We present an extract from Assembling Ailish, the debut novel by Sharon Guard.
Ailish McCarthy is not doing well. Outwardly successful – career, beautiful home, wealthy husband, two daughters reared and on the cusp of their own lives– inwardly she is crumbling. Under the guidance of her therapist, Ailish begins the process of examining her previous selves.
In this extract, preparations for her cousin Sarah and Michael's wedding are underway. Ailish does not want to be there, firstly because she still has feelings for Michael and secondly because she is worried how her mother Barbara might embarrass herself and the family...
We arrive to an infestation of Elena’s people, the farmhouse in fiesta mode, the feel of it foreign, changed. The wedding, New Year’s Eve, is two days away, but the party is already flying, the kitchen brimful of loud jabbering Spaniards, bloated from Christmas, jostling with over-pronounced vowels and angsty hands. Puffs of Channel and Paco Rabanne and primary colours. Glitz and glorified tendrils of hair, women and men equally polished and buffed. The pungent whiff of loosened social norms.
'Ailish, chica, you’ve met my sister Penelope?’ Elena says.
Penelope, a younger and even more beautiful version of Elena, comes complete with a clatter of offspring, early versions of my cousins, who will be flower children. They mope, huddled in jumpers, complaining bitterly of the cold. The smallest, Theodora, four, maybe five, takes a shy shine to me.
I’m having none of it.
‘Ailish isn’t used to children,’ my mother says. Apologetically. As if this is a mere by-the-by, a shallow lifestyle choice.
Barbara is sparkly high, an aura of anxiety I picture wrought into finely woven threads of glass. Frank and I exchange wary glances, keep an eye on where she is, watch for an off-beat, alert to what she is saying. What she is drinking. She’s not a big drinker. A badly timed glass of wine could do for her, awaken carefully nurtured slights, erode the fragile mortar holding her together, turn the carefully curated tableau to dust.
We are staying in the farmhouse, Elena’s cousin José and his family have been ejected especially to accommodate us, doubtless resulting in a lot of enthusiastic Mediterranean bitching, which my mother is oblivious to. Would be even if she spoke their language.
‘We were so sorry we couldn’t make it for Christmas,’ she says.
To anybody not quick enough to escape her.
‘But Ailish’s boyfriend, Gerry, his mother and father, they were having us over for St Stephen’s Day. Huge big affair. They live on Aylesbury Road, you know. Charlie was there.’
This last an octave lower, her mouth action over-pronounced. As if imparting dangerous information. As if they might be impressed. Know that ‘Charlie’ is the Taoiseach. Know, even, what a taoiseach is. A hopeful validation of me, her, an unnecessary trinket to underscore the desirability of our presence.
‘It’s all about degrees of connection in Ireland, don’t you know,’ I say apologetically. Raise my eyebrows in an attempt to disown her.
I’m in my usual room. But it is a room I have not usually been in for years now. A ghost of child-me sits on the bed playing with her Barbies. Dressing them and fixing their hair:s the blonde, an aspirational future Ailish, the dark-haired one, maybe, Sarah. A strappy, spotty, summer dress for me, neat hair tied back. A single strand of plait, an off-the-shoulder top and skirt, for her. The pair of them heading into the world, young women on the cusp, living independently in a kitchen crafted from cardboard, a bed made from a book. Working, glamorously, in offices. Dating. A Hawaiian-shirt-clad Ken and Joe’s discarded Action Man. Hanging out together, telling each other all our secrets. Wordless play in the hours when I could legitimately hide here, hide in my head, the pressure to mingle and be seen relieved because adults were busy.
I sit on the familiar bedspread, the patches and threads of it hurtling me back in time. It is rumoured to have been made by my grandmother’s mother, coveted in my childhood by my own mother, designated a family heirloom, morally hers. When the time came to claim it, she didn’t have the energy, couldn’t place it in our three-bed semi. Too rustic. She cast it aside and gave focus to the bigger insult, the fate of the farm. Memories of lying here, after my grandmother died. My mother’s compound and complex grief. Her ill-hid disappointment.
‘Five thousand pounds?’
‘You knew Brendan was inheriting the farm.’ my father said.
‘But a lousy five thousand pounds? And Sarah and Louisa get my grandmother’s rings? Ailish gets a watch? I’m the eldest, Frank. It’s not fair.’
But that was Before. Barbara Before cared about such things. Barbara Before was an Innocent, a victim of cruel circumstance, robbed of inheritance because of her gender, robbed of her babies by a body that refused its biological imperative, robbed of the comfortable middle-class life she thought she was entitled to by a feckless and ineffectual husband. A straightforward narrative. Black and white. Wrong and right.
Barbara now is Barbara After. Barbara After lives in a world of mist and grey edges. Barbara After is a Sinner. Hoist by her own petard. Has committed, in her own opinion, through an act of procurement, the ultimate evil. The termination of a life. It’s a story she cannot own on any conscious level. A story her subconscious rails against. She blames me, loves me, hates me, sees me as a prodigal. Her job to ensure I achieve atonement. Reparation. When she kneels in church and prays, her reptile brain feverishly negotiates a deal with her God. If she can deliver me to him whole, chastened, repentant, then maybe we will both be saved.
Of course, this is conjecture. But.I think I’m not wrong. However.
It’s wearing thin on me. This mantle of shame.
Assembling Ailish is published by Poolbeg
