Essays and Stories by Marian Keyes Read online

  So I sent my check off, counted down the days and tried to keep a tight rein on my hope.

  Over the years, on and off, I'd gone to tarot readers, as you do. (Or maybe you don't.)

  I often went when I was having man trouble (most of the time). And then there were the social events, when you got in a load of Chardonnay and a tarot reader came to your house and "did" nine or ten of you, and you all got scuttered and had a good laugh.

  But recently I'd had a bad run. I'd gone to a few (again in the name of research with my personal interest add-on) and they'd been badly crap. A tiny little voice inside me was suggesting that perhaps they'd always been bad. Maybe I'd wanted so hard to believe that I'd overcompensated for their bollocks. And indeed, years ago, I remember one who'd got so much alarmingly wrong about me that when she said, "You've just suffered a bereavement?" I found myself agreeing that I had (although I hadn't) because I was so embarrassed for her.

  Recently, when I'd asked a tarot reader about my career, she 'd said, "Don't worry about your career, love. Let your husband take care of all that. Be there to support him and maybe in a couple of years' time you can get a part-time job."

  I'd also been promised two children who'd never arrived. I'd been told I'd be moving house, which I hadn't. And a dark-haired man would deliver good news and then ask for money—as yet, no sign of him. The accumulated disappointments had stacked up on top of each other and were on the verge of toppling over into cynicism. So I really, really, really wanted this Angela person to be good.

  But on the appointed day and hour, when I rang, she said, "Who are you? Maureen from Dublin? Look, I can't talk to you today, I've got builders in. Bye."

  She was about to hang up, but anxiously I said, "Wait! When can you talk to me?"

  She said impatiently, "Oh, I dunno. Ring me on Saturday at five," and the line went dead.

  So I rang on Saturday at five and even before her answering machine clicked in, I knew she wouldn't be there. I left a message, then sent another e-mail and after I didn't hear from her, I decided to forget it.

  Friends and family got heated about the twenty-five euro I'd been swizzed out of, but I let it go—maybe it would teach me not to be so stupid in the future.

  Life moved on, then out of the blue—perhaps seven months after the initial contact—Angela e-mailed, offering me a half-hour phone reading between seven and half-past seven, on a Tuesday, six weeks hence.

  Naturally, I was trepidatious but when I rang on the agreed date, she answered the phone and this time seemed prepared to talk to me.

  "Where are you based, Maureen?"

  "Marian—"

  "Is it Dublin? Because I'm coming to Dublin soon to do ten shows. Tell everyone you know. I'm doing my show in xxxxx." (Name of venue withheld to protect her identity, although I'm not sure why I'm bothering.) "Do you know it?"

  I admitted that yes, I knew the theater in question.

  "Whereabouts is it exactly?" she asked.

  I told her the street name and she said impatiently that she knew the name of the street but whereabouts in Dublin was it exactly. Using the Brown Thomas handbag department as a reference point, I did my best to explain and she cut in, "Is it anywhere near Heuston station?"

  I admitted it was near enough.

  Walking distance?

  Not walking distance, I admitted.

  How long would it take to get there in a taxi?

  I said it would depend on traffic.

  So how much would the taxi cost?

  Not much, I said, feeling a little panicky. Could we close down this line of inquiry?

  No, actually. She wanted to know what time the last train for Portlaoise left Heuston station. Would she be able to get the train home every night after the gig? Or would she have to stay in a B&B in Dublin? And if so how much would a B&B in Dublin cost?

  I was stumped. I mean, how would I know? How often do I have reason to stay in a B&B in the town I live in? I suggested she contact the tourist board.

  It was now eight minutes past seven and we still hadn't started on my reading. Desperately trying to steer things back on track, I asked, "How does this work? Someone will come through for me?"

  She sighed as if I was being selfish and unhelpful. "Oh aye, the reading. Let 's see who we have for you."

  A pause. Another sigh. "I have your granny here."

  Surprise, surprise. That was pretty low-risk. "Which granny?"

  "She says her name is Mary? Does the name Mary mean anything to you?"

  "My mother's name is Mary."

  "Ah! It 's not your granny, it 's your mother! Sorry, sometimes they don't make it clear."

  "My mother isn't dead." She 's at home in Monkstown, watching Emmerdale and eating peanut M&M's.

  "It 's not Mary I'm getting anyway." Like I'd tried to mislead her. "I'm getting the name Margaret? Maggie? Mean anything?"

  No. No.

  "Bridget? Bridie?"

  No. No.

  "Catherine? Kate? Katie?"

  No. No. Yes. My mother's mother was called Katie. Angela had finally hit paydirt on the eighth attempt. Mind you, how hard could it be to get the name of an Irish granny right? They came from an era when women's names were rationed, there were only four or five possibilities.

  "Katie says to say hello to you."

  "Right back at her," I said.

  A pause. "She 's telling me you have relationship troubles."

  Actually, I hadn't. And, instead of trying to save Angela's blushes, I said so.

  "No relationship troubles? Aren't you the lucky girl? Well, you're probably going to get them, they don't always get the timing right. Katie tells me you're thinking of moving house."

  I wasn't. And I told her so.

  "Sorry I misheard. Katie says you're thinking of changing jobs."

  No.

  "You're worried about a family member. They have health troubles."

  No.

  "You have health troubles."

  No. Not really. Not apart from the ear infections I got every Wednesday.

  "So what are your troubles?" But the tone of her voice said, So what are your fucking troubles?

  So what were my fucking troubles? Fear of not being able to write my next book, fear that everyone would hate my current one, fear of public speaking, fear of journalists, fear of causing offense, fear of saying no, fear of looking in the mirror, fear that all the size

  36 sandals would be gone before I got to the shops. You know, the usual. How to encapsulate it? "Sometimes I feel like I can't cope."

  With that she took a deep breath and yelped, "You feel you can't cope. You'd want to try being me. I've not got a day off, not one day for the next month and a half. I'm booked solid with readings, back to back, and they're always asking me to be on TV, they're making a documentary about me, did I tell you that, a film crew are going to follow me for a week, then I've got the shows in Dublin and I'll be on telly a lot for that and talking to journalists and being on the radio. I could tell you a thing or two about not being able to cope!"

  She said it with enormous pride. She loved it. She fucking loved it. The giddy whirl of being a busy, in-demand medium had gone to her head.

  "Book a massage, breathe deeply and spare a thought for me, girl," was her advice.

  It was now seven twenty-four. "No one else is coming through for you. Bye now. And don't forget to tell everyone to come to my shows!"

  A couple of months later she came to Dublin to do her live shows and she got a lot of publicity. I saw her on the telly; she 'd done a reading for a presenter on a daytime program and the presenter looked at the camera and intoned solemnly, "This woman is amazing. In a world full of con merchants, I can promise you that she is the real thing."

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY

  You'll be hearing a bit about my family in this part, so to avoid confusion, here's a brief introduction. I'm the eldest of five and I've had the extreme good sense to pick siblings who live abroad. (So we can visit them and ha
ve a lovely time.)

  I've, very cleverly, bagged a brother (Niall) who lives in Prague. Niall is married to Ljiljana, aka The Most Fabulous Woman on the Planet.™ (She can make a fabulous three-course meal for six people from two moldy tomatoes in the bottom of the fridge. She also speaks three languages fluently, is beautiful, kind and very funny.)

  Niall and Lilers have two children, Ema and Luka. They are so very fantastic that me and Himself (who have not been blessed with babas of our own) have offered large sums of cash to buy them. To our chagrin they keep refusing, so now we are considering plan B—reporting Niall and Lilers to the Praguish social services, accusing them of being bad parents, so me and Himself will get custody! Ingenious, no?

  Next in line is my sister (Caitríona) who lives in New York and is

  also very fabulous. She looks like a model, yet she can fix a broken ballcock. She is also the funniest person I've ever met.

  The youngest are the twins Rita-Anne and Tadhg (pronounced Tyge) who are very, very nice—don't get me wrong. I just can't help feeling they're being a little unreasonable, still insisting on living in Dublin, no matter how many times I mention that I've heard that house prices are very reasonable in the Seychelles.

  Now to my Mammy. Mammy Keyes is a legend; she is nearly as funny as Caitríona. She prays for me and Himself and doesn't mind that we're dirty atheists who don't deserve it. She also cooks for us. Every Thursday we go for our dinner and one week we get spaghetti bolognese, the next week we get chicken casserole, the next week we get spaghetti bolognese, the next week we get chicken casserole, the next week . . . Even when we're out of the country, the pattern continues clicking away without us and on our return we just slot straight back in. It's wonderful, a fixed point in an uncertain world.

  My dad is very kind. If I'm ever coming to visit on a Tuesday or Friday afternoon, he includes me in the Telly Bingo tickets. Sometimes he also buys me a bar of chocolate to heighten my enjoyment. He is very proud of my success, even though he never reads my books. Thing is, see, he read my first, which had a sex scene in it, and as a result we couldn't make eye contact for the next six months, so now we've come to a lovely, tacit agreement: he won't read my books and I won't mind. Nevertheless, he knows everything there is to know about publishing. He used to be an accountant so he brings his keen mathematical brain to analyze my career. He knows how I'm doing, how many books I've sold, what my market share is, how my rivals are selling, who is due a book out that will knock me off my perch . . . He's very, very loyal. Sometimes I go into my local bookshop only to dis cover that an entire wall is devoted to face-outs of my books. Supportive and all as the shop are to me, I get a bad feeling. "Is he . . . ?" I ask the manager. "Was he . . . ?"

  "Yes," she sez, "Your dad was in again."

  "Sorry." I sigh. "I'll have a word."

  Finally, I am married to Himself, who is beyond description.

  Big Night Out

  Inever win anything. Nothing. Not raffles, or scratch cards, or poker, or penny cascades, or the lotto. Nothing. And even though many, many lovely things have happened to me in my life, at heart I consider myself an extremely unlucky person. I can't shake the feeling that there 's only so much good fortune in the world to go round and if someone else is getting it, it leaves even less for me. Take Telly Bingo, for example. It 's on every Tuesday and Friday on the telly (the clue is in the name), Mam and Dad are devoted to it and if I'm over visiting them, I'm devoted to it too. But I've never won anything: not a Full House, not a Four Corners, not even a single line (you can get up to twelve euro in prize money for that).

  I always start off in fabulous form, my pen poised over the card, frothy and giddy with hope. It could be me, I tell myself. I've as much chance as the next person. But as the minutes pass and the balls are called and I've only ticked off three numbers and the computerized scoreboard yoke is telling me there are fifteen people in County Monaghan needing only one more number to win the jackpot, I slip deeper and deeper into a depression. Why does nothing nice ever happen to me? Why is it always other people? Why has God got it in for me? And even though I'm usually supposed to be staying at my parents for the whole afternoon, as soon as the final ball is called, I find myself sloping off home and when Himself opens the front door, surprised to see me back so early, he takes in my gloomy aspect and says, "Oh no! Not the Telly Bingo! Stay away from it!"

  And yet the hope always returns. So when I heard about Dad 's golf club's Christmas fundraiser bingo night, I couldn't wait to go. Apparently there would be ten rounds of bingo and, according to Mam, loads of prizes. I quizzed her on them. "Poinsettias, Christmas crackers, bottles of Jameson, boxes of biscuits, teddy bears."

  "Christmas hampers?"

  "Sometimes."

  Surely, if there were that many prizes to go round, I had a chance of winning something?

  Seven of us signed up: me, Himself, my parents, Rita-Anne, Tadhg's girlfriend Susan and Mam's friend Ann Carty. Although kickoff wasn't until eight P.M., Dad made us arrive at the golf club at seven-thirty. Mind you, we considered ourselves lucky he hadn't made us get there at quarter to five—if a journey takes twenty minutes, Dad prefers to allow an hour and three quarters just to be on the safe side. All the same, at seven-thirty trade at the golf club was already brisk. Books of bingo cards were rapidly changing hands and raffle tickets were being hustled. People were flooding in, grabbing tables, buying drinks and glad-handing all over the place. Funnily enough I'd expected all the golf people to be in their funny Rupert the Bear trousers and dodgy Pringle jumpers, but they were in civvies so they seemed quite normal. From what I could gather from all the people my mother kept introducing me to, a lot of the golf people were also bridge people. Clearly quite a competitive bunch. My heart sank slightly.

  And then I noticed the table of prizes! I suspected it would be bad form to check them out—I should have been thinking about the socialness of the occasion, or the charity the night was in aid of—but I was dying to see what I might win. I had high hopes for a hamper. Himself and I had kept ourselves awake the previous night making a wish list of all the lovely things you'd find in the perfect hamper: a cheeseboard, a bottle of port, a Christmas pudding, a jar of brandy butter, crystallized fruit, a 200g bag of Percy Pigs, my favorite candy . . .

  I went up with Susan to check out the prizes and Susan was fantastically scornful. (Because the golf club didn't let Tadhg wear jeans or baseball caps she 'd thought of the place as intimidatingly posh, so she 'd expected their prizes to also be posh. Nothing like a bit of disappointment to release the bile.) Poking fun at the ranks of poinsettias, she said they were like The Day of the Triffids, and with several all lined up together, they did look quite menacing, almost alive. But the bitterest of her bile was reserved for the boxes of Rover biscuits. I had never heard of them (and God knows, if anyone knows about biscuits, it 's me), but Susan assured me they were horrible. So horrible that she 'd thought they didn't even make them anymore. Someone must have had them in their attic for the last fifteen years and donated them, she said. In fact, someone must have died and their house was being sold and the Rover biscuits must have been found when the attic was being cleared out before the new people moved in, she suggested. Or else someone had won them for the last twenty years and kept redonating them. I'm very suggestible and although I thought the prizes were lovely (boxes of chocolates and non-dodgy, non-Rover biscuits), the more Susan mocked, the more I joined in. Not only am I very immature but something about being in a place where lots of my parents' friends were present had made me revert to teenage brattery.

  When we returned to the table, I leaned over quietly and told Mam, "Susan says the prizes are crap." Mam hissed back, "It 's for charity, keep your voice down. And there 's loads of vouchers for turkeys, it's just that the turkeys aren't here and you can't see them, but they're very good prizes."

  Then, on another table, I spotted the raffle prizes—different from the bingo prizes. And I could see a hamper! Already I was p
ulling Susan to her feet. This I had to see.

  "Sit down," Mam begged. "Let it alone, be good."

  But we were up and pushing through the noisy throng, and the first thing I saw behind the cellophane was a jar of supermarketbrand jam, then a jar of Nescafé. "Look—Branston pickle," Susan choked and clutched me. "Jacobs crackers," I riposted. "A lovely Christmas hamper, total value two euro twenty." We convulsed quietly, then across the room, I caught Mam's eye and abruptly my mirth dissolved. And in all fairness, in a second layer behind the first, extremely poor one, there was a bottle of Smirnoff, a bottle of port, smoked salmon and a white envelope which must have been one of the famed turkey vouchers. No bag of candy, mind . . .