by Sharon Owens
I went into Alicia-Rose’s bedroom once and switched on her bedside lamp for a few minutes, knelt down by the side of her bed and said a prayer for her safety. Bill saw me kneeling there and he didn’t even laugh. That’s how serious it was.
‘Say one for me while you’re at it,’ he said gently and I just nodded.
It was around that time I started going back to church. Not to attend Sunday service, no. I don’t really like kneeling in crowds, I must say. A bit claustrophobic. It’s years since I’ve been to Mass (apart from weddings and funerals) because I prefer to pray in private. But in the quiet times between services I would go in, sit at the back of the church and think about things in general for half an hour or so. Maybe light a candle occasionally if there was nobody else about to see me. And, I thought, maybe if I’m sitting here, God will give me a little feeling of reassurance; he’ll let me know that Alicia-Rose and Emma and everyone will be all right. Well, I said to myself, there must be more to life than just getting by? There must be some point to all of this struggle and heartbreak and pain and love and loss? Why do I love Bill and my children so much if all we are is a bunch of living things competing with one another for food and shelter?
And though it absolutely kills me to admit this, I enjoyed the atmosphere in the church. It’s an old one, very Gothic in style, lovely stained-glass windows. Shafts of coloured light streaming down onto the long wooden benches when the sun came out. So, even though I’ve seen The Da Vinci Code and I’m a fervent supporter of birth control being made freely available in developing countries and all that liberal stuff (and by the way, where did they raise the money for all these fabulously beautiful churches in Ireland in the seventeenth century when so many of the people were dying of hunger?), I decided to put my common-sense head away for a few minutes each week. And just concentrate on being spiritual and praying for Alicia-Rose out in Australia with the poisonous spiders and the crocodiles and the blistering sunshine. I mean, you worry about your children all the time anyway but somehow the fear is a lot worse when your precious child is on the other side of the world. I even knelt to pray at the ridiculous outdoor grotto dedicated to St Bernadette, which is something I always swore I would never do. And I’d even told Bill that if he ever caught me doing it, caught me looking sideways at that neon-painted grotto, he was to shoot me. Or, failing that, take me to the Royal Victoria Hospital for an urgent brain scan.
What can I say?
It was a difficult period in my life.
I was lonely.
There, I’ve said it.
I had a rich and active life with a full-time job and a husband to love and four children to worry about, and I was still lonely. Bill was busy training Alexander to be a plumber and teaching him to drive because you can’t be a plumber if you can’t drive yourself to call-outs. So he didn’t phone me during the day any more, like he used to.
And Julie was busy telling lies to Gary on a full-time basis and spending every minute she could merrily mounting and dismounting the bold Jay O’Hanlon. He was insatiable, she told me. He never got tired. Well, I thought, how would he? He has all day to lie about, relaxing and showering and resting his mighty doo-da at Julie’s expense. Ten minutes after a frantic ‘wreck the flat’ bout of sweaty animal sex, she said, he was ready to begin again. She was chuffed with herself for teaming up with such a devoted stud. Even when Jay got her name tattooed on his arm one day (incidentally, in the same parlour I’d gone to, though I hadn’t told Julie about it yet), she thought it was all some kind of major joke. She laughed and laughed at the fact her name was written in black ink on a barman’s arm. I took Jay’s tattoo as an alarm bell, though. A red flag of warning, but Julie didn’t flinch. I mean, tattoos are pretty permanent, aren’t they?
‘He can get it covered over when we split up,’ she said casually, tucking into a ready-made pasta salad from Marks, one lunchtime in the lighthouse.
I was munching my favourite snack, their sour cream pretzels. I have no idea how much money Julie and I have spent in that store over the years. An absolute fortune no doubt, but it was worth every penny. Sometimes, it’s only the promise of a lemon drizzle cake or a stone-baked pizza that stops you from signing yourself in somewhere.
Anyway.
‘He can have it disguised with leaves or roses or something when we go our separate ways. Keep your wig on, Mags. Honestly, he’s such a nutcase!’
As if being a nutcase was a good thing.
I wondered if Julie was subconsciously falling for Jay because he was so ‘off the wall’. Because she’d been brought up by a couple of ‘eccentrics’ and that’s why it felt so normal for her to be with Jay. I mean, he didn’t work at all and he didn’t go out of the flat much and he rarely got dressed. But then again neither did Julie’s mother when she decided to drop out of the real world for ten years.
I was sure it was only a matter of time before Gary was able to drive and socialize again and then he’d find out about Jay, and the whole thing would end in tears. Belfast is a very small town. There are no secrets here. But, unfortunately, that means if you do grass somebody up there’s nowhere to hide. So we generally keep our mouths shut. Therefore I was pretty sure nobody would actually tell Gary that Julie was doing the dirty on him. But he was bound to clock them himself in a café or bar or just sitting at the traffic lights somewhere. I worried about it more than she did, but even I didn’t think Julie Sultana’s toy-boy tryst would end up in a shocking outburst of violence in the Café Vaudeville! Oh, well, as Julie said during our little stint in A&E at the City Hospital (which made a pleasant change from the Royal Victoria), nobody could possibly accuse her of being dull and boring. She was a lot of things, but she wasn’t dull and boring. Every cloud.
We’ll get to the Café Vaudeville incident in a little while.
October arrived and the nights began to draw in.
And then we got our biggest commission of all time. The people from Dublin turned up again at the lighthouse. Poor Gary, he’d been so distracted the day he called to take me out for lunch, he hadn’t recognized them. It turned out the guy was a major rock star and I do mean major. He was a fully paid-up by-the-book, larger-than-life, eyeliner-and-platform-heels American rock star who was living in Ireland for a while. Enjoying the good life on his country estate in County Kildare. Or until the novelty of being off heroin wore thin, at any rate. His doe-eyed girlfriend was a top French model, about ten inches taller and four stone lighter than he was. Your classic ‘bucket and spade’ combination. And they wanted to use a wedding planner that none of their friends or acquaintances had used before. So they’d chosen us from the Yellow Pages.
All I can say is, thank goodness Julie happened to be at work that day because I would’ve passed out on the stairs if she hadn’t. It’s not that I get star-struck, not really. I just think most celebrities come from another planet. It’s kind of hard to relate to a person who goes to the corner shop for caviar and crackers in their own helicopter. Well, maybe not the corner shop, but you know what I mean. And it’s impossible to know what to say to them. You can’t exactly waffle on about the price of home-heating oil, can you? When they own an island in the Caribbean. Now I come to think of it, if it wasn’t for celebrity gossip, what would we even talk about with one another?
Julie was magnificent, the way she handled those multi-millionaire cooler-than-cool dudes. She didn’t raise an eyebrow throughout the entire meeting. It was amazing. Me? I had three hot flushes, my mind went blank twice and I almost said ‘Fuck me,’ when the rock star described his budget. Not because I fancied him, no, dear. But because I was totally stunned by his extravagance. A heck of a lot more than it cost Bill and myself for a civil wedding and two beanburgers in 1985, I’ll tell you that! I can’t reveal their names because we had to sign a secrecy clause. But I’m sure you can guess who I’m talking about. The photographs were already promised to a glossy magazine and none of the guests were going to be allowed to take cameras into the venue. It was
so secret we had to arrange the entire thing without any of the guests finding out there was even going to be a wedding (until about twenty-four hours beforehand), never mind the tabloid press getting tipped off. Heavens, no. They would have ruined everything by hovering above the ceremony in some light aircraft and whipping up a sandstorm. Well, a gravel-and-cigarettes storm, maybe?
However, I can tell you some of the details. They wanted their wedding ceremony to be held in the grounds of a ruined Irish castle, and the reception in a luxury marquee which would be erected nearby. What ruined castle exactly, we didn’t establish on our first meeting. Somewhere remote enough to be considered terribly private and exclusive but not so remote the guests couldn’t actually find it. Right away, I knew there’d be a muddy swamp of regulations to wade through – some of our by-laws date back to the Stone Age. Ditto, a good few of the local council bigwigs. Still, I hoped they’d be so besotted with the idea of a celebrity wedding taking place in their backyard that they might be prepared to compromise a little on the details. Money talks, isn’t it the truth?
The marriage ceremony itself? Well, they fancied something whimsical and poetic specially composed just for them. And for the wedding to be co-celebrated by a pagan Druid in full regalia and an open-minded magistrate who didn’t mind being upstaged by a pagan Druid. Again, a little money would probably go a long way towards easing any misgivings the magistrate might have, we decided. And we wondered to ourselves whether we knew anyone who needed a new roof on their local community centre, and did they happen to have a ruined castle nearby? You know how it is when you’re working backwards?
Oh, dear, now this kooky little arrangement could lead to all sorts of problems, I thought to myself. But of course I smiled politely and so did Julie, as if we get Druids and open-minded magistrates traipsing in and out of the lighthouse on a regular basis. I knew the papers would have a field day whipping up fears of a pagan revival and condemning the worship of false gods and all manner of jiggery-pokery. No doubt, we’d be invited onto UTV Live and asked to explain ourselves to some fire-and-brimstone religious minister. I’m sure Julie was relishing the prospect of so much free advertising for Dream Weddings but I (being the practical one) feared the loss of our more conservative clients. And they do tend to be the ones with the healthiest bank balances.
Needless to say, the rock star and his French-model girlfriend didn’t have to worry about any of that. Their main concern was making sure they had enough room for their entourage near the altar. Apparently, they couldn’t get married without five personal assistants, three make-up artists, two hair-stylists, one fashion designer, one nutritionist, four pet-minders and a lighting expert from Norway within hand’s reach. (They’d hired the Norwegian themselves because they knew it gets pretty dark in Ireland when the clouds roll in, thus requiring a lighting expert from a Nordic background.)
Things went from bad to worse after that. The loved-up lovebirds mistook our politeness to indicate that NI was a happening sort of place where anything was possible. Next up on the agenda, the guest list. Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen! There were exactly 666 guests on the list. The happy couple had to plunder their old phone books to scrape together the last few dozen, and distant relatives were going to be flying in from the four corners of the globe. But the final tally was 666 and they’d even invited a few diehard fans to make up the numbers in case any of the relatives got lost en route to the ruined castle. Now, don’t worry, this devilish number had no real significance other than to impress the rocker’s fellow musicians and full-time hellraisers. That’s what he told us, anyway. But still, I knew there’d be a bit of a ruckus when the press found out. Especially if it’d been a slow week for real news stories.
I’m sure you’re getting the general idea by now, of where this wedding was going. And you’d be right. It was ‘Halloween Meets Bling’ on a grand scale. The wedding cake? Oh, yes. The bride-to-be wanted her wedding cake to stand five feet tall and take the form of a haunted mansion. Complete with twisty-pointy turrets, overhanging balconies, iron railings on the overhanging balconies, trailing ivy on the iron railings on the overhanging balconies. Actual electric lights in the windows if it could be arranged. She said she had always, always, always wanted such a wedding cake. All her life, it was ‘all she had ever dreamed of’. Well, you need to get out more, my dear, I thought to myself. Even though I have a solid-stone gargoyle in my good room and a rather big collection of giant candlesticks. But, at least I don’t make a song and dance about my likes and dislikes, I keep them to myself. I was slightly puzzled at the model’s request for a haunted-mansion cake because she didn’t seem to be into serious rock music, but I suppose she wanted to impress her husband-to-be. And it was his money paying the bill so we said we’d do our best to find a baker who’d be willing to try. I had serious doubts we’d find a local baker, though. I said I’d find out how much it would cost to have a top chef kidnapped in Paris, flown to this country and forced to bake a haunted-mansion cake at gunpoint. And I was only half joking.
The meeting wore on and the requests got sillier. The groom-to-be fancied a red velvet frock coat with skulls embroidered on it and a red silk top hat to go with it. We didn’t envisage any huge problems there as Ireland is coming down with fashion designers since the Celtic Tiger woke up and began to roar. But could they make top hats, I wondered. Julie saw the shadow of doubt flicker across my eyes and inclined her head at me to say nothing. So I didn’t. I measured the guy’s head circumference and told him his aftershave was lovely. Shame about the halitosis but then sustained drug-use can really bugger up your molars, so I’ve heard.
The bats! Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you about the bats. The groom-to-be also thought it would be nice to have real live bats released at dusk, just before the dancing and the serious boozing got under way. Julie and I exchanged glances at that one. There was no way the government, either north or south of the border, was going to allow such an infringement of animal rights, but we said nothing. We knew we’d come up with some less-controversial alternative and convince him it was fabulous and groovy when the time came. We discussed staging the ruins with lights and props. At one point I just knew Julie was about to volunteer the loan of my stone gargoyle but I interrupted her by offering tea or coffee or indeed a glass of champagne to our guests. I couldn’t take the risk of the pair of them or someone in their hefty entourage making off with my most prized possession at the end of the day. Which seems laughable now in the light of what actually happened, but life is like that, isn’t it? Full of surprises, is life.
Back to the doe-eyed bride: she wanted a fireworks display as night fell. Obviously, not too close to the bats being deployed, for humanitarian reasons. Although it would have been rather hilarious to release thousands of fluttery little bats over the heads of the crowd and then disorientate the bejaysus out of all of them with a few tons of gunpowder. Worth a clip on You’ve Been Framed, I imagine. Oh, God. So yes, she wanted red, white and blue fireworks to symbolize both her native France and her beloved’s home country, the USA. That seemed okay with us, although again we said we would have to consult ancient rules and regulations regarding local council etiquette, and we weren’t exactly sure how much a bespoke fireworks display would cost. I didn’t think we’d be allowed to make a lot of noise near birds and wildlife, but of course we didn’t mention anything awkward at the time. That’s why we get paid a lot of money, Julie and me. Because we do all the boring stuff like making endless phone calls to reference libraries and police stations. And flattering stuffy old town mayors and vacuuming up any stray confetti before the next wedding begins.
My head was splitting by this stage and we hadn’t even touched on the catering. Julie knows some top chefs specializing in mini-bowls of Irish stew and best Irish seafood platters, but of course it wasn’t going to be that easy, was it? Oh, no. Our happy couple wanted to go all New Age and forward-looking. Or, at least, that was the image they wanted to project to the rest of the w
orld. The menu was to be entirely vegetarian if not vegan. Julie looked at me when the two of them began a short sermon on vegetarianism. Julie can’t abide veggie sermons; she loves a nice fillet steak cooked rare. But we said it was a super idea and we’d look into pricing a top vegetarian chef right away. I joked about kidnapping another chef from Paris, but nobody laughed. It’s a serious business, getting married nowadays.
Slight problem with the food: vegetarian cuisine in this neck of the woods seems to consist of a few strips of soggy aubergine, deep-fat fried and served on a bed of undercooked brown lentils. Yuck! We’d really have our work cut out to find a decent chef willing to work in the open air.
‘Leave it with us,’ Julie purred, fluttering her eyelashes at the rock star and admiring his girlfriend’s enormous pink rocks.
And that’s not a euphemism. There were three pink diamonds the size of golf balls on her engagement ring. It occurred to me then, and not for the first time, if it wouldn’t be easier to get myself a part-time job in our local chippy. Or even open a chippy of my own? The prices they charge, I’d be a millionaire in six months. But of course, I’d never do that. I must admit, I do enjoy my work most of the time, there’s always something exciting going on. Today is just a blip, I told myself. A little bit over the top and ridiculous but surely, as the preparations progressed, some of the more outlandish requests could be down-sized or dropped altogether? I mean, I couldn’t help wondering if this media-circus was going to damage the general image of getting married. I hoped the whole thing could be shoehorned into something more tasteful as the months went by. Well, no harm in hoping.
Next up, the invitations! Pop-up invitations, to be exact. To be handmade, naturally. A little paper vampire was to leap out of the card, they said, complete with a red-lined paper cape and fangs dripping paper blood. Nice. There’d be lots of information on the back of the invites too. The guests were to be told of the secrecy surrounding the location, the no-cameras rule and the dress code. Here we go, I thought. This will be good. And it was. The dress code for the wedding of the century was to be Rock Chicks and Vampires. And no exceptions were to be made, not even for the guests who were knocking on a bit. Or the forty-three relatives of the happy couple who were bona fide pensioners already.
