Whitethorn Woods (16 page)

   "I don't know why you ask me," I said coldly.

   Rosie seemed surprised. "Because you're so cool, you know everything, Bar," she said. As far as I could see she wasn't mocking me. Which made it all the odder that she hadn't wanted me to join them.

   "I think you have every chance of winning Martin's affections," I said. "Best keep him away from Sandra, though, she's meant to be a bit of a man-eater."

   "Oh, Bar, you're just wonderful, I wish you were coming with us, you could advise me the whole time. Why will you not come? Just this once?"

   "Wasn't asked." I shrugged, trying not to show how much it mattered.

   Rosie pealed with laughter. "As if you would have to be asked," she said. "You just didn't want to come, we knew that from the word go, the way you talked about the place and sneered at it. We knew you had something much better to do."

"I
never
sneered at Rossmore, I suggested it," I cried, outraged.

   "No, not sneered exactly, but, Bar, we all knew it wouldn't be your kind of thing. A bit beneath you. Not in a snobby way but that's the way it is."

   "I don't believe you," I said.

   "Well, ask anyone then," said Rosie. And I did.

   I asked the man-eating Sandra.

   "I don't suppose it would be your scene," Sandra said. "All right for us ordinary folk but not for you, Bar."

   "Why not for me?" I asked in a voice of steel.

   "You're sort of classier than we are, Bar, you know—no one could see
you
spending a weekend in jeans grilling sausages."

   I was astounded.

   Well, yes, I do dress well. I take care of my appearance. I consider myself well groomed. I have had some elocution lessons to improve my accent. But too classy to go on an office outing? Come on. They couldn't all be so humble and in awe of me as not to include me? Surely?

   But I wasn't going to let them see how startled and upset I was. No way.

   "Have a good time anyway, Sandra," I said cheerfully. "Got your eye on anyone in particular for the weekend?"

   "Not really. That Martin fellow in the Sales Department is a bit of a looker. But we'll see."

   Sandra could have any man she wanted, Rosie wasn't so fortunate. Even in the middle of my own disappointment I decided to even things up.

   "I wouldn't waste my time on him, I heard he's as dull as ditchwater when you get to know him," I said.

   "Thanks, Bar," Sandra said, putting on more lip gloss. "Good to have your card marked. What are you doing for the holiday weekend by the way?"

   "Me? Oh, I'm not doing much," I said, confused.

   "I bet you are," Sandra said.

"I'm giving a big lunch party," I heard myself say.

"Ooh, Barbara, aren't you something else? How many people?"

   "Twelve including me." Was I mad? I don't
know
twelve people. I couldn't cook for them even if I did.

   "Twelve people! You're fabulous, Bar, will you have photos next week?"

   "Very probably," I said miserably. I could always say the camera had jammed. Not only was I pathetic and unpopular . . . I was mad and dishonest as well. Great start to the weekend.

   I waved them all good-bye as they left the office for the two o'clock train. People I had thought were my friends—sexy Sandra, innocent Rosie, that nice, gentle Martin from Sales and half a dozen others who all thought I was stuck up and superior. I looked at myself in the mirror in the ladies' room. A pale face, framed with an expensive haircut, a well-cut jacket, which I sponged and brushed every night. I wore cheap T-shirts underneath, a different color every day. There was nothing upper-class, snobby, about me. Was there?

   Two cleaning women came in with their buckets and mops. They greeted me pleasantly with big smiles and a lot of gold teeth. They weren't Irish but there are lots of overseas people working in Ireland now and I didn't know where they were from. They were remarkably good-humored with three hours of scrubbing and polishing ahead of them.

   And yet I dared to feel sorry for myself, I, who had a good job in marketing, a big garden flat, a flat-screen television and a designer jacket!

   "Are you looking forward to the three-day weekend?" I asked them.

   "Not very," said one.

   "Sunday is often a sad lonely day in a big city," said the other.

   I knew how she felt.

   "Would you like to come to lunch with me?" I heard myself say.

They looked at me openmouthed.

"To eat a lunch with you?" they asked, astounded.

   "Well, yes. On Sunday at about one o'clock in my house. Look, I'll write down the address for you."

   I got out my little leather-bound notebook. The two women in their yellow working overalls looked on as if I were writing them an invitation to fly to the moon.

   "Oh, and I'd better know your names, to introduce you to other people," I said.

   "There will be other people?" They looked alarmed.

   "Oh, indeed, about twelve of us altogether," I said cheerily.

   They were from Cyprus, sisters, they told me, they had Greek names: Magda and Eleni.

   Nobody had ever invited them to a home before, Eleni said, excited.

   Magda was worried about it all. "You like us to clean the house for you maybe?" she said.

   I felt so ashamed I could hardly speak. "No, no, as my guests," I mumbled.

   "We will make some baklava . . . beautiful Greek dessert," Magda said, now that it had all been cleared up.

   I left them talking excitedly in Greek, nothing so marvelous had happened to them before in their new country.

   On the way back to my own office, before I had even time to think about what I had just done, I met my boss, Alan, a tense, anxious workaholic of about forty-five, I suppose. We knew nothing about his private life except in bursts, when he announced that he hated his ex with a great passion. This was one of these bursts.

   "She is an evil, vicious woman," Alan told me in the corridor. "A foul and very bad person."

   "What has she done now?" I asked. Alan was quite handsome and he could be good company apart from all this droning on about his ex.

   "She's only gone and dumped Harry and two of his ten-year-old friends on me for the whole of the weekend, and instructions about no fast food. I'm to cook them proper meals, apparently."

   "Oh, bring them round to my place on Sunday—about one o'clock," I said, casually writing down my address.

   "I can't do that, Bar," he said, though it was obvious that he wanted to.

   "Ah, why not?" I shrugged. "There'll be twelve of us, and plenty of home-cooked food." I began to wonder, was I going mad?

   "I'll bring you some wine then," Alan said, eagerly bursting with gratitude.

   Back in my office and gathering up my things, I took a last look at my diary. I would be away from it until Tuesday, better see was there anything I should remember. It was my aunt Dorothy's birthday on Sunday—my father's elder sister. Disapproving of everyone, she had rarely been known to utter a pleasant remark.

   There was still time to fling a birthday card into the post so that she couldn't accuse me of neglecting her when next she saw my parents. Then I thought, better still, I'd ask her to lunch. She couldn't make it any more ludicrous than the way it was shaping up to be.

   Aunt Dorothy was in a black humor when I called. Her three bridge friends had forgotten her birthday, she always remembered
their
birthdays, but oh no, they hadn't said a thing about celebrating it.

   "Why don't you return good for evil, Aunt Dorothy, and ask them all to lunch at my house?" I suggested. I was now completely insane, I realized. Aunt Dorothy liked the idea a lot. She would embarrass them, humiliate them even, make them feel ashamed.

   "What can I bring with me for lunch, dear?" she asked in tones that almost approached civility. I thought for a moment. I hadn't even planned what we were going to eat but we'd need a salad. I suggested it.

   "For five?" Aunt Dorothy asked.

"No, for twelve actually," I said apologetically.

"You can't seat twelve," she snapped.

"We'll eat in the garden," I said. And hung up.

   I did a count, we had now reached eleven. Only one more. Larry the security man came in. He was about to lock the place up for the weekend. So naturally I invited him to lunch and naturally he said he'd love to, and that he'd come over early in his van with some planks and set up a table in the garden.

   So there was my party.

   I went home by a bookshop, where I looked up a book on very easy entertaining. On Saturday I went shopping and bought three cheap tablecloths, packets of crisps and dips, some brightly colored balloons as well as the ingredients for an Easy Chicken Pie and an Easy Vegetarian Special. That and the Greek dessert, Aunt Dorothy's salad and Alan's wine should cover everyone.

   I slept well on Saturday night and never thought at all about my colleagues on their patio in Rossmore, grilling their lamb chops and sausages amongst the mosquitoes and visiting walking statues in the woods.

   Larry, true to his word, was round with the wooden planks, and he had put half a dozen folding chairs in the back of his van, borrowed from the office penthouse. I had no seating plan: let them sit where they liked.

   At half past twelve I wondered whether any of them would come. At one o'clock sharp they all arrived and Alan had brought enough wine for half the neighborhood. There was a roar of conversation from the moment they came in.

   Magda and Eleni had brought olives as well as dessert.

   Alan's son, Harry, and his two friends turned out to be hugely interested in money. "How much will you pay us to be waiters?" they asked as soon as they arrived.

   I looked at Alan helplessly. "They're worth two euros each, no more," he said.

   "Five," I said, and then I settled back while they did all the work.

   Aunt Dorothy lorded it over her friends very happily. "Oh, Barbara has a wide circle of acquaintances," she said proudly, and wept a little tear when I got everyone to sing "Happy Birthday" to her.

   Magda said that Eleni had always needed a strong helpful man like Larry and did everything to throw them together. Harry and his friends finished the washing up and wondered, would they be paid for weeding the flower beds?

   "One euro each," Alan said.

   "Three euros each," I said.

   Magda and Eleni taught Larry to do a Z
orba
dance; Aunt Dorothy and her friends all sang "Just a Song at Twilight."

   Alan said to me, "You know, I always fancied you a bit but I thought you were rather toffee-nosed. I never in a million years thought you were like this. You are absolutely wonderful."

   So I forgot about the people who hadn't invited me to grill things on a patio on a holiday that I had more or less set up for them, and Alan forgot about his ex.

   And I think somebody took some pictures but it didn't really matter. Because no one would ever forget the day.

Lots of people at school have parents who are divorced. Well, it stands to reason, you don't always want the same thing all the time, do you? I mean, I don't like the things I liked when I was seven, not now that I'm ten. Those awful PlayStations that I liked then, well, of course they were fine then, but they are so boring now.

   So I quite see why Mum and Dad got tired of each other and wanted different things. It's nothing personal. Or at least it shouldn't be. But that's not the way it is in this family. Mum never stops talking about how mean Dad is, how he keeps us in poverty.

   I don't think we are in poverty but it doesn't do to say that, so I don't say anything, really.

   Dad is always saying to me that that mother of mine will have us all in the workhouse before long, and that can't be true either because Dad drives a big car and he is very high up in his office, but it's not a good idea to say that we don't look like the workhouse people you see pictures of in Charles Dickens's time. So I say nothing about that either.

   They both keep telling me that they love me. Too much, really.

   Mum says, "The one thing that can be said about that monument to selfishness is that he gave me you, Harry."

   Dad says, "If there's one thing to be said about that dizzy, self-obsessed woman it's that she gave me a fine son."

   I don't know why they think that, because I am always the problem, or the worry, or the person to be parked here or collected there.

   George doesn't see his father at all, so he says I'm lucky compared to him. Wes says that his family are arguing all the time and we are both lucky compared to him. So obviously the whole family thing isn't really meant to work.

   Anyway Mum has a new fellow. He's awful, of course, trying to be nice to me and pretending to be interested in me when he isn't a bit. His name is Kent, he's not from Kent in England or anything. Kent is what he is called.

   George says that Kent has a very expensive car and so he must be loaded and that we should make as much money from him as possible while he lasts. He said I should say that I am saving for a new iPod, or a mobile phone, or computer updates. I should concentrate on something that sounded as if I would get myself out of his hair and Kent would be likely to hand over a tenner or whatever.

   I was nervous at first but it worked like a dream. I kept my part of the bargain: I stayed out of his way and was very polite to him when I was in his company. Mum asked me, did I like him and I opened my eyes very wide, which is a good thing to do if you're telling something not exactly true, and I said I thought Kent was just fine and Mum said I was a good son, a very good son indeed, and her eyes got watery so I took myself off.