The Fields (3 page)

The window pane smashes into a billion pieces, like in the
Cannonball Run
when a stolen car gets driven through the glass front of a big fancy showroom, yee-haw style. There’s a billion deadly bits of glass everywhere, all over the kitchen, like shiny snowflakes, covering the sink, the washing rack, the oven top and all the chopping boards. Mam has left a big bowl of brown scone mix out on the bread board and that’s covered in glass too. When she walks in she can’t believe her eyes and starts to cry. Me and Mozzo are out in the garden at this stage. We didn’t know what to do, so we started playing Hit the Helen Macker Turnip again, only facing the right direction this time.

After the first few tears Mam goes crazy and comes charging out to the garden, screaming, I’ll call the Parish Priest, I’ll call the Parish Priest! over and over again, while grabbing me by the scruff of the neck.

Mozzo, cool as a cucumber, just looks at her and says, Does he know anything about fixing windows?

Mam was always threatening to call the Parish Priest on us. My sister Fiona says that’s because she grew up in a small town down the bog, called Ballaghaderreen, in County Roscommon. And in a small town, like when Mam was a child and when our
nan was her mam, everyone thought that the priest was brilliant. He could do anything for you, solve any problem. He was like Moses, or the old fella in
The Equalizer
. If your kids were fighting or, as in our nan’s case, if your husband was too drunk for words and belting you all the time, you’d call the Parish Priest and he’d be there in a flash. He’d sort out the situation, no bother to him, over a nice cup of tea by a roaring turf fire.

And the funny thing is, according to Fiona, it didn’t matter who the Parish Priest actually was, as long as he was called the Parish Priest it meant that he was brilliant. The Parish Priest was like Miss Ellie in
Dallas
: one minute she’s the lovely old lady with the warm face and crinkly eyes, the next minute she’s been transformed into some ole boot with too much make-up, but she’s still called Miss Ellie. The Parish Priest was always the Parish Priest, no matter what.

So far, Mam has called the Parish Priest out to our house only twice. The first time was because Dad was selling too much office furniture and never coming home for his meals on time. Fr Lonnegan had to tell him that a marriage was like a plant that needed sunlight and water to grow and that although Mam was providing the water goodo, she needed more than the amount of sunlight that she was getting from Dad. We all listened, all six of us, from upstairs with breaths held and giddy stomachs. We thought that there’d be murder, but after a while Dad was being a real charmer and everyone was laughing and Fr Lonnegan was drinking whiskey and all three of them were having a gas time. The next morning Dad sat out in the back garden having a big long smoke to himself and Mam lay in bed on her own for ages. Fiona said it was because they had being ‘doing it’ all night long.

The second time was worse. There’d been a massive row in the house coz Sarah had stayed out till three in the morning without telling Mam or Dad. Sarah’s the eldest, she was born two and a
half minutes before Siobhan and she says that makes her the Leader of the Clan. She’s got long jet-black hair, a sharp pointy nose and big boobs, and now that she’s become a woman she makes Dad’s friends pull stupid faces when Dad’s not in the room. They stare at her legs and at her boobs, and then they look at each other and make ‘whoooo’ faces, as if they’re eating something that’s burning the roofs of their mouths.

Mam and Dad both stayed awake downstairs by the fire with Mam praying and Dad saying things like Little Floozy under his breath. Sarah had been smoking pot with Dave Gallagher outside Castle Mount Youth Club till three in the morning. When she came in she giggled a bit and said that she was sorry but Dave’s car had broken down. Mam hugged her and told her to go to bed, but Dad said nothing.

Mozzo says that when someone offers you pot at a party you’re either in or you’re out. You can’t just say no and watch everyone else smoke it. You join in, or you leave.

The next day, we’re all sitting round the table having our dinner, me, Susan, Claire, Fiona, Siobhan, Sarah and Mam, when Dad comes in from work like a bear in a china shop and shouts at Sarah really loud.

You could’ve been raped last night, do you know that? You could’ve been dragged off the road into the bushes, stripped naked and raped!

We all drop our forks and stare into our plates of lovely buttery potato-cakes, beans and sausages.

Mam tells Dad to cool it, but he’s having none of it.

He plonks himself down into his chair, savages a pan-blackened sausage, and starts saying things like, A daughter of mine, out till that hour, and no fella to show her home! What would’ve happened if you’d been raped and killed last night, eh? What would’ve happened?

Dad’s moustache is mostly brown, but there are flecks of grey
in it. And they are spreading. Over the years he’s been able to do great things with it, like rub it against our bellies when he’s in the mood of a big giddy grabby tickle machine, or make a big show of smoothing it down with two fingers when he’s talking to sales customers or pretty women at Christmas parties. But when he’s all raging, like this, it makes him look meaner than ever, and turns his whole face into a weird blank ball with three short dark strokes across it – two for the eyes, one for the ‘tache.

Sarah says nothing and this makes Dad even angrier.

You’re nothing but a tart! he says, and everyone gasps. We all know this is a bad thing to call your own daughter. Dad knows it too and starts to tremble at what he’s saying. He wipes a fleck of his own spat butter from the ‘tache. Mam starts to cry.

A disgrace, he continues, but pauses before saying it again, And a tart!

Susan’s sitting beside me. She’s only just turned fifteen, and is, says Mam, a very young fifteen, and a real softie without a hardened bone in her body, so she bursts out crying too. Opposite me is Siobhan, Sarah’s twin, identical except for the boobs, the long hair and the constant stream of admiring fellas, and she too starts to whine out loud like a mad old woman from down the bog. Fiona and Claire aren’t crying, but you can tell by their faces that they’re upset too.

Yet Sarah herself is dead calm and sits back and says nothing.

Dad gets tired of saying tart and stops. As he does, Mam sniffles and tells him that it’s all over now, and she wants no more of this around her table. But Dad wants to know from the horse’s mouth.

Well? he says, looking over at Sarah. What do you have to say for yourself?

Sarah stands up, shoves her plate aside, looks straight into Dad’s face and says, It’s not off the stones that I licked it!

None of us have a clue what she means by that but Dad
obviously does because he leaps out of his place and tries to grab both her and the bamboo cane in the corner, screaming the word Bitch as he does. But Sarah’s way too fast and she’s already upstairs with the door slammed and the stereo playing ‘La Isla Bonita’ before Dad can even get a whiff of her. And you just know that he’s thinking about following her up and into the room, and giving her a good smackabout for her troubles. But he wouldn’t dare. Not with the door shut, slammed or otherwise. Because Sarah and Siobhan’s door is like a magic science-fiction force-field when it’s closed, and it means that no one can dare enter, on pain of death, because they could both be standing right behind it, at any minute of the day, in their bras and pants, and lathering themselves in Impulse like the woman on the telly who uses half a can in one spray even though she’s only running for the bus. And being in their bras and pants gives Sarah and Siobhan the right to scream out loud, at anyone unlucky enough to be on the other side of the door, stuff like, Feck off! Feck off! We’re in here, and our bodies are on show, and we’re women!

Naturally, Mam calls the Parish Priest. Fr O’Culigeen, this time. The new one. A young one, with slick black hair and tanned skin and black leather driving gloves. A handsome man, O’Culigeen. Standing at our door in his black outfit and black leather driving gloves like Simon Templar from
The Saint
. O’Culigeen. He looks at me, calls me a grand lad and says that I’d be perfect for altar-boy duty, before asking if he could speak to me mam. As usual, Mam tells us all to wait upstairs until the Parish Priest has sorted it all out, only this time Dad has already stormed off in the car. So Mam and O’Culigeen sit downstairs and drink a bucket of tea and eat about twenty brown scones each before Dad gets back.

O’Culigeen wasn’t as good as Fr Lonnegan. He didn’t drink any of Dad’s whiskey and he didn’t have that much of a laugh.
Instead he was very serious and gave them a joint lecture on teen-agers and hormones and changing body organs. After he left, Mam and Dad said Amen to that, and had a cuddle on the couch.

Mam and Maura Connell get together over soggy bickies and they ban me and Gary from seeing Mozzo for the rest of the summer. Mam goes all serious and takes me to see Fr O’Culigeen, and there right in the corner of the churchyard, behind the railings, beside the back door where the coffins come in and the hangers-on doss about at Saturday evening Mass, Mam holds my hand tightly and with me staring at the holy water bowl she looks into Fr O’Culigeen’s eyes and tells him that I want to become an altar boy. I know, deep down inside, that this is wrong. My mam is lying to a priest in order to turn me into a good boy. She wants me to become one of those little fellas on the altar with the tiny pinched mouths and thick bowl haircuts who kneel and bow in all the right places and swing the smoky slingshot around when the bell goes and make their parents in the front row proud because they look like mini-priests.

O’Culigeen is still wearing his black leather driving gloves and he leans a hand over to me and gently tilts my head back by putting two fingers under my chin and calling me My Child. He looks at me as if he’s sizing me up for a photo-shoot for
Jackie
magazine, and then he says that it’s such a shame that they don’t need me at the moment. They’ve got loads of lads at my age just dying to be altar boys. But if I come again next year, there’ll definitely be an opening for me.

In the meantime My Child, he says, I’ll be looking out for you.

He winks at Mam and she winks back and in their winking I think they’re saying that I’ll be a good lad now because O’Culigeen the Priest is going to keep his eye on me and make sure that I don’t get into any more trouble.

On the way home from the church Mam walks dead quiet beside me. She’s not normally this quiet. Usually she asks me my opinion on loads of subjects, from the weather, to the holidays so far, to my sisters, to the fellas that Sarah and Siobhan are hanging out with, right down to things like her new haircut, the colour of her new A-wear blouse or the shape of her new stretch denims. It’s like she loves talking to me. She’s brilliant like that. Brilliant at making you feel like what you’re saying is the most important thing ever. But today she’s dead quiet. She’s taking deep breaths the whole way home, and sighing a lot too.

Eventually, just after we pass the small side-gate to the Protestant church on Bailiffscourt Road, she says it.

Jim, love, what do you know about periods?

Before I have a chance to answer, she says, And masturbation? And intercourse too?

She says that she’s been talking to Maura and she’s sorry to ask me so many questions but she’s never had to raise a boy before and she wants to make sure that I don’t grow up to be a pillow fucker. She doesn’t actually say the words Pillow Fucker, but she says she wants me to have good experiences with girls, which is what Gary’s mam said to him. I tell her not to worry about all that stuff. I tell her that Fiona told me everything a couple of years ago.

Did she now? says Mam, relieved that she’s not going to have to talk about my mickey out loud, but clearly furious with Fiona for stealing her thunder as a mam.

Even though she’s way older, Fiona and me share the same room. This is because the twins have their own room coz Mam says that they’re magically bonded together by the very fact that they’re twins, even though most of the time Sarah’s a complete cow to Siobhan and is always real loud when they go out and gets all the fellas and leaves Siobhan feeling mousy, flat-chested
and unpretty. Claire and Susan have a room too. They’re not twins but they may as well be. They’ve the same browny blondey hair, although Susan has to spend ages curling hers just to make it as wavy as Claire’s, they wear the same blue Penny’s denims, the same leg warmers, and the same luminous pink sweatshirts. If it wasn’t for the fact that Susan’s a big old podger and Claire’s dead skinny, they’d be more like twins than Sarah and Siobhan.

This leaves only one more bedroom in our house, not including Mam and Dad’s, and that’s the one that me and Fiona have. It’s got two single beds shoved up against opposite walls, two thin plywood wardrobes that Dad got free from a work fella, four short rickety bookshelves, a make-up table for Fiona, and a fancy paisley rug down the middle of the floor for dirty clothes and dancing.

Fiona is brilliant. She doesn’t mind my parked Porsche poster over my bed, or Survivor, and I don’t say anything about her framed picture of the fella and girl kissing goodnight under the bridge in Paris. She listens to Chicago and Kim Carnes, and doesn’t spend for ever doing her make-up like Sarah and Siobhan. She has bright red hair, ginger red, that she keeps dead short, and Mozzo says that although she’s got a bit of a doggy face she’s got a lovely arse, but I don’t know about that. I think her face is great, all round, smiley and warm, and with light greenish eyes. Best of all, me and Fiona get on like a house on fire. We have deadly chats most mornings where I sneak into her bed and she tells me everything that happened the night before. Who snogged who, who Sarah was with, what Siobhan did, who was drinking naggins of vodka down the field, who started on who, who fancies Saidhbh Donohue, and who got caught in the school sports hall with their cacks round their ankles. I love all that stuff, and Fiona’s brilliant at describing it.