by Maeve Binchy
She wrote one letter home. Early in that next year, in the spring of 1963. She said that they had been married in a Catholic church and that they had used her twelve hundred pounds to buy a share of a small corner shop. They thought the business should be very good.
They were both prepared to work long hours, and this was how you built up good trade in a neighborhood like this. She said she had nothing more to say, and she didn’t really expect to hear from them—she thought they had said all they ever wanted to say that last day. But still, Louis had been very keen that she should let them know where she was. Louis sent them cordial wishes. She was merely pleasing him by writing this once.
They wrote, they tried to write letters explaining what had been done was done with the best motives. Nessa wrote and told her about the visit of President Kennedy and how they had all gone on the excursion to see him. Seamus wrote and said it was a bit dead at home now, and you’d sort of feel sorry for the old fella. But Mary never wrote back.
Once, when she was combing her hair, Louis said she should look in the mirror. “Look at yourself in the mirror, there’s a bit sticking up there,” he said good-naturedly. Mary had burst into tears. She never looked in the mirror. She was afraid she might see a mare like her father had seen.
When he knew the result of his exploratory operation, Louis wrote to Mary’s parents.
“She is very proud and she feels always that to open up her heart to you is to let me down somehow. She thinks that it’s further loyalty to me if she cuts you out. But when it’s all over I’m sure she’ll need you. Please let her know that this is what I wanted. I’ll leave her a letter myself.”
They had tried to contact him at the hospital, but it was too late. Mary had sent them a black-edged printed card, thanking them for their condolences.
As she had worked for ten years in the little shop as a wife, so she worked ten years as a widow. Other little shops were bought by new immigrants, Pakistanis who were prepared to work equally hard hours, and once or twice an elderly Pakistani had made her a good offer for her little corner business, saying he wanted to set his nephews up in a good trade. That day she remembered that she too had nephews. Nessa had three sons, and Seamus had two. She wondered what they heard of their aunt Mary in London.
The night she forgave her family Mary looked at herself in the mirror. Nearly fifty and she didn’t feel it; perhaps she looked it. She didn’t really know how she looked nowadays. No Louis for many years to admire her, or tell her she was frowning too much, or that she had beautiful big gray eyes. Her father was nearly blind now, and her mother’s yearly letter seemed to imply that he was no longer able to leave the house. Her mother seemed to go to the church even more than she had done all those years ago.
There was a lot of mention of Nessa’s family; she had married the son of the pub owner, which was a good thing to have done. They had three boys and three girls. Nessa had her own car. Not much mention of Seamus. His wife was hardly mentioned at all. Perhaps she had been another Louis in their eyes, a no-good, mad for the Brennan money. The poor Brennan money. It was laughable. Within two years, she and Louis had gathered more than her father had got in his lifetime. But she mustn’t speak like that when she got home.
No, no triumphant tales of how well it had all gone, what a good man Louis had turned out to be, how wrong, how very wrong they had been to say that he was anything less. No, if you forgive, you must forget a lot too.
They had obviously been able to forget too, no words of apology these days. Not since Louis had died, and they had sent her his letter and asked her to come back. Begged her.
Excitedly, she wondered what it would be like. She would stay for a week; young Mr. Patel, who was her assistant in the shop, could easily run the place. His family didn’t celebrate Christmas anyway. She could even stay for two weeks. She wondered where she would sleep. In her old room? She supposed that Nessa would want her to stay in her house too, and she’d make a great effort to go and stay with Seamus and the wife and make a fuss of them. She would be like Santa Claus for all the children—she must look through the letters again to see how old they were. It would be desperate to bring them all the wrong things. Lord, Nessa’s eldest would be seventeen now. A grown man, nearly.
What would he have to say to his aunt, his new aunt—or rather, his old aunt? Her gaiety left her for a moment. What would any of them have to say?
There was a nagging voice that wondered would they like to be forgiven or might it all be a bit too much trouble now? Perhaps they all had their own Christmases planned. Perhaps the priest was coming to lunch on Christmas Day, and old Mrs. Lynch from the shop where Louis had worked. Perhaps Nessa and her fellow had to go to the publican’s people for Christmas. Who knew what Seamus was like now?
She touched her gray hair as she looked in the mirror. She was a stranger to them all. It didn’t really matter whose fault it had been, or who’d said what: the main thing was that they didn’t know her. They didn’t know what her life had been like with Louis; they’d never heard that she and Louis took a train to Rome one year and had picnics with Italians all the time. They didn’t know what her little flat was like here, and how she had made a patchwork quilt and how she had gone on a holiday to an old hotel with a lot of other people who wanted to learn about antiques.
Her mother and father didn’t know that she’d had her gallbladder out three years ago, and that she had given up smoking three times and the last time it seemed to be working. They didn’t know she could make pickles and that she had a friend, Phyllis, whom she went to a show with every week. They would look up the papers and choose what seemed suitable.
They both had the same taste. Phyllis had been going to book them a Christmas lunch in a hotel—she had probably made the booking by now. She would understand, of course. But still…
No, perhaps it would be foolish to rush into it. She might do more harm than good. Perhaps this year she should just pave the way. Send them a card. Let them know that she was holding no more grudges. Yes, that would be the way, and when they wrote and thanked her…then, little by little. And next Christmas…That was it. Not immediately, people don’t like to be forgiven too quickly.
She found a card and put a second-class mail stamp on it. There was still plenty of time—no point in wasting first-class postage. She thought for a while. People mustn’t be rushed.
After a lot of thought she wrote: Seasonal Wishes to one and all. Mary.
She put it on the little table to post early next morning, on her way to the shop. She thought that it would give them all a nice warm glow to know that she had forgiven them, and she was glad that it had happened at Christmastime.
New Year’s Eve and the Garden
They used to have a big New Year’s Eve party every year—sometimes as many people as forty turned up. It was a tradition: “Are you going to the Whites’ on New Year’s Eve?” Well yes, people said, they’d try to drop in or they’d see if they could put in an appearance. There was always the suggestion that something better and more glittering might turn up, but it rarely did. So Mr. and Mrs. White would stand there in the hall, which was covered with holly and Christmas cards, welcoming people every year.
That’s why it was going to be so terrible for her this New Year’s Eve, people said. Imagine that he had gone so quickly, in the whole of his health and never a day sick. The shock alone would be enough to upset her nerves, not to mention the loneliness and trying to get used to life without him.
She had been very calm, Mrs. White, very calm indeed. She said that she was glad he had no long illness, no pain; she said that it did seem sad he wouldn’t live to see his retirement, but she reassured those who sympathized that he was not a man who could bear any kind of discomfort. Perhaps the Lord had been wise to take him before pains and aches set into his joints, before he noticed that his body wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
What should they do about her on New Year’s Eve? friends wondered. It was too soon to co
nsider gaiety and a big noisy party. No, no, something much more restrained. Supper at home around the fire somewhere. But as the day came nearer, nobody had planned anything. After all, for years and years they had never had to think of what to do on New Year’s Eve. There had always been the Whites. The Whites had the streamers, and the bottles of red wine on one table and white wine on another; the Whites had a big buffet and “Auld Lang Syne” at midnight. Nothing had come up yet to replace it.
The Whites had no children, so there wasn’t a nice convenient family where she might have been expected to go. She had cousins in the country where she went for Christmas, but she was due back a day or two afterwards. She would be all alone in that house, unless someone did something.
Freda wondered if they should all go to a hotel, about ten of them, but Freda’s husband said that was madness; it would be artificial and phony, it would cost a fortune, and Mrs. White would still be left at the table without a partner. It would only highlight the fact that she was on her own.
Grace said that maybe they should try to have a New Year’s party instead, but Grace’s husband pointed out that they were no good at entertaining and they didn’t do it often enough to feel relaxed and who would they ask, and should they have people from the office and neighbors, and Grace said she was sorry she had even mentioned it.
Michael, who had been a friend of Mr. White at work, was a bachelor. He wondered if he should ask his friend’s widow out on New Year’s Eve—or would this be tasteless? Perhaps she might think he was trying to step into the shoes, or something. It was so difficult to know the right thing to do. Better say nothing.
—
But as the day got nearer, people began to feel that something must be done. Year after year, they had arrived at that house slightly merry already. Year after year, they had picked up a plate at one end of the table and oohed and aahed over slices of cold turkey and salads and four different desserts. It wasn’t fair that she should sit alone there after all those years of opening up her home to them all. And following on the worry about what Mrs. White would do for New Year’s Eve came their own worry. What would they do?
When the tentative inquiries began, when people asked in hushed tones what she planned to do, Mrs. White knew they wanted to hear that she was going somewhere, that she was going to spend the most emotionally charged night of the year with some friend. But no. She told them simply that she would have a quiet evening on her own. No, she brushed aside their protests, it wasn’t morbid, it wouldn’t be sad—it would be peaceful. Really, thank you. Thank you again, but it was what she wanted to do. They didn’t like it, but she was unyielding, polite but firm.
—
Freda got highlights in her hair so that she would look well at the posh hotel they were going to, but something went wrong with the bleach, and she looked as if she had gone prematurely white after seeing some supernatural happening. She cried and cried and had almost recovered when her son said she looked fine, she looked a bit like Santa Claus, and then she started all over again. Only the thought of poor Mrs. White sitting alone in that house made her pull herself together and count her blessings. “At least it’s not nearly as bad as that,” she said, trying to cover her white, straw-like hair with a festive scarf.
—
Mrs. White was building up a nice fire; she prepared a supper on a tray and drew in a small table beside her.
—
Grace had been stung to the very core of her heart about the aspersions that had been cast on her as a hostess. She had invited three couples to dinner and had been cooking all week. Even on Christmas Day she had not been able to relax properly, thinking of it all. An hour before they were expected, she had spilled a bottle of claret over the beautifully set table. Oh, God, why couldn’t it be like other New Year’s Eves where they all went over to the Whites’? A pang of guilt nearly knocked her down. She threw salt on the red wine in a fury and hoped that it would not be too lonely for that poor woman all on her own.
—
Mrs. White took the books, fourteen of them with their faded blue covers, and rearranged them in the right order. She was going to read them very slowly.
—
Michael, Mr. White’s friend, went to his sister. The house was very warm, the television was on, and his sister’s husband had laid in enough drink for twenty people. Michael looked into the fire while his sister ironed, the television roared, and his brother-in-law opened bottles with a new gadget he got for Christmas. It was very festive, he supposed; at least it was family. Think of the widow on her own…
—
She read only the bits about New Year. In his careful, neat, slanty writing, he had kept a diary every day of his life. “What on earth do you find to write?” she had asked him, mystified, early on. Nothing much happened to them; they were always living days that seemed like other days.
He said he wrote about his thoughts and what he felt. He said she was to have a great time reading them when he was gone—she’d discover then what a complicated old devil he had been.
She had discovered how happy he had been; he had been happy almost all the time. This had given her great strength. He had loved coming home from work. He had written about how it felt on a summer’s evening, coming in and having tea in the kitchen before he went out to the garden.
He had written about the peace of home, about how well she had looked in the green dress, how funny she had been when the Yorkshire pudding had burned and she had thrown it out the window and hit the postman, who was coming up the steps. Little things she had forgotten, little things she had never noticed, realized. It was like seeing a film of their life made by a loving director.
No mention of rows or fights…the worst that ever got written down was a “silly disagreement” and how strange it was that people who were so fond of each other should grope for and find the new words in the language that would hurt. He blamed himself for that silly disagreement, even though Mrs. White knew it had all been her fault.
But tonight she wanted to read the entries about the New Year’s Eve parties. For fourteen years they had been having these gatherings. She thought it was nice for him to see all his friends together—it made up for the fact that they didn’t go around visiting much during the year; it made things a bit lively for him after their quiet Christmas, she had always thought.
She had been wrong; he hated them. She read a catalog of effort and duty and concern. He had gone along only because he thought that they cheered her up. She read one after another, gentle accounts of the getting ready in 1968, of the bad weather, of the year that the roads were icy, of the time when they had made a punch and it had been far too sweet. She read of the fight that Grace had had the year she went home in tears, the time when Michael had cut his hand on a broken glass.
Every New Year’s Day began with the hope that she had enjoyed the party, the belief that she looked more cheerful, and the resolution to give her more fun and let her meet more people. There was relief that it was over for another year; there was delight to be back out in the garden.
Year after year, he spent New Year’s Day in the garden, oiling the handles of the rakes and hoes with linseed oil, ferreting out the little bits of moss from the plant pots, trimming the edge of the grass. It was only a very small garden, but he said, “It’s enough to handle…enough for any one person.”
She hadn’t ever been interested; oh yes, she liked the flowers and the tomatoes, and she admired his work, but she had never even learned the names. She read on about the New Year’s Days when he had shown her the seed catalogs and wondered what they would choose. She had always looked at them briefly and said that he was better at knowing.
There was no blame in the diaries, no sadness. He had accepted that she would never share that. It hadn’t made him love her less. Mrs. White looked around the sitting room, quiet on New Year’s Eve for the first time in fourteen years. She had no regrets: his diaries told a story of a happy man. But she did have a resolution th
at she would build up his garden; she had a manual better than any gardening book…All she had to do was to read his own records, year after year, patient and uncomplaining. She would do what he had done and learn from his mistakes.
Oh yes, he had made mistakes. Way back in the early diaries he had done some forking and digging one day when there was snow on the ground…He learned later that this had been a mistake; he was only forcing the frost down to the roots still further.
She took this year’s diary—which had ended so abruptly in mid-October. She turned to December 31 and began to fill it in. Her writing was bigger; perhaps she should get a larger kind of diary for herself when the shops opened?
The Sensible Celebration
As soon as she had planned the little gathering Lorna felt better. She had written to them all, four couples, their best friends. Nothing tacky like a printed invitation, but a warm handwritten note, saying that they would have a sensible celebration to mark the passing of the last ten years. With all the nonsense and the ballyhoo there was bound to be, Lorna thought that her little celebration would be the one they would all talk about, look back on—and remember.
How like Lorna and George they would say, to have a sensible celebration. Nothing over the top like poor Anne and Kevin did with their theme party, which nobody understood. Nothing vulgar like Doris and Jim had done, with all that game which nobody could eat properly and the dessert with all the liqueur in it that had made everyone feel ever so slightly ill. And then Brian and Hilda had done that frightfully worthy party where they asked everyone to give money for starving children, which had been a teeny bit of a downer since it had made them a bit uneasy about approaching the buffet supper that Hilda had been slaving over all week. And then, of course, there had been that awful time—you couldn’t call it a party, really—that evening when Teddy and Lola said let’s play the Truth game and almost everyone had been lured into the most unwise revelations, and almost everyone had ended up very hurt. That had been such a foolish thing to do. Lorna remembered Anne’s face when Kevin had said that she was no fun anymore. And she would never forget Lola’s face when Teddy listed how many ladies he had…er…well, known in his life.
