‘Now Mum, it’s not a “who lives in the posher house” competition,’ I told her as soothingly as I could. ‘I don’t want my wedding to be about the haves and the have-nots. It’s going to be simple and small and more importantly, cost-effective. Have you even seen what hotels charge for wedding receptions these days? Thirty grand and upwards! And that’s before you even buy a bottle of water for your guests. Besides, the Pritchards will be dream wedding guests, wait till you see.’
‘Hmm,’ Mum sniffed doubtfully. ‘Well, if I have to listen to one more patronising remark out of them, I’m warning you, Tess, I won’t be held responsible.’
The Pritchards are my future in-laws, you see, and in sharp contrast to us, they live in an elegant two-storey, over-basement, Victorian redbrick statement home in Donnybrook. They’ve got about five reception rooms that they hardly ever use, including a drawing room, a conservatory and a sitting room with dusty hardback books piled everywhere which they insist on referring to as ‘the library’.
My family, however, have none of the above. And so for one day and one day only, our modest and very ordinary little semi-d in an estate full of houses just like it, is about to be transformed into fairyland; a bit like a low-budget Santa’s Grotto on Christmas Eve.
At least, until half an hour ago, that was the plan.
I stick my head closer to the window, savouring the lovely, soothing spring breeze and as the minutes tick by, gradually begin to feel more and more composed. Better. At least now my heart rate seems to be heading back down into double digits. Definitely better.
OK, I try my best to think calmly and rationally, gulping in one last mouthful of fresh air before snapping the bedroom window shut. So according to this letter a major problem has arisen, but I’m going to deal with it efficiently and with minimal stress. I’ll tell Bernard, of course, because he’s officially the most understanding man on the planet and if he can’t think of a way to get me out of this, then no one can. Then I’ll mention it to my nearest and dearest on a strict need-to-know basis only, because this is surmountable. After all, people manage to wangle their way out of situations like this all the time, don’t they?
Besides, it’s just not possible. True, there’s never a good time for an axe like this to fall, but the timing here really couldn’t be much worse. In one month’s time, Bernard and I are getting married; it’s as simple as that.
So trying my best to channel Kate Middleton, I trip downstairs with the letter clutched in my fist to somehow break the news to my wedding-planner-in-chief. Which would be Mum. I find her in the kitchen, walloping the hell out of the Magimix, busy making the icing for my wedding cake.
‘Where did you disappear off to? You’re supposed to be here helping your dad and me,’ she says crossly when she sees me coming into the kitchen. Bear in mind this is a woman who’s got about two hundred pounds of lamb cutlets in the deep freeze. You don’t mess with a woman with two hundred pounds of anything in the deep freeze.
‘Yeah, I know,’ I say in a wobbly voice I barely recognise as my own, ‘but the thing is, Mum, something a bit, well, unexpected has just come up—’
‘You’re as bad as that oaf out the back garden. Now grab an apron and start making yourself useful. You can drain the rum marinade off the sultanas and dump them into the mixture. Barring your father hasn’t already drunk the rum himself, that is. Which, to be honest with you, I wouldn’t put past him.’
‘Mum, you’re not listening to me—’
‘Jesus, Tess, you’re worse than useless! What was the point in you taking time off work to help if all you’re going to do is stand there and let me do everything? May I remind you, madam, that getting married at home was all your bright idea?’ Then turning back to her Magimix, she mutters darkly, ‘getting married to Bernard in the first place was all your bright idea too, let’s not forget.’
Now normally that last sentence would automatically trigger The Conversation. The same bloody conversation I’ve been having with just about everyone ever since Bernard and I first got engaged. But under the circumstances I let it slide and instead just shove the letter under Mum’s nose, then wait the approximate two-second delay while she processes it.
But there’s silence. A long, bowel-withering silence.
‘Well, this has to be a joke,’ she eventually says, all the blood suddenly draining from her face. ‘Maybe something Monica and Stella would do to get a rise out of you before the hen night?’
Monica and Stella are my two best pals and although they both love a good giggle as much as we all do, there’s no way in hell they’d ever contemplate doing something this cruel.
‘It’s not a joke. This isn’t the girls messing. Look at the headed notepaper. This is legit. Believe me, it’s about as legit as it gets.’
It says a lot about just how serious this is that Mum abandons her Magimix and slumps down wearily at the kitchen table, unable to say much else.
She doesn’t need to though.
The crumpled look on her face tells me everything I need to know.
KATE
Your Daily Dish.ie
October 2014
TROUBLE IN PARADISE?
Here at Your Daily Dish we’re receiving troubling reports from the Castletown House residence regarding billionaire Globtech founder Damien King and his well-known socialite wife, Kate.
The Gardai have said that following a ‘complaint of a most serious nature’, a court order was issued to Mrs Kate King at the property earlier today. A source close to Mrs King says that the order is in relation to a valuable painting, an end-period Rembrandt known as A Lady of Letters, which we’re told, is ‘a source of contention between Damien and Kate King at the present time’.
The painting is said to have been valued at upwards of €95 million. The Kings are well known to have a notable art collection, the jewel in the crown being A Lady of Letters. Sources tell us that Mrs King ‘is cooperating with the police in any way she can’. It’s not yet known if charges are to follow or not.
This of course has our heads spinning at Your Daily Dish. Can our favourite celebrity couple really be warring over a painting? To such an extent that a court order was issued?
Rumours have been rife for some time now that the couple have been living apart and are on the brink of separation. This troubling report would appear to confirm it.
Remember, you read it here first, on Your Daily Dish.
TESS
The present
‘The main thing is not to panic,’ says Bernard, my hubby-to-be, when I call to fill him in on what’s just happened, my imminent heart attack, etc.
‘Try not to panic?’ I say, doing the exact polar opposite. ‘Bernard, I’ve just been summoned for jury service, bloody jury service and you’re telling me not to panic?’
I consult the now half-scrunched letter in my hand for about the thousandth time today. ‘Here it is in cold, hard print. I’ve got to be at the Criminal Courts of Justice at 9 a.m. this coming Monday morning. So forgive me for panicking when this lands on me less than a month and counting before D-Day! Do you realise how much there’s still left to do?’
It’s a rhetorical question; of course Bernard hasn’t the first clue what’s left to do. After all, he’s a forty-three-year-old heterosexual male. What the hell does he know about weddingy floral centrepieces or alternate menu choices for coeliac lacto-ovo vegetarians?
‘Now I strongly suggest you stay calm dearest,’ Bernard says patiently. ‘All this panic is getting you nowhere. A nice cup of tea, that’ll soon set you to rights.’
Bernard, it has to be said, thinks that there’s no drama in this life that can’t be instantly righted with a cup of Clipper gold blend.
‘The thing you have to understand,’ I sigh, regrouping and trying my best to keep cool, ‘is that with a wedding like this, there’s a whole clatter of stuff that you can only leave till these last, precious few weeks. So there’s no way in hell I can handle something as huge as jury se
rvice right now. Besides, I’ve got my family and pals all roped into helping me out before the big day, how could I possibly just skive off to court and leave them to do all the heavy lifting for me?’
‘Well, I’m sure they’d be most understanding, under the circumstances—’
‘No, I can’t do it, Bernard, it just isn’t right. I won’t do it to my friends and I certainly wouldn’t put my family through that. I need to be here working around the clock along with everyone else, that’s all there is to it. After all, we’re talking our dream wedding here.’
‘I suggest you just try to put this whole thing into perspective,’ he says calmly. ‘Remember, it’s nothing personal. Being summoned for jury service can happen to any of us, at any time.’
‘I know, but I’ve got my whole life ahead of me to deal with stuff like this! Why does it have to be right now? Landing on me out of a clear blue sky?’
‘Such a pity you don’t live in the UK,’ Bernard muses calmly. ‘Because over there, you know, you’re allowed to turn down jury service twice and only on the third time are you obliged to serve.’
‘But, sweetheart, I don’t live in the UK. It’s totally different here; if you’re summoned, you’ve got to turn up, simple as that. And you know the nightmare I had at work trying to get time off – I can’t have all that precious time eaten into with this crapology.’
‘Now there’s absolutely no need for neologism,’ he chides gently, and it’s all I can do to bite my tongue and ask him to stop using words I don’t understand. ‘The critical thing is to remember that this is how our judicial system works. That’s how our democracy works.’
‘I already know all of that, but the thing is, how am I supposed to get out of it?’
‘In fact, did I ever tell you about the time I was summoned just a few months before I was due to take my doctorate?’ he chats away, sounding perfectly relaxed about this, oblivious to the rising note of hysteria in my voice. ‘I still had reams of research to do on the painting technique of the seventeenth-century Dutch Masters, with particular reference to Vermeer, which as you know is a highly contentious subject which needs a plethora of astute writing, not to mention the most forensic editing—’
‘Eh, no offence, but can we just get back to the point?’
No rudeness intended in cutting across him, but when Bernard gets going on either Vermeer or Rembrandt, you could be on the phone all night.
‘Sorry, sausage. But just remember that when it comes to court service, just because you’ve been summoned, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ll be selected.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, both the Prosecution and Defence have the perfect right to turn down any proposed juror on the slightest pretext, you know.’
‘So all I have to do is turn up at the courts, hang around for a bit and then maybe I’ll just be discharged at the end of the day?’ I ask hopefully, for the first time since that bloody letter landed on me this morning, seeing a sudden glint of light in this nightmare. Could he possibly be right? Is that all there is to it? After all, if all this jury service malarkey takes no more than a single day out of my schedule, then maybe – just maybe – all is not lost.
‘Better than that, sausage,’ Bernard chats on. ‘Fact is, there are a whole myriad of reasons why you can plead ineligibility to serve. So go online, check them all out and remember, at all costs, nil desperandum. Now I’ve really got to dash, I’m afraid. I’ve got a tutorial with my MA students at 2 p.m., so I’ll call you later. That alright with you, dearest?’
‘Of course it is,’ I smile, for the first time all day starting to feel the tight constraint that’s been around my chest actually start to loosen a little.
You see? This is why I love Bernard. This is why he and I make the perfect couple. This is why we work, no matter what anyone says. And believe me, in the run-up to this wedding, they’ve pretty much said it all. At stressed-out times like this, I can always rely on him to be the sober yang to my slightly more highly strung ying.
Even if I haven’t the foggiest what his Latin reference meant.
*
Turns out Bernard is absolutely on the money. When I log onto the court’s website, there’s a whole section on who isn’t eligible for jury service, not to mention all the reasons why you can be instantly disqualified the minute a Jury Selection Officer casts their eye on you. My eye greedily scrolls down the page, desperately trying to spot one that might just apply to me. Or if all else fails, one that I can plausibly fake and hopefully get away with.
Bernard, I know, would baulk at my doing anything that even remotely smacks of dishonesty, never having told an out-and-out lie in the whole course of his life. But then, I remind myself, Bernard doesn’t have to organise catering for over fifty guests, get a marquee up, fully stock a bar, scrub and clean this house from top to bottom, then hound all our last-minute guests who’ve yet to RSVP. And that’s just what I’ve got to do this week alone. So it’s actually reasonably calm and quiet compared with the weeks that lie ahead, but don’t get me started.
OK. So far the court’s website is telling me that if you’re in any way involved with the administration of justice, then you’re automatically disqualified, simple as that. I scan quickly down the checklist to find out exactly who they mean, but given that I’m neither the President, the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, a guard, a prison officer, a practicing barrister, a solicitor or a court officer, then that’s feck all use to me.
My eye keeps speed-scrolling down, the words almost like a blur in front of me.
‘Those who have been convicted of a serious offence in Ireland, those who have ever been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years or more, those who, within the last ten years, have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of at least three months and have served at least part of that sentence … ’
Silently cursing myself for being law-abiding all these years, I keep on reading, praying that I’ll stumble on some handy little get-out-of-jail-free card that’ll neatly extricate me from all of this shite.
‘Persons aged 65 and upwards … members of either the House of the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament), members of the Council of State, the Comptroller and Auditor General … a person in Holy Orders, a minister of any religious denomination or community, members of monasteries and convents, aircraft pilots, full-time students and ships’ masters … ’
Bugger, bugger, bugger, I think. The slow, sickening panic I’ve been holding at bay starting to rise again.
‘Those who provide an important community service, including practicing doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists, vets, chemists, etc … ’
Important community service? Yes, success! We might just have a winner on our hands here. Finally, this could actually mean all my problems are solved, I think, suddenly feeling calmer. And OK, so maybe working as a personal trainer in a gym mightn’t necessarily be considered ‘important community service’, but plenty of my clients, not to mention my manager, would certainly disagree.
Well, this is it then, I decide firmly. I’m not officially summoned for jury service till next week, so cometh the hour, cometh the woman. I’ll stride into the courts, be polite and professional, but by God, I’ll plead my case. I work in a busy city centre health club, I’ll tell them, and I’ve a long list of clients who are completely dependent on me.
And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll flash the engagement ring, say the wedding is less than a month away and, what the hell, if they’ll only see reason here, I might even invite every single solicitor and barrister, as well as whoever’s standing in the dock in handcuffs along to the afters.
Feck it, I think, firmly snapping my laptop shut, mind made up. I’ll name our first-born child after the judge if it’ll give Bernard and I back our dream wedding day.
Because after what I’ve been through to get here, nothing is going to compromise that. No court case, no legal threats, absolutely nothing.
> KATE
The Chronicle (weekend supplement)
January 2001
A SPECIAL REPORT by Maggie Kelly
There’s nothing more headily infectious than being around a young couple, newly in love and with their whole lives ahead of them. So you can imagine my excitement at interviewing Globtech founder and scion of the famous King dynasty, Damien King, along with his beautiful young girlfriend, successful model Kate Lee.
We meet for afternoon tea at the Weston hotel and straight away I can sense that this really is a genuine love match. Damien is courteous, polite and so much taller and more handsome in the flesh than I’d ever have imagined, while Kate is even more stunningly gorgeous than in her photos and on her countless TV appearances – if that’s even possible. She’s just one of those rare natural beauties that it’s impossible to peel your eyes off.
In the past she’s been likened to the late Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, but even that comparison fails to do her justice. Kate’s super-tall, as you’d expect, with that famous waist-length, poker-straight blonde hair and cheekbones you could feasibly grate cheese off. She jokes that she stands a shoeless inch taller than her boyfriend and he laughs this off, saying, ‘You see? We’re not even together a full year and already Kate’s got me looking up to her!’
But there’s something more than that. There’s a glow about Kate, an inner radiance that no amount of clean living, Bikram yoga or daily juicing can give; in short, she seems a woman very much in love.
Over tea and clotted cream scones (which I notice Kate just picks delicately around the edges of), I ask the one question we’re all dying to know the answer to.
‘So how did you two lovebirds first meet?’
‘Will you tell it, darling, or will I?’ he asks.
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