by Maeve Binchy
‘Don’t go too heavily on the limitations and problems, if they’re like you say, dwell more on the celebratory side,’ he advised.
‘Did your parents have a silver wedding?’
‘Two years ago,’ Ken said.
‘Was it great?’ she asked.
‘Not really.’
‘Oh.’
‘When I know you better I’ll tell you all about it,’ he said.
‘I thought we knew each other well now?’ Anna was disappointed.
‘No. I need more than one drink to tell the details of my whole life.’
Anna felt unreasonably annoyed that she had told him all about Joe Ashe and about how he had to be kept a secret at home.
‘I think I talk too much,’ she said contritely.
‘No, you’re just a nicer person. I’m rather buttoned up,’ Ken said. ‘Come on, drink that back and we’ll head for the Saltmines.’
‘The what?’
‘Isn’t that what you said your house was called?’
Anna laughed and hit him with her handbag. He made her feel normal again. The way she had felt a long time ago when it was great to be part of the Doyle family, instead of walking through a minefield which is what it was like these days.
*
Mother was waiting on the step.
‘I came out in case you had any difficulty parking,’ she explained.
‘Thanks, but it seemed to be quite clear … we were lucky.’ Ken spoke easily.
‘We haven’t heard much about you, so this is a nice surprise.’ Her mother’s eyes were bright, too bright.
‘Yes, it’s a surprise for me too. I don’t know Anna very well, we just talk when I go to the bookshop. I invited her for a drink this evening and as it was one of her evenings for coming to Pinner it seemed like a good chance of a drive and a chat.’
Ken Green was a salesman, Anna remembered. He earned his living selling books, getting bigger orders than booksellers wanted to give, forcing them to do window displays, encouraging them to take large cardboard presentation packs. Naturally he would be able to sell himself as well.
Her father liked him too.
Ken managed to ask the right questions, not the wrong ones. He asked easily what line of business Mr Doyle was in. Her father’s usual mulish defensive look came on his face. His voice took on the familiar pitch he had when he spoke of work, and rationalization.
Most people shuffled and sort of sympathized, mixed with jollying Desmond Doyle along when he began the tale of woe, the company that had been going along very nicely thank you until in the cause of rationalization a lot of jobs, perfectly sound secure jobs, went. Desmond Doyle’s job had got changed, he told Ken Green. Changed utterly. It wasn’t the same breed of men in business these days.
Anna felt weary. It was always the same, Father’s version of the story. The truth was that Father had been sacked over what Mother called a personality conflict. But it was a secret. A great secret nobody was to know. At school it was never to be mentioned. Anna’s first great habits of secrecy must have begun then, she realized. Perhaps that was when the secrecy all began. Because a year later Father was employed again by the same firm. And that was never explained either.
Ken Green didn’t mutter agreement about the world in general and the ways of businessmen in particular.
‘How did you manage to survive the rationalization? Were you in some essential post?’
Anna’s hand flew to her mouth. No one had been as direct as this before in this household. Anna’s mother looked with alarmed glances from one face to another. There was a short pause.
‘I didn’t survive it; as it happens,’ Desmond Doyle said. ‘I was out for a year. But they brought me back, when there was a change of personnel along the line, when some personality differences had been ironed out.’
Anna’s hand remained at her mouth. This was the first time that Father had ever acknowledged that he had been a year unemployed. She was almost afraid to see how her mother had taken it.
Ken was nodding in agreement. ‘That often happens, it’s something like putting all the pieces into a paper bag and shaking a few of them back on to the board. Though the pieces aren’t always put back in the right holes?’ He smiled encouragingly.
Anna looked at Ken Green as if she had never seen him before. What was he doing, sitting in this room interrogating her father about forbidden subjects? Was there the remotest possibility that Mother and Father would think she had discussed private business with him?
Mercifully, Father hadn’t taken it at all badly; he was busy explaining to Ken that people had indeed been relocated into the wrong positions. He himself who should have Operations Manager was in fact Special Projects. Special Projects meant as little or as much as anyone wanted it to mean. It was a non-job.
‘Still, that leaves it up to you to make what you will of it, that’s the thing with non-jobs. I have one, Anna has one, and we try in our different ways to make something of them.’
‘I have not a non-job!’ Anna cried.
‘It could be called that, couldn’t it? There’s no real ceiling, no proper ranking or way of getting recognition, you make it a good job because you’re interested in publishing, you read the catalogues, you understand why books appear and who buys them. You could stand filing your nails like that colleague of yours with the purple hair.’
Anna’s mother giggled nervously.
‘Of course you’re right when you’re young, Ken, people have chances to make something of their job, but not when they’re old …’
‘So you were all right, then.’ Ken was bland.
‘Come now, don’t be flattering me …’
‘I wasn’t.’ Ken’s face showed that nothing was further from his intentions. ‘But you can’t be more than forty-six, can you, forty-six or forty-seven?’
Anna fumed at her own stupidity, inviting this lout home.
‘That’s right, forty-seven next birthday,’ Father was saying.
‘Well, that’s never old, is it? Not old like fifty-eight or sixty-two.’
‘Deirdre, can we make that steak stretch to four pieces? This young fellow’s doing me good, he has to stay for supper.’
Anna’s face burned. If he said yes she would never forgive him.
‘No, thank you, Mr Doyle, no, I mean it Mrs Doyle. I’m sure it would be lovely but not tonight. Thanks again. I’ll just finish my drink and let you get on with your evening.’
‘But it would be no trouble and we’d like to …’
‘Not tonight, Anna wants to talk to you, I know.’
‘Well, I’m sure if it’s anything …’ Anna’s mother looked wildly from her daughter to this personable young man with the dark hair and dark brown eyes. Surely Anna couldn’t have come home with some announcement about him. Was the message written in her face …?
Ken put her out of her misery. ‘No, it’s got nothing to do with me. It’s a family thing, she wants to talk about your silver wedding anniversary and how you’re going to celebrate it.’
Desmond Doyle was disappointed that Ken was definitely leaving. ‘Oh, that’s not for months,’ he said.
‘Anyway, whenever it is, the main thing is that you discuss it and do what you both want, and I know that’s what Anna came home to talk to you about, so I’ll leave you to it.’
He was gone, there had been handshakes all round and a quick grip of Anna’s arm with his other hand.
They watched him pull out into the road and he tooted his horn very gently, just an acknowledgement.
The three Doyles stood almost wordless on the doorstep of Salthill, number 26 Rosemary Drive.
Anna faced them. ‘I just told him casually that we were going to make plans, I don’t know why he made such a big thing out of it.’
She got the feeling that neither of her parents was listening to her.
‘That wasn’t the only reason I came back. I came anyway to see you both.’
Still a silence.
‘And I know you won’t believe it but I just said that to him because … well, because I had to say something.’
‘He’s a very pleasant young man,’ Desmond Doyle said.
‘Good-looking too. Smartly turned out,’ Deirdre Doyle added.
A wave of resentment washed over Anna. They were already comparing him favourably to Joe Ashe, Joe whom she loved with her body and soul.
‘Yes,’ she said in a dull voice.
‘You haven’t talked much about him before,’ her mother said.
‘I know, Mother, so you told him two seconds after you met him.’
‘Don’t be insolent to your mother,’ Desmond Doyle said automatically.
‘I’m twenty-three years of age, for Christ’s sake, I’m not insolent like a child,’ Anna stormed.
‘I can’t think what you’re so upset about,’ her mother said. ‘We have a lovely supper for you, we ask a civil question, pass a remark about how nice your friend is, and get our heads bitten off.’
‘I’m sorry.’ This was the old Anna.
‘Well, that’s all right, you’re tired after a long day. Maybe the little drinks on top of all that driving didn’t agree with you.’
Anna clenched her fists silently.
They had walked back into the house and stood, an uneasy threesome, in the sitting room. They were beside the wall of family pictures.
‘So what do you think we should do, eat now?’ Mother looked from one to the other helplessly.
‘Your mother went down to the shops especially when she heard you were coming tonight,’ Father said.
For a mad moment she wished that Ken Green hadn’t left after all, that he was here to drive a wedge through this woolly mass of conversation, this circular kind of talk that went nowhere. It just rose and fell, causing guilt, creating tension, and then was finally patted down.
If Ken were still here he might have said: ‘Let’s leave the meal for half an hour and talk about what you would really like to do for your anniversary.’ Yes, those had been his very words. He hadn’t said anything about what should be done or what might be expected, or what was the right way to go about it. He had said as he was leaving that Anna would want to talk to her parents about what they would both like for this day.
Like. That was a breakthrough in this family.
On an impulse she used exactly the words she thought Ken Green would say.
Startled, they sat down and looked at her expectantly.
‘It’s your day, it’s not ours. What would you like best?’
‘Well, really …’ her mother began, at a loss. ‘Well, it’s not up to us.’
‘If you all want to mark it, that would be very gratifying of course …’ her father said.
Anna looked at them in disbelief. Did they really think that it wasn’t up to them? Could they possibly live in a wonderland where they thought that life was a matter of all their children deciding to mark the occasion together? Did they not realize that in this family everything was acting … and that one by one the actors were slipping off the stage – Helen to her convent, Brendan to his remote rocky farm in the West of Ireland. Only Anna who lived two rail journeys away was even remotely around.
A great wave of despair came over her. She knew she must not lose her temper, that the whole visit would have been useless if it ended in a row. She could hear Joe asking her mildly why on earth she took such long wearying journeys on herself if it only ended up making them all tense and unhappy.
Joe had life worked out all right.
She felt an ache, a physical ache to be with him, and to sit on the floor by his chair while he stroked her hair.
She hadn’t known it was possible to love somebody so intensely, and as she looked at the troubled man and woman sitting obediently on the sofa in front of her she wondered, had they ever known any fraction of this kind of love? You never could think of your parents expressing love, it was gross beyond imagining to think of them coupling and loving like real people did … like she and Joe did. But Anna knew that everyone felt that about their parents.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I have to make a phone call. I want you to stop worrying about dinner for a moment, and just talk to each other about what you’d really like, then I’ll start organizing it. Right?’ Her eyes felt suspiciously bright, maybe the little drinks hadn’t agreed with her.
She went to the phone. She would find an excuse to talk to Joe, nothing heavy, just to hear his voice would make her feel fine again. She would tell him that she’d be home a little earlier than she thought, would she get a Chinese takeaway, or a pizza or just a tub of ice cream? She wouldn’t tell him now or later how bleakly depressing her old home was, how sad and low her parents made her feel, how frustrated and furious. Joe Ashe wanted to hear none of this.
She dialled her own number.
The phone was answered immediately, he must have been in the bedroom. It was a girl’s voice.
Anna held the phone away from her ear like people often do in movies to show disbelief and confusion. She was aware she was doing this.
‘Hallo?’ the girl said again.
‘What number is that?’ Anna asked.
‘Hang on, the phone’s on the floor, I can’t read it. Wait a sec.’ The girl sounded good-natured. And young.
Anna stood there paralysed. In the flat in Shepherd’s Bush, the phone was indeed on the floor. To answer it you had to lean out of bed.
She didn’t want the girl to struggle any more, she knew the number.
‘Is Joe there?’ she asked. ‘Joe Ashe?’
‘No, sorry, he went out for cigarettes, he’ll be back in a few minutes.’
Why hadn’t he put the answering machine on, Anna asked herself, why had he not automatically turned the switch, like he did always when leaving the flat? In case his agent rang. In case the call that would mean recognition came. Now the call that meant discovery had come instead.
She leaned against the wall of the house where she had grown up. She needed something to give her support.
The girl didn’t like silences. ‘Are you still there? Do you want to ring him back or is he to ring you or what?’
‘Um … I’m not sure.’ Anna fought for time.
If she got off the phone now, he would never know that she had found out. Things would be the same as they were, nothing would have changed. Suppose she said wrong number, or it doesn’t matter, or I’ll call again, the girl would shrug, hang up and maybe might not even mention to Joe that someone had called and rung off. Anna would never ask, she wouldn’t disturb what they had.
But what had they? They had a man who would bring a girl to her bed, to her bed as soon as she was out of the house. Why try to preserve that? Because she loved him and if she didn’t preserve it there would be a big screaming emptiness and she would miss him so much she would die.
Suppose she said she’d hold on, and then confront him? Would he be contrite? Would he explain that it was a fellow actress and they were just learning their lines?
Or would he say it was over? And then the emptiness and ache would begin.
The girl was anxious not to lose the call in case it might be a job for Joe.
‘Hang on, I’ll write down your name if you like, won’t be a jiff, just let me get up, should be up anyway … Let’s see, there’s some kind of a desk over here by the window, no it’s a dressing table … but there’s an eyebrow pencil or something. Right, what’s the name?’
Anna felt the bile bitter in her throat. In her bed, lying under the beautiful expensive bedspread she had bought last Christmas was a naked girl who was now going to carry the phone across to the simple table where Anna’s make-up stood.
‘Does the phone stretch all right?’ Anna heard herself asking.
The girl laughed. ‘Yes it does, actually.’
‘Good. Well, put it down for a moment on the chair, the pink chair, and reach up on to the mantelpiece, good, and you’ll find a spiral-backed pad with a pencil attached by a stri
ng.’
‘Hey?’ The girl was surprised but not uneasy.
Anna continued, ‘Good, put back the eye pencil, it’s kohl anyway, it wouldn’t write well. Now just put down for Joe: “Anna rang. Anna Doyle. No message.”’
‘Sure he can’t ring you back?’ A hint of anxiety had crept into the voice of yet another woman who was going to spend weeks, months, even years of her life trying to please Joe Ashe, say the right thing, not risk losing him.
‘No, no, I’m with my parents at the moment. In fact I’ll be staying here the night. Could you tell him that?’
‘Does he know where to find you?’
‘Yes, but there’s no need to ring me, I’ll catch up on him another time.’
When she had hung up she stood holding on to the table for support. She remembered telling them that the hall was the very worst place to have a telephone. It was cold, it was too public, it was uncomfortable. Now she blessed them for having taken no notice of her.
She stood for a few moments but her thoughts would not be gathered, they ran and scurried like mice around her head. Finally when she thought she had at least recovered the power of speech she went back into the room where her mother and father sat. They who had never known the kind of love she knew nor the kind of hurt. She said that if it wouldn’t put them out she’d like to stay the night, then they’d have all the time in the world to discuss the plans.
‘You don’t have to ask can you stay the night in your own home,’ her mother said, pleased and fussing. ‘I’ll put a hot-water bottle in the bed just in case, the rooms are all there for you, not that any of you ever come and stay in them.’
‘Well, I’d love to tonight.’ Anna’s smile was nailed firmly on her face.
They had got to the actual numbers that should be invited when Joe rang. She went to the phone calmly.
‘She’s gone,’ he said.
‘Has she?’ Her voice was detached.
‘Yes. It wasn’t important.’
‘No. No.’
‘No need for you to stay over and make a big scene and meaning of life confrontation.’
