The Glorious Heresies Read Online Free

side of the euro. Still believing the recession was a sag in Ireland’s fabric, stretched as far as it could go and on the point of bouncing upwards.
    That pig-headedness was what had taken her so long to leave him. She had sailed through nearly a decade of his debasing their marital vows before she’d run aground. He hadn’t made a habit of affairs; there were plenty of girls he could fuck without having to fork out for extras. Even so, there were so many all-nighters, so many week-long absences that any other woman would have read the warnings. By the time Deirdre noticed, it was much too late to draw boundaries. Jimmy gave her the house and wondered if one day she’d chalk their collaborative fuck-up down to experience. For now, she still laid claim to the title of Jimmy Phelan’s Wife. She didn’t want him in her bed anymore, but she was too stubborn and too tough to give up what she thought were the perks of his infamy.
    “I want to get the kids a piano,” she said, dispatching a cup of tea in Maureen’s general direction, wrinkling her nose. She hadn’t asked how Maureen took her tea, but Deirdre had long assumed, incorrectly, that she had a knack for hostessing. “I’ve always regretted not learning an instrument. I don’t want them saying the same thing in ten years’ time.”
    “Are you having me on, girl? They’d have no more interest in learning the piano than they did in anything else you demanded I foist on them. It’s you who wants the piano. A front-room centrepiece. Something to rest a vase on.”
    “You can be a very thick man, Jimmy.”
    “Maybe it’s because I never learned to tickle the ivories. There’s no art in me.”
    “You’d deny your children the opportunity to learn a skill so? Just because there’s a chance they might not stick with it? Is it depressed you are, or just plain mean?”
    Maureen took her mug and walked out onto the back decking.
    “Ah, she’s thrilled you found her,” sneered Deirdre.
    “I’m glad you know her so well, girl, because she’s staying here with you tonight.”
    “What?”
    “The flat’s getting cleaned. Industrial shit. No way can I have her stay there overnight, and I have too much on to offer her my bed. Long and short of it: you’re stuck with her till tomorrow.”
    “I am in me shit, Jimmy,” she hissed. “You can’t leave that loon here.”
    “You’ve got a spare room. And she’s been wanting to spend more time with her grandchildren. At least until she starts knowing them from the next pair of spoiled brats.”
    “The cheek of you, boy. That woman, wherever you found her, might have ties to you but she doesn’t to
my
children.”
    “That’s a failure of the most basic concept of human biology, Deirdre.”
    “You know what I mean, Jimmy. There’s a lot more to family than…” She waved a hand and grimaced. “Fluids. Genetics. Whatever you want to call it.”
    Maureen wasn’t moving but to bring cigarette to mouth. She stared out across the lawn, serene as a cud-chewing cow.
    “Well look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Jimmy said to Deirdre. “I’ll find you a piano and you can honky-tonk your musical regrets away to your heart’s content. I won’t even ask why Ellie and Conor’s fingers are still pudgy as pigs’ trotters in a year’s time. And all you have to do is mind my mammy for the night.”
    “Ah, in fairness, Jimmy…”
    “You should try talking to her. She’s got your children’s history knotted up inside that wizened head of hers. She’s got Ireland’s history in there. She’s a very interesting woman.”
    “A bit too interesting. Don’t you think I’ve had it up to here with how interesting you can be?”
    “A piano for sanctuary,” he said. “You’d deny your children the opportunity to learn a skill just because there’s a chance my dear mum will leave smudges on your furniture? Don’t be plain mean, Deirdre. Aren’t you better than me and my ancestry?”
    He went out onto