by Maeve Binchy
Being able to guess the response is a large part of the surprise party culture. There is the optimistic belief that the recipient will allow gratitude and celebration to cover shock and the business of not being in control. I think you need to be a fairly intuitive psychologist, with a record of reading people’s wishes very well, before you set a surprise in motion. While there can hardly be anyone who would not rejoice in a surprise gift or card, there must be many more for whom the wince factor of the sudden appearance of an unselected group of people would be too nightmarish to inspire a generous, grateful response.
Morning After
“She is praying that the guards were called to the party after
she left, in answer to the complaints about the noise level”
This woman went to a party on Wednesday and she doesn’t remember coming home. This is not a regular occurrence. In fact, it has never happened to her before. She was on a diet and didn’t know very many people at the party. Out of nerves, she drank a lot more than she would usually drink and because she hadn’t eaten, well, it must have all gone straight to her head.
There were lots of good things about the evening, like the fact that she didn’t drive home. Like she didn’t appear to have been sick anywhere. Like she didn’t bring anyone home with her. This was not totally clear to her, however, in the early hours of the morning. She thought she must have brought the taxi driver in with her because she saw him lying half in and half out of his side of the bed. But it turned out to be her coat, so that was a huge relief.
And she examined her eyes. They were, of course, red with drink but it didn’t look as if they were swollen with tears or anything, so she thinks she may not have sat down and cried publicly about the particularly bad behaviour of a certain rat in her life. Her clothes, though distributed wildly around the house, were not torn, so she didn’t wrestle with anyone. Her money and credit cards were intact. She hardly went to Leeson Street to bop the night away, buying wine for strangers.
In the absolute depths of alcoholic remorse, she was determined to explore all mitigating factors and find some signs of optimism, so she lists these very positively as proof that Things Could Have Been Worse.
Because she does not move in a crowd of screaming drunks who would meet for the cure the following day and make a half-hearted effort to fill in the missing parts of the jigsaw, she is totally at sea.
She doesn’t know whether to apologise profusely to her hosts, find out who took her home, tell them some lies about being on medication which reacted badly with the minimal amount of alcohol she had, or to say nothing.
Perhaps she looked perfectly fine. Maybe everyone else had been down on their hands and knees barking like dogs and she had looked cool and distant and superior in the melee. Maybe her hosts were embarrassed that she had witnessed such bad behaviour.
Like all of us, she has been weary of people who keep saying they were drunk and making a thing about it. The man who says: “I know I’ve had a few drinks but . . .” The woman who says: “There I go, slurring my words.”
Years ago, we all used to have a friend who was no drunker than any of us but who used to send a bunch of carnations with a note of apology after every gathering. It made us all think he was totally out of control. In fact, someone once asked him if he could send the flowers before the next party as it would save his hostess having to buy flowers.
And I have an American friend who says, after every single party he was ever at: “I’m afraid I was so drunk last night I was no addition to the scene.” On no occasion has he been anything other than articulate and charming, and it is an eternal mystery why he claims he doesn’t remember anything he said or did.
So back to the woman who got drunk on Wednesday. Should she join the ranks of the apologisers, or should she go along blithely assuming that everything was fine?
She knows quite a few people of the latter category – the non-apologetic sort. People who never mention the fact that they insulted you or spilled drink down your front or danced a hornpipe when other people were trying to have a normal conversation.
From time to time in Dublin, I see a woman who once told me that she had seen a documentary about yaks and every one of them reminded her of me. She told me this with her face dissolved in drink so that none of her features remained in the correct place. I think I would have preferred if, at a later date, she had said: “I’m afraid I was very peculiar the other night and I’m asking for a general absolution from everyone I spoke to.” It would certainly make me feel a lot happier whenever the image of a yak comes into my mind. Otherwise, we have to assume (a) that she doesn’t know she said this; (b) that she knows it and hopes I have forgotten it; or (c) that she meant it.
The woman who got drunk on Wednesday evening crawled around to the house and retrieved her car the following evening. She is in deep depression and in a lather of indecision. She is recalling every article she ever read which begged the question: “Are you an alcoholic?” She is searching desperately for someone who will tell her that it wasn’t really a blackout, not a blackout as such. She is praying that the guards were called to the party after she left, in answer to complaints about the noise level.
I would advise her to apologise. As she left the party without her car, I’d think it was pretty clear that someone had agreed to take her home or at least made sure that she got home safely. That has to be acknowledged. You cannot take for granted that you can fall to bits in someone’s house and that everyone else will look after you.
She doesn’t have to tell the story of the diet, the empty calories, the dirty rat who treated her wrong, the fact that she thought her coat was perhaps the taxi driver. All she need say is that she has only now recovered from her ferocious hangover and would like to thank them for everything. She can leave lots of pauses where they can fill in the things she is thanking them for – no self-flagellation but some acknowledgement that all was not as it might have been.
There’s an aggressive, macho charm about being the kind who never apologises and never explains. But it could mean you never get asked anywhere again, and are never given the opportunity to bring such principles into play.
Late in Life
“We should never again say to latecomers that they’re in perfect time when the meal is stuck to the roof of the oven and the other guests are legless with pre-dinner drinks”
I regard people who say they’ll meet you at 8 p.m. and then turn up at 8.30 as liars. I had a colleague, years ago in my teaching days, who used to smile and say that she was always late, as if it were something outside her control, like having freckles or a Gemini star sign. At first I went through agonies thinking she had been mown down by a bus. After that I would arrange to meet her, not on the corner of a street or at the cinema, but in a café where at least I could sit down while waiting. After that I stopped meeting her. There were too many main features beginning at 5.20 missed, too many buses gone, too many houses where I had to be part of an apology for an unpunctuality that was none of my making.
She lives in another country now and I met someone who had been to see her. Just as nice as ever, apparently, just as good company. Much loved by her children but treated as a dotty old lady who can’t be relied on. She would never turn up to pick them up from school, so they just adapted to doing their homework in the school-yard. So she is still at it, thinking she can say one thing and do another, and everyone will forgive her because she is unpunctual the way other people are left-handed or colour-blind.
Of course she got away with it because people are so astounded by the unpunctual that they forgive them and allow them to roam the world as ordinary people instead of as the liars they are. It’s our fault for putting up with it in every walk of life, and I advise people to declare war on the unpunctual. It’s no longer acceptable to consider it an attractive, laid-back, national characteristic. It is, in fact, a lazy self-indulgent, discourteous way of going on. Already there are a lot of signs that people do not accept it as charming.
I remember a time when the curtain never went up on time in a Dublin theatre because, as the theory went, the Irish were all so busy being witty and wonderful and entertaining in bars they couldn’t do anything as pen-pushing, meticulous and prosaic as coming in and being seated before eight o’clock. But enough protests from those who objected to people shuffling in late to performances have led to their not being admitted until the first interval, and it’s very interesting to see how that has concentrated the ability to get to the place before the lights go out.
Staff of Aer Lingus don’t think it’s charming and witty to leave late because their wonderful free-spirited clients can’t be hurried. Likewise with trains, the DART and the buses. Religious services don’t take account of some quirk in the national psyche by having Mass at around 11 or Matins at approximately 10. Races, football matches, television programmes start on time. Why should business appointments and social engagements be let off this hook? And yet this week I was talking to an American publisher on the phone who said that she was expecting an Irish author in her office but he was 40 minutes late. She laughed good-naturedly and, even though she was 3,000 miles away, I could see her shrug forgivingly. “Oh well, that’s the Irish for you!” she said, as if somehow it explained something. To me it explained nothing.
As a race we are not naturally discourteous. In fact, if anything, we wish to please a bit too much. That’s part of our national image. So where does this unpunctuality come into the stereotype? Has it something to do with being feckless and free and not seeing ourselves ever as a slave to any time-servers or time-keepers? It’s a bit fancy and I don’t think that it’s at all part of what we are.
Not turning up at the time you promised seems quite out of character and, if we do it, it must be because it has been considered acceptable for too long. If nobody were to wait for the latecomer, then things would surely change. If the unpunctual were to be left looking forlorn and foolish when they had ratted on their promise, then people would keep better time. We shouldn’t go on saying that it’s perfectly all right and, nonsense, they mustn’t worry, and really it was quite pleasant waiting here alone wondering was it the right day, the right place, or the right time. We should never again say to latecomers that they’re in perfect time when the meal is stuck to the roof of the oven and the other guests are legless with pre-dinner drinks.
Sit in any restaurant, bar or hotel foyer and listen while people greet each other. “I’m very sorry. The traffic was terrible.” “I’m sorry for being late. I couldn’t get parking . . .” “I’m sorry. Are you here long? I wasn’t sure whether you said one or half past . . . ” “I’m sorry, but better late than never”.
I wouldn’t forgive any of these things. In a city, people with eyes in their heads know that the traffic is terrible; they can see it. Unless they have been living for a while on the planet Mars, they’re aware that it’s impossible to park. If they couldn’t remember whether you said one or half past, that shows great interest in the meeting in the first place. And as for better late than never, I’m not convinced.
Pieces of Silver
“Inheritance, sentimental attachment, beautiful craftwork, valuable asset . . . it’s no life for a piece of silver”
It’s important that you know that this woman is not one of the Very Rich. She said I could write about her but I must say that her husband is a teacher and she works part-time in a dress shop. They have three children in their teens, they have one car, and pay a £200-a-month mortgage on their house.
Every July they go for three weeks to the seaside; they’re off today and, when I met her, she was on her way into the bank to leave in the silver.
It was in a carrier bag, all polished up, and each piece wrapped carefully in soft cloths. She had been doing this as long as she could remember, taking it to the bank for three weeks a year.
She didn’t know how much it was worth, but there were cream jugs and sugar basins and a teapot and salt cellars and a bon-bon dish. Maybe worth £2,000 or more.
They were mainly 1940s pieces, which her parents had received as wedding presents, and a few pieces from the 1970s, such as spoons which had been her own wedding presents. She clutched the bag as if she were expecting we would be felled to the ground by a bandit before she was able to pass it across the counter.
And, for the other 49 weeks of the year, did they use the silver, pour milk from the jug, spoon salt from the salt cellar, eat old-fashioned humbugs or fruit pastilles from the bon-bon dish?
Was I mad or something? Of course they didn’t.
Well, were the pieces of silver all nicely displayed at home and winking at them from a shelf, or even from behind glass doors, so they could see them and get pleasure from the shape of them and the way they looked if they weren’t going to be allowed to be pressed into service?
Did I live in the real world or where? Of course they weren’t displayed. Displayed, like an invitation to a burglar, like a notice saying “Look, here are the valuables.” Well, where were they when they weren’t in the bank for their holidays?
They were in a drawer behind the tea cloths, that’s where they were. And did they ever get out at all? Well, the pair didn’t entertain much, but suppose there was some kind of a do . . . but not always, they didn’t want to be showing off, loading a table down with silver. It looked like boasting. It said “if you have it, flaunt it”. That wasn’t good.
But was it good, I asked, to be in the situation that you have to hide it behind the tea towels? And then, if you still have it, lug it to the bank for three weeks in July? Now we were squaring up for the fight.
So what would you do with it, she asked, not unreasonably. As it happens I had exactly the same kind of silver. A share of the pieces that had belonged to my parents, all of it 1930s Birmingham for some reason; maybe that’s what they saved up for then.
Anyway, I used it non-stop, even to the extent of planting an African violet in one of the sugar bowls, because you couldn’t use two sugar bowls at the same time. And people were always shaking their heads and saying it was criminal to use good silver like that, and not respecting it. But I liked it and I thought using it was respecting it. Like having your Solpadeine from a Waterford glass, if you have one, seems to be the right thing to do rather than making a value judgement and wondering would the glass violently object to being used for such humdrum purposes.
In the end I didn’t keep the silver, because everyone was making such a fuss about it. We travelled so much, they said, it was inviting disaster to have it around the place and I was not going to beat a path up and down to the bank. What was the point of it if it was in a sports bag wrapped up in the dark? Someone should be looking at it and pouring things out of it.
I sold some in order to help with the house deposit, and 1 gave the rest away to the people I was going to give it to anyway in my will. They all said that, as usual, I was overdoing it and overreacting. But to me it was great.
Now I can see the silver when I go to their houses, and I don’t care if they have to remember to get it back or burrow in the tea towel drawer for it, and I don’t care whether they hate dirtying it up by putting milk and sugar and salt and pepper into it instead of leaving it in a sports bag. That’s what it was made for.
So I was in a fine position to argue with the woman in the bank. But she was a spirited person. She said that this was her inheritance in the sense that it had been left to her, not in the sense that it was worth a fortune. She felt a sense of duty to hand it on to the next generation.
And, no, she didn’t mind if they sold it when it came to their turn, or gave it away or used it to plant African violets in. That was their decision to make. And so, in front of my eyes, the silver went into a vault. To live a further lonely unseen life. Out of the tea towels and into the strong room.
Better by far than out of your house and into the meltdown or No-Questions-Asked gift trade, the woman said. The bank official joined in the discussion to say that quite a lot of people ava
iled of their services. “There are people who value their silver,” he said very disapprovingly.
Yes, and there are banks who value the possibility of renting out space to the nervous, I said.
It doesn’t cost very much, the bank man said: £10 a year for an envelope, £20 a year for a grip bag.
Plus VAT? I wondered. Plus VAT he agreed. It was an animated discussion, and none of us changed our views. Inheritance, sentimental attachment, beautiful craftwork, valuable asset . . . it’s no life for a piece of silver or your own peace of mind if it is going to be spent in the dark. Look at it or offload it.
She thinks everyone will agree with her, but I know they will agree with me.
Where There’s Smoke
“I begged her to remember reading about the days when people used to pee into things under the table to save themselves the trouble of getting up and leaving the conversation . . .”
It’s bad luck but it’s true. It just sort of happened that smoking became unacceptable. And it’s very bad luck on a friend of mine who says that she knows I, at least, will be sympathetic.
I who wheezed and coughed and hawked with her over the years across people’s dining tables, over their new-born babies, in their brand new cars. Surely, just because I gave them up in some kind of act of foolish and public bravado, I haven’t forgotten the compadres of the ashtray?
Surely I’m not going to join a bandwagon spouting the politics of hate, and start laying down rules about where and when she can smoke in my presence? She says that cured alcoholics don’t go round shouting at other people who still drink: joggers don’t take you by the throat and force you into a tracksuit. But the bad news is that I am . . . on the bandwagon. If it were her liver she was punishing with daily downpourings of Red Biddy, then it’s her liver, not mine. If a jogger sees a non-jogger, then, selfishly, the jogger can leave the non-jogger be, sitting festering, getting fat and unfit. But if it’s a smoker, then it’s my air and my lungs that they are coming at and, for that reason alone, I think they have to face the fact that people are not cranks, weirdoes and freaks if they don’t want to be in their company.
