Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [19]
‘I was talking about you,’ Delia stalwartly insisted to Katherine. ‘I knew the phone was going to ring and I knew it’d be you. I always know these things. I have the gift, the sight.’
‘You wish,’ Katherine scorned. ‘You know I always ring on Granny’s birthday.’
‘Don’t call her Granny, her name is Agnes. And haven’t I been telling you since the day you were born not to call me Mam. I’m Delia.’
Katherine’s family was an unusual one. At least, in Knockavoy it was. It centred around Delia, Katherine’s mother, who’d been a wild and beautiful young woman in her time. She’d been very forward-thinking, and spent her teenage years in the sixties berating anyone who’d listen (precious few in Knockavoy) about the stranglehold the Catholic church had on Ireland. She had no fear.
One day when she was seventeen she arrived in the kitchen, her hands dirty, her black hair more tousled than usual, an air of barely contained glee bringing a sparkle to her silvery eyes.
‘What were you doing?’ Agnes, her mother, feared the worst.
‘Pegging lumps of turf at the curate when he went past on his bicycle.’ Delia snorted with laughter.
Agnes rushed to the window and in the dip of the road she could see young Father Crimmond cycling away furiously, a clod of turf still attached to his big black coat.
‘Conduct yourself! You’ll get us all into terrible trouble,’ Agnes objected, alarmed yet shamefully exhilarated.
‘Trouble is what this place needs,’ Delia said darkly. ‘Trouble would do them no end of good.’
When news of the turf-throwing antics got out, the townsfolk were in uproar and two stout matrons purported to faint clean away. They’d never heard the like. Father Crimmond made oblique reference to the assault in his sermon and urged prayers for the poor deranged creature who’d attacked him. ‘More to be pitied than scorned,’ he concluded, which disappointed the congregation because they’d been looking forward to a good bit of scorning.
Delia became the most talked-about person for several parishes. People shook their heads when they saw her coming, saying, ‘That young girl of the Caseys has a bit of a lack,’ and, ‘That Casey child isn’t all there.’
Austin, Delia’s father, a dangerously mild man, suspected she was a changeling. Others with a bit more nous simply suspected that Agnes had strayed.
Delia continued to rebel. But no one else would join in, they were all too frightened. And as it isn’t much fun by oneself, Delia left Knockavoy in 1966 and went to London, where she found many other ways of railing against the establishment than throwing combustible fuel at mobile clergymen.
She channelled the bulk of her rebelling through the medium of sex and drugs, enjoying copious quantities of both. In case anyone doubted the sincerity of such rebelliousness, Delia put their minds at rest by getting pregnant. Better still, the man responsible was married and had no intention of leaving his wife.
But suddenly, to her great surprise, Delia became very frightened. She felt young, alone and scared. Rued the day she’d left Ireland. Sorry she’d ever heard of London. Cursed her contrary nature. Why couldn’t she have behaved herself like the girls she’d been at school with? A fifth of them had gone into the holy orders. Why hadn’t she been afraid of hellfire and damnation like everyone else?
Her poor father. He’d feel obliged to take his belt to her; it was the done thing. He’d hate having to do it because he was such a gentle soul, but rules were rules.
As it happened Austin was spared because a week after Delia realized she was pregnant he had a heart attack and died. (He’d been out getting turf for the fire. As Agnes said, turf brought nothing but sorrow to the Caseys.)
On the train home for the funeral, Delia practised her justification. ‘A new life in place of the old. Dada is gone, but a new person will be born in his stead.’ She was nervous. Being impregnated and ditched had knocked the stuffing out of her. The free-spirited principles that had seemed so worthy and true in London became less and less convincing