by Maeve Binchy
I hear the most outrageous and utterly unfounded stories about people that nobody has checked out but everybody accepts and then forgets. Half my friends disappeared suddenly out of Dublin to go to the Merriman School, which I get a feeling seems to be occurring every six weeks. I can’t even talk about films like The Front Page because they’re here already. I thought they were joking me when I had to pay 7p to post a letter. England nearly rose in rebellion when it went up to 4½p not long ago.
It’s wonderful to be able to go and see everyone again without undertaking mammoth journeys across a huge city, and even better when everyone will agree to come into Bowes pub to see me, instead of having to arrange rendezvous places halfway between me and them, as you would in London. You can cash a cheque in lots of places without hunting for your credit card, and I got over the fact that cigarettes were so much dearer because the woman in the shop was so nice and told me that they were ruining my health, she remembered when I had rosy cheeks and wasn’t bent double whooping and wheezing over the counter.
I can take up any conversation where I left it off a month or two ago. I didn’t have to explain about the IRA to anyone and everyone kept asking me when I was going back.
The Couple Who Behaved Perfectly
7 January 1976
She had a lot of very good skirts and some really expensive soft twinsets. She knew how to knot a scarf around her throat so that it didn’t look like a bandage. She would read the Daily Mail at breakfast while he read the Daily Telegraph; their dog waited obediently out in the hall since animals were welcome but not in the dining room. She had nice bright awake eyes and looked as if she might want to have a chat as they ate scrambled eggs and toast, but in her circle she had probably learned early that men aren’t communicative at that hour. So she would look out the window a bit at the seagulls over the harbour, and at the life of the village getting underway, and say nothing.
Every morning he said the same thing when the last cup of coffee had been drained and his mouth carefully wiped for danger of a last lurking crumb. With a rattle of the newspaper, and with the air of a man who has put up with ladies being late and slow and unpredictable all his life he would say, ‘Right, if you’re ready, we might as well push off, what?’
She had always been ready at least ten minutes ahead of him. But a bright little smile would come on cue and she would say, ‘Yes. Why not, I’m ready now, I think.’
And smiling at the waitress with the friendly but not familiar smile that those who are at ease in country houses or good hotels always have, they would walk from the dining room, pick up the dog’s lead and stroll down the street to their car. It was very like them, their car – good, expensive, well-kept but not showy.
I used to wonder what they talked about as they settled in and fastened their seat belts. Would they have planned their sightseeing the night before, or would he say, ‘I thought we might go and look at that headland that Charles and Antonia told us about, what?’
Or were they in fact not real at all? Were they part of a gang of jewel thieves and once in the car would he say, ‘Great stuff, Tiger Lil, we had them fooled again this morning, let’s get to Diamond Harry’s place and get hold of last night’s haul.’
There seemed to be no way of knowing at all.
Or there wasn’t until one night when the hotel dining room was more crowded than usual and we all had to push our tables slightly closer together. They were in the habit of exchanging a few sentences over the evening meal so this was a marvellous opportunity to hear what they actually said.
She always wore something dark and understated for dinner, if understated means that it wasn’t covered with jewels or cut to the navel. He would wear a dark suit and tie, the tweedy morning look wouldn’t have been at all suitable. They had a sherry each before their meal and he would spend a considerable amount of time discussing with the wine waiter the half bottle of the wine they had nightly. Whatever it was she would sip, and think and sip again and say, ‘Lovely, really very good.’
That much I had noticed when they were far away. I had thought that if he had ordered methylated spirits with the same formality she would have sipped it and given the same reply.
From close up he looked slightly younger and she slightly more tired than I had thought. They debated whether to have whitebait or the pâté with very logical reasoning, like having had pâté at lunch but not really knowing whether a whole plate of whitebait might not be too heavy a starter. I felt sure that they were not a real married couple on a holiday at all. They had to be a pair of actors brought in from a professional company to lend the hotel some style and character. Nobody could invent and mean dialogue like theirs unless it had been intended for the stage.
‘I think the tide is coming in again dear, do you?’
‘No, actually, I think it’s going out.’
‘But it seems to be further into the harbour than it was at lunchtime.’
‘Oh really? It probably came in further and then started to go out. Tides do, you know.’
‘I don’t want to disagree with you, dear, but it’s further in now than it was when I was dressing, it’s up higher on the pier.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it may be, dear, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be going out now, does it?’
‘But you haven’t even looked, dear.’
‘Then how can you expect me to make any judgment at all, dear?’
It was riveting stuff.
When the wine ritual was over, and the main course eaten, they had their usual microscopic piece of Stilton. And here the pattern changed.
‘I think we might have two vintage ports,’ he said to the wine waiter without consulting her.
‘How splendid, port!’ she said politely, in tones that you knew meant she would have said How Splendid if he’d ordered a glass of arsenic.
When the port arrived, he raised his glass and said in the same studied tones, ‘It hasn’t worked at all, of course.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ she said.
‘The holiday, the getting away, the behaving normally. It hasn’t worked, it’s just as bad as being at home.’
By this stage I was so interested I was practically sitting in their laps all the while, pretending to read, of course, the greatest cover an eavesdropper can ever have. But they were far too honourable to have suspected that anyone would be so unsporting as to listen to someone else’s private conversation, so I was safe.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, considering. ‘It has been very pleasant really. We have been lucky with the weather, and we’ve been most comfortable here. No, I’ve enjoyed it, dear, a lot actually. I’m sorry if you haven’t.’
‘I’m not talking about the holiday,’ he said, and there were no dears or whats in his conversation now, he was quite different to his normal self.
‘I don’t want to disagree with you, but you just said this very minute that the holiday hadn’t worked for you ….’
‘Please don’t try and throw words at me to prevent me finishing what I’m trying to say. I said that it’s all been a waste of money and time and we might as well never have come. I can’t think why I allowed myself be talked into it at all. I knew from the moment that you suggested it that it was insane … and that we can’t … can’t ….’ He ran out of fluency.
‘Dearest, you’re not going to say “we can’t go on like this”, are you? It would be too much. I think I’d get a fit of hysterics.’
He grinned. ‘I was going to say it, and I tried to change half way but couldn’t think of anything else that began with “we can’t”,’ he said, and again they looked like a happy couple exchanging a pleasantry.
There was a bit of a pause.
I decided that he was having an affair with someone else, and wanted a divorce, and that she had said let’s have a quiet week away from everything and make no hasty decisions, and then we’ll sit down and talk about it in a civilised manner. I was very sorry for her, because she looked nice and
kind, and probably loved doing the flowers and taking healthy walks with that nice brushed dog, and gardening, and hanging up hunting prints so that they got the light. And now when he left her she would have a very lonely time, and she was undoubtedly very dependent on him and devoted to him, which passes for love with a lot of people.
I was sorry too that the nice week in the beautiful countryside and in the village with the magical little harbour hadn’t worked for her.
The pause ended.
‘You’re not making it easy for me, you know,’ he said, twisting his glass of port around in his fingers. ‘You could make it much easier, you know, if you’d only allow us to talk about things. I don’t think all this coolness is healthy, I really don’t. Why don’t you cry or show some emotion like women do?’
‘My dear, I’ve said over and over again I haven’t the least idea what other women do. They never discuss it with me, and indeed if I knew I don’t suppose for a moment that I would want to copy it, just to fit in with some kind of convention. You should be very grateful that I am being so calm, it should surely help you.’
I don’t know, I thought to myself, I think he hates it. Men like him would expect a woman to cling and weep, not just let him go without discussing it, but then why had she insisted on coming on a holiday with him? It was very confusing.
‘After 15 years nobody has a right to be so calm,’ he said. ‘I seriously do think you are having some kind of depression or nervous trouble. Why don’t you let me make an appointment for you to see someone? Old Harris has all the best contacts, and you could talk to somebody very sympathetic, somebody who’s the best in his field, what? It wouldn’t be like going to a psychiatrist because you were, you know, not quite … it would be more like having a discussion with somebody trained who could tell us why you want to do this.’
‘Dear, listen to me just one last time, I’ve told you and I am not telling you again. I am leaving. On the first of next month I am going. The house will be perfect, the decorators are finished already. I am not taking any of the jewellery or furs, they will be put into storage. I want to take Nelson, but if you want him very much then he must stay with you. I will let you have evidence of adultery immediately I have left, and the divorce action will be undefended. I will ask for no alimony, I want nothing at all, least of all a scene.’
‘But, for God’s sake, why? And who are you going to? I’ll know sooner or later when I get this evidence of adultery, as you call it. You can’t have had time to have any adultery. It’s ridiculous.’
‘Could you keep your voice down, please, dear? There will be no discussion whatsoever. I really didn’t expect to have to say this so often. You have always behaved perfectly to me, and I think that I am behaving perfectly to you now. You looked very tired and overworked, so after I gave you my news I was concerned that you might become ill. That’s why I suggested that we have this holiday, insisted on it, as you describe it. I was right, you look ever so much better now, all the rest and the good food and the change. I knew it would do you good.’
And then wiping away any crumbs of cheese, she stood up and said, ‘Right, if you’re ready we might as well push off, what? And perhaps we could take Nelson for a walk around the harbour before we go to bed.’
A Snatch at Some Happiness
5 February 1976
She had been married for 10 months and she found it odd that this sense of doom lay like a big heavy meal on her chest. She couldn’t explain all that to the doctor, of course, because she had already told him she felt a bit off when she went three months before to find out if she were pregnant. He had examined her blood pressure, her heart and taken a blood test, and he told her she was as fit as a fiddle.
And there was no reason she should feel a sense of doom. Andy was kind to her and he said he loved her often which she liked hearing, and she believed. The girls at work were envious of her because she was always rushing out at lunch hour to buy their evening meal, and they thought that was a lovely secure thing to be doing. They had a flat which got lots of sunlight, and had a bit of a garden. They often had people in for spaghetti on a Friday or a Saturday. They were saving £48 a month between them; putting it into a building society so that they would be able to get a deposit on a house when the Time Came.
She thought a lot about the Time Coming, and was very disappointed each month to realise that there was little hope of the excitement of wondering, hoping, getting tests done and discovering that she was pregnant. In her mind she never thought much beyond the pregnancy and the birth.
She never thought about what it would be like to have a child around the place, she just thought about having a child.
It was Andy’s mother who started to make things seem more urgent. Six months married and not a sign of anything yet, was the kind of throwaway line she could manage to include into every conversation. She was a grandmother five times over, it wasn’t any of her damn business whether there was a sign of anything or not. How dare people be so personal and offensive, they wouldn’t dream of telling you that you had a poor sense of dress, or bad teeth, but they felt they could comment on the most intimate side of your life, with a kind of coarse ribaldry that they would never use in any other context.
Then it was the man she worked for. He was wondering, he had said to his wife the night before, if his nice secretary had been looking a bit pale recently. Now he was a married man, and he had four children, and she must have no hesitation in telling him if she thought there was a little one on the way. Women needed rest at the beginning and he would only be too glad to let her have a few days off if she needed them. His eyes seemed piggy to her rather than kind, and she thought again how appalling it was that this man who never even addressed her by her first name should feel free to comment on the possibility of a life growing or not growing in her body.
It was when her sister came back from America and oohed and aahed over the flat, over Andy and over the wedding pictures and presents that the weight on her chest got very heavy indeed. Her sister had a way of looking at her with an upwards downwards glance, a look that said starkly, Is she? Isn’t she? Her sister managed to say at every meal that one of the greatest regrets in her own successful life had been that she had never had children. She used to talk about it to Andy at night sometimes. Would he like a child? Of course he would, eventually. Maybe three; an only child would be spoiled and lonely, and two might dislike each other and that would be bad luck on them. Three seemed a safer number. He spoke about it in the same way he spoke of maybe bringing all his golf clubs to Spain for a fortnight and staying in Marbella, playing 36 holes a day. As a nice but unlikely event.
And one weekend when she was shopping she saw two very pregnant women at the supermarket shelves, and they seemed smug and complacent, and knowing it all, and having it all, and she realised that what they had was the ultimate recognition of their role. And she felt very cheated and stood for a long time with her wire basket empty thinking that it had always been the same, at school she had never won the prizes, been on the first teams, been chosen to speak in debates. Even though she had been just as good as those who had got these things.
Not long after that she saw a baby in a pram outside a shop. It looked very small and very peaceful. It had a little red face but not a cross little face, its hand was under its little chin and it wore a furry bonnet. She put out her own hand and touched its face; it opened its eyes and smiled.
Minutes later an untidy-looking girl rushed out and started putting parcels on to the pram. She explained that the baby was a girl and she was four weeks old. Yes, she had a lovely smile but some people said those things weren’t smiles at all, it only meant the baby had wind. She was no trouble, she slept for hours and hours, and she was great fun to play with. Her name was Amanda, and she was never going to let her be called Mandy, it must be the whole name.
So she went home and thought about Amanda who was great fun to play with and who, of course, had a smile, not wind, and wondered about
her sleeping there peacefully in a pram, and decided that the pram would be nice near the window where the sunlight could come in. And that Amanda would like a row of coloured beads on her pram, not a lot of untidy parcels. And she thought about Amanda’s hair for a long time and wondered if she had dark strands or blonde strands under that furry bonnet, and wondered did her toes have the same grip as her fingers, which was something someone had once told her about a baby.
The next day she left work as usual at lunchtime but, instead of going into the supermarket to buy the things for dinner for Andy and herself, she just went up to a pram where there was a sleeping baby, bigger than Amanda, no furry bonnet but a little pink hat. As if she had been doing it all her life, she kicked the brake free underneath the pram and wheeled it away. She didn’t look around to see was anyone watching her, she didn’t look into the shop to see would the mother come out, she just pushed the pram home and she went by different ways, she chose lanes and alleys through the city, not the main streets, she didn’t feel like talking to anyone about Amanda yet. She just walked deliberately down lane after lane smiling into the pram.
She stopped at a chemist, bought a bottle, a tin of baby milk powder, a packet of disposable nappies, a tin of baby talcum powder, a shampoo that said it wouldn’t hurt a baby’s eyes. The man in the chemist said that the baby was a fine little fellow and she looked at him coldly and said it was a girl and her name was Amanda. The chemist man said apologetically that it was hard to tell when they were that wrapped up.
And then she went home and parked the pram by the window where the early afternoon sunlight came in on the pram, and touched the pink knitted bonnet. And the baby didn’t wake up for a while so she didn’t think it needed to be changed but she left the nappies nearby just in case, and she made up the bottle as it said you should on the side of the tin. And the sun went down so that the light was a bit pink like the bonnet.
