Aisling smiled.
‘Well, don’t you look a bonnie lassie with those flowers in your hair. Now, what is it my grandson says when something’s good?’ She looked to her husband who gave a rumbling snore followed by a whistling sound. ‘Fat lot of good you are. It’ll come to me.’ She screwed her bright blue eyes up trying to find the words and then her face brightened. ‘Pure barry, that’s it. Your hair looks pure barry, Aisling. Mine used to be that colour when I was younger believe it or not. And you two bonnie lassies are the bridesmaids I take it?’
Roisin and Moira nodded.
‘Come in and have a blether about these wedding plans of yours,’ she invited.
They weren’t in any rush and so Roisin played mother making the tea while Aisling sat down on the sofa with Moira chatting away to the friendly Scots woman. She told her all about the latest look in Holland that had her bridesmaids resembling praying mantises. Mrs Dunbar was chuckling away at the picture Aisling was painting when Roisin, dunking a teabag into a cup, interrupted and told them all about Sten misinterpreting her expression and how he’d not had the lightest of touches after she’d made it clear she was spoken for. They all laughed as she relayed how his goatee quivered when he got excited or annoyed.
‘Oh, and what about Mammy,’ Moira snorted, mimicking her informing her poor stylist, Polly that she was the mammy of the bride and as such could wear her hair, however which way she wanted.
‘Mother of the bride is a lovely thing to be indeed. My hair was on my shoulders when my daughter got married, I had it blow waved and set for her big day and wore a magenta hat with my dress. Navy it was with a magenta rose pattern. What did your mammy decide to do with her hair?’
‘Curls, Maggie.’ Aisling said. ‘And for some reason when I think of Mammy’s curls I want to start singing and doing a spot of the tap-dancing,’ Aisling said.
All eyes turned toward her, unsure what she was on about.
She got up from the sofa beginning to jig about as she burst into song. On the Good Ship Lollipop, she tapped away.
‘Shirley Temple!’ Maggie clapped delightedly. ‘She went for ringlets then.’
‘They were supposed to be pin curls but they were very tight. The drizzle out there should sort them out though, even if she does wear a headscarf over them.’ Aisling gestured to the large windows facing the street from where they could see a glimpse of the glistening, slick pavement outside before sitting back down again.
Roisin carried two cups of tea over and as she started laughing, they rattled ominously on the saucers.
‘What’s so funny?’ Moira asked.
She managed to set the tea down in front of her sisters without spilling it and took centre stage in the room before launching into her heartfelt take on Tomorrow.
‘Little Orphan Annie!’ Mrs Dunbar chortled, thoroughly enjoying this impromptu version of charades.
The giggles were getting loud and James poked his head around the door to see what was going on. He shook his head on seeing a room full of women and a snoring man. It reminded him of when his mammy got together with her sisters, and his da always nodded off thanks to the extra glass of whisky he’d have knocked back in order to cope with his sisters-in-law.
Moira wasn’t going to be left out. ‘My turn.’ She stood up and began to perform some fancy footwork while singing Michael Jackson’s ABC. The others were in fits and when poor Mr Dunbar woke himself up with a particularly violent snore he had to blink rapidly because he’d found himself in a room full of giggling women. And what he’d like to know was why was the bonnie lassie he’d been speaking to yesterday dancing around singing a song he hadn’t heard since the seventies? They were a mad lot these Irish, he thought, reaching for his cup of tea.
Chapter 15
Aisling swept into the house in Blanchardstown that Quinn shared with his mam and dad, glad to be in out of the cold. She’d felt like your character from the Narnia book the half human, half horse one that got frozen as she waited for the bus. Now, the homely smell of fabric softener and fresh baking washed over her. She greeted her soon-to-be mammy-in-law with a big fecky brown noser smile and received a warm one in return. She’d known Mrs Moran since her student days and was very fond of her but lately she’d found herself feeling irritated by her fiancé’s mam’s incessant fussing over Quinn. He wasn’t a baby, he was a grown man and it was ridiculous the way she ran after him.
Quinn’s siblings had all long since left home, as had he until he decided to open his bistro. It was a decision that saw him leave behind his career in London to move back to Dublin. He hadn’t intended to move home but given the soaring accommodation costs in the city and the uncertainty of trying to get a new business off the ground, it had been the sensible thing to do. Sometimes, Aisling thought he’d gotten a little too used to being back in the family fold. She expected them to be a partnership when they finally moved in together at O’Mara’s, the sensible option given Aisling needed to be on site and Quinn’s bistro was a hop, skip and a jump away, and began their married life. You would not find her waiting on her new husband hand and foot the way Mrs Moran was prone to doing with her husband and sons.
Of course, it wasn’t all down to her. Quinn seemed perfectly happy to let his mammy do so. She’d broached the subject with him a few weeks back but he’d shrugged in that laid-back way of his that was at times endearing and at times frustrating and said, ‘I
