Revenge of the Wedding Planner (9 page)

‘You haven’t slept with him? Thank God for small mercies! At least no real harm has been done, then. You haven’t officially cheated on Gary. What age did you say that fella was, by the way?’

‘Oh, Mags,’ she said sadly, ‘infidelity isn’t just about sex. We connected, do you understand? We felt easy together, at peace under the stars. Look at the way I’m talking, Mags. I never used to talk like this. I’m opening up in ways I never imagined. Last night, I didn’t worry about my age, about my wedding to Gary, about the fact I can’t have children. I block things out, you see? I always have. So do you, Mags. I thought you would understand.’

Let’s take a moment.

You know, it’s amazing how things can change in one generation, isn’t it? My parents went to school in bare feet in the summer and were working full-time by the age of twelve, my father as a shop delivery boy with a big black bicycle, and my mother as a cleaner in the linen mill. By contrast, I was still buying pop posters when I was eighteen and taping the charts for hours every Sunday night, painstakingly writing down all the titles on cassette cards. I lived in a sort of bubble for most of my childhood,
that’s the truth of it. I didn’t like to hear or see anything that might upset me so I blanked it out and created a little world of my own in my bedroom. I had all my posters in there, my books and cassettes, a beanbag and cushions, a blue plastic crate of make-up and cheap jewellery, incense sticks and a bedside lamp that looked like an oil lamp but wasn’t really an oil lamp. Bill still teases me about my ‘bubble mentality’ and asks me how my ‘bubble integrity’ is at stressful times in my life. He understands, though, why I put so much effort into creating our perfect home. It’s because I want to create a perfect world, but deep down I know I can’t.

Julie couldn’t have children.

I couldn’t believe it.

‘What was that you said? What was that you said, Julie? You
can’t
have children?’ I never knew Julie was infertile. She never brought the subject up and I’d always assumed she wasn’t the maternal type.

‘Years ago, on holiday. I caught an infection off this idiot. A cheesy nightclub crooner with platform shoes. It didn’t matter to me, Mags, when I found out. I didn’t want children anyway but I should have told Gary before he wasted three years of his life on me.’

‘Julie, is this what it’s all about?’ I tried to be extra gentle. ‘Is the break-up with Gary because you
can’t
have a child together? I’m sure Gary will understand – you know how calm and sensible he is? At least give him the chance to talk about this. I can’t believe you won’t even see him after what a decent bloke he’s always been. You can’t be in love with this Jay guy after knowing him for only five minutes. This isn’t a Hollywood movie, Julie.’

‘Who said anything about love?’ Julie said then, sounding utterly bewildered. ‘I don’t love Jay. I just love who I become when I’m with him. I’m different, a better person. It’s easy for you, Mags, sitting there in your little palace on Eglantine Avenue with your chattering brood round you. And Bill making all the decisions. Your whole life is one big certainty. I’m living from day to day, Mags. Here and now is all I have.’

Well, I didn’t like that comment about Bill making all the decisions but I let it slide. Single women without kids can be quite naive sometimes, I find. It’s not their fault. They have no idea how much hard work and serious responsibility motherhood and being married actually are. All they see are the glossy adverts on telly for Mother’s Day gifts. They know nothing of the agony you go through when your child makes their own way to and from school for the first time. God, I was in bits for weeks with all four of mine. Imagining them smiling and laughing as they stepped out in front of a juggernaut. Still, you can’t rattle on about these things or you get labelled neurotic. And you can’t walk the kids to and from school yourself after they turn eleven or the poor mites will be crucified by their peers. In fact, eleven is pushing it. My kids made me wait round the corner from the school gates and pretend I was sitting at the bus stop. If there were any other children about, they wouldn’t even walk beside me or speak to me. What’s
easy
about that?

‘But you have Gary,’ I reminded her.

‘Not when he finds out my tubes are blocked. Look, I’m on my own in this world. Well, there’s my mother
but she’s too busy with her precious boutique to talk to me like a normal mother would. Poor cow.’

‘You have me,’ I said. ‘You can talk to me.’

‘Oh, I’ve tried talking to you, Mags, and you won’t listen. You’re a hopeless romantic. Look, I’ve got to go.’ She sighed then. ‘Tell Gary today, please? Will you? Bye for now.’

‘Julie, wait! Are you testing Gary? Do you want him to come to Galway and find you? Like Richard Gere and Debra Winger in that film and she was wearing his hat at the end? Should I tell him where you are but let him think he dragged it out of me? Julie?’ I almost shouted into the phone but she had already hung up.

I was left with the uneasy feeling that Julie was perhaps feeling very vulnerable at the moment and maybe she needed to be rescued from this Jay, whoever he was. Some dope-smoking Casanova who’d take advantage of her? A smooth-talker with wandering hands? A daydreaming poet who’d make her fall in love with him and then move on to his next muse? I almost fainted with worry.

So although I felt guilty to the core, talking about Julie behind her back, I decided I’d call Bill and ask his advice. Naturally, I knew exactly what he’d say but I wanted to hear him say it anyway. I said Julie wanted me to finish with Gary for her and that she was in hiding in Galway until the deed was done. Bill told me it wasn’t my problem, just like I
knew
he would. He said I owed Julie my loyalty and respect for being a good employer but that I wasn’t her doctor, her shrink, her mother or her agony aunt. Well, that’s men for you; the bottom line is they’re very logical. Of course I wasn’t Julie’s personal psychiatrist but
I still wanted to help her. Bill said I should give Gary the name of the spa and let him sort it out himself. That’s what he’d prefer, Bill said, if he was in Gary’s shoes.

But I couldn’t do that because I hadn’t told my husband about Jay O’Hanlon and the hayloft and Julie deciding to ‘open up’ after forty-one years of being a super-tough survivor.

It wasn’t even lunchtime and I was in turmoil. I went to the office to try to organize my thoughts. Incredibly, I just sat there thinking that all-white really is very cold to live with and that the office could have done with two coats of Soft Truffle (by Dulux) and some pretty desk lamps. And maybe a soft rug to take the bareness off the floorboards.

And then Gary phoned to say he was coming to the lighthouse to take me out for lunch. Digging for more Julie-info, obviously. I told him I was far too busy for lunch and he said he’d swing out by the lighthouse all the same and maybe we could go for a short stroll along the shore. My skin was prickling with panic. He hung up before I could think of an excuse why we couldn’t meet. Like I had scurvy or something terribly contagious?

And then my mother called me from Devon to inform me that my – wait for it – ‘silly old sod of a father’ had passed away.

‘What?
Who’s passed away? My da?
Mum, have you been drinking?’ I croaked, switching from mouse-mode to toad-mode. ‘Get out of that, will you? Dad’s only sixty-eight.’

‘Drinking, is it? I never touch the stuff, Margaret. You know I don’t. Honestly, what a thing to say to me. Now,
your father’s gone to a better place and so on and so forth, so let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. The thing is, my dear, you’ll have to arrange the funeral, all right?’ she said brusquely. ‘I simply can’t get away in the peak season and, besides, we
are
properly divorced so I’m not the next of kin any more. You are. You’re the eldest child, Margaret.’

‘Me? Arrange a funeral? But you know I’m not religious! I can’t go asking his priest to say the Mass. I don’t even know who his priest is. I don’t know what to do! You know Bill and I aren’t religious, Mum.’

‘That’s your problem, Margaret. I’ve always told you to keep in with the clergy and now you know why. Because sooner or later you’ll need a priest and then where will you be with your trendy ideas? I’m sorry, but I’ve already given the hospital your name. As of now, I am not to be contacted any more
re
my ex-husband.’

‘Re’ meaning ‘with reference to’. It’s the only modern lingo my mother knows and she uses it at every opportunity.

‘Well, that’s very handy for you,’ I snapped, a huge lump of sadness forming in my throat. That day, I almost wished divorce wasn’t available in the British Isles because clearly one of the spin-offs of divorce is that we children have to bury our fathers these days, instead of the estranged wife having to do it. ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ I gasped, experiencing my first hot flush since meeting Bill in the Limelight Club. ‘What the heck
happened
to him? Can you tell me that before I order the coffin? Or are you too busy with your toast racks and your butter curls?’

‘Don’t be cheeky, Margaret. It’s not my fault the man died. You know he had no time for me or anyone else outside of Stormont.’

That’s the name of our local parliament building, by the way. Though it hasn’t seen much action these last few years.

‘So?’

‘So why do you think I should be upset? Any woman who could cook and clean would have done him for a wife. As long as she kept her mouth shut and didn’t interrupt him when he was watching the news.’

She had a point there.

‘Go on, then,’ I grumbled. ‘Tell me the rest of it.’

‘
Apparently
, one of the neighbours found him sitting at the kitchen table with his head on a sliced loaf. They broke in when they noticed the milk hadn’t been collected from the doorstep for three days.’

For one awful moment, I thought my father had been murdered and horribly mutilated by some psychopath. Care in the community isn’t what it was, you know. But no. No such drama. He’d only fallen asleep listening to the radio as usual and died peacefully of heart failure. Maybe the exhaustion of waiting for a civil war had finally sapped his life force? I should have visited him more often but it used to put me off when he’d start up about how society had forgotten the 1981 hunger-strikers, before I’d even got my coat off. And he always told me I was pale as death even though he knew that was how I
wanted
to look. I mean, how could he forget I was a Goth when he never forgot the anniversary of Bobby Sands’ death? But, anyway, he was gone. And the worst
thing was, he’d been sitting there with his right ear firmly pressed to an Ormo thick-sliced loaf for a day or two before he’d been found. I couldn’t even cry, I was that stunned.

‘Oh, Mum, this is terrible. I feel so absolutely
awful
about this. Are you devastated?’

‘No, dear. I only married him in the first place because he had a decent car.’

‘Well, that’s nice to know, that I’m alive today only because you liked the look of my father’s wheels!’

‘He was so handsome when we first began walking out together, Margaret. And he could have gone a lot further in that job of his, if he’d done some exams and kept at it. I really thought I’d caught myself a prince. All the girls round our way had their eye on him, you know. But then he went all funny into politics and he made nothing of his life. Now, don’t worry,’ she said kindly, easing up on me a little bit, ‘it won’t be in the papers, they’ve already assured me it won’t. This sort of thing happens all the time to poor folk who live by themselves. I suppose he should have had an arrangement with a neighbour, where they’d call each other every morning at a certain time? That’s very popular nowadays, you know? With so many people living on their own in our society. But of course your father was too pig-headed to entertain anything normal like that. He’s at peace now. How ironic. He can go to heaven and meet the 1916 Easter Rising gang and tell them where they went wrong. Greatest armchair-general this country has ever known, your father. And God knows we had plenty to choose from.’

That’s my mother for you, a very dry sense of humour.

‘Do my sisters know yet?’

‘No, Margaret. I thought you’d prefer to break the news to them. You were always so close, the three of you. As thick as thieves always.’

‘Oh, thanks, Mum!’ I was so looking forward to
that
. No doubt she was thinking of the cost of calling Australia. She’s very careful with money, is my mother, unless you’re talking about facelifts and then it’s no expense spared.

‘That’s okay, love.’

‘What will I do, though, after I’ve phoned them?’ I asked her. ‘I’ve never arranged a funeral before. Let alone a funeral for a devout Catholic and hard-line Republican sympathizer.’

‘Don’t be like that, Margaret. It doesn’t suit you, dear. Look up Undertakers in the Yellow Pages, for heaven’s sake. What do you think you’re supposed to do? They’ll fetch your father from the mortuary and tidy him up, I expect. I wouldn’t bother with a big do. It’ll be nearly as expensive as a wedding but it’s up to yourself. If you’re willing to pay for it, you go ahead.’

‘When are you coming over?’ I said, making a mental note to pop a basket of fresh towels in the guest room. It’d be lovely to spend a few days with Mum, I thought. Even if the circumstances were so awful. ‘Will Tone be coming with you?’ Tone is her boyfriend’s name. Well, he’s really called Tony and he’s fifty-nine but she calls him Tone. She’s sixty-four.

‘Oh, no, Margaret. I can’t make it to Ireland at the minute. I’m up to my eyes here with cooked breakfasts and afternoon teas. And Tone wouldn’t feel comfortable, dear, going to a funeral with so many Nationalists kicking
about. Keep this to yourself now, but he once had a relative in the UDR.’

The Ulster Defence Regiment.

‘But you’ve got to come
to the funeral
,’ I pleaded. ‘Mum, I need you here. You’re not seriously going to miss it, are you? You must be there for my sake and for Ann and Elizabeth too. Remember them?’