Tales From a Hen Weekend (31 page)

Instead, we tell Roisin all about our weekend in Dublin and how Jude came to break her ankle. She tells us about the one and only time she’s been to England, in 1979 to the wedding of a niece who
emigrated
to Swansea.

‘But Swansea’s in Wales,’ I point out.

‘Yes, you could be right, I did hear tell of that once meself. These foreign places move around, do they not – England one minute, Wales the next, ’tis very confusing, so it is.’

‘Do they?’ says Emily, looking blank.

‘Sure, ’tis only here in God’s own country that the towns seem to stay put in one place,’ she says smugly. ‘Have you ever noticed Kinsale moving out of County Cork, Judith, or Cork becoming part of Northern Ireland, God save and preserve us all?’

‘No, Roisin.’

‘You see?’ she nods triumphantly at Emily. ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’

I’m thinking privately that Roisin’s barking mad and it’s probably best just to humour her, but I can see Emily frowning and squaring up for an argument.

‘Would you like more tea, Roisin, before you get back to Paddy’s dinner?’ says Jude hastily before she can start anything.

‘Bless yer heart, I could sit here drinking tea and telling you me traveller’s tales all day, if it wasn’t for me arthritis.’ Emily’s frown deepens at this, and I catch her eye, shaking my head, warning her off any attempts to make head or tail of Roisin, who, if not barking mad is probably rolling drunk. ‘But you’re right about Paddy’s dinner, God love you. If I don’t have his tatties in the pot by the time he sets foot in the door, he has a face on him to scare the devil himself out of hell, God save our poor souls from his mighty wrath.’

‘Paddy’s mighty wrath?’ echoes Emily faintly, looking worried.

‘No, the devil’s, I think,’ Harry whispers behind his hand. ‘Just smile and nod.’

‘Thanks a million again for looking after Fergus,’ says Jude, as Roisin struggles with her arthritis to haul herself to her feet. ‘Give Paddy my regards.’

‘Goodbye. Nice to meet you,’ I say, going to the front door with her.

‘And likewise yerself, bless your sweet innocent heart,’ she says, laying a heavy florid hand on my arm.
Innocent ?
‘May all the blessings of St Anthony be with you on your holy wedding day.’

Oh, fuck. No way am I telling this fruitcake that there’s no holy wedding day happening. I’ll probably have her here for the rest of the day talking about the devil’s wrath.

‘Thanks,’ I say. Smile and nod, smile and nod.

‘And don’t you be worrying your head about Judith, now. I’ll bring her down some tatties and stew every evening till her leg’s mended, bless her heart. You and your little friend can just get yerselves home to Wales.’

Harry heads off, straight after Roisin goes, to pick up his cousin. He’s already phoned the pub in Urlingford, where, amazingly, someone handed in Jude’s crutches almost as soon as we must have left them in the car park. When he commented to the barmaid on the surprising honesty of the crutch-finder, he was apparently treated to a lecture on the inherent integrity of the citizens of Urlingford, culminating, indignantly, with:

‘’Twould be a mortal sin indeed to steal the crutches off the legs of a cripple!’

‘Cripple?’ retorted Jude, when he told her. ‘I’ve only broken me sodding ankle!’

‘Yeah, and you’re getting tatties and stew from upstairs for as long as it takes to mend it!’ I said with a grin.

‘Jesus. She means well, the daft old bat, but I’ve had her stew before, and it’s enough to set your intestines in concrete, so it is.’

God save us and preserve us from Roisin’s stew, then.

It’s quiet now, with just Emily and Jude and me. We put the telly on and slob out in companionable silence.

‘So, Jude,’ I say lightly after a while. ‘Are you going to tell us about it? About Fergus?’

‘Sure, and isn’t he the sweetest little cat that ever…’

‘Not the damn cat, Jude. You know what I’m asking you here. Why? Why the need for that dumb trick? Making up a boyfriend, making excuses for why he wasn’t around whenever he should have been? What the hell was all that about?’

‘Just a joke, Katie, for the love of God. No need to get upset.’

‘A joke?’ I shake my head at her. ‘We were worried about you – did you know that? We thought he sounded like he was messing you about. I was going to chop him up and throw him in the river.’

‘And what river would that have been, Katie?’ she asks, completely straight-faced. ‘Only I’m not sure you know your way around here, and the river is…’

Emily giggles. I glare at her.

‘So suddenly this is really funny, is it?’

‘Come off it, Katie,’ says Emily mildly. ‘Jude’s taken the piss out of us, we fell for it, serves us right.’

‘It stopped the nagging, for a while,’ Jude adds quietly.

‘Nagging?’ I’m cross, but only because I recognise the truth of this and I don’t want to admit it. ‘I have so
not
nagged you, Judith Barnard!’

‘You so
have
!’ she returns, laughing, imitating my Essex accent. ‘Every phone call, every e-mail, every time we see each other! “When are you going to get a boyfriend, Jude? When are you going to find yourself a man, Jude?”’ She stops and gives me a very pointed look. ‘Don’t you realise it’s just rubbing salt into the wound? Don’t you think I’d give anything to have a nice man in my life like the rest of the population of the world? Do you think I
like
being lonely and unloved?’

She says this flippantly, as if it’s a joke, but I suddenly see – years and years of
nagging
too late – that it isn’t. It’s hurting her, and I’ve been adding to that hurt. I jump to my feet as if I’ve been stung, run across the room and throw myself at her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I tell her, through the tangle of her hair and mine as our faces bump together. ‘I didn’t realise… I didn’t think. I was worried about you; I just want you to be happy.’

‘So do I, Katie, so we’re both after the same thing, are we not?’ she responds lightly. ‘Now will you get off me for the love of Jesus, before you break my other leg, with the weight of you, you great lump, you!’

‘Well, that’s nice, isn’t it!’ I retort huffily.

There’s a moment’s silence and then Emily sniggers and before we know it, we’re all killing ourselves laughing.

‘All right, I suppose I asked for it,’ I admit eventually.

‘It
is
quite funny,’ says Emily. ‘We’re all dying of curiosity about this guy – is he nice, is he good-looking, is he going to marry you and give you babies. And he’s a bloody Burmese cat!’

‘Don’t you be swearing about my pussy, young lady!’ Jude admonishes her, and we all start laughing again.

‘Just don’t ever say that again,’ I tell her when we finally calm down. ‘OK?’

‘What? Say what?’

‘That thing about being unloved. It’s not true. Whether you’ve got a man or not, it isn’t true.’

‘Cos
we
love you, baby!’ says Emily.

‘Yes, we do. Better than any man ever can, Jude. Don’t you ever forget it!’

She nods and grins at us both. She looks too choked up to reply. Probably too much laughing.

‘Shall Katie and I cook us something for dinner?’ asks Emily when we’ve finally slobbed in front of the TV for long enough.

‘Or shall we send for a takeaway?’ I put in quickly. I’m still on my holidays, thanks very much. Soon enough for normal cooking to be resumed when I get home. ‘Do you have takeaways around here, Jude?’

‘
Do we have takeaways
? Did you think Kinsale is a sleepy village in the back of beyond? It’s the gourmet capital of the Irish Riviera, Katie Halliday! There’s a queue a mile long for some of our restaurants, with fine good chefs from all over the world and tourists coming here specially for the seafood!’

Shit. That’s telling me, isn’t it.

‘So do you have takeaways?’

‘Yes, we do, Katie – is it Chinese or fish and chips you’d be liking?’

It’s not till we’ve piled the sweet and sour prawns and egg fried rice onto our plates and we’re just about to get stuck in, that I remember to ask Jude:

‘Who’s St Anthony?’

‘Patron saint of weddings, amongst other things. Although if you ask me, there’s a lot of confusion between these patron saints as to who’s responsible for what. St Valentine is obviously supposed to be the saint for lovers, fair enough. And I’ve heard some folk say St Nicholas is your man when it comes to brides and weddings – but how he can find the time to attend to that as well as playing Father Christmas, I couldn’t say.’

‘Does seem too much of a job for one guy,’ agrees Emily with a forkful of rice halfway to her mouth.

‘So I think, Katie, I’d put my money on Anthony if I was thinking of a quick prayer in relation to a wedding,’ says Jude quite seriously.

‘And is there a patron saint for cancelled weddings?’ I ask her without missing a beat.

She looks up at me, a question in her eyes. I have a sudden vision of the lilac bridesmaid dress hanging in my wardrobe, and a lump comes to my throat. Maybe I should be looking for the patron saint of broken promises and jilted bridesmaids.

‘Is it all out in the open now, so, Katie? You’ve told Emily?’

‘Yes. Emily knows. They all know, now, Jude. I told them all at the airport.’

Now it’s Emily’s turn to drop her fork and stop eating. We’ll never get through the meal at this rate.

‘Jude
knew
about this?’

‘Em – I had to. I had to tell someone or I’d have gone mad.’

‘Sure I only knew a few days before we went to Dublin, Emily.’

‘
I
only knew a few days before, myself!’ I say grimly.

‘And you couldn’t tell me?’ Emily asks softly, looking back at her dinner.

‘It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t that I couldn’t… didn’t trust you. Don’t be silly, that’s ridiculous. It’s just that I wasn’t ready for Mum, or Lisa, or Auntie Joyce and all the family to know about it. They’d have wanted me to cancel the hen weekend, for one thing. I know everyone thinks I’m peculiar for still going ahead with it – but it was what I wanted to do. Maybe it sounds mad, but I thought, if I just carry on, keep it to myself, have the hen weekend, pretend nothing’s happened, I won’t have to face it all till I get back.’

‘And I encouraged her,’ Jude tells Emily. ‘What would be the point of sitting at home, miserable, while her man still buggered off to …’

Emily shoots her a warning glance and Jude tails off, ‘… to that place where he’s gone to,’ which makes us all smile, despite ourselves.

‘It was too soon,’ I try to explain to Emily. ‘Too soon to talk to any of you about it. I couldn’t face you with it. It was easier telling to Jude on the phone; I didn’t have to see her face. See the disappointment.’

‘Jesus, will you listen to the nonsense of her? Disappointment? Sure I was only concerned about your own disappointment, you silly girl, and when you told me you thought it would be better for the two of you to not be married, that you’d been arguing and you wanted to go back to how you were before – well it sounded like it was for the best, when all was said and done.’

‘Well, I suppose I’m glad you weren’t keeping it all entirely to yourself,’ Emily tells me. ‘I must admit I was stunned, when you told us, to think you’d never let it slip, not to me, not to your mum or anyone.’

‘Yeah. To be honest, with me and Jude sharing a room, I’d probably have blabbed to her over the weekend if I hadn’t done already.’ I sigh. ‘Come on, girls, the food’s getting cold. No point crying over split milk. At least I haven’t got to say any prayers to St Anthony, anyway.’

But just as I start to dig into my Chinese again, I realise the strange music I’ve been hearing from somewhere in the distance is my chosen ring tone on my mobile phone, calling to me from my bag out in the hallway. I run out to answer it, but it’s only my voicemail, telling me I’ve already missed four calls. What’s the matter with me? Have I gone deaf, or what? All the calls were from Matt. And when I return the call and he answers, I have to sit down on the floor to recover from the surprise.

He sounds absolutely furious. And his first words to me are:

‘Where the fucking hell are you?’

‘I’ve been sitting here waiting for you,’ he thunders across the ocean at me. Well, the Irish Sea. Matt never normally thunders.

‘Here? Where?’

‘At home, Katie, where do you think? Why didn’t you come home with the others?’

‘Because of Jude. She broke her ankle. Emily and I…’ Hang on a minute. Why am I on the defensive? ‘Why aren’t you in Prague?’

‘I came home early. I needed to talk to you.’ His voice sounds grim. I don’t recognise the tone he’s taking with me. Has he been drinking? ‘I cut short my holiday because I needed to see you. I sat up all night, waiting, wondering if your flight was delayed, and then I phoned your sister and …’

‘But didn’t she tell you? About Jude’s ankle?’ I’m so stunned by the accusation in his voice, I can only talk in short sentences. He cut short his holiday because he needed to see me? Oh, that’s rich, after all this time refusing to consider anything less than ten days!

‘Yes, yes,’ he says impatiently. ‘Lisa told me some load of crap about you and Emily driving down to Kinsale with Jude. What the
hell
are you playing at?’

‘Playing at?’ I’m repeating him like a parrot. ‘We’re not
playing
at anything, Matt! We had to help Jude. She was stuck in hospital, and her parents couldn’t come, and Fergus couldn’t help because he’s a cat. Burmese. Her neighbour’s been looking after him but she had to go and get the tatties on for her husband.’

I’ve gone from gasping in short sentences to babbling like a racing commentator coming up to the finishing line.

‘Are you drunk?’ asks Matt when I pause for breath.

‘No! I’ve given it up, as a matter of fact. On account of a fight I had with Emily…’ I stop, thinking back over the events of the last few days. ‘Which was your fault,’ I add, crossly. How dare he be annoyed with me for not being there just because he decides to come home early? And how dare he accuse me of being drunk? This is
all
his fault!