Even Mr Walsh would get in on the act. Not so much with the eye shadows and foundations – like I’d stand for any of that nonsense … do I look like Chantelle Houghton, as they say – but there was one time Anna had sent some beautiful Vetivert shower gel and I couldn’t locate it, and where do I find it? Only on his shelf in the shower!
Anna Walsh has the best job in the world. Helen’s is good too, but Anna’s is better.
Q is for ‘The Gays’. Because I know I’m not allowed to say the ‘Q’ word. (All this interfering with words, I can’t keep up. You can’t even say the ‘Q’ word if you want to describe a thing as strange or uncanny. And you certainly can’t say it about a poor divil who isn’t ‘right in the head’. You can’t say it any time, ever, about anything. And once upon a time, ‘gay’ was a skippy, flowery sort of a word, but it has entirely different ‘connotations’ now.)
The term we use in our family for ‘the gays’ is Jolly Boys – Helen once worked with some chap from India who mistranslated ‘the gays’ as ‘Jolly Boys’ and after we’d finished laughing at him, we decided we’d use it.
And I’ll tell you something gas: the Kilfeathers next door to us have a Jolly Person in their family, and it’s not even a boy – it’s miles worse … it’s a girl, a Jolly Girl!
Now look, before you jump down my throat for being a ‘homo’ ‘phobic’, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be one of ‘the gays’. Especially as there is no such thing as ‘gay’ – they’re only putting it on to be fashionable. All I’m saying is, if you had seen Angela Kilfeather ‘back in the day’ – she used to be a right sucky little angel with long blondey ringlets on her – oh, she’d sicken you. And then she ups and becomes a Jolly Girl and gets a ‘partner’, whom she kisses out in the open, in full view of everyone on the road.
And I mean French-kisses her, not just that awful kissing on the cheek that we now have to do to say hello whenever we meet someone. (Would you mind telling me this: when did that become the done thing? I can’t bear it. I don’t hold with ‘affection’; it’s just nonsense from the telly. I’m not saying I have ‘OCD’ and am afraid of getting germs from people, not at all. But all that hugging and kissing is pure silliness.)
So there Angela Kilfeather is, standing out in the street, French-kissing another woman and not a lick of shame on her. Of course, it’s her poor mother I feel most sorry for. (To be quite honest, I could burst with delight. She always looked down on me, Audrey Kilfeather, with her perfect little Angela, with her perfect little ringlets, and my girls running around, as bold as brass. But look at Mrs Audrey Kilfeather now! ‘Eat my shorts!’ as they say … or maybe they don’t say it so much any more …)
Despite the fact that they do not actually exist, I get on very well with ‘the gays’ and their ilk. I get on well with everyone and that’s because I take every person as they come. I am very much a ‘people’ person.
R is for Real Men. Right. I’m taking a big, deep breath here because I’ve lots to tell you about them. The Real Men are a group of Irish lads that Rachel met in New York. Five of them, long-haired and burly and dressed in denim, denim and more denim – with a bit of leather thrown in. They wear their jeans tight: on a good day – and I’m quoting Rachel here – you can tell which of them has been circumcised. (For the love of God! Was it really necessary for her to say that?)
The name ‘Real Men’ was invented by Rachel and her friend Brigit to be a bit of an insult originally, but I can’t see why. Being a man never goes out of fashion, surely?
The Real Men are ‘heavy metal’ fans and they say that the last time a good record was made was in 1975 (Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, if that means anything at all to you. It’s nothing to me. As I said, I’m a Bublé ‘girl’). For a while all the Real Men shared an apartment and it was known far and wide as Testosterone Central – even though they play a lot of Scrabble, which isn’t exactly ‘rock ’n’ roll’!
The Real Men sort of blur into a hairy manly haze for me, but I’m going to try to untangle them in my head for you and describe them
Okay, they’re all ‘Alpha’ ‘Males’, but Luke Costello is the ‘Alpha’ ‘Alpha’ and I’ll save him for last.
I’ll tell you about Joey first. Joey has long, blondy hair and he looks a bit like Jon Bon Jovi. But his hair isn’t really blond; it’s because he uses Sun-In and he goes mad if you suggest that he does. Joey is as cranky as bedamned. Always going round with a face like thunder, and he does these ‘statement actions’ like striking a match off the brick wall in Rachel’s apartment or swinging a chair round so that he’s sitting on it backwards, you know what I mean? I spend my life in dread that Joey is going to start shouting at me for something or other.
Despite his ‘narkiness’, Joey sees a lot of ‘lurve action’ (another dreadful phrase) with the ladies. Loads of them have slept with Joey. Helen did as part of her ‘Tag and Release’ Programme. Rachel’s friend Brigit did. Anna’s friend Jacqui … Joey snared Jacqui by stealing one of her Scrabble tiles and shoving it down the front of his jeans and making her rummage around and fish it out again – with him not wearing any jocks. Which she did, cool as a cucumber. Took her time about it too, if what I hear is to be believed. Then it all went to hell, but that’s another story.
Next there’s Gaz – and how do I put this without getting the head bitten off me …? Gaz has a small bit of a lack. Gaz, if you ask me, is not all there. A nice lad, no harm in him, a bit on the tubby side, but that’s no crime. What’s worrying me is that he’s training to be an acupuncturist and he goes round with a leather pouch full of needles, and if you stand still for more than two seconds, he’s sticking them into you and trying to cure you of ailments you didn’t even know you had, and my fear is that in his ‘cluelessness’ he might accidentally sever someone’s spinal cord with one of his needles …
Gaz doesn’t enjoy the same success with the ladies as Joey does, but funnily enough, in one of those six degrees of separation things, Gaz once ‘slept’ with Claire, a long time ago, before any of them were in New York. Hilaire, as Helen would say. Small world, as I would say.
Now I’ll tell you about Shake. Shake distinguishes himself by his skill at playing the air guitar. He did very well in a championship, got to the semi-finals of something or other – forgive me for not having the details to hand, but it’s not the sort of thing I’m interested in.
Shake has a ‘mahooosive’ head of hair, easily the biggest of them all and at Rachel’s wedding, he did a sort of floor show. The DJ put on ‘Smoke on the Water’ and Shake was swirling his hair round and about in a big circle and he was playing his air guitar, twiddling away at his ‘region’, you know … his ‘down below’ … and for all the world he looked to me like he was ‘at’ himself, if you know what I mean. I mean … you know … ‘at’ himself, like playing with himself. I was mortified, but I couldn’t stop looking …
Johnno now, I couldn’t tell you much about. Quiet sort of chap. Doesn’t do much. Just there to make up numbers.
But Luke … Luke is the one I want to talk to you about. Luke Costello is the stand-out Real Man, the ‘break out’ ‘star’. Anna says she can only talk to Luke’s crotch, that she tries, she tries really hard to address his face, but for whatever reason her eyes are always drawn back to his ‘region’.
Even on his wedding day his trousers were distractingly tight and we were all wondering how he does it; does he have the trousers specially tailored or is it just down to … him?
Jacqui says Luke makes her break into such a sweat, she has to take rehydration salts after ten minutes in his company.
As for myself, I dread being alone with Luke. He’s so … I don’t know the word, but he makes me feel … I don’t know the word. Like a wild animal. Often I’m afraid I’m going to lunge across the room and take a bite out of him. I have a suspicion he doesn’t always wear underpants and sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go to … What! Sorry, where were we?
S is for
Sausage. As in ‘Throwing a sausage up O’Connell Street.’ A disgustingly vulgar phrase Claire employs to describe having sexual intercourse after having given birth.
S is also for Sisters. I myself have five sisters and I suppose you could say I have five best friends. We are great pals, all of us; we all get on great and there is no rivalry between any of us, none at all. We are all thrilled when a child of one of the others does well and we are not one bit happy when a child of one of the others gets caught embezzling from their workplace, or becomes a Jolly Girl or a deserted wife. We are all terrific pals. The best of friends.
S is also for Shovel List. The Shovel List is a simply marvellous invention of Helen’s. It’s a list of all the things and people she hates so much she wants to hit them in the face with a shovel. It can be an actual list, written on a piece of paper, or on your ‘smartphone’, or you could have the things written on little cue cards and you could shuffle them around, as the mood took you, or you could simply keep the list in your head. I will give you some examples of the things on my shovel list: the Aon Insurance ad; the sound of Francesca drinking a Slurpee; the smell of the elephant house at the zoo; hard pears, especially when the label said they were ‘perfectly ripe’; old people who stop for no reason in the supermarket so your trolley goes bashing into their heels and then they act like you were the one at fault; Michael, the man who used to ‘do’ our garden but did sweet damn all, and when Mr Walsh finally ‘fronted’ him ‘up’, he left and spread a rumour that he’d seen me use a dirty tea towel to dry Mr Walsh’s lettuce.
Do you see? Isn’t it lovely? And you can keep adding new things all the time!
T is for ‘Taking agin’. Honesty compels me to admit that this phrase originated with Margaret’s friend Emily, but it has been adopted by the entire Walsh clan. Even Imelda, my most competitive sister, says it, like she made it up. To ‘take agin’ something means you have a ‘set’ against something, that something has displeased you or disappointed you in some way. It is a tremendous phrase, extremely versatile, and I urge you to give it a go yourself, right now. For example, let’s say you’ve gone to the hairdresser and you’ve had a body wave and decided to take your colour down a shade. You’re looking the best you’ve looked for years and you know it. You arrive home and not only is your husband there, but so are two of your daughters and not one person mentions your beautiful new hair. Under old circumstances you would become vexed with them, perhaps even enraged, but not any more. Now, you ‘take agin’ them. ‘Taking agin’ someone can be expressed in many ways – banging is always considered suitable. You could say, ‘Cup of tea, everyone? I’ll make it, will I? Like I always fecking well do, will I?’ Then you can bang the kettle into the sink, fill it with water, bang it back onto its stand, bang some mugs onto the worktop, bang open the door of the biscuit cupboard, bang the biscuits onto the table, and so on. Like ‘holding a grudge’, ‘taking agin’ things is one of life’s great pleasures.
T is for also for Tree Over a Blessed Well. In a way, being like a tree over a blessed well is the opposite of taking agin something. A person who has had a bad blow and wants everyone to know about their misfortune by behaving sadly, mournfully and miserably could be said to be ‘like a tree over a blessed well’. Streeling around the house like a droopy drawers, if you get me. If someone’s husband has ‘done’ the ‘dirt’ on them, or if a person has lost their job or had their car stolen and their self-pity is starting to get on your nerves, simply say, with great jocularity, ‘Look at you, drooping away there, like a great big droopy drawers! You’re like a tree over a blessed well!’
You will be amazed at the effect it has on people. Usually it jizzes them up so much that they jump to their feet and run off, clearly to do something constructive. Sometimes they are so grateful that they punch you in the upper arm.
T is also for Television. The Walshes would not be the happy family that we are, if it wasn’t for the telly. It is a great way to ‘bond’.
U is for Useful. And that brings us to my husband, Jack Walsh. Unlike my daughters, I did not ‘play the field’ before I married. I was not a one for the boys. Of course, I’m sure I had many admirers, but they were so in awe of me, they kept their distance. It was my height, I think, that put them off. I’m not extremely tall. Only five foot ten or thereabouts. But people were generally smaller in those days and it takes a big man to be happy with a tall woman. (I’m saying ‘big’ metaphorically there, just for clarification.)
Mr Walsh and I met in circumstances that were mundane. He was originally from some rural hamlet in County Clare and he came to work in the ‘big smoke’ of Limerick, where I was reared. He was ‘in digs’ in a house across the road from my family, and myself and himself used to get the bus to work, around the same time every day.
Back then, people were friendlier. You just didn’t ‘ignore’ people at the bus stop and stick yokes in your ears and nod away to yourself. At the very least you’d say, ‘Fine day, thank God.’ And if the weather wasn’t fine, and it usually wasn’t, you’d say, ‘Mild day, thank God.’ Or, ‘At least it’s not raining.’ Or, if it was raining, and it usually was, you’d say, ‘Lovely growthy weather, good for the crops.’
Of a weekend, Mr Walsh used to go ‘home’ to his half-cracked mother and family of bogaloons and one Monday morning, at the bus stop, didn’t he give me a little parcel wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with string. ‘What’s this?’ says I. ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘nothing at all.’ But it was something! It was a little pullet hen, roasted all lovely and Mammy was delighted with me and said maybe I wasn’t the big long streel of uselessness she’d taken me for (she was a ticket, was Mammy).
Every weekend after that, he’d bring me something, maybe some eggs or a lump of ham, and, before I knew it, we had an ‘understanding’. Now, the funny thing about ‘understandings’ is that they’re unspoken. For a nation so chatty, we Irish can be quite ‘clammed up’ about important things. But without anything being formalized, Jack Walsh and I were ‘walking out together’ and ‘coooourting’, which eventually solidified into ‘doing a strong line’.
Every Wednesday night we’d go to the pictures, and in those days it didn’t matter what was on, you just went. There was none of this reading reviews or saying, ‘I can’t stick that Bette Davis. That last thing she was in was a load of sh*t.’ Horse opera, musical, romance – you got what you were given and you were glad of it. Mr Walsh used to buy me a box of Cleeves toffee and we’d eat them together.
Then there would be dances, but it wasn’t like these days, when you can go to ‘clubs’ any night of the week, and sometimes even two or three different clubs. I have a faint memory – now, don’t quote me on this, because I might be wrong – that dances couldn’t be held on a Saturday night because they might infringe Sunday ‘non-enjoyment’ laws. As far as I remember, dances were usually held on Friday nights and they’d be wonderful affairs. You’d have a live band playing their heart out and you’d dance the legs off of yourself and the national anthem would be played at the end. (Now that I think of it, it was played at the end of the pictures too. The lights would go up and everyone would clamber to their feet and if you’d been at any ‘dirty business’ during the picture, you’d have to tidy yourself up fairly lively if you didn’t want the whole cinema looking at you. Not that I ever did anything like that, of course.)
It was taken for granted that, when Jack had saved enough money for a down-payment on a house, he’d ask me to marry him. As Mammy said, ‘If he asks you, you make sure you say yes, my girl; he’s the best chance you’ll ever get. The only chance.’ But of course I was going to say yes. I was – and still am – very fond of Jack Walsh. He’s a quiet, easy-going man and that’s probably for the best. Especially because I sort of ‘blossomed’ after I moved away from living with Mammy. I like a good chat and I’m a great raconteur – you should have seen the reception I got out in ‘LA’! I was invited to the next-door-neighbour’s Fable Telling evening and, even if I am
polishing my own medal here, I stole the show! They loved me and my story of Famous Seamus and How He Won the Love of the Doctor’s Daughter!
Mr Walsh and I have been married for forty-seven years and, do you know something, even though I am taller than him, we’ve been very happy together. Apart from the children, of course. They have made us very unhappy. Only from time to time, that is – when they were up to whatever feck-acting they were up to. But it was like a relay race! The minute one of them stopped her tomfoolery, another started up. There was very little respite, and being honest with you, if it wasn’t for Margaret being so well-behaved I would have surely ended up in the mental hospital.
I can see you trying to do the sums there, thinking, ‘If she’s married for forty-seven years and she must have been in her late twenties at least by the time she got the ring on her finger, what age does that make her now?’ Well, I’ll tell you something. A lady (and I am one) doesn’t disclose her age but I’ll whisper you a secret: I’ve aged well.
I have been entirely faithful to Mr Walsh and he has been entirely faithful to me. I would ‘know’ if he hadn’t. My woman’s intuition would alert me. Also I keep a close eye on things – lipstick on a shirt collar, the smell of some other woman’s perfume – but he never let me down. Of course, there was that unpleasant incident a few years ago when his ‘ex’ turned up. Nan O’Shea. The woman he ‘dumped’ when he ‘fell’ for me. She came back into our lives and asked if they could be friends, but I nixed that good and lively. Friends! Does she take me for a gom?
U is also for Umbrellas. ‘They’ often say that Ireland would be a lovely country if we could only put a roof over it. The rain, do I need to explain? The rain that never stops. It could get you ‘down’ and I often say that if umbrellas hadn’t been invented I would never be able to leave the house. I also often say that the man who invented umbrellas should be canonized. (D’you see the way I said ‘man’ there? And not ‘woman’! If Claire heard me say that she’d be down on me like a ‘ton of bricks’! She claims to be a feminist. Although she looks nothing like one, with her short skirts and her fake tan and her hair extensions.)