The Ballad of Mo and G (8 page)

The handyman made himself at home. He sat at the kitchen table and sipped a coffee before he spoke.

‘I know you and Dermo were split up but it must be still be a bleedin' shock. Jesus that oul bitch was completely on the wrong side. She's stone dead. Dermo had no chance. Ploughed right into her.'

The handyman took out a box of Olsen own-brand Marlboro cigarettes from a pouch on the front of his utility belt and lit up. He got up to measure the frame. The
window
was boarded up.

‘Dem modern foxes would nearly sit down at the table and eat your dinner. I'll be back tomorrow with the glass. That nun. I knew her well. She had a brother with Alzheimer's up in the Home. I done a few jobs there.

‘She was half-deaf and had thick glasses like the bottom of a jam jar. The oul nun used to drive with her head up agin the windscreen same as a suction Jesus.

‘Lookit, I'm not knockin' no one, but that Mother Aloys was an accident waitin' to happen.'

Mo felt herself go weak. She had to sit on the windowsill.

Mo curled up her toes so much she felt a cramp go up her leg. The piece of glass she squeezed cut her hand.

The handy man stubbed his cigarette.

‘You didn't mind me smoking, Mam?' after he took a long drag.

The handy man put the decommissioned cigarette over his ear. I suppose he could hardly stick it under his ear.

‘It's a recession,' and shrugged an
ah sure you know yourself and we're all in the same boat.

‘MotherAloys?' asked Mo. ‘From who – sorry where?'

It had to be her Mother Aloys. The handyman confirmed her thoughts.

‘She was your one what was the head nun over in St Mary's boarding school for rich girls up in Clandeboyce. I think it was Aloys. Yeah it was Aloys. Sounds like she was called after hubcaps or somethin'. Do you know what I mean?'

It was the hand-me-downs that killed the Mother.

Mo was a student for three years at Clandeboyce, a very expensive and exclusive boarding school. The nuns took in a few kids from ‘the wider locality' as day pupils, to maintain the illusion they were carrying out God's work. Mother Aloys was fond of saying, ‘The well-off are God's children too.' Which was true, in a way, as God was looking after them much better than the poor kids. Even if he did
have a change of heart after Ireland went bust.

Mo passed the entrance test with flying colours and her mother went on the piss for three straight days to celebrate the scholarship. An I wasn't such a bad mother now was I sort of a piss-up. She drank the back-to-school allowance, which was given by the government to parents to help out with buying school uniforms and books. There was no money left for Mo's uniform. Mother Aloys arranged for hand-me-downs.

Twelve-year-old Mo knew straightaway it was a
second-hand
uniform. Her mother told her no one would know it wasn't new. Mother Aloys sent a thank you note to the mammy who gave her the uniform, mentioning Mo was the recipient, and all about her family circumstances. The kid who had worn it the previous year read the note when she was rummaging through Mammy's bag for cigarette money.

Mo was teased from her first day in the school and left at the end of third year for a Community School in the city. It was pre the big take-off of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. So the bullying was all stored in head memory only. Mo either forgot or blanked out the details of most of it, but the girl who found out her secret never left her alone. She was cruel. Took off Mo's accent and sent her notes like ‘Why do you always smell? Does your mammy wash your sanitary pads?' Then there was the taunting, ‘Your mammy is your sister. Your mammy is your sister.'

The girl gave Mo a nickname – Eeny Miney.

Mo used to cry until the pillow was that wet she had to turn it over. Mo's revenge was to finish top of the class. Mo could not remember if she wanted the nun to die. Most kids wish death on some teacher at some time or another.

The handyman gabbed on and on but Mo took no notice. Mo was now seriously beginning to believe she had some kind of power.

Everyone in Ireland knows someone who knows someone but this coincidence of two on the death list getting their comeuppance, at the same time, in the same place, was still a long shot statistically. Like billions to one. Killing two birds with the one stone never seemed so apt.

If you added in Mrs D that made three. That's if Dermo was going to die and Sergeant Matt seemed to think he would, which was no bad thing.

If killing two people amounted to double murder then three would definitely upgrade Mo to a serial killer.

Mo Googled the FBI definition of ‘serial killer' and all while the handy man was telling her Mother A had given him a fifty-cents tip, which he said was insulting and the Vatican should be sold off to help the poor, which no doubt included recession-hit handymen. Even there in the midst of an impending death he was setting Mo up for a big tip. She gave the handyman a tenner, just to get rid of him.

The FBI definition came up on her iPhone screen.

Serial Murder: The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.

She was in. Up there with John Wayne Gacy and the Boston Strangler and Jack the Ripper.

Mostly the bullying in Clandeboyce took the form of copying Mo's accent. It could be Mother A knew this was going on and tried to fix the problem.

Or so Mo figured now, ten years later.

At the time she was really upset and miserable and Mother A must have picked up on that.

Mother A was an elocution teacher. Mo was soon speaking like a posh girl but it took some time. Mo never forgot the perseverance of Mother A. Her grammar was perfect after the three years but the inner-city accent never left her.

Mother A had her ways. ‘Now girls, the organs of articulation are the tongue, the teeth, the lips, the soft palate and the lower jaw.'

Mo was brilliant at impersonating people.

‘I nearly bit my tongue off trying to do the th's. I wasn't sure if I was being taught how to speak properly or give head.'

The nun drove Mo nuts but not nuts enough to have her killed by wishing, as was the case with Mrs D, unless it was a temporary wish, an off the cuff sort of adolescent wish that was never rightly cancelled. The old nun meant well and she gave Mo spending money for school trips, without ever telling her mother.

Mo was worried there could have been a disaster on a bigger scale. A bus sliding off an icy bend on the way to St Moritz for a Clandeboyce tenth reunion might kill fifty. She cancelled the wish immediately.

I told her not to worry too much. Most of the Clandeboyce girls' husbands would have lost millions in the financial crash and so the tenth would be held in a
one-star motel with chicken leftovers recycled into an à la king for a main course, with soft stuck-together rice on paper plates with plastic knives and forks.

I was trying to cheer her up. It didn't work.

‘He's going to die. I killed him. I killed another human being.'

Dora Seerly, who wrote
The Law of the Wish
, wrote that when death came she hadn't the slightest notion of disappearing into the bellies of worms. It was her intention to last forever in some shape or form. Through what Dora called ‘The Doctrine of the Transmutation of the Spirit'. Because she wished it, her spirit would live on forever.

Dermo would never leave Mo alone either, even in death. The thought she had killed him even in self-defence might haunt her forever. Mo wasn't cruel in any way. She just wanted some love and a little peace. I tried to persuade her this was all just a random series of mad coincidences.

All three of Mo's alleged victims were doubly connected in life and death.

Mother A was in a pull-out fridge in the left wing of St Hilda's of the Holy Sepulchre.

Dermo was in the Intensive Care Unit, final home to the recently departed and little missed Mrs D.

The doctors were of the considered opinion that the next twenty-four hours would be crucial. Dermo had only a very slim chance of survival.

The car windscreen smashed but did not break into large pizza-slice pieces of glass capable of inflicting serious scars like those Dermo had suffered when he was wounded. It was more like multiple abrasions, as if he was riddled with an acne machine gun.

The Gardaí took the car away, as they do, to check out the brakes and that sort of thing. But would they compare the car damage and the medical reports? Mo waited and waited but it seemed the police were sure Dermo's injuries were caused by the car accident. She was in the clear, if Dermo died, and stayed unconscious until he died.

The doctors stitched up the throat wound. Dermo would be badly scarred, but if he was to die it would have been from the bang to the head. Dermo wasn't wearing a safety belt. Well he wouldn't, would he? Wouldn't have had the time to put it on while he was bleeding to death. He probably never wore one anyway, because it was a rule. But which bang to the head did him in? Was his trauma caused by Mo's hammer, his own head-butting of the window or the collision with Mother A?

Maureen and Mikey were on a bedside vigil.

Soon Olsens began to arrive from all over Ireland.

There was an injured jockey in the bed next to Dermo. He was in a bad way after a fall from a horse at a Point-to-Point.

Maureen came into the waiting room with the latest update on her son.

‘At least he's not getting any worser,' was the prognosis.

The jockey's brother told his news within a few seconds of Maureen's communiqué.

The grieving brother lowered his head as he spoke. Tears welled in his eyes.

‘The doctor says he's just about jumpin' the last.'

Dermo's brother Mikey had been chatting to the jockey's partner and she told him they had a two-year-old at home being minded by her mother.

‘A horse?' asked Mikey.

‘No a baby,' replied the jockey's partner tearfully.

That was Mikey. It was like the time Mo and Maureen were planning a trip to Tuscany and Mikey asked ‘Have they elephants there?'

The Olsens were very nice to the jockey's family.

The jockey's brother and his partner were back in the waiting room within ten minutes.

They had bad news for the rest of the family. The jockey's mother broke down. His dad tried to comfort her but soon he too was sobbing.

The Olsens cried to a man and a woman.

Maureen embraced the jockey's mother. Mikey whispered to his uncles and numerous first cousins. They left the room. Mikey was back in minutes later. He called over the jockey's partner.

‘Sorry for your troubles, Mam. The Olsens wants to show our sympathy. This is from us.'

Mikey handed her a large envelope with ‘Blood Samples for Lab' printed on the front. Inside were the contents of the Olsens' collection. Nearly three grand. The Olsens had emptied their pockets.

The jockey's partner who was only nineteen said she couldn't take the money but Mikey wasn't for moving. ‘It's for the small babby. He has no daddy now.'

Maureen told Mo there was one son who turned out good and Mikey's ‘nature' helped ease half the regrets she had for staying with her husband.

The doctors were of the opinion the life support machine should be switched off. There was little point in keeping Dermo alive, the specialist advised, as there was no prospect of recovery.

There was no mention of a lump hammer trauma. It never came up at all. Everyone assumed Dermo was injured in the car accident. The fact Mother A's head was cut off implied that Dermo's injuries were consistent with a violent smash.

The blood tests showed Dermo had taken several
heaped teaspoons of coke, which explained a lot.

Maureen spoke to the hospital chaplain and he convinced her all this wishing to death was no more than chance and superstition. ‘Dermo took cocaine and nobody forced him to. He was in rehab but he left of his own accord. It was his choice and his alone,' said the Chaplain. ‘It had nothing to do with wishing anyone to death. It wasn't even the will of God but more a case of the will of Dermo.'

Numerous visits to the hospital church and the lighting of hundreds of candles brought Maureen back to her own religion and away from the teachings of Dora Seerly. Nuns consoled Maureen as she sat by the bed and they prayed with her. Maureen took out her Rosary beads and said Novena after Novena for Dermo.

Maureen practised a kind of voodoo-bling Catholicism.

Her house was full of holy water bottles from sacred fonts, saint's wells and blessed taps. There was a huge
picture
of someone who was supposed to be Jesus. He looked very sad.

Scattered here and there around her home, and
outdoors
too, were five mounted silver shrines to the Blessed Virgin. Holy Mary was dressed in real blue and white silk robes, embraced with golden rosary beads. The robes were covered in see-through plastic sheeting.

There were various mini-shrines to minor saints whose holy wells could cure blindness and arthritis. A black saint in the form of a doll was hanging off a hook on the ceiling. St Bridget was impaled by a nail to the rim of the shelf over the stove, just underneath a tea canister with two cute pusheens on the front and above a framed, signed photo of Dora Seerly.

The fridge was the coolest shrine of all. Stuck to the door were dozens of magnets of A-list saints, cathedrals, discredited Popes, several St Patricks and the thin-legged donkey from the flight to Egypt.

Our Lord's Sea of Galilee boat was berthed in a huge stagnant pond at the back of Maureen's house. The boat was one-fifteenth of the size of a real fishing vessel. The statue of Jesus was stilling the tempest and the seasick apostles were cowering. Maureen explained that Dermo bought it off a crooked orthodox churchman in Bosnia and brought it home with a consignment of dodgy cigarettes.

Mo moved back into the Compound two days after the accident. She didn't want the police calling to the holiday home in case the damage to the window was spotted and the blood analysed. Mo greatly missed Maureen. There was no danger from Dermo. Even he couldn't cheat death and because of the positive coke test, the killing of Mother A was now upgraded from a road traffic accident to a murder or manslaughter case. There was twenty-four-hour police guard on the Intensive Care Unit.

Maureen needed Dermo's good suit. To lay him out in.

‘Wait there and I'll get it for you.'

Mo had Dermo's number-ones out of the wardrobe within seconds. The once shiny suit had lost its lustre and smelt of damp. There was a black Guinness stain on the back of the jacket, which didn't really matter as surely Dermo would be face up in the coffin.

I worked for a while in the Man's Emporium in Ballymore. The owner, Redser Doyle, specialised in bargain one-piece suit-shrouds. The black suit and the white shirt were
backless
. The snap-on tie was clipped like a terrier's tail to just
below the top button of the suit. The going away outfit didn't even have shirtsleeves. The cuffs were sown to the inside of the suit and there were no flies.

‘Dead men don't pee,' was how Redser put it.

By the way, we buried Dad in his best suit from Italy. Goes without saying, that.

Maureen wasn't overly emotional. Eight days of crying drained her dry. She had come to the realisation Dermo was going to die and was ready.

Mo handed her the suit.

It was the same suit Dermo had worn at their wedding and the time he was up in court for spitting at a Garda.

‘I must get this dry-cleaned, love. There's a two-hour place near the hospital.'

Mo began to cry.

‘Where did it all go wrong?' she sobbed and Maureen embraced her tenderly.

‘Go on, love let it all out.'

Maureen mammied Mo and Mo felt much better.

‘Put on the kettle, Maureen. There's a cake in the fridge. Fudge. Got it for you.'

Maureen got to her feet slowly and made for the kitchen. They ate the cake, every slice, and drank numerous cups of tea with lots of sugar.

Maureen told Mo of how Dermo's Dad used to hang him off high roofs by the legs when they were stealing lead, just for laughs. One day he threw a hammer in the direction of Dermo and Mikey almost causing Dermo to lose his balance and fall off the roof. It was a wonder Mikey was as good as he was, she said, after all he had been through.

‘And Dermo. Poor Dermo stood no chance. He could
be very nice. Only boy I ever seen or heard of what would make his own bed and he always put his plate in the sink after he finished his dinner. He had his good points.'

Maureen asked for Dermo's razor, the electric one.

‘He got thirty-seven stitches and we haven't made up our mind if we'll open or close the coffin at the wake. His face is like a pin cushion and there's a terrible scar across his neck, like his throat was cut.

‘I have Father O on standby and Masseys will get a horse and carriage to bring him on his last journey.'

I was brought to Lady Louth's tomb up in County Louth by this girl, Lottie, which rhymes with Totty, on a date. I swear. A freakin date.

Lottie was a bit off the wall but she was a Mo
lookalike
.

The crypt had been broken into by grave robbers and whoever patched it up didn't do such a good job. Lottie showed me Lady Louth through a gap in the front of the tomb where the masonry had fallen apart, just above the giant door slab of granite, with a rusted handle on the front.

Lady L was laid out in a ragged, faded yellow-white shroud. It might have been she was buried in her wedding dress. It had a back to it as you might expect. The Ladyship had been dead for fifty years but her hair was long and flowing and was only ever so slightly grey, even if her face was very thin.

Lady Louth's tomb got me thinking of my poor old Dad who shaved twice a day and now had no one to shave him.
He would have hated that. I take after him. Dapper, if I do say so myself. Dad was the first man around our place to buy a shaver for ear and nose hair.

The bikers would provide a guard of honour for Dermo and that was what ‘he would have wanted'. She was afraid they might spook the horses but the undertaker assured Maureen, ‘An earthquake wouldn't upset my horses. And I have earplugs as well, just in case.'

‘Funny thing, Mo, but he said to me, they are human ear plugs even though you would think horses had bigger ear holes because they have bigger ears.'

That stopped Mo from crying. She laughed at the story. Maureen held her hand as she told it.

‘We'll bury him with my father and mother, if that's alright with you, pet.' As if Mo was only dying to be buried with her husband.

‘He was my son, Mo. Nothing can change that. I should have gone, but I had it in my stupid head his father would calm down and anyway he could be very nice to the boys other times. Most of the times.

‘He would go off the drink for six months and everything would be fine. Then, mostly for no reason, or for some reason he only med up as an excuse and that some wan upsetted him, he would go back on it. I think he forgot, so he did, why he went off the drink or thought it was just a wan off when he got doped up and beat Dermo cross the legs with a bike chain. There was no stopping him when he was on the dope.

‘Dermo and Mikey and me used to be shivering in bed
waiting for him to come home. There was no point in locking the door because he would chop it down with a hatchet if he thought we were getting the better of him. I'm not makin' no excuses. I'm only tellin'.'

Mo patted Maureen on her hands.

‘That's okay, Maureen. I understand. Don't worry,
whatever
it is you say will not upset me. You are entitled to love your son, just as I loved my little baby who died in me.'

‘If I coulda kept Dermo as a small boy, it would have been grand. He was such a lovely little boy, with his blondey head an' all. But there was always something about him. He was always fightin' at school and he could smile away at you wan minute and rear up the next.'

Mo had enough.

‘Who are you tellin'? Sorry Maureen I wasn't being smart or anything.'

Maureen nodded slowly several times.

‘I know that, pet. And oh and don't forget the electric shaver.'

Mo found the shaver under the bed, unopened in the box. She read the Christmas card without thinking.

‘Too my darling husband Dermo. Happy Xmas from ure wife Moe. XXX.'

The writing was in Maureen's block letters. Mo was livid but then she calmed down and figured Maureen bought the card and the shaver to appease Dermo. For Mo's own safety? She was going to bring it up but changed her mind. Maureen had enough on her plate as it was and anyway Dermo would be dead soon, or so it seemed.

Mo ironed a shirt for Dermo. My mother, the feminist icon, broadcast on her radio show, ‘No matter how big a
bastard the husband is, the wife will always iron his shirt even when she knows he's only getting dressed up to go out to score with some other woman.' Or in this case a date with the undertaker.

Dermo was now in a coma for eight days.

I began to think he was staying alive out of pure badness. That somewhere in the darkness of his dead mind there was a tiny atomic particle of evil powered by a satanic energy.

The doctors gave up on the tenth day. The machine would be switched off at noon on Tuesday. Just in time for the doctors to go to lunch.

Dermo was clinically dead when a machine
malfunctioned
but he soon came back to life after the engineers changed a fuse or kicked the engine or whatever it is they do when life support gizmos go bad. It was touch and go according to Maureen.