by Melissa Hill
She bit her lip, and grabbed a stool at the bar while Paul stood waiting to order drinks. Maybe she should just bite the bullet and tell him about Kerry. Now that they were a couple, a real couple, well – she was almost obliged to, wasn’t she? It might only do damage to keep him in the dark any longer. That was probably where she went wrong with Richard – she should have told him long before she did. Anyway, Paul was different – he was softer, more approachable, not a hard-nosed corporate freak like Richard. Helen wasn’t sure what, but there was something telling her that Paul wouldn’t mind at all-in fact, he might be pleased. Yes, Helen thought, feeling better about it already. She would tell Paul about Kerry tonight. Well, maybe after a few drinks, but definitely tonight.
Helen chuckled inwardly, imagining herself arriving at Laura’s wedding in Paul’s sleek, black Audi. She’d emerge outside the church in a show-stopping outfit, something expensive, tight and probably indecently short (definitely something to scandalise the Holy Marys in Glengarrah). Then, as the rest of the congregation stood back and stared, Helen would enter the church on the arm of the sexiest man this side of Carlow. That might finally stop the old biddies going on and on about ‘the poor child’s father’ every time Helen met any of them in the village.
She smiled. Yes, she would definitely tell him. Helen just wished her heart would stop pounding and her palms would stop sweating. Still, a drink would soon soften her nerves.
Helen glanced idly round the darkened pub, trying to remember the last time she had been in here. Generally, she and Paul met for dinner or drinks in town. This was the first time they had gone out near her place and, after their little bonking session on the floor earlier, it was likely that he would stay with her tonight. She was probably pushing her luck in asking Nicola to have Kerry stay over, but Nicola adored Kerry and luckily seemed to love having her. It couldn’t have worked out better really, Helen thought, smiling to herself. For once, she wouldn’t have to trudge all the way in and out of town, just to spend a few hours with him.
The pub was very busy, and judging by the banners and balloons hanging from the ceiling, a 50th birthday party was being held there. As if on cue, sixties music began blaring out of the speakers on Helen’s left. She looked across at the levellers who, surprisingly for that hour of night, included a few young children – probably grandchildren, she reasoned. The kids looked tired and sleepy.
The barman put a quarter bottle of white wine in front of her and let Paul’s Guinness settle on the bar.
“I think we should stay up here,” Helen said to Paul. “It could get dangerous down there.” She indicated the busy seating area where the birthday girl and her companions were now dancing around the tables to ‘Brown Girl in The Ring’.
Paul shook his head. “That’s why I can’t stand these local-type pubs,” he said, with, Helen thought, a real edge to his tone. “They’re always filled with bloody kids.”
Helen looked at him. She knew what he meant; sometimes children could overrun pubs like swarming locusts, causing maximum destruction with crushed crisps and red lemonade, but these particular kids weren’t doing any harm. Actually Helen felt a bit sorry for them as the grown-ups showed no sign of leaving anytime soon – in fact, they looked as if they were just getting going.
“Well, at least they’re not running around,” she said as if in agreement, although his tone had unnerved her.
“Doesn’t matter, I think they should all be bloody banned, anyway.” Paul took a sip of his drink. “Pubs are no place for kids.”
Helen wondered whether he meant this out of concern for the kids, or concern for the drinkers. She couldn’t be sure.
“So you’re not a big fan of children, then?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
Paul nearly spat out his Guinness. “Jesus, no way!” he said. “I can’t stand being within two feet of the little whingers. My sister has three and they’re right little bastards, with all their moaning and groaning and ‘I want this’ and ‘I want that’. I ask, you what’s the bloody attraction? You’re expected to feed, clean and clothe the little feckers day in, day out for the best part of twenty years, and what do you get in return? Grief, that’s what!”
Helen’s throat felt dry. She took a huge gulp from her glass. Shit!
“Well, I’m sure most parents feel differently,” she said, rubbing her hand provocatively across his thigh. “Anyway, we won’t stay here too long.”
His earlier annoyance forgotten, Paul grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Helen Jackson,” he said, “you’re my kind of woman.”
* * *
Laura was sorry she had ever made a phone call to Maureen, enquiring as to whether her sister had remembered the wedding-dress fitting this coming weekend..
“Honestly, Laura,” Maureen sniffed, “I can’t understand why you had to go and get your dress made in Dublin. There’s plenty of dressmakers down this way too, you know. And poor old Cathy having to traipse all the way up there on the bus for a fitting, every time you snap your fingers.”
Laura heart quickened with annoyance. Traipse all the way up there! The way her mother carried on, you’d think that Dublin was on the other side of the world! And Cathy, being a modest size twelve, didn’t have to come for fittings all that often. In fact, Laura remembered, she had only come twice. Anyway, wasn’t the shoe on the other foot when Cathy was getting married, and Laura had to ‘traipse’ all the way down to Carlow for her dress fittings? And poor old Cathy didn’t mind coming to Dublin unexpectedly, and landing herself in on top of Laura when she felt like a bit of shopping, did she?
“Anyway, Laura, you know that poor old Cathy is having a tough time of it at the moment.”
Laura frowned. “How’s that?”
Maureen lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Apparently, all isn’t well with herself and Packie.”
“Really?” Laura hadn’t heard anything. Then again nothing ever seemed to be ‘well’ with Cathy. Her sister was a perpetual moan. Laura couldn’t remember if Cathy had ever acknowledged Laura’s business, let alone wished her well with it.
“Yes. So I really think you should forget all about this fitting nonsense, and not be putting your sister to any trouble.”
Putting her to any trouble! Jesus, Laura wasn’t asking her to make the bloody dress!
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Lately everything her mother said – everything anyone said – was getting on her nerves. She wasn’t usually so touchy or irritable, but of late she found she was becoming oversensitive and irrational. And it was something she was finding more and more difficult to control.
“Mam, it’s the final fitting before the wedding,” she said as calmly as she could muster. “Cathy knows that.”
Maureen harrumphed. “Well, that’s all very well, but I’m the one that’s stuck looking after the twins while the two of you are living it up in Dublin.”
Stuck looking after the twins! And the same one wouldn’t hear of anyone else minding them, Laura thought uncharitably. For all her mother’s whingeing about being landed with baby-sitting, Laura knew that Maureen would die before she’d let Cathy’s mother-in-law look after them.
“That woman breastfed Packie as a baby,” she’d told Laura one day, in shocked tones. “It’s small wonder he turned out to be such a Mammy’s boy. Seriously, did you ever hear such rubbish in all your life? But then again, the likes of Milupa wouldn’t have been good enough for those Kennys and all their fancy notions.”
Laura did wonder about the research that claimed breastfed children tended to be more intelligent than those who were formula-fed, because her brother-in-law seemed to fly in the very face of that research. Packie was one of the dimmest people she had ever come across. “A nice oul divil,” as her father had described him, Packie tended to take everything and everyone at face value, but somehow always ended up being involved in every moneymaking scheme that was going. He always had a couple of quid riding on a ‘sure thing’ and the only thing sur
e about it was that Packie would be minus his couple of quid after the race. He was one of the first to get duped by the illegal Pyramid schemes, having handed the majority of his and Cathy’s savings to some chancer in the hope of making it big. Her younger sister too could be a little naive at times, and the combination of herself and Packie was a recipe for financial disaster and possibly the reason ‘all was not well’ now.
“Tell her to bring the twins with her if she wants,” Laura said, feeling magnanimous, although she was sure Cathy could do with the break. The twins weren’t exactly placid. Monkeys jumping on hot coals would be a more apt description for Laura’s wayward nephews. “They can all stay here for the night.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “And I after cancelling my bingo night in order to mind them?” her mother shrieked. “She will not bring them with her. She’ll go up on the bus on Saturday morning, get the fitting over and done with, and then come back home straightaway. There’ll be no gallivanting round Dublin with you, either.”
Not for the first time, Laura wondered how Cathy managed to stay living in the vicinity of her mother, let alone two doors down. Maureen still treated her grown-up daughters as if they were children who didn’t know how to behave, and were likely to embarrass her at any given moment. Didn’t Cathy feel like Laura did sometimes, and want to strangle her? Yes, she loved her mother, but a lot of the time Maureen wasn’t easy to love. She was just so – so bloody contrary!
She recalled the way her mother had nearly eaten her that time she couldn’t get the concert tickets for Kathleen Brennnan.
“I can’t believe you were too busy to do the poor woman a good turn, Laura,” her mother had admonished soon after. “Do you know I couldn’t show my face at the bingo for two whole weeks after it?”
I couldn’t give a shit about your bingo, or bloody Kathleen Brennan, she wanted to say, but in true Laura fashion she asked Maureen to again pass her apologies on to Kathleen, and to tell her that she would be happy to try and book something for her again in the future.
“Well, that’s not much good to her now, is it? Just because you were too busy to –”
“It wasn’t that I was too busy, Mam,” Laura reiterated, knowing that her words were falling on dear ears. “That show was completely sold out.”
“Well, I think the very least you could do to make it up to her is invite herself and Cornelius to the afters of the wedding,” Maureen had said – no, Laura thought – ordered and of course, she had complied. Despite the fact that she hadn’t seen Kathleen Brennan in years, and had never known the woman all that well in the first place. But as usual, her mother’s guilt trip had done the trick.
“Listen, Mam, I have to go,” Laura said now. “There’s another call coming in and it could be important.”
Laura hoped it would be. She needed it to be.
“It’s like that now is it, Laura?” Maureen was put out. “Too high-flying these days to have a decent conversation with your own mother?”
Laura gritted her teeth, and tried to dispel the feelings of resentment rising up within her. She shouldn’t be feeling this way, but lately her family were driving her mad. Lots of things were driving Laura mad.
“I really have to go,” she said, refusing to rise to her mother’s bait. “Tell Cathy I’ll meet her outside Easons on Saturday morning.”
“Well, make sure you don’t leave her waiting too long . . . with the way things are going in Dublin these days, you wouldn’t know what could happen – she could get shot or anything –”
“Goodbye, Mam.” Laura disconnected and briskly picked up the other line. “Good afternoon, Laura Connolly Design?”
“Hello, I’d like to speak to the owner or manager please?” a chirpy female voice asked.
“Speaking. How may I help you?” Laura said, a slight smile crossing her features. Owner or manager. That she most certainly was. This sounded promising.
“Oh, hi, how are you today? My name is Jenna McCauley, and I’m calling from Business Network Marketing Management. We’re a marketing consultation company, and I wondered if you might be interested in our services?”
Laura’s heart sank. Another sales call. It seemed that every time the phone rang these days it was some telemarketer or advertising rep, trying to sell services that the business just couldn’t afford. Neil told her not to entertain it, that maybe someday she could afford them, but it always irked Laura to have to explain that this was a small company, and the advertising budget ‘just couldn’t stretch to additional advertising’.
Still, some of these reps seemed to have been genetically engineered to sell, and were incredibly persistent. Laura always found it difficult to get rid of them, and wondered how on earth her business name managed to circulate so quickly amongst sellers, and so slowly amongst what she really needed – buyers.
Unfortunately for Laura, chirpy Jenna was an über-seller and couldn’t be fobbed off by non-existent marketing budgets, or Laura’s feeble attempts at being firm.
“If I could just have a few minutes of your time, it won’t take that long, and if you could give me some information about the company I could design a sample business strategy and –”
“Look, I’m sorry. We’re really very busy here,” Laura began.
“Well, maybe we can arrange a more convenient time. I could perhaps call to the premises, and explain exactly what we could do for Laura Connolly Design. You wouldn’t believe what a constructive marketing solution could do for your company. Say ten am, Monday?”
“No, I really don’t think –”
“Ten it is then. Looking forward to it, I really feel that Business Network Marketing can grow –”
“I said no!” Laura bellowed, her hands shaking with adrenaline. “I don’t want you calling here for a meeting. I don’t need a constructive marketing solution – whatever that might be. I told you I wasn’t interested. Now stop annoying me!”
Her face hot and her heartbeat going a mile a minute, Laura hung up. For a long moment, she stared at nothing in particular, trying to get a grip on herself. Why was it that everyone thought they could roll her over like a trained dog, thinking that they could take advantage of her? She was so sick of them, so sick of all of them, her mother, her family – Helen.
The other day, Helen had asked Laura to drop off a disc to a client in Dun Laoghaire.
“There’s no rush with it or anything. But seeing as it’s on your way to the pre-school . . .”
It was nowhere near the pre-school – in fact it was an extra forty minutes in Dublin traffic out of the way of the pre-school, and Laura had been livid, absolutely livid.
And what had she done – what had she said? She hadn’t said what she wanted to say which was: ‘No, Helen. Shag off, Helen. I’m sick and tired of doing your messages and taking in your deliveries, and being your childminder and your general dogsbody – so you can go and stuff it!’
No, Laura hadn’t said that. Instead she had simply said: “Fine, just give me the address and I’ll drop it off on my way.”
“Thanks, Laura, you’re a star,” Helen said airily.
Laura sighed. At the beginning she had been happy to do Helen a turn, and get her out of a spot, but why couldn’t Helen do the same? Why couldn’t she see that Laura was working, that she was trying to get her business off the ground, and that being away from the phone every afternoon while she was off collecting Kerry wasn’t going to help? She took a deep breath. Well, at least Kerry would be starting school soon, so hopefully Helen wouldn’t need her any more. Then again, as far as she knew Helen hadn’t found another childminder – as far as she knew she hadn’t even looked! So it would be the same old story – Laura would now be collecting Kerry from school, and trying to keep her entertained until her mother decided she would turn up to collect her.
Just then, the phone rang again and Laura snatched up the receiver, deciding that if this was Ms Telemarketer bothering her again, she was really going to give her a piece of her m
ind. But she was wrong.
“Hello, is that the jewellery design place?” the caller tentatively asked.
“Yes, this is Laura Connolly – how can I help you?”
“Well,” the caller began, “I know this might be a bit short notice, but my boyfriend and I are getting married at the end of October and we were thinking of . . . well, I was thinking of, getting our wedding rings specially designed. I have a few ideas in my head . . .”
Laura was so excited she barely heard the rest of the sentence. A customer, a real live customer – and someone looking for a one-off design! Oh, this was good, this was really good!
“So, I wondered if I could maybe call into your studio and show you what I have in mind?” the caller went on. “I’m really anxious to get this organised. You’re in Ballinteer, aren’t you? I could call on my lunch break – around two o’clock if that would suit? I’m so sorry for calling at such short notice but –”
“Of course, yes! That would be fine, absolutely fine!” Laura replied and then her heart sank. Keny! She had to collect Keny from playschool at two. Oh, blast it, this wasn’t on. She had to be here for this. It was her first personal consultation for goodness sake! No, Laura thought, her thoughts tripping over themselves as she tried to find a solution. She would ring Helen, explain the situation and hopefully her friend could make some alternative arrangements for today. She knew Helen’s work was important, but damn it, Laura’s was too.
“Oh, that’s terrific! I sooo appreciate it,” the caller said, and Laura couldn’t resist a smile.
This was a sale. It was definitely a sale. She could feel it in her bones. Maybe things were finally looking up.
