The Mask and Other Stories Read online

  THE MASK AND OTHER STORIES

  Nesta Tuomey

  * * *

  © 2013 Nesta Tuomey

  Nesta Tuomey has asserted her rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  Published by Nesta Tuomey

  First published in eBook format in 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-78301-229-9

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.

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  Dedication

  For Larry as always

  and in loving memory of Patrick and Winifred my parents

  Short Story Index

  An intriguing, sensual and poignant portrayal of modern Irish women

  1. Menomadness

  2. Top Girl

  3. The Mask

  4. Ashes

  5. Sisters

  6. Letting Go

  7. Godsend

  8. Future Generations

  9. Poodles & Diamonds

  10. The House

  11. Old Habits

  12. St. Magdalen’s

  13. Party Piece

  14. No Bad Women

  15. False Alarm

  16. Milkshake

  17. Stopover

  18. It Could Only Happen in Nerja

  ***

  Menomadness winner of Image/Oil of Ulay Story Competition.

  Top Girl published in Irish Tatler

  Ashes winner of the John Power short story award at Listowel Writers Week also published in anthology Writers Week Award-Winning Short Stories 1973-1994 Edited by David Marcus

  Sisters published in Woman’s Way Annual

  Future Generations published in IT Magazine

  The House, The Mask and False Alarm broadcast on BBC.

  It Could Only Happen in Nerja published in an anthology In the Shadow of the Red Queen by Bridge House.

  ***

  Menomadness

  What a fool, she thought, looking into the mirror. Slowly, she ran her fingers over her face. Old enough to be a granny and still getting het up about men!

  Approaching fifty, May Duggan was taken aback by her vigorous sexual response. At a time of her life when most other women bowed to the inevitability of warm flushes and waning libido, by some strange quirk of nature May seemed to have been given an additional blast of hormones. She became prey to sexual fantasy. It took very little to set her off. A fleeting glimpse of a young cadet’s cheeky little buttocks encased in tight pants was enough to feed her lust for a week, by which time some other eroticism became fuel for her lascivious imagination. She was a woman of Brunhildan proportions – breasts, belly and buttocks formed after the fashion of a more voluptuous age. Her own milky reflection dimly seen in the pocked mirror over the washstand was an add incitement. She began to explore her body in a way previously foreign to her. Sometimes it was the plush feeling of her inner thigh which mesmerised her. She would stroke her satiny flank, imagining how it would feel to a lover’s hand. With fluctuating hormone levels, her breasts became tender and bursting as overripe mangoes. Palpating her nipples lazily, she would stare down at them, livid and erect, and wish it were anatomically possible for her to taste them as her husband and children had. It was as if a fire had ignited in her bloodstream. She accepted that her metabolism was disturbed. She waited for it to right itself.

  She took to wearing lighter garments and impulsively flinging wide the windows. But as the weeks passed she became so highly charged that even the rub of cotton against her flesh was a sensuous delight. One particularly humid night in June, while her husband lay, an inert lump, in their featherbed, she restlessly threw back the covers and stole out to the wooded slopes behind their house, avid for the cool currents of air on her bare skin. The thought of discovery heightened her excitement and she quivered expectantly, naked except for a pair of wellington boots. Sounds distorted by the night startled her. A wood pigeon rising with clashing wings from its perch, the jeering call of a nighthawk form the topmost tree. On hearing voices nearby, she stealthily made her way between the boles of trees, always within earshot of her unseen companions. She shadowed them to the outer perimeters of the sylvan mass and crouched, hidden by an overhanging fern, as they passed close by. She felt the ground tremble beneath their tramping feet, heard the staccato snapping of twigs grow faint as they drew further away. Careless of encounter, she openly travelled home by the main track, a pale blob in boots, an ageing wood nymph. She crooned a song. Her hormones were in riot.

  Stan Secombe came down the gangway. On his shoulder he supported a canvas duffle bag. A light stubble of hair covered his chin and his eyeballs were sapped with sleep. He had a biggish head on a gangly body and the sort of cherubic face which universally appeals to women of all ages, especially those of a motherly disposition. Two nights of sleeping rough without benefit of razor or soap had detracted little from his seraphic charm. He ignored the taxis lined up outside the Ferry Terminal and set out to walk the two miles into the city. It was almost midnight. He yawned and jingled coins in his cupped hand as he moved along.

  Stan had crossed the water hoping to improve his fortune. There was another reason. Expediency. Signed on for a trip to Taiwan, he had waited until only seconds before the gangplank was hoisted before bunking back on to the dock, where he kept out of sight till the ship sailed. This was the beginning of a period of enforced invisibility for Stan. It became a matter of never staying long in the one place. There were other counts against him but by using his wits he always managed to stay one jump ahead. His candid air was his greatest asset. Time and again, it had helped extricate him from fraught situations. In this new country, it was to stand him in good stead where blonde blue-eyed youth was synonymous with innocence. He played the part to the hilt. Sometimes, tiring of the role, he went slumming in the sleazy areas of the city. In the dimly lit bars he entertained his boozy companions in return for slopped glasses of beer. Below deck he had become as familiar with the seamy workings of the human mind as the ship’s circuit boards and he knew instinctively the kind of indecencies they wanted to hear. When he deemed it time to leave the city, he travelled inland to a biggish town where he put his electrical apprenticeship to good use, servicing washing machines.

  It was in the course of his new career that he met May. One day, in answer to a distress call from a rural area, he drove the dusty service van through narrow roads banked high with cow parsely. At the end of a rutted track he came upon the house, nestling in a hollow, against a backdrop of spruce trees. The air was filled with the sweetish stench of recently spread manure. May opened the door to him wearing a blouse hastily buttoned over straining breasts. From her exuded the timeless smell of milk and sweat. She was Aphrodite, Eve, the original Earth Mother, all rolled into one.

  ‘Come to fix your machine, luv,’ Stan said, nimbly stepping over the foot-scraper, ‘Stanley’s the name.’

  He followed her down the hall, so close that his breath brought out the goosebumps on May’s neck. She had been expecting her regular repairman, old Paddy Devlin. But she wasn’t complaining. Stan was the stuff of her fantasies; lean, hard, jutting. Enough tinder for a fortnight. She showed him into the tiny wash-house adjoining the kitchen. As he bent ove
r the washing machine the sight of his taut hips effectively wiped from May’s mind all thought of the absent elderly. The back door slammed and her teenage daughter flounced in.

  ‘Ma, I’m starving,’ she squawked, like an infant deprived of the teat.

  ‘Your daughter?’ Stan asked, returning his smiling gaze with flattering promptness to May. ‘Never would have thought you’d be old enough to have a kid that big.’

  May was gratified though not fooled. She hid her pleasure in the refrigerator. Having fed her offspring, she leaned in the doorway watching Stan, a predatory glint in her eyes. He glanced around.

  ‘Your programmer’s kaput,’ he announced with gleeful regret, ‘A new one’s going to cost you, what with labour and VAT on top of everything.’

  His words barely rippled the surface of May’s awareness. Whatever else they had to do without in her household it wouldn’t be the washing machine, not with the heavy loads she had to cope with. Stan left with a promise to return next day. Thoughts of him kept her scorched into the small hours when she forsook the connubial couch to air-bathe on the moonlit slopes. In the morning she had a wild-eyed look. She watched the clock until midday, when Stan’s van nosed its way up the lane. She trembled as she went to open the door. In the cramped wash-house he bumped against her, triggering wet spasms of pleasure. She was further excited by thoughts of him taking her, there and then, on the heaps of creased laundry. May’s inventiveness with regard to place and position had never been met by her husband whose technique in twenty years had not varied. Stan soon had the machine clicking through its paces. May took time off from her baking to make tea and to butter thick slices of soda bread. Sitting opposite him, she eased the buttons on her blouse and with a floury, fidgeting hand, drew discreet attention to her nudity.

  ‘That’s what I like about the folks over here,’ Stan said, ‘Hospitable. Friendly. Back home they wouldn’t give you the steam off their piss.’

  Stan’s vulgarity was one of the things May liked about him. Unlike her prudish husband who cloaked everything in euphemism. She threw back her head and laughed. Stan stared into the pink wet cavern and felt his loins ache. People assumed that such a personable young sailor had a girl in every port, but they were wrong. Stan Secombe only ever had one girl and that was his mother. She was resurrected in May’s plump contours, her air of having only moments before removed an infant from her lactating breasts. He licked the butter absently from his fingertips and tentatively brushed them against her fatty protuberances. May quivered. She took his hand and he followed her like a sleep-walker back to the wash-house.

  Several times a week Stan stopped by the house. May would wait for him behind lowered shades. There was rarely any speech between them. They would speedily remove their clothes then, hand-in-hand like concupiscent children, mount the creaking stairs, to tumble into May’s feather-bed. There was an earthiness about Stan which revived the wanton side of May, almost extinguished by two decades of respectable marital congress. With him she indulged her desire for the bizarre. Afterwards, coming unexpectedly upon herself in mirrors she would be surprised by her sly eyes and swollen mouth. She had the fecund look of a woman in her prime. Even her husband noticed it, for once, not tarrying until after his nightly ablutions to take his pleasure.

  When May’s washing machine broke down again she was pleased at this legitimate excuse to see Stan. This time, it seemed, her motor had burned out.

  ‘Sorry, luv,’ Stan condoled.

  ‘But it’s barely three years old.’

  ‘You’ve a helluva lot to wash for. Stands to reason.’

  May had to agree. Seven children and two adults amounted to a lot of laundry. Sometimes she ran her machine four times in a day. She was grateful when Stan told her he might be able to get her a reconditioned motor, cheap. She cut him a generous slice of apple cake and waited impatiently while he ate it. In the sleepy time between two and three, with not a leaf stirring or a child returned from school, she got a further chance to show her gratitude. Later that week the motor was fitted – reconditioned as Stan had promised – but regrettably not so cheap as he’d led May to expect. In the aftermath of lovemaking she passed no comment. But, her passion cooling, she wondered just what else could go wrong with her machine, it was like it was jinxed.

  ‘Your drum,’ said Stan, a faraway look coming into his azure eyes. ‘Springs a leak, see, and before you know it – water everywhere.’

  May was sorry she had asked. It was only tempting fate, she thought. At the door of the wash-house Stan cocked his ear. The dryer, briskly tumbling the laundered sheets upon which he and May had recently lain, sounded unusually discordant. While she made tea, he checked it out.

  ‘As I thought,’ he said, ‘the motors they put in that particular model weren’t made to last. Take my word for it.’ He fixed her with his candid stare. ‘Definitely substandard.’

  May’s plump face fell into dejected folds. Next to the washing machine, the dryer was her most valued possession. ‘Perhaps if I don’t use it too often,’ she suggested.

  ‘Won’t make a blind bit of difference,’ Stan scotched the notion. ‘It’s a gonner, whatever you do.’ His cheeks bunched in something like sympathy.

  May felt absurdly compelled to console him. ‘Not your fault,’ she said, ‘Thanks anyway.’ She waved goodbye as cheerily as she could and Stan, pocketing a substantial cheque, waved just as cheerily back. Soon afterwards, scenting the seahounds on his trail, he left the district. It was time to move on again.

  Overnight the fires in May died down. She no longer roamed the wooded slopes or indulged in narcissistic reflection. Instead she developed a craving for raspberry jam and curried pickles. Fortunately both were easy to get. She also developed a neurosis about her machines, continually dreading their breakdown. Her anxiety increased when she thought of all those extra nappies she would soon be called upon to dry for, summer or Stan having penetrated her defences, she found she was expecting again.

  May’s baby was born, fittingly enough, one baking day. Laying down her rolling-pin, she paused to draw breath. Moments later she found herself beneath the table. Two heaves and he was there. Swaddled in tea-towels he blinked his azure eyes and emitted a faint cry. By the time the home-coming children banged in the kitchen door, May had recovered enough to place the pies in the oven and lay the table. The newcomer, washed and fed, snoozed in his crib. A considerate child, he supped at her breast six times a day, no more, no less. From early on, he slept through the night. Like Stan, his first consideration was for his mother.

  It was not until May opened the kitchen door one day on the tide of water that she recalled Stan’s prediction. The drum! she thought. After all this time, it had sprung a leak like he’d said it would. Her pride in her absconded lover was as great as if one of her children had given her the right answer to a sum. She lifted the phone and dialled for service.

  The new man arrived within the hour. Mid-flood, he paused to ogle May’s baby. ‘Eyes like hyacinths,’ he waxed fanciful.

  ‘Like is father’s,’ replied May with nostalgic exactitude.

  In the wash-house, the dryer was making anguished sounds. ‘That doesn’t sound too healthy,’ he said.

  ‘On its last legs,’ agreed May, proceeding to explain.

  The man laughed. ‘Who told you that fairytale? Nothing wrong with that dryer a screwdriver can’t fix. Look,’ he angled it so she could see. ‘The screw is loose. Needs tightening.’

  May started. Was that all? When he switched it on again, the raucous note was stilled, the motor softly whirred. He shifted attention. ‘Seems your washer has sprung a leak.’

  Again, May was tempted to launch into explanations but some dawning realization kept her silent. She was glad a little later, when he waved a child’s sodden sock beneath her nose. If he had a pound for every one that got stuck in the outlet hose he’d be a millionaire, he said. Dubiously she returned his grin.

  ‘Just as well I’ve got an honest natur
e,’ he went on, ‘There’s lots of dodges if a chap wants to make a few quid. Amazing how many women fall for it. Gullible, that’s what the public are.’ Still chuckling, he went down the path.

  Soberly, May watched him. Somewhere beyond the wall a loose-limbed young man with arresting blue eyes cockily waved two fingers. She turned her back on him and went inside. ‘So, what was it,’ she said irritably. Merely a little bit of foolishness, a last hormonal fling. She returned to the kitchen and, under the shifting gaze of her love-child, she began making bread, flinging down handfuls of flour, her blouse agape, her greying blonde hair straggling loose on her plump shoulders.

  Top Girl

  Selena held up her favourite suit against her and wondered if she could possibly wear it one more time. One last time, she corrected herself, before her swelling figure proclaimed to the world her undoubted pregnancy. She was at the stage when she could still fasten her skirts before midday but, by evening, her stomach asserted its right to blossom independently. It had become a game of mix’n match. Extending her skirts with pins and bridging the gap with blouson tops. Fortunately the prevailing fashion was with her. The layered look was in. Even figure-conscious teenagers had adopted it. Yes, she thought, I will wear my favourite suit today, regardless of consequences. All too soon she would be one of that vast, invisible army of pregnant women, dependent on acts of kindness form total strangers, ignored by men and pandered to by husbands. And not only that, the thought continued, one of the vast army of the unemployed

  But even if her condition, when discovered, had not carried with it the threat of dismissal she had no wish to don maternity wear before time. All sail and no ballast, she told herself, like women ten weeks pregnant with barely discernible bumps rushing into sensible shoes and voluminous dresses, near-sightedly trodding ground as though childbirth was imminent. If only, she thought, someone would design intelligent outfits for mothers-to-be rather than winsome smocked garments more suited to corpulent infants. Surely pregnancy did not have to signify an end to good taste. She sighed at the thought of being condemned for the next five months to a wardrobe of floppy bows and page-boy collars. Her figure was gone, she thought, not her mind.