Fish for Flowers

Margaret Mary was strong and healthy, and never had a cough or cold. It was amazing, said the town, after the poor start she had in life. Look at her now, they said, the size of her, and her born not weighing more than a bag of sugar.

And her mother had done all the right things – been extra careful and never carried the fish crates, but even so the baby arrived too soon, born on the bathroom floor, and so tiny that the children next door had to look out their dolls’ clothes for it. The baby girl was given the name of Margaret Mary, and baptised hastily in the back bedroom.

The whole town, and all the family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, first, second, and those once or twice removed, assumed the baby would die, and the only thing that divided opinion was how soon that would be. But Margaret Mary’s mother had waited decades for a child, and was determined it should live. She persisted, and she did not give up; she fed the baby every two hours, night and day, carried it next to her wrapped in a shawl, and miraculously the baby had survived, and thrived. More amazing was the fact that Margaret Mary grew into a large, strong woman – a strapping girl, said the town.

Strength was an asset when you had to heave crates of fish about, and you had to be healthy to withstand the cold of the quaysides. Margaret Mary had taken on the family fish shop; it wasn’t something she’d have picked as a lifetime occupation, but she went there to help her mammy when her dadda died, and just stayed on.

Her mother assumed she’d be there for a short time, until she was ‘snapped up’ as she put it, by some lucky man. Margaret Mary’s mother thought that her daughter was beautiful, “You’re my lovely, lovely girl,” she would say, and try to stroke Margaret Mary’s frizzy hair. She was the only person who called her that, to everyone else she was Maggie – a great girl (in all senses of the word), always cheerful, pleasant, ready to do anyone a good turn. The girls of the town liked her because she was no threat to them, and the young men liked her because she was almost one of the lads.
Margaret Mary reached her teens before she realised that her mother’s eyes were blinded by love; she was not beautiful, not a lovely girl. When she looked in the mirror she saw someone not pretty, not even attractive; the person in the mirror had round cheeks that were too florid, red hair that was too frizzy, and a form that was too shapeless, too big. As time went on she would have settled for being described as handsome, but she never even achieved that.

The things she most disliked about herself were her large hands. They were rough and red from handling the cold fish. They were strong and capable too, because she could gut a fish, skin and bone it in just a few seconds, but they could never be described as beautiful, and cleaning a fish was not the first thing men looked for in a woman.
She noticed other women, and their pretty hands, with their small palms and dainty fingers, nails adorned with bright polish, and she wanted hands like that, hands that would draw men in, reel them in like the fish on her counter. If Margaret Mary hadn’t grown up into a big strong lump of a girl, but had stayed small and fragile, she could have reeled men in, she thought.

She watched her family and friends marry and settle down. She did not marry, and she settled into an unexciting life of order and routine, and was thankful that at least her mother was spared the knowledge that her beautiful daughter had not been snapped up, nor was likely to be.

Margaret Mary made a living out of the fish shop, but not much of one, and as the years went by, and fish fingers and breaded scampi appeared in the supermarket that replaced Tommy’s grocery store, she made less and less – even fish on Fridays was not observed as it had been.

At a family wedding her cousin, Teresa told her how much she admired her for running a business in what was a man’s world. Teresa had trained as a beautician and said she wanted her own shop one day. Margaret Mary should have been pleased at the compliment, but her attention was focused on Teresa’s soft white hands that were ornamented with the pinkest of nail polish. She watched her hands rise and flutter, until they were stilled when a young man put a glass of wine into them. He did not bring one for Margaret Mary, and her big hands stayed empty.

Teresa married the man who brought her the wine, and had a home and children. Margaret Mary wanted the same things, but her hands were not beautiful, and they washed and gutted fish through her twenties and thirties, and into her forties.
It was the babies that upset her. She held them at the christenings and family parties. They would be dumped on her ample lap, and her broad fingers would trace patterns on their soft faces, and she would inhale the scent of them, while their mothers stood in groups with their friends, and complained that their figures were ruined. Margaret Mary had never had a figure, but thought that if she had, then she could have been holding her own baby.

At her second cousin’s engagement party, Margaret Mary sat with the elderly relatives, and watched the young women. She watched the hair tossing and flirting, the slim legs in the tiny skirts, and hardly minded; she thought she was resigned, but when a baby was plonked in her lap so its mother could go outside for a cigarette, the feel of the baby and the smell of its fresh, new skin almost overwhelmed her. It stayed in her nostrils, and next day it overpowered the smell of cod and crab, and made her eyes fill with tears so that they blurred, and she cut herself.

“What have you been doing to yourself?”

It was Gerry Casey. He’d come into the shop with another sea bass he’d caught, but when he saw the drops of blood he left the fish on the counter, took charge, and went to look for plasters and Savlon. He held her hand under the tap, and checked the wound.

“Deary me,” he said, “your poor little hand.” And he gave it a gentle pat. Margaret Mary looked down on him, on his red hair that lay in thin strands across his pink scalp, and was lost. Her hand had been called ‘little’; he had touched it softly. When he kissed it better she looked at him with wonder, and glistening eyes, so he did it again, and somehow one thing led to another.

Gerry Casey said her eyelashes were as soft as butterflies. He said that her skin, released from the confines of her overall, was as smooth as silk. “You beautiful girl,” he said, and turned the sign on the door to ‘closed’. “You lovely, lovely girl”.
She knew he was married; he’d told her he was a family man the first time came into the shop to sell her the sea bass. He’d told her about his children: Kevin who had asthma, and Katy who’d just made her first communion, and young Gerry who was a broth of a boy. She knew he’d go home soon, and that he didn’t expect to be back.

“We’re all being put on computers now, us reps, we’ll be a thing of the past soon.”
She knew all this, but when he touched her she didn’t care. He touched her as if she was so delicate, so fragile, that she might break. He made her feel beautiful, so that even after he had gone she didn’t want to heave fish crates around; it wasn’t the right thing for someone who was delicate and precious and fragile. The smell of the fish turned her stomach for the first time, and she yearned for perfume, not the scent of fish. She told customers that she wanted a change, and shut the shop.

The town talked about her. “It’s her time of life – that’s what it’ll be.”
They grumbled about losing their fish shop, but as most of them didn’t go in, the grumbles faded quickly. Real shops like butchers and bakers now shared the streets with others, whose goods were less obvious: hairdressers, beauty parlours, and antique shops. There was even an Italian restaurant.

“Why would we want one of those?” the town asked, but went inside for birthdays and anniversaries, and even strange coffees.

When they saw that Margaret Mary sold flowers instead of fish, there was more talk.
“Who’s going to be buying all those flowers? She can’t make a living out of a flower shop.”

She proved them wrong. Her flower shop did well, and so did Margaret Mary. Amongst the perfume and colours she bloomed too. Her eyes shone, her skin looked brighter, and her thick fingers did not seem so clumsy when they held fragile stems.
Because she was big to begin with no one noticed. Margaret Mary didn’t notice, and ignored the things her body was telling her. It was Dr Sullivan who told her. He came in to buy a bunch of freesias for his wife, and when she handed it to him he asked how she was.

“Never better, doctor. It’s the best thing I ever did – swapping fish for flowers.”
He nodded his head up and down a few times before he spoke.
“Seems to me, Maggie, that you’ve a look about you – a sort of a bloom – the sort of look a lady gets when she’s … in the family way.”
Margaret Mary guffawed with laughter, but stopped when she saw that Dr Sullivan was serious.

“Now, Maggie, do you think that might be possible? Well?”
Margaret Mary was silent.

“Why don’t you come to the surgery tomorrow, and I’ll have a look at you?”
After she’d been looked at thoroughly, Dr Sullivan told her to sit down. He pushed a box of paper handkerchiefs towards her, folded his hands, and told her she was pregnant.

Margaret Mary pulled a handful of tissues from the box, and sobbed into them.
“Now it’s not the end of the world, Maggie, you’re not the first and you’ll not be the last.”

“It’s not that, doctor, it’s because,” she stopped, sobbed louder, and blew her nose, “It’s because I’m so happy.”

“Ah, well, that’s grand then. People will talk, but take no notice.”

When her baby daughter was born Margaret Mary’s large hands tended her so gently, and so lovingly, that they could have been meant for motherhood. The baby looked very like its father, and had his red hair and small frame; it was obvious that she would never grow into a strapping girl. Margaret Mary kissed the tiny toes, stroked the tiny fingers and gave thanks for her perfect child.

The men laid bets as to who the father was, and the women shook their heads. Margaret Mary, cocooned in happiness, did not notice. The town gossiped with relish, until Mick and Mick ran off together, and provided better fodder.