Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

To think of the babies, when they grew old enough to wonder! James Phelan had been told with dignity stiff and cold that Maureen-in-London was his real mother, and that he should think no more of it, but still he’d come after her once Una had given up her grip on the world and expired in her marital bed for an audience of effeminate printed Jesuses. So many other boys and girls grew up with holes in their chests gaping as wide as the Christian fissure that had spat them into the world. Maureen had read about it in recent years, once the tabloids had tested the value of Magdalene anguish. Hordes of Irish children — American, too; the exported generation — digging through Catholic detritus to find out who they were. Their searches were, more often than not, fruitless. Natural mothers had died, returned unto dust by the chemicals in the laundries. Documentation had been scant and useless. Women who’d moved on refused to remember and denied their flesh and blood their closure. Sometimes the mothers had just disappeared, as their country had designed.

In the shadow of the landmark, Maureen Phelan picked her way through thickets and thorns, enduring memories, even the ones that were not hers.

When she rounded the corner at the end of the building there was a man sitting in the grass, more interested in the weight of his bottle than he was in the walls before him. He spotted her but seemed indifferent, then testily, as she approached, he brought the bottle to his lips.

He was a vagrant, much younger than her, though his beard hid it well. He wore jeans and scuffed boots and was sitting on a pair of waterproofs. His baseball hat displayed the name of a Florida golf club; underneath its peak he scowled.

‘D’you want something?’ he said. He wasn’t American.

‘What do you know about this place?’ she asked.

‘What? G’way with you.’

‘Just how you can sit here getting merry and looking up at that ruin. Admirable.’

‘Do I look merry?’ he said.

‘No. I assumed you were giving it a lash, though.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘I’m about to. I didn’t come up here to talk to you, sunshine.’

‘Grand, so…’ His wit failed him. He took another drink. ‘Jog on.’

‘D’you know this place used to be a Magdalene Laundry?’

‘Course I did. Fuck off.’

‘D’you know what happened to it?’

‘Are you not going to fuck off?’

‘When I’m good and ready.’

He considered the bottle, then frowned at her. ‘It burned down. Twice. Now fuck off.’

‘Twice?’

‘Grudges everywhere, up here,’ he said. ‘One for every brick.’

‘Is it possible to get in?’

‘Missus, the grudges stuck because it’s impossible to get out. Why the fuck would you want to get in?’

‘To set another fire,’ she said.

He smiled. He was missing a tooth on the top, right in the middle. ‘You don’t look like a woman who’d set fires, in fairness. I was reckoning you were walking a dog. A bitching-freeze or chi-wow-wow or something. The last thing I needed.’

‘No dog,’ she said.

He raised the bottle again, and stared at her between the peak of his cap and the vicious slope of the glass. When he’d finished, he said, ‘Are you one of them?’

She looked back up at the crumbling brick. ‘No.’

‘So you’re not going to set any fires, then.’

She grimaced.

‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘There’s not much left of it to burn. Still, though. Nothing as cleansing as a fire. This heap turned the air black but d’you know what? Everyone felt cleaner after it.’

‘That so?’

‘That’s the job, I’m telling you.’

She found a tenner and gave it to him and he thanked her for not fucking off sooner. And even knowing he was there watching the walls for her, she felt uneasy walking away, like the heat of a pointed stare was burning up her shoulders, like the bitterness soldered to the past and to the ground the past was built on had touched her, and marked her. There were places this city wanted no one to tread.

It’s Tuesday morning, the place is baking, and I’m stuck in writing you a letter. Melting, I am. Neapolitan blood will only get you so far. Only wearing prison-issue trackies and socks in my cell and I’m wringing. Tough on me, eh? S’pose next time I’ll try not getting into trouble and see how far that gets me. Until then I just have to deal with it.

Prison is shit. Prison is very very shit. Of course it’s supposed to be shit. Still, it’s some land. Every day I get up I have to deal with the fact I’m only another day closer to getting out. Destination all the ways over there in January and January seems like a million miles away when you’re stuck gasping hot in the middle of a heatwave. This is the absolute worst place you can possibly be when all you can think about is going down to Fountainstown for the day and balming out.

On top of everything else school is out for the summer, which I totally get the irony of because when I was at home I’d have done anything to not go to school. Weird what you miss. Really considering getting back into all that once I’m done here. It wouldn’t be that hard. There’s loads of schools in town. Except I guess Barry’d have to tell them I was expelled. There’s no way I’d get away with that one.

Have a load of books taken out from the library over the past few weeks instead. It’s funny how sick you get of reading when that’s all you can do. Seriously, I was down there flaking through books thinking I’d never be bored again but a couple of days later I’m sick to death of them. Obvious irony is obvious.

Pretty much lost for things to tell you. Every day’s the same. Nothing new happens. Least of my worries I guess.

‘You like prison, Ryan?’

‘Bored as fuck in there I was.’

‘Eh, isn’t that the point? Can’t make it into a holiday camp for you, can they? Arts and crafts you’re after? Ukulele? Surfing? Elephant polo? Tell me you’re for real, boy. Here’s a slap of reality. Eventually you’ll get out and you can go surfing then. Shut up and put up in the meantime.’

Christ, I went off on one there, didn’t I? Really, there’s so little to tell you I’m waffling. Education through reading is noble but not the stuff of brilliant letters home. What about if I focus on the stuff I’m going to do when I get out? Seriously, here’s the plan.

Ryan gets out of prison. Ecstatic, he dives into a whole new life. And he sticks to it. Determined, wiser and with a whole head full of book-learning, he finds some course to do, gets a job and even goes busking with Joseph. Eventually, he atones for fucking things up with his girlfriend and she forgives him. Very very slowly, but she gets there. Each day then is better than the day before. Ryan buys her tons and tons of shoes. Yup, he knows he said he wouldn’t but he’s changed his mind. There aren’t enough shoes in the world for Karine D’Arcy. Heels five inches high, slipper flats, Cons, boots, whatever she wants. It’s shoe central around her gaff. Now her mam can’t even get through her bedroom door for shoes. ‘Girl, your boyfriend must be loaded if he keeps buying you all these shoes,’ she’ll say. And you’ll say yeah, he is, he got himself together, he’s totally worthy now. Next thing Ryan knows, Jackie D’Arcy has invited him in for dinner and is telling him what a daycent son-in-law he is with daycent taste in shoes.

Does me good, that little dream.

Cian came up with Dad last time and said one of the McDaids next door to us emigrated last month. Australia. Now there’s a gaff I wouldn’t mind dipping my toes into. Melbourne, did he say? Adelaide? Karine, I don’t remember but let’s write them all down as possible destinations. Even the poison spiders would be worth it. There’s more things that can kill you in Australia than anywhere else on the planet. Heard it on a documentary on the telly in the cell a few days ago but it didn’t put me off.