Shortlisted in RTE Guide/Penguin Short Story Competition 2011

“I ran away with him, you know”, Mrs. Maguire looks at me from the corner of her
eye. She is a small fat woman who smokes all the time, the finger and thumb on her
right hand golden-brown from the fag she keeps puffing at, even when she is cutting a
wedge of cheese when you go for a message for your mother to the kiosk down at the
corner of the road. I’m always going for the messages.

Mrs. Maguire loves to talk. Sometimes I just sit there, listening, pretending to listen,
when I collect the paper she always gives my mother when she’s finished with it.
Mammy is as bad as me for reading. My Nanna says the two of us would read brown
paper, if we had nothing else. Nanna lives across the road from us, at the other side of
the Green. We used to live with her, but now we have our own house. Mammy has it
lovely, she’s always cleaning the floor and polishing the new furniture. Mrs.
Maguire’s house is always a bit dusty, though. In the room they live in, they have a
grate where there used to be a range, like we have now in our house. The fire isn’t lit
yet, and there are still ashes from last night’s fire. And there’s always a smell around
the place, an old people smell. Mrs. Maguire is older than Mammy, more like a
grandmother. That age. But they have a carpet instead of the lino we have, and a sofa
with a lamp on a table beside it. Mammy would have loved that.

Sometimes Mrs. Maguire asks me to stay for a cup of tea. Lonely, my mother said.
Mind now, and say thank you properly for the paper, she always tells me. And for the
tea. Now Mrs. Maguire leans across the table at me, a big smile on her face, taking
the cigarette out of her mouth for a minute. “That shook you now, didn’t it? She
laughed. “Ran away! Eloped! ”, she said. “That’s what we did. Me and Mr.
Maguire” I stared at her, really listening now. Eloped? I knew that word well,
because in some of the books I read from the Library down near the Park, girls were
always eloping. Except they ran away to get married to gorgeous young men, with
horses and wigs and high leather boots. Mr. Maguire was a big fat man, with a red
face who always wore a cap because he was bald, and was missing some of his front
teeth. And had a laugh you’d hear the other side of our Square.

“God, I was mad about him,” she said, and laughed. “Would you like a cup of tea?” I
said yes, hoping she’d cut a piece of one of the cakes she always brought up from her
shop, one of the ones my mother sometimes sent me down for, when my other
grandmother was coming. But I wanted to hear more too. “Mad about him!” she said.
I looked at her. Mr. Maguire was nice, all right, always smiling and laughing, but…
elope? “I’ll go and wet the tea. I’m parched for a cup.” Mrs. Maguire got up ,
holding on to the back of the chair. “I have loads to tell you. Wait ‘till you hear”. Her
eyes were all excited and she had a funny little smile on her face when she turned and
went into the kitchen. Then, “Would you like a piece of cake?” I heard her shouting
at me. She always talks loud, because she’s a bit deaf, Mammy said.

Mr. and Mrs. Maguire never had any children. Up our way, most of our mothers and
fathers have children, loads of them, all of us playing out on the Green in the Summer,
the grassy bit in the middle of our Square of houses, and on the streets in the Winter.
“The Forty-eight” they call our houses. Me and one of my pal counted them all one
day, every one. Forty-eight. Then Mammy laughed and said if we wanted to check up
on it, all we had to do was go to the last one around the back to see the number on it!
I was raging. I hate people making a laugh at me.

Like going to school. I just started up at the Secondary. I used to go down to St.
Joseph’s, with all of us up around, me and all my pals. But now there’s only me.
Everybody - Jeddy, Mary, Eileen, all of them , they’re all working now, down at the
Factory. And they have loads of money, and go dancing and wear high-heels going to
work. And nylons. Sometimes, when I’m coming home for my lunch, I might meet
some of them, and they make a skit of me and my ankle-socks and I get mad . And
I’m not let go dancing either. Not for ages. I’m going to be at school for another long
time.

I like it, though. I like learning French and Latin and I love our English teacher. She
told us that any time we want a book out of the Library, just to tell her. But I hate not
having any friends . I don’t really know anyone at school. None of the girls there live
up near me. I like my pals still, but I have to do homework, loads of it, and they are
let go down town and to go to the pictures on their own. And they wear lipstick. If
they had let me work down at the Factory, I’d be able to do all that too.
“Look at you there, dreaming the happy hours away!” Mrs. Maguire brought the cups
and things in on a tray, and I set them out on the table. “I told her”, she said, pouring
out the tea from a lovely flowery tea-pot, “I said “Do what you want to do yourself.
Don’t listen to anyone else”. Now none of them are talking to me!” She giggled,
suddenly not looking like an old fat woman at all. And then she took a big suck out of
her fag, and nearly coughed her guts out. “Go on” she said, “Have a bit of the lemon
cake. You like that.” She could hardly talk. I was afraid she’d choke, and the noise
she made was unmerciful. She flapped her hands in front of her face, and laughed.
“But I don’t care. I bested them, and she had her wedding breakfast here yesterday
morning!” She sat back, clasped her arms across her chest and smiled at me. “What
do you think of that, now?” I chewed the lemony cake, and looked back at her. Who
was she talking about? She was often like that. She’d talk and talk, and I would just
nod my head, and eat cake. “They’re gone to Rome for the honeymoon. Himself
brought them out to the Airport! I went too! The smiles of the two of them, God
Bless them. And I got them a room down town, for when they come back. Let them
all outside put that in their pipe and smoke it! “

She took a great swig of her tea, and a huge bite of her piece of cake. Two kinds she
had put on the plate. Hers was an Oxford Lunch, full of currants and cherries and with
almonds on top. Gorgeous! I was going to take a piece of that next. “You might have
seen her around when she was here. Not much good at the books, so they took her
out of school and they asked me to give her a job in here, a year back, down at the
shop. But sure she was hopeless. Useless with the customers, a bit hoity-toity. She
was great at the driving, though, and she helped Himself out with the taxi-work.
That’s how they met, herself and her fella. Her husband now,” she laughed, and took a
drag of her cigarette.

I chewed a piece of the Oxford Lunch. Lovely and yummy. “D’you know who I’m
talking about at all? My niece, the one who was staying here for a while? Sure you
must remember her!” She stopped talking and rapped the table at me, annoyed, and I
jumped. And I nodded. “Yes. The tall girl? ” It wasn’t my fault! Mrs. Maguire
always talks so fast that sometimes you can’t follow her. I remembered the girl now,
long black hair and lovely clothes. “And you’d have seen him around, too, helping
the Boss with the cleaning and shining of the cars, and that. A grand lad. I won’t have
a word said against him. Sure none of us knew where we were going to be born into!”
She giggled, delighted with herself. “That’s one in the eye for them all out there at the
farm. Full of themselves. Didn’t like it when they heard where he comes from. “Sure
they’re in love”, I said. And then they sent her away up to that school in Monaghan.
But she escaped! She wrote to me and I got all the arrangements done. . And now
they’re married!” She laughed, her eyes crinkling up.

I often saw the boy she was talking about when I was going and coming from school.
I never liked him. He’d look at you when you were coming down the road. Leaning
up against one of the cars they kept outside the kiosk, he’d watch you. Stare. And you
knew he’d still be looking at you when you passed him. And he wasn’t even goodlooking.
I never liked boys with red hair. And his was roaring red. Carroty, my
grandmother would have called it.

“Wasn’t that a good one now? Off in the aeroplane, the two of them!” Mrs. Maguire
leaned across the table, holding out the plate of cake. “They’ll be grand. Not a bother!
Sure look at me and the Boss . Didn’t we turn out all right? Himself bought the first
car with the bit of money they gave me. Not all I should have brought with me, mind.
My stingy brother made sure of that, the one who got the farm in the end. Sure ‘twas
him tried to make the match with me and that ould fella with the big house near us. “
She laughed. “There’ll be meelia murder when it all gets back . No more
matchmaking for him! She’s the only daughter, you know. “ The words all ran
around in my mind. “Honeymoon… eloped… escaped”. She talked along for another
while and then I finished my tea, and stood up. She patted me on the shoulder as I
went out the door. “Wasn ‘t that a good story for you now, though? Her and him,
and me and Himself! Isn’t it a quare ould world? Tell your mother what I told you,
make sure now!”

My mother was dumb-struck. “I never knew her and your man ran away! And then
she goes and tells you! In all the years I know her, she never let on! And that young
one. She had her down at the kiosk a couple of times . Nose in the air! Her niece, from
the old place, she said. And she helped her run away with your man? God, didn’t he
fall on his feet, now! She comes from a fine tidy farm out the country. There’ll be
ructions!” She sniggered, delighted with herself. “Hold the baby for a few minutes
and I’ll go over to her.” And she ran out of the house but not over to Mrs. Maguire
straight away. I knew where she’d go. I stood at our gate and I heard her calling
“May, May…” in at her pal Mrs. Danaher’s door. And then there the two of them
were, nodding and shaking their heads and looking across at Mrs. Maguire’s house
over the way.