Rainy Days & Tuesdays

by Claire Allan

  I sit up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and trying to resist the urge to lie back down and lose myself in another passionate embrace with my favourite newsreader. Daisy looks happy. This can only mean good things. This could mean the curse of bad romance which has dogged her for the last six years is now a thing of the past. Looking at the clock I see it is three o’clock. With the average bar closing at around one thirty I figure that gives her plenty of smooching time before she got home.

  Padding down the stairs, I find Daisy sitting on the worktop, mug of hot milky tea in one hand, chocolate digestive in the other.

  “You are never going to believe the night I just had!” she grins. Catching a look of my haggard face she immediately apologises for dragging me from my sleep – explaining that she would not have felt comfortable discussing such matters in front of Lily in the morning.

  I nod, explain that I’m only annoyed because of the passion that was about to erupt in my dream and curl up on the armchair, allowing myself a chocolate biscuit with my tea because – as we all know – food consumed during the night does not count towards your daily calorie allowance. “Right, now that I’m sitting comfortably, you can begin,” I say, taking a sip of the warm, soothing tea and feeling my body relax into the comfy cushions of the chair. “Well, I’m not sure where to start,” Daisy says and I give her a look which states quite clearly that as it is three in the morning, she better damn well start to figure the best starting point and quick. “He was lovely, Gracie! Oh my God, he was just a gentleman! I mean he was a sexy fucker too, but most of all I just thought that the whole time I was there he was really interested in me, and what I had to say.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Well, first of all we went to Quay West where we had the most gorgeous meal.”

  “Please don’t talk about food,” I laugh. “I’m ready to eat the scabby end of a donkey these days.”

  “Well, I’ll not tell you I had the stuffed mushrooms then,” she laughs, knowing they are my most favourite food ever.

  I grin back, her enthusiasm catching me unawares and becoming almost contagious.

  “We talked the whole time. I mean, I couldn’t tell you what songs were playing or anything because we just talked about everything.”

  “Everything?”

  I raise an eyebrow, wondering if Daisy has managed to bring up the subject of the wee woman in her life.

  “Yes,” she says. “We talked about the Schmoo and he was so okay with it, and I don’t mean okay with it and then won’t ever call again, because he made a point of telling me that he was not one bit phased by my being a mum. He guessed I must have been a bit keen on kiddies working in Little Tikes anyway.”

  “Right then, tell me more.”

  “After dinner we walked along the quay. It was so warm and romantic and he held my hand. I seriously couldn’t decide if I would have an orgasm on the spot or faint.”

  “Did you do either?”

  “No,” she laughs, “I managed to keep my cool. Then we ended up in Jackson’s of all places.”

  My heart beats a little faster. I’m not entirely sure why. Part of me is dog-jealous that she will have seen Aidan and part of me is panicking in case she has seen him and he has told her that the whole separation malarkey was actually my fault – well, partly my fault at least – and that we can’t hate him any more – not that we hated him anyways. We just thought he was a twat, which even he admitted that he was. I realise that Daisy is chattering and I’m lost in my daydream, my feelings of guilt and love and weirdness, and I have to physically snap myself out of it and refocus on her words.

  “Gracie, it was so nice. He bought a bottle of wine for us to share and found us a quiet booth so we could sit and chatter.”

  I’m nodding, listening now, and I realise that she is in fact talking about Aidan and, as she is not looking at me funny or throwing the chocolate biscuits in the direction of my head in a modern stoning-of-the-harlot fashion, he has not sunk me.

  “That’s nice,” I say and she nods.

  “It was. I know he has been a twat, but he seems keen to make it up. Which reminds me, Louise and Briege were there.”

  Oh yes, Louise – who was going to make a play for the newly single manager of Jackson’s. I hope to God he put a flea in her ear or a toe in her hole. “Did he tell her to feck her skinny arse off?” I ask – suddenly alert.

  “Well, not in so many words, but she kept wiggling her insubstantial fried-egg chest at him and he didn’t so much as bat an eyelid. She left in disgust at about twelve.”

  “Ha!” I say, mentally preparing my vicious comeback for Monday morning, but then I look at Daisy and see a little pleading look in her eyes – one that lets me know she needs to finish this story. “Sorry, Dais, tell me more about Dishy – or should we officially be calling him Shaun, now that you two are better acquainted?”

  “Dishy will do just fine,” she smiles. “It kind of suits him.” She sips her tea. “You know when you just are mad about someone and you want to find out everything about them in as short a time as possible? That is what we did. I told him everything – about TMF, about leaving to come here, about my mum and dad and their relationship with Lily – everything.”

  “Ach, so you would have told him what an amazingly wonderful friend I am then?”

  “Actually,” she says, turning a little red, “we made a rule at the start of the night not to talk about you. It’s not that we didn’t want to but, with him being your doctor and all, well, we didn’t want it to get weird.”

  “I understand,” I say, only for the first time truly realising how strange it might be for my doctor – who knows the very dose of Cipramil I’m on – to spend a night chatting to the friend who is housing me while my marriage is on the rocks.

  “I’m glad,” Daisy replies. “I was worried you would be weird about it.”

  “Thinking about it, I probably would be weird about it if you did talk about me. I mean, Jeez, he even knows my weight! But enough of me, the real question, Daisy, is: did you kiss him?”

  “Yes, well no, well, he kissed me! My God, it was amazing! I mean we were both a little tipsy and we were just laughing about Louise Her Flat-chestedness and he leant over the table and kissed me and before I knew it, we were snogging like a pair of sixteen-year-olds.”

  I wonder if I will be able to look Dishy square in the face again knowing that he has just snogged the face off my best friend.

  “Is that all you did?” I say, raising my eyebrow at her, a sly smile across my face.

  “I don’t kiss and tell,” Daisy laughs. “Well, obviously, I do kiss and tell, but I don’t do anything else and tell.” She winks, adding: “Although, between you, me and the wall, there may have been some touching in the breast area.”

  I look at Daisy, her face alight with excitement, and I’m sure already that she isn’t going to sleep tonight. She is going to lie awake and play over this romantic scene time and time again. I’m almost envious – envious of her feeling that first flush of romance.

  And then she stops smiling, looks at me, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

  “Please tell me this isn’t going to go horribly wrong. Tell me he isn’t going to stomp on my heart and hurt me!” I get up and hug my friend and let her sob. I know she is letting out years of hurt, years of feeling not good enough to be loved and I know that while she is truly excited to be at this stage of a relationship again, she is scared.

  “I can’t promise, Daisy,” I say, “but it has to be worth the risk, doesn’t it? You could walk away but I have a notion you would be walking away from happiness. And hey, if he turns into a total shitehawk, I’m sure that between the two of us we can come up with some heinous revenge plan involving castration or chest-hair waxing!”

  She smiles, a snottery, watery smile and I rub her back. “Right, missy, time for you to go to bed. I’ll get you some of my Lush Dream Time Temple Rub to help you get to sleep. Have a nice lie-in the morni
ng. I’ll get up with Lily and Jack.”

  “Are you going to your mammy’s tomorrow?” “Is it a Sunday?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then yep, but we won’t be going until one so I order you not to get out of your pit until then.”

  “Yes, boss,” Daisy says, saluting.

  “No probs, chicken. Sweet dreams.” I start running the cups under the sink.

  “Grace?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you too, hon – now get to bed.”

  I wash up the cups from the tea and think about everything that has happened. I hope with all my heart this works out for Daisy because she needs a break. She needs someone to love her for the person she is. And then it dawns on me: all this time I’ve believed I have been relying on her. I’ve believed she has been the strong one and whatever Daisy says I hang on to it because I’m just so damn grateful to have her in my life as a friend.

  But she needs me too. Perhaps she even needs me more. I don’t know whether to feel smug about that, or very sad.

  Chapter 22

  Sundays at my parents are a tradition as long-standing as the sun setting, the moon rising, the ebbing and flowing of the tides. They are what we do. We are not allowed not to do them, except in fairly exceptional circumstances like when I bugger off to Donegal to have a wee nervous breakdown to myself, or when I leave my husband.

  It’s hit and miss as to whether Aidan comes along. A lot of it depends on how busy he has been the night before and whether or not he has done anything wrong which I will have told my mother about.

  If he has been a twat and she is aware of his twattage, then generally he’ll stay at home feigning illness or talking about paperwork he needs to catch up on.

  Today, given the obvious marital disharmony that is not yet 100% resolved, Aidan will not be joining us. Jack and I will see him later when he wants us to go for a walk along the beach. I think, actually, that, despite the revelation that my marriage breakdown may actually have been my fault and not Aidan’s, he is scared to see my parents. I can’t say that I blame him – after all, I’m not exactly doing my internal happy dance at the thought of next seeing Máire. That said, I’m strangely envious of the fact that about now Máiréad will be on the phone to her, gleefully telling her mother that she hasn’t got rid of me that easily. Now that I would pay to see.

  No, today is all about me and Mammy and Daddy. Cathy suggested, at the end of our counselling session, that I talk to them about my feelings of inadequacy as a child. I have, however, decided that this would not necessarily be very productive. My mother operates on Guilt Factor 10 most of her life anyway. She may seem like a canny, no- nonsense kind of gal but the truth of the matter is she is soft at heart. She may hide it well, because, I suppose, she has had to over the years but I know that she worries she may have messed me up.

  It would not help her, nor me who would only inherit her sense of guilt, to discuss my childhood issues. She did the best she could, as did Daddy. They were great parents – just not perfect. It’s up to me to forgive them for not being so. I suppose while I’m at it I might as well try to forgive Daisy, Aidan and myself too. I won’t try and forgive Louise though, because she is a pain in the hole.

  I don’t refer to my parents’ house as home – simply because it is not the house I grew up in. Mammy and Daddy chose to move shortly after I decamped to university. One day I went up the road to Belfast and by the time I returned to Derry the following weekend the home of my childhood was someone else’s home.

  Instead Mammy and Daddy had moved to a house with four bedrooms. You would have thought they would have wanted to downsize now that I had flown the coop, but no, they wanted more space. Mammy used to joke it was so that she could house the many grandchildren I would produce for her in the future for sleepovers and other such festivities. Being twenty and more concerned with not getting pregnant than producing the next generation of O’Donnell wains, I do believe I told her to fuck off and earned myself a clip around the ear for my trouble.

  They have transformed their house into the perfect grandparents’ retreat. They have a massive master bedroom which I was delighted, when the time was right, to realise had more than enough room for a crib to settle beside their bed. When Jack was tiny, and a fecking terrorist with the colic, I would on occasion fob him off on Mammy so that I would not kill him, or indeed myself.

  As he grew older, and as my parents fell madly in love with Lily and claimed her as one of their own, they decided to transform a bedroom into a children’s haven, complete with bunk beds (even though Jack is much too young to be allowed to sleep anywhere without bars on all four sides).

  Mammy is exceptionally proud of her nursery, and the children love playing there. I try not to take the huffs that the remaining two bedrooms have in turn become Daddy’s study and Mammy’s dressing room.

  Should I ever want to stay over I’m left with the unenviable choice of the top bunk or the sofa – and therein lies the reason why I love Daisy and her king-size bed so much.

  In the corner of their living-room stands a wicker basket crammed to breaking point with toys and books. When Jack isn’t rolling his toy cars along with the floor with his grandad, he is climbing up on the sofa, book in hand, and demanding to be read a story.

  Luckily his grandparents are only too happy to oblige him, pouring out years of pent-up love for the children they lost into the new life before them.

  When Lily first called my parents ‘Granny’ and ‘Grandad’, I thought my mother would burst with pride. It’s not to say that Lily doesn’t have the most amazing relationship with her ‘birth grandparents’ (as Mammy calls them) but it would seem my mam and dad have slipped quite nicely into the gap left by TMF’s family’s rejection of the Schmoo. Mammy has threatened, with a few drinks in her, to mosey on over to Scotland and kick their arses but luckily Daisy and I have been able to talk her down from that particular ledge.

  So it is fair to say, my parents’ house feels like Jack’s home, Lily’s home, Mammy and Daddy’s home – but most certainly not my home. That’s not to say it isn’t homely, but I have few memories of it. It was somewhere I dossed at weekends between shifts at the supermarket – it wasn’t a place I felt akin to. I suppose that’s another wee joy of growing up and getting more sensible – when you realise home is more about the people in a building than the building itself.

  Pulling into the drive, Jack gets excited. He knows he will be spoiled rotten for the next two hours. I can’t say that I blame him. I would be excited too if someone was going to force-feed me ice cream and provide all my favourite playthings for my amusement. My food-deprived gut is feeling both nervous and excited too. If one thing beats having parents willing to take a fractious two-year-old out of your hands for a couple of hours, it is the knowledge that they will feed you the finest of Sunday dinners while doing it.

  When Aidan and I first started dating we had this incredibly stupid and juvenile argument one day over whose mammy made the best Sunday lunch. He argued that Máire was the talk of her bingo club with her spreads, while I said no one could beat Mammy’s home-made apple-pie for afters. After an hour of batting our arguments back and forth, it was decided the only way to really find the answer was, as the ad says, to suck it and see.

  It was my turn first. I showed up at Máire and Aidan Snr’s at three o’clock one wintry afternoon. I had brought a bottle of wine and immediately Herself looked down her nose at me. I could tell she thought I had a drink problem – why else would I need to drink wine at three in the afternoon? She didn’t say the words but they hung there in the air like a bad smell and when dinner was served I was offered milk or juice – as if I was an errant toddler. Aidan later told me that wine was not consumed in the Adams household before 8pm. (Indeed he had a major battle on his hands with the She-Devil Who Must Be Obeyed over whether or not we should offer alcoholic punch as our guests arrived at our wedding reception. Máire thought we
were encouraging drunken buffoonery – we thought we were being sophisticated.) I’ll admit the food was nice – Máire certainly knows how to cook. And, being of the same gene pool, Aidan knew quite well how best to get on with his parents. I sat there throughout feeling a little lost. This was not how a Sunday lunch was supposed to go. It was much too refined and polite.

  The following week Aidan had the joy of experiencing lunch O’Donnell style. The wine was cracked open at two thirty and we sat in the kitchen while Mammy busied herself cooking the roast and steaming the veg. Daddy entertained us with whatever naff jokes he had heard that week and by the time the apple-pie was laid out we were all a bit squiffy and our sides were sore from laughing. As we walked home that evening Aidan conceded that I was the winner but we agreed, for the sake of surviving into our mid-twenties, that we were never to speak of this issue again.

  We walk in the door, Jack screeching “Allo!” at the top of his lungs before running straight into his grandad’s arms. The smell of the dinner cooking is wafting from the kitchen and I walk in to see Mammy sipping from her glass, stirring the gravy and singing along to a Doris Day classic on the radio.

  “Hey, love,” she says, seeing me. “Join in!”

  I can’t help it, her warmth is infectious, so I start to sing along, reminiscing with her about the Black Hills of Dakota. When the song is done, she kisses me on the cheek and offers me a glass of wine. Sadly, owing to not having Aidan on hand to do the driving, I have to decline so I pour some iced water and sit down at the table, which has already been set.

  “How are things, Grace?” Mammy asks, returning to her gravy-stirring. “Did Daisy get her end away last night?” Always straight to the point.

  I laugh. “Not quite, but she will be seeing him again.” “Great, that wee girl deserves a lucky break. And how are things with you and yer man?”

  After our separation Mammy began to refer to Aidan as ‘the ex’ but now has taken to referring to him as ‘yer man’ with increasing regularity. She’s obviously unsure of how to refer to him and has decided ‘yer man’ is the safest option. “Not so bad,” I reply honestly. “We talked and I realize that maybe some of this is down to me.”