The Ballad of Mo and G (4 page)

But who knows what's going on in anyone's head. The only way human behaviour makes sense is if you accept we are all mad in varying degrees, with the Dermos right up near the top of the scale.

Western Europeans are descended from four or five explorers out of the Rift Valley in Kenya who made their way across the world, via a few million years, to the Compound. So it says on the TV.

Everyone is everyone's cousin. We are interbred and mutants of ourselves. Well that's my theory and some are madder than others. In time and with training and practice it's some bit sortable out. For most.

How we help each other out defines us.

But I feel so small, scared and useless. I don't really know what to do, to make us safe. It was sort of like trying to keep out the tide with a plastic chip shop fork.

Maureen is now Mo's closest woman friend.

One night, not long before the baby died, Maureen made drinking chocolate with marshmallows. She patted Mo gently on the belly.

‘How is my little my grandchild and it swimming away without a care in the world? You must play nice music. Elvis would be lovely. ‘Love Me Tender'.'

Maureen put her head on Mo's tummy and hummed a few verses of a lullaby.

‘They can hear music in the womb you know. And later, when they gets older, they remembers it.'

I wondered what sweet music Mo heard in the womb. Shouting and drunken fighting I would guess, for certain.

Dad used to take me down to the river when I was a small fella and one day he brought home an
orange-coloured
toyshop net attached to a slender bamboo pole. We travelled hand-in-hand from our house to the Owenalee, over a timber style, and through two green meadows dotted with little yellow flowers.

I netted darting salmon fry in the lukewarm pools under the weeping willows at the lazy bend.

My Mam washed out a jam jar.

‘In case the little fish get diabetes,' said Dad.

Mam laughed. She used to laugh at all his jokes back then.

I took the fry carefully from the net. They wriggled about tickling my palm as I closed my fingers into a tunnel, in case the fry fell off and were lost in the long grass.
Carefully I placed the babies in the jar.

The salmon fry died after a few days. I blamed myself for taking them away from their river.

‘Ah, little G,' explained Dad, ‘some are meant to perish and more are made to go. Only a tiny few grow up to be big salmon anyway. They have so many fish and bird enemies and they live in a very dangerous place.'

I grassed from an internet cafe, so deep in the inner city, it was an independent republic.
A place where the citizens were allowed to get on with whatever it was they were doing, provided they didn't bother anyone on the outside.

Cameras owned every street. The police could trace an email sent from a laptop or an iPhone. I wore a hat and dark glasses at night. Like a rock star.

I was the only white person in the cafe. Walk into a shop in some other part of town and there was always the chance you would meet someone from home, or work, or wherever. In Ireland, there was only one or two degrees of separation. Except in Ethnicland.

The email gave the police the exact location of the Olsen place and a detailed account of the death of the Papillon.

More than a week passed before the cops got around to calling to the Olsens but by then the dead donkey had galloped off. The runs had been cleaned up. Bones were
buried, or maybe Dermo made consommé for the flask he brought on lorry trips.

Dermo must have had the captured dogs killed in one last savage waste not, want not orgy.

He produced state dog licences and breeding papers from the Kennel Club. There was no proof. No one ever exhumed a donkey or a Papillon and so it was, the Olsens walked. The Olsens were always breaking some law. Some were small laws like driving without silencers and more were big laws. The family sold stuff from their vans. Dodgy smokes and fake DVDs. You'd never know what they'd be up to. Maybe Dermo smuggled in drugs but Maureen hated drugs, so maybe not.

There must have been a tip-off.

Most likely the police made a judgement call. Which was more important to the law? High-quality intelligence, or a few stray dogs waiting to be torn apart on death row?

The Olsens were giving the cops information in return for immunity. Mo was sure of it. She often overheard Dermo talking to a Sergeant Matt. Dermo used to tell Big Matt, as he called him, about the criminals he met on the road, the stuff they were up to, where they were going, and why.

I was petrified and wished I hadn't sent the email.

But if they did trace me, would I be forced to testify against the Olsens behind a screen, wearing a bulletproof vest, with a new nose, and a digitally altered had-a-stroke voice?

I was truly horrified over what happened to the little dog. But I wasn't going to testify against Dermo. Not for a dog. Maybe not even for a human.

The stress of it all fuelled the mad dreams and worries.

Would I finish up on a witness protection scheme, somewhere in the Deep South of the USA? In a place where there were no Irish, and catfish gumbo stunk the house. With fuck all to do all day only swat flies with rolled up newspapers and flick the zapper until I get epilepsy or go blind from jerking off at porn channels.

In the end I give myself away with the emigrant's corny longing for home by going up to an Irish pub in El Paso and singing ‘The Fields of Athenry' and asking for Chef Sauce with my corned beef and cabbage and saying top of the morning or whatever crap it is mock Irish people say when they greet each other in Hollywood movies.

Thor Olsen, a long-lost Swedish American lumberjack cousin, spots me from the pictures circulated by the clan all over the world. He cuts my head clean off with his axe. And sticks it on a barbeque fork, as a warning to the others.

Although on the positive side there would hardly be too many lumberjacks south of El Paso. Unless he was a cactus lumberjack.

As ever and always I began to lose it under stress. I saw all this in my mind.

The wide awake dreams were back.

Ridiculous as the odds were, I just couldn't turn off the stupid images, especially in waking time. It's like watching your operation on a TV monitor. There's no end. At least with nightmares they stop when you wake up the next morning and you say thank God, it's only a dream.

Which makes me the living dead. But my dreams are all action. I'm a frenetic zombie.

My Mammy told me I was always talking about ‘pictures on my pillow' when I was a kid. She and Dad assumed these were my happy kiddies' dreams about Disneyland and stuff.

Mam thought it was kinda cute, but they were terrifying head movies of people being killed. Maybe it was brought on by the murderous TV we watched from the age of four.

Mo didn't know it was me who tipped off the police.

Even though I trusted Mo, you would never know what she might say to Dermo in the heat of the moment, just to hurt him, and not in any way to get me into trouble. Married people say stuff to each other they wouldn't dream of saying to anyone else in a million years. Sometimes I could hear my parents arguing late at night.

I used to pull my head under the bedclothes, until I nearly smothered.

Then one night my Dad pulled back the duvet, gently, and found me with my eyes closed and my thumbs in my ears. I never heard my parents argue again. Love left but courtesy stayed. For the kids' sake.

Mo knew it was him. From the sounds made by the dogs. He was a day early. She tried to hide her cases, but there wasn't enough time. Dermo always drove right up to the door at speed, as if he was trying to catch her at something she shouldn't be doing.

The dogs recognised the revs of Dermo's engine.

The Alsatians barked a series of warnings when an ordinary car drove into the Compound, but for Dermo they sang in a high manic pitch.

Grey, the leader, started the yodel. His pals joined in. The Doberman pups down in the far-off amphitheatre, led by their diva mother, sang ‘welcome home, Dermo' in a howling wolverines' chorus.

‘You're home early.' She forced a smile.

Dermo was almost always cranky after a long drive. Some c— drove out in front of him and he nearly
jackknifed
, or the pigs pulled him over to check mud flaps and tacographs.

Dermo's road rage kept going when he wasn't driving. One wrong sentence could trigger him.

She was hoping he wouldn't notice the labelled cardboard boxes full of books on the kitchen table or the half-filled open suitcase on the floor of the utility room. Mo was getting ready to leave Dermo. Her plan was to be well gone by the time he came home.

Dermo walked past her on the porch, through the kitchen, to the back of the house.

She hid a suitcase in the broom cupboard.

‘Dermos Den' was painted on the door of his private room in a large-lettered red daub. The letters bled into the door and dripped down in long, thin lines.

Mo was often tempted to stencil in an apostrophe, but thought better of it. The door was padlocked. Dermo nailed on a steel frame for extra protection. Mo always wondered what was in there.

A deep freeze for sure.

Dermo brought frozen bags of minced meat from the
Den. I joked that Dermo put hitchhikers to death and butchered them for dog meat and kicks.

Mo knew Dermo kept his stash of cash in the Den. Once when Dermo was out-cold drunk, Mo went through his pockets and found nearly six grand in fifties and hundreds. Supposedly thick people can add, multiply and subtract with the brightest, provided you substitute x, y and z for dollars, pounds and euros. Dermo had plenty of money.

‘Strip, bitch!' he shouted in a weird, high voice. Mo dived on the sofa for her mobile. Dermo got to it first. Mo was sent flying to the floor.

Dermo squashed the phone under his big boot. The one he killed their baby with. He undid his shiny belt buckle.

‘Not now. It's my period.'

And she smiled at him again. Then with a shrug, she said casually, ‘You know how it is with us women.'

He put his face in hers.

‘I don't want to shag you,' he whispered softly, forcing his revolving tongue into her ear as he squeezed her slender wrists so tight she felt pins and needles on the tips of her fingers. He moved back a little and looked her up and down. Still holding her wrists in a tight grip, he whispered again.

‘I wants to torture you.'

Dermo tied Mo's hands with the cowboy belt and dragged her roughly across the hard, tiled kitchen to the Den.

Mo tried to scream, but he got his hand over her mouth and muffled words into mumbles. There followed a vicious punch and Mo's left eye started to swell up almost immediately.

Dermo ordered Mo to stand up.

Mo was choking.

‘Will you shut up if I let you breathe?'

She nodded. Mo stole a breath. She felt absolutely helpless and under his power. Mo kept on thinking her way through the ordeal, trying to figure out how she could escape unharmed.

‘Swear on your dead baby you will shut your big fuck-faced mouth.'

Your dead baby. Your dead baby.

That ate her up. The ‘your dead baby' bit. Your. Your. Your. Your. But she kept quiet. Mo was screaming inside but she nodded again, barely able to propel her head forward.

He took away his greasy black hand from her mouth. Mo drank in the air in big gulps. The breaths tasted of diesel and sweat.

Dermo opened the door of the Den.

The door was stiff and stuck. The timber had contracted from the damp and cold of the Den. It made the hoarse throat noise of a door opening in a haunted house movie. Dermo kicked the reinforced door with such force, he knocked flakes of caked black paint off the wall.

He took out a bag of minced meat from the freezer and ordered Mo to put it up to her eye.

‘You'll tell the Ma you fell?'

She nodded again, afraid to speak, and not trusting her squashed voice box. For Mo it was just a case of getting to the next minute without getting hurt and taking it from there. It was all about survival until he wore himself out. She stood in the centre of the room with her head lowered
and her hands joined. Mo prayed silently. A long prayer to Holy Mary the nuns taught her.

‘You bruise easy,' he said in a calmer voice.

Dermo lit up a cigarette even though she never saw him smoking up to that. But it was only an intermission. He put the cigarette out by stubbing it slowly in Mo's arm. She screamed loudly and tried to free herself from the cowboy belt.

‘Shut–the-fuck-up.'

Dermo hit Mo across the face with a leather motorbike glove as if he was offering her out for a duel.

He rummaged through the drawers of a bashed-in filing cabinet. Mo could see the nostrils of a shotgun sticking out of the half-open bottom drawer. Dermo took a cordless drill from the top drawer. She bought it for him for his birthday. Black and Decker. Mo thought it might help to domesticate him. The drill buzzed before Mo like as if he was inscribing the airspace in front of her with threats.

‘Open wide. It won't hurt a bit. It's just like giving head.' He slapped his thigh and laughed hysterically at his own joke.

Dermo took an egg timer from the credit card pocket in his motorbike jacket. He push-kicked Mo over to a purple chaise longue that might have been the property of a Madame or a broke property developer.

‘Admit it and I might go easy on you.'

‘Admit what?'

He straddled her. Placed the egg timer on her heaving and contracting chest. Dermo picked up the egg timer with his mouth and pressed it into to her forehead, leaving a perfect red circle.

Then he showed her the sands in the top chamber.

‘This is how long it will take me to rape you, bitch. That's all of my valuable time I can spare. When the beach is down in the bottom half, we'll flip her over, and then you'll get what's comin to you.

‘Now for the nineteenth time, tell me it was you what ratted on your husband who has been very, very good to you, givin' you a good home and a new kitchen. And you as good as an orphan with nobody to look after you. Your husband what is a lovely man, what has a big heart, a heart as big as a turnip, dey all says.'

‘I haven't a clue what you're on about.' And she didn't.

‘I know you know. It was you what done the grassin' on us bout the fightin' dogs. But we weren't caught, cunt.'

Dermo stopped, as if he was thinking, and scratched his head with his left hand as his right hand pinned Mo by the neck to the chaise longue

‘Howld, howld on now. Ah but I'm all wrong there. All wrong. Wait up. Whoa up. A cunt is a useful thing.

‘The cops was tolt everythin' what happened. You sent it. You sent it. That fuckin' email. You betrayed your
husband
you swore to love, honour and obey up in the altar before the priest and before God hisself.' Dermo was crying as he spoke. He slapped her hard across the head.

‘Bitch!' he shouted. ‘I used to love you. I fucking used to love you.'

Semi-concussed, she saw stars. Actual stars. Shooting around in all directions, like in the cartoons.

Mo didn't move. Lay as quiet as could be. She knew he was out of control now. He was still sobbing, silently. And feeling very sorry for Saint Dermo The Victim.

She braced herself for another slap or kick. Her head started to clear a little.

The last grains of sand shifted to the bottom chamber.

The epileptic drill rat-a-tat-tatted a drum solo on the thin-assed antique George the something chair. The crying stopped.

Dermo turned off the drill and asked quietly, ‘If it wasn't you, then who was it?' He was blinking rapidly as if the single bulb hanging from the ceiling was hurting his eyes.

Dermo sat on the antique chair. It broke under his weight and he stayed on the floor with his head in his hands.

Mo was shaking but years of crisis management enabled her to put on the face again. Dermo was having one of his migraines. He twisted and turned from the pain. Dermo rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. He got up and sat down again on the floor. Experience and instinct told her now was the time to risk all.

‘You are a dead man if I wish you dead. Even if you kill me, my curse will get you. Just ask your Mammy. I killed more than Mrs D. Did you know that? I can kill whenever I like. All I have to do is wish. Just a wish and you're dead. But I don't like killing people unless I really have to. Unless I really have no choice.'

The fury squirted out of him. It could be he believed Mo didn't know about the raid, which she didn't. Possibly he saw the headache as Phase 1 in his death by wishing. Maybe he was afraid of his mother. Or was some little bit of human still left in him? And did he still love her? It could be random, down to the route the roulette balls took round his head before they stuck on a saner pocket.

Dermo stood up, slowly.

‘Get the fuck outta here. And don't never threaten me again. You're not worth doing time for, bitch.'

Mo released her hands by pulling open the belt with her mouth. She put on her top. It was one of Dermo's and had ‘Route 66' embroidered across the front.

She walked out slowly. Route 66 was hanging just above her knees which were scratched and bleeding from carpet and tile burn.

Dermo squeaked, ‘You know I was going to bring you to Route 66 on the honeymoon.'

She closed the already swollen eye and made her way slowly and silently towards the door. Mo counted every step, scared that if she ran, Dermo would sense her fear and might strike again. Mo's wrists were so bruised and sore, she could barely open the door. She glanced back at him.

He was lying on the chaise longue, his head busting from the pain.

Mo wasn't sure if she had won, or if this was a truce, or just a postponement of the inevitable.