‘Up here,’ calls Jude after a while, leading us up off the beach.
Probably a good job. I was getting a bit knackered there and didn’t want to be the first to admit it.
‘Through here!’ calls our Leader, still striding ahead as we follow her through a tunnel under the railway line and up some steps.
And up.
And up.
We were laughing and chatting when we left the beach. By the time we’re a quarter of the way up the steps we’ve all stopped talking. Halfway up, all I can hear is the sound of my own heavy breathing. By the time we reach the road at the top, I’m being deafened by the sound of everyone else’s breathing.
‘Sure that was a good bit of exercise, wasn’t it?’ gasps Jude.
No-one’s up to answering.
Mum and Auntie Joyce haven’t even appeared yet.
‘I’ll nip back and give them a hand,’ says Lisa.
With all her working out at the gym, to say nothing of the other kind of exercise I now know she’s getting after the gym sessions, she’s by far the fittest of us and hasn’t even worked up a sweat yet.
‘No, I will,’ protests Jude, darting ahead of Lisa.
I don’t think she’s showing off. Not exactly. You see, Jude’s normally the quiet one, the one who stays at the back of the group and doesn’t have a lot to say. But this weekend in Ireland, she’s automatically become the unofficial leader of the pack. She’s the one with the maps, the guidebooks, the local knowledge. She speaks the dialect. She understands the natives.
She’s planned our day out, and she’s enjoying herself showing us the way. So if she’s forgotten, for a moment, that two of our group are middle-aged and not quite up to speed with climbing great steep flights of steps, then in her mind she probably feels responsible.
‘Hold on, ladies!’ she shouts down to Mum and Joyce, who’ve stopped for a breather halfway up. ‘I’m coming back down for you.’
But in her haste to get ahead of Lisa, she treads awkwardly on the first step down. I feel myself flinch as I see her ankle turn over. Seconds later, she’s sunk onto the top step, out cold, and it’s only Lisa’s quick grabbing of her arm that stops her tumbling the whole way down.
‘Oh Jesus! Fucking hell! God, it
fucking
hurts!’
To be honest I’m just glad she’s finally spoken.
She didn’t come round from her faint till we’d carried her onto a bench beside the road and sat her with her head down. Then when did regain consciousness, she took one look at all of us staring at her, and fainted again. I don’t think it was anything we said.
‘You poor thing! You’ve sprained it. I know how much it hurts – I did that when I came off the treadmill too quickly a few months ago,’ says Lisa sympathetically.
Probably too busy looking at someone in Lycra shorts on the next treadmill.
‘I feel sick,’ groans Jude. She looks terribly pale.
‘It’s the shock. And the pain,’ says Lisa knowledgeably.
‘It’s probably going to swell up. She needs ice on it. And painkillers. Has anyone got any aspirins? Paracetamol? Anything?’ says Emily.
We’re all shaking our heads pathetically.
‘I’ve got two diarrhoea tablets,’ says Suze, rummaging in her bag, ‘and an old Elastoplast.’
‘Very helpful,’ sniffs Helen, who isn’t offering anything any better.
‘We need to strap it up,’ I decide, trying to remember my First Aid. ‘With something cold, I suppose.’
‘I know!’ says Lisa. ‘Where’s that towel? I’ll run back down to the beach and soak it in seawater.’
The very idea of
running back down,
with its concomitant thoughts of
running back up again
, is enough to make the rest of us shudder. Significantly, Mum and Auntie Joyce still haven’t even joined us at the top.
‘Not the towel – it’s too big and thick. What we need is…’
I’m looking round the group, and my eyes fall on Helen’s scarf. It’s one of those nice silky knit ones, blue and lilac stripes with a thread of silver running through it. She takes it off without saying a word, which is nice of her really as it looks expensive.
‘I’ve got a bottle of water in my bag,’ says Jude, sitting up a bit and wincing as she moves her ankle slightly. We all wince with her. ‘Wet it with that. No point going back down to the sea.’
What
hasn’t
the girl got in her bag? I peek inside. Sure enough – a bottle of water, still nice and cold. I pull it out and underneath I can see a rolled up plastic raincoat, gloves and spare pair of socks, a bar of chocolate and packet of nuts & raisins. Was she planning a nice little stroll to the next village, or a trek into the mountains? I’m surprised there’s no torch or compass. And she never even
was
a Girl Guide!
‘Why the spare socks?’ I can’t help asking, ‘if you weren’t even going to paddle?’
‘In case it rains,’ she mutters, looking at me as if I’m daft.
We’ve soaked the scarf in the cold water and bandaged Jude’s ankle fairly tightly by the time Mum and Joyce finally appear, gasping and holding their sides, at the top of the steps.
‘What on earth…?’ cries Mum, standing stock-still on the other side of the road and staring at us.
‘Jude twisted her ankle, Mum. It’s probably sprained.’
‘She’s in agony,’ joins in Emily, who likes a drama. ‘She fainted twice.’
‘Well – for God’s sake!’ pants Mum, coming over to join us. ‘She needs a doctor! Phone the poor girl an ambulance – don’t just stand there!’
‘I do
not
need the doctor, Marge,’ says Jude, trying gingerly to stand up on just her good foot. ‘Sure I’ll be fine altogether if I can just get on me feet and get to a chemist’s for some aspirin or … oh! Oh, God!’
At the first attempt to put any weight on her bad foot, she collapses back down onto the bench, as white as a sheet again.
‘I don’t think you’re going anywhere, Jude,’ points out Emily. ‘Not walking, anyway.’
‘Well, now, do you see any sign of a wheelchair around here?’ she retorts, between her teeth.
‘No. We’ll have to carry you,’ says Lisa.
Good old Lisa with her strong back and her toned muscles! That gym membership must be worth every penny.
‘You’re only little,’ agrees Helen. ‘It won’t kill us.’
‘Yes, come on, dear,’ says Mum, still panting from the climb up the steps. ‘Let me help you up.’
‘
You’re
not carrying anyone! And anyway – where are we carrying her to? It doesn’t exactly look like there’s a shopping centre just around the corner.’
‘Sure there’ll be a chemist in Dalkey,’ says Jude. ‘But it’s a walk and a half from here. We’d not even
begun
the walk.’
Now she tells us.
‘It’s a nice walk, too,’ she adds, looking miserable. ‘Sure and I’ve spoilt everyone’s day with me stupid ankle, haven’t I, so.’
‘Course you haven’t,’ we all chorus.
‘Can we not just carry you back to the Tube station, dear?’ suggests Mum.
‘DART station,’ Lisa corrects her. ‘But it’s a good idea – it can’t be far, can it, Jude?’
‘No, if you look down the railway line there, sure you can see the station just round the bend there, see? Tis only a little way, but ’t would mean missing the lovely walk and all.’
‘Bugger the lovely walk,’ says Mum with surprising spirit. ‘We need to get you back to the hotel, Jude, dear, and get you resting with that foot up.’
‘Poor Jude,’ says Emily sadly.
‘And Dalkey would have been such a grand place for you to visit, too, with the castle and the fine pub and all,’ Jude’s still wailing.
‘Well, you can sit with your foot up in a fine pub just as well as you can back at the hotel, can’t you?’ points out Helen. ‘What’s stopping us from getting off the DART at Dalkey and having lunch there anyway?’
Once the notion of the
fine pub
has resurfaced, it’s surprising how efficiently we get ourselves organised. It’s quickly decided that Jude won’t actually have to be
carried
– with someone on each side of her to take her weight she can get along on her good foot as if she’s using crutches. The only trouble is that she’s shorter than everyone else so she has to lean on their elbows rather than their shoulders.
‘No problem,’ says Lisa airily, supporting Jude under her armpit so that she practically lifts her off the ground.
‘You don’t all need to come on the DART,’ says Jude pitifully. ‘Why don’t some of you do the walk, and we’ll meet you in Dalkey?’
‘Yes – go on, dears – off you go and enjoy yourselves!’ says Mum briskly to nobody in particular. ‘We’ll get Jude to this Dorky place and I’ll sit with her while Lisa goes and finds a chemist for some tablets. Then we can all have lunch in the pub.’
‘I’ll come with you, then,’ says Helen. ‘You don’t want to be taking her weight, if you don’t mind me saying so, Marge. You look done in already.’
‘I hope they’ll be all right,’ says Emily anxiously as we set off down the road in the direction Jude showed us. ‘I feel a bit guilty leaving them to it.’
‘No, it wasn’t far to the station. And Jude was worried about spoiling the day for us all,’ smiles Joyce, who’s recovered from climbing the steps now and is striding along quite energetically, swinging her arms and breathing in the sea air. ‘She was pleased some of us are doing the walk.’
‘Bless her. It
is
lovely, walking along and looking down at the sea, isn’t it,’ says Karen.
‘It’s certainly done away with our hangovers!’ I laugh.
The sunshine, the fresh air, the run on the beach and even the shock of the cold sea have all helped to clear my head, sharpen my senses and cheer me up, despite the calamity with poor Jude.
‘And look at the houses along this road! Aren’t they beautiful! What a fantastic outlook they’ve got!’
‘Yeah – I read somewhere that Bono lives round here,’ says Suze excitedly. ‘I wonder which one is his house? Wouldn’t it be great if we bumped into him!’
We all laugh, but the thought of bumping into Bono suddenly around the next bend keeps us walking with a spring in our step for quite a while.
‘Jude says there are quite a few celebrities living in this area, actually,’ I tell them as we pass a particularly impressive house with views straight over the bay. ‘You can see why, can’t you.’
‘Yeah,’ jokes Emily. ‘It’s downhill all the way to the
fine pub
!’
We’re absolutely starving by the time we arrive in Dalkey.
‘Where are we meeting the others?’ asks Joyce. ‘At the pub?’
‘I suppose so. They didn’t actually say, did they? Oh, bugger – that’s a point!’ I laugh. ‘We don’t know the name of the pub.’
‘Well, there can’t be many, in a little place like this,’ says Emily reasonably.
‘This is Ireland, remember – almost as many pubs as there are houses,’ I point out.
‘So what do we do? Try them all?’ Suze asks hopefully, peering through the window of the first pub we come to.
‘No. Don’t want to waste time – I’m too bloody hungry.’
I get out my phone and send a quick text message to Jude:
OK, no use hiding from us! Which pub are you in?
We look through the windows of the pub again while we’re waiting for her to reply. It looks nice in here, but there’s no sign of Jude and the others.
‘Maybe we should walk on to the next one – oh, hang on!’ My phone’s ringing. ‘Hello? Jude? Oh – who’s that?’
‘Who’s this? Well,
you
sent a text to
me
!’ laughs a very attractive male voice with an English accent. ‘We’re in The Halfpenny Inn in Dublin if you want to join us – we’re certainly not hiding from you! Who are you, by the way?’
‘Oh! Oh my God, I’m sorry – how the hell did I get the wrong number?’ I stammer, embarrassed. ‘I mean – this is Jude’s number – it’s in my phone – I couldn’t have made a mistake.’
Auntie Joyce has walked on down the road a bit, looking for another pub, but needless to say, the others are standing around me, giggling.
‘No problem! Nice talking to you…’
‘Wait!’ I shout, so loudly that Emily next to me, taking photos of the village, nearly drops her camera.
I know this voice.
‘It’s Harry.’ I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is ridiculous. ‘It’s
Harry
, isn’t it?’
‘Yes!’ he sounds a bit startled. There’s a pause. I can hear his mates, behind him, laughing and shouting about another pint of Guinness. ‘Who’s this? Is it
Katie
?’ He says my name softly, like a prayer. ‘Katie from last night?’
‘Yes! God – how embarrassing. How the hell…?’ A ridiculous thought occurs to me. ‘You didn’t put your number in my phone, did you?’
Ridiculous. I’m embarrassed, now, that I’ve even asked it. Even thought it. Emily and the others are staring at me now. Their expressions range from surprise to outright dismay.
‘I didn’t,’ says Harry almost apologetically. ‘But I’d have liked to.’
This just adds to my discomfiture.
‘Yes, well, look – I don’t know what happened here,’ I say in a rush. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ll let you get on with your beer.’
‘Nice to talk to you again, Katie,’ he says.
I can hear the smile in his voice. I bet he thinks I’ve got hold of his number somehow. How humiliating!
‘Enjoy the rest of your weekend.’