Four Takeaways and a Funeral

2. Sloe Gin

Chapter Two

Sloe Gin

One man’s meat is another woman’s cake.

After closing the post office, Mavis followed me home and proceeded to tuck into my sloe gin with relish. We were sitting by the Bag Lady’s campfire with Sheryl, the Bag Lady, and her greatest pal, Betty. Mavis was on a downer and seemed to think that sloe gin was the answer, while Sheryl, also tucking into the sloe gin, talked about her wedding. Sheryl was trying to cheer Mavis up, although how she thought gloating about her wedding would help I have no idea.

With a glowing face and “Steven” in every sentence, Sheryl described what we had already heard. A two-day honeymoon in a one-berth caravan. Campbell had given them the use of his caravan at the back of one of his fields and, according to “the wife,” they didn’t emerge once. Even I found it a bit much, despite being heavy-handed with the gin.

“Steven had organised it all,” said Sheryl.

“Hurrah for Steven,” muttered Mavis.

“Two days on cake and bubbly,” said Sheryl. She laughed. “It was the best.”

“That’s love for you,” huffed Mavis, poking at the fire.

“We walked along the beach, staring at the sheep, and that’s when it hit me.”

“Please don’t talk about vegetarianism again,” said Betty. “Shifty’s cooking steak.” She sighed.

Shifty, Betty’s son, periodically cooked her rare meat, usually after a row, and he was feeling guilty. Betty’s slim legs had him worried about her bones and he believed all things red and bloody would build her up. Betty downed her drink as Sheryl continued to talk, then topped up everyone’s glasses – except Sheryl’s.

“A caravan?” I said to Mavis. “Is that what you want? A honeymoon in a tin can with a shower the size of a dog kennel, that rocks with every move…”

Sheryl glared at me.

“…surrounded by sheep droppings?”

“Essentially no,” muttered Mavis. “Just, the spirit of it all – the romance; the intimacy…”

“In a caravan?” said the Bag Lady.

Sheryl glared at the Bag Lady.

“Well no…”

Mavis downed her drink. “Of course mum doesn’t help, Lumpy can do no wrong in her eyes. She thinks a bring-your-own-bottle in the community centre is a great way to get hitched. I mean the playgroups met there – I’d be better off with sheep droppings.”

“There weren’t that many sheep droppings,” muttered Sheryl.

Mavis looked at her empty glass. “Mum says I should be grateful for anything at my age.”

“You’re lucky,” said Sheryl. “My mum sulked for days. I think she was annoyed she wasn’t there. I told her that as it was on a beach, I would have had to build a ramp for her wheelchair. Then I would need to ask my sister to take her, who’d ruin everything. And then Steven would have to ask his family, who’d ruin whatever my sister had missed. Then we would have to accept Campbell’s half a sheep, which would mean I would have to return some DIY favour to Campbell wife, who would completely milk it and I would be working my arse off for the next six months.”

Sheryl looked from one face to another. “And where’s the romance in all that?”

“Exactly,” said Mavis.

“When I got married there was no one,” said Betty. “It was so small we had it at McDonald’s – a Big Mac followed by a McFlurry, and did I complain?”

No one took her seriously.

“No, because he was doing his best.”

I poured another drink as Betty talked about a robust man who wore jeans like they were painted on and “swanked about the placed.” Apparently, women loved him. It was all to do with an unbuttoned shirt and chest hair. And, of course, nothing like the man she married…I’d seen the photos.

Betty stared at the fire and smiled to herself. “It was back in the seventies,” she said, “when men were hairy and proud of it.”

Mavis sighed. Usually she was the first in with a “you’re talking through your arse” comment, but not this time. She looked at Sheryl.

“Lumpy says that he wished all women were like you.”

I, missing the point completely and thinking Mavis was talking about Sheryl’s outfit, told Mavis that yellow was not her colour.

Mavis called me superficial.

“You don’t get the point,” she said. “It’s not about Sheryl’s lemon, it’s about agreeing. Lumpy thinks that Sheryl agrees with Steven all the time, and when I tell him it is only half the time because they compromise, he gets all uppity. ‘Like I do with you,’ he says.” Mavis snorted. “As if!”

“One person’s compromise is another’s giving in,” said the Bag Lady.

“I told him I wanted a fine dining experience,” said Mavis. “He said fine dining was his idea of hell – not fun.” Mavis looked at her fingers. “Apparently eating a curry with your hands is.”

“Some say you get the true taste of a curry that way,” said the Bag Lady.

Betty dribbled a smidgen of sloe gin in Mavis’s glass.

“He’s come up with this stupid idea of sitting on the floor eating curry. No presents, just joss sticks and scattered rose petals.”

She tossed the twig into the fire with a weak smile. “His family thinks it’s a great idea. Well, I told him,” said Mavis, “Lumpy, I said, fun is a three-letter word, and there are two in a marriage.”

We all looked at her.

“Lumpy then said, two meaning you and you—not me.” She sighed. “…and that’s when I called him pedantic.”

Mavis sort of killed the evening after that.

The Bag Lady slipped into her tent with a curt zipping-up, while Sheryl with an “I give up” look called Steven for a lift.

I watched Mavis look as downcast as a sunset in the rain. She had been so excited when Lumpy proposed six months ago. Now she looked as miserable as the days before she discovered belly dancing.