Our Ladies, page 4
Orla whispered, You’re no all alone in the world, I’m with you. She took the cold hand, it’d the tacky damp of aliveness. She squeezed, I’m with you. She bent to the ear, I’ll be like you soon. She kissed his forehead and she smiled.
Thing about Lourdes was the spooky silence: so many under open skies or close to the Grotto of Our Lady but everyone whispered. Then the occasional sound of planes taking off and landing, beyond the Ravine of Light, at the airport, flying in the sick and flying them out.
Orla stood in the cloisters of the underground basilica. She was under an enormous black and white photograph, smiling. It said the fucking pillars of the basilica were earthquake-proof, that’s what Orla was smiling about. They were expecting the worst in the home of miracles.
She knew what the photo reminded her of. It was a photo of some place in the Pyrenees, a marathon of mountain penitents – maybe fifty or sixty of the loonies, hulking crosses, tied to their backs. It was making her feel horny, those rampant-looking bits where the ropes joined the wrists, tight, tight at the back.
Orla shifted the way she was standing. She looked at the bent backs, bare feet among the jaggy rocks and cactus. Climbing up the top the mountain where they were gonna stand those crosses up in their holes.
What all that row of bodies winding up the height reminded her of was the Rapids water chute at the Time Capsule. You had to carry your rubber tyre up the top, the queue of naked torsos, up the ascent, each waited for the moment of release where the ride started at the top, down thro’ pools and rapids.
Orla! Old Dear called and she walked quickly after her. Quickly!
Next night, nurse had vanished away beyond the Ancient One. Orla stepped inside, amongst that breathing, amongst that murmuring. When the nurse had come to clean him she’d left the door blind down. Orla could feel her heart bumping. He wasn’t shaved.
Suddenly she moved forward and dropped onto her pyjama knees. She lifted up the blanket and peeked under.
First thing was to check he hadn’t shat himself. When you’re dying and away with it they slip this sort of rice papery tissue beneath arse to prevent bedsores and catch shite.
She rolled him, the skin of his arse hadn’t even puckered and pruned in bedsoreness. Orla rolled him but didn’t have the strength to lift him enough, she found, biting her tongue and looking down behind his balls you could judge there was nothing there, like when Kylah babysat for English Katie’s sister and Kylah’d check the nappies.
Orla took the tube out the end of his cock the way she’d ease a skelf from her Old Man’s thumb when he came in from the garden. A single piss-drop rose up out of the little eye-hole and raced down the wrinkled skin and across the awful smoothness of his tummy-side.
In the little toilet she got the bowl and cloth, identical to in hers. She clothed the cock. She kept looking up at his face but the mutters continued. What word came to mind about the cock was its awful ‘unusedness’ neither anymore for pissing or even a wank.
She tried everything. Lying thinking about it for so long she’d realised she couldn’t put what weight was left of her on him so she’d go like in Fionnula’s porno mags.
She put her hands on the bottom of the bed and began shaking with turned-on-ness as she lowered herself, her legs spread over his, while reaching back with another hand to force it up, into the saturatedness that was between her there. The cock just flipped from side to side and he continued burbling behind her. She tried to force the limpness in her, sliding herself up and down; she realised she could get off, but that wasn’t the point. She had to get him hard.
She took it in her mouth, eyes shut. She’d crawled backward so her fanny was over the burbling lips; when those rambles came round to the every-so-often-excited-bit, the breath touched her hairlessness there and she kept shivering all over. Despite the images of Night Sister with the Ancient One peering over her shoulder, suddenly opening the door, she sucked and sucked, using her hand too, like it said in More, but it was the same. She sighed, legs stiff as she swung round off and pyjama bottoms back up and the sailor sat straight and stared at her.
Orla took two steps back before the huge leap of adrenalin hit her face. She thumped almightily into the wall, as she shot to the side, she saw he was staring at the same spot. He lunged forward but as his left leg came free of the bed, it buckled, canted onto the bathroom wall; the morphine drip on his right arm caught up with him, violently tautened and the stand the clearbag hung on, flew onto the bed and dragged across.
The sailor was shouting, both arms out sudden. The other glucose drip, tightened up, but instead of following his Frankenstein walk, they tore free at his arm. Orla turned to the door but he was going to reach her and she didn’t want that to happen with her back to him. She turned, saw the long spread of blood on both arms where he’d lost his drip. She ran forward, hands out and she hit him with both palms on his chest. She stopped and the sailor fell backward, crashed down against the curtains. There was a sound and Orla watched as a huge puddle of skitter spread under his skinny buttock and then pee was squirting up helplessly out of him and the blood was all down his arms and it was the look, that awful look, helplessness, bewildered pain that Orla saw, a look like that would be in her eye soon.
Orla burst out crying as the man swung his arms round in any old way, pleading, she stepped forward and kneeled down in the piss and the shit and pulled her arms tight round the nude man, his cock like a shrivelled fossil, his face suddenly ancient but infantile in pain. Orla cried and the man shuffled weakly, little pained sounds from his mouth.
Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Orla whispered until the door flung in and Night Sister called out. In the morning the nurses had tied him to the bed with belts.
In Lourdes, shops sold only souvenirs. Worse than the Port in high season. Every form of Virgin you’d ever require, every permutation: egg-timers to alarm clocks. Each shop was a cave of trash.
It was when she was in, maybe, the tenth cave of trinkets she realised u)hy she was going from shop to shop with Old Dear in Lourdes. It was cause Old Dear kept saying, Are you sure you’re okay? And she was.
After Orla and her folks returned from the Lourdes trip, funded by gatherings through the cathedral, it was a bit obvious Orla wasn’t dying quite that quick, so they drove south again.
For one hundred miles and more, down long, slow swerves between the blackest Mounts, the clouds then above, moving faster over behind them than the wide land seemed to go below the tyres. The drooping then leaping wire, rubber-wrapped against snow-cling, hung between the telegraph poles of the railway line that comes close to the car then retreats away, over the glens, the neat symmetry of track, insinuating it knows a better route south, to cities.
At each village of the hundred miles, Orla, her Old Dear and Old Man stop yapping cause there’re sudden human beings to look at rather than the uninhabited lands with the deeply rich commission plantations, runway-wide boulevards of desolate fire-breaks, suddenly blocked in their ascent by solid walls of mist-choke. Cultivated front gardens in the villages with chrysanths amongst the inhuman mountains that have always been around Orla and her parents – they even know the gaelic names of some – but on those wide flanks, stotted with rolled boulders and the dots of sheep two thousand feet up, they have never, nor will they ever set a foot.
Though Alec Johnstone can’t afford it on top petrol and won’t be able to have a few pints in the Gluepot for two weekends, he swings off the road for pub lunch at Rest & Be Thankful. In, its embarrassingly quiet. They hear the big lorries swish by from where they sit in the empty lounge by the real log fire. The targe and crossed claymores above, Orla dousing her fat scampi (really took from a blue bay round the cliffs) in lemon, vinegaring her chips with inundations till the ones at the bottom are disintegrating and fairly swimming in it – leaving her wee cluster of cress, lettuce and greenish tomato slice, untouched as always. Her parents watching her, just watching and watching her.
Back in the car a frizzle of post-food chatter as they descend corners (several of them claiming to be The Devil’s Elbow) to where the valleys meet and … out of the Westlands, the mountain ranges are receding, like the advance clouds on an overtaken weather front. Then the three in the car fall silent with the huge arrival of constant streetlights, the massed flow of the first dual carriageway, and like an inaudible hum all round them, the theme of great cities, an oppressiveness; helpless ugliness; a people cowered in numbers for reasons they can’t remember.
The Specialist smiles a lot and says, With Hodgkinson’s Disease at this age there is always a good chance. The malignancy has completely vanished as you can see.
Can it ever come back? Mr Johnstone asks.
Mrs Johnstone almost turns and tells her husband not to ask such a thing. For Mrs Johnstone her daughter has been saved by Our Lady and all this is not needed.
At this age, the Specialist tells them, Every six months that passes makes a relapse less likely. In our experience, after three or four years any recurrence would be, unusual, highly unusual. In our experience. We shall ask for regular blood samples from her for the immediate future.
Can I ask, why the radiotherapy seemed to no work, then she, recovered?
Sometimes trauma therapy like that can take a time, as you know I was extremely pessimistic. It’s unusual for such an eleventh hour reversal. But wonderful, of course, he laughed. Shall we bring her in?
Her Old Man brought Orla in. She knew she was going to live cause the way the Specialist came round from the back his desk and kissed her on the cheek. He wouldn’t have wasted otherwise.
This means I’ll be back to school next week, eh? she asked. The three adults chuckled.
Hymn to Single Parents
Reluctant to refrain, knowing a long journey was ahead them, Sopranos were last down the pavement to the bus stop, though there was no sign of the nuns.
It’s prove that smoking adds to the ageing process, Kylah says.
Good, we’ll get into over 21’s nights sooner, snapped Fionnula.
Chell and Kylah barked out laughs and Manda honked.
There was a whoop from among the girls assembled there. Cross square, tummy seeming as per-usual, laughing and pointing at them, showing teeth – Michelle McLaughlin.
Ooo … goes Manda.
She might know if there’s any sailors come ashore, Chell was smiling.
Cmon. That’s no fair, Fionnula warned.
Who is it? Kylah was squinting.
Michelle McLaughlin, says Orla. She’s no belly at all.
A few of the Seconds and Thirds were calling out and Michelle was crossing the square towards. Fat Clodagh swung round and glanced back at the Sopranos. Manda stuck out her tongue and Clodagh looked away.
The choir formed three deep round Michelle, apart from Kay Clarke who stood a-way-away, as if she was disapproving of Michelle. Manda now scowled at Kay.
The inner circle round Michelle – Shuna, Iona, Aisling, Asumpta and Maria: gleering between their shoulders were Manda Tassy and Chell, Fat Clodagh and Yolanda. Fionnula (Ordinary) and Fionnula (the Cooler), English Katie, Ana-Bessie and Orla circled the cluster.
Clodagh was just talking about you, Manda announced.
Aye? Michelle peeped.
Clodagh tutted and went beetroot, Where are you going, at this time?
Yous are all off to the Finals, eh? Whah-ow. I’m off up pre-natal at the Chest.
At this time in the morn?
Oh aye, it’s to get ya used to the idea of sleepless nights when the baby comes ah guess …
A rubble of chuckles rose up.
… Ah tell yous, think pre-natal at nine in the morn is bad yous should see the fucking post-natal up there; all the lassies from the villages and that … mental … all fourteen and that, ah swear on the bible to yous, there’s three lassies in post-natal there, and they come in a horse box pulled by boyfriend’s tractor, three of them in the shitey horse box wi their wee babies and this ugly, bogger guy, driving the tractor, ah mean, fair enough, they used to arrive the Mantrap in that horse box … that’s quite a laugh no think? But it’s no exactly-a ‘family’ vehicle now, is it. Fucksake! Eh? She laughed:
Chell went, That’s right enough, it’s yon Dempster boy, Fuckin ‘Dumpster’ they call him. Aye, his house is built three quarter out of old railway wagons, ah swear! They used the box as a bar once at a plough contest.
Michelle went on, Theyve got these signs on every table on the cafeteria up at the Chest, right:
NO TITTY DUNKING PLEASE
It’s cause they post-natal lassies are aye taking the ends of their wee wet tits and dipping them into the sugar bowls so’s their babies’ll sook away at them quiet-like and they can get on having a smoke and a good ceilidh.
A huge, Awww, had taken place.
Ah, dinnae scum us out! goes Chell.
How many pregnant this year? Michelle nodded up towards Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.
Twenty-seven, beamed Manda, she turned to Fionnula (the Cooler) and says, Y’know Moira Grierson got hers off of Iain Dickinson?
The dick! He’s a fucking bonk, a right spunker.
A couple girls looked back at Fionnula (the Cooler) who’d famously handjobbed Dickinson infront Moira at New Year Dance.
How are ya Orla – you look great, I’d heard you’d got better, honey.
Aye, it’s great to see ya Michelle. Girls moved specially aside to let Orla through and the two girls hug-huggd.
Ah hear you went to Lourdes and all?
Aye, didn’t get off with a single guy.
Everyone laughed.
That a ring on your engaged finger, Michelle? Clodagh pointed.
Nah, nah, it’s just a crappy-nothing-ring. You slip it on just for the post-natals … some of the fathers to the village girls come along just to chat up the pre-natals so ah says I’m engaged to a big guy that’ll burst their faces if they fucking touch me!
The girls all laughed. Here was a silence. On Michelle’s side, it signified how Out-Of-School she was now; she lived in an adult world wi mysterious quantities of time on her hands and she’d moved into the exclusive world of teenage pregnancy, an infinite distance from the few virgins present. In some ways this silence confirmed Michelle’s young life was over; pure and intense, she’d devoured the few opportunities for the wee bit sparkle that was ever going to come her way. Part of the remaining tension came from the obscurity of her child’s fatherhood; the choir were just too embarrassed to mention top news of the submarine.
Can you feel your baby kick at all? Wee Maria piped up.
Aye.
Can I touch? Orla held out her palm near Michelle’s stomach.
Course, aye.
Can I? went Aisling.
Let us? goes Maria.
Can I too? says Iona.
Michelle laughed, grabbed the hands that flew out at her, helping them in, under the Adidas top.
Whoa! You’ve hardly any tummy at all, Fionnula (the Cooler) smiled, peeping over.
Aye, All ma jeans still fit; what is, is all up here, see?
I can’t feel.
Nah, ya have to keep your hand there.
Boy or girl?
After the scans ah’ve asked them no to tell, so it’s a bigger surprise, more interesting and that.
Do you get lots of kicks?
Oh … ah tell yous … it’s wild … see when you go to Mowat the Fleshers – ah go in to get ma mum’s mince and the mincer machine, it makes this Neeee, Neee noise and the wee thing starts booting away like billy-oh. Every time.
Cmon then girls, our F# sounds like that, called Fionnula and apart from Kay, the choir screed:
NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
With her outstretched blazer arm, Orla suddenly broke off the touch – tooked her hand from out under Michelle’s top and called, It’s right enough, feel, feel!
Another couple of hands reached in.
Oh, yeah, so’s it is …
Don’t say ‘it’.
A couple folk turned. It was Kay Clarke.
It’s okay. That’s what ah say … ‘it’, shrugged Michelle.
Manda Tassy scowled at Kay but she just turned away and pretended to look up past Wilson’s Garage for the bus.
That’s just sooo fucking gorgeous and adorable to feel it there, Orla says.
Let’s feel, let’s feel. Fionnula (the Cooler) shoved forwarders.
This is yous off to Finals then ya jammy lot?”
It’s gonna be brilliant Michelle, we’re just gonna go mental ah mean it’s fuck the singing yknow …
Aye, sure …
… Just go on a massive pub crawl, check out the shops, Orla’s getting new boots and, eh, we’re gonna try get back here for the slow dances at the Mantrap.
Oh, yous’ll have a brilliant time, girls. Our Ladys loose in the city, eh?
Aye, doesn’t bear thinking about.
Who’s it going with yous; the Condom and who?
The Pagan. But we’re getting to practise last so’s we should get the longest up town, says Manda.
It’s gone be filmed for telly, eh?
Aye. On late night next week.
Yous’ll have such a brilliant time, girls, ah wish ah was with yous.
There was a silence.
Fionnula (the Cooler) asked, Why don’t you come along with us the night to the Mantrap?
Ah, cannie Fionnula. Uhm totally skint. I was working part-time in the Superstore, fucking bass, yon Tina MacIntyre cliped on me that ah was pregnant an they fucking sacked me on the spot. Ma Dad went mental, down there screaming at Creeping Jesus but to no avail. It’s complete breach of contract cause if you get hurt or lose the baby or that, lifting boxes, they could get sued, ah mean ah was stacking boxes of cornflakes, no way was ah going to hurt ma baby for they shower … fair enough, ah know ah fibbed to get the job, but ah need the money. They fucking government saying about single mothers getting pregnant to get a council flat! What council flats? Get fucking real. Might be plenty council houses get built down Birmingham or some shitey place but when’s a council house last built here?
