Spin the Bottle

by Monica McInerney

  ‘Well, it serves you right. If you hadn’t broken up with Adam you could have asked him for help. He’s a genius in the kitchen.’

  Did Hugh think she hadn’t had the same thought? Over and over? Stay cool, Lainey, sound nonchalant. ‘Yes, Hugh, I know that. But it’s hardly fair to ask Adam for help, is it?’

  ‘Well, I’ll ask him for some tips for you, then. We’re going to meet for another beer. I invited him. Thought he might want to get to know one of your brothers a little better, explore the family’s hidden depths, try and fathom how it went wrong with you, you know the sort of thing. I’ll ask him about the meals. I bet he’ll have great ideas.’

  Now that Hugh had brought up the subject, Lainey couldn’t stop herself from pursuing it. ‘Hugh, how often exactly are you seeing him? It’s just I saw someone who looked a bit familiar on the Rex video.’ She’d phoned and thanked him for the video the day she’d got it, but deliberately hadn’t mentioned Adam.

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Really? You know someone else who is six foot two with a taste for hats? Who is good with animals? Who Rex knows and doesn’t try to scratch?’

  ‘I know loads of people just like that.’

  It was time to get stern with her little brother. ‘Hugh, I don’t want you to say anything to Adam about the cooking, all right?’

  ‘Are you forbidding me?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Too bad. You’re not the boss of me,’ he chanted, as he’d been doing since he was a child.

  It had made her laugh back then and it made her laugh now. She feigned a casual voice for her next question. ‘So you’ve seen a bit of Adam, then?’

  ‘No, I’ve seen all of him. Geddit?’

  Lainey got it. ‘And how is he?’ If her voice became any more casual, she’d be drawling.

  Hugh paused. ‘You know, Lainey, I could give you two answers here.’

  ‘What do you mean, two?’

  ‘I could give you the one I bet Adam would like me to give, which is that he is perfectly fine, probably glad to be rid of you. In fact, had trouble remembering who you were.’

  ‘Or… ?’

  ‘Or I could tell you that in my opinion you’ve broken the poor man’s heart and you are a cruel heartless wretch.’

  Lainey’s heart flipped. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I’m speaking of course from very limited romantic experience, based mostly on repeated viewings of eighties films like The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink –’

  ‘Hugh…’

  ‘Well, he asked loads about you again. And I could tell he wanted to ask more, but he kept kind of stopping himself. He would have made a perfect guinea pig for a project I had to do on body language last month, actually. You know, how people say one thing but the way they sit or stand shows how they really feel? So, he was asking about you really casually, but then when I told him he kept himself really still, the way someone does when they’re really concentrating on your answer. And then I just as casually brought up the fact that you can be a terrible bossy boots, just in case he wanted to let off a bit of steam, and he actually defended you.’

  ‘Defended me?’

  ‘Said that you weren’t bossy, not really, that you were just organised. And I said, if that’s just being organised, he should have tried growing up with you, it was like living in a boot camp. And then he laughed but he looked sad. And so I told him, you’ll get over her, Adam. Soon she’ll be just a distant memory, you wait and see.’

  ‘Hugh, you did not say that, did you?’

  ‘Well, I thought it.’

  ‘So then what did he say?’

  ‘I can’t remember. I think we started talking about the footy. And then he had to go. He’s started opening up for breakfasts on the weekends now.’

  ‘Breakfasts? But when’s he going to get any time off? He works too hard as it is.’

  ‘What do you care if the poor man has to throw himself into work to try and mend his broken heart? Some role model you turned out to be, breaking hearts hither and thither.’

  ‘Hither and thither?’

  ‘Don’t try and change the subject. You know what I mean. All I hope is that I never treat anyone as meanly as you have treated Adam. And I hope you manage to sleep with that thought on your conscience. Not to mention the disgraceful example of human relations you’ve shown me, at such a vulnerable stage of my emotional development –’

  Lainey started to laugh. She couldn’t help herself. Hugh had cheered her up in a strange way, though she wasn’t too sure why. ‘Oh, forget it, Hughie. Is Ma still there? I’ve just remembered I’ve got a message for her.’

  ‘I know what you’re up to, you just don’t want to face the truth. Hold on, I’ll get her.’

  Mrs Byrne didn’t bother with hellos again. ‘That’s very kind of you to spend so much time talking to Hugh, Lainey. Heaven knows none of us can get any sense out of him.’

  Lainey smiled as she heard Hugh’s protests in the background. Served him right. ‘Ma, sorry, I meant to tell you before. I met a friend of yours the other night. A Leo Ramsay, an Englishman, kind of arty?’

  ‘Leo? Good God, I haven’t seen him in –’

  ‘Nearly seventeen years. He practically knew the date you left.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He just asked me to remember him to you. Told me I reminded him of you.’ She didn’t mention the anatomical way he’d studied her.

  ‘When did he get back from England? Is he living in Meath again?’

  ‘Ma, all these questions! Don’t tell me, he’s an old flame of yours?’

  Mrs Byrne ignored her. ‘Good heavens. Leo Ramsay, that really takes me back. Do give him my best if you see him again, won’t you?’

  Her mother sounded wistful. ‘Who is he?’ Lainey said, her voice sharper than she meant it to be.

  ‘He was a painter back then, as in artist, not house painter. He lived in Meath for a while, taught part-time at the college. That’s where we met. He used to come into the library.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  And what’s the rest of the story that you’re not telling me? ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s all, Elaine. Now, I’d better go or this phone bill will send us into even deeper financial ruin than we’re in already.’ And then her mother hung up.

  ‘Still no more bookings?’

  Lainey paced around the house, phone to her ear. ‘No, Evie, nothing. I’ve had one lot of midweek guests, tourists from Spain, but I can’t exactly lock them in the house until the weekends come around, can I? I was mad to waste all that money on the party. I think everyone just enjoyed a good feed and a drinkfest at my expense and then went home and forgot about the whole place. All I have is two couples booked in for the Irish art weekend and two for the literature, but they’re friends of Mr Fogarty, nothing to do with the party at all. I should have saved myself the bother.’

  ‘Could you get an article into one of the newspapers?’ Eva suggested. ‘Get someone to write about it?’

  ‘It’s not exactly newsworthy, is it? Australian woman opens gourmet guesthouse. Australian woman who can’t cook opens gourmet guesthouse. Australian woman who can’t cook opens gourmet guesthouse, then throws herself off the nearest bridge.’

  ‘You’ve still got ten days till the first theme weekend, haven’t you? And you just need to fill four rooms, eight people each weekend. Calm down. It’ll work. Just wait and see. Let me have a think.’

  ‘When exactly did we swap positions here? How come you’re the sane one with all the ideas suddenly?’

  ‘You don’t have a monopoly on good ideas, Lainey. Now, take a deep breath and then go for a run or something. You have to keep in shape, remember. You don’t know when your big nudie moment with Rohan might arise and you want to be looking your best.’

  ‘Eva Kennedy!’

  ‘Better go, Lainey. I’ll see you on Saturday for your
first cooking lesson.’ She was laughing as she hung up.

  Lainey took Eva’s advice and set out for a run. She’d given up listening to the language tapes while she exercised. She’d discovered it was much more pleasant to listen to the sounds around her, the peace broken just occasionally by the sounds of cars. Sometimes she didn’t even feel like running, doing a fast walk instead, or on soft, warm days like this, a slow gentle walk.

  She was spending a lot of time up on Tara, taking the long way up through the tree-lined lanes, no longer dark tunnels of bare branches. There was a green haze appearing on all the trees, as though they were slowly being coloured in by an unseen hand. The air smelt different. There was movement all around her. She’d seen rabbits in the fields, even a fox one morning, which had reminded her to keep the chickens locked up each night. The wild birds were her favourites. She loved the constant whistling and the sound of the sudden flap of wings, the rush of air as she walked past their nests in the hedges, which were also becoming lusher by the day.

  She walked further than usual today, past the Tara car park and coffee shop, through the gate and right across the hill, to the very edge. There were other people wandering about, but she kept to the far edge, wanting to be alone, gazing out at the fields for miles around. They were changing too, as the crops started growing, a hint of bright yellow in one, a deeper green in another. She took off her jacket and laid it on the grass, sitting on top of it. She breathed deeply. The sky was a beautiful pale spring blue. There were scatterings of wildflowers in the grass around her. She heard the bleating of spring lambs, the rustle and chirping of nest-building from the birds in the oak and chestnut woods in front of her.

  She’d learned from all her reading that this area of Tara was called An Grianan, the Women’s Sunny Place. There were two large trenches in the steep slope in front of her, reputed by legend to have slid down the hill centuries before, after two Kings of Tara had made bad judgements. Beside them was the grass-covered mound called Ráth Gráinne, Gráinne’s fort. Lainey thought again of the Celtic legend of Diarmuid and Gráinne. She knew it from her schooldays and had read about it again in several of the books from the library. It was a tragic tale, the story of Gráinne, daughter of Cormac Mac Airt, one of the Kings of Tara, who ran away with her beloved Diarmuid rather than marry the legendary but ageing warrior Finn McCool. After fleeing Tara, the pair were pursued all over Ireland by Finn, the whole tragic affair finally ending with the death of Diarmuid.

  Poor Gráinne, Lainey thought. And she thought she had relationship problems. She breathed in deeply, trying to remember tips from a meditation book. Breathe in, breathe out, make sure you are placed in the here and the now. Look around, be where you are, be who you are.

  Who was she? Lainey Byrne. Where was she? Going bananas. She was genuinely losing it, she decided. She didn’t feel at all like herself any more, especially in regard to Rohan. It was like she’d been taken over by an alien being, someone who blushed easily, stammered, whose head was filling with mad thoughts. She thought of something Eva had said once. She had a theory that there were a number of different emotions or feelings that every human being had to experience in a lifetime. A Life List, if you like. Some people did them in normal order – first crush, first disappointment. Then came the big ones – death of a parent, falling in love, getting married or having children. Others did them in a different order.

  Perhaps that explained what was happening now. She’d just fallen behind with her Life List and was catching up on the crush one now. She hadn’t gone through it as a teenager. At her prime crush time she and the rest of her family had moved to Australia. She had been too busy trying to make friends, adjust to different schools, a different country, a different life, to be able to take time out for something as frivolous as a crush.

  The thought pleased her. Yes, that’s all this was. A simple, ordinary, run-of-the-mill crush. Delayed development. A midlife crisis. She was going back to her teenage self. It had nothing to do with Rohan Hartigan per se and nothing to do with blocking out any confused thoughts about Adam, or any worries that she had made the wrong decision about breaking up with him. It was just her mind’s way of ticking off one more thing on that list. Good. Fine.

  She had a chance to put her new maturity into practice immediately. Rohan’s car was parked in front of Tara Lodge. She noticed that Sabine wasn’t in the car with him. She took control, marching up to him as he got out of the car, talking quickly to get in first, to try and stop the mind-films from playing in her head, taking over. ‘Rohan, hello. And before you say anything, I’m sorry for my drunken behaviour at the party and for whatever I said and if I was rude and for trying and failing so badly to speak German to Sabine.’

  He seemed taken aback, then he smiled. ‘Don’t be sorry. You were absolutely grand. Sure, we were all having a few drinks. You were no orphan. And Sabine said it was very nice of you to try and speak German. And she really enjoyed singing “O Tannenbaum” with you. Germans don’t often get the chance to sing about Christmas trees this early in the year.’

  Lainey groaned. ‘I didn’t, did I?’ Eva and Joseph hadn’t mentioned that little jewel of drunken behaviour.

  ‘Just the one verse.’

  Lainey knew then why he was there. ‘You’ve come to cancel the Hill of Tara tours, haven’t you? You don’t want to be associated with an old soak.’ It was a relief to talk to him like this, her embarrassment about the party cancelling out any nerves she’d previously felt.

  ‘No, I’ve come about Nell, actually.’

  ‘About her photography?’ Nell still hadn’t called around with her photographs, though Lainey had reminded her about it at the party.

  ‘About that and something else. Can I come inside?’

  They went into the kitchen, Lainey putting on coffee, making general conversation, still amazed at how normal she was being with him. There was a tiny imp in the corner of her mind making lewd suggestions, but she was successfully keeping it subdued. This was just a nice, normal conversation with someone she used to go to school with.

  He accepted the coffee with thanks, then started talking about Nell. Lainey sat opposite him, taking some pleasure in the fact that his curly hair was looking a little bouffant today.

  ‘Nell’s not just here for a holiday or to spend time with her grandmother while her mother’s away working,’ he said. ‘The main reason is she got into a bit of trouble in London. She got involved with another student in her photography class who was unsuitable, for lots of reasons. I won’t go into details, I hope you don’t mind. She’d hate it if she knew I was talking about her like this. I didn’t meet the fellow myself but my sister took a real dislike and she’s not one to overreact.’

  ‘So that’s why she’s here? To keep her away from this boyfriend?’

  ‘Just until my sister gets back from America. The trouble is, Nell is getting very bored. Which is why I’m here today. We wondered, well, I wondered, could Nell give you some help here at all? No need to pay her. She’s got an allowance from her parents, but just to keep her busy, give her something to do with herself?’

  Lainey didn’t need to think about it. ‘Well, sure, once the theme weekends get under way. Or if I start getting any midweek guests. Send her along. We can have a chat. And of course I’d pay her, if she’s working for me.’

  He finished his coffee, and stood up, looking relieved. ‘Thanks, Lainey. You’re a lifesaver. See, you must have been meant to come back here.’

  Where did he get a phrase like that from? ‘Yes, I must have been.’

  ‘So is Sabine still here?’ she asked casually as she saw him to his car a few minutes later.

  ‘No, she had to go back to Munich. I’m back to being a bachelor again.’

  She looked at him, trying to hide a feeling of dismay. Don’t tell me that, don’t say that. It was too late. As he drove off, the imp in her mind came out waving flags and gyrating its hips. Eva’s words came flying into her mind as well, in neon
block letters. ‘You really might be in with a chance, Lainey. He is quite sexy, isn’t he?’ Oh shite, she thought, closing her eyes. Here we go again.

  Lainey was out in the garden the next day pulling up weeds, Rod Stewart snoozing in a patch of sun near her, when she heard a car. It was Nell, driving what Lainey assumed was Mrs Hartigan’s car.

  Watching as Nell climbed out, Lainey noticed again that she was really just a child, only sixteen or seventeen, despite the make-up and older clothes. She stood up, holding her creaking lower back, and smiled. ‘Come in, Nell. Welcome to Tara Lodge.’

  ‘Hi.’

  She wasn’t just shy, she was very shy, Lainey guessed that much immediately. But that was okay. She had the occasional shy moment too.

  ‘Come in. Have a cup of tea. Your uncle was saying you’re looking for some work.’

  She nodded.

  ‘You’re here for about six months, is that right?’

  Another nod.

  Rod Stewart got your tongue? ‘Are you liking being in Ireland?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s not where I want to be.’

  ‘Where would you rather be?’

  ‘Back home in London. At my photography class.’

  Lainey wanted to hear Nell’s version. ‘Why are you here, then?’

  ‘Boyfriend trouble.’ She said it in a sing-song, mocking voice, but then became sullen again. ‘Mum had to go away for work and they didn’t trust me to be at home on my own, so they sent me here.’

  Lainey couldn’t mistake the note of hurt in Nell’s voice. ‘What about your dad? Couldn’t you stay with him?’

  The eyes went down again. ‘It’s a bit crowded in his house already.’

  ‘Crowded?’

  ‘All his other kids. His new wife.’