A Few of the Girls: Stories

by Maeve Binchy

  Over in Brian and Carol’s house, the supper of cold chicken salad had been placed on the table by Maria, the au pair. She had been with them for four years now and was part of the family. Carol always said that if you spent the money building a small bathroom and gave them a television in their own room, then there was no problem with au pairs. The real strains only came when they lay in your bath all day and sat in your sitting room looking at rubbish on television all night. It couldn’t have been quite as simple as this, but anyway, for Carol it seemed to work.

  There they were, Maria about to go out for the night, the seven-year-old twins, all clean and shiny in their dressing gowns, were going to hear their bedtime story. It was about a huge, good-tempered, vegetarian monster who loved eating nettles and thistles and playing with little boys and girls. Matt and Sara loved this story.

  Brian had just begun to read in that slow, measured voice he used in the classroom, making sure every word was heard. Halfway through the first page, the knocking on the wall began.

  “I’ll go.” Carol started to get out of her chair.

  “She’s my mother,” Brian said, handing the book to Carol.

  “Right, kids, you’ve got me,” Carol said.

  “Dad reads better,” Matt complained.

  “Will we play a game until Dad gets back?” Sara suggested.

  “It might be very late though, might be well past your bedtime,” Carol said doubtfully to her daughter. That’s exactly what Sara had hoped.

  The children were asleep, and Carol had her papers all over the dining room table when Brian got back. She was lost in her work, and didn’t seem at all annoyed that he had been gone for over an hour. She gathered the spreadsheets together.

  “Sorry, love,” he said.

  “Not at all, gave me time to look at those figures,” she said. Carol took a lot of work home with her—she had been thinking of building an extra little office area under the stairs. You saw such marvelous conversion jobs in the advertisements.

  He didn’t explain what his mother had wanted: it didn’t matter anyway; it was always one thing or another, or just nothing at all. Brian took away the cloth that covered their chicken salad.

  “Lucky it was cold,” he said, trying to rescue something from the evening.

  Carol pushed her glasses back on her head.

  “It always is on Saturday nights, hadn’t you noticed? She always calls you on a Saturday around this time. That’s why we have cold chicken.” There was no complaint in her voice. It was just the way things were.

  —

  They all talked about the holiday at work the next day. At the butcher’s shop they told Julie that she should go to the Munich Beer Festival, great fun and some of the finest sausages a body could ever want. Julie didn’t tell them that she would be happy never to see meat again for the duration of the holiday and that the notion of seeking it out would be ludicrous.

  In Brian’s staff room they were amazed. “Two weeks without the kids? Brilliant, mate—no wonder you’re looking forward to it.” Brian felt it wouldn’t be necessary to say that the children would be no problem; he might even have time to finish reading them that story. It was his mother that he was longing to escape.

  Carol told her partners that she would definitely take two weeks off in August. “I’ll believe that when you’re actually sitting on the plane,” said one of them. “Some holiday with your mobile phone tucked in the elastic of your bikini bottoms,” said the other.

  “I will not. I’ll unwind totally,” Carol insisted, stung at the accusation. Her partners looked at each other and her and laughed affectionately.

  It was a busy Monday; everyone’s television set seemed to be on the blink. When they paused for tea, Bob told them about the holiday. “Great thing, a holiday,” one of his colleagues said. “The women always get turned on—I think it’s the climate. My wife never feels like it here but it’s different out foreign.”

  “That’s good,” said Bob. It would be just his little secret that he didn’t have that problem at home at all.

  They all brought brochures to Kriti next Saturday, but what they hadn’t expected was that Yanni would join in too. On the table with the pita bread and the big juicy olives was a small photograph album with pictures of a white house by a magnificent sandy beach. The sand was white and the water a turquoise blue and green. Rich purple bougainvillea climbed the white walls. Scarlet and blue rugs were on the wooden floor and colorful plates and pottery around the walls.

  There were two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a long wooden veranda that ran around the house, with a dining table. It was the villa of Yanni’s brother, the great investment that would make their fortune. It was free for two weeks because of a cancellation, it could be theirs for very little money: their own home in Crete.

  It wasn’t only because it was Yanni and his brother: the place touched their hearts. It was exactly what they had dreamed of. And the bus passed the door six times a day, so they could go into the harbor town; they could spend a day at the ruins of Knossos; they could go to the museum in Heraklion or shopping in the touristy places. They could take a boat trip, learn to water-ski.

  The other brochures remained unopened. This was where they would go.

  Julie said she would collect the money. She would take so much a week every Saturday and put it all in the post office or a building society, whichever they preferred. This surprised the others: usually Carol would make that kind of suggestion. They didn’t know how desperately Julie wanted to make sure that her husband’s quota was not spent foolishly on his daughter.

  There were twelve whole weeks before they left. Time to lose seven pounds weight. Time to learn a few phrases of Greek conversation. Time to read about King Minos and the minotaur so they would understand it when they got there, time for anything to happen.

  The first thing that happened for Carol was that they got three months’ notice to quit on their premises. Her recruitment agency would be right in the middle of the move at the date of the planned holiday. That is, if they ever found suitable premises.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she said to Brian.

  “Let’s not make any decision yet,” he began. He had become so excited by the holiday, reading the works of Kazantzakis, showing the children on the map where Crete was.

  “But I have to make this decision, it’s only fair on the others to let them know in case they want to find another couple…”

  “But you know they won’t find another couple.” His disappointment was naked on his face. “This is the four of us—we’ve been planning it, dreaming about it…”

  “Brian, the agency is my life,” Carol said. “It’s what I nearly killed myself setting up…it’s my whole life.”

  “I suppose it is,” Brian said bitterly.

  The next thing that happened was that Flora took the news of the vacation very badly indeed. Flora’s mother began calling during the week.

  “She won’t eat, she won’t go to school. Really, Bob, I don’t know what you’re going to do.”

  “But what can I do?” Bob wailed down the phone. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “It has everything to do with you,” his ex-wife snapped. “The girl is naturally upset that you’re going off to Greece with that woman and giving no thought to her Saturdays, her needs.”

  “It will sort itself out,” Julie said through gritted teeth. “Believe me it will, once she sees that you’re not going to waver.” But she didn’t like the look on Bob’s face.

  “I did leave her, Julie, I did abandon her, there’s no saying I didn’t do that.”

  “Well, let’s not say it to the others just yet,” she pleaded. The florist’s shop where Julie worked was doing excellent business these days. That new office block had, after all, meant a significant increase in customers. It had taken some time for the units to sell. They offered Julie a full-time position. But there was one problem: they didn’t want her to have
the two weeks off in August—in fact, that was when they needed her most. She said nothing to anyone. She still had a week to make up her mind.

  Shortly after she heard that she was going to a home for two weeks of the Greek holiday, Brian’s mother got chest pains.

  The doctor said that it was most likely to be heartburn or indigestion. Brian’s mother took up the words “most likely.” It meant that the doctor just didn’t know. She gravely doubted that she would be alive on their return if thrown into an old people’s home at this critical time in her health.

  They all met for Saturday lunch as usual in Kriti: there were now only three weeks to go.

  Yanni knew that something was wrong. They were never like this, these people, his friends as he considered them. He had written to his family in Crete and asked them to be sure and look after them when they arrived; they were not like the greedy, selfish tourists who had so often spoiled their countryside. Now there was trouble.

  He passed near their table to hear what they were saying. He could hear snatches of conversation about a teenage daughter crying down the phone, an elderly mother refusing the offer of two weeks being cared for in a home with the certain knowledge that she was not going to be left there permanently. Yanni heard one of the women saying that there was no office space left anywhere you would want to go, and even if she did find somewhere, there wasn’t a question that she could go on holiday just now.

  The other woman, the one he had always liked best, stood up. She looked very pale.

  “This morning I have had to quit the flower shop,” she began, “because I couldn’t accept the job I’ve wanted for years. They are going to take on a girl of nineteen instead. She can’t do the displays like I do, she doesn’t know how to bring in the greenery properly or make ribbons into lovely bows. But she is free to start because she doesn’t have three people depending on her to go on a promised holiday.” She looked at their stricken faces.

  “It’s all right. Really it is. It was only a job—it’s not a mother like you have, Brian, or a daughter, Bob, or a Life as you have, Carol, it was only a job I would have liked and now I’ll have to stay on at the butcher’s, which I don’t really like…” They were wordless as they saw Julie struggling to be fair about it. Then her face changed slightly.

  “But it’s not only the lost holiday. I think we’ve lost something else. I’ve lost some respect for your great business sense, Carol. The office block down by my florist’s still has some empty units—you haven’t tried there.

  “You could have paid Maria extra to look after your mother and taken the twins in to see her every day, Brian, then she wouldn’t have had this panic about the old people’s home and thought it was the thin end of the wedge.

  “And, Bob, you must know that even if she is your daughter, Flora is just as much a bully as anyone in a playground. By staying at home you are proving to her not only that she can get whatever she wants but that somehow she was right all along, that you did abandon her instead of breaking your heart to be there for her all the time.” She wasn’t in tears but her voice had a shake.

  “I’ll go down and start the business of getting the money back—no, please don’t stop me; it’s all I’m fit for really, to go and do errands. I’m the one who lost a good job this morning, a job I’d really have liked, and I lost it only because I was stupid enough to think we were going on holiday. I need to be alone for a bit anyway. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

  She was relieved that she got to the door before the tears of self-pity and rage fell. It all took some time, the forms, the explanations, then Julie walked through a big store and stopped at the cosmetic counters.

  “Want some sun cream?” the very well-groomed girl asked.

  “No, the holiday’s been canceled,” Julie said flatly.

  “Always a bit overrated holidays, I think,” said the blond beauty.

  “You’re right, I’m sure,” Julie agreed and held out her wrists for a spray of very expensive perfume instead.

  She never knew what had happened in the restaurant while she was gone: what they had said, who they had phoned, what deals had been done. And she knew that she would never ask Bob when they were alone.

  Whatever had happened stayed between those three. Close friends, distraught that they hadn’t shared enough in the dream.

  And it was never awkward, no unspoken words hung between them as they walked through the airport with the other holidaymakers. And when they danced the Greek dances under the moonlight with Yanni’s cousins and friends, and climbed the mountain paths and swam in the turquoise sea, nobody said or needed to say how nearly they had lost this holiday—which would in so many ways alter the rest of their lives…

  Sandra’s Suitcase

  Everyone said that Sandra was mad. All those countries in such a few days, overnight stops in cities that she would never remember. What a way to see Europe! But Sandra did not agree. All her life she had spent money on clothes and shoes—she had spent nothing on seeing foreign places.

  She didn’t know what Paris looked like, or Brussels, or Venice, Florence or Rome. She wouldn’t waste her two weeks’ holiday just in one place—after all, clothes were so expensive and so essential that she might never be able to afford to travel again.

  Sandra knew you had to dress well to make a statement in life.

  So that’s what she did. Made expensive statement after statement with everything she bought.

  She had read so many articles about how your clothes were a key to your character that she really believed it.

  Now, at the age of twenty-seven, she wondered why on earth these messages that she was sending out hadn’t borne more fruit. Beautifully dressed, perfectly groomed, she sat in a dead-end job day after day and her private life contained no husband, partner, or even long-term relationship.

  But it would all change eventually, Sandra knew it would. After all, she was playing life by the rules.

  Perhaps people might think she was dull because she hadn’t traveled anywhere. After all, that silly girl in accounts who looked as if she had fallen out of a garden hedge had been to Russia and even went for weekends to Brittany.

  And the girl in marketing who wore the same dreary suit with a collection of different-colored T-shirts for years had been to Australia and come home via Fiji.

  Unfair as it was, people did seem to think they were more interesting to talk to than Sandra, who spent every waking moment reading fashion magazines and then scouring the stores to buy the latest recommendation.

  So now she was going on this coach tour.

  They were confined to one suitcase each, and Sandra spent six happy weeks wondering what to wear when being photographed outside the Louvre or in a gondola.

  She packed them as all the fashion articles had instructed, with layers of tissue so they would not crush, but put in a travel iron just in case.

  She chose a simple washable dress to travel in, and met all her fellow holidaymakers at the coach depot.

  They seemed a nice enough crowd, nobody very stylish and some of the women looking positively frumpish. Sandra shuddered. How could they bear to travel like that? Hardly any makeup, jeans, anoraks—comfortable, certainly, but more suitable for doing the garden than for continental travel.

  And, oddly, a lot of them seemed to be married or traveling with partners.

  Extraordinary what some men would put up with; Sandra sniffed disapprovingly.

  Their guide was a very fat man called Johnny. Johnny had a voice like a foghorn and a series of nonstop jokes.

  But he also managed to give them quite a lot of information. There were thirty people on the bus and Johnny had learned all their names before they got to Belgium.

  The coach whizzed them to the ferry, over the Channel, and then, for the first time, Sandra’s eyes saw a land that wasn’t her own.

  People drove on the wrong side of the road, but she had expected that, and they had shutters outside their houses, and a lot of people on bi
cycles.

  The traffic had been slower than the driver expected.

  When they got to Brussels it was beginning to get dark.

  “Now you’re all to go into your rooms, open your suitcases, have the quickest shower ever known to humans and be back on the bus in fifteen minutes, then I’ll take you to the Grand Place and show you the sights and we’ll have our dinner.”

  Johnny’s good humor was catching; the group was already looking forward to the night out.

  They all pulled their suitcases from the row of bags waiting outside the hotel—all except Sandra. Her bag wasn’t there.

  She knew it had to be at the back of the bus somewhere, so she waited and waited.

  Then Johnny told her what she could not accept. Her bag was in London.

  “But when will they send it? Will it be here tomorrow morning?” Sandra was white with anxiety.

  “They can’t find it,” Johnny said, glumly. “There’ll be compensation, of course, but I’m very sorry.”

  He was unprepared for the sense of tragedy in Sandra’s face.

  “My life is over,” she said simply. “My first and only trip abroad. I had brought everything to be photographed in so that I would always remember it, and now your company has lost everything I love.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Sandra, you’ll go abroad lots, and if they can’t find it then you’ll get the money to buy new gear.”

  “But what will I do for this trip?” she wept.

  “Leave it to me,” said Johnny.

  In the foyer, before they headed out for the Grand Place, he called a crisis meeting. “Small problem,” he said cheerfully. “Now I want twenty-nine of you here to donate one item each to poor Sandra, whose case has gone missing.”

  As Sandra looked on, stricken, she heard generous, well-meaning women offering her used T-shirts, a sweater, panties, sandals a half size too big, nighties, jeans, and shorts. And from the men, short-sleeved shirts, a baseball cap, another sweater, an anorak four sizes too large.

  Ashen-faced, Sandra tried to thank them for their kindness as they all went to their rooms and returned with the terrifying items, laying them proudly on Sandra’s bed. She washed the dress that she was wearing, hoping that it would be dry in the morning, and put on a disgusting-looking green-and-white shirt with a crushed pair of jeans and a hooded anorak.