Revenge of the Wedding Planner

by Sharon Owens

  In the end, Bill collected me from the hospital and we drove out to the airport in silence. There was nothing left to say, was there? I knew Bill was thinking I should have left the table the minute Jay sat down with us but even platonic relationships are so complicated these days. If I’d walked out on her, it would’ve driven a wedge between Julie and me. And besides, I didn’t want to be done out of my lovely Christmas lunch in the Café Vaudeville because of Jay O’Hanlon, of all people. Call me shallow but I so wanted to enjoy that lunch, knowing I’d soon be chained to my own kitchen sink for two solid weeks.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ I said as we sat in gridlock on the motorway.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘It’s not your fault. But I did say it would end in tears. It gives me no pleasure to know I was right.’

  ‘Not half, it doesn’t,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘Yes, Bill Grimsdale was right, once again!’

  Because of the rush-hour traffic, Bill and I were over an hour late getting to the airport and my sisters weren’t too pleased about the delay after such a long and tiring flight. We found them sitting with Alicia-Rose in the bar, all sipping Irish coffees, wearing thick scarves and complaining loudly about the bitterly cold weather. We told them we were so sorry, there’d been an emergency with a friend of Julie’s taken ill, and the great reunion with Alicia-Rose and my sisters went ahead. I was overwhelmed with happiness when I held them all in my arms. I felt like anything was possible and we’d have the best Christmas ever. Singing carols round the (gas) fire, watching feel-good movies on the television and eating mountains of festive food.

  And so we did.

  I spent most of the holiday in the kitchen cooking and making tea and being a mother-figure to my sisters; well, our biological mother had skipped off to the Maldives with Tone for ‘a bit of a rest’. Skiver! Still, I thanked my lucky stars my name wasn’t Julie Sultana. I kept thinking of her sitting up in the lighthouse with Jay, like some kind of latter-day fairy tale. Jay with his lovely face ruined and Julie with her personal life in tatters. Bill relented on Christmas Day and invited the two of them over to Eglantine for their dinner, but Julie said they would prefer to rest in the lighthouse and thanks anyway. So we dropped them off a basket of food and a small telly and a bottle of rum. She was delighted, I have to say, when she answered the door to myself and Bill. There was blood all over the front of her sweater; she told me that when Jay tried to make love to her it brought on another nosebleed. Poor Julie. It wasn’t the best Christmas she’d ever had.

  But it probably was the best one I can remember.

  Even when my sisters insisted on going out to Dad’s grave on New Year’s Eve afternoon to see the newly erected headstone and sing ‘Are You Teasin’ Me?’ at the tops of their voices (and lay an Irish tricolour over the white marble chippings), I was still glad I was boring old Mags Grimsdale, second-in-command. It was unbelievably cold and the wind chill made it worse. I could barely think, it was that bad. Bill waited in the car, looking rather smug with the heat turned on. The rough-finish Celtic cross did look fabulous against a stormy black sky and the three of us girls had a right good laugh at the inscription, which read (in Gaelic): Beloved Husband, Father and Grandfather. Love Never Dies. Well, we reasoned, why not? Our mother would likely never come to see the grave so what was the harm in giving the old man a nice inscription? And even if she did make the effort some day in the far-distant future, she couldn’t read Irish anyway and she’d be far too proud to ask a passer-by to translate. I whipped the Irish flag off again, though, the second Ann and Elizabeth were finished singing.

  ‘What are you doing? Don’t take it off!’ Ann said crossly. ‘We had that made specially by a master flag-maker, and blessed by a bishop before we left home. We want to leave it on the ground until it rots.’

  ‘We haven’t poured the holy water and the Irish whiskey on our wee daddy yet, either,’ Elizabeth said, rooting in her enormous mock-croc handbag for the bottles.

  ‘You two’ve been away from Belfast for too long,’ I told them bossily. ‘We’re trying to tone down all this kind of thing in the interests of peace and security. And anyway, there’re a few hoods hanging about down the far end and I don’t know where they’re from. Now get back in the bloody car before the lot of us are lynched.’

  Bill drove out of the cemetery so fast the hoods wouldn’t have had time to blink, let alone take down our registration.

  Honestly, ex-pats take the biscuit, don’t they?

  There was quite a strained atmosphere at dinner that evening but then Ann had the great idea of ringing round all her and Elizabeth’s old school mates and organizing an impromptu knees-up at the Wellington Park Hotel disco. They managed to contact eleven of their chums from their schooldays on Rosetta Road and I was very touched when they said to me, ‘Come on, Mags, get your coat on.’

  And they didn’t add their usual joke afterwards, about me getting my coat on because they were turning off the gas fire in the living room!

  ‘Really?’ I said, almost surprised they’d asked me to join them, after I’d spoilt their graveside ceremony with a lecture on peace and harmony.

  ‘Aye,’ said Elizabeth, warming up her Belfast brogue for the night ahead. ‘Sure, the way you dance, we’ll need something to laugh at if the talk dries up!’

  So, after a frantic ‘girls getting ready’ session in my bedroom, off we went down the street, arms linked and singing our heads off. Something glam-rock and daft by Van Halen but I didn’t care because I’d had a couple of gins by then and I was wearing my lovely new suede boots. I asked Bill if he wanted to come too but he said he’d rather stay at home and laze in front of the telly. And also that he’d rather face a pack of hungry wolves than take part in an old girls’ reunion with the three of us. He waved us off at the front door and I blew him a kiss and said I’d be home by midnight for another kiss with him under the mistletoe.

  ‘Crikey, Mags, give the poor fella a rest!’ said Ann and we all laughed.

  ‘Don’t wait up for us two, though, Bill. We could be anywhere by midnight,’ Elizabeth added with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. ‘With any luck, we’ll be engaged to a couple of gorgeous, twenty-year-old millionaires and sailing off to Cannes in their yacht!’

  They were only joking, naturally. We’d already decided to come home at eleven thirty and see in the New Year at home with Bill and the rest of the family. But it was still fun to pretend. For a second, it seemed like we were all eighteen again and I felt a lump of happiness in my throat. Some moments in time you know will never come again and that was one of them.

  ‘Come on,’ I said suddenly. ‘Hurry up or we’ll not even find standing room in the Welly. And don’t let me get too squiffy, will you?’

  And this time I made sure I left my credit card at home. One tattoo is enough for any girl.

  Next morning, I was sitting comfortably in the breakfast room with my sisters, the three of us polishing off an Ulster fry (fried wheaten bread, potato bread, pork sausages, tomatoes, eggs and three tablespoons of brown sauce each – delicious!). And feeling very pleased with myself for not getting too drunk the night before. Then Ann reached into her dressing-gown pocket and gave me a small pink envelope.

  ‘Now, that’s from myself and Elizabeth, towards our share of the funeral,’ she said kindly, patting my hand. While Elizabeth poured us cups of tea from my best teapot and smiled warmly in agreement.

  ‘Oh, there’s no need,’ I began, on auto-pilot as usual when it came to being generous with Bill’s savings.

  ‘There certainly is need,’ Ann said firmly. ‘We should have given you some money at the time but we were that shocked, it didn’t even occur. So you put that away somewhere safe and we’ll say no more about it.’

  ‘And by the way,’ Elizabeth added, ‘thanks for always being there for us when we were growing up. You were a great sister always, Mags, and we appreciated it. Even if we didn’t say so at the time.’

  I was so
touched I couldn’t speak, so I just nodded furiously and then went to wash the dishes.

  Later on, I opened the envelope and was thrilled and appalled to see how much they’d given me.

  15. The Lighthouse

  We were well into January and my sisters had gone back to Australia again. After having some of the ‘best nights of their lives’ gadding about the city centre and blowing kisses to any good-looking guys they happened to see in the various clubs and pubs. At one point, they nearly ended up in a catfight when some possessive girlfriends got the wrong idea in a glamorous Indian restaurant. But it was thankfully sorted out when Ann convinced them that she and Elizabeth were a lesbian couple, just having a laugh. Which wasn’t exactly hard to do, considering Elizabeth was wearing my old reefer jacket at the time and was smoking a cigar.

  I cried my eyes out at the airport, needless to say, when they left. And again two days later when Alicia-Rose boarded her plane. Even though I’d promised Bill I wouldn’t cry, I couldn’t help it. My beautiful daughter with the big blue eyes and the long white hair was all independent and organized at last. And she looked every inch the professional traveller by then, with all her ‘permitted items’ safely packed in her hand luggage and her big shiny suitcase-on-wheels checked in within two minutes of entering the building.

  ‘Thank God for Dream Weddings,’ I said to Bill constantly that night, or so it seemed. ‘Because without Dream Weddings to keep me busy I could honestly see myself becoming very hard to live with.’

  ‘No comment,’ Bill said guardedly.

  And we both laughed for ages.

  It wasn’t easy trying to plan for the wedding of the century with Julie and Jay living in the lighthouse. They were under my feet constantly, like the children used to be when they were younger. I bitterly regretted moving that old sofa bed of ours into the office, I can tell you, because Jay and Julie made themselves quite at home on it, barely bothering to get up when I arrived for work each morning. And the air in the room was stale and there were plates and cups left on the desks and on the lovely new rug. A circular rug that I’d spent hours tracking down because it would echo the shape of the office. And now it was strewn with Jay’s unwashed socks and bandages (his broken nose) and Julie’s dainty bras. The first thing I’d have to do each day was open the windows, gather up the mess and wash the dishes. A woman’s work is never done. Julie would scamper off to the bathroom to get herself smartened up as best she could in the miniature sink with a flannel and a bar of soap.

  ‘It was good enough for people in the old days,’ she’d say stubbornly when I told her she could do with a shower at my house.

  And Mr Wonderful would just lie there while she was out of the room, his head resting on the lovely cushions I’d bought in town. And he’d say I was just to ignore him and work away. Which was well-nigh impossible in a twelve-foot-wide space. Every time I had to step over the edge of the bed to get to the files, he’d say, ‘Watch yourself now.’ Like he was doing me a big favour. It was infuriating. Even though I felt sorry for him with his two black eyes and his obvious pain and discomfort.

  And Julie was no better. She made no effort to rent another apartment. I think she was actually wallowing in her new bedsit-drama lifestyle. You get that sometimes with people who’ve never been to university, who’ve never lived in an HMO (House of Multiple Occupancy). They seem to think living in a mess, knee-deep in chip wrappers, is a bit of a laugh. Well, it isn’t hip and trendy. It’s lazy and silly, that’s what it is. I told Julie the housing market was coming down with buy-to-let opportunists. Now that houses have become so expensive in Belfast, only landlords can afford to purchase them. Which is bad news for buyers but very good news for renters. She said when the big fancy rock-star wedding was over she’d take her time to look properly and she’d buy another place, and until then she wasn’t going to be reduced to renting.

  ‘I am many things,’ she said crossly over morning coffee, ‘but I am nobody’s tenant.’

  Julie decided not to press charges against Gary for destroying her lovely home. She said she didn’t want any fuss and commotion and, really, I didn’t blame her for that. Dream Weddings didn’t need the media intrusion and poor Gary had suffered enough. He hadn’t touched Julie’s white Mercedes, though, which was parked outside the lighthouse every night so we decided he must have calmed down a little bit. Julie sent her engagement ring back to him by recorded delivery and then she had the flat in Saintfield cleaned and restored by professionals and put up for sale. She said she didn’t want to live there any more, and anyway the neighbours had filed a complaint against her for making too much noise after midnight. The estate agent who came out to assess the property valued the apartment at a staggering half a million pounds! For a two-bedroom, two-bathroom flat. Can you believe it? Albeit with a landscaped patio area and top-notch tiling in the showers. This country really has lost the run of itself. He said it would sell in no time despite the management fees, which were a thinly veiled form of daylight robbery.

  I was counting the days until they moved out because Jay had bought a deep-fat fryer for the lighthouse kitchen and he was in there most days, merrily cooking banana fritters and singing songs by Bruce Springsteen. And hanging his sexy faded jeans out to dry on the balcony railings. I found myself resenting him, despite his bruises and his nosebleeds. Easy to lie about doing nothing all day when the rest of us are working ourselves silly. I mean, where would Jay have been without the lighthouse? In a shop doorway, that’s where. At least that’s what I thought at the time. But canny old Jay wasn’t quite the innocent he seemed. Oh, no. I bet he planned everything, right from the very start. Julie Sultana was only a stepping stone to the main prize, in the end.

  So there we were, the three of us, stuck in that tiny office at the top of the lighthouse. Me and Julie trying to locate vegetarian chefs, trustworthy security guards, red top hats and designer mobile-phone covers. While Jay spent most of his time lying on his back reading the papers and looking for another job, the Café Vaudeville having decided to terminate his employment rather abruptly. It seemed they’d made a mistake and didn’t need another barman after all.

  I can’t say he was really putting much energy into the search, though. He kept saying he’d love to open his own restaurant some day if he could only find a financial backer willing to put their faith in him. No doubt he had his handsome green eyes firmly trained on Julie’s half a million pounds’ equity. She must have known what he was hinting at but she didn’t pick up on it. I suppose she hadn’t decided yet what she was going to do with him. And you don’t want to go into business with a toy-boy lover, do you? So she just said a restaurant sounded lovely and what a pity she would need all the money from the sale of her flat to buy another property, prices being the way they were. Otherwise she’d have jumped at the chance to go into the restaurant business. I couldn’t prevent a delighted smirk or two from crossing my chops when Julie said that. At least she hasn’t gone so crazy she’s giving Jay O’Hanlon access to her finances, I thought to myself. Good for you, Julie.

  Then Jay took up smoking again. Cigars to be precise. I think he did it to spite us because neither Julie nor myself is a big fan of the deadly weed. And he started getting a bit moody with Julie, not answering her sometimes when she asked him a question or pulling away from her whenever she kissed him. Then she’d be whispering to me, had I noticed anything different about Jay and what did I think was wrong with him and what should she do about it? I felt so claustrophobic marooned in the lighthouse with the pair of them, I began to yearn for lunchtimes when I’d be sent out to the shop to buy sandwiches.

  I thought of my sisters and Alicia-Rose back in Australia after the holidays and I half wished I was there with them, maybe living in the outback as a mystic or hermit of some kind. And I remembered when Alicia-Rose was about to go through the Departures gate for the second time and she said I was looking tired and maybe I should give a month’s notice to Dream Weddings and set up some little
thing of my own. Something smaller and less pressurized, maybe selling wedding hats online? I was touched that she’d noticed how exhausted her old mum was feeling but I didn’t think I’d ever be confident enough to go into business for myself. I remembered holding onto her until the last call was announced and then Bill pulled me away and we were both heartbroken all over again. I went home and moped about the house until I felt sick, and when I called Australia the following day to make sure Alicia-Rose had arrived safely at her destination, she said I was becoming neurotic and I was to cop on to myself. There’s gratitude for you. But I was stunned by my daughter’s confidence and proud as hell of her, at the same time.

  And then Jay started having an affair with the French model. Broken nose notwithstanding. And I began to think Alicia-Rose might have been onto something, regarding me and Julie going our separate ways. Oh, yes, I expect you saw that little dalliance coming, but I have to say, I did not. I must have been preoccupied with my own various family dramas but I definitely didn’t think Julie’s toy boy would ever hook up with her best client of all time.

  Poor Julie.

  She was well out of Jay’s league, wasn’t she, that French model? Even though the rock star was a bit wrinkly and a bit short and his molars were crumbling and he was on heavy withdrawal-medication. And he had breath that smelt like cat food. Sorry, but he did – maybe he ate some weird kind of health food? But he was so incredibly rich! I mean, how on earth did Jay O’Hanlon manage to catch the eye of a top supermodel? Even if the thought had crossed my mind that Jay couldn’t be trusted around other women, I’d never have guessed he would have tried it on with someone of her pedigree or that she would’ve been the least bit interested in a penniless Irish stud. I mean, they’re a dime a dozen, good-looking Irish men. A bit of forthright banter, a few moments of intense eye contact, a roguish way of holding a cigarette inside their curled-up hand. Go into any pub in the land and there’s ten of them standing idly at the bar. You can take your pick, missus, and good luck to you. But with the money and connections she must have had, you’d think she’d have laughed in Jay O’Hanlon’s face. It makes me cringe now, looking back at how naive I really was. I like to see the best in people, that’s my problem. But the truth is some people have no conscience whatsoever when it comes to money, power and sex.