper.
Aye, ah seen her in the Mantrap, she’s really pretty … says Fionnula.
In a kind of Aerobics Barbie sort of way … Manda went.
Aye, well, Calum vites her to the Plough Queen, right? Laura Graham says she’ll meet him at Silvermines hotel by the fields. Calum turns up, jeans, gum boots y’know? Laura Graham is early: fucking stilettos, stockings, wonderbra, G-string, skimpy little red mini-dress and full make-up …
