Whose Life is it Anyway? (6 page)

Brilliant. A stroke of genius. I was delighted with myself.

My mother, despite herself, began to laugh. ‘You are some chancer, Niamh O’Flaherty. Nice try but you’re still not wearing your jeans. Now, come here to me with that hair.’

‘
Noooooo
, Mum – please let me do my own hair. You’re too rough with the brush.’

‘OK, but I want you downstairs in ten minutes with your dress on and your hair neat.’

‘OK,’ I grumbled.

‘Oh, and by the way, Niamh,’ she said, turning towards me as she closed the door, ‘I wouldn’t change a fuzzy hair on your head.’

That was the problem with my mother: she always made you love her, even when you wanted to hate her.

∗

When I came downstairs half an hour later with a hundred and fifty clips keeping my fuzzy hair in check, Finn was standing in the hall looking grumpy in a shirt and dickie-bow. I felt much better. I might look bad but he looked ridiculous.

‘Oh, Danny boy…’ The doorbell tinkled. The relations had arrived.

I answered the door and my cheeks were then squeezed by my aunties, my head patted by my uncles, and I was told for the zillionth time that I was the spitting image, head cut off, twin separated at birth from Granny O’Flaherty. I had only ever seen one picture of my father’s mother and she was a boot, so I was none too pleased to be constantly reminded that I looked like her.

After the squeezing and patting, the grown-ups went into the kitchen to gossip and have a few drinks. Us youngsters were expected to entertain ourselves while making sure our younger cousins didn’t choke on their food, drink too much Coke, eat too many sweets, go into the garden unaccompanied, go upstairs unaccompanied, go to the loo unaccompanied, burn themselves, cut themselves, bump their heads or interrupt their parents while they were getting sloshed.

I had only one cousin I liked. Maura was a year older than me and was also rubbish at Irish dancing. But she had got out of having to do it by feigning weak ankles. Her mother, my auntie Nuala – by far the most progressive of the bunch – had helped her out. She’d lied to my uncle Tadhg and told him that the doctor said poor old Maura’s ankles just wouldn’t hold up to the clicking and jigging.

Ever since Maura had told me that story I had had the utmost respect for Auntie Nuala. She was a legend in my eyes. I wished my mother could have been a bit more sympathetic to my plight. But she very rarely disagreed with my father. The only time I could remember her shouting at him was a year ago when my father suggested that boarding-school in Ireland would be good for me. They had just come back from a parent-teacher meeting at school at which Sister Patricia told them I had said Ireland was a backward place full of thick people with red hair.

My father was furious and mortally embarrassed that a child of his would be so ignorant. He said England was corrupting me, and it was time for me to go back to my roots and see Ireland for what it really was: a beautiful country full of wonderful, warm people with deep souls and big hearts. I sat under the stairs listening to their conversation and sobbed. My life was over. But then my mother saved me. For once, she turned on him and said, in a scary voice, that over her dead body would a child of hers be sent away to boarding-school. She said I was a great girl who was just trying to find her way. I didn’t mean to insult anyone, she said, I was only rebelling as all teenagers do.

‘It’s hard for the children, Mick. Their whole lives have been spent in England. It’s confusing for them to be living in one country and expected to behave as if they live in another. Kids don’t want to be different, they don’t like standing out. I know you want them to appreciate where they’ve come from, but you have to let them breathe. You’re suffocating them with Irishness. I love Ireland, too, and I miss it, but we left for a reason. We left because there were no opportunities and the country was in a deep recession. We came here to England and made a success of things. This country has been very good to us.’

‘I know it has, but I came over here out of necessity, not choice. I want my children to grow up in an unspoilt land, raised with the morals I was raised with. I don’t want them running wild. I’m trying to protect them, Annie.’

‘Children need to make mistakes, Mick. It’s part of growing up. If you over-protect them, they’ll rebel. Ease up on Niamh. She’s a good girl, just different from Siobhan – she’s more strong-willed and stubborn. And she didn’t lick those traits off a stone. The two of you are very alike. That’s why you clash.’

‘I’m not stubborn,’ my father said, sounding genuinely shocked.

‘You’re the most stubborn man I ever met,’ my mother laughed, ‘but tonight, you’ve met your match. I’m digging my heels in. There’ll be no more talk of boarding-school.’

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I was safe. But I’d have to be careful from now on and try to be more positive about my Irishness in front of my father.

As my birthday party progressed, us elder cousins sat around the TV room playing records and giving out about our parents, taking it in turns to lunge after the sprinting toddlers and trying to stop them crying when we blocked their exit routes. After much experimenting, we discovered that stuffing marshmallows into their mouths was a far more effective way of stifling their tears than putting our hands over their gobs and watching them turn blue.

After a few hours the parents trooped in, some reeking of booze, and told us we were marvellous kids. They hugged us and planted slobbery kisses on our cheeks while congratulating each other on being great parents.

Then the sing-song began, as always led by my father, singing ‘Danny Boy’. All the uncles and aunts cheered when he howled out the last line: ‘Oh, Danny boy, I looooooooove you so.’ Then Uncle Tadhg sang ‘The Fields of Athenry’ and everyone tut-tutted about the heartbreak of emigration.

Siobhan was called upon to dance. She pretended she didn’t want to, and made everyone beg, even though she already had her shoes on. It’d make you sick. Maura rolled her eyes to heaven and we giggled. My uncle Donal took out his fiddle and accompanied Siobhan as she leapt and whirled around the room to the clapping and whooping that accompanied her.

All the parents then got up, some a little more unsteady on their feet than others, and twirled each other round with great gusto, then dragged us up to join in. Although I pretended to Maura that I found it embarrassing to see my parents dancing together, I actually loved it. They were wonderful. They never missed a beat and my mother looked so young and carefree as my father twirled her this way and that as they relived their courting days in the dance halls of London.

After an hour or two of dancing, singing and poetry-reciting, the whiskey came out and things began to deteriorate. My uncle Donal said what a saint my grandmother O’Flaherty had been, and my father and his brothers nodded and sniffled into their hankies while my mother and aunts sighed.

From what I could gather during my years of covert eavesdropping under the stairs while my mother and Auntie Nuala bitched about Granny O’Flaherty in the kitchen, she’d been a right old witch. Not only was she ugly (and me the image of her!) but apparently she was scabby and rude to her daughters-in-law.

‘She was an oul bitch, so she was,’ said Auntie Nuala, cutting to the chase. ‘Sure the first time I met her she said to me, “I think you forgot to put on your skirt.” Imagine the cheek of her! Tadhg, of course, then went from thinking I was fabulous to thinking I looked like a cheap tart. And she wouldn’t give you the leftovers on her plate. She was always milking the boys dry. You must have really felt it, Annie. She was always asking Mick for money.’

‘Ah, well, Mick liked to spoil her when the business got up and going. I think he felt it was almost his responsibility as the eldest to look after her,’ said the champion fence-sitter.

‘Don’t give me that holy-Joe talk,’ said Auntie Nuala. ‘It’s me you’re talking to and I know you hated the old bitch.’

I could hear my mother laughing. ‘OK, I admit I wasn’t her biggest fan. But with her living in Ireland and us over here she didn’t really have a chance to get up my nose.’

‘Mmm. Well, she got right up mine. When Tadhg said Mick wanted us to move over here and work in the business I practically sprinted on to the boat. Like the Road Runner I was,’ said Auntie Nuala, and they giggled.

After bemoaning their mother’s early demise, my father and uncles proceeded to have a huge argument about who had shot Michael Collins. They shouted at each other, glasses were slammed down, fingers were poked into chests (their own when they were making a point, the other person’s when they were accusing them of being wrong).

Uncle Tadhg stormed dramatically out of the house, nearly taking the door with him, after my father called him an ignorant fool. He was chased down the road by Uncle Donal and coaxed back into the house, but said he’d only stay if my father apologized. Dad said he wasn’t apologizing for anything, so Uncle Tadhg stomped out and said he’d never darken our door again. My father ran after him and shouted that that was the best news he’d ever heard. Uncle Tadhg yelled that he could shove his job up his uptight arse. My father bellowed that he’d rather be uptight than thick. Mr Green from next door stuck his head out the window and told them both to stop causing such a racket and take their argument indoors.

‘Mind your own business,’ said Uncle Tadhg.

‘Don’t you curse at me, you drunken Irish fool,’ shouted Mr Green.

‘How dare you call my brother a fool?’ roared my father. This from the same man who, minutes earlier, had chased his brother out of the house for being thick. ‘My brother here is the most intelligent man you’ll ever meet, and the best friend a man could wish for,’ he said, staggering towards Uncle Tadhg and swinging his arm over his brother’s shoulders.

‘If you don’t pipe down I’ll call the police, O’Flaherty. I’m warning you,’ said Mr Green, and slammed his window shut.

‘Am I your best friend, Mick?’ said Uncle Tadhg, beaming at my father.

‘The best, Tadhg.’ My father beamed back, and they stumbled into the house arm in arm, the best of friends and not a stupid man between them.

7

Now that I had turned fifteen and left my early teens behind, the pressure was on for me to snog someone. Sarah had snogged four boys already and I was still a virgin kisser. There was a party on for the fifteen to eighteen-year-olds in the local Irish club on Saturday night, and I was determined to get some experience. Even if I had to kiss the biggest leper there, I wasn’t coming home without a snog.

I decided to ask Siobhan for some tips. She had been going out with Liam O’Loughlin, champion Irish dancer in Great Britain for two years. They were the Torvill and Dean of Irish dancing. It’d make you sick. Anyway, I was always catching them kissing in her room and recently had found him with his hand up her skirt. She had screamed at me to get out and given me a dead arm later on when I teased her about it. The perfect Siobhan was not so perfect, after all. I was thrilled.

I knocked on her door instead of barging in. I wanted to get her in a good mood.

‘Get lost,’ she shouted.

‘Come on, I need to talk to you. It’s really important.’

‘Sod off.’

‘I’ll tell Mum I saw Liam’s hand up your skirt.’

‘Bitch.’

The door opened. Sometimes you had to use tough measures to get what you wanted and I was desperate.

‘Well? What do you want?’

‘Look, Siobh, I need your help. I’m going to the disco on Saturday and I want to get off with someone. I’ve never snogged anyone before and I just wanted you to tell me what to do.’

‘Who are you planning to snog?’

‘Anyone who’ll have me at this stage. I’m the only one of the girls who hasn’t got off with anyone yet,’ I said, sorry for myself. ‘If I don’t snog someone soon, I’m going to end up having to be friends with Noreen O’Reilly and you know what a nerd she is.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, stop being so dramatic. Here, sit down and watch me closely.’

I sat on the edge of her bed and watched her with the concentration I normally reserved for my prayers to God that Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran would see me in the audience at one of their concerts, lift me out of the crowd and whisk me off to a life of glamour and luxury.

After slobbering over her hand for a few minutes Siobhan told me to have a go. I licked my lips and set to it. Round and round my tongue went.

‘Stop,’ she said sharply. ‘You haven’t been watching properly. There’s far too much saliva – you’ll drown him.’

‘Well, tell me what to do,’ I wailed. ‘You’ve enough practice – you’re always sucking the face off Liam.’

‘I told you, less saliva. Look, just stick your tongue out and twirl.’

‘Clockwise or anti-clockwise?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

‘What?’ I thought it was a perfectly valid question. The last thing I wanted to do was announce my inexperience by heading in the wrong direction.

‘Get out. You’re annoying me now.’

‘OK, but just one more question. Should I let him go to second base?’

‘No,’ she snapped, frowning. ‘If you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.’ ‘Thanks, Siobh.’

‘Hey, Niamh, don’t worry, you’ll be grand.’

Sometimes Siobhan could be almost human.

Sarah called over and we spent hours in my room getting ready. Well, she actually arrived ready. She was wearing stretch denims that clung to her stick-thin legs and a long white T-shirt that said ‘relax’ in black on the front. She had tied it up on one side in a little knot and her hair was all messy and sexy like Madonna’s. She also had black fingerless lace gloves on. She looked amazing – cool and gorgeous.

She helped me French-plait my hair, which was brilliant because I couldn’t do it on my own, and when my mother tried, I ended up looking like Pippi Longstocking, which wasn’t cool. Once my hair was done, and the stray frizzy bits had been controlled with a large can of hairspray, I tried on my entire wardrobe.

This wasn’t as dramatic or time-consuming as it sounds – after all, I wore a school uniform five days a week. Brown skirt, brown jumper, white shirt, brown and black striped tie, white socks and brown shoes. You were only allowed to wear small stud earrings, no hoops: they were considered highly dangerous. Someone could apparently easily stick a large tennis racket through the three-centimetre size hoop in your ear and rip the lobe off. One finger ring was allowed – a claddagh ring worn upside down by losers like me who had no boyfriend or the right way up by the lucky few who had. Mind you, you could tell a girl who had a boyfriend a mile away – you didn’t need the ring. Girls with boyfriends strutted; girls without shuffled. Siobhan strutted; I shuffled.