Premier Writing showcases poetry, essays and short fiction by new and emerging Irish writers. This week’s short story is by Madge O’Callaghan from Clare.
Short Story
Angela
“Was it wonderful?” she whispered.
“It was,” I smiled.
“Did you love it?”
“I loved it,” I laughed. “I moved my mouth at all the right places.”
“Brilliant,” she grinned.
She closed her eyes.
I climbed into the bed next to hers, wearing her nightdress to infuse her smell, listening to her unsteady breathing. She was the first person I had ever shared a bed with, me curled up at the end of her single bed, her legs jamming me against the bedroom wall.
When I was learning to spell, she would draw letters on my feet with her fingertip, sending secret messages to me through the soles of my feet. Sometimes she would get me to use my small fingers to wriggle minute specs of fluff from between her toes, cleaning them out. She denied this as we got older.
Later I would cry when she wanted to leave me behind while she went out with her friends,and when she met him, she often took me with her on their dates. When she got married, I was her flower girl. I was ten years old.
Most Fridays, her husband would collect me in his light blue ford Anglia on his way home from work and take me to their house to mind me. The damage had already been done by the neighbour by then, but we didn’t realise it. They just knew that something wasn’t right.
On Sunday mornings he would cook breakfast and serve it to us in bed – bacon, egg, sausage and black and white pudding and sometimes there would be mushrooms and tomatoes, bought by him in Moore Street, and cooked in the same pan as all the other components of Sunday breakfast The fried eggs would have a thick black rubbery rim of burnt oil around their edges.
He worked in his family business in Moore Street in the heart of Dublin from the time he was twelve years old. School wasn’t important to them. They needed him to work in the shop, and so he did.
He would deliver me back to secondary school on his way to work on Mondays, neatly turned out in a clean school uniform and with food for my lunch, whatever few coins were needed for school activities and a big bag of fresh fruit from Moore Street. His kindness and generosity rested gently on him.
Sometimes, to my shame, he embarrassed me with his loud voice and his raucous humour, indifferent to whoever happened to be in earshot while I squirmed, mortified. He called me Twiggy – still does sometimes – but I was a little fat-faced teenager, not impressed by the comparison. He loved calling me Twiggy – didn’t see a thing wrong with it. She was a beautiful teenage model. He treated me as if I was, too.
She worried about him every day, except on the days when he annoyed the hell out of her…
I moved to the other side of the country, had my family. She was busy raising hers too. Each wedding anniversary I would send flowers to them from their flower girl. We spent holidays away together, sometimes with other family members and other times on our own. She was my first port of call with good news and bad, and I think I was hers. We often shared secrets, talked through issues, supported each other, championed each other. She picked me up more times than I can count, advised or cajoled. C’mere and I tell you, she’d begin.
He was diagnosed with dementia. She was devastated. She worried about him every day, except on the days when he annoyed the hell out of her and she lost her patience with him and she’d get on the phone to me and give out yards about him and rant and rave until she had calmed down and laughed at herself and her nonsense.
She became ill.
I’ll be at your performance, she said.
I’ll keep you a ticket, I said, but I knew she wouldn’t make it. I went to her the day after we sang the Messiah in the concert hall, climbed into the bed and waited with her.
On the third morning, I lay under the duvet, watching her chest as it weakened. The palliative care nurse had come the night before, turned her in the bed. I was sitting by her side when she spat “Get away from me”. She was saying it to the nurse, I knew, but it still cut through me.
As I lay awake watching her at sunrise on her final day, he entered the room, her demented husband. He shuffled around her bed and looked down at his wife of 60 years on her deathbed.
“Good morning, Beautiful,” he beamed. “Have I told you today how much I love you?”
He leaned in and kissed her cheek, stroked her hand and shuffled out of the room.
I lay in my bed and wept.
*
About the author:
Madge O’Callaghan holds an MA in Creative Writing from DCU, and was awarded Gold at the New York World Festival of Radio for her first radio documentary, My Uncle Jack, commissioned for the RTE Doc On One series. She writes poetry and short stories, and facilitates the Shannon Amherst Writers Group, which has published two anthologies – Write, So in 2023, and Write Lines in 2024. Madge lives in East Clare, where she offers creative writing courses and hosts the Samhlaíocht Second Sunday Sessions – a gathering of poets and storytellers.
For details on Madge’s writing courses, email her at: madgethewriter@gmail.com
Please see our Premier Writing page for details of how to submit your poetry, essays, or short fiction.
Loughtagalla Times 
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