Essays and Stories by Marian Keyes

by Marian Keyes

  Shortly after eight, the games began. A hush fell and balls were called and numbers were ticked and brows were furrowed and concentration was high. Win, I urged myself. Go on, win. But in no time at all, a woman at another table called "Check"—which meant "Bingo" although I don't know why we weren't allowed to shout "Bingo"—and her card was ferried away to be verified. Amazingly, she was wrong! Everyone (not just at our table, everyone) exchanged small, mean-spirited smirks and someone at the other end of the room yelled, "Swizzer!" Mam elbowed me and scolded, "Stop that!"

  Flustered and red-faced, the woman denied charges of trying to pull a fast one, bleating some makey-upey story about wearing the wrong glasses and not being able to see the numbers properly. No one believed her, of course, then the games resumed. However, a short time later another woman called "Check" and this one really had won. Her prizes were brought to her table (a poinsettia, a box of chocolates, a Beanie Baby and a bottle of wine), everyone clapped graciously and I clapped too, but the downward slide in me had begun. Already the night was losing its luster. Already everyone looked luckier than me.

  A new game began and obediently I ticked numbers, musing on how terrible it was to be constitutionally unlucky and wondering what it felt like to be a golden girl who won everything. Then I noticed that I needed only three more numbers for a full card. Yeah well, what was the point getting excited? Millions of people would beat me to it. Then I ticked another, and saw I needed only two more. Then, out of nowhere, all I needed was one number: sixtyfive. Which was when the caller said, "Retirement age."

  Retirement age? But wasn't that . . . ? "Sixty-five!" he called. "Sixty-five."

  Sixty-five! Christ! I'd won! "Check!" I called, while everyone at the table looked up from their cards in surprise. What was I doing winning something? That wasn't right.

  "Stop your messing," Dad said anxiously. "They know me here."

  They were afraid it was going to be just like the lady with the wrong glasses all over again and I can't say I wasn't anxious that I was about to make a prize gom of myself, but my card was checked—and found to be correct! Next thing two ladies were moving through the tables, bringing me my prizes—two bottles of wine, a box of biscuits (not the Rover ones), a poinsettia and a box of Terry's chocolates. Everyone clapped me warmly and I smiled graciously around the room, savoring the moment, one of the pleasantest of my life to date. "Just call me Lucky," I murmured.

  Off we went again but before the ticking recommenced in earnest, I warned the rest of our table, "That 's all our luck used up now, okay? We might as well go home."

  "Feck off," someone whispered softly and although I looked sharply at all of them, I couldn't establish who it was.

  It was very soothing, ticking numbers now that I'd won something. All the anxiety was gone, I was calm and at peace. Tick. Nice and easy. And another tick. Not a bother. And another tick. And then I noticed something very odd. I had only two numbers left to go. Then one: thirty-seven. "Thiiiirrrrrteeeee," the caller said, and my heart nearly stopped, "six," he finished. "Thirty-six."

  Ah okay. "And the next one up from that," he said. The next one up from thirty-six? But wasn't that . . . ? "Thirty-seven!"

  "Um, lookit," I said to the others. "I've won again."

  "I'm warning you," Dad glared.

  But I had won! My card was full. "Um, check," I called apologetically. A roomful of faces turned to me, their delight kind of freezing and fading when they saw it was me. Again.

  "Didn't she win already?" Murmurry voices wafted towards me from the farthest reaches. "Isn't that the same girl as last time?" "How did she win again?" "Something's not right."

  But my card was verified and found to be correct. My prizes arrived—two more bottles of wine and another poinsettia and, just like the previous time, I received them with a gracious three-sixty smile. But nothing happened.

  "They didn't clap," I said quietly to Himself.

  "You're lucky they didn't boo," he replied.

  Then the fuss died down, another game started, other people won, we clapped enthusiastically when they were presented with their prizes—basically we all moved on with our lives. Until about four cards later, Rita-Anne suddenly appeared to be in distress. "Oh Christ," she whimpered. "I've only one number to go. Twenty-one."

  Dad stared at her aghast, like she 'd done it on purpose, just in time to hear the caller shout, "Key to the door, twenty-one!"

  There was a stricken moment, where we had a panicky silent eye conference. What should we do? Pretend it hadn't happened and let someone else win? But as Rita-Anne later admitted, she was just too competitive. "Check!" she called.

  This time the news was greeted with a nasty little oh-yeah? style laugh. In fairness, though, when Rita-Anne was presented with her prizes—two more bottles of wine, a side of smoked salmon, a box of chocolates, a box of biscuits (not Rover) and another poinsettia— they did clap—even if it was a slow handclap.

  Blushing furiously, she put her poinsettia on the floor beside the others; in numbers of two or more, they really looked sort of nasty, like they were about to take over the world. Stressed and mortified, Rita-Anne wanted to open the box of chocolates, but I persuaded her not to, we were unpopular enough without enjoying the fruits of our ridiculous luck under all their noses.

  Then a new game started up and Dad whispered hoarsely around the table, "Don't fecking win anymore!"

  We promised we wouldn't and Mam said anxiously, "I hope they won't do us over in the car park later. I'd like to take one of them poinsettias home."

  We got through the rest of the night without winning anything else—although it came terrifyingly close a couple of times—and enough other people won to almost obscure our disproportionate luck. Then it was time for the end-of-night raffle and the man called out, "It 's a pale blue ticket, number seventy-five. Number seventyfive. Anyone? Anyone at all?"

  Susan suddenly noticed something on the table in front of her. "Oh Jesus," she said. "That's me."

  Villa-itis

  Villa-itis. n. The fear, while trapped with your entire family in a villa just outside Cannes, of running out of bread.

  It started even before we left. About a week before the off my mother rang me and she sounded anxious. "You know when we 're in that house in the South of France? Shouldn't we organize some sort of kitty?"

  This baffled me because the one thing you can say about my family is that we pay our way. In fact, it can almost get ugly. There were going to be ten adults and two children in the house for the week and everyone was going to be trying their hardest not just to "stand their round" grocerically speaking, but to be the first to do so. I reminded Mammy Keyes of this but she refused to be mollified. "What if I come down for my breakfast and someone 's eaten all my bread and I can't make toast?"

  Then I understood. She didn't mean a kitty, she meant selfdetermination over food. Kind of understandable: my family are all adults now, used to living on our own or with a small number of other people, whom we can monitor, hawkeyed, to make sure they stay away from our bread. Suddenly we were going to be thrust into a situation with several other hungry people and it would be a hard job to track them all.

  But what was Mammy K proposing? Everyone getting a shelf in the French fridge for their own food, like in a flat share? Even putting little notes on things? "Tadhg's butter. It 's been weighed!" Or (when in Rome) "Les Muller Corners de Marian. Ne touchez-pas!"

  I tried to jolly her along with talk that it would all work itself out. But clearly she wasn't convinced because a rumor reached me that, along with her sundresses, sandals, sun cream, etc., she was planning to bring a sliced loaf in her suitcase. Allegedly (according to my source) she would keep said bread under lock and key for the week, only opening the vault once a day, to retrieve two slices to carry downstairs for her breakfast toast. She would swagger past all the hungry hordes who were too proud or too foolish to think ahead as she had, saunter into the kitchen, approach the toaster and make toast. When
I confronted her, she would neither confirm nor deny it. But when I made mention of my nephew Luka's fondness for OPT (Other People 's Toast—it is as ambrosia to him, rendered unbearably delicious by the fact of belonging to someone else) and that she wouldn't be able to resist giving it to him, because no one can refuse him anything ever, I could see her doing mental calculations, to see if she had enough slices to bring down an extra one each day for Luka. Evidently the sums added up because her brow cleared and the serene "I've got my own bread" expression resumed residence on her face.

  Anyway, on a Saturday in early September, twelve of us descended on a beautiful house just outside Cannes. We came from all three corners of the globe—Prague, where my brother lives with his wife Ljiljana and their two children; New York, where my sister Caitríona lives; and Dublin, where the rest of us reside.

  We got through the first night 's dinner without any mention of

  bread because the caretaker had prepared us a dinner so delicious that we were distracted. Then the following morning, Himself and myself saddled up to go to le supermarché to buy supplies for the twelve of us. Everyone had special requests—goat 's cheese, drinking chocolate, Special K bars, blackcurrant Winders (that was me)—but even in these carb-phobic times, bread was the one common thread. It was what everyone wanted. It made sense: we were self-catering and as we 're not the kind of family who "rustles" things up—blanching peppers and making our own balsamic vinegar dressing and preparing a "delicious, light lunch" in fifteen minutes—bread was vital. We could make cheese sangwidges. We could make hang sangwidges. We could make cheese and hang sangwidges. Sure, you wouldn't even need a plate.

  Actually, it 's not entirely true to say that no one in the family can rustle up delicious meals in seconds. One member is spectacularly gifted. I need hardly say she is not from the original gene pool, but "brought in." I speak of my sister-in-law, Ljiljana (The Most Fabulous Woman on the Planet™). But she was on her holidays, so why should she be producing indescribably delicious fresh tomato soup from "bits and pieces that were lying around in the fridge."Also Himself 's admiration for Ljiljana is very, very high, I wasn't keen for her to do anything to fan the flames.

  Leaving for le supermarché, I was badly jostled by the front door as everyone insisted on giving me money to pay for le shopping. ("I'll get it." "No, I'll get it." "Je . . . moi . . . le . . . ah feck it, I'll get it.") Festooned with bank notes like an Afghani bride, I left. (Is it Afghani I'm thinking of ? Maybe it 's Uzbek? Or Armenian?) Just before the car turned out onto the road an upstairs window opened and a disembodied voice called, "Get some bread!"

  We bought four loaves, which seemed like enough for one day— after all we would be going to le supermarché or even le boulangerie chaque jour. Then we came home and a lovely, casual day unfolded. People sunbathed, swam, shoved each other off lilos and wandered in and out of the kitchen for their lunch sangwidges whenever they felt like it. (Me? I usually like my lunch around 10:45.)

  But sometime in the early afternoon, Dad rushed out of the kitchen, stood at the top of the steps that descended to the garden and, like a general returning with news of an unexpected and dreadful defeat in battle, wailed at the prone bodies by the pool, "All the bread is gone!"

  I was mortified! It had been my responsibility to buy enough bread and I hadn't. Dad assembled a pitiful repast of Special K bars, goat cheese and blackcurrant Winders and although he made the best of it, he was obviously upset.

  But later, in the admittedly large kitchen, I stumbled across an almost full baguette hidden beneath a tea towel. Further investigation revealed another loaf—hello?—in the bread bin. And half a brioche on the draining board.

  But the damage had been done. We were all in the grip of a hysteria, a terror of running out.

  The following day more people went on the official trip to le supermarché and bought five loaves. Then Niall and Tadhg arrived home from golf bearing several eight-foot-long baguettes. Five minutes later Dad appeared—he 'd been missing all morning— apparently he 'd walked the three kilometers into the center of Cannes and he too was laden with bread.

  We had far too much, but it still wasn't enough. It was like we had become blind to what was really there and the acquisition was the only thing that was important. (Some kind of metaphor about life there, if I could only be arsed to pursue it.)

  The following day the situation reached its high-water mark. I wasn't there (in the spa in Hotel Martinez, another story) but apparently Dad did a reprise of his general-returning-with-news-ofdefeat act. There was NO BREAD!

  Ljiljana, demonstrating she is more than worthy of her title, The Most Fabulous Woman on the Planet,™ offered to bake bread. For some reason she happened to have a packet of bread mix about her person. And I returned, reeking of lavender oil, to the bizarre sight of Ljiljana, in a kitchen that seemed to be heaving with bread, baking bread.

  I have since discovered that it 's not just that my family are insane, although of course they are, but that this fear of running out is a "villa thing." A syndrome that has something to do with displacement and temporary lack of domestic autonomy. My friend Shoshana went to a villa in Spain with her family and experienced an almost identical situation with bread. People were actually hoarding the stuff, she said, even though they had so much bread they had run out of cupboard space and had taken to stacking it on the floor. Then one day she and her mother went on a trip to Gibraltar and discovered the local branch of Marks & Spencer. Despite being surrounded by Marks & Spencers at home, they got very excited. (This is a holiday feature for me, too—shops that I can visit any time I like at home, suddenly seem like Aladdin's caves of wondrousness.) What could be nicer, they thought, than to buy Marks & Spencer sandwiches for everyone? All of a doodah they hurried home and exclaimed, "M&S sangers all round!" The others stretched to see over the uneaten columns of bread and gave grateful thanks that now there was something to eat for lunch.

  A version of this was first published in Cara, August 2004

  Life Begins

  Iwas never very good at birthdays. On my eighteenth I was wretched at the speed at which my life was slipping through my fingers. Again on my twenty-sixth. And as for when I turned thirty, I was so distraught I might as well have been two thousand and thirty.

  The problem was that, like most people, my image of myself is frozen in time at some young age (I'm nineteen) and I'm still deciding what I'll do when I leave school. I still feel "young"—although I admit that genuine "young" people would find such sentiments risible. But, in my defense, I vaguely covet Hello Kitty toasters, I get complicated highlights, and when they launched Kit Kat chunks, I was genuinely excited.

  So on that reckoning, my fortieth birthday—traditionally regarded as the gateway to a twilit half life of elasticated waistbands and gardening—should have been a total bloodbath. Next stop death . . .

  But not anymore!

  Because forty isn't what it used to be. Forty—just in case you hadn't heard—is the new thirty. Several friends "crossed over" this year and most of them look and behave like women ten years their junior. (Vitamins? Positive attitude? BOTOX? Whatever it is, it works.) One recommenced smoking after several abstinent years because forty felt so young! Another got engaged—her first time; as she said with magnificent hauteur, "Getting engaged is a big deal. Not something you want to rush into."

  Forty had been rehabilitated and actually, so had I. From thirtyone onwards, having brokered a fragile peace with myself, birthdays had been less of an angst-fest and as my big day neared I was swaggering about, boasting that being forty wouldn't bother me at all. I might even—perish the thought—have said, Age? Hah! Merely a number. (Mind you, I'd been in training, mentally preparing myself, since turning thirty-seven.) But clearly I was only showing off because on the morning itself the realization hit me like a sack of wet sand falling from a height—I was FORTY, I was ancient. How had all this time passed without my noticing? Where had my life gone?

  If it
hadn't been for my family and my presents waiting for me downstairs, I would probably still be in bed now, staring at the ceiling, paralyzed with despair.

  The only thing that helped was my appearance. The previous day as a thirty-something I'd despaired over how I looked, but now that I was in my forties I found myself thinking, actually, I'm not that bad.

  Then the hiccup passed and it was business as usual and I realized how disappointed I was—all my life I've been waiting for that glorious moment when I arrive at the top of the mountain and finally become an adult. In that instant I would suddenly be able to ask taxi drivers to turn down their eardrum-hurting Def Leppard tapes and to tell my hairdresser that she doesn't blow-dry my fringe properly and to ask her to go over it again without feeling wretched with guilt. I had hung a lot of hope that turning forty would miraculously effect this change but nope, I was still a nineteen-year-old trapped in a forty-year-old body, way too fond of Claire 's Accessories and still getting spots.

  Then something happened . . .

  It was this: I've always dreaded confrontation. Even when I've been in the right and I should have hotly defended myself, I've swallowed back the words, destroying the lining of my stomach and giving my incipient ulcer a shot in the arm.