Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

Tony said, ‘No.’

‘Do you feel you have any measure of control over him?’

To which arose, unbidden, an image of Jimmy Phelan bellowing for answers, seizing the boy for a search of the city, sending him into drug dens and tenements to flush out the Georgie girl, having her dealt with, having him dealt with, uncovering ugly truths and dismantling whatever peace they’d forged during the curfew.

‘Oh, God,’ he breathed.

‘Mr Cusack?’

‘I don’t have any control over him,’ said Tony.

The boy turned in his seat and said, ‘Dad…’, and Tony looked down as the judge hushed them, and directed Ryan to look at her, and said, ‘In light of the circumstances, and in light of the seriousness of this crime, something it’s clear you are gravely and deliberately underestimating, I feel the best sentence is one of nine months’ detention in Saint Patrick’s Institution, wherein, my lad, you’ll find a school to blaze a trail through.’

It’s supposed to look like a shopping trip. My mam spins it as a pre-exam treat, in case any of the neighbours twig.

On Tuesday morning, instead of putting on my uniform, I go with her into town to the airport bus. She’s trying to talk to me but I don’t feel like talking. Everything she says is slapped back. I guess I’m sulking. I dunno.

We buy our tickets and walk around by the side of the station and she sees them before I do and I hear her go, ‘Oh dear Jesus.’

There’s four of them, two men and two women. They’ve set up a trestle table and they’ve got big signs saying ‘Abortion stops a human heart from beating’ and ‘For unto us a child is born’ and this picture of a haloed foetus and you’d think my heart would fly up my throat and out my mouth or something but instead I am just instantly raging.

My mam is horrified. Like, she doesn’t know where to look. I call over at them and she grabs my arm but it’s too late, the words are flowing. ‘You sick bastards,’ I say. ‘You sick, shaming fucks. Why can’t you mind your own business and keep your glorious mysteries to yourselves?’

The two fellas and one of the women are old as balls but the second girl is only in her twenties I’d say, and you’d think at that age she’d know better. She’s sitting behind the trestle table. When I get close I see why. She’s pregnant. Massively pregnant. She’s like a blimp pregnant. So I say to her, ‘You’re down here shaming when you’re having your own baby and you don’t see anything wrong with that?’

And she’s like, ‘Well, we’re just campaigning for—’

But I stop her because honestly, I could hop off her. ‘How many girls walking past here might have had to terminate even though they don’t even want to? What about the ladies whose babies have no brains and stuff? What about girls who were raped? Oh, my God, you know what you are? You’re fucking evil. You’re a fucking evil cow.’

The oldest guy, the one with a grey ponytail and big stupid eyes too close together, says, ‘Please move along, this is a peaceful protest.’

‘You should be moved along, you miserable bastards.’

But my mam is dragging me away and I’m letting her, because the rage is making me cry. I hate that: when you get so angry you start crying and then people think they’ve beaten you when in reality you’re just so wound up you can’t stop yourself. My mam stops in front of our bus; it’s not boarding yet. ‘Don’t mind that now,’ she hisses. ‘Don’t think about it.’

‘When am I allowed to think about it? On the plane home again?’

I wished she hadn’t noticed this mess in the first place but that’s what mams are for, isn’t it? Noticing.

They were the worst two weeks of my life. At the beginning I get a call from Ryan’s phone and I answer it all, ‘Oh hey, baby boy, go on, what happened?’ and it’s his bloody dad, not him and I’m crying even before he tells me: ‘He got nine months, girl, I’m sorry, he’s gone, they took him straight up.’ I couldn’t eat for days I was stressing so much, and everything I did eat I threw up again, till my mam came into my room one morning and shut the door behind her and said, ‘I know you say you’re sick from stress, hon, but…’

And she was right. The second she noticed she made it real. And I wish she hadn’t noticed, I really wish she hadn’t, because then I might have been too far gone to talk out of it, I dunno. Stupid to think that, isn’t it? Ryan would do the entire time inside, away from me. Yeah, nine bloody months. And how would I cope with that? I’ve never been this long away from him and I cry every night because I miss him and I’m scared for him and I want to fucking kill him.

My mam said, ‘Can you not see what a bad match you are? A time when you needed him and he’s in prison, Karine. Prison!’ My dad was way harsher but only because I’ve never seen him so close to bawling. ‘That’s the kind of waster he is, girl, gets you into trouble and fucks off. How much school and grinds did you miss for this fucker in a fucking exam year? And there you go now, isn’t it a roaring lesson for you?’ He’s always hated Ryan.

And you know what? They’re right. I did need him and look what happened. I could be here with him now, working this out, deciding how to manage because if he was around I’d be keeping this baby but he’s not, is he? He’s not around and if he keeps dealing he’ll never be around and if I can’t trust him how can I have his baby for him?

The driver opens the door and my mam and me get on.

She sits near the front but I walk a few rows back from her and sit by the window with my iPod turned all the way up.

As the bus pulls off I put my hand on my tummy. It’s still flat, because what’s in there is only the size of a grain of rice, it’s not a baby yet and it never will be and I’m crying again, because I know this is the right thing but I’m so cross that I have to do it, cross with my mam and dad and cross with Ryan and missing him and hating him and loving him and I’m scared, above all. I’m so fucking scared.

Frank Cotter: they called him General Franko. He had a head of curly black hair and wind-tanned skin; he looked like a lighthouse keeper, or a shepherd, something that spent its days in the elements rather than in the back rooms of shuttered casinos, breaking fingers and cracking skulls.

He was waiting in the yard when Jimmy arrived, the waves on his head lifting with the coastline bluster, dressed in a faded jumper and jeans, dirt on his shoes and a gleam in his eye.

‘Thanks for meeting me, Franko.’

‘No bother, boy. You know me. I’m not afraid of hard work.’

From his jacket pocket Jimmy fished a pair of black gloves and pulled them on as he rounded the other side of the Volvo.

Though cleaned from his chin and lips and philtrum, the blood had caked around Tony Cusack’s nostrils; Jimmy guessed he’d decided not to spend his last hours picking his nose. When he opened the door Cusack chanced weight on legs unable to hold it. He flopped out of the car and onto the dirt, then got to his knees, holding on to the inner fittings of the door to steady himself.

‘Come on, Cusack,’ Jimmy offered. ‘Jellyleggedness is so unbecoming in a grown man. And father of six.’

‘Why are we here?’ Cusack croaked.

‘Because I can’t trust you. And those I can’t trust I don’t keep around.’

Cusack started keening his own wake. He put his hands to his face and his fingers dragged at the skin under his eyes. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh God.’ Jimmy gestured to Franko and he came around the car and pulled Cusack upright. ‘Oh God,’ he said, again, and then for variety’s sake, ‘Oh Jesus.’