Chapter Eighteen #3
Lena is dizzy. She bends over till her eyes clear. Then she puts the shotgun back under the sofa and goes to the door.
It’s Sheila Reddy and Yvonne McCabe and Julie Quinn, all of them crowded onto Lena’s step to shelter from the rain.
“About feckin’ time,” Yvonne says, and then they’re in the hall, shaking the rain off their jackets and wiping their faces and making a fuss over Nellie, who’s practically bending herself in half with joy at all the attention.
“Why’s this on your step?” Yvonne asks, waving the antifreeze bottle at Lena.
“Someone left it there,” Lena says. She can’t see them straight, through all the movement and the noise. She’s not sure they’re really there.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake,” Yvonne says, indignant. “Who was it?”
“I didn’t see,” Lena says. “It was dark.” Someone shoves something into her hands. It’s a bottle, a different one, not antifreeze. She doesn’t understand what’s going on.
“Dirty little gurriers,” Yvonne says disapprovingly. She heads into Lena’s kitchen, dumps the antifreeze bottle in the bin, and dusts the whole business off her hands.
“I’m frozen,” Sheila says. “Here.” She thrusts something else at Lena and follows Yvonne. “I knew themens would bring booze, so I brought that instead.”
“You’re making us sound like a pair of alcos,” Julie protests.
“If the shoe fits, girl—”
“I’m not even drinking, I’ve to drive ye all home, I only brought it for the rest of—”
“You did, yeah, o’ course you—”
“Did anyone remember tonic?”
Lena looks down at the things in her hands. She’s holding a bottle of gin and a plate with a clingfilmed cake on it. “Where d’you keep your glasses?” Yvonne calls from the kitchen.
Lena goes after them. Julie is piling wet coats on a chair and giving out about her feet being cold, Sheila is reaching down glasses from a cupboard, Yvonne is pulling more bottles out of a shopping bag and saying something about ice, everyone is moving and talking and Nellie is prancing between the lot of them with a tug-of-war toy, looking for takers. Someone has switched on the lights.
Lena says, “What are you doing here?” She doesn’t have the thoughts to put it better.
“Sure, you called round to us,” Julie says. She whisks a couple of leftover mugs off the table and dumps them in the sink. “With the jam. It’s our turn.”
“I hadn’t seen you in forever,” Yvonne adds. “If we left it any longer, you’d only feckin’ vanish again.” She waves her bottles. “Look, I’ve tonic and Coke. And vodka. We’re sorted. I’m not sure these exactly go with cake, but like Charlie Sheen says, fuck it, let’s do it all.”
Lena looks at Sheila. “Trey said you were in shite form,” Sheila says. “And I oughta call round. I brought these two while I was at it.”
Lena says, “Trey?”
“I know, yeah. She never gave a toss about anyone being in bad form before. You oughta be honored.”
Faintly, through everything else, Lena feels the prick of anger. She’s no one’s charity case, to be coaxed out of her bad mood with cake and sympathy. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she says.
“Well, tough shite,” Yvonne says, plunking the bottles on the table, “we’re here now, and I’m not going out in that rain again without a drink inside me. D’you want gin or vodka?”
“I’ll have tea,” Julie says. “Or I can just have Coke, if you’re not boiling the—”
“Ah, Jesus, have the one,” Yvonne says. “You can’t be sitting there with a cuppa tea while we’re—”
“No,” Sheila says. “We’re going to be pulled over, leaving.”
There’s a beat of silence. Yvonne nods, acknowledging that.
Lena starts to understand what this is. It’s not a charitable intervention; it’s an act of alliance and defiance, carefully thought through.
These women know what Tommy Moynihan is aiming at her.
They drove here separately so they can leave two of their cars in her front yard to tell his watchers: You thought Lena Dunne was easy prey, the lone animal cut off from the herd, to be taken down at your convenience. Let’s see you come for her now.
She says, “Tommy’ll go after you.”
Yvonne flaps a hand and makes a pfft noise.
“I’d say I’m in his bad books anyhow. Mark was out with that crowd making a ruckus around Moynihans’ the other night.
He had a scarf pulled up over his face, but d’you know what he was wearing, the feckin’ eejit?
That red puffy jacket he got in Canada. No one else has a jacket like that.
We’re on Tommy’s shit list, right enough, but so’s half this townland; it’ll take him a while to get to us. ”
“I already was,” Sheila says. She’s found a knife for the cake. “And you said you’d back me, if I needed it.”
“Yeah,” Lena says. “I would.”
“I was worried,” Julie confesses. “Just at first, like.”
“She’s always worried,” Yvonne says, conquering the stiff cap of the vodka bottle. “Nothing personal.”
“But then I thought,” Julie says, giving Yvonne a smack on the arm for that, “he can’t do anything to the kids.
They’re outa the country. We all act like Tommy’s the king of the world, but no one in Berlin or Birmingham ever even heard of the man.
So if I don’t wanta do what he says, I don’t haveta.
” She looks happily surprised at herself.
“And Clodagh ratted me out in the exams in fifth year, when I’d the dates written on my leg,” Yvonne says. “What I’m saying is, basically, fuck the Moynihans. Have you got any ice?”
“Right,” Lena says. “OK. Fair enough.” She puts the bottle and the cake on the table, and goes to the freezer. “I’ll have a G and T.”
She rummages for ice and tries to clear her head; it’s smeared and rocking, like she’s either dreaming or just waking up and she can’t tell which.
The room where she was sitting five minutes ago has evaporated.
Julie is filling the kettle and complimenting its color, Yvonne is explaining to Nellie why she can’t have any vodka no matter how much she begs; even Sheila, who was made of iron-weighted silence for decades after she married Johnny Reddy, is telling everyone that her Maeve made the cake, so if they don’t like it they can keep that to themselves.
Lena says, “Is this place freezing?”
“Just a teeny bit subzero, yeah,” Yvonne says. “Few icicles forming here and there. D’you get the hot flashes? Mel keeps her place bleedin’ Baltic ’cause of those, I wear three jumpers if I’m calling over to her.”
“I’ll light the stove,” Lena says, handing her the ice cube tray.
By the time she gets back to the table, Yvonne has the drinks ready, Sheila is slicing cake, and everyone’s found a chair.
Someone has brought paper plates and napkins left over from Halloween, with carnivorous-looking pumpkins on them.
Nellie is sprawled under the table, to gnaw her toy in the center of the action.
“Chocolate and orange,” Sheila says, pushing a plate towards Lena. “Maeve’s baking all the time now. She was never interested in anything before, only Snapchat and makeup, so I’ve to eat my head off. Just to encourage her, like.”
“That’s great and all,” Yvonne says, “and I’ll help encourage her any time, but this is a war council here. We’ll get to the kids later.” To Lena: “You know what Tommy’s spreading around, yeah?”
“More or less,” Lena says. She takes a big drink of gin and tonic, and feels it hit her right between the eyes. “He sent a Guard over here, to see could she put me in a mental hospital or arrest me for killing Rachel. So I got the gist of it, like.”
Julie, pouring milk into her tea, gasps and spills it. “The cheeky fuck,” Yvonne says, her glass coming down hard.
“Tommy’s a fool,” Sheila says, taking a big slice of cake for herself. “You couldn’ta killed Rachel. You were over at mine that evening.”
Lena looks at her. Sheila cocks an eyebrow and gives her a grin.
“I was there as well,” Julie says, mopping up milk with her napkin. “We’d a lovely night. It was great to catch up.”
“I couldn’t make it,” Yvonne says, through cake, “ ’cause the kids know I was home all night, except when I went to pick up Sophie. But Julie told me all about it the next day. I’m raging I missed it. I love a bit of do-you-remember.”
Lena is so startled she can’t talk. She never in a million years expected this.
“Not just do-you-remember,” Sheila says. “Rachel’d called over to me earlier, all in bits about how Eugene was treating her. So I was asking ye should I do anything about that.”
“We won’t use that bit at first,” Yvonne says. “Keep that in the back pocket, whip it out if we need it.”
Lena manages to bring her mind to bear on this.
She doubts it will hold up if the Guards do any real digging, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
The danger may not be gone, but it’s been transformed beyond recognition.
It was a dark sediment thickening at her windows, seeping into the air she breathed, targeted and unstoppable.
Now it’s a solid shared annoyance, something large and smelly plopped down on the table for them to work on together.
“Thanks,” she says, looking around at their faces. “That’s great. Thanks.”
“It doesn’t even matter whether we can prove it,” Yvonne says.
“All we haveta do is say it to the world, and make sure they feel like eejits for believing all that soap-opera crap, and then everyone’ll shut the fuck up about you.
And I seriously doubt Tommy’ll be arsed going any further with the Guard shite, if he knows no one’s falling for his bolloxology.
” She raises her glass to them all and takes a neat sip, closing the door on that.
“Which would be lovely,” she says. “For you, obviously, but for everyone else as well. Didja hear about the fight in Seán’s? ”
“I haven’t heard much about anything,” Lena says, “this last week or two.” The cake tastes more vivid than normal, like cake used to taste when she was a little kid. She can feel the sugar speeding through her blood. She’s not sure when she last ate.