‘Why didn’t you ever get married, John Joe?’ she demanded.
More shrugs, more gentle smiles.
‘I s’pose I just never got round to it,’ he said.
‘Did you ever have a girlfriend, John Joe?’
‘Yerra, I might have had one or two,’ he admitted.
‘Was it ever serious?’
‘Sure, it was and it wasn’t.’ John Joe shrugged. (Again!)
He was starting to irritate me now. Couldn’t he just tell Josephine why he hadn’t got married. There was bound to be a good Irish economic explanation. Perhaps the farm wouldn’t have been viable if it was divided between him and his brother, or he had to wait until his mother died before he could marry his sweetheart because he couldn’t have two red-headed women under the one (thatched) roof. (This one seemed to be a common problem in rural Ireland, cropping up again and again in agrarian folklore. I had spent a summer in Galway once, I knew about these things.)
On and on whittled Josephine, asking questions that were ever more brazen. ‘Were you ever in love?’
And finally she asked ‘Did you ever lose your virginity?’
There was a collective intake of breath. How could she ask such a thing?
And was there really a chance that he hadn’t?
A man of his age?
But John Joe wasn’t telling. He gazed steadfastly at his boots.
‘Let me put it another way,’ Josephine pressed on. ‘Did you ever lose your virginity to a woman?’
What was she implying? That John Joe had lost his virginity to a sheep?
John Joe sat as if made of stone.
The rest of us were much the same. I held my breath.
The voyeuristic thrill was nearly cancelled out by the feeling that I was trespassing. The silence stretched on for ever. Until eventually Josephine said ‘Right, time’s up.’
The disappointment was huge. How awful to be kept hanging on a thread. It was like a soap opera only worse, because it was real.
As we all filed out my head was racing. I caught up with Mike.
‘What was that all about?’
‘God knows.’
‘When will we find out?’
‘We’ve got group again on Monday.’
‘Oh no! I can’t wait’
‘Look.’ He sounded annoyed. ‘It mightn’t mean anything. It’s just a ploy. Josephine asks all kinds of questions in the hope that one of them touches a nerve. She casts her nets widely.’
But I wasn’t buying it. I was used to the dénouement of soap operas.
‘Oh come on…’ I said scornfully, but I was talking to the air. I was annoyed to find that Mike had gone over to John Joe who looked shocked and shaken.
11
Now what happens? I wondered eagerly. Now do we go for the massages? I watched the others intently, anticipation zinging my nerve endings, to see where they were going. Down the corridor, round the corner and… oh no!… back to the dining-room. Everyone from Josephine’s group and the other groups poured in and commenced to drink tea, talk loudly and smoke cigarettes with gusto. Maybe they were just having a quick cup before rushing to their session in the sauna? Maybe.
I sat down, perched on the edge of my chair, and refused a cup of tea. I didn’t want to be dying to go to the loo during my aromatherapy session. My eyes darted anxiously from one cup of tea to another. Come on, I urged silently, drink them quickly! Otherwise, it’ll be dinner time and we won’t have long enough for a massage worth talking about. But the tea was consumed with excruciating slowness. I felt like frantically grabbing the cups and drinking it for them.
Then, as they drained the dregs in unbearably relaxed fashion, I was aghast to see them languidly pick up a teapot and pour a second cup which they sipped with lazy enjoyment.
OK, I reasoned nervously, maybe after the second cup?
But as the minutes ticked by and the second cups were sipped and cigarettes were lit and then, the dreaded third cups were poured, I reluctantly admitted that they all looked as if they’d settled in for a long stay. Maybe after tea was when it all happened?
Of course, I could just ask someone and find out for sure.
But somehow I wasn’t able to.
Perhaps I was afraid that the ordinary clients like Mike and John Joe would think I was shallow if I seemed too concerned with the luxury treatments or where the celebrities were housed? In fact, I realized, they were probably expecting me to ask about them. They were probably sick of people arriving and saying dismissively ‘Get out of my way, I’m off to sit in the seaweed bath with the likes of Hurricane Higgins.’
Well, I’d pretend that I was perfectly happy to sit and drink tea with them for all eternity. That way they were bound to like me. I’d be here for two months, I calmed myself, plenty of time.
I looked around the table. They were still at it, heaping spoonfuls of sugar into cups and knocking back tea and remarking on how nice it was. How sad for them.
‘Don’t you smoke?’ asked a man’s voice. I was alarmed to discover that it belonged to Vincent, Mr Angry.
‘No,’ I said nervously. At least, not cigarettes.
‘Given up, have you?’ He moved closer to me.
‘Never started.’ I shrank back. Oh, how I wished he would go away! I didn’t want to be friends with him. He scared me, with his black beard and his big teeth. Lupine, that was the word to describe him, if lupine meant wolf like.
‘You’ll be on sixty a day by the time you leave here,’ he promised me with a nasty grin and a whiff of BO. (‘Oh Vincent, what a big smell you’ve got.’)
I looked around for Mike to protect me but there was no sign of him.
I turned my back on Vincent as much as I could without seeming rude and found myself face to face with strange Clarence. Out of the frying pan into the fire. Although I was afraid there would be a repeat of the hair-stroking incident, I reluctantly spoke to him.
I suddenly realized that I’d been there a whole afternoon and the thought of a drug hadn’t even crossed my mind. Hadn’t even occurred to me! Which gave me a warm, self-satisfied glow which lasted while I had a succession of identical conversations with nearly every man in the place. They all wanted to corner me and find out everything about me. All except the good-looking one I’d seen at the lunch table. Because I would have actually liked to talk to him, he totally ignored me.
Well, to be fair, he wasn’t even in the room.