What Can I Do To Make You Love Me?

Happy Nollaig na mBan to you all. This time two years ago I was taking part in a lovely celebration of Irish women’s writing, (see attached photo of seriously talented fellow writers), at the fabulous Irish Writers Centre. Here’s the commissioned short story I read that night. It’s Corrs fan fiction with a bit of a Sireny twist. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. iI’s one of the daftest/most fun to write stories I’ve ever worked on.

What Can I Do To Make You Love Me?

It is Andrea’s turn to lay the table.

It is Caroline’s turn to wash up.

It is my turn to stand in the window and lure a young fella to his death.

Tonight, as always, I am wearing an ankle length dress: virginal white with an austere neckline. Sleeves buttoned tightly round my wrists. Think bride of Christ. Think little woman. Think Miss Havisham; the cobweb years.

The dress does nothing for my boobs. My boobs could do with a bit of help. They’re pancakes compared to Caroline’s. Last night, my sister rocked up for window duty in a gold lamé bikini, recently purchased online. She stood in front of the fireplace, chest thrust forward like a shelf. “I thought I’d mix it up,” she said. Caroline’s the oldest. She’s desperate to hook a fella and get out of the window permanently.

Mam looked at the gold lamé bikini. “Absolutely not,” she said. “This isn’t some sordid back-alley show. It’s the voice the fellas are attracted to.”

“The voice, my arse,” muttered Caroline.

She still put on the stupid white dress and posed demurely by the drapes as if her head were full of cotton candy and sweet Jesusy thoughts. She still sang like singing wasn’t the very worst thing she could do with her voice. When she lured her fella up the drive Mam let him get as far as the rhododendron before she raised her shotgun and took off his head. You couldn’t tell from that distance whether he was a keeper or not, though Caroline insists he was good looking, like Harry Styles but with blonde hair. She says Mam shot him just to spite her. There was nothing wrong with the lad.

I don’t fancy Harry Styles. I don’t fancy any of the fellas who come lurching up our drive. I have always preferred girls but the voice doesn’t work on them. Mam says it’s just the way it is. The voice is pitched to lure fellas in. Eventually a decent one will appear. Mam will let him up the drive, through the front door and into our bed. So, we can make other voices. So, we won’t be the last of the line. She’s sorry, I’m not that way persuaded but a fella’s a prerequisite if the line’s to carry on. Once, Caroline asked how she intends to pick our keepers out of the parade of feckless losers who traipse up the drive every night.

“I’ll know, when I know,” Mam said.

“Like with Dad?” I asked.

Mam did not want to discuss Dad.

We’ve been in the window for three years now. Seemingly there’s no end to the feckless losers who cannot resist the voice. Hundreds and hundreds of young fellas in their best get ups. All of them thinking they’re in with a chance. Every single one of them, stone cold dead. You’d think this fact would put the lads off. Apparently, it does not. We are irresistible. You’d also think one of these fellas would’ve turned out to be a keeper. Not according to our mam. None of them have been good enough. Who’d have thought there were that many feckless losers in the North?

I take my position in the bay window. I open all three windows as far as they’ll go, so the voice will carry down the lawn.

“Here, Sharon,” asks Andrea. “What are you for singing tonight?”

“Maybe a bit of Runaway,” I say. Runaway is my favourite. Sometimes when I’m singing it, I imagine myself running away, down South in search of Dad and Jim or somewhere nice, where I can be quiet and not lure fellas to their death.

“You’ll do, What Can I Do to Make You Love Me?” says Mam. “The lyrics are very appropriate.”

I should say, we are not the actual Corrs though we only ever sing their songs. Mam’s a fan. She likes the way they do their hair and how they work their harmonies and the fact that they dress quite modestly. She called the three of us after them. Caroline, Andrea and I’m Sharon. I do not like being called Sharon. Sharon is an old lady name. We have a fourth sister. She came last. Mam named her Jim. Dear love the child - she did not have the voice. Jim’s down South with our dad. They’ve got women’s rights down there. You can’t display your daughters in a window. You can’t lure fellas to their death. “A load of woke nonsense,” Mam always says. “No good will come of turning their back on the traditional ways.” I do not agree with Mam. I think Dad and Jim had the right idea, running away as soon as they could. I’d like to live in a place where I didn’t have to stand in a window and do whatever I was told to do.

Mam takes up position behind the drapes. “On you go,” she says. She prods me with the shotgun. I’d like to say no, I’m not in the mood. I wouldn’t dare cross our mam, whether she’s armed or not. I open my mouth and let the voice out. “I haven’t slept at all in days,” I sing. “It’s been so long since we have talked.”

It’s a red-haired fella tonight. He keeks around the gatepost, flame-headed in a going out shirt. He has a pleasant milky face, not unlike a baby sheep. I sing on. He cocks his ear. His body leans into the voice. I am magnets when I sing.

“Good girl,” says Mam. “Give it dixie. Here he comes.”

“There’s only so much I can take, and I just got to let it go.” God, I hate this stupid song, but here I am still singing away at the top of my lungs. “And who knows I might feel better, yeah, if I don’t try and I don’t hope.”

The red-haired fella’s half-way up the drive. I brace myself for the bloody bang. No fella’s got further than the laburnum tree and your man’s only a foot or two away. As ever, I am in two minds. I don’t want to bed a fella. I wouldn’t know what to do with him. I have looked at man parts online and I think they’re ludicrous. I’m not one bit bothered about being the last voice in the line. If anything, I’d be pleased to see the back of it. I think the voice has run its course. No more women stuck in windows. This nonsense ends with the three of us. If it were up to me, not Mam, I wouldn’t let any fellas within fifty feet of this house.

Then again, I’m no monster. Ludicrous as they are, there’s no real pleasure to be had in luring fellas to their death. Every night’s the same old same old. The bang. The blood. The burst brains flying all roads and directions. In the morning, another corpse for the bin men to pick up.

The red-haired fella’s past the laburnum. The yellow flowers cast a jaundiced glow on his skin.

Mam lowers her shotgun.

“Really?” says Andrea, “you’re going for him? He’s a bit leprechauny looking, don’t you think?”

“Uch,” says Caroline, “I can’t believe you’re letting Sharon land a fella first. I don’t think she’s even into men.”

“I’m not,” I whisper in the hair’s breadth pause between chorus and bridge. No one hears me tell the truth. The voice does not work like that. It is a hook. A magnet. A lasso. It cannot ever ask for help.

“No more waiting, no more aching,” I sing, stretching to hit the painful high notes, “no more fighting, no more trying.”

The red-haired boy’s at the door.

Mam says, “that’s enough now, Sharon. Away you go and let him in.” I turn the voice off. It is a shame. It is also a relief. I will never have to sing again. There is nothing more to say. Sure, no one really listens to me anyway.