Free The Mammy by Brendan O'Carroll Page B

your pyjamas.’
    ‘I have to go out,’ said Mark.
    ‘Where?’ Agnes spoke like a barrister.
    ‘To the ... boxing club.’
    ‘Of a Wednesday night? Why, what’s on?’
    ‘Eh... some man is coming down to talk to us about ... something.’
    ‘Oh all right, but you be back here by nine, d’yeh hear me?‘
    ‘Yeh! Nine!’ Mark answered, relieved that his date with Maggie O‘Brien - his date with destiny - was allowed to take place. The other children kept their eyes down. Brownes don’t snitch.
    As Mark skipped down to Foley‘s, his excitement almost made him burst. So this is love, he thought. He had practised some romantic lines he had heard at the matinees, and was ready to tackle the serious business of wooing his lady. As he rounded the turn from James Larkin Court into James Larkin Street, he saw her standing there outside Foley’s pub. His heart leapt. He had never felt like this about anyone or anything before. He slowed his walk to try and look ’cool‘. It was impossible. Cool, me hole, he thought, and began to run. When he got to her, she went all coy.
    ‘How ye?’ he said.
    ‘How ye,’ she answered, without looking at him.
    There was an awkward silence. She was leaning with her back resting against the lamp post, and for some reason she kept slipping her heel in and out of the black brogues she wore. She’s gorgeous, he thought. Okay, so one of her teeth sticks out, the one beside the yellow one, but it was nice in a kinda way. Time for one of his romantic lines.
    He cleared his throat. ‘Your hair shines in the moonlight.’
    ‘Fuck off! Yours isn’t even combed!’
    Her retort caught him off guard. I must have said it wrong, he thought. Try another one, his brain screamed, try another one. ‘Your pools are like big eyes,’ he stumbled out.
    ‘What boobs? I haven’t got any yet, and if I had you wouldn’t be gettin’ your fuckin’ hands on them.’
    This wasn’t going according to plan at all. Say nothing.
    ‘Do you want a kiss or what?’ she asked him.
    ‘Yeh,’ he answered without hesitation.
    ‘Well not here — go ’round the back,‘ she said with a shrug of her shoulders.
    ‘Okay.’ Mark was now prepared to do anything he was told. He went around the back of Foley’s pub. Passing under the toilet window, he heard a cough, and then a fart, and a cigarette butt narrowly missed him as it flew from the window. He climbed as quietly as he could over some beer crates and stopped, looking left and right. He had never been around here before.
    ‘Go right,’ she ordered. She had been here before. He went right until he came to a comer. It was damp, and enough light spilled from the pub for him to see he was at some kind of back gate. He stopped and turned. She walked up to him and stood before him with her eyes closed. He looked at her in wonder.
    She opened her eyes. ‘Are you all right? Kiss me!’ She closed them again.
    Mark Browne was about to have his first kiss. He moved right up to her until his nose touched hers, and pushed his face hard against hers. Their lips met, their noses squashed and it lasted all of three seconds. When he pulled away, Mark saw stars before his eyes.
    This is great, he thought. Then he thought, I must see this girl’s bum.
    ‘Wait here,’ she said.
    ‘Why? Where are you going?’
    ‘I have to do me pee, wait here!’ She vanished around the side of the building. Mark was thinking to himself, I’m never going to see it, when the door he was standing beside began to open slowly and quietly. He froze, terrified. It was Dermo.
    ‘What the fuck ...?’ he barked, annoyed.
    ‘Here,’ Dermo said and disappeared. It was a stick of liquorice. Mark smiled, and to the now closed door he whispered, ‘Thanks, Dermo.’

Chapter 11
     
    THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SECRET in Moore Street. Within days, news of Marion’s visit to the clinic and the doctor’s request for her to go into hospital for tests was all over the markets. There was a path