Paddy O’Connor cooked up a load of sausages and potato bread for himself, lardering on the butter since Helen wasn’t around to admonish him . . .
The women of the house were gone mad, and seemed to spend their whole time shopping for some sort of wedding thing or another. Helen had the place full of bridal magazines, and the notice board in the kitchen was full of clippings about flower arrangements and photographers and musicians. He was demented with it. Now here she was, gone off shopping again!
Every time they went out Helen prattled on about the wedding as if she had lost her ability to talk about anything else. Money was being splashed around left, right and centre, and he had already had to go to Mick Dunne, his bank manager, to get him to agree to an overdraft just in case the wedding bills ate up all the money they had allotted. When they had started saving for the girls’ weddings they had never envisaged the cost being so enormous. Dan Quinn was a generous type of young man, and had offered to pay his fair share towards it, but Paddy knew that Amy and he were saving to buy a house. A home for the young couple was more important than a big day out, but he would accept the groom paying for a few things like the car and the church flowers and some other expenses, and maybe putting money towards the drinks bill.
It only seemed like yesterday since Helen and he had got married with barely the arse in their trousers, as his father would say. They had both worked long and hard to build a home and a good life for their family, and he had no regrets. There had been no fancy cars or holidays or luxuries for years, but they had, with hard work, managed to move from a small three-bed semi-detached in Dundrum to a new house in a small estate in Blackrock long before the prices had gone through the roof and property madness had taken hold of the nation. Their three kids had gone to good local schools and done well going to college and getting good jobs. They weren’t out of the woods yet with young Ciara, but she was a good student and he knew that she would make them as proud as Amy and Ronan had.
The past two years had been tough, with work harder to come by. Still, O’Connor’s were holding their heads above water when lots of businesses were closing down, and letting staff go. He had planned to retire in another few years, improve his golf game, and take off with Helen to see the world, going to the sun for a few weeks in the winter, but now he would likely have to keep working for longer than he’d planned to boost his pension.
‘Paddy, I’m home.’
‘She’s back,’ he said to Barney, who was sitting at his feet.
‘We got the dresses.’ Helen was all excited as she opened the bag and showed him the dress she had bought for Ciara. ‘Isn’t the colour lovely?’
It was, but it had cost a small fortune. Still, he could see Helen was relieved that another piece of the wedding plan had finally fallen into place.
‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’ he offered, sticking on the kettle.
‘That would be great.’ She smiled. ‘I’m jaded from walking around the shops, but at least it was all worth it. Paddy, everything is just coming together, and it’s going to be such a lovely day.’
‘Of course it will,’ he said, getting some more milk from the fridge. ‘Where are the girls?’
‘Amy and Dan are having friends in for dinner tonight, so she’s gone home to help organize things, and Ciara disappeared off to see some friend of hers. She said not to expect her home.’
‘Then what about the two of us get a bite to eat down in Flanagan’s later, save you cooking?’ he suggested. ‘Tom and Fran might join us.’
‘I’ll phone Fran and ask her,’ Helen said, picking up the phone and settling down in a chair for a chat with her best friend.
Paddy sighed. Helen would give Fran a blow-by-blow account of the day’s shopping and then, when they went out, spend most of the night talking about it, too. Roll on the end of June when the wedding and all the wedding talk would be finished with.