Tales From a Hen Weekend (8 page)

Some of us are quiet at breakfast in the morning, and several of us have difficulty looking a fried egg in the face.

First in the queue for black coffee is Mum, who looks like she can hardly bear the sunlight coming in through the dining-room windows.

‘How’s your head?’ I ask her gently, sitting down next to her with two slices of toast and marmalade.

‘Not good, dear, I’m afraid. Oh, move that food away from under my nose, please, if you don’t mind. The smell’s making me feel a bit faint.’

‘Sure you’ll be fine when you’ve got a bit of fresh Dublin air in your lungs, Margie,’ says Jude cheerfully, joining us and plonking her plate of sausages and fried potatoes down on the table. Mum winces and turns away, covering her mouth delicately with her serviette. ‘It’s a lovely day outside, so it is. I’ve been up since seven o’clock watching the world warm up.’

‘Not a bit of it, Marge,’ says Jude stoutly, ‘You were grand altogether. Sure and we were all fluthered, were we not?’

‘Fluthered?’

‘Hammered, so we were – but didn’t we have a great time and all? Is it beating the shit out of your own hen night at Southend, do you think, Margie?’

‘Southend… did I mention Southend last night, for God’s sake?’

‘Of course you did, Mum! You never left off going on about bloody Southend!’ I laugh. ‘It must have been fan-bloody-tastic, I’ll give you that – the amount you keep going on about it!’

‘It wasn’t,’ she says, dropping her coffee cup into the saucer with a crash. ‘It wasn’t good at all.’ She looks stricken, like she’s going to cry. ‘I don’t know what I was blabbing on about last night, but I’ve never told anyone the truth. It was a terrible day. It was the worst day of my entire life!’

‘I feel awful leaving Mum and Auntie Joyce behind,’ says Lisa as we leave the hotel a little later. ‘Are you
sure
they didn’t want to come?’

‘I think Mum still feels a bit hungover. And Joyce looks knackered. I reckon she didn’t get a lot of sleep – she says Mum was groaning and carrying on in her sleep all night. They’ll both be fine if they stay here and rest, this morning.’

I haven’t said anything to Lisa about Mum and the Southend Hen-Night Outburst. I feel pretty sure she’s just feeling tired and over-emotional, like we all do when we’re recovering from a piss-up, and probably didn’t mean it. Anyway, I’m hardly going to bother Lisa about it when she’s spent half of last night spilling the beans about her own personal disaster.

‘Are you feeling OK this morning?’ I ask her quietly as we walk down the street together.

‘Course I am!’ she says sharply. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

Christ, has she forgotten it all already? Sobbing in our arms about the night her husband wouldn’t look her in the eyes, or under her negligee? Confessing to an affair with a younger guy who wears black Lycra shorts and a sweatband? It was such riveting stuff, you could have heard a pin drop in that bar last night.

‘I’m absolutely fine,’ she goes on, giving me a sideways look and a sly grin. ‘I feel better than I have for months. I should have told you about it ages ago.’

Something about confession being good for the soul? Blimey. Maybe we should play Truth or Dare more often.

Today Jude’s in charge. Emily asked her to organise some sightseeing, as she knows Dublin a lot better than any of us. We’re all wearing the pink ‘Hen Party’ T-shirts and getting a few smiles as we walk through Temple Bar arm-in-arm. And a few comments.

‘Is “Rather You Than Me, Love” the mainstay of Irish conversation about weddings?’ I ask Jude a bit tersely after the fifth of these remarks from passers-by (all women).

‘Can you blame them, when you look at what they’re married to? Sure yer average Irish husband is a complete eejit, out on the piss every night of the week and about as much use to his wife as a babby.’

‘That’s a bit harsh!’ laughs Emily. ‘Maybe you should look for a nice English guy for yourself, then, Jude – or is Fergus the exception to the rule?’

She flushes and smiles.

‘Well, to be fair to Fergus he does
not
go out on the booze every night, so I’ve no complaints in that department, now.’

‘And what about the other department, eh, Jude?’ Karen calls out, with a suggestive gesture that nearly stops a group of lads in their tracks as they’re passing us in the street.

‘Be off with you, you and your dirty mind!’ But she’s laughing and blushing and I think to myself –
I hope this Fergus realises just how sweet and lovely she is.

‘He’d better bloody treat you right,’ I tell her fiercely, ‘or I’ll be over here to sort him out.’

‘I’ll let him know that, so I will, Katie! Now then, are y’all paying attention to your tour guide? As you know, we’re in the Temple Bar area here, where most of the bars, live music and nightclubs are, so…’

‘So we’ll just stay here then, shall we?’ says Karen.

‘No, we shall
not
be staying here, there’s a city to explore and sure you’d not want to go home without visiting the famous Guinness Storehouse, would you now?’

‘Now you’re talking,’ says Helen appreciatively. Helen’s a beer drinker and she spent most of last night on the Guinness, informing us with every single pint that it was the best she’d ever drunk. By the time she got to the last one I was surprised she could even remember the others, but there you go.

‘Lead on, then, MacDuff, or should I say O’Duff?’ quips Lisa in a lousy imitation of Jude’s accent that makes us all laugh.

‘Well, I thought we’d get ourselves a trip on the city bus tour. You can see some of the sights from the bus, and we’ll get off at the Guinness building. Is that OK for you all?’

‘Abso-bloody-lutely, Judy baby!’ says Lisa, flinging an arm round her extravagantly. ‘A bus would be great. I’m not up for walking too far on these bloody cobbles.’

‘Jesus, God, will you listen to her giving out! Sure it’s only in Temple Bar you’ll see the cobbles, Lisa, and it won’t kill you for a few minutes to walk on them either!’

‘Yeah, Lisa, stop whingeing and keep up with the rest of us!’ I tease her. ‘How far to the bloody bus stop, Jude?’

We sit on the top deck of the bus, half listening to the commentary as we pass close to Dublin Castle and St Patrick’s Cathedral. Suze, who’s been frighteningly quiet this morning and didn’t manage any breakfast, has fallen asleep by the time the bus arrives at the Guinness Storehouse, and we enjoy shouting in her ear to wake her up.

‘Come on! Lovely Guinness!’ says Emily cruelly, and we all laugh as she turns a bit green and clutches her stomach, promising never to drink again as long as she lives.

‘Yeah, right,’ mutters Karen. ‘I’ll give it a couple of hours at the most…’

Not everyone likes Guinness, but Jude tells us it’s definitely impolite to refuse the complimentary pint in the bar at the top of the Storehouse, the highest bar in Dublin. After traipsing around the building looking at how it’s made, I think the least we can do is enjoy a pint of it, and I’m gasping with thirst anyway, so it goes down a treat. Helen, however, is sipping hers reverently, with her eyes closed, like it’s a religious experience. It’s supposed to be the best Guinness you’ll ever taste in your life. I nudge her, making her swear furiously when the beer splashes onto her jeans.

‘Better than sex, is it?’ I tease her.

She takes another sip, closing her eyes again, obviously considering this carefully.

‘It’s a close thing,’ she says eventually. ‘And it certainly lasts longer.’

The other girls fall about laughing at this all-too-obvious crack, but I smile back at Helen, because I know her, and she doesn’t joke about things like this. I think she actually does prefer the Guinness. Maybe she’s got a point.

We get back on the bus afterwards and finish the rest of the tour. Jude’s doing her best to encourage us to listen to the commentary but by the time we end up back at Temple Bar again, Suze isn’t the only one who’s fallen asleep.

‘Will you look at the lot of you – what a shower of bloody eejits!’ she says in disgust. ‘And there was I thinking you’d be up for a spot of lunch in one of these fine hostelries, with a little live music, but of course if you’d rather be back in your rooms asleep on your beds…’

We all seem to have woken up miraculously at the mention of lunch and hostelries.

Lisa takes it upon herself, despite complaints about the cobbles, to go back to the hotel to bring Mum and Auntie Joyce out to join us for lunch. We find a table in one of the biggest bars, where the live music consists of a lone singer, accompanying himself on the guitar.

‘He could do with cheering up a bit,’ I whisper to Jude. ‘Music to slit your wrists by, or what?’

‘Oh, he’ll liven up in a while,’ says Jude with surprising confidence. ‘Come on, let’s get something to eat, for God’s sake – it’s been hours since breakfast and me stomach feels like me throat’s been cut.’

That’s another strange thing about Jude. For someone so slim and petite, she’s got the appetite of a horse. Where does she put it all? Why doesn’t she ever get an ounce of fat on her bones? And why am I already feeling like I’m two dress sizes bigger than yesterday, after just one night of booze and junk food? Why is life so full of unfairness and contradiction? Why am I sitting here feeling sorry for myself in the middle of a gang of riotous crazy friends whose only mission in life is to get me pissed?

‘Get that down you,’ says Emily, plonking a glass of white wine in front of me.

Seems churlish to refuse, really.

Within ten minutes we’re all back on the booze, even those who pledged only a few hours ago to give it up forever. We’ve ordered sandwiches and we’re getting stuck into packets of crisps and nuts as if we’ve never eaten before. It must be the fresh air.

Mum’s sitting next to me, sipping delicately at her glass of wine, giving it the occasional suspicious look as if something’s going to leap out of it and bite her.

‘Just take it easier today and you’ll be fine,’ I tell her quietly.

I feel a bit sorry for her, and guilty for letting her get drunk last night. Lisa and I should have kept more of an eye on her. She’s not really used to the amount of drink we were putting away.

‘I know. I’m not daft,’ she says tetchily. ‘You don’t have to treat me as if I’m five years old.’

‘I’m not! Sorry! I just thought, as you’re not used to it…’

She gives a little laugh that isn’t really a laugh, and mutters something into her wine glass at just the same moment that the singer suddenly leaps to his feet, grabs a violin from under the table, and is joined by another guy who’d been sitting, apparently half asleep, at a neighbouring table, who produces a tin whistle out of his pocket. Without seeming to pause for breath they immediately launch into a frenetic Irish jig, swaying together dangerously, fingers moving like sparks of electricity on the whistle and the fiddle, tapping their feet and nodding their heads in time to the music but never passing a smile or even a blink towards each other. The explosion of this music into the bar is so dramatic and unexpected that we’re all sitting up, staring, open-mouthed, for a good two or three minutes, before a couple of people at the back of the room start clapping in time, and amazingly, someone else produces a mouth organ and begins, still sitting at his own table, to join in with the tune.

‘This is bloody great!’ exclaims Emily. ‘I can’t believe it!’

‘You’d never get this down the White Hart at home on a Friday night!’ I agree.

It’s probably about another five minutes before I think to look back at Mum again. And by then she’s finished the glass of wine and started on the next one.

‘Hey! I thought you said you were going to take it a bit easier today!’ I laugh.

‘No, Katie, I didn’t.
You
said I was going to,’ she says, taking another mouthful.

‘Well, OK – come on, I didn’t mean anything. I just didn’t think you were quite used to it, so be careful. You’ll get drunk again really quickly cos you’re just topping up from last night.’

The look she gives me is something I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.

‘I have had a bit too much to drink once or twice before in my life, thank you very much,’ she says very calmly.

Hearing this, Auntie Joyce stops swaying and tapping on the table and leans across to touch Mum on the arm and whisper to her:

‘All right, Margie. That’s enough, isn’t it. No need to…’

‘No need? What, I’m not allowed to talk to my own daughter, now? When she’s getting married in a few weeks’ time?’

‘Let’s just eat our sandwiches, Mum!’ I laugh, feeling embarrassed. ‘Sorry I said anything about the wine. OK?’

‘I
like
a drop of wine,’ she says a bit huffily by way of agreement, taking another long swig.

I watch her warily. Whatever she says, this is taking social drinking a little too fast. Joyce, obviously thinking the same, leans across again and asks her quietly:

‘Are you all right, love?’

‘Of course I’m all right!’ she retorts. Her glass is empty. This is bothering me. ‘Who wants another drink?’

A sea of surprised faces turns towards her. We’re all still holding full glasses.

‘Margie,’ says Joyce firmly, laying a hand on her arm, ‘Don’t do this, love. Not today. Don’t spoil the day for Katie.’

For a horrible moment, I think there’s going to be a row. Mum shakes Joyce’s arm off, picks up her glass and starts to get up. She’s going to the bar to get another drink.

No, she’s not.

She slumps back in her seat, hangs her head for a moment, and when she looks up she’s wearing a very false, very bright smile.

‘Thank you, Joyce,’ she says. ‘You’re quite right. Of course I don’t want to spoil things for Katie. My little Katie.’ She turns to give me a lopsided smile. ‘My baby girl – all grown up and getting married!
M
arried!
’