A Few of the Girls: Stories

by Maeve Binchy

  The Other was a tall, noisy girl called Zappie, who seemed to be a combination of everything that Larry hated. Or said he hated. She was very showy and calling attention to herself; she knew nothing about cookery, she said life was too short to own a kitchen oven; a tiny microwave and a nearby Chinese restaurant were all any couple needed.

  When Larry started to tell her about Zappie, Kay thought it was a joke; she wondered was it April Fool, or Candid Camera. He couldn’t mean these things he was saying. He was talking to her in that responsible tone he always used when speaking of money. He would work out exactly what her contribution had been to their building society and return it to her, together with the correct interest that had accrued.

  She listened, horrified. He was talking about their life! He was unpicking their plans neatly and meticulously, as he would have done a file at work. He was going to put all her records and tapes in a box—they would divide the ones they had bought jointly, with Kay having first choice.

  Three times, and three times only in the middle of all this, did he tell her he was sorry and that he wished things had been different—it was just that when Zappie came into his life, there was no room for anyone else.

  Kay didn’t sleep these nights. She got up and paced her flat. She felt that someone must be mad. Was it Zappie with her crazy clothes and her shouty voice? Was it Larry with his nit-picking division of goods and insistence that they were very lucky Zappie had come into his life before he and Kay had married rather than after? Because the end result would be the same, and there might have been more to divide, like children.

  Or was it Kay herself who was going mad? Had she been insane to think that Larry loved her? There must have been signs all along the way that he was looking for someone much livelier than the dowdy little Kay who worked in the delicatessen.

  She grew more and more silent and worked harder and harder. She knew they talked about her behind her back and worried about her. She knew that the dark circles under her eyes weren’t covered by makeup and that the sparkle had gone out of her voice.

  Years ago, in the olden times, women went into a decline after a Broken Romance, they had the Vapors and they were sent on a world cruise. Or the rich ones were. The ordinary ones just got on with it, Kay supposed. And in those days they had to marry the next man that turned up, because there was no other life for women.

  She was not going to marry the next man, or indeed the only man who had turned up. He had been there for years, hesitant and hopeful and constantly saying the wrong thing. She would not take consolation from Eric. Not even if the world was going to end would she go to him. She had always told him that she felt nothing for him, and that was still true. He had been mute with disappointment when she announced her engagement to Larry and had sent an entirely inappropriate flower-covered card saying he would be waiting in the wings in case Anything Happened.

  How could he have known it would? Did he dream up Zappie?

  The date came when it should have been her wedding and her honeymoon in Italy. In order to avoid any silent sympathy, Kay said she would take holidays anyway. They seemed relieved, but didn’t even dare to ask her where she was going, which was just as well.

  Kay had no idea where she would go, and she cared less. Her last job was to deliver a birthday cake to an elderly woman who lived in a cottage about ten miles away from town. Kay would go on the bus, cake on her lap.

  It was like the kind of cottage you see on the front of a calendar, beautiful thatching and window boxes with flowers tumbling out. In the garden tall hollyhocks were waving and there was an air of peace about the whole place, which was in great contrast to the busy traffic and crowds she had left behind.

  Anna Whelan held back the door to let her in and Kay looked at the brasses, the jars of dried flowers, the rugs, and the walls covered with different kinds of plates. This was a happy place; people had lived a good life in this house.

  The cake was examined and praised. The money was paid and the receipt given. Mrs. Whelan was highly impressed that an employee would travel all the way out on the bus. Kay explained that it was all good public relations and perhaps Mrs. Whelan would now recommend them to other people. She had a little card that she would leave, with their phone number. But she wasn’t really thinking about work and getting further business, she was thinking about this lovely house. She looked around and sighed happily.

  Anna Whelan was making tea and they sat together in the kitchen. They talked easily. The cake was for a neighbor. He would be seventy tomorrow. They had been friends for years. He came to tea once a week. Always had for years and years, ever since they had been young.

  Sometimes the days went by so quickly she didn’t realize it was time for him to come again. She worked, you see, mending broken china. It was deeply satisfying, she said. She wasn’t up to museum standard or anything, but she could mend pieces that people valued. She had a little workshop out at the back, and she never noticed the hours passing as she worked with the broken cups and plates and cracked jugs that meant so much to the people who had brought them to her.

  Kay found herself telling the whole story of Larry, and how they had met and that tomorrow should be their wedding day. She told Anna Whelan about the honeymoon they had planned, and how Larry had divided up the refund they got from the travel agency. She told her about Zappie and the hurt of it all, and even about Eric, who said he would always be there, and how that seemed to irritate her more than any other single thing in this unhappy story.

  She was a wonderful listener, because she remembered everything and everyone in the tale. She asked if Larry were mean, and, thinking back, Kay decided that he was a little. Not dishonest or unfair but tight with money. She asked whether Zappie came from a rich family. Again, something Kay had not thought about, but it could well be so. Those clothes and that manner could well be the product of a rich, spoiled upbringing. She asked about Eric and if he were reliable and plodding and stable.

  “I’m never going to marry Eric!” cried Kay.

  “No indeed, my dear, that’s the very last thing you should do. Come with me to my workshop and I’ll show you some of my broken china.”

  Together they went down the path through the back garden. The table was covered with pieces of china and ceramic.

  “Let’s try a little blue bowl,” said Anna Whelan.

  She wiped the edges with acetone, then with a tiny toothpick she spread the glue over the edges to be joined.

  Very, very little was all that was needed, she explained, and if a tiny bit oozed out at the sides you wiped it away with alcohol. If it had been a plate she would have put it on its side in a biscuit tin of damp sand, but bowls and cups were best just turned over on their rims. It would be as good as new in no time.

  It did look deeply satisfying, Kay thought.

  “What a pity you can’t do that to a heart,” she said.

  “But that’s just why I took it up,” said the old lady. “My heart was broken, not simply like this bowl, but cracked all over; I thought it would never mend. And I too had a man waiting in the wings.”

  “I expect you married him.” Kay was gloomy.

  “No, I most certainly did not. The wings are where he waited for fifty years. It’s his birthday cake that you brought along today. He wasn’t the type to mend a broken heart, nor is your friend Eric. There are men who should be invited to tea and men who are allowed into your life.”

  “And the man who broke your heart. Did he come back?” Kay asked. It seemed very important to her to know how Anna Whelan’s story had ended. She seemed to live alone in this cottage and yet it had a look of a place that had known years of love and contentment.

  “He tried to come back. But by that stage I knew that hearts could mend. And mine had. Perhaps it was all that china restoring. You see, I knew that you could mend things even if there was a piece missing; you got some kaolin at the chemist and mixed it with the glue, or powdered clay.”

  She smiled brightly at
how simple it was once you understood.

  “And did someone else…”

  “Oh yes, someone else did come along, when I least expected it. And he wasn’t like the man who broke my heart, or the man who waits in the wings. He was just like himself.”

  They went back to the house and Kay saw pictures of the man who had been just like himself. Who had been married to Anna for forty-five years, who was as alive now in her mind as he had been when he was on earth.

  Anna Whelan said that she was behind on a lot of her simple work and that if Kay would like to spend a couple of weeks here helping, she would be very pleased.

  She would see the man who had waited too long in the wings when he came for his tea and birthday cake, she would see also how fragile things could be put together again if you realized that this was possible. Rather than just putting them in the back of a cupboard and pretending that the break hadn’t happened at all.

  No Tears in the Tivoli

  It was hard to know what to wear at the school reunion. Laura spent a great deal of time trying to choose. She was not at all like the women who wanted to look smart in front of school friends they had not seen for a decade. Laura’s problem was different.

  She was married to an extremely wealthy man and her aim was not to look too smart.

  She went through her clothes. The gray outfit was simple looking but they would know it was a designer suit; the navy jacket had cost a fortune and yet she couldn’t go out and deliberately buy an outfit in the High Street, something in Marks & Spencer that was within everyone’s reach. They would talk even more about her.

  And Laura knew that she was already an object of interest. Mousy little Laura having married Don Dixon, the tycoon. Laura with a house in London and in the country and a holiday home in France. Twenty-eight years old like all of them, pale as she had always been, and yet set aside from all her old schoolmates. She would never worry about paying the mortgage, the chance of a holiday abroad again this year, what it meant when the car wouldn’t start.

  She would have to be careful enough in her conversation with them so she must make sure not to anger them by her clothes. If only she had a good friend to ask—but that was another thing that being married to a very wealthy man had meant: she didn’t have a real friend anymore. There were so many people to meet with Don, to entertain, so many Other Wives to go shopping with. Pleasant women, all of them, confident, and easygoing, but you had to be watchful, for they were the eyes and ears of their husbands. Laura couldn’t say things that might be repeated back. Things like she was lonely, isolated, and wanted a family so badly that she ached when she passed by a baby in a stroller.

  The day of the reunion lunch turned out to be very wet, which solved Laura’s problem. She wore a smart scarlet raincoat over a simple black-and-white dress. They wouldn’t know that the raincoat had cost in a New York boutique what would run their homes for three months. She could always shrug and say it was only a mackintosh if anyone praised it.

  She decided to go by taxi, that way they wouldn’t have to see her car.

  Don was annoyed at the rain. He had planned a day’s golfing with an important business contact. It had been arranged months ago. Don hated things that were out of his control, like the weather. His face was dark and angry.

  It would have been useless to try and cheer him up, to suggest that he and his colleague play instead at an indoor range. He would have already considered this and other alternatives. Four years of marriage to a difficult and demanding man teaches you lessons if you’re a good learner. Laura had been a very good learner and she was good at smiling sympathetically and saying nothing. Her support and quiet solidarity seemed to work.

  Soon, the frown left his face and he continued to eat his wholemeal toast and fresh fruit that she served in their conservatory at whatever time it suited him.

  His good humor had returned.

  “Well, enjoy the ladies today! Ten whole years since you all left school. There’ll be lots of crow’s-feet and plastic surgery to examine, I’d say.”

  He laughed at her good-naturedly. Fifteen years older than she was, he often made jokes about how she was nearing thirty and therefore approaching middle age.

  It never ceased to amaze Laura; she was nothing special and yet she had managed to marry one of the most eligible men in Britain and keep him interested in her.

  He was so obviously proud of her and loved her to dress well and be admired.

  Laura wouldn’t tell him that the girls she was at school with wouldn’t recognize the scarlet raincoat for what it was and later she would pretend that it had knocked their eyes out.

  That would please Don Dixon much more than the fact that she had been thoughtful, considerate, and had not wanted to stress how much better her financial circumstances were than her schoolmates.

  In Don’s world, such sensitivities had no place. They would be considered devious and hypocritical if they were considered at all.

  “Don’t stay out drinking with your school chums all day and night, though, remember we’re off to Copenhagen at the crack of dawn,” he said.

  He stroked her face tenderly.

  The very notion of Laura carousing with a crowd of women was ludicrous; she drank so little anyway, and she was always at home long before him, making sure that whichever house they were in ran smoothly.

  “Will you be late?” she asked.

  “Probably. You know when this lot fly in they want a good time. It’s discourteous not to stay until they think the party’s over.” He looked weary at the very thought of it, yet Laura knew he loved to play host at a flamboyant evening.

  “Yes, silly to spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar,” she said.

  His face lit up as it often did when she came out with an old proverb or meaningless cliché.

  It was easy to keep Don Dixon happy. Just as long as you lived by his rules. If you didn’t ask any questions, or have any suspicions about other ladies in his life. Then it was very easy.

  At the lunch the years rolled back. They laughed and talked as they had at seventeen, eighteen, they traced their lives and there were pictures of children, chubby toddlers, serious boys and girls in school uniform.

  Shirley was as wild as ever, and having an affair with a well-known married actor.

  Celia was as disapproving as ever: sensible shoes, and her mouth in a hard thin line.

  They had all read about Laura’s houses in magazines.

  “Next time maybe we should have a reunion in one of your properties?” Celia said in her clipped, jealous voice.

  “Certainly, if anyone likes, but isn’t it more fun to meet like this and let a hotel do the work?” Laura smiled broadly at them all. She had learned a lot over the years, how to diffuse a mood, how to say nothing while appearing to say everything.

  “Does he take you with him on his business travels?” Shirley asked, eyes flashing suggestively.

  “Yes, if I want to go.”

  “You go, Laura! Believe me, go everywhere, I could tell you what they get up to on these outings, believe me, I know.”

  Laura believed her. It was a side of life with Don that she had closed her eyes to. Her view was that nobody could have everything, and that she, Laura, had a great deal.

  “I’m going to Copenhagen with him tomorrow morning,” she said brightly.

  “Very wise,” Shirley said. “Very beautiful women, the Danes, smart and beautiful.”

  —

  Don was in good humor as they set out for the airport. Laura had supervised the packing—there was never any last-minute fuss or confusion when they left for anywhere.

  She had dressed with care, a very chic cream outfit and her scarlet raincoat over her arm. People looked admiringly as they walked through the airport.

  “Shouldn’t be too busy this visit,” Don said. “Suits me. I’m tired—I wasn’t in until after one o’clock last night. You were fast asleep, I didn’t wake you.”

  “That was good of you
, darling.” Laura smiled her gratitude. She had not been asleep as it happened when he came back. She had been lying in the dark with her eyes open for a very long time. And it was nearly four when Don had finally come home to bed…

  —

  Monika met them at the airport. She was tall, blond, perfect skin, and spoke such fluent English that Laura thought she must be English herself, but no, she was from Bornholm, she said, an island out in the Baltic Sea; she showed it to them on a map, and laughed happily as she told them about the ferry that would take her home.

  Laura noticed the appreciative glances that Don was giving to this handsome, lively woman, whose face lit up when she talked of the rocky cliffs of her homeland. A wave of the familiar jealousy flooded her but she hid it with a practiced smile.

  Oddly, Monika seemed to understand what was happening. Suddenly she spoke of her son, Erik, and how he too loved the journey on the ferry with his grandparents waiting and waving a welcome. It was done in a very subtle way. But it definitely sent a message: it told the handsome, wealthy Englishman that Monika was a family woman, she wasn’t a beautiful conference organizer who might be available for more than tourist and business advice.

  She brought them to the hotel, handed a schedule of meetings to Don, and suggested that she show Laura some of the sights, until lunchtime.

  “Amazing girl, that Monika,” Don said as Laura swiftly unpacked for them and he glanced over his notes for the meeting. “Could win a beauty contest if she wanted to.”

  A lesser woman, a more obviously jealous wife, would have referred to the little boy Erik, hinting that she was already settled in her life. But not Laura. Laura agreed.

  “Delightful, isn’t she? I’m so glad she has time to take me on a little tour. I’ll be the Copenhagen expert when I see you next.”

  It worked, as these things always worked if well thought out. Don kissed her and held her tight for a moment.

  “Wasn’t I clever to find you?” he said.

  “Only what we’d expect, Don.” She laughed lightly and went down to the hotel foyer to meet the amazing Monika. Shirley had been right. These Danish girls were a deadly combination…both beautiful and smart.