A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle Page A

going to meet them at Enniscorthy station.
    Now, fourteen years after Scarlett had been born—it was July 1980—they were heading back to Wexford in her dad’s car. They were in Arklow now, going down its one crummy street, and the car was hardly moving. There was a tractor in front of them, crawling.
    â€œHow come every time I drive out of Dublin I get stuck behind a bloody tractor?”
    No one answered.
    â€œIt’s the same tractor as well,” said her dad. “Waiting to ambush me.”
    â€œPoor Gerry.”
    â€œPoor bloody me.”
    They were embarrassing.
    More ash was landing on her arm. She wished it hurt, so she could scream—because she really, really wanted to.
    She remembered her dad telling her about that first time he went to Wexford.
    â€œRight,” he said—Scarlett was sitting beside him, in his big chair. “Where was I? So, we got off the train in Istanbul—”
    â€œDad!”
    â€œOkay. We got off the train in Enniscorthy.”
    â€œWhich, by the way, has a lot more going for it than Istanbul,” said her mother, who was sitting in her corner.
    â€œMammy!”
    â€œIs there a strawberry fair in Istanbul, is there?”
    â€œMammy!”
    â€œOr a Vinegar Hill?”
    â€œMammy!”
    â€œOkay,” said her dad. “We got off the train in Enniscorthy. It was dark.”
    â€œIt was,” said her mother. “It often is at night.”
    â€œYour uncle Jim—James the Baby—was there, waiting. A nice fella.”
    â€œHe is. A fine man. It’s a mystery how he never found himself a woman.”
    â€œMammy!”
    Her father spoke over Scarlett’s head, to her mother.
    â€œIt took you a fair while to find yourself a man, missis,” he said.
    â€œAnd what a man I found, God love me.”
    â€œAhem,” said Scarlett. “I’m here.”
    â€œCheeky as ever.”
    Her dad looked down at her.
    â€œSo, anyway,” he said. “We got into your uncle’s old Ford.”
    â€œI sat in the front,” said her mother. “Because I’m taller than your dad.”
    â€œAnd significantly older.”
    â€œSo, I needed the legroom.”
    â€œSo, anyway,” said her dad. “I got into the back. Because, like your mother said, I’m a bit of a leprechaun.”
    â€œI said no … such … thing!”
    â€œWell, actually, you did.”
    â€œWhen did I ever call you a leprechaun?”
    â€œThe first time we met.”
    â€œI didn’t.”
    â€œYou bloody well did.”
    â€œWhen did I say that?”
    â€œAt the match,” said her father. “At Croker—Croke Park. Dublin against Wexford,” he told Scarlett. “That’s where I met your mother. And we won—Dublin did.”
    â€œYou were lucky.”
    â€œI was standing on Hill Sixteen and I asked the tall woman standing in front of me to shift a bit so I could watch the Dubs trounce the bog men, and she turned to me and said—”
    â€œDon’t listen to him.”
    â€œâ€˜Why?’ she said,” said Scarlett’s father. “‘Are you some class of a leprechaun?’”
    â€œI said it before I knew what I was saying. It’s too late to apologize, I suppose.”
    â€œScarlett,” said her dad. “Have you ever heard the sound of twenty-five thousand people laughing at you at the same time?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt’s a horrible experience,” he said. “Still, though,” said her mother. “You thought I was gorgeous.”
    â€œWell, that’s true,” he said. “I’ve always had a thing about giraffes.”
    â€œCan we get back to the story, please?” said Scarlett.
    â€œSo, anyway,” said her dad. “I threw our cases—
I
carried the cases, mind you—I threw them into the boot of Jim’s jalopy and got into the backseat, all set to go. And