Tales From a Hen Weekend (13 page)

I’m thirsty now. Shit, I’ll have to get up and get a glass of water. I sit in the chair and drink it, wondering about Helen and why she seemed so pissed off with me. What did it matter to her whether I kissed someone or not? Come to that, why does it matter to me if she’s in a mood with me?

But it does. I’m on my special weekend away with all my favourite girls. I don’t want it spoilt by any bad feeling. I wish I could have it out with Helen, but she’s bound to be asleep by now. Maybe I’ll send her a text. Yes, that’s an idea. I fumble in my bag for my phone. Yes; a text won’t wake her up – she can read it in the morning and talk to me when she’s ready. Maybe she’s just drunk and crotchety, but I don’t want to leave anything festering.

Hi. Have I upset u? Please tell me. Luv K xx

That’s enough. Hopefully she’ll laugh about it in the morning and we can both just . . . Oh! I nearly drop the phone with surprise as it bleeps with a return message. Jude stirs and turns over in bed but doesn’t wake up, and by the light of the phone’s screen I read:

Sorry. Feeling a bit down. Come and talk.

She’s still awake! I blink at the message. Well,
I’m
wide awake anyway, so I might as well.

I slip a cardigan on over my pyjamas and, grabbing the room key, let myself out quietly and tiptoe down the corridor to number 142.

Helen’s the only one with a single room. There’s an odd number of us; we wanted it to be ten, but my friend Donna couldn’t make it and to be honest, there wasn’t really anyone else I wanted to come, just to make up the number. I was worried at first about the odd one – but without even knowing the problem, Helen asked if she could have a single room. I think it’s partly because she didn’t really know anyone else. Or maybe she just doesn’t like sharing.

I tap on the door and she opens it immediately. She’s got the main light on, which makes me blink after the darkness of my own room and the low lighting in the corridor.

‘I’ve got the kettle on,’ she says, indicating the tea-making equipment.

‘Lovely. Any biscuits?’

She opens the regulation packet of custard creams and puts them on the tray.

‘Sit down, Katie. You have the bed. I’ll take the chair.’

I don’t bother arguing.

‘You couldn’t sleep, either, then?’

‘No. Couldn’t stop thinking about…’ She stops, sighs, takes a sip of her tea.

‘About what? Are you mad at me? Look, I…’

‘No. It doesn’t matter. I know Jude was right. Why the hell shouldn’t you have a bit of fun? It just makes me… sorry; I know you think I’m weird, but it just makes me
so depressed
.’

I stare at her through the steam from my tea. I can’t make her out. She’s been quite open about the fact that she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to get married. She says she doesn’t believe in committing yourself to one man, giving up your freedom, all that crap. So what’s
this
about?

‘
What
makes you depressed?’ I ask her, trying to hide the irritation in my voice. ‘You’ve been on my case all this time about getting married, and now… well, it seems to me like I can’t win!’

She’s silent for a minute, looking down at her cup, dunking her biscuit, watching it drip. Then she looks back up at me, and to my surprise, she looks like she’s going to cry.

‘You’re so wrong, there, Katie,’ she says quietly. ‘You
always
win. And you don’t even know it.’

What is it about everyone? Are they all determined to tell me their sob stories? I know I’m the bloody Agony Aunt, but why
this weekend
? And why Helen, who’s hardly ever spoken to me about anything more personal than her taste in breakfast cereals and music before?

‘So tell me,’ I say, leaning back against the pillows with a sigh. Best get it over with. ‘What is it I don’t know about?’

I’ll probably be sorry I asked.

I’m jealous of Katie, obviously.

Who wouldn’t be? Look at her. She’s lovely, and she doesn’t even seem to realise it. She’s not little and delicate and perfect like her friend Jude – but she doesn’t even have to try. Jude spends hours making herself beautiful, but men don’t look at her – any more than they look at me. It’s girls like Katie who get noticed. She’s a natural. She smiles all the time. She laughs, and sparkles. She knows the right things to say; she knows how to make people like her,
instinctively
.

I used to spend hours, when I was younger, worrying about stuff like this. What I was doing wrong, why I didn’t appeal to people. Why I didn’t make friends. Why nobody ever fell in love with me.

It’s easy enough to pretend you don’t care. Trust me – I do it all the time, now. I’ve got used to my own company. Not many people like the same things as me, anyway: the books I read are too serious, the music I like is too old-fashioned, the plays and films and places I like to visit aren’t most people’s idea of fun. So I’m better off on my own, enjoying my own kind of things, not having to pretend to like the Kaiser Chiefs, or Harry Potter. Not having to compromise just to fit in, just to suit some guy that I’ve got nothing in common with.

Don’t misunderstand me. I like men.

Katie thinks I despise them, but she’s wrong. I’ve had my share of boyfriends, if you can call them that. They never last long. Usually I get bored with them at about the same time that they give up trying to puzzle me out. I’m sorry they find me difficult. I don’t do it on purpose – I’m just not very good at the things they normally like. Coyness, silliness, giggling, flirting, being cute and fluffy and
girly
. Some girls just seem to be like that – others do it on purpose. It annoys me when they’re strong, intelligent women but they seem to feel the need to play-act all this crap just to get a man. But then again – what do I know? Who’s the one sitting on her own every night with a cat and a microwave dinner?

Before I started working at Bookshelf, I never had any real friendships with my colleagues. It wasn’t their fault; most of them were nice enough to me, but when they wanted to talk about pop music, or they spent hours – literally hours! – discussing
Big Brother
or whatever peculiar, inane programmes they wasted their time watching on TV, I couldn’t contribute anything. I didn’t know how to join in. I just don’t
do
that type of meaningless social chitchat; I don’t understand how to. I’m not criticising them – you see? I know it’s my problem, but I can’t change the way I am.

Katie’s not the same as all the others. She recognises our differences but she doesn’t seem to find it a problem. She doesn’t stare at me as if I’ve come from Mars, if I admit I haven’t heard of a pop group that’s been top of the charts since Christmas without me knowing about it, or a so-called celebrity who’s apparently in the news because their boobs
accidentally
popped out of their bra on TV. She treats my lack of interest in these things as inconsequential, just as she does her own lack of enthusiasm for architecture, for opera, for poetry and all the things that matter to me
.
She laughs at her own inadequacies, and makes me laugh at myself. We tease each other. It’s refreshing, and delightful. I enjoy her company so much and, however much I know I can never be like her and doubt whether I’d
want
to be … I envy her.

I envy her because she’s popular, and easy to be with. Because she’s charming and natural and she doesn’t have to agonise over how to talk to people. Because men like her, and fall in love with her, and I’ve never cared to admit it, but I want that too. If only it was the right man.

The right man?

Oh, I’d given up on that idea! After the first few short-lived and disappointing relationships, I’d built this kind of protective shell around myself, so that I could have boyfriends, sexual encounters, without becoming emotionally involved. Without giving up anything of
myself.
Who wants to go through all that crap and end up getting hurt?

But when I started work at Bookshelf, Katie wasn’t the only person who turned things around for me.

How can you live for forty years, travel the world, study cultures and histories of every continent, meet people from all walks of life, without ever meeting someone who could come remotely close to being your soul mate – and then, on taking up a post with a tiny, quiet, backstreet enterprise in your own home town, suddenly find him staring you in the face?

Greg.

He’s perfect.

He’s intelligent and serious, gentle, and wise. He speaks softly and precisely about things that matter. If there’s nothing interesting to say, he doesn’t bother to say anything. It’s so restful being with him. I don’t have to think. I don’t, for once in my life, have to
try.

I don’t hold with the soppy romantic rubbish that Katie reads. People falling in love because someone smiles at them in a certain way. Falling in love because of something to do with stars, or sunsets, or even because of the way someone looks, or how good they are in bed. I’m sorry. It’s misleading a whole generation of women into believing that’s how they find love.

It’s hard to explain what this has got to do with last night.

That guy – Harry? It was a bit of a joke to begin with. Just part of the game. I’m not good at this sort of thing, but I’m determined, this weekend, for Katie’s sake, to do my best to join in and enjoy myself. She’d do the same for me, you see; if I invited her, as my friend, on a trip to Vienna, say, to go to a concert, or a weekend in Florence, to visit museums and art galleries, I know she’d put a smile on her face and make an effort, to please me, and that’s what I’m doing this weekend for her.

Jude and I were never favourites to win the treasure hunt thing. She’s as shy as I’m awkward – what a pair to put together, to go out in the street accosting people and asking for underwear and vibrators. We’d used up nearly the whole of the allotted half-hour without getting any of the items on the list. We just kept running around in circles asking each other what to do. And then, at the eleventh hour, so to speak, around the corner came this group of guys, spread out across the pavement, laughing and jostling each other, the way they do when they’re young and good-looking and being macho together on a good night out.

A couple of them nudged us as they passed. It was deliberate, but not malicious. A kind of teasing, probably because we were too intent on studying our list and panicking about being so useless at the game to take any notice of them.

‘What’s the matter, girls?’ laughed one of them. ‘Don’t look so worried!’

I don’t know what possessed me. Maybe it was because I’d already had a couple of drinks in the bar. Or perhaps I was showing off slightly, because I was aware that Jude was even worse than me at engaging in conversation with strangers.

‘We need all the things on this list!’ I told them, quite curtly. ‘And we need them in less than five minutes!’

They passed the list around the group, laughing and scratching their heads and saying
f
ucking hell!
until finally, just as I was about to snatch it back and get on our way, one of them – Harry – stepped forward, smiling that amazing smile, and said:

‘You won’t get all that lot in five minutes, love. But if you want a volunteer for the
bloke
– there’s no gorgeous ones around here, that I know of! – I’ll come back with you, to save you getting
nul points
!’

Obviously he knew he
was
gorgeous. We probably wouldn’t have cared, at that stage, if he wasn’t – but looking at him, we were beside ourselves with excitement. I’m not much of a game-player, but I do have a slightly competitive nature when I’m challenged, and I knew the other girls would go wild when they saw what we were taking back as our Number Six. He was so gorgeous, we might even be declared the winners, despite our lack of sex toys and vegetables – but at least we wouldn’t have the indignity of coming back with nothing at all.

I had to try to hide my impatience at the time he spent taking leave of his mates. I’d have thought it was enough to arrange a time and place to meet up again, but a good five minutes were spent discussing the merits of O’Grady’s versus several other Dublin bars, following which there was at least another ten minutes of loud and obscene speculation about exactly what Harry was coming back to our hotel with us for, whether he was equipped for it, whether we were (as hypothetical schoolgirls) actually old enough for it to be legal, and how long it was likely to take him supposing he could manage it.

Once we eventually got him away from his mob and walked him back to our hotel, though, he dropped the big macho act and was utterly charming. I was feeling amazed at myself for achieving something so completely out of character for me, and couldn’t wait to see the reaction of the other girls – especially Katie. I wasn’t disappointed. They were all totally bowled over by Harry, hardly surprisingly, and as for his finale with the striptease – well! I couldn’t have dreamt it up.

He was the star of the evening; and through him, Jude and I got our five minutes of fame. Can you see what I’m getting at? How can I explain it? It wasn’t so much that I fancied Harry myself, although of course he was very attractive. To be honest I don’t like men like that. Too sure of themselves, too overtly masculine; I actually find them quite offensive at some personal level. It was more that he was
my
piece of work.
My
achievement. Well – mine and Jude’s, at least.

Not
Katie’s. Not this time.

That sounds ridiculously childish, and I know it. I’m ashamed of thinking it. Why do you think I’m so upset?

When I saw her kissing him at the nightclub, all I could think was:
even him.
She’s got her own boyfriend. She’s got all these other men, everywhere she goes, falling under her spell, and she isn’t even aware of it. Now even this one, the one
I
picked up, is making a play for her!