The Ballad of Mo and G (3 page)

Mrs D died the very next day.

The police told the supermarket she died from shortage of breath. So Mo could hardly be charged with murder. Everyone dies from shortage of breath in the end. Well nobody ever died from some terminal disease and kept on breathing. Did they?

But Maureen was certain Mo had wish-killed Mrs D. That's Maureen, as in Dermo's mother. She was very worried for her son. Worried sick he would die in the near future from one of the several I-wish-he-was-deads made by Mo.

Maureen loved her precious book. She minded it like an old manuscript illuminated by the monks.

‘It's my bible,' said Maureen.

Her hardback, dust covered,
The Law of the Wish
was without dog ears or thumb smears.

When Maureen was reading it, on went the surgical gloves. Sometimes if Maureen ran out of gloves, she went on her knees to blow open a new page. It often took her a whole day to read just two pages. Every sentence was
checked and rechecked, several times, for new meanings. She asked Mo a thousand interpretation questions. And there were long phone calls to other Wishers.

Maureen joined up the Law of The Wish Foundation at the second highest level of associate membership. The book ‘sold more copies than the bible' and the foundation had 23.3 million members. ‘Worldwide,' Maureen emphasised as if Mo thought the 23.3 were all living in Ireland, which wouldn't leave very much room for the rest of us.

There's more than one strand to
The Law of the Wish
but in the context of the alleged killing of Mrs D, it goes something like: if you wish someone the worst, and you are one of those with the power of life and death, the wishee is as good as dead.

Maureen was certain her son Dermo was doomed. After all, Mo did put a curse on him and now she was a proven killer. Maureen called next door to see Mo on the night she came home from the hospital. Dermo was on his way to the pub.

‘Sorry bout dudder night,' he said before he left. ‘Here's somethin' for you to get somethin' with. I shunta kicked you in the gee. I'm a sorry bout the babby, but he wadn't really a babby cos he wadn't rightly made inta a babby. But you shouldn't have gone knocking no dogs nader. There was no call for that. The dogs can't stand up for theirselves. They're dumb you know.'

Mo let go at Dermo.

‘You prefer Doberman pups to babies. I will never forgive you, ever, you murderer. I wish you were dead.'

‘Fuck you.' He snatched back the fifty. The note tore in two. Afraid now, she handed him the other half, at
the same time watching his free hand.

Dermo banged the door so hard that the euro store porcelain duckling I bought for Mo as a take-the-piss wedding present smashed into smithereens on the floor.

Every time that man closed a door something broke.

That night, Maureen made Mo a stuffed chicken dinner with creamy mash and buttered carrots. Mo's mother-in-law made lovely dinners, with homemade gravy.

Indoors, Maureen always wore fluffy pink slippers in the shape of big bunnies. The slippers were covered with plastic bags to keep the rabbits clean and dry.

There was a new pair of matching bunny slippers for Mo ‘to keep her toes warm.' And a block of ice cream with two packets of wafers.

‘It's Cosmopolitan,' announced Maureen. ‘Your favourite.'

After the dinner and the ice cream and the coffee, there was small talk. Then after only a few minutes, Maureen, who couldn't ever restrain herself if something was bothering her, asked Mo if she really meant her death wish for Dermo.

Mo didn't answer.

Maureen responded by trawling her calloused hands through her wild, variegated hair.

‘I must get me roots done.'

Maureen took off her gold charm bracelet.

She twisted the tiny handle of the gold wishing well with her plump fingers.

‘Seeing as I have no daughter of my own, I want this to
be yours when I'm gone. Please don't go murderin' our Dermo. I know what he done was terrible. I was dying for a little grandchild.'

Maureen began to cry. Mo put her arm around Maureen. It only went as far as the tip of the opposite shoulder blade.

‘It's no bed of roses being an Olsen. I had it tough, but back in the old days I couldn't go nowhere. There was the kids and I had the lard walloped out me a good few times. I think that's why I got so fat. I ate to forget.'

‘It's usually drink to forget,' replied Mo

She poured Maureen a top-up glass of Chateau Tuesday and the two watched TV. Maureen had a 52-inch TV installed for Mo when she was in the hospital and had all the channels put in.

‘Paid for by our Dermo. In a shop.'

The TV programme was about the winning garden at the Chelsea flower show.

Maureen scraped the last of the melted ice cream off the cardboard carton with a knife and licked it clean. A yellow banana blob fell on the fluffy bunny.

‘Look Maureen, the bunny's wearing fake tan.'

If there were ten cartons, Maureen would have eaten every one, for comfort's sake. Mo joked Maureen would even have eaten the fluffy bunny now there was ice cream on it. Maureen laughed and then she went all serious.

‘Dermo kicked out at the table in a temper, but he missed. He was frustrated and upsetted. That's all. He didn't mean to hurt nobody. It was an accident. Our Dermo is no saint but he'd never kill a little babby.'

Mo didn't respond.

They watched a programme about celebrity chefs and celeriac. When it was over Maureen said, ‘Careful what you wish for.'

‘I am very careful,' replied Mo.

She knew that would upset Maureen but somehow she knew too that her mother-in-law would take heed and in turn would get to Dermo. Even mad sons listen to their mammies.

‘Can you take back what you wished about Dermo dying?'

Mo looked at her mother-in-law full on.

‘Is that why you're being nice to me?'

Maureen held Mo by the hand.

‘No love. It's not the only reason. The night in the shower, I thought he was kickin' lumps out of you and ye were, well … at it.'

‘“It,” is that what they call it?' asked Mo.

And they got another fit of laughing. Maureen told Mo she wanted her to be the daughter she never had.

Mo didn't lift the death threat there and then but she did call out to Maureen's house later that night and took Dermo off death row.

Mo phoned me the next morning with all the news. Mo would find time to speak to me while her husband was up at the runs feeding his dogs, and kicking things.

Mo was kind of, but not completely, worried about wishing Dermo was dead. Back then, I couldn't see any logic at all in the Law of the Wish.

‘How could you kill by wishing, Mo? There would be no one left, given all the hate that's in the world. Just check the net. It's full of people wishing death on other people.
Thousands of years into the future the archaeologists digging up Twitter will come to the conclusion the people who lived in the first decades of the twenty-first century were a truly horrible bunch of psychopaths and wish-killers. I lose faith in online humanity. It depresses the crap outta me. So if people are so bad how come more of us aren't wished to death?'

Mo seemed a little calmer. Or less rattled, might be the best way of putting it.

You'd never know with Mo.

She could go through hell on earth and somehow manage to get by. Mo never ever really had a sustained period of happiness, so when bad things happened to her, she saw the abnormal as normal. Men were shot in gangland feuds just down the road from the block of flats Mo and her mother lived in. All the while Mo studied, day and night, just to get out. Mayhem and murder and drugs and drink were part of everyday life. There were good times, but the bad times were never too far away, and the gestation period was an instant.

You made for home, head down, no eye contact. The bad boys and girls were on their rounds in their souped-up cars or taking up both sides of the pavement with hoodies up.

There were many more ordinary people who just got on with living their daily lives.

I was never there. No one ever did go, bar the people who lived in Mo's home place, and people who worked for the government.

Mo told me how it was.

The people there did the shopping, brought the kids to school, went to work and made every effort to play the
hand they were dealt. On the news the area was described as working class, but hardly anyone living there had a job.

The good people lived in the war zone, not of their making. Sometimes the innocent got caught in the crossfire while the rest of us parked our fat arses on white horses high on the hill overlooking the battlefield. And the generals always say, ‘It will all be over by Christmas.' But decades of neglect, poverty and relative poverty have gone in too deep. Their troubles are layered now, like an archaeological site.

It's as if there were two countries, divided by a border, defined by postal addresses. If you were born in 4 you were fine, and if the number that came out of the pot was 12, well then that was you well out of luck. This was the second partition of Ireland.

Employers would give you the time of day and then lash off a quick email to say how impressed they were with your interview. Thanks but no thanks. We'll keep you on file. Just in case something comes up. Under F for Fuck Off.

But we were fine. Dad described the way it was back in the seventies when the war was full on in the North of Ireland. The people in the deep south, where we lived, ‘Might as well have been on Mars.'

Dad told me, ‘Some story might have come on the news about twenty people being killed in a bomb but even though the north was only three hundred miles up the road, it might have been in Afghanistan, for all people were prepared to do about it.'

Now the distance in the city between the safe places and the dangerous places is no more than a bus stop or two, but Mo's home is still in another faraway country.

Mo was even more unemployable because she dropped out of college when she became pregnant. The chances of Mo getting a job were somewhere between none and slim. But I didn't tell her that when we talked about the future. She knew. Mo knew, but she didn't complain. Because it would do no good.

‘I took back the bit about Dermo dying. It was probably an accident alright.'

Ah well, forgive and forget that's what we always say when someone is the cause of killing a baby. But I didn't say that. It was in my head now, she would never leave him.

Mo spoke about the Law of the Wish.

‘I know the Mrs D thing was probably only a mad coincidence anyway. But she did wish my baby dead and I wished her dead. And now they are both dead.

‘Maureen kept going on last night about Hitler's astrologer who forecast the death of Mussolini and even his own death at the hands of the SS and Hitler's death in a bunker. It was all in
The Law of the Wish
. Maureen had a premonition she would be killed by an Olsen unless there was what the wish book called “an intervening event”.

In the book there's a bit where Hitler's astrologer wrote out on a letter to his next of kin that he was going to die at the hands of the Nazis and one morning they called to his house and took him away. And, well, killed him. Just like that.'

‘Jeez you're losing it completely now.' I turned the speaker on my iPhone all the louder. I just loved listening to that voice.

It was girly hoarse, sang too much, smoky and very gentle. Sometimes her voice broke and went less croaky and a little high. But her tone was always soft and kind. The kind of voice you would like to wake up to in the morning, even if you were really tired.

Her accent was a strange mix of inner city and posh. She could move the accent in either direction when she concentrated, depending on who she was talking to. Mo kept a special voice for me. An even softer and more gentle voice with a slow and easy rhythm, all of its own.

‘Hey, G. Guess what dude? I was at his jigsaw again.'

Mo had prized away part of the wheel of a Ferrari from the framed jigsaw glued together by Dermo. The
masterpiece
was hanging over the mantelpiece on permanent exhibition. Dermo was very proud of his work. Dermo thought he not only put the pieces together, but designed the car as well. Every now and then he would ask what happened to the missing jigsaw piece and Mo would say it must have fallen into the fire when the glue melted.

There were several gaps in the huge jigsaw and the red Ferrari was badly in need of spare parts. Schumacher, the German driver who was standing by the car, had lost his crotch and Dermo coloured it in with a marker.

‘Maybe I am losing it but I just can't leave. Not for a while. But I will go and soon. I still have nowhere to call home. It's going to take time for me to get well. Maureen gave out yards to Dermo. She swore it was really an accident and that he just kicked out and happened to get me in the worst possible place.'

I didn't know how to react to that. He kicks a baby out of her and she as good as forgives him other than to
remove a wheel from his Ferrari and emasculate a
cardboard
German racing driver.

I would never have given her any excuse to forgive me for something bad because I wouldn't do anything bad.

Dermo would always be nice to her after acts of ignorance and violence. This time he sent an expensive voucher for a makeover. There was no way he would have thought of that all by himself. It had to be Maureen.

Did she think Dermo would reform?

Maybe Mo was always and forever about to give him one more chance.

The answer was in the future, but how much time can you gamble on someone beyond redemption?

There was a dependency in her too, I think.

The broken home she came from was better than no home and maybe the Compound was the same. And I didn't exactly jump in with an offer of a bed in my apartment.