Factory Girls Read online

  The next morning, Maeve perched on the windowsill outside the shop, waiting for Aoife and Caroline. She’d begged them to get her Coke and crisps because she was buzzing too much to walk around the shop saying, “Hiya,” or “Och, hello,” or “So, what’s the craic?” to whoever was going about their business.

  She was torn between wanting to preserve the town forever, exactly as it was that morning, or taking fifty pounds of Semtex and blowing it all to smithereens.

  All of a sudden there were no empty weeks stretching out ahead of Maeve, no long lie-ins spent staring at Deirdre’s empty bed, with fuck all to get up for. She wouldn’t waste hours dandering around the town broke or mucking about down by the river. The summer that’d yawned before her, dank with boredom, was now sliced up into work days, while her free time fluttered with bank notes. She’d soon be like the older girls she’d watched for years heading for the factory, smoking fags and carrying handbags instead of rucksacks bulging with homework. Just one thing felt the same: the ticking time bomb of her exam results, primed to go off in August.

  Maeve trembled, then reached into her bag for a fag. She lit up, blowing smoke at the blue sky stretching out of reach above her head. That’s when she noticed the sign above the shop.

  2 BEDS TO LET

  JP DEVLIN

  78234

  Maeve chanted, Seveneight-twothreefour, seveneight-twothreefour over and over in her head until Aoife and Caroline emerged. She pointed up at the sign.

  “To let?” Aoife said. “So what?”

  “It’s about time I got a place of my own,” Maeve replied, stubbing her fag out.

  “Can you afford it?”

  “Not on my own. But we could afford it.” Maeve linked arms with Caroline.

  “Oh, God, ah don’t know about that now, Maeve!”

  She dragged Caroline over to the phone box and opened the door. A smell of pish and chips stung her nose. She kicked a soggy takeaway out the door, then checked the receiver for gum before putting it to her ear. The line purred and crackled.

  “Aoife?”

  “Yep?”

  “Lend us 20p.”

  Maeve dropped Aoife’s coin into the slot, then punched JP’s number into the keypad.

  “Seveneight-twothreefour, JP Devlin’s office. Louise speaking, how can I help you?”

  Bang on half twelve the girls arrived outside the shop to meet JP. At ten to one, they were still waiting. Suddenly the dogs up the road started to howl. The hairs on Maeve’s neck prickled and her nipples stiffened. “Brits,” she hissed, giving Caroline a dig in the ribs.

  Caroline perked up like an enthusiastic puppy. “Where? Where?” she panted.

  Maeve muttered, “Quit staring!” then nodded in the direction of the patrol. Her and Caroline crossed their arms under their diddies for a bit of a boost. But Aoife just stood gawking at the soldiers with her mouth hanging open as if she was one of the holy Americans who were flown in on peace trips from time to time. Maeve watched the patrol out of the corner of her eye, doing her best to look indifferent with just a hint of hostility. A few of the soldiers winked like they were doing something dangerously sexy, while one of the younger, cockier bucks aimed his gun at them — a move that reminded Maeve of the way Header Doherty used to wave his dick around in class before Fatty Dolan’d got him into the special school.

  Maeve eyed the oldest Brit. He was a hardy fucker who looked like the sort of gristle her Granny Murray liked to chew on after a good Sunday roast. You could tell by the way he handled his gun that he’d tucked several tours of duty under his belt. Brits like him didn’t play around at the winking-aiming shite: they were the ones to watch.

  The dogs tailed the soldiers down the street at a safe distance, snarling and barking. The patrol stopped just out of earshot, each of them crouching in a different vantage point so they could get a good look around. Caroline released a long, hot breath. “Phwoar! Did you see the black fella?”

  Maeve cringed. Caroline was always pure thrilled when she saw a black or brown face under the camouflage face paint, because everyone in the town was blindingly white. But it annoyed Maeve to see colored fellas in the British army. It felt like they were on the wrong side. She wished they’d join forces to fight for freedom, instead of displaying as much sense as their collective ancestors, who’d been too busy tearing lumps out of each other to stop the English from stealing their lands.

  “I think it’s sad,” Aoife said, gazing at the Brit squatting nearest to them.

  Maeve got a bad feeling that Aoife was about to let the side down. “What’s sad?”

  “The way the UK military recruits.”

  “What are you shiting on about?”

  “The UK’s the only country in Europe that routinely recruits minors.”

  Maeve closed her eyes. Aoife was off on one. “And? So what?”

  “They recruit boys from the age of sixteen. And anyone who signs up at sixteen or seventeen has to serve until they’re twenty-two.”

  Caroline stared at the Brit on the corner, her lust liquifying. “Jesus. Imagine becoming a soldier before you’re allowed to drink or see a dirty movie.”

  “And imagine being stuck in the army for six years!” Aoife said, as if she was auditioning for an Amnesty International documentary. “The British army’s recruitment policy is the same as Zimbabwe’s, Iran’s and North Korea’s!”

  Maeve didn’t like where Aoife was headed. On the one hand, she was comparing the UK to places run by dictators, which was fair enough; but on the other, she seemed to be saying that the dickheads swaggering around their town with guns needed some kind of protection, which was a bit of a headwreck. “Aoife,” Maeve said. “If there’s a North Korea, there must be a South Korea. Kind of like East and West Germany, right?”

  Aoife nodded.

  “So. Any time I hear of a country using the points of the compass in its name, I know there’s a border. And borders need soldiers. The younger they are, the more gullible they are. That’s why the Brits give kids guns. The IRA does it too. Because it works.”

  Aoife frowned. “I’m not sure I’d say ‘this’ is working for anyone in particular.”

  The Brit on the corner lifted his rifle and peered at them through his gunsight. Maeve gave him the finger. Which was, of course, the exact moment JP pulled up in his BMW.

  “Fuck,” Maeve said, dropping her hand.

  JP got out and leaned on the roof of his car, appraising the girls like they were cattle at the mart. Maeve tried to look demure, a look she hadn’t practiced since her First Holy Communion.

  “Miss Murray. Miss Jackson. And Miss O’Neill?”

  It was no shock that JP had already sniffed out who they belonged to, or that he was surprised to see Aoife.

  “Mr. Devlin, how are you?” Maeve said.

  “Grand, grand,” JP replied, squinting up at the misty sun.

  She seized the opportunity to demonstrate her maturity by commenting on the weather. “Well, sure, it’s a grand day, anyway.”

  JP blinked down at Maeve. She felt him take the measure of her, from her scuffed bomb-sale boots to her cracked leather jacket.

  “It’s not so bad now, altogether,” he said, begrudgingly, letting Maeve know that the day hadn’t quite met his personal standards for the title of “grand.” “So youse want to take a look at this place?”

  “We do, aye.”

  “And who is it that’s looking?” JP asked, glancing at Aoife. “Not all three of youse, surely.”

  “No, Mr. Devlin. Just myself and Caroline. We got a start in the factory and this place’d be very handy for us.”

  “The factory, eh? Under Andy Strawbridge?”

  Maeve nodded, trying not to picture herself under Andy Strawbridge.

  JP tossed his head back in judgement but said no more. He locked his car, then walked towards the flat. He paused in front of the snarl of litter in the doorway and fingered a bundle of keys. Then he unlocked the door and loped up the narrow sta
ircase with Maeve close behind him. He stopped abruptly at the top of the stairs to search for the next key. Maeve stopped awkwardly near to his buttocks, so she turned her head and held her breath to avoid the whiff of JP’s arse crack.

  After he eventually entered the flat, she leaned against the door frame, taking a couple of deep breaths.

  “Bedroom one,” JP said, pointing. “Kitchen. Bathroom. Bedroom two. And your living room.”

  The flat smelt of fresh paint but was carpeted with what looked like grey pubic hair glued onto a bed of thick black mold. The first bedroom sat in the shadow of the house opposite and was crammed with a stained-pine double bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers. Maeve left Caroline there, checking under the bed, while she took a quick look at the kitchen. There was no window, but it had the basics: a microwave, washing machine, cooker, toaster and kettle. Next she ducked into the bathroom. It was so small Maeve reckoned she could vomit in the sink while shitting in the toilet.

  When she walked into the second bedroom she knew right away it was going to be hers. It was lit by a big, west-facing window. A cheap wardrobe slumped heavily against a chest of drawers, and the double bed already had a defeated look about it. But its main selling point was what it didn’t have: a doll-sized statue of the Infant Child of Prague, and her dead sister’s empty bed.

  The living room was occupied by a saggy sofa, two hardy-looking armchairs, and a coffee table that seemed to have survived an interrogation that’d left it knock-kneed and scarred with cigarette burns.

  JP stood at the window, staring down at his BMW with an expression similar to the Virgin Mary gazing at the baby Jesus. Maeve looked out of the window. Strawbridge & Associates Shirt Factory squatted right across the road. The blinds were down in Andy’s office, but she could see onto the empty factory floor. In the distance, a squall of rain was bearing down on the town, blotting out the hills that dipped and rose like waves all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

  “So, Mr. Devlin, how much is it?”

  JP tore his eyes away from his car. “Twenty-five quid a week. I need two weeks in advance and two weeks’ deposit. Heating and light’s on top.”

  Maeve did the sums. They needed a hundred pounds.

  “No parties,” JP said. “No drugs.”

  Maeve fired him a wounded as-if-I-would stare — instead of the more accurate I-frigging-wish look. “Does the fireplace work?”

  “Wouldn’t chance it.”

  “Can we put pictures up?”

  “Blu Tack. No nails.”

  Next door, Aoife flushed the toilet and switched on the shower. Then she padded into the living room in her socks. “Mr. Devlin.”

  “Miss O’Neill.”

  “I was wondering how this place is heated?”

  “All-electric Economy 7 heating. The storage heaters and water tank heat up overnight.”

  “Dear enough to run.”

  “Easy to maintain.”

  Aoife and JP nodded at each other, as if they’d played a respectable tennis volley. Then Aoife turned to Maeve. “The water pressure’s not great. Want to see?”

  At home Aoife had what Mrs. O’Neill called an “on sweet” bathroom. She’d never queued up for what passed as a shower in Maeve’s house, where the water pressure and temperature were comparable to Grandad Murray’s urine flow before they’d sorted his prostate problem.

  “I’m sure it’ll be grand,” Maeve said before retreating to the kitchen. Caroline ventured in after her, then opened a cupboard door as if it were booby-trapped. Suddenly a bed started creaking rhythmically. Caroline clapped her hand over her mouth and stared at Maeve, horrified.

  A few seconds after the noise stopped, Aoife entered the kitchen. “I think that bed’s a bit rickety.”

  “Sure, it only has to last me the summer,” Maeve said. “I’ll try to go easy on it.”

  “It’s your call,” Aoife replied, Maeve’s insinuation sailing clean over her head.

  “So, how much is he looking for it, anyway?” Caroline asked.

  Maeve watched Caroline’s forehead crumple as she explained the terms. She’d a fair idea that it wasn’t the no parties or drugs clause that was bothering her.

  “That’s fierce dear,” she said.

  “Twenty-five pounds a week is market rate,” Aoife said. “And if you want a short-term lease, you don’t have good grounds for negotiating a reduction.”

  Maeve opened her mouth to say something to Aoife, but caught herself on at the last minute, and turned to Caroline instead. “I’ve got the money in my bank account. I can do the rent and the deposit. You gather up your money in the factory and get me back.”

  “But that’s your prize money! Are you not saving that for England?”

  Maeve’s prize money was the best thing that had ever happened to her. At fourteen she’d won the regional finals of a Royal Mail writing competition by penning a letter to Bill Clinton beseeching him to bring peace to Northern Ireland. A reporter had arrived at school with some locally famous poet who smelt strongly of the sheep he immortalized in rhyming couplets. A photographer had snapped the poet presenting Maeve with a check for £250 while squeezing her arse. After she’d got over the feeling of his mucky fingers on her, she’d felt frigging brilliant. She’d never had money like it in her life. But before she could spend a penny of it, her mam’d dragged her to the bank and made her open a savings account. And for months afterwards, Maeve had resented the snobby English doll from a posh private school who’d won the national finals. In her prize-winner’s interview, the girl had said she was going to piss her thousand quid prize money away on a new saddle for her pony, Phoebe.

  “We can save up out of the factory,” Maeve pleaded. “And ah’ll get the deposit back when we go to uni.”

  “But if we lived at home we’d save even more!”

  Maeve thought of her brothers farting on the sofa, her mam stuck like a thorn in her armchair, the weight of Deirdre’s empty bed above their heads. She saw herself ticking the days off on her Trócaire calendar like the hunger strikers scratching their lives away on the walls of Long Kesh. “Mam’s gonna charge me housekeeping when I start in the factory. Sure, I might as well have my own place!”

  Caroline hung her head, defeated.

  Maeve walked into the living room, where JP was jangling his keys like a jailer. She told him they’d take the flat.

  Maeve let herself in the door at home. She went into the living room, where her mam sat in the chair by the fireplace and her two youngest brothers, Paul and Chris, lay on the sofa watching the telly. She went straight over to the fire to toast her arse, which was always freezing. Before Deirdre’d taken to her bed, she’d always got in some barb about fat being colder than muscle and Maeve’d always said something about how at least she had an arse. Then their mam’d lepp in with, “Ah’m warning the pair of youse,” and after that they had to make do with firing dirty looks at each other.

  The news was giving the latest updates on the Chinook crash in Scotland. A forensics team was combing the ground for wreckage as a reporter noted that twenty-something Brits had been wiped out in one go and the search for survivors was being called off.

  “Well now,” Maeve’s mam said. “The bucks that died in that aren’t the boyos we have tae put up with here in the town. Probably never caught wind of a petrol bomb, never mind dodged a bullet.”

  A military expert with a large mustache filled the TV screen, stressing that the tragedy was most likely an accident caused by a mechanical fault.

  “They’d hate to hand that to the IRA,” Paul said.

  It reminded Maeve of an old joke. “I heard that an RUC patrol crashed into a tree in Fermanagh this morning!”

  “No way!” Chris said, all delighted.

  “Yep. All four of them were kilt!”

  “God, that’s wild,” Maeve’s mam said, shaking her head.

  “Aye. The IRA said they planted it.”

  Paul dead-eyed her. “Ye think you’re so funny, don’t
ye?”

  “I don’t think it,” Maeve said, flicking her hair. “I know it.”

  Paul and Chris turned their heads slowly and with great dignity back to the telly.

  “So, where’s Mickey and Deci?”

  Maeve’s mother ground out her fag on the ashtray she kept perched on the chair arm. “Away down the town with your father.”

  Maeve picked up the ashtray and emptied it into the fire while her mam sat rubbing her forehead as if her skull ached.

  “Is there any more news after the excitement of yesterday?”

  Maeve was pretty sure her mam wasn’t being sarcastic: nobody’d expected her to get a summer job. Paddy Slevin — the bollocks — had even turned down her offer to work for free on the Town Times saying Maeve’d cost him too much in tea and biccies. There was next to nothing going on in the town at the best of times, and jobs went to connections of people already working. Maeve’s parents, most of her aunts and uncles, and her nearest neighbors, had no jobs, so she’d no one to lean on for work. Her factory job was as much excitement as they could count on until the exam results came out in August.

  The whole town was waiting for the results. They’d decree who’d get away and who’d be left behind, which families had the hope of a teacher or doctor or lawyer, and which families would be kissing Woody Duffy’s hole in the hope of a carpentry apprenticeship.

  “Well, I’ve more news now, so I do.”

  Maeve liked how her mam looked up at her. “D’ye now?”

  “Hmm-mm. Oul JP is renting out the flat above the shop. A two-bed.”

  Her mam dropped her eyes back to the telly. “Aye. Ah saw the McHugh lads doing it up. Ah was wondering who he had in mind for it.”

  Maeve pulled a set of keys out of her pocket and shook them. Her brothers gawked, then Chris punched Paul in the belly. “I’m getting Maeve’s bed.”