Bridget Keehan

Extract from Identity Theft

Chapter 1. The Changing Room

I am about to commit my first independent act of shoplifting. I’ve nicked stuff before and got away with it: a small compact of silver dream eye shadow from Boots, which slipped up my sleeve, and a thin silver bangle with a tiny heart hanging from the clasp, that I tried on then ‘forgot’ to take off. These little steals usually happen with my best mate, Murph, who doesn’t need to nick stuff cause her parents buy her whatever she wants. She just does it for the laugh. I love her but she can be a liability in a shoplifting situation. Unlike me she doesn’t blend easily into the background, she’s model tall but not model skinny and never steps out the door without her bright red lipstick and big hoop earrings. Compared to her I’m the quiet one. I blush easy and although I try to look people in the eye, in case they think I’m lying, I’d much rather focus on their chin.

When Dad asks how I’m going to earn a living when I leave home and I tell him, that I’m going to be an actress, I get why he laughs. He’s not one for taking things seriously, except money, he takes that very seriously.

‘There’s no money in acting Aisling, you’ll end up a sponger.’

‘What’s a sponger?’

‘A money leech. A parasite. Never a lender or a borrower be. Or if you do borrow make sure it’s off a bank and you never pay it back.’

Dad has a talent for making money, and for remembering lines from Shakespeare, but he’s not like other people’s dads who sweat their lives away on building sites or do boring office work. Losers, he calls them, wage slaves who waste their time doing what toffs tell them to. Like him, I want to be rich but I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a crook. There’s a part of me that is more like Mam and would rather keep my head down. Take shoplifting, it doesn’t come easy to me but at least I know how you go about it, whereas becoming an actress, well that’s a mystery.

So here I am in town on a Saturday afternoon, clutching a plastic Faircost supermarket bag in one hand and my small, beaded purse in the other. The purse is an embarrassment. It looks like a child’s. Inside is a scrunched fiver, my cash-in hand wage from my morning’s work of making beds and cleaning bogs at the Majestic Hotel, which is anything but. Logically, I know five quid will, at best, buy me a trendy t-shirt from Chelsea Girl, but I don’t intend to spend it, unless of course I bottle it. Nerves can sometimes get the better of me.

On entering the shop I clock an assistant at the till who barely acknowledges me as I head to the rails of swish new shirts. Quickly I find the one for me: black check and sleeveless. Notice another sales assistant to my left, rearranging a rack of jeans. I wander over and select the style I’m after. Shyly, I ask if there’s a size six. She smiles a Debbie Harry dazzler and pulls out a pair from the rack. Check if I can try them on along with the shirt. She nods her approval then leads me up the stairs to the changing rooms, shiny bangles jangling around her wrists.

In the Chelsea Girl changing room I stare at myself in the mirror and for once like what I see. My hair, recently bleached, to look more like Murph’s, matches my new, cool outfit. I finger the soft denim and turn to check myself from a side-on angle. The shirt goes so well with the pale grey jeans. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are pumping ‘The Message’ through the shop’s speakers and I dance to the music within the confines of the cubicle, trying to shake off the nerves fluttering in my gut. Dad’s voice in my head reminding me, only stupid crooks get caught. Most of his misdemeanours have gone undetected and, on the rare occasions he has come to the attention of the authorities, he has protested his innocence and never yet faced prison. If I get caught, I have failed. I pull the label from the waist of the jeans to check the price tag again. No way can I pay. Maybe I should put these costly clothes back on the rails to wait for someone who can afford them.

The door to the changing room is a grey painted shutter and peering through the slats it seems that no one else is up here, but then I hear heels and jangly bangles approaching. The voice of the glossy lipped, Debbie Harry lookalike purrs through the door, ‘how are you getting on?’

‘Trying to make up my mind,’ I giggle as if she cracked a joke.

‘Let me know if you need any help.’

‘Can you tell me how fast you can run?’

Of course, I don’t say that, but it’s what I’m thinking as I hear her heels tip tapping the floor as she walks away. I reckon her shiny black stilettos will slow her down a fair bit should she decide to leg it after me.

Try to figure out my options: I could stuff the clothes into my bag and attempt to walk casually out of the shop. But the plastic carrier’s not big enough, the bulk of the jeans will protrude, no good. Only stupid crooks get caught. Images flood my mind: me in handcuffs, pushed by the police into the back seat of their Panda, whilst disapproving shoppers look on. Try telling myself that it’s not worth the risk but the thought of leaving the shop with my mission unaccomplished weighs me down. Lean my damp forehead on the cold mirror. Think about what Dad would do.

Dad has instilled a moral manifesto around crime: never steal from an individual or small business but big business and governments are fair game. Take any chance you can to get one over on them. This is opportunity knocks, I tell myself. No store detective and two assistants, not much older than me, who probably don’t care if an item or two goes adrift. And Chelsea Girl is not a girl, she’s a big fat corporation run by men in suits with loads more money than me. I’m their charitable donation. A new plan hatches: keep the outfit on, put my old shit clothes on top, that way Faircost carrier bag is as light and empty as when I walked in.

The shop music changes to Dexy’s Midnight Runners, ‘C’mon Eileen’ and I sing along, changing the lyrics to ‘C’mon Aisling’. The music gods are calling me to action. It’s happening. I pull my baggy, beige jumper over the top of the shirt and my deepening red face. Think of my parents’ wrath if I get caught, but still I continue, pulling my navy-blue, crimplene trousers over the jeans, the beat of the music spurring me on. I look bulky wearing two layers, and nerves are off the scale as I swing through the shutters of the changing room door. Try to walk casually down the stairs to the ground floor, hoping the shop assistants won’t notice that I’ve put on ‘weight’. Sunlight is shining through the windows and the wide glass doorway signalling my exit is only a few feet away. Turn to look at ‘Debbie Harry’, who is now stood by the till with a hanger in her hand. Her eyes scan me as she smiles, an automatic glassy-eyed smile, ‘any good?’

I mean to say, ‘sorry, I left them upstairs, should I have bought them down? Would you be able to put them by for me and I’ll pop back later?’ Instead I make a whimpering sound and pray that the beat of ‘C’mon Eileen’ has drowned it out. I follow the whimper with a ‘no, sorry’ and hear the fearful wobble in my voice. I’ve forgotten to breathe. Oh Christ, I think she is on to me, but she says nothing, just keeps smiling her strange, vacant smile. I walk past her and make it through the front doors with no alarm sounding.

The daylight is blinding after the low lights of the shop. I gulp in air and walk as fast and direct as possible up the hill, past Boots and Marks & Sparks to the bus stop, expecting a hand to land on my shoulder at any moment. Feel the heat from the layers of clothes turning my body sweaty and damp. Bet my pits pong but can’t afford to drop the pace ‘cause I can see the number 17, my unsuspecting get-away vehicle already at the stop, filling up.

By the time I board the bus the adrenaline rush has subsided. I climb to the top-deck and sit in the front row seat, feeling proud and relieved as the bus pulls away and rumbles towards home. I got away with it! As I look out of the window to the pavement below, I can hear their voices, the voices of the kids who always have nice new clothes. They’re asking me, Where did you buy that shirt and those jeans? I smile and say, My dad brought them for me.

Next day Mam asks where I got the new clothes hanging in my wardrobe. I decide to tell her the truth.

‘I got them from Chelsea Girl.’

‘And where did you get the money?’

Telling her the full story is a touch risky ‘cause she’s inclined to go through the motions of reacting like a normal parent, but I like to give her cause to worry. It’s the only time she gives me her full attention.

The interrogation takes place in the kitchen. It’s just me, Mam and Dad. The other kids have all left home. The rule in our house is that when you turn sixteen you must find your own digs, and I am soon to reach the age of out-stayed welcome. Older brothers, Seamus and Mick, born within two years of each other, and almost ten years ahead of me, have long gone. Older sister, Caitlin, and Dad’s favourite, has recently fallen from grace having left home to move in with her boyfriend. Mam and Dad say she is living in sin, although they don’t really believe in all that hell and heaven stuff and never go to Mass. But they tell me to keep quiet about it in case news of her shame should leak back to relatives in Ireland.

So back to question time and too long a silence as Mam waits for my answer. I look at Dad, who is filling the kettle, and then back at Mam, who is wiping crumbs from the kitchen table with intense concentration. I scratch at the label on the bottle of HP Sauce and make a little tear.

‘I took them.’ She stops wiping. ‘I stole them.’

‘You stole them?’

She looks at Dad with her cross face on: dark eyebrows furrowed, jaw muscles tight, cheeks turning pink. He plonks the kettle down on the gas ring, strikes a match, then looks at me with his hugely amused face on: eyes glinting with mischief, mouth in a half smile. ‘How did you do that?’

I describe how I checked out the joint to see if I was being watched, how I had considered my options, and then seized my chance. His approving laugh is as warm as the lit gas.

‘Jesus! What if you’d got caught?’ Mam’s voice is rising to shrill. Unlike Dad, Mam yearns for respectability, security and a law-abiding life. One in which the gas does not suddenly get cut off because the authorities discover that someone has illegally re-routed the supply. Knowing that any day the police, Inland Revenue or Social Security might come knocking, keeps her in a state of constant stress. Her biggest worry is saying the ‘wrong thing’ and dropping Dad in it. I sometimes worry about that too, but mostly I like being the one who answers the phone and pretends he isn’t home. He loves it when I do that. It makes him laugh.

He’s laughing now and I can see his reaction casting doubt in Mam’s mind on how she should respond. She settles for a pointing finger and a ‘Don’t you ever do that again. You’ll end up in jail.’ Dad adds, with a wink, ‘And if you do, you’re on your own, we’ll not be visiting you.’

Later that evening we sit in front of the television, digesting the roast and chuckling our way through an episode of Only Fools and Horses. As the credits roll, and the News begins, Mam nips out to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Dad is settled in his favourite leather-look armchair, a glass of Bell’s whiskey on the go. He leans forward as an item on election results in Ulster is reported. Gerry Adams appears and a crowd cheers.

‘You know, I always thought you took after your mother, but I think you’re more like me, a rebel.’

Me, the last in line, crowned rebel. The word conjures up Robin Hood; it joins with songs of the Irish rebellion that Dad likes to sing. His blue-eyes, warmed by the whisky, smile at me, ‘You did well today.’

‘But what if I’d been caught?’

‘Sure, there’s always that fear but if you box clever, and listen to your dad, you’ll not get caught, and if you do, just deny it. Remember, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’

Dad’s habit of quoting Shakespeare really gets going after a whisky. Sometimes, he is Hamlet, other times Mark Antony, but most often he is Macbeth. And he loves a monologue. ‘Would you listen to your man there, slagging off Adams. What does he know? Typical ignorance of the English establishment. The whole system is crooked Aisling. You have to learn how to beat it. But don’t worry your dad will show you how.’

Chapter 2. Becoming Lady Macbeth

Mr Lamb joins St Thomas Moore’s secondary school as a temporary replacement for our English teacher, Mrs Gillings, whose legs and belly have become strangely swollen as though some cruel trickster attached an air pump to her ankles. It turns out to be common old cancer rather than a rare inflatable condition and so Mr Lamb becomes a permanent fixture. Murph and I are intent on giving him grief, but when he announces that he’s putting on a production of Macbeth, I try not to look that fussed, but my heart beats faster at the news.

It’s Monday lunchtime and I’m hanging out in the library. Normally I’d be glued to Murph, cadging fags from Ken, the creepy caretaker, or persuading timid kids in the tuck shop queue to buy us a Bounty bar or Twix. But Murph’s in detention for messing around in Mass and the library is the only place in school where I can relax. But this is no sexy box of biscuits collection. There’s C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, which I’ve read and a collection of illustrated books about Sir Thomas Moore (namesake of our school) which I’ve avoided. The next shelf up is stacked with George Orwell and Thomas Hardy. Still, it’s rich pickings compared to home, where there is only the daily diet of the Bournemouth Echo, a book on the life and times of Al Capone, and a secret stash of Irish Republican news, An Phoblact, buried amongst disputed bills in Dad’s bureau.

Mr Lamb appears from nowhere and heads towards me just as I’m biting into my floppy, fish paste sandwich. Steel myself for a bollocking, ‘cause eating in the library is strictly forbidden, but all I get is, ‘Will you be attending auditions for the Scottish play, Aisling?’ Gulp my fish paste down in one.

‘Yes sir, I want to be an actress when I leave school.’

Immediately feel daft for saying this, mainly ‘cause I sound like a creep, but also because I expect a look of disbelief, or at least a raised eyebrow. But he comes back with a nod, as if I’d said I want to work in a cake shop. ‘No doubt you have the determination to achieve your ambition. See you in the school hall after class tomorrow.’ The bell rings, signalling the end of lunchtime and the three-minute warning for the start of afternoon lessons. Mr Lamb is already trotting out of the library. I follow slowly, knowing I have double Maths with Gillespie ahead of me.

Gillespie is the kind of teacher you never know where you are with: one moment jokey, next moment spitting with rage. He’s forever telling Murph and I to sit near his desk so that we are within punching range and he thinks it hilarious to throw things: chalk, a pen, a textbook, whatever is within easy reach of his disturbingly hairy hands. Whenever my mind drifts from fractions to daydreaming I’ll be startled back into reality by a flying object whacking my forehead. This used to happen frequently but lately I’ve learnt the knack of putting on a ‘paying attention face,’ and he’s fallen for it. All I do is adopt the furrowed brow of Mam whilst staring at the chalkboard with zealous intent. Meanwhile my mind, as Mam says, is away with the fairies.

Today, behind the glaze of my thousand-yard stare, are images of me playing the part of Lady Macbeth, with Mr Lamb’s words on repeat, No doubt you have the determination to fulfil your ambition. My daydream gets rudely interrupted, not by a Gillespie missile, but by Murph groaning and holding her arm upright. She has everyone’s attention, not least Gillespie’s. ‘Problem’, he says. It’s not clear whether he’s asking or labelling.

‘I’ve got really bad period pain, sir. I think I might need to vomit.’ ‘Best get yourself to the sick bay, girl. Go on, get a shift on!’

The thought of young bodily fluids is turning Gillespie’s already mottled face purple. ‘Can Aisling come with me, sir? Please. I think I might faint.’ My cheeks flush at her performance. The groaning is too much. She’s clutching her belly with one hand and the other hovers over her gob like she’s about to chuck. Gillespie sighs, he can see her game and is weighing up whether he can be bothered to challenge it. Pointing a finger of chalk at me, like it’s a weapon, he barks, ‘Take her to the sick bay, then come straight back. Go on, shoo!’

As soon as we are out of the classroom, Murph, under the stone statue eyes of Our Lady, experiences a miraculous recovery. We giggle our way past our Virgin Mother and run down the echoing corridor, flying high on the feeling of escape. We arrive breathless in the small loos by the Gym, where we normally sneak a fag before PE. There’s only three cubicles, which we quick check for occupancy, in case some sneak might be loitering. Not a soul. Murph sparks up a Benson & Hedges.

‘I have saved you from pie charts.’

‘For which I am truly grateful.’

‘Don’t bother going back, there’s only half an hour left. Turn up just before the end and say, sorry sir but it’s like a scene from Carrie out there, blood everywhere.’ That’s my cue to become mother of Carrie, as in the Sissy Spacek film, and say, in my best North American drawl, ‘You’re a woman now’, prompting Murph to mewl, ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Momma?’ On we go, repeating the lines and laughing so much we can barely breathe. Murph draws too deeply on her fag and begins coughing like a hag, then ends up with smoke in her eyes. She runs the cold tap from the basin and hands me the dog end. Cupping the water in her hands, she swallows, then grabs a paper towel to wipe her wet face.

‘Guess what, Lamb cornered me in the library and said I should audition for the play, so I’m gonna go.’

‘I thought you was planning on going anyway?’

‘Yeah. I’ve thought about it. Been practising a bit, but I don’t want to go on my own. Come with me.’

She blows her nose with the paper towel then takes the burning butt from me, drawing another puff before pushing it down the plug hole.

‘You know I hate that Shakespeare shit.’

She’s right, I do know, but I don’t want to go to the audition on my own. ‘Oh come on, it’ll be a laugh.’

‘What’s funny about reciting poetry?’

‘It’s not reciting, it’s acting, and it's drama, not poems. It’s a good story, once you get into it. C’mon, it’ll be fun.’

‘Mate, you sound like a Blue Peter presenter. No way am I getting on stage, I’d make a twat of myself. Look, I’d lie for you, I’d steal for you, but I draw a line at looking like a total arse for you.’

‘Maybe I won’t go. I’m bricking myself just thinking about it.’

‘Go. You’re good at voices, you should do an impersonation of your mum, or do Maggie Thatcher. Yeah, do Maggie, you’ll have ‘em.’

‘It’s not about doing impressions, it’s proper acting.’

‘Exactly. it’s gonna be thou this and thou that, to be or not to fucking be. Does my nut.’

‘Wrong play.’

‘See, told you. I’ll just embarrass myself. But you should go, you’re good at things like that. Practice now, go on. There’s no one here, go on.’

‘I only know a few lines.’

‘Yeah, well get on with it then’.

‘Hang on.’ I fish my exercise book from my bag where I’ve written out my favourite bits, mainly Lady Macbeth’s speeches. ‘It’s hard to just go into it. I’ve got to imagine this stinky bog is a castle.’

I’m stalling, feeling self-conscious, even though it’s only Murph. I wait for her to say something funny. She doesn’t. There’s a dripping tap and the sound of a cistern filling up. I try picturing castle walls, but the toilet tiles, yellowing from age and nicotine, refuse to budge. I avoid looking at Murph, fixate on a cracked tile and screw my courage to the sticking-place just as Lady Macbeth instructs. ‘Test me’. I hand Murph my exercise book, where I’ve written out the lines I’ve learnt in my best handwriting.

‘Tell me if I get it wrong.’

‘OK’

‘Don’t laugh.’

‘Chill.’

I can see the side of Murph’s mouth slant upwards to default smirk, but I feel her willing me on.

‘Ok. Here goes.

Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts

Unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe,

top full of direst cruelty.

Make thick my blood,

Stop up th’ access and passage to my remorse.

That’s it, that’s all I know.’

‘That was top, well played, serious.’

‘It was alright, was it?’

‘I’m giving you 10 out of 10, a gold star, an Oscar and a Blue Peter badge. Hey, dare you to stare Lamb out and say this next bit, Come to my woman’s breasts!’

‘No way! Unsex me is bad enough. Everyone’s gonna take the piss, me doing something like this.’

‘They won’t. They’ll think it’s good. They will.’ I hope she’s right, but maybe she’s just being kind.

That night, after tea, I practice quietly in front of my bedroom mirror. Then, when I go to bed, I lie there staring at the ceiling, saying the words over and over till the beat of them is grooved into my mind. I fall asleep dreaming that Dad and Mam have come to watch me in the play. They are smiling. They are clapping.