Making Tracks

By Trisha FitzGerald

Just graduated, Peggy Fitzpatrick and some friends flee Dublin city for a week of

madness in the coastal village of Ballydereen. Four of them set off. Three come back.

Peggy has had more than enough. Her daughter, Sally Ann, is floundering in pubescent no-man's-land and making life hell; Patrick has gone to seed, more belly over than under his belt, and Nora, her social-climbing mother-in-law, has given her a bit too much lip. Leaving the exploded bags of groceries scattered on the kitchen floor where she dropped them, Peggy walks out.

Blindly looking for freedom, her naive spontaneity leads her straight into a trap. After a few short days of exciting recklessness, suddenly no-one is laughing any more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781597050548

Book preview

One

I hate it, I hate it , hate it!

Peggy spat out the words as she sat at her scrubbed and scratched kitchen table, shopping bags strewn around her feet where she had dropped them. Snuffling back the tears and still cursing savagely under her breath, she blinked down at the exploded bags of frozen peas and chicken nuggets which had, after impact, skittered wildly in all directions, most of them finally coming to rest somewhere behind the fridge. That’ll smell just lovely in a couple of days, she thought indifferently, noticing at the same time that the temperature on the wall thermometer had notched up again to twenty-eight degrees Celsius.

And I don’t give a bloody damn either!

She wished she could enjoy all the cursing she was doing, mentally ticking off the wealth of verbal garbage she had accumulated in her forty years. Even the juiciest of expletives, however, was a sorry attempt at relieving her pent-up frustration. The F word had long since lost its allure. Sighing heavily, she slowly raised her eyes from the debris and let her gaze wander over to the window ledge behind the kitchen sink where a slightly greasy ceramic ballet dancer poised mid-pirouette between the remains of two geranium plants. She eyed the figure speculatively.

It had been a Christmas gift from her mother-in-law, Nora, and was useless kitsch of the very worst kind. She’d bought it, of course, for that very reason, knowing all too well how much Peggy detested holiday souvenirs, twirling Flamenco dancers in crepe dresses, knitted loo roll cosies and the like. Nora had bought it to gall her. And gall her, it did. Peggy fought against the flood of loathing which gushed through her at the thought. That high and mighty sneak! Envious of everything! A spiteful, malicious bitch of the highest order! She was resentful of Peggy’s comparatively good taste and sense of dress, she loathed Peggy’s cocky sense of humour, and she despised her chirpy manner and general popularity. Nora, unbelievable as it might seem, was gloriously oblivious of the fact that she, herself, hadn’t as much as a smidgen of natural style and was convinced that, by some iniquitous twist of fate, she’d been born into the wrong social class. This burp in the course of providence was only the tip of the iceberg. The truth of it was, Peggy had taken her boy away. Nora, adamant to last, simply refused to accept that on the day Patrick had sauntered into Mullen’s Pub for a pint and spotted Peggy Fitzpatrick up at the bar with the girls, she had suddenly and irreversibly ceased to be the centre of his universe.

Well, tough shit.

For years she had tried to win him back by applying ploys of subtle cunning, so subtle that Patrick was sublimely ignorant of it all, believing—as Patrick always did—when he thought something, or someone, was the greatest thing since sliced bread, then everyone else did, too. In short, Patrick would have been astonished to learn that his mother couldn’t stand his wife’s guts.

Wearily, Peggy pulled a scrunched-up paper tissue out of her jeans pocket and honked loudly into it before winging it in the general direction of the rubbish bin. Unconcerned, she watched as the snotty hanky bounced off the lid and plopped into a puddle of strawberry yoghurt. Apart from the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional plink as yet another fat drop plummeted from the leaking tap into the sink, the house was silent. Outside, shrill ripples of laughter drifted across the crescent green as children made their way back from an afternoon splashing around in the shallows off Sandy Point. Somewhere an electric lawnmower buzzed industriously like a jam jar of bluebottles, squealing loud objections every time it hit an obstacle. A barely perceptible ruffle of warm air carried the scent of freshly-cut grass in through the open window.

Plink. Already the next drop was bulging slowly out of the faucet. Peggy watched it grow, teeter and drop.

Nora Cunningham. That was an unmitigated cow, if ever there was one.

For her part, Peggy had stoically put up with the snide remarks and helpful advice in order to keep the peace, realising early on in their marriage that complaining to Patrick about his mother was like talking to the bloody wall. What for her was perpetual torment, was for him petty nonsense. It wasn’t so much what Nora actually said, it was how she said it and the look on her face as she said it. Having succeeded in getting Peggy by the proverbial short and curlies, she would tilt her head back slightly, half close her eyes, suck in her cheeks a fraction as if to stifle a smirk, and then fix Peggy with a triumphant look. At such times Peggy would have to clench her fists, often on the verge of drawing blood as she dug her nails deep into the palms of her hands in order to stop herself from flying at Nora and gouging her eyes out.

Peggy’s fury was immense.

After Sally Anne had been born she hoped that the hostility between them would pass, Nora perhaps coming to terms with the fact that Peggy was the mother of her grandchild—her own flesh and blood. No such luck.

Peggy had barely left the delivery room and was lying exhausted, but euphoric, in her hospital bed with Sally Anne mewing quietly in a cot beside her while Patrick, having recovered nicely after the little spell he’d had seconds before the baby was born, was off trying to phone the lads. He had, in all fairness, held up very well during the birth, dabbing Peggy’s brow at intervals, puffing and panting his way through the breathing exercises; he’d even had a wee peek every now and then, his eyes widening at the awesome sight of the baby’s head emerging from what had been, only half an hour before, a snug little aperture. Peggy was proud of her husband. By relating one horror story after the next, the lads had vigorously tried to persuade him not to be with her during the birth, but Patrick, true to his word, had stuck it out to the bitter end. Almost.

You’ll never want to touch her again! Martin Dwyer had exclaimed. It’s enough to make you barf, honest to God. I tell ya, Joe McCarthy was sitting in the front row when his auld one had the babby and he was still heaving when they came home from the hospital a week later.

He’s right! confirmed Jimmy Brennan who had sidled up the bar to join in the conversation. And afterwards she’ll have a you-know-what like a horse’s collar.

Sensing the lads were beginning to think of him as a bit of a sissy for wanting to be involved in all that women’s plumbing business, he tried to rescue the last remnants of his masculinity by replying to Jimmy’s remark with bawdy locker room wit.

Well now, lads, considerin’ the way I’m hung, I’d say that’ll be the least of my problems!

The lads snorted and guffawed into their pints.

Fair play to you, anyway, bellowed Jimmy, whacking Patrick playfully on the shoulder. And no better man!

His manliness thus restored, Patrick had managed to change the subject to greyhound racing, but his conscience niggled at him. Somehow, he felt he’d betrayed Peggy with his shitty little joke and so, over the following weeks, had thrown himself into the antenatal preparations, splashing out on Laura Ashley wallpaper for the baby’s room (he himself had never heard of Laura Ashley, but had noticed Peggy drooling over the catalogues for weeks, sighing raggedly at the prices and giving him wistful looks). He’d rubbed her back, staggered to the fridge in the middle of the night to fetch milk for her raging heartburn, and even taken part in one or two antenatal classes at the local clinic.

Yes, indeed. Peggy was very proud of her husband. He’d done his bit—and almost made it the whole way through the birth process, too. On the home stretch, so to speak—just as the baby’s head had been crowning—Peggy, slightly high on laughing gas, thought she’d heard her husband, who wasn’t normally a particularly religious man, chanting the rosary. Patrick had, in fact, having risked another glance at the miracle unfolding right before his very eyes, begun to murmur, Jesus, oh sweet Jesus, oh God, oh godogodogod, oh sweet Jesus, Christ Almighty, and so on and so forth. As one does under such circumstances.

Then, just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, Peggy’s perineum had torn.

Patrick went down gracefully, in one fluid motion, taking with him a tray of surgical instruments and a kidney bowl full of vomit (the laughing gas hadn’t agreed with Peggy’s stomach). Peggy, unaware of the latest turn of events, vaguely registered the fact that Patrick was no longer within her line of vision. The midwife had thrown her eyes to heaven and kicked Patrick’s outstretched arm out of the way. By the time he came to, it was all over. The last bits and pieces had been stitched and washed, the baby—a beautiful little girl with downy black hair—had been slapped, weighed and swaddled, and sister Breda was marching into the room with a Polaroid camera.

For some reason they’d left Patrick lying where he was. Either there was a staff shortage, or the nurses were simply sick of fishing cataleptic husbands out from under the delivery table. Whatever, not realising it was standard procedure to take a snapshot of mother and child, the sight of the Polaroid camera had thrown Patrick into a state of panic. Perhaps it was due to his lack of lucidity, but for a horrible moment he thought that a photo of him lying face-up and spread-eagled on the delivery room floor between the midwife’s Hush Puppies might somehow get back to the lads. Grappling wildly with the side of the bed, he managed to pull himself up just in time to be part of the picture. Peggy, not having really missed Patrick, glanced blissfully from father to daughter, praising her husband for his loving support.

Now he was out in the corridor stuffing cigars down the nurses’ cleavages while begging for ten-pence pieces for the pay phone. The door opened and Nora came in. Peggy smiled, thinking naïvely that the joy of Sally Anne’s birth was something she would be able to share with the child’s grandmother, but when she saw the expression on Nora’s face, her smile froze.

Nothing had changed.

Without as much as a glance at the cot, Nora pulled up a chair, sat down and leaned forward in such a way that, should someone happen to come into the room, they wouldn’t hear what she had to say. The woman smelt like the inside of a spinster’s handbag.

I suppose you’re feeling fairly chuffed with yourself, aren’t you? Well, you’ve only done what millions of other women have done before you, and if you think that this child gives you some kind of exclusive rights, you’re sadly mistaken, Peggy Fitzpatrick!

Just as Nora had never accepted their marriage, she had also never referred to Peggy by her married name—Cunningham. If anyone had ever asked after Peggy, Nora had, at the very best referred to her as my son’s wife, but never ever as my daughter-in-law or Mrs. Cunningham, the use of the words daughter or her own name Cunningham being far too close to home.

Peggy opened her mouth to say some words of self-defence, but was so shocked by the unexpected verbal attack that nothing came out.

A girl! You know Patrick desperately wanted a son! she hissed dramatically, as if Peggy might have been able to do something about it, had she really known.

Bullshit, she thought, Patrick had never had any preferences.

Nora was far from finished. Judging by the colour of the older woman’s mottled neck, she was only just warming up.

"Sally Anne! What kind of a name is Sally Anne? For Christ’s sake! You spent much too much time sitting around on your backside watching bloody soap operas during your pregnancy. I can’t think of any other explanation as to how you could come up with a name like Sally Anne!"

Peggy, at a loss for words, blinked rapidly in astonishment.

Patrick liked the name Sally Anne. They had chosen it together. It was girlish and nostalgic, it was pinafores and freckles. That was how they had imagined their daughter and it was how they knew she would be.

I only hope you can pull yourself away from the telly long enough to change the child’s nappy and give her a feed every now and then once you’re home. Nora was now on full throttle. And if you expect me to do the baby-sitting while you go traipsing off to the pub with those girlfriends of yours, you—! She broke off suddenly as Patrick bounded into the room.

Mam! I didn’t see you coming in. I was down at the phone box ringing the lads. Well, what d’you think? Isn’t she the most gorgeous child you’ve ever seen?

He threw an arm around his mother’s shoulder in an attempt to stick a cigar he’d whipped out of his jacket pocket down the front of her frilly blouse. Nora squealed like a schoolgirl and swatted her son, feigning surprise.

Patrick Philip Cunningham! You disrespectful thing, you! If your father were still alive I’d have him put you over his knee and give you a good thrashing.

Nora adored it when Patrick pulled her leg. She chirped and giggled, poking him in the ribs.

You are such a wicked boy!

The whole scene was making Peggy nauseous. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and turned her face into the pillow. Patrick led his mother to the door.

Peggy’s tired, Mam, I think we should let her rest. It was good of you to come so soon, we really appreciate it. He glanced back towards Peggy. She’d be delighted if you called by again tomorrow. D’you think you can find your own way to the lift, Granny?

Nora snorted with delight at her son’s teasing and swatted him for the umpteenth time.

You know how happy I am for you—and you’ll be a great father. I only wish your Dad could be here. Now don’t forget, if there’s anything at all I can do for you, pet, just say the word.

Nora left, quietly closing the door behind her. Patrick walked back to the bed. Strange, Peggy thought, he didn’t seem to notice that Nora hadn’t mentioned the baby once. Patrick sat down at the edge of the bed and stroked his wife’s hair. He smiled when he saw the tears coursing down Peggy’s cheeks, clearly mistaking them for tears of joy.

I know, my love, I know. Patrick choked, the tears beginning to well up in his own eyes. This is a precious moment, a very precious moment.

Oh stuff it, will you! Peggy thought.

NOW, SITTING ANKLE deep in weekend groceries, Peggy asked herself for the very first time why she had actually endured Nora’s psychological terror for so long. During the last fifteen years she had often wondered how long it would go on for, or why she was being terrorised in the first place, but she had never really asked herself why she had put up with it for all this time. But then she knew the answer. Her motto had always been keep the peace at all costs. She knew Patrick loved his mother dearly and was deaf and blind to her evil side, be it consciously or subconsciously. Peggy, innocent, intimidated, and mad about her husband, had been reluctant to broach the subject. Long after the fire had become little more than a sputtering flame, she’d continued to let sleeping dogs lie. After all, she’d wanted her husband to be happy. Jesus, had she been a right gobshite.

But now, the fact of the matter was, Mrs. Peggy Cunningham, forty years old, faithful wife, slaving mother, and Honorary Treasurer of the Ballydereen Young Ladies Camogie Club, had had enough.

Pushing herself up from the kitchen table, she crunched her way through the frozen peas to the window and picked up the ceramic figure. She weighed it thoughtfully. Although so delicate in appearance, it felt good and solid in her hand. I could do damage with that, she considered, realising it wasn’t the first time she’d had that thought. She had wondered more than once how it would feel to bring the ballet dancer crashing down onto Nora’s head. Lying in bed at night she’d often played different variations of the scenario through. Would she sneak up behind Nora’s armchair while she was watching the news, or get her in the shower? Knowing how prude her mother-in-law was, the thought of Nora being photographed naked by state forensic experts was particularly appealing. However, Peggy had decided that a violent revenge would only be truly satisfying if Nora could see who was coming to get her; otherwise she might expire thinking she’d been clocked over the head by a common burglar. That would be no fun at all, at all. Peggy shook her head, only slightly ashamed of these perverse fantasies. What really worried her was the fact that more and more frequently she had begun to see another face looking up at her in pure horror as, in her imagination, she raised the dancing figure high above her head, ready for attack. The face was Patrick’s, and that was why Peggy knew she’d had enough.

Today hadn’t been one of her better days to start out with, but she knew what she was about to do wasn’t the result of a whim, a rash and ill-considered action born out of rage and frustration, like throwing a coffee cup against the wall or tearing up your favourite blouse because it wouldn’t iron right. (Peggy’s neighbour, Jo, was always doing things like that.)

No, she wasn’t that kind of person. A little off the wall at times, maybe, but normally she kept her cool. She had kept her cool for fifteen bloody years, after all. Nope, thought Peggy, enough is enough, is enough. I’ll just dispose of this little bone of contention and then it’s a case of—good luck, lads, I’m off. With that, Peggy strode purposely into the sitting room (which Nora had always insisted on calling the drawing room) and placed herself strategically in front of the TV. Wait a minute; she considered, checking the distance. I’d better back up a bit if I want to get a decent swing at it; yes, that’s right. She stood with her legs somewhat apart, her body bent at the waist, then, rocking slightly like an athlete gathering momentum, she reached back and, with one mighty swing of her arm, sent the ballet dancer catapulting across the room, causing the figure to twirl and pirouette as if suddenly alive. With a massive crunch as ceramic hit glass, the television imploded sending a shower of sparks and glass fragments into the air. The ballet dancer was beheaded instantly, the face with its snooty expression sent ricocheting off the video recorder and bouncing over the sofa to make touch down in the soil of a potted Swiss cheese plant.

Whoopee! hollered Peggy, punching the air victoriously. Whoo-o-peee!

Two

Although Peggy had realised that one of these days she was going to snap, she hadn’t known when she woke up to a warm summer morning that, proverbially speaking, today was the day. How could she have?

For the last week the weather had been hot and stuffy. She couldn’t understand it. This was Ireland, for God’s sake! There was just no such thing as hot and stuffy weather in Ireland, and certainly not on the west coast. Even when the weather girls on the telly excitedly claimed that a real heat wave was on its way and that we were going to have glorious sunshine, you still ended up battling with a windbreak, the gusty breezes blowing in from the Atlantic turning your lips blue and your nipples to doorstops.

There must be something behind all this talk of the greenhouse effect and global warming, she’d thought to herself as she slid out of bed. Already she was beginning to feel sticky. By the time she was finished cooking the breakfast, feeding the dog and making a packed lunch for Sally Anne, she’d be in a muck sweat.

She opened the kitchen window in the hope of letting in a sea breeze. They lived on a small, crescent-shaped housing estate situated a hundred yards or so up from the quay. Even though the winds usually didn’t freshen up until a little later in the morning, the few thermal gusts which scurried up over the sea wall and in through the window were normally enough to blow away the cooking smells from the evening before. This morning, however, not a leaf stirred and the smell of chicken chop suey and cigarette smoke still hung in the air.

Patrick had invited some of the lads back to the house after the pub and as it happened to be on the way, and the rake of pints having whetted their appetites, they decided to pop into the Chinese take away. Armed with greasy bags of fried rice and cartons of Asian chow, they had then fallen in the front door singing The Green Fields of Athenry and Galway Bay simultaneously, something that drove Peggy wild. It was not, however, the simultaneous singing which got on her nerves, but the realisation that they were a bunch of bloody hypocrites.

They would spend hours giving out reams about the state of the country, the incompetence of the politicians, the fact that all tax money was being poured into fancy new dual carriageways leading to fancy new business parks (they were no longer called industrial estates), while they poured their hard-earned money into buying new shock absorbers, suspension ball joints and coil springs to replace those knackered by the cracked and crater-filled country roads of Ballydereen.

But by the third pint they would all agree that the sorry state of the local roads added somehow to the charm and character of the area, and the cost of a few spare parts was indeed a small price to pay considering it was this very charm and character which drew the hundreds of tourists to the village every summer. They didn’t find it one bit immoral that O’Dogherty’s village garage charged the tourists double the price for their shock absorbers, suspension ball joints and coil springs, thus allowing Charlie O’Dogherty to employ Martin Dwyer’s son during the season.

Sure, isn’t that job creation, claimed Jimmy, the expression on his face showing he was pretty damned chuffed at this sweeping political statement. Peggy had cringed, knowing that Jimmy wouldn’t appreciate the difference between communal politics and a corned beef sandwich.

There are no flies on them fellas up at the town hall. Wouldn’t they be shittin’ in their own nest if they had the roads repaired? They’re well able to think around a corner.

By their sixth pint the lads were all in complete and absolute agreement that not only were there no flies on the local politicians, but there wasn’t a politician in the whole of the Republic of Ireland whose shit stank (unless he was from the opposition, of course, and then he was a lying bastard). They would then start singing Irish songs and Ireland’s praises, claiming that the only real men on the face of the earth were Irishmen, anyone else being a bleedin’ wuzzy.

Peggy didn’t doubt for a minute that the lads loved their home country; it was the gradual and unanimous swing in opinion after a couple of pints which exasperated her, none of them daring to have their views differ to those of the other.

Peggy had never begrudged Patrick a night out with his pals; she had even encouraged it, believing, as she still did, that getting married shouldn’t necessarily mean giving up your social life. All too often had she observed how friends of theirs, once married, soon settled down to a routine of Monday to Friday evenings in front of the telly, a Saturday night pint or two together in the pub—to let the outside world know they still existed—and Sunday afternoon at the parents-in-law’s for tea and biscuits. It went without saying that the Saturday night visit to the pub was immediately stroked off their list of activities the minute children appeared on the scene.

Patrick also accepted that Peggy enjoyed, and needed, a night out with the girls and had never complained when she tottered in well after midnight, tittering to herself every time she fell off her high heels as she clattered around the kitchen on her nocturnal quest for Super Smash spuds and mushy peas. On the contrary, he often joined her in the kitchen to top up on all the latest gossip. You can’t fart without the girls getting wind of it! Joe McCarthy had once warned, sending everyone into hoots of laughter at his unintentional joke.

Although inevitably sworn to secrecy, it never took long to tickle the very last salacious detail out of Peggy. On such occasions, the aforementioned salacious details and six glasses of cider getting the better of the auburn-haired woman, she would plonk herself down on Patrick’s lap and, sneaking her fingers under his towelling dressing gown, would then proceed to play round and round the garden with his nipples and progress to itsy bitsy spider, whereby she would wheedle her way into his boxer shorts in order to demonstrate how a spider slides down the drainpipe and then crawls back up again. The spider only ever needed to slide down and crawl back up two or three times before Patrick would sweep Peggy up in his arms and gallop off into the bedroom with her.

Though Ballydereen was an extremely close-knit community, and nothing much could happen without the whole village finding out about it, Peggy and Patrick trusted each other completely. It was, indeed, common knowledge that Patrick could charm the hind legs off a donkey and was a wicked flirt to boot, but Peggy never worried about him chatting up girls.

If Peggy was jealous of anything, then, it was the time he spent with the lads. What had once been one evening a week soon became two or three, and when Patrick injured his knee during a game of squash and decided to take up darts (which he insisted on playing at least three times a week, practice being absolutely vital) she finally confronted him. She’d thought about it for some time, again wanting to keep the peace, but eventually decided there was not only herself and her marriage to think of, but Sally Anne, too.

How’s your knee, pet? Any better? Peggy had asked casually one Sunday afternoon, feeling as if she were treading on eggshells.

All right, but still a bit stiff, mind you. Have to take it easy for a while.

Dr. Norman thought you should’ve been back doing sports long ago.

Dr. Norman doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, Patrick countered testily, suspecting where the conversation was leading to.

Well, of course you don’t have to go back to playing squash immediately, but maybe you should start jogging again Saturday mornings. A mile or so out the road and back. It would do you good. I know it’s an awful waste, but you could sweat out a pint of Guinness or two, Peggy joked, hoping to humour him.

"I just knew you’d start in on me about the drinking, Patrick barked defensively. And when I say I can’t run on my knee, I can’t run on my knee!"

"You’re well able to run when it comes to catching the pub before closing time, aren’t you? It’s not as if I’m asking you to stay home every evening, I