Cork, Ireland, 1966

Noreen felt quite certain she had just had an orgasm. It was not what she had been expecting from only her third time making love with John. The first time had been somewhat uncomfortable and awkward, as they had both been expecting. The second had been pleasant enough but really they were just getting into the swing of it. Then today, their third time. Well, it had been something else altogether. An orgasm. What else could that mighty, shuddering, glorious cacophony of ecstasy have been?

Noreen flopped across her fiancé’s chest, smiled broadly and laughed a little. After a minute she leaned on one elbow to look at him. John was looking very pleased with himself indeed. As well he might.

‘Ouch,’ he said, ‘that elbow’s sharp.’

Her elbow was the only thing about Noreen that was angular. Fully dressed, she had a broad, traditional build, which, while it didn’t suit all of the fashions of the day, made her perfectly delicious when she was naked. At least John thought so. She was boundlessly sexual, with mound after glorious mound of flesh, as white and soft as powdered sugar. Irresistible. John considered himself something of a saint to have held strong as long as he had. Nearly a whole year ago they got engaged and, in the end, they were only here on her insistence. With broad features in an honest, open face Noreen wasn’t considered the most beautiful girl in Carney but John didn’t care too much about that and neither did she. She was clever, funny and kind. She was all he ever wanted. Noreen was John’s girl. And now she always would be. She gave him a playful dig with the offending elbow and reached across him for the cigarettes.

‘Just tell me. Did I have an orgasm, John?’

‘Jesus, Noreen. Isn’t it enough for you to be doing the thing without talking about it as well. Who cares?’ Sex had been Noreen’s idea. Of course, John had wanted to do it. He was a man, after all. But sex before marriage was a risky business. She might get pregnant, too early to pass it off as post-marital.

She gasped with exaggerated horror. ‘I can’t believe you just said that. Everyone cares. Every woman is entitled to an orgasm every time she has sex.’

‘Who says? I never heard that.’

‘That’s because you never read the Yanks.’

‘Ah, that’s grand. It wasn’t Father Carney then. Phew. Thought I’d missed something there.’

‘Well, did you feel anything?’

He laughed. ‘I surely did.’

‘I mean from me, not you.’

‘I dunno, sure didn’t I pull out before… Ah Jesus, Noreen, you have me at it now as well.’

‘It’s just that if we are going to have sex…’

‘Make love. Noreen, please. If we are going to commit mortal sin before marriage can you at least put a nice name to it?’

‘And do this terrible thing that’ll have us in purgatory for all eternity…’

‘That is correct.’

‘Well, then, at least I want to be sure I’m getting the most out of it. It says here,’ she pulled a copy of The Feminine Mystique off her bedside table, ‘that every repressed housewife in America feels they should be having orgasms while waxing the family room floor. They’re having orgasms all the time. It’s all they’re doing. American women are not fulfilled because they’re not allowed to work. Only do housework and have sex. And orgasms are mandatory.’

She took a pull of her cigarette and blew smoke up at the ceiling. ‘I wish I wasn’t allowed to work. Da has me killed out in that pub. I’m on again tonight.’

‘Ah no, I thought we’d go into Fermoy and see a movie.’

Noreen tried to look disappointed. Truth be told she preferred real life to the movies and would actually rather be in the pub. Catching up on local gossip and dealing with rowdy drunks was better than chewing on a bag of Emerald toffees and cooing over some soft, romantic Hollywood nonsense with every other couple in town. John was so predictable. Life was so predictable. At least in the pub there was usually a bit of trouble on a Saturday.

‘Old Kathleen Molloy passed on this morning, so Da has to get her ready for the wake.’

‘At least he hasn’t got you fiddling with dead bodies.’

‘Yet.’

Noreen knew that her father wanted her to take over the funeral home as well as the pub. Once she and John were married, Frank Lyons would be getting a replacement son. His own, Noreen’s brother Matthew, had run off to become a priest halfway through his arts degree in Dublin, leaving a perfectly good girl, Lara Collins, behind him. Frank had been disgusted until he realised that Noreen was a whiz behind the bar. Even without the addition of fiancé John, she was twice the man her fanciful, holy brother would ever be. Although, she could be flighty too. Noreen liked getting out and about and in among people, and Frank lived in fear of her taking off to London or, worse, New York. While his wife worried about Noreen’s moral capacity for withstanding a long engagement, Frank was anxious to get her properly married and settled so that he would be able to take a back seat. His business would be safe in the hands of his daughter and her solid, sensible guard of a husband. However, in the meantime, he had to handle the dead bodies himself and, whenever he could, leave the bar in the hands of his twenty-year-old daughter.

‘Besides, I prefer the live bodies,’ Noreen said, running her hands down the front of John’s bare chest.

‘Will we go again? Just so I can be sure?’

‘Ah, Noreen. Now, we have to put a stop to this carry on. Honestly. We’ll be married soon and then we can be at this whenever we like.’

His voice was saying one thing, but his body was saying quite another.

‘Noreen, stop now. You’re a desperate woman altogether. Really, we can’t be at this messing.’

But it was too late. She had already clambered on top of him and he was drowning under a mound of sugar.

❊

‘She looked just like herself.’

‘I never saw her looking as well.’

The three Marys were the first of a large, mixed crowd in Lyons’s small bar after the removal. A good funeral was the only circumstance that would bring these respectable women into a public house and, lucky for them, there had been plenty of funerals this year. The smart ones had given their condolences to the family at the house during the day so they could sneak out of mass early and be up at the pub to get a seat before the hoards arrived. You could catch up on a month’s gossip in Lyons’s in less than an hour if you knew who to sit next to.

‘A glass of black and one whisky and red, there’s a good girl, Noreen. Your father played a blinder today. Small sherry, Mary?’

‘Go on, but make it a large one. One is my limit, as you know, and I had one back at the house earlier, but I’m that upset about Kathleen.’

The Mary who was buying winked and nodded at Noreen. One was her cousin’s limit alright. One bottle. It was going to be a long night. Although, if Sherry-Mary did get hammered and started to cause a fuss, she couldn’t be in safer hands than young Noreen. She had such a good head on her shoulders it belied her young years.

‘What would Frank do without you at all?’

‘She’s a great girl altogether,’ said Whisky-Mary, ‘letting her dad off to tend to the dead when she could be off gallivanting with her handsome guard.’

‘Fine thing,’ Black-Mary butted in. ‘When’s the big day?’

Noreen smiled and said, ‘Next month, Mary.’

‘Not long now, just four weeks to wait. And we all know the men don’t like to be kept waiting too long.’

‘Mary!’

The three of them shared a scandalised laugh. Noreen joined in although, truthfully, she was starting to get fed up of people asking her about the wedding. Her father was an important man and her family so well known that people talked about her and John as if they owned them. How she longed to confess to them all that she had already made love to her fiancé, that only that afternoon they had snuck up to the spare bedroom where she had seduced him into giving her an orgasm. An ORGASM! She felt like shouting it out loud in the bar, ringing the bar closing bell and hollering, at the top of her voice, ‘ORGASM! ORGASM! ORGASM!’ She wondered if any of the three Marys had ever had an orgasm. It was doubtful.

She reached to the back counter and topped up the ladies’ round. Next to them were four pints already lined up for the men that came in the door. She knew every customer and their preference. The regulars, all men, liked when she knew what they wanted and ordered with the barest of nods. After the delay of standing around after a funeral, having a pint ready to lift to their lips with one hand, while the other removed their cap, was exactly what they needed. The women, in contrast, made a big fuss over ordering their drinks. They did not like to be kept waiting either, but at the same time, it was important not to assume. That might imply that they drank on a regular basis, which, as witnessed by Sherry-Mary, would not do at all.

The same regulars had been coming in here since Noreen was a child. The same crowd after every funeral. They didn’t change what they drank. Habits remained the same through a lifetime. All of these people… they were so predictable. They went to the same masses, ate fish on a Friday, ham and potatoes for tea on a Saturday and, for those that had a chicken to kill, chicken on a Sunday. If somebody got a new coat, it was cause for speculation. When they got married, the town celebrated and the men commiserated in the pub. When the first baby was born, they wetted its head in Lyons’s. When they died, the town mourned them the exact same way. And always Frank there, behind the ancient oak bar. The crooked shelves behind his head were lined with bottles of spirits that sat alongside sliced bread, flour, sugar and teabags that gave a husband sent on an errand an excuse for being there. Frank even kept a few bars of chocolate under the counter so that a late-drinking husband could bring back something to appease an angry wife.

Noreen noticed Finbar Fuller nodding off into one of his drunken afternoon stupors and made a note to pop a bar of Dairy Milk in his torn overcoat pocket for poor Deirdre later. On the house. Goodness knows the poor man put enough business their way.

‘Who’ll be next?’ Sherry-Mary said.

‘Well, young Noreen here if her big day is next month.’

‘No, not that,’ Sherry-Mary said, waving her second (or maybe sixth) glass of sherry in the air.

‘Who’ll be the next to, you know…’ and she nodded behind her then, for good measure, squinted and stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth, adding in a dramatic whisper ‘to go.’

Whisky-Mary winced. Black-Mary took up her glass of stout and, taking a sip, said quite matter-of-factly, ‘That’ll be Joe Gilroy. He’s above in Castlebar with a tube the size of a hosepipe draining his gullet and his face is yellow as a sheep’s stomach. He looked dead already to me when I was in on Tuesday visiting Kathleen. They’re saying he won’t last the week.’

‘Could be giving us another day out next Sunday then, ladies.’

‘And Noreen’s big day after that.’

‘You never know when the good Lord is going to take you.’

‘Thank goodness some things never change.’

‘Like a good glass of black. Throw us up another one there, Noreen, like a good girl.’

But Noreen was stood stock still staring past Sherry-Mary’s shoulder.

‘Noreen?’ It wasn’t like Frank’s daughter to be so inattentive. She was usually dying to hear all the news. ‘Noreen, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

And she had seen a ghost of sorts. In the form of her Big Day.

As the women talked Noreen saw her life flash in front of her. In a month’s time she would marry John Connolly, their local guard. She would wear the puffy white dress that her father had paid a fortune for, currently hanging in the spare room wardrobe.

She would continue to work in the bar until the children came. At this time her father would retire and enjoy his grandchildren, and John would begin to take responsibility for the pub. Having gone through the ordeal of childbirth and becoming a mother, Noreen would then be considered mature enough to work in the funeral parlour, tending fully to the dead. The three Marys would be at their funerals, her parents then and eventually, after a long, long time it would be her turn, and one of her own children would tend to her.

That was going to be Noreen’s life. Book-marked by two big days out – her wedding then her funeral. Marriage then death. Her life mapped out for her in a monotonous, straight line for the next fifty years. Sixty if she was unlucky. Was this it?

Noreen had always been a home bird. She had never thought about what she wanted for the rest of her life. She loved Carney and its aul’ ones and the gossip. She was great behind the bar. Noreen was fun loving, while her brother Matthew was the sensible one, the priest in training for the last six months. Yet he was the one who had moved away from home to start a life in Dublin. Noreen liked her life in Carney too much and had always been happy to stay at home. She liked the familiarity of her family, the comfort of home, the craic in the bar. Then, when John had come along and showed an interest in her, it seemed that life was complete. But standing here, in this moment, as these three Marys predicted the next death in their small, sleepy town, Noreen found herself infuriated by the idea that her own life was so predictable. Even her boring, weird brother had done something unpredictable by leaving art school to become a priest, by leaving Noreen’s best friend, Lara Collins, high and dry. Noreen had been furious at his ruining their friendship, and also mortified by how stupid he was. Most lads his age would have chopped their arm off to get at Lara. Most lads knew they wanted to be priests before they left school. Noreen thought Matt was an idiot for changing his life course last minute. She had always been clear about what she wanted. But now… she wasn’t so sure.

As these thoughts ran through Noreen’s head she grew more and more indignant. Here she was, stuck in Carney, living out her parents’ life. Supposing they knew what she had been up to that afternoon. Sex before marriage. Orgasms. Of course, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered really because she and John would be getting married in a couple of weeks. Once they were married the status quo would be set. She would wear through her orgasm quota and become an old Holy Mary like the three standing in front of her. Goodie-two-shoes Noreen, who never put a foot wrong. Here minding Da’s pub for him. Orgasms were supposed to be gloriously sinful, but they were only a real sin, a proper sin, if they were with people you weren’t going to marry. When was that ever going to happen now? Matthew might even go off travelling the world in the missions, having all sorts of adventures. She would get married in two weeks and…

‘NO!’

She shouted it out so suddenly that the three Marys, who had been watching Noreen in bewilderment, all jumped. Sherry-Mary dropped her glass and found it was already empty.

‘No, what?’ Whisky-Mary asked.

But Noreen didn’t reply.

Instead, she went to the back of the bar and shouted up to their barman, Pat, who was in the apartment kitchen, to come downstairs. She untied her apron, went to the end of the bar and lifted it.

‘Where are you going?’ Black-Mary called.

Noreen pushed past the funeral crowd and said, more to herself than her puzzled audience, ‘I’m going to London.’

Irish catholic ‘removal’ of the remains to the church, usually the night before the funeral mass.