The woman returned to the house at about 3pm. She didn’t come out to the garden, where she’d left Felicja. Felicja sat in a damp deckchair and texted her boyfriend – BoredX – and occasionally counted the chickens. Then she looked up and saw the woman at the kitchen window. She was at the sink, filling a large pot with water.
Felicja tried to open the door but it was still locked. She knocked. She heard a key being turned, and the door opened. The woman had changed her clothes; she was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt.
–There are still four chickens, said Felicja.
–What? said the woman. –Oh, good.
–You locked the door, said Felicja.
–Habit, answered the woman.
-You will pay me now?
–What? said the woman. –No. I mean, sorry. Come in.
She stepped back, and Felicja stepped in.
–I do not know your name, said Felicja.
–I’m sorry, said the woman. –I’m Dee. I’ve been rude, I’m sorry. I’m just putting some pasta on for the monsters before they get in from school.
She picked up the pot and brought it to the cooker. Felicja followed her.
–So, Dee, she said. –My salary?
–End of the week. Okay?
-This is the end of the week, Dee, said Felicja. –Today is Friday.
Dee’s smile dropped off her face.
-Well, fine, she said. –You’ve come through you probationary period. With flying colours. I’ll start paying you next week.
She turned on the gas beneath the pot.
–I wasn’t always a stay-at-home mum, Felicja, she said. –Don’t try to exploit me. Don’t even think about it.
The woman was insane. But Felicja wanted her money. And she quite liked the hens.
–Okay, she said. –But you will not exploit me, Dee.
–We speak the same language, said Dee. –See you on Monday.
Felicja’s boyfriend, Darren, still had a job. He was Irish and was very respectful of his country’s culture and tradition. So it was after midnight and he hadn’t come home. But Felicja didn’t mind, too very much. He’d texted to tell her where he was – Pravda! He’d invited her to join him – Save me! But she stayed in. She was broke and she wanted to work on her blog, Polegirl-in-Ireland – although she was thinking of changing the name. It had started as a diary, a what-I-did-today. But she got bored with that. Living her full day, then coming home to write about it seemed to make less of the day. There was no comparison between sex and writing I then had some sex with Darren. Sex won, every time. Even boring sex was much better than writing I then had some sex with Darren. Then writing I went to work this morning or I then had some sex with Darren became unpleasant, even dishonest. She tried to write Today, Peter told me that I no longer had a job, but she really didn’t want to. And she didn’t want to write I think Darren is on love with another girl, called Heineken.
Someone had once told Felicja that she spoke English as if she was telling a fairy tale. So Felicja had started to write fairy tales. And she enjoyed it. Writing about ogres was probably much better than having sex with ogres.
The NAMA walked the land, eating all the builders and the fat cats.
She wrote satirical fairy tales.
The NAMA had come from a land far off called Poland. But there were no builders left in Poland. He had eaten many and the rest had fled to Ireland. There was no such thing as a fat Polish cat. So the NAMA followed the builders.
She wrote, and people read. She’d been stunned when she discovered that more than two hundred people had read her last chapter. Stunned, delighted and terrified – OMG! Her empty days began to fill again.
But she couldn’t write all day and no one paid her to do it. So she continued to baby-sit Dee’s chickens.
The next time, the following Monday, Dee did not lock the back door when she left. She knocked on the window and waved, and was gone. Felicja spoke to the hens.
–How are we today?
Not one chicken answered.
–Should I call you chickens or hens?
The chickens fussed around as if they felt insulted.
Felicja waited some more minutes, then she went into the kitchen. She sat at the table and wrote in her Moleskine notebook. The NAMA did not travel to Ireland in the belly of the Ryanair. He moved through many lands, and over wide rivers and seas. But he ate nothing as he moved, through many summers and harsh winters.
She went to the window and checked on the chickens. They were clucking and scratching, doing what they always did.
Except one of them was missing.
© Roddy Doyle 2009
