Peg meandered towards the kitchen, the heart of the house. But what was here for her? No bright gingham tablecloth like in her doll’s house, for starters, only some grubby thing splattered with stains. The smell of bone soup and burnt rashers clinging to the curtains. More pictures of the Virgin Mary than Peg could count, as if she were a family member. And Granny Doyle’s wireless, the radio she kept on all day, so the patter of indignant listeners and reassuring men filled the room, no space for any thoughts.
If Aunty Mary had been visiting, Peg might have been able to escape to the back garden. Here at least was some quiet, the hedge nice and big to hide behind, a large stone where fairies could leave presents, so Aunty Mary said, her face gleeful when they overturned the slab and uncovered an old sixpence beside the scurrying woodlice. Aunty Mary had the key to the shed, too, and here, beside the reek of petrol from the lawnmower and the jumble of abandoned possessions, were piles of books in cardboard boxes. Peg longed to put them on a shelf and move them about until they were arranged by colour or size or whatever took her fancy. She couldn’t read them yet, but Aunty Mary left her be. No aren’t you a brave girl? or you’ll be a good girl and help your gran, won’t you? Aunty Mary even gave Peg some books with pictures, to be getting on with, while Peg took ‘a little break’ from school to help out her granny with the triplets. But Aunty Mary was in Galway, teaching other children. The back door was locked and Peg didn’t have the key, even if she could have reached the handle.
Aunty Mary might have understood why Peg was so upset at the loss of her copybook, another victim of the move. Peg had cried for a solid day when she realized her copybook was gone, her tears intensifying when Granny Doyle came home with a new one, its lines all the wrong size and none of Peg’s pictures or attempts at the alphabet preserved inside.
‘I want my copybook,’ Peg dared to say, face red with the rage, fists clenched at such an unjust world.
‘Ah love,’ Danny Doyle sighed, patting her on the head and shuffling up the stairs, no use, as usual.
‘I went to Nolans special for that,’ Granny Doyle said, in a voice that was trying to be nice, even as she opened up the impostor copybook.
‘I want my copybook,’ Peg repeated, wishing that Aunty Mary or her mother or somebody sensible were there, but she only had Granny Doyle, who turned to the counter and started to chop onions. Granny Doyle had a formidable back, which tensed to show just how much she wasn’t listening, but Peg wouldn’t let her win this fight. ‘I want my copybook,’ she howled, hoping that the words might smash windows or send the house tumbling down or right the ways of this wrong world. But all they did was send Granny Doyle’s hands to her brow, onions abandoned as she turned around.
‘Be quiet or you’ll wake the triplets.’
This could not stop Peg, whose words had turned into wails.
‘I want my copybook!’
‘Listen, Missy, I won’t tolerate this carry-on …’
Peg would carry on crying until she exploded, I want my copybook and I want my old house and I want my mammy clear in every scream and sob.
‘Just shut up!’
‘I want my copybook! I want—’
The slap pulled the air from Peg’s lungs. A quick tap across the face, it only stung for a second, but Peg felt the air in the room shift in that instant. Granny Doyle’s face reddened. She turned back to her onions as if nothing had happened, leaving Peg stock-still in the middle of the kitchen, her face turning white from the shock of it. Something her mother had never done. A violation. Peg knew then that her tears would be of no use here. She swallowed them inside, thinking that this was revenge of sorts. Fury filled her instead, a colder kind that kept her face pale. Her composure remained, even as Granny Doyle turned around in frustration – ‘see, you’re after waking the triplets’ – Peg’s mask fixed as Granny Doyle made a great show of taking away the new copybook and bringing it to ‘somebody who’ll appreciate all I do for them’. Lines had been drawn that day: there would be no more need for slaps or tears. Peg understood there was no out-wailing a baby; if she wanted her way in 7 Dunluce Crescent, she’d have to be inventive.
‘Are you all right, love? Would you not want to go outside and get some fresh air?’
It was Mrs Nugent, in to heat up the kettle for a fresh round of tea. This was all grown-ups did: made tea and smoked and offered Peg things she didn’t want.
‘I can see if my Clare’s ones are about? Tracey might even let you play with her new Barbie, though you’re not allowed to give it a perm, the cheek of her, trying to make it out like me! Though, I says, you’d be paying a lot more for a doll with this quality hair, wouldn’t you!’
Peg looked longingly out at the back garden, where the books Aunty Mary had brought were locked up in the shed. There wasn’t a hope that Mrs Nugent would read her mind.
‘Staying here to look after the young ones, are you, pet? Aren’t you a brilliant help to your gran? Janey, I wish some of my lot were more like you!’
Peg left Mrs Nugent, who continued to chat to the radio, and trudged upstairs. She would look in on her siblings, cosied up in their cots in the biggest room in the house. They weren’t even cute, like Peg’s doll. All they did was sleep and cry and stare, the last action being apparently a great achievement. ‘Isn’t he a great one for looking at you?’ the ladies in the porch said. ‘Oh, he’s a sharp one,’ Granny Doyle agreed. He was John Paul Doyle, the only one of the triplets who warranted such attention. Granny Doyle had recognized her future Pope immediately in the runt of the litter, the one who had struggled to stay alive. Granny Doyle knew that cunning trumped primogeniture and here was the Jacob to Esau, a battler who could cut the queue to the head of the Vatican: Ireland’s first Pope, John Paul Doyle!
A great one for his poos: that was how Peg saw John Paul. Helping Granny Doyle with the endless parade of cloth nappies through the house, Peg had excellent insight into the triplets’ characters. While Damien produced nice little nuggets of poo that could be easily cleaned up, John Paul’s explosive shits were messy and unpredictable. A testament to the luxury of riches that Granny Doyle piled upon him – for he would be the first to have a scoop of mashed potato; the baby who’d get the extra bit of bottle – but Peg knew that there was more to it than nurture: it was John Paul’s nature to cause trouble, something he excelled at.
Any sensible person would have placed their bets for papal stardom on the other two babies, docile creatures who were happier sleeping than staring. Damien had the capacity to sit quietly in his high chair; unlike John Paul, he did not need to play ‘food or missile?’ with every object that crossed his path. He was as placid as could be; he was doomed from the get-go.
Rosie was a trickier character to get a handle on. The only one named by her father, Rosie somehow managed to wriggle away from the moniker of ‘Catherine Rose Doyle’ before she could talk. Even as a baby there was something vague and dreamy about Rosie Doyle; she had none of the solidity of a ‘Rose’ or a ‘Catherine’. Against the perversity of John Paul and the purity of Damien, Rosie was a perpetual hoverer, a swirl of characteristics, none of them fussed enough to dominate. For the record, her poos, those reliable auguries of the future, were hard to classify, trickles that were neither solid nor liquid, not quite committing themselves to any shade of the spectrum.
One thing Peg was sure of: they were all united against her. If there were any magic to be found in 7 Dunluce Crescent, it was all concentrated in the triplets’ room; eerie the ways in which they seemed to be connected, as if some elastic band that Peg could never see looped them together. How else to explain how they could all wake up at the same instant or wail as one? Or not quite as one, Peg realized, as she creaked open the door innocently and peered at her slumbering siblings. John Paul woke