Once, Twice, Three Times an Aisling

by Emer McLysaght

‘Well, Ais, I suppose you’ve heard?’

  ‘Well, not really. Only from Pablo. What happened?’

  ‘Well, I hate to have to tell you this, but … James started on John.’

  ‘What?’ I can’t believe my ears. ‘What did he say to him?’

  ‘I’m not sure, to be honest, Ais, but he squared up to him inside the Vortex, and then when we took him outside to cool off and John followed, Titch says he swung for him. I put James in a taxi and sent him home.’

  ‘What did James say, Ais?’ Sharon looks at Cyclops with concern in her eyes.

  ‘Nothing. He was working today. He left first thing. I haven’t talked to him.’

  Sharon has long since turned off the hairdryer, and when I turn my head the Ó Súilleabháin twins are hanging on our every word. Great.

  ‘Aisling! Hey, Ais!’

  Someone calls my name as I leave Strong Stuff, checking my phone again for any word from James and debating ringing John. It’s Turlough McGrath, looking a bit worse for wear. He’s coming out of Filan’s with a roll the size of my head in his tiny hands. He jogs towards me but has to stop after about ten paces, bending down and breathing deeply.

  ‘Are you alright, Turlough?’

  ‘Heavy night. You know yourself.’ He regains a bit of colour and stands up straight. ‘I just wanted to check if James is okay? I don’t have his number and he left awful quick last night after John –’

  ‘What happened, Turlough? Do you know?’

  ‘I just saw John having a go at him, Aisling. Which isn’t like him at all, to be fair.’

  ‘I thought it was the other way around?’

  ‘Well, that’s what it looked like to me. John’s a good friend of mine so I don’t want to chat shit about him at all, but James was buying rounds and, well, he seems like a good lad. I hope he’s okay.’

  ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone all day?’

  James, with the faintest shadow of a bruise under his left eye, pulls the door of his site office closed behind me and points me towards a chair. ‘It’s barely even lunchtime, Aisling.’ But he can’t quite look at me.

  I nearly had to hand over a kidney to be allowed onto the Garbally site. The same monster of a Nordie security man as before checked my driving licence against my name on the list about seven times, and I got so flustered that I started explaining that I had been on holidays the week before the photo was taken and my freckles might be disfiguring but it’s definitely me in the picture. I even reminded him about the quiche.

  Eventually the brute let me through and I raced the Micra towards the site office, avoiding potholes and stacks of pipes the size of a house. James was right: there is a lot of work to do here.

  ‘What happened with you and John?’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Pablo. Cyclops. Turlough. It was the talk of the stag, naturally.’

  ‘Look, I’m not proud of it but I wasn’t going to let him push me around and not defend myself.’

  ‘So he did push you around?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ But he doesn’t meet my eye.

  ‘Oh. But why were you fighting at all? What was said?’

  James is avoiding my eye again. ‘Nothing. I can’t remember. There were a lot of shots.’

  ‘You honestly don’t remember why you and John were going for each other?’

  ‘Look, all I know is it’s all sorted now. Can you leave it? I’m not feeling the best.’

  He does look fairly ropey. They all did. There might be a better time to do this.

  ‘Sorry. I’m just stressed. Mammy has been on to me about groups causing hassle at the farm, and I’m supposed to be on a day off but there’s been a big delivery so I have to go back to the café.’

  As well as the hens, Mammy had what she thought was a group of nature artists during the week. She assumed they were there to draw the wildflowers, but actually they were naturist artists there to draw each other. They kept threatening to shed their clothes but, thank God, the icy February chill isn’t conducive to it. Constance had her hands full directing them away from the polytunnel, according to Mammy, who kept me on the phone for half an hour going on about it – she was just launching into talking about Paul when I had to cut her off. And then there’s the delivery of some of the non-perishable stuff I’ve ordered for the Coburn wedding canapés. Carol and I are trying to get on top of as much as possible in order to minimise the stress coming up to both the Garbally wedding and Majella’s. Carol and the BallyGoBrunch staff have all signed their NDAs but I still have to guard the Coburn–Dixon wedding info with my life.

  A voice outside calls James’s name and his eyes dart to the window and then back to me.

  ‘Okay, well, I’ll see you later then.’

  There’s a knock on the door and a woman in a hard hat reefs it open and sticks her head in. ‘James. Problem with the pointing on those upstairs interior walls.’

  ‘Be right there.’

  He kisses the top of my head, picks up his own hard hat and heads out the door calling behind him. ‘Don’t worry, Aisling. Everything is fine. Relax.’

  31

  I’m exhausted the following morning as I head towards the eco farm. James came home late from the site and announced he was wrecked before heading straight to bed, so I got nothing more out of him about the stag. To be fair, he looked dead on his feet and my heart went out to him. He was fast asleep when I was leaving so I left him to it. I say a little prayer that I can get five minutes alone with Mammy. Apart from the odd badly timed phone call, I feel like it’s been weeks since I’ve seen her properly, and they’ve been really busy with the first of the school tours starting to come in and then the naturists and the hens. She and Constance weren’t expecting the uptake in school tours so early in the season but they’re not complaining. Keeping a keen eye for any exposed flesh, I pull into the driveway of the house and around the back, hoping and expecting to see Mammy’s car. In its place, however, is John’s, with a trailer hooked up to the back.

  ‘What the blazes …?’ I mutter. What is he doing here? I specifically asked Mammy not to keep asking him for things. I debate turning back and going instead to BallyGoBrunch where I have a million and one things to be doing. But a part of me wants to see what John has to say for himself after the stag. Fighting with my boyfriend outside the Vortex. The tiny horrible voice in my head telling me that I actually like the idea of it doesn’t get much of a chance to speak up. Instead, I focus on being mad. James is such a nice man and has been so good to everyone in BGB and beyond. How dare John make him feel unwelcome. With my hackles good and high, I get out of the car and march to the back door, swinging it open and nearly taking the nose off John, standing on the other side. He looks less than pleased to see me.

  ‘Hiya.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ My voice is ice cold.

  ‘I’m just collecting something. I’m leaving.’ It’s a bit of a stand-off, me on the step, him inside the door. He goes to push past me. ‘I better go.’

  ‘What did you say to James on the stag?’

  He stops in his tracks, fiddling his car keys between his fingers. He speaks quietly. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So why were you fighting in the Vortex? What the hell was that all about?’

  ‘Just a few too many drinks. It’s nothing, Aisling.’

  ‘Cyclops says he started it. Turlough says you started it. Pablo was nearly hospitalised for his nerves. What the hell happened?’

  He’s saved by the crunching of tyres on gravel and Mammy swinging around the corner. I’ve never seen anyone look so relieved.

  ‘Don’t make a big deal of it, Ais. It’s nothing. I’ll text him and sort it out,’ he mutters as Mammy gets out of the car, reefing a few bags for life with her.

  ‘Well, there’s a surprise. Hiya, Aisling. I had to race over to the New Aldi for more burger buns.’

  ‘I better go,’ John says.

  ‘You’re blocking him in
, Mammy.’ I take the bags from her and she goes to get back into the car but John is over in a flash.

  ‘I’ll move it. No worries. I’ll drop in the keys.’

  ‘Well, now, aren’t you a gentleman, John? Thanks very much.’ He’s already in and reversing, eager to get as far away from me as possible.

  I bring Mammy’s bags into the kitchen and she follows, looking sheepish.

  ‘He was just collecting something, Aisling. He wasn’t doing any work or anything.’

  ‘Okay, Mammy.’

  ‘But do you know, it was just like old times seeing the two of you standing there chatting. Isn’t it great you can be friends?’ She obviously didn’t pick up on any of the ice-cold tension.

  ‘Sure,’ I sigh, unpacking the shopping for her and quizzically holding up some curiously posh-looking cat food.

  ‘That contrary old b-word has stopped eating the regular stuff so I have to feed her like a queen now.’ As if on cue, That Bloody Cat strolls into the kitchen, gives a snide meow and strolls back out again. ‘She has some attitude since your father died. I think she misses him,’ Mammy deduces, and I nod in solidarity.

  John finishes his manoeuvres outside and, with his car freed, he knocks gently on the door, holding up Mammy’s keys and placing them on the counter with a small wave. He doesn’t meet my eye and is gone.

  ‘John texted me.’ James is barely in the door when he offers up this information. I know John said he would but I took it with a pinch of salt and definitely didn’t think he’d do it that very evening.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘So it’s all fine. We both said sorry and it’s water under the bridge.’

  Just like that. If it was girls there’d probably be a tribunal followed by a candlelit ceremony of hope and reconciliation. We had a particularly crusty religion teacher in second year who instigated a candlelit ceremony of hope and reconciliation after Claire Conrad’s gang started picking on Majella after Titch Maguire gave Majella a Valentine’s card even though he had been Claire’s first shift two weeks previously. (I must remember that one for the wedding speech too.) It ended up developing into something of a civil war between the second year girls, and Mrs Kinsella made us sit in a circle and say what we liked and admired about each other. Majella really struggled with what she liked and admired about Claire, finally settling on ‘you’re good at French’, which sounded like a cop-out to me but Mrs Kinsella seemed to accept it. She was straight out of her seat to gather up all the candles and cushions and get the desks back in order for Mr Burke’s double Geography. I always had a soft spot for Mrs Kinsella because she was very supportive of me and Maj’s earnest harmonising to ‘Dreams’ by the Cranberries at the St Brigid’s Cross retreat in first year. I still have the cross I made in one of the boxes under my bed.

  James collapses on the couch, puts his head back and closes his eyes, and he looks so wrecked I feel sorry for him. I sit down beside him and tuck my legs up under me – not quite Sadhbh levels of tucking but I manage – snuggling in to him. He smiles with his eyes closed and puts his arm around me and we sit like that for a few minutes. I try to clear my mind and just relax, and I’m just about getting there when there’s a racket in the hallway – a jumble of Spanish and the bashing of cases against the walls. Pablo’s brothers are finally leaving.

  James’s eyes open slowly and he looks slightly pained. ‘Should we help?’

  The shouting intensifies, somehow Willy the dog gets involved and there’s a high-pitched scream and some definite sobbing.

  ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘They’ll be grand.’

  32

  Five weeks pass in no time and the week of Majella’s hen is suddenly upon me like a ton of bricks. The stag drama dissipated fairly easily, although things were a little bit tense between me and James for a while. We’re both stressed out, though, so I try not to worry. He’s under pressure to get Garbally finished before the big ‘party’, and I feel like my shoulders are nearly up around my ears with the tension of trying to keep the details of Emilia Coburn’s wedding under wraps. It’s a weird, lonely feeling, being the only one who knows. But I feel proud that she’s chosen our local BGB café to feed her guests. I wonder who’s doing the main meal. Some big celebrity chef with their own NDA, I’m sure. Mandy communicates only via me, and Carol and the gang still think it’s a birthday party they’re working towards – and their NDAs prevent them from even talking about that, even though the whole town is buzzing with speculation about whose party it is. Mandy has told me that Ben and Emilia have been so hounded by paparazzi they’re determined to keep the whole thing a secret until the Big Day if they can. They’ve even rented a chateau in France, which seems like a fierce waste, but Mandy says they’re also selling their wedding pictures to Hello! and donating the two million euro fee to charity so I suppose I can’t really judge.

  I’ve booked Maguire’s for the night before Majella’s wedding. She really wanted to have a few ‘send-off’ drinks and I said I’d organise it, as if I haven’t enough on my plate. I was hoping her parents would want to do it in the house, since it’s almost finished being renovated and they’re due to move back into it in a week or two, but no such luck. I’m going to need a holiday after all this, despite the fact that I’m going to Tenerife in two days.

  And with that in mind, I’ve arranged for the girls to head into Strong Stuff to get our nails and tan and all the rest of it done. Well, it’ll just be a pedicure for me. As much as I enjoy the freedom of wearing sandals, my feet are in no condition to be seen in public now that I’m pretty much on them twelve hours a day. I’ve never had a pedicure before, but Sharon assures me it will change my life. I don’t think Majella will let me wear my footies with my bridesmaid dress anyway – it’ll be strappy sandals all the way. I finally found the perfect dress among the thirty-seven-odd I ordered online. A simple blue chiffon tea dress with cap sleeves and a sash that’s almost the same ivory as Majella’s dress. It’s perfect. I still have about fifteen others I need to return, though. I must remember to do that tomorrow.

  Sharon said we could come in after closing time so we have the run of the salon. Everyone – Maj, Dee, Denise, Sinéad and Maeve – is there when I tip in at ten past seven. They’re all huddled around the computer on the reception desk, screaming and gesturing at the screen.

  ‘That’s her, that’s definitely her,’ Dee is saying. ‘She was standing at the pump talking on the phone but she had two more in her other hand. That’s what caught my attention in the first place. I thought to myself, why would anyone need so many phones? And at the pump, too. It’s no great shakes.’

  I’m about to point out that the decorative pump, and the Tidy Towns committee’s controversial decision to paint it red, is one of the reasons Ballygobbard was commended in the Pride of Place Competition, Population 300 –1,000, in 2015. But I say nothing. It’s not the time.

  ‘Ais, it’s that celebrity party planner! She was in BGB the other day. The Indo has pictures online.’

  I nod and try to look interested. I actually knew Mandy was in BGB but obviously hadn’t said anything. I didn’t see her myself but James had had what he described as a ‘challenging’ meeting with her.

  ‘I could just tell she was American,’ Dee says knowingly. ‘Even though I was going nearly forty.’

  When will she respect the thirty kilometres per hour speed limit in the village? That’s what I want to know.

  ‘Has James said much about it?’ Maeve asks as I shrug off my anorak.

  ‘No, we, eh, we don’t really talk much about work. He’s just involved in the building side of it, sure.’

  ‘He must know something,’ Maeve insists, frustrated.

  ‘So are we going to start the treatments now or …?’ I say, absolutely desperate to change the subject. I’m about to fake some kind of seizure – anything – when there’s a knock on the glass door and I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s Lisa Gleeson, waving frantically.

  ‘Sorry,’ Maeve goes, ‘she
lost a nail trying to glue a hurl back onto a cake topper and I said you’d be open late tonight, Sharon. I didn’t know it was just for us.’

  Cliodhna Ó Súilleabháin jumps up from the chair at the reception desk. ‘I’ll do it. I only put them on her yesterday.’

  ‘Skippy Brennan was saying on the radio the other day that he’s convinced it’s Emilia Coburn’s birthday party, but I looked it up and her birthday’s in November,’ Sinéad says.

  ‘Maybe it’s Ben Dixon’s?’ Dee suggests before Sharon lets out an uncharacteristic roar.

  ‘Will everyone decide what they’re having done and we can try to get out of here by midnight?’

  The girls start studying the nail books intently as Cliodhna opens the door and lets Lisa in.

  ‘I’ve news,’ she says conspiratorially. Oh God, not her too. The girls all lean forward in anticipation as she sits down and prepares to deliver her gossip.

  ‘Well, I heard from Martin Kelly’s cousin – she was in the hotel today pricing a communion – that Dicey Kelly was caught taking money out of the church collection basket last week. He had hundreds in two euro coins.’

  The girls all sit back, disappointed.

  ‘Who hasn’t taken a fiver to get milk and bread on the way home, to be fair?’ Majella says, holding out her hands for Cliodhna to get to work. Lisa’s gossip is shite but I’m delighted that she’s distracted them all from talking about Emilia.

  ‘I’m sort of disappointed Emilia Coburn’s getting married in France,’ Sinéad goes. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. There’s no escape.

  ‘I was hoping she’d have a winter wedding,’ Denise says, staring wistfully out the window. ‘She has that colouring that would look good in the snow. Imagine she wore a fur cape? Stunning. You’d love that, Sharon.’

  Sharon has an extensive collection of faux fur, a coat for every occasion. Weight Watchers Maura always told us to avoid it since it ‘adds unnecessary volume’, but truth be told, I’d love a little stole for a wedding now and then. Sharon’s very focused on Dee’s nails, though, and just gives a nod.