Don’t You Forget About Me. Mhairi McFarlane

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       8

      I’m hugely enjoying something I didn’t expect to enjoy whatsoever, so the sense of enjoyment is potent – two and half times the strength of a scheduled pleasure. And I’m being paid.

      In my defence, everyone here seems to be having fun. The music is blaring, the conversation is near-deafening but always good spirited, and everyone I encounter is polite, no matter how trolleyed.

      Dan’s wake would surely have made Cousin Janet’s do look like a Quaker meeting, and I wish I’d met him, although I might’ve felt conflicted serving him drinks.

      Devlin gave a short speech, during which tears rolled down his cheeks, about how much Dan hated grim-faced memorials.

      ‘He has absolved you from the guilt of still being here without him, and asks you celebrate the fact instead. Which was Dan in a nutshell. To Dan,’ he toasted.

      ‘To Dan,’ everyone said, as arms went up, and I felt my eyes well as I raised my glass and wiped my face with my apron.

      Devlin said to me in the first hour: ‘Have one on the go for yourself throughout, won’t you? As long as you can see straight, it’s only fair and decent. Help yourself to the buffet too.’

      I pour myself a champagne and barely get a chance to sniff it, but it’s that satisfying-to-the-soul sort of busy where the clock leaps forward rather than crawls and I get a glow from everyone being properly looked after, as if it’s my personal largesse I’m dispensing.

      Devlin’s wife, Mo – ‘You’ll know her if you see her. She’s short, bleached blonde and will be giving me shit’ – keeps me stocked up with fruit and ice and otherwise I run the show single-handed.

      I remember something I’d forgotten in the trenches of That’s Amore! – I’m a good worker. Having served a hundred of them in two hours, I can now draw you a shamrock in a Guinness foam with a flick of the wrist under the tap, while pushing an optic with the other.

      As the crowd thins out, the middle of the space turns into a dancefloor.

      I find a crate of fizz that’s been lost in the melee and mention it to a flushed and expansive Devlin.

      ‘Call me Dev! I am only ever Devlin to my mother and the police. Thanks for letting me know.’

      He taps a flute with a fork.

      ‘If I can have your attention! Our wonderful barmaid has found more of the Moët. I always say, get the decent stuff out once the riff-raff have gone home. Let’s all have another glass and toast dear Dan.’

      A roar.

      ‘And while we’re at it, a round of applause for Georgina and her tireless efforts tonight.’

      Devlin points at me, everyone claps and whistles and I blush and think: well, at least Esther’s going to have no cause to mither that I’ve made Mark look bad.

      As the night wears on, I’m exhilarated, I feel I’m half Gaelic now, in a superficial and appropriative way – like Rose in that bit in Titanic where she can somehow blend seamlessly into the revelry below decks by hitching up her skirts and dancing a jig to a tin whistle.

      As I assemble a cluster of goblets and start doling out the second wave of champagne, I become aware of a man who’s walked in to the party, with a portly, sandy-coloured dog in tow.

      He’s tall and dark in a navy jacket with its collar turned up. He has curling, jet black hair, just long enough to scrape behind his ear. I realise what’s drawn my gaze is that he’s not greeting anyone or joining in, but doing a studied, sulky performance of ‘brooding’, a modern disco’s answer to Mr Darcy at a ball.

      These rowdy, twenty-first century commoners are swaying to Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ while he stares into the middle distance.

      I get a funny feeling, watching him watch the room through the throng of people who keep blocking my view: should he even be here? Usually if you walk in alone you’re trying to get someone’s attention to announce your arrival? And why turn up this late to a wake anyway? Is he the wake version of a wedding crasher? But why would you make yourself conspicuous by bringing a dog? No. He must belong. I wonder what his story is, if he was close to Dan and can’t quite stomach the disrespectful raucousness.

      His eyes move toward me and I quickly busy myself.

      Ooh, Blondie’s ‘Atomic’. I dance a little while I tidy the bar.

      ‘Excuse me, blondie?’

      I turn and laugh. Devlin beckons me over at the side of the bar and offers me a wad of notes.

      ‘You’ve been absolutely solid tonight, can’t thank you enough.’

      I thank him and say honestly it’s been my pleasure and then flinch at the inappropriate phrasing when we’re marking a hideously premature death.

      ‘Listen. I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing over who to hire to run the bar full time because I hate interviews and CVs and that bollocks, I’d far rather meet someone and work with them. Get a sense of what they’re about. But holding auditions didn’t seem fair. How about if this was one, in retrospect? Would you be interested?’

      ‘Yes!’ I say. Then, with less windy desperation, more determination: ‘I’d be very very interested, thank you.’

      ‘Great. I’ve got to sign it off with my brother but it shouldn’t be a problem.’

      As hope surges, I remind myself that job offers made verbally when three sheets to the wind are not binding.

      Devlin СКАЧАТЬ