“Genius, my arse.” Mikey lifted his spoon and a slither of milk missed his mouth, landing on his Oasis T-shirt.
Tess stubbed her cigarette out in the sink and handed Mikey a letter. “I think you’ve been waiting for this.”
Snatching it from her hand, he ripped it open, read it then leapt to his feet.
“Yes! Fucking yes!” He lifted Tess into the air and twirled her round the room.
I took it from him. “Bloody hell, Mikey! You did it!”
I was awestruck. At barely eighteen he’d been chosen to play for the England Under-21’s.
Tess was flushed and smiling when he put her back down. “Well done, son,” she said, smoothing down her housecoat, “But wouldn’t you ever try for the green jersey and play at Lansdown Road?”
The euphoria drained from Mikey’s face. She could do that sometimes, slice into your happiness without really meaning to.
He shrugged. “Yeah, Mam. I’ll play for Ireland. Of course I will.”
“But why wouldn’t you? Your blood, your history, everything that makes you run around that field is Irish.”
We both stared at her, open-mouthed, taken aback by the authority and clarity with which she’d spoken. The moments like that when she stepped out from behind the mist of her illness were rare and precious and made me pine for the mother she could have been.
“Not me, Mam.” He snatched his parka from the back of his chair. “I’m English. I’ll play for England thank you very much. And anyway, I don’t see you worshipping at the shrine of the old country much. You haven’t been back for years.”
After he’d gone Tess lit another cigarette and stared out of the window at the rain hammering on the shed roof. I went over and put my arm around her.
“Take no notice of him, Mam. I’ll take you back to Ireland if you want. We could visit your village. I don’t remember ever going when we were kids.”
I felt her stiffen then she patted my hand.
“You’re a good girl, Carmel.”
I caught up with Mikey on the street a few minutes later. Rain was still heaving down and gusts of wind pushed me along the pavement, leaves skittered underfoot.
“Hey, tosser!” I punched him on the arm. “What was all that about? You were vile to Tess back there.”
He frowned and dug his hands into his pockets as I hurried to keep up with his long strides.
“You take her to Ireland then,” he said. “You’re always going on about what a great place it is.”
“I would if I had any money. Anyway, she’s got a point. You could play for Ireland. Look at the Irish football team. Half of them are second-generation Irish.”
“What the fuck?”
He stopped and stared at me like I was an alien or, at the very least, a foreigner.
I put my hands on my hips. “Look, Mikey, I hate to break this to you but you’re half Irish.”
“I’m no Tony Cascarino. I’m English. I’m no Plastic Paddy.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But I am. I was born here.”
“I meant don’t say ‘Plastic Paddy’. You know I hate that expression. You sound just like Sheila McEvaddy.”
Sheila was a cousin on Dad’s side from Mayo who had stayed with us for a few months. Fresh out of Trinity College Dublin, she had a trainee solicitor’s job in town, wore Chanel perfume, Calvin Klein jeans and had notions. She spent most of her stay with us perched on the edge of the couch, looking like there was a bad smell in the room.
One night after much beer at a ceilidh in Chorlton Irish Club, she announced, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many Plastic Paddies in one place in my entire life.”
My jaw dropped and I folded my arms across my chest. I was gobsmacked she would say such a thing. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
She looked taken aback. “Well. People pretending to be Irish when they’re not.”
“You mean second-generation Irish celebrating their culture? Excuse me, Sheila. The parents of a lot of people in this room may have left Ireland but it doesn’t mean their children can’t identify as Irish if they want to.”
“I suppose so.” She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, looked at the ground and shortly afterwards made a quick exit to the bathroom.
I’d read somewhere that it wasn’t the English who coined the term “Plastic Paddy”. It was the middle-class Irish, the brain-drain like Sheila who came over in the eighties. Apparently, they did it to distance themselves from the working-class wave of emigrants like Tess and Dad who settled in the fifties and sixties. Of course, English people used the phrase to slag anyone who felt anything other than English. But in both cases the message was the same: “If you’re second generation you can’t be Irish so you must be English.” And that is a sentiment I never really understood.
Following years of identity confusion, I settled on an in-between place. It was like balancing on a seesaw. I could tip either way and dip into both cultures. I championed the Manchester rave scene of the late eighties but felt the pain in every Christie Moore song. I went to the St Patrick’s Day parade in town every year but got more excited about Guy Fawkes Night. I read more Irish writers than English but did my degree dissertation on Shakespeare. As the child of immigrants, I felt lucky. The in-between place I inhabited was rich and varied. I had choices. I could embrace one, both, or neither of the cultures in which I was raised.
“OK – the last thing I want is to sound like Sheila McEvaddy!” Mikey said with a laugh, his handsome face buried in the fur rim of his parka.
My brother had chosen to identify as English. And it would have made no difference to Tess if he’d chosen to identify with a sect in Outer Mongolia. She would have idolised
