Free The Fields by Kevin Maher Page B

man. Mam’s always dead embarrassed coz she doesn’t like jokes about Catholics and Protestants in the first place, and especially not now with all the killings and things.
    Mam says we’ll think about it, and everyone goes ballistic. Susan can’t believe that I’m younger than her and I’m getting to go out on a Sunday night, and the last night before school and everything. Claire pipes up and demands to be allowed to invite Brenda Joyce around, since I’m going to a party. Sarah mutters that Saidhbh is a tart, Fiona barks back that it takes one to know one, Dolly, meaning Dolly Parton, and Siobhan says Provo-Tart to boot. Even Dad throws in his tuppence worth with something about the smell of booze and me becoming an alkie before my time, as if there is a proper age to become an alkie.
    In school, when the teachers find out that I have five sisters, all older than me, they say that I must be so spoilt, being the only boy. Centre of attention. Apple of everyone’s eye. Man of the house. Little Lord what’s his name. I look around the table at all the angry girly faces snapping at me like the hungry crocodiles in
Live and Let Die
and I think, Bollocks to that.
    Mam’s already had enough of the arguing and of everyone moaning about me going to Saidhbh Donohue’s party. She hasn’t been slaving over a hot stove all day to have her Sunday roast ruined by a pack of bickering brats.
    Nice melon balls, didn’t you think, Matt? she says, deciding to make it her mission to bring Dad out of his daily exhaustion and post-paper slump. Saving your presence.
    She knows that if she starts with him, there’s a good chance that the rest will follow.
    Dad says, Nice, while looking down at his empty plate.
    Matt! Mam says sharply. A bit of eye-contact wouldn’t go astray!
    Dad lifts his head up and says, Nice melon balls, Devida.
    She’s smiling at him, beaming widely, full on, doing her best to bring him back to life. He notices this, so he gives her a polite half-smile in return.
    She pounces on it.
    Look at that, girls! It smiles. The beast smiles! Oh, I made a great choice there, marrying such a smiler. Praise the Lord, lucky me, what a happy man I married!
    Now, this is a dangerous game she’s playing, and we all know it. It’s like she’s messing with nitro. Coz it can either bring him into the glory of wildcard happiness, or it can send him over the edge and he’ll storm out and go over to The Downs or out for a long drive and not come back until it’s night and we’re all in bed, wide awake.
    But this time the gamble works.
    And I got permanent rays of sunshine with you!! he says, a wicked grin beginning to break over his face. The fastest floozy in all of the bog!
    Oh, Matt, you’re awful! Mam says, mission accomplished, standing up and going over to the oven to pull out a freshly spitting chicken the size of an elephant.
    I don’t know what you’re talking about, she says, continuing it on, like panto.
    What’s a floozy? says Susan, even though she knows what it is, coz Fiona’s always calling Sarah one.
    Will I tell ‘em about the knocks? says Dad to Mam, but winking at us as the chicken hits the table in front of him with a carving knife and carving fork rammed into its chest.
    Oh, now, none of your knocks, Mam protests.
    Yeah, the knocks, says Siobhan, tell us about the knocks!
    It was when your mam brought fellas back to the house in Ballaghaderreen, says Dad, as if he’s presenting
Jackanory
. If it was late at night they were never allowed inside the building because there’d be no one up to keep everything above board. He winks to us all when he says this.
    So, your mam would chat to her fellas outside the house, by the door, which was right below her father’s bedroom. And if the conversation ever stopped, which meant that things between your mam and the fellas were getting just a little bit too quiet for their own good, her father’d give his window pane a decent few knocks to shake things up