The Ballad of Mo and G (2 page)

Mo confronted Dermo, even though I warned her to keep quiet about the slaughter of the little Papi.

Mo, being Mo, couldn't let the cruelty go. Possibly she was trying to change him. That this was part of her grand plan to de-dog Dermo.

Mo stood arms folded and legs slightly apart as Dermo tried to explain himself.

‘I was only trainin' dem ickle Dobermen for guarding things. From knackers and dudder robbers what has no consciences. Gets 'em good, and vicious, Babe. Foreplay for fuckin' fightin' to the death. Do you know what I mane? They gotta get blooded. Don't they? There's bettin' goin' on at the fight nights. What do you think pays for the dogs? Their children's allowances, is it?'

Dermo argued the Papi was ‘already dead anyways and was road kill, a dumped orphan what didn't get no rosette in the gay dog show. It's the same's a dead man donatin' his organs.'

Mo laughed a bitter laugh and shouted right in his face, ‘You're a ventriloquist then. A dog ventriloquist. What about the barking? I didn't know dead dogs barked. And don't call me Babe. I'm not your Babe. I'm your bitch.'

Her loving husband didn't like sarcasm very much.

Dermo turned away as if he was choosing to ignore her.

He swung round unexpectedly and slapped her with the knuckles of his left hand, loosening one of her front teeth. Mo had perfect teeth. She brushed and flossed every day, even when she was a small girl.

Mo made for Dermo and hit him with her closed fist. The force of the blow was no more than a fly landing on an elephant.

Dermo kicked her away from him, in the stomach, with his steel reinforced work boot.

The sole left a muddy herring bone footprint on her bulging white top. As if he walked over her for a shortcut. Dermo left Mo bent on the floor, in the foetal position, and on the way out he slammed the door so hard the glass cracked.

Later that night Mo was taken to the hospital. She was bleeding from the uterus.

That was the night she lost her baby.

I called to see Mo in St Hilda's.

Mo's lips were bruised. She moved her loose tooth back and forth with her index finger, like a cat flap.

‘It's going to fall out, G. I'm going to have to put a false tooth soaking in a glass to clean off the plaque. Like my Ma.'

The baby had to be vacuumed out of her, she said, but it was all very matter of fact, which was really worrying. The nurses and the doctors wanted to call the Gardaí but Mo was afraid to tell them anything. The excuse was she was playing football and a stray shot hit her accidentally in the tummy.

‘You have to leave him,' was my advice.

Mo turned away.

‘I have nowhere to go.'

‘Your mother? Get a Ryanair over. Stay until you get sorted.'

Mo sighed with frustration. I went round to the other side of the bed so I could see her face.

‘Let me spell it out for you, G. My mother is in England.
She has a man. Bob Five Bellies is his name. They spend all day smoking dope and eating oven chips. Bob claims to be a talent scout for dancers. But he's really a driver for blonde girls who dance on fat men's bellies. Got that?'

Sometimes the words come out before you have time to stop them.

‘Is she sort of a hooker's chaperone then? Your Mam?'

‘She's hooker lite. It's really nice that, for both sides. Bob's mates think they've pulled. They give Ma a little present. Ma thinks the men love her so much and that she's not really on the game.'

Mo never knew her old man. Her Dad vamoosed one day when he won money at the bookies, not long after Mo was born, and died from the booze and dope when she was five or six.

‘Ah never mind your mother. Surely you're not going back to Dermo. That nutter could kill you.'

I was now finished forever with wishing well on the marriage.

Mo pulled herself up. Grimaced as she held the metal protectors on the side of the bed

‘I have nowhere to go. I told you. For now.'

I wrote out a cheque behind a screen where life was so often altered or ended, and people in a bad way had to whisper last words of love and goodbye.

‘That will fix your tooth. The orthodontist can put in a permanent implant and nobody will know anything or notice it's not real.'

In a temper, she whooshed away the cheque off the mobile table straddling the bed. It flew like a paper plane under the screen separating us from the other patients in the maternity ward.

Mothers were nursing babies and more were on drips. In the background the hospital's own radio station played oldies songs to make sick people sicker. A baby cried and another joined in.

Mo cried nearly every time she heard a baby cry.

I picked up the cheque and folded it neatly. So as to make it seem smaller.

‘Please take it.'

And she did. Mo sat up and opened out the cheque

‘It's a loan. Ah thanks, G. It's kinda cute what with your name signed on it. Like your autograph. You had it written out. Thanks, G. You really are my best friend.'

She smiled at me but with her mouth closed.

‘Hey, G,' she said, perking up at the thought of the good old days.

‘Do you remember the night in Angel Lane?'

It was a mad college party. Nearly five years ago. In a heaving club. The place was lifting. I had to shout the chat-up lines at Mo above the mad music.

‘Remember when we were young the way it was how the mother always gave us Dozo. When we were sick? For fevers and stuff?

Mo bent down to my height.

‘Go on. I hear you.'

I made my pitch.

‘I'm making a new drink from baby dope and booze.
DoZoPop
it's gonna be called. It'll be like drinking in the womb. I'm gonna be rich.'

Mo was studying Business and I was in First Year Civil
Engineering. Mo warned me she was from a part of the city that was always in the news for drugs and gangs murdering each other.

‘But you don't have a really strong accent? You spoofin' me?' I asked. Mo took of her heels. Now we were almost the same height.

Mo told me she spent ‘three long years in the poshest boarding school in the country. On scholarship.'

Her friend came back with two off-duty cops.

Mo's pal hitched herself up. ‘Me knickers is riding me.'

‘Come on,' said one of the cops. ‘I'm on at six.'

‘Sorry, G, I gotta look after her. She's pissed. You know how it is.'

I tailed the girls. Secretly. By the exit, the bigger of the two policeman grabbed Mo's arse and she didn't take any notice.

Her friend said, referring to me, ‘I wouldn't ride that little runt if he had pedals.'

We met in college the very next day. After a while I stopped trying to impress Mo and I was myself.

Told Mo my Dad was very sick.

Told her, ‘Dad lost a leg.' How it was he put an ad in
Buy and Sell
magazine: ‘For Sale 7 left shoes.' I hadn't told anyone about the ad. I didn't want people who didn't really know Dad to think he was crazy. But Mo laughed like mad and said my Dad must be a gas man. She promised to pray for him in the college chapel.

I was well in love with her by then.

We met up most days after that.

The lady who had the hysterectomy on the other side of a plastic screen with dolphins swimming in every direction broke the recall when she pressed long on her buzzer for another room-service painkiller.

A smiling man holding a bouquet of red roses opened Mo's curtains and apologised.

‘I thought he was bringing me a wreath for my dead baby.'

What could I say to that?

I was so deadly scared of Dermo.

We could have gone anywhere with my civil engineering qualifications. But I just couldn't ask her. There was always the worry that if I told her how I felt, she would dump me as a friend. I just didn't know how to close the deal.

Mo was a beautiful looking girl. Taller than me. Black, silky, Spanish hair, and a body that was designed by the lads who made mannequins for shop windows. Her big brown eyes were a deeper brown than my mother's mahogany hall table and her lips always seemed moist and full. That's when they weren't slapped multicoloured by Dermo.

I should have taken the plunge there and then.

I knew for sure Dermo would come after us. Every day there was a murder on the news. The Olsens probably knew hit men. But Dermo would hardly sub-contract a job he would enjoy doing so much himself.

He was capable of castration. Put my testicles in my shoes. I think that was what the Mafia did if you ran away with one of their wives. The tradition was kept in hick
villages
in Sicily or in Little Italy in New York until the net was invented. Now crazies everywhere have a guide.

‘Sleep on it. I'll call back tomorrow.'

I kissed her on the top of the head. She didn't seem to notice that this was the first time I ever actually kissed her anywhere.

‘Hey, G?' she asked, as if trying to get out of the here and now. ‘Do you remember what you said to me when I asked you in the club … the first night … if the horrible orange dress was awful on me?'

I did remember, but Mo answered her own question.

‘You said I would look good in an onion bag.'

Mo changed mood again.

‘I told Dermo I wished he was dead and I do,' she said quietly.

‘The world takes revenge on people like him. There's no need to go to the cops, if you think about it. Bad things happen to bad people. Karma's just another word for dues. He will die soon.'

The attack took place in the supermarket queue, just a few days before Mo lost her little baby.

Mo emptied her shopping on the rolling conveyor belt.

Mrs D dramatically banged the yellow supermarket
partition
between her dog food and Mo's shopping. There were fifteen tins of Fido beef with onion gravy on Mrs D's territory, even though she didn't own a dog.

Mrs D probably made burgers and lasagne from the Fido.

Mrs D put her arms around Mo's big bump and squeezed as tight as she could. Mo released Mrs D's interlocked witch's wrists with difficulty. Then Mrs D opened fire.

‘You're a slut robber like your whore mother. Look at your black pudding fingers with your mock pound shop ring. Fat fingers, fat fingers, fat fingers, fat fingers,' she called out like cruel school yards kids do, in a sing-song voice.

As bad luck would have it, a Taiwanese machine for sucking up leaves was on special offer and there were loads of people in the supermarket to snap up the bargain. It was
late May and there were no fallen leaves on the ground. There wasn't much point in sucking live leaves off trees in May. Unless you're a giraffe that is.

That was the way it was back in the boom.

Mrs D went at it non-stop. Told Mo she was a nobody and her mother was a ride who rode Mr D loads of times.

It was the first time Mo had heard of her mother's alleged affair with Mr D.

Mo wanted to get out of the shop but she couldn't find her purse in the large cluttered bag. A young mother with a baby tied to her front, said ‘Let me try.' She put her hand deep into Mo's bag and pulled out the purse.

‘Lucky dip,' she said in a caring voice.

Her baby's knitted hat had fallen into Mo's bag.

Mo bent over to retrieve the baby bonnet.

‘That's how she takes it!' screamed Mrs D. ‘Like a dog. Look at her. Look at her. Woof woof, woof woof.' And then she began to pant with her long, off-white, waxy tongue flapping out of the side of her mouth.

Heads turned down faraway isles. Shoppers left whatever it was they were examining. A thin man looking at a money-saving device for cutting his own hair walked hurriedly towards the checkout. He fumbled for his iPhone.

Mo put her hands up to her face to avoid the shower of spitty spray. And to hide her face from the thin iPhone man, who was only a few metres away filming like frigging Spielberg. The director put most of the rant up on YouTube for all the world to see. Without Mo's okay. It's there forever now. Mo was worried the movie might go viral. And would strangers point to her in the street and say ‘Look, there's the lady in the mad dog food fight on YouTube.'

Mo felt vulnerable, now that she was so far gone.

Running through her head was the scary thought Mrs D might damage her baby.

Mrs D kicked over a column of aromatherapy foot spas. The top spa fell on her head. A bottle of jasmine oil broke open but the scent failed to calm Mrs D.

She screamed.

‘I hope your bastard baby dies!'

The Polish checkout lady pushed Mrs D roughly out through the front of the shop.

Mrs D called for the police.

Mo almost collapsed. She leant over the Perspex protecting the cash register. Her sweating hands left the perfect imprint of a palm and fingers.

The Polish checkout lady was very nice to Mo. The girl with the baby said ‘Take no notice of her, she's off the head. Here take a drink of water.' Mo swallowed most of the small bottle in one go.

The shoppers went back to their juicers, German sauerkraut and satellites for tents. The girl with the baby stayed. Mo asked to go to the toilets.

Mrs D, who had doubled back into the shop, dodged from shelf to shelf for cover. She followed Mo to the staff toilets. Mo didn't lock the cubicle. Mrs D pushed her face into Mo's.

Mo pulled back from the stench of dog breath. There was no escape. Mo was trapped. She folded her arms round her bump. This time Mrs D spoke slowly and deliberately, just above a whisper, but loud enough for Mo to hear every word.

‘Your baby will be stillborn and they'll throw it in the
furnace. It'll burn like it was in hell cos of your whore mother.'

Mo sobbed. ‘I hope you die. I hope you die soon.'

That was the moment.

The beginning of the wish-killing.

Mrs D was brought to the hospital by ambulance. She was gasping and wheezing. Mo was told by the supermarket people, who were tipped-off by the police. She was diagnosed with lung cancer, even though the woman never smoked a cigarette in her life.

Mrs D was ‘opened and closed' according to the manager of the supermarket. ‘She's a gonner,' he said, in a good-enough-for-her sort of voice.

Mo and Mrs D were in St Hilda's at the same time. Mo asked me to check on Mrs D, who was upstairs in the ward for lost causes.

The sign on the door of the intensive care unit read, ‘Family members only'.

I pretended I was Mrs D's nephew Fintan. The name has such a ring of truth to it. A Fintan could never be
suspected
of telling lies.

Mrs D was attached to a drip feeding liquids in, and another pipe took liquids out. Two forked, stem-thin tubes were stuck up Mrs D's nostrils. Her moustache was as if he wiped her nose with a finger dipped in coal dust. Which made Mrs D into a grotesque, gasping walrus.

She didn't have enough breath to generate speech.

‘This is your nephew Fintan,' announced the nurse, who was delighted Mrs D had a visitor.

Mrs D's pupils rolled around in her marzipan eyes. Her chest heaved and fell but didn't rise again. Spittle blobs formed on the corners of her mouth, but no words came out. A vein on the side of Mrs D's head turned purple as a slug. Mrs D tried to sit up but fell back.

And Fintan slipped away while the nurse was attending to Mrs D.

I reported back within a few minutes. Told Mo Mrs D was panting like a fish on the riverbank.

Mo sat up in the bed. ‘She's mad. Off her game but I'm not sorry for her. I can try but I'm not sorry for her. It was an awful thing to say and her wish came true.'

We changed the subject. Spoke about job prospects and the chances of Mo going back to college.

‘Hey, G. Be honest with me. Are my fingers fat?'

I had the line ready ever since I heard of Mrs D's attack.

‘Mo you have the slender fingers of a piano player.'

She moved her hand slowly over mine.

‘You should write poetry,' she said.