Liberties: Flash Fiction from Ireland Read online

  I hope she reads something flighty just to tell people she reads. I hope she plays tennis in her spare time.

  Margaret Casserly

  Two young wans in Dublin long ago

  Ya better watch it, he'll be takin' liberties....

  De Liberties?

  Ah will ya go'wan wid ya. Liberties, ya know what I mean....

  But I don't. How can he be takin' de Liberties? It's a place, and anyway he's a culchie. He wouldn't be wantin' the Liberties.

  Are ya thick or wha'? Ya know, makin' free wid ya....

  Ahh! Ya mean, not paying for the pictures an' stuff?

  Ya ARE thick. Go and ask yer Ma. She'll give you liberties and more besides....

  Mick Jordan

  Free at last!

   

   “I want to report a man acting strangely on a swing.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I want to report a man acting strangely on a swing.”

  “Okay.  What’s he doing?”

  “He’s swinging.”

   “Yes.”

  “At half past ten.”

  “Yes, I know what time it is.”

  “Can you send someone over?”

  “Well I don’t see the need really.”

  “There’s an old man on a swing.”

  “I understand.”

  “And it’s snowing.”

  “I know.”

  “Heavily.”

   

              Actually, they might send a car round.  I could be taken in, sectioned or something.  I don’t have the time for that.  I only came at this hour because there wouldn’t be any kids around.  Now that would get me in trouble.  I’d better go.  In a minute.

              Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Finally.  And now I’m going to make the most of it.  Finally.  No worries or responsibilities any more.  No work tomorrow, or the next day or the day after that.  Course I haven’t told them yet, I’ll leave that until the morning.  I’ll tell them it’s doctor’s orders, that I have a sick note. 

              No bills anymore.  All direct debits cancelled, by default.  All the money’s gone.  Gone from the account and into my pocket.  What will I spend it on?  I can do  anything I want now!  I can get pissed again – haven’t done that in years.  That’s the first thing I’ll do.  Then in the morning I can ring in and promise them the sick note.

             Of course there is one coming.  The doctor promised me that, said he’d put anything I liked on it.  He was so eager to help, to do something, because as he said sadly – he could do nothing.  Yes, I’ll find a pub.  In a minute, just swing a bit more for a little longer.

  Rosslyn Johnston

  The Truth

  My father said that the day I was born, all the world wanted to greet me.  He said although it had been a grey and rainy mid-winter’s week, the sun shone bright and warm.  That birds crowded the branches of the trees round the hospital ward, and people kept flocking in to visit.  He told me the doctors and nurses said they’d never seen a child more beautiful.

  The day I brought home my first class report, my father said that he’d never seen the like of it.  That it was proof I was something special, the smartest girl in the whole school.  He told me, with a report like that, I could be whatever I wanted; a doctor, an astronaut, president of the world.

  The day my father left, my mother said that nothing would change.  She told me that he still loved me.  I told her that I didn't care, that I didn't need him.

  My family, we've always been ones to take liberties with the truth.

  David Keane

  The Liberation of Marian

  A girl with green hair and a portfolio uncomfortably wedged into her armpit rushes towards the door; Marian holds it open for her and smiles. The girl smiles back then disappears amongst the others. That what-am-I-doing-here feeling sweeps over Marian for the hundredth time; she swallows it down and follows the directions to the first floor. 

   

  Eyes glance upwards as she makes her way to an empty seat. All nervous. All eager. Before her neatly ironed skirt reaches the seat Marian is acutely aware that she is the oldest person in the waiting area. She tells herself it doesn’t matter and then proceeds to list reasons why she’s too old to be there. STOP IT she almost says aloud. A door opens and a young man exits; she can’t be sure of his age but she knows she’s old enough to be his mother. The next candidate is called into the room.

   

  A storm in Marian whirls up a million reasons for her to leave. She places a hand on her stomach and takes a deep breath. This is for me. This is my time. She thinks back to just five short years ago and how different her life was. How the hum drum of domesticated unhappiness was knocked for six by a massive heart attack. In her grief she found freedom and realised there was no longer a reason to be held back. The things she left behind far too long ago could be hers again. Marian smiles at the thought. The only person standing in her way this time is herself.

  Jessica Clerkin

  So this is it

  I visited the off-licence every day; a shabby-frail building—not at all what one would expect as the domineering type. Appearances can be deceptive; to look at me you wouldn’t expect someone who drank near-lethal amounts of vodka on a daily basis.  My ‘problem’ as my husband so puts it, began long before we were married; it started at fourteen and increased its percentage with each year I aged. The day that I took my liberties and abstained from the off-license was the first day in twenty-five years that I didn’t drink. 

  Of course the tremors were horrific; I longed for alcohol in the same way that anyone else in my predicament would long for life but I didn’t give into the beast. Truth be told only for the fact that I was ensconced in my doom, I would have leapt from my recumbent state and skipped to the bottle of freedom.

  The room was dark; my husband was drinking. What baffled me was that he never drank— no matter how inebriated I became. He leaned closer to me and I could smell it, the bousy was drinking my vodka.  Why did he choose the day that I finally gained liberty from the beautiful-bonds of freedom to steal my sauce?

  More gathered around me, red-puffy eyes and snotty noses.

  “What a waste of a life,” said one.

  “Drank up a fever,” said another.

  “Mam.” My son said and placed a trembling hand on my shoulder. It was the utter-austere despair in his voice that led me to the conclusion that I was no longer a being of the earth.

  So this is it. I didn’t take any liberties at all; they took me.

  Tric Kearney

  Let us pray

  A nurse entered the ward, the gentle ting a ling of a bell in her hand signalling the end of visiting time, but Peggy was in no rush, the night time routine of fifty years not yet over.

  “Here’s your beads Tommy”, she said, handing him the glass rosary beads, blessed in the phoenix park by none other than Pope John Paul himself.

  “Peggy, me aul flower, You’re lookin gorgeous tonight”.

  “Ah Tommy, go away out of that ye messer,” admonished Peggy, her cheeks reddening in pleasure. Pulling out her own well worn beads she knelt beside his bed.

  “Hail Mary full of grace...

  Around about the fifth Hail Mary a nurse entered and stood for a moment studying Tommy’s chart.

   “Me temperature’s soaring nurse” he said, with a wink.

  “The lord is with thee” said Peggy, not pausing for a moment.

  “Behave yourself Tommy”, smiled the nurse.

  “Blessed art thou amongst women”.

  Tommy laughed a chesty wheezy laugh.

  “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death”, continued Peggy.

  As the final prayer ended, in tandem Tommy and Peggy kissed their beads.

  “Amen”.

  “Peggy?” said Tommy pulling back the covers, “come on in here and I’ll s
ay a decent goodnight to ye”.

  “Tommy! After all these years you’re still provin me da right. Steer clear of that fella, he used to say, he’s the type to take liberties ye know.”

  “Did he now? Well he was right, wasn’t he? I hope to be takin liberties with you me darlin,for  the rest of my days”

  “Oh go on ye old codger” said Peggy kissing him one last time.

  “See ye tomorrow” Tommy shouted as she left the room.

  “Please God Tommy, please God” she whispered her final prayer for the day. 

  Camillus John

   Who’s afraid of Coddle?

  My daughter, Imelda, had stopped believing in coddle. I had to take her on one of the greatest jockey-back journeys of the world, through The Liberties, to get her believing again. If my back held out.

  She’d ran into our bedroom recently in the middle of the night.  

  ‘Everyone’s afraid of coddle Ma – me too! Can I sleep in your room tonight, please? There’s strange noises, gurgles and bumps coming from somewhere in the house.  Ma, Da, I think there’s a coddle in the attic. It’s gonna get me. Please can I sleep in your room?’

  Her Economics lecturer from Roscommon said that coddle was an evil, filthy and unnatural act.  Boiling sausages? Disgusting. The zombie apocalypse is upon us!

  Up the road Mrs. O’Brien from Galway had likewise expostulated, ‘Imelda, coddle is Chicken Lickin’ - the sky is falling down! It makes me feel like Stephen Rea in The Crying Game when he discovered his girlfriend had testicles. You make me sick.’

  So I jocky-backed Imelda up and down every Liberties’ nook and cranny. We ended up in the deepest part of The Liberties’ Market at The Coddle Factory stall. People milled about spooning steaming bowls of the choicest coddle.

  The old woman behind the counter saw her on my jocky-back.

  ‘Imelda, remember Flavour Flav from Public Enemy? He hung a clock from a chain around his neck. Well, that wasn’t a clock, it was a handy Tupperware container with coddle inside – to be used in emergencies.  They wrote a song about it - Don’t Believe The Hype - But Eat The Coddle. Coddle isn’t evil, filthy or unnatural. It’s tasty, experimental and cucumber cool.’

            The old woman then gave Imelda a spoon. She tucked in, no longer afraid. She believed in coddle – hip hip!

  Dawn Lowe

  Man-Midwife

  “Here?” I asked, confused.

  The woman had led me through the muck to the ruin of a burnt-out house.

  “Down below,” she said.

  I followed her down a set of uneven stairs to a makeshift wooden door. When she shouldered it open, I saw four people inside a flooded cellar: a woman great with child lying on a lopsided table, and her three daughters, pale and solemn, crouched in a pile of straw on the muddy floor. It was raining steadily and had been all day, so the dirt walls of this cellar were melting, and the air inside was thick and cold. I’d seen farm animals given better shelter than this.

  “My name is Mary,” the first woman told me, tears forming in her eyes, “and this is my sister Ann lying on the table, screaming to be delivered for three days. When the baby would not come, I begged the doctor for help, but he sent me to find a man-midwife instead.”

  “The doctor was not being unkind,” I said. “Physicians are forbidden to practice midwifery because their college thinks it’s a low and dirty business. He was right to send you to me.”

  She looked stricken. “I have no money.”

  I nodded and bent over her sister, Ann, who lay spent with exhaustion.

  “Are you a priest?” she whispered.

  “Man-midwife,” I said.

  Crying out in pain, she covered her face when I touched her.

  I found the babe was dead. Ann’s pelvic opening had contracted because she did not eat enough food; thus the child could not be delivered unless I crushed its skull to pull it out. If I cut open Ann’s belly she would die.

  Women must give birth at home, but in the liberties … it is cruel.

  Margaret O Driscoll

  A Poem In Stone

  Awed by its architecture

  I step inside

  Gigantic Gothic arches

  Rise on either side

  Atop red marble columns

  Along each side of the aisle

  A colossal feat of construction

  Created in Pugin's style

  Splendid stained glass windows

  Depicting saints of glory

  Sun's rays shine through the hues

  Each panel tells a story

  Intricate mosaics  frame the shrines

  Below me the Augustinian crest inlaid

  I gaze at the elaborately ornate altar

  Where hosts of priests have prayed

  Jesus and his apostles in white Carrara marble

  The Last Supper around the table

  Priceless treasures by master craftsmen

  Gifted, artistic, diligent and able

  Carved confessionals along the sides

  Painted Stations Of The Cross in between

  I scan the detail of The Great Window

  The largest stained glass I have seen

  I pray for my family and I by

  Our Lady Of Good Counsel as I stand alone

  In that graceful peaceful sanctuary

  A poem in stone

  Emmaleene Leahy

  Liberties Taken

  Water sloped against rushy banks. We swayed, floating in the boat. Just below the surface flitting minnows shimmered in moonlight. We lay in each other’s arms and watched the stars glinting. Carried away on the optimism of each other, we spun stories together, predictions of our happy ever after entwined in each ending. He was all mine that night.

  The seasons changed. A wind rose and whipped up a war of whispers, instilling a fear about what was to be found in the distance. Leaves were torn from tormented tress and flung into a defeated frenzy. The waters we had floated on surged and slammed boats together.

  Then there was her.

  Her who threw her head back in a fit of dramatic laughter. Her who flicked her hair teasingly to attract his attention. Her who distracted him from the tales we had told each other.

  As the wind stripped the world, a hunger for him coiled in my stomach and growled with yearning. He drifted away. The distance impossible to judge in diminishing light.

  I saved a sentence for him. I wove and rewove it, rehearsing again and again the news I would tell him. The world was laced with frost, when I finally glimpsed him. The air tinged a bluish hue. Our vapour breath, an indigo glow to disperse between us. I was unable to release the perfected sentence.

  My news to be shared of the gift he gave me, became my secret. As Spring awoke I abandoned all that was familiar. To create my own distance, to protect the life unfurling inside me.

  Mark Jenkins

  Tommy “Liberty Boy” Lee

  This was the biggest day of my life, at the time!

  Ragged arsed and barefoot I weaved my way through the horsepiss tricklin' alleys, laneways, and streets of the Liberties I knew inside out. Love, live and breathe the place all my life.

  Reaching Gorman's pawn shop, I traded the cheap but sentimental ring ma willingly gave me so I could get the necessary equipment, and with change a pillowcase of fancy bread on the way back. I was eldest of seven.

  Later on, blind coddle down the hatch, I walked tall and brave through the scents of daily life and industry. Powers, Guinness, piggeries, smog, O'Keeffes knackers yard... Ya could nearly chew on the consuming, thick aromas.  I finally made it to the huge arena. I was ten. Fronting nerves, I saw the colossal Jim LUGS Branigan ready to referee. Gloves on, I felt like a man.

  Wanna know the result? I got the bollix knocked out of me by a hardy upstart from Phoenix Boxing Club, but I can always say I fought in the National Stadium.

  I got me ma's ring back, but that's another story.

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