Tales From A Hen Weekend

by Olivia Ryan

  ABOUT SHOPPING

  I’m not too good at working out the exchange rate, but I’m getting the impression that everything’s more expensive in Dublin than it is at home.

  ‘Yeah, no point buying things from shops like Next or River Island that we’ve got at home. You’ll end up paying more,’ says Lisa.

  She’s found a couple of things for the kids. A book of Irish fairy stories for Molly; an Irish whistle for Charlie. Little green leprechaun hats for both of them.

  ‘I suppose I’d better buy something for Richard,’ she says without any enthusiasm.

  ‘What about Andy?’ I ask her. I’m intrigued. Do you buy presents for your lover and your husband? Just one? Just the other?

  ‘He gets his present when I get home,’ she says, winking at me. But there’s a catch in her voice as she says it.

  ‘Do you love him?’ I ask her very quietly.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I feel. I think I’m frightened to ask myself that.’

  ‘But he wants you to leave Richard and live with him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He loves you.’

  ‘Yes. He says he does.’

  ‘Don’t you want to be happy, Lise?’

  She looks at me sharply.

  ‘Katie, it’s just not that simple. Not when you’ve got children.’

  ‘But nowadays loads of people split up – children adapt. We should know that, better than anybody. It didn’t hurt us, did it – growing up without our dad.’

  ‘Look,’ she says, patiently, laying a hand on my arm. ‘Look, perhaps I do love Andy. I know I don’t love Richard any more. But more than anything, more than anything in the world, I love my kids. They come before everything else – and they love Richard. I don’t want to do anything that might hurt them. You’ll understand, when you have children yourself.’

  When I have children myself.

  I feel so stricken at the thought of this that I can’t even reply.

  ‘You will, one day,’ says Lisa, glancing at my face. ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘I’m thirty-one. You’ve heard what Mum says. An elderly primigravida.’

  ‘Thirty-one’s nothing these days. People are having babies when they’re middle-aged. Once you’re married, once everything’s settled down . . .’

  ‘I haven’t really thought about it much before. Not till now.’

  ‘Well, your body’s telling you – you see? You’re ready now.’

  I think my body and I are about to have a major falling-out.

  Celtic jewellery is what most of us are buying. I’ve got myself a silver necklace and matching earrings. I’ve bought a necklace for Jude too.

  We stop for coffee and compare all our purchases. Emily’s bought so much, I think she’s going to need another suitcase.

  ‘Most of these are for Sean,’ she says lightly, rummaging through her carrier bags. ‘He never goes out and buys stuff for himself.’

  ‘That’s sweet,’ says Karen, who’s only been buying for herself. ‘What about you, Katie? What have you bought for Matt?’

  There’s a heartbeat of silence before Emily answers for me, quick as a flash:

  ‘She’s giving him herself, isn’t she? Christ, isn’t that enough of a present for any man?’

  But the carrier bags full of clothes and gifts for Sean sit between us on the café floor, taking on the dimensions of a mountain in their significance.

  We’re just about to pay the bill and move on for the next hour of shopping when my phone bleeps with a message.

  Where are you? Can we join you?

  ‘It’s Joyce,’ I tell the others, puzzled. ‘I don’t think they ought to be bringing Jude…’

  ‘Not for traipsing round the shops!’ says Lisa, imitating our mum.

  I quickly text Joyce back:

  What about Jude?

  Still in the hospital. Got to go back for her later, comes the reply.

  It doesn’t take long to arrange to wait for Mum and Auntie Joyce here in the café, and we don’t need much persuasion to stay for another coffee. But I’m tense with anxiety about Jude.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I demand as soon as they appear. ‘Why hasn’t she been discharged?’

  ‘Oh, they needed her to stay for a bit longer,’ says Mum vaguely.

  ‘Just waiting for the doctor to give her the all-clear,’ says Joyce, smiling too brightly.

  ‘You’re worrying me. Tell me. What’s happened? Is there something wrong?’

  ‘Oh, no, no, nothing to worry about.’

  ‘No, she’ll be fine, she’s just waiting for the doctors…’

  ‘OK!’ says Lisa, sharply and very loudly. Everyone looks at her in shocked expectation. ‘OK, come on, you’ve got us all worried now. You’d better tell us. It can’t be worse than what we’re all imagining.’

  Mum and Joyce exchange a look. I don’t like that look. I saw it a lot, when I was growing up, and it usually meant a trip to the cinema was off, or my pet gerbil had died, or (most often) my dad had let us down yet again and cancelled another proposed Saturday visiting arrangement.

  ‘Well,’ says Mum in very measured tones, looking around at us all, ‘Well, we don’t want you to worry.’

  ‘But the doctors discovered something after you left her last night,’ says Joyce.

  Have you ever been so scared, just for the time it takes for somebody to utter a couple of crucial sentences, you actually think you’re going to faint? I can’t breathe. I can’t even find enough strength to tell them: For Christ’s sake spit it out! I’m trembling. Jude’s got something terribly wrong with her. It’s so bad, they can’t even bring themselves to tell us. The knock on the head has given her brain damage. She’s gone into a coma. She’ll need twenty-four-hour nursing care for the rest of her life. Or she took too many paracetamol after all. The packet Emily found on the floor was someone else’s. And because of us, they didn’t give her the antidote. She’s gone into liver failure. She’s dying…

  ‘She’s broken her ankle,’ says Mum, solemnly.

  ‘Fuck!’ I shout, bursting into tears. ‘Is that all?’

  I’m sorry I sounded uncaring. In fact, it’s awful, isn’t it? Poor Jude.

  ‘She’s OK,’ says Auntie Joyce. ‘But she’s in plaster.’

  ‘Yes, and she actually says she’s in a lot less pain now it’s been plastered,’ says Mum. ‘Poor thing – can you imagine it? She was trying to walk on it.’

  ‘No wonder she was in so much pain,’ says Emily. ‘No wonder the paracetamol didn’t seem to be doing much to help.’

  ‘So are they keeping her in?’ I ask.

  ‘Only till this afternoon. Something to do with the orthopaedic consultant signing her off. She was practising walking on her crutches when we left her.’

  ‘Crutches!’

  ‘Well, of course.’

  I look around the group. Everyone’s sipping their coffee, looking pretty subdued.

  ‘How’s she going to get home?’ I say. ‘She came up by train. She can’t … on her own… on crutches…’

  ‘Joyce and I were saying that to her, weren’t we, Joyce?’ says Mum, importantly. ‘We said to her: Jude, that boyfriend of yours will just have to drive up from Cork and fetch you home.’

  ‘Kinsale. She lives in Kinsale, now.’

  ‘Wherever. Down in the depths of Ireland. He’ll have to come for her, won’t he.’

  ‘And is he going to? Has she phoned him? Asked him?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, dear, do I? I mean, we’ve left it to Jude, and she’s going to phone us, or send us one of those message-things later on, to let us know what’s happening.’

  So it looks like I might get to meet the elusive Fergus sooner than I anticipated – and not for the best of reasons.

  It’s difficult to get excited about shopping again now.

  We stroll along Grafton Street in smaller groups, stopping to watch the musicians and street entertainers. I remember my camera,
and manage to take a few souvenir photos. It’s probably the first time I’ve been sober enough.

  ‘I’ll just have a look for something for the grandchildren,’ says Mum, disappearing into a shop with children’s books and toys in the window.

  Charlie and Molly are coming second only to Sean in the presents stakes, by the look of it.

  ‘Are you buying anything?’ I ask Joyce, as we wait for Mum outside the shop.

  ‘No.’ She turns away from the toyshop window, and stares at the young guy across the street playing the whistle while two small children dance a jig around his feet. ‘No – I don’t like to buy for Charlie and Molly every time. Don’t like to outdo their mummy and their nan.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I feel like that too, about being an auntie. I love them to bits, you know, but it’s not as if they’re exactly mine, so…’

  What have I said?

  Joyce has turned away from me and is walking slowly along the length of the toyshop window, looking down at the ground. I follow her, catch her by the arm and turn her back to me.

  ‘Hey! Sorry – what did I say? Joyce! I’m sorry. Please don’t be upset!’

  ‘I’m not!’ she retorts, quickly, giving me a very false bright smile. ‘I’m fine. Don’t take any notice of me. Just being a silly, emotional old woman.’

  ‘Old?’ I tease her affectionately, slipping my arm through hers. ‘You’ll never be old!’

  ‘No?’ she smiles wistfully. ‘Maybe that’s because I’ll never be Mum, or Nan, to anyone.’

  We walk on, arm in arm, in silence for a while until we find ourselves at St Stephens Green.

  ‘I’ve never asked you why,’ I say, softly. ‘Maybe you don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Actually, I do,’ she responds, to my surprise. We sit down together on a bench facing the lake, watching the ducks. ‘I think I’d like to tell you about it, Katie.’

  And here in the middle of Dublin, on the last day of my hen weekend, almost exactly halfway between my thirty-first and my thirty-second birthday, I’m hearing the story that’s going to change my life.

  JOYCE’S STORY

  I might be auntie to these two great big grown-up ‘girls’, but I’m only forty-two myself. I’m not much older than Katie’s friend Helen – but I feel like I’m from a different generation. I grew up as the ‘afterthought’ baby to a pre-existing family of three. Mum, Dad and Marge were already an established unit, and when I came along I had to fit in with their lifestyle rather than the other way round. Marge was twelve years old when I was born, and my earliest memories were of trying to be like her. It was as if I spent my whole childhood running, trying to catch up with her, never quite grasping the fact that it wasn’t ever going to happen. Mum used to say I was old before my time. She used to sound quite proud of it until I got to about ten or eleven and started behaving like an eighteen-year-old.

  Marge was married by then, and far more interested in having her own babies than paying any attention to her troublesome little sister. My parents, having had me so late in life, were in their fifties now and were also more excited about the grandchildren than me. It was understandable. Lisa, with her solemn dark eyes and sweet, easy temperament, and Katie with her sunny baby smiles and fierce independence, were a joy and a blessing for the whole family. Coming home from visiting their delightful grandchildren to face their sullen, moody and disobedient schoolgirl daughter was probably not a lot of fun at their age. Their way of dealing with my moods and bad behaviour was to completely ignore me. I interpreted this as abandonment by my whole family – and I slid off the rails.

  First I stopped working at school. It was surprisingly difficult to do. I’d always been quite bright, and enjoyed my schoolwork. I had to make a conscious effort to stop trying: to ‘forget’ my homework, to fail exams, to deliberately lose assignments or write nonsense answers. I clowned around in class, talked during lessons, and cheeked the teachers. This got easier the more attention it earned me from the other naughty kids in the class. I enjoyed their approval. At last! Someone was noticing me!

  Of course, the teachers could see what was going on.

  ‘You’re not really like this, Joyce,’ my headmistress used to say when I was sent to her office time after time for various misdemeanours.

  And part of me knew that I wasn’t. But I pretended for so long that I was, in time it became impossible to turn back.

  By the time we were thirteen or fourteen, the crowd I was hanging around with were drinking, smoking, and beginning to experiment with sex. My parents had pretty well given up on me. I know this sounds awful, but I don’t really blame them. They didn’t have a clue how to cope. Probably nowadays they’d have got a social worker involved, but in those days families looked after themselves, and were ashamed to tell anyone if they couldn’t. When the school wrote to them about my bad work or my bad behaviour, they’d send me to my room. I’d simply get changed, walk out of the house and meet my mates. They couldn’t stop me! The feeling of power was superb. And frightening.

  I hid the fear by laughing and showing off with my friends, by drinking cheap cider in the park and snogging older boys with bad reputations. I’d go to school with hangovers and love bites. My life was exciting and dangerous; other kids looked up to me. At the age of fifteen I was wild, I was daring. I was one of the In Crowd. And then I was something else. I was pregnant.

  This was a different kind of fear. I know some very young girls who get into this situation go into denial and ignore all the signs, but my periods had been regular almost to the minute, every month since I was eleven, and I’d never in my life had anything like this awful debilitating nausea and retching, every single morning. I didn’t need a pregnancy test: I knew. I sat in the bathroom for hours on end, crying, praying to God to make my period come, to make it all right again. I bargained with Him. If he’d just make me not pregnant, I’d never have sex again until I was old and married. I’d stop messing around; I’d work hard at school. I’d be good! I promised!

  It was several weeks before Mum asked me if I was all right. How could she not have noticed? I’d stayed in my room for weeks; hadn’t been out with the gang or got up to any trouble.

  ‘You’re looking very pale. I’ve heard you being sick.’

  I told her it was nothing; I’d had a bug; I was tired, a bit off colour. My heart was knocking against my ribs. She mustn’t find out. She’d throw me out. I’d been nothing but trouble to her – why would she want to protect me now? Why would she want to forgive me?

  Of course, I know now that a mother will forgive her child anything.

  ‘You haven’t used any sanitary towels,’ she said, giving me a very direct look.

  ‘I’ve been using tampons!’ I lied, my voice shaking. ‘I’ve bought them myself.’

  ‘You should have asked me to buy them for you,’ she responded quite gently. ‘There’s nothing you can’t ask me, Joycey. Nothing you can’t tell me, you know.’

  I felt tears coming to my eyes. If I didn’t tell her now, I’d never be able to. I’d have to hide it for the whole nine months. I’d have to run away from home, have the baby somewhere in secret, give it away, maybe never come home again. I’d never felt so scared.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I said gruffly. ‘Leave me alone.’

  Friends are fickle at the age of fifteen. If the crowd I’d spent so many hours drinking and playing about with in the park even noticed that I wasn’t part of it any more, they certainly didn’t seem to care. The boy whose child I’d so carelessly conceived was having it off with another girl by now and probably didn’t even remember my name. Where were my mates when I needed them? The girls I’d been friends with before I started my wild-child behaviour didn’t like me any more. I’d turned my back on them and made them wary of me. At least a dozen times, I tried to tell Marge. She was too absorbed with her own small children and her unhappy marriage to notice that I was looking miserable and sickly, but I tried to bring up the subject obliquely, talking ab
out her own pregnancies, asking leading questions about how early she’d started to get big, how long she’d gone on having morning sickness. She took this as a good sign that I was taking an interest in the family again and I even overheard her telling Mum that she was glad I seemed to have settled down. I tried to tell her, but as I’d look at my little nieces, the reality of what was happening to me made me feel weak with panic, and the words just wouldn’t come.

  And then, one morning when I was about three months pregnant, I went to the bathroom with the usual hopeless prayer in my heart for my period to come, and discovered I was bleeding.

  At first I thought my prayers had been answered. I wasn’t pregnant after all! I sat on the toilet, crying with relief. I told God Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ll be good forever from now on! I promise! I promise!

  But at school during the day, the bleeding got much worse. I sat at my desk, clutching my stomach, doubled over with pain. There was blood running down my legs, coming through my school skirt. I asked to be excused, tried to stand up. The kids sitting near me were staring and whispering to each other. Their voices seemed to come from a long way away.

  ‘Please, Miss!’ shouted Hazel Lomax who used to be my best friend, ‘I think Joyce is going to faint.’

  They carried me to the sick room and called an ambulance. I heard the school nurse saying the word miscarriage and then I allowed myself, for the first time for three months, to cry out loud. I sobbed and wailed and cried for my mum as the contractions ripped through my body and I knew that, far from answering my prayers, God was actually punishing me.

  They told me I’d already lost the baby by the time the ambulance had got me to hospital. In those days, fifteen-year-old pregnant girls weren’t generally treated with the same degree of understanding that we’re used to now, but to the kind doctor looking after me, my situation was none of his business – I was just a patient who needed his help. He said there was probably something wrong with the pregnancy and it was nature’s way of dealing with it. I wanted to tell him that the only thing wrong with the pregnancy was that I shouldn’t have been having it.