FINALIST
in the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025, and highly commended by our judge, Nuala O’Connor, who described it as ‘… a love letter to Galway city and a mourning of lost youth, and lives without opportunity. A moving story, with great language flourishes.’
In Galway I walk along the canal from University Road all the way down to the end of Dominic Street. Black heavy clouds hang low over the grey streets.
My mother and her best friend Nancy use this route on Saturday nights to walk into town. They hold hands in the dark. They blow Sweet Afton cigarette smoke into each other’s faces. And drink vodka and orange from Galway Mineral Red Lemonade bottles. Later on, they will walk out to Lower Salthill to the Oasis in The Warwick. It was behind the Warwick I was conceived ten years ago. My mother is 26 now. I am 10. Do the math.
Ma was a wild girl from Mervue. She went to the Mercy. She fought the posh Taylor’s Hill girls and laid them out on Galway’s wet shiny streets. Her father was a murder man. Her mother was a nurse from Mayo who was broken by them both. Ma told me she was going to name me Oasis but decided on Séamus. I would have preferred her first choice.
Ma lived with her beau Jimmy in a tent near the Cotton Factory near beside Scoil Iosagain for years until Jimmy fell through the front window of Anthony Ryan’s Menswear on Shop Street just as two Gardaí were passing by on street patrol. Jimmy wanted a suit to make a good impression for his appearance at the court House in Galway the following Friday. As he was looking at the suits on the manakins in the display window he tripped over something and went head first through the window pulling a suited manakin with him. He went to Mountjoy for three years. He said it was because he had no suit. When Jimmy was sentenced she found out she was pregnant. That’s how Galway love stories happen.
Ma moved back in with her mother and then found Nancy. She was an exotic dancer from New York who had come to live across the road from us in Mervue. She said she had some Irish roots. Nancy had dreamy languid eyes. She had tanned taut thighs (that’s a long story). She said she had to get out of New York fast. She was fast she told me but I thought she was talking about cross country running or something.
Nancy stayed with her aunt and uncle, the Leepers (I called them the Lepers), and their daughter, Oasis – joke – it was Mary. She had only one hand. Not sure what happened. Her father was a famous butcher in High Street. I am just saying. I was always fascinated by that missing hand. She wore an elegant lilac colored glove. Anytime I saw Mary on the street I would rush across the road and put out my hand to shake it. I feigned having a club foot so she would not feel self-conscious. I am all heart.
They were best pals from day one. Myself and Ma were not.
Ma said I held her back. Ma said I made her bleed inside her head where it really counts. Ma said ‘if I had your perfect skin, I could have been Miss Galway. Or at least Miss Mervue. ‘
Nancy would wink at me, lean down and whisper – “it’s just the drink talking. And the pain. And the loneliness. And the way she was made. And what she went through. And her father being a murder man fat far away now over in Broadmoor. And Jimmy – the thick - having no balance. And no suit. And the Galway weather. And fish on Friday.” And on and on.
Nancy also gave me stolen hugs. And crisp fivers. And Tayto crisps. And told me to get ‘that hair’ cut. And to stop running wild. And to stop pulling knives. And to stop arsing around. And to drop Mary Leeper. And to stop being Galway’s number one (and only) arsonist. And to stop sleeping out in the back garden. And to stop telling people my name was Oasis. And to wear shoes when I walked along the canals of Galway with their black deep water and their strong silent currents that carried babies and forlorn boy-girls out to the far sea.
Ma and Nancy sit on the flat granite flagstones along the canal bank, their feet dangling over the edge, the humid night air folds them in, the swans of the Claddagh float quietly by, the bells from the Poor Clare’s ring out from Nun’s Island, the snouts of black seals break the surface, the fog horn from Mutton Island is a sad mellow echo, the diesel engines of trawlers heading out from the docks strain against the incoming tide, boot boys stride past with their German shepherds tethered to their wiry teenage wrists, their metal cleats striking the footpaths. The melodies of Galway town fall down on them.
I watch Ma and Nancy from the dark shadows.
Their love laughs throaty and rich.
Their faces adored and adoring.
I look away.
Inside I am hurt deep.
Where it really counts.
Seamus Scanlon is a working class author from Galway, Ireland. He writes fiction, flash fiction and drama. Recent accomplishments include The McGowan Trilogy play production in Kilkenny (May 2025); Inclusion in the 2025 Fish Anthology (Jul 2025); The 2024 Fish Anthology (Jul 2024); The 2025 Bath Flash Fiction Anthology (Dec 2025); The 2024 Bath Flash Fiction Anthology (Dec 2024); The Fuel Poverty Anthology (UK, Feb 15, 2023).
That’s a masterpiece right there. Perfection.