A Few of the Girls: Stories

by Maeve Binchy

  The children wanted Louise Mitchell too, the one who writes those so-called historical sagas. For once I saw eye to eye with the principal that they were, in fact, pornography. I wondered, was I becoming more conservative or was the principal becoming more aware of the world? We did have Maxwell Lawrie at the school, the creator of Vladimir Klein, Master Spy. He was marvelous with children, told them how to write spy books and thrillers by beginning on the last page and working it out from there. It was like a problem, he said, just see who couldn’t have done it and eliminate them and then find an improbable motive for who could have done it and start at the beginning.

  He stayed for coffee in the staff room and he seemed to be giving me the eye a bit. Said that he’d like ten children at least, wouldn’t I? I say yes, I agreed totally, might as well have a brood: they’d be company for each other and more fun, but if we were going to do it we’d better set about it fairly soon. He suggested that night. I think he was ninety percent joking. Fenella said he was sick, and it would have been madness to get involved before my wounds were healed. It was funny, that was when I realized that my wounds had healed. I rarely thought of John now, and that Maxwell Lawrie—which wasn’t his real name at all, he was Cyril Biggs—he did seem interesting. I didn’t think his approach was sick, I thought it was jokey. It was just a way of speaking. I mean, I’m twenty-eight and he is a great deal more; you don’t say things like “would you come on a date with me?” when you get to our stage. Do you? You make jokes about having to start soon to create ten people or whatever. Fenella’s lips were pursed. I let it go. I didn’t want to upset her.

  Cyril had told me that we should have Mavis Ormitage to talk at the school. A wonderful woman, he said, she is enormous, wears white just to make herself look a little larger still, people used to call her Moby Dick. She wrote true romances, hundreds of them, Cyril knew her because they met every summer at a writers’ school. She had a real gift in talking about life, made it all seem quite simple and easy to handle, somehow, and a great laugh like a roll of drums to go with it. I had thought that the principal mightn’t go for the Queen of the True as she was called. Cyril said he’d have a word; it was easy to make a superficial decision without meeting the person. Mavis would be good for those kids about to set out on Life—she knew it all, somehow, without being preachy. That’s why she was such a success. She drove around everywhere in a Land Rover, wearing a white raincoat and a white lifeboat man’s hat when it rained. She kept her books in plastic bags because she liked open cars and the feel of rain on her face. That sort of thing had to be helpful to children, Cyril said.

  Fenella knew Mavis Ormitage. I couldn’t believe it. In a city of twelve million people, she had known two people that I had come across too. And Mavis wasn’t even a client. Fenella said that there was no way her sort of writing would translate—it was amazing enough that it sold here.

  No, Fenella had met Mavis Ormitage in real life, oh, it must be about five years ago now. She had a daughter who was totally incapacitated and she had given her life to this girl. Well, she wasn’t a girl; she was a woman. The daughter must have been in her forties when Mavis had been forced to put her into a hospital. Fenella had a friend, Ruth, who worked in the hospital.

  I had never heard of Ruth.

  “Where is she now? Ruth, I mean.”

  Fenella had no idea. Ruth had been very depressed in those days—she had this really diabolical mother, talk of the mother in Open Windows! This one dressed like a teenager and was totally pathetic, going around accosting men in the street. Poor Ruth had been very low indeed, but in order to drag herself out of it she had taken up voluntary work in the hospital. And by chance Ruth had been to a writers’ course that Mavis Ormitage had been lecturing at, must have been the same one as that Cyril.

  I felt Fenella disapproved of that Cyril. And Mavis. And in some way her friend Ruth.

  Anyway, it was all very briefly told. Fenella didn’t ever go into much detail about herself. But Mavis recognized Ruth, who was working taking round trolleys of books and magazines, and they all used to talk in the hospital corridors and in the canteen and in the nice big garden of the hospital. I could see it very well. Mavis talking about her dying daughter and Ruth telling of the mad, groping mother. Both of them leaning on Fenella’s interest, her phenomenal memory for the minutiae of their stories.

  “Those were good days,” Fenella said. “We had good conversations under a tree in the hospital garden.” Her face looked far away as she thought of the good days, when she heard about the grossness of a mad old woman and the slow lingering death of a disabled girl. I felt a shiver and wished that I had gone out with Cyril Biggs that night.

  It wasn’t a question of procreating ten or indeed any children. He was a funny, self-deprecating kind of man, who didn’t take himself or anyone else seriously. Had I told him about John and Maria, which would have been highly unlikely, he would have dismissed it briefly. He would not have asked what Maria said when she first found out about John and how we had betrayed her.

  Mavis Ormitage was undoubtedly the most talked-of visitor the school had ever known. From the moment she roared up the drive in her open Land Rover and stepped, in billowing silk, into the school hall they loved her. She demanded questions afterwards and only when the school security men said it was time to lock the gates could she be prized away.

  Mavis Ormitage had a small brandy flask and she topped up everyone’s coffee in the staff room. Even the principal seemed enthusiastic about the celebration, something that had never been known. I brought myself to mention Fenella, though it wasn’t easy. For two reasons. It was hard to get Mavis alone for one thing and also, I was almost afraid that it was disloyal. It was like probing a sore tooth: ask about Fenella and I will hear something bad, I thought. Why do I want to hear something bad about a woman who has been so kind to me? Am I looking for an excuse to stop seeing her?

  Mavis had small beady eyes in the middle of all the creases of good-humored flesh.

  “One of the kindest people I ever met,” Mavis said. “At the time. There’s a time for Fenella, like the old psalm says, there’s a time for being born and dying and a time for Fenella.”

  “And when the time is over?” I asked.

  “You’ll know, but Fenella will never know. She is like a doomed ship, always encountering other stricken ships, helping them and then being abandoned by them.”

  It was a bit flowery and it also made me feel guilty.

  I was feeling better now. I didn’t want to talk about John and Maria or not having visited my mother’s grave or sleepless nights or uncaring colleagues. Things were looking up. Only Fenella was looking down.

  “What happened to Ruth?” I wanted to know.

  “Marvelous things,” said Mavis, wobbling with pleasure. “Her mother got heavily involved with three handsome young men from the market—nobody knows which, if any of them, is her lover. She has calmed down totally and is a businesswoman extraordinaire. Ruth met this wonderful man who works in the museum—they’re doing that big dinosaur exhibit, you know, the one that’s getting all the publicity?”

  “And they’re getting married! I saw it in the papers,” I cried excitedly. “They’re going to have the ceremony in the Prehistoric Hall.”

  “She invited Fenella but Ruth knows she won’t get an answer.”

  There was a little silence. I had to speak quickly lest someone take Mavis Ormitage away from me.

  “Was it when you got better, you know, stopped being a stricken ship, that you felt it a bit…”

  “She was a wonderful person for her time,” Mavis repeated.

  “Will I give her your love, say you were asking for her?” I knew it was a hollow kind of thing.

  “No, no. Wiser not. Anyway, the ocean is full of stricken ships, you’ll discover that later…I mean, before me there was that marvelous woman who wrote Open Windows, who had that devil of a mother, and then there was Ruth and then there was me, and between me and you
there were plenty.”

  —

  A few weeks later, the phone rang and I hoped it was Cyril, but my heart sank when it was Fenella. I listened to the message.

  “Oppressive day today, I suppose it’s brought you down,” she said.

  Then I deleted the recording.

  I remembered something Mavis Ormitage said to the principal about her answering machine. “You can’t get brought down by a recorded voice on a machine, like you can by a live voice. A voice whose time is past.”

  The principal had nodded vaguely and confusedly, unaccustomed to the tot of brandy in the coffee. But I knew now what Mavis had meant. And anyway, Cyril said he loved leaving messages on machines. It made him feel inventive, creative, and even, when the mood called for it, it made him feel loving.

  Giving Up Men

  When Eileen decided to give up men she did it in style. She was also going to give up her home, her country, and her job, she said. Her friend Katy thought that this was very extreme.

  “You could still give up men here and keep teaching,” she said.

  Eileen was adamant. No, the school was full of danger. This was the second father she had fallen in love with. The second rat that had promised the moon and delivered nothing at all. No, she must get well away from deceiving fathers who pretended to be serious about the parent-teacher association and then suggested wine bars.

  “Couldn’t you change your job and still stay in Ireland?” Katy begged.

  No, apparently the whole country was filled with villainous men who would be her undoing.

  “Where are you going to go?” Katy would miss her friend dreadfully and she also had this dark foreboding that wherever Eileen went she would, like a heat-seeking missile, find the rat and the bounder waiting for her. It was more a question of changing attitudes than locale, but there was no persuading her.

  “I’m going to Scotland,” Eileen said triumphantly. “Tomorrow!”

  “Scotland?” Katy was dumbfounded. “Who on earth do you know there?”

  “Nobody. That’s the point. I can start afresh.”

  Eileen’s eyes were shining. She looked like a child instead of a teacher. No one would have thought she was twenty-six. She looked like a typical illustration for a brochure about Ireland with the freckles on her nose and the long, red curly hair.

  “And what part of Scotland?” Katy was resigned now.

  “Which is nearer, Glasgow or Edinburgh? One of them is on this side.”

  “Glasgow’s on this side.” Katy felt the outing was doomed.

  “That’s where I’ll go then. I’ll get on the boat from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead tomorrow.”

  “That’s Wales, you fool!” Katy said.

  “I’ll take a train up the map.”

  “You could go up the map here to Northern Ireland and take a boat straight over to Stranraer—that is, if you’re set on going.”

  “I am set on going, and I daren’t risk any more journeys in Ireland. It would be safer to get off the island as quickly as possible.”

  “Why Scotland? Just tell me that so that I’ll know in my old age when people ask me whatever happened to you.”

  “They always seem reliable, practical, down-to-earth when you see them being interviewed about anything on television.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t understand a word they say any more than I can.” Katy was outraged to lose her friend on such a frail premise.

  “I can understand a lot of it—and anyway, it’s probably better if I don’t.”

  “Don’t walk out on your job, Eileen, you’ll never be employed again.”

  “I’m not walking out. I’ve found them a substitute. She’s better than I am. What I’m doing is a favor for everyone, including myself. I’ve got to mix with sensible, taciturn people who say aye instead of coming out with a stream of romantic baloney that would break your heart. A year or two of nice morose ayes will see me right.”

  Katy looked at her friend sadly. She knew that somewhere in Glasgow at this moment there was a romantic, kilt-wearing knave waiting to promise Eileen the earth and the heavens. She assumed that Eileen would probably meet him as soon as she got off the train.

  Eileen’s letters were a surprise. There seemed to be no Jock or Andy or Alastair creeping out of the Scottish woodwork plotting her downfall. Not a Jimmy or a Sandy had sworn that he was going to leave his wife for her. Instead there were tales of job hunting and outings to Loch Lomond and excursions to castles where Mary, Queen of Scots, had lived. Scotland was full of scenery, apparently. Katy read this bitterly, thinking that Ireland had its fair share of mountains, rivers, and lakes, but she had never been able to drag her friend Eileen from the wine bars and the secret and doomed assignations to see any of it.

  Eileen had worked in a supermarket, at a gas station, and was now in a bookshop. She had found a bedsitter in a house with quite a lot of people in it, but obviously because some of them were men she just kept her eyes down and shouted “Aye” at them if they began to speak.

  It was mostly women in the bookshop, and she kept conversations with the customers strictly on the subject of books. Oddly, some of them found her accent a bit hard to understand, which was hilarious since Eileen didn’t speak with any accent, she wrote cheerfully. She spoke perfectly normally.

  Reluctantly, Katy began to believe that her friend Eileen had made the right move. Perhaps the sudden change of environment had been just what she needed to shake her out of the Romantic Distressed Heroine role she had managed to get fixed in while she was in Dublin. It needn’t have been Scotland. It could have been Chicago or Birmingham. She just had to break the spiral.

  Perhaps one day she might feel really cured and come home. Katy hoped so. She missed her redheaded friend and all her madcap adventures. Katy would love to have had her around to talk about the new man in her own life. Michael, he was called—very, very nice, honest, trustworthy, no hidden wife and kids. No false promises. But Katy didn’t really feel it would be kind and tactful to talk of love. Not when Eileen was so busy curing herself of it. It would be like dangling a martini in front of an alcoholic, or blowing cigarette smoke up the nose of anyone trying to give up smoking. No, she would keep quiet for a while about Michael. And if there was anything dramatic to tell, which there well might be, then she would go over to Scotland and tell her friend all about it personally.

  As it happened, it was Michael who went to Scotland first. Katy had debated going too, but then she wasn’t a serious rugby follower, and in a way it looked a bit silly to go as a hanger-on. She thought it would be more mature to let him go on his own with the lads.

  Murrayfield was a great outing, Michael said. They always loved the years when Ireland played in Cardiff Arms Park and in Murrayfield. Two great weekends—win, lose, or draw. So Katy thought she would not try to intrude into his culture, his traditions. But it seemed a long, lonely weekend while he was gone. Katy hadn’t realized how fond she had grown of this man.

  She found the time hanging heavily on her hands, and she wrote a long, long letter to her friend. She knew that Eileen would not be in Edinburgh. Apart from anything else the thought of so many Irish deceivers arriving on package deals would keep her firmly where she was. Katy wrote about how great it was to have discovered real love at last. She said that she hadn’t intended to tell it all, but there was something about the fact that her true love and her dear best friend were in the same land that made her want to write.

  Michael didn’t ring on Monday when he got back, but Katy didn’t mind because the plane was probably late and he had to rush to work. She was startled, however, when he didn’t phone on Monday evening. By Tuesday she was really alarmed and rang him at work. He was with a client, Katy was told. She had never been told that before when she rang the solicitor’s office. She had always been put through, even for a couple of seconds.

  On Tuesday night she called to his flat, and his flatmate said that he had been called away but would definitely be
getting in touch with her on Wednesday.

  Hurt and frightened, Katy went home. She hardly slept that night and had a headache on the Wednesday morning when she went to pick up the letter on the mat from her friend Eileen.

  Katy sat on the stairs and read how Eileen had gone suddenly to the great match. She had got a ticket at the last moment and it seemed a waste not to go. She had met this really nice guy.

  Now Katy was not to think, Oh dear, here we go again. This man was truly different. He had been very up-front. He did have a sort of relationship going on in Dublin and he was going to sort it out with the girl there. No lies, no double-dealing. He was a solicitor, after all. He was called Michael.

  Oh, please believe that this is the real thing, Eileen begged her friend in closely written pages. This time at last it was going to work out.

  And as Katy sat on the stairs and her own life seemed to end, she knew that for Eileen, who had never liked rugby, who had said that solicitors were dull, it very arguably was the Real Thing at last.

  Living Well

  When I heard that he had left my friend Orla, I began to panic. She loved him so much, trusted him, believed everything he said.

  You couldn’t tell Orla that Eddie was a man who moved on. She would say that, of course, that had been the way in the past, but not now. Now he had found what he had been looking for everywhere—and thank the Lord he had gone on looking until he eventually found her.

  He had moved into her flat four years ago. With all his gear. They made the spare guest bedroom into a dressing room—nobody had as many clothes as Eddie. Orla got a carpenter to make a big closet, with a hanging rail the length of the room and a little angled shelf for his shoes. She had an ironing board in this room and a full-length mirror so that he could admire himself.