Margaret Dempsey
is Fifty

by

Martin Devaney

People say I’m sound.

Sound as a bell.

In all humility, they wouldn't be far wrong. You want to have someone mind your babbies, Margaret will do it, they say. Want to have someone swop shifts in the community centre, then Margaret is always obliging. I also smile a lot.

Sure, I'm great.

 

Teresa had a go at me this morning in the staff room. "Would you look at the face on your one," she said to no-one in particular. "Maybe the birthday girl’s won the Lotto, hah?"

"If I won the Lotto, think I’d be hanging around here with you shower?" I said and they all cracked up.

"You know you wouldn’t see me for dust," Gracy said, all dreamy-like as she pulled on a smoke. "If me numbers came in. I’d be on the first plane there."

She pointed to the postcard blue-tacked to the wall. It was from some young thing who worked in the crèche three years ago - she’d won a holiday to Barbados on the Gay Byrne show. The card was covered in dust and curling at the edges but you could still see the beach, the palm trees, the Dublin-jersey light blue sea. On the reverse she’d written: "Hello Ladies, glad I’m not there, Joel."

"What about your fella?" Bridy said.

"Jaysus, can you see him in Barbados?" Gracy said. "I’ll tell you this, we’d step off that plane, we’d look around and you know the first thing he’d say. ‘Where’s the bleedin’ pub?’ No. If I won, I’d trade him in for a toy boy."

Well, we’d been scarlet. If anyone walked in! What we didn’t say about toy boys isn’t worth knowing, and what we did say isn’t worth repeating.

 

Bridy was right about one thing. I was in good form, bursting with news. You know what it’s like, you’re burning to tell someone something but you have to bite your tongue. I just couldn’t wait to tell Danielle. Danielle’s me daughter. Me dead daughter. I’d been half-looking at the newspaper article on the noticeboard as I dunked me mop in the bucket. Something about Back-to-School bargains. A big circle in biro around it. In the margin, again in biro: ‘For your Attention, Girls. Sharon.’ She’s a tidy kind of person and I suppose if she’d a scissors handy she’d have snipped the article underneath away. She didn’t. It was there.

I was gobsmacked. Me jaw almost on the floor I was supposed to be cleaning. Wouldn’t you know it, that’s when Knobhead would choose to poke his head out of the office. "Don’t forget what I said about firedrills, now," he said. Knobhead’s not his real name of course, but when the cap fits...

I said, "Piss off, Frank," and plopped the mop from the bucket to the tiles. Dirty water washed at his shoes. He stepped back and closed the door. His jokes were wearing a little thin at this stage. All week it was, "Don’t worry, you’re only as old as you feel," "Better have an extinguisher handy when you light the candles," "Don’t get too close to the cake unless you’re wearing asbestos." Et cetera et cetera et cetera.

 

Our Community Centre is a grand place. That is, if you don’t mind the smell of floorwax, sweat, or the constant reek from the jacks which no amount of disinfectant can shift. The hall is always mad busy even though it’s scarcely big enough for kiddies’ basketball. The grant didn’t cover a place large enough for indoor five-a-side, which would have been nice for the older ones. Still, it’s used, I’ll say that. And the noise. The place is never quiet. At any one time, you’ll have the sounds of someone letting rip in the office, nattering from the drop-in centre and the unending screeching of runners in the hall.

Of course, the place isn’t perfect, I mean when they built the estates in North Clondalkin, they’d promised shops and facilities and the like, but there’s nothing between Quarryvale and the village but a few shops with shutters permanently down and a pub and a church built with no windows. And then they filled the estate with people shifted from the Corpo - most of them nice, respectable people but you’ll always have a few, won’t you, who drag the name down. You’ll hear about the gurriers doing wheelies on the wasteground alright and the horses running this way and that, but nothing about the daytrips to Wicklow organised by the Women’s Groups or the self-help workshops set up by the Co-Op.

Of course our estate has problems. The centre had no option but to put on a F.A.S. scheme 24 hours a day just to keep an eye on the place, but that didn’t stop some young one ripping the tampon machine off the jacks' wall last week for the few bob inside. Some places security won’t set foot, I suppose.

I’d include Joe among them.

Some men, if they were animals, would be Alsatians or big Saint Bernards. Joe would’ve been a whippet or a greyhound. You could’ve stuffed him for a fortnight and still there’d never be a pick on him. Joe was me husband and Joe tried most things. A bit of labouring here, a bit of washing-up there. They must have been stuck to hire him for security, he wouldn’t have frightened a rabbit. Still, he looked lovely in his uniform. Like a guard he was. He was wearing the uniform when he just dropped down outside the Bank of Ireland in Clondalkin Village on the way in to cash his cheque. Not a sound out of him, but that was typical of Joe. He never liked to make a fuss.

 

I’m on earlies and that’s the way I like it. I can drop in, do me bits and pieces and then stop in on the church on the way home after. It’s kind of sad, seeing a church with no windows. Looks more like a World War Two block house than a church but that’s the way it is now. I usually stay for an hour and say a few prayers. A rosary for anyone who needs it, even the bad ones. And Mary Robinson, if I think she’s having a hard time of it. Last prayer of course is for Danielle. I always pray that she’ll be alright and in good form. On me days off, I’ll head off over to Glasnevin to see her. Fill her in on all the gossip. Tell her the latest scandal in Rowlagh and the news about how the Council is splitting and we’re going to become South Dublin, but it remains to be seen if the new shower will do more than the last. Somehow in my pew, in the quiet, I know that she can hear me. Now I’m not saying I’m a religious woman, far from it, but it was beat into me at home and at school and now it just is. We all have our habits, and there are worse ones. Gracy once told me that I’m ‘an odd ball.’ She said there’s something peculiar about someone who goes to church every day but never goes to Mass.

I just shrugged. Some things are just too hard to explain.

Joe went to Mass. Each and every day. "There may be nothing up above," he’d say, "but there’s no harm in taking out insurance."

Some people have their doubts, but never me. I know that there is something after. I’m as sure as anything.

 

 

The main article was how to save money by buying school books in second-hand shops and such like. Bleeding obvious, if you ask me. I remember thinking how time flies. If Danielle had had a child, he or she’d be going to school now. Counting the pennies. Stretching the budget. Then again, perhaps she’d have married an accountant and Easons’d bring the books right to the door. Jaysus, if Danielle had a child that’d make me a gran. A gran?

And then, just for a second, I felt old. I didn’t take to being a gran all that much. Then I looked down and saw the other article. I’m surprised I just didn’t rip it off the wall and tear off out to Glasnevin.

I didn’t, of course. I knew that, today of all days, Knobhead would let me off early, but I’d bide my time. I mean, they got that cake for me after all and it’d be a shame to miss it. Danielle can wait a bit longer and when I get to the plot, I’ll tell her all about it. I plan to pick up a copy of the paper on the way into town. That way I can read it word for word. I’ll nip off down to the bank and cash me cheque and get the paper in the village. I’m supposed to set aside a few pounds for tonight. Gracy said she’s going to call around and bring a bottle. Bridy said she’ll come too and we may go to the pub in the new Bewleys Hotel. "Celebrate in style," Gracy said.

"Janey," Bridy said. "What’s to celebrate? She’s over half way now."

"God but you’re bleeding morbid," Gracy said. "She’s years left in her."

"Ah, piss off," Bridy said, laughing, but I could see she was red in the face. "She’ll out-live the pair of us."

"Or die trying," I said.

And we all cracked up once again.

 

Danielle was sweet from the moment she was born. Blue eyes. Dublin-jersey blue eyes. I know all babbies' eyes are supposed to be blue, but not like Danielle’s. They were just right.

Joe looked terrified when he saw her. "Jaysus," was all he could say.

"No," I said. "And that’s a funny name for a girl."

He looked at me. Petrified.

"Jaysus, Maggie, I know it’s a bleedin’ girl."

Danielle gurgled and sucked at me finger.

"She has me nose," Joe said and leaned in closer. "But they look like the postman’s ears."

"Now, you, feck off," I said. "It’s time for me to feed her."

"Well, what are we going to christen her?" Joe dawdled at the door, like a babby himself. He didn’t want to leave. I’d refused to discuss names with him. I thought it was unlucky.

"Get out that door, Joe Murphy and straight down to that pub. I know you’re dying for a pint. Time enough to worry about christenings and all that. This babby wants to feed."

Joe slinked out and, bursting with pride, hightailed it for the boozer.

 

I was wrong though. Danielle wasn’t all that hungry. Not very hungry at all.

 

A monsignor was quoted in the article. Limbo has gone. It hasn’t been officially dropped, you understand. It has just been allowed to slip away, like smoke. As it turns out, they got it wrong. It seems that all those millions of babbies who never managed to get baptised are simply with God. All this time. They were there all along.

 

People say I’m sound.

Sound as a bell.

I also smile a lot.

Sure, I'm great.


Copyright © Martin Devaney 2001. All Rights Reserved


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