The guests are arriving. I watch the approach of the boats from the jetty, ready to welcome them. I smile and nod, try to present a front of decorum. I’m wearing a plain, navy dress now, low wedge heels. Smart, but not too smart. It wouldn’t be appropriate to look like one of the guests. Though I needn’t have worried about that. It’s clear they have all made a big effort with their outfits: glittering earrings and painfully high heels, tiny handbags and real fur stoles (it might be June, but this is the cool Irish summer, after all). I even see a smattering of top hats. I suppose when your hosts are the owner of a lifestyle magazine and a TV star, you have to step up your game.
The guests disembark in groups of thirty or so. I can see them all taking in the island, and feel a little surge of personal pride as they do. We’ll be a hundred and fifty tonight – that’s a lot of people to introduce to Inis an Amplóra.
‘Where’s the nearest loo?’ one man asks me urgently, rather green about the gills, plucking at his shirt collar as though it’s strangling him. Several of the guests, in fact, are looking worse for wear beneath their finery. And yet it’s not too choppy at the moment, the water somewhere between white and silver – so bright with the cold sunlight on it that you can hardly look at it. I shield my eyes and smile graciously and point them on their way. Perhaps I should offer some strong seasickness pills for the return journey, if it’s going to get as windy as the forecast suggests.
I remember the first time we came here as kids, stepping off the old ferry. We didn’t feel seasick, not that I remember. We stood out at the front and held on to the rail and squealed as we soared over the waves, as the water came up in big arcs and soaked us. I remember pretending we were riding a huge sea-serpent.
It was warm for this part of the world that summer, and the sun would soon dry us. And children are tough. I remember running down the
beaches into the water like it was nothing. I guess I hadn’t yet learned to be wary of the sea.
A smart couple in their sixties get off the final boat. I somehow know even before they come over and introduce themselves that they are the groom’s parents. He must get his looks from his mother and probably his colouring, too, though her hair is grey now. But she doesn’t have anything like the groom’s easy confidence. She gives the impression of someone trying to hide herself away, even within her own clothes.
The groom’s father’s features are sharper, harder. You’d never call a man like that good-looking, but I suppose you could imagine seeing a profile like his on the bust of a Roman emperor: the high, arched eyebrows, the hooked nose, the firm, slightly cruel thin-lipped mouth. He has a very strong handshake, I feel the small bones of my hand crushing into one another as he squeezes it. And he has an air of importance about him, like a politician or diplomat. ‘You must be the wedding planner,’ he says, with a smile. But his eyes are watchful, assessing.
‘I am,’ I say.
‘Good, good,’ he says. ‘Got us a seat at the front of the chapel, I hope?’ On his son’s wedding day it is to be expected. But I think this man would expect a seat at the front of any event.
‘Of course,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll take you up there now.’
‘You know,’ he says, as we walk up towards the chapel, ‘it’s a funny thing. I’m a headmaster, at a boy’s school. And about a quarter of these guests used to go there, to Trevellyan’s. Odd, seeing them all grown up.’
I smile, show polite interest: ‘Do you recognise all of them?’
‘Most. But not all, not all. Mainly the larger-than-life characters, as I think you’d call them.’ He chuckles. ‘I’ve seen some of them do a double-take already, seeing me. I have a reputation as a bit of a disciplinarian.’ He seems proud of this. ‘It’s probably put the fear of God in them, catching sight of me here.’
I’m sure it has, I think. I feel as though I know this man, though I have never met him before. Instinctively, I do not like him.
Afterwards, I go and thank Mattie, who’s captained the last boat over. ‘Well done,’ I say. ‘That all went very smoothly. You’ve done a great
job synchronising it all.’
‘And you’ve done a fine job getting someone to hold their wedding here. He’s famous, isn’t he?’
‘And she has a profile too.’ I doubt Mattie’s up to date on women’s online magazines, though. ‘We offered a big discount in the end, but it’ll be worth it for the write-up.’
He nods. ‘Put this place on the map, sure it will.’ He looks out over the water, squinting into the sunlight. ‘It was easy sailing this morning,’ he says. ‘But it will be different later on, to be sure.’
‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the forecast,’ I say. It’s hard to imagine the weather turning, with the blustery sunshine we’ve got now.
‘Aye,’ Mattie says. ‘The wind’s set to get up. This evening is looking quare bad. There’s a big one brewing out to sea.’
‘A storm?’ I say, surprised. ‘I thought it was just a little wind.’
He gives me a look that tells me just what he thinks of such Dubliner naïveté – however long we’ve been here, Freddy and I, we’ll forever be the newcomers. ‘You don’t need some forecast fella sitting in a studio in Galway City to tell you,’ he says. ‘Use your eyes.’
He points and I follow his finger to a stain of darkness, far out, upon the horizon. I’m no seaman, like Mattie, but even I can see that it doesn’t look good.
‘There it is,’ Mattie says triumphantly. ‘There’s your storm.’
