Aisling Gayle Read Free Page B

blonde hair draped in front of her face, and concentrated on taking the brown-paper wrapping off her sandwiches.
    Then, thankfully, one of the other teachers chipped in. “Sure, Oliver Gayle has no worries. Aisling will be well chaperoned. Isn’t she being accompanied by her parents? You can’t get safer than that.”
    Everyone laughed, and Aisling was relieved and grateful when the conversation drifted away from Oliver to the travel details of her trip.
    It made her angry and resentful, the way that her marriage had tainted other parts of her life. Her social life was often filled with awkward moments, with people suddenly announcing that they had seen him here and there. Places she never knew he had been. It was worse when she was out with Pauline, or one of her close friends who knew all about his other women, for the evening would be completely spoiled. Harmless evenings at concerts in church halls and more exciting evenings at dances – all spoiled – just waiting on someone dropping a little nugget of information that they knew about her husband. Information she would never know about her husband if it weren’t for strangers and friends telling her.
    This was what she had become used to. This was married life with Oliver Gayle.
    Aisling had been through all the ups and downs of marriage to Oliver with her sister Pauline and her closest friend Carmel. She knew that at times they thought she was an awful fool for putting up with him, but after all their advice on the ultimatums she should give Oliver and the threats she should make, they always arrived back at where they started. Of course she should leave Oliver – but that was only in theory. Where would she go? And what about her family and the Church? And maybe the rumours were only rumours, and that it was just a kind of flirtation he had with women rather then anything that serious. And then it was back to the beginning again.
    Because women like Aisling Gayle never left their husbands.
    Women like Aisling Gayle didn’t do lots of things. Admittedly, things were not as bad as a few years ago, when married women weren’t even allowed to work in certain jobs. Aisling watched her sister struggle in a country that was a long way off approving of single mothers. She watched the curvaceous, pretty Pauline having to explain to boyfriends and prospective boyfriends about little Bernadette. None of them lingered around long, for if they didn’t mind the situation themselves, then their mothers certainly did. None of the older women were prepared to become mothers-in-law to a fallen girl. And her pretty face cut no sway with them either.
    Aisling’s best friend Carmel was a teacher in the local secondary school. She was thirty next year and still single. She was a slim, vivacious, dark-haired girl who had missed her chance ten years ago. A local hotel-owner had set his cap at her, and Carmel had not been ready. After ‘doing a line’ with the steady, but predictable Seamus Donnelly for three years, she took fright at the thoughts of never having another boyfriend. Of never knowing any other man hold her, or kiss her – or do more exciting things to her.
    She took to her heels to her uncle’s in London, and stayed there for two breathtaking, exciting years. During which time she met several men – very attractive and very interesting – but none of whom were suitable, marriageable material. Well, not marriageable material for Carmel. In fact, she discovered almost too late, that one of them was already married. When she came back, Seamus Donnelly was engaged, and they were hanging up the bunting outside the hotel for his wedding to a more sensible, local girl.
    A girl who knew a good thing when she saw it.
    “The thing is,” Carmel often told Aisling, “I thought I would get better. I thought there was someone out there more suitable for me. Somebody exciting and really interesting . . . but I was wrong. Now all the half-decent local fellows are married.”