by Cathy Kelly
‘It’s good to meet you,’ she said determinedly, shaking his hand hard. ‘I can’t believe we haven’t met till now.’
‘Yeah,’ said Kev happily. ‘Good to meet you too. Hope things are OK, you know. All that press stuff…bummer. Nobody cares about that stuff round here. Hey, do you cycle?’
Nora looked on fondly as Megan replied that, sadly, she hadn’t cycled since she was about ten, and had never been that keen on it then. ‘I liked rollerskating more,’ she said.
‘I do that. It’s rollerblading now,’ Kev said.
‘Right,’ said Megan gravely. ‘I’m not sure I’d be any good at that.’
‘Myself and my girlfriend are going at the weekend,’ Kev said.
‘I’ll get back to you,’ Megan said, nodding. Her social life was looking up. She was having a pizza with Nicky and Connie O’Callaghan tonight, and there was the possibility of rollerblading with sweet Kev at the weekend. It was a far cry from her old life, but it was strangely comforting.
These people were becoming her friends. They knew who she was and what had happened, and they still liked her.
Connie went to Patsy’s salon to have her hair cut.
‘Just a trim, Patsy,’ Connie said, sitting in front of the mirror and noticing all the flaws in her face. Where had all those lines come from? ‘I don’t know what Nicky wants for the wedding, so I’d better keep it long.’
‘Wear it the way you want for the wedding,’ Patsy advised. ‘I’ve no time for that bride madness where they want to rule the world for one day.’
‘You know that Nicky’s not a bit like that,’ Connie said. ‘She only wants me to be happy.’
‘She’s a rarity,’ Patsy agreed. ‘I’ve seen plenty of brides who want the bridesmaids done up like Hallowe’en horrors just so they don’t outshine them on the big day.’
‘I’m hardly likely to outshine Nicky, now, am I?’ Connie said cheerfully.
Patsy glared at her. ‘With that attitude, I don’t know why you bother coming in here at all.’
‘Oh God, just cut it, will you?’ Connie groaned. ‘I don’t want a life-coaching session, just a haircut.’
The girl sweeping the floor let out a snigger. Patsy sent a death glare in her direction.
‘I’ve a good mind to dye it orange,’ Patsy said, when she’d stopped glowering and had started trimming. ‘How are the wedding plans coming along, then?’
‘Fine. We’re having a hen night with her friends from school and the people from work the week before.’
Patsy kept trimming. ‘We could have a bit of a Golden Square hen party,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of us here who’d like to give her a decent send-off, but we’d be out of place with Nicky’s work crew.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ protested Connie loyally, consumed with embarrassment at the realisation that she, as bridesmaid, had forgotten their neighbours in all the party plans.
‘Rae and Dulcie mightn’t, but I wouldn’t be on for a night in a posh club or anything like that.’
Nicky’s workmates had indeed suggested organising a cocktail party at a glamorous city-centre club.
‘What could we organise then?’ Connie asked.
‘We could have it here,’ Patsy said. ‘No, what am I talking about – we’ll have it in Titania’s Palace. Isn’t that a great idea?’
Nicky admired the cupcakes Connie had organised for her. There were pink swirly ones, white chocolate ones with dark chocolate stars on them, tiny carrot cakes with little orange marzipan carrots on top.
‘I love it all!’ she said delightedly.
Livvy from the tearooms had put the wedding march on the stereo, and Nicky laughed as she paraded through the premises, smiling at everyone, hugging her friends and displaying her engagement ring.
Soon, everyone was enjoying tea, coffee and the bellinis Connie had brought in a couple of big flasks.
The only person there who didn’t look happy was Rae.
In spite of the general air of enjoyment, Connie noticed that Rae’s beautiful face was strained and tired. She was doing her best to smile, but it was clear that her heart wasn’t in it.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ whispered Connie to Patsy.
Patsy shrugged in reply. ‘She’s been like that for weeks. The mother-in-law is staying with her. She had a hip done and I think she pushed herself in the door there, and I know she drives Rae mad. Not that she’d tell you anything, but you can tell, can’t you? She’s a right old rip. Thinks she pees eau de cologne, that one.’
Connie giggled.
‘Is that it, then? The mother-in-law’s not staying for good?’
‘You’d want to have been very bad in a past life for that to happen,’ Patsy said darkly.
‘You know what you’re talking about with the mother-in-law thing,’ Connie said suddenly.
Patsy’s laugh was dry. ‘My first husband was a pet of a man and his mother was a cast-iron bitch.’
‘Your first husband –’ repeated Connie. Wow. First implied that there had been a second. And she personally had never even got one.
‘How many husbands have you had?’
Patsy laughed properly this time. ‘My own or other people’s?’ she said. ‘I heard someone say that once. It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Ah no, I only had two. That’s enough for any woman.’
‘There’s no Mr Patsy now, is there?’ Connie asked. She was on a roll. She and Nicky had often wondered about Patsy, but she’d never been that forthcoming when she was in the salon. Here, though, it was different.
‘No Mr Patsy. A few wannabes, though. And you?’ Patsy’s eyes were shrewd. ‘No man on the scene?’
‘I haven’t even made it to the altar once and you’ve had two husbands,’ Connie sighed.
Megan went over to sit beside Eleanor, who was sipping herbal tea.
‘Had your two coffees?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Eleanor, smiling.
‘You know, Nora drinks buckets of the stuff,’ Megan said.
‘Nora is twenty-five years younger than I am,’ Eleanor pointed out.
Megan couldn’t hide her surprise. Eleanor didn’t look that old.
‘It must be hard not to drink coffee in New York,’ she said now. ‘There are so many gorgeous little cafés there.’
She was fascinated by Eleanor’s life in New York. Megan had visited the city, and once spent three weeks there living with one of her friends, a girl who had a trust fund and a growing coke habit. It had been fun, but sort of nocturnal. Megan still didn’t know where anything was during the day: they only went out at night, and then, it was in cabs or limos to parties. At the time, she’d thought it was fabulous fun. Now, she reflected, it had been a bit one-dimensional. Party to party with the same people, all desperate to have fun, all desperate to be famous.
‘New York is great for coffee lovers, but we do good herbal tea too.’
‘I’d love to live there,’ Megan said mistily. ‘Properly live there, not just stay with someone for a week or two. Does it stop being exciting when you live there?’
‘No,’ said Eleanor. ‘It’s a fascinating place. I’d say that New York has a heart. Everyone there is an immigrant, there are very few people who start off in New York, so we’re all blowins, and you can become a part of it very quickly. Everyone’s in the same boat, from the movie star to the kid serving coffee in a diner.’
‘Did you know any movie stars?’
‘A few. But in New York, nobody treats them any differently to anyone else. They have to go to LA for adulation.’
Megan laughed at that.
‘Did you have any movie stars as patients?’ she asked.
‘I can’t tell you that,’ Eleanor said. ‘But people are people, Megan. Whether they’re famous or not. We all have the same doubts and fears.’
‘So, no dirt then?’ Megan said.
Eleanor grinned at her. It was the first time Megan had attempted to make any sort of joke with her. Up till then, Megan
had behaved as if Eleanor was about to launch into a therapy session there and then, analysing her from her conversation.
‘No dirt.’
Megan made her think of Gillian for some reason, even though there was a good seven years between Megan and her grand-daughter. For all her experience, Megan had a sliver of the childlike innocence of a younger person. It was the strange world of celebrity: she’d grown up with sophistication all around her and no chance to grow as a person.
Eleanor thought again of her proposed trip to her hometown and she knew how hard it would be to go on her own. Darling Gillian or Naomi would have been the perfect travelling companion in one sense, but Eleanor couldn’t do that. She’d never be able to go through with what she had to do then. She sighed and changed the subject.
‘Are you working full time with Nora?’
‘For the moment, but Birdie’s back in two weeks. I’ve been thinking I should move on,’ Megan added. ‘I’ve been here since New Year, long enough for everyone to have forgotten about me, so I was thinking of going back into the world. Not London.’ She shuddered. She couldn’t bear to think of her old flat where she’d hidden out when the story had broken. ‘Los Angeles, perhaps.’ Other actors said it was a hard place to make a home, but she couldn’t settle in Golden Square forever. ‘What about you?’
‘Oh, I still want to take a trip back to my home in Connemara,’ Eleanor said. ‘When the weather’s better.’
They were both waiting, she and Megan. Waiting for life to begin again. Megan’s would, but Eleanor wondered if it was all too late for her.
Eleanor got into bed that night and watched a little television on the small portable set. She had never been much of a fan of television. It tortured people with its vision of happiness. How many clients had come into her rooms worrying that their lives weren’t like that of the people on the small screen? Through her practice, she knew enough television writers to know that the happy lives that played out on TV sets around the world were indicative of what people fantasised about rather than any reality.
Eventually, she switched off the box and her bedside light, and lay in the darkness, hoping that sleep would come.
The nights were the worst. By day, she could feel as if she were still part of the human race, but at night, the loneliness came and overpowered her.
‘Night night, Ralf,’ she whispered.
15
Holy Days
Holy days and fast days were hard going, especially for anyone working the land. On holy days like Ash Wednesday, you had to be up early to walk to morning Mass and get the ashes on your forehead. The ashes were from the burned palms from Palm Sunday, and they’d be mixed with oil and the priest would anoint people’s foreheads with this mixture in the sign of the cross.
I can still smell that oil. Catechism oil, we used to call it. It was like the smell of the tabernacle at a funeral, when the canon waved incense over the coffin.
Agnes was once given a tiny vial of perfume that smelled of the Far East, with incense and amber in it. I couldn’t bear the smell of it: it reminded me of being a child in the church, and the thought of the cold, hard corpse in the coffin beside us. We were all used to death, you know, Eleanor. Not like people today. We all went to the funerals, and as a small child I’d kissed the marble-cold forehead of many a corpse. In a way it was good: death held no fear for us.
Ash Wednesday was the start of Lent and it was a day of fasting. You could eat no meat, only one decent meal and two small collations – which were tiny meals.
My mother always cooked us cod on Ash Wednesday with a little butter and a few small boiled potatoes. There were no second helpings and no pudding. Just a small meal and a decade of the rosary afterwards.
We all ate fish on Fridays.
Pin-bone your fillet of cod – my mother used her fingers and so do I – and then poach it in a little milk with a pinch of pepper on top and a bit of dill, if you have it.
The local shop was not the place to go on the eve of a wedding in the village. Not when you were the older, unmarried sister of the bride-to-be. It was an act of recklessness on a par with arriving at the gates of hell with an ice cream. Everyone would want to discuss marriage, engagements and ‘When’s your big day going to be, love?’
So when Connie pushed open the door of Flanagan’s for Everything! she took a deep breath. She loved Flanagan’s with its bizarre combination of things for sale – Buy bleach and get a packet of boiled sweets free! Mr Flanagan had been running it for donkey’s years and, while the lure of the big supermarket had certainly dented his business, there was always steady custom for Flanagans. After all, where else could you buy the makings of an apple pie along with something to trap those pesky mice?
Connie’s grandmother, Enid, liked to reminisce about the good old days when Mr Flanagan Senior used to stand behind the counter and get things for the customer.
‘You had a list and you gave it to him, and while you had a sit down – there was always a comfortable seat at the counter – he got it all.’
‘Yes, but it took him hours,’ Connie’s mother, Barbara, would point out. ‘Someone else would come in and he’d talk to them about the price of a tin of custard powder, then he’d be off to answer the phone, and you’d be waiting.’
‘But you knew all that was happening in the parish by the time you left,’ protested Enid. ‘I liked that.’
‘You should get email, Nan,’ advised Connie. ‘You could stay in touch with the Courtown Bay mafia that way.’
Flanagans had moved on in the sense that customers could choose their own groceries, but they still had to run the gamut of Mr Flanagan Junior, who was every bit as interested in gossip as his father had been.
‘Connie, as I live and breathe!’ he declared, while the over-the-door bell was in the death throes of its welcoming jingle. ‘Weren’t we just talking about you!’
‘Hello, Mr Flanagan,’ said Connie, abandoning all hope of a drive-by shopping spree. At the counter was Mr Flanagan and the Courtown equivalent of Wikipedia, Mrs Hilary Leonard, who knew everyone and everything that went on in the locale.
‘Connie!’
Mrs Leonard was very short and when she threw her arms around Connie, she got a good hold of Connie’s middle, and squeezed tightly.
‘Your mother said you’d be in.’
Since the need for extra milk and some brown sugar for coffee had only just transpired, Connie wondered how her movements were already accounted for. But that was Courtown Bay for you: other people knew what you were going to do even before you knew it yourself.
‘I suppose they’re all at fever pitch down in the house?’ Mr Flanagan said, eager to talk.
‘Enid’s rheumatism is at her again,’ Mrs Leonard leapt in. ‘But she has some of those tablets left, doesn’t she, Connie?’
Again, Connie had to bow to Mrs Leonard’s superior knowledge. Either she had the O’Callaghan family phones bugged or she had psychic abilities.
‘Gran’s rheumatism is bad again,’ she agreed, ‘but she’s determined to be well enough for tomorrow.’
‘It’ll be a great day for your family,’ Mr Flanagan said. ‘I won’t make the church, now, because of the shop.’ He said ‘shop’ with the sort of reverence a US president might reserve for ‘the Oval Office’. ‘But I’ll be up for the meal. I wouldn’t miss seeing your sister married. She’s a lovely girl, Nicky.’
‘Oh, gorgeous, and she’ll make such a beautiful bride –’ began Mrs Leonard.
Connie could sense she was about to start describing the dress, which nobody apart from Connie, her mother and Nicky had seen so far. But she wouldn’t put it beyond Mrs Leonard’s powers to know what it looked like.
‘I’ll have to get a move on,’ Connie said cheerfully. ‘They’re expecting me back with the milk.’
‘You’re a good girl.’ Mrs Leonard patted her arm affectionately. ‘Always thinking of others. You were like that even when you were little. Well, younger. You were ne
ver little. But it must be handy being so big when you’re a teacher. None of the little monkeys would dare to cross you!’
Connie decided against explaining that whacking the students was no longer part of a teacher’s role.
‘I supposed it’ll be you next?’ Mr Flanagan said archly.
Mrs Leonard’s eyes were big as she waited for Connie’s response.
Connie winked. ‘That would be telling…’ she said.
She bought milk, sugar and a big bar of chocolate, said her goodbyes and headed for the door.
‘I hope it’ll be you next, Connie!’ roared Mr Flanagan. ‘Getting wed, I mean.’
‘Thanks.’ Connie managed a smile and let the door swing shut behind her.
Leaving home might allow a person to reinvent themselves. But five minutes back in her hometown, and it was as if she’d never left.
She was no longer Connie O’Callaghan, career woman with her own flat, nice holidays, a pension plan.
She was Big Connie, the tall one of the O’Callaghan girls, as opposed to Nicky, who was the dainty one. Careers cut no ice here, unless you ran a giant corporation and were on the business pages looking grave.
In fact, Connie thought grimly, reversing out of her parking space, even if she were running a corporation, someone would be bound to wonder was there any sign of her getting married yet.
It wouldn’t be enough to run a company, fly in a private Lear jet and holiday in fully staffed villas in Gstaad. No, a husband would have to be part of the package.
It was the same everywhere. The whole planet was obsessed with why single women were alone. Why? If a woman so happened to have got that far in life without a significant other, so what?
The fastest-growing demographic in the world was single women. Or so she’d read. Maybe it was like that so-called ‘fact’ about how women over thirty-five were more likely to be killed by terrorists than to get married, which had turned out to be totally made up. But still, if there were loads of single women out there, why couldn’t they start a union? The Stop Bugging Us About Why We’re Not With A Nice Man Union. Or the Don’t Ask Us About Our Sex Lives, And We Won’t Ask About Yours Union.