by Marian Keyes
On the way they met Ferdia.
‘Hey, are your rooms a bit mad?’ he asked. ‘Mine has five single beds in it, put together like a Tetris game!’
‘Wait till you see where I’m at!’ Saoirse said.
Saoirse was right. Her bed was in a pleasant little fitted kitchen, with a microwave, knife block, toaster and such.
‘Have you a bathroom?’ Johnny asked.
‘Out here.’ She led them into a hallway where they met Nell and Liam, who were being shown to their room by Clifford. Everyone seemed in high spirits, except for a bristling hostility between Ferdia and Liam.
Johnny had heard about the carry-on with Sammie that awful weekend in Mayo. He hoped there would be no argy-bargy this weekend: things were bad enough.
‘You two are in the Swiss Suite.’ Clifford opened a door.
Terrified of what he might see, Johnny stuck his head around the door. Christ on a bendy bus …
‘Give me a look.’ Jessie pushed forward. ‘Stop, this is too funny!’
It was a small kids’ room with a treble bunk bed. A double on the bottom, with steps leading up to a single.
‘Swiss!’ Jessie declared. ‘Why is it Swiss, Clifford?’
‘Because of the mezzanine element, hai.’
‘Mezzani– … You mean the top bunk? That’s the mezzanine?’
‘Aye.’
‘It’s very cute,’ Nell said.
‘Bless you.’ Johnny could hardly speak.
He hurried to the entrance hall to beg Muiria to give the best rooms – whatever they might transpire to be – to the non-family people in their party.
There were three halfway decent double bedrooms, two with en suites. Jessie’s friends, Mary-Laine and Annette, along with their husbands, were to be given those. Rionna and Kaz could have the non-ensuite room: Rionna was sound – she wouldn’t be offended.
‘Who should I put in the yurt?’ Muiria asked.
A yurt?
‘Nobody.’
‘Someone has to.’
‘It can’t be Mary-Laine, Annette or Rionna.’
‘No bother.’
But he was afraid to trust her, so he stood at the front door, intercepting people as they arrived, and shepherding them through check-in.
Here came Rionna and Kaz.
‘This is a bit of a shit-show,’ he muttered. ‘I’m very sorry. I’m deeply, truly sorry.’
Rionna and Kaz laughed it off. ‘So long as Jessie has a good time, that’s all that matters.’
Jessie’s friend Mary-Laine and her husband Martin were similarly relaxed.
Annette and Nigel, though … Annette was Jessie’s friend and she was okay. But her husband Nigel was as arsy as they come. Too aggressive, always had to win and delighted with any chance to make life unpleasant for others.
Here came a gang of people Johnny didn’t recognize. These must be the other guests, he realized. Six thirty-somethings, a smiley, rowdy group of friends. Johnny scanned them, looking for the alpha, the person he could join forces with, to keep this thing on track – but they were all betas. So he was completely on his own, carrying this weekend entirely by himself. He’d only been trying to save money. He’d been ultimately thinking of everyone’s good. But who was going to cut him any slack?
No one, that was who.
His was a heavy and a lonely burden.
The only ones left to arrive were Ed and Cara and they’d be happy with anything. So when Micah whizzed past and told him to come to the drawing room, he decided it was safe to stand down.
FIFTY-EIGHT
‘Nell McDermott?’ Micah called. ‘You’re Ginerva McQuarrie. Socialite and ruthless adventuress.’
Her props were a pair of vintage sunglasses, an onyx cigarette holder, a feather boa and satin elbow gloves, all of decent quality.
‘Ferdia Kinsella?’ Micah called. ‘Quentin Ropane-Redford. Racing-car driver and eligible bachelor.’ Ferdia was given a pair of driving gloves, a fake Cartier cigarette lighter, an elaborate-looking watch and goggle-style sunglasses. ‘For the weekend, become your alter ego.’ Micah winked at him. ‘And expect the unexpected …’
Mary-Laine’s husband, Martin – or MP Timothy Narracott-Blatt – was accessorized with a silver-topped cane, a monocle and a top-hat.
‘Liam Casey? You’re Vicar Daventry.’
Liam received a white dog-collar, a set of buck-teeth and a Bible. ‘Feck’s sake.’ He pawed through his haul. ‘Everyone else is playboys and good stuff and I’m a crappy vicar.’
‘Hot vicar,’ Nell said.
‘Oh, yeah?’ He shoved in his false teeth and lunged at her. ‘Still think so?’
She waved him away. ‘I’m going to the room to get changed.’
Johnny intercepted her, with the aspect of chief mourner at a funeral. ‘Nell, I apologize. This is a bit of a cluster-fuck.’
‘No way,’ she said. ‘It just isn’t very, you know, Johnny-and-Jessie. But it’s going to be the best fun. The props are class. They got them from a theatre group. It’s all cool.’
‘You’re so nice.’
For a scary moment, it looked like he might kiss her.
‘When should we give Jessie her gift?’ she asked. ‘We got her a powder compact. Vintage. Silver and enamel. Will it be okay?’
‘Aaah … We’ll play all that by ear. I’m sure she’ll be happy with it.’
He clearly hadn’t a clue and she felt sorry for him. Whatever, it would have to be okay. She’d wasted days on eBay searching for something adequately ‘Jessie’.
Micah called, ‘Johnny Casey! Dr Basil Theobald-Montague, once-eminent heart surgeon.’
‘I’m up,’ he said, and skedaddled.
Nell saw that Cara and Ed had finally arrived. They looked upset. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
Cara looked around furtively, until she saw that Johnny was too far away to hear. ‘Ed and I, our room is a yurt.’
Ferdia had also come to say hello. ‘A yurt? Cool!’
‘Except it’s not a yurt,’ Ed said.
‘It’s just a tent, like a four-man tent.’ Cara’s chin wobbled. ‘We can’t even stand up in it and there’s no bathroom. I’m too old for this –’
‘Have my room,’ Ferdia cut in. ‘I’ve five beds and at least one bathroom.’
‘Stop, Ferdia, I couldn’t.’
‘You could. I don’t care. I don’t need a bathroom. C’mon, Cara, let’s get your stuff and we’ll swap now.’
‘Thanks, Ferdia,’ Ed said. ‘That would be great.’
Tears actually spilt from Cara’s eyes. She seemed slightly broken. Ferdia led her away, his arm around her shoulders.
As the birthday girl, Jessie was the first Casey to the drawing room, to welcome her guests for the pre-dinner drinks. She’d already passed through about a dozen states of mind since they’d arrived. To begin with, she’d been surprised – surely this wasn’t ‘the country-house hotel’ where her much-anticipated fiftieth-birthday weekend was happening? When she understood that it was, she felt violent disappointment.
It was only when she saw how mortified Johnny was that she felt some sympathy. It was a horrible thing to organize a disastrous weekend, then to have to see it through.
But very quickly, she’d moved on to fury: she’d hinted long and hard about the world-famous place in Perthshire and this was a million miles from it. Johnny was happy to spend lots of money on everyone else. Her money. But he wouldn’t spend it on her. She could have organized the weekend herself and she’d have made sure they all went to Scotland. But she’d wanted to be ‘surprised’.
Well, she was fucking surprised all right.
But her anger would have to be parked for the next two days because it wasn’t just about him and her. Other people were tangled up in this shit-show and she was obliged to be mannerly. There were times, though – more and more often lately – when she wondered about Johnny. Anonymous creeps online were always saying he was a cheater. Not just because he was g
ood-looking and charming, but because, as the main breadwinner, she’d emasculated him. What other choice did he have, they reasoned, but to be unfaithful? Was this shitty weekend a passive-aggressive punishment? Was everything finally catching up with them?
Persuading him to sleep with her, that night in Limerick all those years ago, had been pure spontaneity. He’d been there, his hair rumpled, his tie askew. She’d made a jokey remark, he’d said, I do want you, and bam! She’d gone from dead to alive, from nothing to everything. Out of nowhere had come that astonishing spurt of lust, that flood of longing. Oh, my God, I’m a woman and you’re a man and let’s have sex because I bet sex with you would be pretty amazing. She’d wanted him and she didn’t give a flying fuck about the consequences. Like buying a fabulous coat she didn’t need and couldn’t afford.
But sleeping with Johnny wasn’t like buying a Tory Burch coat. Tory Burch coats could be returned and her money would be refunded.
That first night confirmed that, yep, they were very sexually compatible. That, yep, they were mad about each other. That this thing was real, that this thing was on.
She and Johnny had hit the ground running. Sex, sex, sex. Work, sex and more sex. Getting pregnant had given her a wobble – just what the hell was she at?
The distress of the poor Kinsellas gave her an even bigger wobble. But then it united herself and Johnny more tightly, in an us-against-the-world bond.
She’d thought they were happy, but when you’ve got kids and you share a frantic work schedule, there’s a lot of scaffolding keeping you operational. If things slipped off the tracks, it might take a while for someone to notice.
She had to admit that, despite their relative harmony, Johnny sometimes treated her like a joke: a headstrong nightmare, who needed robust management. When he and the kids sometimes ganged up, calling her Herr Kommandant, she’d assumed it was good-natured, but was she wrong?
Love faded and soured, so she’d heard. Had Johnny’s feelings for her curdled because she was too much of a bossy-pants?
Look at how different Ed and Cara were: Ed adored Cara. It was so obvious. There were no grand gestures from him, but he behaved as if he were the luckiest man alive. And Cara loved Ed back: that was for sure.
She never really got that from Johnny, that feeling of being cherished. Instead, she had a picture in her head of him slinking around, fearful of more chores and on the constant lookout for sex, like a raccoon around a bin.
He could be cheating. He actually genuinely could. The possibility made her feel sick. He had no shortage of opportunity – he travelled a lot without her. God knew who he met. People fancied him. She’d seen it in action. Jealousy surged, like hot lava.
Again she thought of him, like a raccoon nosing around a bin, wondering if he could persuade her into bed. There was a constant imbalance between the amount of sex she felt he wanted and what they actually managed. The thing was, she liked sex. She liked it a lot. It was just that accessing it felt like having to hack her way through a dense jungle, clearing obstacle after obstacle out of the way. Work and tiredness and children interrupting and last-minute chores all conspired to wreck any opportunities.
Once again she remembered the strange things he’d been saying during the weekend from hell in Mayo. All that stuff about being a hollow man had alarmed her. Back then, she’d decided they were going to have some alone time, right? To get to the bottom of whatever was up with him. But as soon as the decision was made, the Hagen Klein disaster had blown up. Next thing she was on a plane to Lebanon, then to Switzerland, trying desperately to persuade another chef to take Hagen’s place at very short notice, all the while running interference from a hundred punters, as pissed off with her as if she’d been personally buying the wraps of crystal meth and standing in Hagen’s kitchen forcing them on him.
In the end, Mubariz Khoury from Beirut had jumped in. It had all gone ahead last weekend, without ultimately causing too much damage to the PiG brand.
But the drama had taken up all her time, focus and every scrap of energy. It was only now that she was surfacing from the mire of panicky planning back to the rest of her life – to discover that Johnny was still being weird.
FIFTY-NINE
Micah approached, carrying a tray of cocktails. ‘Ah, Miss Rosamund Childers, you’re looking well tonight.’
As a secretary, Jessie hadn’t been given much leeway with her outfit. That was another thing! Johnny should have pushed for something more fun as her alias – a showgirl like Saoirse in a short, shimmery halterneck or a woman of mystery like Nell. Instead, she was done up as Dowdy Central in a wool skirt, lace-up brogues and a twin-set, accessorized with pince-nez glasses, fake pearls, a leather-bound notebook and fountain pen to keep details of all MP Timothy’s appointments.
‘Please take any glass,’ Micah said. ‘Except the pink one. That is the special drink of Lady Ariadne Cornwallis, Argentine heiress.’
‘Right so.’ Nothing like signalling ahead that Lady Ariadne Cornwallis, whoever she was, was not long for this world.
Next to arrive was Rionna, as Phyllida Bundle-Bunch, a ‘world-renowned’ opera singer, dressed in an extravagant taffeta evening gown, an elaborate wig and a giant bejewelled choker. ‘Y’okay?’ she asked Jessie.
‘Faking it to make it. I’m going to enjoy myself if it kills me.’
‘Good woman. Here’s Hanging Judge Jeffries.’
It was Kaz, in a voluminous black cape and a long, yellowish, itchy-looking judge’s wig. ‘This is fantastic.’ She waved her gavel about, flapping fabric everywhere. ‘I feel I could take flight.’
As more people began to flood into the drawing room, it was a relief that they’d made an effort with their costumes. There was a lord in a frock-coat, fob-watch and mutton-chop sideburns; a lady do-gooder in a drop-waisted shift and a cloche hat; a ‘mysterious beauty’ in a floaty frock and veil.
Nell, as always, was magnificent as some sort of socialite con-woman, in a champagne-coloured figure-hugging satin dress.
A pair of buck-teeth loomed at her. ‘Have you opened your heart to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour?’
‘Feck off.’ Jessie managed to laugh, but truth be told, she’d soured on Liam, since she’d heard about his caper with Sammie.
It had been blind good luck she’d been up so early that Sunday morning last month, had never got to sleep, in fact. When she’d heard noises from outside the ‘young persons’ house’, she’d opened the front door – and there was Barty, flinging rucksacks into Liam’s car. She’d called, ‘What’s happening, Barty?’
He’d been quite happy to spill the beans. No ability to keep his mouth shut, that lad.
‘There’s an apology going down in there right now.’ He’d nodded at the house. ‘But Liam is a shithead.’ Then, ‘Sorry for the language. He’s not a shithead.’
But Jessie wondered if Liam actually was a shithead. Men acting the arse because their wives’ careers were going well weren’t her favourite people – and especially not tonight.
… Oh, God, here came Johnny, looking stressed, holding a porn-star moustache to his face.
‘I can’t get my moustache to stick. Could you …’
… Jessie pivoted towards Annette and her horrible husband Nigel, presenting Johnny with her shoulder.
‘For the weekend, become your alter ego,’ Micah called, for the millionth time. ‘Expect the unexpected – no! The pink drink is for Lady Ariadne!’
‘Holy shit!’ Kaz exclaimed.
‘Wow,’ Rionna agreed.
Jessie turned around to see Ferdia, tall and lean, in a white dinner jacket, a black dicky-bow and black dress pants. For once his dark hair was slicked back tidily. He looked groomed and glamorous, and her chest bloomed with love. You’d be so proud of him, she told Rory.
‘I’d turn for him,’ Rionna said.
‘So would I,’ Kaz chimed in. ‘Hey! You there, boy! Over here.’
Rionna and Kaz took ownership, pulling at his jacket an
d touching his crisp white shirt. ‘Look at you, Ferdia. All grown-up.’
‘And hot.’
‘Ah, stop.’ His cheekbones reddened. ‘They’re only clothes.’
‘Aha!’ Micah called. ‘I hear the dinner gong!’
‘I heard nothing,’ Jessie said. ‘Am I going deaf?’
‘I think the gong is imaginary,’ Rionna said. ‘Like the luxury accommodation, the three-hundred-thread-count bed linen, the –’
‘Sorry,’ Johnny said. ‘I’m so sorry about all of this.’
So you fucking should be, you mean-spirited, stingy bastard.
Startling everyone, a woman burst in. ‘Lady Ariadne Cornwallis,’ she announced herself. ‘Argentine heiress!’
It was Muiria in a black dress, a wig of long, dark curls and a slash of Frosty Shimmer lipstick.
‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ Rionna turned away quickly, her shoulders shaking.
‘Lady Ariadne,’ Micah said. ‘Here is your special cocktail.’
‘Indeed! My special cocktail!’ Lady Ariadne made quite a show of drinking her special drink and replacing the glass on the tray. ‘Thank you, young Micah.’
‘How was it?’ Kaz asked eagerly.
‘Taste slightly different from usual?’ Rionna’s voice held a hint of malicious glee.
‘A touch of almond?’ Jessie said.
‘Why almond?’ Kaz asked.
‘That well-known poison, cyanide, is almond-flavoured.’
‘Please stop!’ Johnny said.
Nervously, Micah said, ‘Let us process through to the dining room.’
Surprisingly, the dining table looked the part. An elaborate chandelier hung over a long, white-clothed table, the light winking off silver candlesticks and crystal glasses.
‘Sit where you like,’ Micah called.
In high spirits, everyone found a place and introduced themselves to their neighbours, under their new name. Jessie was glad that their crowd were bonding with ‘The Other Six’: it made things less awkward.
Clifford arrived with a trayful of small plates. He and Micah placed mozzarella salads in front of everyone.