Once, Twice, Three Times an Aisling

by Emer McLysaght

  ‘Oh, a couple of mates. I hope you don’t mind? When we said we were leaving they begged us to take them with us.’

  ‘And did Emilia … did she mind?’

  ‘She gave us her blessing. She was stuck talking to some movie producer and looked bored to death.’

  ‘At her own wedding? That’s shocking. Was the food nice, at least?’

  ‘Oh my God, people were raving about your canapés. I should have brought you in to meet Ben. I never thought.’

  ‘Ah, it was mostly Carol anyway.’

  ‘Don’t do that. You put so much work into it. Take the compliment.’

  ‘Okay.’ It nearly kills me to accept it. But I do, because she’s right, I’ve worked bloody hard enough for it. ‘Thank you, Sadhbh.’

  There’s the unmistakable sound of an amp being plugged into a guitar from the ballroom and she grabs my hand and we race towards it. The Peigs are setting themselves up with the Love Hurts equipment, and I must say they’ve been very graceful to let them use it. In fact, Brendan Coleman looks downright relieved not to have to try to recreate the Mickey Magic. Majella is front and centre with Pablo right beside her, and I can see Mairead fanning Fionnuala’s face with a napkin. Tickets for The Peigs are probably the only things Fionnuala’s ever spent money on, so an intimate free gig will be like a dream come true for them. Megan and John seem to be having words. Civilised words but words nonetheless. I suppose she’s not thrilled that he disappeared for an hour and a half with his ex-girlfriend from a wedding where he’s the best man. Not a jury in the land would convict her. Seeing them having the words gives me hope. It’s not a feeling I like admitting to myself, but it does. Maybe I don’t want them to work out. Maybe I want –

  ‘There you are.’

  I don’t know how long James has been standing beside me, looking at me looking at John and Megan. He looks pissed off. And why wouldn’t he be? I basically abandoned him.

  ‘Sharon told me what happened.’ He’s looking over at Paul, who’s pouring champagne into a pint glass for The Truck. ‘I’m glad he’s okay.’

  ‘Me too,’ I say.

  ‘Look, Aisling, it’s been a long week. I think I might head home.’

  This is where I should stop him. I should ask him to stay, tell him we’ll have a great night. Make it all better. He’s so nice – he doesn’t deserve this.

  ‘Do you have time for that talk before you go?’ I ask him, not willing to let it drag on for another moment. He nods and I take his hand and slip out into the hallway and through a side door into a quiet courtyard. James talks before I have the chance to.

  ‘So the job is more or less finished. The Garbally job, I mean. Eh, obviously.’ He doesn’t often look flustered or fall over his words. My heart breaks for him a bit. ‘So I was thinking about jobs in Dublin, or maybe something locally, but I wanted to check …’

  I’m already shaking my head and he nods and pulls his mouth into a tight line.

  ‘I’m so sorry, James. I don’t think you should stay here just for me. It’s just – it’s not working out, is it?’

  He shrugs. ‘I stayed here just for you until now, didn’t I?’

  Ouch. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I really did hope it was going to be something special. And, James,’ I take his hand, ‘it was, so many times. But it’s not right. You can’t feel like it is either?’

  He shrugs again. ‘You’re easy to love, Aisling. And this place, with its bonkers people and your warm family and …’ He trails off, and I want to tell him that my family is far from perfect. Far, far from it. But he doesn’t need to hear that, not James Matthews, little lost boy of George and Celine. I can’t fix him – it’s not my job. I repeat that to myself as we stand in silence.

  ‘I suppose I was in love with the idea of being in a relationship again. I missed it,’ he says finally.

  ‘I probably was too, if I’m being honest,’ I admit, thinking back to that night of my thirtieth and the options before me.

  ‘I did love you, Aisling.’ He looks up at me.

  ‘I know.’

  As I arrive back into the ballroom I don’t even feel sad. I feel … light. Don strikes the first chord of ‘She’s the Business’ and the room erupts in screams.

  Four hits in a row later, Don finally takes a breather and speaks into the microphone. ‘I understand we haven’t had a first dance yet here tonight – is that right?’

  Everyone roars ‘Nooo’ and Majella and Pablo are pushed into the centre of the room as Don croons the opening lines to ‘If Tomorrow Never Comes’ and it strikes me that it might not actually be the most romantic song for a first dance but, to be fair, Pablo probably does lie awake and watch Maj sleeping, fretting she’s going to die, so leave them off. Shem Moran strides over to Juana and pulls her onto the floor and John does the same to me.

  I place my hand on his shoulder and bring myself in close to him, inhaling and expecting that familiar smell, but it’s different. No Lynx Africa. No hint of whatever shampoo someone else bought. But a manly smell. A woody smell. A purposeful smell. He grips my hand tightly and my back even tighter. I feel at home. I remember the last time we danced at a wedding and how far we’ve both come. I feel him move back from me a little and I do the same, feeling like I might say something I may or may not regret. He beats me to it, though.

  ‘So, I have something to tell you.’ He’s not looking me in the eye, but staring over my shoulder. We’re fairly front and centre so to be gazing at each other might be a bit much, to be fair.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m leaving. We’re leaving.’

  ‘What?’

  Where is he going?

  ‘Megan, she got a job in Dubai, teaching. So we’re off in a few weeks. And … we’re engaged.’

  The roaring in my ears is so loud I feel like I might fall over. Don’s singing becomes sort of far away and a fright goes through my body like a sword. I can feel that cold sweaty feeling coming over me, and the breathlessness. I concentrate hard on my breathing, trying to hide it from him and also very conscious that I haven’t answered.

  ‘We did it yesterday but, obviously, we didn’t want to overshadow Majella so we said nothing,’ he continues.

  I get my breath back enough to force a laugh. ‘She’d kill you.’

  He laughs too, and pulls back to look at me, seeming relieved. ‘So, yeah. I just wanted you to know.’

  I’m afraid to say anything in case I burst into tears. So it turns out he does want to get married, he just didn’t want to marry me. Across the room I see Megan chatting to Maeve. She’s holding out her left hand but she’s looking straight at us.

  Thankfully, I don’t have to say anything because Don interrupts his final chorus, announcing to the room, ‘I believe we have another pair of first dancers in our midst. Majella and Pablo, would you mind?’

  I look up and follow Don’s pointed finger to the door of the ballroom, and who’s standing there only Emilia Coburn, Ben Dixon and a gaggle of other strange yet familiar faces. Grateful for the interruption, I detach myself from John and force myself to smile up at him. ‘Ask Megan to dance, I’m just going to get a drink.’

  As Majella clocks Emilia and Ben, screams and drops Pablo to run into Emilia’s arms, I push through the throng and sink into the first seat I find. I watch as Maj drags Emilia onto the dancefloor and Ben follows – James Bond an afterthought, like. Emilia is wearing a red dress, definitely not a wedding dress, and I wonder if she changed before she came. Deeply sound of her if so. Sharon is jumping up and down screaming at the edge of the dancefloor. She’s a big fan of Ben’s, always was. The Peigs start up again on one last chorus and I close my eyes for a second.

  ‘Will you be alright, Aisling?’

  It’s a voice I wasn’t expecting to hear. Fran – John’s terrifying mam. She must have come for the afters. No one can resist the Tayto-sandwich buffet, it seems. I open my eyes and she’s beside me, smiling at me kindly, like she knows.

  I smile ba
ck at her. ‘Yes, Fran, I’ll be alright.’

  49

  I feel like the Ard Rí were really shooting themselves in the foot refusing Emilia Coburn, Ben Dixon and countless other A-listers access to their residents’ bar.

  ‘They’re not residents,’ the manager told Lisa Gleeson when she asked him to think of the social media content, and that was that.

  ‘What’s our plan B?’ demanded Majella, and I loved her so much in that moment. She could have just carried on her own session, but she knows a proper hooley when she smells one.

  ‘What about Maguire’s?’ suggests Emilia, leaning on Pablo’s Uncle Mateo for support. Even celebrities’ feet kill them in heels.

  ‘It’s a bit late, no?’ I go, and there’s a hum of agreement. Two a.m. is very late to be expecting Mikey Maguire to start a lock-in.

  ‘I bet I could sweet talk him.’ Emilia smiles. ‘We spent a lot of money in there on Friday night.’ She digs out her phone and dials a number. Expectation hangs heavy in the air.

  ‘Hey, Mandy. I know it’s late, but can you do something for me?’

  Forty-five minutes later and Mandy Blumenthal is bending my ear at the bar in Maguire’s. The blinds are down and Mikey has spotters outside looking for any sign of passing gardaí. The nearest garda station is twenty-five kilometres away, so I’d say we’re grand, but Mikey says he got a stern warning a few months back when Garda Staunton filed a report that he’d heard ‘mysterious shushing and whispering’ coming from Maguire’s very late one Sunday night.

  ‘I’m just glad she had a great day in the end,’ Mandy barks. I swear she’s only had two drinks but Americans are notorious lightweights.

  ‘She did, Mandy, she did. And she said you did everything she asked of you. Sometimes the vibe just isn’t there.’ The word ‘vibe’ doesn’t roll off my tongue very easily, but I’m just repeating what Emilia said to me in the toilets ten minutes ago, just after Majella collared the two of us for a selfie.

  ‘I’m checking us in. Fuck the guards!’ she’d roared as she exited the bathroom, having the absolute time of her life.

  ‘I did my job,’ Mandy says definitively and I agree with her again. She did do her job and, sure, look, it’s ended in a colossal lock-in in Maguire’s, and I’m fairly sure Don has just about convinced Pierce Brosnan to get up and perform ‘Pierce Brosnan’ with them. Majella and Pablo are shifting in the corner and table twenty-three are doing shots with the lad from Star Wars over by the cigarette machine.

  I slip my phone out of my bag to check for a text from James. He said he’d let me know he got home alright. I’ll go to my grave making people – even people I’ve just broken up with – let me know they got home alright. He has sent the text and I let go a little sigh of relief. It will be good to be in my own bed tonight – one of the few empty ones in BGB – my own bed in Mammy’s. And even though my room is different, I can’t wait to feel the walls of home around me. And to escape the ever-present cement dust.

  Mandy is still talking at me as I put my phone back in my bag.

  ‘And if you ever need a job or a good word, you let me know, honey. I’ll give you references up the wazoo. You’d be a huge hit in New York with that cute accent combined with your business acumen.’

  I stick my fingers into the inner pocket of my bag looking for a twenty euro note I’m certain is in there, and I touch the little envelope I fished out of the box that Mammy dropped off at the Ard Rí for me. I never gave it to Majella! Well, no time like the present. I touch Mandy on the arm and indicate I’m just nipping over to the other side of the pub – and as luck would have it, I find Majella alone in her corner, briefly abandoned by Pablo in favour of a cry with Javier and Miguel, who don’t seem to recognise the woman from Eastenders they’re singing to.

  I sit down on the stool beside her and nudge her. ‘Not a bad day in the end, eh?’

  ‘The best.’

  ‘I have something for you. Your something old. Sorry it’s so late.’

  ‘Sure, aren’t you my something old? Ahhh-hahhh!’ she squeals before I have a chance to admonish her. She takes the envelope and opens it, lifting out the yellowed foolscap paper. ‘No way! What’s this?’

  She unfolds it and reveals a drawing. Two oddly proportioned brides, one with red lips and one without. One with a veil and one without. One in a gigantic princess dress and one in a short sweetheart number.

  ‘I remember! It’s from that double history class when Mrs Foley didn’t show up and we wrote notes to each other promising we’d be each other’s bridesmaid. The skitting we used to do in that class.’

  Well, Majella used to do the skitting and I would kick her under the table, afraid to get in trouble.

  ‘See?’ I say. ‘I drew you and you drew me. And turn it over.’

  Printed on the back is the sentence ‘I solemnly swear that I’ll be your bridesmaid and you’ll be mine’ and both our names are signed in our best penmanship underneath the declaration. Right beside it reads ‘Majella luvs Cillian Ruane 4eva tru love never dies.’

  ‘You snake!’ I laugh. ‘You knew I loved Cillian Ruane.’

  ‘Thanks for being my bridesmaid. My ridesmaid.’

  ‘Thanks for asking me.’

  ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘I signed on the dotted line.’

  ‘I’m sorry I missed my speech.’

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘I was going to back up everything Shem had to say about every one of those hickeys.’

  ‘Jesus, if looks could kill Juana would be refused bail.’

  ‘I was going to tell them about the sheep and the dress. I was going to remind you of the time you and Titch Maguire nearly caused war with the Valentine’s card. I was going to reveal that it was you who put the tampon in the hole in the window of the sacristy that time.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, I would. I was going to say how much Pablo loves you and how much you love Pablo and how proud I am of all the work you’re doing in school and how you’re going to single-handedly save the coral reefs.’

  ‘Well,’ she says, smiling through some tears, ‘there’s a prediction to live up to. Niamh from Across the Road will be sickened.’

  We’re quiet for a second and then she says, ‘I haven’t seen James in a while?’

  ‘He went home.’

  ‘Are you guys okay?’

  I shake my head and she sighs.

  ‘Ah, I’m sorry Ais. James is a nice guy. And such a ride.’

  I laugh.

  ‘But I wasn’t convinced about him for you, you know that?’

  ‘Really? You were so into us being together!’

  ‘At the start, yeah. I just wanted you to be happy. And he was nice. A nice guy. But that’s about it.’

  ‘And I’m literally allergic to him.’

  She looks confused.

  ‘The hives? Cement allergy.’

  Majella hoots. ‘You couldn’t make that up, bird!’ She’s right, you couldn’t.

  ‘Anyway, I was mostly trying to force something that wasn’t there this past while, you know? I just didn’t want to get left behind again.’

  She sits up and looks at me. ‘Who’s getting left behind? You have a fabulous life and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘I know. It’s just Colette Green put this thing up on her Instagram about –’

  ‘Ah, look, forget bloody Colette Green and her bloody inspirational quotes.’

  How could she? Majella has more CG at Home candles than anyone I know. Such sacrilege. And we’ve met her and she’s sound.

  ‘Colette Green has a perfect life on Instagram, but she sits down to take a shite like the rest of us. Sadhbh told me she was engaged twice before she met the lad she’s with now, and when she first started out she used to pay her little sister to write her blog posts because she had no good ideas.’

  My God. My beloved Colette.

  ‘She does a great pair of jeans, though.’ Majella nudges me and we laugh.
>
  ‘I think I bit off more than I could chew the last while,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Understatement of the century! I didn’t want to say it, but I’ve never seen you look so wrecked, bird. Why do you do it to yourself?’

  I shrug. ‘I just find it so hard to say no to anyone. I want everyone to be happy, and happy with me. But I think I need to start putting myself first for a change. And talking about things a bit more. And listening a bit more.’

  Majella holds out her glass and we clink. ‘Now you’re talking sense.’

  ‘I need to book that holiday. And not set my alarm clock for a week.’

  ‘Delighted to hear it. And … you heard about John and Megan?’ she asks hesitantly.

  ‘I did. I did.’

  She lets it sit. She knows there’s no need to ask any more about that.

  ‘Will you move back home?’ she says after a while. ‘I hope not. James will surely leave and you could stay in the apartment. So handy for work.’

  ‘I don’t know, Majella, I really don’t know.’ About any of it. All I want to do is enjoy this night and go home to my own bed and sleep and sleep and wake up without the weight of the world on my shoulders. That would be nice.

  In another corner Don has picked up a guitar and started strumming the chords of ‘Dancing On My Own’. Sadhbh is sitting beside him and takes the Robyn role, singing in a surprisingly sweet voice that I didn’t know she had.

  Next thing they’ll be touring together. A star is born. Majella and I sit side by side and listen to them, surrounded by friends old and new.

  As Sadhbh hits the chorus Majella grabs my hand and turns and smiles sadly at me, but my foot is tapping and I can’t help it. I get up off my stool and sway and twirl as she sings.

  Dancing. On my own.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to everyone who’s picked up an Aisling book and let us know how much they love her. We read every message, every DM, every tweet and we can’t believe our luck.

  To our families and friends for all the love and support and especially to India, Esme and new arrival Felix, for making us laugh and sleeping at the right times.