Tales From a Hen Weekend Read Online Free PDF Page B

you are the only man on board.’
    Helen’s reading a hardback called Solitaire. The cover’s black, with a single white rose in the very centre, beneath the title – the significance of which nobody could even begin to guess at, probably not even after they’ve read the entire book. Always presuming they could struggle through all of its six hundred and odd pages. Just looking at it makes me feel tired.
    ‘Good plot?’ I ask her, nevertheless. My own current paperback, the latest Ginny Ashcroft romp, is at the bottom of my suitcase. I don’t really know why I brought it. Get a life! said Lisa when she saw me sliding it into the case under my knickers and bras. This is your hen weekend! You are so NOT going to get time to read your bloody book!
    ‘The narrative is superb,’ says Helen, smiling, tearing her eyes away from it, closing the book with a brass paperclip-type bookmarker placed carefully over the edge of the page. ‘Durant manages to capture the taste of Paris café culture in the eighteen-sixties, the very essence of the move towards symbolism in literature as well as in art…’
    Sometimes I think Helen and Greg would be perfectly suited, if only Helen didn’t hate all men. They could both put a slow reader off making the effort with literacy, for life, without even trying, despite the fact that they’re both passionate about books themselves. I can never quite work out how Helen manages to read a work of fiction as if it was a well-crafted instruction manual. Give her Bridget Jones’ Diary to read (not that she would, from choice), and she’d start taking it apart and talking about its social message and the author’s use of cliché and colloquialism and before you knew it, she’d have ruined the story for you. Sorry, but I had enough of the dissection of literature when I was in Uni. Now, I read books. I either like them or I don’t; I recommend them or I don’t. The Bookshelf customers know where they are with me. They read my reviews to help them decide which books to buy – and help them is what I do. I don’t bamboozle them with jargon.
    ‘A good yarn, then, yeah?’ I interrupt her, digging her in the ribs as she’s in full flow.
    She’s used to this. She takes it in good part. It’s my little joke at both our expense – my admission of my intellectual inferiority; her admission of her tendency towards being anally retentive. She puts the book in the seat-back pocket and closes her eyes. I wonder if she’s taking a nap, but, with her eyes still closed, she says:
    ‘So this is it, then, Katie Halliday: your rite of passage.’
    ‘I guess so.’
    ‘Half a century ago we’d have been regaling you with old wives’ tales about your forthcoming nuptials. What to expect, how to bear it, what to think about while he’s claiming his marital rights.’
    ‘Yes. Jesus, must have been pretty scary for those virgin brides. If they really were …’
    ‘Good point. A lot of dishonesty’s gone out of the window, along with the mystique. May be a good thing after all.’
    I look at her and wonder. For some reason I’ve never fathomed, I seem to be one of those girls other people tell all their problems to. I’ve often thought that if I was out of work I could get a job as an agony aunt. But not Helen – she’s never confided in me. She’s a closed book. Has she really never loved anyone? Never lived with anyone? Never had a relationship?
    As if she can hear these questions going on inside my head, she opens her eyes and tells me as if it’s a topic of general interest like the weather in Dublin:
    ‘I’ve had quite a lot of sex, you know. Just not often with the same person too many times.’
    There’s not a lot that can usefully be said in response to this, is there?
    ‘Oh. Right,’ seems to just about cover it.
    The fasten seat belt sign has come on and I can feel the beginning of the descent from the pressure in my ears.
    ‘We’re there!’ calls Emily from behind me.