Mrs O’Riordan’s Dirty War

Nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize

AT FIVE O’CLOCK on the eve of her daughter’s wedding, just as the sky over Bootle docks was darkening to the colour of a bruise, Mrs Netta O’Riordan, head down, grim-faced, could be seen hurrying along Chestnut Grove in the direction of the railway arches, her long black coat flapping behind like a ripped sail.

She had failed.

She had failed her daughter.

She had failed herself.

Swiftly passing St James Church, she could hear the organist rehearsing for the Father’s evening mass, but this did nothing to sooth her troubled spirit. Him inside, the weak-chinned excuse for a priest, she would deal with him quite soon enough. There was another score to settle first.

She strode on into the gloom.

When she reached number forty-eight Netta mounted the steps and banged twice loudly on the door, and then descended to face the road in the dark while she waited. A minute or so passed before she heard the sound of footsteps approaching in the hallway, followed by the creak of the inner and outer doors opening, until, framed in the darkness of the unlit doorway, there stood the unsuspecting figure of young Kitty Doyle. Kitty Doyle, the common trollope, the spreader of malicious lies.

Turning again, Mrs O’Riordan advanced upon the girl like a German bomber banking over Gladstone Dock and hefted her a powerful right hook square to the jaw, a blow which dropped Kitty backwards to the floor on her backside like the proverbial sack of shite, legs akimbo, skirt askew, and wearing, Mrs O’Riordan noted with some satisfaction as she turned on her heels to go, a sideways look of pain, shock and understanding imprinted like a fresh bruise on her tarty face.

“ —JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH, what did you go and tell her about that for! And why right bloody now, of all times, you fool! —Oh, get out of my road!” Her temper ignited, Mrs O’Riordan roughly pushed past poor, apologetic Mrs Dooley and, in three swift, booted strides across the darkened hallway, gained the narrow staircase that led up towards the bedroom where her daughter now lay, as Mrs Dooley had just so nervously related on the doorstep, in the grip of a hysterical fit so severe they might need fetch one of the Holy Fathers, or a doctor. Although her boots thudded rapidly on the linoleum-covered stairs, Mrs O’Riordan’s legs felt like she was wading through water. Oh, why-oh-why now? Why right-bloody-now, of all times? When she was so very nearly free of her, at long last! The bloody lunatic daughter that she had never imagined she would ever be free of. Never. Ever. Her cross to bear. On the landing, she halted. The sound of Sissie softly moaning like some poor bloody simple fool came from behind the door and struck all her hopes like the mighty blow in the face she had herself just meted out in retribution to that big mouth Kitty Doyle less than half-an-hour or so ago.

The irony of it! Poor Sissie! Slandered as a shameless slut by half the street but too innocent to know the first thing about life! Mrs O’Riordan stamped her foot in frustration.

None of this was her bloody fault!

She turned back towards the ascending bobbing shadow of Mrs Dooley behind.

“I could throttle you if I had the time.”

Mrs Dooley halted on the stairs, her voice lisping in the void. “It’s her sodding wedding night tomorrow, Netta.”

“He’s fifty-five and works in a bank, in Southport… There’ll be none of that sodding malarkey, believe you me!”

Perhaps in response to the sound of her mother’s voice echoing out on the landing, Sissie’s moans grew suddenly in volume. Mrs O’Riordan, fearing more what she might find behind it than the impact of any German bomb, pushed open the bedroom door.

There, on the bed, Sissie lay, moaning, her eyes firmly shut. A slanting moonlit shadow projected by the window frame fell across her body in the form of a thin italicised cross.

“Horrible, horrible,” she repeated over in a voice no more than a breathy whisper. “Horrible...Dirty—”

Mrs O’Riordan regarded her prostrated daughter in a moment of double horror in the eerie blue moonlight. There would be no bloody wedding at all if this malarkey carried on.

Her worst fears confirmed, she turned rapidly on her heels and pushed past – again - poor Mrs Dooley, knocking her against the bedroom door with a clump on her way out.

“Where are you going now?” Mrs Dooley called.

Her neighbour halted. “I turned my back and bloody left her with you for what?” Mrs O’Riordan said, leaning towards her. “Less than half-a-bloody-hour, was it!”

Mrs Dooley flinched. For a split second, judging by the look in her neighbour’s eye, it appeared Netta might strike her, there and then, on her own landing. But Mrs O’Riordan moved off, heading down the stairs.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. “Try and get her to sit bloody-well up, will you?”

Mrs Dooley, despite an initial hesitation on grounds of self-preservation, followed after her but, as she looked down the dark stairway, Netta’s boots were already thudding on the linoleum of the lower stairs and the hallway and then, as if all in one instant, her swift burly shadow was out through the door.

Back outside again, Netta stepped over the little wall that separated her own front door from her neighbour’s. To her surprise, she found she’d left the key in the lock when Mrs Dooley had first door-stepped her with the news that their Sissie had gone off her blasted rocker again upstairs. At least, she thought, turning the key, this meant bloody soft lad wasn’t back yet with the banker. Thank goodness, for once, that she could depend on their Frankie never to do what he was told.

To her relief, as she entered, the darkness of the house confirmed that no one else was home. Quickly Netta passed though the hallway and the hushed front and back parlours to the tiny kitchen to the rear. Reaching up to the top of the wall-cupboard, her hand felt for a small glass bottle which, finding, she pocketed into her overcoat. Then, with the same alacrity and purpose as her entry, she exited back through the empty house.

Mrs Dooley’s front door was still open, and Netta pushed through it into the hallway and began her re-ascent up the stairs. Poor Mrs Dooley must have heard, with some trepidation, the thud of the boots on the stairs once again as she appeared almost instantly on the landing above.

“Netta,” she called in a hushed yet theatrical tone, as if in a stage whisper, “I’ve got her sitting up, but…”

Sensing no response was forthcoming, Mrs Dooley wisely stepped aside as Netta gained the landing. Her neighbour passed straight through into the darkened bedroom, where she found Sissie sitting upright on the bed, eyes still firmly closed, mouthing incoherently to herself in a low, barely audible, mumbling voice what appeared to be nonsense syllables but were, in fact, her prayers or, rather, if the hearer could but make it out, one single prayer of supplication to the Holy Saviour repeated over and over in a stuttering, hyperactive loop. A rosary of pain.

“Sissie,” Netta said. “Sissie, stop it. Stop it, now! You’ve got to pull yourself together, right this minute!”

No change. She considered the possibility of slapping her daughter but resisted in the knowledge that it generally made Sissie worse, not better, to strike her.

She sat down on the side of the bed.

“Sissie,” she repeated, unscrewing the tiny black cap on the wee bottle she’d retrieved from her house, “I’ve brought the holy water, you know, the Lourdes water, here for you. Here.”

No response, other than the incessant, incoherent, maniacal Jesus prayer. Frustrated, impatient, Netta threw some of the precious contents of the bottle into Sissie’s face. The effect was instantaneous, if not strictly miraculous. Startled by the impact, Sissie sat bolt upright, eyes now wide open, the prayer ceased: silent.

“Here,” Mrs O’Riordan said quietly, offering her daughter’s bow-lips the bottle. “Drink this, now. Sip it, don’t rush.”

Sissie, penitent, eyes glassy, moved her mouth gratefully towards the bottle, and Mrs O’Riordan knew it was going to be all right, the worst was over. There would be some crying next, a period of sobbing, but this would subside, pass. Calm would come. Tomorrow there would be a wedding.

Tomorrow she would be shut of her.

THE FIRE HAD all but gone out, the last embers were glowing orange in the grate. Turning absently away from the fireplace, Mrs O’Riordan glanced around her still dismal-looking, ill-lit back-parlour. There was no sign of their Frankie and still so much to do. Now the fire wanted lighting, the table setting, the kettle going on…

With a renewed vigour born of resentment Mrs O’Riordan took up the folded, chequered tablecloth from the sideboard and, after first billowing it loose once or twice, she then cast it the full length of the somewhat oversized (or so it had always struck her here in this little room) fine, old oak dining table. Briskly—in turn—she straightened the cloth at each corner, smoothing out any creases with her hard, flat hand, like an iron.

She looked around towards the kitchen—and then back again. Such a bloody lot to do!

Quickly, then!—

—Plates, knives, forks flew; cups clattered into saucers. The tall metal milk jug was fetched, filled, set upon the table. Teapot same (two swift small black teaspoonfuls of Typhoo). Next, up from the dank cellar came the coal, what there was left of it; and soon afterwards from the icy backyard came the firewood, such as it was. Scraps.

She knelt sore-kneed before the cold fireplace, opened up the blackened grate and began brushing out the few remaining embers and the fine grey dead ash. Yes, then there was still the question of the cake—no eggs, butter, sugar, not even lard to be had for the bloody damn thing. She tipped the full dustpan of ash out onto the already yellowing pages of last Saturday’s Liverpool Echo, then expertly folded the top two sheets to make a neat all-enclosing paper parcel. Out in the kitchen the kettle began to boil itself hoarse at last—just in good time. They should be back any minute.

She arranged the dribs and drabs of firewood on the grate. A shovelful of coal lay at hand for when the wood caught properly. She lit the fire. Mrs O’Riordan waited while the newspaper crumpled—slowly at first, then quickly—in the grate. Yes, the cake, the joint of beef, the drink and all the rest of it—O such a lot was left for her to do! Impatiently, she scattered the coals over the smoldering firewood, raising a weak plume of grey dust in the process. Then, turning, she ran her customary swift eye over the room.

Well, at least everything here was in its proper bloody place now…

The fire was lit, the table set.

And their Frankie should surely be home any minute. Not even he could mess up the job of fetching someone from the station, for goodness sakes!

Why oh why did she have to think of—do—everything? Why couldn’t they bloody-well, just once, themselves?—

Heavy thudding footsteps passed her backdoor outside in the alley. Came, went.

She stepped across to the window and peered out through the grimy, condensated glass, smearing it vainly with her cuff. She could see nothing.

The teapot.

As though it were a reluctant, misbehaving child, Mrs O’Riordan snatched up the teapot from the table and carried it through to the back-kitchen, where the kettle still steamed. Then, gripping the kettle’s hot metal handle in the folds of her apron, she poured the boiling water into the dark well of the pot. Her mind drifted against her will to thoughts of the poor Rangitane, the ship on which her elder son, Freddie, was believed lost just six weeks or so before. She inserted the lid into the pot and glanced about for the tea-towel. Why, why would the Lord take her one good, good son and leave her with these two bloody fools, God forgive her! But why? What had she done?

She took up the teapot once again, then stopped.

The bloody so-and-so teacloth.

Where was that, now? She looked in the pantry and down the dark side of the stove—nothing!—before she stepped back through into the gloomy parlour. The missing tea-towel—about time!—came to hand; Mrs O’Riordan wrapped it under and over the pot, as if it were some elaborate makeshift bandage.

She set the teapot down on the table, carefully, now suddenly hugely weary. She felt sick in her heart, of everyone, the bloody lot of them, of the war, of everything. Her head spun, and she sat down at her table, on the verge of weeping, with only the loud tick of the parlour clock for company. Her lowest ebb. This was what war meant. No cake at your wedding. Make do and mend. Your only good son missing. Gone.

What she could not yet know was that in a matter of days her elder and by far more able, more dependable son, her precious Freddie, would turn up alive and well, resurrected as if miraculously, in Australia, of all godforsaken places. And the dispatch announcing that their Freddie was, Lazarus-like, back from the dead would bring his mother the one moment of true joy her life would know, like a mighty bell ringing loud in her cold iron shell of a heart.

—Bang— Bang—Bang—

Three loud knocks on her front door awoke Mrs O’Riordan from her weary reverie with a jolt. She stood up with a start, hastily pocketing the telegram, and then stepped on through into her fancy front-parlour and out into the cold hallway. However, when she opened up the door, it was not the anticipated sight of their Frankie’s sorry, sad face that met her eyes but the tall, unexpected figure of Kelly, his demeanour somehow obviously strange, even for him: furtive, yet bold. He looked not directly at her but quickly, left and right, along the dark, empty street. Then, not standing on ceremony, he pushed past her brusquely into the hallway. She shut the door behind him.

“You, Kelly!” she said, following, as he continued on into her parlour. “Wait there, you!”

But, as she came into the back-parlour, he was already warming his legs in front of her fire. The look on his face suggested he was immensely pleased with himself.

The cat with the cream. The man with the lard.

“I’ve got it all for you, Netta. Here.”

He handed her a sack, which, peering into, she began immediately to unpack, spreading the contents out on her table.

“Lard,” he went on, enumerating his bounty, triumphant. “Eggs, flour, even the dried bloody fruit!”

He looked at her, expectantly. She checked the various goods spread out before her, then gazed up at him.

“No butter?” she said blankly.

“Jesus, woman!” he said. “It’s a miracle I got you this! A bloody true miracle!”

They paused. So, there it was.

Hesitating, Mrs O’Riordan briefly slipped her hand under the tea-towel to test the heat of the pot. “You want some of this tea, Kelly, before you go? —It’s probably stewed by now.”

“You know full well, Netta. It’s not tea I want.”

“What do you mean?” she said. “Don’t think you can stop there all bloody night, you fool, I’ve got things to do.”

He lingered a moment longer by the fire, before stepping forward, emboldened, towards her. “Netta,” he said. “Now, listen, here.”

Her eye fell on the black cast iron companion set on the hearth. The poker was swiftly in her hand. At that instant the caterwauling cry of the air-raid siren sounded out its rising dirge, forecasting the prospect of imminent violence to all. He grabbed her wrist. She dropped the poker, giving up. This constant fighting, every day, with everything, was just too hard.

“Quick, Netta,” he said, turning about. “The cellar.”

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