chapter 17

[pickarooney]

Just having some trouble getting this right. Something is off with the pacing, but I need a bit of advice.
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Nancy Quinn pulled back the sleeve of her blue and white work coat and checked the minute hand of her cheap, plastic watch for the second-last time that day, before scanning Mr. Gogarty's meagre shopping through her till. Tin of baked beans, small cauliflower, packet of hickory-smoked rashers.

"Afternoon, Mr. Gogarty, and how are you?" she beamed at the retired schoolmaster, bent almost double, his dromedarian hunch draped in fake black leather looming over the flat brown cap on his ancient head. She didn't know how old he was, but distantly remembered a retirement party held for him in the town hall some time before she'd started school. As always, he'd forgotten to weigh the vegetable, or refused to do it on principle. Nancy rarely had the heart to make him trundle back and put it on the scales, preferring to nip off and print the label herself. It was stupid, when you thought about it, weighing a caulie. Anywhere else they were a unit price, but LoValu always had to be different.

"Being different is what makes us better", was the favourite mantra of the regional manager, Connie Boyle, but he was two ends of a gob****e in Nancy's humble and considered opinion. She rolled the knobbly white head over the scanner and into a plastic bag along with the breakfast items. She wouldn't be charging him the fifteen-cent government levy on the bag, either, and Connie Boyle could lick it or like it.

"Two forty-seven please, Mister Gogarty", she said, handing the goods to him and smiling into his lost, rheumy eyes.
They said he'd lost half his sense along with his wife and Nancy reckoned that might not be such a bad thing. It was a lonely enough world with a full head on you, even without being left behind. "Grand girl", he whispered hoarsely, shuffling off. Six.

A lanky young man in a suit his shorter father must have left him stepped forward, his arms exposed three inches above the wrist where the grey flannel stopped shy of his cuffs. His short, mousy hair had been meticulously combed until all sign of life had been crushed out of it. His glasses, bought on a national health plan impervious to the fashion requirements of young myopics, had seen better days. His incisors protruded and twisted like Chaplin-feet, at angles just short of the cut-off point for state-sponsored orthodontics. His angry acne fell outside the scope of even the most generous coverage policy. "Well Dermot", she winked at him, grabbing his packet of milk chocolate wholegrains from the belt. She was fairly sure this fella was Dermot, although it could well have been Paudie. The whole gang of those Brodericks grew up and out so fast there was no keeping track of them.

"Oh, them are nice, would you gimme one?" she teased.

The poor chap didn't know what to say, so she hurriedly passed the biscuits through along with his AA batteries. The young man flipped out a Laser card with all the cool of Dirty Harry in a confirmation suit and swiped it through as soon as she'd activated the card reader. He grabbed his purchases, nodded and rushed out. Five.

Nancy didn't know her name, but she did know that the ould bitch couldn't count. Here she was again with a trolley-load of stuff coming through the ten-items-or-less checkout. Unless she was counting the poor unfortunate cow that she'd bought in kit form – two steaks, a pound of chops, a big bag of round mince, four litres of milk, a lump of red cheddar the size of a small child and a leather case for a mobile phone – as one article, her sums or her manners were well out. It was always the way with these wans, thinking they owned the place and everyone in it.

Wait till you see, she'd pull out the chequebook and get offended if asked to identify herself, holding up the queue of busy people even more. It was grand for her. She had no job to rush back to or small kids screaming for their dinner. The hackles at Nancy's nape stood up as the woman approached, smiled her condescending little smile and looked off to one side as Nancy scanned her produce, much of it twice or three times. As expected, the woman had no notion of how much of her husband's money she was spending and how much she was being overcharged and of course she began to search for her chequebook once the total of her expenditure had been announced. Her weary sigh suggested that the whole process of paying for her shopping was beneath her, an inconvenience which should really be handled by some manservant.
"Goodbye now", said Nancy, a touch acerbically, as the women left, hitching her expensive Brighton handbag onto a shoulder wrapped in a Hermès scarf, touches of a class absent in her character. And then there were four.

"Sergeant", nodded Nancy to the chubby guard who had been watching the wordless departure of the lady with the expensive tastes.
"The cut o' yer wan, hah?" he answered, nodding after his predecessor. "Lady muck. La-di-da. The same wan never done a hard day's graft in her life and yet she's there looking down on us as is keeping the place going. I tell you one ting, if it warn't for that husband o' hers it's a tracksuit and a pair of oul' runners she'd be wearing, and buying her groceries down in the Aldi along with the immigrants."
Nancy made a sign to indicate that she agreed with at least part of what he was saying. The policeman looked back for approval from the others in the line.

"Oh, Jasis sorry, son, I didn't mean that for you, like. No offence", he blurted at the tall, black man in the tracksuit standing behind him.

The lawman's flustered apology was a silent comedy to the young man, whose earphones blocked out everything the portly cop was saying. Nancy smothered a snigger. Seán Curran was no more an immigrant than herself. He'd been born in the same hospital about two months before her in fact. His birth had been something of a newsflash, all the same, as perhaps the first black child born in Crossmolina to a local man and his African wife whom he'd brought back from the missions. Though born and raised in South London, the townsfolk had always spoken to Amanda Curran in such slow and loud tones that for years she'd assumed the local accent was a sort of exaggerated, drawling roar. Seán himself, though he spoke with a thick Mayo brogue, was no stranger to the same treatment, something he'd come to accept as a burden easier to ignore than attempt to throw off.

Nowadays, of course, there were Blacks and Chinese and Polish and what-have-you everywhere you looked, so he didn't draw as many stares as he did when he was the only man of colour in the area, but he still attracted a fair few glances, including Nancy's as she swiped through Sergeant Drennan's midweek shopping. Cheap deodorant, a single-serving microwave lasagne, a pair of chocolate-brown socks, five tins of peas and a huge bag of dog-food. There'd be no wild parties in the garda's bachelor pad this weekend by the looks of things. Drennan put on his cap, hitched up his sinking trousers and said his last goodbye to Nancy Quinn. Three to go.

The cashier wrestled with a schoolgirl grin as the gorgeous Mr. Curran took his turn.
"Howrya Seán?" she asked, prompting him to pull the plugs out of his ears and ask her to repeat the question. "I just said howya", she said again, a pinkish rush making her face tingle.

For Jasis sake, she was thirteen again any time this fella came by, not able to string two words together.

"Oh right, grand, and yourself?" said Seán, nodding his head slightly to the beat now playing into the side of his neck. He'd come for fags and chewing-gum, twenty Bensons and Wrigley's Spearmint. Neither gave much of an opening for a conversation, but she tried anyway. She might not see him again for a long time; no harm in having a last chat with him.

"Still on the ould smokes? I thought you'd given them up?" she asked, running the chewing-gum through the scanner and sliding the cigarettes past the edge of the radar.
"Ah, I did for a while, but you know yourself, once you have a few pints you kind of have to have a fag", he explained.
"I do indeed, nothin' like a good long drag of a ciggie with a neckful of porter when you're finished work. Sixty-five cents."
Seán looked puzzled, looked down at his two items and back up at the till screen, wondering how exactly she could have come to such a low total.
"Ehm, I think you forgot to charge me for the smokes", he said, pointing at the sub-euro amount on the LCD display screen.
Nancy made a face to tell him to keep schtum and go on with himself, not to be questioning fortune or favour. She felt a hand on the back of her swivel chair.

"Everything all right here, Nancy?" asked the voice of Pinkie Moran, her immediate boss and assistant store manager.
Without turning, she answered coolly "We're grand, Pinkie, just a packet of Bensons didn't go through". She took back the cigarettes and pushed them slowly through until they beeped. "Eh, six forty-five Seán", she said, accepting the ten-euro note he had already prepared.

"It's not the first time something didn't go through today, is it Nancy. And I'd prefer if you called me Gerard, or Mr. Moran."
Pinkie had picked up his nickname when as a four-year-old he'd taken to poking the tip of his little finger up his anus and running after the other children, forcing them to smell it. He'd presumably given up the practice a while since, but the name had stuck like **** to a new shoe.
"Aye, I think there's something wrong with the scanner Pi... Ger, it's not been right all week." Moran wasn't convinced, but didn't want to force the issue, preferring instead to give his departing employee a gentle warning, for both their sakes. He was ultimately responsible for any major checkout errors occurring on his shift and could ill afford to let Nancy or anyone else give away the shop's goods, little and all as he cared about how much profit they made.
"Just be careful, right Nancy, you know the story as well as I do."

She knew he was right, but was annoyed with him correcting her in front of the customers, especially in front of Seán Curran, and this close to the end. She whipped around and scowled at him.
"Ah for feck's sake, Ger, I'm ten minutes from walking out the door forever. You could go easy on me for once, don't you think?"
Moran held up both palms and stepped back, preferring to let her get on with what was left of her job and clean up the mess in the till afterwards. Seán was at the door when she turned back. She waved after him – "See ya Seán!" – as he pushed the door open with his movie-double bum and nodded back to her. Two.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the last person she'd hoped to see at this exact point in her life. Her heart dropped two floors and her head instinctively ducked behind the Plexiglass divider as he passed in front of her field of vision, three aisles over. Daring a second look, her insides were pleased to realise it wasn't him at all, nor even anyone that looked like him. He was wearing a black anorak, that was it, but that was all it took to set her off in a panic these days. That ****er was everywhere she looked.

Ciara McArdle barely reached the height of the checkout on her tippy-toes, so she flung the Mars bar and colouring book onto the belt and almost off the other side, her tongue pinched between milk teeth in determination.
"Hiya Ciara!" whooped Nancy, delighted to see the wee girl.
She was so funny with her lop-sided pigtails and the way she always walked as though she were on her way to an important board meeting.
"Hi Nancy!" squealed the energetic squirt, holding up both hands cupping a bunch of coins whose total was well below the cost of the book and bar.

Her Mammy always gave her just enough to cover one of the cheap colouring books, the ones made with grey, recycled paper and generic images of badly-drawn animals and stars and moons, but Ciara of course went straight for the Tellytubbies or Dora the Explorer, as yet blithely unaware of the restrictions of economics which governed her parents' expenditure. Nancy hadn't the heart to try and explain that the merchandised publications were beyond the little girl's budget and didn't want to risk running it through as a freebie so soon after her scolding from the acting boss. Saying nothing, she scanned and bagged the kid's goodies, took her pennies and chipped in the difference from her own pocket. If it was that easy buy a smile for everyone... She grinned widely as the nipper strutted to the double-doors, screaming "Bye Nancyyy!" after her, and her lips grazed her ears as she clapped eyes on her last customer, patiently waiting for her friend to do the honours one final time.

"Stooory, chicken?" bellowed Aoife Nic An Rí, grabbing Nancy by the shoulders and pulling her forward, crushing her up against the Perspex divider separating client and cashier as she strait-jacketed her arms.
"So this is i', yer last ever customer in this shi'ehole. Yeh must be so exsoirah?"

Aoife loved to overplay her Dublin accent which seemed to grow thicker the further away she moved from the capital. Back home, her big-city twang was much more modulated, almost genteel; down the country it took on the overcooked flavour of a Roddy Doyle caricature. She wore it with zealous pride, a Dub in exile, much as she wore the plunge-neck mauve sweater currently fighting a losing battle to conceal her bounteous bosom. A half-dozen rolled-gold bangles jangled as she enveloped her soon-to-be unemployed friend, her black-dyed clutter of curls combining with her large upper body to completely obscure the cashier.

"So jealous of you, you lucky bitch. What time are you flyin'?" she asked, finally allowing Nancy room to breathe.
"Half-eleven tomorrow from Dublin, couple of hours wait in Heathrow and then off to Lima. Can't wait!"
"Peru, isn't it? Is that where that place is you're always on about, Muchow Pichow?"
"Yeah, Machu Picchu is down south a bit. I'll get a bus there after, maybe stop at the beach on the way down. I've nothin' planned you know, no hotel or anything. Am I cracked?"
High, discordant notes of worry disrupted the symphony of her joy, the euphoria of her release from this job, this town, that bastard. Her heart was singing goodbye to LoValu, waving a handkerchief to County Mayo and all who lived there, but it was also drumming faster at the thought of what she was letting herself in for.
"Mental, woman, a complete looper, and I wouldn't love you any other way. Here, you won't forget to e-mail me, send me pictures of Lima and Macho Picho and all the gorgeous Latin men you'll be shaggin', sure you won't?"

Nancy promised. Not for all the world would she miss sharing the moments to come with her best friend. She'd tried several times to get Aoife to come along, but work and old debts would not afford the Dubliner the luxury, even for a week. Besides, this was Nancy's dream, a vision she had to follow. Ever since she'd first laid eyes on the Inca Ruins on the National Geographic channel, she'd known that one day she'd stand above it and look down into the sacred valley.

"What is it, summer over there now? You'll be tryin' on yer new bikini while we're back here in feckin' Crossmolina wrapped up in our woollies." A twinge of envy couldn't tarnish the happiness Aoife felt for her friend, whom she knew needed this break more than anyone. "Just think, no more taking ****e from that little bollocks Moran or the wanker customers this place attracts", she went on, marvelling at how free the next few minutes would make Nancy.
"Ah, he's grand, most of the time he's sweet, he's just doin' his job, like", Nancy defended Pinkie, who'd had her back a few times over the years, in fairness to him.
Aoife sighed rawly and shook her leonine mane, hands on her broad hips in mock scolding. The brows above her kohl-black eyelids flattened.

"Not a minute too soon, missus, you're beginning to talk like one of them. Right so, bag of apples, fusilli pasta, an avocado you could break kneecaps with, wholegrain rice for healthy bastards, tin of tomatoes, RTE Guide, vanilla ice-cream, cashews, three cans of Bulmers and a litre of milk. Ten items, no less, so you can say you were worked up to the last minute. Oh, and a packet of gee-stoppers!" she added, remembering the box of tampons in the bottom of the basket.
Nancy giggled at her crude choice of terms for the feminine hygiene products.

"Ah crap, that's eleven! I'll have to put something back, or go to another checkout", she mocked. "Or... idea!" Making sure she caught the assistant manager's eye before continuing, Aoife picked up a can of cider from the conveyor and cracked it open, brought it to her glossed, bee-stung lips and jerked her head back, gobbling half the tin in a rapid slug.
"Gwan, will yeh", she urged Nancy, before knocking back the rest of the cider.

Nancy needed no second invitation to follow suit, grabbing a second can and pouring some of the lukewarm apple booze down her throat. Pinkie was on them in a flash, clearly torn between his duty to throw the pair of them out and a desire to grab the third can and join in. He managed a weak "come on girls!" from a safe distance. That Aoife intimidated him no end, with her tough manners and the way she had of looking at you like you were ten years old. He wouldn't mind so much but he was mad into her, her and her massive laugh, her who-gives-a-****e attitude and that body. Oh, that body. She was a real Amazon, the kind of woman he dreamed of taming. None of them skinny yokes of models for him. If there were more Aoife Nic An Rís on the catwalks, the world would be a better place for lads like Pinkie Moran.

"Twenty-four seventy six please miss", grinned Nancy, regretting that the situation required her to charge her friend the full amount.
"Robbery! I'm never comin' back here again!" smiled Aoife, counting out the symbolic coins which added up to the exact and final amount Nancy Quinn would bill a LoValu customer.
"And me and all", she agreed, her voice catching slightly as she pushed the till drawer shut. In some weird way she'd miss the place.

[EileenG]

Very entertaining, very well observed, lots of meticulously drawn characters, a real sense of place.

I just wonder: what's the point? How does it advance the story? What is it giving us that we need to know?

I know it would be heart breaking, but I think you could cut out some of it.

[pickarooney]

Cheers, Eileen. The point of this chapter is to introduce a character who will be one of the protagonists for the rest of the book. Her motivations for leaving her job and the country and going to do something extraordinary are laid out as well as the background to the psychological terror which plagues her and with which she battles later. There's also the set-up for a minor betrayal and of course an insight into the character herself, to try and create some empathy for her in the reader.

Can you give me any specific examples of bits which could be thrown out to improve it? I'm hopeless at that.

[EileenG]

Assuming Nancy is the character you want to introduce, I'd play up her reactions and made less of the other characters. There's too much back story on all the customers, none of whom will probably reappear in the book (maybe Sean?) I'd be quite happy refering to them as "the auld bitch" or "the retired school teacher".

You might want to take a look at your use of adjectives. "cheap plastic watch", "meagre shopping", "dromedarian hunch". "fake black leather", "flat brown cap", "ancient head", "favourite mantra". Allow some nouns to stand on their own.

[pickarooney]

Originally Posted by EileenG

Assuming Nancy is the character you want to introduce, I'd play up her reactions and made less of the other characters. There's too much back story on all the customers, none of whom will probably reappear in the book (maybe Sean?) I'd be quite happy refering to them as "the auld bitch" or "the retired school teacher".

Wouldn't that pretty much remove the 'sense of place'? I mean, I know you're right in that the characters are overdescribed, but would it not be really, really dull if they were just 'the old man', 'the policeman' etc. ?

[EileenG]

Your job as the writer is to keep the sense of place, but you've asked the reader to keep track of a lot of different characters, most of whom will never appear again. I'd give a quick description of them, focus more on how she reacts to them, and shorten the whole thing.

For instance, I really liked the way Nancy reacted to the old bitch buying a "cow in kit form", that showed a lot about Nancy's personality, and I didn't need to know the name of the bitch.

Towards the end, I found I was scanning over the customers, just information overload.

You've got ten fully described characters in there, plus a mother and a mysterious figure. That's too much for what is really just an introduction to Nancy.

[pickarooney]

Right, I'm beginning to get what you mean. It didn't occur to me that readers would actively try and retain information on the 'scenery' characters but of course now that you mention it the reader would have no way of knowing who might show up again.

I gave them all names to illustrate the small-town suffocation of the place, but I could easily just dispose of half of them and as you say, even though Nancy might know them well, the reader doesn't need to, so cull the background and - this is the bit I really don't know how to do - make her react to them... this stuff is way harder than actually writing a book

Is this any better, for example?
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Nancy Quinn pulled back the sleeve of work coat and glanced at her watch for the second-last time that day, before scanning the old man's groceries through her till. Tin of baked beans, small cauliflower, packet of hickory-smoked rashers.

"Afternoon, Mr. Gogarty, and how are you?" she beamed.

He smiled up weakly from under his hunched back and flat cap. As always, he'd forgotten to weigh the vegetable, or refused to do it on principle. Nancy rarely had the heart to make him trundle back and put it on the scales, preferring to nip off and print the label herself. It was stupid, when you thought about it, weighing a caulie. Anywhere else they were a unit price, but LoValu always had to be different.

[me-skywalker]

I liked it, very indepth and has a good yearn to it..

One or two small things i noticed... Too much dialogue and so many minute details on each individual person and observation.

I feel there's too much conversational writing in the piece, there are other writing technique's for dialogue between characters eg;

'Ah hello how are ya' Nancy said.......

I might try

They exchanged cheap pleasantries.... etc

Instead of literally using the he said she said tone you can cut out some of the dialouge to let it flow better.

Also on Nancy herself. It does give a sense that she is very observational and intelligent. Also some of her observations come across cold and judgemental. From reading this alone I wouldnt feel so much empathy for the character too much but in saying that theres obviously other chapters where that would be played on to greater effect.

Hope you keep writing and produce more good material.

[pickarooney]

So I've killed off the child and thinned out Dermot's description. Aoife and Pinkie reappear later in the book, but none of the others do. I'm still having a hard time with Sean and the sergeant though.

Cold, judgmental, intelligent - it's really interesting that you read that from the passage as I have a completely different image of her. 'Cold' I find especially strange, but it has been said to me before that are no likable characters in the whole book. I think I'm a closet misanthropist

[EileenG]

Originally Posted by pickarooney

Right, I'm beginning to get what you mean. It didn't occur to me that readers would actively try and retain information on the 'scenery' characters but of course now that you mention it the reader would have no way of knowing who might show up again.

I gave them all names to illustrate the small-town suffocation of the place, but I could easily just dispose of half of them and as you say, even though Nancy might know them well, the reader doesn't need to, so cull the background and - this is the bit I really don't know how to do - make her react to them... this stuff is way harder than actually writing a book

Is this any better, for example?
----

Nancy Quinn pulled back the sleeve of work coat and glanced at her watch for the second-last time that day, before scanning the old man's groceries through her till. Tin of baked beans, small cauliflower, packet of hickory-smoked rashers.

"Afternoon, Mr. Gogarty, and how are you?" she beamed.

He smiled up weakly from under his hunched back and flat cap. As always, he'd forgotten to weigh the vegetable, or refused to do it on principle. Nancy rarely had the heart to make him trundle back and put it on the scales, preferring to nip off and print the label herself. It was stupid, when you thought about it, weighing a caulie. Anywhere else they were a unit price, but LoValu always had to be different.

I liked this much better. It put the spotlight on Nancy, while giving a slice of small town life where everyone knows everyone else. And I knew from the beginning that the old man wasn't going to be the arch-villain.

[EileenG]

Originally Posted by pickarooney

So I've killed off the child and thinned out Dermot's description. Aoife and Pinkie reappear later in the book, but none of the others do. I'm still having a hard time with Sean and the sergeant though.

Cold, judgmental, intelligent - it's really interesting that you read that from the passage as I have a completely different image of her. 'Cold' I find especially strange, but it has been said to me before that are no likable characters in the whole book. I think I'm a closet misanthropist

I wouldn't worry about it. You want a fully rounded character, which means the odd nasty thought as well. She's obviously a really nice girl, who does all sorts of good things for her customers, she's allowed to have sarky thoughts about the unpleasant ones. Too much sweetness and lights makes me want to puke.