Tales From A Hen Weekend

by Olivia Ryan

  They took me to theatre to give me a ‘D & C’. Just cleaning everything up for you. And when I came round from the anaesthetic, Mum was sitting by my bed. She’d been crying. I’d never seen her cry before, and this more than anything else made me feel ashamed.

  ‘I wish you’d told me, Joycey.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ I muttered.

  ‘I would have looked after you. These things happen.’

  These things happen I thought, bitterly. Not to good girls, they don’t. Good girls don’t go out and get drunk and have sex with sixth-form boys who don’t give a shit about them. Good girls don’t bring this shame on their family and make their mothers cry. Good girls don’t pray for their own babies to die, and then feel relief when it happens!

  I was off school for a while, and when I went back, I found to my amazement that Hazel wanted to be my friend again. I never had anything more to do with my old gang; I got back to my studies and worked hard, passed all my exams and was a prefect in my last year. After I recovered physically, Mum and I never talked about my miscarriage. I know she was doing her best for me. She probably thought least said, soonest mended. But the memory of my dead baby festered away in my brain for years. The idea that I’d somehow caused him to die by wishing him away gradually became a conviction. By the time I met Ron and we decided to get married, I was desperate to have another child; I felt that this would be the only way I’d ever get over the guilt about that first pregnancy.

  Life doesn’t always hand you the things you want, does it? Even though I’m so much older now, and sensible and rational about these things, it crosses my mind occasionally when I’m feeling a bit low, that I’m still being punished.

  I’ve been lucky in other ways – so lucky, really. Ron’s a lovely man. Kind, gentle, easy-going. I look around me at all the women I know who’ve had unhappy marriages to selfish, brutish, ignorant men and I wonder how I’ve got the nerve to be ungrateful. He would have made a lovely dad.

  We both wanted children so much. We did exactly what Lisa described: got married because we decided the time was right to start a family. Every month I waited – with excitement at first, and then with resignation and finally with a kind of furious bereavement – for the missing period that never happened. Never again. Why did it happen so easily, so quickly and unexpectedly when I was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl having sex for the first time? And now, when it was what we wanted more than anything in the whole world, it seemed to be the hardest thing in the world to achieve.

  We ran the gauntlet of the infertility services. I’d already proved my fertility but they checked me over in case something had gone wrong since. Then they turned their attention to Ron. He performed tests. We performed tests together. We tried to joke about it, saying so many tests – it’s like being back at bloody school – but we weren’t really laughing. I took my temperature, we made love on the right days in the right positions and wore the right kind of underwear. Nothing was wrong with us but still nothing happened.

  I’m being punished, I cried to Ron when every month my period arrived, like clockwork, taunting me with its evidence. I’m being punished for wanting to get rid of my first baby.

  He’d always been kind and sympathetic about my early pregnancy, but now I’d started flinging it back at him.

  You think it’s my fault, don’t you. You think I’d be all right if I hadn’t had that miscarriage. Go on, admit it – you think I’ve caused this problem; I’ve brought it on myself!

  There’s only so much a man can take, however patient, however understanding he is. The hospital tests, the temperature-taking, the regimented lovemaking by appointment with only one futile aim in mind, the bitter, neurotic, self-pitying wife constantly whining and crying and provoking arguments…

  I’ve had enough, he said one day. I can still picture him as he said it, wiping his hand across his eyes as if he was too tired to even look at me. I want us to give up, to accept that we don’t have children. I want us to start enjoying life again.

  But I can’t. I can’t live if I can’t have children.

  You can. Other women do. It hurts me too, but we can do this. Together.

  We could adopt! It was a theme we’d returned to many times, debated over and over until we were as exhausted talking about it as we were of trying for our own baby.

  No. We’d just be putting ourselves through another series of ordeals. Interviews, inspections, our lifestyles dissected, our marriage pulled apart by social workers, police poking into our backgrounds, our families, our beliefs, all under scrutiny. No! Joyce, I’ve had enough.

  I cried. I protested, I ranted; I called him heartless and uncaring. I knew that wasn’t fair. He was right. If we’d gone on, we’d have driven ourselves apart. We’d have become more and more bitter, started blaming each other, probably ended up splitting up and then what? We’d have had no children, and not even each other.

  I’ve got a good man. We’ve learned, over the years, to cope with our disappointment. Heartache. Seeing other people having kids effortlessly and treating them carelessly. Hearing about abortions, child abandonment, child abuse. Watching our friends’ children growing up. Being Auntie and Uncle but never Mum and Dad. Loving our beautiful nieces and seeing them, now, having children of their own.

  Don’t play games with your fertility, Katie. If you don’t want children – don’t have them. But if you do, for God’s sake, don’t leave it too late. Don’t treat it lightly, as if a baby is just something you can pop down to the supermarket and buy when you decide you want it.

  God doesn’t play our games. Nature doesn’t work by our rules. Just because we understand how to control it, don’t assume you can take back that control whenever you like.

  At the end of the day – you’re not in charge.

  ABOUT ENDINGS

  ‘Blimey, you two! Are you going to sit there all day, yakking away like a pair of old men?’

  ‘Yeah – cheer up, the pair of you! You look like you’ve got the troubles of the world on your shoulders!’

  The rest of the gang are standing in front of us and we didn’t even notice. How long have we been sitting here?

  ‘Thank you very much for walking off and leaving me in the shop!’ scolds Mum. ‘Good job Lisa and Emily were looking for me, wasn’t it!’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, humbly. ‘Thought you were following us.’

  ‘And anyway! It’s lunchtime!’ says Lisa, waving her watch under my nose. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am, actually,’ says Joyce with a last squeeze of my hand. She gets to her feet and stretches. ‘Come on, then. Where are we going for lunch? Not another boxty, please! My stomach won’t take it!’

  ‘Nah. Think they were overrated – but don’t tell Jude I said that,’ laughs Emily. ‘To be honest I really fancy a Kentucky Fried Chicken or a Big Mac!’

  ‘No!’ we all shout her down.

  ‘Not on our last day in Ireland, please, Emily!’ says Helen, looking pained. ‘We should at least have something vaguely Irish.’

  ‘Another pint of Guinness?’ Karen teases.

  We all groan and start muttering about never drinking again.

  ‘How about a bowl of Irish Broth, then?’ suggests Lisa. ‘Just the thing to get our strength back after shopping till we’re dropping.’

  ‘Excellent idea,’ agrees Emily.

  Within ten minutes we’ve found ourselves a restaurant – not a pub this time – and we’re waiting for our soup to be brought to us.

  ‘Must admit I’m starving now,’ says Lisa.

  But I’m too tired to be hungry. It’s warm in the restaurant and I’m leaning on the table with both elbows, feeling my eyelids drooping. I can’t remember when I last had so little sleep over the course of a few days.

  ‘Are you OK, Katie?’ asks Joyce, reaching across the table to tap me on the arm.

  ‘Yes. Sure. Just knackered.’

  She smiles. ‘That’s about right for a hen weekend.’
<
br />   ‘I suppose so. But I haven’t been sleeping, even when we have got to bed.’

  ‘Not surprising, really.’ She gives me a look. ‘Sorry for bleating on, back there – telling you all my troubles. Don’t know what got into me.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  It’s not OK, actually. To be perfectly honest, it’s not OK at all. If one more person tells me their deepest darkest secrets this weekend, and then says they’re sorry for telling me, I think I’ll scream.

  ‘Let’s play a game or something, while we’re waiting!’ says Emily. ‘Some of us need to keep ourselves awake, by the look of it!’

  She means me. I shift my elbows off the table and try to sit up straight.

  ‘How about another game of Truth or Dare?’ suggests Karen brightly.

  ‘No!’ I retort much too sharply. Suddenly I’m wide awake. ‘No, I think we’ve all heard just about enough truths to last us a lifetime, thank you very much.’

  ‘Katie prefers fiction, don’t you, love,’ says Lisa with a smile.

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. Much safer.’

  ‘OK, then. We’ll make up our own story. Once upon a time…’ begins Karen.

  ‘There were nine beautiful princesses,’ joins in Emily.

  ‘Oh, do me a favour,’ groans Helen. ‘I don’t want to be a beautiful princess. I’m not exactly right for the part.’

  ‘And I’m too old to be a princess,’ says Mum.

  ‘God, some people do make it difficult to create a decent bit of fiction, don’t they!’ says Emily. ‘OK, then. There were seven beautiful princesses, a beautiful queen and a Wise Woman.’

  Helen smiles appreciatively.

  ‘One day,’ Lisa takes up the story. ‘One day, the Queen goes to the Wise Woman and asks her advice. She wants to find handsome husbands for all the beautiful princesses.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ says Helen. ‘Is that the best you can do? Why do the poor cows have to be sold off to handsome bloody husbands?’

  ‘Shut up, Helen – what’s it matter to you? You’re the Wise Woman!’ laughs Emily.

  ‘OK, then. So the Wise Woman says to the Queen: “Listen to me, Queenie Baby. Send the princesses out into the world to earn their living. What do you take me for? A fucking Princess Dating Agency?”

  ‘So the Queen tells the Beautiful Princesses: “Sorry, girls. The market for handsome husbands seems to have dried up,”’ I continue. ‘"You’ve all got to set sail for Far Off Lands with one silver coin each in a velvet purse…”’

  ‘Why a velvet purse?’ interrupts Joyce. ‘Why not a leather one?’

  ‘It’s always a velvet purse. Don’t spoil the story.’

  ‘So they spend their silver coins on a Ryanair flight to Dublin,’ says Suze.

  ‘Must have been pretty big silver coins.’

  ‘No, the flights were on special offer. A pound each way plus taxes.’

  ‘Get on with it!’ says Emily. ‘When’s the sex coming into it?’

  ‘Emily!’ I exclaim. ‘This is a fairy story. We don’t want sex coming into it!’

  ‘Yes we do!’ chorus all the others.

  ‘All right, then,’ says Joyce. ‘Let’s say, The Queen had given each princess a task to do. The first princess had to find the man with the softest kiss in the Kingdom.’

  ‘I thought these were liberated princesses who were going out to earn their own silver?’ points out Helen.

  ‘Nah. Boring. Princess number two had to find the man with the sexiest smile,’ says Lisa, a dreamy look coming into her eyes. Guess who she’s going to conjure up for her lucky princess.

  ‘And number three’s got to find the one with the biggest dick!’ shouts Karen.

  Everyone hoots with laughter and two ladies at the next table nearly faint into their dinners.

  ‘The cutest bum!’ joins in Suze.

  ‘The strongest tongue,’ says Emily, making a very rude gesture and grinning wickedly.

  ‘The longest … staying power,’ adds Lisa meaningfully.

  ‘And the luckiest princess of all,’ I say, ‘Gets the richest, handsomest prince in the land. He’s hung like a horse, with a tight little arse and a smile like George Clooney’s. And he can keep it going for forty days and forty nights.’

  ‘Sure you’ve just described meself almost perfectly!’ says a voice at my shoulder suddenly.

  I jump almost out of my chair, knocking his arm so hard that the bowl of soup our waiter’s trying to place in front of me flies out of his hands and lands upside down on the table. Irish broth seeps from beneath the bowl, spreading slowly across the tablecloth. I don’t know who’s more embarrassed, me or the little wiry red-haired waiter (who bears more resemblance to a fox terrier than to George Clooney, even if he does have all the other attributes).

  ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry! You startled me! I mean, I didn’t see you coming…’

  There’s a sniggering around the table. Very immature.

  ‘I mean, I didn’t know you were there!’

  ‘He took you by surprise from behind, Katie,’ mutters Emily under her breath.

  I can feel myself going red with the effort of not laughing. The poor lad’s scraping up the worst of the mess, scooping up our place settings and glasses and everything and another waiter’s come to help him change the tablecloth.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I tell him again.

  ‘That’s fine. No problem,’ he says, giving me a grin as he brings up fresh soup and baskets of soda bread. I’m keeping my elbows by my sides this time.

  ‘Anyway,’ says Lisa, after a suitable length of silence when he’s finished serving and gone back into the kitchen, ‘Serves him right. I bet he couldn’t manage forty days and forty nights.’

  ‘Forty seconds, more like!’ giggles Suze.

  ‘No change there, then!’ says Emily and we all start to laugh out loud, spluttering soup everywhere.

  ‘I wish Jude was here,’ says Lisa suddenly.

  Shit. We need to phone the hospital and see if she’s OK to be discharged now. Hurry up with your soup, girls. Anyone would think we were here to enjoy ourselves.

  ‘That,’ says Helen, seriously, as we’re wiping our soup bowls enthusiastically with the last of the soda bread, ‘is the trouble with fairy stories. Totally unrealistic.’

  ‘Duh! They’re not meant to be realistic, Helen!’ protests Lisa. ‘That’s the whole point of them.’

  ‘But people tell them to children! Do you? Do you read them to your kids?’

  ‘Of course I do. They’re part of our heritage,’ says Lisa huffily. ‘Kids need to hear…’

  ‘What? Stories about elves and goblins and fairy princesses and magic spells?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Good triumphing over evil? All that crap?’

  ‘Yes! And it’s not crap!’

  ‘So you reckon you believe in happy ever afters?’ persists Helen, giving Lisa a challenging look. ‘Do you?’

  Lisa drops her eyes.

  ‘I’d like to.’

  ‘We all would, Lisa. But you have to grow up some time, unfortunately, and leave the fairy tales behind.’

  And the romantic fiction, presumably. The trouble with happy endings, I suppose, is that you never get to find out what happens after the last page of the book.

  I call the hospital while we’re having our coffee, and get put through to Jude’s ward. The nurse tells me to hang on and she’ll get her to the phone. It seems to take forever.

  ‘Well, I had to walk to the phone with my crutches, Katie,’ she says at last, panting with the effort.

  ‘Is it really that difficult? It always looks like fun.’

  ‘Yes, you would say that if you’ve never tried it. It’s as much fun as wearing too-tight shoes. D’you remember the three-legged race we used to have at school when we were little ones? Well it’s like doing that, but without the other person to hold on to. Sure I’m going to break me neck before I’m much older.’

  ‘Ankle’s bad enough,
Jude. Neck’s out of the question. Behave yourself.’

  ‘Jesus, God, I’d like a chance to do anything else, so I would. The nurses in here are like the devil himself, with their fuss and their bossiness.’ She drops her voice a little. ‘But there are plenty of nice-looking doctors if you’ve half a mind to look around.’

  ‘I think we’d better get you out of there, love, before you start getting carried away.’

  ‘Well now, that’s the best suggestion I’ve heard today. But unless you’ve got ideas for hiring a private helicopter and landing it on the hospital roof, then I think I’m stuck in here for a bit longer, I’m sorry to say, Katie.’

  ‘Why? What do you mean? Isn’t Fergus coming to pick you up? I thought he’d have been there by now.’

  ‘There’s a bit of a problem, you see, now. Fergus is working away and I can’t get hold of him. Sure he’s probably in some boring meeting or other, and hasn’t got his phone on. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘You can’t get a message to him or anything?’

  ‘I’ve tried, Kate, but so far I haven’t succeeded. I was thinking maybe I could get Dad to drive up and bring me back, but he’s out on a job and me Mam never learnt to drive, bless her. It’s also a fierce long drive in the dark for them so I’ve a mind to leave it till the morning and see if they can work something out then.’

  ‘But Jude, I’m sure they’d drop everything like a shot to come and pick you up if they knew you were stuck in hospital!’

  ‘To be sure, they would, but it’s powerful unfair to ask them, when me dad needs to keep this job so badly, Katie – you know how it is.’

  I do. Jude’s father was made redundant from his previous sales job last year and was out of work for months. He hasn’t been in this job for very long so I suppose I can understand why Jude would be reluctant to ask him to take time off.