Hand In The Till

No thugs loitered in the damp beyond the windshield, but a syringe and soiled condoms littered the pavement. William Skivvins tutted his distaste as he parked his BMW on the cobblestones next to a burnt-out phone booth. It was covered with misspelled graffiti of kinky sex and hatred for Queen Elizabeth II. He maneuvered his body to shield the vulgarity from his pride and joy, nine-year-old Victoria, sitting in the passenger seat with a face on her most would slap with glee. She was nodding that head and tapping her foot to some pop tune of the day blaring from her iPod headphones. William tapped her on the shoulder. Victoria heaved an inward sigh and turned down the volume. “I’d feel better if you came into the shop with me, petal,” her father said. He had to collect the previous day's takings. “It’s no bother, daddy. I’ll stay here.” Victoria flashed him a smirk he mistook for a smile, then cranked the volume again. William ran a hand over his cropped hair and the blue tie which complemented his brown suit. For once, he had something to worry about more than the presence of germs: leaving his daughter defenseless in that hardened neighborhood of broken beer bottles and torrid murals of political violence which favored British tanks barreling over mobs of fleeing Catholics. The 35-year-old entrepreneur owned five Sav-U-Mors, grim corner shops scattered across Derry City which sold everything from overpriced turnips to generic tampons. This one in the Moorside was the most grim. As members of the privileged Protestant class, William and his daughter were in enemy territory. “Keep the door locked, then,” he instructed in his precise voice which, together with his weekly manicures, ensured all male shelf-stackers and couriers kept their backs firmly to a wall when in his presence. “And don’t utter a word to anyone. You know what they’re like around here.” “Okay, daddy,” Victoria said ‘sweetly,’ her blonde asymmetrical designer hairdo bobbing. “Oh, it’s so hot here in the car.” She wriggled out of her school blazer, even more confident now that her pressed white shirt made her anonymous. “Cheerio, then.” William exited the car. The moment he rounded the corner, keys flicking in his hand, Victoria was out the door. Her pert nose sniffed the rank air for action, Lady Gaga the soundtrack to her mission of violence. She was a marauder in a dangerous land, seeking casual violence against the indigenous people on that side of the River Foyle, those who were less cultured, less intelligent, less human than her; her schoolmates, her uncles and cousins, her grandparents had taught her all about them, those who made up three quarters of the city and insisted the Pope was Christ on Earth. Derry, Northern Ireland was a divided city, where the Catholic majority and the Protestant minority had spent decades waging war against each other. Although the Peace Process had begun years earlier, and the British paratroopers patrolling the streets with semi-automatic weapons and land-rovers were but a memory of the “Troubles” of the ‘70s and ‘80s, it was taking perceptibly longer for the two communities to harmonize. They drank in separate pubs, shopped in separate supermarkets, got their perms in separate salons. But sometimes a step down the wrong street in the area found one facing a member of the opposing religion. And though Derry had been transformed into a most handsome showcase of European history, culture and technological progress, and both sides of the community were experiencing an unprecedented growth in financial luxury and sophistication, the Moorside seemed mired in a desperate past, the Euros pouring in from the EU having passed it by. This was where Victoria now hunted. Her father had parked aside a row of ramshackle shops that Victoria presumed these particularly disadvantaged people visited for their paltry provisions. Her eyes eagerly scanned the doorways of the butcher’s, the news-agent's, the chemist’s, but there were no signs of life anywhere except an old drunk passed out against the wall of the off-license. Victoria supposed on this side of town few people had money to actually shop. She skipped over the tattered pant legs and considered the tramp. She had heard that, in America, teens set them alight and laughed at their flapping, burning bodies, but she had no matches. She was heading to the car to get some when she heard a scrabbling from around the corner of the butcher’s. She peered down the alley. Under clotheslines riddled with forgotten fashion, a girl with lifeless black hair and a yellow hair clip clawed glumly through a garbage can. The girl, about the same age and vaguely malnourished, Victoria thought, had a frayed PowerPuff Girls handbag dangling from her left elbow and clutched a black plastic bag that looked half-full of the spoils of her scavenging. Victoria could barely control her delight: the perfect victim. She muted “Poker Face” and went in for the kill. “Look at the shape of you!” she snorted. “Rummaging through the rubbish like a wild beast! You’re a disgrace to the human race! Coke or Pepsi?” Siofra Flood froze with one hand in the garbage can, a look of mortification and dumb fear on her face. It was the question every Derry schoolgirl dreaded. The wrong answer could leave her with a clawed face, bruised lip, or tattered clothes covered with dog feces. “I’m asking you a question, you vulgar creature,” Victoria barked, taking a step closer. “Did you get your ears from a rubbish bin as well?” “I heard ye!” Siofra replied with a slight tremble; the girl was a full foot taller than her, and had an almost demonic gleam in her eyes. “And which one are ye, hi? Coke or Pepsi?” “Answer me first, or you’ll feel my fist against your nose!” They squared off amongst the broken beer bottles in the alley like two starved Rottweilers given a sniff at fresh meat. The question being asked had nothing to do with soda, but religion. Coke or Pepsi? meant Catholic or Protestant? Friend or foe? Victoria was obviously Pepsi: not only did she have a West Brit accent and the How Great Thou Art school’s gray and purple striped skirt, the white headphones trailing from her ears screamed their extravagance; few girls from the Moorside could afford an iPod. Siofra slipped her bulky CD player on its strap behind her back in shame. “Scrounging through the rubbish for food to eat?” Victoria sneered. “You must be Coke, then; a filthy Catholic bitch!” "Me granny Heggarty made me two boiled eggs for me breakfast,” Siofra insisted, her cheeks burning. She had eaten one piece of butterless toast, burnt. “What are you looking for, then, new clothes to wear? It looks like you need them to me, what with that bargain bin frock and those ratty tights hanging from your skeletal legs. Purple and blue don’t even match, you know.” “Me...me mammy has me collect tins from the rubbish every time I'm out,” Siofra finally admitted. “She’s three months to live from the cancer that’s eating her brain.” Her guilt-trip comeback didn’t seem to work. “And ye’d better leave me be, as she be’s working off the last of her shifts at the Sav-U-Mor, right around the corner!” She pointed feverishly out of the alley. Victoria was surprised, but not shocked: in a city that small, everybody and everything seemed related to everyone and everything else, so such coincidences abounded. But she would never reveal that her father owned the Sav-U-Mor, let alone that he was probably speaking to Siofra’s mother even as Victoria attacked her. And Victoria was certainly going to attack Siofra. “If your mammy works there, it’s odds-on you’re a filthy Fenian,” Victoria decided with a growl. “And ye're a Proddy cow! With a face like a busted cabbage!” “Your mammy can’t save you now.”