Under the Duvet Read online

  However, there’s a conspiracy of silence around the agony of childbirth. I keep collaring friends who’ve had babies and begging, ‘Be honest with me, be truly honest with me. Tell me how horrific the pain was. I need to know.’ And instead of them going into long, gory descriptions, they just smile dreamily and say, ‘I suppose it stung a bit. But then when it’s all over and you look at the baby in your arms, you think to yourself, A BABY! What a miracle! The day I had Heidi/Lennox/Saoirse was the first day in my life that I felt whole and complete…’

  ‘Does it hurt more than having your legs waxed?’ I brusquely interrupt their lyrical reminiscences. ‘Would it make your eyes water?’ But they just laugh oddly and never really elaborate.

  My friend Kathy is the only person who’ll be halfway honest with me. ‘Did you ever see a cowboy film, where someone has been caught by the Indians and tied between two wild stallions, each pulling in opposite directions?’ she asked.

  I nodded mutely.

  ‘That’s a bit what giving birth is like. But then you have a baby at the end of it all. A BABY! It’s such a miracle…’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, moving away to sit down with my head between my knees.

  Kathy was the one who was full of talk of having her baby the natural way. She scorned the idea of pethidine because giving birth was going to be the most profoundly powerful experience of her life and she wanted to be fully conscious for it. As for an epidural – she declared loudly and at length that she’d never heard anything as gross as having a needle put into your spine to numb sensation. There was no need for any of that chemical stuff, she said. She was going to give birth in a pool where the water would muffle the pain. And hey, she always had her breathing exercises!

  Shortly into her labour, she was begging for gas and air. Which made her puke. Next she beseeched them for some pethidine, which felt like being on a bad trip and did nothing to blunt the pain. Before too long she was roaring for an epidural, but she’d left it too late.

  ‘Breathe!’ her fella urged her. ‘Come on, remember what we learnt in the class. Deep breaths in, deep breaths out.’

  ‘Eff off!’ she sobbed, her face contorted, sweat sluicing from her. ‘This is all your fault. If I survive this, and I don’t think I will, you’re never to come near me with your willie again.’

  So you can see my concern. I want an epidural, at the very least.

  But worse than the fear of giving birth is the fear of not giving birth. My friend Judith’s baby was so late that she turned to me one day, during her tenth month of pregnancy, and said in a high, tight voice, ‘I’m never going to have this baby. I’m going to be pregnant for ever. Until the day I die. But it’s OK. I’ve come to terms with it.’

  She was mortified. Each Tuesday she left her prenatal swimming classes, overwhelmed with good wishes as the other women twinkled, ‘Don’t suppose we’ll be seeing you next week.’ But every time next week rolled around, Judith had to sidle back in, shamefacedly still pregnant. ‘Not yet,’ she muttered. In the end she stopped going.

  Whenever she and her man, Danny, got into their car, the citizens of their road rushed out to wish them well, mouthing ‘Good luck’ from their doorsteps, giving her the thumbs-up from their windows, only to be told repeatedly, ‘Er, no, we’re only going to Tesco.’

  Then she and Danny tried to fool Fate by going away for the night to a flash hotel, on the principle that because they’d spent a lot of money and were looking forward to it, something was bound to happen to ruin it. But Fate is no eejit and the evening passed without incident.

  Eventually she had the baby, nearly four weeks late.

  ‘What was it like?’ I asked, anxiously. ‘Was the pain disgusting?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ she said, serenely. ‘Maybe it hurt a bit. But then I took one look at the baby in my arms and I thought, A BABY! It’s such a miracle…’

  First published in Irish Tatler, August 1998.

  Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Throw Down Your Hair-Dryer!

  In June, a couple of years ago, my brother Niall got married, and as he was living and working in Prague, he had the decency to have his wedding there. Off we went, dozens of friends and family, for a five-day knees-up, flying first to London and then on to the Czech Republic.

  The wedding party took up about twenty rows of the plane, and as we Irish have a reputation for being high-spirited yet congenial (in other words we get pissed but we don’t start fights), we set about proving it before we’d even left Dublin. There seemed to be a competition on to have a conversation with the person furthest away from you – lots of standing up and shouting over heads, and the trading of obscure insults that goes on between people who’ve been friends for a very long time. I felt so sorry for the one or two passengers on the plane who weren’t in our gang.

  We had our first casualty at Heathrow. Not – you’ll find this hard to credit – as a result of the drink, but because a member of the party had forgotten his passport. He hadn’t a hope of getting on the flight without it so we sadly waved him goodbye.

  My mother, my sister Rita-Anne and I had all bought enormous fragile hats for the shindig. ‘Guard them with your lives,’ the girl in the hat shop had warned us darkly. ‘The smallest bang will knock them out of shape and, whatever you do, don’t check them in on the plane. The baggage handlers will take one look at the hatboxes and think, “Posh cows.” They’ll fire them all over the place and the hats will be in bits by the time you arrive in Peru.’

  ‘Prague,’ I’d said absently, and swallowed nervously. I wasn’t sure where she was getting her bleak world-vision from, but she’d put the fear of God in us. So we brought our hatboxes on the plane, our arms cradled protectively around them. There was a vicious tug-of-war when an air hostess tried to wrest the box from my mother’s hands and put it in the overhead locker, but the poor woman didn’t stand a chance. The air hostess, I mean.

  By the time we got to Heathrow, trawling around the duty-free holding our hatboxes with the same tenderness you’d afford a container of nitroglycerine was beginning to wear. And I was getting tired of people nudging and sniggering as we passed. ‘Here they are again. Those ones with the hats.’

  So, having impressed upon him how unbelievably, unbearably fragile they were, we left the precious cargo in the care of my father and off we went to let my mother have a good tut-tut at the cost of La Prairie products. Eventually, we got back to find the hatboxes thrown on top of each other in a higgledy-piggledy pile, with my father’s legs stretched out, resting comfortably on the top box. Mayhem ensued.

  Some hours later, we arrived en masse at the hotel, which was a small, charming marvel of inefficiency. As soon as we’d got to our room I wanted to know if Caitríona had arrived from New York, so I rang Peter, the check-in clerk (also the barman, porter, and chambermaid), who consulted the book and told me that Ms Keyes could be located in room 203. Joyously, I burst into the corridor in my haste to see Caitríona, but skidded to a confused halt when I realized that my room was number 203. Back on to Peter to explain the misunderstanding. He apologized profusely and told me Caitríona was in room 405. Up the stairs I belted, but when I knocked on room 405’s door it was opened by my mother, standing in her slip. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘I’d like to know what you’re doing in Caitríona’s room in your slip?’

  ‘This is my room,’ she said defensively. ‘But your father’s been up and down the stairs with his bad hip looking for Caitríona, and so far he’s only found Tadhg and Rita-Anne.’

  Back on to Peter. ‘Peter,’ sez I. ‘There’s more than one Keyes staying here. In fact, there’s at least seven.’

  Later than evening, we had our second casualty – when someone went to pay for a round of drinks at the James Joyce and discovered that instead of the required Czech Crowns he had a walletful of Icelandic Crowns. ‘I thought I’d got a surprisingly good rate of exchange,’ he lamented. ‘I should have known.’

&n
bsp; We had a couple of days before the actual ceremony, which we spent sightseeing, many electing to do theirs from a barstool in the James Joyce. Everyone goes into spasm about the beauty of Prague, which is indeed so pretty it’s barely believable. It looks like a Disneyfied version of a MittelEuropean city, all pastel, pointy-roofed, gingerbread houses, fairy-tale castles and gilded palaces. But what fascinated me most were the Praguish women, as they catch up after fifty years of grey, drab communism – at the moment they’ve reached about 1985. Big hair, awe-inspiring quantities of make-up, and the more revealing the clothes, the better. It was a man’s paradise. The one waitress at our hotel went about her duties almost naked, her slender neck wobbling from the weight of so much orange foundation and purple eye-shadow and Prince Char-ming stripes of bright-pink blusher.

  She developed a bit of a fondness for Himself, which surprised me, because when you’re married you get used to no one flirting with you or your fella, not even each other. Wreathed in smiles, she was, every time she clapped eyes on him. While she made no secret of her contempt for me, with my tinted moisturizer and nude lip-gloss and loose, unsexy – I call them comfortable – clothes. They’re fashionable in Ireland, I wanted to tell her. Ever heard of casual chic? Eh? I could just imagine her complaining to her friends about me – ‘I mean,’ (in Czech, of course) ‘I mean, what does he see in her? I wouldn’t mind if she made a bit of an effort once in a while.’

  The morning of the wedding dawned and it turned out to be the hottest day for fifty years. My father fingered his top hat and morning suit and looked like he was about to cry. ‘I’ll melt,’ he complained.

  ‘Tough,’ replied my mother.

  Meanwhile, another drama was unfolding. It turned out that there was only one hair-dryer in the entire hotel, but no one could get to it because the girl who owned it had been – accidentally, he insists – locked in her room by her husband. A cluster of desperate women with wet hair gathered in the stone courtyard, four floors under her window, beseeching, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, throw down your hair-dryer.’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’ll smash.’

  Eventually we were all ready and the taxis arrived. My driver didn’t know the way to the church, so he told me he’d follow one of the other taxis. Which he did by going in front. This alarmed me, because I don’t want the Czech Republic going round thinking it can usurp Ireland’s position as Europe’s most illogical and charmingly quirky country.

  We got to the church in time. Our hair was dry, our hats weren’t bashed, the bride looked beautiful, the groom was handsome, the vows made me cry, the speeches were hilarious, the dancing energetic. A great day.

  First published in Irish Tatler, June 1999.

  Lucky O’Leary: a Prince among Dogs

  There are people who love dogs and people who don’t. I fall into the latter category and it’s not so much that I don’t like dogs as that I’m very, very afraid of them. It didn’t help that when I was in London I lived near an estate where a pit bull was as de rigueur as a criminal record. Every time I left my flat to buy a paper, the place was overrun with tattooed thugs (and that was just the women), sporting evil, stocky dogs as they would a new plastic Adidas jacket. To them the dog was a lifestyle accessory. A statement. (Roughly translated, it says, ‘I couldn’t afford an Uzi.’) These people weren’t dog-lovers; they were misanthropes, who never moved aside on the footpath as they lumbered towards me, their gait and the gait of their pit bull exactly matched. All short, bulky limbs, steroid aggression and a kind of side-to-side menacing.

  But I’m even frightened of nice dogs, which is a problem if I’m going to visit people who own one. The thought of their dog jumping up on me and – God forbid – licking me makes me feel faint with terror. The first time Himself invited me to visit his parents, I was racked with fear. And not just because of the obvious trauma of the In-Law Inspection. But because I discovered they owned a dog that they loved very, very much.

  Nervously, I pointed out to Himself that the dog might constitute a problem. So he went and made a few phone calls and came back, all smiles, promising me, ‘Everything’s taken care of, they’ve a kennel.’ I was overjoyed with relief. Until I realized that perhaps I’d misunderstood. Could it be that I might be the one to be chained in the kennel, lapping water from a bowl, howling at the moon, while the dog sat next to my intended on the couch in the good room, his legs crossed daintily, making polite conversation, sipping Lapsang Souchong from a bone-china cup, his little finger crooked?

  It’s not that I fear being savaged by a dog – well, actually I do. But as well as that I’m just terrified of the sheer ‘dogginess’ of dogs. If I tell you that simply looking at a picture of a dog makes my skin crawl you’ll probably have a good laugh at me, but it’s the truth.

  Life as a dog-fearer isn’t easy. Most dog-owners simply insist that I just haven’t met the right dog yet. They simply cannot countenance someone not being gaga with adoration for their hound. It doesn’t matter how many times I say to them that I’ve nothing against their canine friend, but that I’m in the grip of an irrational fear. They always nod sympathetically and make soothing noises, and when I’ve finished outlining my phobia, there’s a little pause. And then they open their mouth and say, ‘Fair enough, but why don’t you just pat Rover/Saddam/Dana/Rebel? Go on, tickle his tummy, he’ll love you for it. I’m telling you he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well, apart from that time he savaged the little girl, of course, but she was pulling his tail, normally he’s the most placid…’

  I don’t know why I have such a phobia. Maybe a dog shoved its face into my pram when I was a baby and bared its teeth at me. Or maybe it’s Acquired Fear (a little knowledge of psychology is a dangerous thing) – because my mother was never very keen on dogs either. Although that didn’t stop Niall, Caitríona, Tadhg and Rita-Anne demanding, ‘Can we get a dog, Mam? Can we, Mam? Can we?’ every day for twenty years. To which my mother’s invariable reply was, ‘If a dog comes, then I go.’ There always followed a short pause while my four siblings consulted each other with inquiring faces and quizzical expressions. The result was unanimous. ‘Well, all right then, Mam,’ an elected spokesman would say. ‘Thanks a million and the best of luck in the outside world.’

  But there was one dog that didn’t put the fear of bejayzus in me. And that dog was the late great Lucky O’Leary. Lucky O’Leary belonged to a family who lived up the road from our house, but he decided he preferred the cut of the Keyes’s gib.

  I wasn’t frightened of Lucky O’Leary because I never really believed he was a dog. I was certain that in a heinous prince-into-frog-type scenario, Lucky O’Leary was a human being who’d had a spell put on him. Except instead of being turned into a frog he’d been turned into a cocker spaniel with ears like a spiral perm.

  Strange things happened around Lucky O’Leary. For instance, the front-doorbell of our house was at least five feet off the ground – so high, I could barely reach it. Often the bell would ring, but when you went to answer it, the only person there was a two-foot-high Lucky, panting and wagging his tail. ‘Howya,’ he seemed to say, his ringlets swinging. ‘Are you coming out for a bit of a laugh?’

  And one afternoon I was in bed with the ’flu. As I lay there aching and sweating I heard this strange, faraway whining. A kind of ghostly, unearthly keening. I was delighted. If I was having audio hallucinations, then I was obviously very sick indeed and could look forward to at least another week off school.

  For a couple of hours I was quite transported and hummed along aimlessly with the faint howling. Could it be a banshee doing her thing, announcing my imminent death, I wondered dreamily? Through my open bedroom door, I saw my mother trudging up the stairs loaded down with a burden of fresh ironing. Weakly, I tried to explain to her about the banshee and that I needed a pen and paper to write my will. ‘In a minute,’ she said, indicating the ironing, and she opened her bedroom door. What happened next has never left me.

  There was a screeching, yelping c
acophany of hysterical relief and Lucky O’Leary shot forth from my mother’s bedroom, a blur of doggy fur. Before my delirious eyes he stood on his hind legs, held paws with my mother and danced around in a joyous circle to celebrate his liberation, his curly ears bouncing, ironed shirts and towels flung to the four corners of the landing.

  When he’d finished his dance of freedom, he marched up to me. ‘I was calling you,’ his wounded eyes accused. ‘Why didn’t you let me out?’

  And the strange thing is that from that day to this, no one has been able to explain how Lucky O’Leary managed to get into the house, up the stairs and locked into my parents’ bedroom. Stranger still, my mother insists that lots of her make-up had been used and that some of her clothes, shoes and jewellery had been worn…

  First published in Irish Tatler, June 1998.

  Now is the Time for All Little Brothers to Come to the Aid of the Party

  Having a party – is it a bit like having a baby? Agony at the time, but when it’s all over, a strange amnesia kicks in and people can’t remember the pain, only the good stuff. Well, that’s the only explanation I can find for why I keep having parties.

  It was different when I was younger and living in rented flats. Back then shindigs happened smoothly, fluidly, spontaneously. It was simply a question of moving everyone from the pub back to my flat. And what did a cigarette burn or two on the hideous carpet matter – it was probably an improvement. And who cared if someone swung on the curtains and halfpulled them off the wall. I could (and did) live with them at half-mast for a good six months (or to put it another way, until I moved out).